Les comic books, qui font partie du 9ème art avec la bande dessinée et le manga, constituent un pan important de la culture populaire et de l’imaginaire contemporain. Ils permettent d’attester de la persistance des super-héros, dont les aventures cycliques sont très appropriées à ce moyen d’expression. La variété des modes narratifs qui transmettent aujourd’hui les super-héros, depuis le cinéma jusqu’à nos univers virtuels contemporains, permet de questionner les enjeux de la fiction et sa vitalité. Ainsi les récits audio-visuels sont étudiés au même titre que ceux de papier.Cette multimodalité narrative de nos super-héros doit tenir compte de la vaste fresque que représentent leurs récits ; et ce sont des éléments représentatifs de mouvances éditoriales, historiques, ou encore sociales qui guident le choix de notre corpus d’étude, au travers des « Ages » de nos super-héros. L’imaginaire dynamique des personnages nous amène à retenir trois d’entre eux pour lesquels la multisensorialité et la moto-sensorialité sont l’essence même de leurs narrations. Cela permet de souligner l’apport des sciences cognitives dans l’analyse des ontologies de la fiction, de sorte que ces personnages intègrent parfaitement, en dépit des objections de Sperber & Hirschfeld (2004), les « fondations cognitives » de nos cultures. Nous défendons que les super-héros font partie des êtres fantastiques et nous utilisons pour leur analyse le cadre heuristique proposé dans Armand (2015), qui permet l’étude des êtres fantastiques repérés dans la Folkloristique en s’appuyant sur les acquis de l’Anthropologie Neuro-Cognitive. Ce cadre nous a permis d’analyser les pouvoirs multisensoriels de nos super-héros en termes d’intuitions, contre-intuitions et sur-intuitions, pour mieux approcher les mécanismes cognitifs qui fondent l’imaginaire des auteurs qui nous proposent ces héros tout autant que l’imaginaire de ceux qui y adhèrent.Batman, justicier costumé en chauve-souris, intègre dans sa lutte contre le crime les représentations de cet animal dans ce qu’il a de plus ambivalent dans nos imaginaires. Il reste toutefois incapable d’employer dans sa fiction une perception biologique naturelle du chiroptère : l’écholocation animale. Bien que connue du grand public, cette capacité demeure dans son fonctionnement trop contre-intuitive pour être représentée avec justesse dans les récits.Daredevil nous permet de poursuivre notre approche de la multisensorialité, avec le cas d’un justicier aveugle aux capacités perceptives et attentionnelles décuplées. Mais ce « super-aveugle » est incapable d’avoir recours à la compétence sur-intuitive de l’écholocation humaine, une compétence qui semble au final dépendre très contre-intuitivement des aires corticales visuelles plutôt que des aires auditives (depuis Thaler et al., 2011).Superman enfin possède a priori tous les pouvoirs, mais est particulièrement reconnu par sa capacité à voler sans contraintes. Cette capacité nous a conduit à rechercher dans quel incubateur neural d’ontologies fantastiques le récit puisait la composante génératrice de ce si célèbre pouvoir de vol aptère. Nous avons pour cela dû faire appel aux expériences hors-du-corps (Out-of-Body Experiences ou OBE), rapportées de longue date et universellement dans les narrations d’expérience, et dont l’émergence n’a été vraiment comprise sur le plan neural que récemment (cf. les expériences de stimulation corticale de Blanke et al., 2002). Nous proposons une approche qui permet d’unifier la Formation de l’esprit scientifique de Bachelard (1938), qui donne les bases d’une épistémologie de la contre-intuition, avec sa poétique. Car nous avons pu requalifier la poétique de L’Air et les songes (1943), dans ses apports fondamentaux − ici le vol onirique aptère −, de sur-intuitive. Ce vol sans ailes trouve par ailleurs un réel terrain d’expression par le mouvement imaginé dans les mondes virtuels et l’expérience de corps dissocié dans la Réalité Virtuelle. / Comic books constitute with comic albums and manga the 9th art and represent an important part of popular culture and contemporary imaginary. They bear witness of the persistence of superheroes, whose cyclic adventures are appropriate for this form of expression. The variety of narrative modes (from cinema to our contemporary virtual universes) that convey superheroes today allows us to question the issues of fiction and its vitality. Audio-visual narratives are thus as studied as paper narratives.The narrative multimodality of our superheroes must take into account the large fresco represented by their stories. These elements are representative of editorial, historical or even social movements that have guided the composition of our corpus throughout the “Ages” of ours superheroes. The dynamic imaginary of characters led us to select three of them for whom multisensoriality and motosensoriality are the very essences of their narratives. This gives us the opportunity to underline the contribution of cognitive sciences in the analysis of the ontologies of fiction, so as to have these characters perfectly integrate – despite the objections of Sperber & Hirschfeld (2004) – the “cognitive foundations” of our cultures. We defend the idea that superheroes belong to the category of fantastical creatures and we therefore use, for their analysis, the heuristic frame suggested by Armand (2015) and which allows the study of fantastical beings spotted in Folkloristics with the help of Neurocognitive Anthropology. This frame allowed us to analyze the multisensorial powers of superheroes in terms of intuitions, counter-intuitions, and over-intuitions so as to better understand the cognitive mechanisms on the basis of the imaginary of theirs creators and of those who adhere to it.Batman, a vigilante dressed as a bat, uses in his fight against crime the most ambivalent representations of this particular animal in our imaginaries. He remains, however, unable to use in his fiction a natural biological perception of the chripotera, namely animal echolocation. Although it is well known by the public, the functioning of this capacity remains too counter-intuitive to be accurately represented in the stories.Daredevil allows us to continue our study of multisensoriality with the case of a blind vigilante with increased perceptive and attentional capacities. But this “super-blind” is incapable of using the over-intuitive aspect of human echolocation, a skill that seems, in the end, to depend counter-intuitively on the cortical visual areas rather than on the auditory areas (since Thaler et al., 2011).Finally, Superman apparently possesses all powers but he is particularly well known for his ability to fly. This capacity led us to look for the neural incubator of fantastical ontologies in which the narrative found the generative component of this famous wingless flight. It was thus necessary to use out-of-body experiences (or OBE), which have been reported for a long time and are universally recognized in experience narratives and whose emergence has only been recently understood neurologically (see for the instance the experiences of cortical stimulations in Blanke et al., 2002). We offer an approach that would allow the unification of Bachelard’s Training of the Scientific Mind (1938), and which gives the basis of an epistemology of counter-intuition, with his poetics. Indeed, we have been able to redefine the poetics of his Air and Dreams (1943), in its most important contributions – here the wingless dream flight – as over-intuitive. This wingless flight finds a real mode of expression in the movements imagined in virtual worlds and in the experience of body dissociation offered by Virtual Reality.

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In a golden era for comic based media, this paper uses the hypothetical emergence of superheroes to analyze the assumptions and predictions of three international relations theories: realism, liberalism, and constructivism. Comics consistently reflect the real world, paralleling events and concepts discussed in foreign affairs dialogues. The thought experiment, and the comic genre itself, provides a vehicle for thinking broadly about the political and social ramifications of successful or failed problem solving, state interaction, and scientific advances.

This​ ​essay​ ​examines​ ​the​ ​appearance​ ​of​ ​non-normative​ ​bodies​ ​in​ ​three​ ​films​ ​from​ ​the Marvel​ ​Cinematic​ ​Universe;​ ​​The​ ​Avengers​​ ​(2012),​ ​​Thor:​ ​The​ ​Dark​ ​World​​ ​(2013) ​and Avengers:​ ​Age​ ​of​ ​Ultron​​ ​(2015),​ ​in​ ​an​ ​attempt​ ​to​ ​find​ ​qualities​ ​that​ ​might​ ​suggest​ ​queer, non-binary​ ​or​ ​gender​ ​disruptive​ ​attributes,​ ​in​ ​addition​ ​to​ ​looking​ ​at​ ​how​ ​the​ ​movies handle​ ​them.​ ​Using​ ​a​ ​combination​ ​of​ ​feminist​ ​film​ ​theory,​ ​queer​ ​theory​ ​and​ ​discourse analysis,​ ​the​ ​Otherness​ ​of​ ​these​ ​bodies​ ​are​ ​put​ ​into​ ​contrast​ ​with​ ​the​ ​normative​ ​and hegemonic​ ​gender​ ​expressions​ ​employed​ ​by​ ​the​ ​protagonists,​ ​the​ ​heroes​ ​of​ ​the​ ​films. While​ ​the​ ​study​ ​finds​ ​several​ ​indications​ ​of​ ​transgressive​ ​bodies​ ​and​ ​'gender​ ​ambiguity' among​ ​the​ ​creatures​ ​and​ ​beings​ ​who​ ​play​ ​the​ ​part​ ​of​ ​inhuman​ ​threat,​ ​as​ ​well​ ​as​ ​the presence​ ​of​ ​discourses​ ​that​ ​paint​ ​them​ ​as​ ​threatening​ ​partly​ ​​because​​ ​of​ ​these​ ​qualities, they​ ​remain​ ​blurred​ ​and​ ​ill-defined,​ ​their​ ​queerness​ ​inferred​ ​rather​ ​than​ ​overt.​ ​The preferred​ ​reading,​ ​the​ ​analysis​ ​suggests,​ ​offers​ ​little​ ​in​ ​the​ ​way​ ​of​ ​identification,​ ​but​ ​all the​ ​more​ ​with​ ​regard​ ​to​ ​oppression.​ ​The​ ​way​ ​these​ ​bodies​ ​are​ ​treated​ ​in​ ​all​ ​three​ ​films implies​ ​that​ ​the​ ​tolerance​ ​for​ ​bodily​ ​deviance​ ​is​ ​virtually​ ​non-existent,​ ​and​ ​that​ ​a defining​ ​quality​ ​of​ ​masculine​ ​leadership​ ​is​ ​the​ ​ability​ ​to​ ​banish​ ​them​ ​from​ ​existence.

En prenant comme point de départ l'interprétation de l'épopée homérique par Erich Auerbach, ce mémoire se consacre à la notion d'immersion fictionnelle, non sous son versant psychologique de phénomène contingent de la conscience imageante, mais sous son versant imaginaire, en tant que mythe sociétal d'immédiateté déterminant des stratégies esthétiques et médiatiques concrètes, que j'articule autour des poétiques contemporaines de construction de mondes (world building). L'enjeu est de saisir les répercussions esthétiques de ce fantasme d'une représentation qui occulterait à la fois sa médiateté et le réel-sensible, à une époque où la transfictionnalité et la transmédiaticité s'élèvent tranquillement comme modes narratifs dominants de notre culture occidentale contemporaine. Avec cette conviction que le terme d'immersion doit être replacé dans le cadre de ses effets, le premier chapitre s'affairera à démêler quelques difficultés théoriques que pose la notion en la problématisant sous l'égide des questions ontologiques de vérité et de la position phénoménologique de Sartre sur l'imaginaire. Tout en posant les outils théoriques nécessaires aux analyses subséquentes, le deuxième chapitre approfondit cette problématisation en empruntant aux théories modales des mondes possibles un cadre conceptuel opératoire, qui amènera, notamment grâce au concept formalisé de «~monde~», à concevoir la fiction comme un mouvement de distanciation. Appuyé par la lecture du roman tolkienien, le troisième chapitre tourne le fantasme d'immersion du côté d'une pulsion encyclopédique de complétude, concrétisée par des stratégies textuelles d'accumulation informationnelle et de virtualisation de données diégétiques laissées en suspens -- effets d'actualité que je qualifie d'extra-narratifs en les présentant en contraste des principes prescriptifs du \emph{muthos} aristotélicien formant une chaîne causale téléologique fondée sur une loi d'économie narrative. Le quatrième et dernier chapitre, articulé autour de la notion encore trop peu étudiée de canonicité, observe les poétiques de construction de mondes telles qu'elles se désamorcent elles-mêmes, dans le contexte des univers partagés, en engendrant des incohérences logiques donnant lieu à la tenue d'un discours auctorial-éditorial régissant les vérités fictionnelles comme moyen de maintenir l'immersivité de la représentation. L'analyse générique des comic-books de superhéros et une enquête sur la gestion éditoriale de l'univers de Star Wars permettront d'identifier les multiples modalités de délimitation de la frontière entre canon et apocryphe. En conclusion, je reviens brièvement sur la notion d'immersion, ainsi exemplifiée, en la resémiotisant comme une médiation compétitive de mise en présence de l'être. / Starting from Erich Auerbach's interpretation of the Homeric epic, this master's dissertation studies the notion of fictional immersion, not in its psychological aspect of a contingent phenomena of human consciousness, but rather in its collective imaginary sense, as a societal myth of immediacy generating concrete aesthetic and media strategies that I investigate from the standpoint of contemporary poetics of world building. The objective is to apprehend the aesthetic repercussions of this desire for a mediation that would conceal both the real and its own mediacy, in a time where transfictionality and transmedia storytelling are becoming more and more the dominant narrative modes of our contemporary western culture. Under the conviction that immersion must be looked at as a set of cultural strategies, the first chapter unravels some theorical difficulties bounded to the term by problematizing it towards ontological questions of truth and Sartre's phenomenological stance on the imaginary. While laying a necessary theorical toolset for subsequent analyses, the second chapter examines these problems by borrowing to possible worlds modal theories a set of working concepts, which will lead to the assumption that fiction is a movement of distanciation, notably with the aide of the formal concept of ``world''. Through a reading of the tolkienian novel, the third chapter directs the desire for immersion towards an encyclopedic impulsion for completeness, embodied by textual strategies such as informational proliferation and allusion to virtual diegetic data -- strategies leaving an impression of the actual that I describe as extra-narrative in contrast to Aristote's \emph{muthos} forming a teological causal chain based on a principle of an unitary narrative. The fourth and final chapter, articulated around the still too little studied notion of canonicity, observes poetics of world building as they neutralize themselves, particularly with shared universes, by generating logical inconsistencies giving birth to authorial and editorial discourses stating fictional truths as a way of maintaining the mediation's immersivity. The analysis of the superhero comics genre and an inquiry of the editorial management of the Star Wars universe will exemplify the multiple modalities of this delimitation between the canon and the apocryphal. As a conclusion, I briefly come back to the notion of immersion itself by redescribing it as a competitive mediation of presence.

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This project uses Michel Foucault’s underdeveloped notion of “tolerated illegality” as a departure point for two converging inquiries. The first analyzes, and then critiques, dominant legal logics and values. This part argues that traditional legal philosophers exhibit a “disagreement without difference,” generally concurring that legal certainty and predictability enhance agency. Subsequently, this section critiques “formal legal” logic by linking it to science envy (specifically the desire for certainty and predictability), and highlighting its agency- limiting effects (e.g. the violence of law en-force-ment). The second part examines multiple dimensions of tolerated illegality, exploring the permutations of this complex socio-legal phenomenon. Here the implications of tolerated illegality are mapped across different domains, ranging from the dispossession of Indigenous peoples of their lands, to the latent ideologies embedded in superhero shows. This section also examines the idea of liberal “tolerance,” as well as the themes of power, domination, politics, bureaucracy, and authority. Ultimately, this project demonstrates that it is illuminating to study legality and (tolerated) illegality in tandem because although analyses of “formal legality” provide helpful analytical texture, the polymorphous and entangled nature of tolerated illegality makes clear just how restricted and artificial strict analyses of legality can be. / Graduate

The theme of the dissertation submitted is the novel Devil Guardian, whose author is a Mexican writer Xavier Velasco. This dissertation is the very first theoretical work in the Czech environment, devoted to the above-mentioned piece of literature published in 2004. In a sense, Devil Guardian represents a characteristic Mexican novel of the early 21st century, combining tradition and novelty in a surprising and original manner. A significant feature of the contemporary Mexican literature is a departure from the theme of Mexicanity, generally from a programmatic indulging in so-called national literature. Velasco's novel is an exemplary, however, not only piece of literature proving that the literary break-up with Mexico is neither an exclusive nor a dominant attribute of the contemporary Mexican fiction. In Devil Guardian Velasco focuses his mind on the theme of personal and national identity, which he treats in a considerably nontraditional manner, giving an ironical turn to speak to a hypermodern girl moving in the globalized world. The dissertation is divided into six parts. The first part "Originality Rooted in Tradition" refers to Devil Guardian ensuing the tradition of Mexican novel and innovating it. The second part "Xavier Velasco" briefly introduces the author's life and work. The issues...