Comment concilier le récit d’une expérience personnelle qui met le “moi” écrivain au coeur de l’entreprise auctoriale avec le désir d’intervenir dans la chose publique et politique ? Et comment réunir ces deux dimensions dans l’espace poétique de la fiction afin que ni la biographie ni l’idée ne prennent le pas sur le romanesque ? C’est ce que nous nous sommes proposé d’étudier à travers les exemples de cinq oeuvres : La Maison du peuple de Louis Guilloux, L’Espoir d'André Malraux, La Conspiration de Paul Nizan, Les Mandarins de Simone de Beauvoir et Le Premier Homme d’Albert Camus. Il est apparu que nos auteurs n’ont pas seulement leur amitié ou leurs conflits en commun, mais également une vision convergente sur la manière de conjuguer leur vécu et les causes de leur temps, avec çà et là, les particularités propres à chacun, que nous avons tenté de mettre en lumière. La période que couvre le corpus allant de la fin des années 1920 jusqu’à la fin des années 1950, sa confrontation avec des théories littéraires qui ont fleuri à partir des années 1970 manifeste la pertinence des questions que continue à soulever une littérature engagée dont on a sonné le glas, et pas seulement sur le plan formel. Prenant ce corpus pour matériau d’analyse sans nous y restreindre, nous détaillons les questions de poétique et de genres littéraires que soulève la désignation “roman autobiographique”, les techniques de représentation et de transposition ainsi que la part de subjectivité qui préside à une écriture en situation, afin de déterminer comment une expérience personnelle se transforme en exercice esthétique pour aboutir à une éthique de l’action. / How do authors reconcile the desire to share their personal experience — where the “I” is the heart of the work — with the desire to participate in public and political life ? And how can they bring together these two dimensions in the poetic space of fiction, so that neither their biography nor their main thesis end up of overshadowing the work’s novelistic qualities? These are the questions we proposed to examine through five novels: La Maison du Peuple by Louis Guilloux, L’Espoir (“Man’s Hope") by André Malraux, La Conspiration (“The Conspiracy”) by Paul Nizan, Les Mandarins (“The Mandarins”) by Simone de Beauvoir, and Le Premier Homme (“The First Man”) by Albert Camus. We found that, beyond their friendship and their shared battles, these authors also shared similar views on how to reconcile their personal experiences and the causes of their time — with, here and there, their own particularities, which we examined. The confrontation of these works, which range from the 1920s to the late 1950s, with the literary theories that emerged starting in the 1970s attests to the pertinence of questions raised by this socially-conscious literature (and not only on the formal level). Using this corpus for analysis, but without restricting ourselves to it, we examined the questions of poetics and genre raised by the term “autobiographical novel”, techniques of representation and transposition, and the subjectivity inherent to engaged writing. This will lead us to understand how a personal experience can be transformed into an aesthetic exercise and result in an ethics of praxis.

L’objectif de cette thèse est d’étudier les transformations économiques, sociales, politiques et idéologiques qui caractérisent le développement du néolibéralisme aux États-Unis, depuis l’essor du mouvement conservateur qui porta Ronald Reagan au pouvoir en 1980 jusqu’à la crise financière de 2008. Par néolibéralisme, on entend une idéologie qui postule la supériorité des forces du marché et du secteur privé sur l’intervention de l’État, un ensemble de politiques qui visent à libérer ces forces des entraves étatiques, et un mode de gouvernance qui s’inspire de la gestion des entreprises privées. À la lecture des nombreux ouvrages consacrés au néolibéralisme, on peut constater un morcellement des connaissances sur certains aspects particuliers du sujet, telles que ses dimensions idéologique, politique ou internationale ; il manque des études qui tentent de concevoir le néolibéralisme à la fois dans sa globalité et dans la spécificité de son développement aux États-Unis. Il nous est paru que la méthode dite « progressive-régressive » de Jean-Paul Sartre permettrait de faire la synthèse qui manque à la littérature actuelle. Bien que Sartre ait développé cette méthode dialectique à l’attention des chercheurs en sciences humaines et sociales, ce cadre épistémologique cherche encore ses adeptes. En l’appliquant au néolibéralisme américain, nous espérons donc contribuer non seulement à la connaissance d’un grand sujet d’actualité, mais aussi au développement des méthodes de recherche dans le champ des études civilisationnistes. / This dissertation aims to study the economic, social, political and ideological transformations that have characterized the development of neoliberalism in the United States, from the rise of the conservative movement that brought Ronald Reagan to power in 1980 to the financial crisis of 2008. Neoliberalism can be defined as an ideology that claims the free market and the private sector to be superior to government intervention, as a package of economic policies that aim to liberate market forces from government constraints, and as a mode of governance based on corporate management practices. Although many studies have been published on neoliberalism, each of them tends to focus on a limited dimension of the subject, such as its ideological, political, or international dimension. Given this fragmentation, there is a lack of studies that attempt to understand the specific development of neoliberalism in the United States from a holistic point of view. In order to achieve this goal, Jean-Paul Sartre’s “progressive-regressive” method appears to be an effective approach. While Sartre developed this method as an epistemological tool for the humanities, few researchers have attempted to make use of it. By applying it to the study of American neoliberalism, this dissertation hopes to contribute not only to the knowledge a topical subject, but also to the development of new research methods in the field of civilizational studies.

Loin d’être un terme dépassé, « l’engagement » reste, au prix de certains élargissements, une notion opératoire pour l’analyse littéraire, tant en Occident que dans d’autres régions du monde. Repenser l’engagement littéraire comme la « dénonciation d’un inacceptable » permet de mettre au jour et de confronter les stratégies rhétorico-poétiques caractérisant la production littéraire d’auteurs contemporains aussi divers que Waris Dirie, Peter Handke, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, Toni Morrison, Taslima Nasreen, Ben Okri, Orhan Pamuk, Salman Rushdie et Luis Sepúlveda. Nous cherchons ainsi à mettre en évidence l’intégration par les textes étudiés d’éléments idéaux-typiques de l’engagement littéraire, de l’investissement auctorial à la confrontation au politique. Ces éléments, liés à des discours théoriques dont certains ont parcouru tout le vingtième siècle, sont examinés selon leurs différentes élaborations dans les textes. En effet, c’est en faisant évoluer certains de ses traits idéaux-typiques que les auteurs étudiés renouvellent l’engagement littéraire. On peut dès lors présenter celui-ci comme la dénonciation, pas systématiquement polémique, d’un inacceptable. Cette notion d’« inacceptable », qui suppose entre autres la construction textuelle d’un jugement moral, permet ainsi d’entreprendre non seulement une analyse transhistorique, qui déborde la conceptualisation sartrienne, mais également une approche transculturelle de l’engagement littéraire. / Far from being an outdated notion, "commitment" remains, with some enlargements, a valid concept for literary analysis, in the West as much as in other regions of the world. Rethinking literary commitment as the "denunciation of an unacceptable" allows us to unfold and compare the various rhetorical and poetic strategies characterizing the literary production of contemporary authors as diverse as Waris Dirie, Peter Handke, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, Toni Morrison, Taslima Nasreen, Ben Okri, Orhan Pamuk, Salman Rushdie and Luis Sepúlveda. We seek to highlight the ideal-typical elements of literary commitment in these texts, such as the authorial presence or the advocacy of certain political programmes. These elements are related to various theoretical discourses, some of which have traveled through the twentieth century. We examine their different patterns in the texts, showing that our authors renew literary commitment through the reorganization and alteration of its usual features. Thus, we define literary commitment as the denunciation of an unacceptable that is not necessarily polemical. The notion of "unacceptable", which implies the textual construction of a moral judgment, allows us not only to undertake a transhistorical analysis, which goes beyond the Sartrean conceptualization, but also to engage in a cross-cultural study of literary commitment.

The purpose of this essay is to examine how a critical view of contemporary France is transmitted in the best-selling novel in three parts, Vernon Subutex by Virginie Despentes. The theoretical base will be the notion ”littérature engagée”, made famous by Jean-Paul Sartre in the 1940s, but re-interpreted in several steps since then. Although Sartre’s definition of ”engagement” is considered outdated and too dogmatic, many researchers argue that there are reasons to redefine the meaning of ”engagement littéraire” to analyse contemporary fiction writing with an interest in human and social issues. This study will examine how the notion ”engagement” can be applied on Vernon Subutex as regards the description of characters and the depiction of a neoliberal society, and its effects on human beings.

The main topic of this diploma thesis resides in the comparison of the expressionist painting and the existential literature in connection with the motif of screaming. Despite the temporal and geographical distance of the two artistic movements (we are focused more profoundly in the German and Austrian expressionist painting, while the main literary work of this thesis, the existential novel The Fall comes from the great mind of a French writer, Albert Camus), the research aspires to prove the interconnection of the two movements and their common tendencies, based on the analyses of chosen themes, motifs, technics, and structure. We propose the motif of screaming as the main part of the comparison, as it constitutes an essential axis of the occidental art, as well as the crucial contact point between Expressionism and Existentialism. In spite of the bountifulness of the various interpretations this motif offers, we have chosen only selected ideas and concepts. As far as the formal structure is concerned, the work is divided into three chapters, where the first two are focused on the origins, a brief characterization of the main point of the two esthetics. Furthermore, they describe their related counterparts of the visual arts and literature (the Expressionist literature and Existential painting...

Since time immemorial, humankind has been concerned with freedom. This thesis introduces the most important thinkers who devoted themselves to studying freedom and who greatly influenced the perception of freedom. The thesis includes historical overview focusing on the problem of freedom mainly from theological and philosophical point of view. However, two authors in the field of psychology and sociology are mentioned as well. In existentialist philosophy, the human freedom is one of the most crucial topics, and it is presented here on the work of the writer Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky, the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and the theologist Paul Tillich.

Ce travail a deux principaux objets : 1) montrer que la « maladie mentale » est un concept subjectif définissable au moyen de termes philosophiques premiers ; 2) tirer argument de certaines données de fait de la psychopathologie à l’appui de la thèse sartrienne de la liberté (« L’existence précède l’essence »). Notre point de départ est une définition de la maladie mentale formulée par le psychiatre Henri Ey (1900-1977) : « La folie consiste en l’abrogation du libre arbitre. ». Afin de nous faire une première idée de la signification de cette définition, et de tester aussi sa valeur, nous étudions minutieusement deux exemples : la dépendance au tabac, état dont les psychiatres s’accordent à dire depuis la fin des années 90 qu’il est pathologique, et l’homosexualité, état dont les psychiatres s’accordent à dire depuis la fin des années 80 qu’il n’est pas pathologique. Après nous être avisés que l’énoncé définitionnel formulé par Henri Ey est incorrect d'un point de vue de philosophe, nous rectifions son énoncé comme suit : « Est malade mental celui qui croit sérieusement n’avoir pas de libre arbitre. »; puis nous montrons que cet énoncé définitionnel rectifié est exact, et qu’il permet dans certains cas de répondre à la question : « Cet état est-il, ou n’est-il pas pathologique ? ». Enfin, nous montrons que les descriptions cliniques des comportements des grands psychotiques viennent fortement étayer la thèse sartrienne de la liberté en faisant obstacle à la formulation d’une quelconque loi du comportement humain. / This dissertation has two main aims : the first is to show that “mental illness” is a subjective concept, which can be defined using foundational philosophical terms ; the second is to expound an argument for Sartre’s thesis of freedom (“existence precedes essence”) based upon certain observations in psychopathology. To begin with, we consider a definition of mental illness formulated by the famous psychiatrist Henri Ey (1900-1977): “Madness consists in the abrogation of free will”. In order to familiarize ourselves with this definition, and to put it to the test, we first examine two examples in depth : tobacco addiction, which psychiatrists have qualified as pathological since the end of the 1990’s, and homosexuality, which they have deemed to be non-pathological since the end of the 1980’s. After arguing that Henri Ey’s definition is incorrect from a philosophical point of view, we offer the following amended version : “Those who seriously believe they have no free will are mentally ill.”; we then confirm that this amended definition is correct, and show that by using it we can, in some cases, answer the question : “Is this mental state pathological, or non-pathological ?”. Finally, we show how the clinical descriptions of the behaviours of severely mentally-ill patients support Sartre’s thesis of freedom by rendering any formulation of a law of human behaviour impossible.

RESUME My diploma thesis is focused on the comparison of opinions of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus concerning existential and philosophical motifs in their literary work. I tried to compare the occurrence of individual existential categories, based on selected philosophical and literary works of both authors, who rank among the French branch of atheist existentialism. The first chapter deals with basic characteristics of existential philosophy and its changes between the two wars; and the consequential spreading of this philosophy thinking in the post-war Europe, in which it achieved a great success in a few branches. Majority of this chapter is devoted to French existentialism, whose goal was to explore and describe concrete existence, while human being (existence) is identified as freedom there. It was due to Jean- Paul Sartre that French existentialism has become the most significant way of thinking. The two following chapters briefly describe the lives of Sartre and Camus; because the lives of authors who write philosophical and literary works are always interconnected with their work. The second and third chapter contain the analysis of selected works of both authors, while I didn't forget the dramatic work which is a part of philosophical ad literary work and by means of that I presented mainly...

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This study offers a comparative investigation into selected figurative and nonfigurative, monochromatic (and mainly monochromatic) artworks by Ad Reinhardt, Ultimate Painting nr 39 (1963), Yves Klein, Monochrome bleu (IKB 3) (1956) and The thin red line (1970) by Douglas Portway. The aim of this research is to examine the possible subjective, meaningful function of the seemingly objective artworks. The selected artworks represent the formalist tendency of the high-Modernist conception of art-as-art, or the artwork as an autonomous objective object. At first sight the objective artworks seem to refute the subjective intentions of the artists who present them as both an externalisation of subjective experience and as possibly meaningful to the viewer. The investigation into the possible subjectively meaningful artworks is guided by an Existential approach to the aesthetic experience, as proposed by Nietzche’s Dionysian and Apollonian concepts as well as Sartre’s conceptualisation of néantisation and the imagination respectively. Both philosophers describe aesthetic experience as a meeting between both subjective and objective elements of their philosophy. The experience of the aesthetic (in the artworks) ultimately leads to a subjective space within which the seemingly objective artworks function as a subjective platform on which the Existential search for meaning can be considered (and possibly relieved). / MA (History of Art), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014