Kohti lyyristä abstraktismia : Anitra Lucanderin 1950-luvun modernismi

Towards Lyrical Abstraction Anitra Lucander s Modernism in the 1950s Anitra Lucander (1918-2000) was one of the early pioneers of abstract art in Finland. During the Second World War Finnish art and cultural life was isolated and stagnated and figurative art was still dominant after the war. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, new international abstract art movements started to come to Finland. Anitra Lucander was one of the artists of the younger generation after the war who took an interest in the abstract movements in the early 1950s. At the beginning of the 1950s, abstract art came to Finland primarily in the form of Concretism, but simultaneously, a more delicate abstract movement emerged, and Anitra Lucander was among those cultivating such conceptions in her art. In this thesis, I observe and analyze through Anitra Lucander s art this central movement in Finnish modern art that has not yet been extensively studied. I examine how Anitra Lucander s art connects with the style change in Finnish art. I scrutinize the factors that affected Lucander and turned her towards abstract expression, and the effect her art had on emergence of abstract art in Finland. I will also consider the development of her art, the reception and critique of her art and the effect the critique had on her position in the 1950s art world. Because of a lack of earlier studies, I will undertake basic research, relying on empirical primary source material, where the starting point is to place the phenomenon under examination in the historical and cultural context. The most significant study materials are the artist s paintings and graphics from 1948 to 1960, newspaper and magazine articles from the same era, archive sources and interviews with Lucander s relatives, fellow artists and friends. An interesting aspect of the topic is the fact that Anitra Lucander was the only woman among the important pioneers of early Finnish abstract art. Through Lucander s art, I also examine the position of female artists in the tradition of Modernism as well as in the Finnish art world of the 1950s. This theoretical background is provided by the studies of feminist art historians, such as Marsha Meskimmon, Gill Perry, Griselda Pollock and Anne Middleton Wagner. Lucander s position in the male-dominated Finnish art scene of the 1950s, and how she achieved her position, emerges as one of the central themes of the study. I will also observe whether gender is evident in Lucander s art and expression, as well as her reception and critique compared to the reception of her male colleagues art. From a woman s point of view, I reveal the masculine rhetoric and gendered attitudes in the critique of the era. As a theoretical and methodological frame of reference, I use discourse analysis. Anitra Lucander encountered modernistic, international art movements during her journeys to Paris in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Her art evolved from the geometric Concretism of the early decade towards more delicate and painterly abstract expression. After the mid-1950s, she had developed her signature expression; through Cubism and a collage technique, she developed in her painting a delicate, coloristic imagery, which can be characterized as Lyrical Abstraction. Lucander did not consider abstract expression to be categorical, but saw the abstract and the nonfigurative as equals: the line between the abstract and the figurative is very often fleeting in her art. Already in her own time, Lucander achieved a position as one of the most talented young artists of her generation and her work was included in significant exhibitions. This success can definitely be attributed to the fact that she embraced Modernism in its extreme form, abstraction, already at the beginning of her career and networked with male painters who shared her outlook and modernistic expression. For her, this was either a conscious or an unconscious method of adapting to the male-dominated Finnish art field in the 1950s. In spite of acclaim and attention, Lucander had to encounter the gendered attitudes in the critique of the time, and her art was often perceived through stereotypical views as overly feminine and dependent. However, with her art, Lucander played an important role in the breakthrough for colorism and abstract art in Finland in the 1950s.

Truth, Proof and Gödelian Arguments : A Defence of Tarskian Truth in Mathematics

One of the most fundamental questions in the philosophy of mathematics concerns the relation between truth and formal proof. The position according to which the two concepts are the same is called deflationism, and the opposing viewpoint substantialism. In an important result of mathematical logic, Kurt Gödel proved in his first incompleteness theorem that all consistent formal systems containing arithmetic include sentences that can neither be proved nor disproved within that system. However, such undecidable Gödel sentences can be established to be true once we expand the formal system with Alfred Tarski s semantical theory of truth, as shown by Stewart Shapiro and Jeffrey Ketland in their semantical arguments for the substantiality of truth. According to them, in Gödel sentences we have an explicit case of true but unprovable sentences, and hence deflationism is refuted. Against that, Neil Tennant has shown that instead of Tarskian truth we can expand the formal system with a soundness principle, according to which all provable sentences are assertable, and the assertability of Gödel sentences follows. This way, the relevant question is not whether we can establish the truth of Gödel sentences, but whether Tarskian truth is a more plausible expansion than a soundness principle. In this work I will argue that this problem is best approached once we think of mathematics as the full human phenomenon, and not just consisting of formal systems. When pre-formal mathematical thinking is included in our account, we see that Tarskian truth is in fact not an expansion at all. I claim that what proof is to formal mathematics, truth is to pre-formal thinking, and the Tarskian account of semantical truth mirrors this relation accurately. However, the introduction of pre-formal mathematics is vulnerable to the deflationist counterargument that while existing in practice, pre-formal thinking could still be philosophically superfluous if it does not refer to anything objective. Against this, I argue that all truly deflationist philosophical theories lead to arbitrariness of mathematics. In all other philosophical accounts of mathematics there is room for a reference of the pre-formal mathematics, and the expansion of Tarkian truth can be made naturally. Hence, if we reject the arbitrariness of mathematics, I argue in this work, we must accept the substantiality of truth. Related subjects such as neo-Fregeanism will also be covered, and shown not to change the need for Tarskian truth. The only remaining route for the deflationist is to change the underlying logic so that our formal languages can include their own truth predicates, which Tarski showed to be impossible for classical first-order languages. With such logics we would have no need to expand the formal systems, and the above argument would fail. From the alternative approaches, in this work I focus mostly on the Independence Friendly (IF) logic of Jaakko Hintikka and Gabriel Sandu. Hintikka has claimed that an IF language can include its own adequate truth predicate. I argue that while this is indeed the case, we cannot recognize the truth predicate as such within the same IF language, and the need for Tarskian truth remains. In addition to IF logic, also second-order logic and Saul Kripke s approach using Kleenean logic will be shown to fail in a similar fashion.

Pathet : Musiikin symboliikka jaavalaisessa varjoteatterissa

The aim of this study is to define and analyse the symbolism hidden in the gamelan music of the Central Javanese, especially in the Yogyakartanese wayang kulit shadow theatre. This dissertation is divided into two parts. The first part deals with the theory, history and practice of Central Javanese shadow theatre. It also presents the tone symbol theory on which this study is based of B. Y. H. Sastrapustaka, the court servant and musician of the sultan s palace of Yogyakarta. For historical comparison, other theories and phenomena that seem to have some connections with the previously mentioned tone symbol theory are presented here as well as the equipment of the shadow theatre, its music, musical instruments and the shadow theatre in general in literature. The theoretic-methodological basis of the study is an enlarged model of research of cultural music, in which a person in the centre of the model with his/her concepts and by his/her behaviour creates a work of art and receives criticism through feedback, while the process of reciprocal action dynamically affects the whole development of the culture in question. In connection with the concepts of the work of art, the manner of approach of this study is also semiotic as the tone symbol theory gives a particular meaning to each musical note. Thus the purpose of this study is to find answers to how the tone symbol theory manifests itself in practical music making, what its origin is, if it is well known or not, and whether shadow theatre music supports this theory. The second part of this dissertation deals with material collected through interviews and observations as well as representative samples of musical pieces for shadow theatre and their analyses. In relation to this a special tool for analysing gamelan music, developed for the purpose of this study, is also presented. Sufficiently versatile material on the essence and meaning of the shadow theatre collected from many puppet masters of an older generation, many of whom are no longer with us, constitutes an important part of this study. This study proves that the tone symbol theory of Sastrapustaka is of tantristic tradition from the Hindu-Javanese period before the 16th century and before the appearance of Islam in Java. The variants of the previously mentioned theory can be found also in other fields of Javanese advanced civilization, such as architecture and dance. But it seems that knowledge about the tone symbolism connected to the shadow theatre especially has only been preserved in the sultan s palace of Yogyakarta and its intimate circles. The outsider puppet masters surely follow the theory, but they do not necessarily know its origin. As a result of the musical analysis, it is obvious that the musical pieces used for the shadow theatre bear different kinds of symbolic meanings which only an initiated person can feel and understand. These meanings are closely related to the plot of the play at the moment.

Tule, rakkaani! : Naisen ja miehen välisestä etiikasta kirjallisuuden rakkauskuvauksissa

Tutkin väitöskirjassani naisen ja miehen välistä rakkautta ja naisen ja miehen välisen rakkauden kuvauksia kirjallisuudessa ranskalaisen filosofin Luce Irigarayn samuuden järjestyksen kritiikin ja sukupuolieron etiikan valossa. Osoitan ensinnäkin, kuinka Platonin Pidoissa, Percy Bysshe Shelleyn Epipsychidionissa (1821) ja Barbara Cartlandin Liekehtivässä lumessa (1975) kuvataan rakkautta kahden rakastavaisen yhteensulautumiseksi - tutkin millaisia haltuunottamisen ja sulauttamisen muotoja rakastavaisten välillä näissä teoksissa tulee esille. Toiseksi osoitan, kuinka Laulujen laulussa, Dian kreivittären 1100-luvulla kirjoittamassa lyriikassa ja Guillevicin runokokoelmasta Trouées (1981) löytyvässä sikermässä Ylistyslaulu kuvataan rakkautta kahden toisiinsa palautumattoman rakastavaisen väliseksi suhteeksi - syvennyn näistä teoksista löytyviin kuvauksiin toista ihmettelevästä kohtaamisesta, toisen huomioonottavasta puhuttelemisesta ja toista hyväilevästä koskettamisesta. Tutkimukseni keskiössä on siis rakastavaisten välinen etiikka eli kysymykset siitä, kuinka rakastavaisten välinen suhde voisi toteutua ilman että kumpikaan pyrkisi haltuunottamaan toista. Objektivoivan analyysin sijaan tutkimusmenetelmänäni on rakkaudellinen vuoropuhelu niin valitsemieni kaunokirjallisten teosten kuin Irigarayn filosofiankin kanssa. Seuraan tässä Irigarayn ja toisen ranskalaisen ajattelijan Hélène Cixous'n työskentelytapoja - heidän mukaansa pysähtyvä ja kuulosteleva asenne on pyrkivää ja tarttuvaa otetta hedelmällisempi niin inhimillistä toista kuin kirjallistakin toista lähestyttäessä, sillä sen avulla toinen voi säilyttää liikkuvuutensa, arvaamattomuutensa ja vapautensa. Työni tulokset ovat johtopäätösten sijaan avauksia. Jatkan tutkimuksessani Irigarayn työtä ulottamalla hänen samuuden järjestyksen kritiikkinsä ja sukupuolieron etiikan hahmottelunsa kirjallisuudentutkimuksen alueelle. Irigarayta seuraten ajattelen uudelleen naisen ja miehen, henkisen ja ruumiillisen, aistimellisen ja transsendentaalisen välisiä suhteita. Tehtävänämme ei ole muodostaa rakkauden teoriaa tai rakastavaisten välisen etiikan ohjelmaa, vaan tutkia mitä etiikka merkitsee ja voisi merkitä rakkauden alueella.

Edistys ja yhteinen hyvä vapaudenajan ruotsalaisessa poliittisessa kielessä

This dissertation analyses the notions of progress and common good in Swedish political language during the Age of Liberty (1719 1772). The method used is conceptual analysis, but this study is also a contribution to the history of political ideas and political culture, aiming at a broader understanding of how the bounds of political community were conceptualised and represented in eighteenth-century Sweden. The research is based on the official documents of the regime, such as the fundamental laws and the solemn speeches made at the opening and closing of the Diet, on normative or alternative descriptions of society such as history works and economic literature, and on practical political writings by the Diet and its members. The rhetoric of common good and particular interest is thus examined both in its consensual and theoretical contexts and in practical politics. Central political issues addressed include the extent of economic liberties, the question of freedom to print, the meaning of privilege, the position of particular estates or social groups and the economic interests of particular areas or persons. This research shows that the modern Swedish word for progress (framsteg) was still only rarely used in the eighteenth century, while the notion of progress, growth and success existed in a variety of closely related terms and metaphorical expressions. The more traditional concept of common good (allmänna bästa) was used in several variants, some of which explicitly related to utility and interest. The combination of public utility and private interest in political discourse challenged traditional ideals of political morality, where virtue had been the fundament of common good. The progress of society was also presented as being linked to the progress of liberty, knowledge and wealth in a way that can be described as characteristic of the Age of Enlightenment but which also points at the appearance of early liberal thought.

Visions of Past Glory: Nationalism and the Construction of Early Finnish History

The study is an examination of how the distant national past has been conceived and constructed for Finland from the mid-sixteenth century to the Second World War. The author argues that the perception and need of a national 'Golden Age' has undergone several phases during this period, yet the perceived Greatness of the Ancient Finns has been of great importance for the growth and development of the fundamental concepts of Finnish nationalism. It is a question reaching deeper than simply discussing the Kalevala or the Karelianism of the 1890s. Despite early occurrences of most of the topics the image-makers could utilize for the construction of an Ancient Greatness, a truly national proto-history only became a necessity after 1809, when a new conceptual 'Finnishness' was both conceived and brought forth in reality. In this process of nation-building, ethnic myths of origin and descent provided the core of the nationalist cause - the defence of a primordial national character - and within a few decades the antiquarian issue became a standard element of the nationalist public enlightenment. The emerging, archaeologically substantiated, nationhood was more than a scholarly construction: it was a 'politically correct' form of ethnic self-imaging, continuously adapting its message to contemporary society and modern progress. Prehistoric and medieval Finnishness became even more relevant for the intellectual defence of the nation during the period of Russian administrative pressure 1890-1905. With independence the origins of Finnishness were militarized even further, although the 'hot' phase of antiquarian nationalism ended, as many considered the Finnish state reestablished after centuries of 'dependency'. Nevertheless, the distant past of tribal Finnishness and the conceived Golden Age of the Kalevala remained obligating. The decline of public archaeology is quite evident after 1918, even though the national message of the antiquarian pursuits remained present in the history culture of the public. The myths, symbols, images, and constructs of ancient Finnishness had already become embedded in society by the turn of the century, like the patalakki cap, which remains a symbol of Finnishness to this day. The method of approach is one of combining a broad spectrum of previously neglected primary sources, all related to history culture and the subtle banalization of the distant past: school books, postcards, illustrations, festive costumes, drama, satirical magazines, novels, jewellery, and calendars. Tracing the origins of the national myths to their original contexts enables a rather thorough deconstruction of the proto-historical imaginary in this Finnish case study. Considering Anthony D. Smith's idea of ancient 'ethnies' being the basis for nationalist causes, the author considers such an approach in the Finnish case totally misplaced.

Turun linna kerrottuna ja kertovana tilana

The Turku castle, founded c. 1300, has changed over the centuries from a medieval defensive structure into a Renaissance palace and from a derelict jailhouse in the late 19th century into a prime example of the Medieval built heritage in Finland. Today, it is first and foremost a monument to the Medieval and Renaissance heyday of the castle. This is apparent in the architectural forms that have been carefully restored and reconstructed. It also becomes clear in all kinds of narratives, both visual (like the set of miniatures about the different stages of the construction of the castle) and textual (as during the guided tours). For the first time in the architectural history of the Turku castle, the Medieval, the Renaissance, the Modern, and the Present as architecturally constructed or reconstructed spaces can all be visited within the same hour. As a result, the monumental Turku castle may even be deemed anachronistic or inauthentic. In this study I look at the ways in which the Turku castle is, indeed, anachronistic and inauthentic. My main objective, however, is to find ways in which the anachronisms and inauthenticities are overcome in a positive way. I base my analysis of the Turku castle on three theoretical standpoints. First, I am studying the castle as space, described by Michel de Certeau as a practiced place (de Certeau 2002). Second, I am approaching the numerous narrative aspects of the castle following Paul Ricoeur s analysis of narrative as a threefold mimetic process (Ricoeur 1990). From these two theoretical settings I have summoned the concept of narrative space. The life and work at the castle are based on expectations and understandings of the historical surroundings. My third theoretical choice is to study this applied knowledge of the place as the management of blocks of knowledge in communication (Robert de Beaugrande 1980). Combining the theoretical starting points of space and narrative , I am approaching the castle as if it were an evolving set of narratives, narrated in space but also through space. Seeing e.g. the restoration teams of the mid-20th century and the present day tour guides as creative narrators, I am looking beyond the dilemma of the anachronistic spaces. What transpires is an inter-connected web of texts and spaces, tangible and intangible narratives. My analytical key to these narrative relationships is the threefold mimetic process of pre-figuration, con-figuration, and re-figuration, inspired by the writings of Paul Ricoeur (1990). This way, the past can be seen as a pool of endless possibilities to emplot place, time, and action into a narrative space. The narratives convey images of the past that may be contested by other images, and the power to narrate in the first place can be challenged and re-distributed.

Questions to Artificial Nature: A Philosophical Study of Interdisciplinary Models and their Functions in Scientific Practice

This thesis presents an interdisciplinary analysis of how models and simulations function in the production of scientific knowledge. The work is informed by three scholarly traditions: studies on models and simulations in philosophy of science, so-called micro-sociological laboratory studies within science and technology studies, and cultural-historical activity theory. Methodologically, I adopt a naturalist epistemology and combine philosophical analysis with a qualitative, empirical case study of infectious-disease modelling. This study has a dual perspective throughout the analysis: it specifies the modelling practices and examines the models as objects of research. The research questions addressed in this study are: 1) How are models constructed and what functions do they have in the production of scientific knowledge? 2) What is interdisciplinarity in model construction? 3) How do models become a general research tool and why is this process problematic? The core argument is that the mediating models as investigative instruments (cf. Morgan and Morrison 1999) take questions as a starting point, and hence their construction is intentionally guided. This argument applies the interrogative model of inquiry (e.g., Sintonen 2005; Hintikka 1981), which conceives of all knowledge acquisition as process of seeking answers to questions. The first question addresses simulation models as Artificial Nature, which is manipulated in order to answer questions that initiated the model building. This account develops further the "epistemology of simulation" (cf. Winsberg 2003) by showing the interrelatedness of researchers and their objects in the process of modelling. The second question clarifies why interdisciplinary research collaboration is demanding and difficult to maintain. The nature of the impediments to disciplinary interaction are examined by introducing the idea of object-oriented interdisciplinarity, which provides an analytical framework to study the changes in the degree of interdisciplinarity, the tools and research practices developed to support the collaboration, and the mode of collaboration in relation to the historically mutable object of research. As my interest is in the models as interdisciplinary objects, the third research problem seeks to answer my question of how we might characterise these objects, what is typical for them, and what kind of changes happen in the process of modelling. Here I examine the tension between specified, question-oriented models and more general models, and suggest that the specified models form a group of their own. I call these Tailor-made models, in opposition to the process of building a simulation platform that aims at generalisability and utility for health-policy. This tension also underlines the challenge of applying research results (or methods and tools) to discuss and solve problems in decision-making processes.

Kaukainen rakkaus : Saavuttamattomuuden semantiikka Kaija Saariahon oopperassa

L Amour de loin: The semantics of the unattainable in Kaija Saariaho s opera Kaija Saariaho (born 1952) is one of the most internationally successful Finnish composers there has ever been. Her first opera L Amour de loin (Love from afar, 1999-2000) has been staged all over the world and has won a number of important prizes. The libretto written for L Amour de loin by Amin Malouf (born 1949) sets the work firmly in the culture of courtly love and the troubadours, which flourished in Occitania in the South of France during the Middle Ages. The male lead in the opera is the troubadour Jaufré Rudel, who lived in the twelfth century and is known to have taken part in the Second Crusade in 1147-1148. This doctoral thesis L Amour de loin: The semantics of the unattainable in Kaija Saariaho s opera, which comes within the field of musicology and opera research, examines the dimensions of meaning contained in Kaija Saariaho s opera L Amour de loin. This hermeneutic-semiotic study is the first doctoral thesis dealing with Saariaho to be completed at the University of Helsinki. It is also the first thesis-level study of Saariaho s opera to be completed anywhere in the world. The study focuses on the libretto and music of the opera, that is to say the dramatic text (L Amour de loin 1980), and examines on the one hand the dimensions of meaning produced by the dramatic text and on the other, the way in which they fix the dramatic text in a historical and cultural context. Thus the study helps to answer questions about the dimensions of meaning contained in the dramatic text of the opera and how they can be interpreted. The most important procedural viewpoint is Lawrence Kramer s hermeneutic window (1990), supplemented by Raymond Monelle s semiotic theory of musical topics (2000, 2006) and the philosophical concept of Emmanuel Levinas (1996, 2002) in which the latter acts as an instrument for semantic interpretation to build up an analysis. The analytical section of the study is built around the three characters in the opera, Jaufré Rudel, Clémence the Countess of Tripoli, and the Pilgrim. The study shows that the music of Saariaho, who belongs to the third generation of Finnish modernists, has become distanced from the post-serial aesthetic towards a more diatonic form of expression. There is diatonicity, for instance, in the sonorous individuality of the male lead, which is based on the actual melodies of the historical Jaufré Rudel. The use of outside material in this context is exceptional in the work of Saariaho. At the same time, Saariaho s opera contains a wealth of expressive devices she has used in her earlier work. It became apparent during the study that, as a piece of music, L Amour de loin is a many layered and multi-dimensional work that does not unambiguously represent any single stylistic trend or aesthetic. Despite the composer s post-serial background and its abrasive relationship with opera, L Amour de loin is firmly attached to the tradition of western opera. The analysis based on the theory of musical topics that was carried out in the study, shows that topics referring to death and resurrection, used in opera since the seventeenth century, appear in L Amour de loin. The troubadour topic, mainly identified with the harp, also emerges in the work. The study also shows that the work is firmly attached to the tradition of western opera in other aspects, too, such as the travesti or trouser role played by the Pilgrim, and the idea of deus ex machina derived from Ancient Greek theatre. The study shows that the concept of love based on the medieval practices of courtly love, and the associated longing for another defined by almost 1,000 years of western culture, are both manifested in the semantics of Kaija Saariaho s opera which takes its place in the contemporary music genre.

Aristotle on the Perception of Perception : Seeing, Remembering, and Sleeping

This study is an inquiry into three related topics in Aristotle’s psychology: the perception of seeing, the perception of past perception, and the perception of sleeping. Over the past decades, Aristotle’s account of the perception of perception has been studied in numerous articles and chapters of books. However, there is no monograph that attempts to give a comprehensive analysis of this account and to assess its relation and significance to Aristotle’s psychological theory in general as well as to other theories pertaining to the topics (e.g. theories of consciousness), be they ancient, medieval, modern, or contemporary. This study intends to fill this gap and to further the research into Aristotle’s philosophy and into the philosophy of mind. The present study is based on an accurate analysis of the sources, on their Platonic background, and on later interpretations within the commentary tradition up to the present. From a methodological point of view, this study represents systematically orientated research into the history of philosophy, in which special attention is paid to the philosophical problems inherent in the sources, to the distinctions drawn, and to the arguments put forward as well as to their philosophical assessment. In addition to contributing many new findings concerning the topics under discussion, this study shows that Aristotle’s account of the perception of perception substantially differs from many later theories of consciousness. This study also suggests that Aristotle be regarded as a consistent direct realist, not only in respect of sense perception, but also in respect of memory.

Halun häilyvät rajat : Magnus Enckellin maalausten maskuliinisuuksien ja feminiinisyyksien representaatioista ja itsen luomisesta

My PhD-thesis The uneasy borders of desire Magnus Enckell's representations of masculinities and femininities and the question how to create the self concentrates on the works of Finnish fin-de-siècle artist Magnus Enckell (1870-1925). My thesis deals with representations of masculinities, femininities, sexualities and different identity-positions. My research is about questions concerning representational ways of melancholy, androgyny, narcissism, themes of Golden Age and Double in Enckell s ouvre. These themes are analyzed by contextualizing them with different, but intersecting, discourses of varied scientific, artistic and occult ideas in the fin-de-siècle. The main point is analyze how the subject is constructed in both Foucauldian and Freudian sense and what one has to know about oneself. My approaches are based on ideas expressed in different discourses as queer-theory, Michel Foucault s genealogical epistemology and knowledge-power theory, psychoanalysis, art history and visual culture studies. My starting point lays is Foucault s idea expressed in his The History of Sexuality that the constitution of homosexual or as well as heterosexual subject inaugurates possibilities for transgressive activities e.g. by giving own voice to the sexualized subject. My main thesis is to suggest that Enckell s works in their multiple and ambiguous ways construct a phantasmatic position for viewer who may identify oneself to different desires, may construct or deconstruct a sexual identity for oneself or try to define the truth about oneself. Enckell s works should be considered as a contradictory processes which both seduce person to construct an identity and as well as lure person to pursue for the deconstruction of specific and permanent identity by celebrating the ambiguousness and discontinuity in one s identity. I m suggesting that the gazing subject feels pleasure in finding one s identity but the one must face the exposure of the melancholic structure which forms the basis of sexual desire. The subject may try to resolve one s melancholy by creating a phantasy about the original and unisexual being where desires, sexualities, phantasies and identities haven t been diverged. This can be fantasized in terms of art which forms a double for the melancholic subject who is in this limited and imaginary way able to forget for a while one s existential solitude.

Ruumiinkuvia! : Suomalainen performanssi- ja kehotaide 1980- ja1990-luvulla psykoanalyysin valossa

My PhD-thesis Body Images! Psychoanalytical Analysis of Finnish Performance and Body Art in the 1980s and 1990s considers Finnish performance and body art performed mainly by visual artists. In Part I, I chart the historical construction of performance art and its extension since the beginning of the 21st century. There are several wievs of the historical background of performance art. I introduce three different genealogies of performance art. One is Rose-Lee Goldberg s view. She connects performance art with the European avant-garde already at the beginning of the 20th century from futurists and dadaists to Russian avant-garde and the Bauhaus. I prefer to present performance art as contemporary art, which began to take shape in connection with visual arts in the 1950s and 1960s. The focus on the body is apparent in nearly all performance art. Nevertheless, throug the concept of body art I want to empasize the artist s body as the place of art. Body art (as part of performance art) functions as thematic and interpretive concept, which allows me to focus on performances where the questions of body image, narcissism, desire, language and pleasure are incorporated in particular intensive ways. In Part II, I explore the arrival of performance art in Finnish visual arts in the 1980s. I study the new generation s relation to earlier Finnish happenings (1960s) and performative actions in 1970 s. I briefly introduce performance groups of the 1980s art scene and consider their reception in media. The main focus is on the group Jack Helen Brut, in which I see many similarities to the so- called Theatre of Images. The goal of this part II is to provide historical context for the performance analysis that follows. In Part III, I develop the concept of body image which is my main theoretical term. The concept of body image is used according to Lacanian psychoanalytical theory, especially his considerations of mirror stages. My first mapping of body image, which I call imaginary body image, is based on Lacan s famous mirror stage article (1949). According to my reading, body image is narcistic and aggressive. The important concepts here are ego, imaginary, méconnaisance and alienation. In 1953 Lacan began to develop different version on mirror stage, in which he emphasized the primacy of symbolic dimension. It is not image, but language which constructs the foundations of body image. Central concepts in this chater are Other as language, ego-ideal, demand and desire. In the last chapter I connect the third version of the mirror stage to concepts of gaze, phantasy, real, jouissance and object a. In previous chapters I had considered body image in relation to ego. Now I explore it in relation to subject. In my reading the body image is fragile phenomen, which oscillates between yearning for coherence and phantasies of fragmented images. Part IV of the thesis begins with an introduction to the central concepts and debates in performace studies over the last few decades. Important concepts are presence, performativity and theatricality. The main substance of my thesis, however, is the performance analysis, which focuses on works by three Finnish artists and one Finnish group. The first analysis concerns the performance (1992) of Kimmo Schroderus. I discuss the relationship between narcissism and body art and the changes in demands projected on body images of men in recent decades in a Euro-American context. I also explore this performance in relation to the myth of Narcissus, which I reinterpret through Narcissus s aggression against his own body. The group Homo S is the main subject of the next analysis. I discuss the relationship between feminist art and performance art, especially in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. Homo S is different from this early performance art because of its anarchism, humor and rejection of all ideals. Homo S characterizes its performance Body Body (1983) as liberating vulgar feminism . Sociality and performance of erotic relations between women are central in Body Body. Pia Lindman s performances are the subjects of my third analysis. I study three of her performances: Olen muoto (1993), 17 and in love (1994) and Arranged views (1995). I interpret these performances as efforts to disperse the imaginary and symbolic structures of the body image. She constructs the peculiar object a and phantasy space of her own. In the last analysis I move from questions of image and gaze to a study of language, sound and jouissance. I discuss at a general level the performance of orality and helplesness (Hilflosigkeit) in body art. The central elements in Pentti Otto Koskinen s performances are the ear, listening and receptive gestures and postions. Perseveraatio (1998) can be understood representing as submission to the super-ego s power, which compels one to enjoy. I examine particularly closely the performance Maissi on hyvää ei missään nimessä maissia (1995), which I interpret as the return of a baby s body image to the liminal site of choice: language or jouissance?

Society by Numbers : Studies on Model-Based Explanations in the Social Sciences

The aim of this dissertation is to provide conceptual tools for the social scientist for clarifying, evaluating and comparing explanations of social phenomena based on formal mathematical models. The focus is on relatively simple theoretical models and simulations, not statistical models. These studies apply a theory of explanation according to which explanation is about tracing objective relations of dependence, knowledge of which enables answers to contrastive why and how-questions. This theory is developed further by delineating criteria for evaluating competing explanations and by applying the theory to social scientific modelling practices and to the key concepts of equilibrium and mechanism. The dissertation is comprised of an introductory essay and six published original research articles. The main theses about model-based explanations in the social sciences argued for in the articles are the following. 1) The concept of explanatory power, often used to argue for the superiority of one explanation over another, compasses five dimensions which are partially independent and involve some systematic trade-offs. 2) All equilibrium explanations do not causally explain the obtaining of the end equilibrium state with the multiple possible initial states. Instead, they often constitutively explain the macro property of the system with the micro properties of the parts (together with their organization). 3) There is an important ambivalence in the concept mechanism used in many model-based explanations and this difference corresponds to a difference between two alternative research heuristics. 4) Whether unrealistic assumptions in a model (such as a rational choice model) are detrimental to an explanation provided by the model depends on whether the representation of the explanatory dependency in the model is itself dependent on the particular unrealistic assumptions. Thus evaluating whether a literally false assumption in a model is problematic requires specifying exactly what is supposed to be explained and by what. 5) The question of whether an explanatory relationship depends on particular false assumptions can be explored with the process of derivational robustness analysis and the importance of robustness analysis accounts for some of the puzzling features of the tradition of model-building in economics. 6) The fact that economists have been relatively reluctant to use true agent-based simulations to formulate explanations can partially be explained by the specific ideal of scientific understanding implicit in the practise of orthodox economics.

Leibniz on Rational Decision-Making

In this study I discuss G. W. Leibniz's (1646-1716) views on rational decision-making from the standpoint of both God and man. The Divine decision takes place within creation, as God freely chooses the best from an infinite number of possible worlds. While God's choice is based on absolutely certain knowledge, human decisions on practical matters are mostly based on uncertain knowledge. However, in many respects they could be regarded as analogous in more complicated situations. In addition to giving an overview of the divine decision-making and discussing critically the criteria God favours in his choice, I provide an account of Leibniz's views on human deliberation, which includes some new ideas. One of these concerns is the importance of estimating probabilities in making decisions one estimates both the goodness of the act itself and its consequences as far as the desired good is concerned. Another idea is related to the plurality of goods in complicated decisions and the competition this may provoke. Thirdly, heuristic models are used to sketch situations under deliberation in order to help in making the decision. Combining the views of Marcelo Dascal, Jaakko Hintikka and Simo Knuuttila, I argue that Leibniz applied two kinds of models of rational decision-making to practical controversies, often without explicating the details. The more simple, traditional pair of scales model is best suited to cases in which one has to decide for or against some option, or to distribute goods among parties and strive for a compromise. What may be of more help in more complicated deliberations is the novel vectorial model, which is an instance of the general mathematical doctrine of the calculus of variations. To illustrate this distinction, I discuss some cases in which he apparently applied these models in different kinds of situation. These examples support the view that the models had a systematic value in his theory of practical rationality.

War and Revolution in St. Petersburg : Modernist Links in the Poetry of Edith Södergran and Anna Andreevna Akhmatova

Important modernists in their own countries, Anna Akhmatova and Edith Södergran are compared in this dissertation as poets whose poetry reflects the climactic events of the early twentieth century in Finland and Russia. A comparatist, biographical and historical approach is used to uncover the circumstances surrounding these events. First the poets’ early works are reviewed and their contemporaries are mentioned to provide a poetic context. Then a brief review of Finnish and Russian history situates them historically. Next, the rich literary diversity of St. Petersburg’s Silver Age is presented and the work of the poets is viewed in context before their poetry is compared, as the First World War, October Revolution and subsequent Finnish Civil War impact their writing. While biography is not the primary focus, it becomes important as inevitably the writers’ lives are changed by cataclysmic events and the textual analysis of the poems in Swedish, Russian and English shows the impact of war on their poetry. These two poets have not been compared before in a critical review in English and this work contributes to needed work in English. They share certain common modernist traits: attention to the word, an intimate, unconventional voice, and a concern with audience. In addition, they both reject formal traditions while they adopt new forms and use modern, outside influences such as art, architecture and philosophy as subject matter and a lens through which to focus their poetry. While it may seem that Anna Akhmatova was the most socially aware poet, because of the censorship she endured under Stalin, my research has revealed that actually Edith Södergran showed the most social consciousness. Thus, a contrast of the poets’ themes reveals these differences in their approaches. Both poets articulated a vibrant response to war and revolution becoming modernists in the process. In their final works created in the years before their deaths, they reveal the solace they found in nature as well as final mentions of the violent events of their youth. Keywords: St. Petersburg, Modernism, Symbolism, Acmeism, Silver Age, Finland-Swedish literature