Jean Genet devant le miroir de la destruction de l’identité

La vie et l’oeuvre de l’auteur français Jean Genet ont toujours été une quête de l’oeuvre d’art absolue. Dans cette quête, trois figures majeures le guideront : le sculpteur Giacometti, le peintre Rembrandt et le funambule Abdellah Bentaga. À travers les oeuvres de ces artistes, Genet découvrira l’identité absolue. Qu’est-ce qui le mena vers cette découverte et quelles conséquences eurent-elles sur l’écrivain ? C’est ce rapport à l’Autre, analysé dans les quatre textes que Genet a écrit sur ces artistes, que nous nous proposons d’interroger dans cet article, notamment à travers le mythe de Narcisse.

Réflexions sur la polysémie connotative de « vous sentez le fauve » (Genet) et sur sa traduction en portugais

Cet article a été rédigé dans le cadre des travaux de recherche sur les difficultés de compréhension et/ou de traduction du français en portugais du Brésil réalisés à l’UFRGS. Il présente une réflexion sur « vous sentez le fauve », expression recontrée pendant la traduction des Bonnes (1947, pièce de Jean Genet), que nous avons faite à l’occasion d’un master en littérature française.Nous commençons par expliquer les objectifs de notre laboratoire de recherche ; ensuite nous exposons les notions de connotation et de polysémie. Ces deux propriétés de la langue sont des caractéristiques importantes du syntagme en question. Puis, nous présentons l’action des Bonnes et nous signalons quelques éléments de la pièce qui contribuent à l’analyse de l’expression que nous y étudions. Après cette contextualisation, nous analysons le mot « fauve » et l’expression « vous sentez le fauve », le sémantisme de chacun et comment traduire l’expression en question. Finalement, nous proposons une traduction et ébauchons quelques éléments de conclusion.

National Identity

This chapter aims at presenting the complex correlations between nationalism and modern theater with a special focus on performative construction of national identity. Whether seen as primordial essence or as a social construction national identity is grounded on public rituals and artistic practices (rather than rational ideological systems) which makes theatrical stage, along with print, museums, other media, central to understanding how imagined communities come into being and continue their existence into the global contemporary society. The chapter addresses the question of how the theatrical apparatus of bourgeois theater and staged representations in national theaters function in forming theatrical nationhood as well as concepts (postcolonialism), strategies (theatrical public sphere), artists (Jean Genet), and practices (interweaving performance cultures) that contest the dominant modes of performing national identity.

La Réception critique de l'écriture engagée de Jean Genet: les exemples de «Violence et brutalité» et d'Un captif amoureux

In this article, the critical reception of two of Jean Genet's most political texts is studied and discussed with regards to the theoretical opposition between poetical and political language. While Un captif amoureux had a fairly heterogeneous and confused reception, ‘Violence et brutalité’ was generally rejected and described as pro-terrorist propaganda. This difference is explained as a result of both textual and historical factors. Moreover, the critics’ inability to attach a genre to Un captif amoureux is discussed and explained as a result of the work's innovative style and structure, for example its particular way of assembling political and poetical patterns.

Antipodean Alice

This chapter discusses how the Alice in Wonderland prototype developed by Lewis Carroll became influential for writers and artists after 1945. It aligns its treatment of sexuality with what Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht called the ‘frozen time’ of the Cold War era, showing how Australian painter Charles Blackman deployed representations of Alice to project a world in which time was reversed. This is linked to Blackman’s interest in Indigenous culture and to explorations of temporality in the work of English film director Nicolas Roeg. Similarly reflexive representations of time in playwright Jean Genet and film-maker Ingmar Bergman are counterpointed with the absurdist style of composer György Ligeti, whose opera Le Grand Macabre frames Cold War politics within a burlesque setting. This chapter concludes with an analysis of Vladimir Nabokov, also much influenced by Carroll, who in his later fictions seeks explicitly to put time and space into reverse.

Konstruksi dan Kontestasi Kuasa Perempuan pada Naskah Drama Les Bonnes Karya Jean Genet

This research aims to portray the social categories such as social class and gender that construct the oppression experienced by women in the drama script Les Bonnes written by Jean Genet. This contestation appears as a result of an interaction between three main characters in the drama: Claire and Solange, as maids and Madame as their employer. Madame is a rich woman who treats them badly because of their social background as poor women. As a result of her treatment, Claire and Solange aim to kill their employer as the way out to be free from Madame’s oppression. They create an assassination simulation to obtain their objective. To analyze this problem, this research uses the concept of habitus, capital, and arena from the theory of cultural production of Pierre Bourdieu. The method used in this article is a textual analysis method. The material objects are the drama script, Les Bonnes. The corpus data is taken from the words, sentences, and paragraphs containing the expression correlated with the contestations of power. The data is then analyzed using the lenses from the concept of habitus and cultural arena by Pierre Bourdieu. The finding shows that the habitus forms a constant and repetitive interaction among the subjects. It is influenced by the subjects’ position based on the social capital they possess. The position is characterized by two classes: the dominant and the worker that contribute to the form of contestations in Les Bonnes.