Inquiry day - diplomacy
Following on from the themes of the institution and res extensa, the AIME project’s third research seminar will deal with the issue of diplomacy. We will be working with two guests: in the morning with Isabelle Stengers who played a decisive role from the very beginnings of this project and in the afternoon with Romain Bertrand who, last year, published an important book in the new connected history, L'histoire à parts égales (unpublished in English) with Seuil Press.
Having listened to numerous complaints from the friends of AIME that holding the inquiry days during office hours made it difficult for people to attend, we have decided to hold this session on a Saturday. Not only that, but the room is much more pleasant; it will be in the Salle Goguel at 58 rue des Saints Pères, also accessible from 27 rue Saint Guillaume. We will be meeting at 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and again in the afternoon from 2:30 to 5:30 p.m.
For this third session, we would like to have the notion of diplomacy, which serves as both the objective and method for this enquiry, put under critical scrutiny. This concept was taken from Isabelle Stengers who had partly developed it in her book Cosmopolitics I. Does this notion allow her to reply to the political question? Is it possible to imagine an inquiry carried out not under the auspices of knowledge but under that of diplomacy? What is won or lost by in this shift? This is an excellent opportunity for the AIME project to have this notion put under the critical gaze of Isabelle Stengers herself.
However, we would also like to begin putting the inquiry to a practical test, that of comparative anthropology. In his book, Romain Bertrand performed the same test on the grandiose story Europe’s conquest of ‘The East Indies’ by demonstrating that by looking at recent research from Indonesia we can cast Europe in an entirely different light. Romain Bertrand is especially capable of judging whether or not the AIME project is simply continuing the European delusion of self-importance or if on the contrary, it opens up another negotiation on past events.
The AIME Team
Salle François Goguel, 56 rue des Saints Pères (5th floor), 75007 Paris
(Métro Saint Germain des Prés, Sèvres-Babylone)
Free entry but limited places and reservation necessary.
Detailed programme: Saturday, 9 February 2013
- 10:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. Presentation by Isabelle Stengers
- 11:30 a.m. – 12 p.m. Tea & coffee break
- 12 p.m. – 1 p.m. Open discussion
- 1 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. Lunch
- 2:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. Presentation by Romain Bertrand
- 3:30 p.m. – 4 p.m. Tea & coffee break
- 4 p.m. – 5:30 Open discussion
This project received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) as part of the 7th Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) / ERC Grant ‘IDEAS’ 2010 n° 269567.