Au printemps 1996, Hitler's Willing Executioners de Daniel Goldhagen est publié. Ce livre, que son auteur croit révolutionnaire, analyse l'antisémitisme et l'enthousiasme des Allemands impliqués dans la Shoah. Cela provoque des réactions immédiates. En général, les historiens récusent ses thèses, quoique quelques-uns saluent son effort de réflexion, et le public les accueille chaleureusement, même en Allemagne. Ce livre a des forces et des faiblesses. Comme force, on retrouve l'usage original des sources photographiques et la revalorisation de l'aspect humain de l'analyse de l'Holocauste. Pour ce qui est des faiblesses, mentionnons l'absence de toute démarche comparative, le rejet ou l'ignorance des œuvres de ses précurseurs et la non représentativité de son échantillon. Par son impact sur les historiens et le public, cet ouvrage révèle certaines divergences entre les mémoires collectives et historiennes de l'Holocauste. En constituant une sorte de pont entre ces deux groupes, il s'assure d'une place dans notre historiographie. / Québec Université Laval, Bibliothèque 2013

Ce mémoire a pour toile de fond Philadelphia à la fin du dix-huitième siècle et couvre les périodes de la Révolution américaine et les débuts de la République. Trois thèmes s’y entrelacent: la culture matérielle, la sociabilité, et l’agentivité des femmes. Ces trois thèmes sont explorés au travers de Elizabeth Willing Powel, une femme éduquée faisant partie de l’élite de Philadelphie, et des moyens avec lesquels elle s’auto-projetait auprès de la société au travers l’environnement matériel de sa maison – la Powel House – and au travers de sa correspondance. Elizabeth Powel était reconnue pour son intelligence, son art de la conversation et ses qualités d’hôtesse. Ce projet explore les interactions entre une femme de l’élite et son environnement matériel durant les périodes révolutionnaires et postrévolutionnaires. Le but est d’observer comment la culture matérielle représentait des positions sociales, culturelles et politiques. Ce mémoire observe les interactions sociales et les façons dont Elizabeth Powel se représente en société par une analyse de sa correspondance, analyse qui porte une attention particulière aux discours de Elizabeth sur les questions du rôle des femmes en société, de l’éducation des femmes. Enfin, ce mémoire explore comment la culture matérielle et l’écriture épistolaire étaient des vecteurs d’agentivité pour Elizabeth, des moyens de participer aux important changements qui transformaient la société américaine de la fin du dix-huitième siècle. / Set in late eighteenth-century Philadelphia, covering the American revolutionary and the early republican eras, this thesis explores three major and interrelated themes: material culture, sociability, and female agency. It focuses on Elizabeth Willing Powel, a privileged and educated woman of Philadelphia, and on the ways she projected herself to society through the material environment of her house –Powel House - and through her correspondence. Elizabeth Powel was renown for her intellect, her conversations and her hostess qualities. This project explores the interaction between an elite woman and her material environment during the eventful revolutionary and post-revolutionary era, and how material culture conveyed a social, cultural and political stance. By a careful analysis of Elizabeth Powel's correspondence - with a particular attention to her discourse on women's social role, female education, politics, and goods - this thesis observes Elizabeth's social interactions and self-presentation to society. It also explores how material culture and epistolary activities provided Elizabeth with means of agency, and ways to participate to late eighteenth-century American society, then undergoing crucial transformations.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T20:12:15Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 3034.pdf: 1410114 bytes, checksum: df723a61b804574fc949e7eb50060874 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-02-19 / May it be possible, based on Hannah Arendt s thoughts, to think of a morality built on the perspective of the subject and not on submission to absolute and abstract norms, a subject that, even in his singularity, continues linked to the political realm? The pertinence of the interrogation is found in a both moral and political problem: the inability of those who lived under a totalitarian regime such as the Nazi to tell right from wrong. Human capacity to commit indignities and cruelties against other human beings, characteristic of the Nazi society, is the background from which the issue under study arose. Arendt s response derives from her perception of the absence of thinking, understood as a silent dialogue between me and myself and, consequently, be able to judge right from wrong, individually taking responsibility for the surrounding world one is an integral part of. It was clear to her that she should address the debate on morality. Thus, the investigation of contemplative activities and their relation with the sphere of action becomes imperious. The challenge Arendt proposes is to think of a morality that preserves individuality, both respecting it and connecting to the sphere of human action, in the attempt to come to terms with the perplexities the contemporary world had imprinted on her. It is in this sense that the term political morality is used, namely, that the subject thinks individually but the result of his thinking appears in the public sphere in the form of his judgment at the moment the citizen acts based on his own choices and not guided by any absolute and abstract principles and laws. Thus the individual would judge the question of right and wrong without reference to previously given absolute universals but the others: those who one wants to live with. Judging is connected to worldliness once the individual shows the world his opinions, thus constituting a singularity in the public space. The capacity of judging renders dignity to human beings as they can take part in such public space as singular beings: subjects. The human being is an agent, born to begin, free to begin, because he can choose. This beginning of something new is initiated in the realms of interiority, but only gains meaning and is actualized in the public realm together with many other I s. Therefore, the activities of the mind need appear and act in concert. / Seria possível pensar, com Hannah Arendt, uma moralidade construída na perspectiva do sujeito e não da submissão desse a normas absolutas e abstratas; sujeito que, mesmo da sua perspectiva singular , mantém-se efetivamente ligado ao mundo político? A pertinência da pergunta encontra-se nos problemas tanto moral quanto político dos quais ela surge: a incapacidade de homens e mulheres pertencentes às sociedades totalitárias nazistas distinguirem individualmente o certo do errado. A capacidade humana de cometimento de indignidades e crueldades contra a pessoa humana, característica da sociedade totalitária nazista, serve de pano de fundo do qual emergiu a problemática investigada. A resposta oferecida por Arendt decorre da percepção da fragilidade constatada na incapacidade ou recusa dos homens e mulheres que compunham a sociedade contemporânea a pensar, no sentido de exercício individual do diálogo silencioso do eu-comigo-mesmo e, por conseguinte, de julgar o certo e o errado, apresentando-se responsáveis individualmente pelo mundo que os rodeia e do qual são parte integrante. Faz-se evidente a necessidade de voltar-se para a discussão moral. Assim, a investigação acerca das atividades contemplativas e a relação dessas com a esfera da ação constitui-se premente. Pensar uma moralidade que preserva a individualidade, respeitando e ligando-se à esfera da ação humana, é o desafio que Arendt se propôs, na tentativa de responder às perplexidades que o mundo contemporâneo impôs. Nesse sentido é que se emprega a expressão moralidade política, noutras palavras, de que o sujeito pensa individualmente e o resultado desse pensar se estende ao mundo comum através do juízo no momento em que o cidadão age no mundo embasado nas suas próprias escolhas e não submetido e guiado por princípios e leis absolutas e abstratas. Assim, compreende-se que o indivíduo julgaria por si mesmo o que é certo e errado, sem referência a princípios universais absolutos previamente dados, mas tendo os outros como referência os outros com os quais se quer viver junto. Apresenta-se o julgar como ligado à mundanidade, uma vez que, ao julgar, o indivíduo expõe ao mundo suas posições, constituindo-se em singularidade no mundo público. A capacidade de julgar oferece dignidade aos seres humanos, pois podem participar do mundo público, apresentando-se como singulares, únicos, portanto, sujeitos. O ser humano é um ser de ação, nasceu para começar; é livre para começar, pois pode escolher. Esse começo, um novo nascimento, inicia na esfera da interioridade, mas só tem significado e se pode efetivar no seio do mundo público em que há muitos outros eus. Portanto, as atividades do espírito precisam aparecer e para aparecerem precisam estar em consonância com os outros.