This study examines how themes, conventions and concepts in Gothic discourses are remediated or developed in selected works of contemporary interactive fiction. These works, which are wholly text-based and proceed via command line input from a player, include Nevermore, by Nate Cull (2000), Anchorhead, by Michael S. Gentry (1998), Madam Spider’s Web, by Sara Dee (2006) and Slouching Towards Bedlam, by Star C. Foster and Daniel Ravipinto (2003). The interactive fictions are examined using a media-specific, in-depth analytical approach. Gothic fiction explores the threats which profoundly challenge narrative subjects, and so may be described as concerned with epistemological, ideological and ontological boundaries. In the interactive fictions these boundaries are explored dually through the player’s traversal (that is, progress through a work) and the narrative(s) produced as a result of that traversal. The first three works in this study explore the vulnerabilities related to conceptions of human subjectivity. As an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem “The Raven,” Nevermore, examined in chapter one, is a work in which self-reflexivity extends to the remediated use of the Gothic conventions of ‘the unspeakable’ and ‘live burial’ which function in Poe’s poem. In chapter two, postmodern indeterminacy, especially with regard to the tensions between spaces and subjective boundaries, is apparent in the means through which the trope of the labyrinth is redesigned in Anchorhead, a work loosely based on H. P. Lovecraft’s terror fiction. In the fragmented narratives produced via traversal of Madam Spider’s Web, considered in chapter three, the player character’s self-fragmentation, indicated by the poetics of the uncanny as well as of the Gothic-grotesque, illustrates a destabilized conception of the human subject which reveals a hidden monster within, both for the player character and the player. Finally, traversal of Slouching Towards Bedlam, analyzed in chapter four, produces a series of narratives which function in a postmodern, recursive fashion to implicate the player in the viral infection which threatens the decidedly posthuman player character. This viral entity is metaphorically linked to Bram Stoker’s vampire, Dracula. As it is the only work in the study to present a conception of posthuman subjectivity, Slouching Towards Bedlam more specifically aligns with the subgenre ‘cybergothic,’ and provides an illuminating contrast to the other three interactive fictions. In the order in which I examine them, these works exemplify a postmodern development of the Gothic which increasingly marries fictional indeterminacy to explicit formal effects, both during interaction and in the narratives produced.

Com base no instrumental teórico da Semiótica Francesa e na Gramática Tensiva de Claude Zilberberg, procuramos empreender um estudo da impossibilidade discursiva veiculada pela ideia de indizível, tal como ela se apresenta no romance A Paixão segundo G.H., de Clarice Lispector. A noção central de acontecimento é caracterizada, no âmbito da teoria tensiva, por sua natureza abrupta, que arrebata o sujeito, deixando-o sem voz (isto é, interrompendo o fluxo discursivo) e destituindo-o de sua competência modal (e, consequentemente, de sua capacidade para a ação). Em termos tensivos, o acontecimento é definido por um paroxismo no que diz respeito à intensidade, assim como por uma drástica redução em termos de extensidade. Uma vez submetido à dinâmica tensiva, o paroxismo gerado pelo acontecimento desencadeará, inevitavelmente, sua própria atenuação, em um processo denominado resolução, que, em linhas muito gerais, consiste na transformação do acontecimento em uma unidade discursiva. Nesta pesquisa, procuramos evidenciar o fato de que o romance de Clarice Lispector é estruturado como um processo de resolução. No entanto, a transição entre o acontecimento e o discurso é problematizada ao longo de todo o romance, na medida em que a experiência que se pretende narrar é considerada indizível. A teoria tensiva do aspecto postula que todo objeto, ao entrar no campo de presença de um sujeito qualquer, passa instantaneamente a integrar um percurso aspectual ascendente ou descendente, cujos limites são, de um lado, a extenuação e, de outro, a saturação. Tais limites podem, no entanto, ser ultrapassados, a depender do grau de impacto causado pelo acontecimento. O indizível ou, mais exatamente, o conjunto de estratégias discursivas de resolução que ele encerra pode ser definido como a expressão de uma ultrapassagem aspectual. / Based on the theoretical framework of the French Semiotics and on Claude Zilberbergs Tensive Grammar, we sought to carry out a study of the discourse impossibility conveyed by the idea of unspeakable, as it appears in the novel A Paixão segundo G.H. [The Passion according to G.H.], by Clarice Lispector. The central notion of event is characterized, within the scope of tensive theory, by its abrupt nature, which takes the subject aback, leaving them speechless (that is to say, interrupting discourse flow) and depriving them of modal competence (and, consequently, of their ability to take action). In tensive terms, an event is defined by a paroxysm with respect to intensity, as well as by a drastic reduction in terms of extent. Once subject to the tensive dynamics, the paroxysm produced by the event will inevitably trigger its own attenuation, in a process designated resolution, which, in very general terms, consists in the transformation of the event into a unit of discourse. In this research, we attempt to highlight the fact that Clarice Lispectors novel is structured as a resolution process. However, the transition between event and discourse is problematized throughout the novel, since the experience to be reported is considered to be unspeakable. The tensive theory of aspect postulates that every object, in entering the presence field of a given subject, instantly engages in an either ascending or descending aspectual course, whose limits are extenuation at one end of the scale, and saturation at the other. These limits can, however, be overtaken, depending on the degree of impact caused by the event. The unspeakable or, more exactly, the set of discourse strategies of resolution it encompasses can be defined as the expression of an aspectual surplus.

Com base no instrumental teórico da Semiótica Francesa e na Gramática Tensiva de Claude Zilberberg, procuramos empreender um estudo da impossibilidade discursiva veiculada pela ideia de indizível, tal como ela se apresenta no romance A Paixão segundo G.H., de Clarice Lispector. A noção central de acontecimento é caracterizada, no âmbito da teoria tensiva, por sua natureza abrupta, que arrebata o sujeito, deixando-o sem voz (isto é, interrompendo o fluxo discursivo) e destituindo-o de sua competência modal (e, consequentemente, de sua capacidade para a ação). Em termos tensivos, o acontecimento é definido por um paroxismo no que diz respeito à intensidade, assim como por uma drástica redução em termos de extensidade. Uma vez submetido à dinâmica tensiva, o paroxismo gerado pelo acontecimento desencadeará, inevitavelmente, sua própria atenuação, em um processo denominado resolução, que, em linhas muito gerais, consiste na transformação do acontecimento em uma unidade discursiva. Nesta pesquisa, procuramos evidenciar o fato de que o romance de Clarice Lispector é estruturado como um processo de resolução. No entanto, a transição entre o acontecimento e o discurso é problematizada ao longo de todo o romance, na medida em que a experiência que se pretende narrar é considerada indizível. A teoria tensiva do aspecto postula que todo objeto, ao entrar no campo de presença de um sujeito qualquer, passa instantaneamente a integrar um percurso aspectual ascendente ou descendente, cujos limites são, de um lado, a extenuação e, de outro, a saturação. Tais limites podem, no entanto, ser ultrapassados, a depender do grau de impacto causado pelo acontecimento. O indizível ou, mais exatamente, o conjunto de estratégias discursivas de resolução que ele encerra pode ser definido como a expressão de uma ultrapassagem aspectual. / Based on the theoretical framework of the French Semiotics and on Claude Zilberbergs Tensive Grammar, we sought to carry out a study of the discourse impossibility conveyed by the idea of unspeakable, as it appears in the novel A Paixão segundo G.H. [The Passion according to G.H.], by Clarice Lispector. The central notion of event is characterized, within the scope of tensive theory, by its abrupt nature, which takes the subject aback, leaving them speechless (that is to say, interrupting discourse flow) and depriving them of modal competence (and, consequently, of their ability to take action). In tensive terms, an event is defined by a paroxysm with respect to intensity, as well as by a drastic reduction in terms of extent. Once subject to the tensive dynamics, the paroxysm produced by the event will inevitably trigger its own attenuation, in a process designated resolution, which, in very general terms, consists in the transformation of the event into a unit of discourse. In this research, we attempt to highlight the fact that Clarice Lispectors novel is structured as a resolution process. However, the transition between event and discourse is problematized throughout the novel, since the experience to be reported is considered to be unspeakable. The tensive theory of aspect postulates that every object, in entering the presence field of a given subject, instantly engages in an either ascending or descending aspectual course, whose limits are extenuation at one end of the scale, and saturation at the other. These limits can, however, be overtaken, depending on the degree of impact caused by the event. The unspeakable or, more exactly, the set of discourse strategies of resolution it encompasses can be defined as the expression of an aspectual surplus.

Contrairement à la conception traditionnelle de la figure poétique considérée soit comme simple ornement du discours soit comme écart par rapport à un niveau ordinaire et neutre du langage, la poésie de Victor Hugo et de Michel Deguy incite à penser le langage figuré et le langage ordinaire dans leur continuité, en les opposant à l’absence du langage. Ce travail tend à circonscrire le langage figuré à partir des représentations de l’indicible et de l’invisible dans Les Contemplations de Victor Hugo et dans l’œuvre poétique et théorique de Michel Deguy qui dévoilent la nature collective profonde du langage, de la perception et de la pensée. De là, les racines rhétoriques et herméneutiques du langage permettront de nourrir une réflexion sur le phénomène de partage comme articulation entre le subjectif et l’intersubjectif, entre l’intime et le commun et entre la sensation, l’affect et la forme. L’objet du partage intersubjectif se dessine dans la forme élémentaire de l’affect étendu de la douleur à la joie, du bon au mauvais et de la pitié à la jouissance. La réunion de la pensée du corps et de l’abstraction au sein d’une pensée de l’éthique constitue une proposition de relecture des deux poètes de la menace d’une apocalypse à la fois langagière, conceptuelle et morale. / Contrary to the dominant conception of the poetic figure as a simple discourse ornament or as a stylistic deviation from the ordinary and neutral language, Victor Hugo’s and Michel Deguy’s poetry leads to a continuity between ordinary and poetic language by jointly contrasting both of them to absence of language. This work tends to define poetic language on the basis of representations of the unspeakable and the invisible in Victor Hugo’s Les Contemplations and in Michel Deguy’s poetic and theoretical writings, revealing deep collective nature of the language, perception and reasoning. Rhetoric and hermeneutic roots of language then enable contemplation on the act of sharing that reflects a joint between subjective and intersubjective, intimate and common as well as between affect and form. The object of a sharing act is being drawn within the elementary form of the affect, laying between pain and joy, the good and the bad, and, finally, pity and sexual pleasure. The junction of the concept of body with the concept of abstraction as an ethical problem contributes to a new comprehension of these two poets of approaching linguistic, conceptual and moral apocalypse.

Le concept d’indicible, aussi complexe soit-il, peut se fonder sur une expérience du sensible, et trouver un contexte commun dans les évènements transgressant la limite et pointant un certain chaos. Ceux de la Guerre d’Espagne ont constitué, par de nombreux aspects, des exemples de ces excès impensables. L’impact de l’environnement sur les créateurs s’est entendu dans les traces thématiques qui s’imposent dans les œuvres composées sur les thèmes de la mort, de la violence ou de la guerre : en partant des phénomènes sonores, ont été relevées des figures qui rendent sensible le dépassement de la limite et la connotation chaotique et font écho à ce qui dépasse l’entendement, comme la destruction de l’homme ou l’inintelligibilité de la mort. Ces figures, relevées grâce à des outils de sémiotique (icônes, indices et symboles peirciens, disjoncteurs d’après Rinn, être et faire inspirés de Greimas, sémiose interne que l'analyse structurelle viendra alimenter), s’inscriront dans des champs sémantiques que nous avons relevés comme étant liés au concept d’indicible contextualisé (démesure ; altérité absolue ; irréel ; mort ; abjection…), non seulement en musique, mais aussi dans les autres arts. Nous explorerons la parenté de ces figures relevant parfois d’un niveau pré-sémique. Nous dégagerons des figures de l’indicible partagées par différents compositeurs espagnols dans des œuvres composées sur ce thème et soulignerons des réminiscences chez certains auteurs, tandis que les spécificités compositionnelles et sémantiques manifestant l’indicible évènement seront explicitées, y compris au sein d’une proto-intrigue dont nous observeront les particularités symptomatiques. / The concept of unspeakable, as complex as it may be, can base itself on an experience of the sensitive, and find a common context in the events exceeding the limit and pointing a certain chaos. Those of the Spanish Civil War have constituted, by numerous aspects, examples of these unthinkable excesses. The impact of the environment on the creators has been heard in the thematic traces which are imperative in the works composed on the themes of death, violence or war: from the sound phenomena, some figures making sensitive the exceeding of the limit and chaotic connotation have been highlighted and echo what is beyond belief, as the destruction of man or the inaudibility of death. These figures rose thanks to semiotics’ tools (icons, indications and peircian symbols, breakers (“disjoncteurs ”) according to Rinn , being and doing inspired by Greimas, introversive semiosis that the traditional structural analysis will come to feed), will join semantic fields which we found as being connected to the contextualized concept of unspeakable (immoderation; absolute otherness; unreal; death; abjection …), not only in music, but also in other arts. We shall explore the kinship of these figures being sometimes of a pre-semic level. We will bring out figures of the unspeakable shared by various Spanish composers in works written on this theme and will underline some recollections at certain authors, whereas compositional and semantic specificities showing the unspeakable event will be clarified, including within a “proto-intrigue” whose we will observe the symptomatic peculiarities.

Cette recherche, axée sur les témoignages concentrationnaires, vise à montrer comment celui de Charlotte Delbo brise l’espace-temps, qui emprisonne généralement ce type de discours le liant à un moment et un décor dans l’Histoire. Plusieurs facettes de son écriture testimoniale seront explorées pour mettre en lumière l’actualisation et accessibilité de son témoignage qui évoque l’éternel dans une volonté d’écriture de représenter et faire ressentir l’Innommable. La première partie de ce travail fixe l’économie discursive à travers deux grandes vagues de témoignages concentrationnaires en se structurant autour d’auteurs-rescapés ayant marqué le genre, soit Primo Levi et Jorge Semprun. La seconde partie s’attache à démontrer l’exemplarité du discours de Charlotte Delbo. Dans une vision historique du discours concentrationnaire féminin, nous mettons de l’avant, à travers la comparaison de témoignages, la voix plus retentissante et troublante que donne Delbo à son témoignage. Ensuite, l’absence de contraintes qu’elle donne à sa parole concentrationnaire confronte nos représentations entourant cet univers ainsi que nos conceptions de la vérité, de la mémoire et du témoignage, amenant alors une reconfiguration de nos schèmes préétablis. Le dernier chapitre montre le rôle fondamental que Delbo accorde à l’imaginaire dans la réception de son témoignage singulier. De la puissance évocatrice du titre de son premier tome Aucun de nous ne reviendra en passant par les silences et les vides qu’elle laisse, ainsi que le décor elle nous amène à imaginer le non-dit. Finalement, l’étude de certaines figures récurrentes dans son œuvre, celles des personnages théâtraux et de la mère mettent en lumière la volonté animant son écriture, soit par le prisme de l’imaginaire de chacun d’exprimer l’Innommable. / This research on the testimonies of concentration camp survivors shows how Charlotte Delbo’s testimony broke the space-time convention that usually links this genre to a time and place in History. Her multifaceted type of writing will be explored to underscore the timeless and accessible aspect of her testimony, its desire to represent and feel the Unspeakable. The first part of this work examines the discursive prose through two waves of testimonies, structured around two authors who marked the genre, Primo Levi and Jorge Semprun. The second part shows the exemplary nature of Charlotte Delbo’s eyewitness account. In a historical point of view of the female’s testimonies, we emphasize, through testimony comparisons, that Delbo’s voice is louder and more troubling than the others. Her unrestrained speech confronts our representation of this universe, and touches our concepts of truth, memory, and testimony leading us to reorganize our preconceived notions. The last chapter shows us the pivotal role that Delbo gives to imagination in the reception of her peculiar testimony. From the force of her first title Aucun de nous ne reviendra, through the silences, the empty spaces and scenery, she pushes us to imagine the unsaid. Finally, the study of some recurrent figures she uses, the theatrical personae and the mother image shed light on the desire that motivates her writing in which she expresses the Unspeakable through the prism of individual imagination.

Le projet proposé est le suivant : d’abord tenter de comprendre quelle place joue l’indicible dans le langage et quelle forme prend — au niveau fondamental — la violence exercée à son endroit en suivant l'oeuvre d'Emmanuel Levinas et de Ludwig Wittgenstein. Ensuite, poursuivre l’analyse des formes de violence du langage en se penchant sur les conditions de possibilité d’une telle violence ou plutôt sur certaines manifestations historiques d’un tel exercice à l'aide du Différend (1983) de Jean-François Lyotard. Et finalement, appliquer les distinctions établies dans les deux chapitres précédents pour mettre en place les conditions d’établissement d’un espace discursif ouvrant à la possibilité du témoignage non-violent visant à reconnaître l’expérience de la survivante auparavant réduite au silence. / The current project aims to understand the role played by the “unspeakable” in language and what form—at a fundamental level—does the violence perpetrated towards it take by following the works of Emmanuel Levinas and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Then, the analysis of linguistic violence continues by examining the different manifestations of this wrong and their conditions of possibility or more precisely, by scrutinizing certain historical incidences of such a reproduction of violence by proposing a close reading of Jean-François Lyotard’s Le Différend (1983). Finally, an attempt will be made at establishing the conditions necessary for the construction of a discursive safe-space opening the possibility of a non-violent witnessing and testimony oriented towards the recognition of the experience of the once silenced survivor.

Par l’écriture, Toni Morrison cherche à rendre leurs voix à ceux qui ont été interdits de mots. Auteure engagée, elle veut redonner à la minorité noire sa place centrale dans l’Histoire des États-Unis. Elle propose ainsi une ré-écriture de l’Histoire au travers de sa trilogie historique, composée de Beloved, Jazz et Paradise, ré-écriture déjà en germe dans son second roman, Sula. À travers l’étude de ces quatre romans, cette thèse se propose de mettre au jour la généalogie de l’indicible dans l’œuvre de Toni Morrison, mais aussi d’analyser le lien dynamique entre minoration et écriture chez cette auteure qui revendique son statut de romancière noire américaine. Les femmes occupent une place centrale dans notre corpus car, à la minoration raciale qui relègue déjà les Africains-Américains en marge de la société américaine, s’ajoute pour les femmes noires la minoration sexuelle qui les réduit à un corps-objet. Mais chez Toni Morrison, cette double minoration, et la fragmentation qu’elle entraîne, deviennent des lignes de fuite, au sens deleuzien du terme, qui (dé-)structurent son écriture. La minoration ne s’entend alors plus comme soustraction, mais comme création. Toni Morrison trace ainsi dans ses textes des lignes de fuite créatrices qui s’échappent du cadre de la page vers un en-dehors du langage où se dit le désir de résister et de survivre du mineur. / Toni Morrison’s writing aims at giving their voices back to those who were deprived of words. As a committed writer, Toni Morrison wants to highlight the central role of the black minority in the History of the United States. She then offers a new version of History as she rewrites it through her historical trilogy comprising her novels Beloved, Jazz and Paradise, to which can be added her second novel, Sula, where the seeds of the rewriting of History can already be found. Through the analysis of these four novels, the objective of this doctoral thesis is to excavate the genealogy of the unspeakable in Toni Morrison’s work, and to analyze the dynamic relationship between minoration and writing for an author who’s « insisted – insisted ! – upon being called a black woman novelist. » Women play a central part in the four novels we are studying because, to the racial minoration that already marginalizes African-Americans in the American society must be added for black women the sexual minoration which turns them into a mere body-object. But this double minoration, and the fragmentation it leads to, become in Toni Morrison’s work “lines of flight”, according to Gilles Deleuze’s terminology, which (de-)construct her writing. Minoration is therefore no longer to be understood as subtraction but as creation. Thus, Toni Morrison draws in her texts the lines of flight of creation which leak out of the page towards the outside of language where one can hear the desire for resistance and survival of the minor.

Ce mémoire présente une réflexion sur la mise en récit de l’indicible. Essentiellement insaisissable parce qu’inexprimable et / ou inexprimé, son étude consiste en une tentative de le démasquer, et de comprendre quelle(s) architecture(s) littéraires en permettent la révélation. Cette analyse approfondira le sens littéral des textes : il s’agira d’en investiguer les différentes interprétations possibles afin d’en définir le noyau originel. Cette entreprise ne peut s’effectuer que de manière indirecte, le sens totalisant ne s’inscrivant jamais dans l’instant présent. De ce fait, le médium artistique du langage se trouvera au centre de ma recherche, notamment avec le concept de la Différance derridienne comme point d’ancrage. L’indicible sous-tend nécessairement un mouvement précédant le texte et allant au-delà de celui-ci, signifiant une impossibilité d’arriver en présence de l’événement traumatique, ou du référent originel. Le mouvement même du discours, de sa structure, génère et fait ressurgir l’indicible. Je penserai le langage (et les mouvements le constituant) comme socle de l’indicible : ironiquement, il en est à la fois la source (soulignant son incapacité à produire une représentation du réel) et ce qui en permet le dévoilement. Nous nous concentrerons sur trois formes d’indicible, à travers trois œuvres distinctes : les conséquences d’un traumatisme et ses temporalités (W ou le souvenir d’enfance, George Perec), la mise en image des affects (L’Écume des jours, Boris Vian), et le récit de soi (Orlando, Virginia Woolf). Ces trois cas de figure témoignent – malgré leurs divergences thématiques – d’une déstructuration de la temporalité, de l’espace et du langage, signifiant l’inaptitude de l’écriture normative à retranscrire le réel, ainsi qu’une remise en question des codes littéraires traditionnels. / This master’s thesis explores the narratives poetics of what in French is called the indicible – a noun that, in English translation, hovers between the “unsayable” (i.e., that for which there is no precise or prehensible language) and the “unspeakable” (i.e.; that which concerns affects that are not easily expressed). As a thematic or affective content that slides between the inexpressible and unexpressed, the indicible generates various literary architectures of indirect story-telling. The goal of this thesis is to illuminate these innovative signifying structures. Accordingly, the analytical project that unfolds here is a necessary movement beyond and beneath the literal thematics of the texts. Within a range of possible interpretations, the text will reveal something of its original conception, its traumatic mark or primal scene. Language as an artistic medium is the essential focus of this work – language, or discourse, as a matrix informed by Jacques Derrida’s model of Différance is, above all, a theory of the movement of narrative or expository language in time. The very movement of discourse around a thematic project – that of bearing witness, of conceptualizing desire, or of mapping identity – is itself generative of the unsayable. Ironically, language is at once the matrix of representation’s limits and incapacities, and the medium of its unveiling and illumination. This mémoire explores three distinct narrative examples of the unsayable by way of three radically different texts : trauma and its temporalities (W, of the memory of childhood, by George Perec), the image-structure of the affects (Froth on the Daydream, by Boris Vian), and the gendered metamorphosis of the self (Orlando: a biography, by Virginia Woolf). Although these narratives vary in form, subject, and thematic content, they collectively dismantle the linear sequence of events and the familiar contours of space; they deconstruct the referential certainties of language; and they point to the limitations of traditional narrative codes in the encounter with reality and the real.

The normative political theory problem of dirty hands (DH) concerns the troubling possibility that political leaders, from a (mostly) consequentialist perspective, might sometimes be morally required to make exceptions from sensitive rules like prohibitions of extremely harmful practices (e.g. torture) in order to avert catastrophic threats and crises, while such rules are still considered so important and such crises so rare that one nonetheless feels inclined to deem dirty exceptions categorically wrong so as to prevent their unnecessary proliferation through a slippery-slope type development.  How can we conceptualize such a problematic necessity? A latent but insufficiently explored idea in the DH literature is that the normatively preferrable approach to such a wicked problem might be to not try to conceptualize it at all, or at least not in our public work as academics. In this thesis, I introduce the straightforward suggestion that if the DH problem cannot be discussed without risking slippery-slope demoralization of the partaking deliberators and/or audience, we seem to be morally required to content ourselves with terming it an unspeakable, taboo subject in non-crisis times, as a meta-level ersatz solution to the core-level political problem conventionally centered in the DH literature.  I also discuss to what extent the mainstream, weak rule utilitarian (WRU) DH literature can themselves be understood as intentionally testing the limits of consequentialist reasoning in a search for a 'higher' moral truth than what their ethical position might entail at first glance.