Responsables de l’atelier
Lucie RATAIL (Université de Lorraine)
Eleanor PARKIN-COATES (Université de Lorraine)
Anne Dalles Maréchal, Université Jean Monnet Saint Etienne, dallesanne@gmail.com
Manchuria as a mirror: questioning the emancipation of the Scottish Presbyterian missionaries in Northeast China
For many, John Ross was the founding father of Christianity in Korea, or at least of Korean Presbyterian Protestantism. But it is often forgotten that he was also one of the first Protestant missionaries in Manchuria – the name given by European travelers to the geographical territories in the Northeast of China. Born in 1842 in the Scottish Highlands, John Ross became a missionary with the United Presbyterian Church (UPC), which took the lead in the race to convert people on the fringes of the British Empire, particularly within communities that were marginalized and neglected by other churches. The UPC missionaries, like Ross himself, acted as ‘pioneers’ among the so-called ‘unchurched’ populations in Scotland or ‘pagan’ populations in distant lands. Initially devoted to missions in the Highlands, John Ross finally set his sights on China in 1872, where he founded the Presbyterian Mission in Manchuria. This mission allows us to examine the theme of emancipation in several ways. I propose first to understand how Manchuria presented itself to Ross as a mirror of the Highlands, and how it reflected on the emancipation of John Ross and the Gaelic populations of northern Scotland with regards to religious and national policies that neglected them in favour of the English-speaking populations of the Lowlands. Secondly, I will address the issue of the emancipation of the UPC, which took place on the fringes of the British Empire and reflected the religious tensions surrounding the Great Disruption that challenged Scottish religious life from 1843 onwards. Finally, I propose to address the emancipation of women missionaries, teachers and nurses of the Presbyterian mission. To answer these issues, this presentation will reflect on how the identity of the Presbyterian Mission in Manchuria can be seen as both national and religious, with Presbyterianism as well as the history of the Highlands influencing strategic missionary choices in Manchuria.
Mélissa Grand, Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, melissa.grand@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr
The Sisterhood – la sororité noire comme vecteur d’émancipation culturelle
Dans les Etats-Unis des années 1970, les auteures du Black Arts Movement peinent à se faire une place dans les sphères académiques. Souvent exclues par le sexisme des Black Studies et le racisme des Women’s Studies, les travaux de ces artistes sont sous-représentés dans le monde universitaire. L’agentivité collective doit donc être repensée dans une perspective intersectionnelle. Ainsi, en février 1977, la maison new-yorkaise de June Jordan devient le lieu de création du collectif littéraire The Sisterhood – Black Women’s Writing Group. Ce dernier, présenté par Jordan comme un espace “éditorial alternatif” (Schomburg Center, Michelle Wallace Papers, 1977) permet à des artistes telles que Ntozake Shange, Audre Lorde et Alice Walker de s’émanciper des diktats culturels défavorables à la multiplication des ouvrages d’auteures noires et leur circulation dans le monde académique. Le collectif offre un soutien pour les femmes noires par la création de portfolios, la mise en relation avec des revues prestigieuses comme Ebony ou des collègues universitaires comme Gloria Hull, et la mise en place concrète d’un soutien social pour les artistes. The Sisterhood, au-delà de sa ligne éditoriale émancipatoire, est un symbole de résistance face à l’invisibilisation. De plus, les archives des correspondances des artistes mettent en lumière la sororité comme moteur d’agentivité collective (Blakeley). Michelle Wallace décrit ainsi une transformation culturelle vers “l’art américain vu à travers les yeux de ses créatrices” (1977). Ce projet permet un décentrement de la sphère universitaire afin de favoriser un rayonnement collectif. Il reste à interroger la durabilité du projet face aux réalités professionnelles de ses fondatrices occupant des postes d’enseignantes ou de lectrices.
Enfin, il est question de comprendre la place de The Sisterhood en tant qu’espace émancipatoire de création et de publication en réaction à l’exclusion éditoriale et académique.
Mayaki Kimba, Columbia University, m.kimba@columbia.edu
The Enslaver State: Emancipation After Decolonization
Recent work in political theory has attended to efforts by thinkers as W. E. B. Du Bois, C. L. R. James and Eric Williams to reject accounts of emancipation as ending enslavement once and for all (Getachew 2019). For these thinkers, empire was analogous to slavery, such that real emancipation required decolonization. Less attention has thus far been paid to the persistence of analogies to slavery even following formal decolonization. This paper reconstructs two critiques—one in Britain and one in France—in which anticolonial activists analogized state actions to slavery. In Britain, this critique centred state interventions in the family, as the Association of Black Social Workers and Allied Professionals submitted evidence to the House of Commons in 1983, denouncing transracial adoption as “an internal colonialism” and “a new form of slave trade.” In France, the critique centred state-sponsored emigration schemes from overseas departments to the metropole. As this form of emigration involved difficult material conditions and an apparent effort to defuse anticolonial agitation in overseas departments, anticolonial activists in the sixties and seventies accused the French state of being a négrier. In both the British and French cases, the slavery analogy was not a rhetorical insult, but part of an elaborated critique. This critique in Britain concerned the ongoing impact of slavery on Black families, which activists wanted to address with a multicultural approach whereby the state recognizes cultural difference. In France, the critique centred on the racialized exploitation of migrants from overseas departments, and served arguments that departmentalization did not constitute real decolonization. The paper thus uncovers differing ways in which slavery analogies continued to serve political projects in the late twentieth century by enabling discursive framings of emancipation as unachieved and as impeded by colourblind liberalism in Britain and by assimilationist republicanism in France.
Farouk Lamine, Université de Tours, lamine.farouk@gmail.com
The Tory Anarchist in 1984: Orwell, Swift, and the Politics of Emancipation
George Orwell’s 1984 occupies a paradoxical position in the cultural and intellectual landscape. While widely celebrated in popular discourse, it has been subject to sustained critique from prominent academic figures. Scholars such as E. P. Thompson, Raymond Williams, Fredric Jameson, and Stefan Collini have variously interpreted 1984 as anti-communist propaganda, a product of bourgeois ideology, or a profoundly pessimistic vision of political life. In recent years, Orwell’s thought has undergone reassessment, with increasing recognition of the complexity and depth of his political and moral reflections. Nonetheless, many commentators continue to overstate the conservative dimensions of his work. In particular, figures such as Simon Leys and Jean-Claude Michéa have contributed to the popularization of the oxymoronic label “Tory anarchist” to characterize Orwell—an expression he himself once used, critically, to describe writers like Jonathan Swift and Leo Tolstoy, whose work he admired yet fundamentally contested.
This paper reconsiders the meaning and function of the term “anarchist-Tory” in the context of Orwell’s own usage, especially in relation to the reception and interpretation of 1984. It challenges earlier critiques that cast Orwell as excessively pessimistic, anti-intellectual, or politically reactionary. Simultaneously, it questions more recent readings that situate Orwell within a broadly conservative intellectual tradition. More specifically, this study argues that the phrase “anarchist-Tory” serves as a complex and underappreciated critique of Jonathan Swift’s political thought—developed by Orwell during the writing of 1984—which aims to expose the psychological and ideological underpinnings of political reaction. Rather than endorsing despair or traditionalism, Orwell’s engagement with Swift reveals a sustained intellectual and ethical commitment to emancipation. Largely neglected in existing scholarship, this reading provides a crucial interpretive key to 1984, illuminating the emancipatory impulses that lie beneath the novel’s dystopian surface.
Bibliographie :
COLLINI Stefan, Absent minds : intellectuals in Britain, London: Oxford University Press, 2006.
JAMESON, Fredric. Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions. London : Verso. 2007.
LABICA Thierry, « Les lettres de Lord Chesterfield : decency, ou salvation by ‘Les Grâces’. »
Revue LISA/LISA e-journal 13/1 (2015).
LORDON, Frédéric. « Impasse Michéa ». La Revue des livres, n° 12 (juillet-août 2013) : p. 2- 13.
MICHÉA, Jean-Claude. Orwell Anarchiste-Tory. Paris : Climats, 2008.
ORWELL, George. 1984. London : Penguin books, 1989.
ORWELL, George. The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell. Vols 1, 2, 3, 4. Eds. Ian Angus and Sonia Orwell. London : Penguin Books. 1968.
WILLIAMS, Raymond. Politics and Letters: Interviews with New Left Review. London: New Left, 1979.
THOMPSON, Edward, Palmer, The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays, London: Merlin, 1978.
Pierre-François Peirano, Université de Toulon / Babel (EA 2649), pierre-francois.peirano@univ-tln.fr
Abraham Lincoln and the issue of emancipation: a decision driven by personal opinion or “external” circumstances?
President Lincoln’s decision, in the autumn of 1862, to enforce an Emancipation proclamation from 1st January, 1863 onwards has given rise to controversial debate about its nature, but the question whether it actually reflected the opinions of the sixteenth president has been raised as well. According to an “idealistic” vision, the Proclamation was the actual fulfilment of Lincoln’s wish to do away with slavery, while a more critical perspective played down his sincere intentions when passing such a measure (Lenore Bennett, Jr., “Was Abe Lincoln a White Supremacist?”, 1968).
The purpose of this paper is to analyse Lincoln’s views on the emancipation of slaves through a study of his personal writings – from his early years as a lawyer and politician until April, 1865 –, in order to trace back the evolution of the latter. Indeed, Lincoln seemed, before the 1850s, to be in favour of “colonisation” – i.e., sending emancipated slaves to the Caribbean or the West coast of Africa – and the ongoing tensions within the Federal Union may have played a role in his adoption of various ideas like the containment of slavery – which could be seen as a means to abolish it over the longer term. A line can thus be drawn between his personal aversion to slavery, which he had confessed in a public speech as early as 1854, and his political attitude, whose evolution, was also due to “external” circumstances, like the Confederate resistance in the first years of the Civil War – which may have spurred him to sign the Proclamation as well. Trying to establish a balance between Lincoln’s endeavour to preserve the Union and the need for emancipation will thus be another key aspect in the paper.
Early bibliography:
Primary sources.
LINCOLN Abraham, Speeches and Writings (FEHRENBACHER Don E., ed.). New York, The Library of America, 1989, two volumes.
GRANT Ulysses S., Personal Memoirs (1885), in Memoirs and Selected Letters (McFEELY Mary Drake and McFEELY William S., eds.). New York, The Library of America, 1990, pp. 1-848.
HOLZER Harold (ed.), The Lincoln Anthology: Great Writers on His Life and Legacy from 1860 to Now. New York, The Library of America, 2009.
SIMPSON Brooks D., SEARS Stephen W. and SHEEHAN-DEAN Aaron (eds.), The Civil War Told by Those Who Lived It. New York, The Library of America, 2011, four volumes.
Secondary sources.
BRAUDEL Fernand, Grammaire des civilisations. Paris, Flammarion, collection « Champs », 2013 [1963].
FONER Eric, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877. New York, Harper Perennial Classics, 2014 [2002].
McPHERSON James, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003 [1988].
Camille Rivoire, Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3, camille.rivoire1@univ-lyon3.fr
From « sweet » ladies to femmes fatales: towards a gustatory and sensory emancipation of female Gothic characters of the Victorian era?
Dans le gothique, la qualité féminine principale est la douceur, que l’on désigne par l’adjectif « sweet ». Ce dernier, bien plus qu’une simple idée de douceur de caractère, peut également avoir des connotations sensorielles et gustatives. La douceur devient alors le côté sucré, qui est lui aussi associé à la féminité, et qui fait de la femme un objet de convoitise. La corrélation entre féminité et sucre s’est construite au XVIIIème siècle, et se poursuit dans le gothique du XIXème. Les personnages féminins doux, tels que Lucy dans Dracula, sont des archétypes de la féminité, qui semble rimer avec absence d’agentivité.
Cependant, on peut voir que le gothique montre également des personnages qui se défont de cet aspect doux et sucré pour laisser place à des femmes qui s’émancipent (en partie) de cette vision de la féminité. La femme fatale et la New Woman prennent alors le devant de la scène et soulignent l’agentivité féminine qui se traduit par un appétit dévorant. Carmilla, la femme vampire créée par Sheridan Le Fanu, corrompt subtilement les codes de la féminité en conjuguant une apparente innocence à une agentivité léthale et à une consommation de sang qui se départ des connotations sucrées en vigueur à l’époque. Ce type de personnage semble alors donner une définition entièrement nouvelle de la féminité qui tend davantage vers une agentivité traditionnellement masculine.
Notre communication s’intéresse à la construction de la féminité dans le gothique par l’association de l’agentivité et de l’alimentation au XIXème siècle. Nous montrerons que ces personnages, qui sont d’abord liés au sucré, affichent leur émancipation progressive, et ce jusque dans leur comportement alimentaire. Ce questionnement alimentaire permet de jouer avec les codes de la féminité et reflète l’image en mutation de la femme victorienne.
Bibliographie sélective :
Dijkstra, Bram. Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siècle Culture. New York : Oxford University Press, 1986.
Eliot, George. The Lifted Veil. Royaume-Uni : Ginger Classics. 2022.
Galiné, Marine. « Les représentations de la femme et du féminin dans un corpus gothique irlandais du dix-neuvième siècle: approche générique et genrée ». Thèse de doctorat, Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, 2019.
Haggard, Henry Rider. The Annotated « She »: A Critical Edition of H. Rider Haggard’s Victorian romance. Édité par Norman Etherington. Bloomington: Indiana university Press, 1991.
Krondl, Michael. « Sweetness and Femininity: Fashioning Gendered Appetite in the Victorian Age ». Mémoire, City University of New York, 2022.
Le Fanu, Joseph Sheridan. Carmilla. Londres: Pushkin Press, 2020.
Patmore, Coventry. The Angel in the House. London: G. Bell and son, 1897.
Prescott, Charles E., et Grace A. Giorgio. « VAMPIRIC AFFINITIES: MINA HARKER AND THE PARADOX OF FEMININITY IN BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA ». Victorian Literature and Culture 33, no 2 (2005): 487515.
Senf, Carol A. « “Dracula”: Stoker’s Response to the New Woman ». Victorian Studies 26, no 1 (1982): 3349.
Stoker, Bram. Dracula: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Reviews and Reactions, Dramatic and Film Variations, Criticism. Édité par Nina Auerbach et David J. Skal. New York: A Norton Critical Edition, 1997.
Nat Rubner, Queen Mary, University of London, natrubner@aol.com
The 1981 African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights: An assertion of Africa’s emancipation
The African human rights charter is invariably studied in a human rights context. It is seen as prompted by pressure from civil society, NGOs, foreign governments and UN, as a desire to emulate the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and a response by African leaders to the depredations of Presidents Amin, Bokassa and Nguema. Yet this analysis has little basis in fact either as regards the charter’s political process or of how it should be understood.
In reality, lobbying for a human rights charter was not merely rejected by African leaders it was counter-productive – the West seeking to impose its morality onto an Africa that had quite different concerns and values. Nor was the charter aimed at human rights protection whatever it proclaimed. Most African leaders were only persuaded to accept a charter because it had little scope to call them to account – confirmed by the woeful implementation of the charter’s provisions in its first twenty years.
Why then did African leaders adopt the charter? Beyond the issues of political power and development funding, the primary preoccupation of African thought was its existential craving to emancipate Africa from the grip of Western (so-called) universalism. Whether in the protestations of the African church (the African reformation), in literature, (opposition to the dominance of Western literary judgments), in politics (African socialism), or in culture (1976 Cultural Charter for Africa). In terms of human rights, emancipation was centred on the Universal Declaration’s failure to encompass African values, notably its accommodation of colonialism – an outlook already well-rehearsed at African human rights conferences of the 1960s and 1970s. The initial drafters and African leaders shared this preoccupation and it was only on this common ground that the charter, as a statement proclaiming African concerns and values, could and would be adopted.
Thomas van Woerden, Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3, thomas.van-woerden@univ-lyon3.fr
Acceleration as Emancipation in and around the “Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics” by Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek
A certain elusiveness generally accompanies the use of the term “Accelerationism”, especially regarding whom it concerns exactly. In order to get a better grasp of accelerationist discourse, one might typically start with a close reading of the text that most popularised the term, namely, the “#ACCELERATE Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics”, first published online in May 2013 by London-based theorists Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek. This document presents their conception of accelerationism as a strategic rethinking of left-wing politics against the hegemony of neoliberalism, while learning from its success.
The notion of emancipation is at the heart of the left-accelerationist project. The manifesto operates a shift in the subject of emancipation from the figure of the factory labourer to the intellectual worker: the agent of change is no longer found in an easily identifiable proletariat, but in the virtuality of a cognitariat, a “knitting-together” of different post-Fordist proletarian identities sharing in the very platforms that they can use against the system. Emancipation thus implies a repurposing and remodelling of neoliberal infrastructures rather than their mere abandonment or destruction.
After the publication of Williams and Srnicek’s manifesto, accelerationism has increasingly been understood as an essentially political project. However, when one looks at the history and wide use of the term, accelerationism appears as a highly unstable and ambivalent concept that ranges from one end of the political spectrum to the other but also assumes seemingly apolitical and artistic forms. One aspect unites most forms of accelerationism: the conceptual and possibly physical mastery of time.
In this presentation, I will summarise the claims and goals of the manifesto’s political project for a left-accelerationism, examine them through the authors’ own conception of emancipation and confront left-accelerationist assertions with critical readings of the manifesto emphasising different approaches to emancipation related to temporality.