Symposium organised by the Institute of Ethnology AV ČR and CEFRES s with the support of the program Strategy AV21 – Diversity of Life and Health of Ecosystems
Venue: Vila Lanna, V Sadech 1, 160 00 Prague 6
Date: 8.11.2019, 10:00-16:00
Contact: broz@eu.cas.cz
Venue: Scientific Center of the Polish Academy of Sciences (74, rue Lauriston, Paris), Sorbonne University (17, rue de la Sorbonne, “Salle des actes”, Paris)
Date: 7-8 June 2019.
Organizers: Science Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Paris, Centre of Polish civilisation (Sorbonne University), CEFRES, Centre of French Civilisation and Francophone Studies in Warsaw
Language: English
This conference is the first in a cycle of conference entitled “1989-2019: Beyond the Anniversary, questionning 1989“, held in Paris, Warsaw and Prague.
You can check the detailed program here.
What is known about 1989, this chain of major events that have shaken up the map of Europe and the world? The collapse of communist regimes has been extensively studied and commented on. The human and social sciences have long focused on the 1989 enigma, which saw the un-anticipated collapse of the European part of the Soviet bloc in just a few months. However, the work on 1989 quickly led to other research agendas, proposing to study the current transformations in Central and Eastern Europe. Because contrary to what the large number of stories about 1989 may suggest, there are few empirical studies on this object and for good reasons. Because of its historical situation as the final moment of the communist period and as the inaugural moment of the “democratic transition”, 1989 was finally little addressed as such and for itself. Retrospective analyses of the reasons for the fall of the communist bloc and prospective studies on the democratization of Eastern European societies quickly marginalized the event as an object of investigation, in favor of more interpretation-oriented writings. More recently, it is more a questioning around the memory controversies on 1989 that has caught the attention of researchers. This conference therefore proposes a return to the event itself. Going back to the field, diving in the past, mobilizing new sources, without of course sacrificing the analysis to pure facts. This is the perspective adopted which consists in questioning the event through its social margins, actors who have until now remained in the shadows (for example workers or women), through writing and cultural practices and by engaging in a debate on the archives of 1989, raising new or too long ignored questions. Several leads seem to be possible:
It is therefore about revisiting 1989 by consciously taking a fragmented look on the series of political events that have transformed Central and Eastern Europe. Hence the use of new and heterodox sources: oral history with ordinary citizens, self-writing, memoirs written by former members of the opposition or communist parties, posters, literary and artistic materials, etc., which have been the subject of so few publications since then.
Location: Warsaw
Date: 24th and 25th of May 2019
Organizers: Institute of Philosophy, French Civilisation Center, Warsaw University
Partners: CEFRES
Language: English
An event, consequently, is not a decision, a treaty, a reign, or a battle, but the reversal of a relationship of forces, the usurpation of power, the appropriation of a vocabulary turned against those who had once used it, a feeble domination that posits itself as it grows lax, the entry of the “masked other”. Michel Foucault, Nietzsche, Genealogy, History
It is quite striking that Foucault’s definition of historical event bears all the characteristics of delegitimization i.e., the loss of authority or an abrupt refusal of recognition. This is no coincidence. Delegitimization is a historical event because it appears as the precondition for the possibility of any novelty in the social world. It is the negative moment preceding any positivity. Delegitimization precedes the change and generates it. The weapons held by the authority are turned against it, the sacred is turned into profane, the glorious into infamous, what is weak becomes strong, and the ignominious takes place in the sun. The figure of delegitimization is indeed one of the most powerful in the modern social imaginary – it arguably represents a heroic moment of progress.
The edifice of the Enlightenment was built through all series of delegitimizations: the delegitimization of Aristotelian teleology paved the way for modern science; the delegitimization of revelation brought the freedom of thought and of speech; the delegitimization of monarchy produced democracy; the delegitimization of privilege – equality before law. Delegitimization pairs up with either collective or individual emancipation. Moreover, in modern societies, delegitimization becomes an institutionalised game. Inscribed within scientific, artistic and political fields it ensures their internally competitive nature. We confront here an apparent paradox where the very legitimacy of any distinction or advantage depends on the possibility of delegitimization standing at bay. Yet, this seems to be a virtuous paradox. If we recognise that every legitimacy, even if to a different degree, carries some fair amount of the arbitrary usurpation and violence, it plainly deserves to be exposed to a reversal of fate.
And yet delegitimization as social practise is far from being an innocent endeavour. It hardly meets any normative expectations. It rarely passes only through a fair critique, it produces strawmen, misinterpretations or puts things out of proportion. The enterprise of delegitimization favours the performative efficiency over the power of argument; the feeling over the reason. It has aversion to nuance. As some prominent contemporary thinkers point out, it proceeds by fabricating empty signifiers filled with imaginary equivocations. Not only does delegitimization distorts its objects, it also constantly manipulates, displaces or conceals the subject of the whole making. The subject of delegitimization is often, if not always, ‘a masked other’ as denunciator rarely speaks undisguised and in his own name; he is rather a Porte-parole for entity of his own making. The art of delegitimating is indeed the backbone of populism. And so the ‘masked other’ appears elsewhere and in different form, when delegitimating turns no longer against holders of power and prestige but against those who lack them dramatically. Withdrawal of recognition targets mostly the ones who lack recognition, by means of stigmatisation, vilification, objectification and dehumanisation. Delegitimization is therefore inherent in every pogrom or genocide.
The goal of our seminar is an interdisciplinary exchange aiming at understanding contemporary crises of legitimation. We hope to achieve this by taking the broadest possible scope in space, time and method.
A lecture by Michael Werner (CNRS-EHESS) on the occasion of the workshop When All Roads Led to Paris.
When & Where: from 6 pm to 7:30 pm, French Institute in Prague, Štěpánská 35, Prague 1, 5th floor
Language: French with simultaneous translation in Czech
Abstract (FR)
Dans la conférence, on reviendra sur les transformations de la vie musicale en Europe au 19e siècle, en particulier relatives au concert. On assiste en effet à un phénomène paradoxe : d’un côté une véritable internationalisation, fondée, entre autres, sur la mobilité des musiciens, la constitution d’un répertoire, l’émergence d’un marché et d’une presse spécialisée ou encore la professionnalisation des métiers de la musique. De l’autre une nationalisation progressive des schèmes interprétatifs de la musique et des phénomènes de réception, voire l’appropriation de la musique par les mouvements nationaux. On proposera quelques outils d’analyse permettant d’éclairer ces mutations et de les inscrire dans une histoire croisée des cultures en Europe.
Michael Werner is a research director at Centre national de la recherche scientifique, and a lecturer at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. His main focus is history of social and cultural relations between France and Germany between and 18th and 20th century. Along with Michel Espagne he introduced a theory of cultural transfers; with Bénédicte Zimmermann he then developed a similar concept of „histoire croisée“, i.e. entangled history. Besides cultural transfers between France and Germany, Michael Werner focuses also on the perspectives of entangled history in humanities, on literary science and social history of music. The latter will be the subject of his Prague lecture.
Illustration : The Piano Lesson, Edmund Blair Leighton (1896)
Organizers: Benedetta Zaccarello (CNRS-CEFRES) and Thomas C. Mercier (CEFRES / FHS UK)
When & Where: 7-9 June 2018 at the French Institute of Prague, 5th Floor, Štěpánská 35, 110 00 Prague 1
Partners: FHS UK, The Jan Patočka Archive, FLÚ AV ČR, ITEM (CNRS-ENS), Bibliothèque Nationale de France, The Wittgenstein Archives at Bergen University, with the support of the French Institute in Prague and the program PARCECO of the MENESR
The conference will comprise four sections:
The afternoon session of the first day (7th June) will be dedicated to Jan Patočka and his archives.
The international conference “The Wording of Thoughts: Philosophy from the Standpoint of its Manuscripts and Archives” aims to establish a dialogue between experts of different archival corpuses coming from various countries and continents, so as to sketch methodological lines and to build a pioneer network focused on philosophical archives. Philosophy is written, practiced, lived through: it is the translation of the experience of a thinking subjectivity in a conceptual alphabet and a verbal fabric. The “making of a philosophical text”, including its cultural features and societal contingencies, challenges the representation of the discipline’s history as a series of abstract findings and innovative intuitions that constitute the landmarks of our paradigms. The philosopher who writes is the first inclined to erase the complex intricacies of the negotiations between existence and theory, between conceptual inventiveness and shared vocabulary inherited from a centuries-old tradition. Yet it is obvious that the dynamics of philosophy production and reception are a complex phenomenon whose writing nature is a crucial stake.
For all these reasons, the philosophical manuscript is an odd object that has only recently started to receive proper appraisal. In Europe, nevertheless, the creation of archive centres gathering major philosophical data has sustained the memory of philosophical writing and enabled such “arches” to cross time. It is beyond doubt that accessing these archives often enables to better understand the appearance, the method, the approach and even the sources, along with the polemical targets and the hints that published books tend to excise or dim. Moreover, in exploring the history of several philosophical archives and their rooting in specific social and cultural contexts, we aim to appreciate the role of such archival materials and their importance so as to develop new approaches to philosophical studies, including the history of philosophy and the exegesis of theoretical thought.
Venue & time: Marc Bloch Center (Germaine Tillion room, 7th floor, Friedrichstr. 191, Berlin), from 10 to 5:30 pm
Organizers: Catherine Gousseff (Marc Bloch Center – CMB), Sylvie Robic (Nanterre University), Clara Royer (CEFRES), Dominique Treilhou (French Institute in Berlin)
Partenaires : CMB, French Institute in Berlin, Paris-Nanterre University and CEFRES
Languages: French, German and English
This conference takes place within the May 68 Cycle taking place in Nanterre, Berlin and Prague, which centers around conferences, round tables, exhibitions and screenings dedicated to the year 1968.
From the Berlin February demonstration against US involvement in the Vietnam War, through the March student protests in Poland and the student unrest in Italy, to Prague Spring or French May ’68, a insurgent spirit swept across the European continent in 1968. The chronicle of the events that shook in different ways European societies, suggests the existence of a rebellious impetus that ignored the Iron Curtain and defied the various political regimes in place. The 1968 new generation held a common ground as they dared asserting their aspirations, upsetting the established order. Still, the diversity of protest configurations, whether speaking of the actors engaged in them or of the political answers prompted by the events, calls for a confrontation of these historical moments which, caught between celebration and tragedy, have become engraved in collective memory.
On the 15th of May, witnesses of 1968 from various parts of Europe will speak about the expectations they had then.
The next day, on the 16th of May, the conference will propose a reflection between East and West through the gathering of specialists on three major topics: violences in 1968, the emergence of women’s movements and the birth of alternative cultures.
What disparities, what common trends can be perceived in the rebellious spirit of 1968?
Continue reading May 68 Cycle Prague/Berlin – West Winds, East Winds
