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The author examines the forms of social mobility that are engendered by socio-healthcare mechanisms for the prevention and management of HIV/AIDS among socially marginalized HIV-positive women in the city of Gondär, in the north-west of Ethiopia. Exposed to a power that is increasingly oriented towards taking account of individuals at the margins of society in order to facilitate their empowerment, these women are beginning processes of identity construction within which their social status is the result of arrangements and compromises between traditional female roles and the new forms of activism and social visibility that the fight against HIV/AIDS has given rise to.

Keywords: empowerment, marges, mobilité sociale, pouvoir, VIH

Kate Millett is best known for her activism and her literary work. However, a major part of her practice remains largely neglected, if not ignored: her career as an artist. Her work must therefore be understood not only as a constitutive phase of the essay Sexual Politics (1970) but also as an active process of resistance. In this article at the crossroads of gender studies and art history, the author explores how Kate Millett's work focused on body representation aesthetically articulates a critique of sexual politics.

Keywords: femmes, féminisme, genre, histoire de l'art, politique, esthétique, cunt art, sculpture, corps, corps lesbien, mujeres, feminismo, género, historia del arte, política, estética, cunt art, escultura, cuerpo, cuerpo lésbico

This essay introduces the six papers in this special issue by comparing the writers' construction of analytical and rhetorical distance from their subjets — folk poetry and folk poets — in terms of concepts of self and other. It focuses upon folklorists as the (re)producers of cultural texts, not only as their disengaged audience.

The manuscript Paris, BNF, fr. 25545 is atypical in many ways. Not only does it present a striking poetic diversity (fabliau, hagiography, romance, didacticpoem, etc.), it also offers a surprising combination of literary and commerce-oriented texts. This has led critics, such as Olivier Collet and Jean Rychner, to argue that this book was composed for a bourgeois patron, who may have been amerchant himself. Such a hypothesis has important implications, and places this early 14th century manuscript among the first — if not the first — bourgeois manuscript. Using a method based on both poetics and philology, this article will seek to nuance this hypothesis. Based on content analysis and the manuscript tradition of these commerce-oriented writings, it will be possible to reveal certain bridges that may have linked commerce and literature in the reading habits of a larger segment of contemporary audiences. These bridges will reveal a series of recurring themes and preoccupations that evince a strong poetic unity within the manuscript. It will then appear that this book, which dwells on moral issues arising out of the social and cultural experience of the city, likely has more to do with “esprit du bourg” than “esprit bourgeois.”

In a recent work, Jérôme Meizoz isolates three authorial “postures,” to quote Céline, that he links to moments in Céline's career: first “antibourgeois,” then “pamphleteer” and finally “bouc-émissaire.” Evidently, these postures are based on biographical facts, known or said to be known by the public. When relayed in his novels by equivalent ethè, these postures can be seen as part of Céline's poetics of authenticity, itself founded on the Célinienne ideal of autonomous literary creation – unfettered by “ideas” and “messages.”

Poised at the intersection of myth, folktales, history and novels, several francophone women writers proceed to rewrite narratives on the origins of humanity or certain communities thereby inventing a new world of imagination where woman is the source of social renewal rather than original sin. Thus, in the novel of Calixthe Beyala, the woman, whose ancestor is the star that strives in vain to save man from self-destruction, prefers to remain aloof from a too intense “sun.” Likewise, the women characters created by Simone Schwarz-Bart sidestep the path of man to avoid being pulled along on his endless route of misery. Observing that the “war of the sexes” inhabits the most ancient narratives as well as everyday discourse, Djebar's novel returns to the ancient empires of the Berbers, the Phoenicians and the Romans in search of the lost language of dialogue between “enemies.” In a similar manner, Marie-Célie Agnant questions history (in this case that of slavery) to locate the point of rupture and to renew the dialogue with the Other who has inspired mistrust since the very beginning. These rewritings trace out an imaginary world of re(birth) where the lost language of the heart emerges from the non-verbal language of the body.

This text analyses how the 1892 Criminal Code deals with cultural and religious diversity, using two examples of provisions making explicit reference to minorities: the section on polygamy, which mentions Mormon spiritual and plural marriages, and the section on the prostitution of Indian women. In both cases, the provisions will be analysed taking into account the socio-historical context in which they were adopted.

Cette thèse explore le leitmotiv de la prostitution dans l’oeuvre de Tennessee Williams et soutient que la plupart des personnages de Williams sont engagés dans une forme de prostitution ou une autre. En effectuant une analyse formaliste des textes de Williams qui illustrent toute forme de prostitution, avec une attention particulière à quatre grandes pièces, A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Suddenly Last Summer (1958) et Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), cette présente étude fait valoir que le dramaturge utilise un mode de fiction—le gothique—en lien avec une pratique transgressive—la prostitution—pour relier les classes sociales et troubler les catégories de prostitution. Ce faisant, Williams offre une vision plus représentative et nuancée de la prostitution. Théoriquement, cette thèse repose sur …