{"id":337,"date":"2013-11-28T11:54:29","date_gmt":"2013-11-28T11:54:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/annualconference\/association-francaise-detudes-americaines\/congres-afea\/congres-anterieurs\/congres-2013-angers-religion-et-spiritualite\/liste-des-ateliers-447\/337\/"},"modified":"2013-11-28T11:54:29","modified_gmt":"2013-11-28T11:54:29","slug":"liste-des-ateliers-447","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/afea.fr\/annualconference\/congres-anterieurs\/congres-2013-angers-religion-et-spiritualite\/liste-des-ateliers-447\/337\/","title":{"rendered":"Liste des ateliers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Congr\u00e8s AFEA 2013 – Angers, 22-26 mai
\nReligion et spiritualit\u00e9
\nAppels \u00e0 communications<\/p>\n

Organisation scientifique : Richard Anker<\/a> (Universit\u00e9 Clermont 2) et Nathalie Caron<\/a> (Universit\u00e9 Paris-Est Cr\u00e9teil).<\/p>\n

– 1 Histoire coloniale I : Ouvrir l\u2019histoire religieuse de l\u2019Am\u00e9rique coloniale
\nColonial History I: Opening up the Religious History of Colonial America<\/a>
\n– 2 Histoire coloniale II : L\u2019\u00e9vang\u00e9lisation dans l\u2019Am\u00e9rique coloniale : politiques et pratiques (1580-1800)
Colonial History II: Christianization in Colonial America: Policies and Practices (1580-1800)<\/a>
\n– 3 La religion face \u00e0 l’\u00c9tat entre 1640 et 1914
\nReligion and the State, 1640-1914 <\/a>
\n– 4 La religion et le sacr\u00e9, leurs rapports avec la guerre ou avec la recherche de la paix : modalit\u00e9s d\u2019expression, propagande, arts et litt\u00e9rature, de la guerre de S\u00e9cession \u00e0 nos jours
\nReligion and the Sacred at War or Promoting Peace: Discourse, Propaganda, Arts and Literature from the Civil War to the present<\/a>
\n– 5 March\u00e9 des religions et religion(s) du march\u00e9, 1950-2013
\nThe Market of Religions and the Religion(s) of the Market<\/a>
\n– 6 De la th\u00e9osophie au New Age : les enfants d\u2019Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
\nFrom Theosophy to the New Age: Where Have the Children of H. P. Blavatsky Gone?<\/a>
\n– 7 Religion et s\u00e9cularisation dans la vie juive am\u00e9ricaine
\nReligion and Secularization in American Jewish Life<\/a>
\n– 8 Les tribulations de la droite chr\u00e9tienne
\nThe Travails of the Christian Right<\/a>
\n– 9 Des \u00ab nouvelles religions \u00bb aux contours flous de la spiritualit\u00e9 : quelle place pour la notion de \u00ab sectes \u00bb aux \u00c9tats-Unis ?
\nFrom \u201cNew Religions\u201d to the Blurry Edges of Spirituality: Where do \u201cCults\u201d Fit in the American Religious Landscape?<\/a>
\n– 10 Religion, spiritualit\u00e9 et politisation des sexualit\u00e9s
\nReligion, Spirituality, and the Politicization of Sexualities<\/a>
\n– 11 Religion et mouvements contestataires
\nReligion and Protest Movements <\/a>
\n– 12 La religion dans l’ordre international
\nReligion and International Relations <\/a>
\n– 13 L\u2019Am\u00e9rique est-elle sortie de l\u2019\u00e2ge th\u00e9ologique ?
\nLeaving or Living the Theological Age? <\/a>
\n– 14 H\u00e9ritage spiritual, empreinte du religieux dans les litt\u00e9ratures \u00ab minoritaires \u00bb
\nSpiritual Heritage, the Imprint of the Religious in \u201cMinority\u201d Writings<\/a>
\n– 15 \u00ab The Standard of Language as well as of Faith \u00bb : la Bible dans la po\u00e9sie am\u00e9ricaine du XIXe si\u00e8cle
\n\u201cThe Standard of Language as well as of Faith\u201d: The Bible in Nineteenth-Century American Poetry<\/a>
\n– 16 La religion et son autre de Dickinson \u00e0 Ginsberg
\nReligion and its Other from Dickinson to Ginsberg<\/a>
\n– 17 La transcendance sans Dieu : po\u00e9sie et \u00e9lan mystique
\nTranscendence without God: Poetry and Mystical Aspiration<\/a>
\n– 18 Fictions du religieux : le travail du sentiment dans la litt\u00e9rature am\u00e9ricaine
\nReligious Fictions: The Political Work of Sentiment in American Literature<\/a>
\n– 19 L\u2019exp\u00e9rience de la crise spirituelle et la question des croyances (1897-1907)
\nThe Experience of Spiritual Crisis and the Question of Belief (1897-1907) <\/a>
\n– 20 Le spectral comme trace du religieux
\nSpectrality\/Spirituality<\/a>
\n– 21 Religion et spiritualit\u00e9 \u00e0 l\u2019\u00e9preuve de la modernit\u00e9
\nModernity: A Test for Religion and Spirituality<\/a>
\n– 22 \u00ab The Christ-haunted South \u00bb ou l\u2019importance du religieux dans la litt\u00e9rature du Sud
\n\u201cThe Christ-Haunted South,\u201d or the Importance of Religion in the Literature of the American South<\/a>
\n– 23 Po\u00e9tiques de l\u2019inscription : des th\u00e9ologies de la lettre \u00e0 la d\u00e9sacralisation de l\u2019\u00e9criture
\nPoetics of Inscription: From Theologies of the Letter to the Desacralization of Writing<\/a>
\n– 24 Mystiques du langage en fiction contemporaine
\nMystique of Language in Contemporary American Fiction<\/a>
\n– 25 Crises et formes litt\u00e9raires de la croyance
\nLiterary Crises and Forms of Belief<\/a>
\n– 26 \u00ab There\u2019s only one god and we don\u2019t believe in him \u00bb : la religion \u00e0 fleur de texte
\n \u201cThere\u2019s only one god and we don\u2019t believe in him\u201d: Religion under Erasure<\/a>
\n– 27 La fin du monde, ou l\u2019\u00e9criture et la d\u00e9sincarnation
\nThe End of the World, or Writing and Disincarnation<\/a>
\n– 28 Incarner la spiritualit\u00e9 et inscrire la religion dans le cin\u00e9ma am\u00e9ricain
\nIncarnating Spirituality and Inscribing Religion in American Cinema<\/a>
\n– 29 Religion et transgression dans la litt\u00e9rature et les arts visuels
\nReligion and Transgression in US Literature and Visual Arts<\/a>
\n– 30 Les ic\u00f4nes entre s\u00e9cularisation et resacralisation
\nIcons: Between Secularization and Resacralization <\/a>
\n– 31 L\u2019esprit iconoclaste I : religion et blasph\u00e8me dans la culture populaire
\nThe Iconoclast Spirit I: Religion and Blasphemy in Popular Culture<\/a>
\n– 32 L\u2019esprit iconoclaste II : religion et blasph\u00e8me dans la musique populaire
\nThe Iconoclast Spirit II: Religion and Blasphemy in Popular Music<\/a>
\n– 33 S\u00e9ries t\u00e9l\u00e9vis\u00e9es, religion et spiritualit\u00e9
\nTV Series, Religion and Spirituality<\/em> <\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a>1. Histoire coloniale I : Ouvrir l\u2019histoire religieuse de l\u2019Am\u00e9rique coloniale<\/em>
\n Lauric Henneton (Universit\u00e9 de Versailles Saint-Quentin) et Elodie Peyrol-Kleiber (Universit\u00e9 Paris 8 Vincennes – Saint-Denis) <\/strong><\/p>\n

La p\u00e9riode coloniale de l\u2019histoire am\u00e9ricaine, jusqu\u2019\u00e0 la s\u00e9quence r\u00e9volutionnaire, est depuis longtemps un terrain privil\u00e9gi\u00e9 de l\u2019\u00e9tude des ph\u00e9nom\u00e8nes religieux, de la mise en place (contest\u00e9e) d\u2019une h\u00e9g\u00e9monie puritaine en Nouvelle-Angleterre et d\u2019une \u00c9glise anglicane \u00e9tablie en Virginie \u00e0 un march\u00e9 plus librement concurrentiel en Pennsylvanie puis \u00e0 l\u2019irruption des r\u00e9veils \u00e9vang\u00e9liques au milieu du XVIIIe si\u00e8cle, notamment dans un arri\u00e8re-pays largement sous-christianis\u00e9.<\/p>\n

Le pr\u00e9sent atelier s\u2019appuie sur la production historiographique la plus r\u00e9cente pour inviter des communications pluridisciplinaires et transversales qui s\u2019inscriraient dans une triple ouverture de l\u2019histoire religieuse de la p\u00e9riode coloniale.<\/p>\n

1. Une ouverture g\u00e9ographique, en envisageant les ph\u00e9nom\u00e8nes nord-am\u00e9ricains dans une perspective au moins atlantique, sinon globale, comme y invitent par exemple Alison Games et Peter Coclanis (William and Mary Quarterly, <\/em>2006), notamment \u00e0 travers les ph\u00e9nom\u00e8nes de circulation des personnes, des \u00e9crits, des id\u00e9es et des pratiques, ainsi que les r\u00e9seaux.
\n2. Une ouverture chronologique, en n\u2019envisageant plus la R\u00e9volution comme une barri\u00e8re infranchissable, mais en privil\u00e9giant une perspective plus longue, de fa\u00e7on \u00e0 mettre en \u00e9vidence les continuit\u00e9s et les ruptures et donc les sp\u00e9cificit\u00e9s de la p\u00e9riode coloniale, notamment \u00e0 travers les questions d\u2019h\u00e9ritage, de m\u00e9moire, de revendications identitaires par rapport \u00e0 une tradition, des P\u00e8res ou des \u00e9pisodes fondateurs, \u00e0 la faveur de r\u00e9\u00e9critures de l\u2019histoire.
\n3. Une ouverture disciplinaire, enfin, qui, \u00e0 l\u2019image de publications r\u00e9centes, montre l\u2019impact des ph\u00e9nom\u00e8nes religieux :<\/p>\n

a. en mati\u00e8re politique : Thomas Kidd sur le r\u00f4le de la religion dans la R\u00e9volution, Denis Lacorne, Evan Haefeli et David Sehat sur les questions de tol\u00e9rance et de libert\u00e9 religieuse, David Hall sur les liens entre puritanisme et modernit\u00e9 ;
\nb. en mati\u00e8re \u00e9conomique : Mark Valeri, Heavenly Merchandize, <\/em>et Katherine Cart\u00e9 Engel, Religion and Profits, <\/em>sur les relations entre pens\u00e9e religieuse et pratiques commerciales chez les puritains et les moraves ;
\nc. en mati\u00e8re de relations internationales et de g\u00e9opolitique, comme les livres d\u2019Owen Stanwood sur la Glorieuse r\u00e9volution, George McKenna sur les liens entre puritanisme et patriotisme ou la somme d\u2019Andrew Preston, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy <\/em>;
\nd. en mati\u00e8re de relations sociales et interethniques enfin (Rebecca Goetz, The Baptism of Early Virginia: How Christianity created Race<\/em>), ou comment les arguments religieux visaient \u00e0 justifier ou au contraire \u00e0 d\u00e9noncer l\u2019esclavage.<\/p>\n

Enfin, comme y invite l\u2019appel \u00e0 communication du congr\u00e8s, les communications porteront autant que possible sur la place probl\u00e9matique de la religion et de la dissidence religieuse dans l\u2019espace public ainsi que du poids des Ecritures et du providentialisme dans l\u2019appr\u00e9hension du monde, notamment dans le cadre de l\u2019histoire des sciences, ainsi que la tension entre pluralisme religieux et d\u00e9clin de la foi (declension<\/em>), r\u00e9el ou per\u00e7u, comme en t\u00e9moignent par exemple les j\u00e9r\u00e9miades puritaines de Nouvelle-Angleterre.
\nLes propositions de 200 mots sont \u00e0 envoyer avant le 15 d\u00e9cembre 2012 \u00e0 : Lauric Henneton<\/a>, et \u00e0 Elodie Peyrol<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Colonial History I: Opening up the Religious History of Colonial America
\n<\/em> <\/strong>Lauric Henneton (Universit\u00e9 de Versailles Saint-Quentin) and \u00c9lodie Peyrol-Kleiber (Universit\u00e9 Paris 8 Vincennes – Saint-Denis), <\/strong>
\n<\/em> <\/strong>
\n<\/strong>The colonial period in American history, down to the Revolution, has long been an important field for the study of religion, what with the setting up of a Puritan hegemony in New England and an established Church of England in Virginia, however disputed by dissenters, to a supposedly free(r) religious marketplace in Pennsylvania and the outbreak of evangelical awakenings in the mid-eighteenth century, notably in a largely under-Christianized backcountry.<\/p>\n

This panel invites papers with a transversal or interdisciplinary approach reflecting at least one of the following thought-provoking trends in recent publications in the field:
\n1. Papers that would consider North American religious phenomena in an Atlantic, if not global, perspective, along the lines prescribed by Alison Games and Peter Coclanis, among others, through the study of networks and the impact of an increased circulation of people, publications, ideas and practices across the Atlantic and beyond.
\n2. Papers that would look at founding fathers (and mothers) and founding episodes through the lens of memory, the (re)writing of history and the construction of identities on the basis of the colonial past in the post-Revolution United States.
\n3. Papers that would consider the impact of religious issues on other disciplines, such as politics (Thomas Kidd on religion and the Revolution, Denis Lacorne, Evan Haefeli and David Sehat on toleration and religious liberty, David Hall on Puritanism and modernity), economics (Mark Valeri, Heavenly Merchandize, <\/em>and Katherine Cart\u00e9 Engel, Religion and Profits, <\/em>on the relations between religion and commercial practices among Puritans and Moravians), international relations and geopolitics (Owen Stanwood on the Glorious Revolution, George McKenna on Puritanism and patriotism, or Andrew Preston\u2019s masterly Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy<\/em>), or social and interethnic relations (Rebecca Goetz, The Baptism of Early Virginia: How Christianity created Race<\/em>), such as the religious discourse justifying or attacking slavery, for instance.<\/p>\n

Finally, following the general call for papers, paper presenters will seek to address the problematic place of religion and religious dissent in the public square and of a Scriptural and providential worldview in the perception of the (natural) world, for instance in the history of science, as well as the tension between religious pluralism and declension (real or perceived), as voiced in the Puritan jeremiads.
\nAbstracts of 200 words should be sent to Lauric Henneton<\/a> and Elodie Peyrol<\/a>, by December 15, 2012.<\/p>\n

<\/a>2. Histoire coloniale II: L\u2019\u00e9vang\u00e9lisation dans l\u2019Am\u00e9rique coloniale : politiques et pratiques (1580-1800)<\/em>
\nBertrand Van Ruymbeke (Universit\u00e9 Paris 8 Vincennes – Saint-Denis) et Anne-Marie Liberio (Universit\u00e9 Paris 4 Sorbonne) <\/strong><\/p>\n

Le Nouveau Monde suscita dans l\u2019esprit des Anglais des utopies d\u2019origines aussi diverses que leurs aspirations religieuses furent h\u00e9t\u00e9rog\u00e8nes. En fondant les colonies de la Nouvelle-Angleterre, les s\u00e9paratistes (ou \u00ab P\u00e8res P\u00e8lerins \u00bb) et les puritains crurent saisir l\u2019opportunit\u00e9 d\u2019\u00e9tablir une \u00c9glise id\u00e9ale, nouvelle pour les uns, ou purifi\u00e9e pour les autres. Roger Williams et William Penn, quant \u00e0 eux, con\u00e7urent le Rhode Island et la Pennsylvanie comme des mod\u00e8les de tol\u00e9rance spirituelle.<\/p>\n

Malgr\u00e9 ces distinctions, les protestants se montr\u00e8rent soud\u00e9s face aux j\u00e9suites, quand il fut question des rapports avec les Am\u00e9rindiens. De m\u00eame que les pr\u00eatres et les pasteurs se disput\u00e8rent la fid\u00e9lit\u00e9 des autochtones, les gouverneurs fran\u00e7ais et anglais rivalis\u00e8rent de pr\u00e9sents, afin de remporter l\u2019all\u00e9geance de dirigeants influents, au premier rang desquels figuraient les repr\u00e9sentants iroquois. Dans les deux cas, spirituel et temporel, contrer les \u00ab s\u00e9ductions \u00bb exerc\u00e9es par les missionnaires de la Compagnie de J\u00e9sus, et d\u00e9fendre leurs fronti\u00e8res, constitu\u00e8rent des priorit\u00e9s pour les Anglais. <\/p>\n

Ainsi, au m\u00eame titre que dans les espaces catholiques, l\u2019expansion anglaise se fit au nom de la religion. Parmi les promoteurs de la premi\u00e8re heure, Richard Hakluyt incita les \u00ab Princes d\u2019Angleterre, d\u00e9fenseurs de la foi \u00bb, \u00e0 envoyer des pasteurs aux \u00ab idol\u00e2tres, qu\u2019il sera tr\u00e8s ais\u00e9 de persuader \u00bb, puisqu\u2019ils semblaient dispos\u00e9s \u00e0 \u00ab imiter <\/em>\u00bb les pratiques religieuses des Europ\u00e9ens (Discourse of Western Planting<\/em>, 1584). Inspir\u00e9es par l\u2019optimisme de ces r\u00e9cits initiaux, et faisant \u00e9cho aux motivations exprim\u00e9es lors de l\u2019aventure de Roanoke (1584-1590), les chartes l\u00e9gitimant les implantations ult\u00e9rieures port\u00e8rent toutes une mention semblable \u00e0 celle octroy\u00e9e pour la Virginie, encourageant la \u00ab propagation de l\u2019\u00e9vangile \u00e0 tous les peuples qui vivent encore dans les t\u00e9n\u00e8bres \u00bb (1606). <\/p>\n

La christianisation des autochtones tissa par ailleurs des liens entre les sujets de la Couronne \u00e9tablis de part et d\u2019autre de l\u2019Atlantique, \u00e0 travers la formulation de projets communs (discours sur les bienfaits la conversion, r\u00e9colte de fonds, recrutement de pasteurs et de ma\u00eetres d\u2019\u00e9cole). <\/p>\n

Si la mise en place de l\u2019instruction religieuse des Am\u00e9rindiens libres se trouva confront\u00e9e \u00e0 de nombreux obstacles (incompr\u00e9hensions linguistiques et culturelles, guerres, manque de main-d\u2019oeuvre), l\u2019\u00e9vang\u00e9lisation des esclaves, africains et am\u00e9rindiens, souleva d\u2019autres difficult\u00e9s. Les ma\u00eetres craignaient avant tout que l\u2019octroi du bapt\u00eame ne dev\u00eent synonyme d\u2019insoumission et de r\u00e9voltes. Par cons\u00e9quent, en m\u00e9tropole et Am\u00e9rique, pamphlets, sermons et lois promulgu\u00e9es par les assembl\u00e9es coloniales, stipulant que la conversion n\u2019entra\u00eenerait pas l\u2019affranchissement des esclaves, tent\u00e8rent d\u2019att\u00e9nuer ces appr\u00e9hensions.<\/p>\n

Du point de vue des pratiques d\u2019\u00e9vang\u00e9lisation, les spiritualit\u00e9s am\u00e9rindiennes et africaines, trouv\u00e8rent les protestants peu enclins au syncr\u00e9tisme. Pour les faire acc\u00e9der \u00e0 la \u00ab civilit\u00e9 chr\u00e9tienne \u00bb, les pasteurs requ\u00e9raient des \u00ab adorateurs du Diable \u00bb, \u00abhors-la-loi de l\u2019humanit\u00e9 \u00bb (Samuel Purchas, 1625), qu\u2019ils fissent table rase de leurs croyances. Par la conversion, \u00e9vang\u00e9lis\u00e9s et \u00e9vang\u00e9lisateurs travaillaient \u00e0 leur salut.<\/p>\n

Nous nous interrogerons ainsi sur le r\u00f4le de la religion dans les interactions entre non-chr\u00e9tiens, libres et esclaves, et Euro-am\u00e9ricains, en gardant \u00e0 l\u2019esprit la dimension transatlantique de ces \u00e9changes. Les communications pourront porter sur les activit\u00e9s de soci\u00e9t\u00e9s philanthropiques (New England Company, Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, United Brethren), sur les missions puritaines, anglicanes et allemandes, ou sur les initiatives d\u2019individus, tels George Thorpe en Virginie (1620-1622), Elie Neau \u00e0 New York (1704-1727), ou Eleazar Wheelock au Connecticut (1750-1770). Les rapports entre religion, instruction et esclavage, \u00e0 travers l\u2019\u00e9tude de travaux comme ceux entrepris par Anthony Benezet aupr\u00e8s d\u2019enfants africains (1750-1784), seront \u00e9galement envisag\u00e9s.<\/p>\n

Nous nous pencherons enfin sur la r\u00e9ception des enseignements chr\u00e9tiens par les autochtones (peuples des familles algonquienne, iroquoise et muskogee) et les Africains. Certains groupes ou individus connurent des pr\u00eatres et\/puis des pasteurs (parfois de d\u00e9nominations et nationalit\u00e9s diff\u00e9rentes). Quelles furent, sur le terrain, les sp\u00e9cificit\u00e9s des uns et des autres, catholiques et protestants ? Comment le christianisme fut-il int\u00e9gr\u00e9 aux pratiques religieuses non-chr\u00e9tiennes ?
\nLes propositions de 200 mots sont \u00e0 envoyer avant le 15 d\u00e9cembre 2012 \u00e0 Bertrand Van Ruymbeke<\/a>, et \u00e0 Anne-Marie Liberio<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Colonial History II: Christianization in Colonial America: Policies and Practices (1580-1800)<\/em>
\nBertrand Van Ruymbeke (Universit\u00e9 Paris 8 Vincennes – Saint-Denis) and Anne-Marie Liberio (Universit\u00e9 Paris 4 Sorbonne)<\/strong><\/p>\n

The New World inspired utopian plans that proved to be as diverse as the colonists\u2019 religious motivations. In New England, the Separatists (or \u201cPilgrim Fathers\u201d) and the Puritans believed they could seize opportunities to found ideal churches that would be either new or purified. Following different courses, under Roger Williams and William Penn, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania emerged as models of spiritual tolerance.<\/p>\n

In spite of these distinctions, the Protestants united against the Jesuits concerning Indian affairs. In the same manner as Catholic clergymen and Protestant ministers competed for the Natives\u2019 loyalty, the English and French governors competed for the Indians\u00b9 esteem with gifts aimed to win the allegiance of influential leaders over (such as the Iroquois representatives). In both religious and secular matters, the English made it their priority to counter Jesuit \u201cseductions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like the Spaniards and the French in the Americas, the English advocated overseas expansion in the name of religion. Richard Hakluyt (1552-1616) was among the earliest proponents of colonization. He invited the \u201cKinges and Queenes of England,\u201d as \u201cDefendours of the Faithe,\u201d to send preachers to the \u201cidolaters, who are very easie to be perswaded.\u201d Hakluyt assumed that the indigenous nations were inclined to imitate European religious practices (Discourse of Western Planting, 1584). On account of these optimistic theories and the original incentive for the Roanoke undertaking (1584-1590), all the charters issued by the Crown to justify subsequent settlements aimed at \u201cpropagating Christian religion to suche people as yet live in darknesse\u201d (Virginia charter of 1606).<\/p>\n

The conversion of the Natives also created new links between the subjects of the Crown on both sides of the Atlantic. They worked together to implement this project, thanks to speeches and tracts that promoted evangelization, fund raising, and hiring ministers and schoolmasters.<\/p>\n

While the religious instruction of free Indians faced sundry obstacles (linguistic and cultural misunderstanding, war, workforce shortage), Christianizing slaves raised specific issues. The slave masters feared that baptism would lead to upheaval and rebellion. To alleviate this fear, preachers delivered sermons in England and in America, and colonial assemblies passed laws to assert that conversion would not cause enfranchisement.<\/p>\n

Furthermore Protestant missionaries showed little interest in syncretism as a means to communicate with Native and African spiritual leaders. The ministers generally required the worshippers of a \u201ctormenting Divell\u201d, who were also \u201dOut-Lawes of Humanity\u201d according to Samuel Purchas (1625), to eradicate their religious beliefs in order to attain \u201cChristian civility.\u201d Conversion would eventually contribute to rescuing Native and English souls alike.<\/p>\n

This workshop will compare the Europeans\u2019policies, their practices, and the way African slaves, Algonquian, Iroquois, and Muskogee nations adapted Christianity. Besides we will examine the extent to which religion informed the interactions between the non-Christians, both free and slave, and Euro-Americans, from a transatlantic perspective. Papers may analyze the activities of philanthropic societies (the New England Company, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, the United Brethren), the Puritan, Anglican, and German missions, or the role played by individuals such as George Thorpe (Virginia, 1620-1622), Elie Neau (New York, 1704-1727), and Eleazar Wheelock (Connecticut, 1750-1770). We also invite papers that will combine the analysis of religion, education and slavery (such as Anthony Benezet\u2019s dealings with African children, 1750-1784).<\/p>\n

Abstracts of 200 words should be sent by December 15, 2012, to Bertrand Van Ruymbeke<\/a> and Anne-Marie Liberio<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/a>3. La religion face \u00e0 l’\u00c9tat entre 1640 et 1914<\/em>
\nLucia Bergamasco (Universit\u00e9 d\u2019Orl\u00e9ans)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dans cet atelier on propose d\u2019explorer les liens que le religieux, c\u2019est-\u00e0-dire d\u2019abord essentiellement le protestantisme anglo-saxon a entretenus avec l\u2019autorit\u00e9 civile, de gouvernement et\/ou judiciaire depuis la fondation des colonies britanniques jusqu\u2019\u00e0 1914. Qu\u2019il s\u2019agisse de b\u00e2tir un \u00c9tat peupl\u00e9 de saints, comme ce fut le cas dans la Nouvelle Angleterre du d\u00e9but, projet qui aboutit, tout au moins, \u00e0 instaurer un solide syst\u00e8me eccl\u00e9sial et une soci\u00e9t\u00e9 ordonn\u00e9e et organique, ou, que dans les colonies du centre et du sud l\u2019on \u00e9tablisse une \u00e9glise d\u2019Angleterre (puis Episcopalienne) plus ou moins h\u00e9g\u00e9monique, ou, comme en Pennsylvanie, la libert\u00e9 religieuse, la religion a \u00e9t\u00e9 un point d\u2019ancrage culturel et institutionnel majeur. Les r\u00e9veils \u00e9vang\u00e9liques du milieu du XVIIIe et du d\u00e9but du XIXe si\u00e8cles secouent cet ordre traditionnel et introduisent des \u00e9l\u00e9ments de contestation anti-institutionnelle, tout en fondant des traditions de pi\u00e9t\u00e9 individuelle et collective, aussi bien qu\u2019un langage et des projets de soci\u00e9t\u00e9 en cours encore aujourd\u2019hui. D\u00e8s l\u2019adoption du premier amendement imposant la s\u00e9paration entre \u00c9tat et religion et r\u00e9sultant dans le disestablishment<\/em>, (laiss\u00e9 n\u00e9anmoins aux soins des l\u00e9gislatures locales), la sc\u00e8ne socio-culturelle \u00e9volue et on assiste \u00e0 la diffusion d\u2019une religiosit\u00e9 populaire (m\u00e9thodistes, baptistes, disciples of Christ, et autres) contestant tout lien avec l\u2019\u00c9tat. Une posture qui eut des retomb\u00e9es majeures au niveau des loyaut\u00e9s politiques \u00e0 une \u00e9poque o\u00f9 les partis politiques \u00e9taient en formation. Les \u00c9glises traditionnelles (mainstream<\/em>, congr\u00e9gationalistes et presbyt\u00e9riennes du Nord-Est), ayant perdu leur ancrage institutionnel, lancent de vigoureuses campagnes de r\u00e9forme morale de la soci\u00e9t\u00e9, fondent des institutions permanentes, r\u00e9clament l\u2019aide de l\u2019\u00c9tat au niveau local, et contribuent \u00e0 leur tour \u00e0 l\u2019impr\u00e9gnation du religieux, comme d\u2019une \u00ab mentalit\u00e9 \u00bb et d\u2019un langage protestants dans le discours politique. Leurs enfants radicaux, abolitionnistes et f\u00e9ministes, portent enfin \u00e0 leur conclusion logique les projets moralisateurs des \u00c9glises traditionnelles, tout en contestant le silence de ces m\u00eames \u00c9glises face aux compromis politiques, intol\u00e9rables dans une r\u00e9publique d\u00e9mocratique, concernant la tare nationale de l\u2019esclavage, ou les injustices flagrantes commises contre les Indiens et les femmes. <\/p>\n

Les derni\u00e8res d\u00e9cennies du si\u00e8cle voient une pr\u00e9sence croissante de cultures religieuses autres que protestantes. Celle port\u00e9e par l\u2019\u00c9glise catholique, en premier lieu, mais \u00e9galement par les \u00c9glises orthodoxes et par le juda\u00efsme, tandis qu\u2019un mouvement de r\u00e9forme morale d\u2019inspiration religieuse reprend pied au niveau national (la Women Christian Temperance Union et la Anti-Saloon League, par exemple). Cette nouvelle situation inspire de r\u00e9ponses nouvelles et diversifi\u00e9es au mouvement progressiste dans ses diverses composantes, qui en m\u00eame temps r\u00e9clame l\u2019intervention de l\u2019\u00c9tat. Si la vari\u00e9t\u00e9 religieuse rend les relations entre \u00c9tat et soci\u00e9t\u00e9 encore plus complexes et introduit les probl\u00e9matiques relatives au pluralisme ethno-culturel du XXe si\u00e8cle, les efforts de r\u00e9forme morale de la soci\u00e9t\u00e9 trouvent enfin r\u00e9ponse f\u00e9d\u00e9rale dans le dix-huiti\u00e8me amendement et la Prohibition.<\/p>\n

Nous invitons les chercheurs qui s’int\u00e9ressent \u00e0 la question des liens entre religion et \u00c9tat, que ce soit dans le cadre de l’\u00e9tude des R\u00e9veils, des mouvements r\u00e9formistes religieux comme l’abolitionniste, ou du disestablishment<\/em> et des questions constitutionnelles, ou du mouvement Progressiste \u00e0 nous envoyer des propositions. Celles-ci, de 300 mots maximum, doivent \u00eatre envoy\u00e9es \u00e0 Lucia Bergamasco-<\/a>, avant le 15 d\u00e9cembre 2012 : <\/p>\n

Religion and the State, 1640-1914<\/em>
\nLucia Bergamasco (Universit\u00e9 d\u2019Orl\u00e9ans)<\/strong><\/p>\n

In this workshop, we will explore the relations that a predominantly Anglo-Saxon Protestantism has entertained with civil authorities, namely governements and the judiciary, since the foundation of the British Colonies up to 1914. From the colonial beginnings religion has been a central cultural and institutional factor in the building of American society. Anglo-Saxon Protestantism in its Puritan variant inspired the initial project of building a society of saints in New England, which in time resulted in a solid ecclesiastical system and an orderly, organic society. In the Middle and Southern Colonies it resulted in the establishment of a hegemonic Church of England, which was soon challenged by alternative non institutional Churches (Baptist and Presbyterian). Only in Pennsylvania was full religious freedom allowed from the outset of colony\u2019s foundation, resulting in a precocious pluralism. Thereafter, through their resistance to State-supported Churches, evangelical revivals in the eighteenth and early nineteeth centuries helped to shatter the religious establishment where it existed. The result was the First Amendement which, separating the Church from the State, brought about the disestablishment of the institutional, traditional Churches, even though it was left to the States to adopt and implement it. Separation of Church and State and disestablishment also meant the strengthening of a new type of popular religion (Methodists, Baptists, Disciples of Christ, and various new sects), which contested any kind of link with the State\u2014a stance that in turn determined significant political loyalties in the young Republic as political parties were emerging. Stripped of their traditional support from the State, the mainstream <\/em>North-Eastern <\/em>Congregationalist and Presbyterian Churches launched vigourous campaigns for the moral reformation of American society, sometimes calling for the State to implement it, and founding permanent institutions which contributed to the absorption of the Protestant religion by American culture, mentality and political language. The radical children of the reform institutions\u2014the abolitionists and early feminists\u2014brought to their logical conclusions the traditional Churches\u2019s efforts at moral reformation, while denouncing these very Churches\u2019 acquiescence to the political compromises regarding the national flaws\u2014or sins\u2014perceived as intolerable in a democratic republic, such as slavery, the destruction of Indians or the oppression of women.<\/p>\n

The last decades of the nineteenth century saw the growing presence of religious cultures other than Protestant: the Roman Catholic culture, in particular, but also the Eastern European Orthodox and Jewish cultures, while new religiously-inspired national moral reform organisations were emerging, such as the Women Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League. Progressive reformers faced this new situation in diverse, sometimes novel, ways, often calling for State intervention. If religious variety anticipated the new problems of cultural pluralism that was to characterize the twentieth century, progressive efforts at moral reform, first successful at the local level, eventually resulted in federal intervention in the form of the eighteenth Amendment and Prohibition.<\/p>\n

We invite scholars working on the relations between religion and the State, whether on revivals, disestablishment, abolitionism, or Progressivism, at any period in American history from the colonial settlement to 1914, to send 300-word proposals by December 15, 2012, to Lucia Bergamasco-<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/a>4. La religion et le sacr\u00e9, leurs rapports avec la guerre ou avec la recherche de la paix : modalit\u00e9s d\u2019expression, propagande, arts et litt\u00e9rature, de la guerre de S\u00e9cession \u00e0 nos jours<\/em>
\nIneke Bockting (Institut Catholique de Paris), Jennifer Kilgore-Caradec (Universit\u00e9 de Caen, LARCA) and Linda Martz (American University of Paris, CERPA)<\/strong><\/p>\n

La Violence et le Sacr\u00e9<\/em> (1972) de Ren\u00e9 Girard a donn\u00e9 naissance au \u00ab Colloquium on Violence and Religion \u00bb (1990-) ainsi qu\u2019\u00e0 la revue Contagion : Journal of Violence, Culture and Religion<\/em> (1990-). L\u2019historien John Dower a d\u00e9crit \u00ab la logique irr\u00e9pressible de la destruction de masse \u00bb dans Cultures of War<\/em> (2010). Alors que les pays occidentaux, les \u00c9tats-Unis en particulier, fonctionnent selon le paradigme de la s\u00e9cularisation (Charles Taylor, A Secular Age<\/em>, 2007), d\u2019autres auteurs montrent que le pouvoir de la religion au sein de la sph\u00e8re publique n\u2019a pas disparu (voir Judith Butler, Jurgen Habermas et Cornel West in The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere<\/em>, 2011). \u00ab La religion est un moyen de faire la paix, et une raison pour faire la guerre \u00bb, affirma Craig Calhoun en 2011. La pens\u00e9e religieuse est \u00e0 l\u2019origine de la th\u00e9orie de la guerre juste depuis les temps les plus anciens, jusqu\u2019au temps pr\u00e9sent (Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars<\/em>, 1977 ; Larry May, War Crimes and Just War<\/em>, 2007), en passant par Hugo Grotius (De Jure Belli ac Pacis<\/em>, 1625). Les promoteurs de paix ont toutefois souvent \u00e9t\u00e9 en lien avec des traditions religieuses vari\u00e9es. Nous faisons ici r\u00e9f\u00e9rence \u00e0 des personnalit\u00e9s telles que Dorothy Day, Cheikh Abdoulaye Dieye, Mohandas Gandhi, Vaclav Havel, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi. Comment une soci\u00e9t\u00e9 multiculturelle peut-elle tirer parti de r\u00e9f\u00e9rences religieuses multiculturelles pour promouvoir la paix ?<\/p>\n

Il est souhait\u00e9 que l\u2019atelier puisse couvrir autant d\u2019aspects qu\u2019il se peut \u00e0 travers les disciplines sur le th\u00e8me de la guerre et de l\u2019instauration de processus de paix. Comment dans le cadre de la soci\u00e9t\u00e9 am\u00e9ricaine a-t-il \u00e9t\u00e9 possible d\u2019utiliser la religion pour provoquer l\u2019entr\u00e9e en guerre ? Quels sont les courants de spiritualit\u00e9 qui ont pu pr\u00e9venir des guerres et promouvoir des processus de paix ? Comment a \u00e9volu\u00e9 le r\u00f4le de la religion en temps de guerre au cours du temps, depuis la guerre de S\u00e9cession, et la Premi\u00e8re Guerre mondiale jusqu\u2019\u00e0 nos jours ? Comment le mythe de la \u00ab guerre sainte \u00bb a-t-il \u00e9t\u00e9 utilis\u00e9 dans le discours public ? Quel r\u00f4le la religion a-t-elle jou\u00e9 durant les conflits et apr\u00e8s les conflits ? Comment le discours religieux se modifie-t-il en temps de guerre ? Quelle est la repr\u00e9sentation de la religion dans la litt\u00e9rature de guerre am\u00e9ricaine (po\u00e9sie, th\u00e9\u00e2tre et prose) ? En quoi cela affecte-t-il d\u2019autres repr\u00e9sentations artistiques de la guerre, y compris en mati\u00e8re musicale ? Comment la religion a-t-elle \u00e9t\u00e9 utilis\u00e9e dans les affiches de propagande am\u00e9ricaines (voir par exemple la repr\u00e9sentation de Jeanne d\u2019Arc durant la Premi\u00e8re Guerre mondiale) ? Dans le cadre d\u2019une soci\u00e9t\u00e9 s\u00e9cularis\u00e9e et multiculturelle, le po\u00e8me \u00ab The Battle Hymn of the Republic <\/em>\u00bb de Julia Ward Howe est-il encore acceptable ?<\/p>\n

Merci d\u2019envoyer vos propositions \u00e0 Ineke Bockting<\/a>, Jennifer Kilgore-Caradec<\/a> et Linda Martz<\/a>, avant le 15 d\u00e9cembre 2012.<\/p>\n

Religion and the Sacred at War or Promoting Peace: Discourse, Propaganda, Arts and Literature from the Civil War to the present<\/em> <\/em>
\nIneke Bockting (Institut Catholique de Paris), Jennifer Kilgore-Caradec (Universit\u00e9 de Caen, LARCA) and Linda Martz (American University of Paris, CERPA) <\/strong><\/p>\n

Ren\u00e9 Girard’s Violence and the Sacred<\/em> (1972), led to the \u201cColloquium on Violence and Religion\u201d (1990-) and the founding of the periodical Contagion: Journal of Violence, Culture and Religion<\/em> (1990-). Historian John Dower speaks of \u201cthe irresistible logic of mass destruction\u201d in Cultures of War<\/em> (2010). While inhabitants of Western countries, and the United States in particular, function under the assumption that they live in a secular age (Charles Taylor, A Secular Age<\/em>, 2007), the power of religion in the public sphere has not been erased (see Judith Butler, Jurgen Habermas, and Cornel West in The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere<\/em>, 2011). \u201cReligion is a way to make peace and a reason to make war,\u201d stated Craig Calhoun in 2011. Religious thought has inspired just war theory from earliest times, to Hugo Grotius (De Jure Belli Ac Pacis<\/em>, 1625), to the present (Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars<\/em>, 1977; Larry May, War Crimes and Just War<\/em>, 2007). Peacemakers have most often been associated with religious traditions. One thinks of figures such as Dorothy Day, Shaykh Abdoulaye Dieye, Mohandas Gandhi, Vaclav Havel, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi. How can a multicultural society draw on multicultural religious references to promote peace?<\/p>\n

This panel would like to cover as many fields as possible in a discussion of religion, war and peacemaking. How has religion been used to promote going to war within American society? Which strands of spirituality have actively prevented war and engaged in peacemaking? How has the use of religion in wartime evolved between the American Civil War, World War I, and now? How have “holy war” myths been used in public discourse? What roles does religion play during conflict and after conflict? How does religious discourse come to be modified during wartime? How has religion been depicted in American war literature (poetry, theatre, and prose)? How does it affect other artistic representations of war\u2014including music? How has religion been used in American propaganda posters (one example being the use of Joan of Arc in WWI)? In a secular and multicultural society, is Julia Ward Howe\u2019s poem \u201cThe Battle Hymn of the Republic\u201d still to be seen as exemplary? <\/p>\n

Please send proposals to Ineke Bockting<\/a>, Jennifer Kilgore-Caradec<\/a> et Linda Martz<\/a> by December 15, 2012.<\/p>\n

<\/a>5. March\u00e9 des religions et religion(s) du march\u00e9, 1950-2013<\/em>
\nEmilie Souyri (Universit\u00e9 de Nice Sophia-Antipolis)<\/strong><\/p>\n

L\u2019antim\u00e9tabole du titre de cet atelier invite \u00e0 explorer les relations entre religion, spiritualit\u00e9 et \u00e9conomie en se penchant plus particuli\u00e8rement sur les influences r\u00e9ciproques de deux ph\u00e9nom\u00e8nes qui sont finalement assez peu \u00e9tudi\u00e9s de concert. Pourtant, il est difficile de penser \u00ab le march\u00e9 des religions \u00bb sans s\u2019interroger sur l\u2019id\u00e9e aujourd\u2019hui tr\u00e8s en vogue de \u00ab religion du march\u00e9 \u00bb, souvent utilis\u00e9e comme synonyme du n\u00e9olib\u00e9ralisme. Mais existe-t-il une seule religion du march\u00e9 ? L\u2019exemple de firmes comme Wal-Mart, Chic-Fil-A, ou Bain Capital, quand elle \u00e9tait dirig\u00e9e par Mitt Romney, dans lesquelles l\u2019\u00e9thique religieuse joue un r\u00f4le important, sugg\u00e8re \u00e0 quel point les sph\u00e8res religieuses et \u00e9conomiques peuvent \u00eatre imbriqu\u00e9es aux \u00c9tats-Unis. Il montre aussi que l\u2019influence du religieux dans le monde \u00e9conomique n\u2019est pas monolithique. Inversement, on attribue souvent la persistance d\u2019une ferveur religieuse comparable \u00e0 celle des pays en voie de d\u00e9veloppement \u00e0 la capacit\u00e9 de certaines confessions am\u00e9ricaines \u00e0 r\u00e9pondre aux exigences particuli\u00e8res du \u00ab march\u00e9 \u00bb des religions am\u00e9ricaines. Des Grands R\u00e9veils d\u2019autrefois, au t\u00e9l\u00e9vang\u00e9lisme ou aux m\u00e9ga-\u00e9glises d\u2019aujourd\u2019hui, on observe outre-atlantique une approche beaucoup plus entrepreneuriale de la religion. <\/p>\n

Pour analyser ces influences r\u00e9ciproques, l\u2019atelier propose de s\u2019int\u00e9resser \u00e0 ces questions avant tout sur les plans historique, politique et \u00e9thique, en se concentrant de pr\u00e9f\u00e9rence sur la p\u00e9riode allant de 1945 \u00e0 aujourd\u2019hui. On pourra, par exemple, interroger la tradition historiographique qui propose une vision du christianisme ancr\u00e9 dans les grands mouvements de la politique am\u00e9ricaine. En effet, pour des auteurs comme Robert Wuthnow, James D. Hunter ou Bethany Moreton, les mouvements chr\u00e9tiens les plus dynamiques des ann\u00e9es 1950-70, port\u00e9s par des militants guid\u00e9s par leur foi comme Martin Luther King ou C\u00e9sar Ch\u00e0vez qui d\u00e9non\u00e7aient les in\u00e9galit\u00e9s socio-\u00e9conomiques, sont aujourd\u2019hui en perte de vitesse. Ils auraient c\u00e9d\u00e9 la place depuis les ann\u00e9es 1980 \u00e0 une interpr\u00e9tation \u00e9vang\u00e9lique du p\u00e9ch\u00e9 comme vice personnel qui l\u00e9gitime les structures \u00e9conomiques \u00e9tablies en associant christianisme et libre entreprise (discours l\u00e9gitim\u00e9 aussi bien par des chr\u00e9tiens comme Irving Kristol ou Michael Novak que par des pasteurs tels Billy Graham ou Jerry Falwell). Il sera int\u00e9ressant aussi de d\u00e9terminer si des religions non chr\u00e9tiennes s\u2019inscrivent dans ce mouvement et de se demander si la r\u00e9ciproque est valable. Les religions se sont-elles davantage diffus\u00e9es suivant une logique que l\u2019on pourrait qualifier de \u00ab solidaire \u00bb dans les ann\u00e9es 1950-70 avant de se tourner vers une logique de march\u00e9 ? Ici on pourra envisager la mani\u00e8re dont les religions, chr\u00e9tiennes ou non ont \u00e9t\u00e9 diffus\u00e9es aupr\u00e8s des nouveaux fid\u00e8les (jeunes, immigr\u00e9s, femmes, etc.). Dans ce domaine les ouvrages de Putnam et Campbell (2010) ou Finke et Starke (2005) sont un point de d\u00e9part int\u00e9ressant. Enfin l\u2019atelier accueillera des travaux portant sur l\u2019\u00e9thique du travail et des affaires telle qu\u2019elle est pr\u00f4n\u00e9e par les diff\u00e9rentes confessions am\u00e9ricaines depuis les ann\u00e9es 1950. <\/em>En effet, les traditions religieuses les plus conservatrices sont loin d\u2019\u00eatre les seules \u00e0 inspirer les outils de management actuels comme le d\u00e9montre la convergence de l\u2019\u00e9thique chr\u00e9tienne et des th\u00e9ories manag\u00e9riales de Douglas McGregor ou encore l\u2019influence du concept de \u00ab leader-serviteur \u00bb de Robert K. Greenleaf. <\/p>\n

Les propositions de communication doivent \u00eatre envoy\u00e9es \u00e0 Emilie Souyri<\/a>, avant le 15 d\u00e9cembre 2012.<\/p>\n

The Market of Religions and the Religion(s) of the Market<\/em>
\nEmilie Souyri (Universit\u00e9 de Nice Sophia-Antipolis)<\/strong><\/p>\n

The antimetabole of the title is meant to encourage scholars to propose papers on the relationships between religion, spirituality, and the economy in the United States with a particular focus on the reciprocal influences of two phenomena that are not very often analyzed jointly, even though it seems hard to study the \u201cmarket of religions\u201d while dissociating it from the now very popular idea of the \u201creligion of the market,\u201d often used to refer to the concept of neoliberalism. But is there only one religion of the market? The example of companies like Wal-Mart, Chic-Fil-A or Bain Capital, when it was helmed by Mitt Romney, in which religious ethics play an important part, suggests the extent to which the religious and economic spheres can be intertwined. Conversely, the enduring American religious fervor, similar to that of developing countries, is often attributed to the capacity of certain denominations to live up to the specific demands of the religious market. It also shows how diverse the impact of religion on the economy is. From the first Great Awakening to the rise of televangelism and megachurches, religions have always been extremely entrepreneurial in the United States. <\/p>\n

In order to explore these reciprocal influences, this panel will address the question at the political, historical and ethical levels by dwelling mainly on the post-war period (1945-2013). It will for example examine the historiographic tradition offering a vision of Christianity following the greater trends of American politics and their overall vision of the economy. Indeed, for scholars like Robert Wuthnow, James D. Hunter, and Bethany Moreton, the most dynamic and visible Christian movements of the 1950s-1970s, led by activists guided by their faith like Martin Luther King and Cesar Ch\u00e0vez, who denounced socio-economic inequalities, have lost their momentum. They seem to have been replaced by a new evangelical interpretation of sin as personal vice that legitimates established economic structures by associating religious principles and free enterprise\u2014a position that has been championed by both lay Christians like Irving Kristol or Michael Novak, but also pastors like Richard Neuhaus, Billy Graham, or Jerry Falwell. It will also be interesting to determine whether non-Christian religions participate in this trend and whether the reverse phenomenon is also true. Namely, have religious denominations spread according to a community-based approach in the 1950s-1970s before turning to a market-based one? Presenters may then consider the ways in which religious institutions have reached out to potential new worshippers (youths, immigrants, women, etc.). Here the works of Putnam and Campbell (2010) or Finke and Starke (2005) will be fruitful starting points. Finally the workshop will also welcome papers on the variations in work ethics of different religious denominations since the 1950s. Indeed current management tools are far from being exclusively inspired by conservative theologies as demonstrated by the converging of Christian ethics and Douglas McGregor’s management theories or the influence of Robert K. Greenleaf’s concept of \u201cservant leadership.\u201d <\/p>\n

Proposals should be sent to Emilie Souyri<\/a> by December 15, 2012.<\/p>\n

<\/a>6. De la th\u00e9osophie au New Age : les enfants d\u2019Helena Petrovna Blavatsky<\/em>
\nBernadette Rigal Cellard (Universit\u00e9 Bordeaux 3)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bien que le New Age en tant que mouvement soit relativement r\u00e9cent, ses racines sont mill\u00e9naires puisqu\u2019elles nous parviennent d\u2019\u00c9gypte, de Chine, d\u2019Inde, du Japon, de Gr\u00e8ce, des druides, des Am\u00e9rindiens, du christianisme mystique, etc. Cette transmission s\u2019est op\u00e9r\u00e9e en grande partie gr\u00e2ce aux travaux ultra syncr\u00e9tiques de H. P. Blavatsky (HPB) et \u00e0 sa Theosophical Society <\/em>fond\u00e9e en 1875 \u00e0 New York. <\/p>\n

Cet atelier s\u2019int\u00e9ressera aux diff\u00e9rents modes d\u2019adaptation des enseignements retransmis par H. P. Blavatsky. Comment les grands groupes du New Age se positionnent-ils par rapport \u00e0 ces \u00e9sot\u00e9rismes venus de tous les points du globe ? Quelle est la vitalit\u00e9 des diff\u00e9rents courants occultes et m\u00e9taphysiques \u00e0 vocation th\u00e9rapeutique ? Sont-ils dynamiques, dormants, ou en d\u00e9clin ? Qui sont leurs membres, comment rayonnent-ils ? Parviennent-ils \u00e0 transformer leur qu\u00eate personnelle en perfectionnement de leur environnement et du monde, dessein originel de la th\u00e9osophie ? L\u2019id\u00e9e sera aussi de tenter de cerner l\u2019impact des enseignements de H. P. Blavatsky et de son entourage non seulement sur la sc\u00e8ne religieuse et spirituelle mais aussi sur l\u2019ensemble de la culture et de la soci\u00e9t\u00e9 am\u00e9ricaines des XXe et XXIe si\u00e8cles.<\/p>\n

Les propositions de communication doivent \u00eatre envoy\u00e9es \u00e0 Bernadette Rigal-Cellard<\/a>, avant le 15 d\u00e9cembre 2012.<\/p>\n

From Theosophy to the New Age: Where Have the Children of H. P. Blavatsky Gone?<\/em>
\nBernadette Rigal Cellard (Universit\u00e9 Bordeaux 3)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even though the New Age as a movement is relatively recent, its roots reach back to Egypt, China, India, Japan, Greece, the druids, Amerindians, Christian mysticism, etc. Such transmission was essentially made possible by the ultra syncretic writings of H. P. Blavatsky (HPB) and by her Theosophical Society founded in New York in 1875. <\/p>\n

This panel will look at the ways the esoteric teachings of H. P. Blavatsky have been adapted by the numerous groups belonging to the occult-metaphysical and therapeutic tradition. Are these groups vibrant, dormant, or declining? Who are their members? How do they relate to the outside world: Do they successfully transform their individual quest into the betterment of mankind and nature (which was the design of Theosophy)? One of our purposes will be to delineate the impact of H. P. Blavatsky\u2019s teachings not only on the religious and spiritual stage, but also on American culture and society at large.<\/p>\n

Proposals should be sent to Bernadette Rigal-Cellard<\/a> by December 15, 2012.<\/p>\n

<\/a>7. Religion et s\u00e9cularisation dans la vie juive am\u00e9ricaine<\/em>
Nadia Malinovich (Universit\u00e9 de Picardie-Jules Verne) <\/strong><\/p>\n

Au d\u00e9but du XIXe si\u00e8cle, les Juifs du monde occidental v\u00e9curent des bouleversements d\u00e9mographiques et sociologiques radicaux \u2013 le plus important \u00e9tant l\u2019urbanisation \u2013, ce qui les rendit particuli\u00e8rement r\u00e9ceptifs aux forces d\u2019attraction de la s\u00e9cularisation. Cela fut particuli\u00e8rement vrai aux \u00c9tats-Unis, o\u00f9 les Juifs, quittant pour la plupart des communaut\u00e9s rurales d\u2019Europe centrale et de l\u2019Est eurent soudain l\u2019occasion d\u2019abandonner l\u2019\u00e9tau strict de la vie traditionnelle pour refaire leur vie en tant qu\u2019Am\u00e9ricains. Et pourtant, alors qu\u2019ils se lib\u00e9raient des contraintes pass\u00e9es, ils s\u2019aper\u00e7urent que la fronti\u00e8re entre le religieux et le s\u00e9culier n\u2019\u00e9tait pas si facile \u00e0 d\u00e9finir : est-ce parce que l\u2019on est un Juif s\u00e9culier que l\u2019on doit refuser de c\u00e9l\u00e9brer les f\u00eates juives ou de familiariser ses enfants avec la Bible h\u00e9bra\u00efque ? Les pratiques religieuses doivent-elles \u00eatre r\u00e9interpr\u00e9t\u00e9es dans le cadre de l\u2019h\u00e9ritage culturel du peuple juif et donc \u00eatre toujours suivies ? Alors que certains militants s\u00e9culiers des premiers temps de l\u2019immigration de masse adopt\u00e8rent la premi\u00e8re approche, il apparut \u00e0 beaucoup d\u2019autres que cette approche conduisait \u00e0 une assimilation totale et refl\u00e9tait un d\u00e9nigrement de la culture des Juifs et de leur histoire.<\/p>\n

Une s\u00e9rie d\u2019articles publi\u00e9s entre 1938 et 1940 par le Workman\u2019s Circle \u2013 l\u2019une des associations socialistes et s\u00e9culiers les plus influentes au d\u00e9but de XXe \u2013 pr\u00f4naient fortement la seconde approche. D\u00e9fendant l\u2019enseignement biblique dans les \u00e9coles s\u00e9culi\u00e8res yiddish, par exemple, l\u2019auteur d\u2019un article avan\u00e7a ainsi que \u00ab La Bible est une \u0153uvre litt\u00e9raire, pas simplement un objet religieux [\u2026] Nous ne devrions pas la rejeter, en avoir peur, ni m\u00eame l\u2019abandonner ; nous devrions plut\u00f4t l\u2019utiliser dans un cadre s\u00e9culier \u00bb. L\u2019argument d\u2019un autre auteur \u00e9tait qu\u2019il valait mieux s\u00e9culariser plut\u00f4t que rejeter la pratique des f\u00eates juives, en notant que \u00ab la religion juive n\u2019est pas simplement une religion. Elle est intrins\u00e8quement li\u00e9e \u00e0 l\u2019histoire juive. Les f\u00eates elles-m\u00eames sont un produit de notre existence dans le temps \u00bb.<\/p>\n

La plupart des Juifs am\u00e9ricains \u2013 au contraire de ces militants s\u00e9culiers \u2013 ne se posaient pas ces questions d\u2019un point de vue intellectuel, mais y furent plut\u00f4t confront\u00e9s dans leur vie quotidienne. Des questions telles que \u00ab faut-il ou non rechercher en priorit\u00e9 un conjoint juif ? \u00bb, ou \u00ab faut-il ou non donner \u00e0 ses enfants une \u00e9ducation religieuse, rejoindre une synagogue, ne pas travailler pendant Yom Kippur, etc. ? \u00bb furent autant de rencontres entre les Juifs et la modernit\u00e9. La plupart du temps, elles ne conduisirent pas \u00e0 des d\u00e9cisions rationnelles, mais plut\u00f4t \u00e0 des d\u00e9cisions prises pour des raisons pratiques ou personnelles qui d\u00e9pendaient aussi du milieu (allemand ou polonais, ashk\u00e9naze ou s\u00e9pharade, etc.) ainsi que de l\u2019\u00e9poque.<\/p>\n

Cet atelier entend examiner les tensions entre s\u00e9cularisation, culture et religion dans la vie juive am\u00e9ricaine de la p\u00e9riode coloniale \u00e0 nos jours. Comment les Juifs ont-ils interpr\u00e9t\u00e9, adapt\u00e9 et transform\u00e9 leur h\u00e9ritage religieux et culturel aux \u00c9tats-Unis ? Les intervenants pourront consid\u00e9rer, par exemple, les transferts entre l\u2019ancien et le nouveau monde, l\u2019attitude des mouvements politiques et culturels vari\u00e9s (bundisme, sionisme, etc.) par rapport \u00e0 l\u2019h\u00e9ritage juif religieux, la diversit\u00e9 des pratiques religieuses chez les Juifs aux \u00c9tats-Unis, ainsi que la comparaison entre les pratiques et les croyances des Juifs et ceux des autres Am\u00e9ricains.
\nLes propositions de communication doivent \u00eatre envoy\u00e9es \u00e0 Nadia Malinovich<\/a> avant le 15 d\u00e9cembre 2012.<\/p>\n

Religion and Secularization in American Jewish Life<\/em>
\nNadia Malinovich (Universit\u00e9 de Picardie-Jules Verne)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Beginning in the early nineteenth century, Jews in the Western World underwent radical demographic and sociological changes\u2014most notably, becoming an overwhelmingly urban population\u2014that made them particularly susceptible to the transformative force of secularization. Nowhere was this truer than in the United States, where Jews arriving for the most part from rural, traditional communities in central and Eastern Europe met with unprecedented opportunities to leave behind the strictures of religious practice and remake themselves as Americans. And yet, even as they left behind the strictures of traditional practice and belief, they found that the boundary between the religious and the secular was not so easy to define. Does being a secular Jew mean refusing to observe the holidays and familiarize one\u2019s children with the stories of the Hebrew bible? Or should these practices rather be reinterpreted as the cultural heritage of the Jewish people and embraced as such? While some early secularist militants adapted the former approach, its dangers were also immediately apparent to many as a license for total assimilation and a lack of appreciation of the evident intertwining of Jewish \u201creligion\u201d with Jewish culture and history. A series of articles published between 1938 and 1940 by the Workman\u2019s Circle\u2014one of the most influential associations of socialist, secular Jews in the early twentieth century\u2014defended the second position in no uncertain terms. Defending the teaching of the bible in Yiddish secular schools, for example, one contributor argued that \u201cThe Bible is literature, not religion . . . We should not reject it, not be afraid of it, and not abandon it, but should use it in a secular way.\u201d Another contributor similarly defended secularizing, rather than rejecting, the practice of Jewish holidays, noting that: \u201cThe Jewish religion is not just religion. It is bound up with Jewish history. The holidays themselves are a product of our existence in time.\u201d <\/p>\n

Most American Jews\u2014unlike these secular militants\u2014have not pondered these questions from a theoretical framework, but rather confronted them on a practical level in their day-to-day lives. Choices such as whether or not to prioritize finding a Jewish partner, to give one\u2019s children a religious education, to join a synagogue, to take off from work on Yom Kippur, are all ongoing and evolving products of the Jewish encounter with modernity. More often than not, they are not intellectual decisions, but rather emotional and practical outcomes of one\u2019s personal history, ethnic background (Ashkenazi or Sephardic, German or Eastern European, etc) and place in time. <\/p>\n

This panel will look at these tensions between the secular, the cultural, and the religious in American Jewish life from the Colonial era through to the present day. How have Jews interpreted, adapted, and transformed their cultural and religious heritage in the United States? Participants might consider, for example, religious and cultural transfers between the \u201cold worlds\u201d and the \u201cnew,\u201d the relationship of various Jewish political and cultural movements (Bundism, Zionism, etc.) to the Jewish religious heritage, comparisons between Jewish religious practice and that of other Americans, as well as the diversity of religious practices among Jews in the United States.<\/p>\n

Proposals should be sent to Nadia Malinovich<\/a> by December 15, 2012.<\/p>\n

<\/a>8. Les tribulations de la droite chr\u00e9tienne<\/em> <\/strong>
\nAur\u00e9lie Godet (Universit\u00e9 Michel de Montaigne Bordeaux 3) et Jean-Baptiste Velut (Universit\u00e9 Paris-Est Marne-la-Vall\u00e9e) <\/strong><\/p>\n

Depuis les ann\u00e9es 1970, la droite religieuse a jou\u00e9 un r\u00f4le moteur dans la r\u00e9volution conservatrice, qui avait commenc\u00e9 comme une r\u00e9volte contre les mouvements de r\u00e9forme des ann\u00e9es 1960 avant de devenir une offensive tous-azimuts contre le gouvernement f\u00e9d\u00e9ral am\u00e9ricain. De la Moral Majority<\/em> de Paul Weyrich en 1980 aux d\u00e9fenseurs de l\u2019interdiction des mariages homosexuels par amendement constitutionnel en 2004, la Nouvelle Droite Chr\u00e9tienne a assur\u00e9 un soutien \u00e9lectoral crucial \u00e0 un parti plus souvent anim\u00e9 par sa ferveur d\u00e9r\u00e9gulatrice que par sa foi religieuse. Sous la banni\u00e8re du Parti r\u00e9publicain, les conservateurs religieux et les partisans du libre march\u00e9 ont form\u00e9 un tandem \u00e9trange. Les organisations religieuses ont en effet apport\u00e9 leur soutien politique \u00e0 des causes parfois bien \u00e9loign\u00e9es des valeurs familiales et de la responsabilit\u00e9 morale qu\u2019elles d\u00e9fendaient, comme la suppression de l\u2019imp\u00f4t sur les successions dit \u00ab death tax <\/em> \u00bb. Les \u00ab guerres culturelles \u00bb ont longtemps \u00e9clips\u00e9 la lutte des classes, ce qui a amen\u00e9 certains analystes \u00e0 se demander \u00ab Pourquoi les pauvres votent \u00e0 droite ? \u00bb (\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter with Kansas?<\/em>\u201d). Et si l\u2019Am\u00e9rique \u00e9tait profond\u00e9ment polaris\u00e9e, c\u2019\u00e9tait bien souvent les conservateurs qui remportaient les batailles et s\u2019effor\u00e7aient de d\u00e9manteler l\u2019h\u00e9ritage politique de la Great Society<\/em>, avant de s\u2019attaquer aux fondements du New Deal.<\/em><\/p>\n

L\u2019\u00e9lection de Barack Obama en 2008 a mis fin au r\u00eave d\u2019une \u00ab majorit\u00e9 r\u00e9publicaine permanente \u00bb que les conservateurs avaient caress\u00e9. Bien que les d\u00e9mocrates aient obtenu un large soutien aupr\u00e8s des \u00e9lecteurs jeunes et urbains, des femmes, des minorit\u00e9s ethniques et des \u00ab nones<\/em> \u00bb (ces Am\u00e9ricains qui revendiquent une forme de spiritualit\u00e9 sans adh\u00e9rer \u00e0 une religion et dont le nombre ne cesse de cro\u00eetre), les politistes se sont bien gard\u00e9s de parler de \u00ab r\u00e9alignement \u00e9lectoral \u00bb \u00e9tant donn\u00e9es les circonstances exceptionnelles de l\u2019\u00e9lection de 2008. R\u00e9cemment, la r\u00e9\u00e9lection de Barack Obama a toutefois confirm\u00e9 que cette nouvelle majorit\u00e9 \u00ab amorale \u00bb pouvait faire figure de contrepouvoir face \u00e0 la coalition conservatrice. Comment expliquer le d\u00e9clin apparent de la droite chr\u00e9tienne ? S\u2019agit-il de la conclusion d\u2019un long processus de s\u00e9cularisation ou d\u2019un \u00e9chec accidentel ? Les exc\u00e8s de la droite religieuse ont-ils conduit le mouvement conservateur \u00e0 sa perte ? Dans quelle mesure a-t-elle chang\u00e9 ou en quoi s\u2019est-elle montr\u00e9e incapable de s\u2019adapter aux transformations culturelles des Etats-Unis ? Certaines \u00e9volutions de la coalition conservatrice permettaient-elles d\u2019augurer de ce d\u00e9clin ? Ou semblaient-elles au contraire lui promettre un avenir meilleur?<\/p>\n

Notre atelier invite toute analyse empirique et th\u00e9orique visant \u00e0 r\u00e9pondre \u00e0 ces questions ou \u00e0 d\u2019autres probl\u00e9matiques connexes. Nous faisons appel \u00e0 des contributions sur les \u00e9volutions contemporaines de la coalition chr\u00e9tienne, notamment son r\u00f4le dans les r\u00e9centes \u00e9lections, sa relation avec les milieux d\u2019affaires, le Parti r\u00e9publicain et le mouvement \u00ab Tea Party<\/em> \u00bb, ses strat\u00e9gies de mobilisation, ses dynamiques internes et ses positions id\u00e9ologiques, sur l\u2019\u00e9mergence de la gauche religieuse, ou sur tout autre sujet li\u00e9 au pr\u00e9sent et \u00e0 l\u2019avenir de la coalition chr\u00e9tienne.<\/p>\n

Les propositions de communication sont \u00e0 envoyer \u00e0 Aur\u00e9lie Godet<\/a> et \u00e0 Jean-Baptiste Velut<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The travails of the Christian Right<\/em>
\nAur\u00e9lie Godet (Universit\u00e9 Michel de Montaigne Bordeaux 3) and Jean-Baptiste Velut (Universit\u00e9 Paris-Est Marne-la-Vall\u00e9e)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Since the 1970s, the religious right has been a driving force of the conservative revolution, which began as a backlash against the reform movements of the 1960s to become a wide-ranging assault against the US federal government. From Paul Weyrich\u2019s Moral Majority in 1980 to advocates of constitutional amendments banning gay marriage in 2004, the New Christian Right provided crucial constituencies to a party that often seemed driven more by deregulatory fervor than religious faith. Under the banner of the Republican Party, religious and economic conservatives made strange bedfellows. Indeed, religious organizations lent their political support to causes that sometimes went far beyond moral responsibility and family values like the repeal of the \u201cdeath tax.\u201d Culture wars long trumped class conflicts, leading some commentators to wonder \u201cWhat\u2019s the matter with Kansas?\u201d If America remained profoundly polarized, conservatives carried the day and strove to repeal the political legacies of the Great Society, before attacking the foundations of the New Deal.<\/p>\n

The election of Barack Obama in 2008 put an end to conservatives\u2019 dreams of a \u201cpermanent Republican majority.\u201d Although Democrats received broad support from young and urban voters, women and ethnic minorities, and the growing ranks of \u201cnones\u201d (Americans who define themselves as spiritual rather than religious), political analysts were cautious not to speak of an electoral realignment given the exceptional political circumstances of the 2008 election. The recent reelection of Barack Obama has, however, confirmed the status of this new \u201camoral\u201d majority as a credible counterbalance to the conservative coalition. What explains the apparent decline of the Christian Right? Is it the culmination of a long-term process of secularization or an accidental setback? Has the religious right overplayed its hand and sunk the conservative boat? To what extent has the religious right changed or failed to adapt to America\u2019s cultural transformations? Did recent developments in the conservative coalition augur this decline? Or did they seem to indicate otherwise?<\/p>\n

Our panel welcomes both theoretical and empirical contributions addressing these and other related questions. We invite contributions focusing on contemporary developments in the Christian coalition, including its role in recent elections, its relationship with the business community, the GOP or the Tea Party, its mobilizing tactics, internal dynamics and ideological positions, the rise of the religious left, as well as other issues related to the present and the future of the Christian coalition.<\/p>\n

Paper proposals must be sent to Aur\u00e9lie Godet<\/a> and Jean-Baptiste Velut<\/a> by December 15, 2012.<\/p>\n

<\/a>9. Des \u00ab nouvelles religions \u00bb aux contours flous de la spiritualit\u00e9 : quelle place pour la notion de \u00ab sectes \u00bb aux \u00c9tats-Unis ?<\/em>
\nAmandine Barb (Sciences Po Paris) et Elizabeth Levy (Universit\u00e9 Paris-Diderot)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alors que le 3 septembre 2012, les grands quotidiens fran\u00e7ais \u00e9voquaient tous la \u00ab secte \u00bb Moon \u00e0 l\u2019occasion de la mort de son fondateur, Sun Myung Moon, les journaux Am\u00e9ricains adoptaient une approche plus nuanc\u00e9e. En effet, si tous rappelaient les nombreuses controverses li\u00e9es \u00e0 l\u2019\u00c9glise de l\u2019unification, le terme \u00ab cult \u00bb, \u00e0 connotation p\u00e9jorative et consid\u00e9r\u00e9 comme l\u2019\u00e9quivalent en anglais du mot fran\u00e7ais \u00ab secte \u00bb, apparaissait dans les articles du New York Times<\/em> et du Los Angeles Times<\/em> mais \u00e9tait absent, par exemple, de celui du Washington Times<\/em>. Plus largement, on pouvait noter de la part des media am\u00e9ricains un important recours \u00e0 des termes g\u00e9n\u00e9raux tels qu\u2019 \u00ab \u00c9glise \u00bb, ou encore \u00ab nouvelle religion \u00bb et \u00ab nouveau mouvement religieux \u00bb, introuvables dans la majorit\u00e9 des articles fran\u00e7ais. Plus qu\u2019une simple diff\u00e9rence de vocabulaire, la couverture m\u00e9diatique de cet \u00e9v\u00e9nement des deux c\u00f4t\u00e9s de l\u00b4Atlantique est r\u00e9v\u00e9latrice d\u2019une diff\u00e9rence de perception \u00e0 l\u00b4\u00e9gard de ce que les Fran\u00e7ais d\u00e9signent comme des \u00ab sectes \u00bb, et invite donc \u00e0 s\u2019int\u00e9resser de plus pr\u00e8s au statut et aux modalit\u00e9s d\u2019existence de ces derni\u00e8res aux \u00c9tats-Unis. <\/p>\n

D\u00e9finies par Max Weber comme des groupements volontaires d\u00b4individus en rupture avec la soci\u00e9t\u00e9 et les institutions religieuses traditionnelles, les sectes ont un statut \u00e0 la fois complexe et singulier dans le contexte am\u00e9ricain. En premier lieu, les \u00c9tats-Unis, en partie fond\u00e9s sur les notions de tol\u00e9rance et de pluralisme religieux, sont un terreau propice au renouveau religieux et \u00e0 l\u2019apparition de courants in\u00e9dits permettant \u00e0 chacun d\u2019adopter une religion qualifi\u00e9e de \u00ab sur mesure \u00bb par Fran\u00e7oise Champion. Les ann\u00e9es 1970 et 1980 ont ainsi \u00e9t\u00e9 marqu\u00e9es par l\u2019apparition d\u2019un grand nombre de courants religieux alternatifs tels que les Ehard Seminars Training, Heaven\u2019s Gate ou encore les Jews for Jesus. D\u2019autre part, le premier amendement de la Constitution, qui stipule que \u00ab le Congr\u00e8s ne pourra faire aucune loi concernant l\u2019\u00e9tablissement d\u2019une religion ou interdisant son exercice \u00bb garantit au peuple am\u00e9ricain une libert\u00e9 de conscience totale et permet aux organisations religieuses, ou du moins se revendiquant comme telles, de se pr\u00e9munir contre une trop grande intervention de l\u2019\u00c9tat. Ainsi, au contraire de plusieurs gouvernements europ\u00e9ens, la justice am\u00e9ricaine, de m\u00eame que l\u00b4Internal Revenue Service<\/em>, consid\u00e8rent officiellement la scientologie comme une religion \u00e0 part enti\u00e8re, prot\u00e9g\u00e9e par la clause de libre-exercice du premier amendement au m\u00eame titre que d\u00b4autres d\u00e9nominations plus anciennes. Au d\u00e9but des ann\u00e9es 2000, la question des sectes avait \u00e9t\u00e9 jusqu\u00b4\u00e0 provoquer une querelle diplomatique entre Washington et Paris, le D\u00e9partement d\u00b4\u00c9tat et plusieurs S\u00e9nateurs et Repr\u00e9sentants am\u00e9ricains ayant publiquement condamn\u00e9 l\u00b4attitude \u00ab autoritaire \u00bb de la France \u00e0 l\u00b4encontre de certains groupes religieux, notamment les T\u00e9moins de J\u00e9hovah, \u00ab arbitrairement \u00bb plac\u00e9s sur la liste des \u00ab mouvements sectaires sous surveillance \u00bb par le gouvernement fran\u00e7ais.<\/p>\n

En d\u00e9pit, n\u00e9anmoins, de cette apparente bienveillance sociale et politique \u00e0 leur \u00e9gard, les sectes repr\u00e9sentent \u00e9galement aux \u00c9tats-Unis, comme dans d\u00b4autres d\u00e9mocraties occidentales, un probl\u00e8me public ind\u00e9niable depuis maintenant plusieurs d\u00e9cennies : les initiatives visant \u00e0 \u00ab d\u00e9programmer \u00bb des adeptes, l\u00b4assaut contre la secte des Davidiens de Waco au Texas en 1993, qui s\u00b4est sold\u00e9 par la mort de soixante-seize personnes, les fr\u00e9quentes controverses li\u00e9es \u00e0 la scientologie ces derni\u00e8res ann\u00e9es et les inqui\u00e9tudes \u00e0 l\u00b4\u00e9gard des arri\u00e8res grands-parents mormons et polygames de Mitt Romney, refl\u00e8tent notamment la r\u00e9alit\u00e9 probl\u00e9matique de groupes consid\u00e9r\u00e9s comme religieux mais aussi comme extr\u00eamement marginaux dans la soci\u00e9t\u00e9 am\u00e9ricaine contemporaine.<\/p>\n

R\u00e9solument pluridisciplinaire, cet atelier vise donc \u00e0 r\u00e9fl\u00e9chir \u00e0 l\u2019existence, au statut et aux perceptions des sectes aux \u00c9tats-Unis en essayant d\u2019identifier, \u00e0 l\u2019aide d\u00b4approches th\u00e9oriques et m\u00e9thodologiques diverses, les limites floues et brouill\u00e9es qui peuvent exister entre ces derni\u00e8res et les \u00ab nouveaux mouvements religieux \u00bb. On pourra ainsi privil\u00e9gier des approches 1\/ historiques : pour montrer, par exemple, comment l\u00b4\u00e9tiquette de \u00ab cult \u00bb a pu \u00eatre impos\u00e9e \u00e0 certains groupes afin de les discr\u00e9diter et de les marginaliser ou comment, \u00e0 l\u2019inverse, un courant religieux jug\u00e9 suspect et sectaire peut finalement \u00eatre accept\u00e9 ; 2\/juridique : pour \u00e9voquer, par exemple, la mani\u00e8re dont l\u00b4appartenance \u00e0 une religion \u00ab \u00e0 la marge \u00bb peut-\u00eatre utilis\u00e9e contre une personne dans le cadre d\u2019un divorce et d\u2019une bataille pour la garde d\u2019un enfant, ou bien s\u2019int\u00e9resser \u00e0 la mani\u00e8re dont l\u00b4\u00c9tat am\u00e9ricain tente aujourd\u00b4hui de lutter contre les groupes \u00ab \u00e0 risque \u00bb dans le cadre autoris\u00e9 par le premier amendement ; 3\/sociologique : les communications pourront s\u00b4interroger sur l\u00b4attitude de mouvements sectaires sp\u00e9cifiques \u00e0 l\u00b4 \u00e9gard de la soci\u00e9t\u00e9 am\u00e9ricaine contemporaine; sur leurs repr\u00e9sentations dans les m\u00e9dias et la culture populaire ; sur les formes et la port\u00e9e des mobilisations anti-sectes aux \u00c9tats-Unis, etc. <\/p>\n

Les propositions de communications sont \u00e0 envoyer, avant le 15 d\u00e9cembre 2012, \u00e0 Amandine Barb<\/a> et \u00e0 Elizabeth Levy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

From \u201cNew Religions\u201d to the Blurry Edges of Spirituality: Where do \u201cCults\u201d Fit in the American Religious Landscape?<\/em>
\nAmandine Barb (Sciences Po Paris) et Elizabeth Levy (Universit\u00e9 Paris-Diderot)<\/strong><\/p>\n

French and American journalists adopted a variety of approaches on September 3, 2012, when the death of Sun Myung Moon, the founder of the Church of Unification, made worldwide headlines. While the French press unanimously dubbed Moon\u2019s creation a \u201csecte<\/em>\u201d\u2014which is a very pejorative word best translated into English by the word \u201ccult\u201d\u2014the American press had some dissenting voices. Indeed, even though most American articles covered the numerous controversies surrounding the Church of Unification, newspapers such as the New York Times<\/em> and the Los Angeles Times<\/em> used the word \u201ccult,\u201d while others, such as the Washington<\/em> Times<\/em> did not. In fact, after careful examination, it appeared that the American media also used a variety of terms such as \u201cChurch,\u201d \u201cnew religion\u201d or \u201cnew religious movements\u201d that were nowhere to be found in most French newspapers. This discrepancy is not only symptomatic of a difference of vocabulary\u2014it is, in fact, very much emblematic of a cultural divide on the matter of classifying and assessing self-proclaimed religious groups. Thus, it seems worthwhile to devote a workshop to \u201ccults\u201d in America in order to establish what they are and what they are perceived to be in the United States nowadays. <\/p>\n

\u201cSectes\u201d, or \u201ccults\u201d were defined by Max Weber as voluntary groupings of individuals who wanted to separate themselves from traditional religious institutions and societies. The American experiment, however, makes up for a specific setting that renders their status particularly complex and interesting. First and foremost, religious tolerance and pluralism, at the core of the foundation of the United States, have created a fertile environment for religious revivals to break out and new religious movements to prosper\u2014so much so, in fact, that Fran\u00e7oise Champion spoke of \u201ctailor made\u201d religions. Indeed, during the 1970s and the 1980s, a great number of alternative religious movements such as the Ehard Seminars Training, Heaven\u2019s Gate or Jews for Jesus, to name only a few, were founded. Secondly, the First Amendment to the American Constitution states that \u201cCongress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,\u201d thus granting liberty of conscience to Americans and prohibiting the government from unreasonable entanglement with religious or self-proclaimed religious groups. Thus, contrary to a number of European governments, both the American judiciary and the IRS deem the Church of Scientology to be a \u201cchurch\u201d\u2014and not a \u201ccult\u201d\u2014protected by the \u201cfree exercise clause\u201d of the First Amendment just like any other older denomination. At the beginning of the 2000s, the cult problem even triggered a diplomatic disagreement between Paris and Washington, when the Department of State and several Congressmen publicly condemned France\u00b4s \u201cauthoritarian\u201d attitude towards some religious groups, including the Jehovah\u00b4s Witnesses, \u201carbitrarily\u201d placed on a list of \u201ccultish movements to monitor\u201d by the French government.<\/p>\n

Even though cults seem to benefit from general social and political benevolence in the United States, they have also been, as in many other Western democracies, a major public issue for at least the past decade. The attempts made at \u201cdeprogramming\u201d followers, the FBI intervention against the Davidians of Waco, TX, in 1993, which resulted in the death of 76 people, the frequent controversies stirred up by the church of Scientology as well as the concerns raised over Mitt Romney\u00b4s polygamous, Mormon great-grandparents, are revealing of the problematic reality of groups considered to be religions, but also extremely marginal and not very well-known in contemporary American society. <\/p>\n

This workshop aims to reflect upon the existence, the status and the perceptions of cults in the United States in an interdisciplinary manner. Using various theoretical and methodological approaches, participants will seek to better identify the blurry and ambiguous boundaries that separate \u201ccults\u201d and \u201cnew religious movements\u201d in the American context. Diverse perspectives are welcome: 1\/historical: to understand, for instance, how the \u201ccult\u201d label was imposed on some groups in order to discredit and further marginalize them, or, on the contrary, how religious movements considered \u201ccultish\u201d at first eventually managed to improve their image and fit better within American society; 2\/juridical: papers could explore how an individual\u00b4s belonging to a marginal religious group is sometimes used against them in divorce or child custody cases; how the government tries to fight against abusive and dangerous religious movements without encroaching on the First Amendment; 3\/sociological: presentations could focus on specific cults and on their connections with the broader American society, analyze their representations in popular culture (TV, movies, literature, etc), or even focus on the anti-cult movement.<\/p>\n

Paper proposals should be sent by December 15, 2012 to Amandine Barb<\/a> and Elizabeth Levy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/a>10. Religion, spiritualit\u00e9 et politisation des sexualit\u00e9s
\n<\/em> <\/strong>Guillaume Marche (Universit\u00e9 Paris-Est Cr\u00e9teil\/IMAGER)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Il est beaucoup question aux \u00c9tats-Unis, depuis les ann\u00e9es 1980 en particulier, de la politisation de la religion et de la sexualit\u00e9, et notamment des intrusions de la droite chr\u00e9tienne dans les d\u00e9bats sur la lib\u00e9ration sexuelle, les droits reproductifs ou la reconnaissance de l\u2019homosexualit\u00e9. L\u2019influence des religions sur la politisation des sexualit\u00e9s n\u2019est cependant ni sp\u00e9cifique des chr\u00e9tiens conservateurs, ni de la fin du XXe et du d\u00e9but du XXIe si\u00e8cles. Les organisations religieuses s\u2019invitent aux d\u00e9bats sur la r\u00e9glementation des pratiques sexuelles depuis les origines des \u00c9tats-Unis, que ce soit durant la p\u00e9riode coloniale, o\u00f9 pouvoirs politique et religieux \u00e9taient souvent \u00e0 peine dissoci\u00e9s, mais aussi \u00e0 des \u00e9poques o\u00f9 l\u2019imbrication du politique et du religieux \u00e9tait moins directe, comme par exemple lors de la p\u00e9riode r\u00e9formiste de la fin du XIXe si\u00e8cle. Il serait de m\u00eame simpliste d\u2019affirmer que religion et spiritualit\u00e9 ont toujours constitu\u00e9 en mati\u00e8re sexuelle un facteur de conservatisme, voire de r\u00e9gression, comme le montrent par exemple les positions lib\u00e9rales du th\u00e9ologien Reinhold Niebuhr sur le contr\u00f4le des naissances. Depuis la fin du XXe si\u00e8cle, de surcro\u00eet, nombre de courants spirituels alternatifs con\u00e7oivent des formes d\u2019\u00e9panouissement sexuel les plus \u00e9loign\u00e9es du mod\u00e8le traditionnel \u2013 h\u00e9t\u00e9rosexuel et monogame \u2013 comme une voie authentique et ad\u00e9quate d\u2019acc\u00e8s \u00e0 la transcendance. Ces courants se r\u00e9clament parfois, en outre, de pratiques pa\u00efennes ou chamaniques h\u00e9rit\u00e9es des religions am\u00e9rindiennes ou, plus g\u00e9n\u00e9ralement, de traditions spirituelles non occidentales.<\/p>\n

De m\u00eame que les questions de morale sexuelle sont fr\u00e9quemment pr\u00e9sent\u00e9es comme des filtres tactiques interdisant un d\u00e9bat sur les \u00ab vraies \u00bb questions politiques \u2013 \u00e0 savoir les probl\u00e8mes socio\u00e9conomiques, comme si les deux types d\u2019enjeux \u00e9taient enti\u00e8rement disjoints \u2013 on peut se demander si l\u2019\u00e9l\u00e9ment religieux ou spirituel fait \u00e0 son tour \u00e9cran aux \u00ab vraies \u00bb questions sexuelles que sont, par exemple, le libre acc\u00e8s des femmes \u00e0 la contraception et \u00e0 l\u2019avortement, ou la reconnaissance des droits des personnes LGBT. La question se pose, par exemple, \u00e0 propos du d\u00e9bat au sein de diverses \u00c9glises, \u00e9piscopalienne en particulier, sur l\u2019ordination de pr\u00eatres et d\u2019\u00e9v\u00eaques ouvertement homosexuels : cette question masque-t-elle les enjeux d\u2019\u00e9galit\u00e9 des droits tels qu\u2019ils se posent effectivement \u00e0 l\u2019ensemble des personnes LGBT, qu\u2019elles soient ou non \u00e9piscopaliennes, chr\u00e9tiennes, ou m\u00eame fid\u00e8les de quelque religion que ce soit ? Ou bien ce d\u00e9bat dans le champ religieux est-il l\u2019occasion de convoquer des consid\u00e9rations spirituelles susceptibles de faire avancer cette cause dans l\u2019ensemble de la soci\u00e9t\u00e9 ? En clair, la spiritualit\u00e9 peut-elle en mati\u00e8re de politisation des sexualit\u00e9s ce que la seule raison politique ne saurait accomplir ? Autrement dit, la place des religions dans les d\u00e9bats sur les sexualit\u00e9s soul\u00e8ve des questions importantes relatives notamment au r\u00f4le des \u00e9motions dans les mouvements sociaux. A contrario<\/em>, en effet, faut-il consid\u00e9rer les positions conservatrices motiv\u00e9es par la religion comme l\u2019expression d\u2019une forme d\u2019irrationalit\u00e9, ou au contraire comme des strat\u00e9gies fortement empreintes de rationalit\u00e9 politique ? <\/p>\n

La question des sexualit\u00e9s nous permet-elle donc de distinguer l\u2019influence politique des religions organis\u00e9es de celle de spiritualit\u00e9s ou de sentiments religieux plus individualis\u00e9s, voire diffus ? Il y a l\u00e0 un angle d\u2019approche qui nous am\u00e8ne \u00e0 nous interroger sur la mani\u00e8re dont s\u2019articulent les formes (organisationnelles et strat\u00e9giques) et le sens de l\u2019action politique : dans quelle mesure le rapport entre religion, spiritualit\u00e9 et politisation des sexualit\u00e9s montre-t-il, par la transcendance, la pertinence politique des enjeux symboliques ? Le recours \u00e0 la religion est-il n\u00e9cessairement un retrait hors du politique signalant que les usages ordinaires de la politique ne remplissent plus leur office, ou bien la spiritualit\u00e9 montre-t-elle que les seuls int\u00e9r\u00eats instrumentaux ne peuvent suffire \u00e0 rendre compte du sens politique ? Comment faut-il interpr\u00e9ter le m\u00e9lange de mim\u00e9tisme et de concurrence qui caract\u00e9rise le rapport entre conservatisme religieux et progressisme ou radicalisme sexuel ?<\/p>\n

Ces enjeux pourront \u00eatre trait\u00e9s \u00e0 l\u2019aide de l\u2019histoire, de la sociologie ou de la science politique, \u00e0 travers des exemples tir\u00e9s d\u2019\u00e9poques diverses \u2013 de la p\u00e9riode pr\u00e9coloniale \u00e0 l\u2019actualit\u00e9 la plus r\u00e9cente \u2013 et ne se limitant pas au christianisme, ni m\u00eame aux trois monoth\u00e9ismes ou aux religions organis\u00e9es.<\/p>\n

Les propositions de communication sont \u00e0 envoyer d\u2019ici au 15 d\u00e9cembre 2012 \u00e0 Guillaume Marche<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Religion, Spirituality, and the Politicization of Sexualities<\/em>
\nGuillaume Marche (Universit\u00e9 Paris-Est Cr\u00e9teil\/IMAGER)<\/strong><\/p>\n

The politicization of religion and sexuality has been an important issue in the United States, especially since the 1980s and the religious Right\u2019s intrusion into debates on sexual liberation, reproductive rights, and the recognition of homosexuality. The politicization of sexualities, however, is not exclusive to Christian conservatives, or to the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries. Religious organizations have held public stances on the regulation of sexual practices ever since the origins of the United States\u2014for example during the colonial period, when there was often hardly any separation between the political and religious authorities, but also at times when the link between politics and religion was less direct, such as the late nineteenth century. It would also be inaccurate to consider that religion and spirituality have always had a conservative or regressive influence on opinions about sexuality, as shown by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr\u2019s liberal views on birth control. Additionally, since the end of the twentieth century, several alternative spiritual movements have regarded the pursuit of non-traditional\u2014non-heterosexual, non-monogamous\u2014sexual fulfillment as an authentic and appropriate path to transcendence. Some of these movements are inspired from pagan or shamanic practices borrowed from Native American religions, and more generally from non-Western spiritual traditions.<\/p>\n

Raising sexual morality as a political issue is often seen as a tactic meant to avoid the discussion of \u201creal\u201d political questions\u2014namely socioeconomic issues, as though the two were totally unrelated; likewise, does raising religious or spiritual questions about sexuality preclude the discussion of \u201creal\u201d sexual questions, such as women\u2019s access to abortion and contraception, or the recognition of LGBT rights? For example, various churches, Episcopal in particular, are divided on the issue of the ordination of homosexual priests and bishops: does this draw public attention away from issues of equal rights for LGBT people, whether they are Episcopalians, Christians, or religious at all? Or is this religious debate an opportunity to advance the cause of LGBT rights in society as a whole? In other words, can spirituality help frame the politicization of sexuality in ways that a political rationale alone cannot achieve? The part played by religious organizations in public debates on sexuality thus raises important issues related to the role of emotions in social movements. On the contrary, should religiously motivated moral conservatism be regarded as a form of irrationality, or as a highly rational form of political strategy?<\/p>\n

We should therefore wonder whether sexuality related issues help us distinguish between the political influence of organized religions and that of more individualized, sometimes even less explicitly religious forms of spirituality. This question is an opportunity to look into the interactions between the form (both organizational and strategic) and meaning of political action: Does the transcendence involved in the relationship between religion, spirituality, and the politicization of sexualities point to the political importance of symbolical issues? Does resorting to religion signify a rejection or a reinterpretation of politics? In other words, have the traditional usages of politics become irrelevant, or does spirituality suggest that purely instrumental goals alone cannot assume the totality of political meaning? How should we interpret the mixture of mimicry and competition that characterizes the relationship between religious conservatism and sexual progressivism or radicalism?<\/p>\n

These questions may be addressed through the lens of history, sociology, or political science. Case studies may be taken from various historical periods\u2014from pre-colonial times to the present\u2014and need not be limited to Christianity, or to the three monotheistic faiths, or even to organized religions.<\/p>\n

Paper submissions should be sent to Guillaume Marche<\/a> by December 15, 2012.<\/p>\n

<\/a>11. Religion et mouvements contestataires<\/em>
\nDonna Kesselman (Universit\u00e9 Paris-Est Cr\u00e9teil\/IMAGER) et Ambre Ivol (Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3) <\/strong><\/p>\n

Dans quelle mesure faut-il combiner le fait religieux et la pratique contestataire aux \u00c9tats-Unis? L\u00e0 o\u00f9 la religion semble correspondre \u00e0 une forme d’h\u00e9g\u00e9monie id\u00e9ologique sur les valeurs du progr\u00e8s social, n’est-il pas logique de consid\u00e9rer qu’en rivalisant avec les principes de la d\u00e9mocratie, ce sont pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment les courants du socialisme historique qui ont \u00e9t\u00e9 marginalis\u00e9s d\u00e9finitivement ? Under God<\/em> ne rivalise t-il pas avec e pluribus unum <\/em>? Selon cette lecture, le postulat d’une autorit\u00e9 supr\u00eame garantissant l\u2019\u00e9quilibre social repr\u00e9senterait la culture dominante dans un pays ayant pourtant institutionnalis\u00e9 la doctrine de la s\u00e9paration.
\nLes interpr\u00e9tations quant au potentiel subversif du fait religieux ont jalonn\u00e9 l’histoire am\u00e9ricaine. Karl Marx notait combien la \u00ab religiosit\u00e9 \u00bb nord-am\u00e9ricaine l’\u00e9tonnait pour ses qualit\u00e9s de \u00ab fra\u00eecheur \u00bb et de \u00ab vigoureuse vitalit\u00e9 \u00bb. Ce dynamisme \u00e9tait d\u00fb, selon Tocqueville \u00e9galement, \u00e0 l’absence d’Eglise officielle. Une telle structuration de l’espace public (\u00e0 la fois spirituel et politique) permettait donc une vitalit\u00e9 intellectuelle qui reposait sur un questionnement constant de l’orthodoxie. <\/p>\n

Engels y voyait cependant aussi une tendance au sectarisme id\u00e9ologique, cons\u00e9quence in\u00e9vitable selon lui du ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne de scission et de concurrence entre groupes religieux issus du protestantisme (S.M. Lipset et G.Marks, 2000, It Didn’t Happen Here : Why Socialism Failed in the United States<\/em>, 34). Le premier crit\u00e8re d\u2019un mouvement social selon les \u00ab r\u00e9pertoires \u00bb de Charles Tilly consacre la pr\u00e9sence indispensable de l\u2019Eglise et des religieux comme garant de la valeur ou \u00ab honorabilit\u00e9 \u00bb (worthiness <\/em>; C. Tilly, 2004, Social Mouvements : 1768-2004<\/em>).<\/p>\n

Une telle h\u00e9t\u00e9rog\u00e9n\u00e9it\u00e9 dans le champ religieux s’est combin\u00e9e \u00e0 un ancrage ethnique, culturel et linguistique extr\u00eamement diversifi\u00e9. Etait-ce l\u00e0 le signe d’une soci\u00e9t\u00e9 \u00ab ouverte \u00bb qui allait repr\u00e9senter un obstacle majeur et durable au d\u00e9veloppement de la conscience de classe? Dans quelle mesure de telles tendances se sont-elles confirm\u00e9es sur le temps long de l’histoire am\u00e9ricaine ? <\/p>\n

L’histoire particuli\u00e8re de l’oppression aux Etats-Unis et les pr\u00e9suppos\u00e9s \u00e9thiques de toute contestation face \u00e0 l’injustice sociale supposeraient que d’une part, le clerg\u00e9 ait \u00e9t\u00e9 partie prenante \u2013 voire \u00e0 l’initiative \u2013 de mouvements sociaux et, d’autre part, que la grammaire de la justice sociale ait puis\u00e9 dans le lexique religieux. En ce sens, outre les r\u00e9sonances explicites avec l’argumentation marxiste soulignant le caract\u00e8re ambivalent de la religion (comme \u00ab opium du peuple \u00bb ou \u00ab soupir de l’opprim\u00e9 \u00bb), un tel constat s’appuie sur les d\u00e9clinaisons historiques de la contestation am\u00e9ricaine : les mouvements syndicaliste, f\u00e9ministe, antiraciste et antiguerre ont tous affich\u00e9, voire revendiqu\u00e9 leur(s) sensibilit\u00e9(s) religieuse(s) comme prisme(s) permettant de formuler des revendications visant le progr\u00e8s social.<\/p>\n

La notion de justice sociale ou de moralit\u00e9 (fairness<\/em>) n\u2019a-t-elle pas \u00e9t\u00e9 con\u00e7ue et d\u00e9clin\u00e9e par des \u00c9glises progressistes aux \u00c9tats-Unis, mues par une r\u00e9flexion \u00e0 la fois th\u00e9orique (\u00e9galit\u00e9, fraternit\u00e9, solidarit\u00e9, humanisme) et pratique (d\u00e9sob\u00e9issance civile, campagnes de mobilisations de masse, insistance sur les minorit\u00e9s agissantes ou d\u00e9monstration par l’exemple) ? D\u2019innombrables figures historiques incarnent ces luttes et ces discours. <\/p>\n

A ce sujet, les contre-exemples trouveront toute leur place : la question \u00e9thique n’a en effet pas \u00e9t\u00e9 le monopole des seuls mouvements progressistes. Pour le dire autrement, la question religieuse a pu se d\u00e9cliner \u00e9galement selon un lexique de mobilisation conservateur. Ainsi, la prise en compte de l’h\u00e9t\u00e9rog\u00e9n\u00e9it\u00e9 id\u00e9ologique du fait religieux deviendrait alors pertinente \u00e0 toute \u00e9tude sur la contestation politique et sociale.<\/p>\n

En somme, il s’agira d’\u00e9tudier le potentiel mobilisateur que repr\u00e9sente le religieux. Quelles limites demeurent, pour qui \u2013 contestation progressiste ou conservatrice \u2013 et pourquoi?<\/p>\n

Les propositions de communications sont \u00e0 adresser avant le 15 d\u00e9cembre 2012, \u00e0 [Donna Kesselman>donna.kesselman@u-pec.fr] et \u00e0 Ambre Ivol<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Religion and Protest Movements<\/em>
\nDonna Kesselman (Universit\u00e9 Paris-Est Cr\u00e9teil\/IMAGER) et Ambre Ivol (Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3)<\/strong><\/p>\n

To what extent is there a correlation between religion and social protest in the United States? Insofar as religion functions as a form of ideological hegemony encompassing the values of social progress, is it not logical to consider that, by competing with the principles of democracy, currents of historical socialism have been definitely marginalized? Does \u201cUnder God\u201d thus not supersede \u201ce pluribus unum\u201d? The postulate of a supreme authority guaranteeing social equilibrium thereby supposedly represents the dominant culture in a country having nevertheless institutionalized the doctrine of separation.<\/p>\n

Interpretations pertaining to the subversive character of religion can be found throughout US history. Karl Marx emphasized how impressive North American \u201creligiosity\u201d appeared, due to its \u201cfreshness\u201d and \u201cvigorous vitality.\u201d Such dynamism was due, according to Tocqueville as well, to the absence of any official Church. Such a specific mode of organization of public space (both spiritually and politically) allowed for an intellectual vitality which was based on the constant questioning of orthodoxy. <\/p>\n

Engels, however, also noted a tendency toward sectarianism, which he saw as an inevitable consequence of division and competition among religious groups originating in Protestantism (S.M. Lipset & G.Marks, 2000, It Didn’t Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States<\/em>, 34). Charles Tilly points to the indispensable presence of the Church and religious leaders within the first criterion of his social movement<\/em> \u201crepertoires\u201d (WUNC), <\/em>as guardians of \u201cworthiness\u201d (C. Tilly, 2004, Social Mouvements: 1768-2004<\/em>). <\/p>\n

Such heterogeneity in the religious field came to be combined with deep-going ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity. Was this the sign of an \u201copen\u201d society soon to be erected as a major and durable obstacle to the development of class-consciousness and class-based political organization in this country? To what extent were such trends confirmed over the long run of American history? <\/p>\n

The particular history of oppression in the United States and the ethical underpinnings of protest against social injustice assume, on the one hand, that clergy has been part and parcel even at the initiative\u2014of social movements and on the other, that the grammar of social justice was inspired by religious doctrine. In this sense, aside from explicit resonance with Marxist themes emphasizing the ambivalence of religion (as the \u201copium of the people\u201d or the \u201csigh of the oppressed\u201d), this observation derives from historical experience of protest in the United States: labor, feminist, antiracist and antiwar movements all expressed some form of religiosity or even outwardly claimed religion as a privileged prism allowing them to advance demands in terms of social progress. <\/p>\n

Have the notions of social justice or fairness<\/em>, not been coined or enhanced upon by progressive Churches in the United States, moved by both theoretical contemplation (equality, fraternity, solidarity, humanism) and practice (civil disobedience, mass mobilization campaigns, insistence on agitating minorities our demonstrations, for example)? Innumerable historical figures illustrate these struggles and rhetoric. <\/p>\n

Counter-examples are also noteworthy: progressive movements can claim no monopoly over campaigns bearing the banner of ethics. Conservative mobilizations have also written history with quotations from the religious lexicon. So an overall view of religiosity\u2019s ideological heterogeneousness is of import to all inquiries regarding social and political protest in the United States.<\/p>\n

Special focus, then, will be placed upon the potential for mobilization by and through the religious. Also, are there limits to this mobilizing force, if so for whom\u2014conservative or progressive protest\u2014and why? <\/p>\n

Proposals should be sent by December 15, 2012, to [Donna Kesselman>donna.kesselman@u-pec.fr] et \u00e0 Ambre Ivol<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/a>12. La religion dans l’ordre international<\/em>
\nJean-Marie Ruiz (Universit\u00e9 de Savoie)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Renouveau spirituel dans les soci\u00e9t\u00e9s anciennement communistes, d\u00e9sormais int\u00e9gr\u00e9e \u00e0 la \u00ab communaut\u00e9 internationale \u00bb ; essor et r\u00f4le du fondamentalisme religieux dans la propagation du terrorisme international et int\u00e9rieur comme dans l\u2019opposition entre l\u2019Orient et l\u2019Occident ; centralit\u00e9 du conflit isra\u00e9lo-palestinien et de l\u2019opposition entre sunnisme et shiisme dans les conflits end\u00e9miques qui secouent et semblent en passe de remodeler la carte politique du Moyen-Orient ; r\u00f4le parfois \u00e9vident de certains courants religieux dans la formulation de la politique \u00e9trang\u00e8re de la plus grande puissance mondiale : le temps o\u00f9 l\u2019on pouvait appliquer la notion web\u00e9rienne de \u00ab d\u00e9senchantement du monde \u00bb aux relations internationales semble loin, et ce qui frappe d\u00e9sormais dans l\u2019actualit\u00e9 internationale contemporaine est au contraire l\u2019omnipr\u00e9sence du facteur religieux. Qu\u2019il s\u2019agisse de conflits inter\u00e9tatiques, intra-\u00e9tatiques (on pense notamment \u00e0 l\u2019ex-Yougoslavie) ou encore interculturels (comme le sugg\u00e8re le \u00ab choc des civilisations \u00bb de Samuel Huntington), l\u2019imbrication de l\u2019ethno-religieux et du politique semble caract\u00e9riser le nouvel ordre — ou d\u00e9sordre — international depuis la fin de la Guerre froide et illustrer la r\u00e9surgence de ce que certains th\u00e9oriciens appelaient d\u00e9j\u00e0 le \u00ab nouveau Moyen \u00c2ge \u00bb dans les ann\u00e9es 1990. \u00c0ces tendances longues \u00e0 l\u2019\u0153uvre depuis au moins la fin de la Guerre froide, se sont ajout\u00e9s les attentats de septembre 2001, qui ont donn\u00e9 au prisme religieux une nouvelle importance dans l\u2019analyse des conflits internationaux et accr\u00e9dit\u00e9 l\u2019id\u00e9e que la modernit\u00e9 internationale s\u2019apparente davantage \u00e0 une r\u00e9surgence qu\u2019\u00e0 une sortie du religieux.<\/p>\n

Dans la perspective am\u00e9ricaniste qui est la n\u00f4tre, l\u2019analyse de ce ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne pourrait \u00eatre men\u00e9e selon les axes suivants (par ailleurs non-limitatifs) :
\na. La place de la religion dans la d\u00e9finition de la politique \u00e9trang\u00e8re am\u00e9ricaine. Outre l\u2019influence notoire du lobby pro-isra\u00e9lien, des \u00e9vang\u00e9liques conservateurs ou plus g\u00e9n\u00e9ralement du christianisme anglo-saxon, il est possible de se demander dans quelle mesure la libert\u00e9 de religion est ou a \u00e9t\u00e9 un objectif de politique \u00e9trang\u00e8re des Etats-Unis, en particulier depuis la Freedom From Religious Persecution Act<\/em> de 1998.
\nb. Les relations diplomatiques entre Etats-Unis et le Vatican, et l\u2019utilisation de ces relations par les Etats-Unis dans la r\u00e9solution des conflits ou\/et dans la r\u00e9alisation d\u2019objectifs de politique \u00e9trang\u00e8re.
\nc. La place de la religion dans les th\u00e9ories am\u00e9ricains des relations internationales. En effet, il est possible de s\u2019interroger sur la prise en compte du facteur religieux dans les principaux paradigmes (r\u00e9alisme, lib\u00e9ralisme, constructivisme\u2026) ou encore dans la vision du monde des \u00e9coles de politique \u00e9trang\u00e8re, telle que le n\u00e9o-conservatisme.
\nd. Les relations des Etats-Unis avec le monde musulman. Cette question est \u00e9videmment centrale depuis 9\/11, et par cons\u00e9quent dans la politique des pr\u00e9sidents Bush fils et de son successeur. Le positionnement d\u2019Obama est particuli\u00e8rement int\u00e9ressant : le pr\u00e9sident am\u00e9ricain s\u2019est en effet fix\u00e9 comme t\u00e2che de redorer le blason des Etats-Unis dans le monde arabe, mais il a \u00e9t\u00e9 aussi confront\u00e9 au \u00ab printemps arabe \u00bb. Il semble donc pertinent de s\u2019interroger sur l\u2019existence, ou non, d\u2019une politique sp\u00e9cifique, voire coh\u00e9rente, envers le monde musulman depuis son arriv\u00e9e au pouvoir. <\/p>\n

Les propositions de communications sont \u00e0 adresser avant le 15 d\u00e9cembre 2012, \u00e0 Jean-Marie Ruiz<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Religion and International Relations <\/em> <\/strong>
\nJean-Marie Ruiz<\/strong> <\/em> <\/strong>(Universit\u00e9 de Savoie)
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Spiritual revivals in the former communist countries now reunited with the \u201cinternational community\u201d; the rising role of religious fundamentalism in the spreading domestic and international terrorism, as well as in the East\/West divide; the significance of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and of the opposition between Schiism and Sunnism in the endemic conflicts currently transforming the Middle East; the obvious influence of some religious views in the definition of the world\u2019s most powerful country\u2014all these developments seem to suggest that what Weber called the \u201cdisenchantment of the world\u201d is irrelevant to understanding contemporary international relations. In contrast, what is striking is the ubiquity of religion. Whether between or within states (as in former Yugoslavia), if not between \u201ccultures\u201d (as suggested by Samuel Huntington\u2019s \u201cclash of civilizations\u201d), the overlapping of the ethno-religious and political seems to have defined the international order since the end of the Cold War, as if to illustrate what some, in the 1990\u2019s, called \u201cthe new Middle Ages.\u201d Then 9\/11 strengthened the role of the religious factor in the studies of international relations and further supported the idea that, when it comes to international conflicts, it is the revival of religion rather than its decline that defines modernity. <\/p>\n

The role of religion in international relations may be analyzed through:
\na. The role of religion in the definition of US foreign policy. In addition to the notorious pro-Israeli, evangelical or Christian Anglo-Saxon lobbies, it may asked to what extent religious freedom is or has been a goal of US foreign policymakers, particularly since the 1998 Freedom From Religious Persecution Act<\/em>.
\nb. Diplomatic relations between the US and the Vatican, and the use of these relations by the US to solve conflicts or\/and to meet foreign policy aims.
\nc. The role of religion in theories of international relations\u2014for example realism, liberalism, constructivism\u2014or foreign policy schools of thought, such as neo-conservatism.
\nd. Relations of the US with the Muslim world, which have been central since 9\/11 and have been prominent in the policies of George W. Bush and his successor. Obama\u2019s policy is particularly interesting because of his determination to improve the image of the US in Arab countries, but also because he had to deal with the Arab spring and its upheavals\u2014hence, the importance of assessing Obama\u2019s policy toward the Muslim world, in order to determine both its consistency and peculiarity.<\/p>\n

Paper proposals should be sent, by December 15, 2012, to Jean-Marie Ruiz<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/a>13. L\u2019Am\u00e9rique est-elle sortie de l\u2019\u00e2ge th\u00e9ologique ?
\n<\/em> <\/strong>Sabine Remanofsky et Gilles Christoph (ENS Lyon)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Depuis le \u00ab Dieu est mort \u00bb de Nietzsche et la mise en \u00e9quation par Max Weber de l\u2019entr\u00e9e dans la modernit\u00e9 avec la sortie de la religion, les historiens et les sociologues des religions d\u00e9battent l\u2019hypoth\u00e8se du d\u00e9senchantement \u2013 ou, plus r\u00e9cemment, du r\u00e9enchantement \u2013 du monde. Cependant, par-del\u00e0 le d\u00e9clin ou le retour du religieux, se pose une autre question, non moins fondamentale pour la compr\u00e9hension de la modernit\u00e9 occidentale : celle de l\u2019emprise de la transcendance, forme la plus \u00e9minemment religieuse du rapport au monde, sur les modes de raisonnement des soci\u00e9t\u00e9s dites s\u00e9cularis\u00e9es.<\/p>\n

Marcel Gauchet tout comme Dany-Robert Dufour ont soulign\u00e9 la propension anthropologique des hommes \u00e0 croire et l\u2019irr\u00e9pressible besoin de transcendance qui ne cesse de s\u2019actualiser dans l\u2019histoire sous diff\u00e9rentes manifestations. \u00ab La forme religieuse n\u2019a plus le pouvoir de d\u00e9finir l\u2019ensemble ; et cependant, elle demeure le seul patron sur lequel concevoir l\u2019ensemble \u00bb (La condition historique<\/em>, 2003) <\/strong>estime ainsi Gauchet, tandis que, pour Dufour, \u00ab nous ne [sommes] pas pr\u00eats de pouvoir vivre enfin sans dieu(x) puisque chaque fois que nous en mettons un \u00e0 mort, c\u2019est pour en aimer un autre \u00bb (Le divin march\u00e9<\/em>, 2007).<\/p>\n

Ainsi les \u00e9conomistes classiques britanniques ont-ils substitu\u00e9 au Dieu providentiel des \u00e9conomistes physiocrates fran\u00e7ais la main invisible du march\u00e9 comme garant de l\u2019harmonie \u00e9conomique et sociale. De m\u00eame, le passage de la monarchie de droit divin \u00e0 la d\u00e9mocratie fond\u00e9e sur le suffrage universel installe-t-il la volont\u00e9 du peuple (m\u00e9di\u00e9e par le chef du gouvernement) en lieu et place de celle de Dieu (m\u00e9di\u00e9e par le souverain). On pourrait multiplier \u00e0 souhait les exemples des transcendances sur lesquelles sont fond\u00e9s les diff\u00e9rents champs sociaux : la nation, en sus du peuple, pour le champ politique, la loi pour le champ juridique, la v\u00e9rit\u00e9 pour le champ scientifique, la beaut\u00e9 pour le champ artistique, etc.<\/p>\n

Premi\u00e8re puissance \u00e9conomique, plus ancienne d\u00e9mocratie, \u00ab laboratoire scientifique \u00bb du monde, foyer de la culture populaire, l\u2019Am\u00e9rique semble \u00eatre un terrain d\u2019\u00e9tude privil\u00e9gi\u00e9 pour interroger la capacit\u00e9 de la religion \u00e0 informer notre rapport au monde puisqu\u2019elle pr\u00e9sente le paradoxe \u2013 en apparence tout du moins \u2013 d\u2019une culture intens\u00e9ment religieuse conjugu\u00e9e \u00e0 des institutions fermement la\u00efques. Cet atelier appelle par cons\u00e9quent des \u00e9tudes de cas destin\u00e9es \u00e0 \u00e9tablir si les diff\u00e9rentes sph\u00e8res qui composent la soci\u00e9t\u00e9 am\u00e9ricaine, qu\u2019il s\u2019agisse de la sph\u00e8re \u00e9conomique, politique, juridique, scientifique ou culturelle, sont v\u00e9ritablement sorties de l\u2019\u00ab \u00e2ge th\u00e9ologique \u00bb (au sens large, c\u2019est-\u00e0-dire non-comtien, du terme). Pourront constituer autant de propositions de communication, entre autres, la mobilisation du march\u00e9 et de ses propri\u00e9t\u00e9s autor\u00e9gulatrices dans les discours \u00e9conomiques, le recours \u00e0 la volont\u00e9 du peuple ou \u00e0 l\u2019int\u00e9r\u00eat national dans les discours politiques, le renvoi \u00e0 l\u2019esprit de la loi dans les discours juridiques ou bien encore les d\u00e9bats autour de la notion de v\u00e9rit\u00e9 dans les \u00ab guerres culturelles \u00bb qui agitent la soci\u00e9t\u00e9 am\u00e9ricaine depuis les ann\u00e9es 1980.<\/p>\n

Merci d\u2019adresser vos propositions de communication \u00e0 Gilles Christoph<\/a> et Sabine Remanofsky<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Leaving or Living the Theological Age?
\nSabine Remanofsky et Gilles Christoph (ENS Lyon)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ever since Nietzsche proclaimed that \u201cGod is dead\u201d and Max Weber equated the beginning of modernity with the end of religion, historians and sociologists have been debating the hypothesis of the disenchantment\u2014and, more recently, of the reenchantment\u2014of the world. However, beyond the question of the decline or return of the religious lies another question, just as fundamental to the understanding of western modernity: that of the hold of transcendence, the most eminently religious form of relating to the world, on the thought processes of so-called secularized societies.<\/p>\n

Both Marcel Gauchet and Dany-Robert Dufour have underscored man\u2019s anthropological inclination to believe and the irrepressible need for transcendence, which keeps actualizing itself in history under various manifestations. Gauchet writes that although \u201cthe religious form no longer has the power to define the whole, it remains the only blueprint for conceiving the whole\u201d (La condition historique<\/em>, 2003), while Dufour is of the opinion that \u201cwe are not ready to live without god(s), since we put one to death only to love another\u201d (Le divin march\u00e9<\/em>, 2007).<\/p>\n

The British classical economists thus substituted the invisible hand of the market for the providential god of the French physiocrats as a guarantee of social and economic harmony. Similarly, the transition from monarchy by divine right to a democracy founded on universal suffrage puts the will of the people (mediated by the head of government), instead of God\u2019s will (mediated by the sovereign), at the center of the political system. Many other examples of transcendence underlying diverse social fields could be given: the nation, in addition to the people, in the political field, the law in the legal field, the truth in the scientific field and beauty in the artistic field.<\/p>\n

As the world\u2019s first economic power, the oldest democracy, the \u201cscientific laboratory\u201d of the world and the home of popular culture, the United States seem a privileged testing ground to ponder the capacity of religion to inform our relationship to the world since America presents the seeming paradox of an intensely religious culture combined with firmly secular institutions. This workshop calls for case studies which could help establish whether the various spheres (economic, political, legal, scientific or cultural) which make up American society, have left the \u201ctheological age,\u201d in the widest\u2014i.e. non-Comtian\u2014sense of the word. Possible topics could include, but are not restricted to, the use of the market and its self-regulating properties in economic discourses, the recourse to the \u201cwill of the people\u201d or to the \u201cnational interest\u201d in political discourses, the use of the spirit of the law in legal discourses, or, finally the debates surrounding the notion of truth in the \u201cculture wars\u201d which have agitated American society since the 1980s.<\/p>\n

Proposals should be sent to Gilles Christoph <\/a> and Sabine Remanofsky<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/a>14. H\u00e9ritage spiritual, empreinte du religieux dans les litt\u00e9ratures \u00ab minoritaires \u00bb<\/em>
\nPaule Levy et Ada Savin (Universit\u00e9 de Versailles Saint-Quentin<\/strong><\/p>\n

L\u2019Am\u00e9rique se construit d\u00e8s le d\u00e9part sur le religieux. La Terre Promise r\u00eav\u00e9e par les P\u00e8res P\u00e8lerins devra pourtant se laisser habiter, p\u00e9n\u00e9trer par d\u2019autres imaginaires, d\u2019autres formes de spiritualit\u00e9, d\u2019autres conceptions du sacr\u00e9, les unes jud\u00e9o-chr\u00e9tiennes, d\u2019autres issues d\u2019horizons \u00e9loign\u00e9s, qui s\u2019imbriqueront de fa\u00e7ons tr\u00e8s diverses avec l\u2019h\u00e9ritage puritain.<\/p>\n

Cet atelier se propose d\u2019\u00e9tudier la dynamique des transferts culturels et religieux tels qu\u2019ils se manifestent dans la fiction et les r\u00e9cits autobiographiques des \u00ab minorit\u00e9s \u00bb aux \u00c9tats-Unis du XIXe au XXIe si\u00e8cle.<\/p>\n

Au travers de quelles th\u00e9matiques, de quelles strat\u00e9gies rh\u00e9toriques ou po\u00e9tiques le religieux marque-t-il de son empreinte la dialectique de l\u2019ici et de l\u2019ailleurs, de la rupture et de la continuit\u00e9, du particularisme et de l\u2019universalisme propres \u00e0 ces \u00e9critures ? De quelle fa\u00e7on est-il susceptible de se faire le vecteur de revendications identitaires ou politiques ? <\/p>\n

On se penchera par exemple sur la place faite \u00e0 la Bible dans l\u2019\u00e9criture noire am\u00e9ricaine ou juive am\u00e9ricaine, sur les formes que rev\u00eat le catholicisme impr\u00e9gn\u00e9 des croyances azt\u00e8ques dans l\u2019\u00e9criture hispanique, sur les tentatives de r\u00e9appropriation symbolique de la Terre Perdue qui se traduisent dans la litt\u00e9rature am\u00e9rindienne. De quelle fa\u00e7on le postmodernisme se joue-t-il par la suite des croyances et des rites, mais surtout des \u00e9tiquettes et des dogmes, les renvoyant dos-\u00e0-dos pour en faire surgir des alliages incongrus, des configurations in\u00e9dites et ironiques ? R\u00e9alisme magique, empreintes et emprunts, \u00e9clatement, distorsion ou diss\u00e9mination des grands r\u00e9cits ou mythes d\u2019origine, seront autant de moyens de faire coexister le s\u00e9culier et le religieux, le m\u00eame et l\u2019autre, l\u2019individuel et le collectif, le poids du pass\u00e9 et l\u2019adh\u00e9sion, f\u00fbt-elle r\u00e9ticente, \u00e0 la modernit\u00e9 am\u00e9ricaine.<\/p>\n

Les suggestions ci-dessus ne sont pas exclusives. Cet atelier est, bien entendu, ouvert \u00e0 des \u00e9tudes portant sur d\u2019autres \u00e9critures \u00ab minoritaires \u00bb s\u2019inscrivant dans cette probl\u00e9matique.<\/p>\n

Les propositions de communications sont \u00e0 envoyer, avant le 15 d\u00e9cembre 2012, \u00e0 Ada Savin<\/a> et \u00e0 Paule Levy<\/a><\/p>\n

Spiritual Heritage, the Imprint of the Religious in \u201cMinority\u201d Writings
\n<\/em> Paule Levy et Ada Savin (Universit\u00e9 de Versailles Saint-Quentin)<\/strong><\/p>\n

America has constructed itself from its beginning upon the religious. The Promised Land dreamt of by the Pilgrim Fathers is nonetheless inhabited by other imaginations, other forms of spirituality, other conceptions of the sacred, some of which are Judeo-Christian, while others come from distant horizons, which interpenetrate the Puritan heritage in diverse ways.<\/p>\n

This workshop intends to study the dynamic of cultural and religious transfers as they manifest themselves in fiction and autobiographical narratives of American \u201cminorities\u201d from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries.<\/p>\n

What are the themes and the rhetorical or poetic strategies that are at work in the dialectic of the \u201chere\u201d and the \u201celsewhere,\u201d and in the dialectic of rupture and continuity, of particularity and universality in these writings? In what ways does this dialectic prove to be the vector of identity and political claims?<\/p>\n

One might consider for example the place accorded the Bible in Black and Jewish American writing, the forms of Catholicism imbued with Aztec beliefs in Hispanic writing, the attempts to symbolically re-appropriate the Lost Earth as it manifests itself in American Indian writing. In what ways does postmodernism make use of beliefs and rituals, and above all of labels and dogmas, juxtaposing them in order to form strange alliances, surprising and ironic configurations? Magical realism, imprints, borrowings, breaks, distortions and dissemination of the Grand Narratives and myths of origin, are so many ways of making the secular and the religious, the same and the other, the individual and the collective, the past and the present, co-exist. <\/p>\n

The above suggestions are not exclusive. The workshop is open to studies dealing with other \u201cminority\u201d writings from this approach.<\/p>\n

Propositions should be sent, by December 15, 2012, to Ada Savin<\/a> et \u00e0 Paule Levy<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>15. \u00ab The Standard of Language as well as of Faith \u00bb : la Bible dans la po\u00e9sie am\u00e9ricaine du XIXe si\u00e8cle <\/em>
\n\u00c9ric Athenot (Universit\u00e9 de Tours)<\/strong><\/p>\n

L’essor de la po\u00e9sie am\u00e9ricaine au XIXe si\u00e8cle co\u00efncide avec de profonds changements dans la pratique religieuse. Le second Grand R\u00e9veil, qui s’\u00e9tend sur les quatre premi\u00e8res d\u00e9cennies, se r\u00e9pand \u00e0 travers le pays au moment o\u00f9 apparaissent de nouvelles traductions de la Bible, situation qui favorisa dans la jeune R\u00e9publique une nouvelle approche des Ecritures, de leur message spirituel et de leur langage. La critique textuelle import\u00e9e d’Allemagne par les tenants de la haute critique, \u00e9corne de fa\u00e7on consid\u00e9rable le statut canonique de la Bible du roi Jacques, ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne renforc\u00e9 par un int\u00e9r\u00eat grandissant port\u00e9 au discours scientifique v\u00e9hicul\u00e9 par les pseudo-sciences comme par les sciences v\u00e9ritables. Le ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne s’accro\u00eet avec la m\u00e9diatisation croissante des philosophies d’origine allemande, orientale puis autochtone, le tout rendu possible \u00e0 travers le pays par la prolif\u00e9ration d’ateliers d’imprimerie. Paradoxalement, ce contexte n’emp\u00eacha pas le Livre, dans quelque version que ce f\u00fbt, de conserver son statut d’exception parmi les textes imprim\u00e9s et lus en Am\u00e9rique au cours du XIXe si\u00e8cle. Le Dictionnaire am\u00e9ricain de la langue anglaise<\/em>, publi\u00e9 en 1844 par Noah Webster et dont Whitman et Dickinson parmi tant d’autres poss\u00e9daient un exemplaire, en offre cette d\u00e9finition saisissante : \u00ab The Book, by way of eminence; the sacred volume, in which are contained the revelations of God, the principles of Christian faith, and the rules of practice. It consists of two parts, called the Old and New Testaments. The Bible should be the standard of language as well as of faith \u00bb.<\/p>\n

L’ann\u00e9e suivante vit la d\u00e9finition par O’ Sullivan de la destin\u00e9e manifeste de la nation am\u00e9ricaine, tandis qu’une poign\u00e9e d’\u00e9crivains s’employaient \u00e0 appeler de leurs v\u0153ux, quand ils ne la pratiquaient pas eux-m\u00eames, une litt\u00e9rature de caract\u00e8re v\u00e9ritablement autochtone. La Bible, ses cadences jacob\u00e9ennes et son omnipr\u00e9sence dans les foyers du pays, fournit la m\u00e9taphore de choix servant pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment \u00e0 d\u00e9signer le niveau d’excellence artistique et spirituelle propre \u00e0 s’imprimer durablement dans le c\u0153ur et dans l’esprit des citoyens am\u00e9ricains. Nombreux sont les \u00e9crivains de l’\u00e9poque \u00e0 la citer comme \u00e9talon-or de la cr\u00e9ation litt\u00e9raire. Emerson, par exemple, dans l’essai conclusif de Representative Men<\/em> (1850), qui s’intitule \u00ab Goethe; or, the Writer \u00bb, \u00e9tablit un lien spirituel entre la Bible et une \u00e9criture pr\u00e9lapsaire qui puiserait directement dans l’exp\u00e9rience am\u00e9ricaine : \u00ab We too must write Bibles, to unite again the heavens and the earthly world. The secret of genius is to suffer no fiction to exist for us; to realize all that we know; in the high refinement of modern life, in arts, in sciences, in books, in men, to exact good faith, reality and a purpose; and first, last, midst and without end, to honor every truth by use \u00bb. Whitman, non content de publier en 1855 \u00ab le grand psaume<\/em> de la r\u00e9publique \u00bb, devait d\u00e8s l’ann\u00e9e suivante, projeter d’\u00e9crire rien que moins que \u00ab la nouvelle Bible am\u00e9ricaine \u00bb, allant jusqu’\u00e0 organiser dans cet esprit les \u00e9ditions successives de Leaves of Grass<\/em>. Dickinson, quant \u00e0 elle, portait sur cette attitude un regard empreint d’ironie, et n’h\u00e9sitait aucunement, dans un po\u00e8me tardif, \u00e0 d\u00e9finir la Bible comme \u00ab volume antique \/ Ecrit pas des hommes fan\u00e9s \u00bb pour r\u00eaver au \u00ab sermon d’Orph\u00e9e \u00bb qui \u00ab captivait \/ [et] ne condamnait pas\u2013 \u00bb. <\/p>\n

Le pr\u00e9sent atelier se propose d’\u00e9tudier l’utilisation faite de la Bible au fil du XIXe si\u00e8cle par les po\u00e8tes am\u00e9ricains (dans leurs essais, leurs po\u00e8mes, leurs conf\u00e9rences, etc.) comme r\u00e9servoir \u00e0 tropes mais \u00e9galement comme texte majeur \u00e0 travers lequel exprimer leurs ambitions po\u00e9tiques et\/ou celles qu’ils projetaient sur leur pays. Il pourrait \u00eatre int\u00e9ressant, par exemple, de voir comment la Bible fournit un signifiant de choix \u00e0 des cr\u00e9ateurs engag\u00e9s dans une r\u00e9flexion sur leur entreprise po\u00e9tique. On pourrait \u00e9galement essayer d’envisager le r\u00f4le majeur jou\u00e9 par la Bible dans les strat\u00e9gies d\u00e9ploy\u00e9es par les po\u00e8tes du XIXe si\u00e8cle pour surmonter la perception d’une influence europ\u00e9enne \u00e9crasante dans leurs tentatives, pour paraphraser un autre po\u00e8me de Dickinson, de prendre leur pouvoir en main. Une autre possibilit\u00e9 pourrait \u00eatre l’\u00e9tude du langage biblique dans les po\u00e8mes proph\u00e9tiques \u00e0 vis\u00e9es politiques\/nationales\/d\u00e9mocratiques. On pourrait \u00e9galement, au terme d’une liste non exhaustive, se pencher sur le r\u00f4le que joue la Bible dans les po\u00e8mes du XIXe si\u00e8cle pour contrer, amoindrir ou subvertir la rh\u00e9torique puritaine dans le but, comme le disait Whitman, de \u00ab d\u00e9corrompre \u00bb le pays.<\/p>\n

Les propositions de 200 mots sont \u00e0 envoyer \u00e0 : Eric Athenot<\/a> avant le 15 d\u00e9cembre 2012.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Standard of Language as well as of Faith\u201d: The Bible in Nineteenth-Century American Poetry<\/em>
\n\u00c9ric Athenot (Universit\u00e9 de Tours)<\/strong><\/p>\n

The development of American poetry in the nineteenth century coincided with sweeping changes in the practice of religion. The Second Great Awakening, spanning the first four decades of the century, combined with the publication of new translations of the Bible, brought about in the young republic a novel approach to the Scriptures, their spiritual message, and their language. Textual criticism imported from Germany by practitioners of Higher Criticism gradually made the King James lose much though not all of its canonical status just as an interest in sciences\u2014pseudo and real\u2014, and philosophy\u2014German, Eastern, then gradually home-grown\u2014spread among the population through proliferating printing workshops. The Good Book, in those circumstances and in whatever version it was read, managed nonetheless to confirm its prominence as prime reading material. Noah Webster\u2019s 1844 American Dictionary of the American Language<\/em>\u2014owned, among countless others, by both Dickinson and Whitman\u2014defined it as \u201cThe Book, by way of eminence; the sacred volume, in which are contained the revelations of God, the principles of Christian faith, and the rules of practice. It consists of two parts, called the Old and New Testaments. The Bible should be the standard of language as well as of faith.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just one year later, as O\u2019Sullivan outlined the country\u2019s Manifest Destiny, many writers were busy calling for\u2014and some of them intent on manufacturing\u2014a home-bred American literature. The Bible, its Jacobean lilt, and its omnipresence in American households, became the systematic metaphor for exactly the type of literary excellence most likely to leave an indelible imprint on the minds and hearts of US citizens. Writers appealed to the Bible as the gold standard in literary creation. Emerson, for example, concluded the last essay of his Representative Men<\/em>\u2014\u201cGoethe; or, the Writer\u201d\u2014, by driving home the metaphorical link between the Good Book and the necessary act of writing a book based on a first-hand experience of American life: \u201cWe too must write Bibles, to unite again the heavens and the earthly world. The secret of genius is to suffer no fiction to exist for us; to realize all that we know; in the high refinement of modern life, in arts, in sciences, in books, in men, to exact good faith, reality and a purpose; and first, last, midst and without end, to honor every truth by use.\u201d Whitman, not content to have published \u201cthe great psalm<\/em> of the Republic\u201d, gradually set his sights on writing no less than \u201cthe new American Bible,\u201d and started to organize his later editions of Leaves of Grass <\/em>accordingly. Dickinson, for her part, was more ironic about such an attitude, declaring the Bible \u201can antique volume \/ Written by faded Men,\u201d and expressing nostalgia for \u201cOrpheu\u2019s [sic] sermon\u201d because it \u201ccaptivated \/ it did not condemn\u2014\u201c<\/p>\n

It might be of interest, therefore, to study the way American poets of the nineteenth century used the Bible in their writings\u2014essays, poems, letters, lectures, etc.\u2014not so much as a provider of tropes but as the major text through which they could express their own poetic ambitions and\/or those they deemed right for their country. One may, among many other possibilities not mentioned here, approach the Bible as a self-referential signifier figuring these poets\u2019 creations. The Bible may also be studied as the prime text through which some of these poets tried to overcome what they perceived as a crippling European influence on their endeavors\u2014to echo Dickinson\u2014to take their power in their hand. One approach could also investigate the role played by biblical language in poetic political\/national\/democratic prophecizing. Another way of looking at the whole issue might finally be to examine the Bible in nineteenth-century poems as acting as a defense against Puritan rhetorics, in their efforts, to echo Whitman, to \u201cdiscorrupt\u201d the US.<\/p>\n

Abstracts of 200 words should be sent to Eric Athenot<\/a> by December 15, 2012.<\/p>\n

<\/a> 16. La religion et son autre de Dickinson \u00e0 Ginsberg<\/em>
\nAm\u00e9lie Ducroux et Axel Nesme (Universit\u00e9 Lyon 2)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Remettre en question la pertinence de l\u2019association modernit\u00e9\/s\u00e9cularisation en tant que pr\u00e9suppos\u00e9 critique implique de rechercher ce qui \u00e9chappe au processus de s\u00e9cularisation dans l\u2019\u00e9criture po\u00e9tique. Les po\u00e8tes am\u00e9ricains de Dickinson \u00e0 Ginsberg reconnaissent et acceptent en grande part la mort de Dieu et le d\u00e9senchantement qui en d\u00e9coule. Mais leur po\u00e9sie, en tant que telle, pourrait bien \u00eatre le lieu m\u00eame du questionnement m\u00e9taphysique. <\/p>\n

Il convient alors de se demander ce qui r\u00e9siste \u00e0 la s\u00e9cularisation dans la po\u00e9sie am\u00e9ricaine moderne et ce qui fait du genre po\u00e9tique un genre particuli\u00e8rement propice \u00e0 l\u2019accueil d\u2019une telle r\u00e9sistance ou insistance.<\/p>\n

Si, depuis la proclamation nietzsch\u00e9enne de la mort de Dieu, la question de la religion a peu \u00e0 peu \u00e9t\u00e9 rel\u00e9gu\u00e9e en marge des grandes pr\u00e9occupations philosophiques, l\u2019intuition d\u2019une forme de transcendance, \u00ab La Dent \/ Qui ronge l\u2019\u00e2me \u00bb (Dickinson 373) ne cesse d\u2019enjoindre aux po\u00e8tes am\u00e9ricains d\u2019explorer ces zones du questionnement m\u00e9taphysique que la philosophie et le discours rationnel ont d\u00e9sormais d\u00e9sert\u00e9es. En effet, dans la mesure o\u00f9 l\u2019\u00e9criture implique toujours le postulat d\u2019un grand Autre et dans la mesure o\u00f9 la po\u00e9sie est une mise en sc\u00e8ne de l\u2019\u00e9criture elle-m\u00eame, genre po\u00e9tique et questionnement th\u00e9ologique pourraient bien se r\u00e9v\u00e9ler \u00e9troitement li\u00e9s, voire indissociables, ind\u00e9pendamment de l\u2019acceptation ou du rejet de l\u2019existence de Dieu comme point de d\u00e9part de ce questionnement. <\/p>\n

De l\u2019adoption, par Poe, d\u2019un mode visionnaire d\u00e9lest\u00e9 de sa r\u00e9f\u00e9rence au divin, \u00e0 l\u2019affirmation whitmanienne selon laquelle \u00ab mourir est chose diff\u00e9rente de ce que supposait quiconque, et plus heureuse \u00bb et \u00e0 celle de Lowell, \u00ab le Seigneur survit \u00e0 l\u2019arc-en-ciel de Sa volont\u00e9 \u00bb, la po\u00e9sie am\u00e9ricaine s\u2019est peu \u00e0 peu \u00e9loign\u00e9e de l\u2019expression d\u2019une vision, d\u2019une appr\u00e9hension du divin impliquant une projection, un mouvement vers l\u2019ext\u00e9rieur, pour se rapprocher d\u2019une dynamique de r\u00e9vision dans laquelle le divin, ou le spirituel, ou leur autre, ne sont plus \u00ab l\u00e0-bas \u00bb mais \u00ab ici m\u00eame \u00bb, c\u2019est-\u00e0-dire dans l\u2019\u00e9criture. Mais un tel d\u00e9placement ne les rend pas pour autant plus faciles \u00e0 circonscrire. <\/p>\n

L\u2019autonomie de l\u2019\u0153uvre d\u2019art est aussi l\u2019autonomie proclam\u00e9e du po\u00e8te qui n\u2019attend plus la r\u00e9v\u00e9lation divine, un messie ou un \u00ab Christ \u00bb qui \u00ab expliquera chaque angoisse une \u00e0 une\/ Dans la belle \u00e9cole du ciel \u00bb (Dickinson 215). <\/p>\n

C\u2019est \u00e0 elle-m\u00eame que l\u2019\u00e9criture doit adresser question ou r\u00e9ponse dans l\u2019acte m\u00eame qui la d\u00e9signe comme fondement de ce dont elle ne saurait rendre compte. La religion ne lie plus d\u00e9sormais le sujet \u00e0 l\u2019autre divin, mais au langage en tant qu\u2019autre symbolique.
\nNombreux sont les po\u00e8tes qui expriment foi et fid\u00e9lit\u00e9 envers l\u2019\u00e9criture telle que celle-ci devrait advenir, une \u00e9criture ouverte \u00e0 l\u2019impr\u00e9visible et s\u2019effor\u00e7ant de soustraire la grammaire \u00e0 tout dogmatisme. Se consacrer tout entier \u00e0 la langue et \u00e0 l\u2019\u00e9criture peut ainsi passer pour une forme d\u2019amour absolu et d\u00e9sint\u00e9ress\u00e9. \u00ab \u00c9crire comme on doit \u00e9crire c\u2019est servir Dieu en \u00e9crivain car on ne gagne rien \u00bb, \u00e9crit Gertrude Stein (Lectures in America, Writings 1932-1946<\/em>). Le signifiant lui-m\u00eame a-t-il d\u00e9tr\u00f4n\u00e9 Dieu comme objet de v\u00e9n\u00e9ration? Ses \u00ab voies \u00bbne sont-elles d\u2019ailleurs pas tout aussi \u00ab imp\u00e9n\u00e9trables \u00bb ? D\u00e8s lors, le lieu du myst\u00e8re n\u2019est plus ce que la langue est suppos\u00e9e signifier, mais le m\u00e9dium signifiant. La croyance en la langue en tant qu\u2019autre inassignable et tout-puissant a-t-elle engendr\u00e9 une nouvelle forme de mysticisme \u00e0 laquelle nombre de po\u00e8tes modernes participent, aux \u00c9tats-Unis ?<\/p>\n

Loin de nier l\u2019influence des textes sacr\u00e9s, les po\u00e8tes modernes ont souvent recours \u00e0 l\u2019anaphore et \u00e0 la r\u00e9p\u00e9tition, dans le but de cr\u00e9er de nouvelles formes d\u2019incantations qu\u2019\u00e0 eux-m\u00eames ils s\u2019adressent. On songe par exemple \u00e0 la d\u00e9claration de saintet\u00e9 universelle d\u2019Allen Ginsberg dans Footnote to Howl<\/em>, ou \u00e0 Hymmnn<\/em>, o\u00f9 l\u2019acte performatif de la b\u00e9n\u00e9diction donne au monde son relief, en marque chaque objet, chaque habitant, fussent-ils les plus repoussants (\u00ab Saintes les caf\u00e9t\u00e9rias qu\u2019emplissent les millions! \u00bb) ou les plus terrifiants (\u00ab B\u00e9nie soit la mort! \u00bb). La notion de s\u00e9cularisation est-elle encore pertinente ici, ou conviendrait-il de parler d\u2019un d\u00e9placement <\/em>du pouvoir spirituel ? Compte tenu de l\u2019influence durable qu\u2019exerce le paradigme religieux et\/ou mystique sur des \u0153uvres aussi diverses que celles de Robert Duncan, James Merrill, ou Kenneth Rexroth, n\u2019est-il pas l\u00e9gitime de voir dans la volont\u00e9 de produire des langages de l\u2019indicible une des tendances majeures des po\u00e9tiques du pr\u00e9c\u00e9dent demi-si\u00e8cle ?<\/p>\n

Merci d\u2019adresser vos propositions \u00e0 Am\u00e9lie Ducroux <\/a> et Axel Nesme<\/a> avant le 15 d\u00e9cembre 2012.<\/p>\n

Religion and its Other from Dickinson to Ginsberg
\nAm\u00e9lie Ducroux and Axel Nesme (Universit\u00e9 Lyon 2)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Questioning the association of modernity with secularization as a secure foothold for criticism implies searching for what escapes the process of secularization in poetic writing. American poets from Dickinson to Ginsberg largely acknowledge and accept the death of God and the disenchantment this entails. But their poetry, qua <\/em>poetry, may remain the very place for metaphysical questioning.<\/p>\n

We need to ask ourselves what resists secularization in modern American poetry, and why of all literary genres poetry is particularly apt to welcome such resistance or insistence.
\nWhile since Nietzsche\u2019s proclamation of the death of God the place of religious questioning within philosophical investigation has become increasingly marginal, the intimation of transcendence, \u201cthe Tooth \/ That nibbles at the soul -\u201d (Dickinson, 501) still motivates American poets to explore those areas of metaphysical inquiry now deserted by philosophy and rational discourse. Indeed, to the extent that writing always implies positing an absolute Other and that poetry is a dramatization of writing itself, it may be inseparable from theological questioning, whether or not the existence of God is accepted as a premise.<\/p>\n

From Poe\u2019s adoption of a visionary mode stripped of its reference to the divine to Whitman\u2019s assertion that \u201cto die is different from what anyone supposed, and luckier\u201d and Lowell\u2019s own \u201cThe Lord survives the rainbow of His will,\u201d American poetry has moved from the expression of a vision, an apprehension of the divine implying a projection, an outward movement, to a dynamics of revision, in which the divine, or the spiritual, or their others, are no longer \u201cout there\u201d but \u201cin there,\u201d that is, in writing itself. Yet such displacement inside writing does not make it any more easily circumscribable.<\/p>\n

The autonomy of the work of art is also the proclaimed autonomy of the poet who is no longer waiting for divine revelation, for a saviour or \u201cChrist\u201d who \u201cwill explain each separate anguish\/ In the fair schoolroom of the sky\u201d (Dickinson, 193). Writing has to turn to itself for an answer, or for a question, pointing to itself as the rationale for what it cannot account for. Religion no longer binds the subject to a divine other, but to language as the symbolic other. <\/p>\n

Many poets express their faith in and faithfulness to writing as it should be, that is to say, writing which accepts the unpredictable and tries to salvage grammar from all forms of dogmatism. Dedication to language and writing can thus appear as a form of disinterested, absolute love: \u201cIf you write as you are to be writing then you are serving as a writer god because you are not earning anything,\u201d Gertrude Stein writes (Lectures in America, Writings 1932-1946<\/em>). Has the signifier itself superseded god as an object of worship? For it too \u201cworks in mysterious ways.\u201d Mystery no longer lies in what language is supposedly meant to express, but in the medium itself. The belief in language as an untraceable, all-powerful other may have spawned a new form of mysticism in which many modern American poets may be said to partake. <\/p>\n

Far from denying the influence of sacred texts, modern poets often resort to anaphora, repetitions, to create new forms of self-addressed incantations. We may think, for instance, of Allen Ginsberg\u2019s declaration of universal holiness in Footnote to Howl<\/em> or Hymmnn<\/em>, in which blessing, as a speech act, may be a way to make the world salient, to mark all of its objects and inhabitants, even the most repellent (\u201cHoly the cafeterias filled with the millions!\u201d) or frightening (\u201cBlessed be Death!\u201d). Is the notion of secularization still relevant here, or should we rather talk of a displacement<\/em> of spiritual power? Indeed, given the lasting influence of the religious and\/or mystical paradigm on the works of such diverse poets as Robert Duncan, James Merrill, and Kenneth Rexroth, to name only a few, is it fair to view the effort to develop languages of the unsayable as one of the major trends in post-world war II poetics?<\/p>\n

Please send proposals to Am\u00e9lie Ducroux <\/a> and Axel Nesme<\/a> by December 15, 2012.<\/p>\n

<\/a>17. La transcendance sans Dieu : po\u00e9sie et \u00e9lan mystique<\/em>
\nH\u00e9l\u00e8ne Aji (Universit\u00e9 Paris Ouest Nanterre) et Cl\u00e9ment Oudart (Universit\u00e9 Toulouse 2 \u2013 Le Mirail)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cet atelier vise \u00e0 lire la po\u00e9sie am\u00e9ricaine au prisme de sa \u00ab lutte terrible avec ce vieux et m\u00e9chant plumage, terrass\u00e9, heureusement, Dieu \u00bb, selon les mots de St\u00e9phane Mallarm\u00e9 dans une lettre de 1867.<\/p>\n

Discr\u00e8te \u00e0 ses d\u00e9buts, la volont\u00e9 de mettre en question la censure morale impos\u00e9e au nom de Dieu devient une revendication affich\u00e9e avec les avant-gardes du XXe si\u00e8cle. Dans le sillage des r\u00e9volutions nietzsch\u00e9enne, freudienne, marxiste, au prix de contradictions, de prises de positions dogmatiques, peinant \u00e0 articuler spiritualit\u00e9 et \u00e9criture, la po\u00e9sie se cherche une transcendance sans Dieu.<\/p>\n

N\u2019est-ce pas principalement sur ce point que s\u2019opposent Ezra Pound et T.S. Eliot, le mysticisme panth\u00e9iste du premier se d\u00e9marquant radicalement de l\u2019anglo-catholicisme du second ? A la m\u00eame p\u00e9riode, William Carlos Williams, puis les Objectivistes, semblent s\u2019\u00e9vertuer \u00e0 d\u00e9pouiller la po\u00e9sie am\u00e9ricaine de l\u2019h\u00e9ritage puritain, qu\u2019ils laissent volontiers \u00e0 la po\u00e9sie dite confessionnelle. N\u2019est-ce pas aussi le lieu d\u2019une tension entre Robert Duncan et Charles Olson dans les ann\u00e9es cinquante (\u00ab Against Wisdom as Such \u00bb) ? Michael Palmer d\u00e9crira plus tard le schisme de la po\u00e9sie am\u00e9ricaine entre le mysticisme d\u2019une lign\u00e9e issue de Duncan et la froideur analytique de la g\u00e9n\u00e9ration des Language Poets comme la \u00ab r\u00e9pression de l\u2019Esprit, orn\u00e9 de cette lettre majuscule embarrassante et d\u00e9rangeante\u00bb. Ces conflits \u00e9manant de la place \u00e0 donner au divin dans la po\u00e9tique engendrent une v\u00e9ritable politique de la litt\u00e9rature. <\/p>\n

Nous souhaitons susciter des communications qui s\u2019interrogeront sur la constance de l\u2019invective mallarm\u00e9enne contre Dieu, mais aussi sur la pertinence persistante des r\u00e9flexions de Walter Benjamin sur la langue adamique et la magie du verbe. On pourrait parler de la permanence d\u2019une po\u00e9tique du divin<\/em> dans la po\u00e9sie am\u00e9ricaine jusqu\u2019\u00e0 nos jours, en s\u2019attachant par exemple \u00e0 reprendre la distinction meschonnicienne entre le sacr\u00e9, le religieux et le divin (Un Coup de Bible dans la philosophie<\/em>, 2004). Loin de la ritualisation de la vie sociale ou de la sacralisation du langage, \u00ab c\u2019est le divin, comme puissance cr\u00e9atrice de vie s\u00e9par\u00e9e du sacr\u00e9, qui ouvre l\u2019infini de l\u2019histoire, infiniment \u00bb, et d\u2019un m\u00eame geste, l\u2019infini de la po\u00e9sie.<\/p>\n

Les propositions de 300 mots sont \u00e0 envoyer \u00e0 H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Aji<\/a> (Universit\u00e9 Paris Ouest Nanterre) et \u00e0 Cl\u00e9ment Oudart <\/a> (Universit\u00e9 Toulouse 2\u2013Le Mirail) avant le 15 d\u00e9cembre 2012.<\/p>\n

Transcendence without God: Poetry and Mystical Aspiration
\nH\u00e9l\u00e8ne Aji (Universit\u00e9 Paris Ouest Nanterre) et Cl\u00e9ment Oudart (Universit\u00e9 Toulouse 2 \u2013 Le Mirail)<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a letter from 1867, St\u00e9phane Mallarm\u00e9 writes that he has \u201cwaged a terrible fight, fortunately prevailing over the old, evil scarecrow\u2014God.\u201d This workshop aims at examining to what extent this tremendous battle has also been American poetry\u2019s fight.<\/p>\n

However low-key in its beginnings, the plan to question the censorship enforced in the name of God becomes an open strategy of the twentieth-century avant-gardes. In the wake of the Nietzschean, Freudian, and Marxist revolutions, despite the crippling contradictions and costly dogmatic statements arising from the difficulties of reconciling spirituality and writing, poetry keeps looking for transcendence without God.<\/p>\n

Transcendence with or without God sparked the conflict between Ezra Pound\u2019s pantheistic mysticism and T.S. Eliot\u2019s Anglo-Catholicism. Meanwhile, William Carlos Williams, and the Objectivists after him, desperately tried to rid American poetry of its Puritan ancestry, relinquishing it willingly to the so-called Confessional poets. Isn\u2019t this tension reenacted in the mid-1950s through the polemical exchange between Robert Duncan and Charles Olson (\u201cAgainst Wisdom as Such\u201d)? Later Michael Palmer describes the rift in American poetry as following the dividing line between the mysticism of Duncan and his followers and the analytical coldness of the Language Poets, accusing the latter of \u201crepressing of the dimension of Spirit, with that troublesome, rebarbative capital letter.\u201d It turns out that debates over poetics and the divine have generated a reconfiguration of the politics of literature.<\/p>\n

We would like to encourage papers that interrogate the persistence of the Mallarmean rejection of God, as well as the enduring relevance of Walter Benjamin\u2019s reflections on Adamic language and the power of the word. What stands out is the lastingness of a poetics of the divine in American poetry until today, especially when tackled through Henri Meschonnic\u2019s distinction between the sacred, the religious and the divine (Un Coup de Bible dans la philosophie<\/em>, 2004). Far beyond ritualized social living or sacralized language, \u201cthe divine is a life-giving force, separate from the sacred, which opens infinitely onto the infinite of history,\u201d and onto the infinite of poetry.<\/p>\n

Three-hundred-word proposals should be sent to H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Aji<\/a> (Universit\u00e9 Paris Ouest Nanterre) and Cl\u00e9ment Oudart <\/a> (Toulouse le Mirail) by December 15, 2012.<\/p>\n

<\/a>18. Fictions du religieux : le travail du sentiment dans la litt\u00e9rature am\u00e9ricaine<\/em>
\nBruno Monfort (Universit\u00e9 Lille 3) et C\u00e9cile Roudeau (Universit\u00e9 Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cet atelier souhaite explorer comment le sentiment religieux, tel qu\u2019il est convoqu\u00e9 dans les textes \u00ab am\u00e9ricains \u00bb depuis le XVIIe si\u00e8cle, a particip\u00e9 \u00e0 la fabrique de la communaut\u00e9 en faisant appel aux sens pour faire advenir le corps politique. Comme la critique r\u00e9cente a pu le montrer, le \u00ab pouvoir de la sympathie \u00bb informait le \u00ab mod\u00e8le \u00bb pr\u00f4n\u00e9 par John Winthrop et ses compagnons de route, venus en Am\u00e9rique fonder leur colonie sur l\u2019injonction biblique du \u00ab sentir avec \u00bb (Abram Van Engen, \u00ab Puritanism and the Power of Sympathy \u00bb, Early American Literature<\/em>, vol. 45, n\u00b0 3 [2010], p. 533-564). Tout \u00e0 la fois doctrine tir\u00e9e de la Bible (H\u00e9breux 13 : 3 ; Pierre 3 : 8), devoir et signe d\u2019\u00e9lection, la sympathie, et les affects qui s\u2019y rattachent \u2013 \u00ab fellowelike-feeling<\/em> \u00bb, selon la d\u00e9finition qu\u2019en donne le Puritain Robert Cadrey dans l\u2019un des premiers dictionnaires en langue anglaise (1604) \u2013 est donc aussi outil politique ; pulsion b\u00e9n\u00e9fique de l\u2019\u00e2me, passion autoris\u00e9e chez l\u2019homme (ou la femme) vertueux, elle donne \u00e0 la \u00ab cit\u00e9 sur la colline \u00bb de devenir communaut\u00e9 autant que congr\u00e9gation, et permet \u00e0 la vieille et nouvelle Angleterre, malgr\u00e9 les fractures de la guerre civile, de s\u2019imaginer un seul corps.<\/p>\n

Le discours religieux, chr\u00e9tien plus particuli\u00e8rement, pourra donc \u00eatre repens\u00e9 comme une \u00ab esth\u00e9tique politique \u00bb au sens o\u00f9 il donne forme<\/em> \u00e0 une communaut\u00e9 index\u00e9e sur le sentir<\/em> plus encore que sur l\u2019abstraction que serait l\u2019\u00c9tat, ou la nation. On peut suivre cette tension \u2013 par del\u00e0 la R\u00e9volution et la religion civique qu\u2019elle tente d\u2019\u00e9tablir en fondant le nouveau contrat social sur une r\u00e9ponse affective \u00e0 la s\u00e9paration d\u2019avec la m\u00e9tropole (Peter Coviello, \u00ab Agonizing Affection: Affect and Nation in Early America \u00bb, Early American Literature<\/em>, vol. 37, n\u00b03 [2002], p. 439-68) \u2013 jusqu\u2019au sentimentalisme du milieu du XIXe si\u00e8cle, venant r\u00e9pondre, lui, par une religiosit\u00e9 exacerb\u00e9e \u00e0 une autre menace de partition, une autre guerre civile, et au-del\u00e0 encore, \u00e0 chaque fois que la communaut\u00e9 fait face au spectre de la d\u00e9liaison. Le sentiment religieux est de fait raviv\u00e9 \u00e0 chaque crise afin de panser des plaies que les pr\u00e9ceptes m\u00eame de la Chr\u00e9tient\u00e9 ont pourtant contribu\u00e9 \u00e0 ouvrir. Car la \u00ab communaut\u00e9 affective \u00bb, b\u00e2tie par del\u00e0 les fractures sur les principes de charit\u00e9, d\u2019amour, de compassion chr\u00e9tienne, ne laisse pas paradoxalement d\u2019exclure ceux-l\u00e0 m\u00eames que l\u2019on continue d\u2019accuser d\u2019une religiosit\u00e9 outranci\u00e8re : les Africains Am\u00e9ricains, les femmes. La rh\u00e9torique du lien sacr\u00e9 entre les membres d\u2019une m\u00eame nation, l\u2019affiliation fond\u00e9e sur le \u00ab comme \u00bb au m\u00e9pris de la diff\u00e9rence, se brise de fait contre la ligne de la couleur ou du genre, laissant affleurer le paradoxe d\u2019une communalit\u00e9 de sentiment qui en vient \u00e0 exclure autant qu\u2019elle re-lie (religare<\/em>) ; celui d\u2019une religion devenue nationale dont on est contraint d\u2019utiliser la langue et les codes pour en montrer les limites, voire en r\u00e9former \u00e0 nouveau les principes. <\/p>\n

La religion sera donc ici moins prise comme ensemble de doctrines, ou structure institutionnelle, que comme le lieu, commun, pass\u00e9-pr\u00e9sent \u00ab utile \u00bb (usable<\/em>) que la litt\u00e9rature r\u00e9investit, pour mieux le d\u00e9faire parfois. La forme du religieux, ou plut\u00f4t le religieux comme forme, s\u2019offre de fait \u00e0 toutes les manipulations litt\u00e9raires, \u00e0 bien des relectures (relegere <\/em>: l\u2019autre \u00e9tymologie possible de religion). On pense \u00e0 la reprise du genre de la confession spirituelle par des esclaves lib\u00e9r\u00e9s, qui, en mettant en oeuvre un nouveau pacte narratif, une nouvelle alliance entre lecteurs et voix auctoriale, prend acte d\u2019une sensibilit\u00e9 commune entre races, et produit, dans et par l\u2019\u00e9criture, un nouage affectif intempestif, et surtout impossible, sur la sc\u00e8ne publique ; on pense aussi \u00e0 la torsion du principe de b\u00e9n\u00e9volence chr\u00e9tienne transform\u00e9e en force subversive et anti-patriarcale chez Susanna Rowson ou Hannah Webster Foster ; aux versions ironis\u00e9es, illusoires ou satiriques, d\u2019une geste puritaine devenue h\u00e9ritage paradoxal chez un Hawthorne ou un Crane ; aux liaisons f\u00e2cheuses \u2013 ou peut-\u00eatre un peu trop opportunes \u2013 entre les vivants et les morts, qui donnent aux laiss\u00e9s-pour-compte de la d\u00e9mocratie am\u00e9ricaine la citoyennet\u00e9 utopique et le bonheur mat\u00e9riel que certaine politique s\u2019obstine \u00e0 leur refuser (Elizabeth Stuart Phelps)\u2026 Cet atelier tentera donc d\u2019explorer comment la fiction am\u00e9ricaine, d\u2019Irving \u00e0 Stowe, de Cooper \u00e0 Twain, comme de Melville \u00e0 James, convoque le sentiment religieux sur la sc\u00e8ne d\u2019\u00e9criture, nouant et d\u00e9nouant la communaut\u00e9 affective de la nation, et jouissant \u00e0 l\u2019occasion de ses fissures.<\/p>\n

Les propositions sont \u00e0 envoyer \u00e0 Bruno Monfort<\/a> et C\u00e9cile Roudeau<\/a>, avant le 15 d\u00e9cembre 2012.<\/p>\n

Religious Fictions: The Political Work of Sentiment in American Literature
\nBruno Monfort (Universit\u00e9 Lille 3) and C\u00e9cile Roudeau (Universit\u00e9 Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3)<\/strong><\/p>\n

What if American literature were a religious fiction<\/em>? This panel will explore to what extent religious affect, from the seventeenth century onward, has fashioned the body politic and the emerging communal voice, both performed and vehicled by literature. Recent scholarly work has shown how the \u201cpower of sympathy\u201d shaped the Puritan \u201cmodel\u201d of Winthrop and his peers, and turned the congregation into an affective body the better to allow it to effect political changes (Van Engen). What was defined as \u201cfellowelike feeling\u201d (in Cadrey\u2019s 1604 dictionary) was not just a Biblical command for the godly community, nor just a sign of election (Heb. 13. 3; Peter 3. 8); it was also a political tool and a binding compact capable of maintaining the integrity of the body politic and revitalizing transatlantic kinship in times of trouble.<\/p>\n

Religious discourse, then, may be redefined as a political aesthetic<\/em>, giving form<\/em> to a community of affects<\/em>, an alternative to building the common through abstractions such as the State, or the nation. This tension can be traced throughout American literature: from the Revolutionary era and the Founders\u2019 attempt to establish a civic religion based on an affective response to the separation from England, to mid-nineteenth century sentimentalism, which found in the excess of religiousness yet another response to another civil war, that is, each time the community had to face the grim prospects of disunion. The political work of religious sentiment however was not only about healing wounds and making up for exclusions. The \u201caffective community,\u201d indexed as it was on the Christian precepts of love, charity and compassion, consistently favored an affiliation based on normative resemblance. The sacred bonds of the nation therefore proved conspicuously loose when it came to fitting the supposedly extravagant religiosity of women or African Americans in the communal web. To perform its office (religere<\/em>: to bond), religious discourse had to be considered as a form <\/em>to be reinvented, a fiction to be written anew. <\/p>\n

More than a set of doctrines or an institution, religion here will be understood as a usable fiction open to the literary\/political work of displacement, manipulation, and revision (relegere<\/em>: to re-read). Examples abound: how the genre of the spiritual confession was revisited by former slaves, who devised a new compact between readers and the authorial voice, allowing for an untimely affective communality across the racial divide; how Christian benevolence was reworked as a subversive, anti-patriarchal weapon in the novels of Susanna Rowson or Hannah Webster Foster; how the Puritan epic, the nation\u2019s paradoxical heritage, was warped and ironically customized by Hawthorne, Crane and others; how the throbs of spiritualist writings allowed for awkward alliances and untimely leveling transactions (Elizabeth Stuart Phelps), etc. This workshop will investigate how in American fiction the literary reclaims the religious as form, tying and untying communal affections better to reshuffle the authorized bonds of the political common.<\/p>\n

Please send proposals to Bruno Monfort<\/a> and C\u00e9cile Roudeau<\/a> by December 15, 2012.<\/p>\n

<\/a>19. L\u2019exp\u00e9rience de la crise spirituelle et la question des croyances (1897-1907)<\/em>
Michel Imbert (Universit\u00e9 Paris Diderot-Paris 7)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dans The Will to Believe<\/em>, paru en 1897, William James s\u2019interroge sur le parti pris de croire, en r\u00e9ponse aux \u0153uvres de Josiah Royce et \u00e0 l\u2019essai de Charles S Peirce, \u00ab The Fixation of Belief \u00bb, paru vingt ans plus t\u00f4t. La question des croyances et de leur v\u00e9rification n\u2019y est plus envisag\u00e9e d\u2019un point de vue purement \u00e9pist\u00e9mologique mais, avant tout, comme une exp\u00e9rience<\/em> empirique d\u2019ordre psychologique ; non pas tant la qu\u00eate t\u00e2tonnante d\u2019une transcendance, mais surtout, une fa\u00e7on d\u2019exp\u00e9rimenter sa puissance d\u2019agir ici-bas. Les convictions religieuses donnent des raisons de croire en l\u2019absence de preuve absolue. La foi a raison du doute qui lui est pourtant consubstantiel et les croyances se v\u00e9rifient d\u2019elles-m\u00eames, qu\u2019elles soient vraies ou fausses, du seul fait qu\u2019elles se traduisent en acte. Peu importe qu\u2019elles soient sans fondement \u00e0 l\u2019origine, car c\u2019est \u00e0 l\u2019aune de leur efficacit\u00e9 pratique, de leurs effets a posteriori et non d\u2019une v\u00e9rit\u00e9 a priori d\u00e9montrable qu\u2019il faut en mesurer la validit\u00e9. La force de conviction, f\u00fbt-elle un pur effet psychologique, n\u2019est pas sans effet : elle fait foi et fait agir ; telle est son extraordinaire efficacit\u00e9. William James poursuit cette r\u00e9flexion sur la question des croyances dans Varieties of Religious Experience <\/em>(1902). L\u2019\u00e9preuve de la crise spirituelle travers\u00e9e par Bunyan, George Fox ou Swendenborg y est observ\u00e9e de fa\u00e7on clinique comme le sympt\u00f4me pathologique d\u2019une m\u00e9lancolie morbide : manifestement, leur foi s\u2019enlevait sur un arri\u00e8re fond de folie mais, \u00e0 l\u2019\u00e9vidence, la r\u00e9v\u00e9lation religieuse avait eu pour eux la vertu salutaire de redonner un sens \u00e0 leur d\u00e9chirement int\u00e9rieur. Le chapitre VIII, \u00ab The Divided Mind \u00bb, qui \u00e9voque la conversion de ces grands mystiques comme un rite de passage a inspir\u00e9 Du Bois, son \u00e9tudiant \u00e0 Harvard, \u00e0 plus d\u2019un titre dans The Souls of Black Folk<\/em> paru l\u2019ann\u00e9e suivante (1903) : Du Bois y d\u00e9crit la conscience divis\u00e9e de l\u2019homme noir (\u00ab double-consciousness \u00bb) comme une sorte de cas-limite de d\u00e9doublement de personnalit\u00e9. Mais l\u2019essai a \u00e9galement des accents messianiques : le prisme d\u00e9formant des pr\u00e9jug\u00e9s qui dissimule le vrai visage des noirs peut se retourner en signe d\u2019\u00e9lection. Du Bois, tel Mo\u00efse transmettant les tables de la loi, le visage drap\u00e9 d\u2019un voile, proph\u00e9tise la lib\u00e9ration du peuple noir. \u00c0 la m\u00eame \u00e9poque, Henry Adams, coll\u00e8gue et ami de William James \u00e0 Harvard, exprime son d\u00e9sarroi face au chaos de l\u2019histoire et, a contrario<\/em>, il c\u00e9l\u00e8bre la force de conviction des croyants au Moyen \u00c2ge, encore capables de b\u00e2tir des cath\u00e9drales pour la gloire de Dieu. Comme Max Weber son contemporain, il met en lumi\u00e8re le caract\u00e8re d\u00e9terminant du facteur religieux dans l\u2019histoire. Le culte marial est compar\u00e9 \u00e0 une force motrice et, inversement, la dynamo de l\u2019Exposition Universelle de Paris est per\u00e7ue comme l\u2019\u00e9quivalent moderne de la puissance g\u00e9n\u00e9ratrice. Paradoxalement, le darwinisme, loin d\u2019\u00eatre diam\u00e9tralement oppos\u00e9 au dogme chr\u00e9tien, est d\u00e9peint comme une religion de substitution dans la mesure o\u00f9 la loi de la s\u00e9lection naturelle r\u00e9gule l\u2019\u00e9ventail des variations virtuellement infinies et r\u00e9introduit un semblant de finalit\u00e9 dans la cr\u00e9ation. \u00c0l\u2019\u00e8re de la relativit\u00e9 restreinte, c\u2019est d\u00e9sormais au progr\u00e8s technique que les consciences affol\u00e9es vouent un culte quasi-superstitieux. La foi dans les forces-surnaturelles et son corollaire, la force de la foi, persistent envers et contre tout. En contrepoint de The Education of Henry Adams<\/em>, Henry James, son ami, publie la m\u00eame ann\u00e9e un \u00e9tat des lieux de La sc\u00e8ne am\u00e9ricaine <\/em>(1907) : l\u2019Am\u00e9rique contemporaine lui para\u00eet non seulement d\u00e9senchant\u00e9e mais d\u00e9-spiritualis\u00e9e : \u00ab The field of American life is as bare of the Church as a billiard table of a centre-piece \u00bb. Mais, simultan\u00e9ment, Henry James prend acte de la vari\u00e9t\u00e9 croissante des confessions au sein de la nation alors m\u00eame qu\u2019Abraham Cahan, qui lui servit de guide dans le New York des immigr\u00e9s juifs venus de Russie, se fait l\u2019interpr\u00e8te de leur d\u00e9tresse spirituelle et de leurs esp\u00e9rances \u00e0 travers sa tribune A Bintel Brief <\/em>et son roman Yekl. <\/em>L\u2019Am\u00e9rique, sur plan religieux, est d\u00e9sormais, plus que jamais, \u00ab un univers pluraliste \u00bb et l\u2019on sait \u00e0 quel point l\u2019essai de William James de 1909 devait inspirer le plaidoyer d\u2019un Horace Kallen et d\u2019un Alain Locke pour une nation multiculturelle sans cr\u00e9do dominant, irr\u00e9ductiblement \u00ab plurielle \u00bb malgr\u00e9 le ciment de la religion civile. Signe des temps, Franz Boas enqu\u00eate d\u00e8s 1897 sur le chamanisme des Chinook et des Kwakiutl et milite contre l\u2019anthropologie \u00e9volutionniste qui tend \u00e0 r\u00e9duire la vari\u00e9t\u00e9 des formes de vie religieuse \u00e0 des sch\u00e8mes invariants. Parall\u00e8lement, alors m\u00eame que des lois sont promulgu\u00e9es pour endiguer le p\u00e9ril jaune, Lafcadio Hearn, prend ses distances, relate ses voyages en Asie, \u00e0 la rencontre des religions extr\u00eame orientales (Gleanings in Buddha Fields, <\/em>1897). Le cheminement erratique de ce citoyen am\u00e9ricain atypique qui finit par se convertir au bouddhisme zen, en dit long sur la d\u00e9sorientation spirituelle d\u2019une Am\u00e9rique en mal de mystique. Il y a entre ce marginal n\u00e9 et le cercle \u00e9largi du Metaphysical Club<\/em> et de la SPR (Society for Psychical Research<\/em>) comme un air de famille. <\/p>\n

L\u2019objectif de cet atelier sera de confronter des textes inclassables \u00e0 la crois\u00e9e du t\u00e9moignage autobiographique, des r\u00e9cits de voyages, des m\u00e9ditations philosophiques et des sciences humaines exp\u00e9rimentales (la psychologie, la sociologie, l\u2019histoire, l\u2019anthropologie et l\u2019ethnographie) qui ont pour trait commun de graviter autour du \u00ab fait religieux \u00bb. <\/p>\n

Vos propositions de communication doivent \u00eatre adress\u00e9es \u00e0 Michel Imbert<\/a> avant le 15 d\u00e9cembre 2012.<\/p>\n

The Experience of Spiritual Crisis and the Question of Belief (1897-1907)<\/em>
\nMichel Imbert (Universit\u00e9 Paris Diderot-Paris 7)<\/strong><\/p>\n

In The Will to Believe,<\/em> published in 1907, William James pondered over the power of beliefs in response to the works of Josiah Royce and to Charles S. Peirce\u2019s essay, \u201cThe Fixation of Belief,\u201d published twenty years earlier. The question of the verification of assumptions was not raised solely from an epistemological vantage point since it involved, first and foremost, a psychological experience, that is to say experimenting empirically with one\u2019s ability to act here below on the strength of one\u2019s beliefs rather than looking, like mystics, for some otherworldly transcendence. William James argued that religious certitudes provided believers with reasonable grounds for taking action in the absence of any certainty. Faith precluded indwelling doubts in the face of insufficient evidence and beliefs were liable to prove self-fulfilling prophecies, whether they be founded or groundless, since they were bound to be performed or played out. That they should be basically true or not hardly mattered because they were to be appraised, above all, in terms of their practical impact. James was concerned with the forceful after-effects they generated rather than their foundation on truth in the first place. The will to believe, however self-deluded it might be, is not without effect. The issue of beliefs as fabulous fiction fulfilling a function was taken up in Varieties of Religious Experience<\/em> (1902), in which William James set out to observe the psychopathological symptoms that betrayed the harrowing spiritual crisis undergone by Bunyan, George Fox or Swedenborg: obviously enough, their faith stemmed from a state of morbid melancholy bordering on lunacy and the experience of religious revelation that had the effect of curing them providentially; it enabled them to make sense of their inner split. Chapter VIII, \u201cThe Divided Mind,\u201d which retraced their religious conversion as a rite of passage, was certainly influential on Du Bois\u2019s Souls of Black Folk<\/em> published a year later (1903): Du Bois, who was William James\u2019s student at Harvard, described the double-consciousness that plagued the minds of black men and which threatened to drive them insane. But the essay was also fraught with messianic overtones: the dark veil of prejudice that shrouded the face of African-Americans could be turned inside out as a sign of divine election. Like Moses in the Bible who wore a veil while he revealed the Ten Commandments, Du Bois, officiating as a \u201ctwice-born\u201d prophet, called for the liberation of his people. It was around 1904 that Henry Adams, who was William James\u2019s colleague at Harvard, voiced his discontent in the face of modern chaos and extolled the faith of staunch believers in the Middle Ages that impelled them to raise cathedrals for the sake of God\u2019s glory. Like Max Weber, Henry Adams underscored the determining factor of faith throughout history: the worship of the Holy Virgin was tantamount to a motive force and, conversely, the modern dynamo displayed at the Paris World Fair was fetishized on account of its generative power. Paradoxically enough, Darwinism, far from being diametrically opposed to Christianity, was viewed as a makeshift religion, in so far as the rule of natural selection regulated the free play of variations and restored a semblance of finality in creation. The engine and technological achievements in general came to be credited with a religious aura in the age of relativity. Faith in some supernatural power and, conversely, the superpower of faith still lived on. Parallel to The Education of Henry Adams, <\/em>Henry James published a survey of The American Scene<\/em> (1907), in which he depicted the disenchanted, almost de-spiritualized state of the Union: \u201cThe field of American life is as bare of the Church as a billiard table of a centre-piece.\u201d But the travelogue also registered the increasing variety of denominations and creeds across the nation, particularly the impact of Jewish immigration in the Bowery, even as Abraham Cahan (who happened to be his guide in New York) spelled out the spiritual distress and the expectations of newly arrived Jews in his magazine Bintel Brief<\/em> and his novel Yekl. <\/em>True enough, the nation was, in William James\u2019s words, \u201ca pluralistic universe,\u201d a concept coined in 1909 that paved the way for Horace Kallen\u2019s and Alain Locke\u2019s plea for a multicultural America in the next decade. Another tell tale sign of the times was Franz Boas\u2019s survey on Shamanism among the Chinook and the Kwakiutl at the turn of the century, in which he advocated an alternative anthropology that would not reduce \u201cthe varieties of religious life\u201d to a single pattern of evolution. Significantly enough, too, Lafcadio Hearn reported his journey into the Far East (Gleanings in Buddha Fields<\/em>, 1897) while immigration laws against Asian aliens were implemented in order to ward off the Yellow Peril. The fact that Hearn went so far as converting to Buddhism was highly symptomatic of the prevailing state of spiritual disorientation and the longing for a makeshift mystique. There is more than a family likeness between a marginal like Lafcadio Hearn and the Metaphysical Club or the Society for Psychical Research. <\/p>\n

The aim of this workshop is to compare unclassifiable texts at the crossroads of autobiographical testimonies, travelogues, philosophical meditations and such experimental sciences as psychology, sociology, history and ethnography, insofar as they each revolve around religious beliefs.<\/p>\n

Please send your proposals to Michel Imbert<\/a> by December 15, 2012.<\/p>\n

<\/a>20. Le spectral comme trace du religieux<\/em>
\nMarc Amfreville (Universit\u00e9 Paris 4 Sorbonne)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dans sa repr\u00e9sentation litt\u00e9raire, le spectral s\u2019affirme au XIXe si\u00e8cle et par la suite, comme une \u00ab hantologie \u00bb pour reprendre le jeu de mots de Derrida entre hantise et ontologie. En d\u2019autres termes, n\u2019y aurait-il pas dans la repr\u00e9sentation du spectre, du fant\u00f4me, de l\u2019esprit – et il conviendra de s\u2019attacher \u00e0 diff\u00e9rencier ces termes – une sur-vie,<\/em> une vie par-del\u00e0 la mort, mais aussi une forme sup\u00e9rieure d\u2019existence, l\u2019expression du besoin d\u2019affirmer avant tout une victoire sur notre disparition programm\u00e9e ? N\u2019est-ce pas l\u00e0 l\u2019essence m\u00eame du religieux, du lien imaginaire ou r\u00e9el, avec une transcendance possible et donc, une persistance du spirituel, une de ces formes de \u00ab d\u00e9s\u00e9cularisation \u00bb auxquelles ce congr\u00e8s nous invite \u00e0 penser ? <\/p>\n

La litt\u00e9rature am\u00e9ricaine, h\u00e9riti\u00e8re sans aucun doute en cela de sa m\u00e8re anglaise, a su prolonger outre-Atlantique les ambigu\u00eft\u00e9s d\u2019une po\u00e9tique qui, entre fant\u00f4me et fantasme – dont l\u2019\u00e9tymologie commune, Longin et son trait\u00e9 sur le Sublime nous le rappellent, renvoie aux hallucinations de la folie et \u00e0 celles de la cr\u00e9ation po\u00e9tique – m\u00ealait d\u00e9j\u00e0 dans la langue des origines les deux sens de spirit, <\/em>mais aussi ceux de ghost <\/em>(Holy ou non), sans parler de l\u2019\u00e2me que l\u2019on rend en anglais comme un fant\u00f4me (\u00ab give up the ghost \u00bb).<\/p>\n

Le paradoxe de la mat\u00e9rialit\u00e9\/immat\u00e9rialit\u00e9 du fant\u00f4me, revenant ou non, ange ou d\u00e9mon, demandait Hamlet, est tel que la litt\u00e9rature a su tr\u00e8s t\u00f4t s\u2019en emparer en Am\u00e9rique pour donner \u00e0 lire l\u2019incertitude des perceptions, mais plus avant, un questionnement m\u00eame sur la nature de l\u2019homme, la place du divin, et la p\u00e9rennit\u00e9 du spirituel. Qu\u2019on se rappelle, comme une entr\u00e9e en mati\u00e8re \u2012 et en esprit \u2012, la repr\u00e9sentation de Moby Dick comme \u00ab one great hooded phantom \u00bb d\u00e8s le premier chapitre intitul\u00e9 \u00ab Loomings \u00bb, en un mode d\u00e9j\u00e0 visionnaire de la revenance, o\u00f9 pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment Ishmael nous parle de son \u00e2me la plus secr\u00e8te. Qu\u2019on songe, par exemple et sans souci de chronologie puisque le fant\u00f4me a pour propri\u00e9t\u00e9 de traverser le temps, aux v\u00e9ritables ectoplasmes d\u2019Ambrose Bierce, aux traces de l\u2019histoire dans les romances<\/em> de Hawthorne ou les nouvelles de Charlotte Perkins Gilman, aux ind\u00e9cidables spectres de Brown, de Poe et de James, \u00e0 la perception de l\u2019imperceptible chez Emily Dickinson, aux fant\u00f4mes si terriblement absents de Faulkner, aux possibles r\u00e9incarnations qui traversent l\u2019\u0153uvre de Toni Morrison, aux esprits du pass\u00e9 qui se confondent avec les images de l\u2019hallucination chez Stephen King et le gothique r\u00e9cent, sans oublier la po\u00e9tique de la r\u00e9manence dans la fiction ultra-contemporaine\u2026
\nLa psychanalyse \u00e0 son tour, d\u00e8s les origines, a fait siennes des interrogations sur le retour d\u2019un refoul\u00e9 personnel, familial, voire ethnologique, auquel le fant\u00f4me, a su \u00e9tonnamment donner corps. L\u00e0 o\u00f9 pour Freud le revenant \u00e9tait avant tout la m\u00e9taphore d\u2019un retour du refoul\u00e9 – pensons par exemple aux fantasmes du petit Hans pr\u00e9sent\u00e9s comme des \u00ab \u00e2mes en peine \u00bb -, le fant\u00f4me devient sous la plume d\u2019Abraham et Torok une m\u00e9taphore des histoires d\u2019un pass\u00e9 que l\u2019on porte en soi et qu\u2019on fait vivre, par-del\u00e0 la mort, contre la mort, de ceux qui nous les ont l\u00e9gu\u00e9es. L\u00e0 encore, cette perduration de l\u2019histoire vient dire que l\u2019esprit ne saurait mourir.
\nLe spectral a de toute \u00e9vidence partie li\u00e9e avec l\u2019inconscient. Il signifie dans le m\u00eame geste le possible et l\u2019impossible de l\u2019\u00e9criture, et exprime ainsi \u00e0 la fois la faillite et la survivance de la transcendance. Cet atelier accueillera en priorit\u00e9 les projets de communication qui, d\u00e9passant le th\u00e9matique, proposeront une r\u00e9flexion sur la nature du spectral en tant que trace du religieux, une forme alternative et cr\u00e9atrice du spirituel.<\/p>\n

Les propositions sont \u00e0 envoyer \u00e0 Marc Amfreville<\/a> avant le 15 d\u00e9cembre 2012.<\/p>\n

Spectrality\/Spirituality<\/em>
\nMarc Amfreville (Universit\u00e9 Paris 4 Sorbonne)<\/strong><\/p>\n

In its literary representation, the spectral can be seen, from the early 19th century onward, in America, as a hauntology\u2014to pick up Derrida\u2019s famous play on the terms \u201chaunting\u201d and \u201contology\u201d). In other words, might we not discover, in the presence of spectres, ghosts, spirits\u2014and these phenomena will have to be distinguished carefully\u2014a form of survival, a life beyond death, indeed a superior mode of being (as suggested in the very noun sur-vival) as the expression of a need to assert a victory over our programmed dissolution? Isn\u2019t the essence of the religious precisely such a link, fantasized or realized, with a possible transcendence and thus a perduration of the \u201cspiritual\u201d?<\/p>\n

American literature, undoubtedly the offspring of its English forerunner in this respect, has managed to carry on and extend the richly ambiguous poetics that crosses the boundaries between phantom and phantasm (whose common etymology, as pointed out by Longinus in his treaty on the Sublime, underscores a kinship between the visions of delirium and poetic creation). One should note that in English, just as in many European languages, \u201cspirit\u201d encompasses the soul and the spectre, also calling forth the Holy Ghost, and summoning expressions like \u201cgive up the ghost.\u201d <\/p>\n

The paradoxical nature of the ghost, hovering as it were between materiality and absence, and striding such oppositions as those between the angelic and the demonic, the return of the dead and the imposition of mere fancy, has from early on (from Charles Brockden Brown onward) informed a questioning of the reliability of perception, and has thereby generated philosophical interrogations on the enduring powers of the spiritual and on the nature of man and God.
\nTo get into the heart of the matter (pun intended), as regards the spirit, one may think of Moby-Dick, evoked in \u201cLoomings\u201d as \u201cone great hooded phantom,\u201d introducing haunting as a visionary form of recurring obsession in chapter 1, where Ishmael speaks of his \u201cinmost soul.\u201d But then, ghosts having a way of disrupting time patterns and chronology, and we could also think of Ambrose Bierce\u2019s \u201creal\u201d ectoplasms, of the manifestations of history in Hawthorne\u2019s romances and of Charlotte Perkins Gilman\u2019s short stories, of Poe and James\u2019s undecidable spectres, of the perception of the imperceptible in Emily Dickinson\u2019s poems, of Faulkner\u2019s so terribly absent ghosts, of doubtful reincarnations that pervade the pages of Toni Morrison\u2019s novels, and of the mind-blowing images that question the very nature of hallucination in Stephen King\u2019s fiction, not to mention the poetics of remanence in ultra contemporary fiction\u2026<\/p>\n

Psychoanalysis in its turn, from its very beginning, has explored the possibility of a return of the repressed\u2014be it personal, familial, or phylogenetical, and used the spectre as a metaphor that gives shape to the unspeakable. It is worth pointing out for example that Freud describes little Hans\u2019s fantasies as \u201cerring souls,\u201d and that this image thereafter took on particular relief in the works of Abraham and Torok, where the ghost becomes a representation of a phantom history, borne by the subject who sets him\/herself the task of securing its survival beyond and against the death of his\/her departed. Here too, the spectre simultaneously objectifies and dematerialises the life of our spirit. <\/p>\n

The spectral, in short, is intimately linked to the representation<\/em> of the unconscious. It jointly signifies the possibility and the impossibility of the very act of writing, and thus expresses both the failure and the persistence of transcendence. <\/p>\n

This panel will primarily welcome proposals that set themselves the task of endeavouring to define the nature of the spectral as a trace of the religious, seen as an alternative and creative form of the spiritual. <\/p>\n

Please send proposals to Marc Amfreville<\/a> by December 15, 2012.<\/p>\n

<\/a>21. Religion et spiritualit\u00e9 \u00e0 l\u2019\u00e9preuve de la modernit\u00e9<\/em>
\nDenise Ginfray (Universit\u00e9 Clermont 2) et Guillaume Tanguy (Universit\u00e9 Montpellier 3) <\/strong><\/p>\n

Adoss\u00e9 \u00e0 la tradition de la romance,<\/em> et appel\u00e9 \u00e0 glisser vers le naturalisme, le r\u00e9alisme social de W.D. Howells qui marque la fin du XIXe si\u00e8cle litt\u00e9raire am\u00e9ricain est embl\u00e9matique d\u2019un pragmatisme d\u00e9mocratique tout entier tendu vers l\u2019id\u00e9al du \u00ab Great American Novel \u00bb. \u00c0 cela rien de surprenant : la foi dans le progr\u00e8s scientifique, une conception instrumentale du langage pour lire et d\u00e9crire le monde ont savamment fa\u00e7onn\u00e9 ce genre litt\u00e9raire tout d\u00e9vou\u00e9 \u00e0 la cause de la mimesis<\/em>. Pour autant, le parti pris esth\u00e9tique du Dean est plus complexe, habit\u00e9 qu\u2019il est par le lien mystique qui doit id\u00e9alement concilier les contraintes \u00e9conomiques, une morale collective et l\u2019engagement artistique. Edith Wharton elle aussi fut sensible \u00e0 cette double \u00e9thique – sociale et fictionnelle – mais lorsqu\u2019elle publie The House of Mirth<\/em> en 1905, le monde est d\u00e9j\u00e0 en marche vers d\u2019autres pratiques culturelles et sociales qui \u00e9loignent ostensiblement l\u2019Am\u00e9rique du fait religieux traditionnel pour la faire basculer dans la modernit\u00e9. <\/p>\n

Si le processus de modernisation qui s\u2019installe au tournant du XXe si\u00e8cle confirme l\u2019effacement de l\u2019id\u00e9al \u00e9vang\u00e9lique amorc\u00e9 d\u00e8s le milieu du XIXe au profit de l\u2019ethos<\/em> positiviste, il serait sans doute erron\u00e9 de conclure qu\u2019il installe une fronti\u00e8re \u00e9tanche entre le s\u00e9culier et le religieux. Il est fructueux au contraire d\u2019explorer la dialectique entre le sacr\u00e9 et le profane qui informe toute la litt\u00e9rature am\u00e9ricaine sur une p\u00e9riode allant des ann\u00e9es 1890 aux ann\u00e9es 1920 et 1930. Depuis le \u00ab r\u00e9alisme symbolique \u00bb de Stephen Crane et le sto\u00efcisme de son h\u00e9ros Henry Fleming rejetant les figures et la rh\u00e9torique d\u2019un mode obsol\u00e8te (\u00ab the brass and bombast of his earlier gospels \u00bb (The Red Badge of<\/em> Courage<\/em>, 1895), jusqu\u2019\u00e0 l\u2019obsession du nada <\/em>de la \u00ab G\u00e9n\u00e9ration perdue \u00bb, les r\u00e9cits fictionnels (prose, po\u00e9sie, th\u00e9\u00e2tre) bruissent d\u2019une religiosit\u00e9 diffuse qui ne consent pas \u00e0 se taire. C\u2019est envers et contre tout, contre tous devrait-on dire \u2013 tant Freud, Darwin, Marx se sont rendus \u00ab coupables \u00bb d\u2019amorcer la r\u00e9\u00e9valuation du monde que Nietzsche jugera d\u00e9sert\u00e9 par Dieu \u2013 que cette religiosit\u00e9 diffuse r\u00e9siste, contraignant le cr\u00e9ateur moderne \u00e0 questionner l\u2019humain, la morale de l\u2019art, la place et la fonction du Beau, de la Nature, etc. en fonction des nouvelles th\u00e9ories de l\u2019ordre naturel (l\u2019inconscient et l\u2019\u00e9volution), du d\u00e9terminisme biologique et social, du technological sublime, <\/em>etc.<\/p>\n

Le paradoxe veut donc que, dans cet univers socioculturel o\u00f9 le sens se r\u00e9v\u00e8le d\u00e9sormais in absentia<\/em>, ce soit l\u2019empi\u00e8tement du religieux sur le profane qui r\u00e8gle les l\u2019\u00e9conomie narrative de bon nombre de r\u00e9cits fictionnels : Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Jack London, parmi d\u2019autres, romanciers, po\u00e8tes (Vachel Lindsay, Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost) ou dramaturges (Eugene O\u2019Neill), et apr\u00e8s eux, John Steinbeck et Ernest Hemingway, offrent une vision primitiviste de l\u2019univers o\u00f9 r\u00e9sonne cependant une spiritualit\u00e9 singuli\u00e8re et prot\u00e9iforme. C\u2019est vrai aussi de Willa Cather, Sinclair Lewis, Upton Sinclair, ou Theodore Dreiser, dont les \u00e9crits, d\u00e9gag\u00e9s du religieux institutionnel, interrogent sans rel\u00e2che l\u2019angoisse m\u00e9taphysique de l\u2019Homme, l\u2019existence du Mal, la culpabilit\u00e9.<\/p>\n

Le tissage subtil du religieux et du s\u00e9culier qui caract\u00e9rise ces pratiques litt\u00e9raires et artistiques d\u00e9passe la simple r\u00e9surgence du sacr\u00e9 dans le profane : il transpara\u00eet \u00e9galement dans le merveilleux<\/em> et le surnaturel (avec leurs rites, leurs superstitions, leur magie), ainsi que dans les repr\u00e9sentations du corps et de la machine, dans les simulacres de la soci\u00e9t\u00e9 de consommation, etc. Avec audace, la prose iconoclaste de Gertrude Stein combine un rythme incantatoire et un mysticisme sans Dieu. Sherwood Anderson et ses grotesques<\/em>, T.S. Eliot face \u00e0 la Terre Gaste, Dos Passos et la m\u00e9tropole moderne d\u00e9shumanis\u00e9e, Hemingway et le myst\u00e8re symbolique de la corrida, ou bien l\u2019extase de la vie et de la mort confondues, John Steinbeck revisitant la rh\u00e9torique biblique dans The Grapes of Wrath<\/em> \u2013 tous partagent cette m\u00eame exp\u00e9rience.
\nCet atelier souhaite explorer le passage du \u00ab mysticisme \u00bb d\u2019Howells au \u00ab sacr\u00e9 \u00bb d\u2019Hemingway, ainsi que ses effets sur le style comme sur les formes et genres litt\u00e9raires.<\/p>\n

Voici quelques pistes de r\u00e9flexion:
\na. La fonction de l\u2019imagination cr\u00e9atrice dans un monde qui s\u2019affranchit progressivement des croyances et pratiques religieuses.
\nb. La qu\u00eate par l\u2019artiste \u00e9crivain d\u2019une autre exp\u00e9rience du langage, (Hemingway dans \u00ab Green Hills of Africa \u00bb, par exemple). La dialectique entre autorit\u00e9 et perte, r\u00e9v\u00e9lation et dissimulation, expression et silence.
\nc. Le concept du numineux <\/em>(Rudolf Otto), \u00e0 savoir le sacr\u00e9, d\u00e9barrass\u00e9 de sa dimension morale
\nd. Conceptions et repr\u00e9sentations de la Nature (cet \u00ab \u00e9quivalent \u00bb m\u00e9taphysique de l\u2019id\u00e9e de Dieu ch\u00e8re aux monoth\u00e9ismes) dans un monde qui s\u2019\u00e9loigne du divin. Le sublime.
\ne. Le merveilleux <\/em>dans la fiction am\u00e9ricaine moderne.
\nf. L\u2019exp\u00e9rimentation formelle li\u00e9e au transfert du religieux au s\u00e9culier ; la question du style en lien avec la Bible et sa rh\u00e9torique.<\/p>\n

Les propositions sont \u00e0 envoyer \u00e0 Guillaume Tanguy<\/a> et \u00e0 Denise Ginfray<\/a> avant le 15 d\u00e9cembre 2012.<\/p>\n

Modernity: A Test for Religion and Spirituality<\/em>
\nDenise Ginfray (Universit\u00e9 Clermont 2) et Guillaume Tanguy (Universit\u00e9 Montpellier 3) <\/strong><\/p>\n

Set between the romance,<\/em> and destined to shift toward naturalism, W.D. Howells\u2019s social realism, which marks the end of nineteeth-century American literature, is emblematic of a democratic pragmatism aimed at the ideal of \u201cThe Great American Novel.\u201d This should come as no surprise for faith in scientific progress, and the belief that language is an apt tool to read and describe the world, shaped this literary genre grounded on the power of mimesis.<\/em> However, the Dean\u2019s aesthetic venture was more complex, for it was permeated with a mystic bond that would, ideally, unite economic constraints, a collective moral and artistic commitment. Like Howells, Edith Wharton responded to this new ethics\u2014both social and fictional, but when her House of Mirth<\/em> was published in 1905, the western world was already adopting new cultural and social practices that would unseat tradition and usher America into modernity. <\/p>\n

It is commonly agreed that the process of modernization that took place at the turn of the twentieth century confirmed the erosion of the evangelical ideal initiated by the positivist ethos <\/em>during the nineteenth century. However, it would be misleading to consider that this process generated tight boundaries between the secular and the religious. It is more rewarding to explore the dialectic between the sacred and the profane that informs American literature written during the period spanning the 1890s to the 1920s and 1930s. From Stephen Crane\u2019s \u201csymbolic realism\u201d with his stoical hero who rejects the figures and rhetoric of an obsolete world (\u201cthe brass and bombast of his earlier gospels\u201d The Red Badge of<\/em> Courage<\/em>, 1895), to the Lost Generation\u2019s obsession with nada<\/em>, American prose, poetry and drama are steeped in a diffuse religiosity. Against all odds, and despite Freud, Darwin and Marx\u2019s reevaluation of the modern world (see Nietzsche), this diffuse religiosity persists, and compels the modern artist to reassess his conception of the human subject, of the ethic of art, of the role and function of Beauty, of Nature, etc. in the light of the new theories of evolution, the unconscious, social and biological determinism, the technological sublime<\/em>, etc. <\/p>\n

The paradox is that, in this socio-cultural environment where meaning reveals itself in absentia<\/em>, it is the encroachment of the sacred on the profane that rules the narrative economy of many fictional works: Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Jack London, among others, novelists, poets (Vachel Lindsay, Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost) or playwrights (Eugene O\u2019Neill), and after them John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway, contemplate the primitivism of the universe where a strange, many-faceted spirituality still resonates. It is also true of Willa Cather, Sinclair Lewis, Upton Sinclair, or Theodore Dreiser, whose works, freed from institutional religion, relentlessly question Man\u2019s metaphysical anxiety, the existence of evil, and guilt. <\/p>\n

The subtle interweaving of the religious and the secular, characteristic of these literary and artistic practices, goes well beyond the mere resurgence of the sacred within the profane. It also shows in the marvelous<\/em> and the supernatural (with their rites, superstitions, magic), in the representations of the machine and the body, in the simulacra <\/em>of the consumer society, etc. \u00c0bold example is Gertrude Stein\u2019s iconoclastic prose that combines incantatory rhythms with a mysticism without God. Sherwood Anderson and his \u201cgrotesques,\u201d T.S. Eliot confronted with the Waste Land, J. Dos Passos and the dehumanized metropolis<\/em>, Hemingway enduring the mystery of bull-fighting or the ecstatic intertwining of life and death, John Steinbeck revisiting the rhetoric of the Bible in The Grapes of Wrath<\/em>\u2014all of them share in the same experience.
\nThis workshop will seek to explore the shift from Howells\u2019s \u201cmysticism\u201d to Hemingway \u201csacredness,\u201d along with its effects on genre, form and style. <\/p>\n

Here are a few suggestions, which may serve as guidelines for our discussion:
\na. The nature and function of creative imagination in a world that gradually loosens its bonds with religious beliefs and practices.
\nb. The artist\u2019s quest for another linguistic dimension (as in Hemingway\u2019s Green Hills of<\/em> Africa<\/em>); his relation to authority and loss, revelation and concealment, expression and silence.
\nc. Rudolph Otto\u2019s concept of the numinous,<\/em> namely the sacred rid of its moral dimension.
\nd. New conceptions and representations of Nature (the metaphysical \u201cequivalent\u201d of God central to monotheist religions) in a world estranged from the divine; the Sublime.
\ne. The marvelous <\/em>in modern American fiction.
\nf. The experimentation with form due to the transfer from the religious to the secular; the issue of style in relation to the rhetoric of the Bible. <\/p>\n

Proposals should be sent to Guillaume Tanguy<\/a> et \u00e0 Denise Ginfray<\/a> by December 15, 2012.<\/p>\n

<\/a>22. \u00ab The Christ-haunted South \u00bb ou l\u2019importance du religieux dans la litt\u00e9rature du Sud<\/em>
\nMarie Li\u00e9nard-Yeterian (Universit\u00e9 de Nice-Sophia Antipolis) et de G\u00e9rald Pr\u00e9her (Institut Catholique de Lille\/ Universit\u00e9 de Versailles Saint-Quentin)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lorsqu\u2019en 1919, Mencken d\u00e9finissait le Sud des \u00c9tats-Unis comme \u00ab la ceinture de la Bible \u00bb, il ne se doutait certainement pas que l\u2019expression allait traverser les d\u00e9cennies et imposer \u00e0 une r\u00e9gion d\u00e9j\u00e0 bien singuli\u00e8re une \u00e9tiquette dont elle ne pourrait se lib\u00e9rer. En effet, les fondements id\u00e9ologiques qui justifiaient l\u2019esclavage reposaient tr\u00e8s largement sur les textes bibliques et le Sud a difficilement accept\u00e9 les changements que la Guerre de s\u00e9cession ou le mouvement pour les droits civiques lui ont impos\u00e9s. Qu\u2019en est-il donc de la situation de l\u2019\u00e9crivain qui souhaite \u00ab dire le Sud \u00bb pour reprendre les mots d\u2019un personnage faulkn\u00e9rien ? Quelle place occupe la religion dans un Sud qui en a manipul\u00e9 l\u2019essence du message christique ? Dans son essai \u00ab Catholic Novelists and their Readers \u00bb, Flannery O\u2019Connor laisse planer le doute lorsqu\u2019elle observe : \u00ab The Catholic novelist doesn\u2019t have to be a saint; he doesn\u2019t even have to be a Catholic; he does, unfortunately, have to be a novelist \u00bb. Le verbe deviendrait-il religion ?\u2014c\u2019est ce que semble sugg\u00e9rer la G\u00e9orgienne. Dans quelle mesure peut-on dire que le Sud est une r\u00e9gion hant\u00e9 de Dieu ou par Dieu ? Quels moyens l\u2019\u00e9crivain utilise-t-il pour donner \u00e0 ses textes une dimension religieuse voire parabolique ? La dialectique du bien et du mal qui inspire l\u2019\u0153uvre d\u2019un \u00e9crivain tel que Cormac McCarthy ne rel\u00e8ve-t-elle pas de la hantise d\u2019un Sud d\u00e9poss\u00e9d\u00e9 du \u00ab Paradis \u00bb, entre le rituel communautaire et l\u2019exp\u00e9rience intime de la rencontre avec le \u00ab Tout Autre \u00bb (L\u00e9vinas) ? Comment situer l\u2019existant ? l\u2019\u00e9crivain ? \u00ab The Catholic novelist frequently becomes so entranced with his Christian state that he forgets his nature as a fiction writer \u00bb, sugg\u00e8re encore O\u2019Connor. Que nous disent par ailleurs des auteurs comme Walker Percy, William Goyen, Caroline Gordon, Harry Crews, Elizabeth Spencer, Janisse Ray ou Andr\u00e9 Dubus sur les rapports que le Sud entretient avec le religieux ? Est-ce que la nouvelle, genre embl\u00e9matique d\u2019une r\u00e9gion de conteurs, s\u2019inscrit dans une tradition biblique ? Que pouvons-nous dire de la pr\u00e9sence de pr\u00e9dicateurs dans l\u2019imaginaire sudiste et comment l\u2019\u00e9crivain utilise-t-il \u00ab les myst\u00e8res essentiels \u00bb (Jean-Luc Nancy) que sont la Trinit\u00e9, l\u2019Incarnation et la R\u00e9surrection ? Le Sud entre-t-il en religion par l\u2019\u00e9criture ou assume-t-il, \u00e0 travers sa litt\u00e9rature, son p\u00e9ch\u00e9 originel ? Le but de cet atelier sera de consid\u00e9rer la litt\u00e9rature du Sud comme le lieu d\u2019un dialogue entre la religion et l\u2019\u00e9criture.<\/p>\n

Les propositions de communication sont \u00e0 envoyer conjointement \u00e0 Marie Li\u00e9nard-Yeterian<\/a> ) et G\u00e9rald Pr\u00e9her<\/a> avant le 15 d\u00e9cembre 2012.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Christ-Haunted South,\u201d or the Importance of Religion in the Literature of the American South<\/em>
\nMarie Li\u00e9nard-Yeterian (Universit\u00e9 de Nice-Sophia Antipolis) and G\u00e9rald Pr\u00e9her (Institut Catholique de Lille\/ Universit\u00e9 de Versailles Saint-Quentin)<\/strong><\/p>\n

When, in 1919, Mencken defined the American South as \u201cthe Bible Belt,\u201d he certainly did not anticipate that the expression would be passed on for decades and stick a permanent label on a region which was already known for many very particular characteristics. In fact, the ideological foundations justifying slavery were largely based on biblical texts; the South never found it easy to accept the changes which the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement had forced upon it. How can we therefore describe the situation of the writer who wants, in the words of one of Faulkner\u2019s characters, to \u201ctell about the South\u201d? What role is played by religion in a South which has altered the very essence of Christ\u2019s message? In her essay \u201cCatholic Novelists and their Readers\u201d, Flannery O\u2019Connor leaves the question open when she writes: \u201cThe Catholic novelist doesn\u2019t have to be a saint; he doesn\u2019t even have to be a Catholic; he does, unfortunately, have to be a novelist\u201d. Have words themselves become a religion?\u2014which is what the Georgian author seems to be suggesting. To what extent can we say that the South is a \u201cGod-infested\u201d region or a region haunted by Christ? What means does the Southern writer have at his disposal to give his text a religious dimension or turn it into a parable? Is the eternal conflict between Good and Evil which inspires the works of a writer like Cormac McCarthy just another sign of the haunting of the South, deprived of its past Eden, as it makes its way between shared community rituals and the deeply personal experience of meeting the One who is the \u201cAbsolute Other\u201d (L\u00e9vinas)? So how can we define the South and its people today? Where does the writer stand? O\u2019Connor suggests that \u201cThe Catholic novelist frequently becomes so entranced with his Christian state that he forgets his nature as a fiction writer.\u201d What do authors like Walker Percy, William Goyen, Caroline Gordon, Harry Crews, Elizabeth Spencer, Janisse Ray or Andr\u00e9 Dubus have to say about the relationship between religion and the South? Is the short story, so emblematic of this region of story-tellers, part of the biblical tradition? What can we say about the presence of preachers in the Southern imagination and the way in which writers use the \u201cessential mysteries\u201d (Jean-Luc Nancy), by which he means the Trinity, the Incarnation and the Resurrection? Does the South write its way into the world of religion or does it, through its literature, fully assume its Original Sin? The aim of this panel will be to provide a place where religion and writing may speak freely to each other.<\/p>\n

Proposals should be sent to Marie Li\u00e9nard-Yeterian<\/a> ) et G\u00e9rald Pr\u00e9her<\/a> by December 15, 2012.<\/p>\n

<\/a> 23. Po\u00e9tiques de l\u2019inscription : des th\u00e9ologies de la lettre \u00e0 la d\u00e9sacralisation de l\u2019\u00e9criture<\/em>
\nMathieu Duplay (Universit\u00e9 Paris Diderot-Paris 7)<\/strong><\/p>\n

En Am\u00e9rique, la religion a partie li\u00e9e avec la lettre. D\u2019abord parce que, dans une tradition fortement marqu\u00e9e par le protestantisme, la r\u00e9flexion th\u00e9ologique et la pratique religieuse sont ins\u00e9parables d\u2019un travail de lecture, de l\u2019attention port\u00e9e \u00e0 la lettre des textes sacr\u00e9s ; mais aussi parce que cette entreprise herm\u00e9neutique conduit directement \u00e0 poser plusieurs questions cruciales. Comment lire ? \u00c0 quelles strat\u00e9gies, \u00e0 quels outils recourir ? Quels autres textes faire dialoguer avec l\u2019\u00c9criture ? Peut on, doit on en faire une lecture \u00ab \u00e0 la lettre \u00bb ? \u2013 probl\u00e9matiques certes classiques, mais sur lesquelles la litt\u00e9rature am\u00e9ricaine n\u2019a pas cess\u00e9 de revenir et qu\u2019il serait pertinent d\u2019examiner \u00e0 nouveau, par exemple \u00e0 la lumi\u00e8re des textes les plus r\u00e9cents. Bien vite, se profilent des enjeux plus importants encore qui, par del\u00e0 le cas sp\u00e9cifique de la religion, interrogent les fondements m\u00eames de toute civilisation de l\u2019\u00e9crit. Qu\u2019est ce que lire ? Qu\u2019est ce qu\u2019un texte ? Qu\u2019est ce qui est (ou fait) texte ? Qu\u2019est ce que la lettre, qu\u2019est ce qui est lettre ? La lettre s\u2019articule t elle n\u00e9cessairement \u00e0 l\u2019interpr\u00e9tation, s\u2019\u00e9puise t elle dans la lecture qui en est faite, voire n\u00e9cessite t elle d\u2019\u00eatre interpr\u00e9t\u00e9e ? Y a t il un sens \u00e0 parler de \u00ab la \u00bb lettre, compte tenu de la diversit\u00e9 des syst\u00e8mes d\u2019\u00e9criture ? <\/p>\n

La litt\u00e9rature se fait l\u2019\u00e9cho de ces interrogations, mais on se souviendra qu\u2019elles int\u00e9ressent aussi la philosophie et la th\u00e9orie litt\u00e9raires : particuli\u00e8rement centrales \u00e0 l\u2019heure o\u00f9 la r\u00e9flexion sur la \u00ab lecture \u00bb prend, de plus en plus, une orientation post herm\u00e9neutique, elles pr\u00e9occupent depuis longtemps les penseurs am\u00e9ricains, et les formes successives que ce questionnement a rev\u00eatues au fil du temps pourraient constituer des objets d\u2019\u00e9tude \u00e0 part enti\u00e8re. La probl\u00e9matique sp\u00e9cifique de la lettre dans ses d\u00e9terminations singuli\u00e8res, li\u00e9es \u00e0 tel ou tel contexte historique ou anthropologique, constitue \u00e0 cet \u00e9gard un int\u00e9ressant cas d\u2019\u00e9cole. Pour un anglophone, lire la Bible, c\u2019est \u00eatre amen\u00e9 \u00e0 se souvenir que ce livre trouve son origine dans d\u2019autres aires linguistiques que celles o\u00f9 pr\u00e9domine l\u2019alphabet romain ; or l\u2019alphabet h\u00e9breu, par exemple, est traditionnellement li\u00e9 \u00e0 une conception tr\u00e8s particuli\u00e8re de la lettre et de son efficace. Si les \u00e9crivains am\u00e9ricains de tradition juive s\u2019en souviennent bien s\u00fbr \u2013 on songe par exemple \u00e0 Call It Sleep<\/em> (1934) de Henry Roth, dont le protagoniste \u00e9tudie l\u2019h\u00e9breu dans une yeshiva<\/em> new yorkaise \u2013 certains auteurs de culture chr\u00e9tienne en ont tout autant conscience, par exemple Emerson qui, dans \u00ab Self Reliance \u00bb (1841), fait allusion \u00e0 la pratique juive de la mezouzah<\/em>, parchemin comportant des citations de l\u2019\u00c9criture et fix\u00e9 sur le linteau de la porte \u00e0 l\u2019entr\u00e9e des habitations : \u00ab I would write on the lintels of the door post, Whim. I hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explanation \u00bb. On est m\u00eame tent\u00e9 d\u2019avancer, \u00e0 titre d\u2019hypoth\u00e8se, que la r\u00e9flexion sur ce qu\u2019ont de relatif et de transitoire les syst\u00e8mes d\u2019\u00e9criture, \u00ab letters \u00bb, rev\u00eat une urgence toute particuli\u00e8re chez les auteurs transcendantalistes ; on pense par exemple \u00e0 Walden<\/em>, ou encore \u00e0 ce qu\u2019avan\u00e7ait Emerson en 1840 dans \u00ab Thoughts on Modern Literature \u00bb : \u00ab The erect mind disparages all books. What are books ? it saith : they can have no permanent value. [\u2026] Literature is made up of a few ideas and a few fables. It is a heap of nouns and verbs enclosing an intuition or two. [\u2026] When we are aroused to a life in ourselves, these traditional splendors of letters grow very pale and cold \u00bb. Il pourrait s\u2019av\u00e9rer pertinent de s\u2019interroger sur les attendus de ce questionnement, sur les facteurs \u00e9pist\u00e9mologiques qui le font \u00e9merger de mani\u00e8re aussi visible \u00e0 ce moment pr\u00e9cis de l\u2019histoire de la pens\u00e9e am\u00e9ricaine, et aussi sur ses \u00e9chos chez les tr\u00e8s nombreux auteurs \u2013 \u00e9crivains, artistes, philosophes, th\u00e9oriciens \u2013 qui, plus ou moins ouvertement, s\u2019inscrivent dans une filiation transcendantaliste. <\/p>\n

Ainsi pos\u00e9e, la question de la lettre produit des effets en retour sur la pens\u00e9e de la religion. Pour Derrida, l\u2019\u00e9criture en tant que \u00ab trace \u00bb signifiante rend probl\u00e9matique la recherche de la parole pleine en raison du travail de la diff\u00e9rance <\/em>; en ce sens, elle constitue un d\u00e9fi (dont rien ne dit qu\u2019il est insurmontable) pour toute th\u00e9ologie du Verbe. Plus g\u00e9n\u00e9ralement, la diversit\u00e9 des syst\u00e8mes d\u2019\u00e9criture, et notamment la fr\u00e9quentation (par exemple chez Pound) des \u00e9critures logogrammatiques, oblige \u00e0 se demander ce qu\u2019il en est d\u2019une th\u00e9ologie qui aspire \u00e0 l\u2019universalit\u00e9 tout en s\u2019av\u00e9rant ancr\u00e9e dans une pratique de la lettre, c\u2019est \u00e0 dire de l\u2019alphabet dans ce qu\u2019il a de sp\u00e9cifique. Avec quelles formes de recherche spirituelle la pratique du logogramme a t elle partie li\u00e9e, et comment interagit elle avec les traditions issues du monde anglophone, o\u00f9 pr\u00e9domine l\u2019alphabet latin ? (On songe ici tout particuli\u00e8rement aux auteurs des XXe et XXIe si\u00e8cles chez qui se fait jour, \u00e0 des degr\u00e9s divers, l\u2019influence de la pens\u00e9e tao\u00efste ou du bouddhisme zen, li\u00e9s l\u2019un et l\u2019autre \u00e0 des modes sp\u00e9cifiques d\u2019expression litt\u00e9raire ; mais on pourrait aussi s\u2019interroger sur la mani\u00e8re dont elle commence \u00e0 prendre forme d\u00e8s le XIXe si\u00e8cle, par exemple chez Thoreau dont on conna\u00eet l\u2019int\u00e9r\u00eat pour les litt\u00e9ratures et les formes de spiritualit\u00e9 orientales).<\/p>\n

Enfin, il convient de s\u2019interroger sur la r\u00e9ponse radicale que donne \u00e0 toutes ces questions le courant de la litt\u00e9rature am\u00e9ricaine qui cherche \u00e0 d\u00e9sacraliser enti\u00e8rement la lettre et \u00e0 lui conf\u00e9rer un statut ontologique apparent\u00e9 \u00e0 celui du d\u00e9chet, comme c\u2019est par exemple le cas chez William Gaddis. Dans la r\u00e9flexion contemporaine, la lettre structure l\u2019inconscient (Lacan) ou appartient \u00e0 l\u2019ordre du signifiant saussurien (Derrida), c\u2019est \u00e0 dire qu\u2019elle se distingue du trac\u00e9 concret tel qu\u2019il appara\u00eet sur la page. Qu\u2019en est il au juste de cette marque empirique, de la lettre non telle que je la comprends, mais telle que je la vois ? Est il possible de l\u2019appr\u00e9hender sans recourir ni au lexique de l\u2019id\u00e9alit\u00e9 (clef d\u2019une \u00ab spiritualit\u00e9 \u00bb au sens le plus large du terme), ni \u00e0 des sch\u00e9mas de pens\u00e9e qui reconduisent, sous couvert de mat\u00e9rialisme, une onto th\u00e9ologie de la pr\u00e9sence ? Peut on imaginer, et rencontre t on dans la litt\u00e9rature ou dans la th\u00e9orie am\u00e9ricaines, une po\u00e9tique de l\u2019inscription fond\u00e9e sur l\u2019hypoth\u00e8se que l\u2019on peut r\u00e9pondre \u00e0 cette question par l\u2019affirmative ? <\/p>\n

Propositions sont \u00e0 envoyer \u00e0 Mathieu Duplay<\/a> avant le 15 d\u00e9cembre 2012.<\/p>\n

Poetics of Inscription: From Theologies of the Letter to the Desacralization of Writing<\/em>
\nMathieu Duplay (Universit\u00e9 Paris Diderot-Paris 7)<\/strong><\/p>\n

In American culture, religion is intimately linked to a concern for literalness. According to Protestant principles\u2014whose impact on the American tradition has been considerable\u2014theological thought and religious practice are inseparable from specific modes of reading and require a keen attention to the letter of the Biblical text. This hermeneutic approach to spirituality raises several crucial questions. What is the best way to read? What interpretive tools or strategies are to be preferred? What other texts may be read alongside Scripture? Is it possible, let alone advisable, to interpret it literally? These familiar issues have lost none of their relevance today, and it might be interesting to examine them again in the light of the most recent developments in American writing. In the final analysis, even more pressing problems come to the fore, calling into question not just religion, but the fundamentals of all literate culture. What does reading entail? What is a text? What counts as text? What is, or counts as, a letter? What, if anything, does the letter of a text have to do with its interpr\u00c9tation? Can interpretation exhaust the possibilities of the letter, and is it necessary for it to be interpreted at all? Does it make sense to speak of \u201cthe\u201d letter, since so many different scripts or writing systems exist side by side? <\/p>\n

While these questions are crucial to literature, it should be borne in mind that they are no less important to philosophy and literary theory. True, they have been the focus of increasing attention in recent years, as examinations of the reading process have taken a post-hermeneutic turn; however, they have long been of interest to American thinkers, and the various ways in which these and related issues have been raised over time are an interesting object of study in their own right. Inquiries about the letter\u2019s dependence on a given historical or anthropological context are a case in point. For a native English speaker, to read the Bible is to be reminded that it originated in a cultural setting where the Roman alphabet did not occupy a dominant position, if indeed it was present at all. This is a matter of some importance since the Hebrew alphabet, for instance, is traditionally associated with a wholly different conception of the letter and of its spiritual, not to say mystical or magical, aura. Jewish American writers are especially aware of this, as suggested, for instance, by Henry Roth\u2019s Call It Sleep<\/em> (1934), whose protagonist studies Hebrew in a New York yeshiva<\/em>. However, this issue is no less important to a number of authors raised in the Christian tradition, e.g. Emerson who alludes in \u201cSelf-Reliance\u201d (1841) to the practice of affixing a piece of parchment inscribed with Hebrew verses from the Torah to the doorframe of Jewish homes: \u201cI would write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim. I hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explanation.\u201d Indeed, the relativity of all \u201cletters\u201d or writing systems appears to have been a particularly significant problem for Transcendentalist thinkers; it is broached in Walden<\/em>, and Emerson draws attention to it in his 1840 essay \u201cThoughts on Modern Literature\u201d: \u201cThe erect mind disparages all books. What are books? it saith: they can have no permanent value. [\u2026] Literature is made up of a few ideas and a few fables. It is a heap of nouns and verbs enclosing an intuition or two. [\u2026] When we are aroused to a life of ourselves, these traditional splendors of letters grow very pale and cold.\u201d It might be useful to wonder what motivates this interest in the issue, what epistemological factors account for its prominence at that particular time in the history of American thought, and what echoes Emerson\u2019s observations have awakened in the numerous writers, artists, philosophers, or theorists who, more or less openly, lay claim to the legacy of Transcendentalism. <\/p>\n

Thus formulated, the question of literalness has an impact in return on the religious thinking out of which it arose. According to Derrida, writing as \u201ctrace\u201d and diff\u00e9rance<\/em> problematizes the quest for parole pleine <\/em>and therefore constitutes a challenge\u2014albeit not necessarily an insuperable one\u2014for all theologies based on a belief in the revealed Word of God. More broadly speaking, the existence of rival writing systems and, in particular, the interest many American authors (e.g. Pound) take in logogrammatic scripts call into question the validity of theological discourses that aspire to universal validity even as they rely on alphabetic writing, which is tied to a specific cultural or linguistic environment. With what types of spiritual quest is logogrammatic writing associated, and how does it interact with the traditions indigenous to the English-speaking world, where the Roman alphabet predominates? (This question has particular relevance to the works of the twentieth- and twenty-first century writers known for their attention to Taoism and Zen Buddhism; however, it could also be raised in connection with nineteenth-century authors such as Thoreau, whose interest in Eastern literature and spirituality is well known.) <\/p>\n

Lastly, it would be appropriate to examine the radical answer given to all these questions by the American writers who seek to dispel the letter\u2019s mystical aura and who view it as ontologically akin to garbage (William Gaddis is a case in point). In contemporary thought, the letter structures the human unconscious (Lacan) and\/or has affinities with the Saussurean signifier (Derrida); therefore, it must not be confused with the visible trace as it appears on the page. If so, then what is the status of the empirical mark, of the letter as the eye sees it, as distinguished from its manifestations in the mind? Is it possible to apprehend it without describing it in terms of ideality (that is to say, without aligning it with a form of \u201cspirituality\u201d in the broadest sense of the term), and<\/em> without falling back on supposedly \u201cmaterialistic\u201d modes of thinking, which implicitly endorse an onto-theology of presence? Is it possible to imagine\u2014and to locate in American literature or theory\u2014a poetics of inscription based on the hypothesis that the latter question can be answered in the affirmative? <\/p>\n

Propositions should be sent to Mathieu Duplay<\/a> by December 15, 2012.<\/p>\n

<\/a> 24. Mystiques du langage en fiction contemporaine<\/em>
\nKarim Danoune (Universit\u00e9 Bordeaux 3) et Anne-Laure Tissut (Universit\u00e9 de Rouen)<\/strong><\/p>\n

La litt\u00e9rature am\u00e9ricaine montre plus d\u2019un exemple de tentative de comprendre le monde par le recours \u00e0 une entit\u00e9 supr\u00eame. Or, les XXe et XXIe si\u00e8cles voient se diversifier les sources du sentiment religieux. Si l\u2019\u00e9merveillement face \u00e0 la nature, qui culmine avec le Transcendantalisme, demeure une manifestation majeure du sens du religieux, encourag\u00e9, peut-\u00eatre, par l\u2019immensit\u00e9 d\u2019espaces riches en myst\u00e8res (on pense au cadre privil\u00e9gi\u00e9 du d\u00e9sert dans l\u2019\u0153uvre de DeLillo, ou sur un mode tr\u00e8s diff\u00e9rent, dans celle d\u2019Everett), les prodigieuses avanc\u00e9es technologiques deviennent l\u2019objet d\u2019interrogations m\u00e9taphysiques. Steve Tomasula, sur un mode ironique et parodique, dit l\u2019exp\u00e9rience du sublime que peut procurer le monde contemporain, dont les rep\u00e8res dans l\u2019espace comme dans le temps ont subi un bouleversement radical. Il s\u2019interroge, notamment dans VAS, An Opera in Flatland<\/em>, sur l\u2019existence d\u2019une instance supr\u00eame qui pourrait gouverner ce monde en perp\u00e9tuelle transformation que d\u2019aucuns disent post-humain. La fiction am\u00e9ricaine du tournant de si\u00e8cle met en sc\u00e8ne ou laisse deviner l\u2019existence d\u2019univers parall\u00e8les, qui doublent ou sous-tendent le monde quotidien, y instillant le myst\u00e8re. Les \u0153uvres de Brian Evenson, Blake Butler, Stephen Millhauser ou Percival Everett (dans Zulus<\/em>, Frenzy<\/em> et American Desert<\/em>, par exemple) mais aussi de Don DeLillo (dans The Names<\/em>, entre autres) ou de Ben Marcus (dans Notable American Women<\/em> ou The Age of Wire and String<\/em>) repr\u00e9sentent ces univers, et les sectes et cultes qui leur sont rattach\u00e9s. Ces groupuscules forcent une red\u00e9finition du religieux en ren\u00e9gociant le sens de la communaut\u00e9. Il conviendra d\u2019analyser par exemple le mode d\u2019existences de ces communaut\u00e9s secr\u00e8tes, de se demander si elles ont recours \u00e0 une violence particuli\u00e8re qui viendrait dupliquer, voire parodier, une violence originelle symbolique. Dans le lectorat m\u00eame, en particulier parmi les lecteurs de litt\u00e9rature \u00e9lectronique, ou d\u2019\u00ab heroic fantasy \u00bb, se cr\u00e9ent parfois des groupes unis par une ferveur quasi religieuse, attis\u00e9e par les moyens de communication informatiques. La litt\u00e9rature \u00e9lectronique offrira aussi la possibilit\u00e9 d\u2019\u00e9largir la r\u00e9flexion sur le pouvoir du lecteur \u00e0 prendre les commandes du \u00ab livre \u00bb tel un d\u00e9miurge, ou au contraire \u00e0 se laisser dicter une conduite, tel un messie, en s\u2019en remettant \u00e0 une entit\u00e9 sup\u00e9rieure machinique.<\/p>\n

On pourra en outre s\u2019int\u00e9resser aux \u0153uvres qui mettent en sc\u00e8ne des figures messianiques. L\u2019enfant y appara\u00eet souvent comme le personnage tout trouv\u00e9 pour ouvrir la voie vers l\u2019ailleurs, ou supplanter la figure de Dieu. On pense notamment au personnage de Gurion ben-Judah Maccabee dans The Instructions<\/em> (2010) d\u2019Adam Levin. Si ce roman revisite les proc\u00e9d\u00e9s litt\u00e9raires propres au Talmud, The Gospel According to the Son<\/em> (1997) de Norman Mailer permettrait, lui, de se pencher sur la question de la r\u00e9\u00e9criture du canon litt\u00e9raire religieux puisqu\u2019il propose la fiction autobiographique du fils de Dieu.<\/p>\n

Or ces fictions dans laquelle s\u2019exprime un sens du religieux, en dehors de toute religion connue, se caract\u00e9risent par l\u2019invention de langages, pour dire le myst\u00e8re du ou des mondes et r\u00e9gir les rapports se tissant entre les membres des cultes et des sectes. On s\u2019int\u00e9ressera \u00e0 ces langages invent\u00e9s qui disent et cr\u00e9ent le sentiment religieux : recyclent-ils des caract\u00e8res stylistiques du discours religieux reconnu, lexicaux ou syntaxiques et plus largement structurels ? Seront consid\u00e9r\u00e9s les moyens mis en \u0153uvre pour faire d\u00e9vier le discours religieux vers des champs et des objets qu\u2019il conviendra de chercher \u00e0 d\u00e9finir. Comment le discours religieux, qu\u2019il soit l\u2019expression personnelle d\u2019un sentiment religieux, ou un discours collectivement tenu refl\u00e9tant et renfor\u00e7ant l\u2019existence d\u2019une communaut\u00e9 religieuse ou du moins spirituelle, s\u2019adresse-t-il au lecteur ? Plus pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment, ce dernier se sent-il accueilli, appel\u00e9, comme en une entreprise de s\u00e9duction, ou au contraire, \u00e9prouve-t-il l\u2019herm\u00e9tisme d\u2019un langage visant \u00e0 l\u2019exclure ? La r\u00e9ception du texte et l\u2019esth\u00e9tique propre de ces avatars du religieux dans la fiction contemporaine retiendront aussi notre attention. On se demandera si le langage lui-m\u00eame n\u2019est pas l\u2019objet des divers cultes qui s\u2019\u00e9panouissent dans ces \u0153uvres, anim\u00e9es par une mystique du langage. La recherche d\u2019une force supr\u00eame entendue comme une alt\u00e9rit\u00e9 absolue ne passe-t-elle pas dans certaines \u0153uvres par l\u2019\u00e9laboration d\u2019un langage outranci\u00e8rement novateur qui voudrait pointer vers son autre ?<\/p>\n

Les propositions sont \u00e0 envoyer \u00e0 Karim Danoune<\/a> et \u00e0 Anne-Laure Tissut<\/a> avant le 15 d\u00e9cembre 2012.<\/p>\n

Mystique of Language in Contemporary American Fiction<\/em>
\nKarim Danoune (Universit\u00e9 Bordeaux 3) et Anne-Laure Tissut (Universit\u00e9 de Rouen)<\/strong><\/p>\n

American literature is filled with attempts at understanding the world by resorting to supreme entities. Yet the twentieth and twenty-first centuries saw a diversification of the sources from which a religious feeling could emanate. If wonder and awe before nature, which were brought to a climax by Transcendentalism, remain a major mode of manifestation of the religious sense, perhaps fostered by the vastness of a territory crammed with mysteries (one can think of the favored locus of the desert in DeLillo\u2019s oeuvre or, in a different approach, in Everett\u2019s), the prodigious prowess of technology has become the focus of metaphysical enquiries. Steve Tomasula, in parodic and ironic modes, tells the experience of the sublime hosted in a contemporary world in which space and time coordinates have changed radically. Especially in his novel VAS, An Opera in Flatland<\/em>, he examines the existence of a supreme being that could rule over this ever-changing world that most are inclined to call posthuman. Turn-of-the-century American fiction portrays or suggests the existence of parallel worlds that duplicate or originate the world we live in, infusing it with mystery. Works by Brian Evenson, Blake Butler, Stephen Millhauser or Percival Everett (in Zulus<\/em>, Frenzy<\/em> and American Desert<\/em>) but also Don DeLillo (in The Names<\/em>) or Ben Marcus (in Notable American Women<\/em> or The Age of Wire and String<\/em>) depict such worlds which have favored the development of sects and cults. These groups compel us to define the religious anew by reconsidering what binds a community together. The modes of existence of these secret communities seem to be worth analyzing: for instance do they resort to specific modes of violence meant to mimic, or mock, symbolic originary violence? Among readers too, especially readers of electronic literature, or of heroic fantasy, groups are formed sometimes, united by an almost religious fervor, itself fueled by computerized communication means. Electronic literature promises to broaden the scope of our research by focusing on the power of the reader to take command of the book like a God-like figure, or conversely, like a prophet or a messianic figure, to obey and trust a superior machine-like God. <\/p>\n

Works including messianic characters could provide interesting material. Children seem most apt to endorse such a role and open onto other worlds\u2014or otherworldliness\u2014or again to supersede godly figures. One can think of the character of Gurion ben-Judah Maccabee in Adam Levin\u2019s The Instructions<\/em> (2010). If this novel uses and abuses the literary techniques of the Talmud, Norman Mailer\u2019s The Gospel According to the Son<\/em> (1997), a fictitious autobiography of Jesus Christ, invites us to look into the possible rewritings of the religious literary canon.<\/p>\n

The fictions conveying a sense of the religious, outside of any known religion, are characterized by the invention of languages, to say the mystery of the world or worlds and to rule over the relationships between the members of the sects or cults. Do those languages recycle stylistic features borrowed from acknowledged religious discourses, be they lexical, syntactical or more largely structural? Attention will be paid to the means resorted to so as to deviate religious discourse towards fields and objects which will need to be defined. How does religious discourse address readers, be it the individual expression of a religious sense, or a collective discourse reflecting and reinforcing the existence of a religious or at least spiritual community? More precisely, do readers feel welcome or called upon, as though in a seduction enterprise, or on the contrary do they perceive this language as hermetic and aimed at excluding them? The reception and aesthetics proper to such progeny of the religious in contemporary fiction will also be given attention. The question will be raised whether language itself is not the very object of worship in those works animated by a mystique of language. In some of the works, does not the quest for some superior force meant as total otherness go through the elaboration of an excessively innovative language tentatively pointing at its other?<\/p>\n

Paper submissions should be sent to Karim Danoune<\/a> et \u00e0 Anne-Laure Tissut<\/a> by December 15, 2012.<\/p>\n

<\/a> 25. Crises et formes litt\u00e9raires de la croyance<\/em>
\nMonica Manolescu (Universit\u00e9 de Strasbourg) et St\u00e9phane Vanderhaeghe (Universit\u00e9 Paris 8 Vincennes – Saint-Denis)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dans son article \u00ab Grids \u00bb publi\u00e9 en 1979 dans la revue October<\/em> et repris dans son livre The Originality of the Avant-garde and Other Modernist Myths<\/em>, Rosalind Krauss discute de l\u2019ambigu\u00eft\u00e9 de la grille comme forme embl\u00e9matique de l\u2019art moderne :
\n\u00ab Given the absolute rift that had opened between the sacred and the secular, the modern artist was obviously faced with the necessity to choose between one mode of expression and the other. The curious testimony offered by the grid is that at this juncture he tried to decide for both. In the increasingly de-sacralized space of the nineteenth century, art had become the refuge for religious emotion; it became, as it has remained, a secular form of belief. Although this condition could be discussed openly in the late nineteenth century, it is something that is inadmissible in the twentieth, so that by now we find it indescribably embarrassing to mention art and spirit in the same sentence. The peculiar power of the grid, its extraordinarily long life in the specialized space of modern art, arises from its potential to preside over this shame: to mask and to reveal it at one and the same time \u00bb.<\/p>\n

M\u00eame si les propos de Krauss concernent l\u2019art moderne plut\u00f4t que la litt\u00e9rature, et m\u00eame s\u2019il n\u2019existe pas d\u2019\u00e9quivalent litt\u00e9raire de la grille, on peut se demander dans quelle mesure une telle \u00ab honte \u00bb de l\u2019impossible mariage entre art et spiritualit\u00e9 se manifeste dans la litt\u00e9rature am\u00e9ricaine et dans le discours critique qui l\u2019accompagne. <\/p>\n

Les exemples d\u2019\u00e9crivains dont l\u2019\u0153uvre est travaill\u00e9e par cette tension, ou qui puisent dans un r\u00e9pertoire de th\u00e8mes, d\u2019images et de postures artistiques de nature spirituelle ne manquent pas : on peut songer, entre autres, \u00e0 Flannery O\u2019Connor, dont les textes reposent sur un d\u00e9calage entre ses convictions catholiques et le contexte protestant du Sud ; \u00e0 Salinger et son engouement pour une forme syncr\u00e9tique de spiritualit\u00e9 avec des accents orientaux (dans Franny and Zooey<\/em>) ; \u00e0 William Gaddis, interrogeant l\u2019impossible authenticit\u00e9 de l\u2019art et de l\u2019\u00e9criture dans un contexte soumis \u00e0 leur reproduction et mercantilisation ; aux \u00e9crivains de la nature op\u00e9rant un transfert de la transcendance vers l\u2019immanence, comme Annie Dillard par exemple, qui con\u00e7oit une forme d\u2019\u00e9criture-m\u00e9ditation dans la tradition de Thoreau et Emerson ; \u00e0 Brian Evenson et ses d\u00e9boires avec les formes institutionnelles du mormonisme, son \u00e9criture pla\u00e7ant la violence au centre de l\u2019\u00e9conomie du texte ; \u00e0 Rikki Ducornet encore, et ses tentatives de r\u00e9\u00e9criture de quelques \u00e9pisodes de l\u2019histoire religieuse de la colonisation de l\u2019Am\u00e9rique (The Fan-Maker\u2019s Inquisition<\/em>), voire son int\u00e9r\u00eat pour le catholicisme dans une variante \u00e0 la fois gothique et carnavalesque aux accents hawthorniens (The Stain<\/em>) ; ou \u00e0 un \u00e9crivain comme Nabokov, h\u00e9ritier (turbulent et parodique) de la tradition romanesque \u00e0 veine m\u00e9taphysique russe (voir Ada<\/em>)\u2026 On pourra en outre s\u2019interroger sur ce qui peut appara\u00eetre comme autant d\u2019\u00e9piphanies s\u00e9culi\u00e8res, \u00e0 l\u2019instar de ce qui se passe dans White Noise<\/em> de Don DeLillo, par exemple, o\u00f9 la seule source de consolation dans un contexte apocalyptique r\u00e9side dans la contemplation d\u2019un enfant endormi. <\/p>\n

Tous ces exemples ponctuels tendent \u00e0 renforcer, tout en le probl\u00e9matisant dans les pr\u00e9misses d\u2019un dialogue ouvert, le lien entre litt\u00e9rature et spiritualit\u00e9. On peut n\u00e9anmoins changer d\u2019optique et prendre en consid\u00e9ration non pas le lien fort, mais plut\u00f4t le lien faible entre les deux, et interroger le caract\u00e8re d\u00e9sormais d\u00e9suet, \u00ab honteux \u00bb et d\u00e9cal\u00e9 des rapports entre art et esprit au XXe et au XXIe si\u00e8cles, en soulignant l\u2019aspect proprement critique<\/em> d\u2019une frange de la litt\u00e9rature am\u00e9ricaine qui aurait peut-\u00eatre cess\u00e9 de \u00ab croire \u00bb en ses pouvoirs et qui interrogerait, ce faisant, entre d\u00e9senchantement et impossible r\u00e9-enchantement, les modes privil\u00e9gi\u00e9s de toute forme, y compris s\u00e9cularis\u00e9e, de croyance (ironie, parodie, plagiat, simulacre\u2026).<\/p>\n

Les propositions de communication sont \u00e0 envoyer conjointement \u00e0 Monica Manolescu<\/a> et St\u00e9phane Vanderhaeghe<\/a> avant le 15 d\u00e9cembre 2012.<\/p>\n

Literary Crises and Forms of Belief<\/em>
\nMonica Manolescu (Universit\u00e9 de Strasbourg) and St\u00e9phane Vanderhaeghe (Universit\u00e9 Paris 8 Vincennes – Saint-Denis)<\/strong><\/p>\n

In \u201cGrids,\u201d first published in a 1979 issue of the journal October<\/em> and later collected in her book The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths<\/em>, Rosalind Krauss discusses the ambiguity of the grid as the emblematic form of modern art:
\n\u201cGiven the absolute rift that had opened between the sacred and the secular, the modern artist was obviously faced with the necessity to choose between one mode of expression and the other. The curious testimony offered by the grid is that at this juncture he tried to decide for both. In the increasingly de-sacralized space of the nineteenth century, art had become the refuge for religious emotion; it became, as it has remained, a secular form of belief. Although this condition could be discussed openly in the late nineteenth century, it is something that is inadmissible in the twentieth, so that by now we find it indescribably embarrassing to mention art and spirit in the same sentence. The peculiar power of the grid, its extraordinarily long life in the specialized space of modern art, arises from its potential to preside over this shame: to mask and to reveal it at one and the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Krauss focuses more specifically on modern art rather than literature, and even if there is no literary equivalent of the grid, one might wonder how extensive such a \u201cshame\u201d is over the impossible union of art and spirituality, both in American literature and the critical discourse that encompasses it. <\/p>\n

Many are the examples of writers whose work is fraught with just such a tension or who dip into a reservoir of themes, images, or artistic attitudes partaking of a spiritual nature. Among them are Flannery O\u2019Connor, whose texts often rest on the discrepancy between her Catholic convictions and the Protestant background of the South; Salinger and the appeal exerted by a syncretic form of spirituality with Eastern overtones (see Franny and Zooey<\/em>); William Gaddis, who questions the impossible authenticity of art and writing in a context defined by their reproduction and commodification; the Nature writers, whose work often enacts a shift from transcendence towards immanence\u2014such is the case, for instance, of Annie Dillard whose writing is tinged with a form of meditation reminiscent of a tradition originating with Thoreau and Emerson; Brian Evenson, who, alongside his notorious trouble with institutional forms of Mormonism, makes of violence the constitutive principle at the heart of his texts; Rikki Ducornet and her attempts at rewriting various episodes in the religious history of American colonization (The Fan-Maker\u2019s Inquisition<\/em>), or, not without some Hawthornian echoes, her interest in a Gothic and carnivalesque rendering of Catholicism; or, still, a writer like Nabokov, the heir, mischievous and parodic, to the Russian metaphysical tradition of the novel (see Ada<\/em>)\u2026 In that regard, one may also question the recurrence of what can be seen as so many secular epiphanies, as in Don DeLillo\u2019s White Noise<\/em>, for instance, at the end of which, against an apocalyptic backdrop, the only source of solace lies in the contemplation of a sleeping child. <\/p>\n

All these examples, selective as they might be, would tend to reinforce, while underlying its problematic nature at the outset of an open dialogue, the connection between literature and spirituality. However, it is possible to turn the perspective around in order to consider not the stronger link, but the weaker one instead between the two\u2014one might thus wonder about the by-now obsolete, \u201cshameful,\u201d or discrepant relationship between art and spirit in the twentieth and twenty first centuries, to stress the very critical<\/em> attitude of some American writers who may have ceased believing in the powers of the word, all the while questioning, halfway between disenchantment and an impossible re-enchantment, the usual modes through which belief, in all its manifestations, secular ones included, is inscribed into the texts (irony, parody, plagiarism, simulacrum\u2026).<\/p>\n

Abstracts should be sent both to Monica Manolescu<\/a> et St\u00e9phane Vanderhaeghe<\/a> by December 15, 2012.<\/p>\n

<\/a> 26. \u00ab There\u2019s only one god and we don\u2019t believe in him \u00bb : la religion \u00e0 fleur de texte<\/em> Sylvie Bauer (Universit\u00e9 Paris Ouest Nanterre) et Anne Ullmo (Universit\u00e9 Lille 3)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dans The Water Cure<\/em> (2007) de Percival Everett, le narrateur d\u00e9clare : “There’s only one god, and we don’t believe in him”. Cette boutade pourrait \u00eatre le point de d\u00e9part d\u2019une analyse plus approfondie des liens ambigus qu\u2019entretiennent la litt\u00e9rature contemporaine \u00e9tatsunienne et la religion. L\u2019enjeu de notre atelier consistera ainsi \u00e0 s\u2019interroger sur la mani\u00e8re dont le fait religieux y est tour \u00e0 tour mis en avant ou au contraire \u00e9vacu\u00e9, valoris\u00e9 ou point\u00e9 du doigt comme intrins\u00e8quement violent.<\/p>\n

On examinera d\u2019autre part la mani\u00e8re dont les diverses pratiques esth\u00e9tiques mettent en lumi\u00e8re la tension entre l\u2019absence de transcendance et la r\u00e9sistance du religieux.<\/p>\n

Interrog\u00e9 sur l\u2019influence de son h\u00e9ritage mormon sur son \u00e9criture, Brian Evenson r\u00e9pondait : \u00ab Religion and morality, if present at all, are present in the reader\u2019s recognition of their absence, and for having been translated into structural and organizational principles \u00bb (Brian Evenson by Ben Marcus). Comment se d\u00e9faire de la religion alors qu’elle s’est impos\u00e9e comme \u00ab principe structurel \u00bb, fondement d’une soci\u00e9t\u00e9 et d’une culture ? On pourrait peut-\u00eatre alors sugg\u00e9rer qu’elle fait retour, \u00e0 l’insu d’\u00e9critures qui non seulement tentent de s’en d\u00e9tacher, mais bien souvent, l’ignorent inconsciemment. Au sentiment d’\u00e9chec et \u00e0 la puissance du rejet du fait religieux s’oppose la force d’une pr\u00e9sence qui s’insinue malgr\u00e9 tout, ne serait-ce que par le biais de son absence, point aveugle ou trou dans la langue qui surgit, sinon avec la force de l’\u00e9vidence, au moins comme un reste, rappel insidieux de son emprise. De quelle mani\u00e8re les \u00e9crivains am\u00e9ricains contemporains inscrivent-ils dans leurs \u0153uvres cette pr\u00e9sence de l\u2019absence ? Comment parviennent-ils \u00e0 proposer une vision proche de la radicalit\u00e9 bataillienne d\u2019un envers insoutenable du monde m\u00e9taphysique ? On se penchera ainsi sur la mani\u00e8re dont l\u2019\u00e9criture, dans un renversement de l\u2019\u00e9tymologie du mot \u00ab religion \u00bb (re-ligare\/ re-binding) parvient \u00e0 figurer la coupure du sujet avec un dieu dont elle pr\u00e9sentifie l\u2019absence avec tant de force. De la repr\u00e9sentation subversive du rituel religieux (Evenson, Gass, Gaddis\u2026) \u00e0 la d\u00e9nonciation de la religion comme ali\u00e9nation (Ducornet, Evenson, Everett), en passant par l’absence totale de toute r\u00e9f\u00e9rence explicite \u00e0 la religion (Abish, Whitehead, Barthelme), alors m\u00eame qu’ils cr\u00e9ent parfois des mondes dans lesquels se substituent au religieux des syst\u00e8mes qui rappellent son pouvoir d’ali\u00e9nation, ces textes font \u00e9tat d\u2019une crise m\u00e9taphysique qui transpara\u00eet non seulement sur un plan th\u00e9matique mais \u00e9galement stylistique par le biais des figures du vide. Le paradoxe d\u2019une absence qui ne cesse de faire retour, d\u2019une b\u00e9ance indicible qui pourtant envahit l\u2019espace scriptural, incarnation qui fonde tout \u00e0 la fois la religion et l\u2019\u00e9criture, sera au centre de nos pr\u00e9occupations.<\/p>\n

Les propositions de communications sont \u00e0 envoyer \u00e0 Sylvie Bauer<\/a> et Anne Ullmo<\/a> avant le 15 d\u00e9cembre 2012.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s only one god and we don\u2019t believe in him\u201d: Religion under Erasure<\/em>
\nSylvie Bauer (Universit\u00e9 Paris Ouest Nanterre) et Anne Ullmo (Universit\u00e9 Lille 3)<\/strong><\/p>\n

The narrative voice of The Water Cure<\/em>, by Percival Everett, declares at one point: \u201cThere’s only one god, and we don’t believe in him.\u201d This tongue-in-cheek statement could very well summarize the ambiguous relation contemporary American literature has with the question of religion. Our panel will focus on examining the ways religion is in turns voiced and hushed, praised and denounced as intrinsically violent.<\/p>\n

We will also analyze how different aesthetic choices highlight a tension between the absence of transcendence and the clinging presence of religion.<\/p>\n

When asked about the influence of his Mormon heritage on his writing, Brian Evenson argues that \u201cReligion and morality, if present at all, are present in the reader’s recognition of their absence, and for having been translated into structural and organizational principles\u201d (Brian Evenson by Ben Marcus). In that regard, how is religion to be done away with, if it has shaped reality and delineated the \u201cstructural principle\u201d of American society and culture? We would like to suggest that religion always returns, in spite of texts that not only overtly dismiss it but also ignore it, consciously or not. This leads to an opposition between, on the one hand, the inability to ward off the impact of religion however vital the need to reject it and, on the other, its almighty presence that pervades writing, if only because of its absence acting like a kind of blank in language insidiously surfacing, a remainder of the grip it has on writers and readers alike. How is this presence of absence inscribed in the very texture of contemporary American works? How do writers manage to conjure up a vision akin to Bataille’s radical perception of an unbearable foil of metaphysics? We will interrogate the way writing succeeds in exhibiting the rupture between the subject and a god whose absence is made so vividly palpable. Ranging from the subversive representation of religious rituals (Evenson, Gass, Gaddis) to a denunciation of religion as alienation (Ducornet, Evenson, Everett), through the total absence of explicit reference to religious matters (Abish, Whitehead, Bartheleme), even though they sometimes create systems that recall its alienating power, those texts display a metaphysical crisis, on both thematic and stylistic levels, embodied, so to say, by a sense of gaping emptiness. Our purpose will be to probe the paradoxes of an absence that always returns with the force of an obsession, of an unutterable void that nonetheless pervades writing, the incarnation perhaps, of the very nature of both religion and writing.<\/p>\n

Submissions must be sent to Sylvie Bauer<\/a> and Anne Ullmo<\/a> by December 15, 2012.<\/p>\n

<\/a> 27. La fin du monde, ou l\u2019\u00e9criture et la d\u00e9sincarnation<\/em>
\nBrigitte F\u00e9lix et Arnaud Regnauld (Universit\u00e9 Paris 8 Vincennes – Saint-Denis) <\/strong><\/p>\n

Oscillant entre mat\u00e9rialisme et id\u00e9alisme en fonction du courant posthumaniste auquel elle se rattache, la figure ironique et blasph\u00e9matoire du cyborg s\u2019oppose \u00e0 l\u2019id\u00e9e d\u2019une Cr\u00e9ation du monde et par extension au mythe d\u2019un retour \u00e0 une unit\u00e9 originaire \u00e0 la fin du monde sans pour autant cesser d\u2019\u00eatre hant\u00e9e par le spectre d\u2019une \u00e2me transcendante qui s\u2019incarnerait dans son corps hybride, mi-homme, mi-machine (Donna Haraway, \u00ab Manifeste cyborg : science, technologie et f\u00e9minisme socialiste \u00e0 la fin du XXe si\u00e8cle \u00bb, Le Manifeste cyborg et autres essais<\/em>, tr. Laurence Allard, Delphine Gardey et Nathalie Magnan, 2007, 29 et 34). Le corps cyborg signe \u00e0 la fois la possibilit\u00e9 d\u2019une restauration de l\u2019intact (ce que Derrida d\u00e9signe comme \u00ab le sain, le sauf, le sacr\u00e9, l\u2019indemne, l\u2019immun \u00bb (Foi et savoir<\/em>, 1997), comme celle d\u2019un d\u00e9s- et d\u2019un r\u00e9assemblage potentiellement infini qui brouillerait les fronti\u00e8res du m\u00eame pris dans un processus d\u2019hybridation perp\u00e9tuelle du m\u00eame avec l\u2019autre, compris ici comme une profanation de la puret\u00e9 (promise). Le cyborg entretient en effet une relation ambivalente avec la religion dont il convient de penser ici l\u2019articulation paradoxale avec la technocience \u00ab expropriatrice et d\u00e9localisatrice \u00bb.
\nOr, d\u2019apr\u00e8s Jean-Luc Nancy, \u00e0 \u00ab la mondialisation \u00bb qui marque la perte de la transcendance du verbe et le d\u00e9but de la d\u00e9rive des signes, correspond \u00ab la fin du sens du monde<\/em> en tant que fin du monde du sens <\/em>\u00bb. En effet, la \u00ab mondialisation (\u2026) ne laisse plus de \u2018dehors\u2019 \u2013 et par cons\u00e9quent plus de \u2018dedans\u2019 \u2013 ni sur cette terre, ni hors d\u2019elle, ni dans cet univers, ni hors de lui, par rapport \u00e0 quoi un sens pourrait se d\u00e9terminer \u00bb (Le Sens du monde,<\/em> 1993). En d\u2019autres termes, l\u2019\u00e9criture ne parvient plus \u00e0 tracer les limites d\u2019un monde qui serait une \u00ab articulation diff\u00e9rentielle de singularit\u00e9s qui font sens en s\u2019articulant \u00bb (Idem<\/em>). Or, s\u2019il l\u2019on en croit Haraway, \u00ab l\u2019\u00e9criture constitue de fa\u00e7on pr\u00e9-\u00e9minente la technologie des cyborgs \u00bb, et c\u2019est pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment notre rapport au monde comme appareillage qu\u2019il s\u2019agit de penser ici, c\u2019est-\u00e0-dire un monde toujours d\u00e9j\u00e0 pris dans un rapport \u00e0 la technique d\u00e9naturante<\/em> : \u00ab un corps cyborg n\u2019a rien d\u2019innocent, il n\u2019est pas n\u00e9 dans un jardin, il ne recherche pas l\u2019identit\u00e9 unitaire et donc ne g\u00e9n\u00e8re pas de dualismes antagonistes sans fin (ou qui ne prennent fin qu\u2019avec le monde lui-m\u00eame) [\u2026] \u00bb (voir aussi le concept d\u2019\u00e9cotechnie, in <\/em>Jean-Luc Nancy, La D\u00e9closion<\/em>, 2005).<\/p>\n

Comment penser d\u00e8s lors la fin du monde,<\/em> ou tout au moins la fin d\u2019un monde de la repr\u00e9sentation, \u00ab c\u2019est-\u00e0-dire un monde sans Dieu capable d\u2019\u00eatre le sujet de sa repr\u00e9sentation \u00bb selon les termes de Jean-Luc Nancy, dans La Cr\u00e9ation du monde ou la mondialisation <\/em>(2002). La question de la transcendance s\u2019est d\u00e9plac\u00e9e, et porte d\u00e9sormais sur l\u2019existence et la possibilit\u00e9 de faire advenir un monde commun dans sa mat\u00e9rialit\u00e9 a-signifiante alors m\u00eame que le discours religieux prenait en charge jusqu\u2019alors la production du sens comme promesse d\u2019une r\u00e9v\u00e9lation. On pourra donc s\u2019int\u00e9resser plus particuli\u00e8rement \u00e0 la probl\u00e9matique de la d\u00e9s\/incarnation dans une litt\u00e9rature marqu\u00e9e par la fin de la transcendance du verbe, fin qui signe l\u2019entr\u00e9e dans le monde des corps<\/em> : dans quelle mesure le myst\u00e8re<\/em> s\u2019est-il vid\u00e9 de sa substance m\u00e9taphysique en se d\u00e9pla\u00e7ant vers le champ de la technique (mouvement que l\u2019on pourra \u00e9ventuellement appr\u00e9hender, sur les traces de Derrida, sous l\u2019angle paradoxal d\u2019une r\u00e9action auto-immune de la religion) ?<\/p>\n

Cet atelier souhaiterait accueillir des contributions consacr\u00e9es \u00e0 la litt\u00e9rature am\u00e9ricaine contemporaine (\u0153uvres imprim\u00e9es ou \u00e9lectroniques, fiction ou po\u00e9sie, au-del\u00e0 des fronti\u00e8res g\u00e9n\u00e9riques classiques) dans sa confrontation avec les questions \u00e9voqu\u00e9es ci-dessus, ainsi que des propositions de nature plus th\u00e9oriques (mais s’appuyant toujours sur un corpus contemporain, dans le domaine de la litt\u00e9rature et\/ou des arts visuels, et de leur interaction avec la technologie num\u00e9rique).<\/p>\n

Les propositions d\u2019environ 350 mots sont \u00e0 envoyer simultan\u00e9ment \u00e0 : Brigitte F\u00e9lix<\/a> et Arnaud Regnauld<\/a> avant le 15 d\u00e9cembre 2012. <\/p>\n

The End of the World, or Writing and Disincarnation<\/em>
\nBrigitte F\u00e9lix and Arnaud Regnauld (Universit\u00e9 Paris 8 Vincennes – Saint-Denis) <\/strong><\/p>\n

The ironic and blasphemous figure of the cyborg oscillates between a materialistic and an idealistic approach depending on the posthumanistic ideology it serves (Donna Haraway, \u201cA Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late 20th Century\u201d, Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature <\/em>[New York: Routledge, 1991] 149-181). The cyborg opposes the idea of a Creation, and by extension the myth of a return to an original unity at the end of the world while being haunted by the ghost of a transcendental soul incarnated into its hybrid body, half-human, half-machine. The cyborg body opens both the possibility of a return to wholeness (what Derrida designates as \u201cthe holy, the sacred, the safe and sound, the unscathed, the immune\u201d (Acts of Religion<\/em>, 2002) and that of a potentially endless dis- and re-assembling process blurring the boundaries of the same as it is caught within a process of perpetual hybridization with the other\u2014such hybridization should be understood here as a profanation of (promised) purity. The cyborg entertains an ambivalent relationship with religion whose paradoxical articulation with an \u201cexpropriating and delocalizing\u201d technoscience should be thought out.<\/p>\n

Now, according to Jean-Luc Nancy, the \u201cglobalization\u201d which marks the loss of the transcendence of the word and the beginning of a semiotic drift entails \u201cthis end of the sense of the world<\/em>, which is the end of the world of sense<\/em>.\u201d Globalization \u201cno longer leaves any \u2018outside\u2019 and consequently no longer leaves any \u2018inside\u2019\u2014neither on this earth nor beyond it, neither in this universe nor beyond it\u2014with relation to which a sense could be determined\u201d (The Sense of the World<\/em>, 1997). In other words, writing no longer manages to delineate the contours of a world which could be \u201ca differential articulation of singularities that make sense in articulating themselves\u201d (ibid<\/em>.). If one is to believe Haraway, \u201cwriting is pre-eminently the technology of cyborgs,\u201d and it is precisely our relationship to the world as prosthesized that needs to be reflected upon, that is to say a world always already caught in a technical and denaturalizing relationship: \u201cA cyborg body is not innocent; it was not born in a garden; it does not seek unitary identity and so generate antagonistic dualisms without end (or until the world ends) [\u2026].\u201d (One could also refer to the concept of ecotechnics, see Nancy, Dis-Enclosure:<\/em> The Deconstruction of Christianity<\/em>, 2008).<\/p>\n

How are we then to consider the end of the world,<\/em> or at least the end of a world of representation, in other words \u201ca world without God capable of being the subject of its representation\u201d in Jean-Luc Nancy\u2019s words (The Creation of the World or Globalization<\/em>, 2007). The question of transcendence has shifted onto other grounds and now bears upon the existence and possibility of the advent of a common world in its a-signifiying materiality while religious discourse took charge of the production of meaning as the promise of a revelation. One could therefore focus more specifically on the problematics of dis\/incarnation in a literature marked by the end of the transcendence of the word, an end which heralds the beginning of a world of bodies<\/em>: to what extent has the mystery been emptied of its metaphysical substance as it shifted into the field of technology (a shift which one could possibly interpret, following Derrida\u2019s theory, as religion\u2019s autoimmune reaction)?<\/p>\n

This workshop welcomes contributions dedicated to contemporary American literature (printed or electronic works, poetry or fiction, beyond traditional generic boundaries) in its encounter with the above-mentioned issues, as well as more theoretically oriented proposals (still based on a contemporary corpus in the field of literature and\/or the visual arts, and their interaction with digital technologies). <\/p>\n

Abstracts of approximately 350 words should be sent to both Brigitte F\u00e9lix<\/a> et Arnaud Regnauld<\/a> by December 15, 2012.<\/p>\n

<\/a>28. Incarner la spiritualit\u00e9 et inscrire la religion dans le cin\u00e9ma am\u00e9ricain<\/em>
\nAnne-Marie Pacquet-Deyris (Universit\u00e9 Paris Ouest Nanterre) et Gilles Menegaldo (Universit\u00e9 de Poitiers)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hollywood tout comme le cin\u00e9ma ind\u00e9pendant ont souvent repr\u00e9sent\u00e9 des syst\u00e8mes de croyance \u00e0 l\u2019\u00e9cran, qu\u2019ils soient clairement identifi\u00e9s comme partie prenante d\u2019un dogme officiel (\u00e9piscopalien, juif hassidique, m\u00e9thodiste africain, baptiste sudiste, amish etc.) comme dans l\u2019adaptation par John Huston de Wise Blood<\/em>, roman de Flannery O\u2019Connor ou qu\u2019ils empruntent \u00e0 d\u2019autres formes de spiritualit\u00e9, en dehors de cette gamme de religions officielles et bien identifi\u00e9es, comme le fait Terrence Malik dans Days of Heaven<\/em> ou plus r\u00e9cemment dans Tree of Life<\/em>. La religion est aussi sous-jacente dans nombre de films de genre comme le western, le film policier (Angels with Dirty Faces<\/em>, Michael Curtiz, Bad Lieutenant<\/em>, Abel Ferrara) ou encore le film d\u2019horreur (The Exorcist<\/em>, The Ome, <\/em>etc.). Enfin la spiritualit\u00e9 irrigue nombre de films hollywoodiens en relation par exemple avec le sublime du paysage. \u00c0l\u2019occasion de cet atelier, nous essaierons d\u2019analyser les moyens divers par lesquels les cin\u00e9astes captent les formes, les significations et les fonctions de la religion pour les inscrire \u00e0 l\u2019\u00e9cran. Est-il possible de d\u00e9finir une cat\u00e9gorie comme le \u00ab film religieux \u00bb dont une expression plus majestueuse serait le film Biblique \u00e9pique ?<\/p>\n

Propositions sont \u00e0 envoyer \u00e0 Anne-Marie Paquet-Deyris<\/a> et Gilles Menegaldo<\/a> avant le 15 d\u00e9cembre 2012.<\/p>\n

Incarnating Spirituality and Inscribing Religion in American Cinema<\/em>
\nAnne-Marie Pacquet-Deyris (Paris Ouest Nanterre) and Gilles Menegaldo (Universit\u00e9 de Poitiers)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hollywood as well as American independent cinema have often represented systems of belief on screen whether they be clearly identified as part of the official dogmas (Episcopalian, AME: African Methodist Episcopal, Jewish Hassidic, Southern Baptists, Amish…) as in John Huston’s adaptation of Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood<\/em>, or draw more on forms of spirituality, outside the well-identified and institutionalized range of religions, as in Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven <\/em>or the more recent Tree of Life. <\/em>Religion is also underlying in a number of genre films such as the western, the crime film (Angels with Dirty Faces<\/em>, Michael Curtiz, Bad Lieutenant<\/em>, Abel Ferrara), or the horror Film (The Exorcist<\/em>, The Omen<\/em>, etc.). Lastly, spirituality pervades a number of films in relation, for example, with landscape sublimity. In this workshop, we will try to analyze the diverse ways in which directors capture the forms, meanings and functions of religion and inscribe them on screen. Is it possible to say that there is such a generic category called \u201cthe religious film,\u201d whose most majestic expression would be the Bible epic? <\/p>\n

Submissions should be sent to Anne-Marie Paquet-Deyris<\/a> and Gilles Menegaldo<\/a> by December 15, 2012.<\/p>\n

<\/a> 29. Religion et transgression dans la litt\u00e9rature et les arts visuels<\/em>
\nChristophe Chambost (Universit\u00e9 Bordeaux 3) et Jocelyn Dupont (Universit\u00e9 de Perpignan)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cet atelier consacr\u00e9 \u00e0 la transgression religieuse dans la litt\u00e9rature et les arts visuels am\u00e9ricains s\u2019inscrit dans une perspective r\u00e9solument transdisciplinaire et diachronique, mais soud\u00e9e par une approche philosophique h\u00e9rit\u00e9e de Georges Bataille (1897-1962). Pour Bataille, on le sait, la transgression et le mouvement \u00e9rotique qu\u2019elle entra\u00eene ne sauraient un seul instant \u00eatre dissoci\u00e9s d\u2019une exp\u00e9rience int\u00e9rieure profond\u00e9ment empreinte de religiosit\u00e9 mystique. L\u2019\u00ab h\u00e9t\u00e9rologie \u00bb bataillienne a donc les contours d\u2019une eschatologie, et ses manifestations transgressives ne se d\u00e9partissent jamais d\u2019un appel au divin, situ\u00e9 plus souvent en-de\u00e7\u00e0 <\/em>qu\u2019au-del\u00e0.
\nSi Bataille avait fameusement pris la d\u00e9fense des \u00e9crits d\u2019Henry Miller en 1946, il est patent que la litt\u00e9rature et les arts visuels \u00e9tats-uniens ne l\u2019avaient pas attendu pour allier mysticisme et transgression. Il n\u2019est ainsi qu\u2019\u00e0 songer \u00e0 la folie poss\u00e9d\u00e9e de Theodore Wieland chez Brockden Brown dans Wieland, or The Transformation <\/em>(1798), au pervertissement du mythe fondateur de l\u2019Akedah responsable de la perte des fils de la nation (Hawthorne, Bierce\u2026), voire aux tourments des narrateurs les plus fous d\u2019Edgar Poe, ceux du \u00ab Tell-Tale Heart \u00bb ou de \u00ab The Black Cat \u00bb, relay\u00e9s sur la sc\u00e8ne contemporaine par Chuck Palahniuk dans Survivor <\/em>(1997). Dans le domaine du cin\u00e9ma, on pourra songer \u00e0 l\u2019alliance maudite entre religiosit\u00e9 et violence urbaine telles qu\u2019elle se manifeste chez Martin Scorcese (Mean Streets<\/em>) ou Abel Ferrara (Bad Lieutenant<\/em>). La photographie contemporaine a elle aussi d\u00e9montr\u00e9 de redoutables potentialit\u00e9s dans ces associations entre religion et transgression, \u00e0 l\u2019image du c\u00e9l\u00e8bre Piss Christ <\/em>d\u2019Andres Serrano, ou encore de l\u2019\u0153uvre de Joel Peter Witkins, qui revendique un art fondamentalement chr\u00e9tien mais dont la part maudite ne saurait \u00e9pargner l\u2019\u0153il du spectateur. Ces \u0153uvres visuelles sont \u00e0 la fois complices et d\u00e9nonciatrices des us et coutumes de nos soci\u00e9t\u00e9s occidentales (Hal Foster, The Anti-Aesthetic<\/em>). Et l\u2019ordonnancement initial d\u2019une image \u00ab propre et nette \u00bb peut parfois se fissurer et laisser filtrer les signes d\u2019un chaos originel troublant (Rosalind Krauss, The Optical Unconscious<\/em>). Les \u0153uvres de Cindy Sherman ou Jeff Wall sont d\u2019autres exemples plus ou moins flagrants de cette veine transgressive de l\u2019art photographique. <\/p>\n

Les contributeurs sont donc invit\u00e9s, sans restriction disciplinaire ni chronologique, \u00e0 proposer des communications dans lesquelles se manifeste l\u2019extase religieuse de la transgression \u00e9rotique, \u00ab approbation de la vie jusque dans la mort \u00bb. <\/p>\n

Merci d\u2019adresser conjointement vos propositions \u00e0 Jocelyn Dupont<\/a> et Christophe Chambost<\/a> avant le 15 d\u00e9cembre 2012.<\/p>\n

Religion and Transgression in US Literature and Visual Arts<\/em>
\nChristophe Chambost (Universit\u00e9 Bordeaux 3) and Jocelyn Dupont (Universit\u00e9 de Perpignan)<\/strong><\/p>\n

This interdisciplinary and diachronic workshop will be dedicated to exploring the manifestations of religious transgression in literature and the visual arts from the United States, under the aegis of French philosopher Georges Bataille\u2019s theories. According to Bataille, transgression and its erotic dynamics cannot be separated from a religious, even mystical internal experience. Bataille\u2019s \u201cheterologies\u201d thus appear as a singular form eschatology, whose transgressive manifestations always somehow connect with the Divine, whose transcendence is to be sought beneath <\/em>more often than beyond. <\/p>\n

While Bataille famously stood up in defense of Henry Miller in 1946, it is obvious that American literature and visual arts had already been exploring for many decades some potentialities of the unholy alliance between mysticism and transgression. One only has to think of Theodore Wieland\u2019s God-inspired dementia in Brockden Brown\u2019s Wieland, or The Transformation <\/em>(1798), the perversion of the founding myth of the Akedah accountable for the loss of the Sons of the Nation (Hawthorne, Bierce), or of the mystical torments afflicting some of Poe\u2019s most famous mad narrators, as in \u201cThe Tell-Tale Heart\u201d of \u201cThe Black Cat,\u201d relayed on the contemporary scenes by Chuck Palahniuk in Survivor <\/em>(1997), to name but one prominent \u201ctransgressional\u201d author. As far as cinema is concerned, filmmakers such as Martin Scorcese (Mean Streets<\/em>) or Abel Ferrara (Bad Lieutenant<\/em>) have for some time imbued their urban ultra-violence with a profound sense of religiosity. Contemporary photography has also explored this path, with artists like Andres Serrano or Joel Peter Witkins leading the way. As Hal Foster argues in The Anti-Aesthetic, <\/em>such visual works simultaneously attack and partake in the mores and customs of our Western societies, so that the initial \u201corder\u201d of the picture fissures and cracks open, letting through the manifestations of an original chaos (Rosalind Krauss, The Optical Unconscious<\/em>). The works of Cindy Sherman or Jeff Walls are further examples of the transgressive potential of photography. <\/p>\n

Contributors are therefore invited, without any disciplinary or chronological reservation, to propose papers in which religious ecstasy meets the transgressive energy of eroticism, \u201cthe affirmation of life into death.\u201d<\/p>\n

Please e-mail your paper proposal to Jocelyn Dupont<\/a> and Christophe Chambost<\/a> by December 15, 2012.<\/p>\n

<\/a> 30. Les ic\u00f4nes entre s\u00e9cularisation et resacralisation<\/em>
\nFran\u00e7ois Brunet (Universit\u00e9 Paris Diderot) et G\u00e9raldine Chouard (Universit\u00e9 Paris Dauphine)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Processus historique de prise d\u2019autonomie vis-\u00e0-vis du religieux (Marx, Weber), la s\u00e9cularisation est un ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne reconnu de l’\u00e9volution du monde occidental, au point d’\u00eatre devenu l\u2019un des principaux paradigmes d’interpr\u00e9tation de sa modernit\u00e9. <\/p>\n

Les \u00c9tats-Unis constituent et revendiquent \u00e0 cet \u00e9gard une certaine exception, li\u00e9e \u00e0 l’h\u00e9ritage historique d’un pays qui a combattu \u00e0 la fois pour la \u00ab libert\u00e9 de culte \u00bb, en en faisant sa premi\u00e8re valeur fondatrice, et pour une autonomisation du politique vis-\u00e0-vis du religieux, et qui a \u00e9labor\u00e9 une \u00ab religion civile \u00bb servant de matrice \u00e0 sa construction identitaire sans pour autant en exclure les religions traditionnelles, \u00e0 commencer par le protestantisme sous ses multiples formes. Depuis les ann\u00e9es 1960, le renouveau de diverses formes de religiosit\u00e9 dans la soci\u00e9t\u00e9 am\u00e9ricaine a amen\u00e9 certains commentateurs \u00e0 mettre en cause la th\u00e8se d\u2019une s\u00e9cularisation croissante et g\u00e9n\u00e9rale de la soci\u00e9t\u00e9 am\u00e9ricaine. <\/p>\n

Actualisant ce propos, dans un article intitul\u00e9 \u00ab The \u201cReturn\u201d of Religion in the Scholarship of American Art \u00bb (2003), Sally M. Promey soulignait justement la sp\u00e9cificit\u00e9 du \u00ab cas am\u00e9ricain \u00bb : \u00ab In the United States, especially, the \u201cproblem\u201d of the historical persistence, and even ascendance, of religion in modernity represents a direct challenge to the secularization theory of modernity and its scholarly application \u00bb, engageant ainsi \u00e0 porter l’attention critique sur le d\u00e9placement du religieux dans divers domaines de la culture am\u00e9ricaine, et notamment celui de la culture visuelle (voir The Visual Culture of American Religions<\/em>, California, 2001).<\/p>\n

Si le visuel dans son ensemble est un terrain d’observation privil\u00e9gi\u00e9 pour interroger la pertinence actuelle de la th\u00e9orie de la s\u00e9cularisation, cet atelier s’int\u00e9ressera plus particuli\u00e8rement aux ic\u00f4nes am\u00e9ricaines (stars, marques, sites, objets, logos, photos \u00ab historiques \u00bb, etc.), offrant des approches diversifi\u00e9es de son processus.<\/p>\n

Cet atelier vise notamment \u00e0 aborder l’\u00e9volution ou l’oscillation (manifeste surtout depuis le 11 septembre) de l’ic\u00f4ne, envisag\u00e9e d’un point de vue th\u00e9orique, politique, religieux, artistique, entre deux p\u00f4les oppos\u00e9s, \u00e0 savoir :
\na. une conception s\u00e9culariste et souvent p\u00e9jorative de l’ic\u00f4ne et plus g\u00e9n\u00e9ralement de \u00ab l\u2019image \u00bb comme simulacre, version d\u00e9vitalis\u00e9e ou commercialis\u00e9e de l’ic\u00f4ne religieuse ou de \u00ab l\u2019id\u00e9al \u00bb politique, allant jusqu’\u00e0 la d\u00e9nonciation d\u2019un \u00ab d\u00e9senchantement \u00bb ou d\u2019un \u00ab d\u00e9sert de r\u00e9alit\u00e9 \u00bb dans le \u00ab culte \u00bb moderne des images (Boorstin, Baudrillard)
\nb. une conception \u00ab resacralisante \u00bb de l’ic\u00f4ne, o\u00f9 le culte moderne des images (notamment patriotiques et commerciales) est pris au s\u00e9rieux comme nouvelle religion civile, voire nouvelle religion tout court, devenant cible et instrument de \u00ab guerres culturelles \u00bb (et en particulier de pratiques iconoclastes, profanation, etc.) et de guerres interculturelles (en particulier dans la confrontation m\u00e9diatique des \u00ab civilisations \u00bb chr\u00e9tienne et musulmane) (Mitchell, Zizek)<\/p>\n

Entre ces deux axes, diff\u00e9rentes acceptions ou fonctions interm\u00e9diaires de l’ic\u00f4ne pourront \u00eatre envisag\u00e9es, dans une large palette de domaines du champ am\u00e9ricaniste (sciences politiques, \u00e9tudes culturelles, histoire de l’art, s\u00e9miotique, critique litt\u00e9raire\u2026).<\/p>\n

Merci d’envoyer vos propositions \u00e0 Fran\u00e7ois Brunet<\/a> et \u00e0 G\u00e9raldine Chouard<\/a> avant le 15 d\u00e9cembre 2012.<\/p>\n

Icons: Between Secularization and Resacralization<\/em>
\nFran\u00e7ois Brunet (Universit\u00e9 Paris Diderot-Paris 7) and G\u00e9raldine Chouard (Universit\u00e9 Paris Dauphine)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Secularization, the historical process in which societies move away from religious dependence (Marx, Weber), is a well-recognized step in the evolution of the Western world and has become one of the main paradigms of interpretation for its modernity.<\/p>\n

The United States, however, is one notable exception in this regard. Historically, the nation fought for both freedom of religion\u2014its founding value\u2014and the separation of Church and State. A \u201ccivil religion\u201d also emerged, forming the basis of an identity in which all traditional religions were accepted, starting with the various Protestant denominations. Since the 1960s, a revival of different forms of religiousness in American society has led some commentators to question the idea of a growing secularization throughout the United States.<\/p>\n

In her recent article, \u201cThe ‘Return’ of Religion in the Scholarship of American Art\u201d (2003), Sally M. Promey sheds new light on this argument by highlighting the specificity of the American case: \u201cIn the United States, especially, the ‘problem’ of the historical persistence, and even ascendance, of religion in modernity represents a direct challenge to the secularization theory of modernity and its scholarly application.\u201d Promey pays particular attention to the expression of religion in various areas of American culture, especially visual culture (see The Visual Culture of American Religions<\/em>, California, 2001).<\/p>\n

While visual culture as a whole provides a unique vantage point from which to examine the relevance of the secularization theory today, this workshop will focus more specifically on American icons (stars, brands, sites, objects, logos, \u201chistoric\u201d pictures, etc.) and provide a diversified look at the evolution of secularization.
\nThis workshop will address in particular the oscillation (especially since 9\/11) of icons between two opposing poles:
\na. A secularist and often pejorative view of icons and, more generally, of the image as simulacrum. The critique of debased or commercialized versions of the religious icon or political ideal denounces disillusionment or a \u201cdesert of reality\u201d in the modern worship of images (Boorstin, Baudrillard)
\nb. A \u201cresacralizing\u201d view of the icon in which contemporary forms of image worship (particularly patriotic and commercial images) are considered constituents of a new civil religion, or even a new religion in itself, and become the target or weapon of cultural wars (in iconoclast practices, defamation, etc.) and intercultural wars (as witnessed in the media confrontation of Christian and Muslim civilizations) (Mitchell, Zizek).<\/p>\n

Between these two opposing views, one may imagine other definitions or uses of the icon in the wide-ranging field of American studies (political science, cultural studies, art history, semiotics, literary criticism). <\/p>\n

Please send your proposals to Fran\u00e7ois Brunet<\/a> et \u00e0 G\u00e9raldine Chouard<\/a> by December 15, 2012.<\/p>\n

<\/a>31. <\/strong> L\u2019esprit iconoclaste I : religion et blasph\u00e8me dans la culture populaire<\/em> <\/strong>
\n<\/strong>John Dean (Universit\u00e9 de Versailles Saint-Quentin) et Nicolas Labarre (Universit\u00e9 Bordeaux 3)<\/p>\n

La culture populaire des \u00c9tats-Unis n\u2019est pas avare de repr\u00e9sentation du fait religieux, refl\u00e9tant en cela le r\u00f4le du fait religieux dans le pays. Simultan\u00e9ment, la culture populaire ne cesse de s\u2019emparer du religieux pour le moquer, le d\u00e9tourner ou s\u2019en affranchir. C\u2019est cette tension que se propose d\u2019\u00e9tudier cet atelier.<\/p>\n

Le cin\u00e9ma hollywoodien, pour ne prendre que cet exemple, fait r\u00e9guli\u00e8rement \u00e9talage de pi\u00e9t\u00e9 \u0153cum\u00e9nique, qu\u2019il s\u2019agisse de l\u2019affiche du ET <\/em>de Spielberg (1982) \u2013 pastichant la Cr\u00e9ation du monde de Michel-Ange \u2013 de la trajectoire r\u00e9demptrice du super-h\u00e9ros ou de l\u2019ascension de pr\u00e9dicateurs t\u00e9l\u00e9visuels au rang de c\u00e9l\u00e9brit\u00e9s nationales. Pourtant, au-del\u00e0 de cette pr\u00e9sence ordinaire, banalis\u00e9e par sa fr\u00e9quence et son traitement, la culture populaire reste un champ de bataille particuli\u00e8rement contest\u00e9 d\u00e8s lors qu\u2019elle entend mettre en avant la religion, m\u00eame pour y adh\u00e9rer. Les exemples de The Passion the Christ<\/em> (Mel Gibson, 2004) ou de la plus sobre saga des films adapt\u00e9s de la s\u00e9rie des Chroniques de Narnia<\/em>, de C.S. Lewis (2005, 2008 et 2010) ont ainsi d\u00e9clench\u00e9 l\u2019enthousiasme d\u2019un public tr\u00e8s cibl\u00e9, en m\u00eame temps qu\u2019une violente controverse. Cette r\u00e9sistance est bien per\u00e7ue par les industries culturelles, qui n\u2019h\u00e9sitent pas \u00e0 en faire usage \u00e0 des fins d\u2019autopromotion, utilisant une approche blasph\u00e9matoire ou per\u00e7ue comme telle comme m\u00e9tonymie d\u2019un propos subversif. On pense ainsi \u00e0 une affiche comme celle de The People vs. Larry Flint<\/em> (Milos Forman, 1996) montrant le h\u00e9ros en croix devant des cuisses nues, qui avait sur ce point atteint son objectif. Citons aussi le personnage de Jimmy Kimmel dans The Strip<\/em> – le cartoon publi\u00e9 par le New York Times<\/em> \u2013 l\u2019animateur de talk-show<\/em> David Letterman ou encore Scandalous: The Life and Times of Aimee Semple McPherson<\/em>, succ\u00e8s actuel de Broadway. De fa\u00e7on r\u00e9currente, le genre horrifique s\u2019est fait une sp\u00e9cialit\u00e9 de cette r\u00e9cup\u00e9ration dans divers m\u00e9dias, depuis le succ\u00e8s fondateur de The Exorcist<\/em> (William Friedkin, 1973) : que l\u2019on pense \u00e0 des objets culturels aussi vari\u00e9s que Event Horizon<\/em> (Paul W. Anderson, 1997) ou \u00e0 la bande dessin\u00e9e Preacher<\/em> (Garth Ennis et Steve Dillon, 1995-2000). La culture populaire se fait alors iconoclaste \u2013 s\u2019attaquant litt\u00e9ralement \u00e0 des images, des repr\u00e9sentations \u2013 sans cesser de clamer en creux l\u2019importance du religieux.<\/p>\n

La question des contours fronti\u00e8res de la culture populaire appara\u00eet de ce point de vue comme d\u00e9terminant : la culture populaire mais per\u00e7ue comme l\u00e9gitime peut s\u2019emparer de fait religieux (Wise Blood<\/em>, de John Houston, 1979, Magnolia<\/em> de Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999) quand une culture de masse, celle du blockbuster et de la production industrielle, se voit d\u00e9nier ce droit. La diff\u00e9rence de r\u00e9ception entre The Last Temptation of Christ<\/em> (Martin Scorsese, 1988) et Mary<\/em> (Abel Ferrara, 2005), deux films r\u00e9alis\u00e9s par des cin\u00e9astes tr\u00e8s religieux, mais deux films pr\u00e9sentant une relecture peu orthodoxe de la Bible, est de ce point \u00e9loquente. L\u2019exemple du jeu de carte Magic : the Gathering<\/em>, qui supprima tout pentacle ou d\u00e9mon de ses cartes au moment de quitter la sous-culture des joueurs de jeu de r\u00f4le pour devenir mainstream<\/em> (en 1995) est \u00e9galement \u00e9loquent. Il faudrait sans doute ajouter \u00e0 cette dichotomie une troisi\u00e8me cat\u00e9gorie, celle de l\u2019underground, par d\u00e9finition peu visible dans l\u2019espace public, qui mobilise le fait religieux dans le cadre de son usage des tabous contemporains et joue le r\u00f4le d\u2019avant-garde en nourrissant sur ce point la culture l\u00e9gitime (voir la filiation entre le roman graphique fondateur de Justin Green Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary<\/em> et Maus<\/em>). On peut d\u2019ailleurs s\u2019interroger sur la place de la s\u00e9rie t\u00e9l\u00e9vis\u00e9e dans cette classification, d\u2019une part en raison de la l\u00e9gitimation rapide de la forme, d\u2019autre part \u00e0 cause de la multiplicit\u00e9 de ses modes de diffusion et de r\u00e9ception. L\u2019ath\u00e9isme militant mais constamment dialectis\u00e9e d\u2019un House<\/em> dans la s\u00e9rie \u00e9ponyme ne semble pas pouvoir \u00eatre mis sur le m\u00eame plan que l\u2019anticl\u00e9ricalisme rigolard de certains \u00e9pisodes des Sopranos<\/em> ou le nihilisme attendri des Simpsons<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Dans le cadre de cet atelier, nous souhaitons nous pencher sur les modes de d\u00e9tournement voir de contestation de la religion et de ses repr\u00e9sentations au sein des formes populaires. Comme l\u2019indique le terme d\u2019 \u00ab iconoclaste \u00bb, ce sont bien les images qui nous int\u00e9resserons au premier chef. Parmi les axes possibles, citons la question de la sp\u00e9cificit\u00e9 des formes : le traitement m\u00eame de la religion par le jeu vid\u00e9o para\u00eet imm\u00e9diatement probl\u00e9matique, par exemple, comme l\u2019atteste le choix de Nintendo de ne pas vendre sur sa boutique en ligne un jeu am\u00e9ricain intitul\u00e9 The Binding of Isaac, <\/em>apr\u00e8s que celui-ci avait \u00e9t\u00e9 qualifi\u00e9 officiellement de \u00ab blasph\u00e9matoire \u00bb en Allemagne. Outre les questions de mondialisation de la spiritualit\u00e9 dans les industries culturelles, que sugg\u00e8re cet exemple, citons aussi parmi les pistes possibles les \u00e9tudes portant sur le r\u00f4le du genre narratif. Celui-ci appara\u00eet comme un axe particuli\u00e8rement riche dans la mesure o\u00f9 la science-fiction, le fantastique ou l\u2019horreur \u00e9tablissent un rapport tr\u00e8s sp\u00e9cifique au religieux et au spirituel, permettant toutes les extrapolations (la s\u00e9rie Battlestar Galactica, <\/em>2004-09), toutes les reconfigurations (2001, A Space Odyssey, <\/em>1968). Outre les modes de cr\u00e9ation d\u2019images pouvant \u00eatre lues comme blasph\u00e9matoires ou iconoclastes, nous encourageons les propositions traitant de leur fonction et leur r\u00e9ception. Une approche historisant ce type de r\u00e9flexion para\u00eet \u00e9galement n\u00e9cessaire et fructueuse, si l\u2019on pense au scandale provoqu\u00e9 par un num\u00e9ro de Panic<\/em> en 1953, dans lequel Bill Elder avait dessin\u00e9 un panonceau \u00ab Just Divorced \u00bb au tra\u00eeneau de Santa Claus, en le rapportant \u00e0 l\u2019indiff\u00e9rence ayant accueilli la sortie de Chosen<\/em>, en 2005, r\u00e9cit dans lequel un messie pr\u00e9sum\u00e9 se r\u00e9v\u00e8le \u00eatre le diable lui-m\u00eame.<\/p>\n

Les propositions de communications, d\u2019une longueur maximale de 300 mots, sont \u00e0 faire parvenir aux organisateurs Nicolas Labarre<\/a> et John Dean<\/a> avant le 15 d\u00e9cembre 2012.<\/p>\n

The Iconoclast Spirit I: Religion and Blasphemy in Popular Culture<\/em>
\nJohn Dean (Universit\u00e9 de Versailles Saint-Quentin) and Nicolas Labarre (Universit\u00e9 Bordeaux 3)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here is the problem: how and why is it that US popular culture so often proclaims the valid importance and integrity of religious and spiritual elements in American life while simultaneously attacking religious images? How and why does US popular culture use religious and spiritual motifs, themes, and narratives in an altogether iconoclastic way, in a wide range of genres, media, communicative languages and levels? The key issue of this debate is the continuity of the incongruous.<\/p>\n

US popular culture is not stingy when it comes to the presence and presentation of religious elements, which, in turn, mirror its importance in the everyday life of the nation at large. Consider the current and familiar cornucopia of US popular culture where an embarrassment of riches awaits us. See the themes of God and country mocked in the nightly editorializing of late night talk show comics from sacrilegious David Letterman to taboo-breaking Jimmy Kimmel, in the New York Times’ weekly use of editorial cartoonist Brian McFaden’s The Strip<\/em>; see it in Broadway’s current Scandalous: The Life and Times of Aimee Semple McPherson <\/em>& even in parts of the record-breaking new musical The Book of Mormon<\/em>; or in US TV’s 2012 season hits \u201cPsych\u201d or ABC’s \u201cThe Neighbors\u201d (about space aliens next door); or in the long-running spiritual-transcendental mockery of \u201cThird Rock from the Sun\u201d sitcom; or with the religious gays in ABC’s fresh sitcom \u201cModern Family\u201d (how does a gay couple with an adopted child adapt to Sunday school?); or in NBC’s new series “Revolution” (a post-apocalypse Earth without electricity\u2014but fighting for faith).<\/p>\n

Amid many medias the dynamic theme of religious belief and religious iconoclasm looms large: in Hollywood movies themselves and in their promotional material in posters, with popular heroes, as daily topics of common conversation and newspaper editorials, in TV shows and merchandising. One has here an enormous buffet of religious narratives which extends from Cecile B. DeMille’s silent-era Ten Commandments<\/em> (1923), through Spielberg’s E.T.<\/em> (1982); in the current sexual-spiritual priest portrayed by William Macy in The Sessions<\/em> (based on the best-selling \u201ctrue story\u201d novel); and in the fall 2012 break-through vision of the nation’s human-spiritual icon, in Lincoln<\/em> (dir. Spielberg).<\/p>\n

One finds US everyday spiritual terrain contested as well in the controversies which accompany such recent blockbusters as Gibson’s Passion of the Christ<\/em> (2004) and the Narnia series (2005,’08,’10). It is found as well in the way religious scandal is used to enhance<\/em> and sell popular culture, as in the poster that promoted Milos Forman\u2019s The People Versus Larry Flynt<\/em> (2004)\u2014with a Jesus-Flynt crucified on a cross, greasy and sweaty with half-porn, half-US self-righteousness; and in horror stories in which bodily harm blend with spiritual longing and fears, in the graphic novel series Preacher<\/em> (1999-2000); and in a long list of movies from The Exorcist<\/em> (1973) to Event Horizon<\/em> (1993) to the current popular hit: The Possession: Fear the Demon that Doesn’t Fear God<\/em> (2012, dir. Ole Bornedal).
\n<\/em>
\nOne determinant element amid the issues of the debate which we seek to explore is the frontier of US popular culture, the need of this socio-cultural force to break boundaries for better or worse. Thus \u201cfrontier\u201d and its relation to the iconoclastic takes on many meanings. There is the use of cutting-edge TV and radio for \u201ctelevangelism\u201d or for Billy Sunday’s and A.S.Mcpherson’s tremendously successful \u201cradiopreach\u201d; or the use of \u201cfrontier\u201d as a respected story-telling place in an otherwise horrid world\u2014as in cinematic adaption of a bestselling yet regional novel; Wise Blood<\/em> (J. Huston, 1979); or in Magnolia<\/em> (P.T. Anderson, 1999); and by religious story tellers who insist on their personal, iconoclastic visions\u2014as in Scorsese’s Last Temptation of Christ<\/em> (1998) or in Ferrara\u2019s Mary<\/em> (2005).<\/p>\n

Then, in addition, one has the process of USA’s popular culture \u201calternative\u201d or underground world of creators, production, representation and audience with regard to the spiritual, religious and the iconoclastic. This is especially vibrant, online and in the hard-copy world, both in US coastal cities (LA, Boston, New York, Chicago) and on US campuses (Austin, Bloomington, Cambridge). Physical places and area, a sense of the US locale, interplay with spiritual representations. Here religious elements are mobilized in a play of faith and faithless, sacred and taboo, traditional and avant-garde\u2014notably in Justin Green’s seminal graphic novel Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary<\/em> (1972) and in Spiegelman’s tremendously successful cross-over work which transformed the use of the animal parable in US popular culture: Maus<\/em> (1973-1991). The example of the trading card-game Magic: the Gathering<\/em>, which shed its demons and pentagrams when it moved from a gamer subculture to the mainstream, illustrates the relevance of these categories from the perspective of culture producers as well.
\n<\/em>Finally, within the frame of these and other works, authors, and audience reception we hope to explore both how American religious beliefs have been affirmed and questioned by way of the nation’s popular culture terrain, which functions as a public forum of debate, reform, protest and spiritual-social consolation. Thus, in effect, the nation’s popular culture is its Declaration of Independence, which is constantly, freshly rewritten and renewed. As the very word \u201ciconoclast\u201d itself points out, our primary interest with our participants shall be to try to discover and clarify together how images are tools, weapons, elements of social persuasion, dialogue and dialectic, belief and disbelief. Realizing, of course, how high culture and low, the church and the \u201cboob tube,\u201d the temple and PC, the mosque and the comic strip all overlap, contend, and explode into each other with this topic.
\n<\/em>
\nWhich means, as well, one must include and consider the uses of \u201cthe holy,\u201d of \u201ckitsch,\u201d of \u201critual\u201d and, of course, the interplay, the balance and the imbalance of the spiritual and material in US popular culture and everyday American life.
\n<\/em>
\nSelected bibliography:
\nStacy Boldrick & Richard Clay, eds, Iconoclasm: Contested Objects, Contested Terms<\/em> (Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publs., 2007).
\nAlbert Boime, The Unveiling of the National Icons: A Plea for Patriotic Iconoclasm in a Nationalist Era<\/em> (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
\nPatrick Eben, “Iconoclasm without Icons?” in: Linda Gregerson, ed., Empires of God <\/em>(Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011).
\nElizabeth Guffey, “Avant-Garde Art and the Culture of Protest: The Use-Value of Iconoclasm” in: Jan Kromm, ed., A History of Visual Culture<\/em> (New York, Berg Publs., 2010).
\nJ. A. Brebner & J. C. Mhanti, eds., Iconomatrix<\/em>, Vol. 1, 1975-1976.<\/p>\n

Proposals no longer than 300 words should be sent to the organizers Nicolas Labarre<\/a> and John Dean<\/a> by December 15, 2012.<\/p>\n

<\/a>32. L\u2019esprit iconoclaste II : religion et blasph\u00e8me dans la musique populaire<\/em>
\nClaude Chastagner (Universit\u00e9 Montpellier 3) et Elsa Grassy (Universit\u00e9 de Strasbourg)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Si elle se fait remarquer davantage par son r\u00f4le iconoclaste que par ses accents spirituels, la musique populaire am\u00e9ricaine s\u2019accommode tout autant du profane que du religieux, du sublunaire que du transcendant, et ne proc\u00e8de pas plus du corps que de l\u2019esprit. \u00c0 c\u00f4t\u00e9 des (trop) m\u00e9diatiques accusations d\u2019immoralisme et de satanisme dirig\u00e9es contre le heavy metal, le rock et le gangsta rap, des genres tels que le gospel, le folk et plus r\u00e9cemment le rock chr\u00e9tien, le New Age et le taqwacore ont glorifi\u00e9 dieu et donn\u00e9 aux artistes come \u00e0 leur public acc\u00e8s \u00e0 de nouvelles formes de spiritualit\u00e9. Dans cette \u00e9trange famille o\u00f9 l\u2019on croise des membres aussi diff\u00e9rents que la Carter Family, Madonna, Mahalia Jackson, Marilyn Manson, Little Richard ou Bob Dylan, la musique refl\u00e8te \u2013 magnifie, parfois \u2013 la relation que chacun d\u2019entre nous entretient avec le divin. La parole biblique, relay\u00e9e par les uns, se trouve \u00e9reint\u00e9e par les autres et les r\u00e9cits de qu\u00eates spirituelles c\u00f4toient les combats livr\u00e9s avec d\u2019\u00e9ternels \u00ab d\u00e9mons \u00bb int\u00e9rieurs. <\/p>\n

M\u00eame lorsqu\u2019elle c\u00e9l\u00e8bre explicitement les plaisirs de la r\u00e9bellion et de la transgression (la fameuse trilogie sexe, drogue et rock\u2019n\u2019roll) ou invoque, par jeu ou ironie, quelque figure satanique, la musique populaire reste li\u00e9e au spirituel dans une tension f\u00e9conde. Elle est aussi bien aux mains des marchands du temple que l\u2019instrument de la foi, et le sacr\u00e9 habite les \u00e9glises comme les festivals de rock, guide la main des artistes come l\u2019oreille de leur public. <\/p>\n

La religion en tant qu\u2019institution a pu \u00eatre la cible des critiques de chanteurs engag\u00e9s ou de rockeurs d\u00e9non\u00e7ant des normes sociales contraignantes. Consid\u00e9r\u00e9s comme une menace \u00e0 l\u2019ordre \u00e9tabli, certains groupes de rock sont devenus la cible des associations religieuses, soucieuses de pr\u00e9server la jeunesse de leurs messages immoraux. Cette odeur de souffre, certains en jouent en virtuoses, comme Marylin Manson qui signe avec l\u2019album Antichrist Superstar<\/em> en 1996 une nouvelle variation rock sur le th\u00e8me de la violence et du sacr\u00e9. En se faisant l\u2019incarnation de tout ce que la musique peut porter de cruaut\u00e9 et d\u2019iconoclasme, Manson embrasse son r\u00f4le d\u2019\u00e9pouvantail m\u00e9diatique et rappelle la position ambigu\u00eb de la star, entre idole des foules et victime expiatoire.<\/p>\n

Car plus qu\u2019un mat\u00e9riau de composition, plus qu\u2019un syst\u00e8me symbolique qu\u2019utilisent ou renversent les artistes de musique populaire, la religion et la spiritualit\u00e9 fournissent par ailleurs aux musiques non savante des XXe et XXIe si\u00e8cle une grille d\u2019analyse. Les chercheurs ont soulign\u00e9 les analogies entre concerts et rituels, explor\u00e9 les contradictions entre lien communautaire et d\u00e9marche individuelle. Ils ont volontiers fait de l\u2019interviewer un confesseur, du critique un ex\u00e9g\u00e8te, du fan<\/em> un fid\u00e8le. Au-del\u00e0 de la c\u00e9l\u00e9bration du divin qu\u2019expriment les musiques populaires li\u00e9es \u00e0 des \u00c9glises sp\u00e9cifiques, la pr\u00e9sence du religieux a \u00e9t\u00e9 lue comme un refuge pour un public confront\u00e9 \u00e0 la d\u00e9sorientation du moderne et \u00e0 la perte de valeurs qu\u2019il est cens\u00e9 induire, un contrepoids aux ambigu\u00eft\u00e9s et paradoxes qu\u2019il g\u00e9n\u00e8re.<\/p>\n

S\u2019il conviendrait de dresser un \u00e9tat des lieux d\u00e9taill\u00e9 et un historique pr\u00e9cis des rapports entre musique populaire et spiritualit\u00e9 qui d\u00e9passent les truismes et apportent des arguments convaincants \u00e0 nos intuitions, cet atelier s\u2019interrogera plus modestement sur la sp\u00e9cificit\u00e9 am\u00e9ricaine de ces rapports. En quoi la pr\u00e9gnance du religieux distingue-t-elle la musique \u00e9tatsunienne de celle d\u2019autres aires culturelles ? S\u2019agit-il v\u00e9ritablement de l\u2019expression d\u2019une foi et d\u2019interrogations spirituelles ou de leur simple esth\u00e9tisation ? En quoi les manifestations du religieux sont-elles compl\u00e9mentaires ou contradictoires de celles du spirituel ? Les processus de s\u00e9cularisation ont-ils \u00e9t\u00e9 plus marqu\u00e9s aux \u00c9tats-Unis qu\u2019ailleurs ? La cohabitation entre la tradition religieuse et l\u2019expression du profane y est-elle au contraire plus difficile ? Comment cette dimension est-elle v\u00e9cue par les diff\u00e9rents acteurs : public, artistes, m\u00e9dias et repr\u00e9sentants de l\u2019industrie du disque et du spectacle ? Dans quelle mesure permet-elle l\u2019\u00e9mergence et la transformation d\u2019identit\u00e9s et d\u2019id\u00e9ologies sp\u00e9cifiques ? Quel r\u00f4le les \u00c9glises institu\u00e9es jouent-elles \u00e0 l\u2019\u00e9gard de ces formes musicales ? Comment la pr\u00e9sence du spirituel et du religieux dans la musique s\u2019articule-t-elle avec le contexte plus global de la culture et des arts nord-am\u00e9ricains ? <\/p>\n

Les communications, de pr\u00e9f\u00e9rence en anglais, peuvent prendre la forme de case studies<\/em> portant sur des artistes ou des genres sp\u00e9cifiques, contemporains ou non. Elles peuvent \u00e9galement s\u2019interroger de fa\u00e7on plus th\u00e9orique sur les diff\u00e9rentes probl\u00e9matiques envisag\u00e9es ci-dessus.<\/p>\n

Les propositions (300 mots + une courte bio) seront envoy\u00e9es \u00e0 la fois<\/em> \u00e0 Claude Chastagner<\/a> et \u00e0 Elsa Grassy<\/a> avant le 15 d\u00e9cembre 2012.<\/p>\n

The Iconoclast Spirit II: Religion and Blasphemy in Popular Music<\/em>
\nClaude Chastagner (Universit\u00e9 Montpellier 3) and Elsa Grassy (Universit\u00e9 de Strasbourg)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Though American popular music is more celebrated for its iconoclastic tendencies than its spiritual leanings, it welcomes the profane as much as the religious, the mundane as much as the transcendental, the flesh as much as the spirit. While heavy metal, rock, and gangsta rap have been famously accused by over-eager media of Satanism and immorality, other genres such as gospel, folk, and more recently Christian rock, New Age, or taqwacore have glorified God, and allowed their followers to access new forms of spirituality. The whole family of popular music, which includes the Carter Family, Madonna, Mahalia Jackson, Marilyn Manson, Little Richard, or Bob Dylan, reflects\u2014sometimes magnifies\u2014the relationship we may entertain with the divine. Some celebrate the Gospel, others tell us of their struggles with their inner demons. Even when it explicitly celebrates rebellion and transgression\u2014or playfully and ironically conjures up some satanic majesty – popular music remains connected to the spiritual. <\/p>\n

Institutional religion has been the target of many protest singers, but conversely, many rock bands have been targeted by religious groups for their lyrics and attitudes, perceived as pernicious and demoralizing. Some relished the criticism, though, and played with it, such as Marilyn Manson with his 1996 Antichrist Superstar<\/em>, a variation on violence and the sacred.
\nIn addition to being symbolic systems that artists either tap into or try to topple, religion and spirituality may be used as a prism through which one can analyze and understand popular music. Researchers have underlined the proximity between religious rituals and rock concerts, and explored the tensions between communitarianism and individualism that the latter reveal. They read interviewers as confessors, critics as exegetes, fans as worshippers. Beyond the celebration of specific creeds and faiths, religiosity in popular music has been understood as providing shelter to bewildered postmodern crowds, puzzled by the loss of meaning and the fragmentation of contemporary societies. <\/p>\n

It would be appropriate to describe in details the current situation, and make a historical assessment of the connections between popular music and spirituality, beyond mere intuitions and truisms. More modestly, this panel will focus on the American specificity of this relationship.
\nWe will pay particular attention to how its religious significance can help distinguish American music from others, but also at how the religious presence in popular music can be articulated within the larger framework of North American art and culture. Music may provide new insights on the conflicts between religious traditions and the profane, which might be more tense in America than in other Western countries. We will address the question the true function of religiosity in the music, as what first appears like a true expression of belief might in the end only be a mere aesthetic sheen. Are religious displays complementary to, or contradictory with a spiritual dimension? We will look at how the various actors of popular music (audiences, artists, media and industry people) perceive this religious and\/or spiritual dimension and at how their experiences might differ. Lastly, an analysis of religion and popular music would not be complete without a study of the role that the various institutions and Churches have played in conjunction with musical forms. <\/p>\n

Papers, preferably in English, can be either case studies on specific genres or artists, from contemporary scenes, or past eras. They can also be more theoretical questioning of the issues mentioned above.<\/p>\n

Send your proposals (300 words + a short biography) to both<\/em> Claude Chastagner<\/a> et \u00e0 Elsa Grassy<\/a> by December 15, 2012.<\/p>\n

<\/a> 33. S\u00e9ries t\u00e9l\u00e9vis\u00e9es, religion et spiritualit\u00e9<\/em>
\nAnne Cremieux (Universit\u00e9 Paris Ouest Nanterre) et Ariane Hudelet (Universit\u00e9 Paris Diderot)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00c0 l\u2019heure o\u00f9 l\u2019Europe de l\u2019Ouest s\u2019\u00e9carte de ses traditions religieuses, la religion et la spiritualit\u00e9 demeurent des aspects centraux de la culture am\u00e9ricaine, pr\u00e9sentes dans les s\u00e9ries t\u00e9l\u00e9vis\u00e9es comme dans toute la culture populaire. Si 95% des Am\u00e9ricains disent croire en Dieu, cette apparente homog\u00e9n\u00e9it\u00e9 ne doit pas cacher une tr\u00e8s grande vari\u00e9t\u00e9 de pratiques que la forme s\u00e9rielle, avec ses multiples \u00e9pisodes et ses personnages fort nombreux, permet de mettre en sc\u00e8ne et de diffuser de mani\u00e8re rituelle, le plus souvent hebdomadaire, selon un calendrier qui correspond \u00e0 la pratique du culte de nombre d\u2019Am\u00e9ricains. Le ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne d\u2019identification forte, de connaissance approfondie, voire d\u2019addiction aux s\u00e9ries est \u00e0 rapprocher de la connaissance des textes religieux et de leur discussion, toutes deux \u00e9tant destin\u00e9es \u00e0 r\u00e9soudre les questions de la vie quotidienne. Les \u00e9missions de t\u00e9l\u00e9-\u00e9vang\u00e9lisme, \u00e0 ce titre, se rapprochent des s\u00e9ries t\u00e9l\u00e9vis\u00e9es par leur mode de diffusion et leur mise en sc\u00e8ne, men\u00e9e par un pasteur qui porte le programme par son charisme, chaque semaine renouvel\u00e9. La s\u00e9rie t\u00e9l\u00e9vis\u00e9e, par son format m\u00eame et son mode de consommation, se rapproche des rituels religieux occidentaux. Les s\u00e9ries \u00e9tant des cr\u00e9ations collectives, produites parfois sur plusieurs ann\u00e9es, leur coh\u00e9rence narrative et esth\u00e9tique est de plus assur\u00e9e par un document que l\u2019on appelle une \u00ab bible \u00bb, sorte de note d\u2019intention pour tous les membres de l\u2019\u00e9quipe, pr\u00e9sentant personnages, th\u00e9matiques, axes narratifs, et s\u2019\u00e9toffant au fil des \u00e9pisodes et des saisons. Le choix de ce terme met en \u00e9vidence les liens \u00e9troits entre s\u00e9ries, religion, et spiritualit\u00e9 aux \u00c9tats-Unis, que l\u2019on pourra aborder sous diff\u00e9rents angles.<\/p>\n

On sera tent\u00e9 d\u2019\u00e9tudier par exemple les s\u00e9ries qui se situent au c\u0153ur des institutions religieuses (The Borgias<\/em>), ont pour personnages principaux des repr\u00e9sentants de la foi (Father Murphy, Sarge, The Father Dowling Mysteries, 7th Heaven, Sister Kate, Nothing Sacred<\/em>) <\/em>ou mettent en sc\u00e8ne des personnages mythologiques (un ange dans Touched by an Angel <\/em>ou Highway to Heaven<\/em>) ou simplement un questionnement spirituel (Six Feet Under<\/em>). Une s\u00e9rie intitul\u00e9e The Bible <\/em>devrait \u00eatre diffus\u00e9e en 2013. Si certaines s\u00e9ries, notamment fantastiques, s\u2019appuient sur de fortes r\u00e9f\u00e9rences bibliques (Lost, Battlestar Galactica<\/em>), d\u2019autres pr\u00e9sentent un th\u00e8me religieux r\u00e9current, comme la polygamie mormone de Big Love<\/em> (2006-2011), la conversation avec Dieu qui ouvre chaque \u00e9pisode de The Cleaner <\/em>(2009-10) ou le mariage interreligieux des deux protagonistes de Bridget Loves Bernie <\/em>(1972-3). Bien des s\u00e9ries subversives mettent \u00e0 mal les institutions religieuses (True Blood<\/em>) et cr\u00e9ent des univers spirituels fantastiques (Buffy the Vampire Slayer<\/em>) qui sont aussi la marque de leur \u00e9poque. Enfin, les analyses des pratiques du culte s\u00e9riel par les spectateurs\/adeptes seront \u00e9galement bienvenues (\u00e9tude des ex\u00e9g\u00e8ses sur internet, ou du rapport entre les spectateurs et les principes moraux propos\u00e9s par certaines s\u00e9ries par exemple). <\/p>\n

Les communications pourront \u00eatre en fran\u00e7ais ou en anglais. Les propositions de communication (un r\u00e9sum\u00e9 de 300 mots et une notice biographique de 100 mots, en fran\u00e7ais ou en anglais) sont \u00e0 envoyer \u00e0 Ariane Hudelet<\/a> et Anne Cr\u00e9mieux<\/a>.<\/p>\n

TV Series, Religion and Spirituality<\/em>
\nAnne Cremieux (Universit\u00e9 de Paris Ouest Nanterre) and Ariane Hudelet (Universit\u00e9 Paris Diderot)<\/strong><\/p>\n

As Western Europe is distancing itself from its Judeo-Christian traditions and practices, religion and spirituality remain central to American culture, as illustrated by popular culture in general, and TV series in particular. While 95% of Americans say they believe in God, such consensus should not hide the immense diversity of practices which the TV series format, with its multiple episodes featuring numerous characters over long periods of time, can portray. The way TV series are watched by the audience may also be seen as a ritual following a regular schedule that mirrors the way Americans practice their religion. The well-known phenomena of strong identification and intimate knowledge of TV series, akin to addiction, is comparable to the study and knowledge of religious texts and their discussion, both being meant to raise and solve everyday life issues. Televangelism, in that respect, is similar to TV series with narratives supported by a charismatic pastor returning every week. On the other hand, TV series, because of the broadcasting schedule and mode of consumption, seem fashioned after Western religious rituals. As a matter of course, each production, because of its potential lifetime and the multiplicity and expendability of its creators, draws up a \u201cbible\u201d to ensure coherence over the years. <\/p>\n

Series that immediately come to mind are ones set at the heart of religious institutions (The Borgias<\/em>), whose main characters are ministers of faith (Father Murphy, Sarge, The Father Dowling Mysteries, 7th Heaven, Sister Kate, Nothing Sacred<\/em>), <\/em>which feature mythological characters (an angel in Touched by an Angel <\/em>or Highway to Heaven<\/em>), or tackle issues of faith and spirituality (Six Feet Under<\/em>). An upcoming series entitled The Bible <\/em>is planned to air in 2013. While some series, especially in sci-fi and fantasy, rely on strong biblical references (Lost, Battlestar Galactica<\/em>), others feature a recurrent religious issue, such as Mormon polygamy in Big Love<\/em> (2006-2011), the conversation with God, which opens each episode of The Cleaner <\/em>(2009-10), or the interfaith marriage of the two protagonists in Bridget Loves Bernie <\/em>(1972-3). Last but not least, many subversive TV series strongly attack religious institutions (True Blood<\/em>) and create fantastic spiritual worlds (Buffy the Vampire Slayer<\/em>) that are also a mark of their times.<\/p>\n

Please send a 300-word abstract and a 100-word biographical note (in English or in French) to Ariane Hudelet<\/a> and Anne Cr\u00e9mieux<\/a> by December 15, 2012.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Congr\u00e8s AFEA 2013 – Angers, 22-26 mai Religion et spiritualit\u00e9 Appels \u00e0 communications Organisation scientifique : Richard Anker (Universit\u00e9 Clermont 2) et Nathalie Caron (Universit\u00e9 Paris-Est Cr\u00e9teil). – 1 Histoire coloniale I : Ouvrir l\u2019histoire religieuse de l\u2019Am\u00e9rique coloniale Colonial History I: Opening up the Religious History of Colonial America – 2 Histoire coloniale II 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