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The contagious sound of Congo-Zaire's distinctive popular dance music has made it a kind of 'musica franca' of sub-Saharan Africa. Despite the music's influence outside of its country of origin, virtually no research has been done to explore the history, production and meaning of the musical style. In addition to being a privileged feature of Congo-Kinshasa's cultural landscape, this 'musique moderne' also constitutes a valuable source of information of the way that 'modernity' is ordered and understood in an African context. 'Modernity', I want to argue, is driven by 'tradition', and 'audition' pulls 'modernity' back into its sphere of utility, resulting in a never-ending, forever-changing, cultural and political spiral. 'Modernism', on the other hand, as a stance or 'way of being' in the world, is used as a means of gaining mastery over the paradoxes and pleasures of 'modernity's' condition. Findings are based on fourteen months of intensive fieldwork (1995--1996) in Brazzaville (Peoples' Republic of Congo) and Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of Congo). I conducted research on three basic units of study relative to Congolese popular dance music: the music industry, the musical style and the audience. By comparing information from these three domains of knowledge, I have attempted to show not only how music in Kinshasa is performed, but how it is produced and understood. The 'modern' idiom through which music expresses itself is interesting in itself, but it also highlights the importance of culture and history to the study of popular culture and politics.

Currently, in the fields of multi-ethnic literary and cultural studies in American, many critics and theoreticians concentrate on exposing forces of social and economic oppression against ethnic minorities and practices of cultural hegemony by the dominant culture. In the process, they often read characters in multi-ethnic American literatures as agents of resistance and counter-discourse. While it is valuable to recognize the subversive potential in these writings, it is equally important to expose their distinct, individual attributes. Accordingly, this dissertation explores the neglected double nature and "bi-cultural" presence of the subject in a branch of contemporary American literature that I designate as "emergent." Through its "re-accentuation" (Bakhtin) of sign systems, writers of emergent fiction strive not to simply reintonate already established cultural paradigms from either recent or ancient homelands but, instead, to engage an active and ongoing cultural exchange in the context of America as (new) homeland. Presenting the individual and social subject as hybrid, emergent writers examine its dynamic involvement in both private and public spheres. My close readings of this literature focus on the representation of self-other interrelationships. / I introduce and situate my analysis with a theoretical overview of the subject in cross-cultural or "liminal" zones (Bhabha). I also consider the significance of "dialogism" (Bakhtin) in the multi-ethnic, often female, subject's experience of "estrangement" (Felski). My choice of both established and lesser-known of new writers, born (or raised) in the United States but of diverse ethnic backgrounds, includes Cristina Garcia (Hispanic), Louise Erdrich (Native), Julia Shigekuni (Japanese), Sandra Cisneros (Chicana), Askold Melnyczuk (Ukrainian), Charlotte Sherman (African), and Amy Tan (Chinese). Situating the individual and social subject at various crossroads---both physical and psychological---emergent writers examine the changing nature of self identity and social expression. Through their "border pedagogy" (Giroux), they traverse axiologic discourses and socio-cultural boundaries and attend to ensuing dialectical tensions between inner and outer worlds, and among peoples, cultures, and social hierarchies.

In spite of the growing interest of Russian and Western scholars in Sergei Dovlatov and his art, his place in Russian literature has not yet been clearly defined. His position as a writer in Russia in the 1960s and early 70s was ambiguous due to his opposition to the traditional Soviet canon and rejection by the current literary establishment. However, he later gained recognition and popularity as an emigre writer in the United States. The concept of 'marginality' colours his biography and art, for his life itself was a succession of marginal experiences and marginality is the key topic of his writings. / Marginality unifies Dovlatov's art. This is evident in his marginal status as a writer in and outside the Soviet Union, and in his writing which uses the underappreciated short form of narration (the novella and short story), develops a non-traditional conversational style, pursues the themes of non-conventional behaviour and introduces eccentric characters. / However, it is not possible to discuss Dovlatov's status as a marginal writer without contextualizing his life and art in the ambience of the entire generation of Leningrad writers of the sixties. Writers and poets such as Brodskii, Goliavkin, Gubin, Vakhtin and Ufliand do not only represent the culture of Leningrad's artistic non-conformists, they are also Dovlatov's prototypes and protagonists. Apart from their marginal status, all these writers shared the determination to make independent choices in life and in art. They refused to be viewed as marginal authors by the dominant canon, which disregarded their works as insignificant. Here as well marginality emerges as a literary concept and a behavioural model, shaped by societal norms (the positive type of citizen or official Soviet writer) and traditional canons (the Russian didactic tradition or Soviet ideological writing). This literary concept includes an orientation towards American literature, the creation of marginal characters and themes as well as an exploration of different styles. / The works of writers of the Leningrad circle laid the foundation for the emergence of a literary phenomenon such as Dovlatov. It is in delineating this context that this dissertation demonstrates Dovlatov's original approach to marginality, as well as the way he turned his life experience into literature and became a spokesman for neglected fellow writers and citizens.

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The "encyclopedic imagination" describes an artist's conviction that a work of art must be expansive and inclusive to a point of total embodiment. The artist (or dramatized artist figure) implies that the work of art must give a total account not only of the subjective life of the artist but of the reality to which the representing self responds. The focus of this study is not on any work's encyclopedic achievement (for the artist's inclusive ideal always remains well outside the actual capacity of the work), but on the relationship of the ideal of aesthetic all-inclusiveness to a problematic ideal of encompassing selfhood for the representing personality. / Following an introduction that establishes modern and postmodern conceptions of the notion of aesthetic totality, this dissertation describes, in six Canadian works, the (untenable) radicalization of the self through the "encyclopedic" ideal. Chapter one considers Ernest Buckler's The Mountain and the Valley (1952) and notes that the protagonist's drive towards total representation is costly to his sense of authentic temporality. Chapter two identifies "total embodiment" as the governing poetic principle of P. K. Page's The Hidden Room (poems c.1942-1997), and suggests the relation of this ideal to Page's apparent creative crisis. Chapter three examines the ethics of all-inclusive representation in Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers (1966) and argues that the novel's vision of the world incorporated into a single body is a reflection of both the totalitarian politic of One Man and of apocalyptic-beatific "total identity." Chapter four looks at Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye (1988) in terms of the trope of the "perverse museum" in Atwood's oeuvre. The novel's treatment of representation as exhibition figures identity as a matter of insatiable demonstration. Chapter five considers the "life-long" poems of Louis Dudek (Continuation c.1971-2001) and bpNichol (The Martyrology 1967-1988) as particularly marked cases of works that must continue until they have enfolded a coherent world-view into an all-encompassing subjectivity. / Each chapter stresses the counterintuitive quality of the "encyclopedic" ideal and demonstrates that a total yet coherent representation of the world seems inversely proportional to a coherent yet total representation of the self.

La seule mention d'un camp de concentration évoque instinctivement Auschwitz, Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, Büchenwald Ravensbrück... Ces noms restent gravés dans l'esprit contemporain. Par définition, toutefois, n'importe quel enclos qui emprisonne ou enferme des réfugiés, des prisonniers, ou même des étrangers hostiles, est un camp de concentration. Mais à cause des évènements historiques ce sont ces camps d'extermination qui nous reviennent à l'esprit. [...]