No / The recent turn to Lacan’s work in critically-oriented Organization and Management Theory signals a welcome focus on one of the 20th century’s most influential thinkers. This article introduces Lacan’s thesis on gender, making a case for its importance for understanding organizations. We discuss two contrasting receptions to Lacan’s Seminar XX, from pro- and anti-Lacanian feminists, offer our own interpretation which can be summed up as a Lacanian inspired parody of the phallic signifier, and argue that Lacanian theorists should turn Lacan’s ideas back upon them/ourselves to question critically our own positions. Further we review Lacan’s seminar XVII and its analysis of four dominant discourses—the university, the master, the hysteric and the analyst. The advantages of the discourse of the hysteric for a Lacanian politics of gender, enabling us to undo our arguments from outside of our own gender and identity, are then identified. We thus advocate conceptual and empathetic (hysterical) bisexuality for critical scholarship within organization studies that already, perhaps unawares, is hysterical. This allows us to avoid, as much as possible, slipping into the frozen and sterile discourse of the master.

In this thesis I aim to investigate the Swedish preschool teacher interested in change and her work, here conceptualised as gender pedagogy. I will take my departure in sexual difference theory to contrast some of the assumptions behind preschool work, gender pedagogy and gender equality. I am also reflecting upon the concepts of normalisation, freedom and change and their relevance for preschool work. To help me with this endeavour I have interviewed five preschool teachers about their work and their interest for change. The thesis is divided into three chapters mirroring the themes of the interviews. In the first chapter I reflect upon normalisation as a process inherent to preschool work, both historically and in the present, connected to notions of class, cognitive ability and sexual difference. Through the statements of my informants and theoretical discussion the concept of normalisation is nuanced and understood as a process inherent to the whole of society as well as the preschool but also as a practice that might not be possible to abolish in its entirety. In the second chapter I move my focus towards gender pedagogy. An outline of different strands of, and discussions on, gender pedagogy is given as well as a critical discussion on the aim to go beyond gender in gender pedagogy and feminist theory. As an alternative and additional approach I suggest sexual difference theory as a possible source of inspiration for gender pedagogy. In the second part of this chapter the preschool teachers express their views on, and their work with gender pedagogy. This allows for a more entangled and process oriented understanding of gender pedagogy and its different strands. I conclude this chapter by stating that gender pedagogy could be understood in terms of normalisation and even as reinforcing the masculine norm, however the process oriented understanding of change as highlighted by my informants, as well as the use of multiple strategies, theories and methods, might allow for a practice where difference instead of likeness serves as a condition for the gender pedagogical work. In the last chapter I turn to the preschool teacher as such and her history entangled with notions of femininity, motherhood and gender equality. Employing the strategy of “working through” as described by Braidotti I lay bare how the position of the preschool teacher  and her work has been represented as stereotyped woman’s work and thus connected to less worth, but simultaneously how the actual work of the preschool teachers strongly denounce this view of  woman’s work, as well as motherhood and femininity. I also show how the work of preschool teachers put into question such prominent binary pairs as mind/body, emotion/intellect, practice/theory and adult/child. I conclude that the misrepresentation of woman’s work also has material consequences in terms of working conditions for preschool teachers. To conclude the whole thesis I emphasise how the view of the female preschool teacher and the view of the child cannot be radically separated and therefore the importance of considering both adults and children in the gender pedagogy work. I also conclude that what gender equality or gender pedagogy is, is not settled ones and for all, but rather the importance to fill these concepts with a positive view of difference.

<p>French Feminism has little to do with feminism in France. While in the U.S. this now canonical body of work designates almost exclusively the work of three theorists—Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, and Julia Kristeva—in France, these same thinkers are actually associated with the rejection of feminism. If some scholars have on this basis passionately denounced French Feminism as an American invention, there exists to date no comprehensive analysis of that invention or of its effects. Why did theorists who were at best marginal to feminist thought and political practice in France galvanize feminist scholars working in the United States? Why does French Feminism provoke such an intense affective response in France to this date? Drawing on the fields of feminist and queer studies, literary studies, and history, “Inventing ‘French Feminism:’ A Critical History” offers a transnational account of the emergence and impact of one of U.S. academic feminism’s most influential bodies of work. The first half of the dissertation argues that, although French Feminism has now been dismissed for being biologically essentialist and falsely universal, feminists working in the U.S. academy of the 1980s, particularly feminist literary critics and postcolonial feminist critics, deployed the work of Cixous, Irigaray, and Kristeva to displace what they perceived as U.S. feminist literary criticism’s essentialist reliance on the biological sex of the author and to challenge U.S. academic feminism’s inattention to racial differences between women. French Feminism thus found traction among feminist scholars to the extent that it was perceived as addressing some of U.S. feminism’s most pressing political issues. The second half of the dissertation traces French feminist scholars’ vehement rejection of French Feminism to an affectively charged split in the French women’s liberation movement of the 1970s and shows that this split has resulted in an entrenched opposition between sexual difference and materialist feminism, an opposition that continues to structure French feminist debates to this day. “Inventing ‘French Feminism:’ A Critical History” ends by arguing that in so far as the U.S. invention of French Feminism has contributed to the emergence of U.S. queer theory, it has also impeded its uptake in France. Taken as a whole, this dissertation thus implicitly argues that the transnational circulation of ideas is simultaneously generative and disabling.</p> / Dissertation

Cette thèse propose de mettre en rapport les enjeux soulevés par la thèse de la philosophe Judith Butler concernant la « mélancolie du genre » et l’œuvre autobiographique d’Hélène Cixous, travaillée depuis ses commencements par la question du deuil et de la différence sexuelle/genre. Dans ce travail, nous souhaitons montrer en effet que la démarche philosophique théorique de Judith Butler, qui relit les thèses freudiennes sur le deuil, la mélancolie et la formation du moi en montrant l’importance de la perte au cœur de l’identité sexuelle, trouve des résonances dans le travail d’écriture et de réécriture « autobiographique » d’Hélène Cixous. L’écrivain reconfigure de fait la notion classique d’autobiographie, tout son œuvre vie étant marqué par un mouvement fondamental qui consiste à reconnaître les deuils et les séparations ayant donné naissance à l’écriture, un mouvement qui consiste, autrement dit, à créer une archive de l’autre. La thèse comporte deux parties : la première partie théorique explique les enjeux qui sous-tendent la « mélancolie du genre » pensée par Judith Butler et les effets de cette mélancolie sur le corps et la sexualité ; les notions de travestissement et de performativité sont revisitées à partir des notions psychanalytiques d’identification et d’incorporation. Puisque la mélancolie du genre est le résultat de la non-reconnaissance des premiers attachements homosexuels, la nécessité de repenser le rapport au maternel, du point de vue féminin plus particulièrement, est posée ; les notions de sémiotique (Julia Kristeva) et de chôra (Jacques Derrida/ Julia Kristeva) ouvrent ici la voie et nous invitent à penser la mère du côté du mouvement et de l’altération, de la plasticité (Catherine Malabou). La seconde partie propose une traversée de l’œuvre d’Hélène Cixous, depuis Dedans (1968) jusqu’aux toutes récentes fictions analysées à partir de la question du deuil et de la notion freudienne de la substituabilité des objets. Sont examinées les formes de substitutions des pertes inaugurales que sont pour l’écrivaine le deuil du père et le deuil de l’Algérie, substitutions qui passent d’abord et avant tout par le travail signifiant. La question de l’humain est abordée par la figure de l’enfant mongolien, dont la naissance quarante ans avant son entrée dans l’œuvre est venue faire vaciller toutes les divisions caractérisant habituellement le sujet (féminin/masculin, humain/animal, vivant/mort), y compris celle, capitale, entre né et non-né. La notion d’incorporation mélancolique est également mobilisée pour explorer les métamorphoses et nombreuses transfigures animales de l’écrivaine, qui mettent en avant la plasticité du vivant mais non moins sa fragilité. Incontournable, la question de la mère et du maternel chez Cixous est analysée dans son rapport à l’écriture et à la langue : lieu de mouvement, support de transformation et de transsubstantiation mais aussi contenance, la langue chez Cixous fait mère. / This thesis proposes to make a link between the issues raised by Judith Butler regarding « gender melancholy » and Hélène Cixous’ autobiographical work, which has dealt from the start with the question of grief and sexual difference/gender. Our wish is to show how Judith Butler, in revisiting Freud’s theories on grief, melancholy and the formation of the ego, points out the importance of loss at the heart of sexual identity and finds resonance in Hélène Cixous’s « autobiographical » writings and rewritings. The writer, in fact, reconfigures the classical notion of what an autobiography is; her/his life-work is under the influence of a fundamental impulse seeking to identify the losses and separations which gave birth to the writing;an impulse which consists, in other words, in creating an archive of the other. The thesis is made up of two parts: the first part explains the issues underlying Judith Butler’s « gender melancholy »and the effects of this melancholy on body and sexuality; the concepts of transvestism and performative utterance are revisited based on notions of psychoanalytical identification and incorporation. The necessity to rethink the maternal relationship, especially from a feminine perspective, is posited. Notions of semiotics (Julia Kristeva) and of chôra (JacquesDerrida/Julia Kristeva) open the way and invite us to consider the mother from the angle of movement and modulation, of plasticity (Catherine Malabou). The second part offers a cross-section of Hélène Cixous’ work, starting from Dedans (1968) right up until her latest fiction, analyzed from the point of view of grief and the Freudian notion of the substitutability ofobjects. The initial losses, which for the writer mean mourning for a father and for Algeria, take on the form of substitutions which are found above all in the work of the signifiers. The human question is broached by the figure of the Down syndrome child whose birth forty years prior to appearing in the literary work, has come and put off balance the divisions which normally characterize the subject (feminine/masculine, human/animal, living/dead), including the crucial division between born and unborn. The notion of melancholic incorporation is also used to explore the metamorphoses and many animal transfigures of the writer, which highlight the plasticity of the living as well as its fragility. The unavoidable question of the mother and the maternal in Cixous is analyzed in its relation to writing and language: a place of movement, material for transformation and for transubstantiation, not to mention countenance. Language for Cixous enacts the mother.

La recherche du Dasein féminin est une enquête sur la relation symbiotique entre la femme et son environnement comme il se déroule durant une certaine période de l'histoire. En postulant l'existence d'une temporalité féminine particulière et d'une manière féminine d'être-au-monde, ce projet conteste la vision de Martin Heidegger selon laquelle le Dasein, dans sa neutralité, n'est d'aucun sexe. En commençant par souligner que la lacune de sa philosophie repose dans son incapacité à aborder le problème de la sexualité comme différence ontologique, ce projet fait appel à différents philosophes, notablement de la tradition féministe anglo-saxonne, afin de caractériser l'unique façon d'être de la femme. Dans la mesure où notre contact avec l'environnement est de plus en plus mêlé aux questions de la technique, je questionne la relation particulière de la femme à celle-ci, et spécialement à la technique reproductive qui marque de façon prégnante l'association historique des femmes à la « nature ». En m'appuyant sur la philosophie de L'Etre, de l’art, et de la technique de Heidegger, ainsi que sur différents penseurs de disciplines variées, j'esquisse une existence qui est singulier au féminin. / The search for female Dasein is an inquiry into the symbiotic relationship between woman and her environment as it unfolds during a certain historical time. In postulating the existence of a particular female temporality and a feminine way of being-in-the-world, this project contests Martin Heidegger’s view that Dasein in its neutrality is neither of the two sexes. Beginning with the insight that the gap in his philosophy lies in his failure to address the issue of sexuality as an ontological difference, this project draws from diverse philosophers, particularly from the feminist Anglo-Saxon tradition to characterize woman’s unique way of being. Insofar as our engagement with the environment is increasingly entangled with questions of the technological, I ask whether woman has a particular relationship with technology, specifically reproductive technology where her historical association with « nature » becomes especially salient. Reading Heidegger’s philosophy of Being, art, and technology in conjunction with different thinkers across various disciplines, I sketch out an existence that is particularly feminine.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

Cette recherche examine la traduction et la réception en France, en Grande Bretagne et aux États-Unis de la littérature contemporaine d’expression arabe écrite par des femmes, afin de répondre à deux questions principales: comment les écrivaines provenant de pays arabes perdent-elles leur agentivité dans les processus de traduction et de réception? Et comment la traduction et la réception de leurs textes contribuent-elles à la construction d’une altérité arabe? Pour y répondre, l’auteure examine trois romans présentant des traits thématiques et formels très différents, à savoir Fawḍā al-Ḥawāss (1997) par Ahlem Mosteghanemi, Innahā Lundun Yā ‘Azīzī (2001) par Hanan al-Shaykh et Banāt al-Riyāḍ (2005) par Rajaa Alsanea. L’analyse, basée sur le modèle à trois dimensions de Norman Fairclough, vise à découvrir comment les écrivaines expriment leur agentivité à travers l’écriture, et quelles images elles projettent d’elles-mêmes et plus généralement des femmes dans leurs sociétés respectives. L’auteure se penche ensuite sur les traductions anglaise et française de chaque roman. Elle examine les déplacements qui s’opèrent principalement sur le plan de la texture et le plan pragma-sémiotique, et interroge en quoi ces déplacements ébranlent l’autorité des écrivaines. Enfin, une étude de la réception de ces traductions en France, en Grande Bretagne et aux États-Unis vient enrichir l’analyse textuelle. À cette étape, les critiques éditoriales et universitaires ainsi que les choix éditoriaux relatifs au paratexte sont scrutés de façon à mettre en lumière les processus décisionnels, les discours et les tropes sous-tendant la mise en marché et la consommation de ces traductions. L’analyse des originaux révèle tout d’abord qu’à travers leurs textes, les auteures sont des agentes actives de changement social. Elles s’insurgent, chacune à sa manière, contre les discours hégémoniques tant locaux qu’occidentaux, et (ré-)imaginent leurs sociétés et leurs nations. Ce faisant, elles se créent leur propre espace discursif dans la sphère publique. Toutefois, la thèse montre que dans la plupart des traductions, les discours dissidents sont neutralisés, l’agentivité et la subjectivité des écrivaines minées au profit d’un discours dominant orientaliste. Ce même discours semble sous-tendre la réception des romans en traduction. Dans ce discours réifiant, l’expression de la différence culturelle est inextricablement imbriquée dans l’expression de la différence sexuelle: la « femme arabe » est la victime d’une religion islamique et d’une culture arabe essentiellement misogynes et arriérées. L’étude suggère, cependant, que ce sont moins les interventions des traductrices que les décisions des éditeurs, le travail de médiation opéré par les critiques, et l’intérêt (ou le désintérêt) des universitaires qui influencent le plus la manière dont ces romans sont mis en marché et reçus dans les nouveaux contextes. L’auteure conclut par rappeler l’importance d’une éthique de la traduction qui transcende toute approche binaire et se fonde sur une lecture éthique des textes qui fait ressortir le lien entre la poétique et la politique. Enfin, elle propose une lecture basée sur la reconnaissance du caractère situé du texte traduit comme du sujet lisant/traduisant. / The present research explores the translation and reception in France, the UK and the US of contemporary Arabic literature by women authors, with a view to answering two main questions that have gone largely unexplored within translation studies: how do women authors from Arab countries lose their agency and subjectivity in the process of translation? And how do the translation of their dissident writings contribute to the construction of an Arab alterity? To answer these questions, the research analyzes three Arabic novels authored by women, and chosen for their very different thematic and formal characteristics, namely Ahlem Mosteghanemi’s Fawḍā al-Ḥawāss (1997), Hanan al-Shaykh’s Innahā Lundun Yā ‘Azīzī (2001), and Rajaa Alsanea’s Banāt al-Riyāḍ (2005). Using Norman Fairclough’s three-dimensional model, the analysis aims to explore the way these authors express their agency through their texts, as well as the images they depict of themselves and of women, in general, in their respective societies/communities. The English and French translations of each novel are then compared to the original with a view to identifying patterns of textural and pragma-semiotic shifts in the translations, and gaining insight into how these shifts undermine the author’s voice and agency. Finally, the analysis moves to the various practices involved in the reception of these translations in the US, the UK and France. Publishers’ decisions, editorial reviews and academic discourse are investigated with a view to identifying patterns in publishers’ decision-making and shedding light on the discourses and tropes undergirding the reception and consumption of these translations in their target contexts. Analysis of the originals reveals that the authors act as agents of change through their texts. They contest, each in her own way, both local and Western dominant discourses, and (re)imagine their societies and nations in the process. In so doing, they carve out their own discursive spaces in the public sphere and open breaches for social change. However, the research shows that in several of the translations, the authors’ agency is undermined and their dissident discourses are backgrounded while an orientalist discourse is foregrounded. This same reifying discourse appears to underpin the reception of the novels in translation, as well. It is a reifying discourse wherein the representation of cultural difference seems to be inextricably imbricated in the representation of sexual difference: the “Arab woman” is (re)written as voiceless and powerless because of an Islamic religion and an Arab culture that are essentially misogynistic and backward. Nevertheless, analysis reveals that publishers’ decisions, reviewers mediation and scholarly interest (or disinterest) impinge upon the way these novels are received and consumed more significantly than do translators through their interventions. Finally, the research underscores the importance of an ethical translation that transcends binary approaches and highlights the link between the aesthetic and the political. It also proposes an ethics of reading based on awareness of the situatedness of both the translated text and the reading/translating subject.

A presente tese tem por objetivo a explicitação de bases conceituais que sustentem uma nova leitura da teoria da sexuação. O texto busca investigar a origem e extrair consequências da máxima o ser sexual só se autoriza de si mesmo e de alguns outros, enunciada por Lacan no seminário Os não-bestas erram, num exercício de redescrição das fórmulas da sexuação a partir de um dizer. Visando sublinhar a dimensão processual da sexuação, elegeu-se o conceito de identificação como método e realizouse um levantamento de suas incidências junto aos registros real, simbólico e imaginário ao longo do ensino de Lacan. No primeiro capítulo, discutiu-se a influência de Marcel Proust na concepção lacaniana que liga a autorização sexuada ao grupo e o paralelo entre a sexuação e a autorização do psicanalista. Buscou-se, junto a modalidades de luta por reconhecimento social e político de gêneros não inteligíveis, um modelo de grupo que Lacan precisa como aquele de um real recentemente emergido. No segundo capítulo, retraçaram-se as origens das noções de significante (na ideia de constelação simbólica), grande Outro (descrito inicialmente como grandes Outros) e lei simbólica (e sua indissociável relação com a norma em Lévi-Strauss), buscando demonstrar de que forma a alteridade simbólica que localiza a posição do sujeito sexuado é plural e baseia-se na variabilidade dos elementos num dado sistema estrutural. O último capítulo buscou apresentar, tanto em Freud como em Lacan, o papel fundamental dos semelhantes no processo de assunção sexual, bem como discutiu a autorização em termos de uma precipitação presente tanto no estádio do espelho quanto no momento de concluir do tempo lógico. Por fim, uma discussão relativa à noção de sinthoma demonstrou a centralidade do ato de nomeação enquanto instância que enoda os três registros da sexuação / This thesis aims to detail the conceptual bases for a new reading of Lacans sexuation theory. We intent to investigate the genesis and consequences of the proposition The sexed being is only authorized by him/herself and by some others, uttered by Lacan on his seminar Les non-dupes errant, as he describes the formulas of sexuation in terms of a saying. In order to underscore the sexuations processual dimension, the concept of identification was turned into a methodological tool as we proceed an analysis of its incidences among the registers of the real, symbolic and imaginary in Lacans teaching. On our first chapter, weve discussed the sexuation and its parallel with the analysts authorization as well as Marcel Prousts influence on the lacaninan relation between sexed authorization and the question of the group. Gender related social and political struggles were taken as a model of the lacanian notion of group as an real recently emerged. On our second chapter, weve explored the origins of the notions of signifier (from the idea of symbolic constellation), big Other (initially described as big Others) and symbolic law (and its inseparable relation with the norm in Lévi-Strauss), to indicate how the symbolic alterity that locates the sexed subjects position is plural and based on the elements variability at one given structural system. The last chapter presents the fundamental role of the neighbors on the sexual assumptions process and discusses the authorization in terms of an anticipation found in both mirror stage and the logical times moment of concluding. Lastly, an analysis of the notion of sinthome has shown the centrality of the act of naming as an instance that knots the three registers of the sexuation

Neste trabalho produzo uma descrição do processo de implantação da vacina contra o HPV (papilomavírus humano) no sistema público de saúde brasileiro, a partir da leitura dos documentos do Ministério da Saúde que abordam as decisões e as justificativas para inclusão da vacina nos Calendários de Vacinas do Programa Nacional de Imunizações. Nesses documentos, percebo os campos de especialização e os métodos científicos que legitimam a necessidade da tecnologia da vacina, além das articulações econômicas envolvidas e a forma como o processo de implantação é escrito e disponibilizado para acesso “aos cidadãos”, o que me permite uma abordagem das coproduções entre as práticas de Estado e os conhecimentos científicos que performam o HPV e o câncer de colo do útero. A vacinação com foco na prevenção desse câncer começou em 2014, direcionada para meninas (entre 9 e 13 anos). Em 2015, foi ampliada para meninas e mulheres vivendo com HIV/Aids (9-26 anos) e, em 2017, para meninos (9-13 anos) e meninos e homens vivendo com HIV/Aids (9-26 anos). Nesse sentido, considerando essa divisão do público a que se direciona e suas justificativas nos documentos, proponho também uma discussão sobre as interferências dessa política de saúde (e de conhecimento sobre corpos) no performar de diferenças entre os sexos. / In this work I produce a description of the HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccine implantation process in the Brazilian public health system, based on the Ministry of Health documents that address the decisions and justifications for inclusion of the vaccine in the Vaccine Calendars of the National Immunization Program. In these documents, I understand the fields of expertise and the scientific methods that legitimize the need for vaccine technology, as well as the economic articulations involved, and the way the implantation process is written and made available for "citizen" access, what allows me to approach coproductions between state practices and scientific knowledges that enact HPV and cervical cancer. Vaccination focused on the prevention of this cancer began in 2014, targeted at girls (between 9 and 13 years old). In 2015, it was expanded for girls and women living with HIV/AIDS (9-26 years old) and in 2017 for boys (9-13 years old) and boys and men living with HIV/AIDS (9-26 years old). In this sense, considering this division of the public targeted and its justifications in the documents, I also propose a discussion on the interferences of this health policy (and knowledge policy about bodies) in the enactment of differences between sexes.

This essay investigates the feminist philosophy of Rosi Braidotti with particular focus on the alternative feminine feminist nomadic subject that she creates. I also introduce Braidotti’s theoretical inspiration from Gilles Deleuze and Luce Irigaray. I argue that Braidotti creates an alternative figuration for feminism through synthesizeing Deleuze’s concept of ”becoming” with Irigaray’s sexual difference-theory. Braidotti highlights the importance of understanding the concept of difference differently. She also argues for the difference between subjectivity and identity, for the materialistic foundation of the subject, for the fundamental asymmetry between the sexes and for the nomadic mode of thinking. Braidottis suggests that the way out of the phallogocentric system, which she means we are encapsulated in, consist in working through the images that patriarchy has produced of women, through mimetic repetitons, in order to create new representations of women. I argue that the feminist philosophy of Braidotti is both humble and subversive which makes it an interesting and useful alternative for everyone who is interested in alternative, complex and thrilling ways of theorizing female feminist subjectivity.