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[pt] A tese busca reunir um corpus de reflexão sobre a experiência da escrita pensada por escritoras mulheres. A escolha das autoras se estabeleceu através do nosso interesse em pensar a relação entre as experiências do escrever e a da loucura para mulheres que escrevem. Escritoras como Alfonsina Storni e Marguerite Duras figuram na base reflexiva da questão que aqui buscará se desenvolver a partir dos seguintes eixos: (a) no esforço de uma releitura crítica de Silvia Federici que pense sobre a opressão que o estabelecimento do capitalismo exerceu sobre as mulheres, unindo a opressão socioeconômica à opressão subjetiva e corporal (técnicas de reprodução e direito à sexualidade e ao uso do próprio corpo); e seus efeitos sobre a experiência da escrita, sua impossibilidade, estrangulamento e loucura; (b) uma releitura da psicanálise pelo feminismo contemporâneo, onde se buscará pensar como o constructo loucura feminina está relacionado diretamente à necessidade dessa exclusão; (c) como elaborações teóricas da crítica literária feminista pensam as especificidades da escrita de mulheres, tanto pelo viés das condições materiais da escrita quanto pelo próprio fazer literário, que convoca um corpo que escreve / um corpo-de-mulher que escreve. A partir dessa empreitada, busca-se elaborar a leitura de algumas obras da argentina Alejandra Pizarnik e da brasileira Maura Lopes Cançado, em suas fulgurações de indomabilidade da língua/corpo, na força que faz escapar a normatividade da escrita, seu território da Lei, em direção (ou em devir) a uma performatividade da língua indomável: trata-se não de escrever sobre a loucura mas sim de fazer enlouquecer a Letra. / [en] This thesis seeks to gather a corpus of thoughts about writing experiences from women writers. The choice of authors was established through our interest in the relationship between the experiences of writing and of madness for women who write. Writers such as Alfonsina Storni and Marguerite Duras figure at the basis of these reflexions, sought to be developed from the following axes: (a) in an effort toward a critical reading of Silvia Federici, to think the essential role that oppression of women had on the establishment of capitalism, linking socioeconomic oppression to subjective and corporal oppression (reproduction techniques, the right to sexuality and the use of one s own body); and its effects on the experience of writing, its impossibility, strangulation and madness; (b) a rereading of psychoanalysis by contemporary feminism, through which we will try to think how the construct feminine madness is directly related to the necessity of this exclusion; (c) how certain feminist literary theory thinks the specificities of women s writing, both from the bias of the material conditions of writing and from the literary work itself, which summons a body that writes / a woman s body that writes. From then, we try to elaborate a reading of some of the Argentinean Alejandra Pizarnik s and the Brazilian Maura Lopes Cançado s works, their indomability fulgurating on language / body, the force that helps writing s normativity escape its territory of the Law, towards (or becoming) a tameless language and its performativity: it matters not writing about madness but driving crazy the Letter.

In this dissertation, disability theories frame readings of madness in select works by Shirley Jackson, Sylvia Plath, and Toni Cade Bambara. The dissertation explores the relationship between madness and fiction, with the author demonstrating the productive and generative aspects of madness. Close readings of the literary works emphasize the impact of madness on structural and formal elements including narrative perspective, sustained metaphors, and narrative time. In chapter one, I use the disability theory concepts of narrative prosthesis and aesthetic nervousness to read Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. In chapter 2, I analyze Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle to explore the concept of unreliable narration, observing similarities between the social model of disability and reader-centric theories of unreliable narration. In chapter 3, I explore unhealthy disability and medical treatment in the sustained metaphors of light and darkness in Plath's hospital stories, "Tongues of Stone," "Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams," and "The Daughters of Blossom Street." In chapter 4, I use disability history to read narratives of medical institutionalization in Plath's novel The Bell Jar. In chapter 5, I use Bambara's concept of "other kinds of intelligences" to develop a Black feminist methodology for reading mad intelligences in Bambara's novel The Salt Eaters. In the dissertation's conclusion, I note prejudice against madpersons in recent legal policies promoting involuntary psychiatric institutionalization, using Bambara's short story "The Hammer Man" to demonstrate the violence of such policies.

The central tenet of the study is that language and madness are bound together, language both including madness and perpetuating the exclusion of madness as 'other'. The first chapter considers the representation of madness in Atwood's novels The Edible Woman, Surfacing and Alias Grace from the perspective ofFoucauldian and Kristevan theories oflanguage and madness. Alias Grace becomes the focus in the second chapter. Here the syntax of madness is traced during Grace's stay in the mental asylum. Language, madness and sexuality are revealed as a palimpsest written on Grace's body. The final chapter looks at Grace's incarceration in the penitentiary and her dealings with the psychologist Dr. Simon Jordan where Grace's narrative tightly threads language and madness together. Underlying each chapter is a concern with how language and madness are in permanent interaction and opposition writing themselves onto society and onto Grace. / English Studies / M.A. (English)

Ce mémoire de maîtrise étudie la mise en scène de la folie des femmes au cinéma. Notre hypothèse est qu’il est possible d’appréhender la folie en tant que forme esthétique et ainsi, d’isoler un répertoire de figures essentielles à la mise en scène et à la mise en jeu des corps féminins. En partant d’une définition « fuyante » de la folie, il s’agit de dégager la folle de la pathologie et d’examiner plutôt comment les images peuvent se faire écho et rejouer dans l’Histoire une série de « procédés figuratifs » à l’écran. Nous nous intéressons d’abord au grand bassin imaginaire dans lequel se construit l’iconographie de la folie des femmes au cinéma. Nous montrons ainsi comment la mémoire visuelle de la folie est tirée de tous les côtés par un réseau d’images plus anciennes et soulignons l’importance du spectaculaire dans ce bassin esthétique. Ensuite, nous étudions le mouvement des corps fous au cinéma. Nous démontrons comment la mise en scène de la folie donne accès à un répertoire de formes d’expressions reconnaissables : syncope, rire hystérique, jouissance, chutes, redressements, tics, contractures, etc. Finalement, en nous appuyant sur les notions d’emprunt et de contagion, nous démontrons l’importance du geste dans la compréhension des corps délirants au cinéma. / This thesis examines the mise en scène of female madness in film. We believe that it is possible to understand madness as an aesthetic form and thus isolate a repertoire of figures essential to the interpretation and performance of female bodies. Beginning with an “elusive” definition of madness, we can conceptualize it outside of the pathology and consider instead how the images can be reflected in History and replay a series of "representational processes" on the screen. Firstly, we are interested in the great repertoire in which imagination builds the iconography of female madness in film. We show how a network of older images influences from different angles the visual memory of insanity and we stress the importance of the “spectacular” aspect of this iconography. Secondly, we study the motion of bodies in chosen films. We demonstrate how the mise en scène of madness gives access to a repertoire of recognizable forms of expression: syncope, hysterical laughter, ecstasy, falls, tics, contractures, etc. Finally, based on the concepts of mimesis and contagion, we demonstrate the importance of gesture in understanding madness in film.

Depuis la deuxième moitié du XXe siècle et le tournant du millénaire, pourquoi se multiplient des figures de la folie et du féminin dans le paysage littéraire haïtien ? En remarquant les grandes tendances qui font coïncider l’expression de la catastrophe, de la défaite du sens et l’apparition de personnages et de figures féminins majeurs dans des œuvres de tous genres, mon interrogation porte sur la folie, la marge et le féminin dans la littérature haïtienne contemporaine en tant qu’expressions concourantes de la dissemblance. Je me penche ainsi, dans des œuvres marquantes, sur le jeu rhétorique des postures de la dissemblance et la manière dont elles pointent depuis le texte vers un au-delà de l’œuvre, soit ce qui en elle indique l’ «espace ménagé» de sa propre faillite ainsi que le travail de la lecture et de la création. Pour cela, il a fallu, à partir des limites (de l’œuvre, de la norme), construire une réflexion capable d’aménager aussi l’espace de sa propre contestation. Dans le premier chapitre, à partir du récit fondateur « Folie », de Marie Chauvet, je pose le problème de la folie en me penchant sur les configurations inaugurales qui me semblent mettre la scène du littéraire contemporain haïtien. J’en profite pour préciser l’approche rhétorique qui me permettra d’aborder les textes littéraires, tout en réfléchissant sur les enjeux théoriques posés par une lecture de la folie comme absence d’œuvre. En m’appuyant sur Chauvet et sur les travaux de Felman, je définis les modalités d’une lecture impliquée. Dans le second chapitre, je brosse un portrait complexe du contemporain haïtien, tel qu’il est médié et rendu à travers les « anthologies » essentielles de Davertige et de Frankétienne. Ces deux œuvres sont l’occasion de poursuivre une interrogation sur les limites en remarquant les formes et les enjeux mobilisés dans le littéraire par les élaborations de la marge, de la mémoire traumatique et de la folie. Une telle approche est aussi l’occasion d’une réflexion de fond sur le contemporain haïtien, abordé d’emblée comme panorama et comme problème façonné et façonnant des sujets d’écriture. Enfin, dans le troisième chapitre, je me penche sur les filiations larvées qui permettent aux configurations précédemment décrites de persister, alors que le féminin, comme dissemblance, négocie sa place du côté de la marge ou de la folie, dans les textes plus récents de Jan Dominique et de Lyonel Trouillot. Les réflexions que je propose sur les destinations, sur l’œuvre impossible ou absente (Foucault) me permettent de distinguer les processus de différenciation spécifiques de la marge et de la folie, mais surtout d’apercevoir, au cœur du texte littéraire, la folie comme l’absence essentielle où se risque et se joue la création. Le dissemblable devient alors cet objet fuyant d’une lecture impliquée dans laquelle, le regard critique s’adossant à une écriture littéraire chargée d’en interrompre systématiquement le flux, constitue en effet ce « moment insolite de la théorie» (Felman), qui, dévoilant son propre jeu rhétorique, maintient la théorie en échec tout en la faisant parler. / Since the second half of the twentieth century and the turn of the millennium, why have representations of madness and the feminine proliferated in the Haitian literary landscape? Whilst reflecting on the broad tendencies that brought together the expression of catastrophe, the unravelling of meaning and the emergence of important feminine characters and figures in works of all genres, I will question madness, margins and the feminine in contemporary Haitian literature as concurring expressions of dissimilarity. Examining Haitian literary works, I want to propose a reading on the rhetoric postures and performances of dissimilarity and the manner in which they point towards an outsideness of literature: the unspeakable “thing” that signals – from within – the (im)possibility of the text, the (im)possibility of reading and creation. To achieve this purpose, I have chosen to construct a reading on limits (of the text, of the norm) that also considers its own contestation. Chapter one is built around the novel « Folie » by Marie Chauvet. It addresses the topic and rhetoric of madness while taking note of important aesthetic configurations that I suggest set the stage for contemporary Haitian literature. I also address methodological problems arising when “reading” madness as “absence d’œuvre” (Foucault). Intersecting Chauvet’s writing with the theoretical contributions of Felman, I specify my approach as a compromised or involved reading. In the second chapter, I paint the portrait of the contemporary Haitian general context using the essential anthologies of Davertige and Frankétienne. These two works allow me to address the notion of “limits” while considering the forms and issues created by the fabrications of margins, traumatic memory and madness. I therefore approach the contemporary Haitian context as a complex panorama and as a problem, both shaped by and shaping literary subjectivities. Finally, in the third chapter, analysing the more recent texts of Jan Dominique and Lyonel Trouillot, I reflect on hidden genealogies that perpetuate previously identified configurations when the feminine, as dissimilarity, negotiate a place on the side of margins or madness. The reflection I propose on destinations, the absent or impossible oeuvre allows me to differentiate the specificities of margins and madness, and most importantly, to glimpse, while reading the literary text, at the essential absence where creation risks itself. Thus, dissimilarity becomes the fleeting object of my compromised reading. A critical reading, which compromises itself with creative writing, in a decisive attempt to subvert theory, forcing it to unveil its own rhetorical play, to reveal its possible failure while making it eloquent.

Silence et soumission aux valeurs patriarcales dominantes : ainsi peut être brossée dans son ensemble et sans pour autant la déformer l’image de la condition féminine encore pleinement opérante à la fin du XIXe siècle et au début du XXe siècle en France. La femme, ouvrière, bourgeoise ou noble, est destinée à la maternité, et ses désirs sont méprisés au profit de ceux de son (futur) époux. En littérature cependant, à partir de Madame Bovary (1857) et parallèlement à la montée timide du féminisme, apparaissent plusieurs figures féminines éminemment tragiques qui contestent la condition féminine. Louise Marles, Véronique Cheminot, Mouchette et Thérèse Desqueyroux – et tant d’autres encore… – sont autant de (jeunes) personnages féminins qui rejettent plus ou moins violemment la mise sous tutelle de la femme et l’impossibilité d’avoir un statut social et juridique accepté en dehors du mariage. Pourtant, parce qu’en ces figures de femme – et souvent malgré elles – refuse de se taire une torturante aspiration à la liberté, elles sont fatalement vouées à la folie et à la mort, deviennent prostituées, criminelles, internées ou suicidaires, voire les quatre. Selon nous, la folie est l’état dans lequel ces personnages féminins s’enlisent car ils remettent profondément en question les valeurs établies par des hommes et pour des hommes. Nous pensons que la folie est le moyen littéraire utilisé par les écrivains pour montrer l’ampleur de leur souffrance existentielle et son unique langage possible ; en ce sens, la folie serait la représentation extérieure d’une écrasante souffrance morale et psychologique. Enfin, la possession diabolique est une autre cause portée par Bernanos pour répondre à la question de la folie des femmes. Notre étude portera sur quatre figures tragiques de personnages féminins imaginées par quatre écrivains catholiques : Louise dans En rade (Huysmans, 1887), Véronique dans Le Désespéré (Léon Bloy, 1887), Mouchette dans Sous le soleil de Satan (Bernanos, 1926) et Thérèse Desqueyroux dans le roman éponyme de Mauriac (1927). / Silence and submission to the prevailing patriarchal ideology : this is how one can describe the female condition at the end of the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth century in France. No matter whether they come from the working class, the middle class or the aristocracy, women are destined for motherhood and their wishes are overlooked. Nevertheless, in literature one can notice several tragic female figures who rebel against their condition. Louise Marles, Véronique Cheminot, Mouchette and Thérèse Desqueyroux – and so many others… – are young women who reject more or less violently the fact that they are under the tutelage of men and the fact that they cannot obtain an acceptable social status outside of marriage. However, it is precisely because these female characters crave for freedom that they are doomed to madness and death or become criminals and/or suicidal women. According to us, these women are said to be mad because they challenge convention and reject patriarchal values. We think that madness is the literary tool used by these writers to show the brutality of their existential suffering. In other words, we believe that madness is the external representation of their overwhelming moral suffering. Finally, demonic possession is another reason given by Bernanos to explain women’s madness. Our study deals with four tragic female figures imagined by four Catholic writers : Louise in En rade (Huysmans, 1887), Véronique in Le Désespéré (Bloy, 1887), Mouchette in Sous le Soleil de Satan (Bernanos, 1926) and Thérèse in Thérèse Desqueyroux (Mauriac, 1927).

[pt] O trabalho tem como objetivo analisar a loucura na cidade do Rio de Janeiro no final do século XIX e início do século XX, bem como os temas que com ela se relacionam tais como raça, alcoolismo e hereditariedade, através da lente do escritor-paciente Afonso Henriques de Lima Barreto, privilegiando os escritos ficcionais e autobiográficos do autor. A pesquisa procurou inserir o registro do particular, isto é, de um indivíduo que sofreu na própria pele a discriminação e o tratamento destinado aos que eram considerados doentes mentais, de forma que o estudo possa ser visto e examinado dentro de uma perspectiva mais ampla. A dissertação foi dividida em três momentos: a tentativa de estabelecer uma analogia entre a experiência da loucura e aquela vivida por todos os habitantes do Rio de Janeiro nos primeiros anos do século XX, a análise das concepções médicas e científicas sobre a loucura e a presença do tema nos textos do autor e, por último, o convívio do romancista com a loucura no espaço doméstico e também no Hospício Nacional de Alienados. / [en] The present study aims at analyzing mental diseases in the city of Rio de Janeiro at the end of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century, as well as the issues related to madness, such as race, alcoholism and heredity, through the eyes of the writerpatient Afonso Henriques de Lima Barreto, mainly through his fiction and autobiographic writings. The present analysis tried to include individual records, i.e. records of a man who was segregated and treated according to the procedures given to the mentally sick at that time, so that the research could be carried out within a broader perspective. The dissertation consists of three parts: the attempt to establish similarities between the experience of madness and the experience lived by the population in Rio de Janeiro during the first years of the 20th century, the analysis of scientific information and doctors` concepts on mental disturbance and the presence of the theme in the writer`s works and last, the writer`s experience with madness both at home and at the asylum Hospício Nacional de Alienados.

Ce travail propose une lecture de la création artistique russe actuelle – 1990-2010 – au regard de l’histoire qu’elle entretient avec la folie grâce à l’analyse de personnages qui émaillent son paysage culturel. Que ces derniers soient jugés fous – fols-en-Christ ou jurodivye, artistes romantiques, dissidents internés en Union soviétique – ou qu’il s’agisse de figures traditionnelles d'idiots – Ivan le simple, le prince Mychkine de Dostoïevski –, un pont sera créé qui reliera ces archétypes et certaines pratiques de l’extrême contemporain, allant jusqu’à la prière-punk des Pussy Riot. Cette étude porte sur le concept d’une idiotie comme posture artistique permettant à l’artiste de se faire le médiateur d’une vérité – politique, religieuse ou sociale. Avançant masqué, il révèle ainsi les glissements sémantiques opérés entre les notions de « folie » et de « norme », en parallèle des rapports qu’entretiennent « art » et « politique ». L’histoire de la folie en Russie sera par ailleurs abordée à travers diverses formes d’envol – compris d’un point de vue métaphysique comme un escapisme de la raison. La littérature servira de socle à une première analyse de la figure romantique de l’artiste maudit à la raison vacillante, celle-ci ensuite mise à mal par les créateurs postmodernes qui déconstruisent aussi bien le mythe du saint idiot que celui du génie artistique, par l’incarnation d’un créateur sot reproduisant des formes sans en saisir le sens. Certains en appellent de surcroît, directement ou non, à la figure ancestrale du jurodivyj afin d’élaborer des postures critiques, parfois scandaleuses, envers les pouvoirs politique et religieux. Considérant les réactions virulentes que peuvent susciter les pratiques actuelles, et grâce à l’étude d’œuvres problématiques représentatives, les causes de leur rejet deviendront explicites. Il sera ainsi permis d’envisager ces créations, paraissant en rupture avec l’ordre établi, dans leur ancrage au sein d’une tradition historique et littéraire de la folie. / This work proposes an interpretation of the current Russian artistic creation – 1990-2010 – with regard to his links with history of madness, through the analysis of characters that punctuate Russian cultural landscape. The latter characters are deemed insane – holly fools, Romantic artists, dissidents interned in the Soviet Union - or whether are traditional idiots figures - Ivan the fool, Dostoevsky’s Prince Myshkin. A bridge will be created linking these archetypes and certain contemporary practices, up to Pussy Riot’s punk prayer. This study focuses on the concept of idiocy as an artistic position which allows the artist to become a mediator of a political, religious or social truth. The creator, moving forward hidden, reveals semantic shifts made by the concepts of "madness" and "norm", in parallel with relations held between "art" and "politics." The history of madness in Russia will also be depicted through various forms of soaring - understood in a metaphysical point of view as an escapism of reason. Literature will be used as a base for a first analysis of the romantic image of the damned artist with flickering reason. This picture will then be undermined by postmodern creators who both deconstruct the myths of the holy fool and the artistic genius, by their incarnation of a stupid creator reproducing forms without understanding their meaning. Moreover, some of them require, directly or not, to the ancestral figure of the holly fool to develop critical postures, sometimes scandalous, against political and religious powers. Considering the violent reaction that can generate the current artistic practices, and through the study of representative problematic works, the causes of their rejection shall become explicit. This will make it possible to consider these creations – apparently breaking with the established order – in their anchor within a historical and literary tradition of madness.

Cette thèse examine l’œuvre poétique de Rimbaud et de Laforgue du point de vue de la catégorie de « folie ». La notion de folie a très souvent été mobilisée dans la première réception de tout un pan de la poésie écrite dans le dernier tiers du XIXe siècle, pour étiqueter des textes considérés comme illisibles. À tel point qu’avec ses corollaires d’époques (manie, névrose, dégénérescence, hystérie), elle est devenue un véritable paradigme de lecture du texte poétique. La folie est envisagée ici non pas seulement dans sa définition médicale, mais aussi comme objet hybride, construit par une multiplicité de discours et de pratiques. On commence par une archéologie de ce discours médicalisant qui pathologise la poésie, pour montrer ensuite que la « folie » constitue bien une catégorie valide pour l’appréhension de la poésie rimbaldienne et laforguienne, mais qu’elle nécessite pour cela une théorisation nouvelle, indépendante de toute considération biographique ou psychologique. Part essentielle de l’écriture, la folie chez Laforgue, Rimbaud et leurs contemporains n’est plus la folie romantique – qui s’articulait aux catégories du grotesque ou du magisme inspiré. La folie poétique se fait méthode, « raisonné dérèglement » selon la formule paradoxale de Rimbaud, et traverse, en tant qu’expérience-limite, tout le trajet lyrique. En même temps, elle devient immanente aux corps, et au corps du texte. La folie romantique s’est immanentisée et textualisée. Poétique de la folie désigne ici un fait littéral, la manière dont le texte se trouve altéré par la folie, et réciproquement la manière dont en tant que poème ce même texte reconfigure la langue et la lecture, devenant par là un autre nom de la « folie » comme intempestivité, invention de catégories nouvelles, illisible devenant lisible. La folie ne désigne plus alors une pathologie, mais la force d’évènement de l’écriture même. Chez Laforgue et Rimbaud, cette dimension de bouleversement se déploie particulièrement dans trois champs : comme expérience radicale, la folie opère une altération et une aliénation du sujet ; comme effet rhétorique, elle entraîne un trouble généralisé de la syntaxe et du sens ; en tant que contre-discours et résistance à l’ordre établi (hystérie, idiotie, fureur) enfin, elle possède en elle-même une dimension politique, par laquelle elle s’articule à l’histoire comme événementialité. / This dissertation looks at the poetic works of Rimbaud and Laforgue from the point of view of “madness”. The category served as a label that was often applied by contemporary readers, including medics, to a corpus of poetry they considered to be illegible. Madness and its then quasi synonyms – mania, neurosis, degeneracy or hysteria – thus became no less than a general paradigm for reading poetry. We conceive of madness here not as a mere medical concept, but as a hybrid object, one that is constructed through multiple discourses and practices. The thesis first takes an archaeological look at this medicalisation of the reception of poetry. It then moves on to show that the category of “madness” can indeed be valid when it comes to understanding the lyric of Rimbaud and Laforgue, but needs new theorisation as a concept. Madness should no longer be considered as a biographical or even psychological category, but as pertaining to the text itself. A crucial part of the act of writing both for Rimbaud and for Laforgue, madness at the Fin de siècle had moved away from its definition in French romanticism, which saw it primarily as akin to the category of the grotesque or that of transcendent inspiration. Madness became a paradoxical method for poetry, according to the rimbaudian phrase “raisonné dérèglement” (“reasoned derangement”). As a limit-experience, madness proves to be at the core of a new poetic practice, while becoming immanent to the bodies as well as to the body of the text. Talking about a “poetics of madness,” we therefore conceive of madness as being primarily textual or literal. The poetic text is altered and displaced by madness, and conversely the text itself qua poem transforms the language it is written in and the categories of reading that are applied to it. In that sense, the text is necessarily mad in its essential untimeliness, since it invents the categories in which it can become legible. Madness thus no longer refers to a form of pathology, but rather designates poetic writing itself as a force and an event. Such a disruptive force is studied more particularly in three domains. As a radical experience, madness alters and literally alienates the subject. As a rhetorical effect, it brings about a major trouble within syntax and meaning. As a counter-discourse, finally, and a resistance to social order (in the cases of hysteria, idiocy, or fury), madness has an immediate political dimension to it, which connects it to history qua eventiality.