Resistance politics of non-violence: Jean Paulhan’s ’Fautrier the Enraged’ (1943)

ABSTRACT

The idea of adequately ‘representing’ violence was an important point of discussion amongst Resistance artists and intellectuals at the time of the French Occupation. In particular, intellectual resistant Jean Paulhan had written on the subject in his text introducing Jean Fautrier’s retrospective exhibition of November and December 1943 in occupied Paris, ‘Fautrier the Enraged’. While the thematic of the exhibition proposed an academic and traditional subject matter, Paulhan demonstrated that Fautrier’s typically matierist and anti-naturalistic approach was instrumental in ‘suggesting reality’. Fautrier’s individual creative process, Paulhan argued, led to a transparent experience to be shared between viewer and artist not only on an aesthetic level, but also from a political point of view. At the time of ‘Fautrier the Enraged”s writing, Paulhan had indeed been concerned with issues of political engagement, as is evident from his essay ‘The Flowers of Tarbes or Terror in Literature’ (1941), which reflects upon the human condition and is concerned with reconciling poetry, politics and ethics. The author believes that such questions were being addressed in Paulhan’s text on Fautrier and by Fautrier’s art and that an aesthetic reading of Paulhan’s text is inseparable from a political interpretation of Fautrier’s art within the context of the Occupation. Indeed, the aesthetic criteria used in Paulhan’s text as framework to his argument were then loaded with political meaning. For instance, Paulhan considered virtuosity as an essential artistic characteristic to be opposed to the art of imitation based on the technical ability to observe and simulate ‘nature’ as imposed by the occupants. With excerpts from Paulhan’s essay and exchange of letters with Fautrier as well as visual analysis of some of the artworks presented in the exhibition, this paper deals with the wider issues of ‘representation’ in the historical and cultural context of the Second World War in France.     

STRONG MOTION VERSUS WEAK MOTION: IMPLICATIONS FOR MICROZONATION STUDIES

A set of mainshock and aftershock data following the Chamoli earthquake of March 29, 1999, recorded at a single station viz. Gopeshwar, has been studied. Particularly, the utility of the use of aftershock/weak motion data for site characterisation in seismic microzonation studies is investigated. The analysis of aftershock and mainshock data indicates that the spectral shape and amplification is quite different during the main-shock and the aftershock. This, in turn, implies that the use of weak motion/aftershock records may lead to erroneous conclusions regarding the expected ground motion during a strong earthquake. Further, it has been shown that the site characteristics estimated from H/V ratios are not stable in the near field conditions, even for weak motion data.     

武汉市滨水公共游憩空间生产的过程与机理

城市滨水公共游憩空间是城市功能转型的典型代表。运用实地调研、访谈、批判性语篇分析等方法，基于列斐伏尔的空间生产理论和福柯的微观权力理论，建立起贯穿空间规划、建设、管理和使用全过程的解构思路，从“规训者—反规训者”视角分析了武汉市滨水公共游憩空间生产的过程和机制。研究发现：①武汉市滨水公共游憩空间的生产是规训者与反规训者相互作用、共同推动的结果，经历了由空间的表征主导的“游憩化规划”阶段，由空间的实践主导的“水岸重塑”阶段和由表征的空间主导的“流动秩序实践”阶段；②多元利益主体在不同阶段形成了自上而下的趋同性空间再造和自下而上的异质性空间实践，但政府始终主导着空间生产过程，保障了其游憩化、公益性方向。