‘Throwing pearls before swine’: the strange publication history of Vie de Frédéric Douglass,esclave américain (1848)

ABSTRACT

This essay reconstructs the publication history of the first French translation of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, which came out in Paris in 1848, three years after the book’s initial publication in Boston. It emphasizes the key role of British abolitionists Kate Parkes and John B. Estlin in translating Douglass’s Narrative and making it available to a French audience. It also documents the ‘non-reception’ of the book. Published in the politically volatile context of the February Revolution of 1848, Vie de Frédéric Douglass, esclave américain went largely unnoticed. The year that saw the abolition of slavery in the French colonial empire also saw the failure of Douglass’s Narrative in France.     

‘Khalas! Literature is the resistance against politics,and this is the politics of literature’: an interview with Atiq Rahimi

ABSTRACT

Atiq Rahimi is a director, photographer and translingual author who has published in Dari (Persian) and in French since 1999. As an outspoken author, Rahimi did not refrain from narrating loss, trauma and fundamentalism already in the 1990s. For his first publication in French, Syngué Sabour. Pierre de patience, he was awarded the highest literary price in France, the Prix Goncourt. With his recently published novel Les Porteurs d’eau, set in Afghanistan and Europe, Rahimi also explores challenges of the global Afghanistani diaspora. Inspired by his personal experiences of travelling from Kabul to Paris, Rahimi explores, with his Kafkaesque narratives, themes of loss, suffering and survival, all located in a war-torn country. In this interview, conducted in Paris, conversing in Persian and French, Rahimi talks about his personal journey and discusses cultural as well as literary theories. He mentions literature without borders, considers the power of literature as a means of taking a stand against political reality, learning French as a teenager and depicting strong female characters. Additionally, Rahimi explains to what extent Persian linguistics allowed him to depict the absurdity of living exile in his latest novel and ends the interview explaining the rationale behind the idea of authors without borders.     

The Impact of Parental Conflict and the Mitigating Effect of Joint Custody After Divorce or Separation

ABSTRACT

This is an empirical study based on a large randomized sample of French children focusing on questions of the consequences of divorce and interparental conflict. In particular, the effect of joint custody after parental separation on children’s self-esteem was tested. The results were compared with those of a previous study made 12 years earlier with the same instruments to measure the evolution of French society and French law in the matter of divorce.     

A Selective History of Internet Technology and Social Work

ABSTRACT

“Organized chaos” is the theme of the short history of the Internet and social work. It is a history of paradoxes. Although there are many paths to follow the historical influence of the Internet for social work, this essay notes that the Internet was bom from a military strategy. Decades later, social work education and practice employed this massive network. This essay traces the unlikely links among the original military agenda, astounding engineering feats, online social interaction action, and social work education and practice. A short glossary is provided to readers unfamiliar with technical terms.     

How to become animal through writing: the case of the bear

ABSTRACT

Animals are present in many corners of our consciousness and can help us in the creative process of writing. It is in the writing, and especially writing on the edge of ignorance, that knowledge of a new kind is produced. In this process, animals have a specific power of attraction, like many famous novels have shown. Taking a close look at the concept of becoming-animal that is in itself embedded in these authors’ poetic and nearly prophetic language, animal writing is seen as an extension of dirty, interruptive or feminine writing. The French novel La peau de l’ours – The bear's skin illustrates how becoming-animal operates in fiction writing, producing a strong effect both on writer and reader. Animal writing is a molecular encounter with the wild animals that live in us and as such it is also an upheaval of the self.     

Some reflections on song theory,signed song and traditional song

In this article I will aim to present results of research which deals with the French word ‘chanson’ and song theory. My observations will be conducted within a metalinguistic and a linguistic corpora. My corpora was largely constituted by works published in France in addition to other countries in Europe. The study of European dictionaries has shown me how important the French song culture has become in German dictionaries (in which chansonnier and chanson de geste sometimes appear) and in Italian dictionaries (in which chansonnier as a synomym of cantaautore appears). This presentation contains some diachronical and theoretical observations. The research appears to be the first significant research conducted about the vocabulary of song in French. This will finally lead us to present the theoretical vocabulary that we have created to study song phenomena.     

Satori in Paris: Deconstructing the French Connection or the Legend’s Satori

Abstract

The deconstruction of Kerouac’s trip to France in search of his family name and lineage as described in Satori in Paris, published in 1966, is examined, and consideration is also given to the very process of redefining French connections. The novel — a voyage to the end of the night trying to decipher, redefine, and blur the French signs that Kerouac had scattered his Duluoz Legend with — is riddled with many deconstructing elements, which allow for better insight into both the quest Kerouac had set for himself and the meaning of French connections throughout the Legend. ‘What’s in a name’ could precisely be the question and possibly the answer. The deconstructing process initiated in Big Sur is now reaching its ultimate step, jeopardizing the stability of the creation of Duluoz’s and Kerouac’s legend altogether.     

Possessed by Poe: Reading Poe in an age of intellectual guilt

Abstract

This essay enters the debate over the French appropriation of Poe not by seeking redress for the supposed political misdeeds of either Poe or the French, but rather, by addressing itself to the American response to the French reception of Poe. While American cultural studies critics in particular have sought to hold the French accountable for ignoring Poe's troubling biography — one in which the question of Poe's relationship to, and possible support of, antebellum slavery remains unanswered to this day — I argue that the important question of how we as critics situate ourselves in relation to material history is too often buried under a moralizing rhetoric of accountability. Following from, and extending, Jacques Derrida's notion of ‘speciality,’ I maintain that material history is itself a kind of conjuration that belies any strict distinction between the material and the immaterial. Against the demand for accountability, the notion of history‐as‐conjuration allows us to address questions of historical responsibility in a manner that circumvents the impulse to hold Poe accountable for his crimes’.     

Intergenerational Programs in the County of San Diego,USA

Abstract

THE MISSING LINK. Carson, R. B. Victoria, BC: Trafford Publishing, 2005, 418 pp. ISBN 1-4120-6315-9. Reviewed by Peter L. French.     

La Mediacion en los Procesos de Negociacion: Un Estudio Experimental

Resumen

El presente experimento compara diversas formas de mediación entre sí y en relación con la negociación sin intervención de terceros de cada ra la resolución de conflictos sociales.

Se estudia la influencia de las condiciones de mediación y la intensidad del conflicto sobre el grado de acuerdo alcanzado, el clima y la satisfacción a lo largo de la negociación.

Se sugieren varias explicaciones con relación a los resultados obtenidos, pero las hipótesis iniciales no quedan totalmente confirmadas.     

Desire,death and wonder: Reading Simone de Beauvoir's narratives of travel

Abstract

This article draws upon the work of contemporary French feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray in developing a post‐structuralist analysis of travel within the autobiographies of the second wave feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir. Travel and the experience of wonder at the otherness of the world figure as important self shaping experiences within the four volumes of Beauvoir's life narrative (1958, 1960, 1963, 1972). Travel has a metonymic relation to the passage of Beauvoir's life, in which the existential extremes of anguish and ecstasy are played out in a (feminine) quest for self knowledge. Through a close reading of Beauvoir's writing I analyse the different formations of desire that structure the experience of wonder in relation to the otherness of the world and death. I also draw upon debates within feminist philosophy about the nature of subjectivity and knowledge that were, in Beauvoir's time, ordered around an Hegelian opposition between immanence and transcendence. I take up Irigaray's notion of the sensible transcendental to explore another way of conceptualising the feminine subject's desire to know and value the world differently.     

Bursting With Laughter

Celio Ferreira. Palauan cosmology: dominance in a traditional Micronesian society (Gothenburg Studies in Social Anthropology 11). Göteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis. 1987. vi, 300 pp., figures, plates, glossary, references. SEK 200 (paper) ISBN 91 7346 183 0 ISSN 0348 4076.

Richard J. Parmentier. The sacred remains: myth, history and polity in Belau. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 1987. xxiii, 309pp., figures, maps, photographs, tables, glossary, place names, references, index. ISBN 0 226 64695 5 (hardcover) ISBN 0 226 64696 3 (paper).     

French Friends,American Allies: Ethnic Dynamics in the Writing of Jack Kerouac

Abstract

The way the scroll text of Kerouac’s On the Road creatively manifests the writer’s unconscious concerns about his dichotomous hybrid French– Canadian–American heritage is analysed. The characters of Gabrielle Kerouac, Henri Cru and Neal Cassady are shown to operate metaphorically to symbolize Kerouac’s tumultuous relationship with the various elements of his genealogy. How the writer’s depiction of, and the protagonist’s allegiances with, these characters, who, respectively, represent French– Canadian maternity, European respectability and American unreliability, betray Kerouac’s covert attempts to reconcile his autobiographical feelings about the dualities implicit in his identity and mirror his efforts to navigate disparate cultural ideologies is examined.     

Adaptación de las escalas de placer,activación y dominancia de Mehrabian y Russell en sujetos hispanoparlantes

Resumen

Se pasó una adaptatión castellana de las escalas de Mehrabian y Russell (1974) a un total de 28 nombres de emoción. El análisis factorial de las puntuaciones promediadas de cada término en cada uno de los 18 pares de adjetivos permitió aislar tres factores ortogonales que explicaban el 93,4% de la varianza total. Los tres factores fueron similares a los encontrados por Mehrabian y Russell: Placer, Activación y Dominancia.     

Biography and Colonial Discourse in ‘French West Africa’

Abstract

There are several biographies of West African leaders located in diaries and memoirs written by influential agents of the French colonization. Such location signals a specific narrative display characterized by the subordination of the biographies to narratives that, in general, celebrate the French historical and political experience in Africa. The investigation of such narratives exposes distorted interpretations of African historical figures and reveals a colonial biography of persuasion. For instance, the analysis of the biography of Ahmadou, last king of the Tukulor Empire, located in Méniaud's Les Pionniers du Soudan discloses a specific biographical strategy that aims to demonize the West African leader in order to impose a discourse of colonial necessity. To do so the biographer adopts a biographical mode of presentation articulated around adversarial references such as Islam and animism, or debatable cultural codes of practice.     

Transnational Corruption in Weapons Procurement in East Asia: A Case Analysis

Abstract

This case study analyzes the Lafayette scandal, which alleges that up to US$760 million in bribes and kickbacks was split among French, Chinese, and Taiwanese officials for the 1992 sale of French frigates to Taiwan. The case was unique in its complexity, intrigue, and repercussions. This analysis focuses on the structural and institutional deficiencies in Taiwan and France that intersected to create opportunities for massive corruption. It also traces how Taiwan and France implemented profound preventive reforms in the aftermath of the scandal. This landmark scandal highlights the need for further global efforts to establish legal frameworks and judicial protocols to tackle corrupt practices that transcend national borders.     

The Ghost of Grandeur

Abstract

Carsten Meiner analyses a series of classic French films, from Truffaut to Haneke, and their uses of the home with respect to the relation between grandeur and individuality. Homes thus become problematizing mediators between individuals and national grandeur, and together the films form a historical series of quite consistent albeit surprising articulations of the metabolism of life in national grandeur. This focus on the home leads to reflections on the problems of the idea of “represented nationalism” in cinema.