A47 - Crise(s)/ Exil(s)/Image(s)

 Crisis(s)/Exile(s)/Image(s) is a workshop made up of four intervening researchers and a discussing researcher who intends to question fragile fields in crisis (sanitary, political, climatic) in relation to migrations (artistic, political, climatic) in a rhizomorphic approach to exile. A dust of exiles notion theorized in a recent work on the theory of images (Le Houérou, 2021) which questions, once again, the heuristic relevance of the concept of rhizome developed by Deleuze-Guattari (1980).

 For Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari the notion of rhizome designates a structure constantly evolving, in all horizontal directions, and devoid of levels. This structure contrasts with the pyramid hierarchy (or "tree structure"). This rhizome theory is inspired by both botany and mathematical work on fractals. A conceptual tool, the rhizome is used both in philosophy and art, as well as in the study of social and political evolution. During this workshop, methodological issues related to images and their use in the humanities and social sciences will be examined in the light of this concept for its virtues of malleability and methodological flexibility. Indeed, the rhizome makes it possible to associate elements that appear to be opposed (texts/images or even forced/voluntary migration) in a horizontal and non-hierarchical vision. Deleuze explained that the sciences had a vertical structure (like the tree) and facing this structured tree structure, he mirrored an organization of horizontal thought going beyond the pyramid framework of hierarchy (1980). This way of apprehending reality thus makes it possible to see in the intertwining a source of methodological fecundity. Also in this workshop we will examine the role of images (moving or still) in the study of crises. Whether it is a migration crisis (Sahar El Echi, University of Carthage) in the Mediterranean where cinema reveals an unprecedented deadly outbreak in the geographical space of a "dying-house" sea in which exiles drown Syrian artists in exile studied by Maya Ben Ayed (IREMAM) who experience a stack of exiles (during the pandemic). An accumulation of exiles which allows him to question the staging of the self and its evolution since the health crisis by questioning the new digital tools which have - somewhat - revolutionized the staging of the self since 2019. Hugo Darroman (IREMAM) will evoke a circulation of exiles starting from images and films of Palestinian warriors and their impact among North African immigrant workers, in France, in the sixties, questioning in this presentation the way in which exiles can add up. It also questions the way in which the visual history of a people in exile should be written: is an image transformed when it crosses borders? What place should we give to national categories in the understanding of representations linked to exile? What scales of analysis (local, national, transnational) are relevant for judging the power of an image? The workshop will also be an opportunity to come back to the concepts of profiling and self-directing which are essential notions in documentary cinematography. They relate to the different ways in which the subject presents itself to the filmmaker and the camera. It is a question of a “proper, autonomous staging during which the filmed subjects themselves choose what they want to show of their personality or of their social and cultural world. They create their own showcase of themselves according to the presence of the filmmaker or the interviewer. Self-staging is a notion that therefore refers to profilmie. It is a question of two cousin concepts linked to the way in which the beings filmed modify their behavior in front of a camera. Do these notions, developed by visual anthropology, have scientific value? Can we speak of profilmia as a paradigm? We call a paradigm a type of logical relation which implies the inclusion of the conjunction of the disjunction, of the exclusion between a certain number of notions or main categories. Is the self-directed category a relevant category for a researcher filming his investigations? What is the scientific interest in apprehending the subjects filmed in their relationship of dependence with the filmmaker-researcher? Doesn't any interview situation, filmed or not filmed, translate a staging? Each of the speakers will attempt to examine, in the light of the consubstantial fragility of its field research (exiles), the role of images and their problematic handling for scientific writing.

Responsable:  Fabienne Le Houérou, CNRS, IREMAM, France

Discutante : Mathilde Rouxel, Université de Paris 3

The pandemic has allowed us to observe the implications of a health crisis with plural, economic, social, family, psychological, artistic, ecological repercussions in rhizomorphic cause-effect relationships. These interweavings marry the graphic mode of the rhizome and send us back to an intertwining of consequences in an encompassing vision of science where everything is entangled like an indomitable undergrowth. It is about a vision that rejects the unique strain of identity. (Gliding, 1993:185). “Banians, rhizomes, cursed fig trees. The same disorder of chaos, under identical and dissimilar species” (Glissant, 1993:63-64). After presenting the concept of the rhizome, this intervention proposes to return to the heuristic virtues of  transdisciplinarity to study forced and voluntary migrations by not reducing them to a classic binary opposition. It will therefore be a question of promoting multidisciplinarity and insisting on the role of images in scientific dialogue. How can images of a land in crisis - such as migration crises - escape journalistic sensationalism and become real methodological tools?

 

Beyond its health and economic consequences, the covid 19 pandemic has disrupted social ties. Exchanges by interposed screens have become the rule in all social interactions (family, friends, work, etc.) inviting sociologists and other humanities researchers to immediately examine these transformations.

These transformations have resulted in a reshaping of the object of study and a renewal of data collection methods. Indeed, almost impossible international travel and traffic constraints on the same national territory imposed by successive lock down have changed the relationship to the field and the way of investigating.  Face-to-face meetings and direct observation have been superseded by virtual interactions email, telephone or interviews filmed by videoconference.

Online conversation tools with their split-screen interface continually remind us that we are filmed and therefore exposed to both the gaze of others and our own. The medium is the media, by Marshall McLuhan, takes on its full meaning in the data analysis stage. Obviously, it was already the case in the filmed interviews with the physical presence of the camera. But which remains much more visible and obvious in “virtual” interactions where the absence of the materiality of the body of the other and the dematerialization of a concrete space of socialization makes it almost impossible “erasing or progressive oblivion” of the recording tool. We will question these new methodologies and the impact of videoconferences on the scientific field.

 

In the aftermath of May 1968, the situation of immigrant workers in France remained disastrous: to the speed of the factories and the misery shared with the French specialized workers were added unsanitary housing, waves of racist crimes, and the new appearance of a class of undocumented immigrants with anecdotal salaries. Groups of leftist students are trying to mobilize North African workers and thereby compensate for the shortcomings of traditional unions, which fail to meet the specific needs linked to the condition of Arab immigrants. It is ultimately through the figure of the Palestinian fighter, the feddai, that they manage to mobilize immigrant workers. From 1970, the latter organized themselves around the "Palestine Committees", not only to support Fatah and the PLO, but also and above all to demand justice in the face of racist crimes, to fight for the improvement of their living conditions inside and outside the factories, and fight against evictions. The evolution of the gaze cast on Palestinian exiles has resulted in France in a change in the gaze of other Arab exiles, the Maghreb workers, on themselves. What dignity did Arab workers find in the feddai image? How did this new image become a vector of political mobilization that was broader than the Palestinian question?