Résumé Cet article explore le processus de déshumanisation et ses effets sur les individus et plus particulièrement sur leur corps. Pour approcher l’univers de la déshumanisation, les auteurs se sont plongées dans l’irreprésentable des violences génocidaires survenues dans la région des Grands Lacs au Burundi. Deux grandes interrogations constituent le fil rouge de la réflexion : le corps et le paradoxal. Le cas de Nemesa, jeune ex-rebelle burundaise, a permis de penser la souffrance paradoxale liée aux violences extrêmes et inhumaines.

Le 15 décembre 2005, René Girard, lors de son entrée à l'Académie française, prononça l'éloge de son prédécesseur, le révérend père Carré. Michel Serres répondit à ce discours par un tableau de la vie et de l'oeuvre du récipiendaire dont, dit-il, la théorie compte parmi les plus fécondes du XXe siècle.

L'univers de René Girard est un univers complexe dans lequel se mêlent étroitement les éléments biographiques et les différentes disciplines auxquelles il a fait appel pour mener à bien ses travaux. Centrés sur le phénomène du désir mimétique, ces entretiens dévoilent la genèse de sa théorie dans les domaines littéraires et religieux. Le fil conducteur en est le principe des doubles mimétiques qu'il a analysés chez des auteurs comme Stendhal, Proust, Dostoïevski et Shakespeare. Il se réfère également à la (...) Bible, considérant que " la donnée fondamentale de notre temps est la crise du religieux ". Ses ouvrages relèvent à la fois de la littérature comparée, de l'anthropologie et de l'histoire des religions. Il trouve aussi, dans les échanges économiques, la confirmation de sa théorie. En effet, selon lui, le monde moderne est à la recherche du sacré qu'il a perdu, et, dans ce processus, il se retrouve victime d'un mimétisme exacerbé. René Girard déploie son esprit critique à l'encontre de la société de concurrence et de la consommation ; ce faisant, il compare les sociétés française et américaine du point de vue d'un intellectuel français installé au coeur de l'Amérique. (shrink)

State Violence, Coalitions, Subjects After a consideration of the reception of her work in France , Judith Butler assesses the political contribution of queer movements and minority struggles. She addresses the need for the left to reappropriate the forthright critique of the State and its violence and to examine the way minorities are produced. To do so, her analysis starts from the question of immigrant persons. She highlights the issues and the difficulties which are involved, if there is to be (...) a productive critique of the State, the aim of which is to contest it. As part of a dynamic political perspective, she proposes the creation of coalitions. She outlines the main lines of such a coalition, its dynamics and singularities, its articulation with the subject, but also its limits. In conclusion, she examines the issue of revolution and her relation to Marxist thought, indicating the outlines of her current thinking. (shrink)

A humorous bedtime story for budding philosophers "There's a rhinoceros in my room!" Ludwig claims. His father doesn't think so. He looks for the huge pachyderm in every corner, but he just can't find it. There CANNOT be a rhinoceros in Ludwig's room. It's way too small for a rhinoceros. But Ludwig shows his father that something can be there, even if you can't see it. Ludwig Wittgenstein discussed this philosophical problem with his professor Bertrand Russel, and is the basis (...) for Noemi Schneider's hilarious and thoughtful story. The Berlin duo GOLDEN COSMOS, who work with their characteristic screen printing style for international magazines, are now illustrating a picture book for the first time. (shrink)

Across contexts and time, subjects marked by racial difference have expressed public accounts of the multiple injuries of race. From the vantage point of critical race and black theory, this paper sheds light on both the heuristic and critical political values of such accounts. The first part critically reassesses conceptualizations of vulnerability as an ambivalent ontological condition within critical approaches to liberalism. A close reading of Fanon's account of injury in Black Skin, White Masks specifies how race exploits bodily and (...) enunciative vulnerability and materializes subjects into a state of suspension and suspicion. The second part addresses the political promise of accounts of racialized injury. Departing from sceptical readings of “wounded attachment,” critical race and black analyses associate accounts of injury with citational practices that pertain to historically entrenched conventions of resistance to racial and colonial abusive power. Such accounts can be read as misappropriations of race which expand the horizon of the human. (shrink)

In 1988, Nadine Dormoy conducted a series of interviews with Rene Girard after a number of books and conferences had situated his work in a new context of research on self-organizing systems. In these interviews, Girard discusses the intellectual activity that followed the 1982 Stanford University conference, Disorder and Order. Girard also discusses Theater of Envy, his book on Shakespeare, as well as corrects several misunderstandings of his mimetic hypothesis.

This article explores the relationship between place and Bildung, in the context of the North American African diaspora. In the process it raises questions of identity and the troubled concept of America itself, and the fatefully compromised roots of this modern democracy (‘We the People!’—but which people are we?). It begins by elaborating on the central concepts of place and Bildung in light of the classic formulations of Heidegger and the more recent critical discussions of the humanist geographer Edward Relph. (...) The development of the idea of Bildung has connected substantially with the literary form of the novel, and experiments in the novel have shaped and reshaped the understanding of what Bildung can mean. Hence, the strands of thought I have established are brought to bear, in the latter part of the article, on a consideration of one of the outstanding 20th-century Bildungsromane by a Black author, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. My discussion of Ellison is intertwined with reflections on William James Booth’s ‘The Color of Memory’—which deals more explicitly with the violence of self-formation in North American colonial contexts—generating thoughts that I thematize in relation to visibility. Consideration of the novel enables an exploration of the themes of insideness and outsideness, and hence, of alienation, as well as reflection on new ways of thinking and being, in which the relation between Bildung and place are altered and in some respects weakened. (shrink)

After the coup d’état in 2012, the Malian state experienced progressive decomposition in terms of loss of territorial integrity as well as in the functioning of its institutions. Against this backdrop, this article examines life histories of a former student generation whose members were actively involved in the protest movement of 1980. At the time they fought for student rights and democratization under a military junta, but were not able to induce the desired change. Today they portray themselves as committed (...) patriots for whom the state serves as an ongoing point of reference in their identity constructions. Bringing together higher education, protest movement and state decline, I argue that their narratives not only reveal how damaged identities and political visions are narratively repaired, but also, on a symbolic level, their damaged country as well. (shrink)

In 1973 Girard was invited by the editors of Esprit in Paris to discuss his work with several interlocutors from the fields of philosophy, psychoanalysis, literature, and theology. In this exchange Girard addresses challenges to his thinking, and is further prompted to consider the relation between his critique of primitive or archaic religion and the role of Judeo-Christianity, which Western culture has adopted as its own, and to which his book pays scant attention.

This text is an outgrowth of notes prepared by J. Y. Girard for a course at the University of Paris VII. It deals with the mathematical background of the application to computer science of aspects of logic (namely the correspondence between proposition & types). Combined with the conceptual perspectives of Girard's ideas, this sheds light on both the traditional logic material & its prospective applications to computer science. The book covers a very active & exciting research area, & (...) it will be essential reading for all those working in logic & computer science. (shrink)

In the Preface to the Discourses Machiavelli laments that the greatness of the ancients is “rather admired than imitated” by his contemporaries and expresses the belief that recurring to past examples would be most beneficial to those interested in “ordering republics, maintaining states, governing kingdoms, ordering the military and administering war, judging subjects, and increasing empire” (D I 2.2). Machiavelli is indeed persuaded that the laws governing human nature are unchangeable, and that the ancients can be imitated, since the causes (...) for their actions and the reasons for their choices are the same that determine the conduct of the contemporaries. Thus, an analysis of Titus Livy’s work on the Roman republic might shed light on the weaknesses and strengths of existing governments and encourage men to the emulation of past greatness. More specifically, such an analysis would make clear that the greatness of Rome lied in that both the city and its citizens enjoyed a high level of freedom. In fact, the city had sovereign power over itself and other cities, rather than being ruled by others. Besides, no social group had enough power to overcome the others: people were able to foster their interests by participating in the civic life of the city and by protesting against those public decisions which they found contrary to their interests. But what did this freedom exactly consist in? In other words, does Machiavelli conceive freedom as non-interference, or rather as non-domination, by others? Moreover, does he consider participation and contestation as constitutive of liberty, or rather instrumental to it? In this paper, I will first present Philip Pettit’s account of three alternative conceptions of liberty and indicate which of them might have been endorsed by Machiavelli. I will then consider the issue of contestations and tumults and of their role within the polity. I will argue not only that Machiavelli endorses a republican view of freedom but also that, in contrast to Pettit, he maintains contestations and tumults to be instrumental to freedom, rather than constitutive of it. I will conclude by claiming that Machiavelli’s and Pettit’s different stance on the value of tumults and contestations reflects the kind of freedom as non-domination in which they are interested in. Pettit supports a more democratic form of republicanism, in which not only groups but also individuals must be able to contest given decisions. By contrast, Machiavelli endorses a republicanism in which power must be distributed among different political figures within a polity. Dissensions are seen as a means for one of these figures, i.e. the multitude, to raise its voice when its interests are damaged by public decisions. In Machiavelli’s view, the end to which a state should aim is to be great, for which it needs to be free only at the collective level. Different means might be employed in order to realise this aim. Tumults are just one of them: the one that made Rome a great city, worthy of being imitated. (shrink)

L’ouvrage de Julie De Ganck se veut une histoire de la médecine belge concernant l’« hermaphrodisme » et les « anomalies sexuelles » couvrant la période allant de 1830 à 1914. Comme l’explique l’auteure, la période voit l’émergence de travaux médicaux sur la question de l’« hermaphrodisme » – ce qui se traduit notamment en Belgique par la publication croissante d’articles d’auteurs européens sur ce thème dans des revues médicales, qui constituent le corpus d’étude de l’ouvrage. L’auteure choi...

La psychologie phénoménologique sartrienne, qui s?attèle à repenser la mé­thode psychologique classique, inopérante et cernée de préjugés et d? a priori chargés, fait de l?émotion un de ses sujets de prédilection. Elle constitue un thème continu du projet philosophique sartrien, de son premier essai à sa dernière somme biographique, traversant divers types d?approches de la réalité-humaine, s?inscrivant toutes dans un projet global d?investigation et de compréhension de l?homme en situation, de l?individu concret dans son époque, dans ses rapports au monde, (...) indissociable d?une pensée de la liberté en construction. La conception de l?émotion élaborée par Sartre est assez constante malgré de nets bouleversements contextuels. Elle sera ballottée de cadres en cadres, passant du statut d?acte de conscience dont la psychologie phénoménologique s?évertue à saisir l?essence, à celui d?une conduite indivi­dualisante du pour-soi au c?ur d?une ontologie phénoménologique à la fonc­tion d?anthropologie fondatrice qui vise à balayer l?entièreté des caractéris­tiques de la conscience. L?émotion deviendra finalement, dans la psychana­lyse existentielle appliquée, le lieu même de la construction de soi dans l?enfance en ce que le choix originel se crée sur base d?un affect en situation qui orientera toute la destinée sociale et affective de l?individu considéré. Au sein du déploiement de ce. (shrink)

Hervaeus Natalis distinguishes two types of items that can have esse obiective in the intellect: objects of acts of intellection (man, this cat, etc.) and properties unapprehended by these acts, or background properties (being a species, being a particular, etc.), that are beings of reason. Yet, his conception of the esse obiective of objects evolved. First, he had a neutral conception of esse obiective: items presenting themselves to the intellect are cognized, transparently, without being altered in the process. Later, he (...) developed an ontologically committing conception of the objective being of objects: items presenting themselves to the intellect take on rational being (esse rationis) as such. This evolution transpires because Hervaeus introduces intentional relations as what makes the cognized item be objectively in the intellect and includes them within the class of background properties (being of reason). Both these conceptions manage to account for our access to extra-mental things. -/- . (shrink)

Ahora que la digitalización está ampliamente extendida en las aulas y la educación se enfrenta a un cambio de paradigma, la Realidad Aumentada aparece como la herramienta ideal para el desarrollo de una educación híbrida. Esta tecnología, a caballo entre el mundo real y el virtual, facilita experiencias en entornos de aprendizaje altamente significativosPara reflejar el estado de la realidad aumentada en el ámbito educativo y conocer las principales limitaciones de los docentes para usarla, se analizó la relación de los (...) docentes de educación primaria con las tecnologías en general y la realidad aumentada en particular. (shrink)

Con una indagación cualitativa se intenta averiguar si el método de palabras generatrices de Paulo Freire presenta ventajas para la enseñanza-aprendizaje de la lengua escrita castellana en la edad infantil. Se extraen los datos de la experiencia práctica acumulada por profesorado que lo ha aplicado en el segundo ciclo. Cinco maestras aportan informes escritos individuales y dos equipos docentes se constituyen en grupos de discusión. Tras la categorización y análisis de los datos, se concluye que el método tiene muchas ventajas. (...) Entre las ventajas de tipo didáctico cabe resaltar el respeto al protagonismo del alumnado y a su pensamiento sincrético, ser muy motivador, conseguir la comprensión lectora desde el principio, desarrollar simultáneamente las conciencias léxica, silábica y fonológica; enriquecer el vocabulario, fijar una ortografía correcta, integrar todos los ámbitos de conocimiento, y desarrollar la capacidad simbólica y la creatividad. Como ventajas de tipo pedagógico: considerar los efectos de tipo actitudinal que actúan sobre los procesos cognoscitivos, adaptarse a los contextos, permitir al profesorado conocer mejor a su alumnado, propiciar el desarrollo de la dimensión afectivo-emocional, favorecer la socialización por trabajarse siempre en grupo y la ayuda entre iguales, el buen clima de aprendizaje y la colaboración familiar. (shrink)

Cet article présente le projet de recherche international « Le monde atlantique comme laboratoire conceptuel . Fondations pour un Dictionnaire historique de la langue politique et sociale dans l'espace ibéro-américain» , qui réunit plus de 60 chercheurs en Europe et en Amérique latine. Son objectif est d'effectuer une étude comparée des concepts politiques de base tels que América/ americanos, constitución, etc. Il analyse les modes de conceptualisation et de traduction/adaptation des vocables d'une même langue d'un pays à l'autre, et les (...) différences qui apparaissent entre les deux grands blocs politico-linguistiques que sont l'Espagne et l'Amérique hispanique d'un côté et le Portugal et le Brésil, de l'autre. L'article s'achève par l'examen du terme d'opinion publique et de ses liens avec les autres concepts du projet.This paper presents the international research project "The Atlantic world as a laboratory concept . Foundations for a Historical Dictionary of language and social policy in the Ibero-American ", which brings together more than 60 researchers in Europe and Latin America. Its objective is to make a comparative study of political concepts such as basic América / americanos, constitución, etc.. It analyzes the modes of conceptualization and translation / adaptation of the words of the same language from one country to another, and differences appear between the two major political blocs that are language-Spain and Hispanic America one side and Portugal and Brazil on the other. The article concludes by examining the terms of public opinion and its relationship with other concepts of the project. (shrink)

La psychologie historique d’Ignace Meyerson est habituellement présentée comme opposée à l’épistémologie de son oncle Emile Meyerson , fondée sur le « principe d’identité ». Toutefois, dans les écrits d’Ignace conservés dans ses archives personnelles, un certain nombre de notes le révèlent proche du système de son oncle. L’objet de ce texte est d’éclaircir le rapport intellectuel entre l’oncle et le neveu. A la lecture de leur correspondance, entre 1922 et 1933, apparaissent quatre points de discussion. L’interprétation de Lévy-Bruhl, la (...) relation d’Ignace avec le positivisme, les rapports entre la perspective épistémologique d’Emile et le regard psychologique d’Ignace sur le rôle des images dans la pensée, la notion de « transcendance » du réel qui, d’après Emile englobe l’ensemble de leurs discussions antérieures.It has been frequently said that Ignace Meyerson’s historical psychology was opposed to his uncle Emile Meyerson’s « principle of identification » based epistemology. However, when reviewing Ignace’s writings at his personal archives, a number of notes evincing his agreement with his uncle’s system calls the reader’s attention. The aim of this paper is to clarify the complex intellectual relationship between uncle and nephew. For this purpose, we will analyze their « philosophical » correspondence from 1922 to 1933. We can clearly identify four main points of discussion : Lévy-Bruhl’s interpretation, Ignace’s relation to positivism, the relations between Emile’s epistemological perspective and Ignace’s psychological outlook as to the role of images in thought, the notion of « transcendent reality », and according to Emile it encompassed all their previous disputes. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show the importance of intercultural competence for identity construction in a globalized world. Pedagogical, as well as methodological approaches are given to show how intercultural competence is implemented by Ethnologie in Schule und Erwachsenenbildung, a Germany-based NGO.

L’expertise du restaurateur de peintures se définit à Paris à la fin du XVIIIe siècle dans l’institution muséale. D’une part, cet article présente les compétences revendiquées par le praticien pour justifier de son expertise et se créer une identité professionnelle distincte de celles des autres acteurs impliqués. D’autre part, ce texte montre comment cette expertise est construite dans les rapports de travail du commissaire-expert et du restaurateur et souligne la négociation et la porosité de leurs champs de compétence respectifs.

This volume is a collation of original contributions from the key actors of a new trend in the contemporary theory of knowledge and belief, that we call “dynamic epistemology”. It brings the works of these researchers under a single umbrella by highlighting the coherence of their current themes, and by establishing connections between topics that, up until now, have been investigated independently. It also illustrates how the new analytical toolbox unveils questions about the theory of knowledge, belief, preference, action, and (...) rationality, in a number of central axes in dynamic epistemology: temporal, social, probabilistic and even deontic dynamics. (shrink)

L'expérience de la connaissance nous enseigne qu'il n'y a pas de Réalité Dernière, que tout train en cache un autre. Une évidence qu'il n'est pas facile d'accepter, d'où l'idée de ce train ultime, celui qui ne cacherait plus rien. La transparentisme postule l'existence, au-delà de la perception immédiate, d'un monde, d'un niveau de lecture, complètement intelligible, i.e, explicite et immédiat. D'où cette croyance en de prétendus "rayons X du savoir" qui nous dévoileraient l'envers de l'Univers.

Recently, there is increased attention to the integration of moral values into the conception, design, and development of emerging IT. The most reviewed approach for this purpose in ethics and technology so far is Value-Sensitive Design (VSD). This article considers VSD as the prime candidate for implementing normative considerations into design. Its methodology is considered from a conceptual, analytical, normative perspective. The focus here is on the suitability of VSD for integrating moral values into the design of technologies in a (...) way that joins in with an analytical perspective on ethics of technology. Despite its promising character, it turns out that VSD falls short in several respects: (1) VSD does not have a clear methodology for identifying stakeholders, (2) the integration of empirical methods with conceptual research within the methodology of VSD is obscure, (3) VSD runs the risk of committing the naturalistic fallacy when using empirical knowledge for implementing values in design, (4) the concept of values, as well as their realization, is left undetermined and (5) VSD lacks a complimentary or explicit ethical theory for dealing with value trade-offs. For the normative evaluation of a technology, I claim that an explicit and justified ethical starting point or principle is required. Moreover, explicit attention should be given to the value aims and assumptions of a particular design. The criteria of adequacy for such an approach or methodology follow from the evaluation of VSD as the prime candidate for implementing moral values in design. (shrink)

Des droits fondamentaux au fondement du droit, le lien semble non seulement direct, mais évident. Or l'examen des différents discours théoriques sur le droit montre qu'il n'en est rien. Le livre de Charlotte Girard analyse précisément les différences de traitement du rapport entre ces deux termes dans les discours théoriques juridiques, en particulier ceux qui posent la question du fondement du droit. Soit l'étude des droits fondamentaux se distingue de celle du fondement du droit - les droits fondamentaux ne (...) mènent pas naturellement au fondement du droit -, soit on associe les deux notions - les droits fondamentaux sont au fondement même du droit. Or cette distinction renvoie à ce que la théorie du droit différencie traditionnellement : les approches juspositiviste d'une part et jusnaturaliste d'autre part. La confrontation de ces discours théoriques à la question du fondement du droit, qu'elle se traduise ou non par les droits fondamentaux, révèle une certaine fragilité des présupposés respectifs de ces discours. En réalité, le fondement du droit n'est pas seulement un élément de débat juridique et normatif, mais il relève aussi et surtout d'un débat politique et institutionnel. C'est en effet en raison de son caractère normatif que le fondement du droit - quel que soit le discours qui le porte, y compris le discours juridique théorique - appartient pleinement au champ politique. (shrink)

This paper deals with Plato's use ofpoikilosand cognates to describe democracy. It does not argue that Plato'sRepubliccontains empirical analyses of some contemporary event, but supposes that an historical reading of the book is possible and legitimate. Post Peloponnesian War Athenian society experienced profound socio-economic changes. Echoing the aristocratic élite's circumspect anxiety when faced with thenouveaux riches, Plato clearly regards obsessive greediness as one of the root causes of the corruption of any political system. Referring to democracy, the philosopher invents thehimation (...) poikilonor ‘embroidered coat of many colours' metaphor. By materializing the multifaceted concept ofpoikilia, this metaphor gives a single and palpable form to the principaltopoiof anti-democratic rhetoric: thehimation poikilonevokes the motley constitution of the Athenian regime, the tyrant's ostentatious opulence, aped by thedemos turannos, the inconstancy of thedemos, the deceitful character of democracy and, last but not least, its penchant for spectacles. (shrink)

It has been an open question whether or not we can define a belief revision operation that is distinct from simple belief expansion using paraconsistent logic. In this paper, we investigate the possibility of meeting the challenge of defining a belief revision operation using the resources made available by the study of dynamic epistemic logic in the presence of paraconsistent logic. We will show that it is possible to define dynamic operations of belief revision in a paraconsistent setting.

Within the Caribbean literature, the imaginary—a very often defined notion—is presented in a new light by the fictional and theoretic thought of Patrick Chamoiseau. The imaginary dimension can’t remain something abstract and essential full of invariants. Chamoiseau is mistrustful of the mythical imaginary, however he doesn’t put an end to it but he opens a literary space where everything has to be created. In Chamoiseau’s works, the imaginary dimension is of the highest importance in an ideological battle-field where the main (...) character is the Warrior of the imaginary. His ambition is to switch from monolingualism to multilingualism, therefore the French and the Creole languages—we can read in his writing—crystallize the new and always changing definitions of the imaginary. (shrink)