Speaking through the voice of another is a practice-based PhD that employs art practice to interrogate translation (as a textual and verbal practice). It uses linguistic translation as both the subject and the method to make multimedia artworks (text, sound, performance and events) that examine and analyse the translation process itself. The research has been conducted from my own subjective position, as an artist and monolingual speaker (a translation user rather than translation professional), investigating translation as a dialogic, subjective, embodied and performative phenomena. It adopts a self-reflexive methodology that places equal value in theoretical and experiential knowledge and proposes that an artist-led inquiry challenges assumptions, translation protocols, conventions and normative behaviour. The artists and artworks discussed in the thesis examine the translators /translation s agency and its linguistic performativity; exploiting it s creative potential as an artistic process/medium and amplifying its pivotal role within the expanding global art world. This transdisciplinary approach has resulted in the creation of translation zones - works and events devised to engage monolingual and multilingual individuals, professional translators, practitioners and public(s) in the process of translation - that offer an alternative perspective on translation (to research carried out within Translation Studies). Consequently, generating new knowledge that contributes to our understanding of translation and art and beyond both disciplines, creating a new transdisciplinary genre of art-and-translation. The artworks are an integral part of the thesis submission; samples and documentation of these are accessible within the full interactive PDF ersion. The layout of the thesis has been specifically designed to ease communication of the research, it uses various visual cues to distinguish between different types of information and to demonstrate my research praxis; the continual movement between theory and practice.

This practice-led Ph.D. is comprised of a body of work (hybrid films) and its contextual analysis. Together they constitute a method that aims to understand and re-interpret the dialogical relationship between live action and animation filmmaking. The research argues that from its beginning the art of moving images has presented a struggle between opposed tendencies such as imprint and construction , machine eye and artist s hand , dissection of time and condensation of time that are found between the unstable duality of live action and animation. While mainstream cinema has focused most of its efforts on taming the collisions that occur within the integration of live action and animation, it has also relied on the interface s instability to animate its being. As the interface becomes more invisible in the digital age, this research reconsiders the interaction between live action and animation in moving-image production and the construction of meaning in filmmaking as it incorporates the digital into its languages. In contextualising the double and fluctuating nature of co-presence in live action and animation, my question is How could the integration of the opposing attributes of live action and animation interrupt perceptual realism and produce a sense of estrangement in a meaningful way? Firstly this involves identifying the constantly mobile tension between live action and animation. Secondly integration is informed by ideas of estrangement and derealisation , and methods of interrupting perceptual coherence within the screened world to reveal insights into the world of social relations. Two underlying themes are addressed: (1) the uncanniness of co-presence, and (2) the expression of subjectivity through this co-presence. Interrogating the constructedness of the hybridised figure as it appears on screen by exposing its inherent conflicts, and exploring the aesthetics of estrangement and the expression of subjectivity in hybrid films led to an inquiry about cinematic time and movement. This revealed another dimension to the difference and interrelationship between live action and animation. Being both the source and outcome of these themes as expressed in the written thesis, the practical component of this project consists of three hybrid films: Nothing to Do with Weather (3 50 ), Animating Animator the Animated (2 47 ), and Flying Tunes (8 27 ). Theoretical findings are identified through the analysis of works by other artists and discussion of their concepts, and my own practice contributes to knowledge by inspiring, assessing and demonstrating my ideas on hybridity. My three practices are, to some extent, an allegory about the alienation a Far-East Asian filmmaker may feel in a world seemingly dominated by Western paradigms. The films chart my Far-Eastern Asian independent filmmaker s research as a journey towards an adaptation of the aesthetics and methods of contemporary filmmaking originating in Western culture and philosophy. As a piece of research, the transformation of the researcher through practice may be considered of significance in the formation of theory.

My thesis explores the formation of the subject in the novels of Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses, Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, and Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day. I attach the concept of property in terms of how male protagonists are obsessed with materialistic ownership and with the subordination of women who, as properties, consolidate their manhood. The three novelists despite their racial, gendered, and literary differences share the view that identity and truth are mere social and cultural constructs. I incorporate the work of Judith Butler and other poststructuralist figures, who see identity as a matter of performance rather than a natural entity. My thesis explores the theme of freedom, which I attached to the ways characters use their bodies either to confine or to emancipate themselves from the restricting world of race, class, and gender. The three novelists deconstruct any system of belief that promulgates the objectivity of truth in historical documents. History in the three novels, as with the protagonists, perception of identity, remains a social construct laden with distortions to serve particular political or ideological agendas. My thesis gives voice to African American female characters who are associated with love and racial and gender resistance. They become the reservoirs of the African American legacy in terms of their association with the oral and intuitionist mode of knowing, which subverts the male characters’ obsession with property and with the mainstream empiricist world. In this dissertation, I use the concept of hybridity as a literary and theoretical devise that African-American writers employ. In effect, I embark on the postcolonial studies of Henry Louise Gates, Paul Gilroy, W. E. B Du Bois, James Clifford, and Arjun Appadurai in order to reflect upon the fluidity of Morrison’s and Naylor’s works. I show how these two novelists subvert Faulkner’s essentialist perception of truth, and of racial and gendered identity. They associate the myth of the Flying African with the notion of hybridity by making their male protagonists criss-cross Northern and Southern regions. I refer to Mae Gwendolyn Henderson’s article on “Speaking in Tongues” in my analysis of how Naylor subverts the patriarchal text of both Faulkner and Morrison in embarking on a more feminine version of the flying African, which she relates to an ex-slave, Sapphira Wade, a volatile female character who resists fixed claim over her story and identity. In dealing with the concept of hybridity, I show that Naylor rewrites both authors’ South by making Willow Springs a more fluid space, an assumption that unsettles the scores of critics who associate the island with authenticity and exclusive rootedness. / Ma thèse est une étude comparative entre William Faulkner, Toni Morrison et Gloria Naylor. Elle me permet d’explorer comment les protagonistes males construisent leur identités en se référant à la possession matérialiste et en se basant sur la subordination de la femme, qui est une autre forme de possession, afin de consolider leur masculinité. Dans leurs textes respectifs, Go Down, Moses, Song of Solomon, et Mama Day, les trois auteurs, malgré leur différences culturelles et même littéraires, partagent l’idée que l’identité, l’histoire, et la vérité ne sont que des construits culturels et sociales. On se basant sur la théorie de Judith Butler et d’autres théoriciens poststructuralistes et contemporains, ma thèse reflète qu’il n’y a pas d’identité « naturelle » ou de réalité objective. La perception identitaire n’est qu’une illusion imaginaire et idéologique ou le sujet ne fait que répéter et performer le discours de son environnent. Faulkner, Morrison, et Naylor basent leurs oeuvres sur le thème de la liberté. Ils explorent comment, à partir de leurs corps, leurs caractères se conforment ou bien se détachent de l’idéologie qui confine leurs identités sexuelles, raciales et sociales. En critiquant, non seulement l’identité’ mais aussi l’histoire, ma thèse montre que les trois écrivains détruisent la perception que la vérité est objective surtout dans les documents historiques. Ainsi, la vérité devient qu’une forme de distorsion qui consolide une certaine idéologie. Ma thèse montre que les trois auteurs mettent en valeur la voix de la femme Afro-Américaine. Elle joue le rôle d’une médiatrice pour les protagonistes males. Elle rejette le discours matérialiste et sexiste. Cette voix féminine représente le thème de l’amour et la survie de sa communauté noire et la résistance raciale. La femme Afro-Américaine préserve la culture Africaine à travers son attachement à la tradition orale et à la connaissance intuitive. En se basant sur la tendance subversive de l’art et de la littérature postcoloniale qui est promulguée par les théories de Henry Louise Gates, Paul Gilroy, W. E. B Du Bois, James Clifford et Arjun Appadurai, je montre qu’à travers Toni Morrison et Gloria Naylor, le texte de Faulkner reste logocentrique et essentialiste dans sa vision hiérarchique de l’identité raciale et sexuelle. Morrison et Naylor se référant au mythe de l’Africain volant afin de justifier qu’il n’y a pas d’identité fixe et stable, donnant ainsi la voix a une identité hybride et fluide. En se basant sur l’article, « Parler en Langues » de Mae Gwendolyn Henderson, ma thèse explore comment en réécrivant d’autres textes, Gloria Naylor déconstruit non seulement Faulkner, mais aussi le sexisme qui demeure résident dans le texte de Toni Morrison. L’histoire de Willow Springs se base sur le mythe féminin d’une ex esclave Sapphira Wade, qui en étant volatile, son histoire et son identité résistent toute forme de catégorisations. En étudiant l’hybridité’ dans la culture Afro-Américaine, ma thèse montre que le Sud qui est décrit dans l’oeuvre de Mama Day est plus hybride que celui de Faulkner et Morrison.

« Ce qu’il y a de plus profond en l’homme, c’est la peau – en tant qu’il se connaît » écrit Paul Valéry dans L’Idée fixe. Peu d’œuvres autobiographiques se sont pourtant abandonnées à l’exploration de cette profondeur : depuis Rousseau, les impératifs du genre exigent d’aller in cute. L’Histoire de ma vie est de ce petit nombre. Casanova, longtemps l’homme de toutes les superficialités, parcourt sans discontinuer cette surface de l’être, non pour s’y oublier, mais justement « en tant qu’il se connaît ». Sur l’épiderme, s’affichent les plus vertigineuses métamorphoses autant que se dévoilent les plus éclatantes révélations : l’homme y découvre de quelle étoffe il est fait. La réflexivité du récit de soi ne saurait faire l’économie de cette médiation, et ce que tente de retrouver l’écrivain au fil des pages, c’est moins une vérité ou une essence qu’un corps à nouveau capable de profondeur. L’œuvre tend à recomposer ses tissus, à rétablir sa splendeur et à rejouer ses élans, espérant ainsi triompher de la seule réalité véritablement superficielle : le Temps. La mémoire du désir renvoie à cette anamnèse charnelle, qui se déploie à l’écart de la conscience et de l’intériorité mais au sein du théâtre des peaux et des parures. L’Histoire de ma vie tente d’en recueillir et d’en relancer l’intensité, de redonner au sujet écrivant cette chair perdue, la seule qu’il connaisse et que chaque ligne tente de reconquérir. Cette mémoire à sa temporalité propre, elle façonne un sujet inédit et génère un régime d’écriture singulier : elle ouvre ainsi au sein de l’univers des écritures du Moi un espace immense et encore insuffisamment exploré. / «What is deepest in man, it is the skin - as he knows himself," wrote Paul Valéry in L’idée fixe. Few autobiographical works have quite explored of this depth: since Rousseau, the imperatives of the genre require to go in cute. L’Histoire de ma vie belongs to this little number. Casanova, for long man of all superficialities, runs continuously the surface of being, not to forget himself, but precisely "as he knows himself." On the epidermis, appear the most dizzying metamorphoses as the most brilliant revelations: man discovers of what stuff is made. The reflexivity of the narrative itself cannot do without this mediation, and that the writer tries to find as the pages go by, it's less a truth or essence than a body again capable of depth. The work tends to recompose its tissues, to restore its splendor and to replay his impulses, hoping to overcome the only truly superficial reality: Time. Desire’s memory refers to this carnal anamnesis, which unfolds away from consciousness and interiority but in the theater of skins and ornaments. L’Histoire de ma vie tries to collect and to raise the intensity, giving back to the subject writing this flesh lost, the only one he knows and that each line is trying to regain. This memory has its own temporality; it shapes a unique subject and generates a unique writing system: it opens within the world of writing of the self an immense space and still insufficiently explored.

This text explores the question of reasons for morality and the related issues, particularly the nature and the source of moral motivation. First, I elaborate the metaphysical distinction between subjective and objective, which concerns the status of moral reasons and the extent to which a human agent in involved in their genesis. Next, I raise some questions about moral motivation and I introduce briefly some contemporary views on these issues. Major part of the work is dedicated to the exposition of Kierkegaard's position, which combines subjective motivation for ethics (avoidance of personally perceived symptoms of despair) and objectively grounded reasons for morality (sin). Philosophers interested in moral motivation typically look for fundamental moral principles and compelling arguments in favour of being moral, but Kierkegaard turns the attention of his readers to the task of their own selves. His pseudonyms do not look for an objective moral principle, they show why the ethical life-view is essential for attainment of true selfhood. In this work, I compare some contemporary accounts of moral motivation to Kierkegaard's, I comment critically on some interpretations of Kierkegaard and differentiate between different aspects of reason for choosing the ethical life, implied in his pseudonymous...

This thesis examines the links between and intersections of violence and subjectivity in a comparative, transatlantic and transnational study of the fiction of four recognized international authors, namely, Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy, J. M. Coetzee, and Yvonne Vera. Despite their differing geographical, temporal, cultural and socio-political situations and situatedness, these writers’ common, thematic concerns with taboo topics of violence such as rape, incest, infanticide and necrophilia, situate violence as a constitutive, intimate and intricate part of subjectivity. In providing varied, and not unproblematic, renderings of the mutuality of violence and subjectivity, their novels do not just reveal the ambiguous and ambivalent character and the fragile and tenuous processes of (exercising and asserting) subjectivity; their fiction enacts and engenders its own kind of textual violence that reflects and refracts the (metaphysical and epistemological) violence of the subjective process. Raising crucial questions about the place, role and efficacy of literature in articulating violence and subjectivity, this thesis argues that violence is meaningful to and constitutive of the subjective process in these authors’ works that offer an experiential, lived appreciation of subjectivity. Providing an historical and socio-political contextualization of the novels, the thesis maintains that these authors’ specific interpretations of violence in their fiction necessarily interrogates and reconfigures questions of race and culture, gender and sexuality, as well as morality; that is, it reexamines and repositions conventional interpretations of being and belonging, of subjectivity in general. In this way, their fiction reveals literature’s ability not merely to disprove theory but, through its very textuality, extend and enhance it to reflect the materiality of being.

Dans notre étude, nous retraçons le chemin d’une reconstruction de la raison pratique à partir du concept de responsabilité. La théorie de la communication est en mesure de nous fournir les moyens théoriques pour saisir l’étroite relation entre responsabilité et normativité pratique, tant au niveau de la reconstruction de la raison pratique, qu’à celui de son application. Néanmoins, il ne s’agit pas d’une reconstruction du mouvement d’ensemble de la pensée de Habermas. Bien au contraire, nous procédons, tel est notre choix méthodologique, par une mise en relief de l’ouverture dialogique de la théorie de la communication à ses interlocuteurs. La théorie de la communication veut restaurer toute la richesse pratique du concept de responsabilité dans ses droits en s’appuyant sur une critique de la subjectivité moderne. Néanmoins, une critique de la théorie de la communication peut montrer que le moment de la constitution de l’intersubjectivité va de pair avec celui du sujet de la communication. / In our study, we are tracing the way of the reconstruction of the practical reason starting from the concept of responsibility. The theory of communication can provide us with the theoretical tools in order to understand the close relation between responsibility and the normative core of practice at the level of the reconstruction of the practical reason as also of its application. Nevertheless, our study does not have for his object the reconstruction of Habermas’ thought as a whole. On the contrary, our methodological choice is to proceed based on the emphasis on the opening of the dialogue of the theory of communication towards its interlocutors. The theory of communication attempts to restore the whole practical richness of the concept of responsibility underpinning a critique of the modern subjectivity. Nevertheless, a critique of the theory of communication can show that the moment of the constitution of the intersubjectivity is consistent with that of the subject of communication.

Rapporter 'j'ai vu le stimulus' est la marque de la vision consciente et implique deux caractéristiques fondamentales de l'expérience consciente, à savoir son aspect qualitatif et la subjectivité. L'aspect qualitatif correspond à la perception vive du stimulus, alors que la subjectivité correspond à la conscience implicite que j'ai fait l'expérience du stimulus. Afin de déterminer les bases neurales de la subjectivité, nous introduisons le concept de cadre neural subjectif ('neural subjective frame') qui correspond aux mécanismes biologiques définissant le sujet en tant qu'une entité biologique, un point d'ancrage à partir duquel des expressions relatives à l'expérience consciente à la première personne peuvent être formulées. De plus, je propose que la représentation neurale de l'information viscérale pourrait constituer ce cadre neural subjectif. Afin de tester expérimentalement cette hypothèse, à l'aide de la magnétoencéphalographie, nous avons enregistré les réponses neuronales aux battements cardiaques, pendant que les participants réalisaient une tâche de détection visuelle. Nous avons trouvé que les réponses neuronales aux battements cardiaques avant la présentation du stimulus, dans le cortex cingulaire ventral antérieur et le lobule postérieur intrapariétal droit, pouvaient prédire la détection d'un stimulus visuel de faible contraste. Les réponses neuronales aux battements cardiaques de plus forte amplitude s'accompagnaient d'un taux de détection et d'une sensibilité plus importants, sans changement du critère de décision. Ni les fluctuations des paramètres corporels ni l'excitabilité corticale générale ne semblent contribuer à ces résultats. Par ailleurs, le fait de voir consciemment le stimulus a ralenti le battement cardiaque après la réponse des participants et cet effet de décélération cardiaque pouvait être prédit par la réponse neuronale aux battements cardiaques du cortex cingulaire antérieur ventral, avant la présentation du stimulus. Ainsi, nos résultats sont en faveur de l’hypothèse selon laquelle la cartographie des afférents viscéraux façonne notre expérience subjective perceptive. Au-delà de la vision consciente, ces résultats suggèrent que les signaux internes du corps et leurs représentations neuronales peuvent être la source de fluctuations dans des aires corticales multi-fonctionnelles. / Reporting “I saw the stimulus” is the hallmark of conscious vision and implies two fundamental characteristics of conscious experience, namely qualitativeness and subjectivity. Qualitativeness refers to the vivid feeling of the stimulus, whereas subjectivity refers to the implicit awareness that the experience occurred for me. To account for the neural basis of subjectivity, we introduce a concept termed the neural subjective frame which corresponds to the basic biological mechanisms defining the subject as a biological entity, as an anchoring point from which the first-person statements of conscious experience can be expressed. I further propose that neural representation of visceral information could constitute the neural subjective frame. To experimentally test this proposal, using magnetoencephalography, we recorded neural events locked to heartbeats while participants conducted visual detection task. We found that neural responses to heartbeats before stimulus onset in ventral anterior cingulate and right posterior intraparietal lobule could predict the detection of faint visual stimulus. Larger amplitude of neural responses to heartbeats were accompanied by enhanced hit-rate and sensitivity, but without changes in decision criterion. Neither fluctuations in measured bodily parameters nor in overall cortical excitability could account for this finding. In addition, consciously seeing the stimulus decelerated heartbeat after participants responded and the heartbeat slowing effect could be predicted from the prestimulus neural responses to heartbeats in ventral anterior cingulate cortex. Our findings therefore support the hypothesis that neural mapping of visceral afferents shape perceptual subjective experience. Beyond conscious vision, our findings suggest that signals from internal body and their neural representations could be sources of fluctuations in multi-functional cortical areas.

Ce travail porte sur la fonction des éducateurs spécialisés en institution. Malgré les différents profils des éducateurs et leurs différents cadres d’intervention (spatiaux et temporels), la fonction éducative peut être définie comme fonction « chorale », en référence au choeur de la tragédie grecque, dans sa qualité première d’institution. La métaphore tragique a permis d’envisager cette fonction selon le paradigme groupal proposé par la métapsychologie. Les théories psychanalytiques du groupe rendent possible l’examen du travail du lien intersubjectif et de la question des transferts dans l’éducation spécialisée, tant du coté de l’équipe éducative que du coté des « confiés ». La fonction éducative conçue comme fonction « chorale », fonction d’une psyché groupale, permet de penser les relations éducatives plurielles dans leur potentiel de figuration, contribuant à la tâche primaire. La problématique du lien intersubjectif s’avère pertinente pour fonder une « clinique éducative ». / This work concerns the educative function of caseworkers in institution. Despite the caseworkers‘ different profiles and their different frameworks (time and space related), the educative function could be described as a choral function in reference to the Greek tragedy’s choir, in its institution first quality. The tragic metaphor made it possible to think this function according to the group paradigm offered by metapsychology(psychoanalysis). Group psychoanalytical theories made it possible to examine the inter‐subjective link and the question of transfer in social work, so much for the caseworkers than the “users”. The educative function, as a choral function, function of group psyche, allowed us to think the plural educative relationship in their conformation potential, contributing to the primary task. The inter‐subjective link problematic turns out to be relevant to found a “clinic of education”.

Cette thèse porte sur l'héritage reçu par les générations suivant l'arrivée des premiers migrants venus du Maghreb et plus largement du monde islamique. L'immigré est un exilé du ventre, des conditions de vie difficile l'ont conduit à aller chercher ailleurs, à s'exiler. Arrivé sur les côtes de l'occident son monde est remis en cause. Notamment par l'apparition de l'objet « a » bien souvent caché sous un voile sur les terres d'Islam. Le désir et les tentations engendrent un traumatisme du fait d'un bouleversement du discours de l'Autre en soi...La parole de l'Autre tombe comme une prédestination. Pour l'héritier de l'exil cette question s'accentue encore, comme le dira Lacan « L'inconscient c'est le désir de l'Autre », quelque chose se transmet au-delà du message…la déchirure de l'exil se transmet et l'exil physique vient recouvrir l'exil du langage. / This thesis deals with the legacy inherited from the generations after the arrival of the first migrants from the Maghreb and more broadly from the Islamic world. The immigrant is an exile of the womb, difficult living conditions led him to go and seek elsewhere, to go into exile. Once on the coasts of the Occident his world is called into question. Particularly with the emergence of the object « a » frequently hidden under a veil on the lands of Islam. Desire and temptations lead to a trauma due to the turmoil in the speech of the Other in oneself...The word of the Other befalls as a predestination. For the heir to the exile this question becomes more marked, as Lacan says « the unconscious is the desire of the Other », something is imparted beyond the message… the wrench of the exile is transmitted and the physical exile comes and covers the exile of the language.