Le rapport au religieux et aux religions s'est métamorphosé dans les sociétés occidentales, sous l'influence de l'ultramodernité et du tournant subjectif qui domine les nouvelles religiosités. Plusieurs institutions et organisations choisissent aujourd'hui de discuter de leurs activités en termes de « spiritualité » et non plus de religion. Les pratiques de dialogue interreligieux, qui concernent non pas les spécialistes mais plutôt les citoyens et les croyants, sont, elles aussi, travaillées par ces changements. Pour les organisations qui cherchent à rassembler des gens afin d'échanger au niveau de la spiritualité -et non de la religion-, très peu de ressources théoriques existent pour éclairer les enjeux propres à ce type d'activité collective. Cette recherche vise à amorcer la théorisation de l'interspiritualité en tant que pratique intersubjective mobilisant la spiritualité des participants, à partir de l'analyse de quatre études de cas portant sur des organisations de Québec et de Paris. En inscrivant la recherche dans une sociologie de la spiritualité, l'attention est maintenue sur le contexte d'émergence de l'interspiritualité, qui est caractérisé non seulement par une critique de la religion, mais aussi par le double mouvement de la sécularisation des ressources pastorales et de la spiritualisation des ressources psychosociales. Notre théorisation de l'interspiritualité procède d'une analyse à quatre dimensions : la conception de l'être humain qui est mobilisée dans les milieux à l'étude, leur rapport aux normativités, leur conception de ce qu'est la spiritualité et le rôle attribué à « l'autre » dans les dynamiques intersubjectives. Les activités interspirituelles apparaissent dès lors comme étant des espaces de résonance, dont la vocation est de nourrir l'expérience subjective des participants. Selon les visées des organisations qui soutiennent ce type d'activités, les rencontres interspirituelles peuvent même constituer de véritables critiques actives de l'aliénation qui caractérise l'ultramodernité, et alimenter un imaginaire de transformation du monde à travers des individus résonants. / The relationship with religion is metamorphosed in Western societies, under the influence of ultramodernity and the subjective turn which dominates new religiosities. Several institutions and organizations choose today to discuss their practices in terms of “spirituality” and no longer “religion”. Interreligious dialogue, which concern not theologians but rather citizens and believers, is also affected by these changes. For organizations that seek to bring people together to discuss spirituality - and not religion -, very few theoretical resources exist to shed light on the issues specific to this type of collective activity. This research aims to initiate the theorization of interspirituality as an intersubjective practice mobilizing the spirituality of the participants, based on the analysis of four case studies relating to organizations in Quebec and Paris. By placing the research within a sociology of spirituality, attention is maintained on the context of emergence of interspirituality, which is characterized not only by a critique of religion, but also by the double movement of the secularization of pastoral resources and spiritualization of psychosocial resources. Our theorization of interspirituality proceeds from an analysis of four dimensions: the conception of the human being mobilized by those organizations, their relationship to normativity, their conception of spirituality and the role attributed to “the other” in intersubjective dynamics. Interspiritual activities therefore appear to be spaces of resonance, whose vocation is to nourish the subjective experience of the participants. Depending on the aims of the organizations that support this type of activity, interspiritual encounters can even constitute active critiques of the alienation that characterizes ultramodernity and fuel an imagination of transformation of the world through resonant individuals.

Generic transformation of the castaway novel is made evident by the various ways in which the narrative boundaries that separate fiction from reality and history, the past from the present, and the rational from the irrational, are reconfigured in Umberto Eco’s The Island of the Day Before (1994), J.M. Coetzee’s Foe (1986) and Yann Martel’s Life of Pi (2002). The dissolution of boundaries reflects the dominant shift that has occurred in the castaway novel from the 18th century literary context to the present postmodern, postcolonial context. In this regard, the narrative utilizes various narratological strategies, the most significant being intertextuality, metafiction, historiographical metafiction, allegory, irony, and the carnivalesque. These narratological strategies rewrite, revise, and recontextualize those generic conventions that perpetuated the culture of masculinity and conquest that defines colonialism and the traditional castaway novel epitomized by Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719). From a postcolonial perspective, the castaway’s state of being reflects on the condition of the colonized as well as the colonizer: his/her experience of displacement is similar to colonized peoples’ separation from their cultural, spiritual and personal identities; simultaneously, processes of appropriation, adaptation and control of space resemble colonization, thereby revealing the constructed nature of colonial space. As such, space is fundamental to individual orientation and social adaptation and consequently, metaphorically and metonymically linked to identity. In the selected postmodernist and postcolonial texts, the movement from the position of castaway to colonist as originally manifested in Robinson Crusoe is therefore reinterpreted and recontextualized. The postmodernist and postcolonial contexts resist fixed and one-dimensional representations of identity, as well as the appropriation and domination of space, that characterize shipwreck literature from pre-colonial and colonial periods. Rationalist notions of history, reality and truth as empirically definable concepts are also contested. The castaway identity is often characterized by feelings of physical and spiritual displacement and estrangement that can be paralleled to postmodernist themes of existential confusion and anxiety. / Thesis (PhD (English))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013

Generic transformation of the castaway novel is made evident by the various ways in which the narrative boundaries that separate fiction from reality and history, the past from the present, and the rational from the irrational, are reconfigured in Umberto Eco’s The Island of the Day Before (1994), J.M. Coetzee’s Foe (1986) and Yann Martel’s Life of Pi (2002). The dissolution of boundaries reflects the dominant shift that has occurred in the castaway novel from the 18th century literary context to the present postmodern, postcolonial context. In this regard, the narrative utilizes various narratological strategies, the most significant being intertextuality, metafiction, historiographical metafiction, allegory, irony, and the carnivalesque. These narratological strategies rewrite, revise, and recontextualize those generic conventions that perpetuated the culture of masculinity and conquest that defines colonialism and the traditional castaway novel epitomized by Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719). From a postcolonial perspective, the castaway’s state of being reflects on the condition of the colonized as well as the colonizer: his/her experience of displacement is similar to colonized peoples’ separation from their cultural, spiritual and personal identities; simultaneously, processes of appropriation, adaptation and control of space resemble colonization, thereby revealing the constructed nature of colonial space. As such, space is fundamental to individual orientation and social adaptation and consequently, metaphorically and metonymically linked to identity. In the selected postmodernist and postcolonial texts, the movement from the position of castaway to colonist as originally manifested in Robinson Crusoe is therefore reinterpreted and recontextualized. The postmodernist and postcolonial contexts resist fixed and one-dimensional representations of identity, as well as the appropriation and domination of space, that characterize shipwreck literature from pre-colonial and colonial periods. Rationalist notions of history, reality and truth as empirically definable concepts are also contested. The castaway identity is often characterized by feelings of physical and spiritual displacement and estrangement that can be paralleled to postmodernist themes of existential confusion and anxiety. / Thesis (PhD (English))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013