The instant -- The problem of habit and discontinuous time -- The idea of progress and the intuition of discontinuous time -- Conclusion -- Appendix A: "Poetic instant and metaphysical instant" by Gaston Bachelard -- Appendix B: Reading Bachelard reading Siloe: an excerpt from "Introduction to Bachelard's poetics" by Jean Lescure -- Appendix C: A short biography of Gaston Bachelard
From Sade at one end of the nineteenth century to Freud at the other, via many French novelists and poets, pleasure and pain become ever more closely entwined. Whereas the inseparability of these themes has hitherto been studied from isolated perspectives, such as psychoanalysis, sadism and sado-masochism, melancholy, or post-structuralist textualjouissance, the originality of this collaborative volume lies in its exploration of how pleasure and pain function across a broader range of contexts. The essays collected here demonstrate how the complex relationship between pleasure and pain plays a vital role in structuring nineteenth-century thinking in prose fiction (Balzac, Flaubert, Musset, Maupassant, Zola), verse and the memoir as well as socio-cultural studies, medical discourses, aesthetic theory and the visual arts. Featuring an international selection of contributors representing the full range of approaches to scholarship in nineteenth-century French studies – historical, literary, cultural, art historical, philosophical, and sociopolitical – the volume attests to the vitality, coherence and interdisciplinarity of nineteenth-century French studies and will be of interest to a wide cross-section of scholars and students of French literature, society and culture.
In this new study, Cristina Chimisso explores the work of the French Philosopher of Science, Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962) by situating it within French cultural life of the first half of the century. The book is introduced by a study - based on an analysis of portraits and literary representations - of how Bachelard's admirers transformed him into the mythical image of the Philosopher, the Patriarch and the 'Teacher of Happiness'. Such a projected image is contrasted with Bachelard's own conception of philosophy and his personal pedagogical and moral ideas. This pedagogical orientation is a major feature of Bachelard's texts, and one which deepens our understanding of the main philosophical arguments. The primary thesis of the book is based on the examination of the French educational system of the time and of French philosophy taught in schools and conceived by contemporary philosophers. This approach also helps to explain Bachelard's reception of psychoanalysis and his mastery of modern literature. Gaston Bachelard: Critic of Science and the Imagination thus allows for a new reading of Bachelard's body of work, whilst at the same time providing an insight into twentieth century French culture.
The first study to assess the importance of the marginalia, inscriptions, and other manuscript notes in the 750 volumes of Samuel Beckett's personal library.
Fifty Key Contemporary Thinkers surveys the most important figures who have influenced post-war thought. The reader is guided through structuralism, semiotics, post-Marxism and Annales history, on to modernity and postmodernity. With its comprehensive biographical and bibliographical information, this book provides a vital reference work of the last fifty years.
Frantz Fanon's psychiatric career was crucial to his thinking as an anti-colonialist writer and activist. Much of his iconic work was shaped by his experiences working in hospitals in France, Algeria and Tunisia. The writing collected here was written from 1951 to 1960 in tandem with his political work and reveals much about how Fanon's thought developed, showing that, for him, psychiatry was part of a much wider socio-political struggle. His political, revolutionary and literary lives should not then be separated from the psychiatric practice and writings that shaped his thinking about oppression, alienation and the search for freedom.
Frantz Fanon's political impact is difficult to overestimate. His anti-colonialist, philosophical and revolutionary writings were among the most influential of the 20th century. The essays, articles and notes published in this volume cover the most politically active period of his life and encapsulate the breadth, depth and urgency of his writings. In particular, they clarify and amplify his much-debated views on violent resistance. These works provide new complexity to our understanding of Fanon and reveal just how relevant his thinking is to the contemporary world and how important his ideas are to changing it.
Comprehensive overview of the entire spectrum of works by one of twentieth-century Frances most original thinkers. Gaston Bachelard, one of twentieth-century Frances most original thinkers, is known by English-language readers primarily as the author of The Poetics of Space and several other books on the imagination, but he made significant contributions to the philosophy and history of science. In this book, Roch C. Smith provides a comprehensive introduction to Bachelards work, demonstrating how his writings on the literary imagination can be better understood in the context of his exploration of how knowledge works in science. After an overview of Bachelards writings on the scientific mind as it was transformed by relativity, quantum physics, and modern chemistry, Smith examines Bachelards works on the imagination in light of particular intellectual values Bachelard derived from science. His trajectory from science to a specifically literary imagination is traced by recognizing his concern with what science teaches about how we know, and his increasing preoccupation with questions of being when dealing with poetic imagery. Smith also explores the material and dynamic imagination associated with the four elementsfire, water, air, and earthand the phenomenology of creative imagination in Bachelards Poetics of Space, his Poetics of Reverie, and in the fragments of Poetics of Fire.
CHAPITRE I: Niveau d'alterite . 5 CHAPITRE II: Niveau mathematique 34 CHAPITRE III: Niveau physique . 53 CHAPITRE IV: Niveau bio1ogique 78 CHAPITRE V: Niveau social . 107 CHAPITRE VI: Niveau historique . 165 CHAPITRE VII: Niveau personnel 226 CHAPITRE VIII: Niveau d'ipseite 264 INDEX DES NOMS PROPRES . 310 INTRODUCTION Lorsque les philosophes du XVIIe et du XVIIIe siecle -a commen cer par Hobbes et Descartes - decouvrent dans les mathematiques Ie modele de toute connaissance certaine, et tendent a delimiter a priori les pouvoirs de l'esprit, ils posent ces limites en definissant en meme temps ce que sont des connaissances imaginaires. Ce sera, pour Hobbes, ce royaume des Fees auquel, dans Ie Leviathan, il compare l'Eglise; pour Descartes Ie royaume de l'enfance et du prejuge. II s'agit du lieu d'une imagination dereglee, malsaine, ou regnent les pieges d'un langage vain, par lequel des esprits qui se pretendent savants seduisent, egarent, en croyant et en faisant croire qu'un objet reel ou possible correspond aux mots dont ils se servent. On n'est pas delivre de ce qu'on nie: Ie monde de Descartes sera un monde feint, l'imagination va constituer Ie centre de la pensee de Hume et se confondre chez lui avec la raison. Les monades seront, de l'aveu de Leibniz, des fictions commodes, et Kant fera de la force d'i magination la charniere entre l'intuition et Ie concept.
