Alexandra Giroux

La dernière création de la compagnie Materia Prima est la suite logique d’une réflexion entamée sur l’ange et la chute, mêlant poésie barbare, performance, théâtre physique, installation, musique vivante, vidéo et art urbain. Le spectateur touche ainsi la frontière, frontière scénique lorsque les limites de la scène se font mouvantes mais aussi frontière entre le vivant et le mort, l’eau et le feu, le féminin et le masculin.

Eternal in / out est un objet hybride, comme ces corps transgenres qui l’animent, secoués par les décharges des prémices d’un quotidien au XXIeme siècle, doux comme l’enfer. Pris au sein de la spirale d’une hyperréalité, les acteurs du cabaret mortuaire désirent, souffrent et courent dans une forme de rituel cathartique.

Cette création post-moderne défie les limites de l’interculturalité, mêlant les langages au sens de moyen d’expression et d’origine. Le spectateur est bousculé et bouleversé, la boule au ventre lorsque les étranges anges éteignent les néons de cette pièce “belle comme le sucre qui se dissout sous la pluie”.

Click here to watch the “Swatch Coffee” Pecha Kucha presentation.

Young French Females’ Attitude Toward Menstruation

Menstruation in several cultures has been considered with fear and wonder. However, this blood, which regularly flows from the woman, is a totally natural phenomenon that a female experiences usually each month. Only pregnancy, special contraception means, marginal ways of living or some diseases allow the woman to be rid of it. Menstrual blood is a liquid which connotes a variety of symbols, from birth to sexuality. It is the external manifestation of an internal process. While male genitals can easily be shown externally in its apparent form, the female anatomy is more complex as the genital apparatus is internal and kept hidden like a secret. Related to life, death and sex, it is the subject of numerous myths. The key question to be asked is as follows: how is menstruation dealt with in Western society, with a particular focus on the narratives and discourses about menstruation among young French women. Currently it is still a taboo subject because of the influence of our cultural inheritance. Womanhood, femininity and menstruation are sophisticated and mythic construction created by our civilization. Scientists and general practitioners monopolize the discourse about it. Only few academics wrote about this subject in the psychological, sociological and social anthropological fields. The academic knowledge produced in these areas has been dominated by males. The aim of this paper is to hear the women’s voices in order to understand how menstruation, a natural thing, is in fact really cultural. The focus is on French culture in particular, and especially the generation of women who are in their twenties. Four French students living in Scotland have been interviewed in order to explore in a small way this vast topic of menstruation and how it is regarded in developed European societies. The objectives of this work are to understand connotations of the menstrual blood and the behaviour of people towards it, to investigate the theories of some feminists about menstruation, to allow women to talk about their periods in other ways rather than medical ones. Further, it is about analysing this discourse and criticizing our relationship with an understanding of the concept of menstruation. First, this essay puts forward a review which helps to give a broad approach to the topic. Once it has set out the main themes, the methodology, the findings and the discussion of the results are presented. This essay finishes with a reflection on control and how power is exercised over the body of women using the pretext of menstruation.

First, it should be pointed out that France as a multicultural society has been influenced by the habits of different groups. However, traditional beliefs still hold sway. A famous original French belief states that during menstruation, women would not be able to make mayonnaise successfully. It was also long believed that a child conceived during the menses would be red haired, silly or that he would have diseases such as leprosy or ulcers. Religion plays an important part in the way we perceive menstruation. Jewish women must not have sexual intercourse during menstruation and Muslims have to wash themselves in a kind of ritual. In the Old Testament, blood is viewed as unclean. “Inter urinas et faeces nascimur” says the Church (“we are born between urine and faeces”). Fairy tales unconsciously prepare young girls for menstruation. In Snow white, the queen, sewing, pricks her finger with a needle and she decides to have a child with lips as red as blood. The meaning of this extract is that women need to bleed to give birth. It is interesting to stress that menstruation splits the life of the woman in different times, depending on the culture. In France, there are several stages in the life of a female: the girl, the teenager, the woman and the post menopausal woman. All these phases are related to the presence or the absence of menstruation. The post-menopausal woman does not have any menstruation, and so, she is not “useful” anymore for the society in terms of not being able to have babies. The uterus may be seen as a void to be filled. Thus, menstruation would be seen as the proof of a failure. However, it can be as well seen as a success: it is like a reminder that the reproductive system works correctly. Usually, in other time and other places, menstruation was considered as bad, even if it is possible to find some exceptions. A cosmic power has sometimes been given to menstruation: the reason for this has been found in the moon cycles, the seasons or the rhythm of the tides.  In our culture, we are frightened of blood in general because it is related to death or illness, because it is a vector of contamination for diseases. Women often feel pain during menstruation. The etymology of the word “pain” is “poena” means “punishment” in Latin. The concept of PMS is controversial and it could be constructed by culture. De Beauvoir describes menstruation as a hard thing in her well-known book, The Second Sex: “menstruation is painful: headaches, over-fatigue, abdominal pains, make normal activities distressing or impossible” (1949, p.353). As a feminist, it is striking to read that from her hand. Even this really open-minded thinker of the middle of the 20th century stresses only the bad aspects of menstruation in this quote reinforcing all the clichés that we have about it. The way that writers describe menstruation is really important because it has an influence on our perception.

Menstruation is a cultural fact because it is constructed but, most of the time, the discourses that we can find about it are medical discourses. The medical model therefore appears to dominate western discourses over and above social and cultural ones.  At least in print, menstruation is accepted as a normal body process but some consider menstruation as “the weeping of a disappointed uterus” (Jeffcoate 1975, quoted in Laws 1990, p.93). Lots of general practitioners encourage women to have children to get rid of their menstrual pain, as if women had to let their body do what it is intended for. Some of them go further.  Several books have been written by general practitioners on menstruation and even on the ability – or not – to have intercourse during this period of the month. There is as well the idea that hormones would alter women’s behaviour. By using the expression “PMT”, “Premenstrual tension”, general practitioners encourage woman to focus only on the bad aspects of their feelings, before menstruation. General practitioners control the boundaries of the social norm of what constitutes femininity. The institution of science is a social institution where medicine reproduces and legitimates patriarchal values. Women who take the pill bleed each month, but in reality, this blood is only there to mimic the natural cycle and to reassure some women. Currently, some females can decide to get rid of their periods and to choose a pill which does not provoke this artificial bleeding. The attitude toward menstruation is therefore ambiguous: some women want to get rid of it others want to still bleed once a month. Periods play an ambivalent role in our lives as they are something that we can see, something with a huge symbolic significance and something to be hidden.

According to the etiquette of menstruation, women should not make men aware that they are menstruating (Laws 1990, p.29) nor of how they cope with it. Advertisements for sanitary wear are usually politically correct: the blood used is blue, the vocabulary is naïve and nothing is embarrassing. But the expression “sanitary protection” is problematic because it leads people to believe that blood is dirty or dangerous. Currently, some companies even provide some even some protective tins to hide sanitary protection devices, with black pant liner and specific towel to perfume the vulva. In the clean male-centred world of pornography, menstruation, cyprine or any other fluids of the woman are banned. Some feminists have argued that we should positively consider the menarche as a girl’s coming of age. However, nothing has happened to consider the cycle glamorously and respectfully (Greer 1999, p.37). Menstruation can be used to emphasise men’s power over women. The production of this fluid is passive, whereas the production of sperm or urine is active. The menstrual flow can be seen as uncontrolled and unchecked and, by analogy, the woman can be seen like that. So, women seem to be devalued by menstruation but it may be as well an object of jealousy by men because it is the sign of child-bearing ability. While the female’s body is not aimed to serve male sexual desires, menstruation could be seen as a resistance to the man’s will. During her period, the woman would often be thought to be useless and the resistance to having sex could be considered by some men as an invitation to legitimise adultery.

Even though in lots of cultures, menstruation was depreciated, in some of them they had a positive attitude toward it. A research done in 1983 by the World Health Organization among women of all socioeconomic classes in ten countries shows that they see menstruation as a positive event (Delaney J, Lupton MJ and Toth E. 1988, p.14). Moreover, a large majority of them would not voluntarily get rid of it.  Now, some contraceptive devices allow women to control or to get rid of their periods. For the first time, women are able to free themselves from natural determinism. Some feminists have sought to represent menstrual blood in a positive light. These thinkers, who are from “Mai 68” are artists or intellectuals belonging to the “Second Wave” in the sixties. Some artists have tried to remove the complex that we can have about menstruation, by using it at the main point of their work. Orlan, for instance, explains one of her performances: she was using “a huge magnifying glass to show [her] vagina (the pubic hairs on one half were painted blue) during [her] period” and “a video screen showed the head of the man or woman who was about to see another showed the head of women and men who were looking and at the exit, Freud’s text on the head of Medusa was distributed” (Orlan, quoted in Greer 1999, p.38).

This review is the start point of a deeper research focusing on French females. Through this project, the researcher wanted to explore this subject from her own auto-ethnographic perspective also, as well as from the four women chosen as interviewees: Emanuelle, Laetitia, Charlie and Martine. Indeed, all the women interviewed are really similar to her: same gender, same age and same nationality. The thematic analysis of the views on menstruation of the young French women has to be considered also in relation to the feminist standpoint theory which influenced the researcher. Because women are not often asked to talk about the subject of menstruation, their point of view is interesting. In order to understand the real point of view of the subjects, the interview, as a qualitative method of research, was chosen. Most of the books discussed in the literature review present menstruation as a taboo so a one-to-one interview allows the person to feel more confident and to talk more freely. The semi-directive interview is an interesting way to let people talking about what they want. Nevertheless, the French female students who answered the questions cannot be taken as representative of the whole French female population. They are just a few out of the many and may not be typical because they have accepted to talk about menstruation. Indeed, some young women who were asked to participate in this research refused the proposition. They explained that they thought that the subject was too strange or that they would not be comfortable to talk about it.

Through the interviews, four key ideas were systematically discussed by the participants: the women’s link with temporality, their behaviour during menstruation, their relationships with family and friends, and finally the idea of control and power. Menstruation plays an important part in the life of a woman and reflects her link to temporality. Nowadays women live longer and thus experience more menstrual episodes during their life-span. Men’s perception of time is somewhat different because they do not have any periods. Menarche is a key step in the life of a woman. For two of the interviewed women, it was a positive experience and they were happy. For the two others, it was scary and they wanted to hide it. Charlie knew as well what periods were because she had an elder sister. She was happy to have her periods because she had the feeling of being “a whole woman”, like her friends who already all had their menstruation. For all the interviewed young women, the menopause is far away but they have their own idea about how they will react when they won’t have periods anymore. Martine thought that when women have the menopause, they are often retired and they do not have the same link with time as do younger women: when a woman has her periods, she usually knows when the beginning of her cycle is and what day she will begin to bleed. Most of the time women talk about their menstruation when they experience pain and problems, or when it is related to childbearing or contraception. But some women try to make things different. Vanessa Tiegs (2004) for instance wants to produce a positive image of menstruation and paints with her menstrual blood. During her periods, she feels more creative and she expresses the menstrual cycle every month.  All the girls interviewed used pads for their first period, and not a tampon, though some are using this method currently. None of the interviewed women used alternative protections like a menstrual cup, a sea sponge or a tissue towel, because they were not known to them or rejected them because it meant having a closer contact with their own blood.When she has her periods, Emmanuelle tries to avoid practising sport and sometimes, it is so painful that she cannot go to the university. It can be assumed that women may attribute bad moods to being premenstrual. PMS might be considered as a cultural construction and the relationship that women have with their relatives may explain a lot about the construction of our different cultures.

When the young girl has her periods for the first time, a woman plays often the role of the mentor: for Martine and Charlie, it was the grandmother who was present; for Laetitia and Emmanuelle, it was the mother. All say that they would not have talked about it to a man, even though it is someone in the family. Charlie said that she would not talk about it to her father because they have a “blood relation”, which suggests that the blood of the menstruation is seen as having a different connotation than the blood in the veins. Foucault (1981, p.116) explains that sex is concerned with power and surveillance: pedagogy, medicine and economics and so on are perfect surveillance tools. Now, technology is easily associated with the idea of good: using tampons is considered modern. It is important to keep in mind that taking the pill like she does could be thought to be against nature as well as natural is not synonymous with good. The only thing is that women should have access to the information to make up their minds and to decide if they want to have periods or not. Each woman has a special relationship with her general practitioner when it comes to menstruation. Laetitia pointed out that sometimes, when male general practitioners ask this kind of question, they are smiling a little bit. She thinks that it may be considered as a misogynist reaction. Really often, men are those with the medical gaze and women are their helpers, although men themselves cannot go through the female body experience. Women are often the passive victims of the doctor’s ministrations. The pill is both a liberator and a problem for the woman. It gives her more power because she can choose to have babies and periods. But at the same time, it can have negative effects on the body and it reinforces the idea that only women should care about issues surrounding reproduction. Control of reproduction is done through the control of periods and taking the pill is considered as the correct thing to do because it is technological and modern.

To sum up, menstruation is both very present and very absent in our society. Culture plays an important part in its symbolic construction, as much as our perception of menstruation constructs our culture. Usually, the knowledge that we have about it is from the perception of medical knowledge, as an attempt to rationalise a little known subject. The lack of knowledge about it leads lots of men to use their construction of menstruation in relation to their beliefs about women as an argument to depreciate women and to support and therefore perpetuate patriarchal society. In the majority of the cultures, people do not talk a lot about menstruation, except when it is discussed within a scientific discourse. So, women tend to hide it and often leave it in a framework imbued by the negation of their own body. Of course, generalisations must be avoided and some women have a positive approach to their bodies. Through the interviewing of the four French women, the idea of gender relationship was really present. It has been suggested that menstruating women have a different link to temporality than men. Periods appeared to be important because they seemed to be the most obvious evidence that the women can have children. Menstruation is connected with reproduction. The mother who gives life to the daughter is often the same person who will help the young girl with her menarche, a sign that shows that she can be a mother as well. This relationship is privileged and the women cannot all the time talk freely of this subject with their male friends, for instance. Unconsciously, women know that they do not have a huge interest in discussing this subject as it is used as a coercion tool. Jokes, medicalization or even notions of “aberrant” hygiene can be used by them to control the bodies of women. This study may contribute to breaking the taboo and to allowing women to talk about menstruation but the road is long. The more civilized we are, the more distant with our bodies we become.  Menstruation has been made into something horrible by so-called “civilized man”, and different technology devices allow women to control their flow. This is often imposed upon them by cultural restrictions. However, they have the choice: being slaves of technology or being in control. The problem is complex and the power exercised cannot be considered as springing only from man to dominate women. Women perpetuate this taboo. One of the pieces of evidence is the fact that some girls who were asked to take part in the interviews declined the invitation, explaining that the subject was personal. The aim of this essay is not to write an apology of menstruation. Women should have the appropriate information about it. They should be able to use the sanitary protection that they want, they should be able to decide if they really want to take the pill and they should even be able to choose if they want to have their periods.  Tampons or the pill that seemed at first sight to be a revolution for women can finally immure them. The woman’s body has to be rethought and this can be achieved only by the mutual work and commitment of both genders. But some people, most of the time women, try to change our perception of menstruation, in order to have a more positive attitude toward it. If menstruation is not the problem, then attitudes to it could be. Menstruation is often linked up with womanhood alone, but hopefully this is not totally true and they must not be limited by it. Women are more than a womb which has to be filled.

>> Dissertation “Young French Females’ Attitude Toward Menstruation”

There is no correlation between technological progress and happiness. This account is one of the explanations for the apparition in art of the movement called “postmodernism”, following modernism and expressing a disenchantment of the world. The etymology of the word reveals the complexity of this concept: postmodernism seems to be both linked and separated from modernism. With reference to the cultural sphere, this essay will critically evaluate the claim that post-modernism constitutes a break from modernism. We need to wonder if we leave in a totally different period or if we just experiment the late modernity. First of all, a typology of the concepts of “modernism”, “avant-garde” and “postmodernism” will allow the reader to understand what the main characteristics of these movements are. After setting the scene, the relationship between modernism and postmodernism will be evaluated in order to point out the similarities, the differences and the implications.

To begin, a historical review is necessary to differentiate modernism from avant-garde and postmodernism. Modernism is an answer to modernisation and modernity. Berman (1983, p.15) explains that modernism is contradictory: “to be modern is to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world – and, at the same time, that threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know, everything we are.” The first modern painting is known to be Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe (Manet, 1863). This movement was an artistic response to the bourgeoisie. It is characterized by a rejection of tradition and the assessment that it is impossible to represent the world in a single language: art is considered as the expression of reality, not a copy. Impressionists like Paul Cézanne or Claude Monet for instance used to focus on colours and shapes more than the natural world. For them, it was the essential characteristics of art. Modernist culture is characterized by artistic autonomy, self-critical aesthetic and self-consciousness. Artists use processes like juxtaposition and laud paradox, ambiguity or irony. Surrealism disturbed the audience because of the phantasmagorical juxtaposition of improbable elements. Stravinsky or Schoenberg used dissonance and atonality in their music. Joyce or T.S. Eliot wrote in their novels some intelligible plots with constant irruption of nonsense, onomatopoeias or even musical notes. The invention of photography during the nineteenth century has challenged the representation of reality: artist has tended to focus more on presentation than representation. Guernica (Picasso 1937) is considered as the last modern painting, drawing the attention of the audience on a political issue by representing the war. Hughes (1980, p.89) states that thanks to modernism, “art (its creators hopes) would be open to everyone instead of a few initiated souls; and the old class distinction between artist and artisan, architect and engineer, would be merged in a general conception of art as production”. But now, with the institutionalisation of modern art, only the elite have access to it. On the contrary, Harrison (1997, p.14) thinks that “modernism may fruitfully be thought of as a form of tradition, but one maintained in a kind of critical tension with the wider surrounding culture.” Modernism was a rupture but the following movements were rupture too. Guibaut (1951, p.36) suggests that modern art had to lose its negative oppositional edge “to enter into the international area as a positive alternative in Europe to Communist culture”.

Avant-garde was more political than modernism but there is a nebulous relationship between this two denominations. Although some people think they are totally different, some other argue that they should not be separated. Stating that capitalism will not last for ever, avant-garde is interwoven with social and political ideas. The artists of the avant-garde were challenging commodification by practicing happenings or non completed works so it was hard to give them a value. Dadaists like Max Ernst or George Grosz wanted to reform the order of experience and the condition of social life. Futurists such as Umberto Boccioni or David Burliuk, were considering art like a support for revolutionary movements.

Postmodernism is sometimes considered as a break with the past and sometimes as the late phase of modernism. Postmodernism rejects the idea that the truth is universal and that language is capable to reach it. A reminder of the historical context is important to understand this movement which can be characterized by two key ideas: political pessimism and cultural decay. Postmodernism, appearing in the 1930s and becoming important in the 1950s, has probably emerged in reaction to the academic institutionalisation of modern pieces of art. If modernism was canonized, something else had to be created. It is more difficult to attach meaning to post-modern objects. To challenge commodification, artists produce ephemeral art or make masterpiece of everyday life things. Marcel Duchamp and his “ready-mades” are a perfect illustration of an attempt to anti-elitism in art. Fluxus, with Carolee Schneemann or Yoko Ono, included a strong current of anti-commercialism and an anti-art sensibility as witnesses Cage when he performs the silent play 4’33. Pop-art, from Andy Warhol to Roy Lichtenstein draws the attention of the viewer on issues such as commodification or fetishism. But Debord (cited in Jameson 1991, p.18) observes that “the image has become the final form of commodity reification”. The distinction between low culture and high culture is less obvious, like in Rabelais’ carnival. Postmodernism uses parody, quotation, irony and pastiche. For instance, the movie Romeo + Juliet (Luhrmann, 1996) reinterprets the original Shakspeare’s text, updated to the hip modern suburb of Verona. Be Kind Rewind (Gondry, 2008) refers to the popular cinematographic culture, uses pastiche and suggests that each of us can be a director. Jameson (1991, p.54) states that “the political form of postmodernism, if there ever is any, will have as its vocation the invention and projection of a global cognitive mapping, on a social as well as a spatial scale.” Mixing genre and using intertextuality can be seen as a new attempt to democratize art, where modernism has failed. It is difficult to distinguish high culture from low culture. Each individual can understand what he sees like he wants. The self-referential aspect of postmodernism is important. For instance, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey has been interpreted both by the Coen brothers with their film O’Brother and by Joyce with his book Ulysse.  Postmodernism is found in a wide range of domains, from literature to music. Some of its forms are interesting ad new: happenings, street art, alternative, psychedelic and so on. The first most visible post-modern attempt was architecture. The post-modern architecture is a critic of Utopia and pays more attention to the social environment. It can be seen as an aesthetic populism. Llash (1999, p.57) explains that “post-modern architecture and difference contest modernism’s machinic absence of memory with the reconstruction of the new built environment. Its legibility as univocal brings into play conscious memory, its legibility as multivocal unconscious memory.”

Now that these different concepts has been defined, this essay will wonder if postmodernism is a continuity or a break. It can be argued that postmodernism represents an extension of modernism. If one consider postmodernism like a rupture, one must consider each new style as a rupture. For instance, Romantism and especially La Liberté guidant le peuple (Delacroix, 1830) was a shock for the first viewers whereas for us this painting is not really disturbing. Several artists like the surrealists André Breton or Salvador Dali were interested in collage, montage and photomontage. Mourey (1990, p.21) explains that lots of modern artist were using these techniques and post-modern artists use quasi the same self referential techniques by referring to the cultural sphere. Thus, the intertextuality of the postmodernism is not a new idea. Modern artists wanted to challenge the commodification of art and to break with the official rules by adopting a new style. Post-modern artists have the same aim: land art, happenings or art in situ redefine the concept of art and suggests that art is for everybody, everywhere. But it can be argued that like modernism, postmodernism has failed in its attempt to democratize art. In one hand, the work of Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut or Agnès Varda, major figures of the Nouvelle Vague, refer a lot to popular culture, from advertisement to cheap newspapers. On the other hand, these movies are made by film critics for intellectuals – although it is hard to criticize the fact that some people urge the audience to read Franz Kafka or to go more often to the ciné-clubs. The reader can as well think about an other failure: in Paris, lots of people were shocked after the installations of Les deux plateaux (Buren 1986), in the courtyard of the Palais Royal.
Really often, these pieces of art end up in museums, where only the elite is going. In general, it is hard to say if modernism and postmodernism are so different. Lyotard (1986) explains: “it seems to me that the essay (Montaigne) is post-modern, while the fragment (The Athaeneum) is modern”. An other issue to think about is the fact that modernism would still exist. According to Berman (cited in Anderson, 1988) modernism is profoundly revolutionary and “contrary to conventional belief, the modernist revolution is not over”, which could mean that postmodernism is its logical continuity and actual form. Lyotard as well refutes the end of modernism, whereas Jameson does not.

It can be argued on the contrary that a kind of tension exists and that postmodernism is a break. Things have changed and we live in a capitalist world, a cyber culture where communication technologies are prominent. Obviously, all these elements had an impact on art. Waugh (1992, p.113) analyzes that “postmodernism is a debasement of the avant-garde desire to take art out of a sphere of autonomous withdrawal from mass culture and to reintegrate it into life as an oppositional praxis.” During the 1960s, in the cultural sphere, a shift from modernism to postmodernism can be seen, a shift which can be compared to the replacement of post-fordism by post-industrialism. There is a historical and economical explanation: during the twentieth century the economic needs of capitalism have changed from production to consumption, what can explain the proliferation of popular media culture. “The postmodern adventure consists of dramatic mutations in science, technology, society, and human identity that are producing the transition from modern to post-modern constellations” (Best and Kellner 2001, p.205). It can be stated that the political speech of art was taken away by mass Medias. Some theories show that the grand narrative is related to the modernism, although the petite narratives are related to postmodernism. But it is not sure that metanarratives are in decline. Strinati (1995, p.241) reminds the reader that a metanarrative “presents a definite view of knowledge and its acquisition, together with a general account of the significant changes it sees occurring in modern societies. It presumes to tell us something true about the world, and knows why it is able to do this.” But this is exactly what is postmodernism so it is not logical that to say that metanarratives are in decline. A rupture was needed because modernist buildings became to reflect alienation and dehumanization rather than being an utopian reflection about a new life, like Jencks wanted to do. Jameson made an interesting comparison between Van Gogh’s A Pair of Boots (1887) and Andy Warhol’s Diamond Dust Shoes (1980) where he shows that mainly, the reproductive element separates modern and post-modern aesthetics. Of course, the break is more or less visible depending on the different spheres. In literature it is much more difficult to say if the text is modern or post-modern although in other spheres, it is more obvious. It can be argued that postmodernism is not be a break but a step, like the avant-garde was, between modernism and postmodernism.

It is time to take stock on postmodernism. Some theorists are really critical although others really laud this movement. One of the most famous thinker who thinks that modernism is still important, Baudrillard (1998, p.180) states that “simulation is indefinitely more dangerous since it always suggests, over and above its object, that law and order themselves might really be nothing more than a simulation”. The reification process can be pointed out; there are plenty of signs in our culture which lead to the loss of the real. In hyperreality, concept explored in the film Matrix (Wachowski brothers, 1999), people become unable to distinguish reality from fantasy. Postmodernism is accused of having abandoned the critical stance, which was one of the characteristic of modernism. But one can wonder what was the impact of modern art and if the people were really interested in the political content. For instance, lots of people think that Guernica (Picasso 1937) depicts the horrors of the world war two although it is about the Nazi German bombing of Guernica, Spain, on April 26 1937, during the Spanish Civil War. It can be wondered if all out culture is vacuous, if the aura that Benjamin talks about is definitively lost. If art is now intertextuality and cannibalisation of the past, the viewer can come across some issues such as sensation of déjà-vu, vacuity or nostalgia. Our experience of the world is now different and the i-pod shuffle is a perfect metaphor for it. It can be argued as well that there is a breakdown of the distinction between culture, society, economy: what we buy is influenced by our culture. We live in a world of signs and our enjoyment of art comes from other knowledge that we have but all the people do not have these knowledge so it can be wondered if sometimes, postmodernism is not a bit elitist. On the other side, postmodernism expresses the idea that each person has something interesting to say. And each of us can have his own sensibility, his own approach and understanding. It is all about emotion – the emotion coming from art, not from reality. “Lyotard’s sublime is a self-consciously post-modern mode in which all striving for correspondence between real and concept is abandoned: the aesthetic is to be preserved in the form of a non-utilitarian autonomy.” (Waugh 1992, p.115). And it is dangerous to try to do an academic rank of art; each attempt to create is an inscription in a mode of representation. “As Deleuze argues with respect to Plato, the attempt to distinguish between good and bad copies of reality may be seen to found a system of moral defence against the principle of simulation which governs all forms or representation” (Zurbrugg 1997, p.129). The issue goes further than the own taste of the viewer. Habermas (cited in Huyssen 1987, p.206) argues that “postmodernism is not so much a question of style as it is a question of politics and culture at large”.

This essay has shown that postmodernism is linked to modernism because of the linguistic composition of the word. But it is quite difficult to know to what extend they are similar or nor, though postmodernism is not dead yet. It seems like postmodernism arise from modernism but rejects it in the same time. Of course, sometimes the break is more visible like in architecture. But in literature for instance, it is not really easy to make the difference. Some people recognize the reality of postmodernism but their aim is to criticize it with a nostalgic discourse. In art, each movement is important because it creates a small rupture and allows the next one to spring up. If the statues of Camilla Low can be shown in the DCA, it is indirectly because of the previous work of intrepid artists. The reader needs to put things in context and he needs to remember that for some people, Romantism, in the eighteenth century, was really shocking. To sum up with a quotation of Zurbrugg (2000, p.126) about postmodernism: “Perhaps the 1980s and the 1990s signal not so much the supposed disappearance or termination of modernist values, as their reappearance or transmutation through new eyes and new technologies”.

References:

Aderson, P. 1988. Modernity and revolution. in Nelson, G, Grossberg, L (eds). Marxism and the interpretation of culture. Basingstoke: Machmillan P.

Baudrillard, J. 1998. Selected Writings. Cambridge: Polity.

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In the contemporary society, pornography, prostitution or sex-shops are made essentially for men so one can wonder what the importance of female’s sexuality is. “Patriarchy”, “paternity” or “male supremacy”, several expressions refer to the oppression of the “second sex” described by Beauvoir. The construction of genders shapes the sexuality of the individuals. Historical clichés and natural arguments are brought to justify the privilege of the masculine in the social relations. In the regulation of sexuality, the most visible thing is the regulation of woman’s sexuality. As the male script is built up, women are constructed through the gaze of men. With reference to the increasing phallocentrism of sex, this essay will critically evaluate the extent to which the history of sex has been the history of male pleasure. First, it will be argued that through history, the male pleasure was predominant. Then, different forms of resistance to oppression will be discussed.

During the history, the pleasure of the man and especially his phallus were considered as what matters. Although the 16th and the 17th centuries were a period of relative gender equality, women who used to be associated with the idea of an uncontrollable sexuality became to be more controlled by a powerful patriarchal ideology during the 18th century. While sex was more and more practiced and discussed, women were more and more repressed. Sex became to be more phallocentric and the 18th century was obsessed by the penis. Everything which was not intercourse was considered as foreplay and not real sex. One third of the women were pregnant when they got married. The woman who used to be seen as Eve the temptress became Virgin Mary the mother. During the Victorian age, although men urges were considered as natural, they were controlled by social purity crusades. In the meantime, prostitutes were harassed for many reasons including that they were not working in factories. Foucault (1977: 153) explains that during the 19th century, sex was describes as belonging par excellence to men and in the same time at that which by itself constitutes woman’s body. He explained that “hysteria was interpreted in this strategy as the movement of sex”, principle and lack. An other argument is that at school, no one was talking about the clitoris, except to compare it to a little penis. This organ was probably taboo because its unique function is pleasure. Sex was defined by intercourse because women should have an orgasm through men and not by themselves by stimulating their clitoris. Currently, this idea is still developed through porn movies: although the body of the woman is filmed in wholeness, the body of the men is thus reduced to his penis. The image of the male sexual urge was in opposition with the ideal of the asexual woman.

The pure woman became during the 18th century a womb to be filled: reproduction became more important than sexuality id est the female body became more maternal than sexual. The procreative sex was the good sex. Perry (cited in Faut 1992: 112) states that “’non reproductive’ forms of sexuality were increasingly displaced and devalued in this period”. Motherhood became a commodity for the interest of the state and a new social and sexual identity for women was elaborated. If women can have children, men need to control them and consider them like mothers more than beings who are seeking pleasure. A good woman had to obey to three rules: “love, honor, and obey”… but not “pleasure”. Pearsall (1969: 73) states that “the submissive instincts were rationalised by many as the necessity of sacrificing oneself for the children”. But currently, the body of the woman can be seen as well as infantilized. For instance, in the porn industry, women do not have any hair, any menstruation and have bodies of teenagers. Women seem most of the time to accept this role, because it may be easier to be enslaved. Giddens (1992: 132) suggests that “in so far male power is passed on the compliance of women, and the economic and emotional services which women provide, it is under threat”.

The focus on the male’s pleasure is achieved by the power exercised on the female’s body. This power can have different forms like the medicalisation. Pfeffer (cited in Homans 1985: 5) explains that in medical writings, penis has been positively portrayed and considered as “structurally efficient” and was not as much described in negative term than the vagina. Moreover, in the 18th century, scientists discovered that the active element in reproduction was the male sperm (Phillips and Reay 2002: 190). Thus, women’s orgasm was considered as less important and “the gender distinction became ‘natural’”. During the sensual Victorian period, the medicalisation of the body was growing and medical theories were the reflection of some moral views. The control of pregnancy is for instance the first step to control women’s sexuality and thus women in general. In the 19th century, sexology and psychoanalyse rehabilitated the female orgasm, the clitoris and the possibility of a female sexuality. But it has to be stressed that women came to be “stigmatized as ‘reservoirs’ of infection, reflecting in part the prevailing double standard of sexual morality and in part a deeper and more primitive notion of women as ‘polluter’” during the 20th century (Eder, Hall and Hekma 1999: 66). Prostitutes and libertine women became the point of reference of the cause of venereal diseases (VD) in the propaganda material id est the regulation was operated against women. Prostitutes have almost always been considered as the evil, while the male clients were forgotten. In 1905 Freud (1991: 61), wrote that “the normal sexual aim is regarded as being the union of the genitals in the act known as copulation”, suggesting that others practices are abnormal, even if women can feel more pleasure when practicing them. Moreover, he states that the girl, in her childhood, thinks that she has been castrated and will suffer in the future because she does not have any penis. His conservative theory about the hysterical woman is as well controversial. In a Marxist point of view, it can be said that men having pleasure with submissive women who care more about their children than their own pleasure can be a perfect schema for a capitalist society. Barrett (1981: 188) states that this nuclear family form “has developed because it is particularly well suited to the industrial capitalism’s need for a mobile labour force”. Moreover, before the invention of contraception, the danger for libertine women was to get pregnant, without being able to afford a child because they were not working and thus being dismissed from the society. Now, as Murphy Robinson (1992: 258) reminds to the reader, female circumcision, excision and infibulation are still practice in Africa. Some of these practices can make the “intercourse extremely painful for the woman and often pleasurable for the man”. Nevertheless, this example cannot be the reflection of the whole history of sexuality, even if the male pleasure was usually considered as the more natural to be satisfied.

But it is important to take in consideration that things are changing and even that history of sex is not only history of male pleasure. During the 20th century, while the Church hegemony began to collapse, the idea of pleasure for married women was growing. Social and scientific progress like the Abortion Act (1967), the Divorce Act (1969) or the pill helped the woman to do with their bodies what they wanted to do. Even if pro-life movement or AIDS were, and still are, an obstacle to a total free sexuality, women had their word to say. The texts of Ellis, sexologist in the 20th were a radical step because they stated that men and women were experimenting sexual desire equally. Reich thought that the reform could only be achieved by the sexual liberation (cited in Giddens 1992: 163). He “advocated equality of sexual expression for women” and was concerned as well by the sexuality of children and teenagers. The results of post-feminism are controversial. But like Cockburn (1991: 10) suggests, now, women seek more for equivalence than equality, more for parity than for sameness. Regarding to the work issue, the body question, or the pleasure one, men and women are constructed differently by the society but should have the same rights. The right for pleasure is one really important issue because pleasure bodies are thinking bodies. The history of sexuality seems to operate as a cycle: sometimes the pleasure of the woman seems to be as important as the pleasure of the man and sometimes it is neglected. Laqueur (1990: 43) reminds us that in the Greek mythology, “Tiresias, who had experienced love as both a man and a woman, was blinded by Juno for agreeing with Jupiter that women enjoyed sex more”. The best orgasm capacities of the women are as well recognized in the work of Masters and Johnson (Gagnon and Simon 1974: 18). Women can have multiple orgasms and do not need any resting period. Although the pleasure of the woman is recognised, it is not always the priority of the men.

Sometimes, women resist to this phallocentrism by being more aware of their bodies or even by turning to lesbianism. Different ways to challenge the power of the super phallus exist: women can as well decide to be bisexual, queer or more generally to redefine their gender. During the 18th century, lesbianism was seen as a form of romantic friendship between two women but Satan’s Harvest Home (1749) pointed out that this behaviour was a serious problem and lesbians were condemned. Lesbianism can be seen as an alternative to the phallocentric society. Greer explains that the masculine ideology keeps the woman in a submissive position and that there is a need to change it. Wittig was the first to write a lesbian manifest because she wanted to women to become free. Orgasm between two women is easily reached than between a man and a woman during the penetration. In the 18th century, when general practitioners discovered that the female orgasm was not important for reproduction, it was as well a progress because women who were pregnant because of a rape were not accused to have pleasure during their aggression. Plummerr (cited in Gagnon and Simon 1974: xvi) refers to the sexual revolution of the 1960s. “Second-wave feminism had just appeared, bringing key debates on violence, pornography, the sexuality of women”. Like Betty Dodson, Mort (2000: 115) explains that the problem was that “through centuries of doctrinaire education and repression women had become ignorant of their own sexualities” even if both sexes need the same pleasure and fulfilment. Annie Sprinkle, porn actress, performance artist and pro-sex feminist, in her movies, refuses to be an object and celebrates the female pleasure. Far from the conventional pornography, she acts against the passive female paradigm and thinks that pornography can be used to critic the current relation between the sexes.

If some women, called “liberal feminists” are for equality with the men, some others, the “radical feminists” for difference. Before the contemporary period, several examples attest of the rebellion of some women against the male power: abstinence, pamphlets etc. Some women who want to freed from male control, like Frances Swiney who wrote in the fifties on the natural supremacy of women and on the need for a matriarchal society. Women’s pleasure is more difficult to locate: Irigoray (cited in Conboy, Medina and Standury 1997: 251) suggests that “her sexual organ, which is not one organ, is counted as none”. Judith Butler explains that talking about the penis is not talking about the phallus and that women can use dildos or vibrators without the idea that something is missing. The penis is considered as something penetrating the female’s body to dominate it. The dildo is thus seen as a device which allows the woman not de be dependant of the nature. Preciado suggests that the denomination male and female should be abolished. Choosing a gender would mean choosing a way of life. But it has to be asked if being free to choose a gender means being free to choose a sexuality. Today, some woman see chastity and love as a form of rebellion – avoiding intercourse is seen as a political act – while some pro-sex feminist support the porn industry and act for the women body.

This essay has shown that through history, women, human being without phallus, seen as sexualized and submissive, were during history controlled and locked away. Counterexamples are rare. They were seen like virgins, mothers but their pleasure was forgotten. Victim of their bodies, and seen as unstable, they had to endure the power and its different forms like medicalisation. Of course, things have not always been like that and mentalities are constantly changing. Performers, thinkers, feminists more or less radical want a shift in the society. Because currently, the female body is still suffering: ideal of beauty, eating disorder, clitoridectomy and so on. And the state, because it is not only a male issue, control as well the sexuality of the working class, the homosexuals or the HIV-positive people.

References:

Barrett, M. (1981) Women’s Oppression Today. London: Verso.

Cockburn, C. (1991) In the Way of Women: Men’s Resistance to Sex Equality in Organizations. Macmillan: London.

Conboy, K; Medina, N; and Standury, S (eds). (1997) Writing on the body: Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory. New York: Columbia University Press.

Eder, F; Hall, L; and Hekma G (eds). (1999) Sexual cultures in Europe: Themes in Sexuality. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Foucault, M. (1977) The history of sexuality volume one: The will to knowledge. Penguin, London.

Fout, J.C. (ed). (1992) Forbidden history: The State, Society and the Regulation of Sexuality in Modern Europe. Chicago University of Chicago Press.

Freud, S. (1991) On Sexuality: Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality and Other Works. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Gagnon, J. H., and Simon, W. (1974) Sexual Conduct: The social sources of human sexuality. London: Hutchinson.

Giddens, A. (1992) The Transformation of Intimacy. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Homans, H. (ed.) (1985) The Sexual Politics of Reproduction.  Aldershot:Gower.

Jackson, S. and Scott, S. (eds.) (1996) Feminism and Sexuality: A Reader. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Laqueur, T. (1990) Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud Cambridge MA and London UK: Harvard University Press

Pearsall, R. (1969) The Worm in the Bud: the World of Victorian Sexuality. Phoenix: Sutton Publishing.

Phillips, K.M. and Reay, B. (2002) Sexualities in History. London: Routledge.

Mort, F. (2000) Dangerous sexualities: Medico-Moral Politics in England since 1830. London: Routledge.

Vance, C. (1992) Pleasure and Danger: Towards a Politics of Sexuality. London: Pandora.

La mooncup (ou menstrual cup, keeper, diva cup,…) est une coupe menstruelle en silicone qui s’utilise pendant les règles pour recueillir le sang – et non pas l’absorber. Portée dans le vagin, elle adhère aux parois et permet de récupérer le flux menstruel. Méconnue à tort, c’est une alternative intéressante aux tampons et serviettes.

1. La mooncup est très confortable et se fait oublier : pas de fuites, pas de sécheresse vaginale.
2. Le corps n’est pas exposé à la javel, aux pesticides ou à d’autres produits chimiques. Entre chaque périodes de règles, la mooncup est stérilisée avec un produit antiseptique ou simplement avec de l’eau bouillante pendant quelques minutes.
3. La mooncup existe en deux tailles différentes. La taille B, pour les jeunes filles qui n’ont jamais eu d’enfants, permet de recueillir jusqu’à 12 ml de liquide, ce qui est plus qu’un tampon ou une serviette. Plus besoin de se réveiller en pleine nuit pour se changer.
4. Il n’est plus nécessaire de remplir son sac de tampons ou de serviettes. La mooncup se vide et se réutilise immédiatement. Dans les toilettes publiques, il est possible de l’essuyer avec du papier, de la rincer avec une petite bouteille d’eau ou encore de la nettoyer dans le lavabo des toilettes pour personnes handicapées.
5. Faite de silicone, elle est idéale pour les femmes sensibles ou sujettes aux allergies. A l’inverse des tampons, il n’y a pas de risque de syndrome du choc toxique.
6. La mooncup coûte 30 euros et peut être utilisée des années. La somme de départ correspond à six mois d’utilisation de protections classiques.
7. La mooncup est plus écologique que les autres protections féminines. Pensez aux nombres de serviettes ou tampons jetés à la poubelle chaque mois.
8. On peut pratiquer sans problème les activités du quotidien, faire du sport, voyager.
9. Une communauté sur Internet s’occupe de la promotion de la mooncup puisque l’entreprise ne communique pas sur ce produit. Des personnes compétentes peuvent répondre aux questions des utilisatrices.
10. La mooncup permet de connaître son corps : on l’insère dans le vagin et l’on voit le sang que l’on pert. Elle est l’antithèse du tampon avec applicateur qui est négation du corps : on ne veut rien toucher, rien voir.

Alors, convaincues ?

The Indian Captivity Narrative operates as a resonance in the national popular culture. This spiritual, moral and social guidance was important to the first settlers but also for all the Americans, through history. Yet, captivity tales continue to be told in great numbers in films and novels, as testify the enormous corpus of Anglo-American narratives, and are related from autobiographic texts to space westerns. With an ethnocentric neglect of the Indians, this discourse was adapted across the Medias. This essay will wonder if the prominence of the Captivity Myth in modern America is evidence of a failure to account adequately for history. First, it will be argued that this myth was important regarding to its link toward religion and propaganda. Then, this essay will measure the impact of this text and show whether in Modern America, this narrative can bring coherence or not to history.

First of all, it can be argued that the prominence of the captivity myth in Modern America is evidence of a failure to account adequately for history. A myth is a traditional story, often made up in part of historical events that express the world-view of a people. “Myth is constituted by the loss of the historical quality of things” as Barthes said (Slotkin 1998, p.24). The Indian Captivity Narrative refers to the story of American early settlers captured by “uncivilized” Indians. Indians can be seen as a synecdoche for all the “others” as suggests Prast (2002, p.23). The Indian Captivity narrative includes three steps: the capture, the trial and the redemption. During this period, non Indian captives were used as slaves, to ransom, to be sold or to replace Indians by adoption. This part of history was related by several people. Two protagonists are particularly famous: Mary Rowlandson, in The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, recounts her three month of captivity among anti-English Indians. The other one is John Smith, captured in 1607 in Virginia and saved by Pocahontas. Clarck and Vaughan (1981) explain that the modern reader can see this myth as a rite or passage or as an initiation, which is important to understand, as this essay will show.

This Narrative is deeply linked with religion and more specifically to Protestantism. Writers openly refer to the protestant jeremiad – the misfortune of an era as a just penalty for a happier future and to the apocalypse, adopting an ecclesiastic view of the world. America is considered as a special land chosen by god and people moved there to be saved. The early settlers thought that they were “living in the promised world where they had to establish the New Zion” (Vanderbeets 1973, p.XXI). Mary Rowlandson interprets her pain and suffering through a biblical frame. But there is a contradiction: wilderness is the devil but America is the place chosen by God. The religious leaders had appropriate this narrative in order to defend themselves, to justify their act through providence tales. But in the long term, American people might tend to lose their religious commitment. The narrative is thus here to keep the people shaped.

This narrative has been used by propagandists for several reasons. Most of the texts known were written by the early settlers, not by the native Americans. Since it was produced by puritan new world community, the narratives emerge as distorted, forgotten that early settlers brought lots of diseases with them which killed lots of native Americans. Mary Rowlandson is represented with a gun but she was too frightened to move. Culture has to be taken in consideration and real incidents are portrayed through the framework of previous narratives. This narrative was and is still used to demonise forces which can be obstacles to progress. For instance, during the Cold War, Communist people were perceived as “the others”. In America, the nation has to be linked because of the diversity of the people. Since there is no ethic national identity, this narrative acts to shape the national character and fight the fear of the loss of national dynamism. Capitalist expansion seems to be the American mission, following a manifest destiny. The Indian Captivity Narrative can be used to motivate people to engage in war. The soldiers can die for Vietnam if their ancestors have fought the Indians and died. Nowadays, this is still present in the collective imagery as the fictionalisation of Jessica Lynch’s story attests.

But the prominence of this myth might not be seen as a failure to account for history. In the modern tales like the Vietnam War, the myth that there are still America soldiers captured persists. Sayre (2000) explains that hostages in Lebanon often become celebrities because of the focus of the Medias. There are as well high media attention and diplomatic efforts when it comes about Iraq or Serbia. America deals with kidnapped people, the army rescues hostages and it may be considered that the state has become God’s figure. “Namias argues that ‘the popularity of the captive story came from a fascination with both the other and the self’, as it enabled readers to confront various aspects of cultural relativity in family and social relations, gender constructions, and ethnicity” (Ebersole 1995, p.268). Some video games can be seen the reflection of this myth. Fallout refers to a post apocalypse world and clearly refers to the Indian Captivity Narrative with its aesthetics displaying for instance an “Indian Head test card”. Zelda and Mario are other examples where a princess held captive has to be rescued.

The Indian Captivity Narrative is still really present in the Memory of the people as it has been argued. Whereas the History refers to rational facts, Memory is the way people envisage and consider what has happened. The approach of past events is still built through the Medias, especially in America, even if other cultures have as well their captivity tales. Nowadays, series like X-Files still reflect the Indian Captivity Narrative. As Kellner argues (in Knight, 2002 p. 229), we “put on display our deepest fears and fantasies” in this kind of TV show. He points out the alien abduction phenomenon and explains that the new frontier is the human body, which is subject to extraterrestrial experiments. But if the alien is the other, he can be anyone. Utley (1984, p.34) argues that the label “Indian” was applied culturally diverse people. As Durkheim explains with the concept of “mechanical solidarity”, cohesion is necessary for a society and people need to share common beliefs and values. The Indian Captivity Narrative plays thus this role. Moreover, it helps to give coherence to History. People see the way things has happened as natural and do not tend to question the atrocities that Americans has committed because of the figure of the evil Indian. This myth is important because it helps to understand that America defines itself in relation to the others and that their power is achieved in a conception against their neighbours as suggests Mennell (2007, p.183). In a Manichean conception of the world, the Vietnam war was seen as being a “good war” because the American were the “goods” (Devine, 1999, p.XIX).

Sometimes, American can have another self awareness of this sensitive issue. Walker (in Rollins and O’Connor, 1998, p.183) analyzes The Last of the Mohicans (Griffith, 1920) and explains that this film depicts, far from the myth, the historical truth and the American real violence toward the Indians. In Fort Apache (Ford, 1948), Indians are not depicted as savages.  Another Indian version of History us shown in Broken Arrow (Daves, 1950) even if the “good Indian” is Jeff Chandler, a white actor. America is aware of its mistakes but not totally ready to assume all its culpability because myth and clichés are deep rooted. In The Searchers (Ford, 1956), the heroes try to find the niece to kill her because she had a relation with an Indian. The American racism is depicted. It is called a revisionist western. Little big man (Penn, 1970) is an anti-western. This is the story of Jack Crabb, kidnapped by Indians. In this film, the Indian wife of the heroes is killed by an American soldier. The actress who plays this part is not Indian but Asiatic, which is a clear reference to the atrocities done during the Vietnam War. Dancer with wolves (Costner, 1990), like A Man Called Horse (Silverstein, 1970), portrays the Indian world as superior to the white world. Indians are depicted as good but there is still the hollywoodian cliché between good Indians (Sioux) and bad Indians (Pawnees). Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1976) is a post-modern version of the captivity myth which considers the possibility that the captive does not want to be rescued and which shows the American man as a anti-heroes (Mortimer, 2000, p.111). It can be noticed as well that the image of the good Indian was quite popular among hippie people. This narrative is sometimes also pastiched by singers like Rasputina with humoristic songs like “My captivity by savages”.

To conclude, the Indian Narrative Captivity, which can be seen as an evanescent tropism, is a myth and is the reflection of one side of the account, used for religious or propagandist purpose. These narratives are a necessity to the construction and the perpetuation of the white nationalism. They are still really present in the modern tales, in the memory of the people even if some counterexample can be found in the popular culture. The Indian Captivity Narrative is a reflection of a society and cannot be seen as being the reality; it helps to bring coherence to facts and to shape the mind of the people. A strong anti-Indian sentiment and by extension anti-other sentiment was constructed by texts relating horrors that early settlers had to endure. By identification to the people of this narrative, people adhere to the doctrine of conquest and in general to the American way of thinking. Now the influence of America can be seen over the Western frontier: with the globalisation, the influence of America is growing day after day. For instance, Nicolas Sarkozy is described as someone very inspired by the America conception of politics.

Bibliographie:

•    Ebersole, G. 1995. Captured by Texts: Puritans to Post-Modern Images of Indian Captivity. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.

•    Clark, WC and Vaughan AT. 1981. Puritans among the Indians: accounts of Captivity and Redemption. 1676-1724. Cambridge: The Belkap press of Harvard University Press.

•    Devine, J. 1999. Vietnam at 24 frames a second. Austin: University of Texas Press.

•    Knight, P. 2002. Conspiracy Nation: the Politics of Paranoia in Post-war America. New York: New York University.

•    Mennell, S. 2007. The American Civilizing Process. Cambridge: Polity Press.

•    Mortimer, B. 2000. Hollywood’s Frontier Captives: Cultural Anxiety and the Captivity Plot in American Film. New York: Garland Publishing.

•    Prast, A.J. 2002. Invisible natives: Myth and Identity in the American Western. London: Cornell University Press.

•    Rollins, P.C. and O’Connor, J.E. (eds). 1998. Hollywood’s Indian: The Portrayal of the Native American in Film. Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky.

•    Sayre, G. 2000. American Captivity Narratives. Boston: New Riverside Editions.

•    Slotkin, R. 1998. The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialisation 1800-1890. Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press.

•    Utley, R.M. 1984. The Indian Frontier of the American West 1846 – 1890. Mexico: University of New Mexico Press.

•    Vanderbeets, R. 1973. Held Captive by Indians. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press.

Our civilization is built upon both high and low culture and we need tools to understand the link between these two notions. Bakhtin (1895-1975), writer or Rabelais and his World was interested in the transgressive qualities of carnival and the grotesque, including a critical utopia. This text has in our post-modern society offers a new insight. This essay will try to consider how the relationship between high and low culture is worked out today, through a piece of analyse of Bakhtin’s work on Rabelais. First, it will be stated that Bakhtin’s theories are important to understand our society: after a typology of carnival and the grotesque, it will be explained how these notions are still present in our culture in order to challenge the power. But some limits will be envisaged like the issues commodification or spectacle, before wondering if it is still possible nowadays to make a distinction between high and low culture.

To begin, it can be stated that Bakhtin’s account of carnival and the grotesque continues to be an indispensable instrument for analysing the relationship between the high and the low in contemporary culture.  A typology of the carnival and the grotesque will help the reader to be more familiar with these notions. Carnival is a profane celebration tolerate by the Church that takes place before Lent, in which people feast and dress in costume and when “the world turned upside down”. It used to challenge the Church morale. The traditional carnival has inspired through time and spaces different variations. For instance, in some areas of France, one hundred days before the A Level, pupils wear fancy dresses and do the mess in the high school. The grotesque refers to the use of bizarre, absurd, irony, laughter and excess, dealing with the dichotomy life and death. This art is characterized by the mixture of parts of humans and animals, the presentation of defecation and vomit, which has to be considered as a whole celebration of the body. For instance, in The Phantom of Liberty (Buñel 1974), bourgeois conventions are demolished when a couple of friends seat all together on toilet bowls and hide themselves when they want to eat. “The grotesque expresses not the fear of death but the fear of life” (Kayser cited in Bakhtin 1984, p.50). Carnival and the grotesque question the notions of utopia and dystopia. Irrupting into the everyday life, the carnival is a period where hierarchies are temporally lifted although narrative disappointments are experienced by some people. Some traces of the carnival and the grotesque can be found in our culture, in reaction to the process of repression.

We live in an atomized society of abundance, of accumulation, which tends to obscenity, in Latin, ob scene, behind the scene. Therefore, the carnival can be seen as a collective response to challenge power such as capitalism, bureaucracy or gender issues. In Nancy, France, once a month, during the “vélorution”, hundreds of people wear fancy dresses, ride their bicycles and go in the street to protest and to ask for more space and security for them in the city. The gay pride is the same concept: people holding parades and asking for more rights and equality within sexual difference. In March 2008, in Paris, sex workers and activists celebrated the “Pute pride” (hooker pride) in reaction to the laws which oppresses prostitutes. Bennett (1986) takes the examples of Blackpool and the seaside, which he considers as an unregulated land, site of carnival praxis. The idea was “to expose the working classes, if only for a day, to the improving physical and moral climate then prevailing in Blackpool” (p.138). In The Sopranos, the words used are quite vulgar, for instance one of the character has the nickname “Big Pussy”, which is an important element of the carnivalesque (Work 2002). If language is an interesting aspect to consider, the body is even more. Since the modernity, we tend to hide the body functions. “The body is where the power bearing definitions of social and sexual normality are, literally, embodied, and is consequently the site of discipline and punishment for deviation of those norms” (Fiske 1987, p.248). People refuse the identity proposed by the dominant ideology and use the body as a material against morality, discipline and control.  Larsen (2001, pp.68-69), inspired by Freud’s theories about the anal stage, analyzes South Park: “The episode “Cartman’s Anal Probe” presents Cartman as the exemplary post-modern acephale, suffering amnesiac abduction and the resultant lapses in self-regulated subjectivity, the schizophrenic invasion and probing of sacrificial organs of the body (the anus), the unfolding of the classical body onto a plane of seductive and impenetrable surfaces, with the prioritized inspection of the (expressionless) anus signifying the lack of disciplined and expressive “self” which marks out the grotesque body”. Orlan playing with her body material or modern primitives reconsidering their skin as a semantic field express that they owe their body. As Foucault (1979) has argued, “the power exercised on the body is conceived not as a property, but as a strategy, that its effects of domination are attributed not to ‘appropriation’, but to dispositions, manoeuvres, tactics, techniques, functionings”.

Carnival and the grotesque are anti-hegemonic strategies to escape the hierarchy, the church, or other power like capitalism. They are a temporally and spatially determined transgressions followed by the restoration of the social order. These notions are tainted with Marxist theories, with the idea of challenging the power, like in The Island of Slaves (Mariveaux, 1725), a play about servants and masters, on a desert island where a group of slaves decide to take the power. The carnival is the dream of a free world where people would not miss anything. “The suspension of all hierarchical precedence during carnival time was of particular significance” (Bakhtin 1984, p.10). It is exactly what De Certeau argues in his book The Practice of Everyday life (1984) when he explains that the everyday man uses tactics such as urban nomadism, poaching or bricolage to subvert the state power imposed upon him. If the State tries to control the people whenever and wherever, each individual has his own micro possibilities of resistance. For Gardiner (in Crossley and Roberts 2004, p.39), all these things “constitute a crucial resource through which the popular masses can retain a degree of autonomy from the forces of socio cultural homogenization and centralization”. Mary Russo (1997 in Conboy, Medina and Standury) in a feminist point of view explains that the category of the grotesque “might be used affirmatively to destabilize the idealization of female beauty or to realign the mechanism of desire” (p.10). As the transsexual body challenges the bodily boundaries, the female grotesque body is “the body of becoming, process and change”. Pregnancy, aging or obesity can be used to lead the people think about the boundaries marking high culture and organized society. But some critics of the carnival can be made: it was not spontaneous because people had days off, some groups used to excluded because of racism and outsiders were accused of several things like diseases. Current carnival and notions of the grotesque can as well be subject of some critics.

It can be wondered if Bakhtin is out of context because his theories have their own limits. Humphrey (in Brandist, C and Tihanov, G (eds). 2000. p.167) points out two key limitations: “it does not enable us to describe the complex range of ways in which cultural practices make us of inversion at the level of symbolic form, since all inversion is read as resistance, and neither does it enable us to investigate with any degree of refinement how forms of culture come to acquire and express various kinds of political meanings and effects historically”. To understand correctly these issues, we need to consider the notions of commodification, class struggle and gender struggle. Now, the upper-class, which is associated with the high culture, is also the producer of the low culture. Little Britain may be a grotesque show but the purpose for BBC is at the end to earn money. Likewise, the social aim of the carnival has disappeared and his purpose is most of the time commercial, like the Venetian Carnival can be. The case of Blackpool analyzed by Bennett mentioned earlier is criticized by Webb (2005). He thinks that Bakhtin’s concepts have been over-utilized. He explains for instance that with the help of a “geographical class regulation” (p.125), class distinctions were maintained. He states that utopia cannot really be found in the case of Blackpool because it was “a space of pleasure for the working class created in large part by the working class” (p.131). Strinati (1995, p.191) makes as well an interesting feminist critic and explains that usually high culture – art – is associated with masculinity production, work, intellect, activity, writing. On the opposite, mass culture – popular culture – is associated femininity, consumption, leisure, emotion, passivity, reading. But another thing can be pointed out: today, we tend to consume more than we participate.

The Carnival of Rio may be a popular event but it is a show where casual people do not participate. Mass people are only the viewers who watch that in the television. Similarly, Big Brother is the screen materialization of a fake show where the participants gazed leave their boring life in front of a camera: they eat, swear and fart and their behaviour is glorified by the viewer, by the voyeur, the stalker. The spectator who wants to become spectacle will try to mimic what he sees in the Medias, by using the same postures, clothes or expressions than his pathetic idols. Our life is influenced by all the images that we continuously see from the television to the cinema, from the porn movies to the freak shows. In our society influenced by a bourgeois sensibility, the woman of the porn industry is slim, she has no hair, no periods, and sometimes it is even hard to guess if her body produces cyprine. It can be seen as an infantilization of the body. This taboo is present as well in advertisement: a campaign for a sanitary towel usually shows how it is efficient by a demonstration with blue blood. An other taboo is talking about diseases because it reminds us that we will die one day. Guy Debord (1967), in his pessimistic analyze explains that “understood in its totality, the spectacle is both the result and the project of the dominant mode of production. It is not a mere decoration added to the real world. It is the very heart of this real society’s unreality. In all of its particular manifestations – news, propaganda, advertising, entertainment – the spectacle represents the dominant model of life. It is the omnipresent affirmation of the choices that have already been made in the sphere of production and in the consumption implied by that production. In both form and content the spectacle serves as a total justification of the conditions and goals of the existing system. The spectacle also represents the constant presence of this justification since it monopolizes the majority of the time spent outside the production process”. But the spectacle is not the life, it is his inversion. The mass-entertainment industry allows us to escape the world for a few hours. Nothing changes and at the end, when people leave Disneyland, the pumpkin is not a coach anymore. However, the problem has to be rethought in context, which means that we need to take in consideration the fact that we live in a post-modern world.

In our post-modern society, it can be asked what the meaning of what we see in the Medias is and if even it means anything. Strinati (1995, p.225) states that “there are no longer any agreed and inviolable criteria which can serve to differentiate art from popular culture.” The distinction between high culture and low culture is complicated. It is more complex than literature, painting and sculpture versus popular music, tattoo art and pornography. Although Jean-Louis Costes, performer artist, plays with his urine, feces and sperm on stage, he is recognized to be “an artist” by the profession and he is invited all over the world. The post-modern pieces of art use intertextuality and the frontier between high and low tends to disappear. Exhibitions in the streets, happenings, art in situ are evidence that it is harder and harder to consider that a work belongs to this or that category. If an extract of a symphony is used in an advertisement, this tune will be tarnished and although it used to be considered as related to high culture, the masterpiece will probably loss a bit of its symbolical value. Moreover, it can be wondered if carnival and the grotesque are really achievable today because we live in an individualistic society where the idea of community is not really present. Carnival was the idea of lots of different people going all together in the street and it was not a compilation of individual isolated actions.

In our society, carnival and the grotesque do not have the same meaning than they used to have but still, these concept help us to understand what is problematic in our culture. These concepts still exist in our society, in a fragmented and localised form. The aim is still the same than in the past id est it is a way to challenge the power. But in the capitalist society, carnival and the grotesque can be used by some people for the only purpose of making money. Sometimes, the social aim disappears so class and gender struggle are still present. More than an event where everybody can participate, carnival and the grotesque are now most of the time a voyeuristic show where the scopic pulsion of the spectator is satisfied. Moreover, it is much more complicated to inverse the notions of high and low currently because they tend to disappear with postmodernism. The analyse of Bakhtin is thus still interesting in the contemporary culture but we need to bear in mind that things have changed and a recontixtualisation including politic, economic and social issues is necessary.
References:

Bakhtin, M. 1984. Rabelais and his World. Bloomington: Midland Books, Indiana University Press.

Bennett, T (et al). 1995. Popular Culture and Social Relations. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Brandist, C and Tihanov, G (eds). 2000. Materializing Bakhtin: The Bakhtin Circle and Social Theory. New York: Palgrave.

Conboy, K Medina, N and Standury, S (eds). 1997. Writing on the Body: Female Embodiment and Feminist theory. New York: Columbia University Press.

Crossley, N and Roberts J.M. (eds). 2004. After Habermas: New Perspectives on the Public Sphere. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

De Certeau, M. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. University of California Press: Berkeley.

Debord, G.1967. The Society of the Spectacle. New York: Zone Books

Fiske, J. 1987. Television Culture. London: Routledge

Foucault, M. 1979. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books.

Larsen, D. 2001. South Park’s Solar Anus or Rabelais Rectum. Cultures of Consumption and the Contemporary Aesthetic of Obscenity. in Theory, Culture and Society. Volume 18, Numero 4.

Strinati, D. 1995. An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture. Routledge: London.

Webb, D. 2005. Bakhtin at the Seaside: Utopia Modernity and the Carnivalesque. in Theory, Culture and Society. Volume 22, Numero 3.

Work, H. 2002. Big Bellies and Bad Language: Carnivalesque in The Sopranos. in Media Edcational Journal. Issue 32.