Documents found
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792.More information
My objective is to offer an approach to the relationship between women and power that takes into account the kinesic appropriation of social space by the female body. In historiography, mobility has never been a feminine attribute. Culturally conditioned to be passive, woman as portrayed in nineteenth-century fiction is like a fragile ornament who must stand in wait of he who travels, undertakes, acts—her father, husband or lover. In the society where spaciality is in the service of power, because “women are at the window and men are at the door” (Zola, Germinal), the woman who comes out, by deciding to leave or by adventuring alone into the urban space, is an individual who, consciously or not, moves toward confrontation with the social order. A woman's free expression of her wishes in the geographic and social space is in no way a passing distraction: such seemingly capricious boldness involves an act that engages her whole existence. For such an act is not only one of revolt, it is also one of transgression that resembles a rite of passage. After a woman dares to cross, symbolically, the threshold of her dwelling, things will no longer be the same; moreover, every notable change in her existence begins with an act: that of leaving, which is itself prolonged by wanderings.
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793.More information
A textual analysis of the oppositions which structure À ciel ouvert, will reveal Nelly Arcan's paradoxical stance, reflecting a tension between the apparently passive construct of the body and the narrative agency of Julie, who analyses the subject-object power relationships in White heterosexual couples and families. However, a category never mentioned in the protagonist's sociological discourse, that of « whiteness », its presuppositions and prerogatives complicates the analysis. The study will suggest a definition of this concept in relation with sex/gender in order to interrogate its relationship with the protagonist's standpoint.
Keywords: Nelly Arcan, blanchitude, contrôle des corps, agentivité, constructivisme
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794.More information
This article examines the cinematographic writing of two filmmakers in their representation of the historical figures of the French-speaking regions of Black Africa and its Caribbean diaspora. According to its etymology, cinema is a form of writing and its artistic and aesthetic ambitions are enriched by the specific use each filmmaker makes of its techniques. The analysis of David Achkar and Charles Najman's approach to the technique of montage as used in Allah tantou and Royal Bonbon respectively is central to this paper. The methodology used here is primarily a combination of elements of semiotics and structuralism. The analysis focuses on the dynamics of the montage in the two above-mentioned films, the effects which it produces and their interpretation. The study shows that David Achkar and Charles Najman's subjective aesthetics is freed from any dependence on established standards. Their art is an illustration of the cinematographic writing of a piece of Black African and Caribbean history by means of the biographical genre.
Keywords: langage cinématographique, montage, histoire, figures historiques, pouvoir, droits de l'homme, mythe, film language, montage, history, historical leaders, power, human rights, myth
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795.More information
AbstractIn the light of recent Ferronian scholarship dealing with the complexity of origins and the convoluted ways of filiation, this reading explores the equivocal nature of autobiographical memory as evidenced in La créance. A tale of birth, in which one might expect to find consolidation of the subject's foundation, turns out to be ruled by a discourse of ambiguity, inversion and flight. Starting from certain places (abandoned cemeteries and the Notary's house), and around certain emblematic figures (the village midwife and the ghostly mother), a pattern of images is established combining mourning, transgression, deception and exile. Thus the writing, reversing the movement of history as it seeks to push back the limits of memory, actually unveils memory's fissures and lapses: ultimately, identity is woven from forgetfulness.
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800.More information
In French crime film, women are usually attributed the role of tart or victim, but under the Occupation they appear as investigators, mostly in the comedy strain of the genre. This figure would not reappear in any significant manner until the early 1970s. These new heroines, played by major stars, officiously or officially embodied the law and enjoyed traditionally masculine prerogatives in response to legislative changes which enabled women to enter “male” professions and, in theory at least, to enjoy equal status. Following statistical analysis of the presence and evolution of this new figure in the French crime film, the author studies the figure's contradictory narrative and aesthetic effects on the genre, from fetishism to working-class feminism, through the figure's formulation and reception in La femme flic (Boisset, 1980) and Vivement dimanche! (Truffaut, 1983).