MIGRACT
This project is meant as an intervention within the global redefining of “postcolonial studies” which has taken place over the past 20 years. It explores notions of mobility and migration through a questioning of the impact of Humanities, and especially Arts, on public life. It relates to REMELICE’s two research axes, namely: “Interculturality and educational transmission” and “Cultural fact and citizenship”.
The multidisciplinary research team specializes in arts, languages, culture and education. We are currently working on a corpus of literary and artistic representations of migrations with a focus on geographic and cultural areas - French, English, Spanish and Japanese - which belong to REMELICE’s areas of expertise.
This corpus aims to:
- analyze the literary and artistic propositions and angles in relation to migrations
- explore new lines of investigation associated with mobility, migration, flow, uprootedness and displacement.
The exploration of mobility and migration through art and its aesthetic receptions proposes a shift from border control, activism, political, legal or diplomatic strategies, towards subjectivity and cultural representations. Such a shift will question the ideological models that support the notions of integration and assimilation in the chosen cultural areas. It will also highlight what Alexandre Gefen calls “useful” cultural productions when “literature proclaims itself useful because it relates to experiences of thoughts of moral value, and it allows us to recapture otherness in a fragmented society that is organized around individuals.”
The partnership with ERCAE (Sciences of Education - University of Orleans) is aimed at reaching out to the specific issues of educational practices. We wish to rethink the social and educational integration of migrant children with the support of a domain (arts) that is often overlooked in this particular curriculum (for newly arrived populations).
This project encompasses the visual arts, languages and participatory sciences in their capacity to develop dynamics of co-creation with local communities. It considers the works of artists (migrants or not) as informative and ethical resources or, to put it another way, as ways of knowing and of thinking related and adapted to integration and education.
Key words : migration, emigration, immigration, representations, art, culture, education, languages, language learning, identity.
Project leader : Geneviève Guetemme
Scientific committee : Brigitte Natanson (Spanish Studies), Kerry-Jane Wallart (Anglophone Studies).
Website : https://migract.msh-vdl.fr/