The fame monster ! : Reverse and Fortune of the Pirate, from 19th century till today, from the Seas to the Web ; The fame monster ! : Revers et fortune du Pirate, du 19e siècle à nos jours, des Mers jusqu'à la Toile
We all know what a pirate looks like. We may wonder, however, why pirates fill us with such enthusiasm. Where does our fascination for this "Fame Monster" come from? The expression, Fame Monster, underlines the ambiguity of a character whose fortunes will always know a fall-down, unveiling our thirst for transgression – our temptation for the other side of morals. Our comparative literary approach (one that borrows from visual studies, sociology, political philosophy, and cultural history) not only allows for a description of this social trend, but intends to get to its specific meaning, and indeed reveal the needs and the desires it hides. Our hypothesis is that the pirate represents a specific marker in the cultural history of the western world, leading us to explore our own desire for adventure, danger, transgression, rebellion (although it should be noted that the pirate also exposes our willingness to embrace norms and conformism through a stereotypical figure that is constantly repeated, a never-ending myth). Secret history in the main one, negatively connoted fiction, the marginal pirate seems to be read as an outlawed part of our society, as the indicator of either our golden or our bloody potentialities – the indicator of our might-have-been. Thus our study moves further than the mere analysis of a figure, to investigate the true stakes of its fictions and representations. For instance, sea-piracy and web-piracy (and the semantic transformation implicit in the move from one to the other), point to specific issues with regards to creation and reception. As he achieves new e-success on the Web, and becomes more than a character – a behavior, through hacking – the pirate may also provide us with a model to reconsider the very possibilities of fiction. Perhaps, then, is it time to ponder: are we all pirates? Or have we all already been hacked? ; Nous savons tous à quoi ressemble un pirate. Ce que nous savons moins, c'est la raison de ces succès, les causes de notre engouement – voire de notre fascination ...