Malraux, Senghor

CALL FOR PAPERS INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM

“Malraux, Senghor – In search of cultural thresholds”

Conference venue: Assane Seck University of Ziguinchor (Senegal)

Dates: June 14 and 15, 2023

Format: Hybrid (face-to-face/remote).

Summary :

The symposium is intended first of all to be a reflection allowing the exploration of the notion of cultural thresholds. The subjects of connection and declosing of the world are at the heart of the thought of many contemporary intellectuals on different continents. The meeting of Malraux and Senghor in the field of essential difference allows the former to open up to African otherness[1], the second to reverse the negative into a positive. For Malraux and Senghor, what defines man as such only has meaning insofar as it is intended to be shared: civilization of interbreeding, imaginary museum….

Based on the meeting between the two men, the reflection will open new perspectives for the exploration of cultural thresholds. Literary and artistic archives will have a special place in this work.

The objective of this scientific meeting is not only to bring together researchers from various backgrounds but also to raise awareness of the importance of the interactions between art, cultures, sciences and literature which can be read through exploration. cultural thresholds.

Argument :

The question of thresholds concerns many disciplines. It is posed by the exact sciences and by the human sciences at the center of the notions they define. If the thresholds confront us with the experience of limits and identity, they send us back to a collective practice and to a form of “returning home” in the cultural domain.

The notion of cultural thresholds can be questioned by the perception we have of them as a privileged space/time allowing man to return to the work according to an anthropic principle.

So when it comes to cultures, the notion of threshold moves to reach the interstice giving access to art, to spirituality, to the affective, to intelligibility. Whatever their essence, cultural thresholds impose on us the social environment in which we are and our relationship to the world.

Politics, culture, activism, but also the complementarity between the notion of “universal culture” and “civilization of the universal” are all areas that brought Malraux and Senghor closer together.

Culturally distant from each other, each, in their own way, sought to cross the threshold(s) giving access to the culture of the other. Malraux and Senghor are committed to rehabilitating and enhancing African culture, to defending human dignity, highlighting difference and interbreeding as an element of richness in living together.

In the last chapters of his work L’Intemporel, Malraux reflects on the question of the power of annexation of the Imaginary Museum. He studies, as Jean-Pierre Zarader points out, everything that is on the margins or on the threshold of the Museum, everything whose annexation – fetishes for example – is not self-evident like everything that, within the Museum Imaginary, puts it in question like the arts of Africa[2]. For Malraux, Negro art represents the opening of a world, the passage from closed to open. “In this closed world, how did a black mask become a work of art? So he only became so when this world ceased to be closed. »[3]

In this game with the limit, this dialectic of the Universal (the museum) and the Particular (the works of Africa) marks the encounter and the fruitful dialogue between Malraux and Senghor at the heart of the exploration of cultural thresholds.

The historical, generic, literary, artistic and comparative approaches of Senghor make it possible to understand the nourishing virtue of the dialogue of cultures; his milk culture was the “fresh bed” of what he later systematized into a theory of encounter and dialogue between people and cultures: the Civilization of the Universal.

The Senghor-Malraux meeting thus symbolized the mutual recognition of the origin and of the universal dimension which is the only hope of building a rebirth of man on the ruins of the past, the rubble and the hopes of the present. This rebirth is possible through poetic and artistic knowledge linked to scientific knowledge. All love of wisdom and of the spirit, all philosophy and all spirituality depends on it as the living, hidden and sacred root, which alone makes us survive.

It is by drawing on the links that unite Malraux and Senghor that we will explore the vast question of cultural thresholds during this colloquium which is organized in the alliance of sciences, arts, cultures and literature with the artistic contribution of students from the Higher Institute of Arts and Cultures (UCAD-Dakar) and the culture department of Senghor University in Alexandria (Egypt).

Three areas will be explored:

African arts and cultural thresholds

· The links between Malraux and Senghor in the service of global citizenship

Training and sharing of cultures

Responsible for the symposium and its organization:

Jacqueline BERGERON, International Expert in Higher Education and Research Systems, President of Erasmus Expertise (France) jbergeron@erasmus-expertise.org

Raphaël LAMBAL, Lecturer, Assane Seck University of Ziguinchor (Senegal) rlambal@univ-zig.sn

Terms of submission of contributions:

Proposals for papers should be sent in Word or RTF format to the following address colloquium@erasmus-expertise.org

They must include the surname and first name of the communicator, the establishment of affiliation, the electronic address, the title of the communication and the axis chosen as well as the summary which must not exceed 2500 characters (spaces included ). Following a pre-selection of the contributions by the scientific committee, you will send, if necessary, your complete contribution.

Calendar :

December 20, 2022 : deadline for receipt of proposals;
February 28, 2023: notification of acceptance to authors;
May 31, 2023: receipt of complete contributions for the proposals selected by the scientific committee.

Note: Priority will be given to communications from doctoral students who will contribute to the reflection from different disciplinary inputs.

Scientific committee of the conference:

Florian ALIX, Lecturer in French Literature, Francophone Literature, Sorbonne University, Paris (France)

Denis ASSANE DIOUF, Lecturer in Modern Literature, Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences, UCAD (Dakar, Senegal)

Souleymane BACHIR DIAGNE, Professor at Columbia University, New York (USA). President of the scientific council of Erasmus Expertise

Jacqueline BERGERON, President of the Erasmus Expertise network, head of the research program on thresholds – Bordeaux (France)

Andrée-Marie DIAGNE, Professor at the Faculty of Science and Technology of Education and Training, UCAD (Dakar, Senegal)

Babacar MBAYE DIOP, Professor in the Department of Philosophy, UCAD. Director of the Higher Institute of Arts and Cultures (ISAC), training center integrated into UCAD (Dakar, Senegal)

Cheikh Mouhamadou Soumoune DIOP, Professor of Comparative Literature, Director of the UFR Letters, Arts and Human Sciences of the Assane Seck University of Ziguinchor (Senegal)

Sophie DOUDET, Lecturer in French Literature at the Institute of Political Studies of Aix-en-Provence (France)

Romuald FONKOUA, Professor of Francophone Literature, Sorbonne University, Paris (France)

Jean-Louis JEANNELLE, Professor of 20th Century French Literature, Sorbonne University, Paris (France)

Raphaël LAMBAL, Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary French Literature, Department of Modern Literature at Assane Seck University in Ziguinchor (Senegal).

Christine LE QUELLEC COTTIER, Associate Professor and member of the scientific council of Senghor University (Egypt)

Carlos LOBO, Philosopher specialist in phenomenology. He directs the magazine Intentio; member of the board of directors and the scientific council of Erasmus Expertise (France)

Ribio NZEZA BUNKETI BUSE, Director of the Culture Department of Senghor University of Alexandria (Egypt)

Christos NIKOU, Lecturer-researcher at the Department of International and European Studies at the University of Piraeus (Greece)

Yves OUALLET, Teacher-researcher in Literature at the University of Le Havre; member of the board of directors and the scientific council of Erasmus Expertise (France)

Eugène TAVARES, Professor of Portuguese Literature, Department of Applied Foreign Languages, Assane Seck University of Ziguinchor (Senegal)

[1] Raphaël Lambal (dir.), Malraux and AfricaParis, African Presence, 2012.
[2] Jean-Pierre Zarader, Malraux. Dictionary of the imaginary, Paris, Klincksieck, 2017. See especially the chapter entitled “Fétiches”, p. 125-129.
[3] Andre Malraux, Complete Works, Volume V, Paris, Gallimard, 2004, p. 884.

Malraux, Senghor – In search of cultural thresholds (Senegal & online)