Entre intelligibilité et authenticité : perspectives butlériennes sur la quête identitaire dans trois romans de Nathalie Sarraute (Portrait d'un inconnu, Le planétarium et Tu ne t'aimes pas)

RÉSUMÉ : Alors même que Nathalie Sarraute s'est toujours opposée aux lectures genrées ou féministes de son œuvre, ce mémoire postule qu'une analyse du rapport que les personnages sarrautiens entretiennent avec le genre permet de mettre au jour l'espace dans lequel se situe leur quête d'authenticité, entre l'impératif de reconnaissance qui accompagne toute existence sociale et l'absence totale d'exigences identitaires. Cette analyse des romans Portrait d'un inconnu (1948), Le planétarium (1959) et Tu ne t'aimes pas (1989) s'appuiera sur les travaux de la philosophe Judith Butler qui, concevant le genre comme performatif, le place au centre de la formation des sujets. Si une telle conception performative de l'identité semble au premier abord incompatible avec une quête d'authenticité comme celle que l'on retrouve chez Sarraute, ce mémoire montre que les façons d'exercer une puissance d'agir et de s'opposer au pouvoir que dégage Butler correspondent bel et bien aux moyens entrepris par les personnages sarrautiens pour mener leur quête identitaire. Les travaux de Butler, en effet, empruntent une trajectoire qui va de la définition de l'agentivité comme un outil du pouvoir à la recherche de formes de reconnaissance qui passent par l'acceptation des limites de sa propre cohérence. Cette progression identifiée dans les travaux de Butler, de Trouble dans le genre à La vie psychique du pouvoir et du Pouvoir des mots au Récit de soi, permet de cerner le mouvement qui émerge des trois romans de Nathalie Sarraute étudiés, qui va de l'impossibilité pour le personnage d'échapper aux contraintes de son milieu, dans Le planétarium, à l'exploration d'une nouvelle relation, féconde, à l'abject et au tropisme, dans Portrait d'un inconnu, puis à la mise en place, dans Tu ne t'aimes pas, d'une forme de reconnaissance qui, bien qu'intermittente, s'avère libératrice et permet d'atteindre une forme viable d'authenticité. -- Mot(s) clé(s) en français : Nathalie Sarraute, Judith Butler, quête identitaire, genre sexuel, performativité, intelligibilité, authenticité. -- ABSTRACT : While Nathalie Sarraute always opposed a gendered or feminist reading of her works, this thesis argues that an analysis of the Sarrautian characters' relation to gender may shed light on the space occupied by their quest for authenticity-struck as it is between the imperative for recognition in social life and the total absence of identity obligations. The analysis of the novels Portrait of a Man Unknown (1948), The Planetarium (1959) and You Don't Love Yourself (1989) will rely on philosopher Judith Butler's theoretical work wherein gender is conceived as performative and is central to the subject's formation. Upon preliminary inspection, such a performative conception of identity may seem to be incompatible with the kind of quest for authenticity found in Sarraute's literature. However, this thesis proposes otherwise, showing that the means of gaining agency and opposing power fleshed out by Butler find clear echo in the ways in which Sarraute's characters advance their quests for identity. Indeed, Butler's work moves from defining agency as a tool of power to a search for forms of recognition that arise through accepting the limits of one's own coherence. This progression, charted in Butler's works from Gender Trouble to The Psychic Life of Power and from Excitable Speech to Giving an Account of Oneself, helps pin down the dynamics that emerge within Sarraute's three aforementioned novels. From the impossibility of escaping the constraints of one's milieu in The Planetarium and exploring a new and fruitful relationship to abjection in Portrait of a Man Unknown, the protagonist comes to build, in You Don't Love Yourself, a form of intelligibility which, while intermittent, is ultimately liberating and permits to reach a viable kind of authenticity. -- Mot(s) clé(s) en anglais : Nathalie Sarraute, Judith Butler, quest for identity, gender, performativity, intelligibility, authenticity

Committed, inspiring, and healthy teachers: how do school environment and motivational factors facilitate optimal functioning at career start?

This study aimed to deepen the understanding of the role of work motivation in teachers at career start. Participants were 589 beginning French-Canadian teachers working in public elementary and high schools. In addition to situating the forms of motivation (autonomous versus controlled) that drive teachers in the three first years of their career, the results provide support for a model explaining the motivational pathways by which school environment factors (work overload, control, recognition, and sense of community) relate to teachers’ psychological health (emotional exhaustion), attitude toward the job (occupational commitment), and behaviors in the classroom (climate that fosters student attentiveness). © 2016 The Author

Revisiting the Multidimensional Work Motivation Scale (MWMS)

This multi-sample study (5 samples) revisited the content and factor structure of the Multidimensional Work Motivation Scale (MWMS) through exploratory structural equation modelling. Specifically, the operational representation of, and the relations between, the types of behavioural regulation were investigated as was their relation to theoretical outcomes. Results suggest the removal of three problematic items and show that work motivation, as measured by the MWMS, is best represented by a factor structure reflecting autonomous motivation, introjected and external regulation as well as amotivation. Furthermore, introjected regulation is more strongly represented by its avoidance subscale, whereas the two types of external regulation (material and social) are not distinguishable. Lastly, autonomous motivation is linked to optimal employee functioning (e.g., vigor/vitality, satisfaction, lower turnover intention). The two controlled types of regulation have differentiated relations with performance, but are both linked to poor employee health and turnover intention, with (avoidance) introjected regulation being a particularly important predictor. By revisiting the content of the MWMS and cross-validating its structure in five samples, this study provides an empirically adequate representation of the types of regulation and their outcomes. Suggestions for future research aimed at improving the content of the MWMS are also offered

Revisiting the Multidimensional Work Motivation Scale (MWMS)

ABSTRACT This multi-sample study (5 samples) revisited the content and factor structure of the Multidimensional Work Motivation Scale (MWMS) through exploratory structural equation modelling. Specifically, the operational representation of, and the relations between, the types of behavioural regulation were investigated as was their relation to theoretical outcomes. Results suggest the removal of three problematic items and show that work motivation, as measured by the MWMS, is best represented by a factor structure reflecting autonomous motivation, introjected and external regulation as well as amotivation. Furthermore, introjected regulation is more strongly represented by its avoidance subscale, whereas the two types of external regulation (material and social) are not distinguishable. Lastly, autonomous motivation is linked to optimal employee functioning (e.g., vigor/vitality, satisfaction, lower turnover intention). The two controlled types of regulation have differentiated relations with performance, but are both linked to poor employee health and turnover intention, with (avoidance) introjected regulation being a particularly important predictor. By revisiting the content of the MWMS and cross-validating its structure in five samples, this study provides an empirically adequate representation of the types of regulation and their outcomes. Suggestions for future research aimed at improving the content of the MWMS are also offered

Le Forum, Vol. 41 No. 3

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/francoamericain_forum/1092/thumbnail.jp

A close look at the Centaurus A group of galaxies III. Recent star formation histories of late-type dwarfs around M83

We study the resolved stellar populations of dwarf galaxies in the nearby Centaurus A/M83 group of galaxies. Our goal is to characterize their evolutionary history and to investigate eventual similarities or differences with the dwarf population in other group environments. This work presents the analysis of five late-type (irregular) dwarfs found in the vicinity of the giant spiral M83. Using archival HST/ACS data, we perform synthetic color-magnitude diagram modeling to derive the star formation histories of these late-type dwarfs. The target objects show heterogeneous star formation histories, with average star formation rates of 0.08 to 0.70x10^{-2} M_odot/yr. Some of them present prolonged, global bursts of star formation (~300-500 Myr). The studied galaxies are all metal-poor ([Fe/H] ~-1.4). We further investigate the spatial extent of different stellar populations, finding that the young stars show a clumpy distribution, as opposed to the smooth, broad extent of the old ones. The actively star forming regions have sizes of ~100 pc and lifetimes of >~100 Myr, thus suggesting a stochastic star formation mode for the target dwarf irregular galaxies. The galaxies formed ~20% to 70% of their stars more than ~7 Gyr ago. The studied dwarfs have average star formation rates slightly higher than their analogues in the Local Group, but comparable to those in the M81 group. Our preliminary sample indicates that the neutral gas content of the target dwarfs does seem to be affected by the group environment: galaxies within a denser region have a much lower M_HI/ than the isolated ones, meaning that they will exhaust their gas reservoir more quickly.Comment: 20 pages, 12 figures; accepted for publication in A&

Le Forum, Vol. 44 #2

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/francoamericain_forum/1104/thumbnail.jp

Hamiltonian Theory of the Composite Fermion Wigner Crystal

Experimental results indicating the existence of the high magnetic field Wigner Crystal have been available for a number of years. While variational wavefunctions have demonstrated the instability of the Laughlin liquid to a Wigner Crystal at sufficiently small filling, calculations of the excitation gaps have been hampered by the strong correlations. Recently a new Hamiltonian formulation of the fractional quantum Hall problem has been developed. In this work we extend the Hamiltonian approach to include states of nonuniform density, and use it to compute the excitation gaps of the Wigner Crystal states. We find that the Wigner Crystal states near $\nu=1/5$ are quantitatively well described as crystals of Composite Fermions with four vortices attached. Predictions for gaps and the shear modulus of the crystal are presented, and found to be in reasonable agreement with experiments.Comment: 41 page, 6 figures, 3 table

Electronic correlation in the quantum Hall regime

Two-dimensional interacting electron systems become strongly correlated if the electrons are subject to a perpendicular high magnetic field. After introducing the physics of the quantum Hall regime the incompressible many- particle ground state and its excitations are studied in detail at fractional filling factors for spin-polarized electrons. The spin degree of freedom whose importance was shown in recent experiments is considered by studying the thermodynamics at filling factor one and near one.Comment: 55 pages, 26 eps-figure