NCube/papyrus huggingface dataset:
L’esthétique du partage dans l’œuvre littéraire et picturale de Claude Cahun et Moore

The polymorphic work of Claude Cahun, author and artist from the first half of the 20th century, and Moore, visual artist, is essentially based on the idea of sharing. From 1913 to 1954, Cahun and Moore developed a work that relies in part on shared creation, that is to say, it is produced symbiotically by two collaborators, but whereas another part is undertaken solely by one of the artists. Their work takes on the double path of writing and artistic expression (drawing, photography, photomontage, object) to express their vision of the equivocal subject and art under the sign of the multiple. With the perspective of studying writing and the image as two inseparable means of expression, the notion of sharing will allow to consider both Cahun’s and of Moore’s approach between literary and artistic movements and genres, between an author and an artist, between the subject and its doubles and between the arts and the media issues. By proposing the notion of sharing as an operational concept, this thesis seeks to recontextualize Cahun’s and Moore’s work according to its belonging in the cultural and literary history of late symbolism, modernism and the surrealist avant-garde, embracing both the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. Their vision of the work as a space for sharing between the textual and the visual is accomplished by a collaboration between author and visual artist, which redefines the status of the solitary creator. I will also approach the self-representation approach from the notion of sharing as the identity construction of the Self, through many self-projections on paper or film, goes through duplication to express the être-au-monde of a subject that does not recognize itself within the boundaries of univocal gendered and identity categories. The act of sharing results in the creation of a hybrid work combining words and images in a process that goes beyond the illustration of the text by the image to favor dialogue between media. Sharing is essential as the notion par excellence to capture a work that has made out of duplication – of filiations, intertexts, creator, identity and the oeuvre itself – its modus operandi.

Keyphrases: Claude Cahun, Marcel Moore, Collaboration, Rapports texte/image, Symbolism, Modernism, Surrealism, Text/image relationship, Sharing
Animismes : de l'Afrique aux Premières Nations, penser la décolonisation avec les écrivains

This thesis is part of a reflection carried by decolonial studies, which underline the need to think of situated knowledge in order to renew our analytical tools outside of the euro-centric categories. It proposes a comparative reflection between the literatures of the First Nations of Quebec and those of sub-Saharan Africa and Afro-descendants and more specifically the poetry of Natasha Kanapé Fontaine, Rita Mestokosho and Josephine Bacon, as well as some of the novels of Léonora Miano and Sami Tchak. The texts of these Innu, Franco-Cameroonian and Togolese poets and writers are based on the notion of animism. By means of literary referents, anthropological studies and Aboriginal studies, this work therefore questions the presence of animism in the practice of writing and questions its decolonial scope. This reflection is also built from fieldworks, by taking into account the promotion of the experiential knowledge advocated by Aboriginal studies. Building on what the researcher Renate Eigenbrod calls "narrative scholarship", namely the alternation between theory and narration, this thesis aims to think of the animist way of being in the world as an epistemology.   Through a two-step thought, this work highlights the different effects of colonization on animism as a way of being in the world, as well as its decolonial dynamics through the prism of their literary representation and incarnation.   The first chapter analyzes the objectification strategies of animism carried by the colonial policies. The second chapter focuses on the salient characteristics of the literary representation of animism. The question of the relation to the territory and the its inherent notion of sovereignty are discussed in chapter three. Unlike the mechanics of assignment and oppression, our aim is then to reflect on the dynamics of emancipation carried by animism within the texts of our corpus. Chapter four analyzes issues related to the notion of Subject from a decolonial perspective. Then, this is the resistant potentiality of animism as relational ontology which is questioned in chapter five. Finally, chapter six theorizes its practical dimension and its constitution as a resurgence, against contemporary colonialism. The whole thesis works on the possibility of thinking situated knowledge, this is how it leads to consider animism as a practice and research ethics, a poetic and intellectual tool to use in other fields than the ones carried in this work.

Keyphrases: Innu, vaudou, Léonora Miano, Sami Tchak, Rita Mestokosho, Natasha Kanapé Fontaine, comparative literature, Africa, First Nations, Animism, Voodoo, decolonization, epistemology, territory, dream, relational poetics
Estudio semiótico del personaje de Jimena en el teatro : de “Las mocedades del Cid” de Guillén de Castro a “Anillos para una dama” de Antonio Gala

The objective of this thesis is to study the portrayal and characterisation of Jimena in some of the fundamental works of Cidian literature, so as to demonstrate how her diverging and converging traits build a polyhedral image, of some psychological depth, which evolved through time, adapting itself to various historic and cultural contexts. The corpus studied consists of seven works. Two theatre plays, Las mocedades del Cid by Guillén de Castro (1618) and Anillos para una dama by Antonio Gala (1973), constitute the pillars of the comparative analysis. They engage a dialogue with the two foundational poetic works establishing the Cid’s legend, the Cantar de Mio Cid (siglo XIII) and the Historia y romancero del Cid (1605). To serve as transition between Spain’s Golden Age and the twentieth century, the legend’s internationalisation process is explored in three works belonging to the same transmission chain, with clear filiation links: the drama Le Cid by Pierre Corneille (1637), the opera Le Cid by Jules Massenet (1884-85) and the movie El Cid by Anthony Mann (1961). The methodologic tools used to carry out the analysis of the theatre plays are those laid out by theatre semiotics. Making use of different contributions to semiotics by French (Ubersfeld, Ryngaert, Pruner) and Spanish (Bobes Naves, García Barrientos) authorities, the approach developed focuses on the character of Jimena, in relation with other analysis categories: action, space, time and dialogue. Specific attention is also paid to the study of all the signs included in the verbal dramatic text which facilitate the staging and making of the show and provide a character’s attributes, such as apparel, gestures and movements, or light and sound effects. In conclusion, the analysis determines that the corpus studied depicts a Jimena who, beyond her mere role as the Medieval hero’s wife, is represented in her multiple faces (in various stages of her life, as daughter, wife, mother and widow; and in the private and public aspects of her life, as a simple woman and as a great Medieval lady). Jimena’s characterisation presents differences from one work to another, but an analysis of the whole corpus can identify common traits which point out the character’s intertextual coherence, in a portrayal which reveals attractive psychological depths, humanising her and connecting her to the public. The analysis also showcases the fundamental role of Las mocedades del Cid in the legend’s transmission chain and in the evolution of Jimena’s representation through time, with the introduction of a key change in her personality that would come to define her image as a sentimental and romantic heroine.

Keyphrases: Cid, Jimena, Guillén de Castro, Antonio Gala, Mocedades del Cid, Anillos para una dama, Corneille, Massenet, Anthony Mann, Theatre semiotics, Theatrical character
Women’s Food Refusal and Feminine Appetites in the long British Eighteenth Century

In my doctoral thesis, entitled “Women’s Food Refusal and Feminine Appetites in the Long Eighteenth Century,” I analyze women’s abstinence from food as portrayed by British medical writing, fiction, autobiographies, and spiritual self-help tracts from the late 1660s to the early 1800s. With the works of Dr. George Cheyne, Samuel Richardson, Hester Ann Rogers, and through case studies on female fasters such as Ann Moore, I explore how an interaction of medical, literary, and religious presuppositions and practices defined an oppressive ideology of women’s dietary virtue. By considering transformations in the ideals of rationality, sensibility, and appetite in the eighteenth century, I investigate how maintenance of the feminine appetite became a signifier of moral responsibility. I explore a dual conceptualization of appetite as a volatile feminine passion. On the one hand, women’s socially sanctioned appetite control was positively associated with a disembodied, disinterested faith and rationality. On the other hand, extreme food refusal in women was systematically cast as an emotional addiction, rather than considered as a possible digestive disorder or other form of organic illness discussed in the period. My research underscores eighteenth century biases about gender and class that would limit the nineteenth-century understanding of psychological food refusal as an illness. I contend that the eighteenth century’s paradoxical discrimination between socially sanctioned and unacceptable forms of food refusal was the model for distinguishing between “good” and “bad” restrictive eating.

Keyphrases: Appetite control, Eighteenth century, Sensibility, Medicine and literature, History of medicine, Eating disorders, Dieting, Body image, Women and food, Women and reason, Food refusal, Eating and spirituality, Women, Religion, Medical storytelling
Pluralisme médical et cancer à Montréal : espaces, pratiques, discours

The use of Complementary and Alternative Medicines (CAM) by individuals diagnosed with cancer is a growing phenomenon in Western societies. Quebec is not exempt from these practices, which take place predominantly outside hospital boundaries. However, the use of CAM as a complement to medical care is still poorly considered by medical institutions in the province. In my thesis, I question the different ways CAM are experienced, by those navigating between various forms of healthcare, as well as the ways they evolve inside and outside the confines of the hospital.  My study is articulated around two major axes; I seek to understand what actions CAM lead to within trajectories of care, and how medical pluralism fits within the Quebec healthcare system in terms of spatial configurations. First, to render the hybrid quality of CAM and the plurality of uses pertaining to them by those receiving cancer cares, I will examine modalities of recourse to CAM (levels of adherence and places of practice), while also exploring the entry into the universe of cancer care in terms of collective representations, break points, and social suffering. I look at how those receiving care come to use CAM (art therapy, visualisation, acupuncture, massage therapy, etc.) in addition to usual treatments, and how these uses influence their trajectory of care. Second, I examine how medical pluralism is evolving and adapting in relation to the ideological paradigms (privatisation of healthcare, hegemony of EBM) that guide healthcare in Quebec. I contend that, beyond an increasing visibility of CAM in the public sphere, their integration within a biomedical model aware of their existence is illusory. However, the domestication of CAM through foundations for the endowment of healthcare allows me to explore another facet of medical pluralism. Thus, the study of practices related to the use of CAM by our participants sheds light on the social and cultural issues related to the therapeutic experiences of those receiving care. I conclude that it is relevant to rethink the way such a therapeutic cohabitation can exist within a protean therapeutic landscape.

Keyphrases: cancer, Anthropology, Medical pluralism, Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Collective representations, Social suffering
Entrer en état d’urgence à l’ère du capitalisme globalisé : retour critique sur quatorze ans avec Médecins Sans Frontières

Based on a 14 year working experience with the emergency organization Doctors Without Borders, this thesis seeks to unveil a side of contemporary globalization by exploring numerous fields of humanitarian intervention in Central Africa, as well as as in its headquarters in Geneva.  Beginning with the hypothesis that humanitarian assistance is a place of predilection to grasp an essential aspect of globalization, the thesis questions the legitimacy of international humanitarian interventions by showing that, within other things, the same logic of intervention is increasingly imposing itself at the international level, with the consequence of relativising, even of ignoring all forms of local conditions.  In return, this logic tends to institute an unequal order between victims and emergency workers, leaving little place to the voices, demands and choices of the aided populations, which further enlightens us on questions of sovereignty at the heart of contemporary globalization. The research unfolds at the confluence of these questions.  First, the thesis is anchored in an ethnographic description which makes the inegalitarian paradigm appear between local populations and the emergency workers as it concretely unfolds in the humanitarian missions, to afterwards question the ambiguity of emergency as ideology in long term assistance projects. When we look at the reality from the grounds and from the aided populations, it becomes difficult to separate "humanitarian aid" from "development", emergency assistance from global politico-economic inequalities, the role of local governments in the miseries of their people from the economic foreign exploitation of the country. The thesis hence unveils the ideological and practical ambiguity of emergency humanitarian aid in order to begin a theoretical reflection on the undersides of contemporary emergency humanitarian aid and its place within globalization.   Second, we go deeper into the theoretical critique of humanitarian aid by leaning on the critiques of colonialism and of development, to afterwards question the place of humanitarian aid in the international order from the 1990s onwards and the contribution of anthropology of humanitarian aid on these issues.  An anthropological mutation signs the entry into late modernity and accompanies the uniformisation of the world, which go hand in hand with a crisis of anthropology as an academic discipline.  In fact, the social sciences and anthropology evolve within the same aporia and the same contradictions as those in which humanitarian assistance is deployed. It is finally upon situating the humanitarian response and anthropological analysis within globalized capitalism seen as "total social fact" that we will bring the limits of this study into perspective.

Keyphrases: Technique, Capitalism, Crisis, Apparatus, Humanitarian, Inequalities, Neocolonialism, Nihilism, Power, Sovereignty, Emergency, Victim
Vulnérabilité et stratégies de subsistance des microentrepreneurs et de leurs ménages dans les quartiers populaires du centre de Yaoundé, au Cameroun

Promoting entrepreneurship and microenterprises has been an integral part of widespread strategies to reduce poverty and contribute to the development of informal settlements in the Global South. Increasing urbanization in Sub-Saharan Africa and the limited absorption capacity of the formal sector have made microenterprises both attractive and inevitable. This thesis focuses on the vulnerability and livelihood strategies of microentrepreneurs and their households in 12 informal settlements located at the centre of Yaoundé in Cameroon. It particularly focuses on the motivations that underlie these strategies as well as on the links between microenterprise, housing and credit in relation to how the microentrepreneurs and their households manage their portfolio of assets and activities. In-depth interviews were conducted with 70 microentrepreneurs from 67 different households to explore these questions empirically. The results have implications for urban, social and economic planning as well as for poverty reduction in Africa and in the Global South.  For the vast majority of participants, the microenterprise was part of a general adapting strategy based on diversification where the objective of reducing vulnerability superseded the objective of economic growth. These results lead us to distinguish between survival and growth microenterprises, which underscores the importance of adapting support in relation to differing motivations, needs, capacities and opportunities, as well as in relation to the obstacles faced by microentrepreneurs and their households. These obstacles include the overabundance of activities of similar nature; the lack of socioeconomic, physical and spatial integration; the partial, deficient or inexistent access to infrastructures and collective and urban services, including health and education services; and the absence of insurance and social protection.  Vulnerability also has a substantial impact on the livelihood strategies of microentrepreneurs and their households. This dynamic affects growth and poverty reduction, not only because of the impact of shocks on household assets, but also because of the strategies to face these that internalize the risk through ex ante insurance strategies and ex post recovery strategies, which impact asset accumulation and consolidation. Thus, we argue that the synergy between poverty reduction and the reduction of vulnerability is a necessary condition to sustainable socioeconomic graduation.

Keyphrases: Yaoundé, Livelihood strategies, Urban poverty, Vulnerability, Microenterprises, Housing, Informal settlements, Cameroon
Artistes sonores et «espaces du commun» : enjeux esthétiques, éthiques et politiques de l'expérience de l'écoute dans la ville

This dissertation establishes a two-part reflection that is on the one hand, anchored in the experience of art to address politics and on the other, engaged in political thought in order to understand the political nature of the relationship that is created between the listener in the city, and the world. In bringing together philosophical reflections that explore spaces where “one” interacts with plurality (Jürgen Habermas, Hannah Arendt, Giorgio Agamben, Tiqqun, Marina Garcés) and the sound art practices that invest in our cities’ shared spaces (Christina Kubisch, Andra McCartney, Udo Noll, noTours, Audiotopie, Max & Julian Stein, Soundwalk), I weave together ways of thinking (theory) and ways of acting (practice) that interrogate the political dimension of our human existence. In this dissertation, shared spaces are understood as concrete sites for political potentiality, that is, sites where something unpredictable can happen between our shared and anonymous presences. The practices of bringing awareness to the shared world that the sound experiences crafted by the artists interviewed in the course of this research call into question present themselves as critical acts and – ethical – ways of being and connecting in the world, ways in which the relationship between the “one” and the common can be reimagined. As sensorial and intercorporeal experiences, they contribute to the political thought on shared spaces that acknowledge the complexity, the conflict and the unpredictability that are inherent to our plural condition.

Keyphrases: art sonore, in situ, anonymat, sound art, site-specific, political/politics, singularity/common, public space, anonymity, body/form-of-life, embodied critique, reality/fiction, plurality
Le temps verbal en espagnol

Our work presents an adaptation to Spanish of the verbal inflection system proposed by Lareau (2008). This approach, which was made for French, is based on the explanatory and combinatorial lexicology (Mel’čuk, Clas, & Polguère, 1995), which analyses linguistic signs as a whole. We aim at describing the inflectional forms of Spanish verbs by using this model, which allows us to highlight a current phenomenon in Spanish which is rare in French : the substitution of the pluperfect for different tenses, specially the simple past. Therefore, we paid special attention to pluperfect by closely observing the contexts in which it alternates with the simple past and the meaning it carries. We have been lead to conclude that the Spanish auxiliary HABER is not ambiguous unlike its equivalent in French, and that by using the simple past which can be semantically neutral, Spanish fills any possible gaps in the system.

Keyphrases: Temps grammatical, Tense, Spanish, Pluperfect, Grammemes
Intégration de VerbNet dans un réalisateur profond

Natural language generation’s (NLG) goal is to produce understandable text from nonlinguistic data. Generation essentially consists in two tasks : first, determine the content of a message to transmit and then, carefully select the words that will transmit the desired message. That second task is called linguistic realization. An NLG system requires access to a rich lexical ressource to generate natural-looking text. If we want a maximum of flexibility in the realization, we need access to the combinatory properties of a lexical unit. Because verbs are at the core of each utterance and they usually control its structure, we should encode their properties to generate text representing the true richness of any language. In addition to that, verbs are highly unpredictible in terms of syntactic behaviours, which is why we need to store them into a dictionary.  This work is about the integration of VerbNet, a rich lexical ressource on verbs and their syntactic behaviors, into a deep realizer called GenDR. To make this implementation possible, we have used the Python programming language to extract VerbNet’s data and to adapt it to GenDR. We have imported 274 syntactic frames and 6 393 verbs.

Keyphrases: Natural language generation, Linguistic realization, Government patterns, Syntactic frames, Verbs, Meaning-Text theory
Mouvement et cristallisations : l’actuel entre mythologie, cinéma et théorie du web

The connection between actual and virtual has been very much problematized in the history of Western thought. Based on Nietzsche criticism of essentialism, the Aristotelian idea of ontological primacy of acting over power was deeply questionned: in fact, the essence would not exist, only actions would. Therefore, the movement, the dynamics, the process would have a priority over their actualisation as essence, and that would be the result of power. This structure prioritizing dynamic over actuality seems to particularly adapt to digital environnements which are always evolving. However, the growing number of notifications and the constant recording of our actions turns out to be essential to the goals of producing the movement – the latter being actually based on immobility. In this article, we will analyze the connections between actual and virtual to highlight how important the concept of actual is.

Keyphrases: Notification, Facebook, Web, Current, Virtual, Motion, Recording, Cinema