NCube/papyrus huggingface dataset:
Représentation et fétichisation des femmes trans racisées dans les médias audiovisuels

This master's thesis focuses on the representation and fetishization of trans women of color in audiovisual media. This study first describes the evolution of trans-feminine representation from the 1950s to recent years. Trans women of color were virtually invisible in the early decades. The thesis distinguishes anti-assimilationist representation from integrationist representation. The film Paris Is Burning (1991, Livingston) announces a change and a new reality in media. The impact of the New Queer Cinema documentary is still significant to this day. The television series Pose (Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk, Steven Canals, FX, 2018-2021) pays homage to director Jennie Livingston's film almost thirty years later. The thesis examines the feminist, intersectional and queer theory of the 1990s to understand these studies' evolution. This analysis questions the subversion of gender roles and the impact of performance and performativity in trans* media images.

Keyphrases: Trans, Lgbtq+, Queer, Performance, TV series, Intersectionality, Performativity
Le trafic illicite de biens culturels dans le cadre de la guerre civile syrienne : une mosaïque byzantine à Palmdale, étude de cas

Trafficking in cultural objects is an illicit source of income that partially supplies the art market. This clandestine trade is international even if some countries are more affected than others. In order to limit these practices and the consequences they generate, the international community has been trying since the second half of the 20th century to mobilize the population and to produce legal tools for the protection of the world's heritage. However, in August 2015, a shipment of eighty-three objects of Syrian origin was delivered to the port of Long Beach, California. The shipment sent from Turkey was composed of pottery, and three mosaics, including one piece dated between the 3rd and 4th centuries AD. This mosaic has been seized and confiscated from its owner by the District Court of California but has never been returned to its country. The purpose of this study is to analyze and understand the path of an illicit cultural object. However, trafficking remains a complex phenomenon and its ramifications are countless. In order to make this study intelligible, our dissertation will be divided into three chapters that will anchored into a case study. The historical context of the mosaic is studied in the first chapter. It highlights the impact of an unstable environment on crimes against art. The chapter also provides a global analysis of the intermediaries involved in the traffic and provides a formal and iconographic analysis of the mosaic. Then, in order to understand the journey of the artifact to the United States, the second chapter of this study focuses on established yet illicit practices of the art market, both the legal « white » market and the illicit or «black» market. It also underlines the importance of technology in the expansion of the illicit traffic of art objects. Finally, the last chapter studies the international institutions and their pronoucement (if not always their actions) in favor of the protection of cultural heritage. This section creates a history of the different legal instruments that could have prevented the illicit export of the mosaic or that could still currently allow its return to Syria. But are these tools efficient ?

Keyphrases: Idleb, Trafficking in cultural goods, Art market, Mosaic, Syria
L’envergure du poète dans la pensée de George Sand

George Sand, born Aurore Dupin (1804-1876), was one of the most prolific writers of the July Monarchy (1830-1848). Her monumental work focuses on a myriad of subjects, which are often studied from the perspective of the ideal. Among other things, Sand was interested in the notion of the poet-artist, which refers to an ideal artist. This notion, specific to this period, is distinguished from the other poet, which is a writer. While the meaning of the notion of poet-writer is well determined, that of poet-artist is subject to a vague and subjective definition. For her part, Sand considers that the poet-artist designates both an artist and a philosopher. This proposition, which is clearly stated, constitutes a central axis to all the artistic thought that she develops. This is what is explored in the present work, through three themes of George Sand's artistic thought. Each chapter is devoted to one of these themes, with an attempt to organize the artistic thought of Sand. The theme of the brotherhood of the arts will be studied first. This typically romantic theme, omnipresent in Sand's writings, perceives the different disciplines as forming a whole. Then, the hierarchy of arts will be reviewed: George Sand considers that music is the superior discipline, compared to some of her contemporaries who believe that poetry is the superior discipline. Finally, George Sand perceives a figure of genius in her writings, which comes close to the ideal artist. All these themes are studied in close relation to the usual visions found under the July Monarchy.

Keyphrases: George Sand, Romanticism, July Monarchy, Poet, Brotherhood of arts, Hierarchy of arts, Genius, Ideal artist
Le personnage queer du dandy décadent dans Les Hors nature de Rachilde et Le Portrait de Dorian Gray d’Oscar Wilde

With the advent of sexology at the end of the 19th century, the medico-legal discourse on sexual deviance and psychiatry impose itself in European societies, thus becoming the reference in matters of not only sexual normality and identity, but also, in parallel, in cultural and moral discourse. Investigating the literary field in search of sexual perversions, the forensic discipline seizes the characters and their authors, now all analyzed and criticized by this “pathologizing” gaze. From this angle, the decadent dandies Paul-Eric de Fertzen in Les Hors nature (1897) by Rachilde and Dorian Gray in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) by Oscar Wilde are two exemplary medical “cases” of androgynous, “homosexual” and degenerate deviance, because they do not perform (or poorly) the heteronormative and virile norm in force at the time. Using queer theory seen as a process of “‘deterritorialization’ of heterosexuality” (Preciado, 2003), this thesis questions the historiographical presuppositions of the implicit “social contract” (Wittig, 1992) and decompartmentalizes the characters (and the authors) of their multiple diagnosis. By noting in the narrative trajectories of the protagonists the initiation failures that prevent their aggregation into society, from an ethnocritical perspective, we will be interested in what built an identity at the end of the 19th century. A main question guides this work:  how these dandies, by being monstrous, abnormal, marginal, poorly initiated, do they pose as queer and “liminary” figures (Scarpa, 2009) within the narrative?

Keyphrases: Oscar Wilde, Rachilde, queer theory, decadent dandy, luminary character, 19th century, performativity, ethnocritic and anthropology of literature
Corps à la dérive : réduction sexuelle de la misère contemporaine dans Les particules élémentaires et Plateforme de Michel Houellebecq

How can we understand a Houellebecquian text when it evades meaning by incessant references to the field of sexuality? The sexual in the author's work is as much a textual façade as a tool for criticism. This thesis provides an in-depth analysis of the construction of sexuality in Michel Houellebecq’s Les particules élémentaires and Plateforme. The observation of an omni-present sexuality is surpassed in order to question the mechanisms at work in the representations of the body and sexuality conveyed by French society as it enters the 21st century. Employing a sociocritical interpretation, the present study draws on the concept of “social imaginary” (Popovic) to bring out the dynamic reltionship established between these pre-existing patterns and the produced text. First of all, this gives a new insight into the nature of the pornographic references that interrupt the Houellebecquian narrative, and allows us to establish how subversion works in this particular register. The characters’ relationship to their bodies indicates a sexual reduction to their genitals, wich we understand as a systematic sexualisation of individuals. This descriptive choice leads to a questionning of the injunctions and norms addressed by the text, present in the public area. By dealing with the subjects such as prostitution, sexual tourism, swinging, or paedophilia, the Houellebecquian text speaks of the world from an “oblique” angle (Hamon), associated with the construction of a double discourse. The study of Les particules élémentaires focuses on the tension between an erotico-advertising imaginary and a discours on the biological determinism of bodies for the characters, whil Plateforme is examined through the question of the sexualisation of exoticism and the commodification of the body as an objet of consumption. By drawing on previous Houellebecquian critiques and literature, this thesis brings out constructions of female and male figures, which convey an incisive critique and a new discourse on contemporary society. The lover and the prostitute, between pornographic representation and lyrical sublimation, are redefined in this context.

Keyphrases: Houellebecq, Plateforme, Les particules élémentaires, Sociocritical, Irony, Social imaginary, Discourse analysis, Sexuality, Porn studies
La mémoire comme itinéraire et expérience topographique dans les écrits des générations successives à un génocide : Dora Bruder de Patrick Modiano et Peut-être Esther de Katja Petrowskaja

This thesis uses a topographic perspective in order to examine how the memory of traumatic events is apprehended in the literary works of post-genocidal generations. While these traumatic events happened in the past, their imprint remains perceptible in the present, according to the structures of what Marianne Hirsch called “postmemory”. Through the analysis of Patrick Modiano’s Dora Bruder (1997) and Katja Petrowskaja’s Peut-être Esther (Vielleicht Esther, 2014), we look at how memory taken as a topographic experience allows for, by the embodied relation implied, a rich and singular contact with this traumatic heritage, as well as the emergence of a plural, trans-temporal and transcultural look on postmemory and its resonance in contemporary literature. The first chapter is dedicated to the presentation, definition and illustration of the main theoretical concepts and themes guiding the reflection, such as postmemory, embodied memory and the idea of memorial topography. The second chapter is a reflection on the memory itineraries in Dora Bruder and on the presence-absence, in the contemporary parisian topography, of the young girl who gives her name to the narrative. Therefore, the narrative and literary processes used by Modiano in order to draw, through the mists of history, the portrait of a character still remaining uncatchable and enigmatic are examined in this section. The third chapter addresses the fragmentary and plural narrative that Petrowskaja elaborates in Peut-être Esther, with a particular attention to the way that the narrator interacts with memorial sites and links them together through her movements and travels. The analysis of various passages also brings to light the richness and relevance of the figure of the palimpsest in the expression and apprehension of memorial topography.

Keyphrases: mémoire incarnée, Patrick Modiano, Katja Petrowskaja, memory, topography, postmemory, embodied memory, palimpsest, Patrick Modiano, Katja Petrowskaja, comparative literature
Du Salmon People au saumon d’élevage : analyse des frictions découlant de la présence de l’industrie salmonicole sur les territoires autochtones de l’île de Vancouver

This research aims to better understand the frictions caused by the introduction of the salmon farming industry on the ancestral territories of the kwakwaka’wakw and nuu-chah-nulth nations of Vancouver Island. While this context has already been the subject of much research, the question of the relationship between humans and fish was generally put aside. In that sense, this thesis seeks to bridge this important gap. While the frictions are understood here as fertile places from which new arrangements of culture and power are born, I propose that the introduction of the salmon farming industry into the indigenous territories of Vancouver Island instigated significant frictions between different ways of understanding the relationships with fish. Because this research was conducted in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, an ethnographic field investigation could not be carried out. Consequently, in this thesis, I propose an original analysis mainly based on data drawn from a large corpus of anthropological and indigenous literature, but also on publicly accessible information from social networks and cyberspaces. All of the data analyzed support the proposition that the context under study is, in fact, instigating important frictions between two value regimes that guide relationships with fish: First, a traditional value regime associated with the reciprocal rules of interaction, predation and sharing with the chiefs of the other-than-human peoples they represent and embody; Then, a regime of market value making sense in a globalized and globalizing capitalist market economy. The example of the resurgence of the First Salmon Ceremony presented in the conclusion supports this proposition. In fact, it presents itself as an important space for political, territorial and identity claims, negotiation, and affirmation, while testifying the transformative continuity that characterize contemporary West Coast indigenous cosmopolitics. In addition to proposing new avenues of research, this paper is an invitation to rethink the logics and power structures that currently guide halieutic management within the indigenous territories of Canada.

Keyphrases: salmoniculture, frictions, Anthropology, Ethnology, First Nations, Northwest coast, Salmon farming, Other-than-human persons, Fish, Entanglements, Value regimes
Le cerveau «immature» : genèse et diffusion d’un nouveau discours social sur les jeunes délinquants aux États-Unis

This dissertation investigates the role of neuroscientific knowledge about the adolescent brain in the contemporary mutations of the field of juvenile justice in the United States. More specifically, it analyzes the socio-historical dynamics whereby the theory of adolescent brain immaturity came to play a key role in three Supreme Court rulings which, between 2005 and 2012, made the death penalty and life imprisonment unconstitutional for juvenile offenders. Located at the intersection of the sociology of science and the sociology of the penal field, this dissertation examines this “legal triptych” in light of the history of the juvenile justice system in the United States. I argue that the contemporary debates surrounding the age of criminal responsibility are the latest manifestation of the symbolic struggles that various fractions of the dominant class have historically waged around the definition of the “problem” of juvenile delinquency.  Following a socio-historical perspective, this dissertation traces the oppositions and alliances between scientists, philanthropic foundations, learned societies, government agencies, elected politicians, and legal actors who have shaped the trajectory of the field of juvenile justice in the U. S. One key focus of the dissertation is to examine the “work of symbolic manipulation” (Bourdieu, 2001) of the “new reformers”, an heterogenous alliance of agents from the dominant class who, at the turn of the 21st century, constructed and disseminated a new social discourse locating the causes of juvenile delinquency in the brain of adolescents. To address this focus, I formulate a critique of the epistemological foundations and political uses of this discourse. I give an account of the power relations, notably of age, class and race, that this discourse of immaturity helps to reinforce, despite the progressive ambitions of its promoters. The analyses presented in this dissertation are based on a diversified material combining judicial archives, scientific articles, grey literature and 37 semi-structured interviews conducted with scholars, judges, members of philanthropic foundations, of activist groups and of government agencies. The heterogeneity of this material provides the means to track how the discourse of immaturity shifts from the laboratory to the courtroom or from the U.S. Congress to correctional institutions. It allows me to account for the specific field logics that generate the action of these agents, as well as the cross-cutting logics that lead them to ally themselves to act politically in order to “save” juvenile offenders.

Keyphrases: neurosciences, adolescent brain, neuroscience, neurolaw, penal field, U.S. Supreme Court, juvenile justice, field theory
Les femmes noires qui aiment les femmes : résistances aux rapports de pouvoir enchevêtrés

"Black Women Who Love Women: Resisting Entangled Power Dynamics" addresses issues of survival from a queer and diasporic perspective. This thesis argues that the participants’ everyday practices and positioning are situated within the cracks of a system that criminalizes the very existence of Black people. Analysing these women’s living conditions allows to better understand of the complex landscape of power systems at the intersection of class, gender, race and heteropatriarchy. It also recognizes their ability to create an alternative space, a universe of possibilities that opposes normative and hegemonic categories.  The participants’ realities, thus, generate starting points where otherness becomes a tool for critical thinking, a means of resistance, and a foundation for a substantially different future infused with the hope of improvement. This research is based on autoethnography, an ethnography of participation, and semistructured interviews of 22 individuals who identify as female, Black, and have romantic and sexual relations with womens. This thesis, then, centers on desire and draws on multiple inputs, mostly from racialized female theorists, whether from the academic world or from my private circle. It is shaped by powerful narratives, but also by equally impactful silences, by a strong attention to what happen on the micro scale and to description, by an autoethnography of participation, and by a willingness to depict in a few pages even a snippet of these women’s flamboyance.

Keyphrases: queer, race, diaspora, Black women, Intersectionality, (homo)sexuality(ies), Ethnicity
Nouvelles perspectives sur les algèbres de type Askey–Wilson

This thesis is divided in three parts which all orbit around the same theme: the study of algebraic structures related to the algebras of Askey–Wilson type. In the first part we obtain two interpretations that are dual in the sense of Howe for the algebras of Askey–Wilson type. Meanwhile, the other two parts are concerned with generalizations of these algebras. In the second part, we study degenerations of the Sklyanin algebra, which are built out of generators that are more fundamental than those of the Askey–Wilson algebra. In the last part, generalizations of the Askey–Wilson type algebras to higher rank are studied. In the first part, dual interpretations are obtained for the Racah, Bannai–Ito, Askey–Wilson, Higgs, Hahn, \(q\)-Higgs and dual \(-1\) Hahn algebras by invoking Howe duality.  The way that this Howe duality operates is made explicit through the examination of a dimensional reduction procedure.  A 2D superintegrable superconformal quantum mechanics model, whose symmetry algebra is the one of dual \(-1\) Hahn type, is also introduced and solved. In the second part, we study algebras that are generated by contiguity and ladder operators that encode properties of families of orthogonal polynomials.  We show that these operators belong to the Sklyanin–Heun class of operators, which can be defined for various grids.  We also show how their algebraic relations correspond to those of degenerations of the Sklyanin algebra.  Then, we show how various families of para-polynomials support finite-dimensional irreducible representations of these degenerate algebras. From the linear, quadratic, exponential and Askey–Wilson grids, we are respectively led to the para-Krawtchouk, para-Racah, \(q\)-para-Krawtchouk and \(q\)-para-Racah polynomials. Later, we connect the para-Krawtchouk polynomials (and other families of orthogonal polynomials) to tridiagonal representations of the deformed Jordan plane. In the final part, we explore higher rank generalizations of the Racah and Askey–Wilson algebras. To that end, their realizations in terms of intermediate Casimir elements are studied.  The role of the braided \(R\)-matrix is understood as follows: it connects various intermediate Casimir elements through conjugation. We obtain an isomorphism between the Kauffman bracket skein algebra of the four-punctured sphere and the algebra generated by the intermediate Casimir elements in \(U_q(\mathfrak{sl}_2)^{\otimes3}\).  This leads to a diagrammatic interpretation of the conjugation by the braided \(R\)-matrix mentioned in the above.  Lastly, a presentation of the centralizer \(Z_n(\mathfrak{sl}_2)\) of \(U(\mathfrak{sl}_2)\) in \(U(\mathfrak{sl}_2)^{\otimes n}\) by generators and relations is obtained and we show that this centralizer is isomorphic to a quotient (which we provide explicitly) of the higher rank Racah algebra \(R(n)\).

Keyphrases: Matrice R, Askey–Wilson algebra, Howe duality, Sklyanin–Heun operators, Centralizers, Dimensional reduction, Sklyanin algebra, Para-polynomials, Kauffman bracket skein algebra, R-matrix, Classical invariant theory
Opérateurs monopôles dans les transitions hors d'un liquide de spin de Dirac

In strongly correlated systems, gauge fields can emerge as collective excitations coupled to fractionalized quasiparticles. In particular, certain frustrated two-dimensional quantum magnets are described by a Dirac spin liquid which has a U(1) gauge symmetry. The infrared description is given by a conformal field theory, namely quantum electrodynamics in 2+1 dimensions with 2N flavours of massless fermions. In typical magnets, N=2 or 4. The compact aspect of the gauge field also implies the existence of topological excitations corresponding to instantons, which are created by monopole operators in this context.  This thesis focuses on quantum phase transitions out of a Dirac spin liquid and the properties of monopoles at the corresponding critical points. These transitions are driven by activating various types of Gross-Neveu interactions. In all the cases studied, the scaling dimension of monopoles are obtained using the state-operator correspondence and a 1/N expansion. The confinement-deconfinement transition to an antiferromagnetic order produced by a monopole condensate is first studied. A degeneracy lifting is observed at the critical point, as certain monopoles have their scaling dimension reduced in comparison with the value in the Dirac spin liquid. This hierarchy is charactized quantitatively by comparing monopole scaling dimensions in distinct magnetic spin sector at leading-order in 1/N, and qualitatively by an analysis in representation theory. Critical exponents of various other operators are obtained in the non-compact model. Transitions to two topological spin liquids, namely a chiral spin liquid and a Z2 spin liquid, are also considered. Anomalous dimensions of monopoles are obtained at sub-leading order in 1/N. These results allow the verification of a conjectured duality with a bosonic model and the value of a universal coefficient in U(1) gauge theories.

Keyphrases: Topological disorder operators, Gauge theories and dualities, Quantum phase transitions, Quantum spin liquids, Conformal field theory