ANTHROPOLOGIE DE L’IMAGINATION 2016 PROGRAM

CARLO SEVERI, DIRECTEUR D’ÉTUDES À L’EHESS GIOVANNI DA COL, DIRECTEUR, CENTRE FOR ETHNOGRAPHIC THEORY, SOAS

MICHAEL LAMBEK OLIVIER ALLARD MARILYN STRATHERN A-C. TAYLOR WEBB KEANE JAMES LAIDLAW

JOEL ROBBINS LUC BOLTANSKI

VENDREDI 20 MAI 17H-19H30 PM— SALLE DE COURS 2 IMAGINING AND REALIZING RELATIONS BETWEEN IMAGINATION AND REALITY IMAGINER ET REALISER LES RELATIONS ENTRE L’IMAGINATION ET LA REALITE

MICHAEL LAMBEK (TORONTO) DISCUSSION BY OLIVIER ALLARD (EHESS)

I briefly address the reality of imagination and the imagination of reality and then consider how relations between imagination and reality are differently constituted – differently imagined, differently realized – in different genres of practice. The illustrations come mostly from fieldwork in Mayotte, with respect to the denial of imagination in realizing spirit possession, the acknowledgement of imagination in celebrating weddings, and the conflation or confusion of imagination and reality in sorcery. J’examine brièvement la réalité de l’imagination ainsi que l’imagination de la réalité et je considère ensuite la façon dont les relations entre l’imagination et la réalité sont différemment constituées—différemment imaginées, différemment réalisées—dans divers genres de pratique. Les illustrations viennent pour la plupart de mon terrain à Mayotte, en lien au déni d’imagination dans la pratique de la possession par les esprits, à la reconnaissance de l’imagination dans la célébration des mariages, et à l’amalgame ou la confusion de l’imagination et de la réalité dans la sorcellerie.

PROGRAMME

VENDREDI 20 MAI 17H-19H30 PM— SALLE DE COURS 2 IMAGINING AND REALIZING RELATIONS BETWEEN IMAGINATION AND REALITY

MICHAEL LAMBEK (TORONTO) DISCUSSION BY OLIVIER ALLARD (EHESS)

JEUDI 2 JUIN, 17H-19H30 — SALLE DE COURS 2 LEARNING TO SEE IN MELANESIA AND BEYOND

MARILYN STRATHERN (CAMBRIDGE), ANNE-CHRISTINE TAYLOR (CNRS), GIOVANNI DA COL (SOAS)

MARDI 4 OCTOBRE 14H00-19H00 - CINÉMA INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP

THE OPACITY OF MINDS AND THE LIMITS OF ETHICAL IMAGINATION WEBB KEANE (MICHIGAN), JAMES LAIDLAW (CAMBRIDGE), JOEL ROBBINS (CAMBRIDGE),

CARLO SEVERI (EHESS), LUC BOLTANSKI (EHESS), GIOVANNI DA COL (SOAS), ANNE-CHRISTINE TAYLOR (CNRS), JASON THROOP (UCLA)

ORGANIZERS / ORGANISATEURS CARLO SEVERI Depuis les travaux de Lucien Lévy-Bruhl sur la mentalité «prélogique» (1949) jusqu’aux réflexions de Dan Sperber sur les croyances « apparemment irrationnelles » (1982), la littérature anthropologique consacrée aux formes d’exercice de la pensée, a posé la question de la différence culturelle en termes de rationalité ou d’irrationalité. Il est pourtant évident que d’autres formes de conceptualisation existent dans la vie sociale, qu’il serait difficile d’évaluer en ces termes. L’analyse de l’ethnographie fait notamment émerger des idées concernant l’espace, les images, la nature du langage, ou différentes formes de la communication. Ce séminaire se propose d’ouvrir une réflexion collective sur ces formes d’exercice de la pensée, plus liées à l’exercice de l’imagination qu’à une définition, en termes positifs ou négatifs, de la rationalité. GIOVANNI DA COL What would an ethnographic theory of imagination that would not use the word “imagination” look like? In the last two decades, phrases like ‘social imagination’, ‘moral imagination’, ‘political imagination’, ‘affective imagination’, ‘cosmological imagination’, and the like — much like the related phenomenon of ‘scapes’ (landscapes, ethnoscapes, mediascapes) – have come to be used so casually as to become well-nigh meaningless. The word “imagination” seems to encompass phenomena as diverse as fantasy, utopia, prognosis, divination, futurity, dreaming, visualization, memory, ideology, and creativity—or some kind of open-ended combination of all of them. When we speak of cosmologies, ontologies, subjectivities, as being “imagined,” what do we actually mean by this? Rarely do anthropologists even ask the question. Instead, we see a succession of anthropological ‘turns’ that appear to be obsessed with totalities that no one can fully imagine at all. Against some de-humanizing trends affecting the discipline, we wish this seminar to explore some lines of inquiry advocating a return to a humanist study of the relationship between value and imagination. If “economy is” - as Sahlins (2010) once put it - “the objectification of cosmology” then the mystery of the cosmological order lingers in that very same nature of the concept of ‘objectification’: since objects ultimately preserve a kernel of opacity and cannot ultimately - unlike humans - imagine. Hence Marx’s famous passage in Das Kapital on the human architect who, unlike the best of the bees, must raise a building in his own imagination before it is raised in reality. In this seminar, we wish to reflect on “imagination” as an active force, embedded in creative projects of action—as immanent in a reality that is constantly being shaped rather than a transcendent from it. This in turn means seeing what we are used to call “imaginaries” are, above all, the effects of the pursuit of forms of value, and as such, tend to take on a certain hypothetical, “subjunctive,” or “as-if” quality, creating contexts which make questions of ontology, in a certain sense, not always apt.