Patrick Imbert, Comparer le Canada et les Amériques. Des racines aux réseaux transculturels", Québec, PU Laval, 2014.

Patrick Imbert's Comparer le Canada et les Amériques.Des racines aux réseaux transculturels is a nuanced and far-reaching monograph that renews the field of comparative cultural studies with regard to the relations between Canada, the United States, and Latin America.If most of the research related to the Americas adopts the European models of thought, this book displays the essential role of transcultural networks of knowledge beyond the idea of "roots", fundamental to Europe.Drawing on an impressive repertoire of scholarship in history, sociology, anthropology, and critical theory, as well as on literary analyses of contemporary writers, the monograph is deeply invested in engaging comparisons between European, Canadian, American, and Latin American concepts and practices -ranging from the invention of the Nation-State to the contemporary intercultural, multicultural and transcultural dynamics of the New World -that challenge the major 19 th century paradigms: "extérieur/intérieur" and "barbarie/civilisation"(3), and the national metanarratives.More so than in a historical discourse, based on diachronic perspectives, Patrick Imbert -following the multiculturalism of Will Kymlicka, the Quebecois interculturalism by Gérard Bouchard, and the anthropological views of René Girard in Des choses cachées depuis la fondation du monde -interrogates the social, political, literary, and symbolic implications of the transgression of such dualisms as: inside/outside, sole alterity linked to Europe/multiple alterities in the Americas, long temporality/short temporality, frontier/frontière through the integration of new concepts like: "le tiers inclus" and "le caméléonage", along with the legitimacy of mobility and theories of multi and transculturalism.The book consists of three long chapters, each comprising fifteen to twenty sub-chapters, to which annexes the conclusion, "Le surplus de savoir", and an extensive bibliography of twenty-six pages of critical and literary works -an excellent tool for research in the field.In the first chapter, "L'invention des États-nations et les paradigmes fondateurs: intérieur/extérieur synonyme de barbarie/civilisation", the author explores the stakes of passing from a dualistic identity to the acceptance of movement and the role of the "métissage des espaces" (58) in creating new forms of identity, more open to various encounters with the other/s.Here, Imbert breaks new ground in extending and consolidating a strain of violence theory emerging out of René Girard that inhere to "les rapports avec les peuples fondateurs" (72) in order to invite these peoples ("Autochtones, Noirs et Métis", 3) into diverse dynamics of belonging.In this pursuit, in the second chapter, the author proposes several ways of escaping national metanarratives built on exclusion: "échapper au dualisme par le complexe" (79), "le rejet du nationalisme homogénéisant" (99), "les réincarnations", "l'hybridité" (112) and "le territoire bigarré" (127)….The analyses of literary pieces like: Life of Pi by Yann Martel, Comment faire l'amour avec un Nègre sans se fatiguer by Dany Laferrière, The Law of Love by Laura Esquivel, and Myron by Gore Vidal lead us to rethink the negative stereotypes related to the Americas -"la différence, le racisme, l'immigration" (48) -and turn them into creative processes of transformation of the self and the society, and into "dynamiques interculturelles, multiculturelles et transculturelles contemporaines" (139) -as we read in the third and last chapter.Imbert's valuable contribution to the ongoing conversation about the role of alterity in theorizing transculturalism, multiculturalism, and interculturalism come in the form of the undertheorized concept of the transgression of duality, a term that symbolically signifies being inside or outside, belonging or being excluded, without having a third option.In Patrick Imbert's agile reflections, this third party ("le tiers inclus") signals the possibility to overcome the cause-

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.