Fortress Europe and its metaphors: immigration and the law. CES Working Paper, vol. 3, no.1, 1999

It is in that context that I would like to listen, obliquely, to two types of discourse that tend to ignore each other: first I want to listen to the legal discourse that manifests itself in this new immigration law, then I also want to listen to a simultaneous layer of discourse, a popular discourse made of images, metaphors, and quotable quotes that constitute a vast reservoir of seemingly spontaneous thoughts on immigrants and their presence in France. I would like to position myself at the intersection between those seemingly incompatible discourses. I would especially like to check to which extent the second type of discourse (those popular images that are so often devalued as a language) do not constitute a second type of law, a law that is sometimes even more rigid that the official one. So, instead of examining the official legal discourse as if it were a self-contained universe, a text that can be read as a finished product, I would like to concentrate on what happens before and after that drafting of the bill. I would like to focus on the ways in which such texts are written, prepared, argued (what happens upstream if you will), but also how the text is read and interpreted. Let’s see if a law on immigration is part of everyday life, if it finally turns into everyday life or if as I will suggest, it reflects what already exists in everyday life and in our culture

Lectures mythophores des recits de l\u27origine dans N\u27zid de Malika Mokeddem

In 1957, Barthes critiqued the omnipresence of imperialist myths. Is his study of the collusion between myths and colonialism still relevant today? Rather than looking for a new canon of postcolonial myths, Rosello proposes to distinguish between two critical stances: demystification and demythification. Rosello suggests that literature can afford to take the risk of mythification through a reading of a mythoforic novel: Malika Mokeddem\u27s N\u27zid, a text that remythifies and demystifies the opposition between nomads and sedentaries

European Hospitality Without a Home

How do European governments conceptualize what they call hospitality when they draft immigration laws and when they allow the concepts of asylum, of illegal immigrants, to change according to a constantly evolving political context? What consequences

« Ils se marièrent… etc. » : Chouchou, La Confusion des genres et autres mariages

Dans le contexte des débats internationaux sur le mariage gay, cet article s’intéresse à trois récits visuels qui nous invitent à réfléchir sur les questions de la masculinité et des normes. Il se concentre sur les façons uniques et spécifiques dont un mariage entre deux hommes dans une comédie (Chouchou) ou dans un canular public (Coluche et Thierry Le Luron) et un mariage homosexuel entre un homme et une femme (La Confusion des genres) renforcent ou critiquent les normes sociales hétérosexuelles et de genre.In the context of international debates on gay marriages, this article looks at three visual narratives that invite us to reflect on the issues of masculinity and norms. It focuses on the unique and specific ways in which a wedding between two men in a comedy (Chouchou) or in a public hoax (Coluche and Thierry Le Luron) as well as a queer wedding between a man and a woman (La Confusion des genres) reinforce or critique heterosexual social and gender norms

European Hospitality Without a Home

How do European governments conceptualize what they call "hospitality" when they draft immigration laws and when they allow the concepts of asylum, of illegal immigrants, to change according to a constantly evolving political context? What consequences

Jay translation, ki ma qal Abdiche

One of the heroes of this talk is Fellag, a famous Algerian humorist. In a portrait of the artist included in the published version of another of his plays, Djurdjurassique Bled, Pierre Lartigue writes that in Arabic, the name Fellag means "bûcheron, coupeur de routes. Au figuré, bandit de grand chemin" [lumberjack, road cutter. Figuratively: highway man or high way robber] (Fellag 1999, 95). We do not need to know this or even to believe that it is accurate to appreciate Fellag's work but for the purpose of this talk, it is worth keeping in mind that, according to a public portrait inserted into one of his books, Fellag accepts that we imagine him as someone who stands in the middle of roads. Moreover, depending on whether we are in the literal or the figurative mood, the "cutting" involved may be deemed legitimate or illegitimate

"Chocolat blanc" et plat de tortue : Le dialogue ethnicisé dans les textes de Michelle Cliff

Le point de départ de ma réflexion est le titre de cette conférence. L'expression "ethnie voices" semble suggérer l'existence d'une catégorie pré-définie dans laquelle certains textes ou certaines manifestations artistiques viendraient se ranger comme naturellement. Mais elle invite aussi le lecteur à remettre en question ce que cette catégorie aurait d'évident et de simpliste. Le texte que je vais lire ici est un passage d'un des romans de Michelle Cliff, No Telephone to Heaven, que je voudr..

L’imagination du corps greffé : filtres bilingues

Contemporary narratives featuring organ transplants speak of a painful but also life-saving contact when the “donor” body is African and the receiving body is European. At this point the surgical operation and that of the imagination assume a whole other dimension, as the inequality and interdependence of these two bodies invite the reader to re-imagine the links between the concept of the “body,” on the one hand, and culture and language, on the other. This article looks at the transplanted body as an imagining machine capable of articulating a vision of itself different from the one that words impose upon it

Renée Vivien: Velléité et Résistance

This article focuses on three short stories by early twentieth-century lesbian poet Renée Vivien. Published in a collection entitled La Dame à la louve , these narrative texts differ from the rest of Vivien's work which is pervaded by the presence of an autobiographical "I." The author of this article suggests that the short stories propose a problematic (and self-contradictory) definition of seduction by exploring situations in which the protagonists' gender turns dialogue into a confrontation. What will be the reader's position when faced by a narrative claiming that understanding what the other means, says, or means to say is a matter of life and death?L'auteure analyse ici trois nouvelles de Renée Vivien réunies dans le recueil intitulé La Dame à la louve , Ces textes lui ont paru intéressants en ce qu'ils rompent avec le principe du «je» autobiographique qui sature les poèmes et le roman de cette poétesse lesbienne. Ces nouvelles abordent de façon narrative la confrontation entre le «principe mâle» détesté et le «principe femelle» investide tout l'espoir de Vivien. L'auteure suggère done que ces textes proposent une définition intéressante (et contradictoire) de la séduction dans un contexte ou le sexe des protagonistes transforme tout dialogue en combat. Quelle sera done la place du lecteur ou de la lectrice face à un récit qui dit que comprendre ce que l'autre veut (dire) est une question de vie ou de mort