Academic literature on the topic 'Théâtre – Aspect social – Cuba'

THE CURRENT CRISIS IN RUSSIAN SOCIETY HAS BEEN THE SUBJECT of all manner of scholarly investigations, essays and editorials. But the clear economic reverses, distinctly felt by all, have caused analysis to focus almost exclusively on this aspect of the crisis. A more constructive approach to the problem might be to examine it as a process, as an objective result of all aspects of the country's development and contemporary civilization as a whole.This approach presupposes that the rejection of socialism in Russia and Eastern Europe, the major reforms in China and Vietnam, and the dead-end situation in Cuba are not chance, but form a pattern. In each case, the crisis is a function of the transition from one social system to another. This transitional crisis is all-encompassing; its economic component is no more important than the political, social, ethical, cultural, or that of daily life. A transitional crisis is the harbinger of a Time of Troubles when all of society — not just isolated elements — is thrown into turmoil.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide comparative perspectives on how educators teach issues that affect two countries with a history of governmental tensions. The investigation examines how teachers in Cuban classrooms engage in discourses on the recent developments in Cuban and US relations, including the teaching of historical and territorial issues. This research considers border pedagogy, critical border dialogism and critical border praxis as approaches for those who educate on the effects of US international policies. Ultimately, pragmatic hope offers the possibilities for an emergent third space for Cuban and US relations, including educational exchanges. Design/methodology/approach The research took place in Cuba during an educational exchange to Cuban secondary and university educational sites. Cuban educators of pedagogy and social education engaged in dialogue and shared information on how they address US international policies during their classroom discussions. The researcher employed methodologies that followed Stake’s (2000) model for a substantive case study. Impressions, data, records and salient elements at the observed site were recorded. Transcriptions were documented for face-to-face interviews and hour-long focus group sessions. Participants also logged responses to written survey questions. The study focused on how Cuban educators taught, discussed and addressed the US international policies in classrooms. Findings Heteroglossia, meliorism, critical cosmopolitanism, nepantla, dialogic feminism and pragmatic hope were components of the data analysis. Heteroglossia was an essential consideration throughout the study as multiple interpretations of Cuban and US interconnectedness emerged. Meliorism factored into Cuban educators’ commitments to their professions. Critical cosmopolitanism developed as educators put forth different conceptualizations of human rights and democracy. Nepantla emerged as a key aspect as indigenous and self-determined viewpoints emerged. Dialogic feminism was preeminent as patriarchy continues to exist, despite a new awareness of gender roles and gender violence. Pragmatic hope offers possibilities for a transnational community of inquiry and collaboration. Research limitations/implications The most obvious limitation to this study is, as a case study, the limited scope of perception. Practical implications If future relations between Cuban and the US are deemed uncertain, critical border praxis has an essential role in addressing new sets of uncertainties. This study recommends that educational communities engage in discourses addressing ongoing issues facing the dynamic, fluid border environs. Critical border praxis provides conditions in which we, as educators and members of diverse communities of learners, become cross-borders and broaden the possibilities to achieve what had been considered the unattainable. Resources need to be prioritized and redirected toward educational efforts on national, state and local levels so critical border praxis becomes a reality. Social implications Through transnational and transborder engagements, such as educational exchanges, both US and Cuban educators are provided opportunities to reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of their own educational systems. The role of education, formal and informal, then serves to transform perceptions one-by-one, school-by-school, community-by-community and to influence policy makers to reconstruct education country-by-country as part of pragmatic hope for an enduring Pax Universalis. Pax Universalis serves as a third space where transborder students and educators alike are positioned as co-creators of knowledge and agents of change. Originality/value This study proposes a new emergent third space resulting from critical border dialogism that utilizes border pedagogy and critical pedagogies of place to seek new zones of mutual respect and cooperation among educators. Common educational understandings are the key starting point for a critical border praxis that facilitates ongoing dialogue between the two countries and offers pragmatic hope for the futures of both nations and opportunities to ameliorate relationships. An emergent third space is possible through sustained critical border praxis, a praxis that seeks to address points of contention and the bridges that need crossing between the two neighboring countries.

This article examines the reasons why racism persists in Cuba more than fifty years after the 1959 Revolution in which Fidel Castro promised Afro-Cubans to eradicate racism from the island. More specifically, it investigates Cuba’s racist history and concludes that the enduring problem cannot be resolved by economic and social policies alone. While Fidel Castro introduced social and economic reform, his prohibition of discussion on the controversial topic of race relations due to his desire to maintain control prevented a resolution of institutional racism. After the fall of the USSR, the Cuban government implemented temporary economic liberalization policy reforms that remain today.3 Under Raúl Castro’s leadership the economy continues to expand.4 However, as the economy broadens by moving towards a free-market model, there is an increase in both economic and social exclusivity stemming from the racist history of slavery on the island. Thus, Afro-Cubans lack the ability to participate in the free market aspect of the Cuban economy, placing them at an economic disadvantage. While current literature discusses Cuba in terms of either economic or social factors, authors Drake and Davidow take a holistic approach by investigating the relationship between Cuba’s enduring history of social and economic inequality that Afro- Cubans encounter today. Finally, the authors introduce proposals promoting greater racial equality for Afro-Cubans.

Sexuality is an important aspect in women's quality of life, however, sexuality studies dedicated to women age 60 and older are scarce. The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of female sexual dysfunction and its domains in women age 60 and older, and to identify the association between diseases and drug use with sexual dysfunction. A descriptive and cross-cutting study was conducted, in women 60 years and older, in Havana, Cuba. Two surveys participated in 112 women: The Female Sexual Function Index (IFSF) and another who collected a medical and social history. 66.1% of women had some degree of sexual dysfunction, the prevalence increased with age. The domains most affected were desire, excitement, and lubrication. A strong association between Parkinson's disease, depression and osteoarthritis was identified with the onset of sexual dysfunction in the studied population, as well as the use of antidepressants, oral hypoglycemics and diuretics. Sexual dysfunction was present in 100% of octogenary women. All women with Parkinson's disease had sexual dysfunction.

Artivisme est un néologisme composé des mots art et activisme. Il concerne l’engagement social et politique d’artistes militants (Lemoine et Ouardi 2010) mais aussi l’art utilisé par des citoyen.ne.s comme moyen d’expression politique (Salzbrunn 2014, 2015 ; Malzacher 2014 : 14 ; Mouffe 2014). La distinction qui porte sur la formation initiale est davantage analytique qu’empirique dans la mesure où la définition d’artistes ou d’œuvres d’art en lien avec une formation institutionnelle (hautes écoles d’art) est aujourd’hui mise en question : Le succès planétaire d’artistes autodidactes engagés comme le photographe français JR montrent qu’on peut acquérir une reconnaissance en tant qu’artiste sans avoir été formé dans une école d’art. De plus, la différence entre l’engagement politique des artistes et leurs œuvres au sens propre est de plus en plus difficile à saisir (Roussel 2006 ; Dufournet et al. 2007). Sur le plan conceptuel, les recherches sur l’artivisme remettent en question la distinction entre l’art considéré comme travail et l’art pour l’art, discutée entre autres par Jacques Rancière dans « Le partage du sensible. Esthétique et politique » : « Produire unit à l’acte de fabriquer celui de mettre au jour, de définir un rapport nouveau entre le faire et le voir. L’art anticipe le travail parce qu’il en réalise le principe : la transformation de la matière sensible en présentation à soi de la communauté » (Rancière 2000 : 71). Les expressions artistiques couvrent un très large panel, allant de l’art plastique et mural, en passant par le graffiti, la bande dessinée, la musique, le flash mobs, le théâtre, à l’invention de nouvelles formes d’expression (Concept Store #3, 2010). L’artivisme actuel, notamment les performances, trouvent leurs racines dans d’autres courants artistiques expérimentaux développés dans les années 1960, notamment le théâtre de l’opprimé d’Agosto Boal, le situationnisme (Debord 1967), le fluxus (http://georgemaciunas.com/). Certains remontent encore plus loin vers le surréalisme et le dadaïsme auxquels l’Internationale situationniste (1958-1969) se réfère afin de pousser la création libre encore plus loin. Tout comme le mouvement situationniste cherchait à créer des situations (1967) pour changer la situation et déstabiliser le public (Lemoine et Ouardiri 2010), et que le théâtre de l’opprimé (Boal 1996) pratiquait le théâtre comme thérapie, l’artivisme contemporain vise à éveiller les consciences afin que les spectateurs sortent de leur « inertie supposée » et prennent position (Lemoine et Ouardi 2010 ; pour les transformations dans et de l’espace urbain voir aussi Schmitz 2015 ; Salzbrunn 2011). Ainsi, les mouvements politiques récents comme Occupy Wallstreet (Graeber 2012) ou La nuit debout (Les Temps Modernes, 2016/05, no. 691 ; Vacarme 2016/03, no. 76) ont occupé l’espace publique de façon créative, se servant de la mascarade et du détournement (de situations, notamment de l’état d’urgence et de l’interdiction de rassemblement), afin d’inciter les passants à s’exprimer et à participer (Bishop 2012). D’autres courants comme les Femen, mouvement féministe translocal, ont eu recours à des performances spectaculaires dans l’espace public ou faisant irruption au cours de rituels religieux ou politiques (Femen 2015). Si ces moyens d’action performatifs au sein du politique étaient largement employés par les courants politiques de gauche (Butler et Athanasiou 2013), l’extrême-droite les emploie également, comme le mouvement identitaire qui a protesté par des actions coup de poing contre les réfugiés dans les Alpes françaises en hiver 2018 (https://www.lemonde.fr/police-justice/article/2018/04/30/militants-identitaires-dans-les-alpes-les-autorites-denoncent-une-operation-de-communication_5292856_1653578.html). Les thèmes politiques abordés se situent néanmoins majoritairement à gauche de l’échiquier politique : mouvement zapatiste, LGBTqueer, lutte anti-capitaliste, antifasciste et pro-refugiés, (afro-/latino-) féminismes (de Lima Costa 2012), mouvement contre l’exclusion des personnes à mobilité réduite, protestation contre la gentrification et la dépossession de l’espace urbain qui s’opère en faveur des touristes et spéculateurs immobiliers et qui va à l’encontre des habitants (Youkhana 2014 ; Pisanello 2017), mouvement d’occupation d’espace, de squat et de centres sociaux auto-gérés, lutte créative en faveur de nouvelles formes de vie commune comme dans la ZAD (Zone à défendre) contre l’aéroport de Nantes etc. (Rancière 2017 : 65-73). Si ces luttes s’inscrivent dans une réflexion critique générale sur les conséquences de la glocalisation, elles se concentrent parfois sur l’amélioration de l’espace local, voire micro-local (Lindgaard 2005), par exemple en créant une convivialité (Caillé et al. 2013) ou des espaces de « guerilla gardening » (mouvement de jardinage urbain comme acte politique) au sein d’une ville. Les « commonistes » qui s’occupent de biens communs et développent les créations par soi-même (DIY – Do it yourself) à travers des FabLabs (laboratoires de fabrication) s’inscrivent également dans cette philosophie en mettant en question de façon créative le rapport entre production et consommation (Baier et al. 2013). Enfin, les mouvements actuels ont largement recours aux dernières technologies d’information et de diffusion, pendant le processus de création et pendant la circulation des œuvres, des images et des témoignages (Salzbrunn et al. 2015). Plus radicalement encore, les hacktivistes interviennent sur des sites web en les détournant et en les transformant. Dans certains endroits, l’humour occupe une place centrale au sein de ces activités artistiques, que ce soit dans le recours aux moyens de style carnavalesques (Cohen 1993), en réinventant le carnaval (Salzbrunn 2014) ou encore en cherchant à créer une ambiance politico-festive réenchantente, assurant un moment de joie et de partage heureux pour les participants. Betz (2016) a traité ce dernier aspect en analysant notamment des « Schnippeldiskos », discos organisés par le mouvement slow food jeunesse qui prennent la forme d’une séance joyeuse de coupage de légumes destinées à une soupe partagée, un moment de « protestation joyeuse », une « forme hybride de désobéissance collective ». Ces nouvelles formes d’interaction entre art, activisme et politique appellent au développement de méthodes de recherches anthropologiques inédites. Ainsi, l’ethnographie est devenue multi-sensorielle (Pink 2009), attentive au toucher, aux parfums, au goût, aux sensations des chercheur.e.s et des personnes impliquées dans l’action artivistique. L’observation participante devient plus radicale sous forme d’apprentissage (Downey et al. 2015). Enfin, les anthropologues qui travaillent sur l’artivisme ont non seulement recours à de nouvelles méthodes, mais aussi à de formes inédites de restitution de leurs recherches, visant notamment à dépasser le centrage sur le texte (Schneider et Wright 2006) en tournant des films documentaires, créant des bandes dessinées (www.erccomics.com), discutant avec les artivistes à travers blogs (www.erc-artivism.ch), ou interagissant à travers des performances comme « Rawson’s Boat », conduite par le Nigérian Jelili Akiku en mai 2018 au Musée d’Acquitaine de Bordeaux.

ملخص البحث: بدأت إسهامات آيزر في النظرية النقدية مع شروعه محاضراً في جامعة كونستانس عام 1970م، وقد اشتهر بعد مدة وجيزة بنظريته التجاوب الجمالي وتبعها بعد ذلك بمؤلفينِ آخرينِ هما: (القارئ الضمني)، و(فعل القراءة). يرى آيزر إنّ انتاج المعنى يكون نتيجة التفاعل بين النص والقارئ، ومن ثم قاده ذلك إلى ابتكار مفهوم عملي جديد لرؤيته هو القارئ الضمني، ويعرفه بأنه حالة نصية وعملية انتاج للمعنى على السواء، ومن ثم يسعى البحث إلى الكشف عن القارئ الضمني في رسالة الغفران بوصفه أحد أهم انجازات نظرية القراءة والتلقي. استهل البحث بمقدمة نظرية مكثفة اضاءت فيها تعريفات هذا المفهوم الاجرائي، تلتها محوران، كان الأوّل بعنوان: العلامات الناطقة للقارئ الضمني، وتشمل ثريا النص وتقنيات الإغراب ووجهة النظر الجوالة والديالوج. والثاني، بعنوان مناطق الفراغ والنفي في الخطاب الغفراني، ومن تقنياتها تقطيع السرد وفاعلية التصوير البياني والتناص الأجناسي وخرق المعيار الديني. توصل البحث إلى أنّ من آليات تحديد القصدية هي آليّة الراوي الكلي العلم في السرد بوساطة الإغراب اللغوي، وتكمن أهمية الاسترجاع في المبنى الحكائي لرسالة الغفران بكونها بنية أساسية من بنيات حضور القارئ الضمني، وأن المؤلف الضمني قد أسهم وبفاعلية في تشكيل القارئ الضمني عن طريق خطاباته لغوياً وأدبياً ودينياً واجتماعياً وسياسياً، وأن تحقيق القارئ الضمني كانت بآلية الشخصية الهامشية. الكلمات المفتاحية: القارئ الضمني- رسالة الغفران- أبي العلاء المعري- رسالة أبي العلاء- القارئ. Abstract: The contribution of Wolfgang Iser in theory of literature critic could be noted when he started lecturing in Constance University. He became famous after his esthetical response theory which was followed by another theory; the implied reader and the act of reader theories. Iser thought that the production of meaning is the result of interaction between the text and the reader, and this led him to propose a practical new concept that he termed as ‘the implied reader’ that he defined as textual situation and process of meaning production. This paper tries to uncover the aspect of ‘implied reader’ in the Ghufran Letter of al-Maʿarri which is regarded as the most significant aspect in the theory of reading and reception. The research starts with an introduction to shed lights on this aspect. The introduction is followed by two sections, the first one are the signs of manifestations of the implied reader aspect which includes the text title, defamiliarization techniques, the wondering view point and dialogues; while the second one is entitled the narrative gaps and negation in the text through the techniques such as narrative division, optimizing figurative descriptions, intertextuality through paronomasia and the breakaway rom religious norms. Among the conclusions of the study: among the tools to identify the intentionality of a text is the omniscient narrator whose narration is characterized by language defamiliarization. The importance of retrieval of the narrative structure lies in the forms of the structures that manifest the presence of the implied reader. The implied writer has contributed significantly to the construction of the implied reader through his linguistic, literary, religious, social and political expressions. The construction of the implied reader was through the mechanism of marginal characters. Keywords: Implied reader- Risalah Ghufran- Abu al-‘Ala al-Maʿarri- Letters of Abi ‘Ala- the reader. Abstrak: Sumbangan Wolfgang Iser dalam teori kiritkan sastera mula mendapat perhatian ketikan beliau mula menjadi pensyarah di Universiti Contstance. Beliau menjadi terkenal selepas teori tindak balas estetika yang dikemukannya disamping teori-teori pembaca tersirat and teori tindakan pembaca yang dipeloporinya. Iser melontarkan yang penjanaan makna adalah natijah kepada ineraksi di antara teks dan pembacanya. Ini telah mendorong beliau mengemukakan satu konsep praktikal yang dinamakan beliau sebagai ‘pembaca tersirat’ yang dieertikan beliau sebagai satu keadaan tekstual dan proses penghasilan makna. Artikel ini cuba untuk menyingkap aspek pembaca tersirat ini di dalam Risalah Ghufran karangan al-Maʿarri kerana aspek ini dianggap sebagai yang terpenting dalam teori pembacaan dan penerimaan makna. Kajian bermula dengan pengenalan untuk menjelaskan aspek ini. Ia disusuli oleh dua bahagian: pertama berkenaan tanda-tanda penampilan aspek pembaca tersirat yang merangkumi tajuk teks, teknik penggayaan bahasa luar biasa, perspektif tinjauan dan dialog. Bahagian kedua pula membicarakan tentang jurang naratif dan penafian dalam teks melalui teknik-teknik seperti pembahagian naratif, penggunaan optimum gambaran figuratif, ciri antara teks melalui paronomasia dan pengabaian norma keugamaan. Di antara dapatan kajian ialah: di antara instrumen untuk mengenalpasti aspek tujuan teks ialah pencerita serba tahu yang ungkapan bahasanya berciri keluarbiasaan bahasa. Kepentingan memahami struktur naratif dapat dilihat pada srtuktur-struktur yang berkisar tentang kehadiran pembaca tersirat. Penulis tersirat pula menyumbang terhadap pembentukan pembaca tersirat melalui ungkapan linguistik, saterawi, keugamaan, kemasyarakatan dan politiknya. Pembentukan pembaca tersirat juga adalah melalui pemahaman tentang watak-watak sampingan yang terdapat dalam teks. Kata kunci: Pembaca tersirat- Risalah Ghufran- Abu al-‘Ala al-Maʿarri- Risalah Abi ‘Ala- Pembaca.

Boxing is a purely masculine activity and it inhabits a purely masculine world. […] Boxing is for men, and it is about men, and is men. (Joyce Carol Oates) IntroductionWriting about boxing is an intimate, private, and unusual activity. Although a decade has passed since I first “stepped into the ring” (sparring or fighting), I have not engaged with boxing in academic terms. I undertook a doctoral degree from 2012 to 2016, during which I competed and won amateur titles in three different countries. Boxing, in a sense, shadowed my research. My fieldwork, researching heritage foods networks, brought me to various locales, situating my body in reference to participants and academics as well as my textual analysis. My daily interactions and reflections in the boxing gym, though, were marginalised to give priority to my doctorate. In a mirrored journey to Wacquant’s “carnal ethnography of the skilled body” (Habitus 87), I boxed as a hobby. It was a means to escape my life as a doctoral student, my thesis, and the library. Research belonged to the realm of academia; boxing, to the realm of the physical. In this paper, I seek to implode this self-imposed distinction.Practising the “noble art,” as boxing is commonly called, profoundly altered not only my body but also my way of seeing the world, myself, and others. I explore these themes through an autoethnographic account of my experience in the ring. Focusing on sparring, rather than competing, I explore conceptualisations of my face as a material, as well as part of my body, and also as a surface for violence and apprenticeship. Reflecting upon a decade of sparring, the analysis presented in this paper is grounded in the phenomenological tradition whereby knowledge is not an abstract notion that exists over and above felt experience: it is sensed and embodied through practice.I delve into the narratives of my personal “social logic of a bodily craft” of boxing (Wacquant, Habitus 85). More specifically, I reflect upon my experiences of getting hit in the face by men in the ring, and the acclimatisation required, evolving from feelings of intrusion, betrayal, and physical pain to habit, and at times, excitement. As a surface for punching, my face became both material and immaterial. It was a tool that had to be tuned to varying degrees of pain to inform me of my performance as well as my opponent’s. Simultaneously, it was a surface that was abstracted and side-lined in order to put myself purposefully in harm’s way as one does when stepping into the ring. Through reflecting on my face, I consider how the sport offered new embodied experiences through which I became keenly aware of my body as a delineated target for—as well as the source of—violence. In particular, my body boundaries were profoundly reconfigured in the ring: sparring partners demonstrated their respect by hitting me, validating both my body and my skill as a boxer. In this manner, I discuss the spatiality of the ring as eliciting transitions of felt and abstracted pain as well as shaping my self-image as a re-gendered boxer in the ring and out. Throughout my account, I briefly engage with Wacquant’s discussion of “pugilistic habitus” (Body 99) and his claims that boxing is the epitome of masculine valour. In the final section, I conclude with deliberations upon the new bodily awareness(es) I gained through the sport, and the re-materiality I experienced as a strong woman.Methodological and Conceptual FrameworksThe analysis in this paper is based on the hybrid narrative of ethnography and autobiography: autoethnography. In the words of Tami Spry, autoethnography is “a self-narrative that critiques the situatedness of self and others in social context” (710). As such, I take stock in hindsight (Bruner; Denzin) of the evolution of my thoughts on boxing, my stance as a boxer, and the ways the ring has affected my sense of self and my body.Unlike Wacquant's “carnal ethnography” (Habitus 83) whose involvement with boxing was foregrounded in an academic context where he wrote detailed field-notes and conducted participant observation, my involvement was deliberately non-academic until I began to write this paper. Based on hindsight, the data collected through this autoethnography are value-inflected in ways that differ from other modes of data collection. But I have sought to recreate a dialectic between perceptual experience and cultural practices and patterns, in a manner aligned with Csordas’s paradigm of embodiment. My method is to “retrospectively and selectively write about epiphanies that stem from, or are made possible by, being part of a culture” (Ellis et al. 276) of boxing. These epiphanies, as sensed and embodied knowledge, were not solely conceptual moments but also physical realisations that my body performed, such as understanding—and executing—a well-timed slip to the side to avoid a punch.Focusing on my embodied experiences in the ring and out, I have sought to uncover “somatic modes of attention:” the “culturally elaborated ways of attending to and with one’s body in surroundings that include the embodied presence of others” (Csordas 138). The aim of this engagement is to convey my self-representation as a boxer in the ring, which emerged in part through the inter-subjectivity of interacting with other boxers whilst prioritising representations of my face. As such, my personal narrative is enmeshed with insights gleaned during embodied epiphanies I had in the ring, interweaving storytelling with theory.I have chosen to use the conventions of storytelling (Ellis and Ellingson) to explore the defining moments that shaped the image I hold of myself as a boxer. My personal narrative—where I view myself as the phenomenon—seeks “to produce aesthetic and evocative thick descriptions of personal and interpersonal experience” (Ellis et al. 287) whilst striving to remain accessible to a broader audience than within academia (Bochner). Personal narratives offer an understanding of the “self or aspect of a life as it intersects with a cultural context, connect to other participants as co-researchers, and invite readers to enter the author's world and to use what they learn there to reflect on, understand, and cope with their own lives” (Ellis 14; see also Ellis et al. 289).As the focus of my narrative is my face, I used my body, in Longhurst et al.’s words, as the “primary tool through which all interactions and emotions filter in accessing subjects and their geographies” (208). As “the foundation of the entire pugilistic regimen”, the body is the site of an intimate self-awareness, of the “body-sense” (Heiskanen 26). Taking my body as the starting point of my analysis, my conceptual framework is heavily informed by Thrift’s non-representational theory, enabling me to inquire into the “skills and knowledges [people] get from being embodied beings” (127), and specifically, embodied boxers. The analysis presented here is thus based on an “epistemic reflexivity” (Wacquant, Habitus 89) and responds to what Wacquant coins the “pugilistic habitus” (Body 99): a set of acquired dispositions of the boxer. Bourdieu believes that people are social agents who actively construct social reality through “categories of perception, appreciation and action” (30). The boxing habitus needs to be grasped with one’s body: it intermingles “cognitive categories, bodily skills and desires which together define the competence and appetence specific to the boxer” (Wacquant, Habitus 87). Through this habitus, I construct an image of myself not only as a boxer, but also as a re-gendered being, directly critiquing Wacquant’s arguments of the “pugilist” as fundamentally male.Resistance to Female BoxingMischa Merz’s manuscript on her boxing experience is the most accurate narrative I have yet read on female boxing, as a visceral as well as incorporeal experience, which led Merz to question and reconsider her own identity. When Merz published her manuscript in 2000, six years before I put the gloves on, the boxing world was still resisting the presence of women in the ring. In the UK, licenses for boxing were refused to women until 1998, and in New South Wales, Australia, it was illegal for women to compete until December 2008. It was not until 2012 that female boxing became internationally recognised as a sport in its own right. During the London Olympics, after a sulphurous debate on whether women should be made to box in skirts to “differentiate” them from men, women were finally allowed to compete in three weight categories, compared to ten for men.When I first started training in 2006 at the age of 21, I was unaware of the long list of determined and courageous women who had carved their way—and facilitated mine—into the ring, fighting for their right to practise a sport considered men’s exclusive domain. By the time I started learning the “sweet science” (another popular term used for boxing), my presence was accepted, albeit still unusual. My university had decreed boxing a violent sport that could not be allowed on campus. As a result, I only started boxing when I obtained a driving licence, and could attend training sessions off-campus. My desire to box had been sparked five years before, when I viewed Girlfight, a film depicting a young woman’s journey into the ring. Until then, I had never imagined a woman could box, let alone be inspirational in the use of her strength, aggression, and violence; to be strong was, for me, to be manly—which, as a woman, translated as monstrous or a perversion. I suddenly recognised in boxing a possibility to rid myself of the burden of what I saw as my bulk, and transform my body into a graceful pugilist—a fighter.First Sparring SessionTwo months after I had first thrown a punch in my coach’s pad—the gear coaches wear to protect their hands when a boxer is punching them to train—I was allowed into the ring to spar. Building up to this moment, I had anticipated and dreaded my first steps in the ring as the test of my skill and worthiness as a boxer. This moment would show my physical conditioning: whether I had trained and dieted correctly, if I was strong or resilient enough to fight. More crucially, it would lay bare my personality, the strength of my character, the extent of my willpower and belief in myself: it would reveal, in boxing terminology, if I had “heart.” Needless to say I had fantasised often about this moment. It was my initiation into the art of being punched and I hoped I would prove myself a hardened individual, capable of withstanding pain without flinching or retreating.The memory of the first punch to my face—my nose, to be exact—remains clear and vivid. My sparring partner was my coach, a retired boxer who hit me repeatedly in the head during the entirety of my first round. Getting hit in the face for the first time is a profound moment of rupture. Until then, my face had been a bodily surface reserved for affective gestures by individuals of trust: kisses of greeting on the cheeks or caresses from lovers. Only once had I been slapped, in an act of aggression that had left me paralysed with shock and feeling violated. Now in the ring, being punched in the face by a man I trusted, vastly more experienced and stronger than I, provoked a violent reaction of indignation and betrayal. Feelings of deceit, physical intrusion, and confusion overwhelmed me; pain was an entirely secondary concern. I had, without realising, assumed my coach would “go easy” on me, softening his punches and giving me time to react adequately to his attacks as we had practised on the pads. A couple of endless minutes later, I stepped out of the ring, breathless and staring at the floor to hide my tears of humiliation and overwhelming frustration.It is a common experience amongst novices, when first stepping into the ring, to forget everything they have been taught: footwork, defence, combinations, chin down, guard up … etc. They often freeze, as I did, with the first physical contact. Suddenly and concretely, with the immediacy of pain, they become aware of the extent of the danger they have purposely placed themselves in. The disturbance I felt was matched in part by my belief that I was essentially a coward. In an act condemned by the boxing community, I had turned my face away from punches: I tried to escape the ring instead of dominating it. Merz succinctly describes this experience in the boxing realm: “aspects of my character were frequently tossed in my face for assessment. I saw gaping holes in my tenacity, my resilience, my courage, my athleticism” (49). That night, I felt an unfamiliar sting as I took my jumper off, noticing a slight yet painful bruise on the bridge of my nose. It reminded me of my inadequacy and, I believed at the time, a fundamental failure of character: I lacked heart.My Face: A Tool for Sensing and Ignoring PainTo get as accustomed as a punching bag to repeated hits without flinching I had to mould my face into a mask of impassivity, revealing little to my opponent. My face also became a calibrated tool to measure my opponent’s skill, strength, and intent through the levels of pain it would experience. If an opponent repeatedly targeted my nose, I knew the sparring session was not a “friendly encounter.” Most often though, we would nod at each other in acknowledgement of the other’s successful “contact,” such as when their punches hurt my body. The ring is the only space I know and inhabit where the display of physical violence can be interpreted as a “friendly gesture” (Merz 12).Boxers, like most athletes, are carefully attuned to measuring the degrees of pain they undergo during a fight and training, whilst accomplishing the paradoxical feat—when they are hit—of setting aside that pain lest it be a distraction. In other words, boxers’ bodies are both material and immaterial: they are sites for accessing sensory information, notably pain levels, as well as tools that—at times detrimentally—have learned to abstract pain in the effort to ignore physical limitations, impediments or fatigue. Boxers with “heart,” I believe, are those who inhabit this duality of material and immaterial bodies.I have systematically been questioned whether I fear bruising or scarring my face. It would seem illogical to many that a woman would voluntarily engage in an activity that could blemish her appearance. Beyond this concern lies the issue, as Merz puts it, that “physical prowess and femininity seem to be so fundamentally incompatible” (476). My face used to be solely a source of concern as a medium of beautification and the platform from which I believed the world judged my degree of attractiveness. It also served as a marker of distinction: those I trusted intimately could touch my face, others could not. Throughout my training, my face evolved and also became an instrument that I conditioned and used strategically in the ring. The bruises I received attested to my readiness to exchange punches, a mark of valour I came to relish more than looking “nice.”Boxing has taught me how to feel my body in new ways. I no longer inhabit an “absent body” (Leder). I intimately know the border between my skin and the world, aware of exactly how far my body extends into that world and how much “punishment” (getting hit) it can withstand: boxing—which Oates (26) observed as a spectator rather than boxer—“is an act of consummate self-determination—the constant re-establishment of the parameters of one’s being.” A strong initial allure of boxing was the strict discipline it gave to my eating habits, an anchor—and at times, a torture—for someone who suffered from decade-long eating disorders. Although boxing plagued me with the need to “make weight”—to fight in a designated weight category—I no longer sought to be as petite as I could manage. As a female boxer, I was reminded of my gender, and my “unusual” body, as I am uncommonly big, strong, and heavy compared to most female fighters. I still find it difficult to find women to spar with, let alone fight. Unlike in the world outside the gym, though, my size is something I continuously learn to value as an advantage in the ring, a tool for affirmation, and significantly, a means of acceptance by, and equality with, men.The Ring: A Place of Re-GenderingAs sparring became routine, I had an epiphany: what I had taken as an act of betrayal from my coach was actually one of respect. Opponents who threw “honest” (painful) punches esteemed me as a boxer. I have, to this day, very rarely sparred with women. I often get told that I punch “like a guy,” an ability with which I have sought to impress coaches and boxers alike. As such, I am usually partnered with men who believe, as they have told me, that hitting a “girl”—and even worse, hitting a girl in the face—is simply unacceptable. Many have admitted that they fear hurting me, though some have quickly wanted to after a couple of exchanges. I have found that their views of “acceptable” violence seem unchanged after a session, as I believe they have come to view me as a boxer first and as a woman second.It would be disingenuous to omit that boxing attracted me as much for the novelty status I have gained within and outside of it. I have often walked a thin line between revelling in the sense of belonging that boxing provides me—anchored in a feeling that gender no longer matters—and the acute sense of feeling special because I am a woman performing as a man in what is still considered a man’s world. I have wavered between feeling as though I am shrugging off the very notion of gender in the ring, to deeply reconsidering what my gender means to me and the world, embracing a more fluid and performative understanding of gender than I had before (Messner; Young).In a way, my sense of self is shaped conflictingly by the ways in which boxers behave towards me in the ring, and how others see me outside of the boxing gym. As de Bruin and de Haan suggest, my body, in its active dimension, is open to the other and grounds inter-subjectivity. This inter-subjectivity of embodiment—how other bodies constitute my own sensory and perceptual experience of being-in-the-world—remains ambivalent. It has led me to feel at times genderless—or rather, beyond gender—in the ring and, because of this feeling, I simultaneously question and continuously re-explore more vividly what can be understood as “female masculinity” (Halberstam). As training progressed, I increasingly felt that:If women are going to fight, we have to be reminded, at every chance available, time and again, that they are still feminine or capable, at least, of wearing the costume of femininity, being hobbled by high heels and constrained by tight dresses. All female athletes in a way are burdened with having to re-iterate this same public narrative. (Merz)As I learned to box, I also learned to delineate myself alongside the ring: as I questioned notions of gender inside, I consequently sought to reaffirm a specific and static idea of gender through overt femininity outside the ring, as other female athletes have also been seen to do (Duncan). During my first years of training, I was the only woman at the gyms I trained in. I believed I had to erase any physical reminders of femininity: my sport clothes were loose fitting, my hair short, and I never wore jewellery or make-up. I wanted to be seen as a boxer, not a woman: my physical attractiveness was, for once, irrelevant. Ironically, I could not conceive of myself as a woman in the ring, and did not believe I could be seen as a woman in the ring. Outside the gym, I increasingly sought to reassert a stereotypical feminine appearance, taking pleasure in subverting another set of beliefs. People are usually hesitant to visualise a woman in a skirt, without a broken nose, as a competitive fighter with a mouth guard and headgear. As Wacquant succinctly put it, “I led a sort of Dr. Jekyll-and-Mr. Hyde existence” (Habitus 86), which crystallised when one of my coaches failed to recognise me on three occasions outside the gym, in my “normal” clothes.I have now come to resent profoundly the marginal, sensationalised status that being a boxer denotes for a woman. This is premised on particular social norms surrounding gender, which dictate that if a woman boxes, she is not “your usual” woman. I have striven to re-gender my experience, especially in light of the recent explosion of interest in female boxing, where new norms are being established. As I have trained around the world, including in Cuba, France, and the USA, and competed in the UK, Mexico, and Belgium, I have valued the tacit connection between those who practice the “noble art.” Boxing fashions a particular habitus (Bourdieu), the “pugilistic habitus” (Wacquant, Body 12). Stepping into the ring, and being able to handle getting hit in the face, constitutes a common language that boxers around the world, male and female, understand, value, and share; a language that transcends the tacit everyday embodiments of gender and class. Boxing is habitually said to give access to an upward mobility (Wacquant, Habitus; Heiskanen). In my case, as a white, educated, middle-class woman, boxing has given me access to cross-class associations: I have trained alongside men who had been shot in Coventry, were jobless in Cuba, or dealt with drug gangs in Mexico. The ring is an equalising space, where social, gender—and in my experience, ethnic—divides can be smoothed down to leave the pugilistic valour, the property of boxing excellence, as the main metric of appreciation.The freedom I have found in the ring is one that has allowed my gendered identity to be thought of in new and creative ways that invite continuous revision. I have discovered myself not solely through the prism of a gendered lens, but as an emotive athlete, and as a person desperate to be accepted despite—or because of—her physical strength. I find myself returning to Merz’s eloquence: “boxing cannot help but make you question who you really are. You cannot hide from yourself in a boxing ring. It might seem a crazy path to self-knowledge, but to me it has been the most rich, rewarding, and perhaps, the only true one” (111). Using Wacquant’s own words to disprove his theory that boxing is fundamentally a virile activity that reaffirms specific notions of masculinity, to become a boxer is to “efface the distinction between the physical and the spiritual [...] to defy the border between reason and passion” (Body 20). In my view, it is to implode the oppositional definitions that have kept males inside the ring and females, out. The ring, in ways unrivalled elsewhere, has shown me that I am not reducible, as the world has at times convinced me, to my strength or my gender. I can, and indeed do, coalesce and transcend both.ConclusionAfter having pondered the significance of the ring to my life, I now begin to understand Merz’s journey as “so much more than a mere dalliance on the dark side of masculine culture” (21). When I box, I am always boxing against myself. The ring is the ultimate space of revelation, where one is starkly confronted with one’s own weaknesses and fears. As a naked mirror, the ring is also a place for redemption, where one can overcome flaws, and uncover facets of who one is. Having spent almost as much time at university as I have boxing, it was in the ring that I learned that “thinking otherwise entails being otherwise, relating to oneself, one’s body, and ambient beings in a new way” (Sharp 749). Through the “boxing habitus,” I have simultaneously developed a boxer’s body and habits as well as integrated new notions of gender. As an exercise in re-gendering, sparring has led me to reflect more purposefully on the multiplicity of meanings that gender can espouse, and on the possibilities of negotiating the world as both strong and female. Practising the “noble art” has given me new tools with which to carve out, within the structures of the society I inhabit, liberating possibilities of being a pugilistic woman. However, I have yet to determine if women have fashioned a space within the ring for themselves, or if they still need to reaffirm a gendered identity in the eyes of others to earn the right to get hit in the face.References Bochner, Arthur P. “It’s about Time: Narrative and the Divided Self.” Qualitative Inquiry 3.4 (1997): 418–438.Bourdieu, Pierre. The Logic of Practice. Stanford, California: Stanford UP, 1990.Bruner, Jerome. “The Autobiographical Process.” The Culture of Autobiography: Constructions of Self-Representation. Ed. Robert Folkenflik. Vol. 6. Stanford UP, 1993. 38–56.Csordas, Thomas. “Somatic Modes of Attention.” Cultural Anthropology 8.2 (1993): 135–156.De Bruin, Leon, and Sanneke de Haan. “Enactivism and Social Cognition: In Search of the Whole Story.” Cognitive Semiotics 4.1 (2009): 225–50.Denzin, Norman K. Interpretive Biography. London: Sage, 1989.Duncan, Margaret C. “Gender Warriors in Sport: Women and the Media.” Handbook of Sports and Media. Eds. Arthur A. Raney and Jennings Bryant. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2006. 231–252.Ellis, Carolyn. The Ethnographic I: A Methodological Novel about Autoethnography. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2004.Ellis, Carolyn, Tony E. Adams, and Arthur P. Bochner. “Autoethnography: An Overview.” Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung (2011): 273–90.Ellis, Carolyn, and Laura Ellingson. “Qualitative Methods.” Encyclopedia of Sociology. Eds. Edgar F. Borgatta and Rhonda JV Montgomery. Macmillan Library Reference, 2000. 2287–96.Halberstam, Judith. Female Masculinity. Durham: Duke UP, 1998.Heiskanen, Benita. The Urban Geography of Boxing: Race, Class, and Gender in the Ring. Vol. 13. Routledge, 2012.Girlfight. Dir. Karyn Kusama. Screen Gems, 2000.Leder, Drew. The Absent Body. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1990.Longhurst, Robyn, Elsie Ho, and Lynda Johnston. “Using ‘the Body’ as an Instrument of Research: Kimch’i and Pavlova.” Area 40.2 (2008): 208–17.Messner, Michael. Out of Play: Critical Essays on Gender and Sport. New York: SUNY Press, 2010.Merz, Mischa. Bruising: A Boxer’s Story. Sydney: Pan Macmillan, 2000.Oates, Joyce Carol. On Boxing. Garden City, New York: Harper Collins, 1987.Sharp, Hasana. “The Force of Ideas in Spinoza.” Political Theory 35.6 (2007): 732–55.Spry, Tami. “Performing Autoethnography: An Embodied Methodological Praxis.” Qualitative Inquiry 7.6 (2001): 706–32.Thrift, Nigel. “The Still Point: Resistance, Expressive Embodiment and Dance.” Geographies of Resistance (1997): 124–51.Wacquant, Loïc. Body & Soul. New York: Oxford UP, 2004.———. “Habitus as Topic and Tool: Reflections on Becoming a Prizefighter.” Qualitative Research in Psychology 8.1 (2011): 81–92.Young, Iris Marion. Throwing like a Girl and Other Essays in Feminist Philosophy and Social Theory. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana UP, 1990.

Il est très délicat de parler " d'identité " cubaine sans la problématiser, la nuancer ou la circonstancier. Cuba est pourtant une île fouettée par des courants venus de tous les horizons, un creuset où se sont mêlées les cultures qui semblent définir son caractère propre. Le cas du théâtre est un exemple incontestable. Le théâtre cubain est un art plus ou moins sinistré à l'intérieur même de ses frontières. Mais après la révolution il commence à renaître. Le théâtre cubain a accompagné l'histoire de la révolution cubaine au milieu d'un siècle de grandes guerres et de mouvement de libération nationale. L'éclosion des années 1960 paraît ainsi être l'apogée de l'écriture dramatique cubaine, et la représentation dans le pays, de ce fait, le théâtre cubain rencontre une spécificité propre à l'intérieur et en dehors de l'île. Les dramaturges cubains représentent dans leurs œuvres la thématique cubaine dans et en dehors de l'île, intimement lié à la circonstance politique révolutionnaire et à ses conséquences dans la famille cubaine et l'individu. Tout ceci participe du " cubain ", autant d'exemples qui montrent la difficulté de parler d'un théâtre cubain. Il n'y pas qu'une seule façon de faire du cubain, car chaque auteur, chaque histoire est différente et implique différentes manières de percevoir " la cubania ", que ce soit dans l'aspect comique, tragique, réaliste, " absurdiste " ou politique, la spécificité de l'île est bien là.

Depuis son émergence dans les années 1980, l’industrie des biotechnologies de Cuba développe des médicaments destinés à la fois à être exportés et à alimenter le système de santé national. Parmi les projets d’innovation, l’immunothérapie du cancer détient une place centrale. Ce domaine de la thérapie anticancéreuse est centré sur la mobilisation des mécanismes immunologiques pour tenter de détruire ou d’endiguer la tumeur. Depuis 2010, plusieurs traitements sont rendus accessibles à large échelle dans le pays par la mise en œuvre d’essais cliniques étendus aux centres de santé primaire, les polycliniques, où travaillent notamment des médecins généralistes. Outre la politique d’accès, l’objectif de cette intervention est d’évaluer la transformation du cancer (avancé) en une maladie chronique. Il s’agit d’un dispositif tout à fait inédit. Sur le plan international, si l’immunothérapie du cancer figure aussi parmi les domaines les plus à la pointe de l’oncologie, il s’agit de traitements particulièrement chers, dont l’accès, réservé au niveau hospitalier, se heurte à des problèmes de financement. Associant observations ethnographiques et études des réseaux de collaboration, ce travail explore le processus d’innovation en immunothérapie du cancer à Cuba dans la tentative de conciliation de la politique industrielle et des objectifs de santé publique. En mobilisant le terme local de vacuna employé pour se référer à ce type de traitement, il s’agit d’interroger la spécificité épistémique et les multiples compréhensions de l’immunothérapie du cancer, entre chercheurs industriels, oncologues et professionnels de la santé primaire. La vacuna prend forme au travers de pratiques, ancrées dans les institutions publiques, visant constamment à concilier des dimensions en tension, entre objectifs économiques et de santé publique, biomédecine et soins primaires, entre suivi des normes globales et prise en compte des particularités locales, ce qui est source d’innovations multiples et modulables, susceptibles de circuler dans les pays du Sud et du Nord
Since its emergence in the 1980s, the Cuban biotechnology industry has developed pharmaceuticals designed to both export and integration into the national health system. Among innovative projects, cancer immunotherapy stands as one of the main areas. This domain of cancer therapy attempts to act upon immunological mechanisms to destroy or contain the tumour. Since 2010, some of these treatments have been made accessible for a wide-spread use in the country through the implementation of clinical trials expanded to primary health centres, called polyclinics, where notably general practitioners are working. The aim of this intervention is to transform (advanced) cancer into a chronic disease. It is an unprecedented intervention. At the international level, where immunotherapy also stands as a cutting-edge oncology treatment, these new drugs are only available at the hospital level, and wide access is threatened due to high prices. Combining ethnography with the study of collaborative networks, this work explores the innovation process in the development of cancer immunotherapy in Cuba, in its attempts to conciliate industrial policies and public health goals. The use of the local term vacuna is part of an examination of epistemic specificity as well as of the multiple understanding of cancer immunotherapy among industrial researchers, oncologists and primary healthcare professionals. The vacuna is taking shape through practices embedded within public institutions, which attempt to constantly conciliate conflicting dimensions, between economic and public health goals, biomedicine and primary care, respect of global norms and attention to local particularities, which is a source of multiple and modular innovations, likely to circulate among both global South and global North

Les pratiques théâtrales en Tunisie, le secteur artistique, le domaine culturel en général dégagent un état de déception chronique, congénitale touchant la sphère des arts dans sa totalité : structures de production, producteurs, structures de tutelle administrative, institutions de diffusion, critiques, publics, financement, créativité, consommation, formation et recherche scientifique. Comment comprendre et tenter d'expliquer, d'un point de vue critique, cet état sans se rendre compte que la formation sociale tunisienne subit depuis la fin du XIXème siècle une domination extérieure qui s'exerce sur les domaines névralgiques : l'économie, la politique, la défense, et le savoir. Une société en mutations profondes, mutations en contradiction avec de lourdes traditions d'immobilisme et de contre-réformes, mutations qui suscitent des déséquilibres stables, des tensions sourdes et un abandon pathogène de la pensée, une démission complice face au présent à confronter, pour un passé en ruine sectionné, bricolé, redoré ou enseveli, et pour un futur hypothétique, hypothéqué, et en hypostase. Faire l'histoire de l'individu dans cette formation sociale éclaire la question hors du domaine de la psychologie. Rappelons enfin, que cette déception, appelée désenchantement nous a été éloquemment transmise, entre autres de ses expressions, par la littérature moderne occidentale, puis latino-américaine. Nous participons donc d'un mouvement de plus en plus universel, contre la globalisation, dans l'espoir d'ouvrir un oeil plus vigilant sur ce que nous endurons, artistes et chercheurs en ce monde de plus en plus apocalyptique
Apart from political propaganda, the Tunisian theatrical practices, artistic field and cultural sphere are deceptive and source of inborn lingering "living" difficulties which affect the sector in all its aspects: producers, production facilities, administrative supervision, critics and audience, financing, creativity, accomplishment and scientific research and training. It'd be difficult to understand and critically decipher the scene without taking into account the formation of the country's social strata, having been subject to foreign hegemony affecting the most sensitive areas: economy, politics, defence and knowledge. A society characterized by deep mutations in total contradiction with ultra conservative trends that are in opposition to progress and rohich have resulted in steady imbalances, unerupted tensions and sickly neglect, withdrawal of a present to be confronted and held under control for the sake of a vaguely reshaped reornamented past and for a hypothetical risky future in hypothesis. Let's finally bear in mind that such a deception called disenchantment, has eloquently been transmitted for us, among others of its expressions, by modem western literature then by Latin American one. We, artists and researchers, partake of a more and more universal movement with the hope to open a more watchful eye on rohat we are enduring in this apocalyptic world

Cette recherche émet le postulat que les expressions cinématographiques et plus particulièrement les films de fiction constituent un terrain de recherche de grand intérêt car permettant de découvrir et d'analyser des aspects de l'imaginaire véhiculé au sujet de la société, de son histoire et de la vie au quotidien. Dans le contexte cubain, la question de la représentation dynamique de la relation entre l'individu et le "Nous" (l'entité collective de référence) s'est révélée cruciale. Selon l'idéologie révolutionnaire, tout individu était appelé à s'engager activement pour la construction d'une société nouvelle qui offrirait enfin à tous la possibilité de s'épanouir individuellement et collectivement. Cependant, les profonds bouleversements internationaux au début des années 1990, entraînant une crise socio-économique sans égal, ont modifié le rapport de l'individu à la société environnante. Grâce à l'analyse d'une quarantaine de films de fiction et de leur mise en dialogue avec les divers dicours personnels, officiels et théoriques, cette recherche pose la question de savoir de quelle façon cette relation entre l'individu et le Nous a été représentée à partir des années 1960 et particulièrement depuis les années 1990. Sur quelles références - idéologiques, culturelles, affectives - le sentiment d'appartenir à un Nous doit-il et peut-il s'appuyer afin de continuer à faire sens ? Comment le Nous est-il imaginé afin de répondre à le revendication actuelle d'inclure d'une façon égalitaire la diversité des individus?
This research postulates that cinematographic expression, and especially fiction films, constitutes a highly interesting field of research, since it allows for discovery and analysis of aspects of the imagination regarding the society, its history and the daily life of its people. Regarding the cuban context, the question of the dynamic representation of the relationship between the individual and the "We" (the collectif entity of reference) appears to be crucial. According to revolutionary ideology, each individual was called upon to engage actively in the construction of a new society that would finally give everyone the opportunity to be fulfilled both individually and collectively. However, the profund national and international changes occuring at the beginning of the 1990s, generating a social and economic crisis that had never seen before, modified the individual's relationship with the surrounding society. Through the analysis of over forty fiction films and their connection with various personal, official and theoretical discourses, this survey examines how the relationship between the individual and the We has been represented since the 1960s and especially since the 1990s. What references - ideological, cultural, affective - can and must the sense of belonging to the We rely on in order to continue making sense? How is the We being imagined so as to answer today's demand to include, in an egalitarian way, the diversity of individuals?

Au crepuscule du xxe siecle, a l'ere technologique de l'interconnexion, de la mediatisation et de l'internationalisation, quels sont la place et le role du theatre dans la societe ? sur bien des aspects, le theatre apparait comme un art du passe qui ne repond pas aux exigences de l'homme d'aujourd'hui et son public est tres minoritaire. Mais, ne suivant pas les caracteristiques generales de l'evolution de la societe, il peut presenter une alternative aux valeurs qu'elle nous impose et trouver sa legitimite. La recherche porte sur le theatre des dix dernieres annees et s'appuie sur une connaissance directe de spectacles appartenant au champ esthetique que l'on peut qualifier, apres georges banu, d'extreme contemporain. Il s'agit d'artistes qui, comme jan fabre, reza abdoh ou francois-michel pesenti, ont cherche a remettre en cause et a renouveler les codes du theatre. La societe est etudiee a partir des analyses des philosophes contemporazins, notamment jean baudrillard, felix guattari et gilles lipovetsky. A l'ere de la production "machinique" de subjectivite et de la societe du spectacle, le theatre propose une experimentation de la perception et une decouverte de l'extreme subjectif. Contre la predominance de l'image, il oppose l'experience emotionnelle de la reception. Par son existence meme, il constitue un espace de resistance au nivellement de l'imaginaire social. Dans une societe qui a perdu ses racines et son centre, on redecouvre la fonction mythologique du theatre. Cet art est l'endroit de l'insatisfaction, de l'insoumission, de la critique et de la vigilance. Au niveau politique, l'engagement contemporain est loin de l'engagement bruyant des annees soixante et soixante-dix. Le theatre engage ne sort plus du champ artistique. Il ne charche plus a prendre la place du politique mais a reveiller les consciences et a attiser le desir d'etre au monde dans le respect de l'alterite
At the twilight of the xxth century, in an era of technological interconnectioins, mediatisation and internationalisation, what are the place and the role of theatre in society ? on many levels, theatre appears as an art belonging to the past, not fitting man's current requirements. Its public is a tiny minority. But, as theatre doesn't adopt society's evolutionary characteristics, it can propose alternatives to the values society imposes on us. Here it finds its legitimacy. This research is about theatre over the last ten years and is based on first hand knowledge of performances belonging to the aesthetic field that georges banu calls "extremely contemporary". It concerns artists like jan fabre, reza abdoh or francois-michel pesenti, who have tried to question and to renew theatre's codes of conduct. A study of society is made through the analyses of contemporary philosophers, especially jean baudrillard, felix guattari and gilles lipovetsky. At a time of machine-like production of subjectivity and in the era of the "spectacle society", theatre experiments with the perception and offers the chance to discover the extreme subjectiveness. To the predominance of the image, it opposes the emotional experience of reception. Its own existence leaves room for resistance to a levelling out of social imagination. In a society that has lost its roots and its centre, one can discover anew the mythological function of theatre. This art is a place for dissatisfaction, insubordination, criticism and vigilance. On a political level, today's commitment is very far from the tumultuous commitment of the sixties and the seventies. Nowadays, commited art doesn't wander from the artistic field. It doesn't aim to change places with politics but aims to awake counsciousness and a desire to be in a world where "otherness" is respected

Le propos théorique se fonde sur une observation participante d'un réseau de compagnies théâtrales, produisant des spectacles humoristiques et muets. Pour nous, la soirée au théâtre représente un lieu privilégié de la production de la théâtralité des rapports sociaux, dont la modélisation peut être appliquée à d'autres domaines. Il ressort de notre étude que, contrairement aux hypothèses d'E. Goffman et V. Turner, la théâtralité des rapports sociaux ne résulte pas seulement des interactions individuelles, mais aussi de la dynamique collective inscrite dans les villes, les réseaux d'artistes, et les normes protocolaires de la soirée au théâtre
The study is based on a systematic observation of humoristic and silent shows. The thesis positively states, in opposition to E. Goffman and V. Turner, that the theatrality of social relationships is not only the result of the individual interactions but also of the collective dynamic included in the cities, the networks and the formal tradition of the theatre

La recherche esthetique, au theatre, repose sur l'elaboration d'un cadre integrant la totalite des processus artistiques, sociaux, economiques et politiques en dehors duquel l'objet d'art n'est porteur d'aucun sens. Pour saisir les enjeux des pratiques theatrales aujourd'hui en france, il est necessaire d'apprehender tous les phenomenes concourant a la creation. En posant l'hypothese que les partenaires de la sphere theatrale forment un reseau constitue de quatre champs subdivises en neuf categories - le texte (auteurs et editeurs), la scene (metteurs en scene, acteurs et directeurs), la salle (medias et public) et les finances (producteurs prives-mecenes et pouvoirs publics) -, les responsabilites fonctionnelles de chacun peuvent etre mises a jour. L'etude des influences (stimulations, selections, flux financiers) et des dependances permet de schematiser un systeme interactif complexe caracterise par un desequilibre prejudiciable a la qualite de la recherche esthetique. La modelisation en manifeste les causes : malgre la constitution d'un secteur public (engagement de l'etat et des collectivites locales dans la decentralisation) et du fait de l'extreme precarite economique du spectacle vivant, le reseau est en effet sclerose par le prestige et le marketing. Leur suprematie se revele tant du cote des pouvoirs publics qui, dans un contexte de reduction des deficits publics, souhaitent, sur le modele du mecenat, maximiser la rentabilite de leurs investissements sans parvenir a affirmer leurs objectifs artistiques et sociaux, que du cote des medias, economiquement assujettis au vedettariat, et des directeurs artistiques lances dans une course aux subventions qui privilegie davantage la standardisation mediatique que l'accomplissement des missions de service public (democratisation et exigence artistique). Cette conjoncture a entraine une institutionnalisation de la creation, une devalorisation du travail a long terme, un renforcement du centralisme et de l'individualisation d'un art devenu accessoirement collectif. Il est urgent que le reseau retrouve un veritable dynamisme en replacant au coeur d'une pensee politique republicaine les propositions alternatives des compagnies d'une part, et d'autre part, les roles atrophies des auteurs contemporains, de la population et du systeme educatif
Research in the aesthetics of drama and theatre proceeds from the development of a framework which involves all artistic, social, economic and political processes without which the artistic object does not generate any meaning. To be fully aware of the challenges of theatrical practices in france today, every element that helps creation must be taken into consideration. Starting from the hypothesis that all the partners in the world of drama and theatre build a network made up of four parts divided into nine categories - the script (playwrights and publishers), the stage (actors, directors and managers), the house (media and audience), finance (private, sponsoring and patronage, government), the functional responsibilities of each partner can be brought to light. Studying the influences (stimuluses, selections, money flows) and mutual dependencies helps to draw up a complex, interactive system characterised by an imbalance that is prejudicial to the quality of aesthetic research. The building of a model reveals the causes : in spite of a state-aided sector (local authorities and central government involved in the decentralisation process) and because of the native economic fragility of the living performing arts, the network is seriously affected by prestige and marketing which reign supreme over the state side - with a reduction of public deficits it hopes (following the patronage model) to improve the profitability of investment without defining clearly its artistic and social aims -, over the media, economically dependent on the star syndrome and over artistic directors involved in the funding race which entails a strong media standardisation rather than the carrying out of a public service (democratisation and high artistic standards). This situation has resulted in the development of an established type of creation, the depreciation of long term work, the strengthening of centralisation and an ego-based art that has become only marginally collective. It is urgent that the network should recover its former aggressiveness by reinstating at the heart of a genuine republican political way of thinking, the alternative proposals of theatrical companies on one hand and the reduced role of contemporary playwrights, the public and the education system on the other

Le rôle philosophique du théâtre : éprouver et penser vise à montrer comment philosophie et théâtre se retrouvent dans une quête commune de vérité. En nous basant sur une démarche empiriste, nous voyons comment au théâtre comme en philosophie, il s'agit avant tout d'interroger la réalité perçue et de proposer différentes orientations, en sachant que le théâtre suscite d'abord une expérience vivante et sensible bien qu'imaginaire. La problématique est: en quoi l'imaginaire théâtral et le travail corporel qu'il implique constituent-ils des éléments essentiels de la (ou d'une) recherche rationnelle de vérité ? Eprouver signifie à la fois faire l'expérience de, mais aussi sentir par la. Sensation et par l'émotion. L'expérience sensible génère une pensée car le spectateur est amené à. Chercher à comprendre ce qui se joue sur scène. Plan: I-L’imagination créative au théâtre. IIL'expressivité du corps de l'acteur et la pensée physique. III- Le théâtre et l'imaginaire socio-politique

Malgré le diagnostic de Lipovetsky, qui dans les années 1980, constata la désaffection générale envers les institutions de la modernité, il est possible d'envisager la vitalité du corps social via les formes de socialisation. Or, il est une activité symptomatique de ce rapport labile à l'institution: le théâtre allie loisir et travail, il fait appel à la présence effective du corps en situation, s'interdit toute division aliénante du travail puisque le résultat advient lors de la représentation qui rassemble tous les corps de métiers. Aussi, nous considérons le monde du théâtre comme paradigmatique de cette tendance à rebours des institutions établies. Dans cette perspective, nous abordons diverses théâtralisations à travers des études de cas qui présentent des ruptures avec le théâtre institué tout en faisant appel aux catégories et principes qui gouvernent le cadre théâtral, afin de dégager les éléments d'une mise en scène - parmi d'autres - du corps social
Accepting the diagnosis of Lipovetsky who, in the 1980's, noticed the general abandon of the institution of the modernity, it is possible to envisage a revitalisation of the social body by forms of socialization. Exists an activity which is symptomatic of this kind of relation between subjects and institutions: theatre joins together leisure and work, it appeals to the actual presence of the body in situation and forbids any alienating division of the work as the result of this work takes act of the representation which gathers together all corporate bodies. So, we consider the world of theatre as the pradigm of this tendency. Our work approches this kind of modulations of theatralization through case studies. Referring to the theatrical frame, our work presents cases that constitute a rupture with the established theatre while, at the same time, they appeal to categories and principles which govern theatre, in order to clarify the elements of a stage setting - among others - of social body

Food procurement and consumption practices represent an important aspect of a culture and the identity of its bearers. Indigenous communities used a wide variety of approaches for the collection, preparation and consumption of food, determined by an interplay of ancestral traditions, climate, and social relationships established by the ample mosaic of ethnic groups settled in the continental and insular territories. This chapter examines the ethnohistorical strategies, forms of food preparation and its consumption, as well as dietary preferences among Arawak Aboriginal communities in Cuba. It critically evaluates and systematizes the information provided by the early chroniclers in the West Indies (late 15th and early 16th centuries), in order to compare them with the data gathered through archaeological excavations, taking into consideration various paleodietary analyses, as well as the most recent census of faunal remains associated with the sites on the island. It also examines the contributions of the indigenous heritage in the shaping of contemporary Cuban culinary preferences.