Le Retour Research Articles

Si vous vous croyez du génie… L’humour situationniste dans et contre l’art et la poésie modernes

Based on a satirical comics, emblematic of the pre-May 1968 period, Le retour de la colonne Durutti, produced in 1966 by André Bertrand, someone close to the situationist movement, this article returns to the practice of diversion as an artistic modality with subversive claims, and in that very sense “humorous.” It turns out that the principles on which situationist diversion is based, that of the arbitrary and non-hierarchical relationship to cultural materials of all kinds (Debord, Wolman), or that of their “updating” and “revaluation” (Jorn) are also those that according to Hegel marked the emergence of modern art, qualified by the latter as “the art of mood and humour.” From the attitude of emancipation of the modern author in the face of his poetic materials which characterizes the “subjective humor” of which the philosopher spoke, we pass with the situationist diversion to a form of guerrilla warfare of meaning, to humor as game and critical weapon against any form of oppression and repression, and at the same time, desire to reiterate the sublime and liberating “absolute revolt” as advocated by Isidore Ducasse.

Об эволюции публичного и приватного в структуре жанров комической драматургии: сюжет Плавта в пьесах Ж.Ф. Реньяра и Г. Филдинга

The article focuses on the transformations of the plot of Mostellaria (or The Haunted House) by Plautus in the plays by J.F. Regnard (Le Retour Imprévu or The Unexpected Return) and H. Fielding (The Intriguing Chambermaid). The article gives special attention to the relations between public and private spheres as they are represented in those works’ dramaturgy. Pointing out the ambiguity of the comedic genre in respect of the interpretation of the public and the private, the author examines the collisions between the two spheres tracing their manifestations on the levels of plot, dramatic action and the relations of characters of the plays under discussion. In The Haunted House the controversy is solved on the ground of genre memory preserving its ritual roots and reviving the purifying effect of putting private relations and individual vices on public display. In the works of Regnard, who writes in the situation of more complex private life, a comic effect comes from the violation of privacy and from the discrepancy between inner cynicism and formal propriety of personages. Lessening the strain of formal symmetry, characteristic of the classical structure of Regnard’s play, H. Fielding represents the violation of privacy as a kind of “familiar” chaos (typical of modern life). This tendency is counterbalanced by the ideal of defending and harmonizing private sphere which is meant to serve the foundation of the public good.

Импрессионизм Ги де Мопассана на материале новеллы “Le retour” («Возвращение»)

В основе статьи лежат отличительные принципы импрессионизма. Акцентируется субъективное видение. Важно не само явление, а его становление. Событие дается в смене впечатлений, определены критерии и их реализации, каждый раз новые, создающие динамизм повествования. Все, что необычно, порождает яркую образность и привлекает внимание. Использование нормандского диалекта позволило автору мастерски противопоставить безыскусность выражения в диалоге остроте и напряженности ситуации. Диалог представлен как основная цветовая гамма, а усложняющие его варианты показаны как результат направленного света. The story relies on the principles of Impressionism listed below. The author of the story emphasizes subjective vision. It is not the phenomenon itself that matters but the way it is shown. The events are marked by a sequence of impressions. Maupassant follows the criteria he set, and their multiple implementations, ever new, make the narrative dynamic. Everything unusual gives rise to vivid imagery and draws the readers’ attention. Use of the Norman dialect gave the author a unique opportunity to oppose the unsophisticated, even awkward, language of the characters’ dialogue and the poignancy and tension of the human drama. Dialogue serves as the general palette, whereas the emotional overtones accompanying it are shown as the result of a ‘spotlight’.

African Cinema and Festivals: FESPACO

African Cinema and Festivals:FESPACO Manthia Diawara (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Figure D. Ouagadougou fountain. Courtesy of FESPACO. [End Page 106] When it first took place in 1969, only five African and two European countries participated in the Festival Panafricain du Cinéma de Ouagadougou (FESPACO). By 1985 it had become the biggest cultural event in Africa, with thirty-three countries competing for the now prestigious Étalon de Yennenga award and several other prizes such as the ones conferred by the Organization of African Unity, UNESCO, the Institut Culturel Africain (ICA), the Agence de Coopération Culturelle et Technique (ACCT), the Organisation Catholique Internationale du Cinéma et de l'Audio-visuel (OCI), and the European Economic Community. The ninth FESPACO (February 23–March 2, 1985) brought to Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, more than five hundred guests: filmmakers, journalists, and critics from Africa, Europe, and America. An unprecedented half-million people participated in the events. While such newspapers and specialized magazines as El-Joudjahid (Algeria), Le Monde (France), and Cahiers du Cinéma have regularly covered the festival since 1969, FESPACO 1985, which was attended for the first time by newcomers such as the Los Angeles Times and the independent British TV network, Channel 4, marked a clear improvement over the preceding ones. It was also at FESPACO 1985 that the Organization of African Unity (OAU) award was inaugurated. The purpose of this chapter is to explain the success of the FESPACO in becoming the most important and culturally unifying event in Africa, despite the ideological contradictions and linguistic differences between some African countries. FESPACO had to overcome several obstacles and undergo several transformations before becoming the international event that it now is. Begun in 1969 as La Semaine du Cinéma Africain, it was only at its third meeting in 1972 that the Ouagadougou film events took the name FESPACO and introduced competition between films for awards. The 1969 Semaine du Cinéma Africain was organized by Burkina Faso (then Upper Volta) and the French Ministry of Coopération, which was the biggest producer of African films. Five African countries (Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, and Niger) [End Page 107] and two European countries (France and Netherlands) were represented by filmmakers and their films. On the African side, Borom Sarret (1964) and La noire de … (1966) by Ousmane Sembène, Et la neige n'etait plus (1964), Le retour de l'aventurier (1964), and Aoure (1966) by Moustapha Alassane, and Cabascado (1964) by Oumarou Ganda were shown. On the European side, Jean Rouch showed Jaguar (1966), Moro Naba (1957), and Bataille sur le grand fleuve (1950), and Joris Ivens showed Demain à nanguila (1963). In total, twenty-five films were exhibited on a noncompetitive basis. This first Semaine du Cinéma Africain (February 1–15, 1969) had many structural elements and rules that are still maintained by the FESPACO. It had a local committee of Voltaics in charge of the organization. The committee was assisted by subcommittees for the reception, housing, information, programming, and entertainment. The French cultural attaché in Ouagadougou participated in the organization and the Ministry of Coopération in Paris supplied most of the films and contributed funds for the festival. The Semaine du Cinéma Africain had as its objective "to make people discover and to promote African film which for the most part was ignored. The purpose of this encounter was therefore to show that there exists an African cinema, which was made in Africa, by Africans, on African subjects."1 Some ten thousand people saw the films, and this encouraged the organizers to have a Semaine du Cinéma every year. The second Semaine du Cinéma (February 1–15, 1970) was more successful on all levels. Nine African countries (Algeria, Tunisia, Ivory Coast, Mali, Guinea, Ghana, Niger, Senegal, Burkina Faso) and the French government participated in the events. Thirty-seven films were exhibited, including Mandabi (The Money Order, 1968) and La noire de … (Black Girl) by Ousmane Sembene, Dianka-bi (1969) by Mahama Johnson Traoré, La femme au couteau (1968) by Timité Bassori, L'aube des damnes (1965) by Ahmed Rachedi, and La voix (1968) by Slim Riad. The number...

The Paradoxes of Description in André Gide's Voyage au Congo and Le retour du Tchad

The Paradoxes of Description in André Gide's Voyage au Congo and Le retour du Tchad Matt Reeck (bio) I don't promise extraordinary adventures; you will not find the charm of the desert or that of Islam, which has seduced everyone. But there is contour and color. When you have traveled here a little, you gain, I believe, a very exact and pure view of primitive Africa. It's not the North African village, it's not the forest, but it's a land, wooded in places with large trees, watered by beautiful rivers, inhabited by a splendid naked race that our Western civilization hasn't yet sullied.1 On January 16, 1925, Marcel de Coppet, a French colonial officer stationed at Fort Archambault near Lake Chad, wrote to André Gide about his upcoming visit. Through their mutual friend Roger Martin du Gard, Gide had met Coppet in Paris in 1920. The fact that Coppet had been stationed at Fort Archambault for four years by the time that Gide and Marc Allégret began to plan the course of their trip to Africa provided the traveling duo with a natural turn-around point for their voyage through French Equatorial Africa. Coppet writes ahead to his new friend that there will not be adventures; at Fort Archambault, there will also not be "charming" desert scenes or those of Islam, the staples of late nineteenth-century Orientalist representations of Africa and the Middle East. Instead of these classic exotic scenes, Gide would be able to witness the "real" Africa, primitive Africa, that Africa inhabited by a "splendid naked race" that existed beyond the sullying touch of Western civilization. This is the same vision of Africa that elicits the name Congo as a blanket term meant to describe sub-Saharan Africa—black Africa—as a primal zone of origin, originality, and infrangible authenticity, available still for discovery to the intrepid European traveler. In short, this encapsulates Africanist discourse,2 which also happens to be the primary lens through which Gide's African travelogues have been read since the advent of postcolonial studies. Coppet's letter is remarkable evidence of aspects of the thinking of the time, as well as the literary style of which Gide himself might be the best representative—a style that increasingly would come to stand for the [End Page 82] best and worst of the French tradition, elegant and formal, contemplative and yet displaying a racial, if not racist, worldview. Coppet's letter also shows us the epistemological and aesthetic connections between natural history writing and ethnographic writing, including the blurred line dividing description of nature with descriptions of people and culture. In attempting to adumbrate the importance of ethnographic description to French modern literature, I read Voyage au Congo (1927) and Le retour du Tchad (1928) in the following ways. Gide's double book—the one charting his course to Fort Lamy, and the next, his return—reveals the continuity of epistemology and aesthetics from the natural history monograph to the ethnographic. Demonstrating this continuity is important. It will help show how descriptive practices are not bald-faced equations of transparency and objectivity, but that ethnographic description carries with it a complex history that includes an inheritance from natural history writing and the natural sciences. Ethnographic description, then, viewed as a surface phenomenon of rendering a worldview visible, must be thought of as part of a multi-faceted system of descriptive practices. Uncertain Designs, Open Form Jeffrey Geiger argues that whatever expectations a postcolonial reader might have in regards to Gide's worldview breaking down upon the encounter of cultural others, this does not come to pass. Gide's "persistent self-regard" leads to more of "Gide's self-projections"; the works are "works of egoism" that do not show any of the risks of "going native,"3 a characteristic that Henrietta Moore cites as being shared by modern ethnography and travel narratives.4 Walter Putnam, too, writes that Gide himself stands at the center of the voyage. The travelogues relied upon the stature of Gide as an author at the height of his popularity to convince readers that political redress...

Le Retour au désert: o grotesco em Koltès

Este artigo se propõe a demonstrar como o dramaturgo Bernard-Marie Koltès atravessou a ponte da retórica antiga para extravasar para o palco contemporâneo o tema da guerra e da falta de liberdade, retomando memórias pessoais em Le Retour au désert (O retorno ao deserto, 1988). A análise é centrada nas rubricas e na enunciação discursiva.

The History Manifesto, History of Science, and Big Narratives: Some Pending Questions.

The History Manifesto, History of Science, and Big Narratives: Some Pending Questions.

Old Stories, New Histories: The Past in the Francophone Tunisian Novel

ABSTRACTThe overarching dilemma for Tunisian society since the end of the French protectorate has been the struggle for a political system that accurately reflects the nation's cultural hybridity. This struggle has marked political and social debates, and appears repeatedly in literature. Before the political freedom that the Arab Spring brought Tunisia, authors such as Sophie El Goulli and Abdelaziz Belkhodja were already recrafting Tunisian history, using it as a way of challenging entrenched Western hegemony and staging a quiet, low-key revolution. In their respective novels, Hashtart: À la naissance de Carthage and Le Retour de l’éléphant, El Goulli, and Belkhodja reprise the history of Carthage; through this movement back in history, beyond European domination, these authors are able to transcend the era of the French protectorate and create a deeper political vision that challenges the presumed inevitability of the postcolonial dictatorship. This article explores how each author challenges the political oppression that remained in the wake of the French protectorate, marks the beginning of the end of the régime du savoir left by colonialism and announces the dawn of political modernity.

Le Tram 83 par Fiston Mwanza Mujila

Reviews 203 owns a bar called “Le Retour d’Ulysse”; Tim runs a souvenir shop; Mary works in the grocery store; and so forth. Their lives intersect frequently in this small town, often in the bar in the evening, and that is mostly where we hear their stories, thanks to the narrator. He is a curious bird, remaining anonymous throughout the novel. He is exceptional in other ways, too, for we know very little about his past, merely that he is French and that he has come up the coast from Long Beach, through Portland. “Ça débute comme un road story, quand on y pense”(15), he remarks; and it is not the only one, because all of the characters have been involved in their own road stories, before each of those stories crested and broke upon Cannon Beach. Other narratives circulate liberally in this fictional world. The narrator reads and rereads Lewis and Clark’s Journals, for instance, in a two-volume edition belonging to Perry. One night in the bar, the talk turns to the Odyssey—yet another road story, come to think of it—and Harry Dean knows enough of it to assure the others that it is a tale that ends in blood. That is just one effect among many others suggesting that this story will likewise end in blood. Catastrophe looms from the beginning of the novel. Pressure builds and will seek release, in an eruption as inevitable (and perhaps just as telluric) as that of Mount St. Helens, which the folks in Cannon Beach remember all too well. Reflecting on the events of the recent past in his motel room, gazing out at the sea day after day, the narrator comes to understand that he is involved in a story, though the question of what role he may play therein—witness or actor, victim or hero—is well beyond his ken. He tells his tale in an engaging, complaisant, dilatory manner, one that seems unconcerned until we realize that he is deferring an event which is far more painful to tell.“Dans mon idée, tout ça, c’est de la faute de l’océan”(86), he says. In a sense, maybe he’s right, because the ocean (like narrative itself) involves forces that are irresistible, in which even the strongest of swimmers may founder; and once you submerge yourself in it (again like narrative) you are necessarily a part of it, whatever else you may wish to be. University of Colorado Warren Motte Mujila, Fiston Mwanza. Le Tram 83. Paris: Métailié, 2014. ISBN 9-782864-249597 . Pp. 200. 16 a. The form and content of this work create a contemporary Africa that is fragmented and chaotic. “La Ville-Pays” and the “Arrière-Pays” are all that is left of the country (unnamed) after cycles of colonization, exploitation of its mineral riches, revolution and civil war.The novel opens with the following statement:“Au commencement était la pierre” (9). The vast deposits of precious stones underlying the city are the first cause of this turbulent world of possession and dispossession. The story begins at the railway station, undertaken then abandoned under the colonial regime, now a mass of twisted metal. This image returns as a leitmotiv. The epicenter of the Ville-Pays is a bar-cabaret, the Tram 83. There is no concrete description of this place, rather a texture of blurred, constant motion, composed of unfinished images and intersecting lines of unrelated sentences. The plotline, summary biographies and intercalated récits are constantly punctuated by the solicitation of the prostitutes, “Vous avez l’heure?” and brief advertisements of their specialties. The epigraph links prostitution to “la pierre” and the Fall: “tu gagneras ta vie à la sueur de tes seins.” The voice of an ironic omniscient narrator colors all, including the multiple biblical quotes, sustaining the sense that we are entering a counter-world, dehumanized and dehumanizing. Mujila invents bizarre, jolting or poetic juxtapositions of terms; the voices without bodies, or body parts (especially breasts) without persons proliferate. The fauna in the Tram are repeatedly enumerated, like a litany of anti-saints: les affreux, the miners and the students perpetually...

Mécanismes de survie en milieu hostile par by Oliva Rosenthal

Reviews 281 Rosenthal, Oliva. Mécanismes de survie en milieu hostile. Paris:Verticales, 2014. ISBN 978-2-070-14634-5. Pp. 192.16,90 a. They say don’t judge a book by its cover, but the colorized still from the 1960 British sci-fi classic Village of the Damned gracing the cover of Rosenthal’s tenth novel gives a strong indication of the eerie, mysterious foreboding found inside.As the novel opens the reader is immediately immersed in a post-apocalyptic world in which the unnamed narrator leaves another female “abandonnée sur le bas-côté de la route, de toute façon je ne pouvais plus rester avec elle, ça devenait trop dangereux” (11). We never learn who these people are precisely, why one had to be left behind, and why the other is on the run. The only constant is fear and uncertainty: “[L]à-haut ils m’attendent, là-haut ils me tueront, je n’aurai pas la force de courir, ni de crier, ni de tuer alors qu’ici je peux reconstruire une dernière fois tout ce par quoi je suis passée avant de finir” (26). It is only over the novel’s five long chapters, and especially in the last one,“Le retour,”that the narrator and reader are finally able to piece together who these people may be and whether the abandoned girl on the first page is truly dead, dead to the narrator, or if perhaps there is no difference between those two states. Reaching the novel’s conclusion, however, requires a great deal of patience. Although aesthetically pleasing, the writing frequently turns overly abstract and opaque: “Je dois aplatir le monde. Dès que le relief s’abîme, on est moins exposé aux mauvaises surprises. Dans un monde en deux dimensions, il est rare qu’un être, un objet ou un événement imprévu surgissent” (55). This abstruseness and lack of narrative line are compounded by what initially appears to be a completely separate second text, interspersed within the first and demarcated by italics. These random paragraphs, whose subjects revolve around near-death experiences, crime scene investigations, and medical emergencies, are much more concrete and scientific. Eventually the two texts begin to intersect, albeit tangentially, and parallels can be drawn, ultimately creating a commentary on and development of the themes and actions presented in the primary narrative, with a concomitant increase in tension.As the narrative progresses through chapters describing an intense and traumatic childhood game of hide-and-seek or the protagonist’s relationship with her friends after her move to Paris at the age of 18, we learn that really all that we are—all our surroundings, friends, family, and foes—can be a “milieu hostile.” Should one leave everything behind and dedicate oneself to photographing the invisible, as one of the survivors of a near-death experience does, should the narrator try to “creus[er] un pli nouveau où me loger, un pli intérieur et hors de portée” (167), or can one find the means necessary to discover solace? Bradley University (IL) Alexander Hertich ...

J’ai sauvé la vie d’une star d’Hollywood par Laurent Bénégui

Reviews 207 death of his sister. Visiting the staff of the clinic where she died, he looks into her former room where he finds a man, eyes filled with hate, who appears transfixed by the narrator’s ring, yet is unable to utter a word. It is this mysterious scene and its aftermath that ultimately propels Aventin to examine “le puzzle incohérant de [sa] vie” (70). Who is this unknown man? Why is he so interested in the ring? Is he the author of an unsettling letter Aventin receives with only the number 6 inscribed on it? And what does that number mean? Is he the author of an anonymous book, Personne ne saura jamais, whose plot seems to intersect precisely with Aventin’s own existence? As in many of Belletto’s novels, the protagonist falls into a world of funhouse mirrors where nothing is sure: “Était-ce ma vie tout entière que je rêvais, était-ce moi qui me dictais le songe que j’aspirais à coucher sur papier, l’un de ces jours proches?” (218). Is the protagonist dying or living?“[M]ais un peu de ma vie égalait toute ma vie, peut- être étais-je mort, me disais-je encore et encore” he writes (266). Countless elements underscore this specularity: he drives a Dodge Reborn; he wrote and starred in a film called Le retour, a still from which offers “[u]ne sorte de preuve de mon existence ou de mon inexistence”(51),and meets people with surnames such as Trévie and Doublier. He does not face these mysteries alone, however. Two beautiful women offer the chance of salvation. One may be carrying his child; the other, to whom he gives a vintage pen handmade by Miguel Padilla, assiduously keeps a journal and encourages the narrator to write. Will either of these possibilities bear fruit? This seems to be the question at the center of all of Belletto’s works. Toward the end the narrator notes: “[L]aissons là les souvenirs, ou plutôt comparons-les aux mille ébauches d’un peintre, dont il espère qu’elles ont écarté assez de voiles pour que l’exécution de l’œuvre dernière les écarte tous, et [...] le mal et la souffrance de la vie” (277). Is this Belletto’s final work? In any case, it is gripping, perplexing, and highly enjoyable. Bradley University (IL) Alexander Hertich Bénégui, Laurent. J’ai sauvé la vie d’une star d’Hollywood. Paris: Julliard, 2014. ISBN 978-2-260-02095-0. Pp. 352. 20 a. It is a bad mistake to get caught feeling up an intern on the set of the hit television series that you write for, especially when your wife has created and supervises the show. Like other protagonists named Laurent in other novels by Bénégui, Laurent Labarrère is his own worst enemy. That is saying a lot, since his enemies include not only the woman about to become his ex-wife but two Russian Mafiosi involved in international meat trafficking. Part farce, part family drama, this novel reflects the kind of television designed to amuse one at the end of a hard day. Laurent gradually finds himself in increasingly hotter water, not just with his estranged wife but also with his two daughters, aged nine and thirteen, who love him but often want things he cannot provide. Money is a problem because his anger costs him his job, and when he does get money he promptly spends it to appease his children. His other problems include driving recklessly on his scooter, overindulging in potent cocktails, and writer’s block. This is not to say that Boris, the main gangster, does not have his own problems. In fact, his are considerably greater, beginning with a nearly fatal heart attack on the estate of the title’s unnamed Hollywood star, who seems to be Angelina Jolie, and including his irresponsible brother and their demanding gangland superior. Boris wants to get out of a life of crime, which is obviously bad for his health, by hiring Laurent to collaborate on a screenplay for an action film providing a leading role for...

Sticking to the “Factual.” Man Ray’s Le Retour à la raison (1923), Marcel Duchamp’s Anémic cinéma (1924–26) and Peter Tscherkassky’s Dream Work (2001)

The present article seeks to show that, for the Dadaists, film was an unsatisfying medium because as a technically reproduced artifact it counteracted Dada’s sense of immediacy. The focus of my text revolves around the notion of “facticity” inspired by Wieland Herzfelde, for whom Dada represented a reaction to all attempts at disavowing the “factual.” Manifestations of Dada, such as the readymade, live performance, collage, photomontage and not least the photogram, attest to a radically new understanding of realism in art, adhering to an “anti-mimetic concept of realism” (Elsaesser). As I will argue, Dada did not capitulate to film, but made a ‘compromise,’ by exploring different strategies to reinsert the “factual“ into this medium of reproduction. This could be done by (1) turning a screening into a live performance, (2) eliciting a bodily reaction in the spectator, (3) experimenting with hand-made, camera-less devices of film making, and (4) calling to mind the material existence of the cinematic apparatus. What these strategies have in common is to minimalize (although not necessarily to abolish) the distance between “reality” and its representation in order to maintain film’s initial tactility, as described by Walter Benjamin in “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Man Ray’s Le Retour à la raison (1923) and Marcel Duchamp’s Anémic cinéma (1924–26) are prototypes of the Dadaist ‘compromise.’ A similar impetus can be found in a more recent example, Dream Work (2001), the third part of Peter Tscherkassky’s CinemaScope-Trilogy, which explicitly refers to the early days of French experimental film. What these three films, despite their differences, have in common, is to privilege a certain immediacy (be it during the moment of production or during the moment of reception) and to include an element of tactility, usually absent from cinematic works.

Les Écrivaines contemporaines et les mythes. Le remembrement au féminin by Metka Zupančič (review)

Reviewed by: Les Écrivaines contemporaines et les mythes. Le remembrement au féminin by Metka Zupančič Anna Rocca Zupančič, Metka. Les Écrivaines contemporaines et les mythes. Le remembrement au féminin. Paris : Karthala, 2013. Pp 342. ISBN 9782811108304. 29€ (Paper). Metka Zupančič examines how references to and interpretations of myths and mythological female figures factor into ten women writers’ treatment of the process of remembering. Zupančič’s theories are based on the belief that there are mental structures in the human psyche that refer to and rely upon universal archetypes and ancient myths. At the heart of Zupančič’s work lies the concept of remembrement. Traditionally used in agriculture to denote the regrouping of lands, here the word plays a symbolic role and is understood as a process of reassembling fragments of life and of remembering. Zupančič demonstrates how, in their maturity, all of the examined women writers utilize female archetypes and mythical memory to reconcile, reunify, and reconstruct what absence, defeat, hurt, and separation once dismembered. The writers’ reinterpretation of female myths, Zupančič argues, allows them to reclaim and recast human interdependence, thus stressing remembrement over démembrement or sparagmos, the latter a term used in ancient Greek mythology that literally stands for the tearing apart of a victim’s body. Their overarching [End Page 108] objective, according to Zupančič, is a better understanding of both human connectedness and inner connection with the origins of life, the mother’s body. In order to demonstrate the ethical contribution of female literary creativity and wisdom, Zupančič explores how Love, interpreted as the quintessential cohesive force of the cosmos, operates in the writers’ work. By openly declaring that their objective is to find healing and catharsis, the author sustains that these writers have participated in the creation of a new utopic genre that engages with society in order to stir the conscience; their narratives also suggest new ways of interacting, particularly between men and women. The study is presented in thirteen chapters. The three introductory sections focus on memory and remembrement and each of the following is dedicated to the analysis of a specific writer. Zupančič contextualizes the writers in a very special way by including personal reflections, excerpts from correspondences, and a remarkable number of literary references that demonstrate the resonance of common archetypes across geographical areas and time periods. All of which come together to render the study more captivating, substantive, and unique. In chapter four, Zupančič proposes that the goal of the characters Myriam/Persephone and Mary-Ann/Eurydice in Tunisian writer Souâd Guellouz’s novel Myriam ou le rendez-vous de Beyrouth is to surpass the ego’s barriers and to connect with the inner sacred self. In chapter five, Zupančič reads Fabienne Pasquet’s reinterpretation of the Mary Magdalene archetype in Le récit de Madeleine as a way of questioning, comparing, and contrasting the female and male understanding of both love and fear. In chapter six, according to Zupančič, Quebecois writer France Théoret redefines Athena’s archetype in Une belle éducation by stripping it of its male legacy–Zeus–and by showing Evelyne to be a self-made woman who, in spite of traditional conventions, chooses to educate herself. Chapter seven focuses on Francine d’Amour’s Le retour d’Afrique and the reversal of the Charlotte/Eurydice and Julien/Orpheus paradigm. The references to Egyptian female myths, the author explains, inspire Charlotte to integrate loss into her life. In chapter eight, Louise Dupré’s Ariadne is interpreted as a symbolic entity that accompanies women into the darkest corners of their psyches to help them to confront their fears and to find their most authentic selves. In chapter nine, the bird-woman in Andrée Christensen’s La mémoire de l’aile embodies a variety of mythical concepts and stands as the symbol of women’s liberation and the female yearning for the infinite. Chapter ten honors Belgian Claire Lejeune’s engagement with Québécois feminists as well as her notion of both sorority and the “third woman,” the latter centered on the capacity of inner strength to...

‘You Kiss in Westerns’: Cultural translation in Moustapha Alassane’s Le retour d’un aventurier

Abstract Le retour d’un aventurier/The Return of an Adventurer, a 1966 short film by Nigerien director Moustapha Alassane, stands at the forefront of a long history of fascination with cowboys in African film-making (Alassane, 1966a). This article revisits Le retour via recent theoretical considerations of cultural assimilation and translation, to argue that instances of cultural appropriation from non-African sources should not be dismissed under the rubric of cultural imperialism. Instead they should be thought of as functioning within specific local, national and global economies of cultural production. By focusing on the production of film in an African space rather than on its consumption, I explore the agential nature of cultural appropriation. Such theoretical reorientation remains necessary in African studies where questions of authenticity and origin, as well as political intention, persist despite abundant evidence testifying to the heterogeneity of African cinema’s central motifs and preoccupations.

Césaire at the Crossroads in Haiti: Correspondence with Henri Seyrig

Césaire at the Crossroads in Haiti: Correspondence with Henri Seyrig

The enchanted arrival: passage into West Africa in the travelogues of Blaise Cendrars and André Gide

Blaise Cendrars’s collection of travel poems entitled Feuilles de route (1924–1928) and Andre Gide’s travel journals Voyage au Congo (1927) and Le retour du Tchad (1928) describe the writer-traveller’s arrival in West African port towns as a metaphorical relocation in another world that suggests a set of narrative and cognitive tensions that call for resolution. These scenes of arrival trigger the question of the language and means of description, pointing to the traveller’s need to transform geography, space, and the experience of encounter into the temporal structure of narrative. This article shows how the description of the arrival scene also requires the traveller to reflect on his presuppositions concerning the place where he has travelled and make apparent the way in which he conceptualises the meaning of his journey. What will be especially highlighted is the way in which the experience of the arrival inspires the writer to project the place of arrival as a possible world that is not only different from but marvellously other than the actual world of home.

Berlioz and Liszt ”in the Locker Room“

The closest of friends in the early eighteen-thirties, Berlioz and Liszt shared artistic aspirations (especially around the latter’s reworkings of the former’s Symphonie fantastique and its sequel, Le Retour à la vie) and personal adventures (especially around the former’s irrational passion for the Irish actress Harriet Smithson and the latter’s efforts at counsel and consolation). These matters are discussed in the context of Berlioz’s private (and I believe insensitive) announcement, in a letter to Liszt sent four days after the marriage, that his new wife had been a virgin.

The PaCS debates: From ‘le retour à la barbarie’ to ‘le droit d’être ceux que l’on est’

This paper seeks to analyse the ways in which the partnership legislation introduced through the French parliament in 1999 (the ‘Pacte Civil de Solidarité’ or PaCS) has brought in its wake a re-examination of contemporary models of Republicanism and citizenship. Viewed by some as a threat to social cohesion (for Philippe de Villiers, for instance, the PaCS represented ‘le retour à la barbarie’), for others the PaCS represents a means to examine, but also to strengthen, the ‘elasticity’ (Gunther, 2009) of the Republic, thus illustrating the ability of the latter to adapt to social and political change. Through an analysis of the evolution of the definitions of key terms in the PaCS debates, this paper charts the ways in which the partnership legislation can be seen to offer a practical, political and social means for a queering of citizenship in the contemporary Republic with its roots in the realm of sexual citizenship, but a reach that extends far beyond it.

Baroque references in works of Vlastimir Trajkovic

The article examines Baroque references in three Trajkovic?s compositions: Arion, Le nuove musiche per Chitarra ed Archi op. 8 (1979), Le retour des z?phyres ou ?Zefiro torna? op. 25 (2001) and solo song Renoveau from the cycle Cinq po?mes de St?phane Mallarm? op. 29, in its version for voice, flute and piano (2003), all these compositions being unified by the idea of modernity and novelty, metaphorically contained also in the idea of renewal of nature, which connects music of the moderns from the beginning of the 17th century and Trajkovic?s search for new paths in music, opposite to ?gothic? tangles of the Avant-garde. Complex and multi-layered, the references to the Baroque era in Trajkovic?s works reflect fundamentally generic, arche-textual relations. Compositions Arion and Zefiro torna are set upon explicit references to Italian origins of the Baroque epoch, in theoretical, as well as in the creative domain (to Caccini?s collection of madrigals - Le nuove musiche, 1601, and Monteverdi?s madrigal Zefiro torna, 1614, after Petrarch?s sonnet). Zefiro torna, with a primarily French title and subtitles of the ?scenes? given after antique mythological sources, indicates, again, a twofold generic relation: to the Italian madrigal tradition (including another Monteverdi?s madrigal with the same title composed after Rinuccini?s sonnet, from 1632) and the French tradition of opera/ballet, additionally mediated by references to the opuses of Debussy and Ravel. Multiple literary and musical trans-historical relations can be observed in the solo song Renouveau. However, from these compositions, implicit generic relations, far more than explicit para-textual references, with the whole corpus of themes, forms, texts, discourses as well as crucial poetic concepts of the 17th century music can be inferred.

Clandestino by Sergio Kokis (review)

towarda plausibleterminus, we never truly find a complete story. Blayze Hembree University ofOklahoma SergioKokis. Clandestino. Montreal. Levesque. 2010.256 pages.Can$25. isbn 978-2-923844-33-6 Born in1944 inRiodeJaneiro, Sergio Kokisstudied psychology inFrance before moving toMontreal in 1969. He stoppedworking as a clinical psychologist in1997 tobecome a fulltime painter andwriter. Whether set inSouthAmerica (Le retour deLorenzo Sanchez, 2008)orinanunnamed no-man's-land (La gare,2005),his novels, written in French, areoften characterized by similartraits: the perplexing experience of exile;the inherently absurdquestfora vanishedidentity ; an individual lostin an incomprehensible, totalitarian societal system reminiscent ofKafka 'sworld; thesymbolism ofchessplayingand its variousstrategies; and thechallenging encounter with literature. Clandestino isanostensibly realistic narrative of victimization andrevenge, setinArgentina during theearly 1980s, thetraumatic period oftheFalklands War. Tomas Sorge,a former lowranking military officer moonlightingas a safecracker, was betrayed by a colleagueand sentencedto sixyearsofhardlaborin a remote penal colonyin Tierradel Fuego. The end of his periodof exilein this"universcarceralsurrealiste," oftencomparedto a brutalSiberianlaborcamp ,roughly coincides withtheend ofthemilitary dictatorship after Argentina's defeatin 1982.Whilehe is stillimprisoned, Sorgeis approached bya shadowy butwell-financed organization that seeks to recruit him forunspecifiedparamilitary activities after his release. SinceSorgehasnothing and no one to go back to,he accepts, eventhough itwillmeanhisofficial "death"and assumption of a new identity, underthe name of Jose Capa. After a longtripto Buenos Aires, andhisgradualreadjustment tolife outside ofprison walls, Sorge/ Capa becomesacquainted withthe manwhoarranged for hisnewlivelihood and who turnsout to be noneother thanthecolleaguewho had betrayed him.Bidinghistime, theex-convict carriesout his new duties, whichcallforusinghisold skillsas a safecracker. Thistimehe is employed bya groupofmilitary officers whoseekto maintain their powerandwealth, evenafter thefall ofthedictatorship. Sorge /Capaalso wantsto honorthedyingwishof a former friend inprison, whohad beenviciously tortured. What couldbea straightforward revenge tragedy withpolitical overtones becomes continually more complexas theformer convict and avid chessplayer - gradually transformed into anexterminating angel - engages ina gameinwhichhislifeand his prospects for anyform ofredemption areat stake.As Sorgetellshisalter ego,Capa: "Etmaintenant que tues devenu Jose, queferas-tu pourcontinuera tesortir indemne de toutce bourbier?" (Nowthat you've become Jose, whatwillyoudo tokeepyourselfcleanofthismuck ?) Clandestino provides, against the backdrop ofsordid intrigue amongcorrupt military officers and governmental officials, a fascinating portrait of a disturbingly isolated individual who, having losthispastand hisidentity, exists onlyinwhatisoften described as an "abstract" sense. Edward Ousselin Western Washington University PatrikOurednik. The Opportune Moment, 1855.Alex Zucker, tr. Champaign , Illinois. Dalkey Archive. 2011.126 pages. $12.95. isbn 978-1-56478-596-1 Patrik Ourednik (b.1957, Prague)is a Czechauthor and translator who since1984haslivedinFrance. Three ofhis novelshave beentranslated into English: Europeana: ABrief History of the Twentieth Century (translated intomorethantwenty languages), CaseClosed, andnowTheOpportune Moment, excellently translated from Czech to Englishby AlexZucker. Thelatter novelwas declared Book oftheYearinItaly bythenewspaper LaStampa in2007. Thenovelhasanintricate structure .It beginswiththe letterof an agingveterinarian, inspired by Utopian andanarchistic ideas,tohis love of fifty yearsago. This part, whichreads more like an essay, outlines a project to builda settlementhosting a freeand fraternal community inBrazilin1855, where people shareeverything and free lovewillreign. Theletter admits that theproject failed, apparently dueto poorexecution. The secondpartcontainsthe logbookof one of the colonists, beginning withthetwo-month passage from FrancetoBrazilbyship. The day-by-day accountconfronts theidealtheory from theletter with the realityof Italian anarchists, Frenchegalitariansand anarchocommunists , Germans,Austrians, Slovaks,and eventheblacksailors asthey try toorganize, share thelimitedresources , and worktogether. Thediarist takesnosides,ironically recording themounting tensions facing the colonists. This partsends whenthey stepontoBrazilian soil. The diaryresumessome six months later.This partreads like 66 1 World Literature Today ...