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This article proposes to examine the place of repetition in the constitution of a female filiation where the body acts as a common space between generations. Sofi Oksanen's novel Purge, winner of the Prix Femina Étranger in 2010, shows that women's bodies have paid the price of the development of Estonian history, and that its bloody repetitions and upheavals have left their mark on female flesh. Between a great aunt who lived under Communism, her humiliations and rapes, and a great-niece who works as a prostitute in Germany while being beaten, abused and pursued by Russian procurers, the novel creates a strange echo. Oksanen views the female body as a deadly repetition. The rallies of history are recorded on the old woman Aliide and the young girl Zara. Is there any way out of this structure of domination where women's bodies speak silently to each other in their suffering ? In what ways can Zara be offered the possibility of a body unscarred by History ?

AbstractThis article attempts to draw a theoretical line between closeted (homo)sexuality and translation through the example of the translational activity of those who collaborated on the 20th-century Argentine literary journal SUR: J. Bianco, E. Pezzoni, V. Ocampo, and H. A. Murena. Through a critical reading of explicit and thinly-veiled discourses on homosexuality in works both written and translated in this period, especially when placed in the context of theoretical discourses on translation, gender and sexuality, it reveals a question all the more unavoidable for present-day discussions: Is translation a closet, and if so, when and how?

Keywords: Argentina, literary culture, (homo)sexuality, closet, SUR Group, Argentine, culture littéraire, (homo)sexualité, placard, Groupe SUR

AbstractIn 2004 and 2005 strange young women named “dead dead” made their apparition in Libreville. The name they are given is characterized not only by the double suffix indicating a prostitute as if intensifying the logic of death but also by its repetition as though this indicated the reality of the mirror. This apparition, taking place in an urban context that taxes lineage solidarity in a “rich country” governed by the individualist logic of capitalism, is unable, as a mirror would, to reflect the reality of this context. The concept of de-parentalisation we propose means that in the mirror of the “dead dead” and the persons this evokes the images that appear are those of terror, of zombies, vampires or ghosts of individualism and communitarism.

Writing about modern slavery brings ethic, religious, political and economic questions. Traditional slavery is complex because it can be a form of « willing slavery », today as much as yesterday. This is one of the reasons why slavery can be described as an « extreme form of dependence » (Condominas 1998). Southeast Asia had been historically subject to the colonisation of territories as the result of conflicts between Nation-States in formation which, in order to colonize new lands, put the submitted populations into slavery. Other forms of slavery existed : slaves' obedience to their landlords or to the person they were in debt bondage with, for instance. Debt bondage can be defined today as one of the most important forms of slavery. On the one hand, authorities, even with their best efforts, cannot eradicate this problem, which is culturally anchored ; and in the other hand, the local economies need these slave-workers to be competitive, and even fetch them in neighbouring countries such as Cambodia or Burma. The paradox is obvious. How can slavery be supressed if the economy is so dependent on slavery ? The dialogue is hence difficult between the United States and the Thai Kingdom, for instance, which makes real efforts to control human trafficking, with mixed results only. That is the reason why Thailand is still inscribed in the infamous Tier 3 category of the ASEAN classification of countries. Even though NGOs, researches, investing committees and sanctions (such as the « yellow card » given by Europe concerning Thailand's sea production because of the unclear status of workers) take relevant actions, they cannot put an end to the ancient practices inscribed in the nepotic culture of Southeast Asia. Only mass education and a step-by-step approach, combined with a massive redistribution of wealth, will hopefully help to eradicate what is considered as one of the pillars of Southeast Asian archaism.

Keywords: Ivanoff, Chantavanich, Boutry, esclavage, dépendance, tradition, économie, ONG, compétition, éducation, travailleur, népotisme, trafic, Ivanoff, Chantavanich, Boutry, Slavery, Dependence, Tradition, Economy, NGOs, Competition, Education, Worker, Nepotism, Traffic, Ivanoff, Chatavanich, Boutry, esclavitud, dependencia, tradición, economía, ONG, competencia, educación, trabajador, nepotismo, trafico

This article critically examines and compares adult male and female experiences selling sex in Canada's off-street sex industry. Findings indicate that gender disparities exist when it comes to the work of selling sex: male providers are better insulated from violence and exploitation because of their gender, while female sex workers are forced to navigate multiple layers of oppression to assure safer working conditions. Despite these differences, this data suggests that prioritizing overarching labour issues, instead of gendered experiences working in commercial sex, can function to increase all sex workers' safety and access to justice.

Keywords: Sex work, gender, victimization, access to justice, labour rights

In 1988, Canada's federal Parliament faced the challenge of addressing the legal status of abortion after the Supreme Court of Canada, in R. v. Morgentaler, struck down existing restrictions. In the resulting legal void, the Progressive Conservative (PC) federal government found itself under pressure to act. Examining parliamentary debates and recently released cabinet documents from the period of January 1988 to May 1990, this paper asks how the federal government managed the abortion issue following R. v. Morgentaler, including creating and defending legislation as a policy solution. This paper identifies politicising and depoliticising procedures (i.e., legislation and motions) that framed the issue in a way that that allowed the government to take action on the abortion issue while maintaining distance as it crafted and defended legislation. This paper reconstructs the frames that presented government legislation (Bill C-43) as “balanced” and uses the theoretical concepts of politicisation and depoliticisation to show how the frames alternately pushed and pulled the government towards and away from the abortion issue. These frames worked by deferring responsibility to other levels of government and the private sphere, as well as by invoking fatalism by highlighting the intransigency of abortion, the constraints that limit government action, and the necessity of pursuing only the government's proposed solution. Although the frames serve to justify the frame of a “balanced” solution, their inherent contradictions and tensions point to fractures within the narrative of Bill C-43 as a “balanced” solution and may help explain the legislation's failure.

Keywords: abortion policy, R. v. Morgentaler, Canada, depoliticisation, framing, la politique de l'avortement, R. c. Morgentaler, Canada, dépolitisation, le cadrage des politiques