{"title":"Criminalizing Muslim agency in Europe: The case of ‘political Islam’ in Austria, Germany, and France","authors":"Farid Hafez","doi":"10.1177/09571558221133253","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09571558221133253","url":null,"abstract":"This article discusses the emergence of a discourse on ‘political Islam’ in the policy circles of European elites. It interprets this discourse on one hand as a manifestation of the further criminalization of Muslimness emanating from programs of countering ‘extremism’ and deradicalizing Muslim youth in the wake of the global war on terror. More specifically, the discourse on ‘political Islam’ is seen as an extension of countering violent extremism projects to counter an alleged non-violent ‘extremism.’ The article discusses three cases: Austria, Germany, and France to analyze what the fight against ‘political Islam’ (in Austria), ‘legalistic Islamism’ (in Germany), and ‘Islamist separatism’ (in France) respectively mean. These terminologies are analyzed as ‘empty signifiers’ and (Foucauldian) dispositifs that are used deliberately to legitimize state interventions to shape their respective societies. It is argued that the main shared idea is not that Muslims break the law or commit violence. Rather, the argument is that Muslims use the law to subvert their European nation-states. This aims at excluding Muslims from political life and not allowing them to shape the future of these countries. A simultaneous effort is the nurturing of an unpolitical, submissive Muslim that does not question hegemonial power structures, a project which is pursued by creating a domesticated or ‘national Islam.’ The article discusses these three terminologies' similarities and differences in the respective countries. In sum, the apparatus of ‘political Islam’ is interpreted as a means to 1) push back or exclude Muslims from the public sphere; 2) crackdown on organized Muslims; and 3) silence critical voices to these policies.","PeriodicalId":12398,"journal":{"name":"French Cultural Studies","volume":"34 1","pages":"313 - 328"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45992420","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"La figure du Noir ou la persistance de l’imagerie coloniale dans les aventures d’Astérix","authors":"Marie-Dominique Duval","doi":"10.1177/09571558221085428","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09571558221085428","url":null,"abstract":"Cet article porte sur la représentation des personnages noirs dans la bande dessinée française Astérix. Écrite par René Goscinny et illustrée par Albert Uderzo, la série est parue pour la première fois en 1959 au moment des guerres de décolonisation de l’Empire français. Bien que destiné à divertir, Astérix reste néanmoins un produit de son époque dans sa représentation de personnages d’origine africaine. La série est peuplée de pygmées, de cannibales ou d’hommes noirs aux caractéristiques simiesques. Presque tous ont de petits crânes déformés, d’énormes lèvres rouges et parlent avec des accents grotesques. Bien que l’imagerie coloniale et raciste de la jeune bande dessinée franco-belge ait fait l’objet d’un examen minutieux, les caricatures racistes d’Astérix ont été étonnamment peu étudiées. Cet article aborde les origines de ces influences coloniales, fournit des exemples de stéréotypes raciaux et discute de la persistance de telles représentations dans les albums contemporains.","PeriodicalId":12398,"journal":{"name":"French Cultural Studies","volume":"33 1","pages":"328 - 344"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45192443","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Censure et consensus dans le cinéma de l’après-guerre : La genèse parallèle d’Au royaume des cieux (Julien Duvivier, 1949) et La Cage aux filles (Maurice Cloche, 1950)","authors":"Daniel Morgan","doi":"10.1177/09571558221120881","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09571558221120881","url":null,"abstract":"Résumé Au royaume des cieux (Julien Duvivier, 1949) et La Cage aux filles (Maurice Cloche, 1950), deux fictions situées dans des centres de rééducation pour jeunes femmes, ont une histoire liée. Fondées sur le même fait divers, produites en même temps, elles font l'objet de tractations complexes lorsqu'elles sont soumises à la censure. Le film de Duvivier, dont le rapport au réel est ambigu, finit par échapper à une réécriture, alors que Maurice Cloche accepte de travailler de près avec le ministère de la Justice et finit par réaliser un film réaliste reproduisant le discours officiel des autorités. Pourtant, les deux œuvres présentent la rééducation en internat d'une manière trompeuse et contraire aux reportages sur lesquels elles sont fondés. En examinant la genèse parallèle des deux films, cet article réexamine le rôle des négociations et de la propagande dans la construction du cinéma « consensuel » français de l'après-guerre.","PeriodicalId":12398,"journal":{"name":"French Cultural Studies","volume":"34 1","pages":"377 - 393"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47750427","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Traduire, un processus infini ?","authors":"I. Kristeva","doi":"10.1177/09571558221115031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09571558221115031","url":null,"abstract":"On the basis of the problematization of the relationships between translatability and untranslatability, tradition and translation, we try to clear the impact of cultural context on the translator's choices. This impact is illustrated through three French translations of the opening stanza of the famous Hamlet monologue (III, 1), those of Voltaire, François-Victor Hugo and Yves Bonnefoy. The adopted perspective focuses on the philosophical dimension, the cultural horizon and the historicity of the act of translating. The starting hypothesis postulates that the translation can be considered as a rewriting of the original, which reflects a poetics and a worldview that reveal the functioning of the literature of a language-culture at a given time. Then the translational analysis can shed some light on the mechanisms of this conditioning. The developed reasoning leads to the conclusion that even though any translation depends on its cultural and historical space, the ethical aim requires to preserve the letter and the spirit of the source text.","PeriodicalId":12398,"journal":{"name":"French Cultural Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46103859","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Is existentialism a posthumanism? The Sarterian reflections of Egloff and Darrieussecq","authors":"Gai Farchi","doi":"10.1177/09571558221118338","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09571558221118338","url":null,"abstract":"The challenges of climate change and mass extinction have stressed the need to rethink our encounters with non-human others in the literary imagination. This article explores this question by reading L'étourdissement by Joël Egloff and Notre vie dans les forêts by Marie Darrieussecq vis-à-vis Sartre’s literary works (namely, La nausée) and philosophical works (namely, L’être et le néant). Drawing upon post-anthropocentric thought, I show how Egloff and Darrieussecq radicalize Sartre in a posthumanistic fashion. In L'étourdissement, this radicalization turns the drama of the look and of the affectivity of the nausea from a dyadic conflict of subject and object into an exposure to multiplicity. In Notre vie dans les forêts, the reciprocity of the self and its other is embedded in a corporeal interdependence, where the double is not perceived as a threat to the self but as a potential ally. In this sense, the Sarterian struggle against the undermining look of the other turns into a realization of radical interdependence and eventually into the emergence of care for the other.","PeriodicalId":12398,"journal":{"name":"French Cultural Studies","volume":"34 1","pages":"161 - 174"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49218236","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The pursuit of luxury as an act of transgression: Bataille, sovereignty, desire","authors":"J. Armitage","doi":"10.1177/09571558221118244","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09571558221118244","url":null,"abstract":"Through concepts such as the act of transgression, the idea of the pursuit of luxury can be radically transformed by reconsidering the work of the French philosopher Georges Bataille on sovereignty and desire within contemporary culture. This article on the relations between transgression, luxury, sovereignty, and desire constitutes a reworking of Bataille's thought. Offering an exploration and development of the key notions which run through current work on luxury, from sumptuous living to human lives in search of lavishness, the article places these important concepts in their intellectual and historical contexts and goes on to trace their considerable possibilities for contemporary French thought. In this manner, the article not only makes the idea of the pursuit of luxury accessible, but also invites readers to make their own critical judgements of such a pursuit. The article concludes with an account of the pursuit of luxury and acts of transgression as a moral vision, and with the perpetual problems of luxury and necessity. The notion of the pursuit of luxury is now impossible to disregard for anybody who is serious-minded about contemporary acts of transgression, and this article affords the ideal companion to the wide-ranging diversity of Bataille's critical texts on sovereignty and desire.","PeriodicalId":12398,"journal":{"name":"French Cultural Studies","volume":"34 1","pages":"343 - 358"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41534795","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Les musulmanes de Soumission face au marché cognitif","authors":"Sana Alaya Seghair","doi":"10.1177/09571558221078446","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09571558221078446","url":null,"abstract":"Presumably guilty of an “ increasing visibility”, the ostentatious presence of Muslim women in the streets of France participates, in Michel Houellebecq's novel Soumission, in this fashionable jeremiad announcing the slow and painful decadence of France and the West. In burqa, veiled or naked, they are the actors of an insidious implementation of a new word in the old one which does not go without leaving scares. Arab women painted as both conquerors and submissive would be the translation of a French historical awareness marked by a surrender to a creeping islam. In the light of the sociological work of Gérald Bronner, this article proposes to think and evaluate the stereotypical representation of the Muslim woman as pernicious contribution to a cognitive market where the most risky beliefs are competing.","PeriodicalId":12398,"journal":{"name":"French Cultural Studies","volume":"33 1","pages":"242 - 256"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45072350","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rethinking haute couture: Julien Fournié in the virtual worlds of the metaverse","authors":"J. Armitage","doi":"10.1177/09571558221109708","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09571558221109708","url":null,"abstract":"This article deals with the concept and practice of haute couture, of the designing and making of high-quality fashion clothes, and haute couture's contemporary engagement with the virtual worlds of the ‘metaverse’, a shared virtual environment that features online gaming and augmented reality. The article is an encounter with these virtual worlds, particularly as they are manifested in the haute couture of the French haute couturier Julian Fournié. To understand Fournié's haute couture, and thus to build a foundation for an interpretation of his most important fashion ideas, it is argued that researchers need to explore Fournié's engagement with virtual worlds and augmented reality from the perspective of German philosopher Martin Heidegger's phenomenological explanation of thinking and rethinking, and then at how Fournié develops and revises the meaning of haute couture.","PeriodicalId":12398,"journal":{"name":"French Cultural Studies","volume":"34 1","pages":"129 - 146"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-07-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47753872","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
French Cultural StudiesPub Date : 2022-06-01Epub Date: 2022-06-08DOI: 10.1098/rsif.2022.0139
Richard D Rabbitt
{"title":"Analysis of outer hair cell electromechanics reveals power delivery at the upper-frequency limits of hearing.","authors":"Richard D Rabbitt","doi":"10.1098/rsif.2022.0139","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rsif.2022.0139","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Outer hair cells are the cellular motors in the mammalian inner ear responsible for sensitive high-frequency hearing. Motor function over the frequency range of human hearing requires expression of the protein prestin in the OHC lateral membrane, which imparts piezoelectric properties to the cell membrane. In the present report, electrical power consumption and mechanical power output of the OHC membrane-motor complex are determined using previously published voltage-clamp data from isolated OHCs and membrane patches. Results reveal that power output peaks at a best frequency much higher than implied by the low-pass character of nonlinear capacitance, and much higher than the whole-cell resistive-capacitive corner frequency. High frequency power output is enabled by a -90° shift in the phase of electrical charge displacement in the membrane, manifested electrically as emergence of imaginary-valued nonlinear capacitance.</p>","PeriodicalId":12398,"journal":{"name":"French Cultural Studies","volume":"19 1","pages":"20220139"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9174718/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87335841","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"For a fluid approach to Céline Sciamma's Portrait of a Lady on Fire","authors":"Michèle Bacholle","doi":"10.1177/09571558221099637","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09571558221099637","url":null,"abstract":"This paper argues that Céline Sciamma's Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) goes beyond the lesbian or queer categorization that critics have often hastily reduced it to. Set in pre-revolutionary France, Portrait is a film from 'the 2019th century' (Sciamma) that addresses contemporary issues (consent, patriarchal and heteronormative order, women's silencing, women's desire and sexuality). It offers a reflection on 'fluid' time and historicizes and archives both disappeared women artists and same-sex women's relations in French painting and cinema. Sciamma reeducates her spectators’ (male) gaze, precludes voyeurism and the objectification and fetishization of her heroines’ bodies, bestows agency upon them, and displays equality and respect in both form and content. Despite its Queer Palme award at Cannes, Portrait calls for a qualifier better suited to our changing times, as this fluid approach attempts to show.","PeriodicalId":12398,"journal":{"name":"French Cultural Studies","volume":"34 1","pages":"147 - 160"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-05-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44289081","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}