M I M M O C G E R H I C O –
C E R H I L I M
Call for Papers :
Signs, colours and images of Europe
8-10 January 2009 University of Poitiers
M.S.H.S.
99 Avenue du recteur Pineau 86000 POITIERS cedex
FRANCE
History does not provide a permanent statement of truth. History is above all the formulation of a specific cultural view of past events aimed at interpreting the present and better informing the future (Jean-Marie Domenach, 19901). There have been many publications, colloquia and discourses on European religious monuments, thinkers and philosophers. The more recent history of the building of the European Union has also attracted increased attention in the context of the 50th anniversary of the founding of Europe.
Europe is a vast community with variable boundaries, a disparate and multifaceted conglomeration that some historians consider to have undefined borders and which continues to fascinate and puzzle participants and observers. At a time when Donald Rumsfeld’s “New Europe” (2003) of the former Soviet Block countries seems intent on disengaging itself from
“Old Europe” within NATO, European unity seems as far distant as ever.
Europe has long suffered from nationalist historiographies which prevent the
“emergence of a common thread of European memory” (to use the phrase of historian Charles-Olivier Carbonell2) and yet now, fifty years after the signature of the Treaty of Rome, at a time when Europe is being enlarged beyond the original Treaty of 1957, it would appear more important than ever to attempt to define this common thread of European memory which perhaps constitutes the origin and originality of European identity
There is no lack of images of Europe. And yet Europe is clearly labouring under an
“iconographic deficit3” of an emblematic and symbolic nature due in part to the developmental directions of the various stages of European Union: first of all political and institutional before becoming economic and financial. These “points of view” which are as diverse and varied as the large number of participants in the widening of European Union, reveal a European reality which is admittedly plural rather than singular, in accordance with the various entities which go to make up the EU. Despite engraver Roger-Louis Chavanon’s
1 Jean-Marie Domenach, L’Europe : le défi culturel, La Découverte, 1990.
2 Charles-Olivier Carbonell, Histoire européenne de l’Europe, Privat, 1999.
3 Maurice Agulhon, notably in Les Métamorphoses de Marianne, Flammarion, 2001.
work commissioned by the European institutions in Brussels, the allegorical representation of Europe (in accordance with the Greek myth of Europa) remains problematical.
Democracies have monuments and symbols: take for example the Statue of Liberty, Westminster, or the Eiffel Tower. Beyond the official European flag, hymn and motto
“United in diversity” and the official Europe Day of the 9th May, there is an imaginary Europe, made up of a mixture of secular traditions and post-war history. But there remains an absence of “places of memory” to signify Europe which leads Pierre Nora to conclude that European identity is “of a highly intangible and incarnate nature”. There are photos which represent Europe (François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl holding hands at Verdun for example) and other events which crystallise a feeling of European belonging (has the Tour de France become a moment of European identification?), and various projects which suggest an emerging identity of an inchoate nature (Why are there so few films on the idea of Europe?
What do European co-productions tell us about Europe?).
An exploration of this « imaginary/imagined Europe » based on the precept of points of view would seem to provide a potentially new approach to the history of European Union based on representations of Europe. We therefore suggest an exploration of the following theme: “Images of Europe- Europe in images”. What are the concrete, imaginary or symbolic images which have marked the history of European Union and which of these images are still present today? What does Europe represent for Europeans? Which signs, colours and images are associated with the building of Europe in the contemporary world?
Taking an “imagological” approach (in the historic and sociological sense of the term) we will explore the nature, form and effect of these “Images of Europe” from an iconographic perspective (territorial and demographic cartography, media and newspapers images, political posters, advertising, photography, cinema, art) also concentrating on the cultural symbolism of “signs of Europe” (linguistic signs and common cultural roots, Europe vs national identity:
the paradoxical re-emergence of “communal”, “local” and “regional” identities, neo nationalism and the appearance of new spaces of identity).
In order to explore more closely these multiple visions of Europe, we invite a pluridisciplinary and comparative approach to the process initiated by the Treaty of Rome.
We particularly invite contributions from specialists in the field of history, history of ideas, history of art, philosophy, sociology, geography, linguistics, literature and cultural studies.
Papers should not exceed 30 minutes in length.
Colloquium co-organised by several research groups : - MIMMOC (Poitiers)
- GERHICO (Poitiers) - CERHILIM (Limoges) - Sciences-Po (Paris)
Please send proposals and a short biographical presentation to both members of the organising committee below before 30 September 2008.
Contact : Hélène YECHE et Guillaume BOURGEOIS
hyech@univ-poitiers.fr guillaume.bourgeois@univ-poitiers.fr
MIMMOC M.S.H.S. - Bureau 0.51
05.49.45.46.51 mcmerine@univ-poitiers.fr
