Axe 4 - Identities on the move: around the "minority".

Responsible: Dominique Samson

The "identities on the move" Axis continues a reflection initiated during the previous five-year period around the crucial issue of minorities in Central, Eastern Europe and Eurasia. Whether of an ethnic, denominational or social nature; literary and artistic, through minores, or works and authors excluded from the cultural mainstream and historiography; or legal, based essentially on the oral or written testimonies of minors, they still too often remain in the shadow of mainstream historiography. Taking a historical, anthropological or literary approach, the project aims to account for the development, evolution and practices of various identities in supposedly peripheral spaces (Siberia, the Arctic, Bashkortostan) or in literary narratives of an (auto)biographical or autofictional nature (European Russia, Romania, Moldavia), from the 18th to the 21st century. It also focuses on those "erased" from literary and cultural historiography: women writers and artists. This project brings together researchers from different disciplines to explore common and unique themes, both national and local.

As far as "peripheral" spaces are concerned, one of the projects developed will report on the identity paths and strategies of indigenous minorities in Siberian, Arctic and Finno-Ugric spaces, in the complex context of the Russian Federation: how to build a religious revival and transmit knowledge systems and vernacular languages? Another project is devoted to Siberian film production, the distribution of which is often restricted to regional borders. Can we sketch out a history of cinematic spectacle in indigenous environments by examining the various components of cinema as a global experience: screening venues and conditions, films shown, audiences and mediation methods? Finally, a project looks at Jewish minorities in Central-Eastern Europe.

With regard to literary space, two projects will be devoted to individual identity construction and memorial discourse based on the study of (auto)biographical and historiographical creation: the "black archipelago" of Russian women-writers on the one hand (around the question of the "major" and the "minor" in literature), memories and narratives of communist childhood in Romania and Moldavia on the other.

Projects:

4.1. Minority identities in the Siberian and Finno-Ugric space

Responsible: Dominique Samson (CREE), Eva Toulouze (CREE, IUF)

In the new five-year plan to come, the aim will be to continue the study of relations between the Russian world and indigenous communities in the Imperial, Soviet and "federal" periods, whether in (sub)Arctic Siberia or Bashkorskostan.

With regard to the Siberian Nenets, Khantys and Mansis, after various works on 19th-century Orthodox missions and indigenous resistance to Sovietization in the 1930s, the focus will be on the evolution, in urban and rural areas, religious revival (shamanism, Orthodoxy and evangelical churches) and indigenous initiatives (creation of experimental or ethno-pedagogical schools, use of social networks, valorization of vernacular languages) in the face of current Russian patriotism. Fieldwork will enable us to continue to gather indigenous voices, and in particular to collect life stories.

For Bashkortostan, research will focus on the religious practices of local Udmurts, whether they have been maintained over time or have been reinvested by communities since the end of the Soviet Union. To this end, fieldwork is planned to study rituals and prayers in contemporary Udmurt village society in particular.

Planned collaborations: Tomsk State University (Irina Nam, Andrei Filtchenko); Khanty-Mansiysk State University (Tatiana Moldanova); Khanty-Mansiysk Obugrian Institute of Applied Research (Valentina Solovar, Evdokia Niomysova, Svetlana Popova); the I. S. Chemanovskiï museum complex in Salekhard; indigenous communities themselves; École Pratique des Hautes Études - section des sciences religieuses (Jean-Luc Lambert); University of Tartu (Liivo Niglas, Nikolai Anisimov).

Expected achievements:

  • Master 2 seminar, study days and/or colloquia, Finno-Ugric Days;
  • Participation in international seminars, study days and colloquia, books and book chapters;
  • Publications, translations ;
  • Publication of collected data and books, notably on Varkled-Bodja rituals (2018), on present-day Udmurt culture (2019), on Udmurt prayers (2021).

Key words:Siberian Arctic; Bashkorkostan; interactions; cultural history; religious anthropology; literature; life stories.

4.2. Cinema and indigenous peoples

Responsible persons: Caroline Damiens (CREE), Anna Leyloyan (CREE)

The project aims to interrogate the relationship between cinema and the national question in the multi-ethnic Soviet space, paying particular attention to the question of autochthony. It is composed of two major sets that cross approaches (visual culture, linguistic approach), objects (modalities of cinematic expression and film distribution modalities) and geographical areas (Siberia, Caucasus) in a multidisciplinary perspective.

4.2.1 Cinema and indigenous peoples in the Siberian and Arctic space

Responsible: Caroline Damiens

Since the 2000s, Siberia, and more generally the Arctic zone, have been the site of intense film production, the distribution of which is often restricted to regional borders. But before addressing the (essential) question of indigenous cinema(s), we need to look at the introduction of cinema into the lands inhabited by indigenous peoples, whether through filming or distribution activities. The first aspect of this research project is to sketch out a history of cinematic spectacle in indigenous environments in the little-explored Soviet Siberian context, by examining the various components of cinema as a global experience: screening locations and conditions, films shown, audiences and mediation methods. Moreover, historically, "natives" have long been the object of an ethnographic or exotic gaze. A second objective will therefore be to document the relations between ethnography and cinema in a Soviet context in the Siberian and Arctic spaces, opening up the reflection to other comparable geographical areas.

Researchers associated with the project: Dmitry V. Arzyutov (KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm), Virginie Vaté (GSRL-CNRS), Ivan A. Golovnev (Institute of History and Archaeology, Ekaterinburg), Lucien Clercq (EHESS - University of Hokkaido), Morgan Corriou (Université Paris-VIII).

Main collaborations: National Archives of the Sakha Republic (Yakutia); State Archives of the Chukotka Autonomous District; Yakutia Audiovisual Heritage Center; Museum of Ethnography and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Kunstkamera); Royal Anthropological Institute of Great-Britain and Ireland

Planned research operations:

  • Study day or symposium;
  • Publications: monograph, articles, chapters in collective work;
  • Participations in international seminars and colloquia.

Key words: cinema; visual culture; ethnographic cinema; history of cinematic spectacle

4.2.2. National cinemas in the Soviet space

Responsible: Anna Leyloyan

This project aims to carry a reflection on language, language and style in cinematographic creation in a multicultural, multiethnic and multilingual space.
Comparative study of the characteristics of artistic expression within a framework of creation "national in its form and socialist in its content".

The aim is to highlight the significance of the language (or dialect) of origin in a cinematographic work, but also to follow the evolution and specificity of the language proper to the 7th art. Its ability to reveal, by way of national or ethnic affiliation, a rich backdrop woven by many of the elements making up the work (languages, music, folklore, ethnography, history, religion, literature, oral tradition) that goes far beyond the limits of form. Follow the history of the evolution of national cinema(s) in the Soviet space, understand how "silence", "the unspoken" and "the language of symbols" become new forms of universal expression and the strength of cinematic language.

A second objective is to follow the evolution and development of these "bipolar" practices of Soviet cinema(s) on the creative example of Armenian filmmakers towards a true expression of national thought and culture and its development.

Researchers associated with the project: Claire Mouradian, (CNRS, EHESS); Siranouch Galstyan, (Yerevan State University); Hayk Hambartsumyan, (PhD student).

Main collaborations: National Archives of Armenia, Yerevan; Paradjanov Museum, Yerevan; National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia, Yerevan; National Institute of Theater and Cinema, Yerevan.

Proposed research operations:

  • Study day and/or symposium;
  • Publications: articles, chapters in collective work;
  • Participations in international seminars and colloquia.

Key words:national cinema; Armenian cinema; USSR; Caucasus.

4.3. The "Black Archipelago" of Russian women writers and artists

Responsible: Catherine Géry (CREE)

4.3.1. Women and the literary canon in Russia (1760-1890)

Responsible: Catherine Géry

In connection with project 6.2 "Thinking differently about literary history"
Women's literature in Russia was, until the end of the 19th century, the unseen, atomized and virtually unexplored part of a literary continent that was itself extremely well known: the "great" Russian literature of men - that of Pushkin-Gogol-Lermontov-Turgenev-Gontacharov-Dostoevski-Tolstoy-Chekhov. The women who entered literature from the 1760s onwards were downplayed, then forgotten and left out of the historiography of a literary modernity in Russia that they nonetheless helped to shape, and the narrative of the "great Russian century", the 19th century, still hasn't included them. A reading of the nineteenth century "from the women's side" - in other words, no longer from the center, but from the margins, the periphery, the minor (or what is considered as such) - will enable us to reassess Russian literary culture and the vertical, patrimonial, deterministic, ethno-centric and unisex way in which it was constructed from the nineteenth century onwards, the most symbolic period of all for the formation of the literary canon in Russia. Women's conquest of Russian literature is not just the conquest of the center by the periphery, or of the major by the minor, it is also the conquest of the normative by the transgressive, and it is the conquest of classical culture (with all that it implies of codification, constraints, control and self-control) by a liberating form of formal and thematic modernity.

How, within the dialectic of norm and margin, feminine creations/productions, minoritized and/or stigmatized, ultimately never cease to "work" - in their own way - canonical productions?

4.3.2. Gender and genres

Responsible: Catherine Géry

The social marginalization of women writers, their specific position both inside and outside literary processes, their long banishment from most literary genres listed by tradition and enshrined in the canon (in this sense, Lomonossov's Theory of Three Styles, replaced in the nineteenth century by a strict hierarchy of genres, was also a theory of the masculine/feminine partition), their confinement to forms of writing considered minor or secondary - autobiographical and epistolary genres and, before Romanticism, lyric poetry - are all factors that paradoxically enabled women to be active agents of cultural modernity, Whether we consider the latter, like the Russian formalists, as the intrusion of "small genres" into the literary field, or whether we consider the emergence in literature of new forms of individuation and subjectivity (discourse on the body, intimacy, sexuality, etc.).).

Through an analysis of the phenomena of marginalization and transgression in women's literature's relations with dominant literary movements in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russia, the aim will finally be to understand how women authors, more or less marginalized, manage to transgress certain literary and/or socio-cultural limits and norms (in autobiographical and more broadly testimonial genres, for example), and how other actors in literary life react to these "interventions".

Researchers associated with the project (4.3.1. and 4.3.2.): Evelyne Enderlein (University of Strasbourg), Natalia Pouchkareva (Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow), Galina Subbotina (CREE), Youlia Maritchik-Sioli (University of Grenoble), Françoise Defarges (PhD student, CREE), Tomasz Krupa (PhD student CREE).

Main collaborations: UMR Eur'Orbem, Sorbonne Université; Russian Academy of Sciences; Mnémosyne (association for the development of women's and gender history), URL: http://www.mnemosyne.asso.fr/mnemosyne/; journal Gendernye issledovanija of the ХЦГИ Center (URL http://kcgs.net.ua); РАИЖИ (Association of Russian Researchers in Women's History).

Proposed research operations:

  • A colloquium (in 2020 or 2021) followed by publication of the proceedings;
  • A Master 2 seminar set up from 2017-2018;
  • The publication of translations accompanied by a scientific apparatus of texts by Russian women writers of the years 1760-1890 (never translated into French and for some not republished in Russia since the xixth century), either in the form of one - or several - anthologies, or in separate editions;
  • A monograph by Catherine Géry, planned between 2020 and 2022: Woman, writer, Russian - a "black archipelago".

Key words:Russian literature; women's literature; literary historiography; literature of the margins; gender studies; minor/major.

4.3.3. Women artists at the Academy and in the public space (Russia-Caucasus: mid-19th to early 20th century)

Responsible: Anna Leyloyan

The aim of this research project is to shed light on the role and place of women in the cultural and political milieu of Russia and the Caucasus at the end of the imperial era, their commitments in an all-male milieu, and their struggle for recognition of their works, which remain largely unknown even today.

Paradoxically, it was the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg that first opened its doors to women, offering them several artistic training courses. They are also present in artistic and cultural associations such as Les Ambulants, Le Monde de l'art, Société des artistes de Saint-Pétersbourg, etc. How much do they invest? To date, very few studies have been devoted to Russian women artists in any artistic field. The record is even more meagre in the Caucasus, which offers a ground for unprecedented research.

Researchers associated with the project: Claire Mouradian, (director of research, CNRS, EHESS), Hayarpie Papikyan, (PhD, Université Paris-Diderot), Paulette Coutant-Houbouyan, (PhD, EHESS), Rafik Santrossyan, (PhD, V. Brusov State University of Languages and Social Sciences).

Main collaborations: Russian Academy of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg; National Archives of Armenia, Yerevan; National Gallery of Armenia, Yerevan; National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia, Yerevan; National Academy of Fine Arts of Armenia, Yerevan.

Proposed research operations:

  • Study day and/or symposium;
  • Publications: articles, chapters in collective works;
  • Participations in international seminars and colloquia.

Key words:Imperial Academy of Arts; women artists and sculptors; Imperial Russia; Caucasus.

4.3.4. Mediators of Russian literature from the 19th century to the present day

Responsible persons: Olga Blinova and Catherine Géry

This project is conceived as part of the wider project "L'″archipel noir″ des femmes écrivains et artistes russes" led by Catherine Géry. It also has close links with project 6.2 "Penser autrement l'Histoire littéraire".

The "Médiatrices" project brings together female researchers (and potentially researchers) interested in the participation of women editors and publishers, translators, literary critics etc. in the literary process in Russia and the Soviet Union. Its aim is to fill certain gaps, in particular by contributing to the return of forgotten names and reflecting on the concept of the mediator and the possible scope of this paradigm in literature. The project also seeks to present a panorama of the activities of female literary mediators, and to assess the impact of their participation on the constitution of the Russian literary field from the 19th century to the present day. This long period, rich in political, social and cultural events, will enable us to better understand the evolution of these activities. Having a strong potential influence on the literary process, both in terms of the choice of authors and texts (to be analyzed, translated or edited), and that of collaborators (in the case of female editors and publishers of literary journals or magazines with literary sections), these mediating practices, often downplayed in literary historiography and of which women were the ignored agents, have nevertheless shaped the Russian literary space.

Researchers associated with the project: Catherine Géry (CREE), Olga Démidova (Pushkin University of Leningrad, Saint Petersburg, Russia), Anna Shcherbakova (associate at CREE), Olga Biberson (post-doctoral fellow at the SeDyL laboratory, Inalco), Anastassia Kouzmenko (Novosibirsk Pedagogical University, Russia), Galina Subbotina (associate at CREE), Youlia Maritchik-Sioli (associate at CREE).

Research operations planned (and carried out):

  • As part of Axis 4 "Identities on the move: around ″minority″, setting up a double-headed doctoral seminar on ethnic and gendered minorities, in collaboration with Dominique Samson (academic year 2021-2022).
  • International study day "Female mediators of Russian literature: women editors, publishers, translators and literary critics in the 19th century" (March 12, 2021).
  • International study day "Female mediators and the Silver Age of Russian literature" (2022).
  • International study day or symposium "Female mediators in the Soviet era" (2023)
  • International study day "Female mediators in the post-Soviet era" (2024)
  • Publication of study day proceedings in Slovo magazine.
  • Preparation and publication of a Dictionary of Russian female mediators from the 19th century to the present day.
  • Participation in international study days, seminars and colloquia.

Key words: Russian literature; women's literature; literary historiography; mediators; editors; writers; translators; women literary critics; proofreaders; women journalists.

4.4. Communist childhood in Romania and Moldavia: memories and narratives

Responsibles: Catherine Durandin (CREE), Cécile Folschweiller (CREE), Irina Gridan (CREE)

The "Communist childhoods in Romania and Moldavia" research axis aims to shed light on the multiple outbursts of societies long interpreted from a static angle. We are part of the trend towards a plural re-reading of the history of communist societies, while recognizing that this attraction for the plural is a kind of fashion for color and individualization that follows the black-and-white visions of the communist years from 1990 to 2000. Our initial approaches to a number of friends, academics and engineers revealed a certain reticence and blockage: to speak of childhoods that were not unhappy, banally joyful, in the communist world of yesterday, seems to be perceived by some as the mark of a failure in the face of democratic ideals that presuppose unhappiness in this phase of communism. The aim is to collect testimonies from children's lives in the years and decades following the Second World War, both in Romania and Moldavia, bearing in mind that the Soviet communist project left its mark on Romania and the Socialist Republic of Moldavia in different ways. A corpus of published life stories already exists (see V. Tismăneanu, D. Lungu). Our aim is to widen the circle of witnesses in time and space, reaching out to different generations, rural and urban, working-class and more affluent backgrounds, whether this affluence is the inheritance of a bourgeois background or the result of red social promotion. We will proceed by building a contact address book to establish a reactive network, and by drawing up a questionnaire to serve as a flexible grid around the essential memories of daily life in connection with political, social and cultural life. As writers, philosophers and historians, we are committed to a narrative: the publication of a kind of atlas of childhood memories. But in this investigation, we consider it necessary for this impressionistic approach to take into account temporalities, historical and political contexts, and the legislative framework of the status and rights of the child.

Researchers associated with the project: Monica Iovanescu (University of Craiova), Petru Negura (Free University of Moldova), Cristina Preutu (University of Iași), Elena Prus (Free University of Moldova), Anda Radulescu (University of Craiova), Monica Salvan (Museum of Literature of Iași), Nora Sava (University of Cluj), Florin Țurcanu (University of Bucharest).

Partnerships envisaged: University of Bucharest, ULIM (Free University of Moldova), Iași Museum of Literature.

Research activities and expected achievements:

  • An M1/M2 seminar
  • A study day
  • A Franco-Romanian collective publication

Key words: communism; childhood; memory; life stories; cultural history; social history; oral history; Romania; Moldavia

4.5. Jewish minorities in Central-Eastern Europe

Responsible persons: Arnaud Bikard, Anne Grynberg