Plastir Number 71

NACRE – MOVING EXISTENTIAL TERRITORIES

Isabelle ELIZÉON holds a PhD in Performing Arts and Art Science from the University of Paris III Sorbonne Nouvelle. She is a playwright, visual artist and independent researcher in art-science, transitions and transdisciplinarity. She is an associate researcher at HCTI EA-4249 (Héritages et constructions dans le texte et l’image) – UBO, LLCP EA-4008 – Paris 8 (Laboratoire d’études et de recherches sur les logiques contemporaines de la philosophie), a member of CIRET (Centre International de Recherches et d’Études Transdisciplinaires), TRAS Transversale des Réseaux Arts Sciences and ZABrI (Zone Atelier Brest Iroise INEE/CNRS). She coordinates and runs the collaborative art-science platform TranSborder, in Brest (Finistère), collaborating on various inter- and transdisciplinary projects: www.transborder-art-science.com/ With Fabien Riera, she published « Dynamiques transdisciplinaires, relation et mondes vécus » in Plastir 63, 12/2021. In this new article, she discusses the Anthropocene, the Capitalocene, the Plantatiocene and the Technocene, which, despite controversy, remain concepts that enable us to think about a set of complex components acting on Living Things in all their forms. These impacts are generating major planetary crises of an ecological, climatic, economic and societal nature. In the face of this emergency, we are looking for ways out, for reinventing our relationship with this Living Being that we have split in two, between nature and culture. To try to overcome these crises and hope for a future that is livable for all living things, we can invoke the intertwined paths of Chthulucene (Haraway, 2020). This article proposes to present and analyze one of these paths to reinvention through the trajectories of a transdisciplinary project entitled NacrE. NacrE explores questions of transition during the current crises through the creation of eco-fictions recounting shifting existential territories. These existential territories (Guattari, 1992) emerge through cross-disciplinary approaches, tools and methodologies in research-action and creation. Through the exploration of these territories, in an approach combining art science, philosophy, anthropology and the discovery of excerpts from field notebooks, it is proposed to approach and question our representations and our relationship to Life, in a necessary transformation of our visions, capable of taking into account the common future of humans, non-humans and their environments.

A WRITING-CRY: DIALOGUES BY JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

Christian RUBY is a philosopher who teaches at the ESAD-TALM in Tours and is a member of the ADHC (association pour le développement de l’Histoire culturelle), the ATEP (association tunisienne d’esthétique et de poiétique), the Entre-Deux collective (Nantes, dedicated to public art) and the Observatoire de la liberté de création.  Latest publications : Abécédaire des arts et de la culture, Toulouse, L’Attribut, 2015; Devenir spectateur, Invention et mutation du public culturel, Toulouse, L’Attribut, 2017. He has published numerous papers in Plastir (n° 53, 56, 59 in 2019/2020 and n°68 in 2023). In this new essay, Christian Christian Ruby explains that the aim of his last paper submitted to Plastir is to talk about one of Rousseau’s later and most puzzling works : Rousseau, Judge of Jean-Jacques. This neglected autobiographical piece was the product of the philosopher’s old age and sense of persecution. Long viewed simply as evidence of his growing paranoia, it consists of three dialogues between a character named “Rousseau” and one identified only as “Frenchman” who discuss the bad reputation and works of an author named “Jean-Jacques.” The Dialogues offers not only a fascinating retrospective on a new autobiography, but also a retrospective of his literary career and the struggle to be understand. The publication of many works led to personal catastrophe. So, he as to cry against that situation. This article consists in an exploration of the Rousseau’s cry against public space. Ref. Website:  www.christianruby.net      

THERAPY AND THE IMAGINAL. DEATH AND REBIRTH ACCORDING TO C.G. JUNG 

Bruno TRAVERSI has a doctorate in philosophy. He is an associate researcher at the I3SP (Institut Sciences Sport Santé) at the University of Paris and at the CEAC (Centre d’Étude des Arts Contemporains) at the University of Lille. After writing his thesis on bodily expression in the light of Jungian psychoanalysis, he went on to conduct research into EMC (Modified States of Consciousness) in art and therapy, in different cultural contexts in the West, Africa and the Far East. His publications include: Le corps inconscient et l’Âme du monde selon C.G. Jung et W. Pauli, Ed. Pauli, Ed. L’Harmattan, Coll. Ouverture philosophique (2016), Entre physique quantique et psychologie des profondeurs – volume 1: La chose, l’espace et le temps, Éditions du Cénacle de France (2017), with Alexandre Lemercier « L’arrière-monde ou l’inconscient neutre », Ed. du Cénacle de France (2018), with several authors: Propos sur l’éducation selon C.G. Jung, Ed. du Cénacle de France (2019). A regular contributor to our transdisciplinary journal, he has published « La déchirure de l’espace et la naissance du sujet – selon C.J Jung et C. W. Pauli » in Plastir 42, 06/2016 and « L’inconscient neutre: étapes psychologiques de la genèse d’un concept chez Wolfgang Pauli et Carl Gustav Jung » in Plastir 49, 03/2018.  In this new essay by Bruno Traversi, we enter the heart of a Jungian hypnosis therapy where we can observe the spontaneous emergence of archetypal images during trance and appreciate their impact on the therapeutic process. In particular, the aim is to describe the deployment and effects of the series of archetypal images that constitute the « archetype of rebirth », according to Carl Gustav Jung. The activation of the true imagination, through trance, enables the subject to reconnect with the archetypal plane, through his or her global sensibility. The archetypal scenes through which they pass, from death to rebirth, renew their vitality, their self-image and their relationship with their environment and with others in particular. The curative effect is based on the original, psychoid nature of the archetype, which recasts the phenomenal ego as a form of sensitive reminiscence of an original being-in-the-world that had been lost or obscured. In Plastir, we are – exceptionally – the privileged witnesses of this rebirth!

STAEL: SPACE-TIME FOR COLOURS AND FORCES BATTLEFIELD’S PLASTICITY (STILL LIFE AS STAËLIAN ORIGINALITY)

Cécile VOISSET is a philosophy teacher, freelance translator, independent researcher and associate member of the LIS (Lettres, Idées, Savoirs) at the University of Paris XII. A member of the ATLF (Association des Traducteurs Littéraires de France), she completed a multi-disciplinary DEA (post-graduate diploma) in Civilisation of the Western World in the 16th and 17th centuries at the University of Clermont II, specialising in philosophy, French literature, British culture and translation training. She then defended a doctoral thesis in Women Studies at the University of Paris VIII, in political philosophy on the myth of the Amazons (Un différend). After researching identity and the critique of gender (theses and works from 2008 to 2017), she turned to a study of anti-corruption and information versus knowledge around the idea of CORRUPTION (the « Panodyssey » website), treating in particular the figure of Julian Assange as that of resistance and intelligence (natural – artificial) www.linkedin.com/in/cecile-voisset-a7b5681b7. Among his books: Marx idéaliste. Essais hérétiques sur son matérialisme », Ed. Mimesis, Coll. « Philosophie », Milan (2019). Identitary order, Lambert Academic Publishing (2017); Guy Hocquenghem. La révolte (1946-1988), Preface by René Schérer, Ed. du sextant, Paris (2015) and in the Collection ‘Ouverture philosophique’ published by L’Harmattan, Paris: Des Amazones et des femmes (2010); Les Amazones font la guerre (2009); Hobbes philosophe redoutable? Des Amazones et des hommes ou le contrat selon Hobbes (2008). After publishing two studies on Vicken Parsons in Plastir 59, 12/2020 & Plastir 61, 06/2021. In this new article, she presents the Staëlian themes, the solitude and tragic destiny of the man behind the painter, his perpetual quest for an unrecovered past, his tortuous and allegorical journey. Above all, Cécile Voisset sheds light on the matter and colour at the heart of de Staël’s work, comparing his canvases and his career to those of famous artists and painters such as Kandinsky, Cézanne and Klee: « I know what my painting is beneath its appearances, its violence, its perpetual power plays; it’s a fragile thing in the sense of the good, the sublime, it’s fragile like love… » (de Staël quote). (a quotation from de Staël) and on the view of poets or men of letters on the depth of the artist. Jacques Dubourg, Georges Kimbour and René Char, for example, said of him that he « has endowed us with the unhoped-for, which owes nothing… ».