775 research outputs found
Revisiting the self-help housing debate: Perceptions of self-help Housing by the beneficiaries of low-cost housing in South Africa
Regardless of housing backlog and rapid urbanization created by population
growth, the promotion of Self-Help Housing by authorities in charge of housing
and policy documents1, there is a limited used of Self-Help Housing in South
Africa. In pursuing the Self-Help Housing debate, this research argues that the
failure to implement a widespread use of Self-Help Housing is not directly linked
to weaknesses of Self-Help Housing. Instead, the difficult access to land for
urban poor households, the ignorance from households of their right of having
access to adequate shelter, the attitude of dependency evident in households,
the paternalistic attitude from the government, the failure to constitute an active
community and the failure to establish real priorities of poor people are the main
causes of the limited use of Self-Help Housing in South Africa. Tembisa, one of
the South Africaâs Townships, is used in this research for the purpose of
illustrating the unsuccessful implementation of Self-Help Housing, adopted in
South as People Housing Process (PHP)
Cross-modal cue effects in motion processing
The everyday environment brings to our sensory systems competing inputs from different modalities. The ability to filter these multisensory inputs in order to identify and efficiently utilize useful spatial cues is necessary to detect and process the relevant information. In the present study, we investigate how feature-based attention affects the detection of motion across sensory modalities. We were interested to determine how subjects use intramodal, cross-modal auditory, and combined audiovisual motion cues to attend to specific visual motion signals. The results showed that in most cases, both the visual and the auditory cues enhance feature-based orienting to a transparent visual motion pattern presented among distractor motion patterns. Whereas previous studies have shown cross-modal effects of spatial attention, our results demonstrate a spread of cross-modal feature-based attention cues, which have been matched for the detection threshold of the visual target. These effects were very robust in comparisons of the effects of valid vs. invalid cues, as well as in comparisons between cued and uncued valid trials. The effect of intramodal visual, cross-modal auditory, and bimodal cues also increased as a function of motion-cue salience. Our results suggest that orienting to visual motion patterns among distracters can be facilitated not only by intramodal priors, but also by feature-based cross-modal information from the auditory system.First author draf
Sony Labou Tansi : LâAntĂ©-peuple ou le peuple hantĂ©
Sur Sony Labou Tansi, bien des choses ont dĂ©jĂ Ă©tĂ© dites et quelquefois des plus farfelues. Il nâest quâĂ lire les gloses des soi-disant « experts » de la littĂ©rature africaine sur les « petites mains » de Sony Labou Tansi pour sâen convaincre. Or ce qui frappe dâemblĂ©e lorsquâon se penche sur lâĆuvre de cet Ă©crivain câest son caractĂšre extrĂȘmement prolixe : sept romans, huit piĂšces de thĂ©Ăątre, des nouvelles, des recueils de poĂ©sie, et, seize ans aprĂšs sa mort, nous nâen avons pas encore fait..
Former des cadres « rouges et experts »
L'arrestation de deux Ă©tudiants congolais de Moscou en juillet 1975 sert de trame Ă cet article qui relate les dĂ©mĂȘlĂ©s du mouvement Ă©tudiant avec le Parti congolais du travail (PCT), parti unique. Celui-ci, se rĂ©clamant dĂ©sormais du marxisme-lĂ©ninisme, s'Ă©tait fixĂ© pour tĂąche de former des cadres « rouges et experts ». Solidaire du mouvement Ă©tudiant congolais dans son ensemble, l'Union gĂ©nĂ©rale des Ă©tudiants congolais en URSS, luttant pour son autonomie, s'Ă©tait insurgĂ©e contre cette option ayant pour objectif le contrĂŽle exclusif de la jeunesse Ă©tudiante, jusque-lĂ base sociale de la reproduction du pouvoir. Les tensions qui entraĂźnĂšrent l'arrestation de ces deux Ă©tudiants peuvent ĂȘtre comprises dans ce contexte.The arrest of two Congolese students in Moscow in July 1975 serves to frame this article relating the conflicts the student movement had with the sole political party, the Congolese Workers' Party (PCT).â Marxist-Leninist, the PCT had set as its objective to train and educate âred expertsâ for senior positions.â Aligned with the Congolese student movement as a whole, the Union gĂ©nĂ©rale des Ă©tudiants congolais en URSS (the General Student Union of Congolese Students in the USSR), struggling for its autonomy, opposed this initiative, which was considered an attempt to control, in an exclusive manner, young students who had, until this point, been the social base of the reproduction of power.â The tensions leading to the arrest of these two students can be understood in this context
Le monde Ă lâenvers
Lâapparition des enfants-sorciers dans le bassin du Congo autour des annĂ©es 1980 est un fait marquant des mutations de lâentreprise sorciĂšre, traduisant une inversion de lâimputation qui sâoriente maintenant dans le sens des vieux contre les jeunes. Signe des temps de la « rĂ©-Ă©vangĂ©lisation » menĂ©e par les campagnes pentecĂŽtistes dans une sociĂ©tĂ© oĂč la diabolisation de la sorcellerie sert dĂ©sormais de capteur des tensions sociales, elle nâen reste pas moins le rĂ©vĂ©lateur dâune crise profonde des structures de la parentĂ©. En rĂ©actualisant le conflit entre les aĂźnĂ©s et les cadets, la sorcellerie trouve, dans la conjonction des effets pervers de la globalisation et de la crise rĂ©currente de lâĂtat postcolonial, les (idĂ©o)-logiques de sa nouvelle formulation.The World Upside Down: Childhood and Kindoki, or the Cunnings of Sorcery in the Congo Basin. â The appearance of children sorcerers in the Congo Basin in the 1980s is a key feature of recent changes in sorcery as it reflects an inversion of imputation which is now practiced by the old against the young. A sign of the times of the âre-evangelizationâ carried out in Pentecostal campaigns in a society where demonization of sorcery is now used as a locus of social tensions, it still reveals a profound crisis of kinship structures. By reviving the conflict between older and younger people, sorcery finds the ideological effects of its new formulation in the conjunction of the negative impact of globalization and the recurrent crisis of the post-colonial state
Lâautre du prophĂ©tisme congolais
« Pour moi, on nâest Ă©crivain quâĂ condition dâĂȘtre poĂšte », assurait Sony Labou Tansi, mais peut-on sĂ©rieusement ĂȘtre poĂšte au Congo sans ĂȘtre prophĂšte ? Telle est lâinterrogation Ă laquelle ce papier tente de rĂ©pondre. PoĂšte et prophĂšte ; ces deux propositions rattachent Sony, non pas au prophĂ©tisme scripturaire dĂ©crit par Jean-Loup Amselle dans Branchements, mais Ă une histoire du prophĂ©tisme congolais relevant du Ventre (moyo) et de sa dĂ©convenue Ă la suite de lâĂ©chec de la rencontre entre le royaume du Kongo, le Portugal et le christianisme au xvie siĂšcle. Le verbe dans la poĂ©sie de Sony est un discours dâeffluves et de visions qui cherche Ă maintenir vivant et dynamique le rapport au Kongo. DĂšs le dĂ©but de son Ă©criture, avec Vers au vinaigre, ses poĂšmes de jeunesse, il est pris par cet appel et enserrĂ© dans le corset du prophĂšte dont il cherche Ă se dĂ©barrasser. On lâentend presque dire ces mots de lâĂvangile : « Non je ne suis pas digne mais dites seulement une parole et mon Ăąme sera guĂ©rie ». Sauf que la parole, câest Ă lui de la porter. Câest cette mission contre laquelle il se dĂ©bat que jâessaie de restituer dans ce texte avant de lui trouver la place qui lui revient dans la ïŹliation prophĂ©tique kongo.« For me, one can be a writer only as a poet » assured Sony Labou Tansi, but can one seriously be a poet in the Congo without being a prophet ? This is the question that this paper tries to answer. Poet and prophet ; these two propositions connect Sony, not to the scriptural prophetism described by Jean-Loup Amselle in Branchements but, to a history of Congolese prophetism pertaining to the moyo (Belly) and its disappointment following the failure of the meeting between the kongolese Kingdom with Portugal and Christianity in the sixteenth century. The Word in Sonyâs poetry is a discourse of emanations and visions that seeks to keep alive and dynamic the relationship to the Kongo. By tieing the Scriptural requirement down to this historical depth, his poetry accords the present with the past but attests also to faith in an appropriation of the world that makes sense only as a presentation of « the up-coming ». From the beginning of his writing, with, his Youth poems, he is caught by this call and tight fitted in the corset of the prophet he seeks to get rid of. We almost hear him saying these Gospel words : « No, I am not worthy, O Lord, but only say a word and my soul will be healed ». Except that the Word is him to wear it. It is this mission against which he is struggling that I try to restitute in this text before finding him a due place in the Kongo prophetic filiation
Le ventre dans lâĂ©criture de Sony Labou Tansi et Tchicaya U Tam'si
Lâauteur francophone nâest pas un simple traducteur ; son positionnement dâĂ©crivain dans une langue qui nâest pas la sienne brouille les contours de cette fonction. On voudrait ici rendre compte de cette dynamique singuliĂšre, Ă partir du champ sĂ©mantique du ventre, central dans lâĆuvre de Tchicaya U Tamâsi et de Sony Labou Tansi, auquel ces deux auteurs ont consacrĂ© deux de leurs ouvrages au titre homonyme, le Ventre (1964) et Sa majestĂ© le ventre (1972).A French-speaking author is not a simple translator of his culture into French: his positioning of the writer in a language which is not his mother tongue, blurs the outline of translatorâs craft. The article presents this particular dynamics using the semantic field of the belly, which is central in the literary production of Tchicaya U Tamâsi and Sony Labou Tansi. Both authors devoted to this theme their homonymous writings: Le Ventre (The Belly, 1978) and Sa MajestĂ© le ventre (His Majesty, the Belly, 1972)
Trois murmures⊠en un cri
- 1 - Trinitaires Jâappartiens au pays oĂč de palourdes profanesSâimmolent au temps Ă©toilĂ© des pĂ©licans-totemSouffrez que le temps ne soit plus Ă la Raison graphiqueManiĂšre dâĂ©chapper Ă la chronique des Ă©vĂšnements au grĂ© du calendrierJe suis enfant de ce pays, vous dis-je !Pays trinitaire oĂč tout se dĂ©cline par troisEt cela ne date pas dâaujourdâhui Cette Histoire eĂ»t-elle besoin dâhistoire quâelle nâeut jamais Ă©tĂ© Ă©crite que sur la pĂąleur trisomique des papyrus souillĂ©s« Trois francs » fut la..
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