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‘Post-’. The Past in the Present. CEFRES–CETOBaC Workshop

In 2024, the French Center for Research in Humanities and Social Studies (CEFRES) together with the institution reunited by its Platform – Charles University and the Czech Academy of Sciences will be CETOBaC’s guest during a one-day workshop.

Date: April 26 2024, 9 am–7 pm CET
Location: CETOBaC, Campus Condorcet, 14 cours des Humanités, Aubervilliers (Bât. recherche Nord, room 0.010)
Language: English, French
Organizers: Mateusz Chmurski (CEFRES), Lucie Drechselová (CETOBaC, EHESS), Fabio Giomi (CETOBaC, EHESS)
Partner Institutions: CETOBaC, EHESS / CEFRES

Program

9:00 – 9:15 – Greeting word

09:15 – 09:30 – Introduction

Marc Aymes, Center for Turkish, Ottoman, Balkan, and Central Asian Studies (CNRS / EHESS, CETOBaC)

Mateusz Chmurski, French Center for Research in Social Sciences (CEFRES)

09:30 – 11:00 – ‘Post-’. Thinking the Present Through the Past

Moderator: Emmanuel Szurek (EHESS, CETOBaC)

  • Adrian Brisku (Charles University / Ilia State University), Imperial Political-Economic Legacies in New (Inter)national Economic Order: Albania, Czechoslovakia, and Georgia’s Foreign Trade Discourse and Policy after the Great War
  • Václav Šmidrkal (Czech Academy of Sciences / Charles University), ‘Post-’ and ‘Trans-’: the Legal Status of World War II veterans in Czechia after 1989
  • Jelena Božović (CEFRES / Charles University), Languages in a post-conflict multiethnic society: The interplay of official and unofficial policies in Bosnia and Herzegovina

11:00-11:30 – Break

11:30-13:00 – Memories. Reflecting on the Past in the Present

Moderator: Lucie Drechselová (CETOBaC, EHESS)

  • Marie Černá (Czech Academy of Sciences), The Czechoslovak Prague Spring of 1968 from the point of view of local communist actors
  • Anna Huláková (Charles University), Situated Knowledge, Feminist Frameworks of Analysis and Women’s Representation in the Post-Soviet Central Asia
  • Camille Leprince (EHESS, CETOBaC), La guerre d’Espagne comme représentation de l’escalade de violence en Syrie

13:00-14:30 – Lunch break 

14h30-16h00 – Reflecting on Genocidal and Mass Violence: Yesterday, Today

Moderator: Xavier Bougarel  (CNRS, CETOBaC)

  • Elif Karakaya (Rochester University / CETOBaC), Unfinished Empire: Place and Memory in Post-Ottoman Visual Art
  • Kateřina Králová (Charles University), Holocaust Ruins: Ethnography of Hirsch quarter in Thessaloniki 
  • Özgür Sevgi Goral (Gerda Henkel Stiftung / CETOBaC), Our Wound Runs Deep: Colonial Aphasia and the Memory Field in Turkey

16:30-18:00 – Behind the Scenes of Political Documentaries 

Moderator : Ilshat Saetov (EHESS, CETOBaC)

Screening of Robert Mihály, The Best Corner in the World (2022), 25’, and screening and discussion with the director Sibil Çekmen, On the Trail of Missing Documentaries (in preparation in 2024), 14’.

18:00 – Closing cocktail

Abstract

The Center for Turkish, Ottoman, Balkan, and Central-Asian Studies (CETOBaC) at the Parisian Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) examines the past and present situations of Turkish speaking people throughout the geographical area of Turkey, the regions that once formed part of the Ottoman Empire, and Central Asia. The Center’s work concerns not only this population group but also their relationships with their neighbors, and social, cultural, and political questions. For certain research questions, the Center extends its reach towards the east to include Iran, Afghanistan, and China, and, to the west, towards Central and Eastern Europe. CETOBaC brings together historians, sociologists, anthropologists, geographers, linguists, and political scientists in 6 research areas: History of the Ottoman Empire; Contemporary Turkey; Balkans in the Contemporary Period; Central Asia and the Caucasus; Languages, Culture and Societies in the Turkish region; Islam and Sufism.
Each year, CETOBaC organizes an annual meeting with a research institution sharing similar scientific interests: these exchanges between researchers and provide a platform for discussing our research on the Balkans, Turkey, the Ottoman Empire and Central Asia in all disciplines.
The 2024 CEFRES-CETOBaC workshop will be structured around three main themes:

  1. Post-Ottoman, post-Habsburg, post-socialist. Thinking the past in the present.
    We will jointly explore the legacies left by the great imperial configurations that had such a profound impact on Central and Eastern European in the 19th and 20th centuries. Particular attention will be paid to how these configurations not only influenced social structure, but also organized the field of social sciences. How do we think about the categories of the multiple “post-“? How do we construct them? By looking at the situated production of knowledge, this first section will address through concepts the institutionalization of “cultural areas” in France and Central and Eastern Europe. This section continues in a successful collaboration launched by Lucie Drechselová during her fellowship at CEFRES in September 2023, that resulted in a doctoral workshop entitled “Dynamics of Political Participation: Disciplinary knowledge through the prism of ‘area studies’”.
  2. Memory studies.
    Closely related to the first section, the second part of the day will explore memory studies. memory studies. The aim is to stimulate dialogue on current research devoted to the formation, preservation, transmission, contestation and forgetting of individual and collective memories. We will also address practices of commemoration and interpretation and interpretation of the past, as well as strategies for reconciliation and healing in post-conflict societies. This section will also examine from several angles the recurring theme of “nostalgia” that animates a multiplicity of the contexts in the post-Soviet and post-Ottoman spaces, as well as – to a lesser extent – in former Czechoslovakia.
  3. Social sciences in danger.
    The third part of the day will take the form of a round-table discussion, focusing on the difficulties facing our disciplines, both in France, in Eastern Europe and in Turkey. We will discuss the combined effects of funding cuts and government decisions restricting academic freedom, controlling research subjects, as well as limiting the dissemination of the dissemination of potentially politically disturbing results. This debate will be followed by the screening of a documentary.

A Subaltern That Sings

A Subaltern That Sings.
From Sound Resistance to Musical Diplomacy in Wartime Ukraine

Kick-off meeting of a research project developed within CU-CNRS TANDEM Program supported by Charles University, CNRS and CEFRES.

Date: April 9, 2024, from 2 pm to 3:30 pm CET
Location: CEFRES, Na Florenci 3, Prague 1
Language: English
Project Coordinators:
Valeria KORABLYOVA (CEFRES / Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University) and
Louisa MARTIN-CHEVALIER (CEFRES / Sorbonne University)

The meeting will be opened by:

  • Mr. Stéphane CROUZAT, Ambassador of France to the Czech Republic
  • Mr. Ladislav KRIŠTOUFEK, Vice-rector for Research, Charles University
  • Mr. William BERTHOMIÈRE, director for European and international affairs at CNRS Sciences humaines et sociales

Abstract

Valeria Korablyova and Louisa Martin-Chevalier will present this research project dedicated to the musical dimension of Ukrainian resistance as a vehicle for escaping the subaltern position of a double periphery in the blind spot between the EU and Russia. The project brings together two academic subfields – cultural diplomacy and postcolonial studies – to reveal how Ukrainian musicians and activists use musical means to increase their visibility on a global level and to raise their country’s geocultural status on the mental maps of international audiences. From the European opera scene to the Eurovision Song Contest, Ukrainians deploy their soft power to manifest their country’s agency and garner international support for their cause.

Since 2018, the TANDEM program endeavors excellency in social sciences and humanities by bringing together Czech and French colleagues to intensify scientific collaboration between our countries in the frame of European Research Area. The program is a joint initiative of CEFRES, CNRS SHS, CU & the Czech Academy of Sciences (AV ČR) in the frame of the CEFRES Platform of scientific collaborations. Its former members have obtained two ERC grants, including the BOAR project.

Museums and their narratives

Museums and their narratives
Is the « national » label a thing from the past?

A roundtable discussion organized within a new cycle of meetings Résonnances / Rezonance by the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Adacemy of Sciences, CEFRES, the French Institute in Prague, and the National Gallery in Prague

Date: March 12, 2024, 5:00–6:30 pm
Location: Trade Fair Palace (Veletržní palác), National Gallery Prague Dukelských Hrdinů 47, Prague 7 (Auditorium, 6th floor)
Language: French and Czech with simultaneous translation

Participants

Sébastien ALLARD (Director of the Paintings Department, Musée du Louvre),
Danièle COHN (Professor of esthetics and philosophy of art, Université Paris I),
Milena BARTLOVÁ (Professor of art history, Academy of Arts, Architecture, and Design in Prague – UMPRUM)
& Anna PRAVDOVÁ (Curator of the Modern collections, National Gallery Prague – NGP)
Chair: Lara BONNEAU (philosopher, Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Adacemy of Sciences – FLÚ AV ČR)

Abstract

Continue reading Museums and their narratives →

Social space, geographical space, representation of space and literature

Social space, geographical space, representation of space and literature

Fifth session of the 2023-2024 CEFRES Francophone Interdisciplinary Seminar The map and the border
In 2023, we would like to start by beginning by questionning the very act of bordering and representing (a territory, a period, a trajectory), in short, thanks to the interdisciplinarity of our respective disciplines, to question the map and the border.

Location: CEFRES Library, Na Florenci 3, Prague 1
Dates: Friday, April 12th, 10–11:30 am
Language: French

Speaker : Josef Šebek, Department of Czech and Comparative Literature, Faculty of Arts, Charles University, associate researcher at CEFRES

Discussant: Yasar ABU GHOSH (FHS UK)

The talk will focus on the forms of space in Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory, looking in particular at the way they relate to one another and at the spatial aspects of the literary field. The first of these forms is the social space and social field, referring to a structure of positions that exists objectively yet does not exist (primarily) in physical space or real (physical) interactions between social agents. In order to make this structure intelligible, Bourdieu creates various spatial schemata that range from simple diagrams to visualisations based on multiple correspondence analysis. His followers come with even more sophisticated representations of social space. The relationship between this structure and geographical/physical space is complicated since relations in the social space or social fields do not necessarily coincide with actual spatial distances and proximities. Nevertheless, Bourdieu demonstrates – especially in the last period of his career – that it is necessary to study the relations among agents and the objectified forms of capital as they play out within physical/geographical space… The talk will then move to the question how the relations of the three forms of space can be applied to the literary field. In the spatially most interesting part of The Rules of Art, the “Prologue”, the representation of space has the competing forms of a diagram and a map. Bourdieu’s thinking on space thus guides us through the intriguing problem how to actually map literary fields as well as the social and geographical space represented in literary works.

Language policy and sociolinguistic differentiation in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Language policy and sociolinguistic differentiation in Bosnia and Herzegovina: From (in)significant difference to language boundaries

5th session of CEFRES in-house seminar
Through the presentation of works in progress, CEFRES’s Seminar aims at raising and discussing issues about methods, approaches or concepts, in a multidisciplinary spirit, allowing everyone to confront her or his own perspectives with the research presented.

Location: CEFRES Library
Date: Tuesday, April 9, 2024 at 4:30 pm
Language: English
Contact / To register: cefres[@]cefres.cz

Jelena Božović (CEFRES / FSV UK)

Speaker

  • Markéta Slavková, The Prague Security Studies Institute

Abstract

The question of language boundaries is not often addressed in language policy studies. When exploring multilingual settings, language policy scholars traditionally presuppose a plurality of languages treated as separate and fixed bounded entities. Working with easily identifiable and distinguishable linguistic units then allows for a closer study of their relationships. However, this task can be challenging in settings where languages are structurally close and overlapping, and boundaries are not always sharp and clear-cut. Here, determining the relationships between the (competing) languages and linguistic groups is not necessarily straightforward. This is because some differences are more subjected to boundary processes and some less, while some go completely unnoticed. Insights from these settings can therefore expand our understanding of language boundaries as stemming not only or not always from differences in languages’ formal aspects and their denotational, usually stable, meanings, but also as something deriving from the social and political function of language and its situated use.

In my dissertation, I am focused on Bosnia and Herzegovina, a context where a transition from one common standard language to three separate national standard languages occurred following the disintegration of Yugoslavia, inevitably raising the question of differentiation and boundaries. In fact, while examining the processes of interpretation of the official language policies during my ethnographic fieldwork in this country, it became clear that they mostly consist in interpreting differences and boundaries between these languages. Thus, my research is concentrated on language boundary processes, i.e. on how language boundaries are constructed, deconstructed, blurred, transcended or ignored altogether by social actors within various language policy settings. In this seminar, I will focus on questions of which boundaries are constructed and how, and in what ways these processes are related to questions of power relations and authority as well as their implications for the official language policy.

See the complete program of 2023–2024 seminar here.

Prague and Its Myths

Prague and Its Myths

Date: 5 April, 2024
Location: CEFRES, Na Florenci 3, Prague
Language: English and French

Sponsor institutions

  • CEFRES (Centre français de recherche en sciences sociales)
  • Institute of Sociological Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University
  • The Institute for Czech Literature of the Czech Academy of Sciences

Scientific and organising committee

  • Mateusz Chmurski
  • Michèle Baussant
  • Alessandro Testa

Participants

  • Jean Boutan, Eur’ORBEM, CNRS-Sorbonne Université
  • Tomáš Bubík, Palacky University Olomouc
  • Stanislav Holubec, Czech Academy of Sciences
  • Michèle Baussant, ISP CNRS-Paris Nanterre-ENS/CEFRES
  • Richard Müller, Czech Academy of Sciences
  • Marco PASI, University of Amsterdam
  • Jiří Pelán, FF Charles University
  • Alessandro Testa, FSV Charles University

Program

10.00: Introduction

10.15-11.15: Magical Prague

– Marco PASI (University of Amsterdam, Faculty of Humanities), Prague: The City of Magic and Occultism
– Alessandro TESTA (Charles University, ISS FSV UK/CEFRES), Praga Magica: The Late Modern Evolutions of a Cultural Myth

11.15-11.30: break 

11.45-12.45: Religious Prague

– Tomáš BUBíK (Palacký University Olomouc, KSAKA FF UPol), Religious’ Prague : Scenes from selected Public Spaces (a Cemetery, a Square, a Museum)
– Michèle BAUSSANT (Institut des sciences sociales du politique, ISP CNRS-Paris Nanterre-ENS/CEFRES), Une Prague des absent.es ? Entre renaissance de l’héritage juif et recréation d’une vie cultu(r)elle

12.45-13.00: Discussion

13.00- 14.30: Lunch break

14.30-16.00: Modern Prague

– Jean BOUTAN (Cultures d’Europe orientale, balkanique et médiane, Eur’ORBEM, CNRS-Sorbonne Université), Libuše reine de Cacanie: la postérité d’un mythe d’un autre temps après 1918
– Richard MÜLLER (Czech Academy of Sciences, ÚČL AVČR), Kafka, Simmel, and Writing the Metropolitan Mind
– Stanislav HOLUBEC (Czech Academy of Sciences, HIÚ AVČR), The Myth of Working Class Prague: Between Communist Sacralization and Postcommunist Forgetting

16.00-16.15: Final discussion 

Abstract

The workshop will explore the various declensions of the idea of Prague in modern and late modern times, with a focus on literature, social practices, religious phenomena, and heritage-making processes. These motifs or tropes are hereby defined as “myths”, borrowing from forms of both high and popular culture. They refer to specific images and traces of the contrasting and multifaceted pasts of Prague and its history. In particular, the city’s religious and esoteric heritage and its multicultural and ‘hinternational’ background, to use Urzidil’s phrase, now find renewed value as symbols of a shared Czech identity and history, with some places dignified as places of memory (“lieux de mémoire”) and others ignored or silenced (“lieux de l’oubli”), and their historical meanings partly recast.

Some of these myths provide an important platform for mass tourism, too, which, somewhat paradoxically, revives Jewish sites, but also other religious or legendary places as romanticised or “Disneyfied” spaces, consumed and partly disconnected from the living environments of memory.

The workshop aims to revisit these mythified pasts and their revival in Prague, with a particular focus on:

  • The myth of “Praga magica” the mystic city
  • The myth of Prague the “Traumreich” (Kafka, Meyrink, Ajvaz, Kubin, Crawford, etc.)
  • The myth of Prague the Jewish city
  • The myth of Prague the city of confrontation between Catholicism and its dissidents
  • The myth of Prague the multicultural and cosmopolitan city
  • The myth of Prague as a literary trope
  • The myth of Prague the post-communist city of mass tourism

What cultural trends have led to the valorisation of a mystical and esoteric past in a country that claims to be the most atheist in Europe? Or of a Jewish past in a place where there are very few Jews? Or of a cosmopolitanism that was partly eradicated after the Second World War? Using Ripellino’s renowned book Praga Magica, which was published 50 years ago, at the peak of the Soviet-imposed normalizace, as a starting point, we intend to revisit the often ambivalent social and cultural dynamics and transformations of Prague as reflected in literature, art, identity politics, old and new forms of religiosity and spirituality, and heritage making. We intend to explore these aspects and dynamics against the backdrop of the city’s communist past and neoliberal present.