La presse se meurt, le journalisme lui survivra

This article proposes a feminist and postcolonial reinterpretation of Freud’s Totem and Taboo, critically examining social relations as structured through a commensal contract among brothers centered on the totemic meal in which sons devour the father and mutually renounce violence. The analysis highlights the symbolic suppression of nursing mothers and female reproductive labor, which are excluded from this foundational myth of society. Articulating feminist philosophy with race theory, the article demonstrates how such exclusion generates hermeneutic, reproductive, and political injustices. The concept of the “non-brother,” understood as non-commensal, sheds light on contemporary processes of ethnoracialization within republican commensality in France. Drawing on the work of Carole Pateman and Charles Mills, the article revisits the totemic meal as inaugurating a “sexual and racial contract” in which power, care, and civic rights are distributed. Ultimately, the study reconceptualizes feeding as a political act of social bonding, revealing the material and gendered conditions that underpin modern civility

Dance · Politics · Realm · Social group · Cultural, Social, and Media Studies · French Historical and Cultural Studies · Literature and Culture Studies