Mimèsis et catharsis : de la représentation à la dénégation du réel chez Aristote, Artaud et Brecht

La présente étude propose une relecture de trois théoriciens dont les investigations continuent à servir de pierre angulaire à la théâtrologie : celles d'Aristote dont La Poétique, outre le fait qu'elle consacre le théâtre occidental, sert de fondement à l'esthétique dramatique et celles, plus récentes, d'Antonin Artaud et de Bertolt Brecht qui, bien qu'ils aient réfuté radicalement les théories aristoté- liciennes, ne se sont pas moins distingués l'un de l'autre pour donner les deux grandes voies que l'on sait à la réflexion dramaturgique contemporaine. Ces spéculations seront envisagées sous l'éclairage décisif de la mimèsis et de la catharsis qui ne se posent pas chez eux comme des notions distinctes, mais comme l'avers et l'envers d'un même travail sur un réel à chaque fois redéfini, qu'il s'agisse de l'obéissance aristotélicienne à une stricte logique narrative, de l'utopique déculturation artaudienne ou de l'engagement brechtien.The author proposes a review of three major theoreticians whose works are considered to be the corner-stones of theatrical studies : Aristotle, whose Poetics, the first reflexion on Occidental theatre, also serve as the foundation of the aesthetics of drama, and, closer to us, Antonin Artaud and Bertolt Brecht who, although unanimous in rejecting the Aristotelian theory, have quite different views on contemporary theatre. Their definitions are analyzed in the light of mimesis and catharsis, which are not taken here as separate notions, but rather as a mean of grasping the fluctuant outlines of the concept of "reality", be it Aristotle's obedience to a strict narrative structure, Artaud's denial of culture or Brecht's political commitment

Travail et santé mentale : une perspective multi-niveaux des déterminants de la détresse psychologique

Thèse numérisée par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal

Le risque, nouveau paradigme et analyseur sociétal

Le néolibéralisme fait du risque un paradigme qu’il oppose à la centralité du travail. Véritable analyseur sociétal, le risque est énoncé comme « valeur des valeurs » et à ce titre occulte la place du travail dans la production et dans les rapports sociaux. Le risque crée les nouvelles temporalités de l’urgence et de l’aléa, prétend déplacer les rapports de domination et de conflictualité sur la seule prise de risque. L’individu, sommé d’être » entrepreneur de lui-même » et délié, devient coupable de ses échecs et est tenté de se réfugier dans un statut de victime et dans des communautés de peurs. L’État social est invalidé par la construction d’un marché du social et d’une société assurantielle où la précaution cède la place à la réparation. L’insécurité sociale se conjugue alors avec un nouvel ordre sécuritaire de contrôle.Neo-liberalism makes risk into a paradigm which it contrasts with the centrality of work. Risk is a real societal analyser: it is expressed as the « value of values » and as such hides the place of work in production and in social relations. Risk creates new temporalities of urgency and uncertainty, and claims to displace relations of domination and conflict onto risk-taking alone. The individual, summoned to be an « entrepreneur of him-/her-self » and set free, becomes responsible for their failures and tempted to take refuge in the status of victim and in communities of fear. The social state is invalidated by the construction of a market of the social and of an insurance society where precaution gives way to reparation. Social insecurity becomes combined with a new security control order

Les Pseudoperisphinctinae (Ammonitina, Perisphinctidae) de l'horizon à Leckenbyi (Callovien supérieur, zone à Athleta) de Montreuil-Bellay (Maine-et-Loire, France) et description d'une nouvelle espèce, Choffatia isabellae.

International audienceDans la région de Montreuil-Bellay (Maine-et-Loire), de nombreuses coupes ont été réalisées au passage Callovien moyen-Callovien supérieur. Le premier banc attribué au Callovien supérieur a été daté de l'horizon à Leckenbyi. Il a fourni une très importante faune ammonitique (N=3125), dans laquelle les Perisphinctidae représentent 51% de l'effectif. À côté de formes plus ou moins bien connues comme Pseudopeltoceras leckenbyi (Bean), Orionoides pseudorion (Waagen), Subgrossouvria famulum (Bean) et S. crassa Gérard et Contaut, on trouve une espèce qui n'a jamais été ni décrite ni figurée : cette espèce fait l'objet du présent article. Choffatia isabellae n. sp. se distingue sans aucune ambiguité des Perisphinctidae contemporains par : 1) un long stade juvénile lisse, 2) une costulation habituellement ténue, 3) l'absence de formations paraboliques et 4) la très grande fréquence des constrictions. Comme cette espèce est inconnue dans les faunes de l'extrême sommet du Callovien moyen, nous pensons qu'elle a colonisé, avec beaucoup d'autres espèces, dont Peltoceras marysae Bonnot et alii, via la marge sud de la Téthys, la plate-forme nord-ouest européenne à la faveur de l'intervalle transgressif qui débute à l'extrême base du Callovien supérieur. Apparue brutalement à la base de l'horizon à Leckenbyi, cette nouvelle espèce possède son acmé dans la partie médiane de l'horizon, où elle peut représenter la moitié des Perisphinctidae, avant de devenir rare dans la partie supérieure de l'horizon, puis très rare dans l'horizon à Athleta

Reinforcement Learning Approaches to Instrumental Contingency Degradation in Rats

International audienceGoal directed action involves a representation of the consequences of an action. Rats with lesions of the medial prefrontal cortex do not adapt their instrumental response in a Skinner box when food delivery becomes unrelated to lever pressing. This indicates a role for the prefrontal region in adapting to contingency changes, a form of causal learning. We attempted to model this phenomenon in a reinforcement learning framework. Behavioural sequences of normal and lesioned rats were used to feed models based on the SARSA algorithm. One model (factorized-states) focused on temporal factors, representing continuous states as vectors of decaying event traces. The second model (event sequence) emphasized sequences, representing states as n-uplets of events. The values of state-action pairs were incorporated into a softmax policy to derive predicted action probabilities and adjust model parameters. Both models revealed a number of discrepancies between predicted and actual behaviour, emphasising changes in magazine visits rather that lever presses. The models also did not reproduce the differential adaptation of normal and prefrontal lesioned rats to contingency degradation. These data suggest that temporal difference learning models fail to capture causal relationships involved in the adaptation to contingency changes

La preuve par satellite

"En 1980, alors que le réchauffement climatique commençait à donner des signes d’accélération, près de la moitié de la population actuelle du Québec n’était pas encore née! Mais déjà, des satellites étaient en orbite, non pas pour le climat, mais pour la météo et pour observer la Terre. Quarante ans plus tard, ces observations spatiales s’avèrent être des outils extraordinaires pour étudier ce qui s’est passé et ce qui se passe actuellement dans l’Arctique. [...]

L'adaptation des superviseurs à la gestion participative de la prévention des accidents

Cet article porte sur les approches utilisées dans les organisations pour amener les superviseurs à adopter un mode de gestion plus participatif de la sécurité au travail avec leurs employés. Les données présentées sont basées sur cinq études de cas réalisées selon un devis commun et analysées de façon comparative. Utilisant l'approche systémique du changement organisationnel, les auteurs développent le concept de stratégie de changement pour analyser les approches organisationnelles observées, en faisant l'hypothèse que ce sont les stratégies plus systématiques qui auront comme effets d'accroître l'utilisation de la gestion participative de la prévention par les superviseurs, et de réduire le taux de fréquence des accidents. Les résultats confirment largement les hypothèses, mais l'analyse montre aussi que les stratégies non efficaces, au plan des effets escomptés, ont néanmoins une fonction d'utilité qui est discutée.Over the last few decades, various countries have adopted laws and regulations fostering joint regulation and labour participation approaches in occupational heath and safety through joint health and safety committees, safety representatives, and workers' rights to be informed about work hazards and to refuse dangerous work. In order to succeed, these mechanisms should not remain isolated, but should be accompanied by larger organizational changes in labour relations, union and management practices. This article is about one of these organizational changes, namely, the transformation of supervisory management practices in occupational safety towards a more participative approach.Concepts and HypothesesGetting supervisors to adopt a participative management approach in occupational safety means changing their tasks and their way of doing them. From the perspective of a Systems theory of organizational change, it can be hypothesized that such a change will succeed only if consistent changes are brought about in other major components of the organizational System, namely : the individuals and groups involved; the formal organizational structures supporting and controlling individuals in their tasks; and the informal political and cultural dynamics of the organization. Each of these other components may present problems during the change process: resistance to change from individuals and groups; loss of control from formal structures; or loss of support from power groups and fallure of adjustment of cultural corporate values. The concept of organizational change strategy is used to designate all actions taken in the organization to address the aforementioned problems. Consequently, change strategies, which are the independent variable in this study, may be more or less developed and systematic. It is hypothesized that when the change strategy is more developed and systematic, (1) supervisors will use a more participative approach in managing prevention activities (inspection, task analysis, safety meetings, design of corrective measures, etc.) that is, getting their employees to participate in these activities, and (2) the lost-time accident frequency rate will be reduced. Variations in participative supervisory management of occupational safety and lost-time accident frequency rate are, therefore, the dependent variables in the study. A third hypothesis is that a greater use of safety participative management by supervisors should be related to a lower accident frequency rate. Figure 1 in the article illustrates this conceptual model and the hypotheses.MethodsThe study was conducted in five industrial firms located in the province of Quebec, Canada. These firms were selected from a larger sample, using a quota method, in order to include (1) different industrial sectors, (2) different firm sizes, (3) unionized and non-unionized firms, and (4)various geographical locations. In each firm, data were collected through (l)semi-structured interviews (n = 55) with supervisors, workers' representatives, top and middle managers, safety managers and members of the health and safety committee, and (2) questionnaires filled out by all supervisors (n = 63) and various other managers (n = 29).The development level of each change strategy (the independent variable) was measured using a scale (1-10) theoretically constructed by defining a total of ten dimensions referring to the three major change problems (resistance, control, and power and culture) that should be addressed and can be solved by consistent action steps during the change process. Data on actions taken, means and measures used by firms between 1988 and 1992 to encourage supervisors to use safety participative management, were collected and analyzed according to these ten dimensions.Variations in the use of participative safety management by supervisors (the dependent variable) were estimated (+/-) using data collected from various sources, including supervisors, about the evolution of the latter's management practices between 1988 and 1992. The last dependent variable, variation in the lost-time accident frequency rate, was measured by comparing the rates between the first and last year of a given strategy during the period under study. ResultsTable 2 presents the main results of the study. On the left side of the table, each of the ten strategies observed is identified, its level of development is indicated, and the number of dimensions for which action steps were taken is mentioned for each of the three major problems of the change process. On the right side, data is provided about dependent variables. Generally speaking, results largely support the hypotheses. More developed and systematic strategies (A-2, D-2, D-4, E, B, C-2) are all followed by an increase in the supervisors' use of participative safety management and a decrease in the accident frequency rate, while three out of the four less developed and systematic strategies (A-l, C-l, D-3) have inverse results.Discussion and ConclusionAlthough the results provide strong support for the hypotheses and confirm the results of previous studies about the positive impact of participative supervisory management on accident rates, the case studies also shows that non-effective strategies have had an important function in the social construction of effective strategies of organizational change. In brief, all non-effective strategies are characterized by an important unsolved problem of supervisors' and workers' resistance to the change in the safety practices expected by the organization. It appeared that this resistance is not only psychosocial, as generally conceptualized in the Systems theory of organizational change, but is also sociological in terms of a strategy used by supervisors and work teams to negotiate their place in the new "organizational order" which is constructed in the change process. Actually, this social process of "implicit bargaining" appears to be the main mechanism for the social construction of more effective strategies, that is, strategies addressing the resistance problem by developing change ownership by supervisors and workers, the power and culture problem by raising the top management commitment in the change process, and the structural support problem by adapting formal Systems of management in a manner consistent with the desired change

Impacts of inter-trial interval duration on a computational model of sign-tracking vs. goal-tracking behaviour

International audienceIn the context of Pavlovian conditioning, two types of behaviour may emerge within the population (Flagel et al. Nature, 469(7328): 53-57, 2011). Animals may choose to engage either with the conditioned stimulus (CS), a behaviour known as sign-tracking (ST) which is sensitive to dopamine inhibition for its acquisition, or with the food cup in which the reward or unconditioned stimulus (US) will eventually be delivered, a behaviour known as goal-tracking (GT) which is dependent on dopamine for its expression only. Previous work by Lesaint et al. (PLoS Comput Biol, 10(2), 2014) offered a computational explanation for these phenomena and led to the prediction that varying the duration of the inter-trial interval (ITI) would change the relative ST-GT proportion in the population as well as phasic dopamine responses. A recent study verified this prediction, but also found a rich variance of ST and GT behaviours within the trial which goes beyond the original computational model. In this paper, we provide a computational perspective on these novel results