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THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE AND BOXING HELENA: DESIRE AND THE DISMEMBERMENT OF THE FEMALE BODY

Michel Hardin
The author compares The Brain That Wouldn't Die, a 1960 B-movie with Jennifer Chambers Lynch's Boxing Helena (1993) in order to show how spectators not only take on the sadistic position which has long been thought to be the one position informing Hollywood cinema but tend to shift between different positions, including masochistic positions. Both movies relate the fetish fantasies of a doctor: in both narratives, the protagonists artificially maintain alive dismembered female bodies. In neither movie is the desire that produces these fetish fantasies clearly critiqued. To some extent, the Oedipal conflict might explain the sexual neuroses of the protagonists. However, both movies have the spectator shift the identification process from one character to the other. In Boxing Helena, such shifts in spectator identification are mirrored on the screen, creating a critique of film, film theory, and voyeurism.

DECONSTRUCTION AND THE DEATHS OF PHILOSOPHY: OF METAPHYSICS AND MOURNING FOR THE ARCHIVE

Peter Trifonas
Through a reading of Derrida, the author addresses questions concerning the "right" of philosophy's birth and death, and the ethics of its body of teaching. Taking into account Derrida's destruction of logocentrism, if any reaffirmation of "philosophy" as the interpretational moment of a disciplinary line of inquiry is to occur, it can only be through a responsible questioning of what is said and left unsaid in the Western tradition of metaphysics. How can deconstruction help us to untangle, demystify, transgress the limits and limitations of the aporia of the death of philosophy and resolve the question of its question, and of its right, its institution, as well as who has the right and responsibility to respond to it?

INTRODUCTION TO KONSTANTIN AZADOVSKI’S "RUSSIA’S SILVER AGE IN TODAY’S RUSSIA"

Murray Krieger
In the context of the Third International Conference on Humanistic Discourse, this text introduces Konstantin Azadovski’s "Russia’s Silver Age in Today’s Russia" and reports on the central concerns that emerged in its discussion.

RUSSIA’S SILVER AGE IN TODAY’S RUSSIA

Konstantin Azadovski
The culture of Russia’s Silver Age (1890-1917) has taken its place in the history of the arts of the country after having been forbidden under the Soviet regime. With a relative "thaw" under Khrushchev, the works of Sergei Esenin, Ivan Bunin and some of Marina Tsvetaeva’s works became available. Today, after the fall of the Soviet regime, what used to be forbidden is now widely published often in cheap editions. What used to be elite culture has become mass culture. However, it unclear how the culture of the Silver Age can address the problems of today's extremely politicized Russia. A similar problematic faces the new wave of interest for other cultural trends, which have also garnered the particular interest of Russian society: the culture and literature of Russian emigration and the literature of the Underground.

INTRODUCTION TO ALEXANDER GAVRILOV’S "HUMANISM AS ANTI-IDEOLOGY"

Hazard Adams
In the context of the Third International Conference on Humanistic Discourse, this text summarizes the introduction to Alexander Gavrilov’s "Humanism as Anti-Ideology" that Hazard Adams delivered and reports on the central concerns that emerged in its discussion.

HUMANISM AS ANTI-IDEOLOGY

Alexander K. Gavrilov
Under Communist rule, Party ideology and humanistic values conflicted with one another. In analysing this conflict, the author underlines the theoretical resources and the great political assets of humanism. Communism was afflicted by its hypocrisy moving from the general the "Man is good" to the particular the "Men living in communism are good". However, scientific socialism and its state politics changed the country into a great reading hall where humanities, and among them philology, became very popular. Philology, as a tool in the study of style, is essentially ideology-proof. Rather than developing counter-ideologies, many Russians turned to an active passive resistance through uses of irony that the humanities cultivated. This praxis of gradually eroding the dominant ideology within oneself and one’s environment was necessary to what would become perestroika. Humanism has proven to be, under necessity, a marvelous opponent of ideology.

INTRODUCTION TO DOUGLAS J. OSLER’S "IMAGES OF LEGAL HUMANISM"

K. Ludwig Pfeiffer
In the context of the Third International Conference on Humanistic Discourse, this text introduces Douglas J. Osler’s "Images of Legal Humanism".

IMAGES OF LEGAL HUMANISM

Douglas J. Osler
Legal humanism is an expression generally used to refer to the study of Roman law by 16th Century philologists. Coming a century an a half after what is generally taken to be the birth of humanism, it is generally understood to be part of humanism mostly in its interest for the historical interpretation of Latin texts rather than for participating in the value orientation of humanism. Strangely enough, legal history has taken the philological work of legal humanism for granted not seeing that legal humanism was itself inscribed in history. First, we should note that when it was being developed in the 16th Century, this philological work in Roman law was marginal if one compares publications in that field to publications of medieval Italian jurisprudence. Secondly, legal history has tended to diminish the presence of interpretation in the work of legal humanists who probably more than is generally acknowledged adapted to their times the Latin texts inventing values which have nothing to do with the Roman sources. Legal humanism has never been used to mean the legal aspects of humanitarianism and probably needn’t to be. If the work of interpretation of Roman law has opened some windows into humanistic values, Roman law itself was the codification of an unjust power structure.

INTRODUCTION TO ANDREAS KABLITZ’S RENAISSANCE – REBIRTH: SOME REMARKS ABOUT THE HUMANISTIC INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY

Ernst Behler
In the context of the Third International Conference on Humanistic Discourse, this text introduces Andreas Kablitz’s "Renaissance-Rebirth: Some Remarks about the Humanistic Interpretation of History" and reports on the central concerns that emerged in its discussion.

RENAISSANCE – REBIRTH: SOME REMARKS ABOUT THE HUMANISTIC INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY

Andreas Kablitz
The author works towards a historical understanding of humanism through his analysis of the notion of rebirth which was a key concept, but under different guise, both in the self-interpretation of the sixteenth century as well as in the appearance, during the nineteenth century, of the term "Renaissance" when it was first used to describe a historical period. However, the contexts of Vasari’s use of the word rinascita and later of Michelet’s use of the word Renaissance differ greatly. Whereas in Vasari, rebirth is meant to reinterpret the relationship of art to nature against nominalism’s views that there are pre-ordained possibilities, in Michelet rebirth is meant to refer to the development of empirical studies of nature and the retrieval of the Greek and Latin program of self-constitution for mankind through the work of reason. Hence, the Middle Ages, and scholasticism especially, are blamed for their suppression of nature. The loss of the importance of art in Michelet's conception of the Renaissance follows logically from the interpretation of this period as a re-establishment of truth. On the contrary, if art is of crucial importance in Vasari's conception of rinascita, it is because art as creation opens all possibilities and, thus, is part of an effort towards perfection.

L’Infigurable, publié sous la direction de Alexis Nouss, Simon Harel et Michaël La Chance, Montréal, Liber, coll. « Bibliothèque Liber », 2000, 195 pages

Geneviève Sicotte

Vladimir Propp, Problemy komizma i smekha. Moskva: Labirint, 1999

Éric Lozowy

Valdine Clemens, The Return of the Repressed: Gothic Horror from The Castle of Otranto to Alien. State University of New York Press, USA, 1999. 274 pages

Éric Alloi
L’ouvrage part d’une prémisse simple : la culture fournit des outils pour vivre à la société. La logique soutenant le discours qui suit se construit comme une réponse qui se décline suivant une petite histoire du genre de l’horreur, comme le titre en illustre la portée : de Castle of Otranto jusqu’à Aliens. L’auteure est affiliée de recherche en études culturelles (cultural studies) à l’University of Manitoba.

Lavertu, Yves, Jean-Charles Harvey le combattant. Montréal, Boréal, 2000. 462 pages

Caroline Désy