The Ideological Transformation of the Icon Chairman Mao during the Four Modernisations period : As illustrated by "Melody of Youth, Beautiful Soul"

After Chairman Mao's death, in the late 1980's, Mao was removed from official government communications and his iconography transformed from having a specific meaning generation role linked to Maoist ideology, to becoming available for use as a commodity. In this research I use cultural theorist Jacques Derrida's theory of Hauntology and the deconstruction method to analyse a representative Chinese Propaganda poster, "Melody of Youth, Beautiful Soul", in order to ascertain the effect Mao's death had on the Iconography of Chairman Mao, and how Mao is ideologically transformed during this period. Analysing the painting I found specific symbols associated with the iconography of Mao that had been adopted and transformed for the purposes of the CCP. These symbols both suggested the presence of Chairman Mao, as well as negated that presence through being co-opted for other purposes. Using these symbols and writings about the period I deduced that during this period the CCP had to rely on existing symbols of power and authority in order to communicate and legitimise regime change whilst maintaining the semblance of continuity. At the same time they had to decouple these symbols from their original meanings in order to distance themselves from the past and redefine the ideology of China. In the process, Mao's iconography was decoupled from its Maoist ideological heritage and transformed into abstract symbols of power, doctrine and so on. This means that the transformation had made them available to use as an "open basket" into which new, related meanings could be placed – including serving as a commodity.

Oljudens musik : En revolution i kompositionsteknik?

Noise music is created around sounds not often welcome in a musical context. Since the birth of electronic music in the 1950s a new perspective on composing has emerged. In electronic music, sounds and their timbre are as much important as melody, harmony and rhythm. This composing perspective is not often observed. Therefore I have examined a musical genre that stretches the boundaries of what we consider music, sound, noise, beautiful and terrible. The aim of this thesis is to investigate what aesthetic ideals noise musicians have when they create music. I examine the composing processes of three noise musicians, by asking the following questions: Do you compose in advance or do you improvise, how do your control of sound look like, how do you use the human voice and how do you categorize sound? The thesis is constructed around interviews I have made with the musicians and an extensive historical background concentrated on the alternative composing techniques that has led to the development of noise music. Among the results I found that these noise musicians always improvise with material, but the real essence of noise music is the character of the sounds, not their origins or material. Composing in advance for sound is a lot more difficult than traditional composing. Another result is that these noise musicians have extensive control of their instruments and can produce the sounds they wanted. They point out the importance of instruments that produce sound not directly controlled by themselves, something that create a musical quality that they aspire.

Prosodic Morphology : Gender in Arabic Perfect Active and Passive 3rd Person Singular Verbs

Prosodic /template Morphology, that "draws heavily on the theoretical apparatus and formalisms of the generative phonology model known as autosegmental phonology" (Katamba, F. 1993: 154), is the best analysis that can handle Arabic morphology. Verbs in Arabic are represented on three independent tiers: root tier, the skeletal tier and the vocalic melody tier (Katamba, F. 1993). Vowel morphemes, which are represented by diacritics, are inserted within the consonant morphemes, which are represented by primary symbols, to form words. The morpheme tier hypothesis paves the way to understand the nonconcatenative Arabic morphology. This paper analyzes gender in perfect active and passive 3rd person singular verbs on the basis of PM. The focus of the analysis shall be drawn heavily on the most common Arabic verbs; triconsonantal verbs, with brief introduction of the less common verbs; quadriconsonantal perfect active and passive masculine and feminine 3rd person singular verbs. I shall, too, cast the light on some vowel changes that some verbs undergo when voice changes.