VIENT DE PARAÎTRE
aux Editions Lambert-Lucas, 4 rue d’Isly, 87000 LIMOGES
http://www.lambert-lucas.com
Sous la direction de Michel Arrivé, Valelia Muni Toke et Claudine Normand
De la grammaire à l’inconscient dans les traces de Damourette et Pichon
ISBN 978-2-35935-022-7, 312 pages, 35 €
« Le système grammatical d’une langue baigne en grande partie dans l’inconscient. » C’est là un des postulats sur lesquels se construit le monumental Essai de grammaire de la langue française, de Jacques Damourette (1873-1943) et Édouard Pichon (1890-1940).
Les deux auteurs sont pittoresques et insolites. Jacques Damourette, de santé fragile, n’a jamais exercé son métier d’architecte, mais s’est passionné pour la langue française. Il a communiqué sa passion à son neveu Édouard Pichon qui, en dépit de la maladie qui le fera mourir à quarante-neuf ans, mène une brillante carrière de médecin. Devenu psychanalyste, il est, en 1939, président de la Société Psychanalytique de Paris : il y reçoit un jeune et brillant psychiatre nommé Jacques Lacan. L’œuvre de Damourette et Pichon continue, près d’un siècle après le début (1911) de son élaboration, à intriguer, souvent à passionner linguistes et analystes. Ils se sont rencontrés à Cerisy pour approfondir les aspects de ce travail entre tous original, qui affronte par le biais de la grammaire d’une langue le problème toujours renouvelé des relations entre langage et inconscient.
29 octobre 2010
De la grammaire à l'inconscient dans les traces de Damourette et Pichon
26 octobre 2010
20 octobre 2010
Situation universitaire, Grande-Bretagne
Message reçu d'un collègue de King's College London à la suite de l'annonce de la "Spending Review" du gouvernement britannique de ce jour. Il s'agit de la circulaire diffusée ce soir par le doyen de ce prestigieux "College" à tous les personnels enseignants :
> Dear Colleague
>
> As you may know, the results for higher education of the Government’s > spending review have now been announced. Although many important > matters of detail are unclear, and are likely to remain so for some > time, it is evident that very substantial reductions are to be made
> over the period 2011-15 in the money that HEFCE has available to > allocate to universities for teaching. It is also now clear that there > will be reductions over the same period in real terms (i.e. after > inflation is taken into account) in the money available overall to > Research Councils for disbursement to universities in the form of > grants.
> The massive reduction in the teaching grant represents a fundamental > change in the way that English universities are financed. We now await > news as to how far the Browne Review will lead to universities having > the power to charge higher fees in order to make up for these very > large reductions in income from the funding council. It will take > some time, perhaps months, for that situation to clarify. I plan to > speak at staff fora around the campuses in the next few weeks by which > time we may be in a better position to interpret the impact of the
> spending review and the Browne Review. >
> In the meantime my immediate colleagues and I, in discussion with a > wide range of staff and students around the College, and with the > College Council, will be starting to consider how King’s can best > react to these unprecedented changes. This is inevitably an anxious > time throughout English higher education. >
> I think that all of us at King’s should remain conscious of the > College’s many great strengths, as recognised recently in our > designation as the Sunday Times University of the Year 2010-11. The > College is also extremely fortunate to have the support of its staff, > students and alumni in these difficult times.
> > Although King’s will have many challenging questions to resolve in the > coming months, we should be clear that the College should be better > placed than the large majority of English universities in mapping out > future strategies. I have every confidence that the College will
> continue to build on its achievements. >
> Rick Trainor >
> Professor Richard Trainor KBE, > Principal & President, King's College London
A lire en écho avec le message posté par E. Guerre sur la liste Préparation de la coordination nationale :
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=413956&c=1
Moins £2.9 milliards pour le budget de l'enseignement superieur, qui passera de £7.1 milliards a £4.2 milliards en 2014-15.
Autre mesure notable: si la subvention de l'enseignement des sciences est gelee (elle n'augmentera cependant pas), il n'y aura plus rien pour l'enseignement des arts, humanites et sciences sociales.
Le budget de la recherche semble cependant gele.
L'augmentation des droits d'inscriptions semble inevitable. Ce qui est tres curieux est que le systeme de prets consenti par l'Etat aux etudiants est maintenu, ce qui va augmenter la dette publique d'autant, du moins sur un regime transitoire de 3/4 ans.
Les coupes ont ete tres violentes pour les plus defavorises: par exemple, ceux qui beneficiaient d'un loyer subventionne devront payer 80% du prix du marche (un deux pieces a Londres est souvent a £1.200 le mois).
Les britanniques commencent a regarder les greves en France avec attention...
13 octobre 2010
The Crisis of the Humanities - Stanley Fish
The Crisis of the Humanities Officially Arrives
Reproduit d'après :
In a response to last week's column on "Howl", the movie about Allen Ginsberg’s famous poem, Charlie from Binghamton asked, “What happened to public investment in the humanities and the belief that the humanities enhanced our culture, our society, our humanity?” And he speculated that it “will be a sad, sad day if and when we allow the humanities to collapse.”
What he didn’t know at the time is that it had already happened, on Oct. 1, when George M. Philip, president of SUNY Albany, announced that the French, Italian, classics, Russian and theater programs were getting the axe.
For someone of my vintage the elimination of French was the shocker. In the 1960s and ’70s, French departments were the location of much of the intellectual energy. Faculty and students in other disciplines looked to French philosophers and critics for inspiration; the latest thing from Paris was instantly devoured and made the subject of conferences. Spanish was then the outlier, a discipline considered stodgy and uninteresting.
Now Spanish is the only safe department to be in. Russian’s stock has gone down, one presumes, because in recent years the focus of our political (and to some extent cultural) attention has shifted from Russia to China, India, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq. Classics has been on the endangered species list for decades. As for theater, the first thing to go in a regime of bottom-line efficiency are the plays.
And indeed, if your criteria are productivity, efficiency and consumer satisfaction, it makes perfect sense to withdraw funds and material support from the humanities — which do not earn their keep and often draw the ire of a public suspicious of what humanities teachers do in the classroom — and leave standing programs that have a more obvious relationship to a state’s economic prosperity and produce results the man or woman in the street can recognize and appreciate. (What can you say to the tax-payer who asks, “What good does a program in Byzantine art do me?” Nothing.)
President Philip cites as one justification for his action the fact “that there are comparatively fewer students enrolled in these degree programs.” Of course, in a bygone time seats in those programs’ classes would have been filled by students who were meeting quite specific distribution requirements; you remember, two advanced language courses, one course in American lit and another in British lit, and so on.
Those requirements have largely gone away. SUNY Albany does have general education requirements, but so many courses fulfill them — any one of dozens will meet your humanities requirement — that they are hardly a constraint at all, something the Web site acknowledges and even underlines with pride. This has happened in part because progressive academics have argued that traditional disciplinary departments were relics from the past kept artificially alive by outmoded requirements.
But keeping something you value alive by artificial, and even coercive, means (and distribution requirements are a form of coercion) is better than allowing them to die, if only because you may now die (get fired) with them, a fate that some visionary faculty members may now be suffering. I have always had trouble believing in the high-minded case for a core curriculum — that it preserves and transmits the best that has been thought and said — but I believe fully in the core curriculum as a device of employment for me and my fellow humanists. But the point seems to be moot. It’s too late to turn back the clock.
What, then, can be done? Well, it won’t do to invoke the pieties informing Charlie from Binghamton’s question — the humanities enhance our culture; the humanities make our society better — because those pieties have a 19th century air about them and are not even believed in by some who rehearse them.
And it won’t do to argue that the humanities contribute to economic health of the state — by producing more well-rounded workers or attracting corporations or delivering some other attenuated benefit — because nobody really buys that argument, not even the university administrators who make it.
And it won’t do, in the age of entrepreneurial academics, zero-based budgeting and “every tub on its own bottom,” to ask computer science or biology or the medical school to fork over some of their funds so that the revenue-poor classics department can be sustained. That was the idea a while back, but today it won’t fly.
The only thing that might fly — and I’m hardly optimistic — is politics, by which I mean the political efforts of senior academic administrators to explain and defend the core enterprise to those constituencies — legislatures, boards of trustees, alumni, parents and others — that have either let bad educational things happen or have actively connived in them.
And when I say “explain,” I should add aggressively explain — taking the bull by the horns, rejecting the demand (always a loser) to economically justify the liberal arts, refusing to allow myths (about lazy, pampered faculty who work two hours a week and undermine religion and the American way) to go unchallenged, and if necessary flagging the pretensions and hypocrisy of men and women who want to exercise control over higher education in the absence of any real knowledge of the matters on which they so confidently pronounce.
On the basis of his performance in this instance, President Philip (who is without a doctoral degree and who has little if any experience teaching or researching) is not that kind of administrator, although he does exhibit some skills. With little notice, he called a town hall meeting for Friday afternoon, Oct. 1, when he could be sure that almost no academic personnel would be hanging around. In an e-mail sent the same day, he noted the “unfortunate timing,” but pleaded the “limited availability of appropriate large venue options.” In effect, I can’t call a meeting on a convenient day because we don’t have a room large enough to get you all in, so I’ll commandeer a large room on a day when I know that very few of you will show up. Brilliant!
The lengthy e-mail is also a legal justification in advance of any legal action. Philip knows that he can’t dismiss individual professors, but can only eliminate programs and departments. And he knows that, given tenure, contracts and all that pesky stuff he can only do that if he can make a case for financial exigency.
Accordingly, he explains in some detail a 30 percent decline of state support in the past three years and lists the steps his administration has already taken to deal with the problem. He is careful to say that the action he takes does not reflect any negative view of the scholars who will lose their positions or the value of the subjects they teach. He acknowledges that the burden seems to fall disproportionally on the humanities, but assures the departing soldiers that comparable cuts are on the way in the other colleges. (It’s almost a Bill Maher line: Don’t get me wrong. I love the humanities.)
Every sentence is written with passages like this one from AAUP v. Bloomfield College (1974) in mind. We consider, the court said, an administration’s “duty to honor solemnly undertaken tenure commitments, the objective data relating to the college’s financial circumstances, its financial history; the authenticity of the financial threat . . . the existence of real alternatives o the action taken.” Philip (or the university lawyer) is covering all the bases.
He also seems to be trying a political ploy. He makes much of the failure of the state legislature to pass a bill that would have allowed the university to set its own tuition rates. “Regrettably,” he reports, that didn’t happen. He is sending the legislators a message: you dropped the ball and see what you made me do. I guess they are supposed to recoil in horror and say, “No, no, we’ll do the right thing.” Fat chance! The truth is no one in public life cares for the humanities as an academic enterprise, although public officials most likely do care for books, movies, operas and TV, and like to think of themselves as crackerbarrel philosophers and historians.
That’s O.K. It’s not their job to value the humanities or even to understand them. But it is the job of presidents and chancellors to proclaim the value of liberal arts education loudly and often and at least try to make the powers that be understand what is being lost when traditions of culture and art that have been vital for hundreds and even thousands of years disappear from the academic scene. President Philip cries crocodile tears. Real tears are in order.
Hémisphère gauche - les nouvelles pensées critiques
Quelles sont ces théories qui accompagnent l’émergence des nouvelles luttes sociales ? En quoi se distinguent-elles de celles qui caractérisaient l’ancien mouvement ouvrier : le marxisme, l’anarchisme, le keynésianisme, le tiers-mondisme et le libéralisme de gauche, par exemple ? Quels sont leurs courants, leurs tendances, leurs innovations ? Hémisphère gauche rend compte avec pédagogie de la grande diversité de ces nouvelles théories critiques : marxisme et post-marxisme, théorie post-coloniale, cultural studies, théorie de la reconnaissance, théorie queer, post-structuralisme, théorie de l’anti-pouvoir, néo-spinozisme, etc. Il montre également l’unité qui sous-tend ces différents courants de pensée, qui résulte de ce qu’ils sont tous le produit des défaites subies par les mouvements de contestation des années 1960 et 1970. Cet ouvrage fournit une introduction synthétique et pédagogique aux nouvelles théories critiques contemporaines, dans une perspective internationale. Il se veut un « mode d’emploi » facilitant l’accès à ces théories aussi une invitation à la découverte et à la lecture.
10 octobre 2010
Manières zutistes
En écho à l'étude d'Arnaud Bernadet sur les "Manières zutistes. La signature au pluriel : Valade, Cros, Rimbaud et cie" :
Bien noté les groupisme et enculisme littéraires. De même, la proposition du zutisme.
Et la circonstance, intégrée en poétique, du lieu de l'Hôtel des Etrangers. Une question à ce propos : c'était le lieu de rdv des zutistes - même hôtel du début du Surréalisme, ou bien avec quoi est-ce que je confonds?
Mais, ici, une remarque sur Beckett, auteur dans le français, soit : venant se mailler en réseau poétique avec l'histoire des manières francophones. La poétique des Conneries des Zutistes me connecte assez directement avec les déclinaisons de la malfaçon dans Beckett. Les fizzles/foirades, pire, dramaticules, pochades, mirlitonnades. "Dramaticule" sonnant de manière nouvelle pour moi dans ce contexte/transtexte de lecture, je note.
Chez Beckett, les trans-connections et relais entre les rémanences poétiques des manières francophones et des anglophones : il faudrait regarder le sens possible des résonances avec les traditions anglophones du nonsense (dans le cadre du régime de répression sexuelle victorien, en miroir négatif du régime "bas" du zutisme : copro-, connerie, etc.), mais aussi de ce qu'en continue Joyce (qui infléchit vers du très copro- et conneriste, Ulysses passé en procès et interdit pour obscénité, 1922).
Autre écho avec Beckett : ses passages, séjours dans, expérimentations parodiques, des -ismes et manifestes et antimanifestes. Jeu énonciatif autour du Concentrisme. Proposition énonciative difficile à placer, beautifully perturbatrice, dans l'ordre discursif de l'époque (fonctionnement du canular, dans l'énonciation universitaire/critique/lettrée, malentendus), et qui continue à faire des dégâts (produire des malentendus) dans la critique beckettienne : sur la question de décider comment faire valoir ces propositions critiques. Mise en instabilité du sérieux critique.
05 octobre 2010
Séminaire Diversité des langues : programme 2010-2011
Séminaire Diversité des langues et poétique de l'histoire
Le Texte étranger (de l'EA 1569, Université Paris 8 - resp. C. Joubert)
UMI Transitions (CNRS/NYU - resp. E. Baneth-Nouailhetas)
et Polart - poétique et politique de l'art
Programme 2009-2011 : "Le 'postcolonial' comparé : anglophonie, francophonie"
- vendredi 22 octobre 2010, 9h30-12h30 - Université Paris 8, salle D 301.
9h30 - table ronde "Etat des travaux" au seuil de la deuxième année du programme : avec Yves Abrioux, Jaine Chemmachery, Dominique Combe (sous réserve), Alice Goheneix, Sarah Heft (sous réserve), Christine Lorre (sous réserve), Natalia Palamarchuk ; puis discussion générale.
11h15 - Emilienne Baneth-Nouailhetas : "Décentrer l'anglophone".
11h45 - Claire Joubert : "Modèle Inde, modèle Caraïbes".
- samedi 30 avril 2011, 10h-18h - Université Paris 8, salle D 143.
Journée d'étude "Les Caraïbes : lieu critique du 'postcolonial'".
Comparaison des héritages coloniaux anglophone, francophone, hispanophone, néeerlandophone. Programme précisé ultérieurement.
- septembre/octobre 2011 - Université Paris 8.
Journée d'étude "Perspectives transnationales : les empires et les
disciplines, suite".
Elargissement de la comparaison à d'autres systèmes coloniaux/impériaux, et à d'autres systèmes universitaires nationaux. Programme précisé ultérieurement.
L'ensemble des séances est ouvert à tous chercheurs et étudiants.
Contact : Claire Joubert.
Emilienne BANETH-NOUAILHETAS
Professor, English Literature
Senior Researcher, CNRS, France
Director, UMI 3199, CNRS-New York University
(Center for International Research in the Humanities and Social sciences)
Claire Joubert
Professeur de Littérature anglaise
Département d'Etudes Littéraires Anglaises
Université Paris 8
http://www.univ-paris8.fr/dela/
03 octobre 2010
Situation universitaire américaine - les langues
Transmis par un collègue américain, le 3 octobre 2010 :
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Today the seven members of the French faculty at SUNY--Albany (all tenured) were informed that by presidential decision, ostensibly for budgetary reasons, te French program has been "deactivated" at all levels (BA, MA, PhD), as have BA programs in Russian and Italian. The only foreign language program unaffected is Spanish. The primary criterion used in making the decision was undergrad majors-to-faculty ratio.
We were told that tenured faculty in French, Russian, and Italian will be kept on long enough for our students to finish their degrees--meaning three years at the outside. Senoir faculty are being encouraged to take early retirement. The rest of us are being urged to "pursue our careers elsewhere," as our Provost put it.
Needless to say, the decision is personally devastating to those of us affected, but it is also symptomatic of the ongoing devaluation of foreign-language and other humanities program in universities across the United States. I'm writing to ask for your help in spreading the word about this decision as widely as possible and in generating as much negative media publicity as possible against SUNY--Albany and the SUNY system in its entirety.
There is much background to add about how this decision was reached and implemented, too much for me to explain fully here. Suffice it to say that the disappearance of French, Italian, and Russian has resulted from an almost complete lack of leadership at the Albany campus and in the SUNY system. Our president, a former state pension fund manager, holds an MBA as his highest degree, has never held a college or university teaching position, and has never engaged in any kind of sholarship.
More disturbing still, due process was not followed in the decision-making process. The affected programs were not consulted or given the opportunity to propose money-saving reforms. Our Dean and Provost simply hand-selected an advisory committee to rubber stamp the president's decision. The legalities of the situation remain to be discussed with our union, UUP, but in the meantime I welcome any advice you may have.
best,
Brett Bowles
Associate Professor of French Studies
French Graduate Program Director
State University of New York, Albany
bbowles@albany.edu
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