She fires all the time. An advertisement for the Green Guide, the French song heritage, a photograph of a Parisian street where the words “Bienvenue à Babelville” are inscribed… Everything from these small facts of everyday life to the cultural productions of a Munch, a Deleuze or the contemporary artist Ann Veronica Janssens, can serve as a spark for a lively thought like lightning, always awake, always mobile.
In fact, on October 18, the Dutch Mieke Bal, a cultural theorist invited to the Collège de France, brilliantly examined the contemporary challenges of intellectual and artistic creation in Europe, during the inaugural lesson of the annual chair devoted to “The invention of Europe through languages and cultures”, which was born in 2021 thanks to the support of the Ministry of Culture (General Delegation to the French Language and the Languages of France).
At a time when the continent and its challenges strongly call for public debate, today’s artists and thinkers, who live and deepen the astonishing linguistic richness, the great plurality of forms of expression and the diversity of European heritage, can offer all citizens a better understanding and ownership of what, in themselves, carries them and exceeds them.
This is one of the challenges faced by Mieke Bal, semiologist, artist, videographer, professor of literary and aesthetic theory at the University of Amsterdam and at the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences, who described himself, for the Collège de France’s Internet users, as a scandalous woman ». No doubt we must not be less, today, to test and think in all its magnitude this Cultural Dream of a one and plural Europe.
Mieke Bal, why did you name your 2022-2023 seminar at the Collège de France, “A cultural dream: Europe in the plural?”
This summer, as I had just been elected to this annual chair, I noticed in the metro stations large advertising posters of the Green Guide, with the slogan: «The Europe of your dreams». This seemed perfectly appropriate to the title of the inaugural lesson I had to conceive, which was then beginning to haunt me.
Indeed, a dream is like a fantasy, the outline of an ideal. The imagination reveals itself wanting to project something beautiful. For me, as a researcher and director, imagination is indispensable.
In addition, the title of the annual chair highlights the «invention» of Europe, and specifically the thinkers and creators as subjects of this invention. I realized then that the invention of Europe is a continuous and endless process. It really excited me! I saw it as a constructive paradox.
The positive sense of plurality immediately struck me as important. The plurality of countries, languages and cultures, clearly indicated in the title of the chair, is not a problem for the idea of the European Union, as a whole, because these pluralities, precisely, constitute it. This is what Europe is doing. It is through it that Europe as a union is unique.
So many memories of my travels across Europe came back to me. This positive sense of curiosity, aroused by plurality and differences, was also, during my adolescence, what made me choose French as a foreign language. It was my first field of study, not only a linguistic study, but also a real source of culture, a cultural resource. I was raised by a mother who loved French songs, from Brassens to Brel, from Piaf to Patachou. She bought their records, and she even took us to their concerts. As soon as I came to read in this language, I appropriated his literature. And it did not divide me! There are not many Europes. Europe is united in its pluralities. It forms a whole without being totalitarian.
However, we are worried today about the future of Europe. What do you think?
Europe suffers above all from hyper-capitalism, which gradually destroys all the means of existence that are not compatible with it. A scourge that affects the whole world. Think of the inhabitants of the so-called peripheral areas in Europe. That’s the worst threat, in terms of the cultural pluralities we were talking about. On this subject, I intend to address, in my seminar, the work of sociologist Eva Illouz and her concept of «emotional capitalism».
As for the plurality of languages, the word and the myth of "Babelism" evoke the division of humanity into so many linguistic communities. For me, there is no real downside. During my inaugural lesson, I showed a photograph of the sidewalk of my street, in the 11th arrondissement of Paris, where is inscribed in brilliant colors: Welcome to Babelville. While acknowledging the plurality of the languages of this intercultural neighbourhood, the word “welcome” and the gesture of welcome it expresses give a positive meaning to “Babelism”.
I also explained how we can “negotiate” this plurality of languages by becoming “trilingual”. Everyone speaks their mother tongue, whatever it is. Then everyone has elements of English, because English has become a tool language, which would almost make us forget that there is that of Shakespeare. Finally, it is desirable for everyone to practice a third language of his choice, to adopt it from school, to make it a pampered language, to cherish it for his contribution to a life in multiplicity.
In your inaugural lesson, you also discuss the notion of “European Semiphere”. What is a semiphere?
This is the methodological basis of my teaching this year. Semion-, Greek root, refers to production and the use of meaning. I invoked this concept for the advantages it has, beyond the simple language issues. The semaphore refers to the aspects of communication which are limited by regional specificities, such as, in this case, Europe, but not by its internal borders or even its linguistic borders.
I have some fairly strong objections to the idea that a border has the primary function of separating. A border is also a ground, a negotiating space.
As for the idea of semiphora, it implies a changing character, never fixed. It is a sphere, or space, where certain habits are common. According to Youri Lotman (1922-1993), who was the first to propose this concept, and who himself was provided with a «changing identity» (Estonian, Russian, Jewish, literary and semiotician), semiotics facilitates a flexible methodology. It makes it possible to pay precise attention to the objects, which are set up by the researcher to «respond» to the interpretations, without fearing interdisciplinarity. I think those three aspects are critically important.
Moreover, the idea of a «Saharan» aesthetic, which I also use, and which is found in Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) emphasizes this changing character that I just mentioned: the sand dunes of the desert are constantly changing.
Vwe do not hesitate to affirm that your method also proceeds from your «sphere of personal Saharan thought». What is it?
Essentially a joke! Through this allusion to my own attitude towards the cultural objects I study, which is based, as I told you, on their belonging to a semisphere and on a spirit of interpretation close to the “Saharan” aesthetic, that is, changing, moving, dear to Deleuze, I also like the idea of remaining loyal to my training in detailed analysis, which highlights the small things, the forms, the meanings, the senses, that count in works of art and cultural objects.
For the personal, even subjective, character of my thought, I will repeat to you the subject of my interview given at the Collège de France: I have never succeeded in being obedient. I have often provoked outraged reactions, especially in my early days, when I was doing my research on the basis of my own convictions, rather than wisely following the sometimes dogmatic methodologies of scientific disciplines.
For example, in my inaugural lesson, I study the formative aspect of the journey, as it was still conceived in the eighteenth century, that I approach the notion of internship (learning by practice). This leads me to be interested in the travels of Edvard Munch, a young student artist, during which he paints views of Paris from the balconies of Haussmann buildings where, unlike those of Caillebotte, for example, on the same subjects, he manages to paint alienation and melancholy due to loneliness. I have always, in my work, integrated methods and aspects derived from my excursions out of my official field of expertise.
You finished your lesson by evoking the installation of Ann Veronica Janssens, visible in the Pantheon until October 30. It is a large mirror placed on the ground, under the pendulum of Foucault, which evokes the oscillations of the earth. Why this rapprochement?
The work of Ann Veronica Janssens teaches us to look atIt incorporates in the act of seeing the act of travelling in all directions: from top to bottom, from the past to the present, from stability to movement.
The gaze is an active principle, a mode of understanding. What I call “inter-gration” (with the r added to preserve the relationship that integration seems to dissolve) between “perceiving” and “understanding” perfectly matches, for our time, what Munch was pursuing in his travel paintings. Janssens is indeed an artist-thinker, who in her works addresses natural and physical phenomena, including, in the case of the Pantheon, the very movement of the earth.
The interplay of thought and art thus prompts us to identify with a whole that, while moving, moves us. It impels us to live together by identifying with the elements – ideas, sensations, landscapes, people – of a semisphere. Nothing is provided with a fixed identity, but nothing is arbitrary either, because movement, while preventing fixity, is the basis of life.
The work of Ann Veronica Janssens tells us about the towers of the planet on itself, evoked by the pendulum of Foucault and the title of the work, 23:56:04 (the duration of each turn). Now, the huge mirror that speaks beautifully to us about these movements of the globe is – and this is significant (even if these are of course technical and logistical constraints) – fragmented. This is a metaphor, from my point of view, of the idea of Europe and the plurality I have advocated for.
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