Letteratura postmoderna e comunicazione pubblicitaria, problemi teorici e analisi testuali

Premise: In the literary works of our anthropological and cultural imagination, the various languages and the different discursive practices are not necessarily quoted, expressly alluded to or declared through clear expressive mechanisms; instead, they rather constitute a substratum, a background, now consolidated, which with irony and intertextuality shines through the thematic and formal elements of each text. The various contaminations, hybridizations and promptings that we find in the expressive forms, the rhetorical procedures and the linguistic and thematic choices of post-modern literary texts are shaped as fluid and familiar categories. Exchanges and passages are no longer only allowed but also inevitable; the post-modern imagination is made up of an agglomeration of discourses that are no longer really separable, built up from texts that blend and quote one another, composing, each with its own specificities, the great family of the cultural products of our social scenario. A literary work, therefore, is not only a whole phenomenon, delimited hic et nunc by a beginning and an ending, but is a fragment of that complex, dense and boundless network that is given by the continual interrelations between human forms of communication and symbolization. The research hypothesis: A vision is delineated of comparative literature as a discipline attentive to the social contexts in which texts take shape and move and to the media-type consistency that literary phenomena inevitably take on. Hence literature is seen as an open systematicity that chooses to be contaminated by other languages and other discursive practices of an imagination that is more than ever polymorphic and irregular. Inside this interpretative framework the aim is to focus the analysis on the relationship that postmodern literature establishes with advertising discourse. On one side post-modern literature is inserted in the world of communication, loudly asserting the blending and reciprocal contamination of literary modes with media ones, absorbing their languages and signification practices, translating them now into thematic nuclei, motifs and sub-motifs and now into formal expedients and new narrative choices; on the other side advertising is chosen as a signification practice of the media universe, which since the 1960s has actively contributed to shaping the dynamics of our socio-cultural scenarios, in terms which are just as important as those of other discursive practices. Advertising has always been a form of communication and symbolization that draws on the collective imagination ��� myths, actors and values ��� turning them into specific narrative programs for its own texts. Hence the aim is to interpret and analyze this relationship both from a strictly thematic perspective ��� and therefore trying to understand what literature speaks about when it speaks about advertising, and seeking advertising quotations in post-modern fiction ��� and from a formal perspective, with a search for parallels and discordances between the rhetorical procedures, the languages and the verifiable stylistic choices in the texts of the two different signification practices. The analysis method chosen, for the purpose of constructive multiplication of the perspectives, aims to approach the analytical processes of semiotics, applying, when possible, the instruments of the latter, in order to highlight the thematic and formal relationships between literature and advertising. The corpus: The corpus of the literary texts is made up of various novels and, although attention is focused on the post-modern period, there will also be ineludible quotations from essential authors that with their works prompted various reflections: H. De Balzac, Zola, Fitzgerald, Joyce, Calvino, etc��� However, the analysis focuses the corpus on three authors: Don DeLillo, Martin Amis and Aldo Nove, and in particular the followings novels: ���Americana��� (1971) and ���Underworld��� (1999) by Don DeLillo, ���Money��� (1984) by Martin Amis and ���Woobinda and other stories without a happy ending��� (1996) and ���Superwoobinda��� (1998) by Aldo Nove. The corpus selection is restricted to these novels for two fundamental reasons: 1. assuming parameters of spatio-temporal evaluation, the texts are representative of different socio-cultural contexts and collective imaginations (from the masterly glimpses of American life by DeLillo, to the examples of contemporary Italian life by Nove, down to the English imagination of Amis) and of different historical moments (the 1970s of DeLillo���s Americana, the 1980s of Amis, down to the 1990s of Nove, decades often used as criteria of division of postmodernism into phases); 2. adopting a perspective of strictly thematic analysis, as mentioned in the research hypothesis, the variations and the constants in the novels (thematic nuclei, topoi, images and narrative developments) frequently speak of advertising and inside the narrative plot they affirm various expressions and realizations of it: value ones, thematic ones, textual ones, urban ones, etc��� In these novels the themes and the processes of signification of advertising discourse pervade time, space and the relationships that the narrator character builds around him. We are looking at ���particle-characters��� whose endless facets attest the influence and contamination of advertising in a large part of the narrative developments of the plot: on everyday life, on the processes of acquisition and encoding of the reality, on ideological and cultural baggage, on the relationships and interchanges with the other characters, etc��� Often the characters are victims of the implacable consequentiality of the advertising mechanism, since the latter gets the upper hand over the usual processes of communication, which are overwhelmed by it, wittingly or unwittingly (for example: disturbing openings in which the protagonist kills his or her parents on the basis of a spot, former advertisers that live life codifying it through the commercial mechanisms of products, sons and daughters of advertisers that as children instead of playing outside for whole nights saw tapes of spots.) Hence the analysis arises from the text and aims to show how much the developments and the narrative plots of the novels encode, elaborate and recount the myths, the values and the narrative programs of advertising discourse, transforming them into novel components in their own right. And also starting from the text a socio-cultural reference context is delineated, a collective imagination that is different, now geographically, now historically, and from comparison between them the aim is to deduce the constants, the similarities and the variations in the relationship between literature and advertising.

Life Cycle Assessment of Peach Nectar: a comparative analysis between conventional and bioenergy-from-waste integrated food chains

Modern food systems are characterized by a high energy intensity as well as by the production of large amounts of waste, residuals and food losses. This inefficiency presents major consequences, in terms of GHG emissions, waste disposal, and natural resource depletion. The research hypothesis is that residual biomass material could contribute to the energetic needs of food systems, if recovered as an integrated renewable energy source (RES), leading to a sensitive reduction of the impacts of food systems, primarily in terms of fossil fuel consumption and GHG emissions. In order to assess these effects, a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) has been conducted to compare two different food systems: a fossil fuel-based system and an integrated system with the use of residual as RES for self-consumption. The food product under analysis has been the peach nectar, from cultivation to end-of-life. The aim of this LCA is twofold. On one hand, it allows an evaluation of the energy inefficiencies related to agro-food waste. On the other hand, it illustrates how the integration of bioenergy into food systems could effectively contribute to reduce this inefficiency. Data about inputs and waste generated has been collected mainly through literature review and databases. Energy balance, GHG emissions (Global Warming Potential) and waste generation have been analyzed in order to identify the relative requirements and contribution of the different segments. An evaluation of the energy ���loss��� through the different categories of waste allowed to provide details about the consequences associated with its management and/or disposal. Results should provide an insight of the impacts associated with inefficiencies within food systems. The comparison provides a measure of the potential reuse of wasted biomass and the amount of energy recoverable, that could represent a first step for the formulation of specific policies on the integration of bioenergies for self-consumption.

Regulating Vertical Agreements: A Comparative Law & Economics analysis of Brazil and Europe

This PhD thesis discusses antitrust enforcement of anti-competitive vertical agreements in Europe and in Brazil from an institutional perspective. It considers both the evolution of the legal framework and the application of the existing policies, with the analysis of case studies. The research highlights the main challenges of the current approaches adopted by the competition authorities in these jurisdictions and formulates specific proposals for future improvements. Because the Brazilian competition rules were originally inspired by the European legal framework, this thesis also summarizes the contemporary discussions regarding comparative law and the efficiency of transplanting laws and good practices. In a Law & Economics perspective, vertical agreements have always been a paradoxical topic and constitute one of the most dynamic disputes for antitrust enforcement. The reason for that concern is the fact that those contracts among companies are complex in nature. Taking into account this background, the thesis provides an original analysis of the pro- and anti-competitive effects of vertical agreements, based on the classical literature of Law & Economics. One of the novelties of the research is the extension of the economic analysis of vertical agreements to also consider new forms of contractual abuses in the context of digital markets, such as the contractual restrictions that are being put I practice in e-commerce platforms. The international comparative approach focuses on the Brazilian and European experiences, and opens up a reflection about the policy recommendations applied to several countries with similar economic and institutional realities.

Holocaust postmemory in contemporary anglophone children's literature

This dissertation discusses contemporary Anglophone children���s literature representing the Holocaust and it claims that, through the reading of historical novels, children can acquire a specific kind of postmemory, which I call ���attitudinal postmemory���. The works analyzed have been written by ���non-related��� authors, meaning writers who are not witnesses nor their descendants. Attitudinal postmemory is based on the readers��� establishment of a personal-emotional link with the Holocaust by means of narrative empathy towards the characters; it is an ���active��� kind of memory because it will hopefully convert into an informed, respectful attitude towards peers that opposes the Nazi ideology. The dissertation is structured into two main parts. Part One provides an overview of the origins and development of Holocaust memory in Western countries. Chapter 1 introduces two major historiographical-literary debates and the following chapter discusses three main issues concerning the representation of the Holocaust (naming, the need to represent, and the ���right to��� represent) while considering the forms and genres traditionally used and considered ���appropriate���. Focusing on the scope of literary narratives, Chapter 3 explains how the presence of a personal-emotional link is essential to acquire Holocaust postmemory and, in particular, attitudinal postmemory. The criteria adopted with regard to the case studies are described in Chapter 4. Part Two discusses the process of interweaving historical truth with fiction and how historical fiction helps child readers acquire attitudinal postmemory. After a brief overview of the genre in Chapter 5, Chapter 6 probes how it is possible to meet the two main expectations of historical fiction while avoiding a disrespectful stance towards the Holocaust. Chapter 7 discusses the idea of empathy and some issues in the representation of Nazi evil, while Chapter 8 offers a comparative analysis of the case studies proposed, including authors from the UK, Ireland, Australia, and the USA.

Comparative constitutional design for divided societies: a model to explain vonstitutional asymmetries

Comparative studies on constitutional design for divided societies indicate that there is no magic formula to the challenges that these societies pose, as lots of factors influence constitutional design. In the literature on asymmetric federalism, the introduction of constitutional asymmetries is considered a flexible instrument of ethnic conflict resolution, as it provides a mixture of the two main theoretical approaches to constitutional design for divided societies (i.e., integration and accommodation). Indeed, constitutional asymmetries are a complex and multifaceted phenomenon, as their degree of intensity can vary across constitutional systems, and there are both legal and extra-legal factors that may explain such differences. This thesis argues that constitutional asymmetries provide a flexible model of constitutional design and aims to explore the legal factors that are most likely to explain the different degrees of constitutional asymmetry in divided multi-tiered systems. To this end, the research adopts a qualitative methodology, i.e., Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), which allows an understanding of whether a condition or combination of conditions (i.e., the legal factors) determine the outcome (i.e., high, medium, low degree of constitutional asymmetry, or constitutional symmetry). The QCA is conducted on 16 divided multi-tiered systems, and for each case, the degree of constitutional asymmetry was analyzed by employing standardized indexes on subnational autonomy, allowing for a more precise measure of constitutional asymmetry than has previously been provided in the literature. Overall, the research confirms the complex nature of constitutional asymmetries, as the degrees of asymmetries vary substantially not only across systems but also within cases among the dimensions of subnational autonomy. The outcome of the Qualitative Comparative Analysis also confirms a path of complex causality since the different degrees of constitutional asymmetry always depend on several legal factors, that combined produce a low, medium, or high degree of constitutional asymmetry or, conversely, constitutional symmetry.