Tableau d’honneur de la Faculté des études supérieures et postdoctorales, 2010-2011 / La recherche-création présentée dans ce mémoire est conçue de détours. Le mémoire lui-même est un détour. La rétroactivité motive son actualité. Cheminant de la performance à la photographie, retournant à la photographie par le dessin, en passant par l'organisation d'événements sans cesser de penser et d'écrire la pratique : la problématique disciplinaire, par le biais de ce que j'ai nommé l'hyperdisciplinarité, y est poursuivie. C'est néanmoins notre relation à la philosophie et à l'histoire de l'art qui en émerge. Les deux projets principaux qui sont présentés, L'Immédiat en différé et Deuil, trouvent une résonance auprès des écrits de Derrida. Aussi, sans en être au diapason, ils ne dissonent pas avec le mouvement romantique. Posant les questions de l'art et du langage -à quoi répond celle de l'ironie- c'est finalement les notions de «l'entre» et du temps qui nous emportent. À la différence des temps de la chronologie et de l'immédiateté, Déjà, hélas, enfin. Une fois pour toutes suggèrent ceux de l'éphémère romantique et du posthume.

Québec Université Laval, Bibliothèque 2013

<p>This is a study of the novel <em>Mes mauvaises pensées</em> (2005) by the French writer Nina Bouraoui. I use an intertextual comparative method, where I read the novel against three intertexts: Marie Cardinal <em>Les mots pour le dire</em> (1975), the David Lynch movie <em>Mulholland Drive </em>(2001) and novels and photographies by Hervé Guibert. Main focus is on the relation between body and language. Using the psychoanalytic theories by Julia Kristeva I examine the melancholy of the narrator in <em>Mes mauvaises pensées</em>. The melancholic subject mourns a Thing which is the unrepresentable archaic mother. Melancholy is connected to the notion of exile; the subject belongs to a lost place in the past which it is still holding on to. The narrator of <em>Mes mauvaises pensées</em> is still living in her childhood, even though she is a grown up woman. I show how the place from where she speaks is the child. The female body and the female sexuality are not represented in the text, there is a missing link between the female body and it’s representation in language – in the symbolic order. According to Kristeva the melancholic denies the loss of the Thing – in the end the mother – and clings to the unrepresentable void. By realizing and acknowledging the loss one can reconstruct the bond to the archaic mother in language. Bouraoui’s failure in writing <em>the feminine</em> into the text is interesting because it puts lights on the conditions of writing the body for women. The theory of l’écriture féminine is an inspiration for the analyses and I contrast it to Judith Butler’s idea of gender performativity. There is a conflict in what constitutes gender and sex between psychoanalysis and queer theory, which is also found in the narrator in Bouraoui’s novel – trying to create herself through pure performativity she never succeeds to act independently of the mother and the female body.</p>

This is a study of the novel Mes mauvaises pensées (2005) by the French writer Nina Bouraoui. I use an intertextual comparative method, where I read the novel against three intertexts: Marie Cardinal Les mots pour le dire (1975), the David Lynch movie Mulholland Drive (2001) and novels and photographies by Hervé Guibert. Main focus is on the relation between body and language. Using the psychoanalytic theories by Julia Kristeva I examine the melancholy of the narrator in Mes mauvaises pensées. The melancholic subject mourns a Thing which is the unrepresentable archaic mother. Melancholy is connected to the notion of exile; the subject belongs to a lost place in the past which it is still holding on to. The narrator of Mes mauvaises pensées is still living in her childhood, even though she is a grown up woman. I show how the place from where she speaks is the child. The female body and the female sexuality are not represented in the text, there is a missing link between the female body and it’s representation in language – in the symbolic order. According to Kristeva the melancholic denies the loss of the Thing – in the end the mother – and clings to the unrepresentable void. By realizing and acknowledging the loss one can reconstruct the bond to the archaic mother in language. Bouraoui’s failure in writing the feminine into the text is interesting because it puts lights on the conditions of writing the body for women. The theory of l’écriture féminine is an inspiration for the analyses and I contrast it to Judith Butler’s idea of gender performativity. There is a conflict in what constitutes gender and sex between psychoanalysis and queer theory, which is also found in the narrator in Bouraoui’s novel – trying to create herself through pure performativity she never succeeds to act independently of the mother and the female body.

This thesis interrogates the ways in which the body-centred practices of women film artists embrace the materiality of direct animation in order to foreground gendered, subjective positions. Through the researcher's own creative practice, it investigates how this mode of film-making, in which the artist works through physical engagement with the film materials and the material processes of film-making, might be understood as feminine and/or feminist. Direct animation foregrounds touch as the primary sense. Its practices are process-based and highly experimental, because images are made through the agency of the body operating within restrictive parameters, making results difficult to predict or control with precision. For these reasons, direct animation has not been embraced by mainstream, narrative-focused, studio-based models of production, unlike other forms of two and three dimensional animation. It has remained a specialist area for the individual artist and auteur, and, to date, there is a paucity of commentary about direct animation practices, and what exists has been dominated by male voices. In order to develop ideas about the ways in which women represent themselves in an expanded film-making praxis that is focused on the body and materiality of process, this PhD inquiry, encompassing a body of films with written contextualisation, is situated in the context of the direct animation practices of three artists (Caroline Leaf, Annabel Nicolson, and Margaret Tait); and informed by conceptual frameworks provided by Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva and Hélène Cixous. This thesis proposes, via interaction between these three axes of research, that women film artists, operating independently, are able to create a female imaginary that represents women and is recognised by them, by constructing positions of practice outside the dominant symbolic modes of patriarchy, which evolve through the maternal body and the materialities of the feminine.

Ma thèse étudie la quête initiatique dans des œuvres littéraires franco-canadiennes pour adolescents en se fondant sur les étapes présentées par Simone Vierne, soit la préparation, la mort initiatique et la renaissance. Je me suis intéressée à l’évolution de la quête initiatique dans la littérature jeunesse franco-canadienne entre les années 1970, époque où Vierne publie ses premiers travaux, et 2015 afin de voir si la littérature ne permet pas de suppléer aux rites de passage de moins en moins présents dans nos sociétés actuelles où la transition entre l’enfance et l’adolescence semble de moins en moins perceptible. La thèse présente une analyse de la valeur symbolique des éléments participants à la quête initiatique dans La vengeance de l’orignal de Doric Germain, La quête d’Alexandre d’Hélène Brodeur, Les grands sapins ne meurent pas de Dominique Demers, La première pluie de Camilien Roy, Cœur de lionne de Guy Armel Bayegnak et Le silence de la Restigouche de Jocelyne Mallet-Parent. Le corpus est divisé selon trois périodes, soit de 1970 à 1985, de 1986 à 2000 et de 2001 à 2015. L’analyse permet de vérifier si certains éléments sont récurrents d’une époque à l’autre ou de cerner les modifications qui touchent au déroulement de la quête initiatique à divers moments. C’est à partir de cette étude qu’il sera possible d’établir s’il y a une évolution dans le traitement de la quête initiatique de même que de formuler des hypothèses quant à la modélisation du roman initiatique franco-canadien pour adolescents. Le tout permettra de déterminer si le schéma proposé par Vierne est toujours pertinent dans le contexte actuel.

Fairy tales are usually described as short narratives that end with happily-ever-afters, imposing patriarchal ideologies. The Grimm’s fairy tales serve as the foundation of many other stories which promote stereotypes like woman passiveness, submissive beauty, while men are put on a pedestal for being active and violent at the same time. Angela Carter’s collection The Bloody Chamber depicts patriarchal oppression in classic fairy tales by challenging what can be identified as patriarchal binary oppositions with a strategic subversion of gender roles. Through problematizing and critiquing the patriarchal fairy tales, Carter’s texts can be read through the lens of écriture féminine. Following Hélène Cixous’s notion of écriture féminine, outlined in “The Laugh of the Medusa”, this essay explores how Carter’s  “The Lady of the House of Love'' can be read as a narrative that has strong echoes of the kind of female writing Cixous advocates. Moreover, this essay argues that  “The Lady of the House of Love” contradicts the Western myth of femininity by resisting, exploring, even undermining the patriarchal representation of woman as “heroine”-the fairy tale princess who needs a man to save her -and “femme fatale.”

This study came forth from a rereading of Ariel (2015) by Sylvia Plath and "The Laugh of the Medusa" by Hélène Cixous. Medusa was there, in the title, in the unsaid, but not so much directly in the text, she is only mentioned a few times in Cixous' works. You could still read Medusa in the works, but take away the title and you probably wouldn't to the extent that you do. That's how the questions arose, what do people do when they use Medusa in their works? Why do they decide to revive her?  The purpose of this study is to analyse, from a feministic perspective, what poets invoke when using Medusa in their works. The poems analysed are ”Medusa” by Sylvia Plath, ”Medusa” by Carol Ann Duffy, and ”Medusa with the Head of Perseus” by Torrin A. Greathouse.  Medusa, the Gorgon, used and abused, is a symbol for the silenced women. A woman is usually seen as an object by the patriarchal society, something they can do whatever they want with, Medusa included. This study is to show that women can take back their own bodies from the men, however many years it takes, however many people it takes.  Medusa is not a monster; she is just another victim of men’s oppression.

This essay examines the inherent instability present in Diana Wynne Jones’ 1986 novel Howl’s Moving Castle. I suggest that in relying on the ambiguity of the story and the setting, Jones creates not only a more complex universe, but allows the characters to be multidimensional -- both literally and figuratively -- without having any stable selves. Using deconstruction as a (non-existent) foundation for my analysis, I contend that the strength of the story is in the looseness of it. Thus, by using a Derridean approach with added Cixousian feminist elements and a heap of Kristevian intertextuality, I further argue that Jones invites the reader to embrace the ambiguity of identity by closely analyzing the conflicting behaviours of the two main characters in the novel, Sophie Hatter and Wizard Howl. In conclusion, I argue that Diana Wynne Jones through subverting classic fairy tale tropes in an ingenious way, suggests that there is no such thing as a final finished growing person and that there is comfort to be found in embracing this incompleteness.

Cette thèse porte sur trois textes autobiographiques qui questionnent, à travers l’élaboration d’une pensée de l’événement, les oppositions convenues entre fiction et témoignage. L’Événement (2000) d’Annie Ernaux, Le jour où je n’étais pas là (2000) d’Hélène Cixous et L’Instant de ma mort (1994) de Maurice Blanchot présentent le récit autoréférentiel d’un événement traumatique, soit un avortement clandestin pour Ernaux, la mort en bas âge d’un enfant trisomique pour Cixous et la mise en joue par un soldat nazi lors de la Seconde Guerre mondiale pour Blanchot. Ce corpus, quoique hétérogène à plusieurs égards, loge à l’enseigne d’une littérature placée sous le signe de l’aveu, de la confession et de la révélation ; cette littérature porterait au jour ce qui était jusque-là demeuré impossible à dire. Partant de la figure de la honte inscrite dans ces trois œuvres, mais aussi dans d’autres textes de ces écrivains qui permettent de déployer ce qui se trame de secret et d’événement dans le corpus principal, cette thèse a pour objectif d’analyser les déplacements et les retours d’un trauma gardé secret pendant une quarantaine d’années et qui remonte, par la voie de l’événement, à la surface de l’écriture. Sous la double impulsion de la pensée de Jacques Derrida et de l’approche psychanalytique, cette thèse s’intéresse à la question de l’événement à l’œuvre chez Ernaux, Cixous et Blanchot. Dans chacune de ces œuvres, un événement traumatique intervient comme révélateur de l’écriture et d’un rapport singulier à la pensée de l’événement, marqué soit historiquement et politiquement (Blanchot), soit intimement (Cixous et Ernaux). Par l’écriture, ces auteurs tentent en effet de rendre compte de l’authenticité de l’événement ressenti, problématisant du même coup la nature et la fonction de l’événement tant réel que psychique dans le récit de soi. L’événement est ainsi abordé dans son caractère historique, psychanalytique mais également philosophique, ontologique ; la pensée de l’événement mise à l’épreuve des textes d’Ernaux, de Cixous et de Blanchot permet d’explorer les figures de la date, de l’archive, de la mort et du deuil qui lui sont liées, en plus de donner lieu à une poétique singulière chez chacun. Enfin, la thèse traite du rapport entre l’aveu de l’événement et la langue qui, défiant l’opposition traditionnelle du constatif et du performatif, entraîne l’événement du récit, cet autre événement qui arrive en même temps que le récit de l’événement traumatique. / This thesis focuses on three autobiographical texts: Annie Ernaux’s L’Événement (2000) [Happening], Hélène Cixous’s Le jour où je n’étais pas là (2000) [The Day I Wasn’t There] and Maurice Blanchot’s L’Instant de ma mort (1994) [The Instant of My Death]. Each presents a self-referential narrative of a traumatic event: respectively, Ernaux’s illegal abortion, the death in infancy of a child with Down’s syndrome for Cixous and Blanchot’s experience of having been aimed at by a Nazi soldier during World War II. These three texts work out a conception of the event and therefore question the conventional opposition between fiction and testimony. This corpus, although heterogeneous in many respects, is brought together under the sign of literary confessions, avowals and disclosures. Such literary writing is intent on unraveling or bringing to light what had hitherto remained impossible to say. This thesis analyzes the movements and returns of a trauma kept secret for over forty years which ultimately, by way of the event, resurfaces in writing. The thesis’s point of departure is the figure of shame found in the three works. Yet other texts of the same writers are summoned in an attempt to untangle the secrets and events woven in the main corpus. Under the impulse of both Jacques Derrida’s thought and that of psychoanalysis, this thesis focuses on the events in the making in Ernaux, Cixous and Blanchot’s writings. In each of these works, a traumatic event occurs and reveals the links between writing and a philosophy of the event, be it inscribed historically and politically (Blanchot) or intimately (Cixous and Ernaux). In their writings, these authors attempt to give an authentic account of the event as they experienced it, while at the same time problematizing the nature and function of both the real and the psychic event in self-writing. The event is addressed in its historical, psychoanalytical, and philosophical, ontological dimensions. Close attention to the texts of Ernaux, Cixous and Blanchot allows one to explore the figures of the date, the archive, as well as that of death and work of mourning. Moreover, a singular poetics emerge for each writer. Finally, the thesis deals with the relationship between the acknowledgement of the event and language. Notwithstanding the traditional opposition between constative and performative speech acts, another event—the event of narration—arises at the same time as the traumatic event is narrated.