Circulation et archipels de l'exception

Ce numéro de Cultures & Conflits est le reflet des préoccupations de nombreux chercheurs concernant les implications de certaines pratiques sur les libertés contemporaines. Le fil d’Ariane que suivent les contributions concerne la circulation des personnes, leur droit, leur liberté et leur désir de mouvement à l’échelle internationale, ou la possibilité de pouvoir rester sur place. Ils analysent aussi la volonté de contrôle des gouvernements, y compris démocratiques, de filtrer et trier ceux qui sont désirables et ceux qui sont indésirables, et de recenser et de garder en mémoire ces mouvements. Ils s’interrogent enfin sur la mobilité et sa remise en cause par un appesantissement de la surveillance au nom de la prévention qui s’opérationnalise dans des contrôles a priori s’appuyant sur des logiques de suspicion portant sur des groupes particuliers. Ce contrôle de la circulation débouche souvent sur des pratiques illibérales, et il génère des archipels d’exception s’il n’est pas lui même soumis à des règles de contrôle démocratique. This issue of Cultures & Conflits reflects the concerns of many researchers about the implications of certain practices on contemporary liberties. The common thread running through the contributions relates to the circulation of people, their rights, their liberty and their desire to move internationally, or their possibility of remaining where they are. They analyze governments’ (including democratic governments’) desire to control, to filter, to sort those who are desirable and those who are undesirable, and to take censuses and keep records of these movements. Furthermore, they look at the question of mobility, and its limitation through the increase of the use of surveillance in the name of prevention, that takes place through a priori controls based upon the logic of suspicion towards particular groups. If it is not subject to the rules of democratic control this control of circulation often leads to illiberal practices, and generates zones of exception

Reversible cardiac fibrosis and heart failure induced by conditional expression of an antisense mRNA of the mineralocorticoid receptor in cardiomyocytes

Cardiac failure is a common feature in the evolution of cardiac disease. Among the determinants of cardiac failure, the renin–angiotensin–aldosterone system has a central role, and antagonism of the mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) has been proposed as a therapeutic strategy. In this study, we questioned the role of the MR, not of aldosterone, on heart function, using an inducible and cardiac-specific transgenic mouse model. We have generated a conditional knock-down model by expressing solely in the heart an antisense mRNA directed against the murine MR, a transcription factor with unknown targets in cardiomyocytes. Within 2–3 mo, mice developed severe heart failure and cardiac fibrosis in the absence of hypertension or chronic hyperaldosteronism. Moreover, cardiac failure and fibrosis were fully reversible when MR antisense mRNA expression was subsequently suppressed