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In Guelwaar, released as a film in 1992 and published as a novel in 1996, Ousmane Sembène provides a detailed exposition of one of his favored themes: religion as an obstacle to social progress. This article examines how Sembène, who considered himself a “modern griot,” skillfully used his cinematic and literary techniques to convey his message. In his film, he focused on a few elements that he was able to amplify; in his novel, he was able to develop nuances that he could not highlight in the film. The novel, therefore, offers a more in-depth depiction of reality. Subtle and striking, Sembène's message reveals both the negative and positive aspects of religion, allowing him to achieve his goal: educating his people.

Ce mémoire traite de la prostitution d’un point de vue philosophique. Pour ce faire, il est nécessaire que l'on étudie le concept d’autonomie, puisqu’il est employé de part et d’autre par les intervenants dans le débat public et théorique. En évaluant les contributions de philosophes, ce mémoire esquisse une position mitoyenne. Ainsi, dans un premier temps, on rapportera la contribution d’auteurs de la tradition libérale, qui considèrent que la prostitution est un travail ou une vision de la sexualité acceptable. En dénonçant le lourd tribut d’une morale conventionnelle dépassée, ils ont montré que le respect des choix individuels est primordial et doit servir de guide au moment de penser l’intervention de l’État. Ce faisant, ils ont néanmoins omis de considérer dans leur équation des éléments …

(en) revenir (roman) (en) revenir est un roman autofictif rédigé à la première personne du singulier, composé d’un enchaînement d’épisodes anecdotiques permettant d’en connaître davantage au sujet de sa narratrice, Véronique. Dans le début de la vingtaine, la jeune femme raconte avec recul, introspection et humour son passage de l’adolescence à l’âge adulte, en y évoquant les rencontres marquantes qu’elle a effectuées durant ces années charnières de sa vie. Parmi celles-ci se trouvent Max, son ancien copain et premier amour, dont la narratrice est encore amourachée, et Amélie, meilleure amie excentrique et collègue de travail au Café Beausoleil à Saint-Roch, où une grande partie de l’action prend place. De ce fait, la Basse-Ville tient également un rôle central au sein du récit, puisque c’est dans …

SummaryThis theoretical paper takes a feminist stance to examine recent sex education research and intervention in Quebec and elsewhere. Two fields of research emerge from the scientific literature : one focuses on the prevention of sexuality-related social problems, and the other on the understanding of the social construction of these problems. An emphasis is placed on « at risk » populations which suggests and reinforces the idea that sex education is socially marked, especially by age and by sex : young women's sexuality is more socially controlled. This is particularly true for sex education interventions : essentialism, naturalism, heterosexism, agism, and some caveats of the preventive discourse are discussed. The author recommends the adoption of a sex education model based on feminist principles.

Keywords: altérisation, bas-fond, colonialisme, orientalisme, prostitution, sexscape, slumming

SummaryEngendered by classified" adds" in the newspapers, shaped by the discourse of the media, lawyers, doctors and psychologists, the so-called "surrogate mother" phenomenon was born of a language dominated by masculine body metaphors, fantasies and codes. This breaking up of childbearing, an amazing linguistic operation which robs the mother of the same language responsible for the making of the father, is, at the same time, a brilliant example of the collusion of the three powers of language, the three dominant powers of modern society, according to Michel Serres. We see at work here the performing power of administration (lawyers, agencies and courts) associated with the power of seduction of the media and with the power of scientific truth (doctors and psychologists) to assimilate childbearing to masculine patterns of sexuality and fathering, to the profit of the begetter/buyer. Moreover, the very essence of contractual motherhood is to deny the highly symbolic and cultural character of childbearing by putting the feminine body as purely instrumental under the control of language. At the same time, it ensures that the sign (monetary and contractual) takes first place over the experience and consciousness of procreation, and that the fragmentation of the body - "we are paying her for her uterus" - is given first place over the physical and psychological integrity of the mother. As an epistemological critique and semantic analysis of the lexical construction of the phenomenon of contractual motherhood, this paper explores one of the facettes of the transformation of the relationships between the sexes in the context of procreation, as observed in the developments of the techno-economy of reproduction.

The theme of innocence threatened or corrupted by seduction recurs in the novels of Prévost. The story appears both in his Mémoires d'unhonnête homme (1745) and in le Monde moral(1760), recounted respectively by the victim of seduction and the seducer. These two, apparently complementary, versions correspond to two ways in which Prévost grasps the phenomenon of the libertine at different moments of its emergence. A comparison of the texts reveals the characteristics of Prévost's oblique discourse on libertinism, with its unuttered motives, slippages and resistances, particularly by the virtuous narrators who set themselves up as moral arbiters of the action. Prévost uses terms of seduction and censure to put forward a critical vision of libertinage touched, as it were, by moralism. The two episodes are notable also for their underlying fantasies: the figure of the libertine father, the incestuous seducer, in Mémoires d'un honnête homme, and the bankruptcy of all-devouring libertinism in le Monde moral, where Prévost evokes some of the psychic aspects of phallic exhibition. Our interpretation should shed new light on the immature libertinage of des Grieux, as well as on its wavering pursuit by the ambassador in l'Histoire d'une Grecque moderne. After 1740, seduction appears in Prévost's novels in the guise of more or less inhibited obsessions and desires for sexual violence.