Historical Semantics in a Transnational and Transdisciplinary Perspective: the Case of ‘Milieu’

Wolf FeuerhahnA lecture by CNRS researcher Wolf Feuerhahn, co-director of the Alexandre Koyré Center and the editor-in-chief of Revue d’histoire des sciences humaines, in the frame of the CEFRES Platform Lectures.

Language: English.

Venue : CEFRES, Národní 18, Prague 1, conference room, 7th floor.

Transnational History is nowadays a flourishing field of research. In the last ten years, history of concepts has been impacted by this historiographical turn. It lays much more focus than before on problems of transnational and transcultural resemantization of concepts. The emergence and success of new expressions like « traveling concepts » (Mieke Bal), « nomadic concepts » (Olivier Christin) are a good indicator of this situation

In my presentation, I suggest to go a step further in this direction. My methodological proposition will be based on the transnational history of the term milieu. Traveling from France to Germany, from history of literature to biology and sociology, the word milieu came to be identified as a French theory. It was seen as an expression of determinism, of the connection between the rise of the natural sciences and the rise of socialism. The vast majority of German academics rejected it ; they coined the term Umwelt  in strict opposition to the French word. But Umwelt was precisely retranslated into French as « milieu », becoming the flag of an antideterminist and postmodern philosophy (Deleuze). Through this case study, I would like to promote what I would term “transnational historical semantics” as opposed to the Koselleckian history of concepts and its a priori distinctions between words and concepts, and to reflect on how words are semantically affected by their transnational and crossdisciplinary destiny.

 

 

 

Making Life and Death Quantitative: Social Statistics and Life Insurance in the Dualist Monarchy

In the frame of IMS and CEFRES’s common seminar “Between Areas and Disciplines”, Mátyás Erdélyi (CEU, Budapest & CEFRES) will present a chapter of his PhD work on The Making of a Productivist Middle Class in the Habsburg Monarchy. His presentation will be discussed by CNRS researcher Wolf Feuerhahn, co-director of the Alexandre Koyré Center and chief-editor of the Revue d’histoire des sciences humaines.

Where: CEFRES library, Na Florenci 3.

Language: English.

Central Europe at the Crossroads

A workshop organized by the PhD students of “Passages” within EUR’ORBEM research center, in partnership with FF UK and CEFRES.

Where:
14 April: at CEFRES, Na Florenci 3, C building, 3rd floor, conference room.
15 April: at Faculty of Arts (FF UK), nám. Jana Palacha, room 104.

See the call for papers here.

Program
Thursday 14 April: CEFRES, Na Florenci 3, Prague 1, building C, 3rd floor, conference room.

9h30 : Opening
– Clara Royer (CEFRES)
– Eva Voldřichová-Beránková (FF UK)
– Xavier Galmiche (Paris-Sorbonne University / EUR’ORBEM)

10:00-11:00. Panel 1: Networks and Intertextuality in Central Europe

Jean Boutan (Université Paris-Sorbonne) : « Czechs and Germans in the poetical rewritings of the Maidenwar in the romantic era: stanzas and stances on nation »
Nicolas Porta (Université Paris-Sorbonne) : « Intertextualité centre-européenne et évolution dans les littératures tchèques contemporaines »

Break

11:30-12:30. Panel 2: Russian Literature As an Opposition Space between Russia and Europe

Leandre Lucas (Université Paris-Sorbonne) : « Gontcharov et l’ailleurs européen »
Simona Fialová (Université Charles de Prague) : « Reading Dostoevsky as „controversy between East and West“ »

Lunch

2:00-3:00. Panel 3 : Central European Science-Fiction and Its Echoes from East to West

Natalia Chumarova (Université Paris-Sorbonne) : « Stanislav Lem: une personnalité polonaise de la science-fiction soviétique »
Alžběta Tichá (Université Charles de Prague) : « Des reflets de l’œuvre R.U.R. de l’écrivain tchèque Karel Čapek dans la pièce „Frénésire ! ou le nouvel Orphée“ du dramaturge suisse David France Jakubec »

Break

3:30-4:30. Panel 4: The Reception of Latin Writers in Czech Literature

Katarína Zatlkajová (Université Charles de Prague) : « The image of St. Teresa of Avila in Czech cultural, spiritual and literary milieu »
Jana Kantoříková (Université Charles de Prague) : « Odkud to přišlo ?! La réception tchèque d’un décadent français »

Friday 15 April: Filozofická fakulta Univerzity Karlovy, room 104, náměstí Jana Palacha 1/2, 116 38 Praha 1.
9:30-11:00. Panel 5: Intellectual Circles and Elites

Svetlana Skvortsova (Université Paris-Sorbonne) : « Les étapes de la formation du marché de l’art du XIXe à nos jours »
Matyas Erdélyi (CEFRES) : « Les écoles supérieures de commerce et les sciences du commerce : un projet national dans l’espace habsbourgeois (1867-1918) »
Stéphanie Cirac (Université Paris-Sorbonne) : « Les émigrés russes et les intellectuels tchèques pendant l’entre-deux-guerres. Réseaux épistolaires »

Break

11:30-12:30. Panel 6: Territories and Borders

Ksenia Smolovic (Université Panthéon-Sorbonne) : « Discours français au lendemain de l’attentat de Sarajevo (1914) »
Laura-Jane Duquesney (Université Paris-Sorbonne) : « La frontière entre la Moldavie et la Roumanie : une ex-frontière soviétique devenue frontière de l’Union européenne »

Lunch

2:00-3:00. Panel 7: Communist Politics and Social Practice

Marián Lozi (Université Charles de Prague) : « Francouzský a český komunismus v historii i historiografii: podobnosti, průniky a možné inspirace »
Lucie Dušková (Université Charles de Prague) : « Prague et Tchécoslovaquie de nuit de l’après-guerre : entre l’Occident et l’Orient, l’imaginaire et la pratique sociale de la fin de la guerre à la constitution socialiste »

Break

3:30-4:30. Roundtable: Central Europe at the Crossroads.

Visegrad Forum: Ioana Popa, between Prague and Bratislava

Program

POPA_ISPMonday 11 April – Prague

6-8 PM
Lecture and debate organized by CEFRES in partnership with the French Institute in Prague.
Topic: Cold War Translations: Actors and Practices of Book Circulations Beyond the Iron Curtain and their Reception in France.
Discussant : Jovanka Šotolová, Department of Translation of the Faculty of Arts of Charles University, and a translator of French literature.
Language: French with Czech translation.
Where: Conference room of the French Institute, Štěpánská 35, 5th floor.

Tuesday 12 April – Bratislava

6-8 PM
Lecture co-organized by the Institute of World Literature of the Slovak Academy of Sciences and the French Institute in Bratislava.
Topic: Translating Under Duress. A Sociological Approach to the Transfers of Central European Literatures in France during the Cold War.
Language: French.
Where: French Institute in Bratislava.

Wednesday 13 April – Bratislava

10:30-12:30 AM
Monthly seminar of the Institute of World Literature of the Slovak Academy of Sciences.
Topic: The Institutionalization and International Construction of Area Studies in France during the Cold War. Insights from the Russian and Eastern European Program of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes 6th Section.
Language: English.
Where: Institute of World Literature.

Thursday 14 and Friday 15 April – Prague

10:00 AM
International conference on “Translation Between Languages, Cultures and History” organized by the Department of South Slavonic and Balkan Studies of the Faculty of Arts of Charles University, the Institute of World Literature of the Slovak Academy of Sciences and the Romanian Cultural Institute in Prague.
Keynote speech: Translation Routes: a Sociology of Literary Transfers between East and West during the Cold War.
Organizers: Libuša Vajdová (ISL SAV) and Libuše Valentová (FF UK).
Where: Hybernská 3, Prague 1 (Faculty od Arts).
The full program will be online soon!

Studying the State through the Scandal: On the Epistemic Value of Transgression

A session led by Jana Vargovčíková

‘In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking. Now, heaven knows, anything goes.’ (Cole Porter).

Far from being anomalies or mere accidents, transgressions are conditioned and given meaning by norms. Subsequently, norms repeatedly reaffirm their legitimacy and meaning in contrast to transgressions. What is considered as transgression and when transgression gains the potential of being turned into a scandal varies in time and space, as the quote suggests. That is why, given the imbrication of norms and transgressions, social scientists and philosophers have turned to cases of transgression in order to understand order, social norms and institutions, as well as to comprehend the nature of the distinction between the two (e.g. Foucault, Becker, Hughes, Goffman). Leaving normative preconceptions aside, then, a sociologist or political scientist can learn from an anthropologist and treat transgressions in the political realm as indicators of the (symbolic, but not exclusively so) structure of the state. Political scandals as narratives of events labelled as transgressive represent precisely such means of enquiry into how a political body organizes the limits of its norms (De Blic & Lemieux) and into how citizens relate to the political order (Gupta).

Readings:

  • Damien de Blic & Cyril Lemieux. ‘Le scandale comme épreuve.’ Politix 71 (3): 9–38, 2005.
  • Akhil Gupta. ‘Blurred Boundaries: The Discourse of Corruption, the Culture of Politics, and the Imagined State.’ American Ethnologist 22 (2): 375–402, 1995.
  • Chris Jenkins. ‘Transgression: The Concept.’ Architectural Design 83 (6): 20, 2013.

“The Spirit of the Laws”. Presentation of the Czech translation

Hana Fořtová presents her Czech translation of Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the laws at the CEFRES library, on the occasion of the publication of the last volume by Oikoymenh publisher.

The first scientific edition of this major text of the European thought gives way for the Czech audience to Montesquieu’s notes and to a contemporary critical commentary .

Montesquieu, O duchu zákonů II., Obrana Ducha zákonů ; přeložila a poznámkami opatřila Hana FořtováPraha, OIKOYMENH, 2015, 584 s. Continue reading “The Spirit of the Laws”. Presentation of the Czech translation