In this dissertation, I investigate the ways in which the phenomenon of racial and cultural hybridity inform and alter the social, political and cultural fabric of three creole cities of significant colonial influence, namely Saint-Louis of Senegal, Saint-Pierre of Martinique and Jérémie of Haiti during and after the colonial era. In particular, I examine the relevance of the French colonial city not only as a nexus of relational complexity but also as an ambiguous center of attraction and exclusion where multiple identities are created and recreated according to the agendas that influence these constructions. In order to articulate the main hypotheses of my thesis, I explore the key historical and social catalysts that have led to the emergence of Saint-Louis, Saint-Pierre and Jérémie as original creole cities. Through the critical analyses of contemporary literatures from Senegal, Martinique and Haiti by Fanon, Sadji, Boilat, Mandeleau, Confiant, Chamoiseau, Salavina, Bonneville, Moreau de Saint-Méry, Desquiron, and Chauvet and films by Deslauriers and Palcy, I illustrate the dynamics of creolization within the context of the French colonial city. I argue that the city engenders new narratives and interpretations of métissage that scholars have often associated with the enclosed space of the plantation. My dissertation intends to prove that the three French colonial cities of Saint-Louis, Saint-Pierre and Jérémie offer distinct interpretations and practices of processes of cultural and ethnic métissage. I propose that a correlation albeit a dialectical one, exists between the development of the French colonial city and the emergence of the mulattoes as a distinct class, conscious of its economic, sexual and political agency. I suggest that the French colonial city, represents both a starting point and a space of continuity that permits new forms of ethnic and cultural admixture. The articulation of such mixtures is made evident by the strategic positioning and creative agency of the mulatto class within the colonial city. The phenomenon of métissage is certainly not a novel subject as evidenced by the plethora of theories and studies advanced by scholars and intellectuals. My research is thus part of an existing critical literary corpus in Postcolonial and Francophone Studies and is inscribed within the theoretical framework of Creolization. My research observes from a historical, comparative and literary perspective, metis presence and consciousness in three specific spaces where colonial authority has been imposed, challenged, resisted and even overpowered (in the case of Haiti). My study therefore analyses the creative agency articulated by the metis ethnoclass in the colonial city and counters the claim of a passive assimilated group. As an in-between group, mulatto’s access to social, economic and political upward mobility are impeded by their ambiguous positioning within the larger community. Consequently, they resort to unconventional means that I refer to rather as creative ingeniousness in order to survive. Scholars usually focus on these “unconventional” practices as immoral rather than as strategies of self-reinvention and revalorization. As a result, representations of cultural and ethnic interconnections and hybridity are often projected in fragmentary ways. The figure of the metis women for example is overly represented in studies on métissage while metis men receive very little attention. My thesis thus intends to decenter narratives on métissage from the women and implicate equally the creative agency of metis males. My thesis expands on the complexities that inform processes of métissage during pre-colonial Saint-Louis in the early seventeenth century, Saint-Pierre from the period 1870-1902 and Jérémie during the dictatorship of Francois Duvalier. It examines further the city as a space that engenders new narratives and interpretations of the processes of creolization. Processes of métissage or creolization have often been described as the results of violent encounters that were colonial and imperial. Moreover, these clashes were inscribed within the enclosed space of the plantation. The city, representation of European pride and greed is an ambiguous space that attracts even as it excludes. Projected as an active commercial, economic and cultural hub, the city is soon engulfed by mass emigration. That site where the European image and culture is imposed, quickly evolves into a complex and chaotic web of human and material interaction giving rise to a complex creolized atmosphere. I propose that practices of métissage in the city are distinct from those generated in the belly of the slave ships, in the trading houses of Sub-Saharan Africa and on the sugar plantations of the French Antilles. I conclude with a look at the present context of métissage, I rethink the significance of racial and cultural hybridity in relation to contemporary cultural and social theories such as creolization, creoleness, and transculturation in articulating, interpreting and decoding a world in constant transformation.

Ce mémoire vise à montrer l'imbrication de trois dimensions de la recherche de terrain en linguistique : la description des faits, l'investissement sur le terrain, et la réflexion théorique, de façon à développer une approche pluridimensionnelle de la variation. Les trois parties du mémoire correspondent à ces trois dimensions. Le concept de variation permet de considérer la langue non seulement hétéroclite par essence, mais surtout caractérisée par une multiplicité de façons de dire. La discussion menée sur la variation de la langue (chapitres 1, 2 et 10 à 12) s'appuie sur la maitrise préalable de la description linguistique en situation de contacts de langue (chapitres 3 à 5 et 11 à 12) et sur une méthodologie soignée de recueils de corpus oraux transcrits et documentés (chapitres 6 à 9). La première partie, Descriptions dans un français, comporte cinq chapitres qui peuvent se regrouper en deux sous-parties. Les chapitres 1 et 2 posent quelques bases théoriques qui positionnent les analyses qui suivent. Ils procèdent à une approche de la représentation de la variation, générale, puis en référence à quelques auteurs. Plusieurs notions et catégories sont remises en cause ou discutées, comme celle de langue considérée comme un ensemble de variétés structurellement constituées. D'autres notions sont adoptées, en vue d'une plus grande utilité opératoire : aire communicative ou linguistique, représentation, réseau, fonctionnalisation, innovation, métissage. Les chapitres 3, 4 et 5 traitent de syntaxe et de descriptions syntaxiques. Dans ces chapitres, les discussions portent sur les méthodes de description des faits (centrage sur les formes vs appréciation de leurs utilisations et fonctions), sur l'exemple, sur les comparaisons, sur la façon de regrouper les faits. La deuxième partie, La recherche de la variation / méthodologie de l'enquête, traite de la méthodologie de l'enquête uniquement par rapport à mes expériences de terrain. Les chapitres 6 et 7 examinent la difficulté et les possibilités de maintenir des relations étroites entre terrain et corpus. Le chapitre 8 examine ensuite les relations entre le chercheur et le terrain, les enquêtés et l'enquête. Le chapitre 9 rassemble quelques expériences concernant la construction proprement dite des données. La méthodologie défendue est celle appelée " écologique ", qui prend en compte les interactions des locuteurs dans leur environnement à plusieurs niveaux, avec une forte implication des chercheurs à toutes les étapes de l'enquête. La troisième partie, Des explications pour la variation ?, présente des réflexions sur des approches de la variation qui vont au-delà des descriptions de formes. Dans le chapitre 10 sont proposées des explications à la variation, du côté du locuteur. Le chapitre 11 montre que le contact des langues n'est pas un embarras pour la recherche théorique générale, ni même un phénomène excentrique parmi ceux qui touchent la variation. Le chapitre 12 tente l'intégration de quelques phénomènes bien circonscrits, et analysés auparavant, dans des processus linguistiques généraux : grammaticalisations en discours, réanalyses, fonctionnalisations liées à la subjectivation, érosions et syncrétismes phonologiques. La conclusion revient sur la métaphore écologique et remet au premier plan la difficulté de tenir compte des divers ordres dans lesquels se situent les mêmes faits, ce qui semble être un point commun aux sciences qui ont trait au vivant, en particulier à l'humain.

This dissertation documents a doctoral endeavor to explore both the potential of theatre as a means to enable students to practice vulnerability and the potential curricular impact of such a practice, using an in-depth narrative study of six theatre and drama for the young specialists. The researcher attempts to gain understanding and create a discourse on the vulnerability of the every-student as a curricular concern as well as make a connection to the potential of theatre as a means to practice navigating vulnerability. This not only involves a reconsideration of the term vulnerability to be seen as a path to strength, but also a reconsideration of educator responsibilities. The researcher sought stories of the everyday vulnerabilities that a student might encounter during school and specifically did not seek stories of vulnerabilities from extreme or exceptional traumatic events. While this study does not produce specific curriculum planning, it yields a better understanding of the concept of vulnerability, including the acknowledgment that practicing navigating vulnerability and practicing vulnerability can be accepted as useful terminology in educational pursuits. A key component of the research is the development of a Métissage Circle Theatre Script entitled “To Practice Vulnerability?” as a method of data analysis and research dissemination. It is the researcher’s intent that this script be available for readings by non-actors at school board meetings, parent-teacher meetings, teacher organizations, departments of education, theatre and drama organizations, theatre artist groups, and educational policy decision-makers. The script gently invites readers to begin to explore, ask questions, and discuss the educational possibilities, and provides a low-risk opportunity to navigate the vulnerability experienced when simply encountering the very subject of our own vulnerability. / Graduate / 0727 / 0465 / cclement@uvic.ca

This dissertation documents a doctoral endeavor to explore both the potential of theatre as a means to enable students to practice vulnerability and the potential curricular impact of such a practice, using an in-depth narrative study of six theatre and drama for the young specialists. The researcher attempts to gain understanding and create a discourse on the vulnerability of the every-student as a curricular concern as well as make a connection to the potential of theatre as a means to practice navigating vulnerability. This not only involves a reconsideration of the term vulnerability to be seen as a path to strength, but also a reconsideration of educator responsibilities. The researcher sought stories of the everyday vulnerabilities that a student might encounter during school and specifically did not seek stories of vulnerabilities from extreme or exceptional traumatic events. While this study does not produce specific curriculum planning, it yields a better understanding of the concept of vulnerability, including the acknowledgment that practicing navigating vulnerability and practicing vulnerability can be accepted as useful terminology in educational pursuits. A key component of the research is the development of a Métissage Circle Theatre Script entitled “To Practice Vulnerability?” as a method of data analysis and research dissemination. It is the researcher’s intent that this script be available for readings by non-actors at school board meetings, parent-teacher meetings, teacher organizations, departments of education, theatre and drama organizations, theatre artist groups, and educational policy decision-makers. The script gently invites readers to begin to explore, ask questions, and discuss the educational possibilities, and provides a low-risk opportunity to navigate the vulnerability experienced when simply encountering the very subject of our own vulnerability. / Graduate / 0727 / 0465 / cclement@uvic.ca

No description available.

This thesis analyses the discursive struggle in the New Caledonian media over the question of independence during the period of most acute conflict during the 1980s. It seeks to demonstrate that the discursive struggle was central to the political struggle, particularly in its emphasis on the development of discourses on identity which authorised particular forms of political engagement. Colonial discourses in New Caledonia provided a well tested armory of identifications of the territory’s indigenous people which were mobilised in the anti-independence media, particularly the territory’s monopoly daily newspaper Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes. The thesis attempts to demonstrate how these identifications connoted, in effect, the non-existence of Kanaks through a denial of a ‘Kanak’ identity: Melanesians who identified themselves as Kanaks and took a pro-independence stance were not recognised within the colonial identity constructions of ‘Caledonian’ and ‘Melanesian’, and their claims to constitute a ‘people’ were vociferously denied. They existed within colonial discourses as a human absence, and were therefore considered to have no rightful claim on Caledonian political life. In the face of such identifications, the pro-independence movement articulated in its media notions of ‘Kanakness’ and the ‘Kanak people’ which sought to hyper-valorise their identity as human and rightful.¶ It is argued that an analysis of media discourses requires consideration of the type of institutional constraints operating within the media institutions from within which these discourses emerge. The thesis therefore analyses the major constraints operating within Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes and the two major pro-independence media organisations, ‘Kanaky’s first newspaper’ Bwenando and ‘Kanaky’s first radio station’ Radio Djiido.¶ As an overarching concern, the thesis attempts to work through and apply different theoretical approaches relevant to the analysis of media reporting in situations of heightened political contestation, negotiating through aspects of neo-Marxist and post-structuralist approaches. It assesses the relevance of the notion of ‘ideological effect’ as an analytical tool in assessing the effects of power produced by particular discourse, concluding that some theoretical notion concerned with elucidating the differential effects of power is required.¶

Art/Re-search (T)here is a SSHRC-funded project that creates new transdisciplinary understandings of art, research and pedagogy. A review of the literature finds that researchers from a wide range of academic fields employ transformational arts-based methods with their participants, but that they are far less likely to weave art-making in all stages of the research process themselves. While researchers “outside” of the arts experiment with art-making in their un/familiar re-search (Absolon, 2011; Rowe, 2020) contexts, I re-perform how new networks and assemblages emerge. Art/Re-search (T)here includes 6 other re-searchers/co-conspirators from different academic fields who identify a need for, and absence of, arts-based research in their respective spaces, including English, Cultural Studies, Social Work, Indigenous Studies, Game Design, Unions, and Education. The individual and collective work that is created throughout this project performs (post)qualitative (Lather, 2007; St. Pierre, 2011) practices and feminist new materialist posthumanism (Barad, 2007) through the data/dada (Morawski & Palulis, 2009) that arises. In the first article, the individual art/re-search that my co-conspirators (Taylor, 2019) and I create provokes me to think about telling stories differently (King, 2005) through the (in)tensions of art, the limitations of language and the embodied (be)longing that occurs through the virtual-material-discursive (Springgay & Truman, 2017). I work through belonging with each of my co-conspirators in the process. In my second article, I work through the initial research questions with my co-conspirators through a collaborative mail art project. Research questions change and shift. I think about how this relational inquiry unfolds as a new materialist (Barad, 2007) methodological space of getting lost (Lather, 2007) with ethico-onto-epistem-ologies (Barad, 2007) of trans-formation in trans-it -- whereby some-thing lost is getting (t)here. In my third article, I re-perform and re-imagine the data bodies and events (Rousell, 2018) of Art/Re-search (T)here after the project ends through a dadaist (Kuenzli, 2015; Richter, 2010) art installation titled Transpedagogical data/dada assemblages. This leads me to put a call of action for more transdisciplinary transpedagogical (Helguera, 2011) art/re-search within higher education (Loveless, 2019) and beyond as it creates space for data/dada, diffraction and difference (Barad, 2007; Haraway, 1988; Lather, 2007) to emerge in world that, I contend, should embrace emergence.

Cette étude explore le rôle occupé par la figure du Métis, en tant que symbole fondateur du nationalisme Mexicaine de la période postrévolutionnaire (1921 – 1945). La recherche s’organise en fonction de trois pôles : 1) les discours littéraires autour du Métissage et leur intégration à la sphère du discours politique, 2) La position et le rôle joué par les intellectuels et scientifiques d’État dans le processus de création, importation, nationalisation et adaptation d’un appareil des savoirs qui positionnait le Métis comme modèle de la citoyenneté mexicaine et 3) L’ensemble des moyens techniques visant au métissage (plus culturel que phénotypique) de la population en tant qu’ensemble d’êtres vivants (ce que Michel Foucault appelle le biopouvoir). Finalement, notre recherche vise à démontrer comment la démographie et les politiques de santé publique de l’époque ont servi à façonner l’idée d’une nation mexicaine peuplée par une population Métisse. Or, ce Métis était moins un phénotype particulier que l’amalgame d’une série de coutumes et des traits culturels spécifiques et associés à l’idée de la modernité et du progrès. Ainsi, à la différence du « Métis » tel que perçu par les théories postcoloniales, le « Métis » du nationalisme mexicain visait à homogénéiser la population et non pas a célébrer sa diversité. / The aim of this study is to explore the role played by the Mestizo as a central figure of the nation building process in post-revolutionary Mexico (between 1921 and 1945). Our approach is threefold: firstly, It synthesises the evolution and changes in the literary construction of the Mestizo (which evolved from an undesired but unavoidable consequence of colonisation into the ideal of a new, homogeneous and distinctive national population), and the concomitant integration of this ideas into political discourse. Secondly, it explores the role played by the State’s intellectuals and scientists in the creation of a body of knowledge that legitimated the Mestizo as a convenient symbol of Mexican citizenship. Finally, it studies the ways in which these discourses crystallized in a series of technologies aiming at the construction of the Mexican mestizo population. The technologies studied here are, following the notion of biopolitics as developed by Michel Foucault, the production of official statistics and the creation of public health policies and institutions aimed at creating the notion and specific characteristics of the average Mexican (which were more focused on the cultural than in the phonotypical aspects). In defining what was a Mexican supposed to be, the nationalist project was also pushing out of the limits of the us those individuals who refused or were not able to comply with the definition of a Mestizo.

Cette étude explore le rôle occupé par la figure du Métis, en tant que symbole fondateur du nationalisme Mexicaine de la période postrévolutionnaire (1921 – 1945). La recherche s’organise en fonction de trois pôles : 1) les discours littéraires autour du Métissage et leur intégration à la sphère du discours politique, 2) La position et le rôle joué par les intellectuels et scientifiques d’État dans le processus de création, importation, nationalisation et adaptation d’un appareil des savoirs qui positionnait le Métis comme modèle de la citoyenneté mexicaine et 3) L’ensemble des moyens techniques visant au métissage (plus culturel que phénotypique) de la population en tant qu’ensemble d’êtres vivants (ce que Michel Foucault appelle le biopouvoir). Finalement, notre recherche vise à démontrer comment la démographie et les politiques de santé publique de l’époque ont servi à façonner l’idée d’une nation mexicaine peuplée par une population Métisse. Or, ce Métis était moins un phénotype particulier que l’amalgame d’une série de coutumes et des traits culturels spécifiques et associés à l’idée de la modernité et du progrès. Ainsi, à la différence du « Métis » tel que perçu par les théories postcoloniales, le « Métis » du nationalisme mexicain visait à homogénéiser la population et non pas a célébrer sa diversité. / The aim of this study is to explore the role played by the Mestizo as a central figure of the nation building process in post-revolutionary Mexico (between 1921 and 1945). Our approach is threefold: firstly, It synthesises the evolution and changes in the literary construction of the Mestizo (which evolved from an undesired but unavoidable consequence of colonisation into the ideal of a new, homogeneous and distinctive national population), and the concomitant integration of this ideas into political discourse. Secondly, it explores the role played by the State’s intellectuals and scientists in the creation of a body of knowledge that legitimated the Mestizo as a convenient symbol of Mexican citizenship. Finally, it studies the ways in which these discourses crystallized in a series of technologies aiming at the construction of the Mexican mestizo population. The technologies studied here are, following the notion of biopolitics as developed by Michel Foucault, the production of official statistics and the creation of public health policies and institutions aimed at creating the notion and specific characteristics of the average Mexican (which were more focused on the cultural than in the phonotypical aspects). In defining what was a Mexican supposed to be, the nationalist project was also pushing out of the limits of the us those individuals who refused or were not able to comply with the definition of a Mestizo.