A complexa filosofia de Giorgio Agamben convoca-nos a compreender a crise dos atuais modelos político-governamentais e a hodierna lógica da segurança que, sob a doutrina do medo orquestrado, visa à eliminação dos não-integráveis, como igualmente nos convida a abarcar na defesa de uma nova ontologia política além da tradição da soberania e do direito. Do confronto entre as conceituações semânticas do termo vida e da relação desta com o poder soberano, inclusive numa sociedade biopolítica de normalização, emerge o protagonista da obra agambeniana, a vida nua. Uma vida que não é inauguração moderna, mas atividade originária do poder soberano, quer dizer, uma vida que pode ser detectada tanto na pólis e na civitas - na figura do homo sacer -, assim como no totalitarismo moderno e, rasteiramente, na democracia em que vivemos. Trata-se de uma vida absolutamente matável e exposta à morte que, fundada numa relação de exclusão inclusiva, isto é, de abandono, revela o verdadeiro vínculo social. O que une vida e lei, violência e norma, é o estado de exceção. A norma se aplica à exceção desaplicando-se: a força-de-lei exercida no estado de exceção não põe, nem conserva, o direito, mas o conserva suspendendo-o e o põe excetuando-se. Uma figura em que factum e ius tornam-se indiscerníveis e homines sacri são produzidos a esmo; um espaço onde distinções políticas tradicionais como direita e esquerda, público e privado, perdem sua clareza e inteligibilidade. Uma indiscernibilidade que pode ser materializada no campo, seja de refugiados, seja de concentração, seja o hoje vigente e ainda inominado, de modo que o campo reflete o próprio paradigma da atualidade. Esta é a era da exceção em permanência. O caminho para a desativação dessa relação é a profanação, figura em que se busca uma nova forma-de-vida que não seja inaugurada pela lembrança teológica da política soberana e do direito, mas que reflita uma comunidade que vem capaz de desativar a máquina biopolítica produtora da vida nua e torne inoperante o atual conceito de político-jurídico: uma nova comunidade que pense além da soberania, do bando soberano e do próprio direito. Trata-se de uma comunidade de singularidades, sem identidade, sem propriedades e destinos, mas que seja pura potencialidade, que seja em si como ela é, quer dizer, que não possua qualquer tarefa enquanto fim, mas tão somente meios sem fins. / The complex philosophy of Giorgio Agamben summons us to review the crisis of the existing political-juridical models and the on-going governmental security rationale, which, based on a pre-oriented administration of fear, aims at eliminating those somehow non-adapted, as well as to join a defence towards a new political ontology beyond the tradition of sovereignty and law. Through the confront of semantically distinct definitions of life and its relation with the sovereign power, including under a biopolitical normalizing society, emerges the protagonist of Agamben`s work, the bare life. A life that is not a modern phenomena but the original activity of the sovereign power, that is, a life exposed to death that can be found either in the pólis or the civitas - in the form of homo sacer or in the modern totalitarianism as well as the democracy that we live in. A life that is permanently subject to death and, founded on an inclusive exclusion relation, that is, a relation of abandonment, exposes the real social bound. The state of exception links life and law, violence and norm. The law is applied through its own withdrawal: the force-oflaw exercised in the state of exception does not posit nor conserve the law, but conserves it through its suspension and posits it through the exception. A place where factum and ius are brought into conjunction and homines sacri are freely produced, a space where traditional political categories such as right and left, public and private, loses clearness and intelligibility. A zone of indistinction materialized in the camp, either of refugees or concentration camps or those in full force and effect and yet unnamed. The camp is the contemporary political paradigm and this is the era in which the exception becomes the rule. The way out to deactivate such relation is to profane, a political task in search for a new form-of-life that abolishes any remembrance of theological sovereign politics and law and that reflects a coming community able to turn inoperative the biopolitical machine producer of bare life: a new community that thinks beyond sovereignty, the sovereign band and the law itself. A community composed of singularities, with no identity nor properties or destinies, but pure potentiality. A community free of means in search for an end, but solely a community of pure means without ends.

L'Art a toujours consacré une grande part à l'image du féminin. Que cela soit dans l'iconographie gréco-romaine ou judéo-chrétienne, ses multiples représentations sont synonymes de confusion et d'ambivalence. La femme et l'image ont en commun de susciter méfiance et fascination. C'est au travers de l'étude approfondie de quelques figures clefs de l'histoire de l'art, que nous vous proposons une relecture post-féministe des diverses facettes du féminin, prises dans la dyade sacré/profane. Mythes et croyances donnèrent naissance à un métissage pagano-chrétien qui fit émerger un Eternel Féminin inébranlable encore très prégnant dans l'art actuel. Tantôt dans la foi de l'image, tantôt dans sa condamnation, ainsi se résume l'insoluble combat entre l'humain et le divin. La Femme restera à jamais l'élément trouble associé au paraître et à la beauté. Dans nos recherches nous avons constaté que la femme et la peinture sont en parfaite adéquation. Elles sont indissociables car iconoclasme et misogynie vont souvent de pair. Peu à peu, le corps remplacera la toile et le fard, la peinture pour les artistes transgenres. Dans d'étranges (queer) parodies entre exhibition et chamanisme, ils réinventeront leur devenir-féminin. La surface de l'œuvre devient alors le miroir où se reflète cet Autre, alter ego tant recherché. La pensée féministe se met en marche au travers des révolutions des genres et des sexes. Ainsi, c'est entre Pygmalion et Narcisse que les artistes des XXéme et XXIéme siècles, nous offrent, entre mascarade et mélancolie, la vision d'un idéal sans original. Enfin, nous revenons sur l'art des femmes. Leurs pratiques sont souvent borderline, partagées entre violence, humour et Charis dans leur quête d'un sacré hors religion. Elles offrent un devenir-pandorien de l'art pour briser à jamais le désormais trop célèbre : " Sois belle et tais toi! "

NOUS AVONS MIS EN OEUVRE UN DOUBLE PROJET – OBJET DE RECHERCHE DANS CE TRAVAIL. <br />D'UNE PART, NOUS AVONS ĖTUDIĖ COMMENT CONCEVOIR UNE HOMOGENĖITĖ DES CULTURES AFRICAINES ET EXPLIQUER A LA FOIS LA DIVERSITĖ DE LEURS PRODUCTIONS, AU DOUBLE SENS DU MYTHE ET DU RITE. <br />D'AUTRE PART, NOUS AVONS CHERCHĖ A PRODUIRE UN REPERTOIRE DE L'IMAGINAIRE NEGRO-AFRICAIN A PARTIR D'UNE ĖXEGÈSE ANTHROPO-SOCIOLOGIQUE DES CONCEPTS DE PRATIQUES RITUELLES ET DE REPRĖSENTATIONS SOCIALES.

Les formes du temps chez Albert Cohen ont montré qu'il existe une interaction entre le temps chronologique romanesque et l'histoire écrite en filigrane l'ensemble des œuvres. Les différentes formes et modes d'expression du temps chez Cohen constituent le socle d'une écriture plurielle en contradiction avec son temps. L'œuvre de Cohen dépasse tous les clivages de la temporalité poétique, romanesque, lyrique, théâtrale, autobiographique, profane et sacrée pour atteindre une dimension universelle d'une construction du temps fondé sur la différence. Le récit a précisément pour rôle de permettre le décryptage du temps par l'homme à travers une expérience intime dont les différentes manifestations les plus fréquentes dans les romans cohéniens sont l'attente, la solitude, l'ennui et la mélancolie. Le moment intime est non seulement illimité mais il reste ouvert à plusieurs horizons ce qui permet d'ailleurs la cohabitation de multiples séquences spatio-temporelles. Avec l'Histoire, le temps admet deux réalités parallèles : une première, terrestre, à partir de laquelle l'homme commence à évaluer le temps chronologique et linéaire ; une seconde, mythique regroupant la première en lui donnant un ancrage dans le temps d'antan que l'écrivain régénère avec l'avènement d'un nouvel Adam.

À partir de la distinction opérée par G. Canguilhem (1966) entre la maladie du malade et celle du médecin, nous avons considéré les récits, constructions personnelles et représentations des patients relatifs à leur maladie cancéreuse et coexistants avec les théories scientifiques médicales. Ces éléments représentent un travail psychique d’élaboration qui peut donner naissance à un « roman de la maladie » (Gori, Del Volgo & Poinso, 1994). Cette quête de sens, que nous considérons comme un fondamental de l'existence, peut être mise à mal lorsque l’événement-maladie fait trauma pour le psychisme du patient, entravant alors l'historicisation de son vécu. Mais quid de cette quête à l'approche de la fin de vie ? Comment envisager et donner un sens à l'innommable, l'irreprésentable de sa propre mort (Freud, 1915)? Notre recherche vise à explorer l’évolution des processus d’élaboration en lien avec une mise en sens de l’événement-maladie, des représentations du cancer et de la mort et des processus défensifs mis à l’œuvre pour faire face à ce vécu effractant, entre deux groupes de patients, respectivement en phases curative et palliative de leurs traitements. Une première partie quantitative de notre travail a pour but d’objectiver sur le plan statistique, à l’aide d’outils psychométriques (IPQ-R et DSQ-40), des différences entre les deux groupes (composés de quarante-cinq patients chacun). La seconde partie, qualitative, consiste en une étude clinique et projective (Rorschach et T.A.T.), à partir de la rencontre avec dix patients (cinq de chaque groupe), des processus psychiques à l’œuvre face à la maladie somatique grave et à sa potentielle évolution létale. Notre questionnement touche ainsi à l'étude du « roman de la maladie » après le diagnostic et éventuellement au moment de l'approche de la fin de vie. La maladie grave peut sidérer l'appareil psychique et faire trauma dans certains cas, laissant dans certains autres des possibilités d'élaboration, malgré les représentations de cette pathologie associées socialement à la mort. Mais qu'en est-il lorsque la mort n'est plus affaire de représentation et prend valeur de réalité inéluctable (au sens d'une impossibilité de maintenir cette réalité inconsciente) ? / Starting with the distinction made by G. Canguilhem (1966) between the illness of the patient and the illness of the medical doctor, we have considered the narratives, patients’ personal constructions and representations regarding their cancer, co-existing with the medical and scientific theory. These elements are a psychical work of elaboration that can give birth to “a novel of the illness” (Gori, Del Volgo & Poinso, 1994). This quest for meaning, which we consider fundamental to any existence, can be tested when the illness-event creates a trauma in the psyche of the patient, hindering the elaboration of its history. What about this quest as the end of life approaches? The inconceivable of one’s own death (Freud, 1915) ?Our research explores the evolution of the elaborative processes linked to the quest of meaning of the illness-event, of the representations of cancer, of death and the defenses in place to deal with this frightening experience, comparing two groups of patients, respectively in curative and palliative phases of their treatment. Firstly, a quantitative part of our work is objectified statistically with psychometric tools (IPQ-R and DSQ-40), showing differences between the two groups (each group containing 45 patients). The second part is qualitative with clinical and projective data (Rorschach and T.A.T.) issued from 10 patients (5 of each group), showing the psychical processes of patients facing severe somatic illness and its potential lethal evolution. Our research investigates the “novel of the illness” after diagnosis and at the eventual approach of the end of life. Severe illness can freeze the psyche and be traumatic at times, leaving in certain cases elaborative capabilities, despite the social representation of the pathology associated with death. But what when death is no longer a matter of representation and becomes an undeniable fact (when it is impossible of maintaining this reality unconscious) ?

A complexa filosofia de Giorgio Agamben convoca-nos a compreender a crise dos atuais modelos político-governamentais e a hodierna lógica da segurança que, sob a doutrina do medo orquestrado, visa à eliminação dos não-integráveis, como igualmente nos convida a abarcar na defesa de uma nova ontologia política além da tradição da soberania e do direito. Do confronto entre as conceituações semânticas do termo vida e da relação desta com o poder soberano, inclusive numa sociedade biopolítica de normalização, emerge o protagonista da obra agambeniana, a vida nua. Uma vida que não é inauguração moderna, mas atividade originária do poder soberano, quer dizer, uma vida que pode ser detectada tanto na pólis e na civitas - na figura do homo sacer -, assim como no totalitarismo moderno e, rasteiramente, na democracia em que vivemos. Trata-se de uma vida absolutamente matável e exposta à morte que, fundada numa relação de exclusão inclusiva, isto é, de abandono, revela o verdadeiro vínculo social. O que une vida e lei, violência e norma, é o estado de exceção. A norma se aplica à exceção desaplicando-se: a força-de-lei exercida no estado de exceção não põe, nem conserva, o direito, mas o conserva suspendendo-o e o põe excetuando-se. Uma figura em que factum e ius tornam-se indiscerníveis e homines sacri são produzidos a esmo; um espaço onde distinções políticas tradicionais como direita e esquerda, público e privado, perdem sua clareza e inteligibilidade. Uma indiscernibilidade que pode ser materializada no campo, seja de refugiados, seja de concentração, seja o hoje vigente e ainda inominado, de modo que o campo reflete o próprio paradigma da atualidade. Esta é a era da exceção em permanência. O caminho para a desativação dessa relação é a profanação, figura em que se busca uma nova forma-de-vida que não seja inaugurada pela lembrança teológica da política soberana e do direito, mas que reflita uma comunidade que vem capaz de desativar a máquina biopolítica produtora da vida nua e torne inoperante o atual conceito de político-jurídico: uma nova comunidade que pense além da soberania, do bando soberano e do próprio direito. Trata-se de uma comunidade de singularidades, sem identidade, sem propriedades e destinos, mas que seja pura potencialidade, que seja em si como ela é, quer dizer, que não possua qualquer tarefa enquanto fim, mas tão somente meios sem fins. / The complex philosophy of Giorgio Agamben summons us to review the crisis of the existing political-juridical models and the on-going governmental security rationale, which, based on a pre-oriented administration of fear, aims at eliminating those somehow non-adapted, as well as to join a defence towards a new political ontology beyond the tradition of sovereignty and law. Through the confront of semantically distinct definitions of life and its relation with the sovereign power, including under a biopolitical normalizing society, emerges the protagonist of Agamben`s work, the bare life. A life that is not a modern phenomena but the original activity of the sovereign power, that is, a life exposed to death that can be found either in the pólis or the civitas - in the form of homo sacer or in the modern totalitarianism as well as the democracy that we live in. A life that is permanently subject to death and, founded on an inclusive exclusion relation, that is, a relation of abandonment, exposes the real social bound. The state of exception links life and law, violence and norm. The law is applied through its own withdrawal: the force-oflaw exercised in the state of exception does not posit nor conserve the law, but conserves it through its suspension and posits it through the exception. A place where factum and ius are brought into conjunction and homines sacri are freely produced, a space where traditional political categories such as right and left, public and private, loses clearness and intelligibility. A zone of indistinction materialized in the camp, either of refugees or concentration camps or those in full force and effect and yet unnamed. The camp is the contemporary political paradigm and this is the era in which the exception becomes the rule. The way out to deactivate such relation is to profane, a political task in search for a new form-of-life that abolishes any remembrance of theological sovereign politics and law and that reflects a coming community able to turn inoperative the biopolitical machine producer of bare life: a new community that thinks beyond sovereignty, the sovereign band and the law itself. A community composed of singularities, with no identity nor properties or destinies, but pure potentiality. A community free of means in search for an end, but solely a community of pure means without ends.

Notre recherche utilise comme source les enluminures des manuscrits de la littérature profane produites aux XIVe et XVe siècles dans les ateliers de France. Elle s’intéresse plus particulièrement aux représentations des êtres étranges qui foisonnent dans la littérature du Moyen âge, qu’elle soit proprement médiévale, le roman arthurien par exemple, ou qu’elle tire son inspiration de l’Antiquité pour les contes mythologiques ou les récits de voyage. Ces personnages s’ils appartiennent à des catégories diverses, comportent un degré d’humanité et d’imaginaire très variable, et mettent en évidence toute l’ambivalence de la nature humaine. Au travers de l’analyse d’un corpus extensif de ces images, nous souhaitons poser la question de la figuration du corps dès lors qu’il sort des normes : normes de mensuration (les géants et les nains), normes morphologiques (anomalies de parties du corps), hybridations et métamorphoses. Que représentent dans l’imaginaire médiéval ces êtres qui transgressent les règles par leur apparence et par l’ambiguïté de leur rapport au règne animal ?Notre recherche s’appuie nécessairement sur les textes des manuscrits et le rapport à l’image, en raison de leur évidente relation de réciprocité. Elle s’appuie également sur les conditions de production des enluminures et le public auquel elles s’adressent. Par cette approche nous tentons de repérer les fonctions de ces images de l’altérité, ainsi que leurs évolutions significatives ou les impasses auxquelles elles peuvent aboutir dans les modes de figuration, tout au long de la période étudiée. / Our research is based on the illumination of manuscripts from the secular literature produced in French workshops in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It focuses more precisely on the representation of strange beings, which abound in literature in the Middle Ages, whether it is strictly medieval like the Arthurian novel for example, or whether it derives its inspiration from Antiquity in mythological tales or travel stories. Although these characters belong to different categories, they present a very variable degree of humanity and fantasy and point out all the ambivalence of the human nature. Through the analysis of an extensive corpus of those pictures, we wish to raise the question of the figuration of the body from the moment it differs from the norm : norms of size (giants and dwarves), morphological norms (abnormal parts of the body), hybridizations and metamorphoses. What do these beings that transgress rules by their appearance and by the ambiguity of their relation to the animal kingdom represent in the medieval cultural imagination?Our research is necessarily based on the texts of the manuscripts and the relation to the picture on account of their obvious relation of reciprocity. It also based on the conditions of production of illuminations and on the people they were addressed to. By this socio-cultural approach, we try to determine the functions of those pictures of alterity as well as their significant evolutions or the stalemates they can reach in the figurative modes, all along the period under study.

No description available.

The study, “Between honor and shame: Martyrdom in 2 Maccabees 6-7 within the socio-cultural arena”, presents a look at how the community viewed martyrdom in 2 Maccabees 6:18-7:42 from the perspective of honor and shame. The chief objective is to determine whether or not the community supported or challenged the notion of the martyrs’ death being either honorable or shameful. In order to reach a satisfactory conclusion to this objective, this study set as goals the identification of key themes which shed light upon the views of the community in regard to the martyrs, as well as the investigation of the community’s understanding of honor and shame found in 2 Maccabees 6:18-7:42. This study incorporates a contextual analytical method comprising of an analysis of sociocultural vocabulary, an analysis of the socio-cultural vocabulary within the Greek text of 2 Maccabees 6:18-7:42 and a synthesis of the analysis of both the socio-cultural and the Greek context. As criteria for the study of the socio-cultural context the aspects of sacred-profane, pure-impure, the patron-client relationship and the relationship between individual and group(s) are implemented. Core-findings of this study may be divided into two main categories: evidence in defence of an honorable conduct during death, and evidence in defence of the dishonorable manner of death. Evidence in defence of honorable conduct during death, are: • The martyrs remain completely loyal and devoted to God (their Chief-Patron), His laws and • the customs of the forefathers. • They are portrayed as being bodily whole. • They safeguard their set-apartness. • They remain pure – especially in the ritualistic sense. • As individuals belonging to the collected identity of various groups, the martyrs prove themselves loyal and honorable. Evidence in defence for the dishonorable manner in which the martyrs die, are: • Torture was deemed disgraceful by the community and would therefore degrade honor. • Mutilation went into the very fabric of the wholeness of the body by destroying the bodily unity, thereby disqualifying a person to come into the realm of the sacred. • Certain members of the community would regard the martyrs’ rejection of the lesser patrons’ favor as disrespectful and therefore as dishonorable conduct. Despite this evidence, it is still found that the community could remain undecided on how to judge the martyrs and martyrdom. Therefore, it is proposed, and successfully implemented, that an emotional argument might be the key to tipping the scale toward viewing the martyrs and martyrdom as honorable. It must therefore be concluded that the community would have indeed challenged the notion of martyrdom being honorable, for torture and mutilations in themselves, were regarded as being disgraceful. Yet the community would have been persuaded to accept the honor of the martyrs because of their honorable conduct and the emotional appeal made by the author of Maccabees. / Thesis (MA (Greek))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013.

The purpose of the present dissertation is to study the elaborations of the initiation myth in contemporary Italian author Alessandro Baricco. The theoretical and methodological framework consists mainly of Mircea Eliade’s phenomenological theory of initiation. It is argued that the categories of space and time are interdepent in religious thought and should thus be studied as a unit, through the notion of the chronotope. The dissertation therefore proposes to introduce the concept of the chronotope of initiation as an operative tool, the intersection of the theories of Eliade and Mikhail Bakhtin, for the literary subgenre of the initiation novel. A hermeneutical analysis of the novels Oceano mare, Emmaus and Mr Gwyn demonstrates that the initiation myth is present in all three novels. The symbolism of death and rebirth is coherently enacted as a movement via the categories cosmos-chaos-cosmos, for which the author uses the symbolism of the earth to define cosmos (regularity and structure) and water symbolism for the regenerating chaos (dissolution and renewal). The different chapters of analysis accentuate the interaction of space and time within the different phases of the initiation pattern: the profane, the threshold, the sacred, the centre (the place where the actual ritual is enacted) and the return, which are all defined as chronotopes. The analysis shows that although the chronotope of initiation – the concept intending the fusion of the temporal event of ritual at the spatial centre – assumes different forms throughout the corpus, its function remains unmodified, with its purpose being the creation of ontological change. In its inherent structure, the chronotope of initiation unites antithetical spatial and temporal characteristics. Spatially it unites infinite and dissolving chaotic space with the constitutive envelope or sacred vertical centre, and temporally it brings together the ultimative ontological change at a fixed, historical moment with the eternal, sacred, time opened by ritual, representing the coincidentia oppositorum of the sacred. The analysis also shows that the so-called “portraits of the ineffable”, present in all three novels, reflect the same qualities. As immanent works of art, they function as thresholds into the infinite. From a chronological perspective, the dissertation shows a modification of the initiation pattern in Baricco’s writing: from the classical form in Oceano mare, via a more realistic application in Emmaus, to the most elaborate, meta-literary adaption in Mr Gwyn. Nevertheless, the use of the pattern and its thematic coherence reveals that Baricco consciously elaborates on the pattern to suit the contemporary context.