This paper is about non-fictional objects in fictions and their role as narrators. Two central claims are advanced. In part 1 it is argued that non-fictional objects such as you and me can be part of fictions. This commonsensical idea is elaborated and defended against objections. Building on it, it is argued in part 2 that non-fictional objects can be characters and narrators in fictional narratives. As a consequence, three fundamental and popular claims concerning narrators are rejected. In particular, it (...) is shown that some fictional narratives have non-fictional internal narrators, some have no internal fictional narrator, and, most controversially, that the author of a fictional narrative can be identical to its internal narrator. (shrink)

Literary narratology has rightly devoted much attention to analysing the source(s) of verbal information about the story world, usually discussed under the label “narration”, and to any agent(s) that present(s) non-verbalized perspectives on it, usually discussed under the label “focalization”. Assessing the identity of narrators and focalizers is crucial for understanding what is going on in the story world. Which narrative agent is in charge? Is the narration and/or focalization layered? If the latter, is there any “colouring” by (...) the higher-level narrative agent of anything said, thought, or experienced by the lower-level agent? Is the information provided trustworthy? Nuanced? Prejudiced? Narration and focalization have supra-medial as well as medium-specific dimensions. Over the past years, the issue of how these concepts function in the medium of comics, which combines visuals and language, has begun to be systematically addressed. This paper aims to show how the visual mode can, on its own or combined with the written-language mode, signal the sources of narration, focalization, and joint narration-and-focalization, as well as distinguish between different levels at which these take place. (shrink)

The account of the conversation between King Janaka and the Ṛṣi Pañcaśikha on the fate of the individual after death is one of the philosophical texts that are included in the Mokṣadharmaparvan of the Mahābhārata. There are different scholarly views on the history and composition of the text as well as the philosophical teachings propagated by Pañcaśikha. In contrast to earlier studies this paper not only analyzes the whole text, but also pays attention to the narrative framework in which the (...) philosophical discourse is embedded. In the text Bhīṣma functions as an external narrator, who relates and interprets the conversation as well as characterizes the protagonists and thereby influences the ways in which text is received by the audience. It is argued that it is important to deal with the interplay between the narrative and the philosophical discourse that is narrated, when analysing the philosophical positions that are either refuted or accepted in the text. 12.211–12 is not only a philosophical text, but also a tale about philosophical discourse in general and about how Sāṃkhya philosophy is taught to a non-expert audience. Seen from this perspective the text is significant for the way in which philosophical terms and issues are dealt with in the epic and adjacent non-expert texts, such as the Purāṇas. (shrink)

This paper reports on a manual monitoring of online representations of LGBT persons in the Republic of Cyprus for the period April 2015–February 2016. The article contextualizes the prevalence of “hate speech” in online Greek Cypriot comments against LGBT individuals, and, more generally, against non-heterosexuals. Adopting a Foucauldian position vis-à-vis the social and discursive construction of sexuality, we outline, first, the socio-historical context with a focus on LGBT rights in the Republic of Cyprus and the nationalistic project construing sexualities. We (...) then examine the different levels of discursive discrimination practices, providing a snapshot of the types of “hate speech” referring to this topic typically found in such an environment. The focus is on identification of the frames used to construct LGBT identities, and their perception.We use in our title the word subject as defined by post-modernists and by Butler in particular : subject refers to “a socially produced ‘agent’ and ‘deliberator’ whose agency and thought is made possible by a language that precedes that ‘I’. In this sense the ‘I’ is produced through power ”. This paper focuses on the socially produced definition of the LGBT community in the context under study. We thus address the way in which sexuality is constructed within a compulsory and hegemonic heterosexuality and heteronormativity. We analyze our data i.e. comments focused on the LGBT community, with corpus linguistic tools as well as through a qualitative examination of the identified frames. Our analysis confirms an interface between nationalism and compulsory hegemonic heteronormativity in the Republic as well as the influence of the Orthodox Church and its beliefs. (shrink)

As has been noted by several authors, in a relativistic context, there is an interesting difference between classical and quantum state evolution. For a classical system, a state history of a quantum system given along one foliation uniquely determines, without any consideration of the system’s dynamics, a state history along any other foliation. This is not true for quantum state evolution; there are cases in which a state history along one foliation is compatible with multiple distinct state histories along some (...) other, a phenomenon that David Albert has dubbed “non-narratability.” In this article, we address the question of whether non-narratability is restricted to the sorts of special states that so far have been used to illustrate it. The results of the investigation suggest that there has been a misplaced emphasis on underdetermination of state histories; though this is generic for the special cases that have up until now been considered, involving bipartite systems in pure entangled states, it fails generically in cases in which more component systems are taken into account, and for bipartite systems that have some entanglement with their environment. For such cases, if we impose relativistic causality constraints on the evolution, then, except for very special states, a state history along one foliation uniquely determines a state history along any other. But this in itself is a marked difference between classical and quantum state evolution, because, in a classical setting, no considerations of dynamics at all are needed to go from a state history along one foliation to a state history along another. (shrink)

This article sets out to critically examine the accounts of well-being produced by a middle-aged Swiss woman living in precarious prosperity. By taking on a feminist reading of the narrative on well-being, the article challenges the taken for granted assumption of the powerful agent in thriving societies. Insights from literature on happiness in nations and gender beliefs enabled addressing the woman’s capability to exert agency, while acknowledging the influence of the context in which narratives are embedded. In addition, the presence (...) of a non-national interviewer appears to be an incentive for the interviewee’s compliance with cultural meta-narratives. The approach of well-being as ‘agential flourishing’ proved helpful in assessing the woman’s capability on a gendered career path in atypical employment to deal with precariousness. (shrink)

This article is an attempt at understanding the use that Abhinavagupta, the Kashmiri Śaiva philosopher and scholar of poetics, makes of a few concepts and theories stemming from the tradition of Vedic ritual exegesis. Its starting point is the detailed analysis of a key passage in Abhinavagupta’s commentary on the “aphorism on rasa” of the Nāṭyaśāstra, where the learned commentator draws an analogy between the operation of the non-prescriptive portions of the Veda in the ritual and the “generalisation” taking place, (...) according to him, in the appreciation of a work of art. Arguing against the tendency of modern historiography to explain this analogy exclusively in terms of Kumārila’s theory of effectuation in its two modalities, the article endeavours to show how Abhinavagupta relies on a variety of other textual sources he knew extensively and presumably first-hand. Some of them belong to the great Mīmāṃsaka tradition ; others, to different trends of medieval Brahmanism claiming exegetical heritage, as in the case of Jayanta Bhaṭṭa’s Nyāyamañjarī The nature of Abhinavagupta’s debt to Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka and his concept of bhāvanā is also reconsidered in light of these new findings. This investigation finally leads to identify, in the Abhinavabhāratī, an original theory of scriptural narratives and their efficacy, irreducible to any of its exegetical sources. According to this theory, mythological passages of the Veda directly prompt action, through the same capacity of abstraction or “de-temporalisation” that is at work in our appraisal of literature and theatre. (shrink)

L'essor de la perspective linéaire a suscité de nombreuses polémiques tout au long du Quattrocento et du Cinquecento, opposant les partisans d'une géométrisation artificialiste de la vision à ceux qui vantaient les qualités du dessin d'après nature ou invoquaient des arguments de nature physiologique. Ces débats peuvent être retracés à partir des quatre alternatives qui en constituent le noyau dur : champ de vision restreint vs. large ; immobilité vs. mobilité oculaire ; tableau plan vs. curviligne ; vision monoculaire (...) vs. binoculaire. En retenant les premiers termes de ces quatre alternatives, l'histoire de la perspective a rejeté de nombreux systèmes hétérodoxes. Du point de vue de la mathématisation, l'intérêt de ces débats tient à ce qu'ils ont succédé, et non précédé, l'adoption du dispositif perspectif comme intersection de la pyramide visuelle. L'histoire de la perspective linéaire offre ainsi un authentique cas de justification a posteriori des fondements ou, pour ainsi dire, de mathématisation à rebours. (shrink)

This chapter explores the role that non-textual narrations of biblical stories can play in Christian life and practice. Our case study is the Shrine of Divine Mercy in Kabuga, Rwanda. The stations at the shrine tell the story of Jesus’s life and passion, incorporating images from the Catholic devotional tradition of Divine Mercy and elements evoking the Rwandan genocide. While many philosophical accounts of narratives presuppose that narratives are textual, material and visual art like the Kabuga shrine can also be (...) narrative, in that, like text, material and visual art can selectively represent multiple events and connections between them. We argue that material-visual narratives like the shrine can be effective in achieving commonly identified functions of narratives, such as focusing attention, immersing in a story, engaging the emotions, and fostering a common perspective on the world. We further argue that material-visual art is well-suited to narrating the Gospel in particular, for it can present the Gospel story alongside other stories (in this case, the story of the Rwandan genocide) and in so doing reframe these other stories in light of the Gospel. (shrink)

Writing and that which it entails are the subject of countless texts by Maurice Blanchot. In particular, Blanchot has focused on the notion of the work, or more precisely on a groundlessness or an absence of the work, which he has designated from different perspectives over the course of more than half a century. In various ways, Blanchot has conceived of the work as an affirmation of its undoing. The question of narration, often about a confrontation with death, is (...) fundamentally important, as is evident for example in Blanchot’s Death Sentence, The Madness of the Day or The Instant of My Death. In a sense, it is bound up with the possibility of the work. Writing about Henry James in “The Turn of the Screw” 2 in The Book to Come, Blanchot discusses narration. What is described is indeed a certain absence of the work relating to the writer’s difficult struggle to narrate everything. I will examine Blanchot’s reading of James to expose this conception of narration centred on seizing the truth. It is apparent that Blanchot approaches the question very differently in “Narrative Voice ,” in The Infinite Conversation in which there is a decentring of the work. 3 I will show that this text as well as certain writings by Derrida make it possible to arrive at a conception of narration in Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw which strongly contrasts with the one put forward by Blanchot in The Book to Come. Thus, alongside Blanchot’s reading of The Turn of the Screw which relates to the project of realising the work as a totality, Blanchot makes possible a more radical approach to the text, illustrating the non-totalization of the work whose borders are uncertain. In this way, Blanchot can be shown to step beyond an impossible conception of the absence of the work. (shrink)

We propose to analyze well-known cases of "imaginative resistance" from the philosophical literature (Gendler, Walton, Weatherson) as involving the inference that particular content should be attributed to either: (i) a character rather than the narrator or, (ii) an unreliable, irrational, opinionated, and/or morally deviant "first person" narrator who was originally perceived to be a typical impersonal, omniscient, "effaced" narrator. We model the latter type of attribution in terms of two independently motivated linguistic mechanisms: accommodation of a discourse referent (Lewis, Stalnaker, (...) Kamp) and 'cautious' updating as a model of non-cooperative information exchange (Eckardt). (shrink)

On peut décrire le monde de Kafka comme mettant à l’épreuve l’expérience du rapport entre tradition juive et modernité critique. Les sources venant justifier ce parti pris d’interprétation sont nombreuses. Hormis des lecteurs aussi fondamentaux que Benjamin ou Scholem, Kafka lui-même a inscrit ce rapport duel au cœur de ses récits. Si la Loi est un des motifs les plus éloquents de cette double appartenance, on peut s’interroger quant à la pertinence qui consiste à poser l’hypothèse d’une interprétation, non pas (...) juive de l’œuvre de Kafka, ce qui n’aurait pas beaucoup de sens, mais d’une lecture qui tente de déceler dans le processus de narration une singularité qui, tout en excédant le problème d’une appartenance religieuse, met en abime la question complexe de l’identité et de la perte d’identité. Qu’en est-il alors de cette herméneutique narrative qui cherche à défaire le lien tacite entre voir et comprendre et qui privilégie un rapport au texte de l’ordre de l’écoute? Danielle Cohen-Levinas cherche à montrer comment l’œuvre de Kafka se trouve être le lieu d’un nouveau paradigme herméneutique dont la source d’inspiration n’est autre que la Révélation et la Loi : entendre et faire entendre. (shrink)

Ce livre part d'un constat - la tutelle du réductionnisme issu du cognitivisme (années 1960-1970) - et du désir d'affirmer une complexité scientifique, philosophique et artistique, via la théorie des systèmes dynamiques. Deux parties d'abord. L'une philosophique : unité de la conscience et problème des attentats à l'aune leibnizienne ; l'autre artistique : installations sonores et visuelles, mouvements horizontaux, question du Je et de l'altérité, images composites (vidéo et cinéma expérimental), espaces topologiques cinématographiques et musique dans ses rapports avec le (...) cerveau. Après un historique des systèmes dynamiques, la part scientifique traite, elle, de neurosciences non-linéaires, de biodynamique, de mesure de la complexité et de l'(anti-)entropie dans l'ontogenèse. En une vue transversale, ce livre opte pour une "métadisplinarité" et défend un cognitivisme non-linéaire. (shrink)

Le but de cet article est de présenter quelques considérations sur les relations temporelles, stratigraphiques et épistémologiques entre la surface archéologique (et les matériels céramiques collectés pendant les prospections) et les niveaux souterrains (avec leur potentiel informatif). Il ne s’agit pas donc d’une étude archéologique spécifique ou de la discussion d’un problème méthodologique. Mais plutôt d’une réflexion sur les contradictions implicites à certaines approches archéologiques : la lecture linéaire du temps et des évolutions, l’application de notions typiquement occidentales (bien (...) qu’utiles) à des contextes non-occidentaux, ainsi que l’absence d’intérêt archéologique pour la culture matérielle actuelle (sur la surface). La temporalité traditionnelle et linéaire (fondée sur la notion d’une Grande Fracture entre passé et présent, antiquité et « modernité »), est strictement liée aux postulats d’un évolutionnisme linéaire d’empreinte coloniale et crée des apories archéologiques qui peuvent être dépassées par l’adoption d’une temporalité non-linéaire et « aplatie ». Des exemples archéologiques sont brièvement présentés pour montrer le caractère souvent non linéaire des transformations techniques et culturelles et comment la culture matérielle du présent peut être approchée par des méthodes strictement archéologiques. (shrink)

The theoretical debate on the nature of narrative has been mainly concerned with literary narratives, whereas forms of non-literary and especially pictorial narrativity have been somewhat neglected. In this paper, however, I shall discuss narrativity specifically with regard to pictorial objects in order to clarify how pictorial storytelling may be based on the activation of mentally stored action and scene schemas. Approaches from cognitive psychology, such as the work of Schank, Roger C. & Robert P. Abelson. 1977. Scripts, plans, goals (...) and understanding. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum; Mandler, Jean Matter. 1984. Stories, scripts, and scenes: Aspects of schema theory. London/hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum; Schank, Roger C. 1995. Tell me a story: Narrative and intelligence. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, suggest that cognition crucially depends on the storage and retrieval of action scripts or schemata, that is, narrative structures, which may occur at various levels of abstraction. These schemas incorporate generalized knowledge about event sequences, such as the order in which specific events will take place; causal, enabling, or conventionalized relations between these events, and what kind of events occur in certain action sequences. There also are scene schemas that are characterized by spatial rather than temporal relations. Further kinds of schemas seem also to play a decisive role. Drawing upon considerations from schema and script theory, I will focus on some concrete examples of pictorial narration, more specifically depictions of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary, where narrative schema structures become involved and, indeed, the comprehensibility of the pictures as such presuppose mental script representations. (shrink)

Al-Sira Al-Nabawiyya is often used as a reference to violence in Islam, mainly because war narration is so dominantly displayed. The tendency of using Al-Sira Al-Nabawiyya as the basis of violence conception in Islam drives Islamic teaching practices to become violence-oriented. This article presents a re-reading of Al-Sira Al-Nabawiyya by Wakhiduddin Khan, Tariq Ramadan and Satha-Anand, with a mimetic anthropology framework. The reading on Al-Sira resulted in three conclusions. Firstly, there are many non-violence stories at all stages in the (...) life of Prophet Muhammad, since the pre-prophetic era until his death. Secondly, the Prophet Muhammad was a teacher who based his activities on the principles of tawhîd, patience, love, forgiveness and appreciation for humanity. Thirdly, educational activities are Muhammad’s exemplary activities which are full of non-violent values. The findings of this article can be used as the basis for the reformulation of Al-Sira Al-Nabawiyya teaching materials in Islamic Education as well as the basis of teaching activities for Islamic teachers. Contribution: This article contributes to a paradigm shift in teaching the History of the Prophet Muhammad in a peaceful Islamic education system. The peaceful paradigm in this article can also divert the tendency of Islamic extremism to become an Islam that provides peace and prosperity to the universe ( rahmatan lil ‘alamin ). (shrink)

There is a similarity between the most technical scientific reasoning and the most humanistic literary reasoning. While engineers and historians make use of both metaphors and stories, engineers specialize in metaphors, and historians in stories. Placing metaphor, or pure comparison, at one end of a scale and simply a listing of events, or pure story, at the other, it can be seen that what connects them is a theme. The theme providing the connecting link between poles for both the engineer (...) and the historian is time. Themes in engineering that mention time are those titled differential equations. The differential equation is story-like because it speaks of time and therefore organizes experience in time, at least implicitly. Time- speaking themes shape the raw experience, as a story does when it is more than a mere unthematized chronicle. The chaotic nature of non-linear differential equations parallels the chaotic nature of history in that large results need not have large causes. Narration becomes difficult in chaotic systems because the knowledge of initial conditions is rarely sufficiently detailed to allow for accurate explanation or prediction for either engineers or historians. (shrink)

Narrar artisticamente o Mistério Santo que habita entre nós: Leitura místico-teológica da obra “Guerra e Paz” de Cândido Portinari. (Narrating artistically the Holy Mystery that lives among us: Mystical-theological reading of the panel "War and Peace"). - DOI: 10.5752/P.2175-5841.2013v11n31p867 A revelação é um conceito fundamental para a teologia cristã: ele se refere à experiência que fundamenta o discurso sobre Deus. No século XX, operou-se uma transformação importante nessa concepção fundamental, uma renovação que implicou na desconstrução do conceito tradicional de revelação (...) focado em doutrinas e dogmas e na emergência de uma nova concepção que coloca como fundamento da revelação a experiência do incondicional, experiência mística. A partir dessa renovação, passou-se a considerar a problemática da dificuldade de uma linguagem que expresse a complexidade dessa experiência paradoxal. Toda criação artística, na medida em que provoca uma forte experiência estética, é uma maneira de falar de revelação. A linguagem da arte com seu poder evocativo e não definível é certamente capaz de expressar essa experiência do divino sem constrangimento do sagrado e sem desvalorização do humano. Esse trabalho consiste em fazer a leitura dos painéis Guerra e Paz de Cândido Portinari, evidenciando que através da arte é possível narrar artisticamente o Mistério Santo que habita entre nós. Palavras-chaves: Mística. Arte. Espiritualidade. Cândido PortinariRevelation is a key concept to Christian theology: it refers to the experience that underlines the discourses about God. In the twentieth century, an important transformation on this concept led to a deconstruction of its traditional meaning, originally focused on doctrines and dogmas, and further to the emergency of a new conception, which places the mystical experience in the very foundation of the Revelation’s concept. Since this renovation, the difficulties of a language to express the complexity of this paradoxical experience were highly problematized. All artistic creation, as long as it provokes a strong aesthetic experience, is matter of Revelation. The Art’s language, with its non-definable and evocative power, is certainly capable of expressing this divine experience without devaluate the holy or the human depreciation. This work consists on the reading of Cândido Portinari’s “War and Peace” panels, pointing out that, through art, it is possible to narrate artistically the Holy Mystery that dwells among us. Keywords: Mystics. Art. Spirituality. Cândido Portinari. (shrink)

Death which is inevitably for every mortal is a sadness for those who are left behind is the cause of sırrrow. While some people reflect this sadness out-word as a tear some of them rebel against this through and cry out. -/- Some of them are traditionally reguired or lamenting as showy. For this reason it is inevitable to reveal the Position of the head of the head In İslam and the fact that it is not permissible to narrate it. (...) As a result of person who dies after A person who dies and sheds tears and silent or vocal crying like the lgnorant. -/- It’s not possible to say that, Permissible to cry after And that person sheds tears and tears. Because this situation is the essence of creation and work of mercy. The prophet Muhammad and Omar (d. 23/644), Fatima (d. 11/632), Ibn Mes’ud (d. 32/652-53), Ibn Omar (d. 73/692) Arecrying because of the death of their loved ones. However it’s understood that It’s not permissible to say the merits and beauty of the person who died from the narrations and to call the shocks of shouting and shouting. And it seen that, If a dead person is crying like that and affect and contribution of the dead person in it, He will see the punishment. This article aims to present to rumors that the prophet and some of companions had cried to their death relatives cried and cried forbidden behaviors and interpret and comment on the narrations about the punishment of the dead by the cry of alive and reveal the permissible and non-pemissible behaviors and forms of crying. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this comment, I argue that transformative experiences such as experiences of grief often imply a break in one's coherent, non-fictional and biographical narratives and practical identities. The nature of these breaks is of a certain kind, as they interrupt even the process of narration. To insist that the process of narration as well as the narratives themselves belong to one and the same process of adjustment in transformative experiences such as grief might overlook the importance of (...) such breaks, namely that the contain a moment of refusal and revolting against mourning. The tension involved in such breaks might not allow to be circumscribed into narratives nor do they fit into the process of narration as a destabilizing moment; the breaks insist on the incomprehensibility of each loss and they remain part of what it means to survive and to undergo transformative experiences. (shrink)

Many studies have documented a close timing relationship between speech prosody and co-speech gesture, but some studies have not, and it is unclear whether these differences in speech-gesture alignment are due to different speaking tasks, different target gesture types, different prosodic elements, different definitions of alignment, or even different languages/speakers. This study contributes to the ongoing effort to elucidate the precise nature of the gesture–speech timing relationship by examining an understudied variety of American English, i.e., academic-lecture-style speech, with a focus (...) on an understudied type of gesture: Non-Referential gestures, which make up the majority of this corpus. Results for the 1,334 Stroke-Defined Gestures in this 20-min sample suggest that the stroke phase of a Non-Referential gesture tends to align with a pitch-accented syllable, just as reported in studies of other gesture types (e.g., deictic gestures) and in other speaking styles (such as narration). Preliminary results are presented suggesting that trajectory shapes of these Non-Referential gestures are consistent across a higher-level prosodic grouping, supporting earlier proposals for kinematic constancy across spoken prosodic constituents ( Kendon, 1972, 1980, 2004 ). Analysis also raises the possibility that the category of Non-Referential gestures is not solely made up of ‘beats,’ defined as simple bi-phasic flick-like movements that beat out the rhythm of the speech, but includes gestures with multiple phases and various types of rhythmicity. Taken together, the results of this analysis suggest (1) a wide range of gesture configurations within the undifferentiated category of Non-Referential gestures or ‘beats,’ which requires further investigation, and (2) a close coordination between co-speech gestures and the prosodic structure of spoken utterances across speaking styles and gesture referentiality, which has profound implications for modeling the process of planning an utterance. (shrink)

This article reconsiders Paul Ricœur’s political philosophical writings on the task of decolonization and European responsibility in light of a horizon of intercultural dialogue. Departing from the exchange between Ricœur and his former student Enrique Dussel, it discusses the Ricœurian critique of modernity. After giving some background on Ricœur’s reflections on decolonization, it will clarify what Ricœur calls the “crisis of the concrete universal in the thinking and in the historical experience of Western Europe,” and what role cultural difference has (...) in this crisis. Considering Ricœur’s explicitly European perspective, this will lead us to a critical discussion on the envisioned possibility of a world-historical subject. Finally, I will discuss the role of European self-reflection in relation to a horizon of intercultural dialogue and narration from a post-/decolonial perspective. (shrink)

Philosopher and anthropologist Elizabeth Povinelli is the author of several books criticising multicultural late liberalism in Australia and the United States. Over the past few years she has created the Karrabing Film Collective with Indigenous people from Northern Australia to produce short experimental narrations filmed using smart phones, partly improvised and inspired by what she calls the animist strategy. This article discusses how, in Geontologies: A Requiem to Late Liberalism, Povinelli articulates her figure of Animism, with two others, the Desert (...) and the Virus, so as to portray the projections of the life and death of humanity within our current geological era that some call or denounce as the Anthropocene. (shrink)

From accounts of migration and stories of personal alienation, through the fragmented memories of former incarnations, to fable-like tales of half-breeds and species metamorphosis, Ying Chen's fiction evolves as it revolves around questions of difference, otherness and identity, which is never fixed or singular. While presenting the narrators' inner preoccupations and, in some cases, unreliable nature, the increasingly complex texts of this francophone-Chinese writer (1961-) also reveal larger concerns about dominant discourses, the limitations of social realities, survival, and the relationship (...) between beings, all framed within an aesthetics of non-belonging. Intriguingly, the author achieves this by consciously distancing her works, from 1998 onwards, from any categorisation by ethnicity. This engaging study considers Chen's writing from the contemporary perspective of the breakdown of traditional spatiotemporal experiences, the homogenization of places, the erasure of cultural differences, and the resulting tendency towards universalism. Rosalind Silvester is Senior Lecturer in French Studies and Director of Education in the School of Arts, English and Languages at Queen's University Belfast. (shrink)

The Book and the Sunnah are the two main sources of Sharʿī science. These two sources are based on narration which requires an absolute certainty, and this makes the reports, especially the mutawātir reports, important for Sharʿī sciences. Many people were involved in the transmission process of the Sunnah and the Book; therefore, Islamic scholars remained loyal to the technical concept “mutawātir reports” which is used in logic and is not open to doubt in terms of credibility. This is (...) particularly important for the science of kalām, which deals with matters of faith. On the other hand, in the science of fiqh, which deals with the practices of the Muslim individuals such as worship and procedures rather than the matters of faith, only the reports that the believer will accept, rather than those that everyone will approve, are sufficient. In this context, as per the science of fiqh, it is sufficient to form a dominant opinion, rather than an absolute certainty as in the science of kalām, for acting upon reports. Some factors, such as the acceptance of conjecture sufficient in the matters associated with fiqh and the low number of mutawātir reports on fiqh matters, also affected the fuqahā’s understanding of certain knowledge. In the context of transmission of the Sunnah, fuqahā partially changed the nature of the concept “mutawātir reports” by going beyond the technical understanding of tawatur. The most important change made by the fuqahā in the nature of mutawātir reports was the inclusion of the phenomenon “sened (chain of transmission)”, which is used to ensure credibility to ḥadīt̲h̲s, in the understanding of tawatur. So much so that while the number rather than the qualifications of the people who convey the reports is important for the credibility of the mutawātir reports in the science of logic; in the determination of mutawātir sunnah, the number of the narration channels which consist of just and fair-minded narrators was taken as a basis in line with the hadith “Whoever ascribes to me what I have not said then let him occupy his seat in Hell-fire.” Even some methodologists valued the justness and fair-mindedness of the narrators so much that they included the famous reports in the scope of mutawātir reports, even though the first layer was ahad, due to their trust in the narrators in the later layers. However, in technical sense, for mutawātir reports, the qualifications of the narrators or who they are is not important at all. On the contrary, any person from a different religion, sect or disposition can take a role in the transmission of mutawātir reports. However, there is no place for fasiq narrators, let alone non-Muslims, in fuqahā’s concept of sened-centered mutawātir reports. Spiritual mutawātir is one of the subjects affected the most by this new understanding of tawatur based on isnād (reporting the chain of transmission). Normally, spiritual mutawātir is the agreement of the reports, conveyed in different texts by a large number of people who cannot agree on a lie, on a common meaning. However, fuqahā interpreted spiritual mutawātir as ahad ḥadīt̲h̲s with different chains of sened reaching a certain number and denoting the same meaning. What makes these two reports different is that the number of narrators assures the credibility of reports in the first one whereas the trust in the justness and fair-mindedness of the narrators does in the second. As a matter of fact, it is not possible to talk about such a spiritual mutawātir if the trust in the justness and fair-mindedness of the narrators who convey the ahad reports is damaged. This approach of spiritual mutawātir was used by the mutakallimūn as much as by the fuqahā. However, they used this approach of mutawātir mostly for matters that are evidenced by the Sunnah but not associated with the essentials of religion, such as Shafa'ah (intercession), Hawd al-Kawthar (Pond of Abundance), Ru’yat Allah (seeing Allah), and imams’ being from Quraysh. Thanks to this new concept of tawatur, Islamic scholars included many ḥadīt̲h̲s that are normally out of the scope of the technical definition of mutawātir reports, in the scope of spiritual mutawātir, and thus provided a credibility to more ḥadīt̲h̲s. (shrink)

: Traditional accounts regard the first-person pronoun as a special token-reflexive indexical whose referent, the utterer, is identified by the linguistic rule expressed by the term plus the context of utterance. This view falls short in accounting for all the I-uses in narrative practices, a domain broader than fiction including storytelling, pretense, direct speech reports, delayed communication, the historical present, and any other linguistic act in which the referent of the indexical is not perceptually accessible to the receiver. I propose (...) a model for the reference of “I” based on the distinction between three functions carried out by indexicals in communication, namely, the anaphoric, perceptual, and phantasmatic functions. The referential mechanism of the phantasmatic “I”, that is, the “I” used in phantasmatic function, is understood as an instance of imagination-oriented pointing exploiting the phantasmatic context, and not the perceptual context relevant in perceptual uses of indexicals. The rule for “I” is revised in light of the perceptual vs. phantasmatic deixis distinction; the resulting rule governing the reference of the phantasmatic “I” allows for a homogeneous treatment of ‘I’-tokens in narrative practices spanning the spectrum from fiction to non-fiction. Keywords : First-person Pronoun; Context; Imagination; Fiction; Indexicals; Narration; L'io fantasmatico. Sull’uso immaginativo del pronome di prima persona tra finzione e realtà Riassunto : Tradizionalmente “io” viene trattato come un indicale token-riflessivo speciale il cui referente, il produttore dell’occorrenza, è identificato attraverso la sola regola linguistica e il contesto di proferimento. Questo approccio, tuttavia, non riesce a rendere conto di quei casi in cui “io” appare all’interno di pratiche di narrazione, un dominio più ampio della finzione e che include lo storytelling, i racconti in discorso diretto e indiretto, la comunicazione differita, il presente storico e ogni altro atto linguistico in cui il referente indicale non è percettivamente accessibile al ricevente. Il modello per il riferimento di “io” qui proposto si basa sulla distinzione tra tre funzioni svolte dagli indicali nella comunicazione: la funzione anaforica, la funzione percettiva, e la funzione fantasmatica. Il meccanismo referenziale dell’io fantasmatico, ovvero del pronome di prima persona usato in funzione fantasmatica, è inteso come una istanza di deissi orientata dall’immaginazione che sfrutta il contesto fantasmatico, piuttosto che il contesto percettivo rilevante negli usi percettivi degli indicali. La regola per “io” è riformulata alla luce della distinzione tra deissi fantasmatica e deissi percettiva; la risultante regola per il riferimento indicale dell’io fantasmatico permette un trattamento omogeneo delle occorrenze di “io” nelle pratiche di narrazione che pertengono indistintamente alla finzione e alla realtà. Parole chiave : Pronome di prima persona; Contesto; Immaginazione; Finzione; Indicali; Narrazione. (shrink)

In recent years there has been great attention paid to the so-called Italian theory in the field of political philosophy. This definition has brought to the fore Italian thinking, but at the same time also covers many reflections of the past several decades, by creating a category easily disclosable but also restricted to a few authors and topics. To this regard, I want to highlight the philosophical work of Ubaldo Fadini, professor of philosophy at the University of Florence, who for (...) many years has been dedicated to the German and French philosophical tradition, crossing different disciplines and combining aesthetic and ethical issues to frame the subjectivity and the institutions into the post-Fordist era. -/- Since his work is multi-faceted and broad, I would suggest first reading Il desiderio in America (The desire in America) for his ‘achipelago-politics’. Fadini addresses the issue of desire in Deleuze with an approach that escapes the opportunity and claim to be an interpretive key from which to see everything systemically. His work wisely touches on several authors and issues, from Kafka to Melville, Spinoza and Nietzsche, and many others, addressing the dynamics of a desire, debt, conscience, responsibility and law. These are, therefore, multiple inputs to desiring, which does not hide the dotted plurality of the brothers in the world, beyond the tight grip of the Oedipal triangle, i.e. the father-mother-child relationship. It follows a not only a psychological issue but also a political one, thus it regards the delineation of a field of forces in which ‘who’ acts – and speaks – is not only the person (a term which in Latin refers to theatrical mask, but well-defined identity fictitious necessary to enter the scene and carry on a story), but the scene itself, produced by relations not illuminated by the light of the show. The plural world of the brothers is the American one, in which the Oedipal relationship with the father-homeland is cut in the name of equality, contrary to colonial subjection (of which Fanon has also shown the psychic character revealing the mechanism of the colonized that internalized the oedipal function of the dominus. Fanon, in fact, has linked the production of subjectivity employee with the apparatus of colonial subordination). -/- To this aside to Deleuzian thought, Fadini adds another, but productively connects to the first: from the cut with the father was not born the son (as in Hegelian-Lacanian interpretation or dialectical-psychoanalytic who wants the definition of the son from by the conflict with his father), but the brothers, the concrete manifold in which the father is not necessary but is placed from time to time in the decision-making function of the uncertainty, in the mobile uncertainty of the brothers in their organization. That this is happening is not a scandal. That this would represent a danger, as Fadini states, is a necessary point to be aware. Maybe, the problem arises when this function is preached the need: no, the fathers are not necessary. And even mothers. We reiterate: it is a political issue around which affirms or denies the legal capacity of the many in favor of the one. The one may be different persons: those who came before, the old, the wise, the priest who runs the border between the world and underworld with the rules applied on the swinging from one place to another, the legislature, the owner. The reason why the scope of the one is so problematic is mainly related to the mechanism he establishes so to ex-istere. It is a mechanism for fault-liability-debt, such as a pyramid which is based on a ‘primary’ concept, namely that of the absence. The paternal function certainly sums up everything in a person: the father is the legislator, he was there before, is older, closer to the world of the dead, but even in that of the living, owns the world, provides rules – even interpretation – to be applied to the fluctuations of life. A really great invention, no doubt about it, higher than that of basileus-priest, more functional, yes, more functional. -/- As in The Wizard of Oz, a narrative that is served in an American election campaign and, as Graeber reminds us, explains the necessity of the idea of debt so to found the new relationship between money and gold, the legislator is microscopic compared to the effects of the conviction that is produced on a large scale, not only on his community but also on the foreigners who come to him in search of completeness. The vacuum is once again an instrument of domination, nothing else. Lack of confidence, of course. Lack of confidence in the ability of the brothers. In the story of The Wizard of Oz, the wizard was well-intentioned and therefore the trick is revealed, however, he reaffirms his role by giving foreigners a certificate of completion that settles the existential debt. Lack of confidence and perhaps even the reading of fairy tales. We don’t need ‘real’ narrations but concrete tales, and, as Fadini says, archipelagos and pirates and cartographers. (shrink)

In a society marked by transnational migration and religious globalization, spatial factors are assuming a central role in the understanding of social relations. This is most prominent in urban areas, where the coexistence of culturally and religiously diverse subjects imposes a forced sharing of territory. Starting from a study of the semiotic concept of the city, the contribution aims first of all to explore the claimed right of the other to use public space through the creation of _aedes sacrae_. It (...) will show how the construction of a place of worship of a ‘minority’ religion can alter the pre-existing urban geography, leaving its imprint on space. Through a brief examination of the Italian constitutional jurisprudence on the so-called “anti-mosque” legislation, the paper will also outline a semantically relational conception of the religious building, offering a starting point for a rethinking of spatial organisation. An intercultural application of law is then needed insofar as the aim is towards a non-hegemonic polyphonic rewriting of urban territory. (shrink)

Cet article analyse les évolutions des positions de Marx à propos de la colonisation. Il souligne tout d’abord l’invariant de ces réflexions : la dénonciation de la violence coloniale. Au départ, on trouve une interprétation de la colonisation comme processus de modernisation, puis comme dynamique de destruction-régénération, liée à l’« unification du monde ». L’auteur identifie spécialement les inflexions successives de la pensée de Marx – résolument critique –, au sujet des questions coloniale et nationale, du caractère non linéaire (...) de l’histoire, mais aussi de la différenciation des formations sociales. (shrink)

Physique des phénomènes vibratoires, dynamique des systèmes non linéaires, neurosciences, chronobiologie, chronopharmacologie, psychologie, psychiatrie, poétique, musique danse, sociologie, anthropologie, sciences de l'éducation, économie, histoire, géographie, architecture, urbanisme, constituent une liste non exhaustive des disciplines qui ne peuvent plus faire l'économie de la notion de rythme. Cependant, l'ample diffusion de la notion de rythme dans divers champs de recherches ne signifie pas pour autant que cette notion soit déjà reconnue dans son rôle heuristique, ni qu'elle fonctionne comme un paradigme commun. Prise (...) de manières très diverses, elle manque encore souvent de consistance conceptuelle, au risque parfois de perdre en compréhension ce qu'elle gagne en extension. L'objectif principal de cet ouvrage collectif dirigé par Jean-Jacques Wunenburger (Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3 et Université de Bourgoge) & Julien Lamy (Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3) est de faire un état des lieux des études sur le rythme et de fournir, dans le sillon des travaux de Bachelard, des repères théoriques, à la fois historiques et conceptuels, qui permettront de mieux comprendre la cohérence propre de cette notion complexe, aux significations et aux usages multiples... (shrink)

En 1893, « physicien-ingénieur » André Blondel invente l’oscillographe bifilaire permettant de visualiser les tensions et courants variables. À l’aide de ce puissant moyen d’investigation, il entreprend tout d’abord l’étude des phénomènes de l’arc électrique alors utilisé pour l’éclairage côtier et urbain puis de l’arc chantant employé comme émetteur d’ondes radioélectriques en T.S.F. En 1905, il met en évidence un nouveau type d’oscillations non-sinusoïdales au sein de l’arc chantant. Vingt ans plus tard, Balthasar Van der Pol reconnaitra qu’il s’agissait en (...) réalité d’oscillations de relaxation. Pour expliquer ce phénomène, il fait appel à une representation dans le plan de phase et montre que son évolution prend la forme de petits cycles. Pendant le premier conflit mondial la triode remplace peu à peu l’arc chantant dans les systèmes de transmission. Au sortir de la guerre, Blondel transpose à la triode la plupart de ses résultats par analogie avec l’arc chantant. En avril 1919, il publie un long mémoire dans lequel il introduit la terminologie « oscillations auto- entretenues » et propose d’illustrer ce concept à partir de l’exemple du vase de Tantale qui sera ensuite repris par Van der Pol et par Philippe Le Corbeiller. Il fournit alors une définition d’un système auto-entretenu assez proche de celles qui seront données par la suite par Aleksandr’ Andronov et Van der Pol. Pour étudier la stabilité des oscillations entretenues par la triode et par l’arc chantant il utilise cette fois une représentation dans le plan complexe et explicite l’amplitude en coordonnées polaires. Il justifie alors l’entretien des oscillations par l’existence de cycles qui présentent presque toutes les caractéristiques des cycles limites de Poincaré. Enfin, en novembre 1919, Blondel réalise, un an avant Van der Pol, la mise en équation des oscillations d’une triode. En mars 1926, Blondel établit l’équation différentielle caractérisant les oscillations de l’arc chantant, en tous points similaire à celle qu’obtient concomitamment Van der Pol pour la triode. Ainsi, tout au long de sa carrière, Blondel, a apporté une contribution fondamentale et relativement méconnue à l’élaboration de la théorie des oscillations non linéaires. L’objet de cet article est donc d’analyser ses principaux travaux dans ce domaine et de mesurer leur importance, voire leur influence en les replaçant dans la perspective du développement de cette théorie. (shrink)

L’installation et le développement de la discipline universitaire « Sciences et techniques des activités physiques et sportives » ne peuvent être pleinement compris que si l’on voit qu’ils résultent de l’action conjointe de facteurs cognitifs et sociaux. La perspective sociohistorique montre que ce qui est arrivé récemment a d’abord été préparé par un long processus non linéaire et complexe. Mais il a encore fallu sur le court terme un dynamisme cognitif interne et des effets sociaux multiples, enchevêtrés, voulus et (...) non voulus, afin que s’établissent l’instutionnalisation irréversible de cette nouvelle discipline universitaire, son « académisation », puis son expansion « démographique ».The setting-up and development of the « sport sciences » as an academic discipline can only be fully grasped by acknowledging that it results from the combined action of both cognitive and social factors. Viewed in a social and historical light, what has recently taken place proves to have come at the end of a long, complex and winding process. But, in the short run, internal cognitive dynamics as well as multiple and intertwined social effects – whether intended or not – were also necessary for the non-reversible institutionalization of this new academic discipline, its establishment as part of the academia and eventually its « demographic » expansion. (shrink)

Dans cette présentation je vais essayer de vous montrer comment les principes deleuzoguattariens de la géophilosophie peuvent être mis en contact avec ce que j’appelle la « physiologie politique ». Ces deux domaines de recherche sont les mieux pensés par rapport aux « sciences de complexité », c’est-à-dire, par rapport aux modelages accomplis par les techniques mathématiques dans le domaine de la dynamique non-linéaire.

Les analyses des parcours de vie s’intéressent surtout au repérage des régularités du cycle de vie ou, tout au plus, aux écarts aux modèles types, en termes de retard des événements ou d’allongement des transitions sur les calendriers scolaires, professionnels, résidentiels ou familiaux. Les études empiriques suggèrent pourtant la présence de dynamiques non linéaires évoquant la possibilité que les parcours comportent des « bifurcations » où tout peut être remis en question, pouvant entraîner des changements durables de situation. Ce phénomène (...) est plus souvent interprété en référence à la capacité des individus de faire leurs propres choix qu’en fonction de l’influence possible des cadres institutionnels. L’étude de parcours scolaires et professionnels de jeunes Québécois dans les années 1990 constitue la base de cette réflexion sur la place des bifurcations dans les parcours de vie qui met l’accent sur le rôle des dispositifs institutionnels dans la création d’une flexibilité des structures, sur les phénomènes d’appropriation par les individus des opportunités offertes par cette flexibilité et sur le mouvement des réversibilités et irréversibilités construites à travers ce processus. L’analyse suggère que les individus peuvent s’engager dans des actions en évaluant les possibilités offertes par les institutions qui encadrent la vie sociale, qu’ils sont capables de percevoir les irréversibilités associées aux choix offerts et ainsi, de les prévenir, les exploiter ou s’y adapter. La croissance du nombre de personnes adoptant les mêmes comportements dans une situation donnée accroît ainsi la possibilité que ce choix se transforme en une convention sociale et que les bifurcations s’institutionnalisent.Life course analyses are mainly interested in identifying regularities in the life cycle or, at most, in deviations from typical patterns in terms of a postponing of events or of transitions within educational, career, residential or family trajectories. However, empirical studies point to the existence of non-linear dynamics and suggest the possibility that life paths may also include « bifurcations », where everything is placed in question, and that may lead to lasting changes in situations. This phenomenon is more often interpreted in reference to the individual’s capacity to make personal choices rather than in terms of the potential influence of institutional frameworks. This study is based on an analysis of the educational and career trajectories of Québec youth during the 1990s : it looks at the role of bifurcations in the life course, in emphasizing how institutional arrangements may help to create a flexibility of structures, and explores the phenomena of individuals seizing the opportunities offered by this flexibility. The study suggests that individuals may undertake actions after evaluating the opportunities presented by social institutions, and that they are able to grasp the irreversibility of certain choices and anticipate them, use them to their advantage or adjust their actions accordingly. An increase in the number of persons adopting the same behaviours in a given situation thus also increases the possibility that such a choice may evolve into a social convention and that these bifurcations may become institutionalized. (shrink)

À la fois omniprésent et incernable, le temps est une dimension omniprésente de nos existences, indissociable de notre rapport au cosmos, à la vie biologique, à la conscience mais aussi à l’histoire, à la culture et à la société. Parce qu’elle est au confluent de plusieurs champs d’expérience et de réflexion, la question du temps offre une passerelle privilégiée pour croiser des approches rarement invitées à se rencontrer : celles des sciences d’un côté (physique, biologie, médecine, cosmologie), celles des arts (...) de l’autre (littérature, cinéma, arts plastiques, musique, théâtre). Au-delà des questions qui touchent à la réorganisation des partages cognitifs et disciplinaires (entre sciences et arts), l’objectif de cet ouvrage est de montrer la fécondité des transferts épistémologiques entre ces deux domaines. D’un côté, les sciences constituent un réservoir inépuisable pour les arts, auxquels elles proposent une multiplicité de modèles du temps opérant à différentes échelles : temporalités non linéaires, réversibles, cycliques ou emboîtées, qui peuvent être dynamisées par des bifurcations, des catastrophes ou des phénomènes d’émergence imprévisibles. De l’autre, les arts sont un lieu privilégié de modélisation, d’exposition et de mise à l’épreuve de modèles temporels, qui tantôt croisent la rationalité dominante (sciences, historiographie), tantôt en réactivent des dimensions occultées (mythe, rite, etc.). Frayant à la fois dans l’imaginaire et le rationnel, ces représentations du temps permettent d’exhiber la complexité d’un phénomène qui ne peut être appréhendé que dans l’entre-deux des savoirs et des arts. (shrink)

Cher, T-Pain, Saez, Châton, Booba, Benjamin Biolay, Bon Iver, Yung Beef, Lady Gaga, Neil Young ou encore PNL, tous ces artistes ont en commun l’usage de l’Auto-Tune. Ce dernier désigne un logiciel permettant d’ajuster, de corriger la voix à la suite d’un enregistrement ou durant une performance. Si initialement, l’Auto-Tune permet de chanter juste, cela est également utilisé pour produire des modulations sonores donnant un caractère artificiel, robotique, non linéaire à la voix humaine. Le premier titre avec une présence (...) marquée de l’Auto-Tune est « Believe » de Cher sorti en 1998 qui connaît un succès retentissant. Depuis, si quelques artistes – à l’image de Jay-Z et son titre D.O.A. pour « Death of Auto-Tune » (2009) – dénoncent cette pratique, l’Auto-Tune a conquis l’industrie musicale et serait utilisé dans la quasi-totalité des productions (Reynolds, 2019), toutes les esthétiques confondues. Malgré cette diffusion, encore peu de recherches académiques abordent cette question. Quels sont les enjeux liés à l’Auto-Tune? (shrink)

Cet article cherche à mettre en évidence qu’Anders a développé une philosophie de l’histoire plurielle et complexe, c’est-à-dire non-linéaire, dès ses premiers écrits d’anthropologie philosophique, mais aussi dans ses œuvres littéraires et théoriques des années 1930-1940, en particulier dans sa Kulturphilosophie encore inédite. Il s’agit alors de relire la célèbre thèse andersienne de l’obsolescence de l’histoire : cette dernière signe l’uniformisation, donc l’appauvrissement, de la pluralité des lignes historiques à l’heure où la technique et le conformisme ferment les possibles (...) politiques, idéologiques et artistiques. (shrink)

L'ouvrage retrace la genèse des études sur les systèmes dynamiques auto-organisateurs (Ashby, Von Foerster, Prigogine, von Bertalanffy) et leurs applications en neurosciences et sciences cognitives. Réalisées aux Etats-Unis en particulier, ces dernières s'inscrivent dans ce que l'on appelle, depuis les années 1980, l'Hypothèse Dynamique. Dès les années 1970, de nouvelles recherches sur le cerveau (neurodynamique) voient le jour. Des neurophysiologistes et biologistes tels Freeman, Katchalsky, Yates et Basar l'envisagent comme dynamique, non-linéaire, fait de combinaisons chaotiques, d'états de métastabilité, d'instabilité (...) s'équilibrant vers un état d'autoorganisation globale. Ces conclusions sont ensuite illustrées dans les neurosciences comportementales (dynamique de coordination sensorimotrice) et aussi par des interrogations sur le rôle des oscillations et synchronisations neuronales dans la perception et la mémoire, avec notamment le binding problem, problème du liage ou de la liaison des données sensorielles dans le cerveau. Sans oublier la découverte de neurones miroirs amenant à l'idée d'une "simulation" à la fois corporelle et psychique de ce qui est perçu par un individu. Ce concept, entre autres, et aussi les principes de codage/décodage et de prédiction de l'information issus de travaux de physiciens et mathématiciens russes et américains, anciens et récents, permettent à l'auteur de proposer un modèle précis de ce que pourrait être une nouvelle théorie esthétique. (shrink)

Leibniz comprenait la question pourquoi y a-t-il quelque chose plutot que rien? sur un mode ontologique; il l'interpretait dans le cadre d'une physique continue, lineaire et necessaire; et il y repondait en invoquant le principe de raison suffisante. Nous comprenons desormais cette question sur un mode non ontologique, en substituant une notion relativiste et pragmatiste de realite a la notion absolue d'etre; nous l'interpretons dans le cadre d'une physique discontinue, non lineaire et probabiliste; et nous y repondons en denoncant, sur (...) un mode non sceptique, le principe de raison suffisante. Operer un tel renversement de l'analyse leibnizienne ne suffit toutefois pas. Car nous restons dans le cadre de la logique binaire adoptee par Leibniz, a savoir l'opposition entre le quelque chose (1) et le rien (0)... (shrink)

Toutes les sciences sociales aujourd'hui semblent adopter une position politiquement correcte qui consiste en une «utilisation appliquée» pour la «société». Nous affirmons ici que l'adoption de cette valeur pratiqued'une science repose sur un assujettissement aux demandes de contrôle social et institutionnel sur les sciences. En insistant sur la nécessité d'une orientation «appliquée», ces demandes excluent les sciences sociales de l'univers du savoir universel qui risquerait de révéler les nombreuses fonctions sociales des institutions de contrôle. Les cadres de demande sémiotiques construits (...) pour réguler les sciences sociales leur garantissent un développement non linéaire dans l'histoire et une répartition géographique inégale. L'histoire de la psychologie sociale - plus spécifiquement son transfert de l'Europe vers l'Amérique - fournit des preuves de ces processus qui ont eu pour conséquence une fragmentation des savoirs et la confiance en des méthodes consensuelles. Il est nécessaire de surmonter ces oeillères historiquement concoctées par une discipline si l'on veut produire un savoir général applicable à toutes les sociétés.All the social sciences of our day seem to adopt the politically correct position of relevance and of being of "practical use" for "society". The author claims here that such appropriation of the applied value of a science subjugates it to social-institutional control demands on the sciences. Emphasizing the necessity for "practical use" means these demands keep the social sciences away from the world of universal knowledge which might reveal the multiple social functions of the controlling institutions. The Semiotic Demand Settings set up to regulate what social sciences do guarantee that the development of the given science is non-linear in its history and uneven in its social-geographical distribution. The history of social psychology - especially its transfer between Europe and America — provides evidence of such processes that have resulted in the fragmentation of knowledge and the reliance on consensually accepted methods. It is necessary to overcoming these blinkers historically set by a discipline if it is to generate general knowledge applicable to all societies. (shrink)

Les spécialistes de l’archéologie des médias défendent une conception non-linéaire de l’histoire du cinéma, en analysant la façon dont les avancées technologiques et les dispositifs concrets contribuent activement à modifier nos modes de perception. Meurtre dans un jardin anglais de Peter Greenaway constitue un exemple remarquable de « métacinéma » mettant en pratique l’archéologie des médias dans le corps même du film, par le biais de citations visuelles renvoyant à d’autres médias ou d’autres pratiques artistiques, comme la peinture de (...) la Renaissance italienne ou la peinture hollandaise. Le présent essai offre donc une analyse détaillée de Meurtre dans un jardin anglais comme archéologie du cadre cinématique. Le cadre est pour Derrida « la structure décisive de l’enjeu » en ce qu’il renvoie au parergon, marquant ainsi les limites de l’œuvre d’art. Nous nous attacherons donc à décrire les différents types de cadrages appliqués aux nombreux médias présents ou « cités » dans le film : pellicules cinématographiques, écrans, dessins de paysages, miroirs plats ou convexes, tableaux, etc. Ces différents « cadrages » nous fourniront autant de clés de lecture pour comprendre les transformations que subit un médium artistique donné quand il est « re-présenté » par un autre. (shrink)