DÉPART: GÉOGRAPHIE et POÉSIE

Soumises à des préventions humanistes et romantiques, la géographie ne voit dans le texte littéraire qu'un réservoir d'images géographiques. Pareille approche impose de sérieuses limites à l'analyse littéraire en géographie: elle interdit pour le moins tout rapport avec le texte poétique moderne. A partir des Illuminations de Rimbaud, première manifestation du non-sens dans la linérature occidentale, il est montre que ce qui est essentiel dans cette poésie, ce n'est pas l'expérience origrnale de la ville qu'elle présente, mais bien le bouleversernentde la fonction textuellequ'elle opère. Du coup, le géographe est amené a s'interroger sur son propre rapport aux textes .
Influenced by romantic and humanistic prejudices, geography has used imaginative literature solely as a source of geographical images. Such an approach puts serious limits on literary analysis in geography. It has prevented geographers from making meaningful contact with modern poetry. From Rimbaud's epoch-making Illuminations, which made a place for nonsense in Western literature, it is shown that significant images (urban motifs) stand on very thin ice in modern poetry, especially when contrasted with the new role that Rimbaud gives the text. Furthermore, it is argued that geographers can take advantage of Rimbaud's joyful play on words by re-examining their own position in relation to texts .     

Foucault's and Arendt's "insider view" of biopolitics: a critique of Agamben

This article revisits Arendt's and Foucault's converging accounts of modern (bio)politics and the entry of biological life into politics. Agamben's influential account of these ideas is rejected as a misrepresentation both because it de-historicizes biological/organic life and because it occludes the positivity of that life and thus the discursive appeal and performative force of biopolitics. Through attention to the genealogy of Arendt's and Foucault's own ideas we will see that the major point of convergence in their thinking is their insistence upon understanding biological thinking from the inside, in terms of its positivity. Agamben's assessment of modern politics is closer to Arendt's than it is to Foucault's and this marks a fascinating point of disagreement between Arendt and Foucault. Whereas Arendt sees the normalizing force of modern society as being in total opposition to individuality, Foucault posits totalization and individuation as processes of normation, which casts a light upon the relative import they place upon politics and ethics.     

John Breuilly: ‘Eric Hobsbawm: nationalism and revolution’

This article considers how Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) connected the concepts of revolution and nationalism, analysing this in relation to his biography, his politics and his work as a professional historian. It traces major changes in Hobsbawm's understanding of revolution and nationalism as he, the political world and the ways of writing history all changed over the course of his long life.     

LES RÉSEAUX TERRITORIALISÉS D'INFORMATION FACE À LA COMMUNICATION-MONDE: UNE EXPÉRIMENTATION QUÉBÉCOISE

L'information devient de plus en plus un enjeu crucial pour les institutions et acteurs engagés dans des processus territoriaux de développement. Comme la littérature sur les NTIC le démontre, l'accès a l'information concernant leur environnement global (sources de capitaux, tendances globales, débouchés, encadrement) ainsi qu'à celle concernant leurs atouts locaux et spécifiques (ressources humaines, physiques, financièrs et institutionnelles, identités, possibilités de mobilisation) fournit des indications indispensables pour faction des collectives locales engagées dans des projets de développement. Cependant, ce qui est souvent négligé c'est que le processus même par lequel cette information est produite et diffusée constitue en soi un facteur intervenant dans l'orientation que prend le développement. L'information marque les territoires concernés. Aussi est-il essentiel de construire des inforoutes permettant la participation des collectivités à la production de l'information qui les concerne. L'Atlas du Québec et de ses régions est une expérience qui vise cet objectif. Dans ce texte, nous présentons l'état d'avancement et les conclusions préliminaires de cette expérience. Information networking is a crucial issue for organizations and socio-economic actors. As the literature on development shows, information at the global level (financial perspectives, global tendencies, markets, and regulations), as well as at the local level (demographic and social characteristics; human, physical, economic, institutional, and organizational resources; specific assets; quality of life; etc.) is indispensable to local collectivities involved in development projects. Nevertheless, often overlooked is the fact that the very process by which this information is produced and disseminated has a significant effect on the direction of development. Information has an impact on the local community. There is a need for building territory information networks that allow local communities to produce the information that concerns them. This paper presents first a global survey of globalization and the effects of information highways on specific territories, and second, an experiment in progress about building a territory information network in the province of Québec, the Atlas of Québec and Its Regions.     

LA PÉRIODICITÉ DE LA GÉOGRAPHIE LINGUISTIQUE ACTUELLE: ESSAI MÉTHODOLOGIQUE

L'article présente une esquisse de I'impact des migrations sur la géographie linguistique. On constatera que le modèle classique d'une mosaïque linguistique stati- que n'est plus de mise: la situation linguistique du monde est dans un état de flux permanent. La nature pendulaire de bien des migrations modernes laissent supposer qu'il ex/ste des régularités , et notamment des périodicités dans ce flux. Cette hypothèse est testée par une étude de cas réalisée sur la place centrale de la ville de Grenoble en France, L 'existence des régularités postulées est confirmée par, entre autres, une analyse de Fourier. La conclusion soulève la pertinence de ces phénomènes en matière de planification linguistique .     

"The dangers of this atmosphere": a Quaker connection in the Tavistock Clinic's development

During the Second World War, through innovations in officer selection and group therapy, the army psychiatrists John Rickman and Wilfred Bion changed our understanding of leadership. They showed how soldiers under stress could develop real authority through their attentiveness to each other. From contrasting experiences 25 years earlier each had seen how people in groups are moved by elemental forces that undermine judgement and thought. This article arose from my experiences as a trainee at the Tavistock Clinic, where the method of reflective work discussion, giving individuals seated in a circle the choice to speak or to remain silent, seemed similar to a Quaker meeting. Many decades later, I found that this association had a basis in fact. Among other influences on Bion -- a childhood in India, distinguished service in the First World War, and a surgical apprenticeship with Wilfred Trotter -- there is a little-acknowledged Quaker source, in John Rickman, for Bion's radical work in the army that led to new methods of training and organizational consultancy in the postwar Tavistock.