Riverine avulsion is a radical divergence of a riverbed. In this dissertation, I take this movement as a paradigm for understanding the features of radical change. I develop a model for understanding the essential features of radical change. I argue that the main features involved in avulsion are tension, abandonment, and material freedom. In my analysis, tension provides the catalyst for change, such that it pressurizes complex systems of organization to the point of collapse. I use Catherine Malabou's work on denegation to understand the collapse of a system as an accident; the rupture of a system entails that it is no longer affirmed nor negated, it is abandoned by the process of becoming. Utilizing the work of Deleuze, I present the moment of rupture itself as the moment where materiality breaks free from the restrictions of an organizing system to becoming consolidated into countless new forms of organization. In my analysis of the ontology of avulsion, I employ a new materialist process of becoming to capture the complex networks of relations involved in the moment of creation. I challenge these Deleuzean and new materialist fields of philosophy over their affinity for affirmation by integrating accidental abandonment. Finally, I propose a potentiality for the freedom of materiality as a transcendental property of all systems of organization, thereby revealing their precarious continuity and inevitable abandonment.

Il y aurait interaction constante entre théâtre comique, masque et pouvoir que nous examinons à travers une lecture intertextuelle et comparative des pièces françaises, francophones et égyptiennes des XIXe et XXe siècles, en mettant l’accent sur les techniques de camouflage et leurs objectifs, témoins d’une continuité entre les cultures. Nous démontrons que la distanciation, bien que rattachée au monde sérieux de la dramaturgie brechtienne, excelle surtout dans le théâtre comique du masque. Ce projet comporte en fait trois parties. Dans une première partie, nous passons en revue dans le premier chapitre les métamorphoses du masque avec ses procédés en arrimant théâtre comique et notion du pouvoir. Nous posons ensuite dans un second chapitre l’assise théorique et méthodologique qui sert de base à notre étude, en abordant le théâtre du masque comme un procédé dramaturgique de distanciation. Nous examinons premièrement la distanciation à travers les zones du texte (didascalies, prologue, spectacle enchâssé), où le théâtre se dit comme tel. Nous consacrons la deuxième partie à l’exploration de tous les procédés d’étrangéisation employés par les dramaturges en vue de distancier le personnage portant le masque du pouvoir, en mettant en lumière son caractère bouffon et carnavalesque. Le travestissement sous ses divers aspects impose un rapport de forces entre les personnages qui se manifeste à travers l’échange verbal et non verbal derrière le masque ainsi que l’espace et la temporalité, et constitue un vecteur de distanciation, comme on le voit dans la troisième partie. Le cadre spatio-temporel, étant le support d’un jeu de faire-semblant, enracine la relation de domination occasionnée par le masque. Du fictif se dégage une image du réel. / There would be constant interaction between comic theater, mask, and power that we examine through a comparative and intertextual reading of French francophone, and egyptian plays from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; focusing on the techniques of camouflage and their targets, which affirm continuity between cultures. We show that “distanciation”, although attached to the serious world of Brechtian dramaturgy, excels in the comic theater of the mask. This project comprises of three parts. In the first chapter of the initial part, we review the metamorphoses of the mask with its processes, by matching comic theater and concept of power. Then we put in a second chapter ,the theoretical basis and methodology, used as the basis for our study; addressing the theater of the mask as a dramatic process of “distanciation”. Firstly we examine the distance through the zones of the text (stage directions, prologue, & embedded shows), where the theater is presented alike. We devote the second part to the exploration of all the processes employed by the playwrights, in order to distance the character wearing the mask of power, highlighting its comic and carnivalesque aspects. The travesty in its various facets imposes a balance of power (relationship of power) between the characters. Which is manifested through verbal and non verbal exchange behind the mask ,space, and time which are vectors of distanciation (as seen in the third part). The spatio-temporal framework, being the holder of a game of make-believe, rooted the relationship of domination caused by the mask. The fictitious emerges an image of reality.

This dissertation examines the reconfiguration of the limits of representation in reference to the intermediary function of angels. The Modernist engagement with the figure of the angel entailed, primarily, a reconsideration of the problem of representation as well as an attempt to trace the contours of a poetics that plays itself outside the mimetic understanding of representation. My contention is that this transformation of literary referentiality was not simply a disengagement of art from reality but, rather, from the truthfalsity, reality-fiction, subject-object dichotomies. The angel, defined as the figure of passage par excellence, but also as the agency that induces the transformation of the visible in the invisible and vice versa, appears both as a model/archetype and as a guide towards the illumination of this intermediary aesthetic. Working with the joined perspectives from angelology, contemporary phenomenology, and poetics, this dissertation is an extended overview of the notion of intermediary spaces, as well as an attempt to probe the relevance of this concept for the field of literary studies. In the first case, this dissertation offers a theoretical background to the concept of intermediality, seen in its theological, phenomenological, aesthetic and ethical significances. In the second case, it presents the reader with a heuristic apparatus for approaching this problematic in the field of literary interpretation and provides examples of ways in which such an analysis can become relevant. The primary texts discussed here are all examples of attempts to redefine the notion of representation away from the truth-falsity or subject-object oppositions, as well as to create an aesthetic space with its own particularities, at the limit between visibility and invisibility, excessive presence and absence. Nicholas of Cusa’s “Preface” to The Vision of God proposes an ethics of reading defined by admiratio (the consubstantiation of immediacy and distance) under the aegis of the all-seeing icon of God. Louis Marin’s reading of the episode of the Resurrection reveals that history and narrative arise from the conjunction of the excessive absence of the empty tomb of Jesus and the excessive presence announcing the resurrection of Christ. Sohravardî’s “Recital of the Crimson Angel” is a presentation of the space-between of revelation, between cognitio matutina and cognitio vespertina. Walter Benjamin’s “Agesilaus Santander” restores the connections between the exoteric and the esoteric under the patient gaze of “Angelus Novus”. Paul Valéry’s Eupalinos, ou l’Architecte explores the aesthetic of “real appearance” in the space-between the image and the perceiving eye. Poe and Malamud’s short stories reveal the affinities between poetic language and angelophany. Elie Wiesel’s Les portes de la forêt expands the apophatic itinerary from the self to the radically other in a hermeneutical gesture which has the angel as its initial and final guide. Finally, Rafael Alberti’s Sobre los ángeles shows that the aphaeretic function of poetic language is very similar to the apophatic treatment of the world as representation; in this last sense too, the angels are indispensible guides.

This dissertation examines the reconfiguration of the limits of representation in reference to the intermediary function of angels. The Modernist engagement with the figure of the angel entailed, primarily, a reconsideration of the problem of representation as well as an attempt to trace the contours of a poetics that plays itself outside the mimetic understanding of representation. My contention is that this transformation of literary referentiality was not simply a disengagement of art from reality but, rather, from the truthfalsity, reality-fiction, subject-object dichotomies. The angel, defined as the figure of passage par excellence, but also as the agency that induces the transformation of the visible in the invisible and vice versa, appears both as a model/archetype and as a guide towards the illumination of this intermediary aesthetic. Working with the joined perspectives from angelology, contemporary phenomenology, and poetics, this dissertation is an extended overview of the notion of intermediary spaces, as well as an attempt to probe the relevance of this concept for the field of literary studies. In the first case, this dissertation offers a theoretical background to the concept of intermediality, seen in its theological, phenomenological, aesthetic and ethical significances. In the second case, it presents the reader with a heuristic apparatus for approaching this problematic in the field of literary interpretation and provides examples of ways in which such an analysis can become relevant. The primary texts discussed here are all examples of attempts to redefine the notion of representation away from the truth-falsity or subject-object oppositions, as well as to create an aesthetic space with its own particularities, at the limit between visibility and invisibility, excessive presence and absence. Nicholas of Cusa’s “Preface” to The Vision of God proposes an ethics of reading defined by admiratio (the consubstantiation of immediacy and distance) under the aegis of the all-seeing icon of God. Louis Marin’s reading of the episode of the Resurrection reveals that history and narrative arise from the conjunction of the excessive absence of the empty tomb of Jesus and the excessive presence announcing the resurrection of Christ. Sohravardî’s “Recital of the Crimson Angel” is a presentation of the space-between of revelation, between cognitio matutina and cognitio vespertina. Walter Benjamin’s “Agesilaus Santander” restores the connections between the exoteric and the esoteric under the patient gaze of “Angelus Novus”. Paul Valéry’s Eupalinos, ou l’Architecte explores the aesthetic of “real appearance” in the space-between the image and the perceiving eye. Poe and Malamud’s short stories reveal the affinities between poetic language and angelophany. Elie Wiesel’s Les portes de la forêt expands the apophatic itinerary from the self to the radically other in a hermeneutical gesture which has the angel as its initial and final guide. Finally, Rafael Alberti’s Sobre los ángeles shows that the aphaeretic function of poetic language is very similar to the apophatic treatment of the world as representation; in this last sense too, the angels are indispensible guides.