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Livres d’artistes, livres numériques

Emeline Brûlé and Lucile Haute
When confronted to digital technology, the book object raises issues born of the association of two media. Artist productions addressing these issues dwell in a friction zone that is developing between print-books, plastic books and so-called digital books. The aim of this article is to develop a “design space”, a theoretical framework for understanding these new forms based both on a literature review and on experiments carried out during a workshop. This iterative process encountered technical and plastic constraints, as it focused on the one hand, on games and the way different media are articulated (text, image, sound, moving image), and, on the other hand, on possible modes of exploration (ergonomics, interface, nteraction). (LH and EB)

La route et ses bas-côtés : imaginaire des lieux autoroutiers liminaires

Eugénie Matthey-Jonais
This issue brings together creative texts and critical essays reflecting on the imaginary of the roadside. How can hegemonic representations of the road be hijacked or explored differently? Drawing on geocritical, feminist, queer, aesthetic and research-creation perspectives, the issue’s authors propose readings of works that allow us to unthink the linearity and velocity of the highway, and take the time to explore the downside of secondary roads, liminal spaces and cul-de-sacs. (EMJ)

Les Nouveaux Monuments : l’ambiant autoroutier : médier par le sensible l’influence préconsciente de l’échangeur Turcot en 2016-2017

Charles Montambault and Daniel Boisclair
Wandering through the construction sites of the complete reconstruction of the Turcot highway interchange between 2015 and 2017, two artists began a creative process inspired by the contemplation and interpretation of unusual landscapes. As residents of the area, their continued exposure to the monumentality of these structures and the intensity of its soundscape revealed how we come to endure sensory experiences, however violent, of our living environments. (DB and CM)

Splendeurs et misères des bords de route : dialogue entre Sud, de Chantal Akerman et ma traversée du Canada d’Est en Ouest

Frédérique Lamoureux
This essay offers a dialogue between the documentary Sud and the author’s east-west crossing of Canada. Adopting Chantal Akerman’s “travel strategy” [stratégie de voyage], this text offers a string of observations on the Trans-Canada Highway’s succession of plains and forests, but also on the inequalities left by the roadside. Through research and creation, the author adopts a literary and cinematographic approach to her experience that renews the imaginary of the road movie and conveys the fleeting nature of the scenes observed on the margins of the road (SP).

Plantes des bords de routes : envahissantes ou invisibles ?

Rachel Bouvet
How do we perceive roadside plants? It is from a personal experience rooted in geopoetic perspective that this article tries to answer the question, mobilizing a reflexion on vegetal blindness and threatening otherness. Finally, its aims to wonder how to cross the “threshold of intimacy” with plants. (RB)

Orphelin du bled

Sanna Mansouri
A text from the North African diaspora, this essay illustrates the similarities between the experiences of North Africans immigrants in France and Quebec. It also shows the gaps, the attempt to find a foothold, particularly a cultural one, in between Algeria and Quebec. (SP)

La frontière américaine

David Beaudoin
Réjeanne and Paul are leaving Québec on a bus headed to Florida, where they planned a vacation. Meanwhile, Ricardo leaves El Salvador and heads to New York, hoping that the United States can provide a better life. (SP)

La route du non-retour

Andrée A. Michaud
This article, exploring the road as a space unconstrained by finality and boundaries, was intended as an introduction to a discussion with Rachel Bouvet and Daniel Laforest as part of the conference “La route et ses bas-côtés. Imaginaires et lieux autoroutiers liminaires”, Université de Montréal, december 10th, 2020. (SP)

Sur le bas-côté : des femmes

Martine Delvaux
From the story of Sally Horner, the girl whose story inspired Vladimir Nabokov as he was writing Lolita, to the author’s resolution to never learn how to drive, this essay celebrates feminism as a marginal act performed from the roadside. (SP)

Grosse corvette, p’tite kékette

Léonore Brassard
In Virginie Despentes’s Baise-moi, the automotive imaginary is clearly in the foreground, if only through the author’s appropriation of the roadmovie genre. However, this imaginary also develops in a complex way troughout the text, unfolding in various images proposed by the author when it comes to a certain representation — and de-representation — of the genre. How does Despentes unthink the fetishistic association between women and cars, through a deconfiguration of the automotive imaginary and true literary skidding ? (LB)

Paris hors Paris : l’espace comme expérience de la lisière dans Journal du dehors d’Annie Ernaux

Emma Lacroix
The edge-space which is traced by the distance between Paris and Cergy constitutes the very matter of Annie Ernaux’s Journal du dehors. Through our reading of her work, we can outline a reflection on the space of the edge, or the border, around, in and outside of the “Ville Nouvelle”. We set out to see how this porous border, which is at the same time geographic, temporal and fictional, shapes the text and its space. Space, as it is represented in the text, is of particular interest to us because it is worked by – and it in turn it challenges – the literary form of the journal. Moreover, the narration calls for a writing that crosses the border: literature almost tries to become photography. This is what mostly holds our attention, since the text manages to put in tension, not unlike a palimpsest would do, two temporalities (one of immediate experience and one of storytelling), and blurs the line between both. (EL)

François Blais et les bas-côtés de la route : posture d’auteur et inscriptions du territoire dans le roman Sam

Rachel LaRoche and Eugénie Matthey-Jonais
The writer François Blais has set the action of most of his works in the Mauricie region. In this article, we look at Blais’s links with his territory, not only from a thematic point of view, but also by exploring his positioning among Quebec authors close to “neo-regionalism” and by analyzing his posture as an author. We are particularly interested in the novel Sam, as well as the author’s rare representations in the media. (RL and EMJ)

Laisse venir et les autres : du pouvoir des oligoptiques

Enrico Agostini Marchese
If geolocation is a central phenomenon of our contemporary era, profoundly modifying any approach to space, what are its cultural foundations? This article tries to answer this question by problematizing the technocentric vision of geolocalization as carried by Google and other private companies to explore other ways of looking at this technology. The notion of oligopticon, central to our reflection, will allow us to highlight the cultural and aesthetic side of this new spatial form that relies on the hybridization of physical and digital space. (EAM)

Accompagner : limites et possibles

Léonore Brassard, Hugo Satre and Clarence Lampron
It is the many tensions brought on by the notion of “care” that constitute the beating heart of this multidisciplinary issue. Between the vulnerability inherent to the position of those who care for others and the fear of abusing the power granted by this position, between active help and disengagement, between control and laissez-faire… who depends on whom, who is of service to whom, the one who cares for or the one who is cared for? Where is vulnerability? where is dependence? Where is the bottom line of an action that, folding in on itself, always seems to rejuvenate the game of perspectives from one to the other, from the cared-for to the caretaker, from the subject to the object, from care itself tending towards care? Shaping various perspectives around these topics, this issue is an opportunity to carefully consider care, the complexity of which forces us to confront its multiples faces. Care in accompaniment, in thought, in creation; the word featured at the center of this special issue ultimately presents itself as companion to the articles that make up “Accompagner : limites et possibles”. (SP)

Du deuil au care : L’écrivain dans nos vies : création

Maïté Snauwaert
I take a look at the figure of the writer as a life companion, able to anticipate and shed light on our future sorrows, inhabiting the space between innocence and acceptance of the end, patient and resolute, occupying that strange threshold between timeliness and lateness, full of an awareness that we don’t want to reach, holding our hand when it’s not us holding it out to him. I thereby examine my own figures of companionship, both old and new: Marguerite Duras, Philippe Forest, Naja Marie Aidt; Japanese filmmaker Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s movie Drive My Car; and the singer-songwriter Nick Cave’s blog The Red Hand Files. What they all have in common is the experience of grief. (MS)

Linda Lê : accompagner l’autre au seuil de l’errance

Simon Harel
This article examines the caretaker’s posture through the exploration of the complex family dynamics at work in je ne répondrai plus jamais de rien (2020) by Linda Lê. This reflection challenges the predominant positive conceptions of care by highlighting the deep entanglement that exists between care and disappointment, violence, and failure. In this context, the position of the literary work’s receptor is weakened, reduced to a form of wandering that questions its relationship to language and exposes its limits. (SH)

Méduse et compagnie

Pascale Millot
Fifty years after it was first published, Hélène Cixous’s Le rire de la Méduse has lost nothing of its power of accompaniment. The notion of “écriture féminine” it heralded may not be as fresh as it used to be, but this classic work continuously acts as a joyful encouragement to all those who question their legitimacy within female authorship. Considering the text within the landscape in which it was published, this short essay draws an itinerary that goes from Virginia Woolf to the current practitioners of autotheory, including France Théoret and Nicole Brossard, and reaffirms not only the political relevance of this call to writing for women, but also the power and singularity of its words. (SP)

Quelles formes d’accompagnement la littérature peut-elle offrir à l’heure de l’anthropocène ?

Catherine Grall
This article examines the forms of guidance that literature has offered for centuries, and their evolution into the Anthropocene era. Religious and philosophical texts have long guided individuals towards transcendent or collective values; with the Renaissance and the Lumières, the emphasis shifted towards a more horizontal accompaniment, centered on the individual and his or her earthly well-being. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, identity crises and globalization have contributed to the integration of literature into postcolonial and ecological themes, and of “other-than-human” subjects such as animals and plants, in a context of shifting focus away from the Cartesian subject. (CG)

Le soin dans la relation éditoriale : le cas des Pénitences

Kiev Renaud and Alex Viens
Kiev Renaud assisted Alex Viens in the writing of their novel Les Pénitences, published in May 2021 at Le Cheval d’août under her direction. Together, the writer and the editor reflect on their correspondence during the editorial process, and on the relationship woven between them during the long months of work: does the editorial relationship imply a hierarchy? How is it possible to carry out this work ethically when, like in the case of Les Pénitences, the text deals with traumas? Can involvement in the text then be perceived as an intrusion? How can we establish a relationship of care without these precautions being detrimental to the reworking of the language (painfully pragmatic)? (KR and AV)

L’accompagnement in absentia par la création littéraire

Benjamin Gagnon Chainey and Philippe Yong
To accompany, etymologically, refers to this action of “taking (someone) as a companion”. A transitive verb, to accompany therefore implies a direct object which, in the most accepted sense, refers to a human presence. However, for the writer in the process of writing, is it possible to think and experience, both psychologically and physically, a form of support in absentia which, on the one hand, would not involve other human presence, and on the other hand, whose direct object would be the very person of the writer? This article, written jointly by two first-time novelists, explores how we can think of the moment of literary creation as a fundamentally solitary experience, but one that, in itself, accompanies the writer who tries to give it form. (BCG et PY)

Les bruits de la désécriture : petit exorcisme de la littérature

Margot Mellet
This essay is an exploration of the creative writing process through the concept of exorcism. Based on Kittler’s Aufschreibesysteme thinking, the paper proceeds with an archaeological examination of new writing media, questioning the equilibrium between human and non-human (from gramophone to digital media). The exorcist, addressing the a priori assumptions of the humanities regarding writing media, leads to an alternative understanding of inscription: de-writing. (MM)

Vulnérabilité et dépendance : variations sur les questions de pouvoir dans l’accompagnement

Patricia Paperman
Relationships based on care and support confront its protagonists to specific challenges related to their inherent asymmetry. The present paper seeks to explore various ways to identify, analyze and cope with this asymmetry within the relationship. Ethics of care have repurposed the wording of this issue by unsettling the widespread approach of autonomy. This essay considers various ways of rethinking autonomy and dependency in actual relationships of support. It highlights these attempts’ difficulty to break free from an ideal of autonomy based on ableist assumptions. (SP)

Accompagner au cours du vieillissement et des maladies chroniques avec la médecine corps-esprit et la technologie

Mona Ben M’Rad
This article describes the experience gained by our research team attached to McGill University, in mind-body medicine, in supporting seniors and people with chronic kidney disease undergoing hemodialysis. This is a review of pilot feasibility studies of mindfulness meditation, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, tai chi and yoga, carried out in Montreal (Quebec, Canada) by our group with geriatric populations suffering from anxiety and depression, or with hemodialysis patients. Some of these studies have used technological innovations such as videoconferencing, telehealth and virtual reality, with promising results. New mindfulness meditation and exercise programs based on virtual reality are currently being developed for the management of chronic pain and functional disability in geriatrics and hemodialysis. (MBMR)

Exploration littéraire de la stigmatisation envers les troubles de santé mentale : quels sont les mots qui font mal ?

Noémie La Haye-Caty
Prejudiced words about mental illness are often heard in advertisements, movies or magazines. Terms like “madness”, “crazy”, “screwed-up” are unfortunately used. Despite significant progress in recent years, mental health disorders are still stigmatized. The collective imagination surrounding mental health issues is perpetuated and transmitted, in part, through the lexical field that is associated to it. Literature holds a particular place in social discourse, referring both to the artistic world and particular realities. What semantic paths does stigmatization takes in literature ? In the context of this research, autofictional literary works have been selected, to then find excerpts depicting the public perception of mental health disorders. Afterwards, these findings have been linked to the current medical literature about stigmatization and mental health. A short literary text will then be presented, inspired by the excerpts that have been chosen. This project falls in the realm of research-creation and aims to restore a creative role in psychiatric research. (NLHC)

Mauro Carbone et Graziano Lingua, Towards an Anthropology of Screens: Showing and Hiding, Exposing and Protecting,‎ Palgrave Macmillan, 2023

Guillaume Giroud
Mauro Carbone and Graziano Lingua’s book offers an anthropology of screen experiences. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, they propose a rethinking of the nature and status of screens, and with them of philosophy. Thanks to their interdisciplinary erudition, the authors overturn current thinking on screens, which presupposes an implicit Platonic metaphysics reducing them to a mere surface, whereas the authors posit them as relational devices that show and hide, expose and protect. Adopting a transhistorical point of view, they consider the body as a proto-screen, the origin of the notion of arche-screen. This notion both allows to account for the historical and technical variety of screens that already constitute human culture, and to question the traditional categories of philosophy derived from this metaphysics.

Engagement citoyen et jeunesse : une perspective amazonienne

Davi Neustein
This article analyzes the Amazonian rainforest as a privileged location for the development of public policies, citizen engagement and technological innovation. As the Amazon region is demographically the youngest in the country, local youth are the vector of this eco-conscious development. As part as the “Pour le Brésil” project, Davi Neustein traveled through the Amazonian rainforest, passing through Belém, Manaus, Porto Velho, Santarém and Tefé. The aim of the trip was to meet and establish contact with various players and leaders of change in the region. (SP)

Une exploration de la photographie vernaculaire par l’IA générative

François Gutherz
This essay traces a personal exploration, carried out as an amateur explorer, testing generative artificial intelligence tools through vernacular photography. By interpolating images across the latent representations of AI, this practice reveals the artifacts and hallucinations specific to these technologies. Rather than trying to fix them, it celebrates their poetic potential and calls for an imperfect generative AI, one that drifts and surprises. (FG)

La symétrie / asymétrie du débat public

Gilles Gauthier
The public debate is structured by a constitutive tension between opposition and interaction: it concerns a disagreement about which a discussion is conducted. In order to account for this double burden, a distinction between symmetrical and asymmetrical public debates is first advanced: a debate is symmetrical when it gives rise to an exchange; it is asymmetrical when it is only pure confrontation. Taking the example of some recent Quebec debates, the article first proposes to characterize symmetry by the argumentative content of interventions made in a public debate. Some particular features of symmetry – asymmetry are then revealed from this characterization: variability, meaning of terms and concepts, implicit, infra-debates and moral justification. In a second step, are examined the postures taken by the speakers about the progress of a debate that undermine its symmetry: distancing, the refusal to debate and the call for censorship. In conclusion, it is argued that public debate should not be subjected to constraints that would force it to be symmetrical. (GG)