Collaborative research practices in the field of plant genetic resources must follow the principles of fairness and equity as defined in the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and in the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA). In this context the concepts of fairness and equity generally refer to the substantive and procedural dimensions associated with sharing the benefits of this research. But neither term is clearly defined by these international treaties, and the meanings attributed to (...) the concepts vary among different societies. This paper looks at the question of how to account for the diversity among value systems when conducting research that implicates diverse stakeholders and respects the requirements of fairness and equity. We incorporated an auto-ethnography method developed as part of a multi-stakeholder network involved in research projects on plant genetic resources in West Africa. A theatrical device was used as a framework for testing the principles of fairness and equity, helping us to collectively identify feelings of injustice, and explore the conditions for making collaborative research practices more ethical in ways that respect the perspectives of different stakeholders. In an environment of extensive political and socio-cognitive inequality, this approach makes it possible to explain the criteria relating to interactional justice and expectations in terms of socio-political and socio-emotional benefits. It also invites us to consider the principles of fairness and equity in a framework of ethical competence that goes beyond international directives. (shrink)

BackgroundWork stress is a serious problem in primary education. Decades of research underline the importance of participatory, organizational-level work stress prevention approaches. In this approach, measures are planned to tackle causes of work stress in a participatory manner and implemented by a working group consisting of members of the organization. This approach can only be effective if the measures contain effective ingredients to decrease work stress risks and are successfully implemented. The aim of this paper is to present an outline (...) of a work stress prevention approach that is evaluated in primary education. To ensure the appropriateness of measures, a logic model of change is built as part of the risk assessment to facilitate the selection of appropriate measures. Progression on target behaviors as well as implementation factors are real-time monitored during implementation and fed back to the working groups, to provide the opportunity to adjust action plans when needed to optimize implementation.MethodsThe approach consists of five steps: preparation: installing an advisory board and working groups, risk assessment: inventory of work stress risks. In addition, a behavioral analysis is performed to build a logic model of change to facilitate selection of measures, action planning: conducting an action plan with appropriate measures, implementation: implementing the action plan. During implementation progression on target behaviors and implementation factors are monthly monitored and fed back to the working groups, and evaluation: effects of the approach are studied in a controlled trial with measurements at baseline, 1 year, and 2 years follow-up. A process evaluation is carried out using quantitative and qualitative data to study the implementation process of all steps of the work stress approach.DiscussionWe believe that building a logic model of change and real-time monitoring of implementation could be of added value to improve the success of the work stress prevention approach. With this study, we aim to provide more insights into work stress intervention research, especially in primary education.Clinical Trial RegistrationThe study is registered in Netherlands Trial Register. (shrink)

1. La philosophie politique contemporaine : en français et en anglais François Boucher (FB) : Votre travail semble habité par une volonté d'établir des ponts entre la pensée politique française et anglo-américaine. Cette volonté est déjà visible dans votre ouvrage de 2000, Pluralist Thought and the State in Britain and France (1900-1925), qui compare les penseurs pluralistes du début XXe en France et en Angleterre. Elle est également au cœur de Critical Republicanism, The Hijab Controversy an...

BackgroundAs a number of commentators have noted, SARS exposed the vulnerabilities of our health care systems and governance structures. Health care professionals (HCPs) and hospital systems that bore the brunt of the SARS outbreak continue to struggle with the aftermath of the crisis. Indeed, HCPs – both in clinical care and in public health – were severely tested by SARS. Unprecedented demands were placed on their skills and expertise, and their personal commitment to their profession was severely tried. Many were (...) exposed to serious risk of morbidity and mortality, as evidenced by the World Health Organization figures showing that approximately 30% of reported cases were among HCPs, some of whom died from the infection. Despite this challenge, professional codes of ethics are silent on the issue of duty to care during communicable disease outbreaks, thus providing no guidance on what is expected of HCPs or how they ought to approach their duty to care in the face of risk.DiscussionIn the aftermath of SARS and with the spectre of a pandemic avian influenza, it is imperative that we (re)consider the obligations of HCPs for patients with severe infectious diseases, particularly diseases that pose risks to those providing care. It is of pressing importance that organizations representing HCPs give clear indication of what standard of care is expected of their members in the event of a pandemic. In this paper, we address the issue of special obligations of HCPs during an infectious disease outbreak. We argue that there is a pressing need to clarify the rights and responsibilities of HCPs in the current context of pandemic flu preparedness, and that these rights and responsibilities ought to be codified in professional codes of ethics. Finally, we present a brief historical accounting of the treatment of the duty to care in professional health care codes of ethics.SummaryAn honest and critical examination of the role of HCPs during communicable disease outbreaks is needed in order to provide guidelines regarding professional rights and responsibilities, as well as ethical duties and obligations. With this paper, we hope to open the social dialogue and advance the public debate on this increasingly urgent issue. (shrink)

In the fifth–sixth century CE the rulers of the Kadamba dynasty claimed the town of Halsi in modern Karnataka as the northern capital of their expanding polity. Their investments in this locale are recorded in a corpus of copper-plate inscriptions spanning four generation of kings. The plates record the growth of a thriving Jain community at Palāśikā and are revelatory of their relationships with the Kadamba rulers and their agents. This study of the donative and political processes converging in Palāśikā (...) shows that the use of Sanskrit inscriptions as media for royal representation and public self-fashioning was highly developed in the Kadamba polity, where idioms and trends developed independent of the Gupta royal model. Moreover, the evidence from Halsi is indicative of the centrality of Jain religious communities, ideologies, and institutions in the administration of the Kadamba polity and the expression of a lineage identity. (shrink)

Background As a number of commentators have noted, SARS exposed the vulnerabilities of our health care systems and governance structures. Health care professionals (HCPs) and hospital systems that bore the brunt of the SARS outbreak continue to struggle with the aftermath of the crisis. Indeed, HCPs – both in clinical care and in public health – were severely tested by SARS. Unprecedented demands were placed on their skills and expertise, and their personal commitment to their profession was severely tried. Many (...) were exposed to serious risk of morbidity and mortality, as evidenced by the World Health Organization figures showing that approximately 30% of reported cases were among HCPs, some of whom died from the infection. Despite this challenge, professional codes of ethics are silent on the issue of duty to care during communicable disease outbreaks, thus providing no guidance on what is expected of HCPs or how they ought to approach their duty to care in the face of risk. Discussion In the aftermath of SARS and with the spectre of a pandemic avian influenza, it is imperative that we (re)consider the obligations of HCPs for patients with severe infectious diseases, particularly diseases that pose risks to those providing care. It is of pressing importance that organizations representing HCPs give clear indication of what standard of care is expected of their members in the event of a pandemic. In this paper, we address the issue of special obligations of HCPs during an infectious disease outbreak. We argue that there is a pressing need to clarify the rights and responsibilities of HCPs in the current context of pandemic flu preparedness, and that these rights and responsibilities ought to be codified in professional codes of ethics. Finally, we present a brief historical accounting of the treatment of the duty to care in professional health care codes of ethics. Summary An honest and critical examination of the role of HCPs during communicable disease outbreaks is needed in order to provide guidelines regarding professional rights and responsibilities, as well as ethical duties and obligations. With this paper, we hope to open the social dialogue and advance the public debate on this increasingly urgent issue. (shrink)

L’infléchissement de l’économie vers la scientificité masque un paradoxe : moins l’économie s’annonce comme politique, plus elle l’est. L’approche critique de Marx rappelle en effet combien ce régime de discours est idéologique. Réciproquement, c’est le dépassement politique, indexé au matérialisme historique, qui donne à la critique marxienne sa fécondité heuristique. Celle-ci s’appuie sur un projet : l’appropriation politique des forces productives. Définissant ces trois sens dans la lecture de Marx mais aussi dans la distance qui nous en sépare, l’étude s’interroge (...) sur une question posée au présent : comment gagner en politicité? (shrink)

Old and Middle Assyrian sources dealing with moths Terminology Moth damage Conditions for moth proliferation Prevention Losses and reuse of infested textiles.

Les Assyriens, au début du iie millénaire av. J.-C., organisent, depuis Aššur (site actuellement en Irak), des échanges commerciaux avec l’Asie Mineure où certains d’entre eux s’installent et contractent parfois un second mariage avec une autochtone. Femmes et filles de marchands restent seules pendant de longues périodes dans leur maison à Aššur, partent fonder un foyer à Kaniš (en Anatolie centrale), ou suivent leurs maris dans toutes leurs pérégrinations en Asie Mineure. Les nombreuses archives cunéiformes – correspondance privée et documents (...) juridiques – découvertes dans le quartier commerçant de Kaniš illustrent les différents voyages accomplis par les femmes avec ou sans leurs époux. (shrink)

« Dans la première préface à la Critique de la raison pure Kant se réfère aux Métamorphoses d’Ovide pour comparer une métaphysique hors bornes à la reine Hécube. Or, ce qui semble être tu dans cette métaphore, c’est qu’Ovide fait culminer la douleur d’Hécube dans sa métamorphose en chienne enragée. Le cliché de la reine des sciences est ainsi poussée à son paroxysme : la métaphysique sauvage serait une chienne enragée! Cet article revient, par le biais de l’œuvre sonore de (...) l’artiste power noise Rosaceae (Leyla Yenirce), à une Hécube qui hante la philosophie. Hécube pose, selon l’argument exposé ici, le problème d’une aísthēsis (αἴσθησις) pure, qui hanterait la notion de raison pure comme son complément logique mais refoulé. Refoulé car, si l’idée d’une raison pure semble parfaitement innocente, celle d’une aísthēsis (αἴσθησις) pure évoque à l’inverse un scandale pour la pensée philosophique, puisque l’idée d’un objet à penser en est exclue, et puisque son spectre renvoie à tout ce qui terrorise les philosophes : la fantaisie et la folie, le désir et la culpabilité, l’enthousiasme et l’irrationalité. ». (shrink)

In his review of my book Whose Body is It Anyway, Wilkinson criticises the view (which I defend) that confiscating live body parts for the sake of the needy is (under some circumstances) a requirement of justice. Wilkinson makes the following three points: (a) the confiscation thesis is problematic on its own terms; (b) there is a way to justify coercive resource transfers without being committed to it; (c) the thesis rests on a highly questionable approach to the status of (...) the body. Wilkinson’s paper is challenging, and some of his points are well taken. On the whole, however, it does not constitute an insurmountable challenge for my thesis. (shrink)

Résumé Le sexe a été théoriquement et discursivement institué comme binarité biologique et invariant anthropologique, fondements de relations nécessaires. Extrapolé des corps, le « savoir du sexe » les réintègre en normativité – et donc en possibles pathologies de la sexualité. De Beauvoir à Butler, c’est à l’interstice de ces intrications qu’agit le féminisme, en venant les troubler. C’est alors une herméneutique du trouble que cet article tente de retracer, et que l’écriture de Violette Leduc vient incarner.

L’un des principaux arguments évoqués contre l’art contemporain au début des années 1990 en France (lors du débat autour de ce qui fut appelé la « crise de l’art contemporain ») consista en l’affirmation que puisqu’aujourd’hui n’importe quoi peut être de l’art, alors l’art d’aujourd’hui c’est n’importe quoi. Ce texte entend montrer que ce raisonnement en deux parties relève d’une confusion qui, une fois clarifiée, permettra de cerner la spécificité de l’art contemporain et des jugements qui peuvent être émis à (...) son égard. (shrink)

« La tradition a longtemps considéré l’homme comme une exception au sein de la nature, lui concédant le pouvoir de la dominer et le droit de l’exploiter à son avantage. Aujourd’hui, à l’inverse, l’homme n’occupe plus tant le sommet de l’ordre de la création que l’épicentre d’une catastrophe en cours. Une nouvelle innocence semble requise pour habiter plus harmonieusement la nature. Seulement, nous rencontrons ici un paradoxe, car c’est aussi l’ingénuité technique qui est chargée de surmonter la crise écologique. Dans (...) le présent texte, nous tenterons de dénouer ce paradoxe par le biais des Deux leçons sur l’animal et l’homme de Gilbert Simondon, en revenant sur deux motifs qui s’opposent seulement en apparence : d’un côté, la vision démiurgique de l’homme comme grand artisan, ancrée dans le mythe platonicien du Timée, et de l’autre, la vision axiologique et éthique de l’homme, rendue emblématique par le sermon aux oiseaux de Saint François d’Assise. L’importance de la légende de Saint François d’Assise pour le canon apocalyptique du xiii ème siècle nous permettra de relier cette vision éthique au mythe platonicien, nous amenant, au final, à suggérer une alternative aux visions apocalyptiques de l’Anthropocène, appuyée sur l’originalité de la conception de la nature dans la pensée simondonienne. ». (shrink)

S’il apparaît encore important, cinq ans après sa parution, de rendre compte de ce recueil de textes articulant jeunesse et sexualité, c’est que ce riche ouvrage venait en 2010 combler un vide sur le sujet dans le champ des sciences sociales. Comme le soulignent dès l’introduction ses directeurs et sa directrice – dans des propos toujours d’actualité – le débat public autour de ces questions est aujourd’hui majoritairement occupé par un discours « psy » souvent peu fondé sur des enquêtes (...) empi... (shrink)

Rares sont les chercheurs qui pratiquent eux-mêmes l’art qu’ils professent. C’est le cas de Sarah Nancy, agrégée de lettres modernes, qui consacre son enseignement et ses recherches à la voix parlée et chantée tout en nourrissant son travail de la pratique du chant lyrique. L’ouvrage qu’elle vient de publier est la version remaniée de la thèse de doctorat préparée sous la direction d’Hélène Merlin-Kajman (2007) sur la naissance de l’opéra en France au tournant des xviie et xviiie siècles. Gen...

Il faut attendre la fin du deuxième siècle pour voir Irénée faire le lien entre la fonction de « diacre » et le récit d’Actes 6 rapportant la création du groupe de Sept hellénistes. Pour le comprendre, on étudie la liaison entre le nombre Sept, la notion de diakonia, la fonction de glorification et surtout l’idée d’imitation par l’univers visible de l’univers invisible. Ces questions étaient au centre du débat entre Marc le Mage et Irénée. Elles se retrouvent dans les (...) spéculations de Clément d’Alexandrie autour du chandelier à 7 branches et des 7 « protoctistes » qui assurent la diaconie au ciel. Les structures ecclésiales sont ainsi conçues comme l’image des réalités célestes préexistantes. Le récit du martyre d’Étienne en Ac 6 contenait déjà quelques jalons qui ont permis à Irénée d’établir ce lien : si Étienne peut être dit « premier diacre » par Irénée, c’est parce que sa confession parfaite lui donne de voir s’ouvrir les cieux en contemplant la Gloire de Dieu. (shrink)

La prévention du vieillissement est au cœur des politiques publiques de la santé. De nombreux dispositifs sont ainsi proposés aux différentes échelles de l’action publique afin de promouvoir le vieillissement réussi ou le vieillissement actif ou encore le bien vieillir. Dans les plans et programmes, trois piliers semblent se dégager au cœur des mesures préventives pour la santé des personnes âgées : la nutrition, l’activité sociale et la pratique des activités physiques et sportives (APS).Notre intérêt se porte sur la politique (...) de prévention de la vieillesse de manière générale ainsi que sur l’usage des APS comme outil privilégié de celle-ci et du maintien en bonne santé des personnes âgées. Ces deux axes permettent de questionner les temporalités de manière plurielle et de faire ressortir leurs articulations et leurs éventuels désajustements.Poser la question de la temporalité invite à questionner le temps long des transformations économiques, sociales ou scientifiques et les temps moyens ou courts des incitations des organisations internationales et des plans et programmes nationaux. De surcroît, en tant que politique préventive, la prévention du vieillissement a un rapport singulier à la temporalité en termes d’anticipation des risques. L’action publique doit ainsi articuler urgence et anticipation, se déployer dans le court terme en intégrant une projection d’un futur plus ou moins lointain. Enfin, les temporalités jouent aussi au niveau du public cible et des effets escomptés. Les plans reposent sur des transformations des conduites qui ont une portée temporelle très différente de celle des réformes et se confrontent aux parcours de vie des acteurs concernés inscrits dans un temps plus long et dans un temps subjectif. (shrink)

« Dans la première préface à la Critique de la raison pure Kant se réfère aux Métamorphoses d’Ovide pour comparer une métaphysique hors bornes à la reine Hécube. Or, ce qui semble être tu dans cette métaphore, c’est qu’Ovide fait culminer la douleur d’Hécube dans sa métamorphose en chienne enragée. Le cliché de la reine des sciences est ainsi poussée à son paroxysme : la métaphysique sauvage serait une chienne enragée! Cet article revient, par le biais de l’œuvre sonore de (...) l’artiste power noise Rosaceae (Leyla Yenirce), à une Hécube qui hante la philosophie. Hécube pose, selon l’argument exposé ici, le problème d’une aísthēsis (αἴσθησις) pure, qui hanterait la notion de raison pure comme son complément logique mais refoulé. Refoulé car, si l’idée d’une raison pure semble parfaitement innocente, celle d’une aísthēsis (αἴσθησις) pure évoque à l’inverse un scandale pour la pensée philosophique, puisque l’idée d’un objet à penser en est exclue, et puisque son spectre renvoie à tout ce qui terrorise les philosophes : la fantaisie et la folie, le désir et la culpabilité, l’enthousiasme et l’irrationalité. ». (shrink)

À quoi ressemble la sexualité des hommes handicapés moteurs? Comment gèrent-ils les contraintes imposées par leur corps handicapé? C’est à travers un ensemble de données (entretiens et données documentaires) que l’article décrit ce qu’ils en disent eux-mêmes. Analyser cette sexualité à partir du concept de « scripts sexuels » permet de comprendre comment l’impossibilité de coller aux normes leur permet de s’en détacher pour construire un répertoire personnel de scripts adaptés à leurs possibilités corporelles et à celles de leurs partenaires. (...) Leur sexualité récréative emprunte à des répertoires variés, dont ceux d’autres groupes minorisés. Elle est marquée par la négociation entre les partenaires de la symbolique des parties du corps ou des pratiques, la souplesse des rôles masculins et féminins, la réciprocité. L’objectif du rapport est souvent la « connexion » entre les partenaires dans un plaisir qui se nourrit du plaisir de l’autre. Non prise en compte dans les recherches habituelles, la sexualité récréative des hommes handicapés moteurs ébranle les normes et montre un potentiel subversif. (shrink)

This book is one of the definitive accounts of Steiner-Waldorf education by the founder of the first Waldorf School in the UK. In clear and insightful terms, Cecil Harwood presents the heart of this unique approach to children's development, learning and wellbeing as a much-needed antidote to modern educational methods. Harwood's book is full of still-fresh ideas for both parents and teachers, and is a must-read for anyone interested in Steiner-Waldorf education. The classic work has been edited for the modern (...) age, with a contextualising introduction by Professor Douglas Sloan. (shrink)

Situer à leur juste place les féministes françaises de la première vague est une entreprise qu’illustre bien le livre de Cécile Formaglio qui met en lumière la vie et l’action féministe de Cécile Brunschvicg. Nous disposons déjà d’autres études sur Brunschvicg, mais c’est seulement à la suite d’un accord entre la France et la Russie, au début des années 1990, que ses archives personnelles, saisies une première fois par les Allemands, puis une deuxième fois par les Soviétiques, sont (...) revenues d... (shrink)

Les dictionnaires et documents, tirés de la littérature ou des archives, qui sont examinés dans cet ouvrage disent plus de mal que de bien de la séduction. La séduction c'est « l'élan qui porte l'un vers l'autre », mais cet élan est dévié par la tromperie. La séduction peut être située dans la polémique de longue durée contre le maquillage et la vanité des femmes. Leon Battista Alberti compare la femme, qui a la déplorable habitude de se maquiller, à l'artiste (...) qui aurait l'habitude, to... (shrink)

La temporalité est bien au cœur de la réflexion de cet ouvrage, mais elle est presque invisible, tant les autres termes temporels sont omniprésents. Très vite, s’impose la question de savoir si cette Sociologie des âges de la vie qui, selon l’auteur, veut « penser l’organisation sociale du temps et l’évolution des existences humaines », est un champ thématique ou bien une sociologie générale. L’ouvrage en présente les enjeux, à la fois son renou...

Lewis was not, and is not, very popular in the academy. I think there are three reasons.First, he did not stick to his subject, which was medieval and Renaissance literature. He wrote highly successful children's books, theological works, and articles accessible to nonspecialists, and was an acclaimed broadcaster. All this allowed his critics to suggest that he was not a proper academic, because proper academics do not throw their nets so wide.Second, he was good at everything he did (except perhaps (...) some areas of philosophy: he was famously bested by Elizabeth Anscombe when he ventured onto her home ground). This was perhaps the most infuriating thing about him. The justification for academic superspecialization is that one cannot do more than one thing really well. But Lewis did. He was a better Renaissance scholar than those who criticized him, moaned about him in the Oxford cloisters, and blackballed him for appointments. He is relentlessly readable; therefore (said his detractors) his scholarship must be shoddy.Lewis infuriates me too. Often, when I think I have had an original thought in some domain a million miles from Renaissance literature, I discover not only that Lewis had had that thought already, but had explicated it, seeing angles I never noticed, and more often than not he had exploded it, using a tenth of the words I used, and all in devastatingly simple prose that would entertain and illuminate the most uninterested plumber.And third, of course, he was a Christian, which was then becoming an unforgivable sin, as it remains now in the humanities (though not the physical sciences or mathematics). The usual (stated) objection to academic Christians is that their theological commitment precludes objectivity, but Lewis's academic writing (notably his English Literature in the Sixteenth Century: Excluding Drama [1954]) was so good that that indictment could not stick, and his opponents descended into incoherent fulmination about superannuated paradigms.These reasons help to explain the chilly reception (or, more often, nonreception) by self-billed “serious thinkers” of Lewis's “space trilogy”: Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength (hereafter THS). In relation to THS there is another reason: the novel is about them. No, about us. Lewis's view of us is just too keen, his diagnosis too alarming.The main concerns of THS are dehumanization, the role of institutions in that dehumanization, and the desire of individuals to be part of an esoteric circle. More broadly, it concerns the nature of evil. Its debt to the Divine Comedy and to Charles Williams, Lewis's fellow Inkling, are clear.The central character is a young academic, Mark Studdock. We all know him. His education had been “neither scientific nor classical—merely ‘Modern.’ That left him pathetically manipulable. The severities both of abstraction and of high human tradition had passed him by: and he had neither peasant shrewdness nor aristocratic honour.” Studdock was “a man of straw, a glib examinee in subjects that require no exact knowledge.” He stood for nothing; he weighed nothing.Humans are not supposed to be weightless. We will do anything to convince ourselves that we have mass. Many of our strategies are counterproductive. Some are disastrous and lead to dissolution. Studdock's strategy is one of the commonest and most catastrophic: he tries to get to the center of things—to the “Inner Ring” whose geography is described by Lewis in his 1944 lecture (and later essay) of that name. At some level, at least occasionally, Studdock knows the stupidity of this ambition, but he closes his eyes and his mind. And he begins to be used by forces far greater than any he had dreamed of.The book opens with a merciless (and horribly entertaining) account of academic politics. Read it and cringe in recognition: the mechanics of toadyism; the devices for getting your own way with a committee (put the real business in coded form at the end of an agenda, to be dealt with on a hot day after lunch); infuse everything with an appeal to self-interest, but never put it quite like that, for fear of awakening long-dormant altruism. Obfuscate: do not call the sale of an ancient woodland in which Merlin's body lies “the sale of Bragdon Wood” but the sale of “the area coloured pink on the plan.” Learn to talk like the bursar of Studdock's college, for each of his sentences was “a model of lucidity: and if his hearers found the gist of his whole statement less clear than the parts, that may have been their fault.” As a manual for getting your own way in institutions, The Prince is artless and benign beside THS.Studdock becomes a pawn in a big and diabolical game. A vast organization, the National Institute for Coordinated Experiments, known, of course, as “NICE” (never underestimate the importance of an acronym), which turns out to be the instrument of dark supernatural forces, is becoming a state within a state. It is unaccountable. That is its tagline, indeed: it will be free of the red tape that inhibits the research of more conventional institutions. And who can define with sufficient exactitude the difference in principle between tedious administrative red tape and moral stricture? If you are in with the NICE, anything goes.The NICE's project is the unmaking of everything that is quintessentially human and, eventually, everything that is biological. Life itself is just too unhygienic. Beauty is a joke. Sentiment a delusion. Love merely a result of chemical interactions in the brain. Nothing signifies.The NICE has a handful of opponents—a raggedy bunch (including a bear) under the direction of Ransom, who has traveled outside planet Earth in the previous two books in the trilogy. The company, it turns out, is the remnant of the old Arthurian kingdom of Logres, which has always been in tension, if not war, with the modern kingdom of Britain: “Haven't you noticed that we are two countries? After every Arthur, a Mordred; behind every Milton, a Cromwell: a nation of poets, a nation of shopkeepers: the home of Sidney—and of Cecil Rhodes.” They recruit Studdock's wife, Jane, who can spy clairvoyantly on the NICE, and then a revived Merlin comes from his tomb to their aid.THS is strong meat. Many will balk at its supernaturalism, and perhaps in particular its complementarian view of the relationship between the sexes. But hear Lewis out: you might not agree with him, but he is always interesting. When I read THS thirty years ago, I thought it a ripping yarn. It still is. But now I see it as prescient, prophetic, and profoundly important. It should be on every university reading list, for every subject, and no one should be allowed to hold any kind of public office until they have shown that they have assimilated its lessons. (shrink)

c.4,000 word critical discussion of Fabre's book. Provides an overview of the book plus comments on the themes of (i) loyalty and treason and (ii) the ethics of spying and sex.

The role of the reader is central to the epistolary genre because the letters anticipate a reader within the novel's framework. There is the letter's intended recipient , the occasional interceptor, the invented publisher and/or editor who organize the collected correspondence, and the extrafictional reader who reads the collection in its entirety, including the disclaiming or condemning prefaces which precede it. The epistolary form, however, with so many layers of readers, considerably complicates the issue of reader response. If we share, (...) for example, Stanley Fish's assumption that "literature is in the reader," the epistolary novel apparently reverses the formula: the reader is in the literature.And yet it is in the novel of letters that the reader, the fictional reader, most clearly creates the text. Let us return to Merteuil's admonishment to Cécile: "Voyez donc à soigner davantage votre style…. Vous voyez bien que, quand vous écrivez à quelqu'un, c'est pur lui et non pas pour vous: vous devez donc moins chercher à lui dire ce que vous pensez, que ce qui lui plaît davantage."2 If a reader's response to a given sentence is colored by the previous one, the epistolary novel achieves the same effect within a larger unit: each letter is determined by the one which precedes it. In this sense the letter is a grammatical unit, a larger sentence. Moreover, a letter-novel presents the possibility of an architectural as well as conceptual interruption. That is, whereas insufficiencies in a first-or third-person narrative must consist of circumlocutions, repetitions, and exclusions of information, the letter-novel can create a concrete insufficiency by a lost, suppressed, stolen, or interrupted letter. In such cases the letter must function without its precedent since the destinataire remains empty-handed. Thus, the epistolary novel has a great capacity for mise en abîme.Both inside and outside the narrative, there always is a destinataire; and even if he is the wrong one in the context of the récit he is the intended one for the histoire.3 In any case, the extrafictional reader is the final destinataire and holds a privileged position. And yet, he too is subject to interruptions: here the editor rears his head by claiming in footnotes that a letter is lost, too damaged to decipher, or so boring or obscene that he has seen fit to exclude it; these footnotes are the only "letters" addressed to and meant for us. At this point the editor removes his mask but remains on stage. Apart from such tricks, however, we do read every letter available, each of which is addressed to another reader, a system of the once removed or of the "letter in suffrance." Or, loosely interpreting Jacques Lacan, a purloined letter means that a letter always arrives at its destination.42. Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liasons dangereuses , letter 105, p. 247; all subsequent quotations are taken from this edition and will be identified by letter and page number in the text. "Therefore attend more to your style....You must well know that, when you write to someone, it is for him and not for you: you must therefore seek less to tell him what you think, than what pleases him more"; here and elsewhere my translation.3. I am using the French terms of Gérard Genette to avoid confusion caused by English equivalents. "Récit is often translated as discourse, plot, narrative, subject, narration; histoire as story, events, myth, and so forth.4. See Jacques Lacan, "Seminar on'The Purloined Letter,'" trans. Jeffrey Mehlman, Yale French Studies 48 : 38-72; all further references to this work, abbreviated as "SPL," will be included in the text. The final sentence reads as follows: "Thus it is that what the 'purloined letter,' nay, the 'letter in suffrance' means is that a letter always arrives at its destination." What Lacan means by this statement has to do with the language of the unconscious, or of unconscious Desire. Each individual sends his own message of "truth" of identity. Earlier in this passage Lacan says: "The sender, we tell you , receives from the receiver his own message in reverse form." Françoise Meltzer is an associate professor of Romance language and literatures and of comparative literature at the University of Chicago. Her previous contributions to Critical Inquiry are "Color as Cognition in Symbolist Verse" and the translation of Christian Metz's "Trucage and the Film" . She is presently working on the relationship between rhetoric and psychoanalytic terminology. (shrink)

Volumi e saggi Jay Schulkin, Reflections on the Musical Mind. An Evolutionary Perspective , [Michele Gardini, p. 202] • Hans Belting, Faces. Eine Geschichte des Gesichts [Pietro Conte, p. 205] • Aby Warburg, Il primo Rinascimento italiano. Sette conferenze inedite [Alice Barale, p. 207] • Laura Anna Macor , Reading Schiller: Ethics, Aesthetics and Religion [Lorenzo Leonardo Pizzichemi, p. 209] • Bernard Lafargue, Stéphanie Cardoso , Figures de l’art n° 25, Philosophie du design [Claire Azéma, Anne Beyaert Geslin, Stéphanie Cardoso, (...) Cécile Croce, p. 212] • Helmut Leder et al., What Makes an Art Expert? Emotion and Evaluation in Art Appreciation , “Cognition and Emotion”, 2013, 28, pp. 1-11; Enric Munar et al., Aesthetic Appreciation: Event-Related Field and Time-Frequency Analyses , “Frontiers in Human Neurosciences”, 2012, 5, pp. 1-11; Gerald C. Cupchik et al., Viewing Artworks: Contributions of Cognitive Control and Perceptual Facilitation to Aesthetic Experience , “Brain and Cognition”, 2009, 70, pp. 84-91 [Gianluca Consoli, p. 217]. (shrink)

I address the long-standing problem of toleration in diverse liberal societies in light of the progress of same-sex marriage and continued vehement opposition to it from a significant portion of the population. I advance a view that contrasts with recent discussions by Teresa Bejan, Mere Civility, and especially Cecile Laborde, Liberalism’s Religion. Laborde emphasizes the importance of state sovereignty in fixing the boundaries of church and state, emphasizing the priority of public authority and constitutional supremacy. I argue that emphasis on (...) priority needs to be complemented by a recognition of the importance of forms of reconciliation that go beyond ‘mere civility’. Reflections on toleration in the liberal and democratic traditions – including in the canonical discussions of Locke, Rousseau, Smith and Tocqueville, and in more recent political science – have recognized that the health of liberal democracy benefits enormously from the educative and morally formative resources furnished by religious c... (shrink)

Droit et morale Sous la direction de Dominique Bureau, France Drummond et Dominique Fenouillet Véritable « pont aux ânes de la pédagogie juridique », la question des relations qu'entretiennent Droit et Morale appelle une réponse doctrinale presque invariable: la séparation de principe n'exclurait pas l'influence réciproque. Le droit contemporain semble pourtant traversé par deux courants a priori antinomiques: ici, la référence morale est invoquée comme une sorte de « tabou » qui justifierait le retrait du droit, alors que, là, elle (...) est appelée en renfort pour justifier telle solution ou fonder telle réforme. C'est de cette étrange coexistence du « retour offensif » et du « tabou » qu'est née l'idée d'organiser un colloque sur le thème « Droit et Morale. Aspects contemporains » en privilégiant une approche interdisciplinaire. Le 4 juin 2010, dans le cadre des journées d'étude qu'il consacre au pluralisme, le Laboratoire de sociologie juridique de l'Université Paris II accueillait donc les réflexions croisées d'Olivier Descamps, Dominique Fenouillet, Michel Germain, Valérie Malabat, Horatia Muir Watt, Cécile Pérès, Marc Pichard, Jean-Emmanuel Ray et Jean-Louis Sourioux. L'ouvrage ici présenté s'est enrichi des contributions supplémentaires d'Éric Martin-Hocquenghem et de Mustapha Mekki. Puisse cette publication contribuer à éclairer les relations singulières qu'entretiennent le Droit et la Morale. Contributeurs Olivier Descamps Dominique Fenouillet Michel Germain Valérie Malabat Éric Martin-Hocquenghem Mustapha Mekki Horatia Muir Watt Cécile Pérès Marc Pichard Jean-Emmanuel Ray Jean-Louis Sourioux. (shrink)