***Please note that the print and digital version of this thesis are not identical as to the order of the various parts of the front and back matter.***Following the emergence of concepts related... Show more***Please note that the print and digital version of this thesis are not identical as to the order of the various parts of the front and back matter.***Following the emergence of concepts related to Arab nationalism there was a clear struggle between the progressive thinkers who wanted to secure a secular society and release public life from religion, and the conformists who wanted to maintain their traditional practices. This research proposes a critical understanding of letterist abstraction works of art by devising a tool that allows scholars to place a letterist work of art on a spectrum of abstraction in relationship to different elements in the painting. It is a way to understand the artworks and their artists in relationship to each other. Understanding letterists abstraction artists and the dynamics that dictated their work was essential for understanding the movement and its artistic production.The research places the life and work of letterist abstraction artists in a wider artistic, social and political context, thus helping the reader form an understanding of the movement from a broader perspective. By tracing all the threads for the assessment of letterist abstraction works of art and artists, I hope to encourage the emergence of more such scholarly and critical works, until we have a better critical understanding of the contemporary Arab art scene as a whole. Show less
In the Counter Reformation, art and architecture are often attributed a central role in such a process of persuasion. Recent historical studies, however, have emphasized the intense fear of God... Show moreIn the Counter Reformation, art and architecture are often attributed a central role in such a process of persuasion. Recent historical studies, however, have emphasized the intense fear of God that held Early Modern society in its grip, leading to a revision of the traditional view of the Counter Reformation as a top-down process. This revision has important implications for the history of art, as it challenges us to reconsider the notion of religious art and architecture during the Counter Reformation as rhetorical “propaganda”. In the present dissertation I approach the religious art patronage in the Catholic South from a perspective informed by recent developments in ethnography and anthropology. I propose to redefine the “baroque piety” of religious patronage that generated works of art and architecture not as a strategy to persuade (in a rhetorical way), but to negotiate with the divine in a continuous process of reconciliation, aiming to regain divine grace. Put in anthropological terms, works of art served as ritual interfaces to enter into negotiation with the divine. This negotiation with God took place within networks of social relations (nexuses) in which art and architecture functioned as agents of change Show less
Barbarism, Otherwise is an interdisciplinary inquiry into the operations of the concept of barbarism and the figure of the barbarian in modern and contemporary works of literature, art, and theory.... Show moreBarbarism, Otherwise is an interdisciplinary inquiry into the operations of the concept of barbarism and the figure of the barbarian in modern and contemporary works of literature, art, and theory. The terms __barbarism,__ __barbarians,__ and __civilization__ figure prominently in politics, the media, historiography, cultural theory, and everyday language in the West. This study takes issue with the currently popular rhetoric of __civilization versus barbarism__ and interrogates contemporary and historical uses of the __barbarian__ in the West. Although __barbarism__ is traditionally viewed as the negative offshoot of __civilization,__ this study shows how it can be recast as a critical concept in cultural theory. The central issue is not __who (or where) are the barbarians?__ but what kind of critical operations barbarism can be involved in. This study thus proposes a shift from an essentialist to a performative approach to barbarism and the barbarian. How can the operations of barbarism in literature, art, and theory unsettle the concept__s violent uses in Western discourses? How can barbarism trigger new modes of knowing, comparing, and theorizing? Can it inspire alternative ways of relating to others that are not based on essentialist binary schemes? In order to pluralize barbarism and chart its complex operations, this study draws from theory, politics, history, literature, visual art, film, and philosophy, and engages cultural objects from various national contexts. Show less
