Expérimentation et clinique électroencéphalographiques entre physiologie, neurologie et psychiatrie (Suisse, 1935-1965)

The electroencephalogram (EEG), invented by the German psychiatrist Hans Berger in 1924, reached the neurophysiological laboratories and several clinical contexts in the mid-30s. In Switzerland, some skeptical physiologists and enthusiastic psychiatrists paved the way for its integration, but it was only after the Second World War that an emerging field of epileptology became part of a process of technological and epistemological innovation which raised great expectations and produced a large body of research at the crossroads of physiology, neurology and psychiatry. An informal network was created, characterized by clinical, scientific and local institutional cultures. The EEG also made it possible to detect some clinical entities, not however without transforming them, as in the case of epilepsy. Some attempts to probe psychiatric diseases and subjects with the EEG are described as negotiated relationships between clinical observations, subjective manifestations or symptoms and inscriptions of a spontaneous or elicited electrical brain activity. These attempts shape a clinical and experimental cerebral subject, which is analyzed in this article from the point of view of its technical aspects and the concrete procedures on which it depends.

The hotel industry and its importance in the technical and economic development of a region : the Lake Geneva case (1852-1914)

The historiography dedicated to tourism has emphasised how some socio-economic evolutions such as urbanisation, mechanisation of transport or the advent of leisure time in society have supported pleasure trips and therefore the development of the hotel industry. On the contrary, the research has too often neglected or at least minimised the impact of the hotel sector on a region's development. This contribution seeks to fill this gap by analysing the Geneva Lake region, one of the most important birthplaces of the European tourism. In this space not much touched by the first industrial revolution, the hotel business has in fact played the role of an economic motor, stimulating investment and employment. This dynamism provoked a domino effect on several other sectors of the economy (industry, bulding sector, banking). To please their customers, the hoteliers have not only given impulses on housing modernisation, but also to the revitalisation of transport, energy and communication networks. The necessity to remain on the state-of-the-art of technical issues, with the concern of competitiveness, has called forth an acceleration of the technology transfer and stimulated the constitution of technical know-how.

"Actes de Paul" et Actes canoniques: un phénomène de relecture

Une approche littéraire de l'intertextualité, à l'aide des catégories posées par G. Genette, permet de renouveler l'approche du rapport entre Actes de Paul et Actes canoniques. A la différence de la critique littéraire classique, qui ne repère pas de dépendance littéraire hors de similitudes verbales ou narratives, l'« hypertextualité » désigne un phénomène de relecture dans lequel un texte-source est recomposé et réinterprété au sein d'un écrit second. Grâce à cette catégorie, cette contribution rend compte du jeu dialectique de parenté et de divergence que l'on observe entre les Actes de Paul et les Actes de Luc. La recomposition de la biographie de Paul dans les Actes de Paul a usé de créativité, elle a puisé dans l'imaginaire chrétien, mais elle s'est aussi servie de traditions préservées dans la suivance de l'apôtre.

Redondances. Paul Ricoeur et ses sutures théologico-politiques

Paul Ricoeur construit la philosophie comme une hétérotopie, en la soumettant à l'ordre, juridique et théologique, d'un «aveu». En soustrayant la pensée à la compétence première de la philosophie pour l'accorder à l'ordre d'un récit, Ricoeur fait de l'exercice de la philosophie une «empirique de la volonté serve». Ce primat donné à un ordre de médiation, par le biais d'un récit, dépouille ainsi la philosophie de toute tâche inaugurale. Dans ses Valences of the Dialectic, le philosophe américain Jameson est revenu de façon critique sur ce montage, soulignant le paradoxe qui oblige Ricoeur à ôter la pensée du temps des tâches premières de la phénoménologie. Cet article vise à en exposer les conséquences (notamment le basculement vers une herméneutique), pour interroger les effets théologico-politiques de ce vaste projet. --- Paul Ricoeur has built up philosophy as a heterotopy by submitting it to the juridical and theological order of a "confession". By taking away thought as the primus competence of philosophy, and attributing it to narration, Ricoeur transforms philosophy into an "empirics of the serve-will". This priority given to mediation through narration deprives philosophy from any inaugural task. In his Valences of the Dialectic, the American philosopher Jameson has critically questioned this construction, underlining the paradox that forces Ricoeur to take away thought of time from the primus tasks of phenomenology. This paper intends to expose the consequences of such a deal (among others the swing to hermeneutics), and to inquire about the theologico-political effects of such a vast project.

Les natures mortes de Paul Gauguin: une production picturale méconnue

Gauguin's first attempts at still-life painting, around 1875, followed the Dutch tradition, influenced mainly by Manet's palette. But he did take occasional liberties in depicting flowers with more fluid colour and dynamic backgrounds. From 1879 his style shows the influence of the Impressionists: Pissarro in the landscapes and Degas in the composition of his still-lifes. He was also open to the new trends which were developing among artists in Paris and applied them in his paintings, using still-lifes as his main means for testing them. He did not escape the contemporary fascination with Japonism, and even experimented briefly with Pointillism in Still Life with Horse's Head. His stays in Britain between 1886 and 1890 correspond to an extremely rich and innovative period for him, in which still-lifes served for increasing experimentation. "Fête Gloanec" and Three Puppies reflect his preoccupations: rejection of perspective, use of areas of flat colour, and mixed styles. These pictures amount to an aesthetic manifesto; many of them are also imbued with strong symbolism, as in the Portrait of Meyer de Haan, which is a melancholic reflection on the fall of man. In Still-Life with Japanese Print, frail blue flowers seem to come out of the head of the artist-martyr, a pure product of the painter's "restless imagination". Thus Gauguin showed that art is an "abstraction" through a genre which was reputed to lend itself with difficulty to anything other than mimesis. Although he moved away from still-life after 1890, Gauguin is one of the first artists to radically renew its role and the status of still-life at the end of the 19th century, well before the Fauvists and Cubists.