Under Eastern Eyes. European Writers Reimagining the West from the Great War to Present Times (en ligne)

Le séminaire de recherche Under Eastern Eyes réunit pour la première fois les laboratoires CELLF et Eur’ORBEM de Sorbonne Université, l’Université de Varsovie et l’Université Charles de Prague. Il est organisé par Maxime Decout, Josef Šebek, Danuta Sosnowska et Clara Royer. 

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In the aftermath of the Great War, a series of rival ideological projects emerged, aimed at re-imagining the political and social unity of Europe—Fascist New Europe, Communist International, European Community projects. All of them redefined the triangular relationship between Western Europe, its Eastern counterpart, and the colonial space, responding to what in the language of the period was dubbed “the death of the West.” The literary sphere developed a similar, if singular, work. Marked by experiences of exile, displacement, genocide and dictatorships, writers from Central and Eastern Europe imagined the West in their works, its taunt relationship with the East and the colonial other. They devised the framework of a common culture, probing its fault lines and questioning its aporias. As first- or second-generation émigrés, they oftentimes wrote in the West as Easterners. Our research program explores such projects of reinvention through literary texts, focusing on writers who, individually or collectively, traced the rifts of a European space haunted by historical catastrophes and disasters (the Holodomor, the Holocaust, authoritarian and dictatorial regimes, displacement of populations, ecological disasters, etc.). How did their work as writers respond to the proclamation of the death of the West, while attempting to redefine the contours of the world in its globality ?

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Les cinq séances auront lieu en anglais et en ligne. 

Lien Zoom des séances : https://cnrs.zoom.us/j/99410228354?pwd=bRDyKpmosiR4xWb5tbBcQBS5oZ4UcB.1  

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Calendrier des séances : 

7.02     14h-15h30

Jana Kantoříková (SU) : African Czech Writers: Identity, Coloniality and Allure of the West

 21.03   12h-13H30

Mykola Riabchuk (Institute of Political and Nationalities’ Studies, Kyiv)  : Challenging "Realpolitik". Ukraine, the War, and the New Eastern Europe

4.04     14h-15h30

Przemysław Czapliński (UAM, Poznań) : The alternative of the West, or how Polish culture moved to the North

23.05   14h-15h30

Nicolas Aude (SU) : “Finding a Counter-Identity" : Julia Kristeva, Tel Quel, and the Chinese Tour of 1974

13.06   14h-15h30

Agnieszka Hudzik (Universität des Saarlandes CEUS) : The Politics of Literature between East-Central Europe and Latin America (1968-1989)