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Les mœurs et les croyances occupent une place charnière dans la vie des hommes et figurent de façon remarquable dans les productions littéraires africaines postmodernes. Que ce soit dans les littératures écrites (roman, poésie, théâtre) ou orales (mythe, légende, conte, épopée...), la règle générale qui détermine les récits se précise par le questionnement de la condition humaine à travers l’examen des modes de vie et des systèmes de pensée. En tant qu’art au service du spectacle, le théâtre africain postmoderne émeut tout autant qu’il aborde des thèmes religieux. Dans "Ils ont mangé mon fils", l’intrigue institue les protagonistes dans un contexte différencié où la question de cultures constitue l’épine dorsale. Il se dresse un tableau dualiste qui laisse clairement entrevoir le choc des cultures où la spiritualité africaine se trouve attaquée, tournée en dérision voire battue en brèche par une civilisation de la modernité basée sur la rationalité. A la lumière de la sociocritique dont l’objet est de dégager la "socialité" des textes, la présente contribution ambitionne d’interroger le fonctionnement de cet environnement de croyances où les traditions africaines sont éprouvées. Il s’agit d’examiner les modalités selon lesquelles les opinions interagissent dans le corpus, puis de montrer en quoi elles se télescopent au regard de la divergence de convictions des actants.

The reputation of the late-antique or early Islamic al-Filāḥa l-nabaṭiyya (The Nabatean Agriculture) as an esoteric forgery has recently begun to shift and its value as a source for the study of early-Islamic or late-antique Near Eastern paganism has been restored. This article contributes to a further reinterpretation of the work by elucidating its value for the history of late-antique and early Islamic science. It argues that the work distinguishes between the epistemological categories of the rational and the marvelous and critically approaches both based on a rational empiricism which it shares with contemporary disciplines such as medicine and astrology. The concepts of experience (taǧriba) and reason (qiyās) are central to al-Filāḥa l-nabaṭiyya 's epistemology, and the work relies on observation and experiments, combined with methods of deductive and analogical reasoning to obtain applied botanical and agricultural knowledge. Al-Filāḥa l-nabaṭiyya also contains competing views regarding prophecy and astrological knowledge which are illustrative of epistemological debates within Pagan late-antique scholarship. Résumé: La réputation d' al-Filāḥa l-nabaṭiyya (L'agriculture nabatéenne) comme une forgerie a récemment commencé à évoluer et sa valeur en tant que source pour l'étude du paganisme proche-oriental du début de l'ère islamique ou de la fin de l'Antiquité a été restaurée. Cet article contribue à une nouvelle réinterprétation de l'œuvre en mettant en exergue sa valeur pour l'histoire de la science de la fin de l'Antiquité et des débuts de l'Islam. Il soutient que l'œuvre distingue les catégories épistémologiques du rationnel et du merveilleux et les aborde de manière critique sur la base d'un empirisme rationnel qu'elle partage avec des disciplines contemporaines comme la médecine et l'astrologie. Les concepts d'expérience (taǧriba) et de raison (qiyās) sont au cœur de l'épistémologie d' al-Filāḥa l-nabaṭiyya et l'œuvre s'appuie sur l'observation et les expériences, combinées à des méthodes de raisonnement déductif et analogique pour obtenir des connaissances botaniques et agricoles appliquées. Al-Filāḥa l-nabaṭiyya contient également des points de vue concernant la prophétie et les connaissances astrologiques qui illustrent les débats épistémologiques au sein de l'érudition païenne de la fin de l'Antiquité. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Les questions du hasard et de la causalité furent les objets d'une discorde majeure entre Freud et Jung. Afin d'expliquer des coïncidences étranges vécues en présence de Jung, Freud déploie la notion de « Entgegenkommen des Zufalls », traduit par l'expression « complaisance du hasard », et qui rend compte d'un processus psychique inédit. Freud fait de cette complaisance le support par excellence de la paranoïa et la caractérise par un mouvement de l'individu vers ce qui constitue le symptôme, avec une « attention énormément accrue de l'inconscient » et une disparition des liens de causalité. Bien que peu connue, cette notion renvoie, selon certains auteurs, au « mécanisme projectif fondamental ». Notre recherche vise à remobiliser cette notion pour rendre compte, dans une démarche de recherche clinique, de ces expériences de coïncidences significatives dont la prévalence est élevée dans la population générale. Nous explorerons le cas de quatre sujets ayant répondu à une annonce en ligne, dont trois ont déjà fait l'objet d'un diagnostic psychiatrique. L'inscription singulière de ces coïncidences montre leurs multiples fonctions psychiques de défense, de suppléance et de sublimation. L'ensemble interroge les modalités de prise en charge de ces vécus de coïncidences significatives. La complaisance du hasard est un concept utile pour décrire les processus sous-jacents aux expériences de coïncidences significatives. The questions of chance and causation were the subject of a major discord between Freud and Jung. In order to explain the strange coincidences experienced in the presence of Jung, Freud deploys the notion of " Entgegenkommen des Zufalls ," translated by the expression "complacency of chance," and which accounts for an unprecedented psychic process. Freud makes this complacency the ultimate basis for paranoia and characterizes it by a movement of the individual towards what constitutes the symptom, with "an enormously increased attention of the unconscious" and a disappearance of causal links. Although little known, this notion refers, according to some authors, to the "fundamental projective mechanism." Our research aims to re-mobilize this notion to account for, in a clinical research process, experiences of significant coincidences, the prevalence of which is high in the general population. We will explore the cases of four subjects who responded to an online announcement, three of whom have already been the subject of a psychiatric diagnosis. The singular inscription of these coincidences shows their multiple psychic functions of defense, suppleance, and sublimation. We question the therapeutic treatment of these significant experiences of coincidence. The complacency of chance is a useful concept for describing the processes underlying significant experiences of coincidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The heavily Neoplatonic and antiquarian-perennialist tenor of Safavid philosophy is now widely recognized by specialists; but few have acknowledged its equally notable Neopythagorean turn. Likewise, that the primary mode of applied Neoplatonic-Neopythagorean philosophy as a Safavid imperial way of life was occult science has been ignored altogether, making impossible a history of its practice. The case of the Twelver Shiʿi sage-mage Mīr Dāmād – famed down to the present as an occult scientist – is here especially illustrative: for he was largely responsible for this Neopythagoreanization of Safavid philosophy, which saw the remarkable transmogrification of Ibn Sīnā himself into a Neopythagorean-occultist, by his espousal of a peculiarly Mamluk-Timurid-Aqquyunlu brand of philosophical lettrism (ʿilm al-ḥurūf) in at least three of his many works. The example of this imperial Neopythagoreanizing lettrist is thus crucial for understanding the intellectual and religiopolitical continuity of Safavid Shiʿi culture with Sunni precedent, as well as contemporary Persianate and Latinate parallels. Within Western history of science more broadly, Mīr Dāmād and the host of his fellow Muslim kabbalists must now be restored to the master mathesis narrative whereby scientific modernity is but the upshot of early modern Western philosophers' penchant for reading the world as a mathematical text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, we have witnessed an efflorescence of research on Islamic esoteric traditions and occult thought. Such scholarly activity has established that the occult sciences are part of Islamic intellectual history that cannot be overlooked; rather, they constituted a primary mode by which people thought about the hidden, the extraordinary, and their potential for partaking in the divine and wondrous. Occult beliefs and practices are thus inextricably embedded in philosophical, scientific, and religious discourses. This article focuses on occult thought in medieval Islam (second-seventh/ eighth-thirteenth centuries), particularly in its relation to the ways in which nature and the divine were perceived and experienced. I argue that medieval Islamic occult sciences distinguished themselves from forbidden siḥr or sorcery by identifying legitimate conditions of acquiring power on the basis of two differing paradigms: by association with natural philosophy on the one hand, and by association with Sufism on the other. A shift of emphasis occurred in the medieval period: from the second/eighth to the fifth/eleventh centuries, legitimisation of occult practices derived mainly from natural philosophy, stressing causation and knowledge of signs as the core principles of magical efficacy. By the seventh/thirteenth century, however, occult practices were increasingly justified on the basis of mystical and Sufi doctrines. During the first phase, magic was generally deemed natural, inasmuch as it functioned according to a causality proven empirically and understood rationally; during the second phase, the power of extraordinary acts, including magic, became the prerogative of a select group who has achieved non-rationalised revelation and theophany, which undermined natural causality and transformed signs from indicators of natural links into tokens of God and the spiritual agents mediating between Him and the gnostic. Scholars such as Pierre Lory, Constant Hamès, and Toufic Fahd have noted the difference between the magic of early Islam and that of the later Middle Period; however, this article elaborates on the epistemological transformations in this period and their implications for cosmological and ontological structures that had a direct impact on magical theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Ifrīqiyan cum Cairene Sufi Aḥmad al-Būnī (d. ca 622/1225 or 630/1232-1233) is a key figure in the history of the Islamicate occult sciences, particularly with regard to the "science of letters and names" ('ilm al-ḥurūf wa-l-asmā'). Drawing on textual and manuscript evidence, this paper examines the role of esotericism-religious secrecy and exclusivity-in al-Būnī's thought and in the promulgation and early circulation of his works in Egypt and environs. It is argued that al-Būnī intended his works only for elite Sufi initiates, and that, in the century or so after his death, they indeed circulated primarily in "esotericist reading communities," groups of learned Sufis who guarded their contents from those outside their own circles. This tendency toward esotericism, and the eventual exposure of al-Būnī's texts to a wider readership, are contextualized in relation to broader developments in late-medieval Mediterranean culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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