Comment se dire « intellectuelle » lorsque, comme Annie Ernaux, on porte la double illégitimité du transfuge de classe et du sujet féminin, pratiquement absent des figures d’intellectuels en France ? Pourtant, la conception d’Annie Ernaux de l’écriture comme un acte politique et ses prises de position fréquentes dans les médias français la rapprochent de la figure de l’intellectuel. Ce mémoire se propose ainsi de formuler dans un premier temps une définition de l’intellectuelle, à partir de laquelle il sera possible de penser l’engagement de l’auteure et sa présentation de soi dans l’espace public. Par l’étude de l’entretien L’écriture comme un couteau (2003), puis de l’autobiographie impersonnelle Les années (2008), il s’agira dans un second temps de montrer comment Annie Ernaux présente un ethos d’intellectuelle et de voir comment elle dépasse le modèle de l’intellectuelle « qui se mêle de ce qui ne le regarde pas » (Sartre, 1972), grâce à la variété de voix qu’elle adopte dans ses écrits : celles de l’autobiographe, de l’ethnologue, de l’auteure « impliquée », de la transfuge, de la « cheftaine » de famille, de la femme vieillissante. Si elle en dépasse le modèle, n’est-ce pas également parce qu’elle s’identifie d’abord à sa situation de transfuge de classe ? Traversée par les sentiments de culpabilité et de responsabilité propres au transfuge, l’auteure fait de sa position de l’entre-deux classes un moteur d’écriture, pour donner une voix aux dominés au sein de son œuvre auto-socio-biographique. L’analyse de L’écriture comme un couteau esquissera ainsi les bases conceptuelles de son ethos de transfuge intellectuelle, alors que dans Les années, l’étude des voix narratives au « on », au « nous » et au « elle » explorera l’entrelacement de l’intime au social, de l’expérience singulière à la mémoire collective. En somme, par l’attention accordée à l’ethos dans ces deux œuvres, ce mémoire se propose d’étudier comment Annie Ernaux se constitue comme une figure légitime de transfuge et d’intellectuelle au sein de l’espace public de son époque. / How can an author call himself an « intellectual », especially when one, such as Annie Ernaux, cumulates both the illegitimacy of a class-passer and a feminine subject? Yet, her vision of writing as a political activity and her positions in the media do assimilate her to the figure of the intellectual. This dissertation thereby aims to provide a definition of the intellectual woman, to which Annie Ernaux’s example contributes significantly. Studying the author interview L’écriture comme un couteau (2003) and her impersonal autobiography Les années (2008), I intend to show how Annie Ernaux displays the ethos of an intellectual and even moves beyond the model, while she embodies the figures of the autobiographer, the ethnologist, the "involved" writer, the class-passer, the head of family, and the aging woman. If she surpasses that model, isn’t it also because she primarily identifies herself as a class-passer? Driven by the class-passer’s sense of guilt and responsibility, Annie Ernaux uses the sensation of being in-between social classes to enable her writing. Therefore, her auto-socio-biographical works become a literary commitment to the dominated. The study of L’écriture comme un couteau will define the conceptual basis of Annie Ernaux’s ethos as an class-passer intellectual, while in Les années, the analysis of the narrative voices « on », « nous » and « elle » will explore how the intimate intricates itself to the social, the subjective experience to the collective memory. In other words, while studying the ethos in Annie Ernaux’s works, this dissertation examines how the author has shaped an image of herself as a legitimate class-passer intellectual within the public sphere of her time.

Understanding how the Renaissance rhetorical curriculum taught style as behavior makes it possible to unite the study of women writers' identities with formal criticism. Nancy L. Christiansen shows that early modern humanists built on the Isocratean tradition of teaching rhetoric as an ethical practice because they adopted and developed lists of rhetorical figures so extensive as to encompass all human discourse, thought, and behavior. For them, knowing, selecting, and applying these various forms was the ethical practice of good judgment, also called decorum. This type of decorum plays an important role in the rhetorical function of two key texts by early modern women. Margaret Fell and Aemilia Lanyer each use a humanist notion of decorum as the virtue of good judgment to formulate their intellectual and moral authority and to argue that women can exercise the same.

Cette thèse de doctorat renouvelle les réflexions autour du « carcéral » afin de le repenser comme un instrument politique et social coercitif, qui saisit et emprisonne des sujets, des collectivités, des alternatives émancipatrices et des capacités imaginatives. S’appuyant sur des récits de femmes du « tiers monde » (We Lived to Tell : Azadeh Agah, Sousan Mehr, Shadi Parsi, 2007 ; Memoirs from the Women’s Prison : Nawal El Saadawi, 1984 ; Imaginary Maps : Mahasweta Devi, 1994 ; Zoo City : Lauren Beukes, 2010 ; Moxyland : Lauren Beukes, 2008), nous explorons de multiples tropes et sites d’emprisonnement, d’enfermement, de sujétion et d’immobilisation, qui renforcent les logiques carcérales et qui entravent l’agence collective. Nous présentons une critique genrée des mécanismes locaux et mondiaux, micropolitiques et macropolitiques de la violence contre les sujets captifs et les communautés précaires. Ce dispositif de déconstruction se base sur une analyse multidisciplinaire des arrangements carcéraux, qui incluent des institutions punitives, des États-nations hétéronormatifs, des discours patriarcaux, le trafic sexuel, la servitude pour dettes, le capitalisme, la surveillance numérique, la privation économique et la déshumanisation politique. Ce travail de recherche invite également à une relecture de récits carcéraux qui permettent la réinvention des vocabulaires, des pratiques et de l’éthique de résistance, ainsi que l’émergence de projets collectifs de libération qui transgressent les confins politiques, sociaux, discursifs et épistémologiques de l’agenda néolibéral. À travers ses différents cadres théoriques, notre lecture s’engage dans un dialogue critique entre les études littéraires, féministes, postcoloniales et matérialistes, afin d’élucider de nouvelles façons de penser la carcéralité, la liberté et la résistance. / This dissertation seeks to produce new understandings of the “carceral” as a mode of subject formation and social production that captures and contains subjects, collectivities, emancipatory alternatives, and imaginative capacities. Drawing on “Third-World” women’s narratives (We Lived to Tell : Azadeh Agah, Sousan Mehr, Shadi Parsi, 2007 ; Memoirs from the Women’s Prison : Nawal El Saadawi, 1984 ; Imaginary Maps : Mahasweta Devi, 1994 ; Zoo City : Lauren Beukes, 2010 ; Moxyland : Lauren Beukes, 2008), this dissertation investigates multiple tropes and sites of imprisonment, enclosure, subjection, and immobilization that reinforce carceral logics and impede collective agency. Through a multidisciplinary examination of carceral arrangements that include punitive institutions, heteronormative nation states, patriarchal discourses, sexual trafficking, debt bondage, global capital, political dehumanization, digital surveillance, and corporate violence, this dissertation offers a gendered critique of the local and global, micropolitical and macropolitical mechanisms of violence against captive subjects and precarious communities. The dissertation also invites a rereading of carceral narratives that enable the reinvention of vocabularies, ethics, and practices of resistance and the emergence of collective liberatory projects that transgress the political, social, discursive, and epistemological confines of the neoliberal agenda. Through its different theoretical frameworks, this dissertation engages in a critical dialogue between literary, feminist, postcolonial, and materialist studies in order to elucidate new ways of thinking about carcerality, freedom, and resistance.

Thèse en cotutelle / Le genre du manifeste prend son essor dans la première moitié du XXe siècle, notamment dans le contexte des avant-gardes historiques en réaction aux nombreux bouleversements sociopolitiques et esthétiques à l’aube des deux guerres mondiales. Alors que les signataires des manifestes dits « fondateurs » des mouvements futuriste, dadaïste et surréaliste se sont vu arroger le titre de « chef de file » dans la foulée de leur publication, la faible participation des femmes dans leur élaboration est remarquable, se limitant tout au plus à une co-signature (comme dans le cas de Sophie Taeuber et du manifeste Dada-Zurich). Or, nombreuses sont les autrices et les artistes à avoir investi ce genre mêlant création et théorie dans une volonté de négocier avec la pensée dominante d’un mouvement avant-gardiste donné et – cela va sans dire – avec les conventions littéraires et esthétiques institutionnalisées. Observer leurs productions dans une approche à la fois féministe et rhétorique montre que les femmes signataires investissent singulièrement cette écriture marquée par la provocation et la violence verbale. Elles forcent ainsi la redéfinition des trois principes fondateurs du geste manifestaire : l’opposition, l’imposition et le regroupement. En résultent des programmes polémiques en réaction explicite aux manifestes officiels ainsi qu’à d’autres consacrés à la défense et à l’illustration d’une pensée artistique qui se veut plus indépendante des textes signés par des hommes. En se mettant elles-mêmes en scène, les créatrices incarnent des positions de dissociation par rapport à certaines idées, valeurs ou pratiques scripturaires et artistiques défendues plus largement dans l’un ou l’autre des mouvements. Dès lors, le manifeste devient le lieu d’une réelle performance de soi rendant possible l’appropriation par les femmes de ce genre historiquement investi par les hommes pour l’adapter à un discours qui s’inscrit dans une marginalité complète. / The genre of the manifesto is linked to the cultural history of the first half of the 20th century with the historical avant-gardes, in reaction to the numerous socio-political and aesthetic upheavals at the dawn of the two world wars. While the signatories of the so-called « founding » manifestos of the Futurist, Dada and Surrealist movements were given the title of « chef de file » in the wake of their publication, the low level of participation by women in their elaboration is remarkable, limited at most to a co-signature (such as Sophie Taeuber with the Dada-Zurich manifesto). Yet many female authors and artists have taken up this genre, which combines creation and theory, in a desire to negotiate with the dominant thought of a given avant-garde movement and – it goes without saying – with institutionalized literary and aesthetic conventions. Observing their productions from both a feminist and a rhetorical perspective shows that the women signatories are singularly invested in this form of writing marked by provocation and verbal violence. In doing so, they force a redefinition of the three founding principles of the manifesto gesture: opposition, coercion and grouping. The result is polemical programs in explicit reaction to official manifestos, as well as others devoted to the defense and illustration of an artistic thought more independent of texts signed by men. By putting themselves on stage, women creators embody positions of dissociation from certain ideas, values or scriptural and artistic practices defended more broadly in one or other of the movements. From then on, the manifesto becomes the site of a real self-performance, making it possible for women to appropriate a genre historically invested by men and adapt it to a discourse that is completely marginal.

Les trois premiers récits de Nelly Arcan présentent des narratrices (Putain, 2001 ; Folle, 2004) et des protagonistes (À ciel ouvert, 2007) habitées par un état d’absence à soi et au monde. Paraissant n’être jamais tout à fait là, elles ont en commun une présence au monde spectrale ainsi qu’un sentiment de vacuité dont émerge le désir de pousser à son paroxysme l’effacement de soi. C’est à ces personnages féminins dont la subjectivité paraît rompue d’emblée que s’intéresse ce mémoire, en proposant de qualifier cet état trouble de « dépersonne », terme employé par Marguerite Duras pour décrire l’héroïne de son roman Le ravissement de Lol V. Stein (1964) avec qui les personnages d’Arcan partagent plusieurs ressemblances mais aussi certaines divergences. Il s’agira d’interroger, dans une perspective féministe et à la lumière des concepts psychanalytiques de l’inquiétante étrangeté et du stade du miroir, les manifestations et conséquences de la « dépersonne » en postulant qu’elles s’articulent principalement autour du rapport qu’entretiennent ces figures féminines à leur corps-objet et à l’altérité. Il sera question du décalage entre la conscience et le corps que produit « l’acharnement esthétique » qui cristallise l’image d’un vide intérieur et inscrit sur le corps et dans la psyché le paradoxe spectral d’une présence/absence. De cette obsession du corps naît également une difficulté à se différencier de l’autre féminin, de sorte que se profilent l’inquiétante figure du double ainsi qu’une conception sérielle de la féminité, lesquelles compliquent un rapport à autrui déjà fragilisé par un besoin désespéré, chez ces personnages, d’être vues et désirées, comme pour éprouver leur propre réalité sans cesse remise en doute. / Nelly Arcan’s first three publications feature narrators (Putain, 2001; Folle, 2004) and characters (À ciel ouvert, 2007) afflicted by a state of absence from themselves and the world. Seemingly never quite there, they share a spectral presence, and a sense of emptiness from which emerges a desire to bring their self-effacement to its completion. This dissertation focuses on these female characters whose subjectivity seems fractured from the outset, proposing to name this troubled state “dépersonne”, a term used by Marguerite Duras to describe the protagonist of her novel Le ravissement de Lol V. Stein (1964), with whom Arcan’s characters share many similarities but also some divergences. From a feminist perspective, and in light of the psychoanalytical concepts of the uncanny and the mirror stage, this research will examine the manifestations and consequences of this “dépersonne”, postulating that they mainly revolve around these female figures’ relationship to their bodies and to others. It will analyse the offset between the conscience and the body that is produced by the relentless work the characters operate on their physical appearance, which is called by Arcan “l’acharnement esthétique” and which crystallizes the image of an inner void and inscribes on the body and psyche the spectral paradox of a presence/absence. This obsession also creates a difficulty in differentiating oneself from the feminine Other: this evokes the troubling figure of the double and a serial conception of femininity, both of which complicate a relationship to alterity that is already fragilized by a desperate need in Arcan’s characters to be seen and desired, as to test their own reality constantly called into question.

Fay Weldon is a popular, prolific author whose oeuvre stretches from 1967 to the present and includes 20 novels, three collections of short stories and numerous stage, radio and television plays, scripts and adaptations. This thesis limits itself to her fiction and follows the chronological course of Weldon's writing career in five chapters. Fay Weldon's fiction, situated at the intersection of postmodemism and feminism, is doubly subversive. It both overturns 'reasonable' narrative conventions and wittily deconstructs the specious terminology used to define women. Weldon's disobedient female protagonists - madwomen, criminals, outcasts and she-devils - assert the power of the Other. Gynocentric themes - single parenthood, sisterhood, reproduction, motherhood, sex and marriage - are transformed by Weldon into uproarious feminist revenge comedy. This she achieves through an intertextuality which often involves unorthodox typography, genreswopping and metafictional devices. Moreover, a unique ventriloquism enables her omniscient first-person narrators to mimic 'Fay Weldon' herself. Since her narrators are rebels and iconoclasts, Weldon has always been viewed as a subversive individual worthy of media attention, especially interviews. For this reason, and because she is a woman writer who struggled initially against social and domestic odds, the thesis incorporates in its argument the author's biography and public personae. Chapter One explores the connections between Weldon's first novels - notably Down Among the Women (1971) - and early liberationist and anthropological feminism. In Chapter Two, Bakhtin's dialogic imagination and Derrida's differance provide the basis for a discussion of multiplicity in Weldon's novels of the late 1970s, particularly Praxis (1979), shortlisted for the Booker prize. Chapter Three tests the limits of a psychoanalytical model in accounting for Weldon's novels of (m)Otherhood, including The Life and Loves of a SheDevil (1983). Theories of humour and carnival inform Chapter Four's analysis of how Weldon's wit - at its tendentious best in The Heart of the Country (1987) - declines into innocence. Finally, Chapter Five sees Weldon's flagging literary reputation as the symptom of authorial exhaustion and retreat from a feminist agenda. This concluding chapter is, however, ultimately optimistic that the mercurial author's undeniable talents may reassert themselves / English Studies / D.Litt. et Phil. (English)

Contemporary scholarship has seen increasing interest in the study of elegy. The present work attempts to elevate and expand discussions of death and survival beyond the ambit of elegy to a more genre-inclusive and ethically sensitive survey of Romantic posthumous life writings. Combining an ethic of remembrance founded on mutual fulfilment and reciprocal care with the Romantic tendency to hybridise different genres of mourning and commemoration, the study re- conceives 'posthumous life' as the 'inexhaustible' product of endless collaboration between the dead, the dying and the living. This thesis looks to the philosophical meditations of Francis Bacon, John Locke and Emmanuel Levinas for an ethical framework of human protection, fulfilment and preservation. In an effort to locate the origin of posthumous life writing, the first chapter examines the philosophical context in which different genres and media of commemoration emerged in the eighteenth century. Accordingly, it will commence with a survey of Enlightenment attitudes toward posthumous sympathy and the threat of death. The second part of the chapter turns to the tangled histories of epitaph, biography, portraiture, sepulchre and elegy in the writings of Samuel Johnson, Henry Kett, Vicesimus Knox, William Godwin and William Wordsworth. The Romantic culture of mourning and commemoration inherits the intellectual and generic legacies of the Enlightenment. Hence, Chapter Two will try to uncover the complex generic and formal crossovers between epitaph, extempore, effusion, elegy and biography in Wordsworth's 'Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg' (1835-7) and his 'Epitaph' (1835-7) for Charles Lamb. However, the chapter also recognises the ethical repercussions of Wordsworth's inadequate, even mortifying, treatment of a fellow woman writer in his otherwise successful expression of ethical remembrance. To address the problem of gender in Romantic memorialisation, Chapter Three will take a close look at Letitia Elizabeth Landon' s reply to Wordsworth's incompetent defence of Felicia Hemans. Mediating the ambitions and anxieties of her subject, as well as her public image and private pain, 'Felicia Hemans' (1838) is an audacious composite of autograph, epitaph, elegy, corrective biography and visual portraiture. The two closing chapters respond to Thomas Carlyle's outspoken confidence in 'Portraits and Letters' as indispensable aids to biographies. Chapter Four identifies a tentative connection between the aesthetic of visual portraiture and the ethic of life writing. To demonstrate the convergence of both artistic and humane principles, this cross-media analysis will first evaluate Sir Joshua Reynolds's memoirs of his deceased friends. Then, it will compare Wordsworth's and Hemans's verse reflections on the commemorative power and limitation of iconography. The last chapter assesses the role of private correspondence in the continuation of familiar relation and reciprocal support. Landon's dramatic enactment of a 'feminine Robinson Crusoe' in her letters from Africa urges the unbroken offering of service and remembrance to a fallen friend through posthumous correspondence. The concluding section will consider the ethical implications for the belated memorials and services furnished by friends and colleagues in the wake of her death.

The thesis deals with the picture of woman in the Croatian prose and its transformations from realism to present times. The main aim of the thesis is to map out characteristics of the female subject primarily within discourses of feminist critique in the context of social aspects of the Croatian milieu. Thesis focuses on analysis of female characters that firstly embodies the social hierarchy, secondly represents the mythological concept of femininity and thirdly works towards confrontation of feminine identity with the patriachal phallogocentric discourse. It also focuses on the analysis of femininity, sensibility and sexuality. The main part of the thesis comprises the analyses of nine selected texts written by Croatian authors, namely Goldsmith's gold by August Šenoa, In the Registrar's Office by Antun Kovačić, Diary by Dragojla Jarnević, Melita by J. E. Tomić, The Last of the Stipančićs by Vjenceslav Novak, The Return of Philip Latinowicz by Miroslav Krleža, Marina; or, About Biography by Irena Vrkljan, Divine Hunger by Slavenka Drakulić and Ministry of Pain by Dubravka Ugrešić. The thesis shows the transformation of female characters by the influence of intellectual concepts and specific cultural situation in patriarchal society. Texts are chosen for typological diversity, which aims to cover...

Fay Weldon is a popular, prolific author whose oeuvre stretches from 1967 to the present and includes 20 novels, three collections of short stories and numerous stage, radio and television plays, scripts and adaptations. This thesis limits itself to her fiction and follows the chronological course of Weldon's writing career in five chapters. Fay Weldon's fiction, situated at the intersection of postmodemism and feminism, is doubly subversive. It both overturns 'reasonable' narrative conventions and wittily deconstructs the specious terminology used to define women. Weldon's disobedient female protagonists - madwomen, criminals, outcasts and she-devils - assert the power of the Other. Gynocentric themes - single parenthood, sisterhood, reproduction, motherhood, sex and marriage - are transformed by Weldon into uproarious feminist revenge comedy. This she achieves through an intertextuality which often involves unorthodox typography, genreswopping and metafictional devices. Moreover, a unique ventriloquism enables her omniscient first-person narrators to mimic 'Fay Weldon' herself. Since her narrators are rebels and iconoclasts, Weldon has always been viewed as a subversive individual worthy of media attention, especially interviews. For this reason, and because she is a woman writer who struggled initially against social and domestic odds, the thesis incorporates in its argument the author's biography and public personae. Chapter One explores the connections between Weldon's first novels - notably Down Among the Women (1971) - and early liberationist and anthropological feminism. In Chapter Two, Bakhtin's dialogic imagination and Derrida's differance provide the basis for a discussion of multiplicity in Weldon's novels of the late 1970s, particularly Praxis (1979), shortlisted for the Booker prize. Chapter Three tests the limits of a psychoanalytical model in accounting for Weldon's novels of (m)Otherhood, including The Life and Loves of a SheDevil (1983). Theories of humour and carnival inform Chapter Four's analysis of how Weldon's wit - at its tendentious best in The Heart of the Country (1987) - declines into innocence. Finally, Chapter Five sees Weldon's flagging literary reputation as the symptom of authorial exhaustion and retreat from a feminist agenda. This concluding chapter is, however, ultimately optimistic that the mercurial author's undeniable talents may reassert themselves / English Studies / D.Litt. et Phil. (English)