The Agonistics of Reading: Playing, Gambling, Committing

From Michel Picard’s La lecture comme jeu to Umberto Eco’s model of the “game of chess”, reading has often been compared to a kind of game. Games serve as a useful template of interaction, highlighting both the exterior set of rules governing an activity, and the agency that these rules leave to the individual. Yet games are also a constitutive human activity, with myriads of variants, from the free play of children to the gambler’s thrill to the highly ritualized sets of actions and reactions seen in martial arts or chess. This article proposes to review classical and contemporary theories of reading based on their specific use of the metaphor of reading as a game. It first presents the structuralist and phenomenological approaches, which tend to define reading as a performance based on pre-established rules, like a game of chess. It then delves into theories that instead choose to highlight the incalculable aspect of every new reading, the possibility for the reader to go off the beaten path. These tend to see reading more as a game of chance than a game of chess. This does not mean, however, that they construe reading as licentious: gambles involve stakes. Theories like Jean-Jacques Lecercle’s Marxist pragmatics are most specific in explaining what the reader is actually committing to. The stance we take, our interaction with texts as “interpellations”, are part and parcel of our lives as social and political beings. They are the products of a certain context, but they may in turn influence or call into question the very structures that make them possible. This is why this article suggests reading be examined through the notion of agonistics. Taking up the ancient Greek word “agôn”, which implies that games are forms of trial made to reveal something of the player’s nature, the agonistics of reading posits that reading must not be seen as an isolated phenomenon. On the contrary, the challenge that texts pose, to confront them or to accept them, is fundamental in the construction of our identity as readers and as human beings. This dialectics of self-revelation and self-construction, through the interaction with texts, is the often unspoken yet decisive game that every reader plays.De l’ouvrage de Michel Picard, La lecture comme jeu, au modèle du « jeu d’échecs » proposé par Umberto Eco, la lecture a souvent été comparée au jeu. De fait, le schéma du jeu permet de penser l’interaction entre une série de règles externes et les possibilités d’action qu’elles laissent à l’individu. Mais au-delà de ces seules structures, le jeu est une activité fondamentale chez l’homme, avec une infinité de variations, des jeux d’imagination d’enfants aux « coups » du parieur, et aux séries ritualisées d’actions et de réactions qui composent un combat d’arts martiaux ou une partie d’échecs. Ainsi, cet article propose de passer en revue plusieurs théories classiques et contemporaines de la lecture, en étudiant spécifiquement leur façon d’employer la métaphore de la lecture comme jeu. Il s’intéresse d’abord aux théories structuralistes et phénoménologiques, qui tendent à considérer la lecture comme l'application de règles pré-établies, comparable à un jeu d’échecs. Il est ensuite question des théories qui préfèrent éclairer la liberté que possède tout lecteur de sortir des sentiers battus. Ces perspectives comparent plus volontiers la lecture à un jeu de hasard qu’à un jeu d’échec : un « coup », qui comme le coup de dé mallarméen « jamais n’abolira le hasard ». Mais le « coup » du parieur a toujours son enjeu. A ce titre, les théories comme la pragmatique marxiste de Jean-Jacques Lecercle donnent une explication particulièrement pertinente de ce que la lecture met en jeu. Notre posture face aux interpellations des textes informe notre être social et politique. Voilà pourquoi cet article propose une vision de la lecture basée sur la notion d’agonistique. Reprenant le mot grec « agôn », qui fait du jeu une épreuve révélatrice, l’agonistique de la lecture soutient que les textes posent au lecteur un défi. En les réduisant à des protocoles préexistants ou en les ouvrant par d’incalculables « coups », nous participons essentiellement à la définition de notre propre identité, en tant que lecteur et en tant qu’être humain. Cette dialectique de révélation et de construction de soi, par l’interaction avec les textes, est le jeu fondamental, quoique souvent passé sous silence, auquel se livre tout lecteur

Avant-propos

Le terme de modernisme, dans sa complexité et sa multiplicité, désigne un ensemble d’éruptions et de disruptions tectoniques, qui ont bouleversé le paysage culturel du vingtième siècle, et s’érigent toujours à l’arrière-plan du monde actuel. Au cours du 61e congrès de la SAES (Société des anglicistes de l’enseignement supérieur), qui s’est tenu à Clermont-Ferrand du 2 au 4 juin 2022, et dont le thème étaient les « Failles », lors du panel conjoint entre la Société d’Études Modernistes (SEM) ..

« La machine dans la littérature et les arts visuels du monde anglophone »

Cette journée d’études internationale, organisée par les doctorantes Diane Drouin, Anouk Bottero et Omayyah Al-Shabab, avec le soutien de l’équipe de recherche VALE (EA 4085) et de l’ED IV, à Sorbonne-Université, constituait l’aboutissement du séminaire doctoral du laboratoire OVALE, qui portait cette année sur le thème de « La machine dans la littérature et les arts visuels du monde anglophone ». Fidèles à l’esprit d’ouverture de cette équipe, les contributions alliaient réflexions sur l’art..

“Show! Hide! Show!”: High Modernism and the Lure of the Obscene

Dans le canon de la littérature moderniste d’après-guerre, l’obscène est le plus souvent étudié à travers la question de la liberté artistique face à la censure, de l’intérêt d’exprimer ce qui choque ou scandalise au sein d’une œuvre littéraire. Quoique pertinente en contexte, cette perspective élude une tension bien plus globale, inhérente à l’esthétique moderniste. En effet, si des œuvres aussi centrales que The Waste Land ou Ulysses sont hantées par des images à caractère sexuel, scatologique, pervers ou violent, leur rapport à l’obscène se joue souvent autant dans ce qu’elles cachent que dans ce qu’elles expriment. De fait, outre sa valeur légale, telle qu’elle était définie notamment par l’Obscene Publications Act de 1857, le mot « ob-scène » renvoie également à la notion d’une limite entre ce que l’on peut montrer et ce qui doit rester hors de vue, limite que l’art moderniste ne cesse de remettre en question. Des auteurs comme Eliot, Joyce, mais également Virginia Woolf, jouent avec les cadres narratifs et poétiques, et avec l’ambiguïté du langage, pour faire signe vers ce qui élude les frontières sociales et culturelles du représentable. Leurs textes sont pleins de remarques voilées, de sous-entendus : des craquements derrière des portes closes (Woolf 1923, 124), des cris masqués par un chant d’oiseau (Eliot 1969, 58), des gémissements et des débordements recouverts par l’explosion symbolique d’un feu d’artifice (Joyce 1922, 478). En outre, tous ces événements laissent des traces, à partir desquelles il est possible de reconstituer d’autres scènes et d’avoir accès à d’autres facettes de l’œuvre. Ainsi, l’on peut dire que l’obscène prend la forme d’un appel. Le lecteur est interpellé, à travers des indices et des énigmes, mené par sa curiosité ou ses instincts voyeurs à explorer ce que cachent les silences du texte. Il doit alors se confronter à ce qu’il découvre de non-dit – sur la souffrance psychique, l’alcoolisme, le viol et les agressions sexuelles ou encore sur les horreurs de la guerre – mais aussi questionner son propre aveuglement, face à ces formes de contre-histoires du monde dans lequel il vit. Sans nous y forcer, l’esthétique moderniste de l’obscène nous propose ainsi d’échapper aux cadres artistiques traditionnels, pour ouvrir notre regard à ce que l’on veut nous cacher, mais aussi, en dernière instance, à tout ce que nous-mêmes avions accepté de ne pas voir.Within the canon of postwar “high” modernism, the question of the obscene is often framed in terms of the artistic freedom to talk about sexuality and the body, and the status of indecency within literary works. However, this narrow focus only deals with the more visible facet of a broader tension, which pervades modernist aesthetics. Indeed, though such central works as The Waste Land or Ulysses are haunted by references to sexuality, scatology, perversity and violence, their relation to the obscene plays just as much on what is left hidden as on what is shown. Indeed, the word “ob-scene” may also refer to the boundary between the “scene” and its margins, between what is presented and what remains out of sight, and blurring such boundaries constitutes a fundamental modernist strategy. Artists such as Joyce and Eliot, but also the supposedly primmer Virginia Woolf, play with narrative or poetic framing, as well as the ambivalence of language, to signal towards what escapes the social and cultural boundaries of representation. Their works teem with veils and innuendos: cracks echoing behind closed doors (Woolf 1923, 124), cries disguised as the chirping of a bird (Eliot 1969, 58), or gasps and releases covered by the symbolic explosion of fireworks (Joyce 1922, 478), leaving traces from which another scene, another facet of the text, can be reconstituted. The obscene then becomes a form of appeal: through hints and enigmas, readers are called upon, led by curiosity or voyeuristic impulses to delve into sometimes fearful depths, where they can be confronted with mental suffering, alcoholism, rape and sexual aggression or the horrors of war, and made to reflect on their own blindness to these untold counter-narratives, hidden in plain sight. Without forcing these things upon us, the modernist aesthetics of the obscene break away from traditional framing, opening up the perspective towards what people want to hide, but also, crucially, to what we might have decided not to see

Revving up natural killer cells and cytokine-induced killer cells against hematological malignancies

Natural killer (NK) cells belong to innate immunity and exhibit cytolytic activity against infectious pathogens and tumor cells. NK-cell function is finely tuned by receptors that transduce inhibitory or activating signals, such as killer immunoglobulin-like receptors, NK Group 2 member D (NKG2D), NKG2A/CD94, NKp46, and others, and recognize both foreign and self-antigens expressed by NK-susceptible targets. Recent insights into NK-cell developmental intermediates have translated into a more accurate definition of culture conditions for the in vitro generation and propagation of human NK cells. In this respect, interleukin (IL)-15 and IL-21 are instrumental in driving NK-cell differentiation and maturation, and hold great promise for the design of optimal NK-cell culture protocols. Cytokine-induced killer (CIK) cells possess phenotypic and functional hallmarks of both T cells and NK cells. Similar to T cells, they express CD3 and are expandable in culture, while not requiring functional priming for in vivo activity, like NK cells. CIK cells may offer some advantages over other cell therapy products, including ease of in vitro propagation and no need for exogenous administration of IL-2 for in vivo priming. NK cells and CIK cells can be expanded using a variety of clinical-grade approaches, before their infusion into patients with cancer. Herein, we discuss GMP-compliant strategies to isolate and expand human NK and CIK cells for immunotherapy purposes, focusing on clinical trials of adoptive transfer to patients with hematological malignancies

Elucidation of the ATP7B N-Domain Mg2+-ATP Coordination Site and Its Allosteric Regulation

The diagnostic of orphan genetic disease is often a puzzling task as less attention is paid to the elucidation of the pathophysiology of these rare disorders at the molecular level. We present here a multidisciplinary approach using molecular modeling tools and surface plasmonic resonance to study the function of the ATP7B protein, which is impaired in the Wilson disease. Experimentally validated in silico models allow the elucidation in the Nucleotide binding domain (N-domain) of the Mg2+-ATP coordination site and answer to the controversial role of the Mg2+ ion in the nucleotide binding process. The analysis of protein motions revealed a substantial effect on a long flexible loop branched to the N-domain protein core. We demonstrated the capacity of the loop to disrupt the interaction between Mg2+-ATP complex and the N-domain and propose a role for this loop in the allosteric regulation of the nucleotide binding process

Defective CD2 pathway T cell activation in systemic lupus erythematosus

CD2 (T11; sheep erythrocyte receptor) is the surface component of an alternative, antigen-independent pathway of human T cell activation. The response to certain anti-CD2 antibodies is relatively independent of accessory cell signals and therefore provides a direct measurement of T cell function. The CD2 pathway may be important in the differentiation of thymocytes, on which the expression of CD2 precedes the appearance of the CD3–T cell receptor complex. In view of the impaired T cell regulation of immune responses in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), we examined the activation of peripheral blood lymphocytes by anti-CD2 antibodies in 57 SLE patients and 32 normal control subjects. The CD2 pathway response was lower in the SLE patients ( P < 0.0001); 18 of the 57 SLE patients had a lower response than any of the control subjects. The SLE low-responder patients did not differ from the normal-responder patients in terms of disease activity or use of antiinflammatory and immunosuppressive medications. Low responses to anti-CD2 were corrected to normal by the coaddition of a submitogenic amount of phorbol myristate acetate (1 ng/ml). In some low-responder patients, the responses were normalized by the removal of non–T cells. The data indicate that some SLE patients have impaired responses to CD2 pathway activation and that this may reflect intrinsic T cell defects and/or regulatory influences of non–T cells.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/37788/1/1780340508_ftp.pd

Accuracy of citrulline, I-FABP and d-lactate in the diagnosis of acute mesenteric ischemia

Data availability: Research data are not shared.Supplementary Information oi available online at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-98012-w#Sec14 .Early diagnosis of acute mesenteric ischemia (AMI) remains a clinical challenge, and no biomarker has been consistently validated. We aimed to assess the accuracy of three promising circulating biomarkers for diagnosing AMI—citrulline, intestinal fatty acid-binding protein (I-FABP), and D-lactate. A cross-sectional diagnostic study enrolled AMI patients admitted to the intestinal stroke center and controls with acute abdominal pain of another origin. We included 129 patients—50 AMI and 79 controls. Plasma citrulline concentrations were significantly lower in AMI patients compared to the controls [15.3 μmol/L (12.0–26.0) vs. 23.3 μmol/L (18.3–29.8), p = 0.001]. However, the area under the receiver operating curves (AUROC) for the diagnosis of AMI by Citrulline was low: 0.68 (95% confidence interval = 0.58–0.78). No statistical difference was found in plasma I-FABP and plasma D-lactate concentrations between the AMI and control groups, with an AUROC of 0.44, and 0.40, respectively. In this large cross-sectional study, citrulline, I-FABP, and D-lactate failed to differentiate patients with AMI from patients with acute abdominal pain of another origin. Further research should focus on the discovery of new biomarkers.Grants from MSD-Avenir and APHP funded the SURVIBIO study; Alexandre Nuzzo received Ph.D. Grants from “Fondation de l'Avenir” and the French Gastroenterology Society (SNFGE)