Le retard de l'archéologue. L'interprétation historienne face à l'oeuvre de Michel Foucault

Partant des termes très tranchés de la polémique qui s'est récemment élevée autour du cas Pierre Rivière, jeune parricide du XIXème siècle, révélé en 1973 par l'équipe de chercheurs réunis auprès de Michel Foucault au Collège de France, il s'agit de considérer une difficulté majeure posée à la discipline historique par l'oeuvre du penseur disparu : les conditions et les limites d'une activité interprétative. La méthode archéologique professée par Foucault prétendait surmonter les impasses évidentes de l'histoire des idées, traditionnellement entendue, sa naïve confiance en la continuité apparente des vocables, notamment ; elle ne parvient cependant à ses fins qu'au seul prix de l'oubli de ses propres conditions de possibilité, s'exposant ainsi au scepticisme qu'elle a elle‐même suscité. La question récurrente—et pourtant jamais abordée de front—du pouvoir atteste l'impossibilité ultime de la méthode foucaldienne de dépasser le point aveugle de sa propre légitimité. Loin qu'il faille tenir ses interpellations pour nulles et non avenues, “l'archéologie du savoir” ne peut, à ce compte, que fonctionner comme un puissant stimulant de l'opération historienne.     

My Enemy’s Enemy: Consequences of the CIA Operation against Abulqasim Lahuti, 1953–54

In January 1954, the Iranian émigré poet living in the Soviet Union, Abulqasim Lahuti, was summoned before the Central Committee in Moscow to discuss the publication of a fraudulent Persian-language autobiography that reflected unfavorably on his experiences in the Soviet Union. This autobiography was the result of a 1953 CIA operation in Iran launched by Donald Wilber after he had become convinced that in case of a Soviet takeover Lahuti would be the one most likely put forward as leader. To preempt this threat, the CIA published the counterfeit autobiography. Unlike Mosaddeq and other CIA targets, however, Lahuti’s position as a cultural mediator between the Soviet Union, Soviet Tajikistan, and Iran made the consequences of this operation more complex than the CIA had imagined. This paper explores its aftermath using recently declassified Soviet archival documents and interviews. It argues that this operation transformed Lahuti’s professional and social standing in Moscow, empowered him to challenge his long-time enemy Bobojon Ghafurov on the issue of Tajik ethnogenesis, and helped change the official Stalinist line on Persian literary culture. Lastly, this operation politicized Lahuti’s biography in ways that are relevant to the present day.     

Les mots de l’histoire (1925–1945)

Sans résumé Ses recherches portent sur l’histoire des idées du XVIII ^e au XX ^e siècle, sur la méthodologie philosophique et l’épistémologie. Elle a récemment publié, sous sa direction, Comparatismi e filosofia, Naples, Liguori, 2006. à propos du recueil Les Mots de l’histoire. Le vocabulaire historique du Centre international de synthèse, édition établie, présentée et annotée par Margherita Platania, trad. de l’italien rév. par Catherine Rutili, Naples, Bibliopolis, 2000, 497 p. (Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici, Serie Testi, XIV). Ce texte est issu d’une conférence prononcée le 3 mai 2002 au Centre international de synthèse, à Paris (H?tel de Nevers, salon de Madame de Lambert).     

«L’europe» 125e congrès national des sociétés historiques et scientifiques université de Lille III 10–15 avril 2000

Vie Scientifique

?L’europe? 125^e congrès national des sociétés historiques et scientifiques université de Lille III 10–15 avril 2000     

A nineteenth-century Mediterranean union: Michel Chevalier’s Système de la Méditerranée

This article examines one of the nineteenth-century’s most revolutionary schemes for establishing a union of Mediterranean states. In 1832, Michel Chevalier set out a startling scheme that would bring to an end armed conflict in Europe through a confederation of European states and a subsequent alliance between Europe and the Ottoman Empire. His plan envisaged a vast infrastructure network of railways, canals, roads and shipping lanes that would link the major ports of the Mediterranean with Europe’s capital cities and those of the Ottoman and Russian Empires. The infrastructure network at the heart of Chevalier’s Système de la Méditerranée was conceived by him as the basis for a system of economic integration that would foster political harmony throughout Europe – anticipating by over one hundred years Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman’s plans for a European Union – but also between Europe and the Ottoman world. Harboured within Chevalier’s infrastructure scheme for the Mediterranean was one of the earliest and most complex nineteenth-century theories of networks ever devised. This article examines the centrality of the Mediterranean to Chevalier’s theory of networks, and explores the multiple dimensions of this complex theory, including the intimate connection he identified between networks as expressions of human creativity and the kind of unalienated human relations that would result in the end of conflict both between and within nations.     

Affamer les prisonniers de guerre: entre mythes et réalités, 1914–54

Since the end of the nineteenth century, prisoners of war must be taken in care by their guardians, in terms of food. Sometimes this food is not good enough and leads to cases of starvation. Considering ideological conditions as well as material and chronological evolutions, this paper tries to explain how the prisoners are very often hostages in hands of their guards and how starvation can be an ideological tool.     

Johannes Janssonius’s Map of Dalmatia and the Ottoman–Venetian Borderland (1650)

The paper presents a comparative analysis of the map of Dalmatia by Johannes Janssonius and maps by his contemporaries. Janssonius’s cartographical models and the sources of the printed text accompanying his map are identified. The roles of Croatian cartographers and Venetian and Ottoman reports dealing with the border are uncovered. The importance of Janssonius’s map in disseminating knowledge about the little-known geography and history of Dalmatia, and the ways in which the map influenced perception of that country in the Ottoman Empire borderlands in general, are assessed.     

Introduction: Roundtable on John Tallis’s London Street Views (1838–1840)

John Tallis’s London Street Views (1838–1840) offers a striking and a distinctive account of the early Victorian metropolis. This introduction outlines its significance and contextualizes the essays included in this roundtable.     

Huacayñán (1952–1953) and the biopolitics of in(ex)clusion

The foundation of the modern Ecuadorian State in the 1940s and early 1950s coincides with a series of attempts to synchronize and incorporate certain “problematic” sectors of the population that were supposedly resistant to progress and whose forms of life were incompatible with modernity, a capitalist economy, and a cohesive nation. This biopolitical project for the modernization and governance of the population also had repercussions on—and analogous manifestations within—the discourse of national identity, the design of cultural policies, and the production of State-sponsored national art. This article analyzes Huacayñán / El camino del llanto / The Way of Tears (1952–1953), a collection of FIGURE 3 aintings by Oswaldo Guayasamín that was commissioned by the government of Ecuador in 1951. Huacayñán was conceived within the ideology of mestizaje as an instrument of aesthetic cultural modernization and as a visual artistic showcase of the harmonious integration of ‘Ecuadorians.’ Despite, or even because of its governmental overdetermination, however, this article shows how Huacayñán instead materialized the exclusionary logic of the syncretic and biopolitical policies of the State, displaying dystopic visions of violence and exclusion, and of a fractured nation inhabited by monsters and resistant to mestizo-ization.     

The Revolution’s Neverending Stories: Liliana Heker’s El fin de la historia

This article considers the legacy of 1970s revolutionary thought and political action within Argentine cultural production. Liliana Heker’s 1996 novel El fin de la historia is a fictional depiction of Montonera ‘Lucy’ Carazo, who was taken as a political prisoner, fell in love with and seduced her captor, and went on to collaborate with the military regime. Similar stories continue to arise and generate a great deal of debate in present-day Argentina, at the same time that Heker's novel itself continues to elicit controversial critical and cultural responses. This close reading of the novel thus situates itself within present-day debates regarding the ethics and politics of 1970s armed struggle as well as ongoing debates concerning individuals who abjure or betray their commitment to 1970s revolutionary causes. The analysis focuses on seduction and sexuality as a means of leading the novel’s protagonist astray from the cultural topoi of revolutionary martyrdom and heroism.     

Japan’s Most Beloved Suicide Bombers: The Nikudan-san’yūshi Phenomenon (1932–1945)

In 1932, three Japanese soldiers died in the line of duty during the Shanghai Incident. Battlefield gossip blamed their deaths on incompetence. Sensational newspaper reports lauded them as suicide bombers who crippled the defences of an enemy stronghold with only a Bangalore torpedo and ‘pieces of torn flesh.’ Hero worship and commercialization followed shortly thereafter. Their alleged exploits inspired books, movies, theatrical performances, political speeches, radio dramas, and popular music. This article is about the Nikudan-san’yūshi (Three Heroic Human Bullets) phenomenon, a cultural sensation that penetrated into nearly every corner of Japanese society and which groomed the nation for military extremism.     

A place in the sun: the British housing market’s (de)construction of Andalusia

Abstract

Andalusia has become one of the main destinations for British residential tourists, attracted by leisure, a mild climate and the search for a better lifestyle. Prompted by its interest in selling houses, the real estate industry has devised an image of the Andalusian landscape that is, to all intents and purposes, partial and biased. The purpose of this research is to assess the importance of the elements and features that characterise this particular vision of this Spanish region, paying particular attention to more rural inland areas. For this, an empirical study has been conducted based on content analysis of real estate websites targeting British buyers. This study has revealed that: (i) the misrepresented and romantic projection of the image of Andalusia still persists to a certain extent. Among the main elements and attributes that characterise the landscape are all those that emphasise the region’s sublime, picturesque and exotic nature; other main landscape qualities and unique areas, specifically, any that today enjoy natural or cultural legal protection due to their heritage value, are less important in this cultural construction; (ii) the various parts of Andalusia are treated unequally. Malaga province and the rest of the Baetic Mountains are much better represented than other areas (the Guadalquivir Valley and the Sierra Morena mountains). This imbalance sometimes results in a distorted construction of the territory. This way of conceiving Andalusia puts Malaga at the heart of the region, and the further from the Costa del Sol, the more peripheral the regions become; (iii) the complexity of the landscape as a cultural expression is reduced to a set of simplified features that can be easily digested by a social group focused not on experiencing, but on consuming the landscape.     

Between Vanity and Sensitiveness: Indo–British Relations During Vijayalakshmi Pandit’s High-Commissionership (1954–61)

Studies of Indo–British relations in the 1950s have been usually dominated by the personalities of Jawaharlal Nehru and, after him, VK Krishna Menon. This article instead focuses on Vijayalakshmi Pandit and her tenure as India’s High-Commissioner in London. Pandit came to London having served as Nehru’s envoy to the Soviet Union, the USA and the United Nations. Based on government records and private papers in India, Britain and America, this article shows that her time in London offers insights into the wider context of changes in Indo–British relations and presents her High-Commissionership as a microcosm of the inter-governmental relations.