Doctoral Theses / Doktorsavhandlingar Institutionen för språk och litteraturer
https://hdl.handle.net/2077/19516
2024-03-28T22:53:49ZRethinking Art and Life: The Multiple Entanglements of Allan Kaprow’s Happenings
https://hdl.handle.net/2077/78668
Rethinking Art and Life: The Multiple Entanglements of Allan Kaprow’s Happenings
Routledge, Laura
This dissertation examines Allan Kaprow's Happenings of the 1960s. It focuses on the ways in which these works spread out, reached into and became entangled with the social world in which they were written, organised and performed. Rooted in archival research and attention to the multiple forms of documentation produced in each Happening, the thesis traces the numerous and developing techniques by which Kaprow brought work and world into close, reciprocal relation in Happenings throughout the decade. It details the ways in which these techniques became a means of critical, experimental engagement with a range of social questions in 1960s America, including the changes in the nature of the public sphere and the shift towards a "post-industrial" society.
The thesis explores entanglement not only as a structural principle of individual Happenings, but also as central to Kaprow's Happenings as a more broadly conceived project. It situates individual works within the context of Kaprow's writings and of his under explored organisational and promotional work related to the form. Drawing on a tradition that originates in Peter Bürger's Theory of the Avant-Garde (1971), the thesis argues that Kaprow developed the multifaceted, intertwining form of the Happening as a tool to examine, and to interrogate the possibilities of, the changing social roles, sites, audiences and values of modern art in 1960s America. As well as opening up new perspectives on Kaprow's Happenings, the thesis contributes to ongoing debates around the "neo-avant-garde", the relationship between ephemeral performance and its documentation, and meaning-making and agency in participatory art.
2023-11-23T00:00:00ZSprachvariation und Sprachkontakt in Existenzverbkonstruktionen des Pomerano. Eine korpusgestüzte Untersuchung einer niederdeutschen Varietät in Brasilien
https://hdl.handle.net/2077/78665
Sprachvariation und Sprachkontakt in Existenzverbkonstruktionen des Pomerano. Eine korpusgestüzte Untersuchung einer niederdeutschen Varietät in Brasilien
Hansen, Martin
This study investigates the Low German variety of Pomerano spoken by descendants of settlers
who arrived in Brazil around 1860–1880 from the European region of Pomerania. The focus of
this linguistic study is on existential constructions (Existenzverbkonstruktionen – EVK), which
are used to express “existence” (Es gibt einen Gott) or an ingressive status of “coming into
existence” (Es gibt ein Fest). The data comprises eight hours of spoken Pomerano recorded from
18 speakers in the Pomeranian settlements in Espírito Santo, Rio Grande do Sul, and Santa
Catarina.
The primary purpose of this study is to analyze the variation in existential constructions with
GÄWEN, SIN, and HEWWEN in Pomerano on morpho-syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic levels.
Additionally, the study aims to identify contact-induced variation through Brazilian Portuguese,
taking sociolinguistic factors into account. The theoretical framework combines descriptive-structuralist
methods with a usage-based cognitive approach to language contact.
In general, the results indicate that the Low German construction in Pomerano appears
relatively stable at the morpho-syntactic level. Contact-induced variation by Brazilian
Portuguese occurs in the HEWWEN-EVK, which is documented here for the first time in about 14 %
of the 285 tokens under scrutiny. This innovation is interpreted as a re-structured variant of
the dominant HAVER/TER-EVK in Brazilian Portuguese and is discussed with the usage-based
factors similarity and frequency.
Additionally, the behavior of speakers in Santa Catarina and Espírito Santo, who are
competent in High German or not, respectively, suggests that High German is deployed in
preventing direct Portuguese influence on Pomeranian existential constructions, especially in
relation to the NP. Speakers in Santa Catarina, who typically speak a High German variety
alongside with Pomerano, use genuine German nominals or conventionalized loanwords in
HEWWEN-EVK. Speakers in Espírito Santo, who generally lack High German competence, tend
to use lexemes or spontaneous loan translations of Portuguese nominals. This makes the case for
a regionally specific development of Pomerano that should be further investigated.
The study also demonstrates multilingual speakers using different EVK variants depending
on their communicative goals. This leads to intra-individual use of a variant repertoire in
comparable semantic settings with highly conventionalized EVK, such as Es gibt einen
Unterschied.
2023-11-07T00:00:00ZLa Fragilité des Limites - une lecture de la critique de la modernité chez Alain Finkielkraut
https://hdl.handle.net/2077/78742
La Fragilité des Limites - une lecture de la critique de la modernité chez Alain Finkielkraut
Tiozzo, Matilde
For over forty years Alain Finkielkraut has been part of debates that have structured, and sometimes divided, public and intellectual life in France. He is an intellectual who arouses controversy, disapproval and admiration. The aim of this thesis is to go beyond these normative considerations and propose a hermeneutic analysis of his work. We argue that the question of limits is a constant feature of his thinking, and his conception of limits is crucial for understanding his critique of modernity. Limits, in their temporal and spatial dimensions, structure the relationship between the Old and the New, ensure the durability of the Common World, and delineate the public and the private sphere, thus ensuring both the separation and the bond between the Peoples of the common world. For this reason, Part I identifies limits in their various forms in Finkielkraut's thought and focuses on his “negative” critique and sheds light on how his conception of limits shapes his critique of the contemporary world. Part II looks at Finkielkraut's vision of literature, which the philosopher sees as a counterweight to ideology. We show that literature constitutes for him both an epistemological and an ethical exploration. The epistemological exploration refers to the idea that literature is a source of knowledge: the knowledge of the particular and the unforeseeable, specific to the human condition. It differs from the common philosophical concept in that it is not aimed at the general but at individual lives. The ethical exploration of, and through, literature means that it enables us to move beyond subjectivity and understand other experiences, thereby broadening the horizon of understanding. In this sense, we identify how the novel, in its Finkielkrautian conception, offers the possibility of accounting for the plurality of human beings. Part III focuses on Finkielkraut's “positive critique” and highlights what Finkielkraut advocates as necessary for the human condition, a human condition that he believes depends on both the Old and the New, on an alliance between universalism and particularism, and on the combination of freedom and culture.
2023-11-02T00:00:00ZWorldmakers and Worldwreckers in Decolonial and Developmentalist Imaginaries of Environmental Justice from Western Europe and North America in the 2010s
https://hdl.handle.net/2077/76516
Worldmakers and Worldwreckers in Decolonial and Developmentalist Imaginaries of Environmental Justice from Western Europe and North America in the 2010s
Blomqvist, Rut Elliot
This dissertation investigates imaginaries of environmental justice from Western Europe
and North America in the 2010s. It explores the relevance of research on predominantly
Global South environmental movements and writer-activism for a part of the Global
North. A contribution to the cross-pollination of political ecology and literary studies, it
develops decolonial, ecofeminist, and cultural materialist theory, and constructs an
ecopolitical narratological method—an econarratology for political-ecological analysis of
how the power to make and wreck worlds is imagined.
The study teases apart colonial and decolonial conceptions of being and knowledge
in six Anglophone texts: the pop music album ORDA: This Is My Land by Sofia Jannok;
the creative nonfiction The Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Tsing; the science
fiction novel New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson; the investigative journalistic book
This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein; the design fiction The World We Made by Jonathon
Porritt; and the textbook The Age of Sustainable Development by Jeffrey Sachs. These texts
approach the intersections of sustainability and justice from different professed political
positions and different forms of knowledge production.
Part I presents a theoretical and methodological framework for the analysis of
environmental justice imaginaries (Chapters 1 and 4), and also contextualises the study
through an overview of academic-political debates on political concepts, ontology, and
epistemology in environmentalism—research in political ecology, the environmental
humanities, and ecocriticism that has previously not been synthesised (Chapters 2–3). Part
II (Chapters 5–7) turns to the comparative analysis of the six texts, and identifies divergent
conceptions of the makers and wreckers of sustainable and just worlds, and of the ways of
knowing that can be part of worldmaking. This divergence is understood as producing two
poles on a spectrum of imaginaries: ecological decolonisation and sustainable capitalist
development. Part III (Chapter 8) further discusses this through a distinction between
decoloniality and developmentalism, and considers the implications of the study for
political ecology and the environmental humanities, as well as for social movements with
an environmental justice orientation.
2023-08-21T00:00:00Z