In Burma, the rituals connected with the earth concern the relationship between the local communities of rice-growers and the political whole that encompasses them. The structure of this totality is a result of the history of the Burmese Buddhist monarchy which was, from the tenth century to the end of the nineteenth, the dominant political institution of the Irrawaddy valley. The Buddhist kings were viewed as the masters of the earth, a role symbolized by the ritual of the first furrow, (...) which they “traced” in the soil in order to inaugurate the work season. Moreover, the native Burmese religious system does not include a deity exclusively associated with the earth and who could, by this right, be the object of a systematic cult. This complex religious system, dominated by Buddhism, includes another cult, that of the thirty-seven nats, whose history is linked both to the Burmese monarchical system and the adoption of Theravada Buddhism as the state religion. The fall of the monarchy in 1886 did not bring about its disappearance. On the contrary, this cult is still quite alive and touches all levels of Burmese society. It is especially vibrant in those local communities that worship the thirty-seven nats of the national pantheon, viewed as the protector of their land. (shrink)

The goal of this article is to demonstrate that, following Derrida, in order to develop a theory of animality it is necessary to renounce to the implicit use of concepts related to subjectivity. The deconstruction of subjectivity is thus the only way to establish an ethical requirement concerning animals, a requirement which is no longer conceived from the point of view of our “humanity.” In the first part of the paper, I attempt to locate Derridean ethics within phenomenology in a (...) way which situates ethics in relation to the experience of aporia. In the second part, I focus on what Derrida calls the “carnivorous sacrifice” and try to outline a concretization of the ethics of hospitality and of responsibility that reconfigures our relationships with animals. (shrink)

"L’œuvre de Marc Richir, riche et polyphonique, nous lègue un ensemble complexe d’analyses, de propositions et de concepts qui puisent tant dans la tradition philosophique que dans les sciences exactes, l’anthropologie, l’esthétique et la pensée politique, créant entre ces discours autant d’intersections inédites opérées en régime phénoménologique. En chacun de ces croisements, l’œuvre de Richir appelle à être examinée, déchiffrée et éclairée à partir de perspectives inédites que lui-même a rendu possible. L’immensité du corpus richirien invite à travailler autant aux (...) marges de la phénoménologie husserlienne qu’aux marges de sa phénoménologie, à travers ses dialogues, ses obsessions et ses ambitions, afin de mieux ressaisir en elles la vivacité et l’originalité des phénomènes."--. (shrink)

Cette premiere synthese integrale de la pensee politique d'Emile Chartier (1868-1951, plus connu sous le pseudonyme d'Alain) se propose, a nouveaux frais et de maniere soigneusement contextualisee, de redonner a Alain la place majeure et singuliere qui lui revient dans l'histoire recente des idees : celle d'un penseur citoyen, d'un liberal de gauche compagnon de route du radicalisme, dont l'anti-etatisme, l'individualisme democratique et le rationalisme laique entrent en resonance profonde avec les preoccupations contemporaines. Jerome Perrier entend ainsi rendre justice a (...) cet insatiable chroniqueur, dont l'oeuvre a pati d'avoir ete disseminee en plusieurs milliers de Propos dans la presse de son epoque. Contre le cliche de philosophe pour classes terminales qu'on a parfois cru devoir lui accoler en raison de son style sans jargon, il campe un Alain a la fois clair et profond, soucieux d'etre comprehensible par tous, qui s'inscrit aussi dans la tradition des moralistes francais allant de Montaigne a Camus. (shrink)

The harvest and the pigeons. A note on the summit course of the pillar of Prusias at Delphi The remains of the pillar of Prusias, next to the temple of Apollon at Delphi, have generated much comment. Indeed, the course that supported the equestrian statue of the king of Bithynia presents 112 mortises, above and beyond the attachment holes of the statue itself. Until the present, it has been thought that these cavities served to attach vegetal elements, ears of corn (...) reaped by a laborer or, after the identification of the base as belonging to the pillar of Prusias, a field of corn signifying the beneficence of the king. A trail of textual and archaeological indications prompts a different interpretation for this enigmatic arrangement. The mortises would have served the insertion of bronze points (obeloi or meniskoi) forming a system of protection against defacement by birds, as is occasionally the case in sculpture and in temple architecture. (shrink)

Le philosophe Alain est rarement considéré comme un penseur politique de premier plan. À tort. Ses réflexions en la matière, nombreuses, sont beaucoup plus profondes et autrement plus originales qu'on ne le croit généralement, et l'inventeur des Propos est bien davantage que le simple « philosophe du bonheur pour classe terminale » qu'on a coutume de présenter - et de citer, beaucoup plus que de lire. Circonstance aggravante, sa philosophie politique, quoiqu'authentiquement démocrate, apparaît dans le même temps viscéralement individualiste et (...) libérale ; ce qui s'avère être une tare rédhibitoire aux yeux de beaucoup d'intellectuels français, et ce qui a certainement joué un rôle non négligeable dans l'oubli presque complet dans lequel est tombé cet aspect de son oeuvre au XXe siècle, c'est-à-dire à l'époque tragique des totalitarismes et de l'État-roi. Or, c'est précisément cette dimension de la pensée d'Alain que nous entendons ici mettre en valeur, avec l'intime conviction que cette oeuvre politique a encore beaucoup de choses à nous apprendre et qu'elle mérite sans le moindre doute de figurer au panthéon des plus grands classiques de la pensée libérale. (shrink)

Dévoilant une impressionnante galerie de portraits de femmes de la fin du xixe et du début du xxe siècle, l’ouvrage de Christine Peltre explore la collection de cartes postales acquise par Pierre de Gigord. Collectionneur passionné par les mondes ottomans et turcs, celui-ci assembla un rare éventail de cartes postales datant de l’époque où la « photographie timbrée » connaît son apogée et s’impose peu à peu comme un média de masse. Au fil des pages, où dialoguent texte et image, (...) l’ouvrage tém... (shrink)

Si l’on en croit la très brève introduction de Yannick Ripa, spécialiste de l’histoire des femmes et du genre de renommée internationale et professeure d’histoire contemporaine à l’Université de Paris 8, ce livre serait né d’une frustration. En effet, de tous les rôles endossés par les femmes du passé, celui de la belle-mère, c’est-à-dire la mère de l’époux ou de l’épouse, serait le grand négligé de l’historiographie foisonnante des rapports familiaux. Les livres et articles savants sur les m...

L’étude du portique de Delphes attribué initialement aux Étoliens a été entreprise par A. Perrier en 2007 et les campagnes de relevés de terrain, commencées à la fin de l’année 2010 avec J.‑J. Malmary (architecte) et L. Fadin (topographe), se sont achevées en 2013 par des vérifications sur le monument, les derniers relevés ayant été mis au net en 2014. Un mémoire sur l’histoire, l’architecture et la topographie du portique et de sa terrasse a été déposé à l’Académie des inscriptions (...) et belles... (shrink)

En novembre 1666 fut promulgué en France l’édit dit « des mariages », qui offrait des avantages de diverse nature aux pères de famille nombreuses, soit celles comportant plus de dix ou douze enfants vivants. Leslie Tuttle a eu la bonne idée de laisser de côté la question de l’efficacité d’une telle mesure pour s’intéresser plutôt aux significations multiples des politiques pronatalistes à l’époque de Louis XIV et au siècle suivant. Cette ouverture l’a amenée à revisiter plusieurs questions ch...

From classic aesthetic theories to fresh aesthetic methods, this volume is an accessible introduction to the main topics in contemporary aesthetics: the media-technological challenges, transcultural aesthetics and aesthetic methodology.

With the advent of the cloud computing model allowing a shared access to massive computing facilities, a surging demand emerges for the protection of the intellectual property tied to the programs executed on these uncontrolled systems. If novel paradigm as confidential computing aims at protecting the data manipulated during the execution, obfuscating techniques (in particular at the source code level) remain a popular solution to conceal the purpose of a program or its logic without altering its functionality, thus preventing reverse-engineering (...) on the program even with the help of computing resources. The many advantages of code obfuscation, together with its low cost, makes it a popular technique. This paper proposes a novel methodology for source code obfuscation that can be used together with other traditional obfuscation techniques, making the code more robust against reverse engineering attacks. Three program complexity metrics are used to define three different single-objective combinatorial optimization versions of the problem, which are solved and analysed. Additionally, three multi-objective problems are defined, those considering each of the selected metrics together with the program execution time, in order to avoid strong obfuscations penalizing the performance. The goal of the defined problems is to find sequences of LLVM optimizations that lead to highly obfuscated versions of the original code. These transformations are applied to the back-end pseudo-assembly code (i.e., LLVM Intermediate Representation), thus avoiding any further optimizations by the compiler. Classical genetic algorithms (GAs) are used to solve the studied problems, namely a basic cellular GA for the single-objective problems and the popular NSGA-II for the multi-objective ones. The promising results show the potential of the proposed technique. (shrink)

Includes bibliography: p. 7-12 and bibliographical references.

Resumen El presente artículo, inspirado en la idea de Vernant de que la razón griega es “hija de la ciudad”, aborda el vínculo existente entre las circunstancias políticas y sociales de Éfeso y el pensamiento heraclíteo. En efecto, a partir de la tensión que se produjo entre la realidad histórica en que vivió Heráclito y el resultado de su propia reflexión sobre ella, el filósofo desarrolló una idea de organización de la ciudad, según la cual una pólis debería ser gobernada (...) por el mismo principio rector del universo -i. e. el lógos-, lo cual, en términos prácticos, se traduciría en un modelo político monárquico.This paper, inspired by Vernant’s belief that Greek reason is “a creature of the city”, explores the connection linking Heraclitus’ thought to the political and social circumstances prevailing at Ephesus. Indeed, the tension arising from Heraclitus’ own historical framework and this philosopher’s resulting outlook on it led him to conceive of a rule for organizing a city, according to which a pólis should be governed by the same principle guiding the universe -i. e. the lógos-, which would materialize in concrete form as a monarchical government. (shrink)

Criticisms of the “container” model of pregnancy picturing female and embryo as separate entities multiply in various philosophical and scientific contexts during the last decades. In this paper, we examine how this model underlies received views of pregnancy in evolutionary biology, in the characterization of the transition from oviparity to viviparity in mammals and in the selectionist explanations of pregnancy as an evolutionary strategy. In contrast, recent evo-devo studies on eutherian reproduction, including the role of inflammation and new maternal cell (...) types, gather evidence in favor of considering pregnancy as an evolved relational novelty. Our thesis is that from this perspective we can identify the emergence of a newhistoricalindividual in evolution. In evo-devo, historical units are conceptualized as evolved entities which fulfill two main criteria, their continuous persistence and their non-exchangeability. As pregnancy can be individuated in this way, we contend that pregnant females are historical individuals. We argue that historical individuality differs from, and coexists with, other views of biological individuality as applied to pregnancy (the physiological, the evolutionary and the ecological one), but brings forward an important new insight which might help dissolve misguided conceptions. (shrink)

This article is an exercise in theory-building about the stories that justify, feed upon, and reproduce systems of oppression. I argue that emotional narratives contribute to the constitution and reproduction of systems of oppression, and that different emotional narratives constitute different forms of oppression. I examine two of these emotional narratives: a narrative articulated around pity and a narrative that draws on fear. I propose that the former prevails when those in power do not perceive the members of the oppressed (...) group as posing a threat to their power structure, in turn inducing low-intensity charitable state action. Conversely, narratives that deploy fear prevail when the group in power believes that the oppressed group presents a threat to their power structure, in turn eliciting high-intensity repressive state action. While narratives of pity recur to the infantilization of the members of the disadvantaged group, narratives of fear animalize them. (shrink)