Call for contributions
Summer school “Sensory Heritages & Sensitive Memories in the Balkans”
Where: University Sveti Kliment Ohridski, Sofia / University Paisii Hilendarski, Plovdiv.
When: July 1-5,2024 (arrival in Sofia on June 30, departure from Sofia on July 6).
Deadline for application: January 31, 2024.
Organisers École française d’Athènes, École française de Rome, CETOBAC (UMR8032 CNRS/EHESS), Aix-Marseille University (Institut SoMuM, UMR 7303 TELEMMe, AMU-CNRS), Università degli studi di Trieste, University Lumière Lyon-2 (UMR 5600 EVS), University Sveti Kliment Ohridski, Sofia, University Paisii Hilendarski, Plovdiv.
Abstract
Heritage and memory processes are usually analysed as discourses, practices and representations, entailing critical approaches of heritage policies, official versus alternative narratives, memory concurrence, contested heritages, politicization of culture and history. They are related to identity and alterity making, temporalities and spatialities, relations between power and knowledge, community and society building at different scales (local, national, transnational), symbolic appropriation or rejection of cultural legacies. While relevant, these approaches neglect the proper sensory and perceptive dimensions of these processes: how are they embodied and performed (Seremetakis, 1993)? How do they deal with sensoriality (sound, taste, sight, smell, touch)? What kind of environments and ambiances do they provide? How do they mark a landscape, and how they merge and articulate to form particular ‘sensory scapes’ (Appadurai, 1996): smellscapes, soundscapes, visioscapes? What role do heritage and memory play in expressing and creating specific ways-of-being-in-the world, including relationships to places, objects, milieus, living beings, supernatural entities, etc.? What are the body politics of heritage and memory, and how do they relate (and change according) to cultural and historical contexts? More generally, can we speak of politics of the senses (Howes & Classen 2014) including policing and politicizing senses, ‘moralizing’ specific senses (Hirschkind 2006), or even promoting democracy and modernity (Hann 1990) through the senses?
We propose to explore the potentialities of the ‘history of senses’ (Corbin 1982, 1994; Mintz 1984) as well as the “sensory turn” in social sciences for providing new insights on heritage and memory processes in the Balkan societies. The cultural identities in the Balkans are often associated to sensory singularities, transmitted and recreated, negotiated and contested, attached to ‘natural’ and material objects (fields, rocks and waters but also houses [Bahloul 1992], a fireplace…) converted into affects, emotions and feelings. These sensory dimensions participate to the production of individual and collective memory, and to the embodiment of heritage as a lived experience. They are consubstantial to a sense of space through place making and dwelling (Ingold, 2000) as well as circulation, migration or diaspora phenomena. They have a peculiar relationship to temporality: usually associated to fugacity (some scholars [Candau 2009] speak of sensory ‘events’), the senses, emotions and affects (Roth, 2022), as well as the object and places they are anchored in, may function as time ‘containers’ encapsulating lived experiences. In short, the senses (in both their physical and cultural dimensions, Herzfeld, 2007) play a key-role in giving meaning to time past (Bahloul 1992, Candau 2016), making sense of memory and heritage, but also framing our political perception of time and space (Hamilakis, 2013). We also argue that these sensory dimensions are particularly mobilized and palpable when it comes to politically “sensitive” heritage and memory issues, such as cultural property and rights, imposed or contested narratives, concurrent political legitimacies and cultural intimacies.
Continuer la lecture de [AAC] The Balkans. Spaces, Societies, History →