Innocence et puissance Heidegger face au principe de raison

The principle of reason, that is accounting for all things by referring them to an unquestioned, fundamental principle, commands for Heidegger the total mobilization and universal computation of the world by the technical. The critique of this principle seems to lead Heidegger toward a thinking of the relinquishment of things and an epistemology of innocence, freed from any effect of metaphysical, political, or sociological power. That innocence is however ambiguous. It recalls the Heraclitean play of the child-king and announces the return of a mysterious sovereignty. The power of the technical is warded off for the benefit of another power, not less commanding and absolute, a “superpower” which in its turn could effectively mean, in a still more decisive way than the becoming-technical of thinking, the accomplishment and the end of metaphysics.     

Ville compacte et qualité de vie: discussions autour de l'approche canadienne des indicateurs de durabilité

L'expérience canadienne de modélisation par indicateurs de qualité de qualité de vie se renouvelle avec l'émergence de la problématique environnementale. La théorie de la ville compacte établit un lien étroit entre la qualité de vie, les densités résidentielles, la compacité du bâti et la durabilité urbaine. Plusieurs auteurs proposent la forme compacte comme un idéal. Les faibles densités résidentielles sont alors présentées comme un problème environnemental bien que les consommateurs continuent de préférer ce type d'habitat. Les comportements individuels semblent opposer le modèle de durabilité urbaine et la satisfaction résidentielle. Les considérations subjectives devraient être prises en compte à l'intérieur de ce modèle. Cet article discute de la forme urbaine et de la ville compacte à partir d'une lecture des documents programmatiques issus des agences gouvernementales et des centres de recherches.     

Les serranos et le pont de Capilla au XVème siècle

Despite a few pioneering studies into transhumant raising in the kingdom of Castile much work in this field has yet to be done. We are acquainted with its general organisation but more rarely with its local manifestations. On the whole we know of the revenues it yielded to the Crown but less of those it delivered to the lords. It was during a lawsuit brought by the Mesta at the end of the fifteenth century against the lord of Capilla, whom it accused of imposing illegal taxes upon the migration of the winter herds across the Capilla bridge on their way to the Extranadura of the south, that a rich documentation was collected by the incriminated party. This documentation holds a twofold interest for us: first it informs us about the region of origin of the animals which followed this migration, the number of herds involved, their composition and their owners and shepherds; second it gives us knowledge of the revenues which a lord could extract from the collection of taxes imposed on the migration, or transhumance, itself.     

Le Conte de deux cités1 : Analyse comparative des conflits urbains de Montréal et Valence, 1995–2010

A tale of two cities: 9 Comparative analysis of urban conflicts of Montreal and Valencia, 1995–2010 Metropolization processes at work in contemporary societies produce social and spatial change, which can raise strong opposition from a variety of urban actors, leading to acts of dissent. While such urban conflict has been examined in the past, geographical analysis of urban conflicts as sociospatial processes is more recent. Systematic quantitative research on urban conflict is virtually nonexistent in terms of comparative analysis conducted with an international perspective. Systematic comparative analysis sheds light on the existing relationship between urban conflicts and the socio‐territorial contexts in which conflicts emerge and evolve. This article presents a comparative analysis of urban conflict that occurred in a selection of boroughs in two cities characterized by different geographical realities, Valencia (Spain) and Montreal (Canada), between 1995 and 2010. Spatial autocorrelation techniques applied to a conflict database show a significant relationship between the emergence of urban conflict and the spatial distribution of some contextual variables. Indeed, for Montreal as for Valencia, the concentration of urban conflict is the greatest in the most deprived neighbourhoods. Also, regarding the management and regulation of urban conflict, results shed light on important differences between Montreal and Valencia. These differences include the outcome of urban conflicts, repertoire of action of actors involved in conflict activity, and the type of contestation faced by actors who promote the challenged urban projects.     

Les pointes de flèches en fer des sites préislamiques de Mleiha et ed-Dur, E.A.U.

Recent excavations at Mleiha in the Emirate of Shajah and ed-Dur in the Emirate of Umm al-Qaiwain (U.A.E.) have yielded a sizable body of iron arrowheads dating from the last centuries BC and the first centuries AD. The present article is a typological and chronological analysis of this material.     

Figures des passions: La pathognomonie de Charles Le Brun

King Louis XIV's official painter, Charles Le Brun, elaborated two models of “reading”; the body. The first one, inspired by the ancient physiognomists, surveys the analogies between human and animal features. The other, ushering in a modern pathognomy partly inspired by Descartes, codifies the signs of passion displayed on human faces: in such a perspective, the movements of the body (and more specifically those of the eyebrows) are supposed to express clearly and distinctly all the emotions of the soul by which they are produced. Thus, using the cartesian physiology as his starting point Le Brun built a semiology of gesture and a rhetoric of emotion that he systematized in the illustrated lectures held at the Royal Academy in 1668. They exemplify how classicism joined the picturesque and the discursive, the natural and the convention, the meaning of gesture and the meaning of words.