Laura Stark and Annika Björnsdotter Teppo(eds), Power and Informality In Urban Africa

Dirigé par deux ethnologues finnoises, Laura Stark et Annika Björnsdotter Teppo, Power and Informality In Urban Africa est un ouvrage collectif et interdisciplinaire publié dans la collection Africa Now des éditions Zed. Fruit d'une longue collaboration internationale, il rassemble des contributions issues des études urbaines, de l’architecture, de la géographie, de l’ethnologie et de l'anthropologie, et apporte un nouvel éclairage sur les dynamiques sociales et politiques d’aménagement des v..

Pineoblastoma segregates into molecular sub-groups with distinct clinico-pathologic features: a Rare Brain Tumor Consortium registry study

Pineoblastomas (PBs) are rare, aggressive pediatric brain tumors of the pineal gland with modest overall survival despite intensive therapy. We sought to define the clinical and molecular spectra of PB to inform new treatment approaches for this orphan cancer. Tumor, blood, and clinical data from 91 patients with PB or supratentorial primitive neuroectodermal tumor (sPNETs/CNS-PNETs), and 2 pineal parenchymal tumors of intermediate differentiation (PPTIDs) were collected from 29 centres in the Rare Brain Tumor Consortium. We used global DNA methylation profiling to define a core group of PB from 72/93 cases, which were delineated into five molecular sub-groups. Copy number, whole exome and targeted sequencing, and miRNA expression analyses were used to evaluate the clinico-pathologic significance of each sub-group. Tumors designated as group 1 and 2 almost exclusively exhibited deleterious homozygous loss-of-function alterations in miRNA biogenesis genes (DICER1, DROSHA, and DGCR8) in 62 and 100% of group 1 and 2 tumors, respectively. Recurrent alterations of the oncogenic MYC-miR-17/92-RB1 pathway were observed in the RB and MYC sub-group, respectively, characterized by RB1 loss with gain of miR-17/92, and recurrent gain or amplification of MYC. PB sub-groups exhibited distinct clinical features: group 1–3 arose in older children (median ages 5.2–14.0 years) and had intermediate to excellent survival (5-year OS of 68.0–100%), while Group RB and MYC PB patients were much younger (median age 1.3–1.4 years) with dismal survival (5-year OS 37.5% and 28.6%, respectively). We identified age

Maux de l'étranger. Mots de l'étrangeté dans Summertime de J.M. Coetzee

Written in 2009, J.M.Coetzee’s Summertime examines the modalities and intricacies of the personal itinerary of a white male writer in the making, a Mr John Coetzee, and the maturation of a literary oeuvre in the heyday of apartheid. This multifaceted text focuses on John's formative years and J.M. Coetzee's fictional protagonist stands out not only as an outsider but also as a melancholy philologist caught up in a profoundly estranged relationship with the languages he had been brought up in and had to speak and work with, and, subsequently, with his culture, family and lovers. Coetzee's text overtly discusses the complex political and ideological framework that shaped, stifled and fractured the society and culture his protagonist had grown up in and away from but also to some extent the geographical, sociological, racial and linguistic transformations that had started to take place underground and against the apartheid regulations and oppression

« Country going to the dogs ? » Outrages humains, dilemmes politiques dans Disgrace de J. M. Coetzee

Très provocateur et controversé, Disgrace, publié par J. M. Coetzee en 1999, est le lieu de l’impasse humaine et de l’équivoque éthique. Critiqué pour la représentation noire et désespérée qu’il fait du paysage social et politique de l’Afrique du Sud contemporaine et pour avoir renforcé les stéréotypes raciaux sans proposer aucune perspective politique positive, Coetzee, il est vrai, ne mâche pas ses mots ; pourtant, l’examen critique du champ social et politique qu’il propose refuse d’ancrer..

‘Nothing is worse than what we can imagine’: Secrecy and Allegory in J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians and Disgrace

Secrecy and the various rhetorical devices that this option entails are major narrative strategies in Coetzee’s fiction and several ramifications of these motifs are recurrently mobilised in many of his texts. Research in clinical psychopathology and psychoanalysis provides us with a framework for an enhanced understanding of why certain things have to be left unsaid or denied, be it torture and mutilation in Waiting for the Barbarians, or rape in Disgrace. Such violent circumstances or events endow human relationships and power relations with a melancholy character. The morbid motifs repeatedly used by the novelist also lead him to probe the limits of the potential to express and narrate. So ultimately the representation of handicap and physical molestation on an imaginary level allows Coetzee to reflect on the nature and position of South African subjects in their complex relation with a crushing history and society. Allegory plays an integral role in Coetzee’s writing of secrecy, if only as a means of calling itself into question

Haunting Apartheids : Melancholy Reminiscences In J.M. Coetzee's Summertime

International audienceJ.M.Coetzee's Summertime examines the intricacies of the personal itinerary of a white male writer in the making, a Mr John Coetzee, and the maturation of a literary oeuvre at the height of apartheid. This introspective narrative, alongside the highly complex self-conscious and self-ironic strategies which make Coetzee's partly autobiographical text a unique literary object, is a poignant revisitation of the haunting 1970's in South Africa.Summertime discusses the complex political and ideological framework that shaped, stifled and fractured the society and culture his protagonist had grown up in and away from but also to some extent the geographical, sociological, racial and linguistic transformations that had started to take place and against the apartheid regulations and oppression. Thus it both chronicles and deconstructs several strata of apartheids, as well as their lethal set-up that eventually led to the final disintegration of the regime

Les mots étrangers

Ce numéro de la Revue LISA aborde la problématique de l’empreinte et l’emprunt des mots ou des phrases en langue étrangère dans divers textes littéraires et documents de civilisation du monde anglophone du XVIIIème siècle à nos jours. Les articles réunis ici étudient comment l’irruption d’une langue dans une autre met en jeu des tensions de familiarité et d’altérité, soulevant des questions identitaires qu’il s’agisse de genre, de nationalité, ou de culture socio-religieuse. Ces études ont pour ambition de montrer comment l’entrecroisement des langues nourrit la création littéraire et contribue à la construction d’un cadre culturel historique, géographique et social. Elles analysent la question de l’étranger dans la langue, au double sens de l’intrus dans une culture d’une autre langue que la sienne d’une part, et d’autre part de l’aspect insolite de la langue étrangère qui trouble l’homogénéité d’un texte d’une autre langue. This issue of the Revue Lisa focuses on the use of foreign words and phrases in a variety of literary texts and civilisation documents in English from the period spanning the 18th century to the present. The articles presented here study how the intrusion of a foreign language in a text authored in English puts into play complex tensions of familiarity and otherness. That friction between languages also raises questions of identity related to gender and nationality, and the sense of belonging to a defined socio-religious community. The aim of these studies is to show how the interaction between English and other languages enriches literary creation and helps construct the historical, geographical and social framework of a particular culture. It addresses the issue of the foreigner using a language which is not his own, and that of the foreignness of the words of others which are woven into a text in another language

Behind the Scenes

Commonwealth Essays and Studies 30.1 (“Behind the Scenes”) considers the novel as a stage and explores strategies of avoidance, ambiguity, and irony as ways to skirt censorship – be it Freudian or political. The studies revisit Fanon’s concept of white mask, address filmic illusion in the world of Bollywood, or problematize the literary codes of realism in a postcolonial context