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Seminar of the doctorants of Donatecarcenter.com : Knowledges and colonisation
On Tuesday, December 16th, 2008 / 17h-19h
Donatecarcenter.com-PARIS / Centres Malher / 9, street Malher 75004
Knowledges and colonisation
Co-ordinated by R. Seignobos
Colonisation and knowledges : the example of Muhammad Kurd `Ali (1876-1953), a learnt Syrian in the middle of colonial rivalry
Kaïs Ezzerelli
From jobs of the doctoral school « colonisation and knowledges in contemporary epoch », organised in Madrid by Put it of Vélazquez and the French School of Rome on June 24-28 of this year, this communication will offer a reflexion around three axles :
- instrumentalized knowledges, or brought into service by the colonial firm.
- the contribution of scientific knowledges in the development of a colonial ideology.
- the scientific representations of the colonized societies and their reception by indigenous elites.
The Syrian man of letters Muhammad Kurd `Ali, object of my doctoral researches, will be taken to be example : his career of journalist, of minister of public Education and of president of the Arab Academy of Damascus, which stretched from the end of Ottoman period to the beginning of independent Syria, was indeed marked by his complex relations with the nationals of European powers, Orientalists and/or diplomats. Sometimes criticised, sometimes taken to be models by scholars as Kurd `Ali, these actors were very often the privileged agents of the cultural influence of their countries, understanding the interest which represented the Muslim elites cultivated in strategies of colonial conquest in Syria, in the course of the first decades of the XXth century : indeed, further to lessons drawn of Maghrebi experiments, it was either only a question of the region militarily, but of winning minds and hearts. I will be interested particularly in the modalities of this cultural influence (across the question of the transfer of knowledges in colonial situation) and in correlations between scholars and political, colonial and colonized. This communication is envisaged as a starting point for a collective debate on this topic, to multiply comparisons between different colonial situations, according to periods and regions.
Transmission and reuse of colonial knowledges Biafra : the choice of a name
Vincent Hiribarren
In 1967, the region is from Nigeria declare its independence. She takes the name of Biafra, officially according to the name of the bay of Biafra. A conflict of two and a half years follows causing the death of more than a million persons. What is the origin of the n ame " Biafra « ? Why to choose a name of colonial origin to indicate a newly independent country ? Everything rests therefore in the question of the onomastique choice. The colonial cartography can give information to us at first. However, the transmission of colonial knowledges and in this case of colonial onomastique also reveals a process of legitimization of Biafra. This debate just as that of Kaïs Ezzerelli on Muhammad Kurd `Alī is envisaged as a starting point for a comparison on transmission and reuse of colonial knowledges.
In the same rubric :
- Local declensions of heritages
- Societies and kingdoms of the regions of the Nile in the Horn of Africa. New fields, new questions
- War and society in the contemporary Arab world : the faces of the combatant
- Portugal in touch with Africa. Between Europe and Asia in modern Epoch, multiplicity of experiments and put in writing of stories
- Africa in contexts, powers, areas and speech
- The monk in the daily
- Not Africain and Africain diasporas of Africa
- Anthropology in questions. Critical reading on « borders of sciences »
