Judith Butler
Professeure à l'Université de Berkeley (Californie), Judith Butler a promu dans ses nombreux travaux la notion de "genre". Elle soutient des positions antisionistes sur le conflit israélo-palestinien. D'où la polémique qui a entouré l'attribution à celle-ci du prix Adorno, mardi 11 septembre à Francfort-sur-le-Main (Allemagne). Ce texte est le discours de réception qu'elle a prononcé à l'occasion de la remise de cette récompense, à la Paulskirche, le lieu où sont remis les plus prestigieux prix littéraires, historiques et philosophiques allemands.
Une morale pour temps précaires
Comment mener une "vie bonne" alors que les existences humaines sont de plus en plus vulnérables, s'interroge Judith Butler, en plaidant pour une politique de résistance des esprits et des corps.
LE MONDE | 2012/09/28 17:36:01- mis à jour le 2012/09/29 15:38:33
Practices and their Bodies. What Kind of Artefact is the Lived Body?
Call for Papers
Practices and their Bodies. What Kind of Artefact is the Lived Body?
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... September 28, 2012 Subject: cfp "Practices and Bodies" Mainz 2013 Call for Papers Practices and their Bodies. What Kind of Artefact is the Lived
Body?
Transdisciplinary Conference, April 25th-27th 2013, University of
Mainz (Germany)
Keynote Speakers (confirmed): Chris Shilling (University of Kent),
Annemarie Mol (University of Amsterdam), Paul Stoller (West Chester
University), Gesa Lindemann (University of Oldenburg) und Martin
Dinges (University of Mannheim).
The human body as the subject of research still sits very firmly in
the grasp of the natural sciences. Nevertheless, cultural studies and
social sciences have put forward two fundamental insights on the body
vis-à-vis established biomedical knowledge. Firstly, both
anthropological and phenomenological approaches have delved into the
inner perspective of our inhabited bodies by viewing the ‘lived body’
as the foundation of all cognition and as the fundamental site of
sensory perception, personality, and subjectivity. Secondly,
ethnological and historical semantic studies have shed light on the
extreme variability of ‘the body’ subject to societal knowledge
regimes. Human bodies span an infinite plurality of cultural
classifications and historical discourses – a bundle of linguistic
categories, medical imaging, interpretation and explanation patterns.
Our natural scientific knowledge of the body is part of historically
and culturally specific ethnosemantics.
This conference proposes a third fundamental sociocultural way of
viewing the body, namely as a component of material culture. In recent
years the term practices has oftentimes been used to express this
perspective – a conception of human action and behaviour that places
controlled bodily movement at the centre of social life. As a part of
material culture the body is without doubt an artefact. It has limited
capabilities, is practically shaped by food, medicine, and
socialisation, and wears out through practical use. However, it is a
special material thing: it can learn, i.e., through usage it is
materially (re)shaped, disciplined, and is impregnated with habits,
and it can specialise in body techniques: instrumental music,
handicraft, sports, martial arts, and sex, to just name a handful of
such specialisation possibilities.
However, as part of material culture the body has another specific
quality: it is the fundamental and, even in the age of technological
telecommunication, the inescapable medium of communicative practices.
This holds true for its everyday use in linguistic communication – for
speaking and hearing, reading and writing – and for the unstoppable
display of visual signs through gestures, facial expressions, and
clothing, by means of which bodies are constantly depicting cultural
differences (e.g. gender, ethnicity, or status). Moreover, this
applies for the body in professionalised cultural practices – e.g.,
pantomime, acting, and dance – and for the specific interconnection of
disciplined bodies with telecommunication artefacts.
The conference aims to consolidate contributions of diverse
disciplines (e.g., sociology, history, anthropology, cultural and
media studies) in order to converge on possible answers to fundamental
questions regarding a sociocultural view of the body. What kind of an
artefact is the lived body? How many bodies does a human being have?
Which language(s), images, and practices were and are used in
pre-modern, modern, and post-modern times to evoke which bodies? What
is the communication technological potential of bodies? How does the
material body correspond to the perception of the lived body and of
‘mental’ activities? What are the variations that ‘marginal bodies’
bring to light: damaged, animal, dead, embryological, and engineered
(cyborg) bodies? Furthermore, cultural studies and social sciences
face a number of methodical challenges: How is it possible to capture
such a mute object as the body empirically? In which sign systems does
it present itself: do bodies ‘speak’ their own language? Is it
possible to access culturally different and historical bodies of the
past? What kind of descriptive language can be developed that is
independent of biomedical ethnosemantics? And finally, how can we deal
with the idiosyncratic bias in light of the fleshy mass in between the
ends of our hair and toes that we show a portion of the front side of
to each other at conferences?
Abstract submission (for papers of 20 min.): one page maximum until
January 1st, 2013 to: symposium2013@socum.uni-mainz.de
The conference will be bilingual (English and German)
More information about the programme and registration will be
presented on our conference homepage by February 1st, 2013:
www.symposium2013.socum.uni-mainz.de
The conference is hosted by SOCUM, the Research Center of Social- and
Cultural Studies Mainz, and the Research Unit Historical Cultural
Sciences
Conference Organisation: Stefan Hirschauer (Sociology), Matthias
Krings (Anthropology), Jörg Rogge (History)
Mainz (Germany)
Keynote Speakers (confirmed): Chris Shilling (University of Kent),
Annemarie Mol (University of Amsterdam), Paul Stoller (West Chester
University), Gesa Lindemann (University of Oldenburg) und Martin
Dinges (University of Mannheim).
The human body as the subject of research still sits very firmly in
the grasp of the natural sciences. Nevertheless, cultural studies and
social sciences have put forward two fundamental insights on the body
vis-à-vis established biomedical knowledge. Firstly, both
anthropological and phenomenological approaches have delved into the
inner perspective of our inhabited bodies by viewing the ‘lived body’
as the foundation of all cognition and as the fundamental site of
sensory perception, personality, and subjectivity. Secondly,
ethnological and historical semantic studies have shed light on the
extreme variability of ‘the body’ subject to societal knowledge
regimes. Human bodies span an infinite plurality of cultural
classifications and historical discourses – a bundle of linguistic
categories, medical imaging, interpretation and explanation patterns.
Our natural scientific knowledge of the body is part of historically
and culturally specific ethnosemantics.
This conference proposes a third fundamental sociocultural way of
viewing the body, namely as a component of material culture. In recent
years the term practices has oftentimes been used to express this
perspective – a conception of human action and behaviour that places
controlled bodily movement at the centre of social life. As a part of
material culture the body is without doubt an artefact. It has limited
capabilities, is practically shaped by food, medicine, and
socialisation, and wears out through practical use. However, it is a
special material thing: it can learn, i.e., through usage it is
materially (re)shaped, disciplined, and is impregnated with habits,
and it can specialise in body techniques: instrumental music,
handicraft, sports, martial arts, and sex, to just name a handful of
such specialisation possibilities.
However, as part of material culture the body has another specific
quality: it is the fundamental and, even in the age of technological
telecommunication, the inescapable medium of communicative practices.
This holds true for its everyday use in linguistic communication – for
speaking and hearing, reading and writing – and for the unstoppable
display of visual signs through gestures, facial expressions, and
clothing, by means of which bodies are constantly depicting cultural
differences (e.g. gender, ethnicity, or status). Moreover, this
applies for the body in professionalised cultural practices – e.g.,
pantomime, acting, and dance – and for the specific interconnection of
disciplined bodies with telecommunication artefacts.
The conference aims to consolidate contributions of diverse
disciplines (e.g., sociology, history, anthropology, cultural and
media studies) in order to converge on possible answers to fundamental
questions regarding a sociocultural view of the body. What kind of an
artefact is the lived body? How many bodies does a human being have?
Which language(s), images, and practices were and are used in
pre-modern, modern, and post-modern times to evoke which bodies? What
is the communication technological potential of bodies? How does the
material body correspond to the perception of the lived body and of
‘mental’ activities? What are the variations that ‘marginal bodies’
bring to light: damaged, animal, dead, embryological, and engineered
(cyborg) bodies? Furthermore, cultural studies and social sciences
face a number of methodical challenges: How is it possible to capture
such a mute object as the body empirically? In which sign systems does
it present itself: do bodies ‘speak’ their own language? Is it
possible to access culturally different and historical bodies of the
past? What kind of descriptive language can be developed that is
independent of biomedical ethnosemantics? And finally, how can we deal
with the idiosyncratic bias in light of the fleshy mass in between the
ends of our hair and toes that we show a portion of the front side of
to each other at conferences?
Abstract submission (for papers of 20 min.): one page maximum until
January 1st, 2013 to: symposium2013@socum.uni-mainz.de
The conference will be bilingual (English and German)
More information about the programme and registration will be
presented on our conference homepage by February 1st, 2013:
www.symposium2013.socum.uni-mainz.de
The conference is hosted by SOCUM, the Research Center of Social- and
Cultural Studies Mainz, and the Research Unit Historical Cultural
Sciences
Conference Organisation: Stefan Hirschauer (Sociology), Matthias
Krings (Anthropology), Jörg Rogge (History)
Managing the Body
Book:
Managing the Body: Beauty, Health and Fitness in Britain, 1880-1939
Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska
Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010, ISBN: 9780199280520; 408pp.; Price: £65.00
Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska
Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010, ISBN: 9780199280520; 408pp.; Price: £65.00
Reviewer:
Dr Ana Carden-Coyne
University of Manchester
University of Manchester
Citation:
Dr Ana Carden-Coyne, review of Managing the Body: Beauty, Health and Fitness in Britain, 1880-1939, (review no. 1195)
URL: http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1195
URL: http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1195
http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1195
Date accessed: 28 September, 2012
Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska’s new history of the body, health and fitness in Britain is a wide-reaching and detailed study of relevant cultural practices and government policies between the Victorian period and the eve of the Second World War. Much recent work has focused on these themes, including Michael Hau’s study of German life-reform movements, racial science and leisure culture, The Cult of Health and Beauty in Germany: A Social History 1890-1930 (1), drawn especially from the archives of the German Hygiene Museum in Dresden, Liz Conor’s groundbreaking The Spectacular Modern Woman: Feminine Visibility in the 1920s (2), which takes a much more theoretically complex approach to modern bodies and visual culture than historians often achieve, and indeed my own widescreen perspective on war, modern bodies, consumption and sexuality across various networks in the Anglophone world, Reconstructing the Body: Classicism, Modernism and the First World War.(3) Managing the Body fits within this trajectory of scholarship, as well as engaging with a plethora of scholarly articles in academic journals on imperial militarism, racial hygiene, national efficiency, and eugenics and with histories of sport and the body in Europe and Britain. What is important about Zweiniger-Bargielowska’s book is its specific focus on Britain, bringing together all the main themes relevant to the periods 1880–1914 and 1918–39.
Part one covers material familiar to scholars in this area – degeneration and urbanity; imperial fitness and nationhood; racial constructs of motherhood. Part two covers themes such as the Lloyd George’s trope of ‘building an A1 Nation’ by improving health and fitness after the First World War and through the inter-war period; the reconstruction of men’s bodies (a theme which I saw in terms of a global social and political emphasis on medical rehabilitation, coalescing with new modes of sexualisation and consumerist subjectivity, but which Zweiniger-Bargielowska also rightly frames in terms of national policies specific to British concerns). These chapters mine this material in great detail, revealing the length and breadth of public and political interest in rebuilding the nation after the war and in creating a confident and fit male body that could be regarded as reconstructed. Managing the Body also focuses on modernity and the female body, but importantly examines the mass appeal of such images and discourses, finally turning to the campaigns for national fitness through the 1930s in the run-up to another global war also involving the mobilisation of all male and female citizens in British society.
The central idea that the body was ‘managed’ provides an important link between government reforms and a coalition of various associations that ‘shared an ideological affinity’, from the National League of Physical Education and Improvement to the New Health Society, the Health and Strength League and the Sunlight League, as well as private commercial ventures, small-scale operators and local activists. The theme of management is expressed through notions of modern progress, organisation and efficiency, and practiced in workplace reform and the bureaucratisation of the body in various government agencies and institutions, such as the Ministry of Health, as well as influential voluntary organisations such as the Central Council for Health Education and the Board of Education. Managerialism was also seen in national campaigns designed to mobilise and motivate the British public after the First World War and through to the 1930s. Though implicit, there is a gesture to Foucault’s governmentality threaded through much of the chapters; more explicit is his notion of biopower.
Managing the Body is underpinned by Foucault’s ideas about the regulation and control of the body, through both a range of disciplinary techniques crafted in state institutions and also ‘techniques of the self’ such as the body cultures explored in the book. These point not just to top-down discourses and their persuasive power but to the investments individuals will make into shaping their bodies in particular ways, preventing illness, fashioning healthy physiques and identities, and ultimately constructing their selves as individuals and citizens. As Zweiniger-Bargielowska argues, ‘a well-managed body was not only the goal of social policy but also an integral aspect of fashioning the self’. This project was steeped in the aims of modernity and progress, yet, as is pointed out, the belief in improvement and transformation was also tempered by pessimism about the implications of rapid social change and underpinned by longstanding anxieties about racial and social degeneration. This ambivalence could extend to anti-modernist stances among some groups, manifesting in pastoral ideals of a return to nature. Others, however, such as the New Health Society and Sunlight League, embraced modern technology and science, and many body culture enthusiasts represented themselves using the latest trends in modern photography, self-fashioning and posturing. The book does historical thinking a great service by taking such a nuanced approach to an eclectic group of body enthusiasts and reformers; it is important to acknowledge their range and variety, especially when little has been left for the historical record except local traces and suggestive fragments that link to wider body movements and social ideas. Thus while some health groups revered nature and an arcadian past, others revered the technological body, aligning fitness with modernity.
The concept of moral and social improvement was signified by physical fitness, which easily fed into and derived from the eugenics movement. Zweiniger-Bargielowska argues that these ideas also coalesced around notions of citizenship linked to a growing concern with public health that reformers and governments were increasingly willing to intervene in; she does not quite say it but the concept of ‘embodied citizenship’ comes to mind. Importantly, the book shows how this ideal and practice were threaded through various British institutions over a long period of time – from the imperial imagining of a fit empire and Edwardian manliness, through different manifestations of the working and middle classes, and in such organisations as the Scouts and Lads' Drill Associations, to the post-war politicisation of fitness in Lloyd George’s militarised call for the nation to be A1 and not C3, which were military categories of fitness applied to scrutinise working-class citizen soldiers in the First World War. Indeed, the significant processes of the militarisation and bureaucratisation of the British body, begun in the Boer War but especially exaggerated during the First World War, could have been much more explicitly theorised. Public institutions were created and transformed by military processes. While peace in 1918 saw degrees of de-militarisation, much of the discursive machinery of the wartime state remained intact, with consequent effects on civilian discourse.
The mass mobilisation of society – the inclusion of men and women in the institutions of war-waging – is also a key aspect of the period. Managing the Body is right to explore the appeal of body cultures not just to men but also to women. The democratising of the nation at war included women as never before, and body cultures were quick to see their new markets. Though masculinity – and reconstructing the male body – was a central concern of reformers, body culturists and governments alike in the aftermath of the war, women were also central to this project. Following the work of Frank Trentmann and Matthew Hilton, the book extends the notion of the modern consumer as a ‘new civic persona’, to which commercial body cultures appealed, but which also connected free trade to civil society, rather than to conflict between classes, labour and capital. The consumerist appeal to women was particularly strong – and body culture marketing was directed at them. In a period of perceived post-war racial decline, the ideal of national vigour also gave women a special role, as they had in the war as workers and mothers of soldiers. Now they could be idealised as mothers of the fit nation, which, as Managing the Body points out, had specific implications for the British Empire and its need to bolster the imperial dream in the aftermath of a devastating war. The book traces the ideal of the race mother between the 19th century and 1920s, and shows that though this feminine figure was fundamental to imperialism and patriotic duty, she was not incompatible with the emerging image of the modern woman. The various nuances of racial motherhood feature as important discussion points in the book. Just as manliness was revered in Edwardian England, culminating in the ideals of military masculinity forged and ruined (to the extent that it had to be reconstructed) in the First World War, maternalism was a complementary ideal across these periods of British history.
The section on physical culture draws appropriately on a select range from a mass of work on this subject; however, the sections on obesity and dress reform, covering familiar ground for the 1920s, endorse the arguments pursued by many other scholars. Though bringing together some old and some new evidence, most usefully for the period of the later 1930s, the second half of the chapter would have been even more enriched by deeper engagement with the secondary literature, though as with all books space was no doubt a consideration. The significant theme of the reconstruction of the male body, in various physical and sexualised facets, is pursued through a range of discourses, motivations, and technologies, opening up a further need for the different frameworks and nuances of masculinity to be explored. On a few occasions, the idea of masculinity in this chapter seems rather one dimensional, when there is equal evidence for the diversity and instability of masculinities and a comparable search for male intimacy in the period. It would be most useful to understand more about the homoerotic gesture and queer performance of the male body within fitness display and consumption, and the potential to unsettle the certainty of heteronormative health and efficiency and its reproductive ends.
While the familiar trope of fascist body culture has received so much attention in the scholarship, and again in Managing the Body, the British story of post-war and inter-war sexuality remains elusive. How do we explain the way images of fascist supermen, and articles suggestive of moral panic about men’s sexual failure (masturbation, venereal disease, homosexuality, obesity, degeneration) sat alongside the homoerotic, playful, and intimate imagery of male bonding? Social and cultural historians can read in between the pages of literature and photography that sexualised and spectacularised men’s bodies, to see, for instance, the ways in which men used the gymnasiums and body magazines to meet other men, giving their body-measurements, forwarding postal addresses and publishing self-made photographs. How can we develop a sensitivity to understanding these practices in the body world in which men were the subjects of surveillance and biopowerful discourses at the same time as they were engaging in self-fashioning, self-display and modes of being that may not be confined to the signifying practices of heterosexuality or even the national project of fitness politics? Historians of queer sexualities, such as Laura Doan and Matt Houlbrook, might have helped disentangle this problem of norms, discourses and practices. Their work suggests that sexual practices in the past are unfamiliar and not recognisable as homosexual and heterosexual identities and subjectivities. Health and Strength, for instance, contains imagery that could only be considered ambiguous and coquettish in its production of youthful male (and female) sexuality and its provocation of a desiring male readership. The hetero/homosexual subject does not have an identity in this period; perhaps we cannot recognise the sexualities of the 1920s as they rupture the logic of identity politics and its projected pre-histories. Matt Cook’s work on homosexuality and the city of London before 1914 explores the dynamics of male sexuality through the public spaces and private lives of late Victorian culture. This raises questions about the interwar period as the growth in gymnasiums and body cultures enabled new forms of encounter unlike the Hellenic gentleman’s club or the rent-boy culture of the city that Matt Houlbrook highlighted. There appear to be many contradictions in the British society of the 1920s and 1930s, not just in the presentation of bodily discourses but also in how people accepted them, interpreted them, and lived their lives within and against powerful sentiments such as physical order and racial fitness. Managing the Body explains well the obsession with A1 national bodies, physical regeneration, race mothers and fathers, and stricter forms of social control underpinned by political ideology, yet it is possible that people do not always conform to the discourses they seem to participate in. There are equally significant cultural connections between beauty, health, fitness and sexuality that remain a hidden though integral part of how different people shaped their lives in Britain across this fascinating period of history.
The final chapter on national fitness in the 1930s presents important new evidence and weaves its way through a range of ideas that connect the political to the social and cultural. The National Fitness Campaign of the National Government, launched by Chamberlain, links the history of the earlier period to developments on the eve of the Second World War, as the work of reformers and health professionals was ‘finally elevated to the status of a major government policy’ (p. 330). The old A1 citizen, juxtaposed against the ‘C3 anti-citizen’, had returned to the public sphere and a Britain that was once again preparing for war. Managing the Body is a welcome addition to historical research on the body in Britain and elsewhere; it is an excellent book that will be used in undergraduate and postgraduate courses for a long time to come.
Notes
- Michael Hau, The Cult of Health and Beauty in Germany: A Social History 1890–1930 (Chicago, 2003).Back to (1)
- Liz Conor, The Spectacular Modern Woman: Feminine Visibility in the 1920s (Bloomington, IN, 2004).Back to (2)
- Ana Carden-Coyne, Reconstructing the Body: Classicism, Modernism and the First World War (Oxford, 2009)Back to (3)
The author is happy to accept this review and does not wish to comment further.
Snuff
www.liberation.fr/livres/2012/.../prendre-le-lecteur-aux-tripes_84906...
il y a 1 jour – Entretien avec l'auteur de «Snuff» ... Le cahier Livres de Libé. Retrouvez ici tous les articles du cahier Livres du jeudi. (Photo ginnerobot/flickr)
Corps suspect, Corps déviant
www.editions-rm.ca/livre.php?id=1405
Les Éditions du remue-ménage sont spécialisées dans la publication d'ouvrages sur la condition féminine.
Table des matières
Corps suspect, corps déviant
Préface
David Le Breton
Genèse d’un projet
Première partie
De la phrénologie du mal à la technologie du mal
Chapitre 1
Le corps du crime
Sylvie Frigon
Chapitre 2
Biocriminologie et identification génétique : une réarticulation du corps, de l’espace et du temps
Dominique Robert et Martin Dufresne
Chapitre 3
Pouvoir psychiatrique et gouvernement des corps déviants : analyse biopolitique des plans de modification de comportements en milieux de psychiatrie légale
Dave Holmes et Stuart J. Murray
Deuxième partie
Corps marqué, corps souillé
Chapitre 4
Old grey and locked away : Older women’s bodily negotiations of the criminal justice system
Laura Shantz
Chapitre 5
L’hippocampéléphantocamelos et autres monstres ordinaires de l’aliénation mentale au Québec
André Cellard
Chapitre 6
Le « corps homosexuel » : source d’inquiétude et objet de contrôle social
Jean-François Cauchie et Patrice Corriveau
Chapitre 7
Policing Diseased, Dirty and Immoral Bodies: The power-geometry of sex work
Chris Bruckert
Troisième partie
Des attaques au corps à la résistance
Chapitre 8
Torture étatique ou comment convertir la douleur du corps en pouvoir politique
Sandra Lehalle
Chapitre 9
À l’intérieur des murs de la cité asilaire : la lobotomie comme mode de gestion des comportements
Isabelle Perreault
Chapitre 10
Le corps féminin incarcéré : site de contrôle et de résistance
Sylvie Frigon
Chapitre 11
Wrapped in restraints, wrapped in bandages : the discursive production of self-injury in the carceral context
Jennifer Kilty
Chapitre 12
Corps, danse et enfermement.
Claire Jenny et Sylvie Frigon
La chair du livre
pups.paris-sorbonne.fr/pages/aff_livre.php?Id=987
27 août 2012 –
La Chair du livre
À l’époque où la chair était triste et les sens las, l’ardeur du baiser s’est portée sur le livre, objet, esprit et matière. Images et estampes, couvertures et reliures, pliages, ornements, graphisme et typographie ont doté les textes d’un sens intellectuel, poétique, et sensuel. À la toute fin de l’ère qui connut l’explosion de l’imprimé et imposa le sens courant du terme illustration, le livre et l’imprimé fin-de-siècle ont
Le corps, territoire politique
chrhc.revues.org/2446
de A Jollet
Le corps, territoire politique. Pierre-Henri Ortiz. L'idiotie contre la folie. [Texte intégral disponible en janvier 2015]. Anthropologie des déficiences de
l'esprit entre
-
Le mot de la rédaction [Texte intégral]
-
DOSSIER
-
Introduction [Texte intégral disponible en janvier 2015]Le corps, territoire politique
-
L’idiotie contre la folie. [Texte intégral disponible en janvier 2015]Anthropologie des déficiences de l’esprit entre Antiquité et Moyen-Âge
-
« Le trône des plaisirs et des voluptés » : anatomie politique du clitoris, de l’Antiquité à la fin du xixe siècle * [Texte intégral disponible en janvier 2015]
-
Le corps criminel au xixe siècle : du trouble des facultés de l’âme à la dégénérescence [Texte intégral disponible en janvier 2015]
-
Archives du corps, archive de la biopolitique [Texte intégral disponible en janvier 2015]
-
La fabrique politique du corps : historiographie sélective des héritages foucaldiens [Texte intégral disponible en janvier 2015]
-
Lectures jouissives
L'artiste américain Clayton Cubitt organise des sessions de «littérature hystérique» associant vibromasseurs et lecture.
Les lectures jouissives
L'artiste américain Clayton Cubitt organise des sessions de «littérature hystérique» associant vibromasseurs et lecture.
Captures d'écran de la vidéo «Hysterical Literature : Session One : Stoya» - Photo DR
Le fond est noir. L’actrice porno Stoya est assise à une table. On ne voit que le haut de son corps. Elle commence à lire, en anglais,Necrophilia Variations de Supervert. Elle prend son temps. Elle s’applique. Les personnages sont à une soirée, ils boivent, mangent, se filment. Ils commencent à s’embrasser. L’érotisme et la mort se mêlent comme l’indique le nom de l’ouvrage. Petit à petit, Stoya a de plus en plus de mal à lire. Elle respire de plus en plus fort. On entend parfois une sorte de ronronnement, mais on ne sait pas d’où cela vient. Trois minutes passent. L’actrice avale sa salive lentement, elle rit. Quelques dizaines de secondes plus tard, elle pousse un petit cri. Elle tente de continuer. Elle arrive à la fin d’une phrase, se lâche complètement, ferme les yeux, mélange de rire et de plaisir. Elle oublie son ouvrage.
Cette scène n’est pas un film porno mais l’une des sessions de«littérature hystérique» organisées par l’artiste américain Clayton Cubitt. Une personne doit lire devant la caméra un ouvrage de son choix avec un vibromasseur en marche entre ses jambes. La littérature donne alors du plaisir au sens propre et au figuré.
Postée en août, la première vidéo avec Stoya a été visionnée plus de deux millions cinq cent mille fois. Deux autres sessions ont suivi pour le moment, avec à chaque fois une actrice différente. «Je suis très intéressé par les relations entre l’esprit et le corps», explique àLibération Clayton Cubitt. «Je suis de la même manière intéressé par les conflits entre les cultures élitistes et populaires, et comment la société est dépendante du sexe et de la culpabilité.»«La culture ni sa destruction ne sont érotiques ; c’est la faille de l’une et de l’autre qui le devient», jugeait ainsi le sémiologue Roland Barthes dans le Plaisir du texte (1973).
«Je pense que la partie intéressante dans le sexe est la suggestion de ce qui ne se voit pas, ajoute Stoya sur son Tumblr, point de vue a priori étrange pour une actrice porno. Mais pour elle cela fait sens,«la pénétration est après tout l’exploration de quelque chose de sombre, humide et caverneux». Elle se réjouit de l'expérience en elle-même : «Sexuellement parlant, j'ai vraiment adoré [...] Cette manière de lire à haute voix en tentant de garder son calme tout en étant stimulée est nouvelle pour moi.» Elle est tombée dans ce que Roland Barthes décrivait : «Le plaisir du texte est semblable à cet instant intenable, impossible, purement romanesque, que le libertin goûte au terme d’une machination hardie, faisant couper la corde qui le pend, au moment où il jouit.»
Danielle Ezzo est photographe et a aussi participé à une session. Au bout d’un peu plus de cinq minutes, elle a été obligée de mettre un terme à sa lecture. «Normalement je ne suis pas devant la caméra, je me sens plus à l’aise derrière, explique-t-elle à Libération. Dès que j’ai commencé à lire, j’ai été envahie d’un sentiment persistant de chatouillement. En fait, je suis assez impressionnée d’avoir réussi à rester sérieuse aussi longtemps. Je me suis dit que c'était ridicule d'être si excitée dans un contexte complétement dénué de quoi que ce soit d'érotique.»
ARTICLE + VIDÉOS | 25 septembre 2012
Les lectures jouissives
L’expérience américaine du corps
L’expérience américaine du corps
Sens et sacré en littérature québécoise moderne
Sous la direction de
Isabelle Miron, David Courtemanche, Marie Parent
Collection
Figura
Éditeur
Figura
Jusqu’à présent, la lecture communément admise de la littérature québécoise des années 1953-1970 révèle la fin du rapport au sacré. Si le contexte de la Révolution tranquille a signé la mort d’un
sacré transcendant, lié au catholicisme dominant, on assiste cependant à l’émergence d’une tout autre forme de sacré dans la quête de sens des écrivains de cette période. Cette nouvelle forme de
sacré, immanente à la conscience humaine, aurait ceci de particulier qu’elle s’appuierait sur l’expérience sensible du sujet dans son rapport au territoire nord-américain. C’est ce que fait
valoir ce volume, qui présente une reconstitution inédite de l'histoire de la subjectivité québécoise moderne.
Avec des textes de David Courtemanche, Candy Hoffmann, Élise Lepage, Andrée Mercier, Jacques Paquin, Marie Parent, Lucie Picard, Katri Suhonen, et une plénière.
2012, 146 pages, FIG017, ISBN 978-2-923907-26-0
Corps et Robot
Robot compagnons PekeeII équipés de bras
www.loria.fr/~rougier/CorpsEtRobots.pdf
Format de fichier: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Version HTML
ROBOTS. & CORPS. CONFÉRENCE ARCO / SÉMINAIRE IPAC. CONFÉRENCIERS ... Le rôle du corps en robotique développementale.
UNIVERSITÉ
[journee] Robots & Corps, Immersion ecologique & Cognition incarnee, Villers-les-Nancy, 18 oct. 2012
(21/09/2012)
De : Christine Bourjot Christine.Bourjot [ à ] univ-nancy2.fr
Bonjour,
L'ARCo et le séminaire IPAC organise une journée "ROBOTS & CORPS , Immersion écologique & Cognition incarnée"
au LORIA le 18 octobre 2012.
ROBOTS & CORPS
Immersion écologique & Cognition incarnée
Des robots en 1ère personne
Conférence ARCO / Séminaire IPAC
Entrée Libre
18 Octobre 2012
LORIA amphi A008
615 rue du Jardin Botanique
54600 Villers-lès-Nancy
Organisation :
B. Andrieu (Université de Lorraine, APEMAC, EPSaM),
C. Bourjot (Université de Lorraine, LORIA/INRIA),
N. Rougier (Université Bordeaux, CNRS/INRIA)
Thématique :
La théorie de la cognition incarnée nous a enseigné, il y a maintenant quelques années, que l'évolution d'un modèle dans le monde réel (sous forme d'un corps robotique) lui donne un accès direct
et privilégié aux lois qui régissent ce même monde. Nul besoin de modéliser les lois de la gravité, le modèle s'y trouvera {\em de facto} confronté s'il essaye de prendre son envol depuis le haut
d'un escalier. Nul besoin de connaître les lois de frottements entre deux solides, le modèle ne pourra de toute façon jamais réaliser une commande parfaite de roulement sur un sol irrégulier. Or,
si cette théorie de l'incarnation représente aujourd'hui une des voies privilégiées pour l'exploration et la compréhension de la cognition, elle semble difficile à appréhender dans le cadre des
nouveaux dispositifs technologiques qui sont apparus au cours de ces dernières années.
Ainsi, les appartements dits intelligents viennent bouleverser la notion de corps en proposant des appartements instrumentalisés permettant d'interagir avec eux. Mais quel type de cognition peut
alors émerger de cette étrange confrontation au réel ? De même, les interfaces cerveaux-ordinateurs viennent brouiller les cartes en ce sens qu'une partie de la cognition est assurée par un
cerveau humain alors qu'une autre partie relève de la machine et doit se développer en symbiose. Mais qui doit s'adapter à l'autre alors ?
Ces nouvelles possibilités de confrontation au réel pour les modèles offrent donc de nouvelles perspectives à la fois dans le champ de l'intelligence artificielle et dans celui de la philosophie.
Nous proposons donc de discuter autour de ces questions au travers des interventions de modélisateurs et de philosophes.
Programme de la journée
8h45 - Accueil et Présentation de la thématique : Bernard Andrieu, Christine Bourjot, Nicolas Rougier
9h - Olivier Simonin, Modélisateur , Loria/Inria Lorraine, Université de Lorraine
« Robots compagnons et maisons intelligentes : de nouvelles interactions ? »
Résumé à venir:
L'introduction de l'IA dans notre environnement quotidien ne cesse de se développer et va s'amplifier : intelligence ambiante, réseaux sans fil (réseaux sociaux, surveillance etc.), robots
compagnons, maison intelligente, vêtements intelligents, véhicules intelligents, etc. Cette immersion, voulue ou subie, pose un certain nombre de questions qui dépassent largement le cadre
technologique et scientifique. Nous présenterons quelques dispositifs en cours d'étude au Loria (en particulier dans le cadre de la plateforme "Appartement Intelligent" du Projet Informatique
Située) et tenterons de poser les questions qu'ils soulèvent sur notre capacité, ou incapacité, à interagir avec un environnement autonome, pro-actif, observateur.
10h - Laurent Bougrain, Modélisateur, Loria /Inria Lorraine, Université de Lorraine « Interfaces Cerveau-Machine »
Résumé : Les interfaces cerveau-machine (en anglais brain-machine interfaces ou BMI), interprètent l’activité cérébrale pour produire des commandes sur un ordinateur ou d’autres périphériques
comme un fauteuil roulant ou une prothèse robotique. Une BMI permet donc à son utilisateur d’interagir avec un environnement réel ou virtuel uniquement par l'activité cérébrale. Afin d'améliorer
l'efficacité du dispositif, il est nécessaire d'utiliser la mémoire procédurale pour sélectionner une commande cérébrale appropriée à l'action et de choisir le niveau auquel l'homme et la machine
doivent respectivement intervenir. Dans le cas d'un contrôle partagé, l'interface utilisera des informations contextuelles en plus des commandes cérébrales pour réaliser une action. Cependant,
d'une part les neurones recrutés pour accomplir la tâche ne sont pas nécessairement ceux associés à cette tâche lors du développement et d'autre part le système utilisera des algorithmes
d'apprentissage pour s'améliorer. Cette cohabitation nécessite une adaptation réciproque.
PAUSE
11h - Pierre Steiner, Philosophe, Costech, Université Technologique de Compiègne
« La situation en question »
Résumé : De quoi est-il, et peut-il être question lorsque l’on affirme que les opérations cognitives d’un agent, vivant ou artificiel, doivent être étudiées et/ou conçues à partir du caractère
situé de cet agent ? Dans cet exposé, je reviendrai sur quelques étapes historiques (critiques dreyfusiennes de l’IA classique ; sémantique des situations) et sur quelques distinctions
conceptuelles importantes (cognition embodied vs. cognition située vs. cognition en contexte vs. cognition distribuée-étendue) pouvant nous aider à mieux comprendre la portée, mais aussi à mieux
apercevoir les limites de la thèse de la cognition située.
PAUSE DEJEUNER/ DEMONSTRATIONS
13h30 - Pierre-Yves Oudeyer, Modélisateur, Inria Bordeaux, Ensta-ParisTech
« Le rôle du corps en robotique développementale »
Résumé : La robotique développementale étudie les mécanismes permettant la formation de structures cognitives et comportementales au cours du développement sensorimoteur et social. Ainsi, elle
s'intéresse à la manière dont un organisme peut apprendre progressivement des savoir-faire nouveaux, et dans le cadre des interactions dynamiques entre son cerveau, son corps et son environnement
physique et social. Dans cette présentation, j'illustrerai en particulier comment l'utilisation de robots peut permettre de conceptualiser de manière originale le rôle du corps dans le
développement: comment l'organisme peut apprendre la distinction soi/objets/autres; comment l'organisme peut apprendre à utiliser son corps par exploration active (curiosité); comment les
propriétés physiques du corps peuvent guider, structurer et finalement faciliter l'apprentissage. J'argumenterai enfin que l'utilisation des robots pour étudier ces questions permet de mettre en
œuvre des expériences impossibles avec le vivant, dans lesquels le corps lui-même peut être considéré comme une variable expérimentale.
15h - Bernard Andrieu, Philosophe, Université de Lorraine, EPSaM, APEMAC, Faculté du sport
« La présence corporelle : Vers une compréhension sensorimotrice »
Résumé : Accepter que le dispositif expérientiel de la perception ne puisse nous fournir qu’une connaissance par les qualia (« qualities in consciousness ») c’est admettre que « nous énactons le
monde perçu par une exploration sensori-motrice » [Noé, 2012, 59]. « Pour l’actioniste direct réaliste » [Noé, 2012, 65] la compréhension sensori-motrice de la conscience (awareness) perceptuelle
des objets est un accomplissement immédiat qui est pourtant le résultat d’ajustement « nécessaire pour réaliser et maintenir le contact perceptuel avec le monde » [Noé, 2012, 67]. Même si cet
ajustement est inconscient, son action direct favorise un réalisme perceptif pour le cerveau en 1er personne. La perception est ainsi définie comme une « relation non intentionnelle avec le monde
mais ce n’est pas non plus une relation brute et externe. Notre cerveau et notre esprit le réalise ensemble avec un effort considérable » [Noé, 2012, 73].
DISCUSSION/DEBA T
--
Christine Bourjot
Maître de Conférences Nancy Université
Responsable M2 SCMN Master SCA
http://www.loria.fr/~bourjot/
LORIA
Tel : 03 83 59 20 75 -- Fax : 03 83 27 83 19
UFR Math-Info de Nancy2
Tel : 03 54 50 35 20 -- Fax : 03 83 39 64 39
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