Browsing by Subject "France"
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Item Beyond Commitment: intellectual engagement in politics in Postwar France, 1944-1962.(2010-05) Richtmyer, Eric WilliamThis dissertation is a study of the way that French intellectuals engaged in major political debates in the years immediately after World War II. It examines three moments in particular: the purge of writers and intellectuals who collaborated during World War II, the Algerian war of independence, and the emergence of structuralism in the early 1960s. Initially, the mode of engagement developed by the existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, called commitment, dominated the political debate over the postwar purge between 1945 and 1948. At the same time, Maurice Blanchot, Albert Camus, and Jean Paulhan critiqued Sartrean commitment for its philosophical inadequacy, its political inefficacy, and its moral ambiguity. As a result, they developed their own mode of engagement, based on the articulation of political arguments through unlikely means, such as literature and philosophy, which achieved prominence by the end of the war in Algeria in 1962. This dissertation concludes with an examination of the mode of discursive, or textual analysis developed in an exchange between Maurice Blanchot and Michel Foucault at the beginning of the 1960s. This exchange reveals that their version of textual analysis itself served as a mode of engagement in politics, and was rooted in the critique of Sartrean commitment articulated during the postwar purge, and the war in Algeria. This dissertation has the additional significance of redefining how the body of thought known in the United States as French theory is conceived. Ultimately, the move away from existentialism and its mode of political commitment was one of the main factors that contributed to French theory's growth in the 1960s. By historicizing French theory within the culture and politics of postwar France, this dissertation shows that French theory must be understood as a large and synthetic intellectual community, rather than as a description of a particular kind of philosophical or literary thought. The relations which obtained within this community affected, and sometimes even determined the generation of theoretical ideas and texts. This dissertation shows that French theory has continued utility for contemporary scholarship when it is taken to indicate the relations of this intellectual community.Item Catalog and Raw Data from the Analysis of the Source of the Douix and Other Gallo-Roman Sanctuaries in Eastern France(2014-11-20) Erdman, Katherine M; erdma084@umn.edu; Erdman, KatherineExamining human behaviors in the past, particularly ritual activity, can provide insight into ritual practices and religious beliefs today. Erdman's project, under the guidance of Dr. Peter Wells, examines the role of ritual offerings as devices for communicating with the supernatural world through their deposition into sacred watery places in the Gallo-Roman Period (50 BC - AD 450). A freshwater spring, known as the Source of the Douix, in Châtillon-sur-Seine, France was used as a focus for comparison to other sites. The quantities of recovered votive offerings and the near continuous use of the site over two thousand years contain data that can help to answer the following questions: How are the objects deposited in sacred spaces, particularly those in water, used as communicative devices? Do the types of objects change over time, and if so, how can these changes be explained using archaeological evidence? Evidence from the Douix was then used for multiple levels of comparative analyses, such as comparison to other local sanctuaries, regional watery sites (other springs, rivers and lakes), and regional sanctuaries associated with mother goddesses. Detailed presence/absence analysis records the types of objects at each location, the materials or media represented, and the types of deities at each location. Through detailed comparisons of such data, it is possible to recognize patterns of offerings from place to place, and such patterns will help illuminate the purpose of the offerings.Item France - Sustainable horticulture crop production(2009-06-23) Jensen, BrianItem Into the Abject: Fracture Zones in Francophone African Literature(2018-09) Jones-Boardman, SarahIn my dissertation I examine what I call “fracture zones” between France and Africa through literary analysis of novels by authors from across francophone Africa: Abdourahman Waberi, Aminata Sow Fall, Cheikh Hamidou Kane, Ken Bugul, Léonora Miano and Nina Bouraoui. Fracture zones are interstitial spaces where two elements come into violent contact but in which one element, the author and gatekeeper of this violent space, has all the power. One manifestation of a fracture zone is the Mediterranean Sea which, at Europe’s behest, has become a space that is fluid and passible only to one side. To the other side, it has become a deadly space that swallows up African lives. A fracture zone serves as a sort of protective belt around the global Northern Subject. It is a Butlerian constitutive border, an abject and unlivable space that guarantees the Subject’s privileged identity. This dissertation descends into the abject to explore fracture zones and the process of “abjectification” that Francophone Africans are made to undergo to protect and justify French subjectivity. Chapter one, Zones of (Im)mobility and Fracture in Abdourahman Waberi’s Transit and Aminata Sow Fall’s Douceurs du bercail, paints a dynamic picture of fracture zones as physical spaces of contact that sharply divide a powerful France from relatively powerless African countries. I demonstrate that power-infused binary oppositions do not dissolve in an interstitial space of fluid exchange and negotiation; instead they are reinforced as the global North reifies its borders, making them increasingly impenetrable to those hailing from the global South. Chapter two, Fractured Inner Worlds: Neocolonial and Gendered Alienation in Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s Aventure ambigüe (1961) and Ken Bugul’s Le Baobab fou (1983), explores France’s historical fracturing of African subjectivity that began with its progressive invasion of the continent. I reveal that fracture zones are not confined to the physical world but produce distorting effects that infect and deform the psyches of the colonized, causing internal fissuring and even internalized abjectification. Chapter three, Infection, Gendered Fracture and Afropessimism in Léonora Miano’s L’Interieur de la nuit, analyzes a fictional central African country in the grips of civil war, exposing how existential destabilization and erasure manifest on a societal level and considering the lasting transgenerational trauma of France’s invasion and colonization of African nations. My concluding chapter, Devoured by Fracture: Nina Bouraoui’s Garçon Manqué, returns to look at the effects of fracturing on both sides of the Mediterranean. I demonstrate that fractures are deforming and even altogether destroying the future not only of the (formerly) colonized, but that of Subject/author-of-fracture as well.Item A North Wind: The New Realism of the French-Walloon Cinéma du Nord(2013-11) Niessen, NielsThis project explains the reinvention of earlier realist practices of depicting everyday lives of ordinary people for the globalized digital era. The cinéma du Nord is an exemplary instantiation of this global new realist tendency. I coin the cinéma du Nord as a transnational regional cinema rooted in the French North and the Belgian South. Once industrial centers, these regions suffered severe crises since the 1950s, when their coal mines were depleted and their industries superannuated. The cinéma du Nord should be understood in the context of the transition from an industrial economy to a postindustrial economy in which existence has become precarious for many. I argue that films such as Rosetta (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 1999) and L'humanité (Bruno Dumont, 1999) have emerged from the endeavor of Wallonia and the French North to reimagine themselves as European centers after decades of recession. Ultimately, I locate the cinéma du Nord within a wider wave of global new realism (e.g., the films of Jia Zhangke and Kelly Reichardt). I argue that in its most compelling forms the new realist humanism renders intelligible the question, "what is a life in the face of the waning power of traditional and modern institutions?"Item Priest as Criminal: Community Regulation of Priests in the Archdeaconry of Paris, 1483-1505(2013-11) Vann Sprecher, TiffanyThis dissertation examines accusations of criminal behavior levied against priests in the archdeaconry of Paris from 1483 - 1505. It is a study of both justice and religion based on an analysis of ecclesiastical court registers. Within these registers are thousands of cases against laypeople and clergy. Focusing on priests, this dissertation scrutinizes the four most common charges brought against them: engaging in illegal business practices; participating in inappropriate leisure activities; committing violence; and having illicit contact with women. It reveals that parishioners had wide latitude and many tools to compel their priests to act in a certain manner. Community members were able to avail themselves of the ecclesiastical court to enforce church law. The ecclesiastical court also tacitly sanctioned the use of certain extralegal means, such as violence, that allowed community members to coerce priests into conforming to local expectations. Finally, community members could ignore ecclesiastical laws altogether, enabling though inaction their priests to contravene church laws against, for example, gambling or living with women. This dissertation challenges a persistent historiography which portrays parishioners as languishing under the leadership of an incompetent and unscrupulous clergy at the turn of the sixteenth century. Historians have argued that this alleged misbehavior prompted parishioners to look elsewhere for religious leadership - namely to Protestant or reformed Catholic churches. However, allegations of crimes committed by Parisian priests have not been systematically examined until now. This study argues that historians have exaggerated the prevalence of, and parishioner disillusionment with, sacerdotal misbehavior. Moreover, this work shows that parishioners had significant agency in the regulation of priests in their parishes. Parishioners were not necessarily looking outside the traditional church to fulfill their religious needs. Rather, they utilized the enforcement tools they possessed to shape the character of their local parish. This study therefore contributes to a growing body of scholarship that sees the church at the turn of the sixteenth century as a dynamic organization directed largely at the parish level by residents of the parish themselves.Item A revolutionary crucible: French radicals, foreign expatriates, and political exiles in the Paris commune(2014-09) Marshall, Christopher JohnDuring the Paris Commune of 1871 non-French radicals served the city's revolutionary government both actively and visibly, holding positions of political and military prominence up until the Commune's final hours. By examining three of these foreign radicals, Leo Frankel, Elisabeth Dmitrieff, and Jaroslav Dombrowski, this dissertation demonstrates how the Paris Commune constituted a pivotal moment in Europe's transnational radical discourse, particularly for foreign radicals operating within the French capital. Beginning with the French Revolution, Paris became a site of revolutionary pilgrimage for international radicals drawn by its promise of facilitating their own political and ideological aspirations. Inaugurated by the Great Revolution, this process greatly accelerated between 1830 and 1848 as the city's community of foreign radicals, spurred the growth of transnational discourse such as socialism, began to perceive Paris's revolutionary portent as transnational and exportable. Though the efforts of 1848 proved a failure, they served to illustrate to Paris non-French radical community that a truly transnational revolutionary effort could only be facilitated by first consolidating revolution in Paris. This, combined with the deepening of transnational radical ties through the establishment of the International, produced the conditions whereby Paris's transnational potential reached its apex with the Paris Commune. Based on archival research conducted in Paris, this project demonstrates how foreign radicals, specifically Frankel, Dmitrieff, and Dombrowski, came to view the Commune as the historical moment capable of carrying Paris's revolutionary promise to its final fulfilment, thus forging a pathway to an emancipatory future for Europe and beyond.Item A Simple Photogrammetry Rig for the Reliable Creation of 3D Artifact Models in the Field: Lithic Examples from the Early Upper Paleolithic Sequence of Les Cottés (France)(2015-06-01) Porter, Samantha T; Roussel, Morgan; Soressi, Marie; port0228@umn.edu; Porter, Samantha T3D scanning is becoming an increasingly utilized tool in archaeology. In comparison with other methods of 3D registration close-range photogrammetry has the benefits of being relatively inexpensive, mobile, and extremely adaptable for use in field conditions. Here, 3D models of lithic cores from the Châtelperronian, Protoaurignacian, and Early Aurignacian levels of the site of Les Cottés (France) are presented as examples of the quality of model that can be produced using photographs taken with a simple and inexpensive photogrammetry rig.Item Sound Moves: displacement and modernity in French and Senegalese cinemas(2010-07) Dima, VladMy dissertation, "Sound Moves: Displacement and Modernity in French and Senegalese Cinemas," explores the relation between film, film sound, modernity, and the cultural politics of gender. Analyzing specific works by French and Senegalese directors, I demonstrate how Senegalese cinema constitutes an original artistic movement unto itself, which can be compared to an established school of expression such as the French New Wave. Both cinemas challenge the primacy of the visual by foregrounding how aural planes affect and alter the economy of visual planes. As a result, I determine that new (aural) narrative plateaus surface from the plurality and plasticity of sound, which displaces and complicates filmic images. These planes reshape the current paradigm of the relationship between spectator and film. In other words, the diverse sound manipulation techniques encountered in these cinemas generate a space continuum in which the audience becomes intimately involved with the projection on screen. I have identified and explored in depth two such prevalent techniques, the sonic jump-cut and the sonic rack-focus, which unfold aural planes in a way that suspends the visual-focused narration. Furthermore, I expose how sound displacement generates the displacement of the film subjects, who, in French and Senegalese films, constantly shift their identity because of their unique position as both products and counterpoints of modernity. I demonstrate that the re-appropriation of the discourse of female identity takes place through voice and sounds, disrupting the gendered relation that classical cinema established primarily through the scopic regime.Item Three Dimensional Models and Two Dimensional Cross Sections of Châtelperronian and Protoaurignacian Lithic Cores from the Sites of Les Cottés and Roc de Combe(2018-05-29) Porter, Samantha T; Roussel, Morgan; Soressi, Marie; stporter@umn.edu; Porter, Samantha TThese data were generated as part of a study investigating the use of quantitative methods on three dimensional models of lithic artifacts. The majority of the data set is comprised of 3D scans of Châtelperronian and Protoaurignacian cores from the site of Les Cottés (France), which were generated using photogrammetry. Although cores from the site of Roc de Combe were also scanned for the associated study, we are not able to make them available here due to rights restrictions. The second part of the data set includes two dimensional representations of cross sections, which were from the 3D artifact models. These were used in two analyses, which are described in the associated publication in JCAA (see citation below).Item Transgressing the boundaries of the nation: decolonization, migration, and identity in France/India, 1910-1972(2013-04) Namakkal, Jessica LouiseTransgressing the Boundaries of the Nation: Decolonization, Migration, and Identity in France/India, 1910-1972_ argues that the state-based discourse of decolonization, which is widely circulated in most histories of decolonization, does not reflect the lived experience of the colonial subjects who negotiated multiple identities and moving borders throughout what I call the "long history" of decolonization. Examining the five French colonies in India, which remained French until 1962, destabilizes the dominant narrative of decolonization in India, of an anti-colonial nationalist liberation struggle successfully completed with the liberation of India in 1947. Beginning in the 18th-century, when British and French imperial forces were fighting for control of South Asia, the two European powers projected competing ideologies of empire, and over time, national belonging. By the late 19th-century, the French-Indian colonies were physically divided from British India by fences, and passport controls and custom borders were erected to patrol the imperial borders. After 1947, as independent India worked to bring French India into the Indian Union, the same borders were used to distinguish foreigner from citizen, French-Indian from Indian, a colonial-juridical designation that had turned many neighbors into strangers, and lead to the migration of over 7,000 French-Indians to France after 1962. Based on archival research conducted in India, France, and England, I show that while decolonization ruptured the geography and political structure of the imperial world, the institutional structures of colonialism and capitalism, intertwined with the imperial mission of modernity and progress, have continued on into the post-colonial world, re-establishing hierarchies of race, caste, class, and gender in the metropole as well as in anti-colonial nation-states.Item A Visual Affair: Popular Culture and L'Affaire Dreyfus(2016-06) Trittipo, KathrynThis dissertation examines the popular culture and visual material connected to the Dreyfus Affair in nineteenth century France. The Dreyfus Affair was an important political and social event that took place in the 1890s in which Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer, was wrongfully accused of treason and found guilty, despite a lack of evidence. In the aftermath of the verdict, French society split into opposing camps, largely based on social and political values. Newspapers and journals covered the Dreyfus Affair prolifically and a broad variety of materials were produced that related to the Affair, such as postcards, posters, novelties, and games. It is through these items that the public really engaged with the Affair, an aspect of it that has largely been overlooked. This dissertation posits that the material produced contained a variety of functions for the public, from didacticism to entertainment. An overview of common subjects and themes is discussed to provide a general framework before the more lengthy discussion of the materials possible functions. Also explored are the concepts of low-brow and high-brow material, especially as it connects to the figure of the collector.