Each chapter of this thesis closely studies a different object of a different medium to trace relationships between Constructivist objects and Soviet community. El Lissitzky’s PROUN Manifesto illuminates the creation of an artistic community. Alexander Rodchenko’s print Propaganda communicates between a state and its people. Varvara Stepanova’s Sportswear designs facilitate a society of workers. Alexandra Exter’s Marionettes combine common everyday objects and children’s theater. Vladimir Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International, envisions the ideal Soviet society as place in which socialists could convene. And Liubov Popova’s Painterly Architectonics relates the functional and aesthetic goals of Constructivism from Russia to the international art world. Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, Bruno Latour’s Reassembling the Social, and Pierre Bourdieu’s Distinction each provide the framework for discussing the intersections of art objects and community. Anderson explores nationhood through the lens of language and print media, Latour studies how social interaction on an individual basis might rely upon the physical objects around them, whereas Bourdieu addresses hierarchies in distinguishing objects of art in class-based societies by outlining the conflicts between cultural capital and tastemaking in the analysis of objects.
Through the exploration of each Constructivist object, this thesis explores individual, national, and international communities while considering their changing political, social contexts.
Second, is/can religion be used as a lens to justify objectively oppressive things. With the novel set in 2027, this novel assumes complicity played out leading to a dystopian future where being gay and queer is illegal. Religion is the justifying indicator to push for advocacies that do more harm than good. But the objectively bad act is justifiable through the good lens of religious pursuit. With that said, is moral ambiguity used in a way to mask atrocities or justify them?
This creative writing piece is the set-up to moral ambiguity and the twists and turns that the protagonist will eventually take. To survive and thrive in this culture, what do we have to do to hide? When it comes to the exploration of religion, what components of religion justify treating people like second-class citizens? Or, what components of religion do we use unfairly to push an ideology that holistically acts against the best interest of the people?
In this introduction, I discuss the methodology used while translating the novel and a few of the linguistic, semantic, and cultural problems I encountered while working on this new annotated translation. I also explain the cultural and literary context of popular novels during the fin-de-siècle that helped create motifs and themes that Colette later inverses in the novel. Colette reverses the narrative of the male spectator sitting in the dark theatre, eyes fixed on the desirable form of the female performer. Instead, Renée observes those in her life reversing the male gaze in onto itself.
Despite the meticulousness of the translator, each translation remains only an interpretation of the original text. From hunting motifs to the socio-economic role of diction in class structure during La Belle Époque, I discuss the specific diction Colette uses to show Renée’s dissociation of self and internalized misogyny in her stream-of-consciousness narration.
Following the introduction is seventy-nine pages of the new translation with annotations on certain cultural and linguistic peculiarities unique to French culture and language.
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