Gemma Bovery

Bemerkungen zum Film ‚Gemma Bovery‘ von Anne Fontaine (2014), der eine Flaubert-Parodie in der Form einer Bildergeschichte von Posy Simmonds (1999) zur Vorlage hat

Trois contes (extrait)

Sermo humilis : réalisme et christianisme « T’es-tu nourrie de la Bible ? Pendant plus detrois ans je n’ai lu que ça le soiravant de m’endormir. »(Gustave Flaubert, lettre à Louise Colet) Les recherches d’Auerbach sur le réalisme ont un avantage inestimable, celui de poser d’emblée la question de la représentation de la réalité dans un cadre rhétorique. S’inscrivant dans la tradition hégélienne, Auerbach considère le réalisme comme le déploiement d’une figure paradoxale : l’incarnation du Ver..

Flauberts Realismus

Lassen Sie mich mit einem Zitat Flauberts beginnen, das vielleicht selbst ausgesprochene Flaubertkenner überrascht. 1852 schreibt Flaubert an Louise Colet: »Voilà ce que tous les socialistes du monde n’ont pas voulu voir, avec leur éternelle prédication matérialiste. Ils ont nié la Douleur, ils ont blasphémé les trois quarts de la poésie moderne, le sang du Christ qui se remue en nous. – Rien ne l’extirpera, rien ne le tarira. Il ne s’agit pas de le dessécher, mais de lui faire des ruisseaux...

Alternative approaches for acute inhalation toxicity testing to address global regulatory and non-regulatory data requirements: an international workshop report

Inhalation toxicity testing, which provides the basis for hazard labeling and risk management of chemicals with potential exposure to the respiratory tract, has traditionally been conducted using animals. Significant research efforts have been directed at the development of mechanistically based, non-animal testing approaches that hold promise to provide human-relevant data and an enhanced understanding of toxicity mechanisms. A September 2016 workshop, “Alternative Approaches for Acute Inhalation Toxicity Testing to Address Global Regulatory and Non-Regulatory Data Requirements”, explored current testing requirements and ongoing efforts to achieve global regulatory acceptance for non-animal testing approaches. The importance of using integrated approaches that combine existing data with in vitro and/or computational approaches to generate new data was discussed. Approaches were also proposed to develop a strategy for identifying and overcoming obstacles to replacing animal tests. Attendees noted the importance of dosimetry considerations and of understanding mechanisms of acute toxicity, which could be facilitated by the development of adverse outcome pathways. Recommendations were made to (1) develop a database of existing acute inhalation toxicity data; (2) prepare a state-of-the-science review of dosimetry determinants, mechanisms of toxicity, and existing approaches to assess acute inhalation toxicity; (3) identify and optimize in silico models; and (4) develop a decision tree/testing strategy, considering physicochemical properties and dosimetry, and conduct proof-of-concept testing. Working groups have been established to implement these recommendations

Adverse outcome pathways:opportunities, limitations and open questions

Adverse outcome pathways (AOPs) are a recent toxicological construct that connects, in a formalized, transparent and quality-controlled way, mechanistic information to apical endpoints for regulatory purposes. AOP links a molecular initiating event (MIE) to the adverse outcome (AO) via key events (KE), in a way specified by key event relationships (KER). Although this approach to formalize mechanistic toxicological information only started in 2010, over 200 AOPs have already been established. At this stage, new requirements arise, such as the need for harmonization and re-assessment, for continuous updating, as well as for alerting about pitfalls, misuses and limits of applicability. In this review, the history of the AOP concept and its most prominent strengths are discussed, including the advantages of a formalized approach, the systematic collection of weight of evidence, the linkage of mechanisms to apical end points, the examination of the plausibility of epidemiological data, the identification of critical knowledge gaps and the design of mechanistic test methods. To prepare the ground for a broadened and appropriate use of AOPs, some widespread misconceptions are explained. Moreover, potential weaknesses and shortcomings of the current AOP rule set are addressed (1) to facilitate the discussion on its further evolution and (2) to better define appropriate vs. less suitable application areas. Exemplary toxicological studies are presented to discuss the linearity assumptions of AOP, the management of event modifiers and compensatory mechanisms, and whether a separation of toxicodynamics from toxicokinetics including metabolism is possible in the framework of pathway plasticity. Suggestions on how to compromise between different needs of AOP stakeholders have been added. A clear definition of open questions and limitations is provided to encourage further progress in the field

Trois contes (extrait)

Sermo humilis : réalisme et christianisme « T’es-tu nourrie de la Bible ? Pendant plus detrois ans je n’ai lu que ça le soiravant de m’endormir. »(Gustave Flaubert, lettre à Louise Colet) Les recherches d’Auerbach sur le réalisme ont un avantage inestimable, celui de poser d’emblée la question de la représentation de la réalité dans un cadre rhétorique. S’inscrivant dans la tradition hégélienne, Auerbach considère le réalisme comme le déploiement d’une figure paradoxale : l’incarnation du Ver..

Le continent noir du désir masculin : Colet et Flaubert, encore

Few correspondences are as distressingly surprising to the reader as the letters between Louise Colet and Gustave Flaubert.  The hope entertained by every reader of a happy love story has rarely been so disappointed.  The studies on sexuality by Freud, one of the greatest skeptics on the subject of love, shed light on the vicissitudes of masculine desire.  Flaubert’s letters to Colet are the dramatization of a desire conforming to kinks of a fetishist scenario.  The fetish is the slippers in which Colet’s bloodstained handkerchief is thrust and then used by Flaubert to masturbate.  The investing of this fetish object is only the more evident, you might even say clinical, symptom of this fetishist disposition.  According to these letters masturbation, linked to foot and shoe fetishism, was Flaubert’s most satisfying sexual practice.  The tragedy of castration is embodied in the slippers, a childish way of interpreting sexual difference.  On the one hand the slippers are what the child sees before becoming aware of the absence of the maternal penis.  The slippers, a most classic fetish, by a metonymic displacement take the place of the maternal phallus, whose absence is discovered with horror.  This lack makes the boy realize the possibility of castration.  The fetish object is both memory of and triumph over castration. Flaubert’s fetish bears the mark of castration: the blood stains.  They both witness and screen the wound.  Nothing excites Flaubert as much as these slippers, which together deny (Verleugnung) and acknowledge castration.  As Freud writes, the fetishist does not only adore the fetish.  Often castration is inscribed in the object.  Flaubert expresses his inability to love on the one hand by his extreme male chauvinistic and hygienic practice of “baisade” or “foutrerie”, and on the other, in a ascetic, even monastic, discourse of “life for Art”, or, even better, of an Art that demands dying to life.  Such words are only a screen to hide an agonizing drama which he never wants to experience again.  For it would mean being torn once more between castration and loss of the love object.  This is a conflict which he believes he resolved once and for all in what has traditionally been called his crisis.  Flaubert is already castrated and dead.  In Art he can gamble and lose what he could preserve in life only at the cost of love: his virility.  Flaubert displaces onto writing the castration of love.  He produces a work, a phallic corpus, from which everything feminine – limp, flabby, dripping – must be scrupulously removed.  But this corpus, shaped in his stylistic work by the physiological model of the masculine sex, reveals a desperate identification with men and women mortally wounded by love.  This love wound often carries religious connotations.  Thus, contrary to what has often been claimed, the Flaubertian text is not a assertion of his virility.  Rather, it would be both a performance of and a triumph over the castration drama