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Decisions rendered by the Supreme Court of Canada have been influenced by the constitutional theory debate on the legitimacy of judicial review. On the one hand, judges have drawn on it in order to validate their own constitutional actions under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Indeed, many Supreme Court cases have utilized this type of justificatory discourse. On the other hand, uncertainties surrounding the legitimacy of judicial power are manifested by attitudes of restraint and activism. Thus, judicial policy, constitutional and legislative interpretation, the limitation of rights under section one of the Charter and the declaration of constitutional invalidity are determined in light of these justifications of constitutional judicial review. Theories of legitimacy can likewise serve to assess stances taken by judges in this context.

This paper offers a first status report and an analysis of the teaching of Scandinavian politics in Canadian universities. Based on a questionnaire sent out to the 57 affiliated member departments of the Canadian Political Science Association (CPSA) in 2022, the paper identifies a clear mismatch between the attention paid to various aspects of the Scandinavian political model among academics and society more generally in Canada, and the very limited number of courses specifically dedicated to Scandinavian politics at Canadian universities during the 2018-2022 period. The paper makes some recommendations on how to promote and integrate Scandinavian politics content more actively into university teaching. Moreover, the paper presents a dedicated course on Scandinavian politics at a Canadian university as an example. The importance of a comparative and interdisciplinary approach to Scandinavian politics is here highlighted.

Keywords: Scandinavian politics, Teaching, Canada, comparative and inter-disciplinary approach

At the heart of this reflection is a hypothesis: some of Tierno Monénembo’s novels seem to be characterized by the depiction of characters who fail in the face of adversity. Whether it is the absurd and bitter failure of the intellectual Diouldé upon his definitive return to his native country after his years of study in Hungary in Les Crapauds-Brousse (1979), the aborted heroic dream of Sanderval in Le Roi de Kahel (2008) or the sentimental and family failure of Juliana in Les Coqs cubains chantent à minuit (2015), Tierno Monénembo’s novels not only summon up African social, cultural and political turpitudes through characters who fail in the accomplishment of their missions, but they also offer a lucid reflection on the place of the adventurer and the intellectual in contemporary African societies. Based on this observation, this article attempts to demonstrate that the novels Les Crapauds-Brousse and Les Coqs cubains chantent à minuit can be read as novels of failure in the sense that they describe the physical and moral suffering of the characters in a situation of failure and the social and political violence of which they are often victims. It will involve, on the one hand, examining the forms and issues of this failure, and on the other hand, questioning the social and political determinants that support the dramatic invention of the novels.

In this article, I examine the autofictional narrative Whore by Quebec writer Nelly Arcan, demonstrating how the psychoanalytic confession of the "whore" narrator (whom we are tempted to confuse with the author) inserts itself into a project of women's genealogy. Following a symbolic death, the narrator gives birth to her story and succeeds in placing herself within the tradition of écriture au féminin. She wishes to remember the women of past generations who have been subjected to male desire and silenced; however, her very act of appropriating language in the name of women is ambiguous in that she herself is often complicit in their objectification and degradation.