2023

Antonio Colinas - Respirer le mystère des lieux

Françoise Morcillo

L'Harmattan, 2023, ISBN 978-2-14-033175-6, 27€

This book takes up the creative challenge of dialoguing with mystery in the work and thought of Antonio Colinas, Spanish poet, writer and translator, awarded the prestigious Reina Sofía Prize in 2016. The dialogue between poet and reader combines two paths. The first is the encounter with a certain “interculturality”, the poet's many readings and references to various literary traditions: Italian, with Dante and Leopardi, the latter translated by Colinas; Spanish, with Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint John of the Cross, Juan Ramón Jiménez and María Zambrano; the German and English Romantics (Novalis, Hölderlin, Keats) and Rainer Maria Rilke to complete a European whole. It is also an approach to a body of work that composes an astonishing poetic “cartography”, to use the word of poet and friend Jaime Siles. Based on this fruitful intuition, we propose the notion of “mediation” applied to the different and successive places that poet and reader survey in concert. An itinerary takes shape on the horizon of ultimate readings, carried by the Breath of the Tao, unifying in the case of the median Void, insofar as it goes beyond the dual principle of Yin and Yang, and which is clearly in line with the Greek pneuma and the Latin and Christian spiritus. A book for listening to La mystérieuse musique des lieux de l'âme en Poèmes.

More information on the editor’s website

Pensées insulaires : Aspiration socio-culturelles

Edited by Catherine Pélage, Françoise Morcillo and Mayumi Shimosakai

Published by Paradigme, 2023, ISBN 9782868785251, 34€

According to Antoine Franzini, islands are a “privileged terrain for thinking about politics, whether it's a question of thinking about the origin or the future of peoples”. In this sense, the Pensées insulaires volume shifts perspectives to reinterpret existing cartographies. Twenty-two researchers explore the representations and paradoxes of island geographies, as well as the challenges of changing cultural heritages. This collective work is placed under the sign of the archipelago, in the sense in which Édouard Glissant understands it: it is a question of considering islands in relation and as spaces from which to rethink the world. The collective archipelagic reflection that emerges here is a powerful expression of island thinking and socio-cultural aspirations. This book follows on from the reflections in our book Écrire et vivre les insularités, Inspirations littéraires. These two volumes are conceived as pulsating signs of spaces in motion.

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Loyauté et patriotisme (le retour), Éducation et néo-conservatisme dans le Japon du XXIe siècle

Christian Galan, Yves Cadot and Aline Henninger

Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2023, ISBN 9782753586574

Which country has seen, over the past decade, its government undermine the principle of secularism that was at the very foundation of its existence, and assert the need to “rebuild the state from scratch”? Erdogan's Turkey? Good answer, but also Abe Shinzô's Japan.

In which country does a leader who uses education as a tool for ideological takeover of his population consider that “schools, colleges and universities must be rid of ‘cultural Marxism’ as quickly as possible”? Bolsanaro in Brazil? Second best answer, but also Abe Shinzô and the powerful Japan Conference to which he belonged.

Which country's government has undertaken a reform of its school curricula in order to impose its conception of the nation and its own version of history? Kaczynski's Poland? Yes, once again, but also Abe Shinzô's Japan.

A Prime Minister who has reintroduced patriotism courses into school curricula, highlighted the “extraordinary spiritual achievements” of the great figures in his history in his textbooks, or made ethics courses compulsory? Orban in Hungary? Exactly, but also Abe Shinzô in Japan.

Most of the educational reforms undertaken in Japan since the early 2000s have been ideologically motivated. Who knows? For the first time since the late 1940s, the policies pursued by most recent Japanese governments are aimed not at improving the education system, but at profoundly altering its nature and purpose, the stated aim being to rebuild a school that produces “good, true Japanese”. The assassination of Abe Shinzô on July 8, 2022 will have no impact on this situation, as his successors are clearly intent on following in his footsteps on all these issues.

This book, which gives a great deal of space to the Japanese themselves, is devoted to these reforms, whose impact is felt throughout Japanese society and politics. It is not without lessons for our own societies.

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