Astract and Programme for our Seminar at the 58th Congress of the SAES
Congrès annuel de la SAES 2018 à l’Université Paris Nanterre, 7-9 juin 2018 : « Revolution(s) »
Abstract
The word ‘life’ is constantly revolving around the axis of writing: a life is both a biography and its topic. In a sense, we write our lives as we live them. Lives that go on being written after the death of the subject, lives that are considered interesting enough to be written and read about are often closely related to a paradigmatic shift, a revolution of one sort or another. Whether the individuals are the indispensable agents of such revolutionary moments, or simply happened to be in the right place at the right moment, is a sensitive case in point. Furthermore, in the ‘structure’ of a human life – this dated word should be understood in the broadest possible sense of what Thomas Kuhn meant in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) – time is heterogeneous: there are ‘turning points’, or moments of higher intensity, which are interesting to study as such, as well as for their two-way impact on individual lives and their contexts, but also for their incidence on the composition of biographies. Under the influence of the cinema, some modern biographies focus on particularly significant moments or periods in the lives they relate. Such ‘partial’ biographies are one instance of formal innovation in a genre that is often criticized for its conventionality, yet there have been other revolutionary experiments in biography, as for example Ruth Scurr’s recent John Aubrey: My Own Life (2015), written out like a diary, in the first-person singular. This seminar will welcome contributions proposing theoretical reflections or case studies in history, literature and cinema, on one or the other of these three heads: how individual lives relate to historical or paradigmatic revolutions, the nature and impact of ‘turning points’ in human lives, or innovations in the evolution of biography as a genre. The article versions of the presentations will afterwards be submitted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal with the permission of their authors.
Conveners: Joanny Moulin Joanny.moulin@univ-amu.fr et Patrick Di Mascio patrick.dimascio@univ-amu.fr
PROGRAMME
Workshop I : Thursday 7 June, 15.30-18.30.
15.30
María-Teresa DEL-OLMO-IBÁÑEZ
Université d’Alicante, Humanismo Europa
Gregorio Marañón’s ‘Relevant Event’ in the Pedagogical Development of Human Beings and Humankind
Gregorio Marañón defines the ‘relevant event’ as one which implies a transformation or change in the life trajectory of the biographical subject. He elaborates a concept of the relationship between man and humanity on a Diltheyan basis. He establishes a similarity between the personal evolutionary process and the history of man. And he talks about ‘panic of instinct’ as another of his main themes concerning that: as much for the individual life as in the history of the human being, Marañón maintains that there are moments in which the advent of decisive changes in his trajectory is felt. These premonitions are the cause of great crises caused by panic and insecurity. He distinguishes three events that they have been preceded by this instinctive terror in humanity: the birth of Christ, the discovery of America and another unidentified terror that would correspond to the time when religious preoccupation has ceased to be so.
16.00
Floriane REVIRON-PIEGAY
Université de Saint-Étienne, CELEC (EA 3069)
Lytton Strachey, André Maurois and the New Biography: French evolution versus English revolution?
The purpose of this presentation is to assess André Maurois’s contribution to the Revolution of the New Biography and more precisely Lytton Strachey’s influence on Maurois. André Maurois prefaced the French translation of Eminent Victorians and commented on Strachey’s breakthrough in biography at length in Aspects of Biography or in Prophets and Poets. An anglophile and English-speaking man, Maurois was to spread Strachey’s ideas about biography in fictional biographies of his own (Ariel or the Life of Shelley, Disraeli, Byron Prometheus: The Life of Balzac), and in theoretical essays. Keeping in mind the text written by Harold Bloom upon The Anxiety of Influence, it is the extent of this “influence” that we would like to analyse by looking at the way these texts were written and spread, interpreted and received both in France and in Great-Britain.
16.30
DISCUSSION
17.00
Craig HOWES
University of Hawai’i, Center for Biographical Research (CBR)
How Soon Can A Point Turn? Childhood, Psychoanalysis, and Biography
One of the commonplaces of the history of biography is that psychoanalysis marks a turning point in its practice. Freud himself made this claim; Strachey and Nicolson were early acolytes of sorts; Erikson, Edel, Sartre, and others became its heirs and its theorists; and in 2007, Nigel Hamilton refers to Freud’s claim as “a historic declaration.” This paper evaluates how this revolution has influenced the representation of turning points in lives. One of the major impacts of psychoanalysis on biography was its insistence on how early, profoundly, and irrevocably a life can turn. This led biographers to examine the subject’s childhood far more closely, and frequently to speculate about turning points that “must” have happened to explain the life’s later course. But to what extent do recent biographies sustain, call into question, or ignore the imperative to locate turning points in the earliest years of a life—and more specifically, in lives that are themselves seen as turning points in the history of science and technology?
17.30
Guillaume WAGNER
Université de Strasbourg, Centre de recherches en philosophie allemande et contemporaine (CREPHAC, EA 2326)
Vies et enjeux collectifs
Nous proposons d’interroger la présupposition d’une dichotomie entre «vie révolutionnaire » et « vie ordinaire », de même entre « tournant » historique ou « moments de haute intensité » et « vies humaines ». Car ce ne sont pas les « tournants » qui « font » les vies humaines. Ces dernières, même passives, s’agrègent en énergies collectives au point de bouleverser des formes d’organisation sociale. Les « tournants » relèvent de forces ou d’énergies collectives plus ou moins considérables se cristallisant autour de circonstances porteuses d’enjeux singuliers. Cela nous amène également à interroger « l’événement historique » comme tel. Nous nous appuierons sur un corpus d’ouvrages pour une étude comparative
18.00
DISCUSSION
Workshop II : Friday 8 June, 9.00-10.30.
9.00
Ahmed GALAL
Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (INALCO), Centre de recherche CERMOM
Vie révolutionnaire ou révolution d’une vie ? Étude de l’autobiographie al-Ṯawra 2.0 de l’Égyptien Waël Ghonim
Sorti d’abord en anglais chez HMH Books à Boston, l’ouvrage paraît en arabe dix jours plus tard chez Dār al-Šurūq au Caire. Né en 1980 au Caire, cyberactiviste égyptien, Waël Ghonim est devenu la figure de proue de la révolution égyptienne de 2011. Directeur marketing de Google Moyen-Orient à Dubaï, il crée anonymement une page Facebook Kulunā Ḫālid Saʿīd (Nous sommes tous Khalid Saïd) en hommage à une victime des violences policières. Fort de la voix de ses 350 000 membres, l’auteur diffuse sur cette page le premier appel à un soulèvement le 25 janvier 2011. Pourquoi Waël Ghonim a-t-il pris la plume ? Notre intervention tentera d’y répondre en s’articulant autour de trois motivations issues de notre lecture et analyse : raconter l’histoire de sa propre métamorphose de l’indifférence politique à l’implication révolutionnaire, réfuter son statut de « héros », et s’expliquer au sujet de quelques doutes sur la sincérité de son militantisme et de ses démarches.
9.30
Hans RENDERS
Université de Groningue, Biography Institute
Theo van Doesburg and his revolution with De Stijl 1917-1932
About the De Stijl-movement and the magazine of the same name has been published a lot, even last year when the centenary of its creation in 1917, a month after the Bolshevist Octotober revolution in Russia, received unprecedented attention in the Netherlands, and in the rest of the world. Theo van Doesburg, the founder of De Stijl, propagated De Nieuwe Beelding or neo-plasticism, which represented an abstract geometric language. Rarely, however, has the relationship been established between this new visual language and the striving for the de-individualization of De Stijl. Even though Theo van Doesburg felt that politics was ‘on-modern’, the political implications of De Stijl can not be denied. In this paper, it becomes clear when and by what personal circumstances Van Doesburg unleashed a revolution in the arts.
10.00
David VELTMAN
Université de Groningue, Biography Institute
Carry On Quietly: the Flemish avant-garde remembers its revolutionary days
During the First World War, many modernist artists in Flanders were collaborating with the German occupier. Victor Servranckx, Felix de Boeck and Prosper de Troyer, for example, worked together at the activist artist’s society of Doe Stil Voort [Carry On Quietly], funded by the Germans. They envisaged a revolution leading to a ‘New World’, based upon the rational choices and clear language that they used in their abstract art. The return of heavily wounded soldiers from the Flemish battlefields could be seen as a turning point in De Boeck’s life. His background of collaboration with the Germans did not function anymore as a way to position himself as belonging to the former activist group. Abstract art was considered suspect during the Second World War: the ‘New World’ revolution did not succeed. What does this lack of revolutionary spirit say about the way the Flemish avant-garde saw its own history?
10.30
DISCUSSION
Workshop III : Saturday 9 June, 9.00-10.30.
9.00
Olivier FRAYSSÉ
Sorbonne Université, Faculté des Lettres, Histoire et dynamique des espaces anglophones (HDEA, EA 4086)
Was Abraham Lincoln a revolutionist?
This paper will explore one of the issues that have divided Lincoln scholars: was president Lincoln a conservative or a revolutionist? The Lincoln presidency is justly famous for the abolition of slavery, which led several historians, from Charles A. Beard to James McPherson, to label the Civil War “a second American Revolution”. If it really was, then was Lincoln an enthusiastic or a reluctant revolutionist? The question expands when considering the significant changes brought about by the Lincoln presidency in the realms of federal power and executive privilege, the financial organization and economic policies of the nation, and becomes trickier when the issue of race relations is squarely addressed. What were the interpretative hypotheses that led biographers to give conflicting answers to these questions?
9.30
Pascale MONTRÉSOR-TIMPESTA
Université de la Réunion, Laboratoire de recherche sur les espaces Créoles francophones (LCF-EA4549).
La « démonumentalisation » de Toussaint Louverture
La geste de Toussaint Louverture constitue le premier « tournant décolonial » (Nelson Maldonado‑Torres) qui édifie l’homme noir en tant que « sujet capable » (Ricoeur). Les biographies de Schoelcher, de Césaire, de Pluchon et de Foix consacrent le personnage historique. La pièce de Lamartine Toussaint Louverture et celle de Glissant Monsieur Toussaint, le roman historique de Métellus Toussaint Louverture, le Précurseur et le roman fantastique de Pasquet La mort de Toussaint Louverture contribuent, au contraire, à sa « démonumentalisation » (Claudie Bernard) en montrant les fêlures de sa pétrification afin de l’humaniser. Mais, lors de la diffusion du téléfilm Toussaint Louverture, cette pratique stupéfie ses apologistes. Les adaptations biographiques doivent-elles se contenter de monumentaliser sa geste ou, au contraire, de la « démonumentaliser » afin d’interroger « la possession coloniale » (Laurent Dubreuil) qui conditionne toujours la perception du lecteur ou du téléspectateur sur les interrelations raciales ?
10.00
QUESTIONS
Workshop IV : Saturday 9 June, 11.00-12.30.
11.00
Karima THOMAS
Institut Universitaire de Technologie d’Angers, CIRPaLL (Centre interdisciplinaire de recherche sur les patrimoines en lettres et langues, UPRES EA 7457)
The Invention of Angela Carter: The Danger of Canonizing an Iconoclastic Author
Angela Carter’s life and writing are inextricably linked to the feminist and the countercultural movements of the 1960’s. In “Notes from The front Line” Carter confirms the role of the sixties in shaping her identity and her writing. Carter’s fiction and essays insist on the social and discursive construction of the identity. Her feminist and countercultural engagements foreground her representation of the subject as invention. This paper will examine the extent to which Edmund Gordon’s biography captures the dialogue between the author and the feminist and countercultural dynamics of her times and reflects the iconoclastic attitude of the author. Other related questions concern the composition of the biography itself: does the biography respect the demythologizing business in which the author was engaged or does it contribute into mythologizing the author like many obituaries did soon after Carter’s death? To what extent is the biography in keeping with the revolutionary spirit and style of the author?
11.30
Angel CLEMENTE ESCOBAR
Université Lille, Centre d’Études en Civilisation, Langues et Lettres Étrangères(CECILLE, EA4074)
Révolution dans la révolution. Le Mai 68 de Lawrence Ferlinghetti
L’écrivain nord-américain Lawrence Ferlinghetti, appartenant à la Beat Generation, a eu l’une de ces vies qu’on peut appeler révolutionnaires, hors des chemins préétablis. Son éducation sentimentale et littéraire au Greenwich Village, l’activité picturale parallèle à l’écriture ou son esprit subversive, trouvent dans ses œuvres un vrai reflet. Concrètement, son deuxième roman, intitulé Love in the days of rage et publié en 1988, recueille beaucoup de ces éléments et les introduit dans le contexte de l’insurrection universitaire et ouvrière de Mai 68. Le roman nous présente un personnage controversé, Julian Mendes, dont la définition plus réussie est l’apparent paradoxe être banquier et anarchiste en même temps, comme l’auteur lui-même reconnaît dans son dévouement, débiteur du personnage dans l’histoire de Fernando Pessoa O banqueiro anarchiste. Son argument est l’histoire de leur rencontre et de la naissance de l’amour entre lui et une peintre américaine appelée Annie au printemps parisien, duquel ils participent activement.
12.00
Taïna TUHKUNEN
Université d’Angers, 3L.AM-UPRES EA 4335
Radical life-writing in process on screen: Howl (Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman, 2010) and I’m Not There (Todd Haynes, 2007)
Rarely endowed with revolutionary potential, the biopic (“biographical moving picture”) has often been regarded as a marginal or “malign” cinematographic sub/genre. However, despite persisting narrative and typological patterns in the filmic rewriting of the lives of “larger-than-life characters”, some of these immensely popular films foreground the radical, to a large extent still unexplored capacity of the biopic to reconstruct an exceptional character in film. This paper proposes a brief exploration of the innovative portrayals of Allen Ginsberg in Howl (Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman, 2010) and Bob Dylan in I’m Not There (Todd Haynes, 2007). After contrasting these films inspired by the life of a well-known American poet and an even better-known singer-poet with more classic poet biopics, we shall see to what extent the two films seek to challenge the canonic retelling of a life. Of particular interest is the way the filmmakers draw on multiple sources during their filmic attempt to recreate an emblematic individual capable of incarnating an entire era.
12.30
DISCUSSION
