De La Terre Research Articles

Fanon in Algeria: a case of horizontal (post)-colonial encounter?

This article will examine Frantz Fanon's involvement in the Algerian liberation struggle and the impact that this experience had on him, as reflected in his book Les damnes de la terre [The Wretched of the Earth] (1961). Above all, the aim is to demonstrate that Fanon's experience in Algeria sheds more light on the dynamics of interaction among (post)-colonial cultures themselves. By foregrounding this under-researched question of horizontal encounter between (post)-colonial cultures, the article will also look into some of the key problematic issues raised by these kinds of exchanges.

Revisiting the Developmental Stage and Age‐at‐Death of the “Mrs. Ples” (Sts 5) and Sts 14 Specimens from Sterkfontein (South Africa): Do They Belong to the Same Individual?

During the 1947 fieldwork season, Member 4 (2-3 My) of the South African Sterkfontein site yielded two important Australopithecus africanus fossils: a cranium popularly nicknamed "Mrs. Ples" (Sts 5), and a partial skeleton (Sts 14). Previous reports have proposed that Sts 5 was a nonfully grown adolescent individual (Thackeray et al., S Afr J Sci 2002a;98:21-22), and that Sts 14 was a sub-adult specimen (according to various signs of immaturity in the skeleton) (Berge and Gommery, C R Acad Sci Paris, Sciences de la terre et des planètes 1999;329:227-232; Häusler and Berger, J Hum Evol, 2001;40:411-417; Thackeray et al., S Afr J Sci, 2002b;98:211-212). It was subsequently proposed that these fossils actually belonged to the same individual (Thackeray et al., S Afr J Sci, 2002b;98:211-212), a proposition supported by their spatial positions within the site. The present work attempts to revise these different assertions. The results obtained: (i) show that the Sts 5 fossil represents a fully grown adult cranium; (ii) provide new evidence of immaturity in the Sts 14 skeletal elements (sustaining the proposed young adult age of this specimen), and (iii) suggest that although the revised ages-at-death for these fossils are partially compatible, there is no evidence to support the idea that they represent a single individual. Finally, the encephalization quotient associated with a hypothetical union of Sts 5 and Sts 14 (calculated using data from both specimens) lies between the upper and lower limits of the currently estimated range for this species and H. habilis, respectively.

Insularity and Ambivalence: The Case of the South African Poet P. J. Philander's Epic Poem,Zimbabwe

This essay explores the South African author P. J. Philander's epic Zimbabwe (1968), an Afrikaans poem of 307 alternate quatrains largely based on the disproved notion that the Phoenicians built the ancient complex of Great Zimbabwe and established a religion of phallic or fertility worship. The essay initially traces the longstanding debate on the "mystery" of Great Zimbabwe and arrives at the conclusion that the poet made a deliberate choice for the Semitic or Phoenician thesis. In the second phase of the discussion, Zimbabwe is read with Frantz Fanon's classic text Les damnés de la terre, especially with regard to the complex but key binary relationship between settlers and aboriginals. In conclusion, the essay discusses the author's political ambivalence and his attempts at making the rise and decline of Great Zimbabwe applicable to apartheid South Africa.

Jules Verne, la science et l'espace : travail de la reverie

Christian Chelbourg's earlier study, Jules Verne: l'œil le ventre — Une poétique du sujet (see FS, lv [2001], 261–2), explored why Verne wrote the Voyages extraordinaires; his new work explores how Verne's imagination treats space and science (both as knowledge and as technology), through a series of six representative texts, weighing in each the different proportions of science, poetic imagination and pedagogy, guided by the assumption that at the heart of the creative process lies rêverie which enables the writer to elaborate his world, freed from constraints imposed by reason. In Voyage au centre de la terre, the narrative of the stages of the travellers' descent (which is also an account of biological ancestry) is seen as tracing a progressive shift from didacticism to a poetic embroidery on scientific discourses (geology and palaeontology); careful comparison of Verne's position with those of other scientists tackling the fossil record (Cuvier, Darwin and Quatrefages) enables Chelebourg to bring out Verne's caution with respect to contending theories about human origins (siding with Quatrefages against Darwin, a stance reinforced in Le Village aérien). In the mining novel Les Indes noires, with its focus on industrialization, Nell's education shows Verne's concept of ‘pédagogie romanesque’ and the privileged roles in this of travel, culture (especially literary) and poetic imagination. The space journey of Hector Servadac, an improbable blend of scientific didacticism and ‘merveilleux poétique’ (p. 72), provides Verne's most polarized combination of ‘féerie burlesque’ and scientific didacticism. Maître du monde, with Robur (both Flying Dutchman and megalomanic inventor) conquering three elements with L'Épouvante, the summa of Verne's machines, but vanquished by the fourth, fire, provides the most extreme example of man alienated by technology. Finally Chelebourg explores the pessimistic implications of ‘Monsieur Ré-dièze et Mademoiselle Mi-bémol’, a fairy-tale/nightmare of children enslaved by technology, read as an allegory of the dangerous use that not only the scientist but also the novelist can make of their powers. If Timothy Unwin's study (Jules Verne: Journeys in Writing (see FS, 00 [0000], 00–00)[aq1] stressed the modernity and self-consciousness of Verne's hybrid texts, Chelebourg brings out Verne's Romantic affinities, his links to the Gothic novel and to melodrama. Although he too stresses the importance of the textual and verbal in Verne, his playfulness and humour, Chelebourg's approach is more traditional, with frequent nods to Bachelard and close readings that trace networks of allusion (notably to myth), verbal echoes and patterns of imagery. This is frequently illuminating, notably in the reading of Les Indes noires (‘un conte de fées repeint aux couleurs du réalisme ouvrier’, p. 37) and ‘Monsieur Ré-dièze’ (‘détournement de mineurs’, p. 121), but sometimes seems forced (allusions to Plato's myth of Er in Hector Servadac), unhelpful (echoes of family names in Hector Servadac reveal ‘fantasmes homosexuels’, a symbolic castration of the father and an indentification with the mother) or over-ingenious (arithmetical juggling in ‘Monsieur Ré-dièze’ produces from the site of a village [page 47 in a geography text] a reference to the date of publication of Le Docteur Ox).

Tragedy Walks the Streets: The French Revolution in the Making of Modern Drama by Matthew S. Buckley

MLR, 103. I, 2oo8 235 the action toCeylon, thenovel represents an extended development of the 'Inkle and Yarigo' theme,which dates back to the seventeenth-century story of an Englishman (Inkle or Hinkle) whose lifewas saved by an Indian woman whom he then aban doned or, in some versions, sold into slavery along with his own unborn child. The introduction suggests that thenovel is tobe read as a 'Revolutionary' text (p. 14), but gives fewdetails. Most obviously, itdenounces European avarice in the shape of the protagonist, a critique that is of course specifically directed against theBritish (the Portuguese governor provides a happy contrast). This culture-versus-nature theme, for which the 'Inkle and Yarigo' story traditionally provided an illustration, ishow ever not theonly instance ofEnlightenment critique. There is a new emphasis on the secondary developments of theplot, and inparticular on the role of thepriests,whose hypocrisy provides the pretext for explicit anti-clericalism. The tribe's downfall is not the result of theEnglishman's betrayal, but of thecrimes of thehigh priest: 'Dans tous les pays de la terre, les pretres sont les artisans du crime et l'erreur' (p. II 4). Revolutionary anticlericalism thus furnishes a significant addition to thebasic senti mental andmoral plotline; another theme is the fraughtnature of revolution itself. In the temple theheroine sees horrible statues, one of them of a European man holding a firearm in one hand and an olive branch in the other, and caressing an old woman on whose forehead iswritten the singleword 'Politique', which 'survit toujours aux revolutions' (p. 5 I). This re-edition is tobe welcomed as providing a new addition to the corpus ofRevolutionary literature available for study. CHRIST CHURCH,OXFORD JENNIFER YEE Tragedy Walks theStreets: The French Revolution in the Making ofModern Drama. By MATTHEW S. BUCKLEY. Baltimore: JohnsHopkins University Press. zoo6. iX+ I91 pp.; 9 black and white illustrations. ?33.5o. ISBN 978-o-80I8-8434-4. This study explores the complex relationship between theatre and political culture during theFrench Revolution and traces the roots ofmodern European drama back to the turbulent Revolutionary events. The theatre of the French Revolution and the theatricality of theRevolution's political culture have been attracting sustained scholarly attention over the last decade or so. The originality ofMatthew S. Buck ley's account resides in his novel interpretation ofRevolutionary theatricality as the product of various practices of social and political performance, and inhis thoughtful analysis of themanner inwhich theRevolution appropriated and transformed dra matic form.The importance ofBuckley's contribution lies also inhis analysis of the British political and cultural responses to thedramatic theatricalityof theRevolutio nary years in France. Yet what makes his book unique is the study of the impact of theRevolution on the formal development ofmodern drama between I780 and i840. The firstchapter, 'The Theater of theRevolution', deals with the language and conventions ofRevolutionary theatricality. Here Buckley explores thechanging char acter of social performance and spectatorship and the rising tensions inpopular acts of political theatricality.Looking at the shift from themonarchical gaze to thepublic gaze, he locates early political theatricality inpublic expression and argues that theRe volutionaryyourn&es are the first distinct formof radical political public performance. Buckley also defines the termof 'politics of publicity' (p. 33)-the gesture, central to Revolutionary theatricality, that publicly asserts the absence of royal authority and connects pre-Revolutionary Paris to theobsession with conspiracy and denunciation during theTerror. The second chapter, 'The Drama of theRevolution', focuses on the relationship between thedrama of theFrench Revolution and socio-political revolu tionarypractice. Concentrating on theRevolution's theatrical and political represen tation,Buckley explores the manner inwhich theRevolution's political performance, 236 Reviews in its effort to gain, maintain, and undermine authority within the theatre, partici pated in thehistorical shiftfrom traditional to modern drama. The thirdchapter, 'The Revolution and British Theatrical Politics', explores the context ofBritish theatrical politics at the time of the Revolution and the reception and impact of the French Revolution's crisis of dramatic form inBritain. Taking a closer look atBritain's par liamentary rhetoric and newspaper industry at this time,Buckley focuses on Burke's dramatic discourse in his Reflections on theRevolution inFrance and on Sheridan's various activities as a celebrated orator, theatremanager, and playwright, and...

Electron spin resonance dating of human teeth from Toca da Santa shelter of São Raimundo Nonato, Piauí, Brazil

Results of the dating of fossil human teeth excavated from a shelter in the surroundings areas of the Serra da Capivara National Park, São Raimundo Nonato, Piauí, Brazil are presented. This shelter was partially excavated to search for more data that could improve the archaeological context of the Garrincho’s limestone hill sites, where the Toca do Gordo do Garrincho shelter provided two human teeth dated by conventional C-14 in (12,170±40)yBP (years before present) and calibrated age (2 Sigma, 95% probability) 15,245–14,690yBP (Beta 136204) [E. Peyre, C. Guérin, N. Guidon, I. Coppens, CR Acad. Sci. Paris, Sciences de la terre et des planètes/ Earth & Planetary Sciences 327 (1998) 335, [1]].This region is challenging the classical theories about the peopling of America. In agreement with such theories the first human groups would have arrived in America, through Behring, only about 20,000 years ago. The site Toca do Boqueirão da Pedra Furada is a rock-shelter situated at the cliff that is the frontier between the Pré-Cambrian São Francisco plain and the Devonian-Permian highlands of the Maranhão-Piauí basin. It was excavated from 1978 till 1988 and presented a very consistent stratigraphy, with thousand of lithic implements and hearths [F. Parenti, Le gisement quaternaire de la Pedra Furada (Piaui, Brésil), Stratigraphie, chronologie, évolution culturelle, Editions Recherches sur les civilisations, Paris, 2002, [2]; F. Parenti, Le Gisement Quaternaire de la Toca do Boqueirão da Pedra Furada (Piauí, Brésil) dans le Contexte de la Préhistoire Américaine Fouilles, Stratigraphie, Chronologie, Évolution Culturelle, Ph.D. diss, Ècole des Hautes Ètudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, 1993, 411p, [3]; F. Parenti, M. Fontugne, N. Guidon, C. Guérin, M. Faure, Chronostratigraphie des gisements archéologiques et paléontologiques de Sao Raimundo Nonato (Piaui, Brésil): contribution à la connaissance du peuplement pléistocène de l’Amérique, Supplément de la Revue d’Archéométrie, 1999, p. 327, [4]].Seventy C-14 dates were obtained going from 59,000yBP to 5000yBP at the actual soil [G.M. Santos, M.I., Bird, F. Parenti, L.K. Fifield, N. Guidon, P.A. Hausladen, Quaternary Sci. Rev. 22 (2003) 2303, [5]]. Beneath the date of 59,000yBP it was found 1.5m of archaeological layers, till the rock base. The cobbles that composed the structure of the hearths placed on top of the rock base were dated by thermoluminescence and the date of them is 100,000yBP [H. Valladas, N. Mercier, M. Michab, J.L. Joron, J.L. Reiss, N. Guidon, N., Quaternary Sci. Rev. 22 (2003) 1257, [6]; H. Valladas, N. Mercier, M. Michab, J.L. Joron, J.L. Reyss, N. Guidon, Datações por Termoluminescência de Seixos de Quartzo Queimados da Toca do Boqueirão da Pedra Furada (Piauí, Nordeste do Brasil), Fumdhamentos III, 1 (2003) 35 (in Portuguese), [7]]. Thus chronological information is of paramount importance to contextualize and to understand the many questions regarding the human occupation of these sites [N. Guidon, A.M. Pessis, G. Martin, O Povoamento Pré-Histórico do Nordeste do Brasil, Proposta da: Fundação Museu do Homem Americano, e do Núcleo de Estudos Arqueológicos, da UFPE, CLIO ARQ, Recife 1 (6) (1990) 123, [8]]. To obtain more information Toca da Santa shelter, the nearest site to Toca do Gordo do Garrincho shelter, was also excavated and three incomplete skeletons with teeth were found at 80cm depth. The teeth were cleaned and acid etched and enamel completely removed from dentine and crushed in particles smaller than 0.5mm. Enamel was irradiated with a Co-60 source and measured with an ESR spectrometer (X-band) to obtain the signal versus dose curve. The archeological doses obtained by the fitting were (5.94±0.07)Gy and (5.97±0.08)Gy. Using the ROSY program an age of 5,700±200yBP was found for both teeth.

Marivetz, Goussier, and Planet Earth: A Late Enlightenment Geo-Physical Project

Abstract The published volumes of Physique du Monde (1780–1787) by Baron É.-C. de Marivetz and L.-J. Goussier fulfilled only a preliminary part of an ambitious plan to present a general theory of géographie physique, together with a new set of maps showing France’s present and past topographic conditions. The 1779 Discours préliminaire et prospectus to this project, together with publications ancillary to Physique du Monde, afford some insight into the partnership between Marivetz and Goussier, and into the ideas they had in mind when they promised an exposition of the general theory of physical geography by deduction from first principles of celestial physics. Believing that the Earth is presently in a prolonged period of warming, Marivetz and Goussier adopted a theory of the oceans’ gradual diminution, through progressive conversion of water into solid matter by assimilation in organic bodies. An understanding of France’s slow emergence from the sea, in the authors’ view, was linked with one of their main practical interests: promotion of inland navigation through enlargement of the French system of interlocking canals. Their project thus reflects a typical Enlightenment conviction in the utility of knowledge. As an effort in geoscience conceptualizing, the Marivetz–Goussier project was in accord with a contemporary pattern of thinking, in which it was assumed that proper theorizing about the Earth must center upon law-like principles or descriptive generalizations. Ce n‘est donc qu’en liant la Physique terrestre aux premières & grandes loix de la Physique céleste, que l‘on peut espérer de répandre de véritables lumières sur cette Science. La Géographie Physique ne peut être éclairée que par la Physique céleste ….Marivetz and Goussier (1779, p. 8)La Physique du Monde, suivant la définition de M. de Marivetz & de M. Goussier, est composée de deux parties, celle du Ciel & celle de la Terre; mais la première n’est destinée, dans leur Ouvrage, qu’àéclairer la seconde, c‘est-à-dire à déterminer les différens états dans lesquels la terre a passé ou dans lesquels elle passera.J.-J.-L. de Lalande, in Journal des Sçavans (1781, p. 532)

L'Image du Nord chez Stendhal et les Romantiques

Textes réunis par Kajsa Andersson. 2 vols. (Humanistica Oerebroensia: Artes et linguae, 10 and 11). Örebro University, 2004. 370 pp and 426 pp. Pb €25.00 and €30.00 (€50.00 together). Handsomely produced and ornamented by photographs of each of the participants, these volumes offer complete proceedings of a conference held at the University of Örebro in 2002. The opening address by Michel Crouzet succeeds in exploding ‘le mythe du Nord’, hence perhaps Kajsa Andersson's anxiety to contextualize his remarks in her foreword: ‘Feignant le scepticisme, avec humour, il posa d'entrée de jeu à son auditoire, la question déroutante que voici: “Sommes-nous très sérieux en nous réunissant pour débattre avec gravité du ‘Nord', dont nous sommes bien obligés de reconnaître d'emblée qu'il n'existe que comme mythe?’’’. Crouzet is less persuasive when making the case for a Romantic ‘philosophie de la chair’ that might subtend this myth and so redeem it. The subsequent papers, however, largely ignore his concerns and set about describing aspects of the myth itself. Mme de Staël emerges as the dominant figure in place of Stendhal and her ideas are rehearsed by a number of contributors. Those papers that are devoted to Stendhal's struggle, in the main, to distinguish between his views of Paris and of the North, although Béatrice Didier and Pierrette Pavet-Jörg do much to illuminate his oppositions of Germanic and Italian cultures. Marthe Peyroux's entertaining review of Stendhal's attitude to megaliths notwithstanding, it is perhaps in order to accommodate his relative lack of interest in Scandinavia that the North is defined to include Britain, Holland, Germany, Poland and Russia (the definition of Romanticism is similarly inclusive). Despite this breadth, there is a great deal of repetition (happily the two papers on Balzac's Séraphîta work well together). At the same time, an obvious text such as Hugo's Han d'Islande is paid relatively scant attention. It is left to Alison Finch and Maria Walecka-Garbalinska to provide welcome balance with their respective surveys of women's writing and popular theatre of the period. Many of the contributors do little to connect their research to a broader analysis of what French myths of the North (and the South) might mean, not least in terms of establishing the latitude of France itself in the Romantic imagination. Furthermore, a number of the papers offer only general introductions to their subjects and the original research that does emerge sometimes fails to convince. For example, many of the references to Xavier Marmier, a considerable figure in this field, imply complete unfamiliarity with existing scholarship. Alain Guyot uses the year for Marmier's birth cited in general reference works rather than that given by scholars in the field since Alexandre Estignard in 1893. Françoise Chenet-Faugeras seems unaware of Wendy Mercer's challenge to Eldon Kaye's misinterpretation of Marmier's poetry (see Studi francesi, 37 (1993), 31–46). Dimitri Roboly, writing about the Voyage au centre de la terre, misidentifies Marmier's Lettres sur l'Islande as an original work of 1855 by François (sic) Marmier, even though other contributors correctly date the first edition of this work to 1837, and seems unaware that Daniel-Henri Pageaux has already written about Verne's borrowings from Marmier (see RLC, 54 (1980), 202–12).

Écrits by Odilon Redon, Claire Moran

MLR, IOI .4, 2oo6 I13I In addition to those mentioned above, there are chapters or substantial sections on Voyage au centre de la terre, Le Village aerien, Les Indes noires, and the short story 'M. Re-Dieze etMlle Mi-Bemol'. Where Chelebourg perhaps loses an opportunity in this pertinent and important discussion is in the relatively small amount of space devoted to ways in which scientific facts and theories are themselves fictionalized, poeticized, or integrated wholesale into Vernian narrative. Many have said thatVerne is at his most effective and his most fascinating when his work ismost 'factual' (Perec, among others, claimed to have been mesmerized by the poetry of Verne's lists).While Chelebourg does offer some perceptive insights into Verne's incorporation or rejec tion of contemporary science in Voyage au centre de la terre (discussed in the first and best chapter of this book), his overall stance, increasingly and a little simplis tically, emphasizes the novelist's rejection of science, or rather his scepticism about it.Yet, as Chelebourg points out in an excellent conclusion, this consistent and stu died distance vis-a-vis the scientific doxa iswhat gives Verne's writing its particular flavour-humorous, melancholic, and, despite everything, deeply serious. UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL TIMOTHY UNWIN Ecrits. By ODILON REDON. Ed. by CLAIREMORAN. (MHRA Critical Texts, i) Lon don: Modern Humanities Research Association. 2005. ix+ I4I PP- ?I 2.99. ISBN 0-947623-63-9. The life and work of the artist Odilon Redon (I840-19I6) could be described, after almost a century since his death, as a small art-historical industry that testifies to the sustained interest in the idealist, anti-naturalistic 'movement' of Symbolism in general and toRedon's now well-established position as perhaps themost productive and significant artist working within this rubric. In 2005 Redon has been the recipient of a career survey at theMuseum of Modern Art, New York ('Beyond the Visible: The Art of Odilon Redon'), a new contextual study (Barbara Larson, The Dark Side ofNature: Science, Society, and theFantastic in theWork of Odilon Redon (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press)), and a prominent place in the huge thematic exhibition 'Melancolie' (Paris, Grand Palais). These contributions add to the impor tant literature on the artist by scholars such as Ted Gott, Douglas Druick, Dario Gamboni, Stephen Eisenman, and Richard Hobbs. However, themost interesting recent insight into Redon and his work emerges from this slender edition of his own early writings, carefully edited and presented by Claire Moran. The ten texts are transcriptions from the originals made by Redon's first bio grapher, Andre Mellerio, and held today in theMellerio-RedonPapers at the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries, Art Institute of Chicago. The meticulous copies by Mellerio of such invaluable items asRedon' s sales books, correspondence, and autobiographical and fictional manuscripts have enabled researchers to overcome the difficulties posed by the incomplete publication or unavailability of his writings, letters, and other pri mary sources. A facsimile publication would have enhanced the particularities of the manuscripts, but Moran preserves Mellerio's notations (including what colour of ink was used and queries about words) and indicates Redon's own corrections to his texts in the footnotes, comprising mostly one-word alterations or eliminations. Several texts are evidently autobiographical, while others might be called 'essais litteraires', 'con tes', or 'histoires' and several appear unfinished. Kept together in agroup byMellerio, the ten texts were apparently intended for a book that Redon never completed. This edition thus begins thework of correcting the problematic and over-edited selection of texts that posthumously appeared with the erroneous title A soi-meme (I 922; original title De soi-meme). Moran explains the problems of publishing Redon's writings and goes on to provide a useful survey of the key themes and literary features of the texts. 1132 Reviews The texts themselves evocatively demonstrate Redon's lifelong preoccupation with the interior life of aman 'seul[] aumilieu de tous' (p. 92) and themystery of the imagi nation, the world of dreams, and the motivations and indecisions of the soul. Struc tured through narratives of encounter with strange worlds and beings (the Basque country and its beautiful, noble women; the exotic 'fakir', or...

History: Puzzle and people or prescription and prophecy?

In 1971 Elie Kedourie had been working on Middle Eastern history for two decades. He then defined the 'key' to The Chatham House Version, which he had just published, as the 'wish to rescue history from prescription and prophecy'. For him accounts of the past shaped by the desire to prescribe policy or to forecast the future, according to some vision or prearranged pattern, 'failed as history'.' It is questionable whether his definition is enough to encompass all his later work. His mind and interests ranged so widely that they have defied simplistic and sometimes hostile explanations that have been advanced for his underlying motives. Nevertheless, he had the knack of expressing, slightly ironically, large and complicated issues in a succinct and arresting phrase. Kedourie's formula is perhaps as sound and consistent as any that has been offered to explain, in a single sentence, his approaches to both history and political thought. His work in both fields helped form his conception of relationships between historians and politicians. To consider his attitude to such relationships it is appropriate to recall, first, some elements in his academic work which essentially contributed to it. His fundamental view of history is certainly consistent with the insistence of many contemporary and earlier historians that history is about what happened and why, not about how events and the lives of men followed some prescribed pattern or course. About a decade after Kedourie was born, H.A.L. Fisher distanced himself from prescribers of patterns in some reflections on writing his History of Europe (1935):

Identity Exhibitions: From Magiciens de la terre to Documenta II

Despite a continual morphing of the large, high-profile, temporary, group-identity exhibition, the provocative case studies published in this issue of Art Journal argue that, in the fifteen years between Magiciens de la terre and Documenta 11, the genre operated in a closed-loop system. The roller-coaster image chosen by Norman Kleeblatt for the title of the 2004 College Art Association session (“Identity Roller Coaster: From Magiciens de la terre to Documenta 11”) in which the essays were first presented alludes to the end-game aspect of the ride as well as to its ups and downs, its twists and turns, its exhilarating and terrifying speeds, its performance as spectacle, and its ultimate function as entertainment—not exactly an image that connotes optimism when linked to identity exhibitions and their programs of social justice and radical reform. Kleeblatt's second formulation of identity as a free radical operating in and circulating around an exhibition nucleus in bipolar tensions rather than binary oppositions offers more possibilities, if the promises of identity exhibitions are to be realized.

From Form to Platform: The Politics of Representation and the Representation of Politics

Held in the summer of 1989, the exhibition Magiciens de la terre was presented by its main curator, Jean-Hubert Martin, as the first truly planetary exhibition of contemporary art. It received a mitigated critical reception that underlined two contextual aspects of the exhibition: its inclusion in the long list of cultural events intended to mark the bicentennial of the French Revolution and its relation to the much-criticized 1984 MoMA exhibition “Primitivism” in 20th Century Art.

The Landscape of Sound in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Alain Corbin, Les cloches de la terre. Paysage sonore et culture sensible dans les campagnes au XIXe siècle (Paris: Flammarion, 1994), 359 pp., €8.69 (pb), ISBN 2080814532.Glenn Watkins, Proof through the Night. Music and the Great War (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2003), 598 pp., $49.95 (hb), ISBN 0520231589.Jeffrey Jackson, Making Jazz French. Music and Modern Life in Interwar Paris (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2003), 266 pp., $21.95 (pb), ISBN 0822331373.Bernard Gendron, Between Montmartre and the Mudd Club. Popular Music and the Avant-Garde (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 388 pp., $55.00 (hb), ISBN 0226287351.David Looseley, Popular Music in Contemporary France (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2003), 254 pp., $25.00 (pb), ISBN 1859736319.Though undoubtedly thriving, the history of music is still a somewhat peripheral area of research which many historians dismiss as secondary. For many years publication in the subject remained the domain of two kinds of researchers, either musicologists – ‘insiders’ au fait with the technical vocabulary – or sociologists and practitioners of ‘cultural studies’ – ‘outsiders’ chiefly interested in the reception of musical phenomena and their role in the constitution of individual and collective identities. This division has become very blurred over the last few years, which have seen the emergence of a number of works with an interdisciplinary approach. But for most historians the history of music remains a largely unfamiliar theme which they struggle to include in any global social or cultural analysis. This struggle is apparent at two levels: first, the difficulty of developing guidelines to the historicity of musical events and, second, the difficulty of escaping the chronology of classical music, which is predicated on a succession of styles and composers. Based on these two points, this article will attempt to develop, through a transverse reading of certain recent works, some working hypotheses centring on the notion of a ‘landscape of sound’ or paysage sonore, as proposed some ten years ago by Alain Corbin, a notion which, it seems to me, may make a valuable contribution to rejuvenating the history of music.

Four Myths about Space Power

The satellite gap between America and every other nation in the world is universally recognized, and the significance of this fact is also unquestioned. America s unparalleled investment in space, in satellites, the infrastructure that goes with them and the precision weapons that best exploit them is appreciated as having made possible its successful campaigns against Iraq, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan. If anything, the gap seems certain to grow steadily greater in the coming years. In the three years between Yugoslavia and Afghanistan, American airpower went from being effective principally against fixed targets like infrastructure to routinely devastating moving formations using real-time intelligence with the help of faster satellite relays. The Army and Navy as well as the Air Force have been directed to devote increasing attention to space, specifically to establish requirements, maintain a cadre of space-qualified officers, and research, develop, acquire, and deploy space systems unique to each service. (1) The United States is even slated to begin testing space-based weapons, starting with space-based interceptor missiles in 2006. The implicit technical possibilities have compelled some to envision the United States going even further and seizing outright the highest ground of all (happily unoccupied by anyone else) to impose a Wilsonian international order on the planet. With an invincible space f orce keeping the peace between nations, war as it has traditionally been known theoretically becomes impossible. On paper, the scenario (no longer limited to government reports, think tanks, and military and policy journals, but increasingly appearing in mainstream magazines like last April's issue of Wired (2)) looks like a masterstroke, a geopolitical checkmate against all future aggression. While some acknowledgment is given to the fact that satellites are not invulnerable, the thornier problems and profound limitations of an astrocop system rarely get the consideration they require. In particular this sort of thinking about space power takes four dangerous myths for granted. Myth #1: America capacity to exploit space and deny its use to opponents will be virtually unquestioned. At first glance this proposition appears to be true, as the United States has no large peer competitors, actual or even potential. China's military remains one to two generations behind the United States technologically. (3) Russia continues to possess the infrastructure for mounting a challenge to the United States, but is likely to remain cash-strapped for a long time to come. (4) Japan's stagnating economic growth and reluctance to increase its military expenditures makes its rise as a space power unlikely. Western Europe has yet to develop a coherent defense and foreign policy, and is slowed further by its skepticism about information warfare. (5) In the meantime, European militaries are falling technologically behind the United States to such a degree that the interoperability of NATO forces seems threatened. (6) While the satellite gap may now appear to be unbridgeable, the wide array of communications, navigation, reconnaissance, and weather satellite services commercially available means that other states can meet much of their need for space power in the marketplace. The imagery offered by the French Systeme Pour I'Observation de laTerre (SPOT) corporation is good enough that the United States relied heavily on it in the Gulf and Kosovo and has developed the Eagle Eye Vision program to facilitate its use. (7) Militaries that can not afford communications satellites of their own can lease transponders on the satellites orbited by other countries, and some--like Australia--have already done so. Navigation aids like the Global Positioning System can be used by anyone with a cheap receiver. The commercialization of space is also likely to progress even more rapidly over the coming years. …

Monique Mathieu: La liberté du relieur

self-display from a telescoped text on a photograph of Beckett, to a roaming meditation on Flaubert, to another photograph, this time of Faulkner, to a fourteenth-century treatise by Muhamad Ibn Mangli on the Commerce des grands de la terre avec les betes sauvages du desert sans onde, ending with a longer amusing musing elliptically circling around Hugo's Booz endormi. Close to the pulse of life, of many lives, intersubjective, contemplative, and stripped down to a bareness that yet avoids minimality, Pierre Michon's writing here, in these two books, acquires a largely discreet yet openly felt penetration of our being-in-theworld that few can emulate.

Memory and Fiction in the Novels of Catherine Colomb

Born in 1892, the French Swiss writer Catherine Colomb spent her first years at Saint-Prex on Lake Geneva near Lausanne. After her mother died in childbirth in 1897, Colomb was raised by her maternal grandmother. She went to school in Lausanne, and made extended stays in Weimar, Potsdam, and England. She received a B.A. in literature from the University of Lausanne in 1916, and worked on an unfinished doctoral thesis entitled Beat-Louis de Muralt. Voyageur et fanatique. In 1921, she married the distinguished lawyer, Jean Reymond; they had two sons, Claude and Dominique. In Yverdon, she secretly began to writefiction and published a first novel, Pile ou face, in 1934. Her reputation is based on a trilogy of novels that followed it: Chateaux en enfance (1945), admired by Jean Paulhan, Les Esprits de la terre (1953), and Le Temps des anges (1962). She received the Prix du livre vaudois and the Prix Rambert. Catherine Colomb died in 1965.

The First French Literary Centenary: National Sentiment and the Molière Celebration of 1773

The First French Literary Centenary: National Sentiment and the Molière Celebration of 1773 JOHN R. IVERSON When was the first French literary centenary? Pierre Nora has called our times the "era of commemoration," and William M. Johnston has defined the "cult of anniversaries" as one of the hallmarks of the modern age.1 Celebrations are staged around even rather trivial cultural dates; commemoration has become a major industry in France, as elsewhere.2 Despite the magnitude of this phenomenon, however, no one has stopped to ask precisely where these practices originated, what first inspired them, what types of rationale were applied to their earliest manifestations. The self-evident nature of the modern commemorative impulse has prevented us from looking towards the past or, more precisely, back to the celebration of Molière's death in 1773—France's first literary centenary.3 Given the lack of commemorative precedent in France, the significance of the 1773 celebration extends far beyond Molière.4 In order for this literary tribute to take place, multiple factors had to converge, some of which had little to do with Molière specifically.5 The prominence of the "cult of great men," an emerging tendency to treat the passing of a hundred-year interval as a significant occurrence, a growing concern for cultivating the heritage of the French literary tradition, and a growing sense of cultural rivalry with England, particularly aggravated by the example of the Shakespeare Jubilee of 1769, all contributed to the birth of the centenary. In combination, these 145 146 / IVERSON elements make the commemorative observance of 1773 a key moment in the formation of a French national literature. More than a simple sign of veneration for Molière, this event emblematized the emergence of French literature and French writers as vital components of national identity. The Molière Centenary On 17 February 1773, the actors at the Comédie Française celebrated the one hundredth anniversary of Molière's death by performing a one-act comedy entitled L'Assemblée.6 Written for the occasion by the abbé Le Beau de Schosne, this work was hardly a theatrical masterpiece. The form it assumed, however, was significant because it established a model for subsequent celebratory spectacles in France. As indicated by the title, L'Assemblée depicts a meeting of the actors of the Comédie Française who must decide whether to accept a new play for their repertory. An aspiring playwright proposes an idea which, he says, will certainly please the troupe, Puisque je veux célébrer le retour Et de l'année & du jour séculaire Qui vit Moliere éclipsé de la terre (33). The plan meets with general acclaim, but the actors are at a loss as to how they might best honor their founder. A sorcerer is called; the ghost of Molière appears and explains why the comic genre has fallen on hard times in France. When the ghost finally departs, a curtain rises and, "la statue de Moliere paroît posée sur un piédestal" (34). The play ends as the entire company gathers around this bust, crowning it with laurels. This was the "Apothéose de Molière" referred to in the full title of the work.7 The following evening, 18 February 1773, a second one-act play dedicated to the Molière centenary premiered, Jean-Baptiste Artaud's Le Centenaire de Moliere.* In this case, the scenario involves the arrival of Thalie and Momus in France, where they have been sent by Jupiter to gauge whether the great comic author is still properly appreciated in his homeland. One by one, characters from Molière's comedies come forth to lament the loss of their creator. Again, as in Lebeau de Schosne's Assemblée, the work concludes with the crowning of a bust of the dead playwright. The "apotheosis" of the writer is thus established as an obligatory element of the commemorative celebration. During the following weeks, each of these two works was given several The First French Literary Centenary / 147 performances, often in conjunction with one of Molière's works. Of the two, La Centenaire de Moliere...

‘Citoyennes à part entière’?The Constitutionalization of Gendered Citizenship in France and the Parity Reforms of 1999‐2000

In France the Last Decade has Witnessed a Notable Attempt at renewing the theory and practice of representative democracy. This has taken the form of a campaign, first launched in 1992, to tackle the significant under-representation of women in all of France's main arenas of elective representation by according constitutional status to the principle ofparite. The campaign focused on the claim that, as one half of humankind, women in democratic polities should have the right to hold half of all elective offices:‘Femmes: moitie de la terre, moitie du pouvoire. Its supporters contended that the requirement that elective positions be held by equal numbers of men and women would revitalize French democracy, ushering in a new form of democratic polity:une democratie paritaire.

Correction of errors in SPOT-Derived DEM's using GTOPO30 data

In hydrological studies of the Little Washita River Watershed, OK, a 1000 km/sup 2/ section of a satellite probatoire d'observation de la terre (SPOT)-derived digital elevation model (DEM) was observed to contain systematic elevation errors, and a technique for minimizing these errors was developed. Error minimization was achieved by first overlaying the Little Washita section of GTOPO30, the latest DEM providing global land coverage, and then computing GTOPO30-SPOT elevation residuals. Spatial analysis of these elevation residuals revealed a systematic elevation error oriented about a single axis, and rotating the SPOT-derived DEM scene about this axis minimized the GTOPO30-SPOT root mean square error (RMSE) by nearly 10%. The axis intercept, slope, and degree of rotation identified using the relatively coarse 1 km resolution GTOPO30 product were nearly identical to those identified using three separate DEM's of 30 and 90 m resolution. Forty ground control points (GCPs) not used in the original stereocorrelation of the SPOT-derived DEM confirmed that rotation improved the Little Washita SPOT-derived DEM RMSE by nearly 26%. This research indicates that 60/spl times/60 km/sup 2/ SPOT-derived DEM scenes may have interior subsections that contain systematic elevation error, and that the GTOPO30 data set has an adequate systematic accuracy for identifying and correcting this error.

Local increase of rock salt porosity by coalescence of fluid inclusions under the effect of a thermal gradient (French with abridged English): P. Lebrun, J. Billiotte, M. Deveughele & J.-M. Le Cleac'h, Comptes Rendus — Academie des Sciences, Serie II: Sciences de la terre et des Planetes, 320(7), 1995, pp 555–561

Local increase of rock salt porosity by coalescence of fluid inclusions under the effect of a thermal gradient (French with abridged English): P. Lebrun, J. Billiotte, M. Deveughele & J.-M. Le Cleac'h, Comptes Rendus — Academie des Sciences, Serie II: Sciences de la terre et des Planetes, 320(7), 1995, pp 555–561