Depuis la fin de la guerre froide, la notion de Failed State est utilisée dans les relations internationales pour décrire des États rencontrant des difficultés à exercer un monopole de la violence légitime sur leur territoire. La thèse se pose la question de savoir dans quelle mesure cette notion a pu jouer un rôle dans les rapports de domination en cours dans les relations internationales. L’étude montre que la notion a été créée par un communauté épistémique et des entrepreneurs de sens avant tout américains et proposait en effet un système de représentation selon lequel le salut des Failed State reposerait avant tout sur la mise en place de politiques très intrusives de la part des États les plus puissants de la planète. L’étude poursuit en montrant que ce système de représentation, créé à grands frais par un ensemble d’acteurs académiques, médiatiques et philanthropiques, n’a toutefois pas toujours réussi à justifier la mise en place des politiques intrusives souhaitées. A travers de nombreuses études de cas (Afghanistan, Haïti, Irak, Somalie, Palestine, Liban, Libéria, Soudan, Zimbabwe, Bolivie, Pakistan, Colombie, Burundi, Sierra Leone, Guinée-Bissau et République centrafricaine), le travail démontre que la notion de Failed State n’a pas toujours eu l’efficacité souhaitée et a au contraire été détournée, parfois avec succès, pour résister aux politiques perçues comme intrusives par des acteurs prétendument dominés. L’étude conclut que si il est théoriquement possible de dominer par les idées, il est aussi possible de résister aux idées par les idées.<p>//<p>Since the end of the Cold War, the notion of Failed State is used in international relations in order to describe States that have difficulties to exercise a monopoly of legitimate violence on their territory. The thesis raises the question of how this concept influenced the relations of domination in the international relations. The study shows that the concept of Failed State was created by an epistemic community and a group of entrepreneurs primarily based in the United States. The notion promoted a system of representation based on the idea that the salvation of the Failed States rested on their acceptance of very intrusive policies leaded by the most powerful States of the world. The study also shows that this representation system, created at great expense, has not always been able to justify the intrusive policies it was designed to legitimize. Through numerous case studies (Afghanistan, Haiti, Iraq, Somalia, Palestine, Lebanon, Liberia, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Bolivia, Pakistan, Colombia, Burundi, Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau and Central African Republic), it is shown that notion of Failed State has not always reached the efficiency desired by its creators and has instead been used, sometimes successfully, to resist policies perceived as intrusive by the allegedly “dominated” actors. The study concludes that while it is theoretically possible to rule with ideas, it is also possible to resist ideas with ideas. / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

El Caribe ha sido reconocido por considerarse una pluralidad de espacios que simultáneamente son solo uno. Contrario al contexto de su fragmentada geografía, su segregada historia colonial y su diversidad racial y lingüística, los intelectuales caribeños han establecido puentes de unidad cultural con la intención de configurar una identidad pan-caribeña. Por consiguiente, los ensayistas del siglo XX se enfrentan a la necesidad de examinar críticamente los factores que formulan sus respectivas identidades, en contraste con aquellas tradicionalmente impuestas bajo el discurso colonial y metropolitano. Desde el tercer cuarto del siglo, pensadores como Aimé Césaire (1913-2008), Fernando Ortiz (1881-1969), Fidel Castro (1926-), George Lamming (1927-), Kamau Brathwaite (1930-), Juan I. Jiménes-Grullón (1903-1983), Hubert Devonish (1953-), Edouard Glissant (1928-2011), Antonio Benítez-Rojo (1931-2005), Arcadio Díaz Quiñones y Maryse Condé (1937-), entre otros, cuestionan el sistema colonial, los procesos étnicos y las propuestas lingüísticas, relacionándolos con conceptos tales como la hibridez, el sincretismo, la transculturación y la heterogeneidad. Estas teorías culturales, de alguna manera, reescriben ideas antecedentes en reacción a discursos hegemónicos previos como consecuencia de los cambios políticos que trajeron las guerras de independencia en América Latina durante el siglo XIX. En mi tesis demuestro que estos planteamientos delinean un mapa de modelos epistemológicos de la cultura del Caribe. Para indicar que estas propuestas constituyen metáforas que muestran una consciencia cultural, las proposiciones acerca de la cultura de Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) y Hayden White (1928-) sirven como marco teórico apropiado. Así, a través de las representaciones literarias ensayísticas de los modelos metafóricos de la cultura caribeña, este trabajo redefine algunos aspectos importantes de la identidad cultural vis a vis la mirada parcial que usualmente se utiliza para estudiar el archipiélago antillano. Igualmente, incluso aunque estos modelos proponen una representación metafórica de la cultura pan-caribeña, la construcción de un modelo del Caribe puede ser utilizado en otras regiones y espacios culturales en el contexto de la globalización, ya que elucida una gnoseología cultural que sirve para describir distintas realidades globales.

This thesis grapples with questions surrounding representation, mourning, and responsibility in relation to two literary representations of the ZONG massacre of 1781. These texts are M. NourbeSe Philip’s ZONG! and Fred D’Aguiar’s FEEDING THE GHOSTS. The only extant archival document—a record of the insurance dispute which ensued as a consequence of the massacre—does not represent the drowned as victims, nor can it represent the magnitude of the atrocity. As such, this thesis posits that the archival gaps or silences from which the captives’ voices are missing become spaces of possibility for additive representation. This thesis also examines the role voice and sound play in these literary texts and the deconstructive-ethical philosophies of Jean-Luc Nancy and Jacques Derrida. This thesis argues that these texts invoke the sonic materiality of voice in the service of responding to the disremembered dead through mourning and acknowledgment.

The status, roles, and interactions of three dominant African ethnic groups and their descendants in Cuba significantly influenced the island’s cubanidad (national identity): the Lucumís (Yoruba), the Congos (Bantú speakers from Central West Africa), and the Carabalís (from the region of Calabar). These three groups, enslaved on the island, coexisted, each group confronting obstacles that threatened their way of life and cultural identities. Through covert resistance, cultural appropriation, and accommodation, all three, but especially the Lucumís, laid deep roots in the nineteenth century that came to fruition in the twentieth. During the early 1900s, Cuba confronted numerous pressures, internal and external. Under the pretense of a quest for national identity and modernity, Afro-Cubans and African cultures and religion came under political, social, and intellectual attack. Race was an undeniable element in these conflicts. While all three groups were oppressed equally, only the Lucumís fought back, contesting accusations of backwardness, human sacrifice, cannibalism, and brujería (witchcraft), exaggerated by the sensationalistic media, often with the police’s and legal system’s complicity. Unlike the covert character of earlier epochs’ responses to oppression, in the twentieth century Lucumí resistance was overt and outspoken, publically refuting the accusations levied against African religions. Although these struggles had unintended consequences for the Lucumís, they gave birth to cubanidad’s African component. With the help of Fernando Ortiz, the Lucumí were situated at the pinnacle of a hierarchical pyramid, stratifying African religious complexes based on civilizational advancement, but at a costly price. Social ascent denigrated Lucumí religion to the status of folklore, depriving it of its status as a bona fide religious complex. To the present, Lucumí religious descendants, in Cuba and, after 1959, in many other areas of the world, are still contesting this contradiction in terms: an elevated downgrade.

The purpose of this project is to ascertain the ways in which Orange is the New Black uses its platform to either complicate or reify narratives about the prison system, prisoners and their relationship to the state. This research uses the works of Giorgio Agamben, Colin Dayan, Michelle Alexander and Lisa Guenther to situate the ways the state uses the prison and social narratives about the prison to extend its control on certain populations beyond prison walls through police presence, parole, the war on drugs and prison fees. From that basis, this work argues that while Orange does challenge some narratives about race and sexuality, because of its reliance on “bad choices” as a humanizing trope and its reliance on certain racialized stereotypes for entertainment, the show ultimately does more to reify existing narratives that support state interests.

This dissertation study was conducted in order to examine and gain an insight on two topics that are considered to be highly under researched: American historically black fraternities and sororities and colorism within the back American community. The purpose of the study was to examine the impact that colorism has had on black American collegiate Greek letter organizations. Using the qualitative phenomenological approach, 18 graduate or alumni members, two from each of the nine historically black Greek letter organizations that make up the National Pan-Hellanic Council were interviewed using open ended questions to see what impact (if any) colorism has had on historically black fraternities and sororities. During the interviews the following five major themes emerged: discriminatory practices between black Americans, stereotyping black Greek letter organizations, stereotyping skin tones, colorism as a part of American history, and colorism as being permanently a part of the black American community. The following theories were also explored during the study: Social Identity Theory, Double Consciousness, Primary Identification Theory, and Conflict Caused by Colorism, to further see what impact colorism had on historically black fraternities and sororities. Through these five themes and theories, it was found that colorism has had and continues to have a significant impact on not only members of historically black fraternities and sororities, but also that of members of the black American community as a whole.

This phenomenological study explored Black male law enforcement officers’ perspectives of how racial profiling shaped their decisions to explore and commit to a law enforcement career. Criterion and snow ball sampling was used to obtain the 17 participants for this study. Super’s (1990) archway model was used as the theoretical framework. The archway model “is designed to bring out the segmented but unified and developmental nature of career development, to highlight the segments, and to make their origin clear” (Super, 1990, p. 201). Interview data were analyzed using inductive, deductive, and comparative analyses. Three themes emerged from the inductive analysis of the data: (a) color and/or race does matter, (b) putting on the badge, and (c) too black to be blue and too blue to be black. The deductive analysis used a priori coding that was based on Super’s (1990) archway model. The deductive analysis revealed the participants’ career exploration was influenced by their knowledge of racial profiling and how others view them. The comparative analysis between the inductive themes and deductive findings found the theme “color and/or race does matter” was present in the relationships between and within all segments of Super’s (1990) model. The comparative analysis also revealed an expanded notion of self-concept for Black males – marginalized and/or oppressed individuals. Self-concepts, “such as self-efficacy, self-esteem, and role self-concepts, being combinations of traits ascribed to oneself” (Super, 1990, p. 202) do not completely address the self-concept of marginalized and/or oppressed individuals. The self-concept of marginalized and/or oppressed individuals is self-efficacy, self-esteem, traits ascribed to oneself expanded by their awareness of how others view them. (DuBois, 1995; Freire, 1970; Sheared, 1990; Super, 1990; Young, 1990). Ultimately, self-concept is utilized to make career and life decisions. Current human resource policies and practices do not take into consideration that negative police contact could be the result of racial profiling. Current human resource hiring guidelines penalize individuals who have had negative police contact. Therefore, racial profiling is a discriminatory act that can effectively circumvent U.S. Equal Employment Opportunities Commission laws and serve as a boundary mechanism to employment (Rocco & Gallagher, 2004).

This thesis examines how skin bleaching can be understood within the cultural context of Jamaican dancehall. I argue that as a cultural practice, skin bleaching can be viewed as a critique of the concomitant structural inequalities precipitated by colorism, which is a by-product of racism. In proposing skin bleaching as a queer performance of color, I attempt to illustrate the manner in which the lightening of the skin exposes the instability of racism and colorism as socially constructed, discursive regimes. If race and skin color are biological and embodied facts dictated by social reality, then bodies, which are racially marked and colored subjects, can be used to project counter discourses that challenge these specific regimes. The space of discursive limit imposed on the racialized or colored body-subject is a space from which critiques of dominant discourses can be projected, and bleaching does precisely that. I conclude therefore, that skin bleaching is performed resistance which challenges the dominating discourses on race by first destabilizing the notion that skin color is an immutable biological fact, and second by contesting subsequent discourses that are contingent on the “facts” of color and race.

Explains how Afro-Cuban culture influenced African-American jazzmen and led to the formation of Afro-Cuban or Latin jazz in 1947 by Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo. Explores the musical connections between the physical plane of Cuba and the United States, and the esoteric spiritual world of the orishas and myths coming to life in sacred and secular music forms.

William Shakespeare’s (1564-1616) theatrical work The Tempest was first performed in 1611 at the court of James I. Since the XVII century until today this work of art has travelled the world and has been (re)interpreted from the perspective of multiple ideologies. This thesis seeks to understand the representations and uses that Caliban has had in different spaces and historical moments. The anti-colonial interpretations of Roberto Fernández Retamar authorize us to read metaphorically the current socio-political situation of Latin immigrants in the United States through the perspective of The Tempest. The first chapter of this thesis studies and critically analyzes the way in which the character Caliban is negatively constructed. This chapter concludes that many of the critics that are cited base their interpretations of Caliban not necessarily on textual evidence but rather on their own colonial and oppressive ideologies. To illustrate this tension I present a detailed analysis of the supposed rape of Miranda by Caliban, I analyze Caliban’s poetic voice and give historical context of the theatrical work’s production and its critical reception by the European literary tradition. The second chapter seeks to present an ideological and analytic counterpoint to this European tradition. This chapter presents the anti-colonial project of Roberto Fernández Retamar who throughout his many essays on Caliban turned this character into a symbol of Latin-American and revolutionary identity. In this section I study the evolution of Fernández Retamar’s thinking through his many essays on Caliban. To understand the importance of his literary reinterpretation I analyze the Cuban historical context of the 60’s and 70’s while paying particular attention to the controversies surrounding the “Padilla affair”. The third chapter applies a metaphorical historic reading of contemporary Latin communities in the United States using the characters of The Tempest. This chapter seeks to centralize the importance of the feminine voice in this theatrical work by combating the supposed silence of Sycorax, Caliban’s mother. In this section I do a detailed textual study to demonstrate that Sycorax, even though she has no lines of her own, is an important character in the play and can be seen as a correction to a long masculinist trajectory that has silenced the importance of women in colonial literature. This last chapter seeks to synthesize the analyzing and theorizing of literature, the studying of social movements in Massachusetts and the political and social status of Latin people using Sycorax + Caliban as an identity metaphor.