CEPOC

Within the laboratory, the first specificity of the Center for Contemporary Political Studies is to analyze the field of powers and counter-powers, not only political, but also social and cultural. The CEPOC is also the most multidisciplinary team in the laboratory, bringing together political and legal historians, researchers in literature and linguists, as well as civilizationists from different areas, an anthropologist and a sociologist.

While its research will continue to focus on the contemporary period (19th-XXIst centuries), CEPOC will remain open to other historical periods, in particular through its review Parlement[s] Revue d'Histoire politique, once again proposing trans-periodical issues. The international and comparative dimension, particularly with English-, German- and Iberian-speaking areas, will be pursued by the Center.

The CEPOC's research areas are intended to be transdisciplinary and comparative, bringing together the diverse skills of the team's teacher-researchers. Four directions have thus emerged as the basis for collective reflection, to be shared if possible with the other two POLEN teams.

1) The forms, types and norms of political discourse

Parliamentary discourse or debate, tribune discourse, partisan discourse, militant discourse, campaign discourse, ritual discourse, eulogy discourse, forms of eloquence or oratory.

The CEPOC is interested in both canonical and less studied forms of political discourse, such as those of female politicians in Britain from the 1980s to the present day, those of class defectors, and the specificities of local or territorial discourse. The team places a strong emphasis on the study of discursive forms (techniques, norms, procedures, aesthetics, rhetoric, oratory, performative procedures, etc.), thus promoting collaboration between historians, particularly those of the present day who work with oral archives, and literary scholars and linguists. The question of the relationship between body, gender, norms and discourse is now being explored by the team, in particular by its doctoral students. Particular attention is also paid to the place of authors and artists in the writing of politics, notably through the study of the literature of ideas, the relationship between writers and power, or writers and political myths. Theatrical expression as a site of social or political mediation is studied by the Groupe de Recherches Interuniversitaires sur les Écritures Théâtrales (GRIET XIXe-XXe), with which the Centre is associated. The figure of the intellectual, and his/her relationship to politics, will continue to be one of the team's main lines of research. Finally, a recent recruitment (MCF) has enabled the emergence of work on ecology and the environment and their discourses.

2) The “non-discursive” writing of politics

The “non-discursive” writing of politics, whether through images, caricatures, gestures, staging, rituals, costumes...

The use of images, whether still or animated, both as discursive mediators and as aesthetic or socio-cultural objects, is one of the main thrusts of this project, which is part of a field of research long practised by CEPOC specialists, including caricature, republican iconography, providentialist mythology and clothing. Audio-visual images, comics, soundscapes and masks were recently added. The team's review, Parlement[s]. Revue d'Histoire politique, features a commentary on iconographic sources in each issue, and will publish an issue on “political objects” in 2024. From 2023 onwards, CEPOC will be organizing an annual seminar entitled “Quand la bande dessinée écrit l'histoire” (When comics write history), in conjunction with two laboratories in the Tours region, CITERES and INtrU. A trans-period, multi-disciplinary symposium devoted to the mask and its various uses and issues is planned for 2025. Finally, CEPOC has just submitted an ANR project, “Hate and denigration of politicians through images in France from 1945 to the present day”.

3) Memorial writing and discourse

In a perspective that is at once patrimonial, historical (politics of memory, political memories), literary and artistic.

This field corresponds perfectly to the competencies of the CEPOC team, whether historians, literary researchers, linguists or civilizationists. The perspective is historical, with the politics of memory (commemorations, political discourses and memories of the event) and memories inscribed in political cultures. Three doctoral students in History of the Present are working on memory, and will start their thesis in 2024. Finally, an international symposium on political memory in Europe since 1945 is planned for 2025. The approach is also literary, with Memoirs of politicians, the relationship between the writer and the memory of politics, and more specifically literary representations of territorial identity. After leading the Loc Mem APR (Places of memory and power in the Centre Val de Loire region), the team is once again involved in the URBALiger project (cities in the Centre Val de Loire region), which sets out to rewrite the history of the Loire's major cities.

4) Discourse dissemination processes (reception and transgression of norms)

The processes of dissemination (communication, propaganda, collective representations, museums) and reception of discourse. The reception of these discourses by political powers and counter-powers: consequences for political norms (encounter, negotiation, conflict, transgression, evolution).

The CEPOC team is interested in the circulation of political discourses (diffusion processes, media, literature, etc.), their performative effects and the conditions of their political efficacy. The team works not only on the processes by which discourses are disseminated and inserted into political rituals, but also on collective representations and mythologies. The CEPOC analyzes the retranscription of discourses in private memoirs, literature and the press, all of which are interpretations that enable us to grasp a relationship with politics. From there, the CEPOC analyzes the various ways in which these norms are contested, circumvented and transgressed. Lastly, the CEPOC is broadening the scope of its research to include the process and discourse surrounding the productivist consensus and its contestation through environmental issues. A project on representations of rurality in relation to technical, socio-economic and literary modernity (Ruramod) will be submitted to the MSH as part of the “Environmental Humanities” axis in 2023.