David Le Research Articles

Blood Re-born

The blood of San Gennaro, the patron Saint of Naples, is re-born during an annual ritual of liquefaction. The blood of Medusa is re-born by colouring the red coral drawn from the city’s gulf and worked by local artisans. Rebirth of coagulated blood was taken up by Belgian theatre and visual artist Jan Fabre in his 2018 Naples exhibition Oro Rosso, where his red coral sculptures were paired with performative drawings of his blood. After its ‘death’, coagulated blood is re-born in image and writing. It acquires a ‘post-mortem stage of life’, as Fabre describes the temporality of his theatre. This essay explores the post-mortem temporality of re-born blood, departing from Pio Monte della Misericordia, which houses Caravaggio’s Works of Mercy and, among others, Fabrizio Santafede’s St Peter resurrects Dorcas. This Chapel, where Fabre exhibited his sculptural self-portrait The Man who bears the Cross, houses permanently his red coral sculptures. The essay is driven by blood coagulated or implied, and draws associations between the Chapel and Fabre’s visual art, his collaboration with local artisans, his solo performances and theatre: the blood on the Cross, Caravaggio the murderer, Fabre’s blood scripture ‘the blood will rewrite its own history’, his choreographic solo The Generosity of Dorcas (2018) where a male HIV positive performer sews his costume/body in a scenography of needles and threads, and his red coral piece Liberation of Passion. Alongside writings by Connie Palmen, David Le Breton, Judith Butler and José Esteban Muñoz, stories of violence and compassion, imposed or offered identities, are narrated. The dynamics of these relations point out to aspects of vulnerability, where mercy is requested and granted as an act of generosity or power. Post-mortem temporality becomes a rite of passage to acceptance of physical and social vulnerability, which can empower a community of mercy makers where power relations are disrupted.

The Suffering Body in Pepe Sales's Poetry

The poems of Pepe Sales (Barcelona, 1954-1994) are marked by his experience as a homosexual, drug addict and AIDS sufferer. He was a key member of the Barcelona counterculture, along with Pau Riba, Pau Malvido and Genís Cano, and has gone down in history as one of the poètes maudits of contemporary Catalan literature. The aim of this article is to analyse the representation of pain and distress in his poems and songs, with some additional references to his paintings. To this end, I draw on the critical work of Susan Sontag, Sara Ahmed, David Le Breton and Joanna Bourke, who conceive pain in general, not as a private and personal experience, but as a cultural and historical event that creates identity and community bonds. The main strategies used by Sales to convey his pain are the scream, animalisation, weapons and wounds and, especially, religious martyrdom. The basic finding is that the poet’s pain is not simply a testimony to the suffering of a lost generation of junkies and misfits that the official account of the transition from Francoism to democracy has stigmatised. On the contrary, it reminds us of an unfair medical, political and financial system that inflicted great suffering on them.

Travelers' Tales: Their Values and Virtues

Travelers' Tales: Their Values and Virtues

ESCAPING FROM SELF” AND REBUILDING IDENTITY

This article proposes an understanding of the issue of personal / social identity as the result of binary choices such as yes or no. They make up a fractal complex of our own lives. Depending on these choices, each of us builds and rebuilds our life, but also our own identity. Some of the hypostases of our identity are quantifiable and captured by empirical sociological analyzes. I illustrated the idea with the results of field sociological research on European identity from 2015-1017. This classic identity - focused on social representations of country, language, religion, family and national culture - is reconfigured as a result of „self-escape” (David Le Breton) and the magic of new technologies. The escape into the white space of the virtual world is often accompanied by the reconfiguration of otherness by identifying with social otherness in the guise of radical religious movements or classical religious denominations. To all these challenges and problems that appeared as a result of the recomposition of the identity, we also proposed a series of solutions.

GOODBYE TO THE BODY AND THE SOUND OF SILENCE IN THE EXAMPLE OF THE MOVIE SOUND OF METAL

In this text, the movie "Sound of Metal" is discussed in terms of body philosophy, body anthropology, and health sociology. Sound of Metal is about the experiences of a person and couple after hearing loss. This film has been examined especially with reference to David Le Breton's important works titled Goodbye to the Body, Anthropology of Pain and Ivan Illich's Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health. In the film, Ruben's focus on bodily loss and the process of not being able to cope with it are actually discussed through the mind-body distinction of the modern age, the desire of man to transform into a mind or a machine, and the social and cultural iatrogenesis that Illich mentions. It is also emphasized in the text that health, illness, physical "losses" are cultural, political or sociological phenomena rather than individual, physiological, medical issues and that they should be approached differently. In addition, it has been argued that human ontologically is an ear/hearing/speech/language/meaning entity, but modern scientific, medical and technological culture imprisons humans in a mechanical, visual and technical world. The result of such a culture is undoubtedly the loss of meaning that many thinkers bring to the agenda in their criticism of modernity. Therefore, the scientific, technological, medical culture we live in has to be re-evaluated based on these philosophical and sociological criticism points.

Water Management Policies in Cameroon: Interference Through Technology Transfer

Water is an indispensable resource for human life and for social and economic development. But Oswaldo de Rivero (2003) notes that ninety-seven percent of all water on the planet is salty, only 3% is fresh and three-quarters of it is concentrated in inaccessible places such as the polar regions and glaciers. Therefore, only a small fraction of the earth's water is fresh and accessible in rivers, lakes and groundwater. According to international hydrological studies carried out by the United Nations and the Stockholm Environment Institute, this small fraction is declining and by 2025, two-thirds of the world's population will be affected by water shortages due to the decrease in the earth's hydraulic cycle caused by the urban population explosion. The search for a balance between population growth and vital resources such as water has a pride of place in the MDGs, which show that disparities in access to water are high, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, and require the pooling of all energies. In Cameroon, the resurgence of endemic water-borne diseases prompted the government to set up a drinking water supply system known as the "Scandinave Water Project." This article attempts to describe the water management policies that eventually led to the re-emergence of water-related diseases. The data for this study were collected between 2006-2009 as part of doctoral studies. This collection is still going on in other localities of the country. This reflection is based on two theoretical approaches: The sociology of knowledge, which, according to David le Breton (2004), strives to identify laws that escape agents carried away by the weight of their class habitus. Knowledge is then viewed as a conquest, an enterprise 'against,' where it is a question of forcing the agent give up a conduct whose motivation he does not know. Science then brings out the hidden, the unknowing, it is an illumination, the revelation of obscure laws of operation to those who live them. Then comes pragmatism, an empirical theory of knowledge of which Widmer (1968) is one of the representatives. The relevance of this theory is measured by its consequences on reality. Pragmatism rehabilitates knowledge as it participates in the mutual construction of the world and brings about changes. The failure of this water supply project is above all the non-involvement of the populations and the lack of communication.

REFLECTIONS ON THE BODY AND ITS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT

: The aim of this article is to present a reflection on the representations of the body throughout history. For this, we rely on the works of Michel Foucault (2005), Richard Sennett (2016), David Le Breton (2007), Lipovetsky (2005) and other authors who bring contributions on this theme. The body will not be taken as a finished and defined form, but as an element in constant change that tends to vary according to the historical needs that constitute it. Thus, we propose to think about some social and cultural aspects, which have contributed to the construction of the body in our society throughout history.

Entre o relato e o silêncio: uma análise comparatista das obras 'Maina Mendes', de Maria Velho da Costa e “A terceira margem do rio”, de Guimarães Rosa

This paper aims to develop a comparative study between Maria Velho da Costa’s Maina Mendes and Guimaraes Rosa’s “A terceira margem do rio”. In this essay, I seek to observe how the concepts of silence and testimony in both works evoke some questions about the composition of speeches, specially concerning the relationship between language and language suspension, orality and writing, prolongation and rupture, focusing mainly on the theme of family relationships. For this purpose, I will also refer to the work of David Le Breton on the polysemic character of silence, the studies of Tito Cardoso and Cunha on the rhetoric of the unspoken, as well as the concept of hidden dialogue by Mikhail Bakhtin.

«Camino y camino y no ando nada»: filosofía de la caminata en los cuentos de Juan Rulfo

En este trabajo planteo un recorrido por los relatos de El llano en llamas, de Juan Rulfo, a la luz de tres libros cuya reciente lectura me hizo pensar a Rulfo desde otro ángulo. Estos volúmenes son Elogio del caminar, del antropólogo francés David Le Breton; Narrating Space/Spatializing Narrative: Where Narrative Theory and Geography Meet,de la crítica literaria Marie-Laure Ryan y los geógrafos Kenneth Foote y Maoz Azaryahu y Había mucha niebla, humo o no sé qué, de la historiadora y escritora mexicana Cristina Rivera Garza. Con base en estas lecturas y saberes cruzados, plasmo un posible mapa cognitivo de El llano en llamas. Mi análisis del libro identifica tres regiones distintas dibujadas por los personajes en sus itinerancias. Estos viajes no solo implican desplazamientos sino que además muestran un peregrinaje cognitivo consustanciado con un ecosistema narrativo inconfundible que termina transformándose en una marca de estilo.

CEZAEVİNDE MAHKÛM BEDENİNİN DİSİPLİNER ÖRGÜTLENMESİ: BİYOPOLİTİK MEKÂN, DUYUMSAMA, KURAL VE İHLAL (1923-1953)

This article examines the body of prisoners within the context of disciplinary practices in prisons in Early Republican Turkey spanning the years 1923 to 1953. It deals with topics such as the discourse of correction and social rehabilitation in prisons; the rites of passage, symbolic and physical intervention on bodies of inmates during confinement; the relationship among space, everyday objects and prisoners; the perception of physical, social and acoustic space; the degrees of isolation of body as a space; the transgressive, destructive and self-destructive impulses among inmates as a strategy of negotiation and survival. Concentrating on the directory of prisons of 1941 and some of the texts by the director of Imralı Prison Ibrahim Saffet Omay on the one hand, referring to the diaries and letters of the authors and poets such as Aziz Nesin, Nazım Hikmet, Necip Fazıl on the other hand, the article tries to answer questions such as how the prisoners’ body and self-perception were conditioned by the total institution during disciplinary practices, how the symbolic interaction took place among the subject / object body , power, space, other inmates and staff in prisons, how and to what degree the regulations and rules could be put into effect, how the discrepancy between legal definition and real conditions in prisons could be interpreted. Using concepts such as the discipline by Michel Foucault, space by Henri Lefebvre, symbolic interaction by Erving Goffman, acoustic space by Marshall McLuhan and symbolic meaning of skin and wound by David Le Breton as a theoretical framework, it provides a critical discourse analysis of that period on a polyphonic basis. It will be argued here that the body of prisoner was considered metaphorically as a space within the space that was physically, spatially, psychologically, socially as well as culturally constructed, reorganized, negotiated, positioned and constantly reshaped through process of symbolic interaction within total institution, penal system, power relations and a series of social actors.

Book review: Challenges in the Theory and Practice of Play Therapy by David Le Vay and Elise Cuschieri

Book review: Challenges in the Theory and Practice of Play Therapy by David Le Vay and Elise Cuschieri

Postoperative psychosocial care of the body/woman after mastectomy for breast cancer: a reflection

On a global level, breast cancer is considered the second most common type of cancer in women. However, the majority of patients will survive due to early detection and the evolution and availability of effective treatments, such as radiotherapy, chemotherapy, hormonotherapy and, most frequently, the surgical removal of the breast or breasts (increasingly less radical) or part of thereof, known as mastectomy, thus improving chances of survival. This provides evidence as to the need to link breast cancer treatment to care that enables a better quality of life for women whose body has undergone suffering and a therapeutically necessary mutilation, which should be echoed in new paradigms for bodily care. This suggests a further need for a theoretical reflection on professional nursing care for patients who have undergone mastectomy treatment for breast cancer, comprising an analysis of the theoretical proposals of authors such as Leonardo Boff, Mayeroff and David Le Breton. These authors reveal that one cannot deal with emotions, feelings and thoughts without a body, nor can one care for a body without emotions, feelings and thoughts. This leads to the conclusion that the psychosocial care of the body/woman requires an integrated care that represents, for the nursing professional, a process involving not only the act of nursing but also the human being in its entirety.

El cansancio antropológico en el imaginario actual y la transmisión de la fe. Análisis filosófico y teológico

El este ensayo, describe uno de los elementos del imaginario contemporáneo: el cansancio antropológico, según los análisis del filósofo y sociólogo Byung-Chul Han y convergente con las aportaciones del antropólogo David Le Breton. Desde este trasfondo cultural y antropológico, y con el ánimo de liberar de sus consecuencias, el logos de la fe propone la educación del deseo y la esperanza, con el fin de ampliar el horizonte de compresión de lo humano y ofrecer vías de solución.

Bioclimatic assessments for tea cultivation in Western Nghe An

Bioclimatic assessments for tea cultivation in Western Nghe An

Working Together: Integration, Institutions and the Sustainable Development Goals, World Public Sector Report 2018

The United Nations in 2016 adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (the successor to its Millennium Development Goals), which should eliminate poverty and achieve sustainable development by 2030. A newly published release by the United Nation World Public Sector Report 2018 using a holistic approach very nicely sheds light on the additional measures that are needed to the collaborative efforts of various stakeholders in the inclusion of those that are left out. This excellent report was prepared by many authors using mixed methods that combined literature reviews and expert contributions. The team composed of United Nations personnel was led by David Le Blan under the responsibility of Marion Barthelemy.

Green Spirituality and Physical Culture. Extreme Sports and the Imagery of Wilderness

In an area of increasingly widespread practices, the strengthening of the self through physical activities is exponentially reinforced by the inflexible laws of wild nature, now seen as a supreme judge. The knowledge of one’s personal limits and their overcoming through the verdict of an implacable, inscrutable but fair nature, allows access to the powerful source of meaning of green spirituality. This phenomenon is closely linked to an unprecedented imagery of nature. In contemporary Western society there is a widespread trend to sacralise nature, but in the terms of a “disneyfied” object—to paraphrase David Lyon. The ritual of “symbolically challenging death”—to say it with David Le Breton—through extreme sports, forces wild nature to manifest its transcendent properties: Getting out of this trial unharmed means being able to recognise one’s higher qualities. Challenging death and coming out unscathed means giving back to the disoriented contemporary individual a right and “nomized” cosmos—in the words of Peter Berger—capable of recognising the “chosen ones”, that is to say the ones that deserve salvation. I conclude that the growing phenomenon of extreme sports in the wilderness represents the attempt of experiencing an amplification of the self in order to “enter into resonance” with nature, to become “one” with it. Nature strengthens the ultimate meanings of experience, integrating them into a sort of green eschatology.

Una vita eroica. Il significato dello sport nell’immaginario della “società del rischio”

In recent years, in a symptomatic manner, peculiar practices are spreading. As David Le Breton brilliantly explains, in the « physical and sporting activities at risk » the individual - often in the presence of a wild nature - becomes heroically the only sovereign of his existence by means of a bet on his abilities, engaging a challenge that, at the limit, puts life at stake. The possibility of finding death in the challenge ensures - in the positive performance - an intensification of the biographical meanings (Le Breton, 2002). According to Le Breton line of thinking we can affirm that individual, becoming the hero of his own existence, fights the anxiety of a world lived as hostile, indifferent and meaningless. Analyzing this particular phenomenon, in an investigation that takes into account the sociological reasons of its indicative success, is the aim of this article.

Em nome dos cuidados, da proteção e da educação: infância, corpo, gênero e sexualidade como discursos entre professoras da educação infantil

Este artigo tem como objetivo compreender os discursos de professoras, de uma instituição de Educação Infantil da rede pública, sobre o corpo da criança, nos modos como estes se entrelaçam com as práticas de educar, cuidar, proteger e como são atravessados por perspectivas de gênero e sexualidade. Como referenciais teóricos, destacam-se os estudos da infância, bem como as análises de Michel Foucault, David Le Breton, Donna Haraway e Judith Butler, que, resguardadas as suas diversidades teóricas, permitem compreender corpo, gênero e sexualidade numa dimensão discursiva. Os discursos das professoras remetem a práticas de cuidar, educar e relações de gênero vividas no cotidiano da instituição, que trazem à tona questões sobre o corpo da criança, em suas mais intensas alteridades em relação ao corpo adulto, civilizado e disciplinado.

Paradoxes of Autonomy and Exceptionalism in Molière and Madame de Lafayette

The seventeenth century, in Europe, saw the rise of modern individualism: of the myth that humanity is composed of autonomous, competitive self-seekers who belong to society only in order to moderate the effects of their “natural” rapacity. Simultaneously, the modern epistemology that posits a detached, rational subject, acquiring definitive knowledge in order to manipulate a passive world of objects, arose and developed. This is the individual whom Stephen Greenblatt famously called «self-fashioning». There are repressed paradoxes at the heart of this synthesis of the autonomous individual and the transcendent subject: the competitive individualist is motivated by self-interested desire, but the dominant modern conception of rationality requires a subject capable of transcending desire and the body, and competitive self-interest can be pursued only in the social context. The attempted radical separation of subjectivity from the body is, according to David Le Breton, an artifact of early modern Europe. Recent research in linguistics, cognitive science, and evolutionary psychology undermines these myths of autonomy and objectivity, emphasizing the entanglement of the mind with emotions, the body, and the social group. The article finds these “new” insights anticipated by Molière and Madame de Lafayette, whose works dramatize both the ambitions of the emerging individualists and the paradoxes inherent in those ambitions. Molière mocks a gallery of would-be autonomous subjects trying to escape reciprocity, emotion, and the body. In La Princesse de Clèves, Madame de Lafayette delves equally deeply into the tensions that arise when ambition inspires delusions of exceptionality.

Ironiá y humor negro en el reino animal: “La divina chusma’’ de Rafael Ángel Herra, o una revisitación de la fábula tradicional

This study focuses on the analysis of the collection of fables La divina chusma, by the writer and philosopher Rafael Angel Herra (Costa Rica, 1943), published in 2011. We will try to demonstrate how the volume relates to the classical models (Aesop, Phaedrus) and to the ones from the 18th century (La Fontaine, Iriarte, Samaniego), while it suggests a revisit to the genre from a parodic point of view that does not abstain from the use of irony and black humor. To achieve our goal, we propose, at first, a reading from the tradition of the genre of the fable, through a study of intertexts and the role of the fable in historical contexts from the Greco-Roman era to the stage of the Spanish Ilustracion. Regarding the theory that we use as a research support, we propose a link between consolidated literary theories (from Vladimir Propp) and other theories of current interest, such as Omar Calabrese's reflections on the recovery of aesthetic and artistic products of the past, or the studies of David Le Breton on the need of human beings to escape social pressure (with an application, of course, to the animal world), or – finally – Bruno Bettelheim's research into the psychoanalytic meanings of fables.Key words: Rafael Angel Herra, Costa Rican Contemporary Literature, La divina chusma, genre of fable.