As James Caesar highlights in Reconstructing America, the word “globalization” seems sometimes to be synonymous with “Americanization” or “Americanism,” evoking negative images. Globalization may bring indigenous cultures to their death and cause national individualism to disappear into a shapeless muddle. On Americanism, Heidegger declared that it was “the future monstrosity of modern times.” This would be homogenization, the rubbing out of cultural specificity, life in one universe, one dimension. Extremists like Alexandre Kohève take it further still. It would be the (...) end of history. Third world nations, particularly the Caribbean countries, would be predesignated victims of such an order, without power in political or economic realms, only making the front page of newspapers during cataclysm and natural catastrophes like Hugo, George, and Mitch. The tiny island of Montserrat, never before known to the West, rose to international fame when its volcano La Soufrière began to erupt. Rwanda would be known for genocide, and the Congo for a civil war and the assassination of its leader. (shrink)

The Guadeloupean writer and critic Maryse Condé has for the last twenty-five years divided her time between her native Guadeloupe and the United States. If the author's work has attracted much critical attention in the United States, it is her fictional works that have been the focus of this attention, with these predominantly read in the light of political themes such as identity and resistance. In these intelligent and sensitive readings, Eva Sansavior argues in favour of adopting a (...) broader thematic and generic approach to the author's work. Sansavior accounts for the multiple and oblique uses of literature in Condé's literary and critical work, tracking its complex interactions with tradition, reception, politics and autobiography and also the singular possibilities that these interactions present for re-imagining the ideas of politics, literature, identity and, ultimately, the nature of critical practice itself. Eva Sansavior is Career Development Fellow in French (Francophone Caribbean Studies) at Oriel College, Oxford. (shrink)

The marked intertextual patterning of Maryse Condé’s first novel Heremakhonon is a widely acknowledged feature, with the relationship between Condé’s novel and Aimé Césaire's Notebook of a Return to my Native Land attracting the bulk of critical attention. Through close readings of to date unexamined dramatic codes in Heremakhonon, this article proposes to extend the cultural context in which Condé’s text is traditionally read. Moving beyond the standard critical discussions of authenticity, I track Heremakhonon's mobile positionings (...) in relation to polarizing debates in the broader French literary-critical field between engagement and modernism. This focus allows for an exploration of the complex sets of relationships between the cultures of modernism and engagement that provide the conditions of possibility for Condé’s novel. (shrink)

This article summarily presents the explicitation interview with some examples of interviews. In the first part, referring to three excerpts from protocols, we consider some of the techniques used to guide a subject into an introspective posture. We show how these techniques create conditions conducive to access to pre-reflective knowledge, knowledge stemming from a moment of action experienced by the subject, of which the subject has no knowledge in the mode of reflective consciousness. Some of this knowledge is in fact (...) surprising both for the interviewer and for the interviewee. The experience or the expertise of the subject interviewed is invariably increased as a result. In the second part, we provide a brief insight into the fields of application of the explicitation interview, with reference to three case studies, which are presented in a vivid and detailed way . We conclude with a very brief panorama of the various known fields of application of the explicitation interview. (shrink)

The increase in women’s labor market participation emphasizes the importance of understanding maternal separation anxiety, that is, the unpleasant maternal emotional state, due to the actual or anticipated short-term separation from the child. Drawing on the insights of the attachment and psychoanalytic perspectives, the Maternal Separation Anxiety Scale was developed to overcome existing measurement gaps. However, prior research did not replicate its original three-factor structure in the contemporary context and in other cultural settings, using large samples composed of mothers of (...) preschool children. This study aimed to examine the factorial structure of the MSAS in a sample of 597 Portuguese mothers of children aged 5–84 months who completed the questionnaire. The exploratory factor analysis conducted in subsample 1 revealed a four-factor structure: Maternal Negative Feelings, Beliefs about Exclusive Maternal Care, Need of Proximity, and Perceptions of Separation Benefits for Children. Confirmatory factor analyses conducted in subsample 2 revealed that the original three-factor structure revealed a poor fit, whereas the four-factor solution revealed an acceptable fit. As in previous studies, our findings report deviations from the original three-factor structure of the MSAS. Three of the newly identified factors seem to reflect specific sub-dimensions that originally guided item development in the MSAS, namely, maternal negative feelings, maternal attitudes about the value of exclusive maternal care, and the need of proximity with the child. The last factor appears to represent a refinement of original items pertaining to perceptions about separation effects for children. (shrink)

Bien que le thème de la révolution soit marginal dans l’œuvre de Gustav Chpet, il nous permet d’éclairer certains aspects importants de sa vie et de sa pensée. Le rapport de Chpet à la révolution a évolué entre ses années de jeunesse et l’année 1922, où il écrit sa préface à l’Aperçu du développement de la philosophie russe. Dans ce texte, ce qu’il entend par « révolution » ne correspond pas non plus aux événements historiques qu’il vient de traverser. Il (...) y définit la révolution en l’opposant au projet de l’intelligentsia et en la plaçant du côté de la vraie vie. Il la pense comme une perspective permettant d’allier le développement de la culture et l’épanouissement de la personne humaine. En nous référant à ses écrits, nous montrerons que, pour lui, il ne s’agissait pas d’une utopie mais, au contraire, des conditions de résistance à toute forme d’autoritarisme intellectuel. C’est cela qui, s’enracinant dans l’idée fondamentale de son œuvre, lui permit aussi d’accomplir au mieux sa tâche de philosophe. (shrink)

The notion of conceptual space, proposed by Gärdenfors as a framework for the representation of concepts and knowledge, has been highly influential over the last decade or so. One of the main theses involved in this approach is that the conceptual regions associated with properties, concepts, verbs, etc. are convex. The aim of this paper is to show that such a constraint—that of the convexity of the geometry of conceptual regions—is problematic; both from a theoretical perspective and with regard to (...) the inner workings of the theory itself. On the one hand, all the arguments provided in favor of the convexity of conceptual regions rest on controversial assumptions. Additionally, his argument in support of a Euclidean metric, based on the integral character of conceptual dimensions, is weak, and under non-Euclidean metrics the structure of regions may be non-convex. Furthermore, even if the metric were Euclidean, the convexity constraint could be not satisfied if concepts were differentially weighted. On the other hand, Gärdenfors’ convexity constraint is brought into question by the own inner workings of conceptual spaces because: some of the allegedly convex properties of concepts are not convex; the conceptual regions resulting from the combination of convex properties can be non-convex; convex regions may co-vary in non-convex ways; and his definition of verbs is incompatible with a definition of properties in terms of convex regions. Therefore, the mandatory character of the convexity requirement for regions in a conceptual space theory should be reconsidered. (shrink)

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion.

El objetivo fundamental de este artículo está dirigido a valorar las funciones de la intertextualidad en la construcción del espacio insular caribeño en WideSargasso Sea, de la escritora dominiquesa Jean Rhys. Por tal motivo se analizaron las relaciones intertextuales entre Jean Eyre, de Charlotte Brontë, y Wide Sargasso Sea, de Jea Rhys, con énfasis en la isla en tanto espacio literario presentado de manera explícita. Como resultado se pudo constatar que la principal función de la intertextualidad en dicho texto responde (...) a la intención calibanesca y desmitificadora de desmonte de los arquetipos en los que la imagen del otro ha sido construida en el discurso del poder. De igual manera, el presente análisis permite develar la riqueza de las connotaciones otorgadas en el texto al espacio isla y a sus significados añadidos. La red de significaciones encontradas refuerza su identidad cultural caribeña. (shrink)

Comment aborder la souffrance conjugale dans la consultation de conseil conjugal et familial? Le couple qui pousse la porte du bureau d’une conseillère conjugale n’a pas d’a priori, il vient chercher une écoute, de l’aide. À travers quelques vignettes cliniques, l’auteur expose la spécificité de l’écoute et du soutien du conseiller conjugal.

Lors des entretiens pré- IVG chez les mineures dans le cadre du Centre de planification, la conseillère conjugale se pose la question de ce qu’il est nécessaire de connaître pour que cet entretien aide la jeune fille à vivre son interruption de grossesse et à affronter éventuellement ses parents. Comment poser des limites à cet entretien bien particulier? Que transmettre dans le dossier de la patiente et dans la synthèse avec les autres partenaires?

De nos expériences de conseillères conjugales et familiales, nous avons le sentiment d’un féminin difficile à représenter, comme si les jeunes femmes “zappaient” le féminin pour le maternel. À partir de situations auprès de groupes d’adolescentes et d’adultes, les deux auteures se sont attachées à saisir ce qui vient se dire du féminin chez les jeunes filles et leurs parents. Elles en discutent la spécificité de leurs places en tant que conseillères conjugales et familiales comme créatrices d’un espace de transmission.