La présente thèse de doctorat prend pour objet d’étude la question des disparus de la fin de la guerre d’Algérie, en l’occurrence, à partir du cessez-le-feu du 19 mars jusqu’à la fin de l’année 1962. Ne pouvant restreindre notre investigation à cette seule période, nous avons élargi notre étude aux conséquences des disparitions. Cette démarche, qui a le mérite de suivre l’événement tragique de son apparition à sa prise en compte par les autorités et la société, avec son retentissement jusqu’à aujourd’hui se déroule en trois parties. La première partie « chercher les disparus » (chapitres 1 à 3), revient sur les recherches, par les autorités compétentes, de la personne physique ou de sa dépouille disparue d’une part, et présente d’autre part la relégation du fait de « chercher les disparus » en un objet de recherche scientifique. Les abus de langage liés à la polysémie du mot « disparu », la surenchère statistique et les usages politiques et mémoriels sont également mis en lumière afin de comprendre les raisons de cet angoissant mystère. La deuxième partie présente les modes opératoires adoptés, tels que les enlèvements et les arrestations arbitraires, afin de « faire disparaître » (chapitres 4 à 6). Les différents auteurs, cibles et mobiles de ces exactions sont ainsi examinés. Enfin, la troisième partie « vivre la disparition » (chapitres 7 à 9) revient essentiellement sur les répercussions économiques et psychologiques pour les familles et les proches confrontés, entre autres, à des problèmes pécuniaires, au poids des rumeurs et au deuil impossible lequel est lié à l’incertitude du sort des « ni morts, ni vivants ». / This doctoral thesis aims to study the issue of the people who went missing at the end of the Algerian War, namely from the cease-fire of 19 march until the end of 1962. As we were not able to restrict our investigation to this period alone, we expanded our study to the consequences of the disappearances. This approach, which follows the tragic event from its outset to its recognition by the authorities and society, including its impact to date, is in three parts. The first part, « searching for the disappeared » (chapters 1-3), revisits the search by the relevant authorities for the missing individual or their remains, and the relegation of the « search for the disappeared » to an object of scientific research. The misuse of language linked to the multiple meanings of the word « disappeared », statistical escalation and the political and memorial uses of the issue are also highlighted in order to understand the reasons behind this agonizing mystery. The second part presents the procedures used, such as abductions and arbitrary arrests, to « make people disappear » (chapters 4-6). The different perpetrators, targets and motives of these abuses are also examined. Finally, the third part « living with disappearance » (chapters 7-9) focuses largely on the economical and psychological repercussions for families and loved ones, which includes financial problems, rumors and the impossibility of mourning due to the uncertainty of the fate of « those who are neither dead nor alive ».

The aim of this Master thesis was to examine news journalism covering expressions of mourning related to violent or unexpected deaths. What rituals for mourning are brought out in media and do media present guidance to how mourners should behave?   The questions examined were: What characterised news events that leaded to texts on expressions of mourning? How was grief framed? Which narrative patterns were there in the texts? How was the deceased represented? How were the mourners represented?   165 texts, from Swedish daily newspapers, covering 93 different news events were analysed. The methods were mainly discourse analysis with focus on identities and relations, but also semiotic analysis with focus on staging and symbols and narrative analysis with focus on patterns for storytelling.   The result showed that a news story about ordinary people expressing their feelings of grief has elements of melodrama. The news story is based on the myth of the victim, and formed as a typical story where equilibrium is disturbed when the inconceivable happens and the mourners can by their actions restore equilibrium. The paradigms behind are the opposites life – death and good – evil.    The deceased is represented as a victim in a mythic sense. The most important qualities of a victim are youth, innocence and goodness. The victim is framed as a person we could sympathise and identify with. The mourners in the texts praise the victim and sanctify the place where the victim died with candles, roses and notes. The mourners are essential to the story; they create identification and an identity that include us as readers in a community and a discourse of mourning and mourners. The ordinary people who appear as mourners in the texts are relatives and close friends of the victim, but also mourning tourists, media chosen friends and anonymous women who are represented, in a stereotypical way, as the professional female mourner who weep over the deceased. In some texts celebrities appear as mourners of ordinary people, and they personalize how the distinction between public and private is erased in popular journalism. They also might give a kind of legitimacy to the way media frame the story about ordinary people mourning the innocent victim.   Some texts had a partly diverging story. If the victim, in some aspect, could not be framed as innocent the paradigm good – evil became problematic. When victims or mourners had foreign origin the contrast us – them was added.  In some texts the ethical code for Swedish journalists was disregarded, mainly by publishing information on ethnicity or by interviewing children and people in shock

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 410-441). Also available on the Internet.

This dissertation is a transnational study that argues that a structure of mourning, spoken through and effected by the historical romance, underlies the narrative of national culture as it emerges in the Americas during the early nineteenth century. The writing, consumption and preservation of these texts reveal not only the psychic life of community but also the material basis for that psychic life. Writing and reading, the production and circulation of texts, plays a crucial role in developing this psychic life, and the historical romance was particularly important in the Americas for imagining a national legacy. Current criticism emphasizes the sexual coupling and generative romantic structure of the marriage plot around which many of these novels circulate. This criticism emphasizes the somatic nature of the genre, the corporeal language of romance that is read in the tears of joy and grief spilled by its characters as well as its readers. But while I agree that a libidinal energy is at the heart of both the narrative and its readers’ responses, I argue that the focus on sexual coupling neglects to consider another bodily discourse: that of death and mourning. Mourning enacts a simultaneous identification with and desire for a lost object, a fetishistic relationship that brings together the Freudian “to be” and “to have” and so invests the lost object with both narcissistic and communal attachments. These texts offer their readers the bodies within the narratives, as well as the texts themselves, as the material of a cultural heritage, constructing a nativism that ties the subjects to the land and to the community through a shared lost artifact, their history. Through mourning a common object, the subjects become citizens, native Americans that distance themselves from Europe while supplanting the Amerindian. In combining modern studies of material culture with post Freudian psychoanalytic criticism, the dissertation works to make explicit the relationship between death, citizenship and textuality in order to show the cultural work of fictional historiography in the making of the American nations. / text

Den kamp som står central för Antigone i dramat med samma namn, är vikten av begravningen. Här har jag visat hur ett skifte i sorgpraktiker stod i relation till politiska reformer som pågick under övergången till det klassiska Grekland. Hur Antigone är en berättelse som tar upp och bearbetar konflikter som uppstår i denna kulturs övergång från en sedlig och familje-orienterad kultur till en stats-styrd och moraliskt orienterad kultur. Det introducerades en ekonomi av ersättbarhet, som ville tona ner det unika i individen för att statsmakten skulle växa sig starkare och tona ner konflikter av hämnd. Jag har även visat hur vissa tidigare läsningar och tolkningar av Antigone haft en tendens att fascineras av den självklarhet med vilken hon går mot sin egna undergång. Hur hennes död framstår som något vackert och skönt, i vart fall hos Jaques Lacan. Här har jag föreslagit en alternativ läsning där Antigones död egentligen kan ses som en reaktion på en oerkänd och felriktad sorgprocess. Det är inte då längre något upphöjt utan snarare visar det oss något djupt olyckligt i bristen på rättigheter och erkännande. Att Antigone tar sitt liv - vilket i sig genererar en kedja av tragiska händelser - kan få sin förklaring i att hon drabbats av melankoli. Melankolin kommer av att hon av staten och sin morbror, inte fick tillgång att leva ut sin sorg eller ens erkännas sin sorg på riktigt vis. Melankolin har jag lokaliserat med stöd av Sigmund Freuds beskrivning. Jag har även med hjälp av Judith Butler visat att värdet av liv regleras genom olika värdesystem och normer för uppfattande och erkännande. Att dessa normer och erkännanden även hänger tätt i hop med ett livs sörjbarhet när det går förlorat. Med stöd av Tina Chanter har jag även poängterat att Antigone många gånger använts som ett verktyg för protest, då dramat belyser just detta med värdesystem. Att stå utan ett erkännande, att bli förvisad till en plats i marginalen frammanar även en position av social död.  Vad det är som gör att Antigone så idogt strävar efter detta att få begrava sin broder och vad denna begravning representerar mer än endast en begravning, hänger samman med just ett behov av erkännande. Att vara människa är bland annat att vara i relation, att vara ett subjekt och att ha ett språk. Att förnekas detta, att stå med ett uteblivet erkännande av relationer där förlusten av det man saknar varken får en medveten eller given uttalad plats, kan skapa ett tillstånd av melankoli. När Antigone protesterar mot Kreons dikret står hon upp för rätten att sörja.  Melankoli uppstår där en sorg inte blivit medvetandegjord och jaget därmed inte klarar att sörja. Melankoli gröper ur jaget, känslan av meningsfullhet förloras, den kan driva en mot sin egna upplösning.

Dans Mortuaires, une pièce de théâtre en fragments, deux soeurs se rencontrent dans une chambre d'hôtel; Jiji, la plus vieille, vient de retrouver les cendres de leur mère, morte dix ans auparavant; elle voudrait enterrer l'urne définitivement, alors que la plus jeune, Ge, tient à la garder près d'elle. Ce sera l'occasion pour les soeurs de faire valoir leur propre désir et de célébrer la morte, de reprendre contact avec ce qui reste d'elle dans leur mémoire. Le texte se présente sous forme de mini-scènes sans continuité, bien qu’étant toutes reliées, comme un dialogue interrompu, une cérémonie rejouant la mise en pièces du corps. La fragmentation de la mémoire constitue le projet esthétique de la pièce, dont le ressort dramatique tourne autour du souvenir endeuillé et du corps mort. La mort-vivance comme motif d'écriture dans « Aurélia » de Gérard de Nerval est un essai portant sur le rapport qu'entretient Nerval avec les morts dans le récit, ceux-ci constituant son moteur d'écriture. Au moyen de théories telles que la psychanalyse (Freud, Jackson), la sociologie (Muray) et la théorie de la lecture (Picard), il sera démontré que Nerval, dans Aurélia, se fait spirite en faisant revenir les morts au moyen du rêve. L'écriture se pose comme un lieu de rencontre entre les vivants et les morts, un espace dans lequel chacun doit se faire mort-vivant pour aller retrouver l'autre. Les frontières se brouillent et il devient difficile pour Nerval, ainsi que pour le lecteur, de distinguer le rêve de la réalité. / In Mortuaires, a drama in fragments, two sisters meet in a hotel room; Jiji, the oldest, has just found their mother's ashes, dead 10 years ago; she would like to bury the urn, but the youngest, Ge, intends to keep it. It will be the occasion for them to emphasize on their own desire and, much more, to celebrate the dead mother, to reconnect with what remains of her in their memory. The text presents small scenes without continuity, although linked, like an interrupted dialogue, a ceremony replaying the body's breaking into pieces. The memory's fragmentation is the esthetic project of the drama, whose basic dramatic's spring turns around remembering, mourning, and the place of the dead body. La mort-vivance comme motif d'écriture dans « Aurélia » de Gérard de Nerval is an essay studying the connexion between Nerval and the dead ones. In the story, these ones are very important in the process of writing. Using theories such as psychoanalysis (Freud, Jackson), sociology (Muray) and reading theory (Picard), it will be shown that Nerval, in Aurélia, is a medium and tries to take the dead ones back through dream. The writing of his dreams creates for Nerval a place where the living and the dead ones can meet, a place where everyone has to become a living dead to be in contact with others. In that way, boundaries are blurring and it becomes increasingly hard for Nerval, as for the reader, to distinguish dream from reality.

À partir de fragments décousus, de morceaux du passé, du présent et même de rêves d’avenir, la narratrice du récit Les rubans bleus réfléchit sur la signification de femmes qu’elle a côtoyées durant sa vie. Elle tente ainsi de recoudre la lignée dont elle est issue et de tisser une histoire qui restera effilochée. Les diverses femmes rencontrées structurent ce récit rapiécé qui, comme une courtepointe, va rassembler de façon hétéroclite les souvenirs d’un « je ». Dans le récit Ma mère et Gainsbourg de Diane-Monique Daviau, le motif omniprésent de la robe constitue une enveloppe psychique qui permet une continuité imaginaire entre la mère et la fille, la narratrice. Cette robe, nous dit cette dernière, est trouée, et la reprise tout au long du récit de ce motif préfigure l’absence ressentie par la fille devant le deuil à faire de sa mère. Les nombreux trous à la robe, que la narratrice met en évidence, se lisent comme des manques et des silences entre la mère et la fille. Ces accrocs à la robe marquent l’identité de cette dernière et fondent cet « héritage-fardeau » qu’elle porte et dont elle témoigne dans le livre. Par l’écriture, la narratrice nous convie à un patient travail de deuil (Anzieu, Delvaux, Green, Harel). Celui-ci s’offre comme un assemblage de fils servant à recoudre les diffé-rents morceaux de sa vie qui lui permettront de mieux reconstituer la figure de cette mère-absente, et, par là même, sa propre identité. C’est donc à la manière d’un patchwork qu’elle lie entre eux des souvenirs d’enfance, des rêves et des réflexions portant sur la perte et le manque. Ceux-ci donneront forme à son texte, cette robe d’endeuillée. / Using unwoven fragments, pieces of the past, of the present and even dreams for the future, Les rubans bleus’s narrator reflects on the meaning of the different women in her life. Thus, she attemps to sew the lineage from which she came and to weed a story that will stay frayed. The different women encountered structure the reattached narrative, bringing together like a quilt, in a heterogenous manner, the memories of an “I”. In the narrative Ma mère et Gainsbourg by Diane-Monique Daviau, the omnipresent pattern of the dress constitutes an envelop for the psyche that allows an imaginary continuum between a mother and a daughter, the narrator. She describes this dress as having holes in it. The reoccurence of this dress in the text prefigures the absence that is felt by the daughter as she mourns her mother. The narrator puts forth the many holes in the dress through gaps which read like silences and emptiness between the mother and daughter. These snags in the dress imprinted on the narrator’s identity and founded a “burdon-heritage” that the narrator wears, and shares in her book. With her writing, she invites the reader to a slow passage through the mourning process (Anzieu, Delvaux, Green, Harel). The latter presents itself as the thread with which the narrator will sew the pieces of her life together, which in turn will allow for a better fit pertaining to the figure of the absent-mother, and from there, to her own identity. Hence, the narrator ties together childhood memories, dreams and reflections about loss and emptiness, like a patchwork, giving form to her text, that of a mourning dress.

Der diesjährige Call for Papers hebt es hervor: „Internet-basierte Technologien wie z.B. Social Media Werkzeuge, aber auch (soziale) Intranet-Systeme und Wissensplattformen bestimmen mehr denn je Lernen, Forschen und Arbeiten in Wirtschaft, Wissenschaft und Bildung und insbesondere das private (Zusammen)Leben.“ Dies betrifft jedoch nicht nur das berufliche Miteinander. Soziale Plattformen führen zu Vergemeinschaftung (Weber, 1922), stabilisieren Freundschaften (Fischer, 2012) und erweitern unsere Möglichkeiten der Kommunikation (ebd.). Zunehmend wird dabei nicht nur Wissen ausgetauscht, sondern – wie obiges Beispiel zeigt - vor allem auch Emotionen. Das Teilen von emotionalen Inhalten rückt nicht nur bei Menschen in den Vordergrund, die an Krankheiten leiden und versuchen, die daraus entstandene Situation auf diese Art zu bewältigen, sondern – wie obiger Auszug darlegt – auch bei Personen, die einen geliebten Nahestehenden verloren haben. Das Teilen von Emotionen geschieht unter anderem auf virtuellen Friedhöfen, den sogenannten Memorials, aber auch auf Online-Plattformen, auf denen Betroffene sich aktiv mit Gleichgesinnten austauschen können, den sogenannten Trauer-Foren. (...)

This study titled: “Mourning Cultural Practice Amongst the Zulu Speaking Widows of the KwaNyuswa Community: A Feminist Perspective” explored how mourning cultural practices contribute towards gender discrimination which results to women oppression. The main aim of this study was to document how cultural practices impact negatively to women. It focused on challenges and consequences that the Zulu speaking widows particularly in the rural areas experience during their mourning period. Within feminism as an umbrella theory underpinning this study, radical approach was employed to address the issue to be investigated since it considers patriarchal practices as a primary cause of women’s oppression (Wills and Ellen, 1994:117). This approach enabled the study to extract the gender imbalances inherent in cultural practices, and to expose widow’s experiences, why they experience what they are experiencing and how do they perceive their experiences. This study employed a qualitative research approach embracing the interpretive paradigm and sought to obtain a rich and deep interpretation of participant’s responses on the topic investigated. A combination of three qualitative data collection methods were used, these were: face to face interviews, focus groups discussion and participant observation. Thirty participants were randomly selected from five districts of KwaNyuswa and that include: key informants, women and men, widows and widowers and these were regarded as people who are knowledgeable and have an experience with the phenomenon studied. Thematic data analysis was used in this study through which four themes were emerged. These themes were derived from participant’s perceptions and experiences which made it possible to meet the research objectives. The findings of this study revealed that the majority of people at KwaNyuswa consider mourning cultural practice as an integral part of their lives irrespective of its constraints or challenges it might have to the people involved. It was clear from this study that the people of this community are very much conservative and stereotyped and they do not consider anything of gender transformation or gender equality. Recommendations were made for social and gender transformation and for some means to improve the widow’s plight. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2013.

By reading mournful poems rhetorically, I expand the concept of the elegy in order to reveal continuities between private and communal modes of mourning. My emphasis on readers of elegies challenges writer-centered definitions of the elegy, like that given by Peter Sacks, who describes how the elegy's formal conventions express the elegist's own motives for writing. Although Sacks's Freudian approach helpfully delineates some of the consoling effects that writing poetry has on the elegist herself, this dissertation revises such writer-centered concepts of the elegy by asking how elegies rhetorically invoke ethical relationships between writers and readers. By reading elegiac poems through Kenneth Burke's rhetorical theories and Emmanuel Levinas's ethics, I argue that these poems characterize, as Levinas suggests, subjectivity as fundamentally structured by ethical relationships with others. In keeping with this ethical focus, I analyze anthology poems, meaning short lyric poems written by acclaimed authors, easily accessible, and easily remembered - including several well-known poems by such authors as Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Robert Frost. Anthology pieces invite ethical evaluation in part because they represent what counts as valuable poetry - and also, by implication, what does not. Because anthology poems are read by broad, diverse audiences, I suggest that a rhetorical methodology focusing on writer-reader relationships is essential to evaluating these poems' ethical implications. This rhetorical approach to poetry, however, questions rhetoricians and aesthetic theorists from Aristotle and Longinus to Lloyd F. Bitzer and Derek Attridge who emphasize distinctions between rhetoric and poetics. I address the ongoing debate about the relationship between rhetoric and poetics by arguing, along the lines of Wayne C. Booth's affirmation that fiction and rhetoric are interconnected, that poetry and rhetoric are likewise integrally tied. To this debate, I add an emphasis on philosophy - from which Plato, Ramus, and others exclude rhetoric and poetry - as likewise essential to understanding both poetry and rhetoric. By recognizing the interrelatedness of these disciplines, we may better clarify poetry's broad, ethical appeals that seem so valuable to readers in situations of loss.