Layers and Connections of the Political

International APH conference 2020-2021

14-15 June 2021- LUISS Guido Carli University Rome, Italy

Politics has changed a lot, in the last half-century – and so has political history. The boundaries of the political have been redrawn. The large social and political bodies of the mid-twentieth century have grown weaker or have dissolved. Public institutions have become both less insulated from society and less effective in controlling and guiding it. Therefore, defining what is political has become more difficult. Political historians have confronted this challenge, and in the process have gained a deeper understanding of their object of study, have enlarged their scope and refined their methodologies, and have entered into closer dialogue with the “other” histories and the social sciences. The fragmentation of the political and the increasing uncertainty of its boundaries have made political historians more acutely aware that politics does not exist only “high up” and on the macro level, but reaches deep into private lives, shapes people’s identities and perceptions, interferes with their thoughts and emotions, regulates and modifies their behaviour. Actions and reactions performed on the micro level can in turn not only determine how initiatives from the top are received, reinterpreted and remoulded, but also condition, constrain and change the institutions and subjects that act on the macro level. For its 2020-2021 conference (23-25 June 2021 – LUISS Guido Carli University, Rome, Italy), the Association for Political History (www.associationforpoliticalhistory.org) presents a program that considers, in a historical perspective, examples of how the multiple layers of the political have connected and interacted with each other during the last three centuries. We welcome senior researchers, but also encourage PhD candidates and young scholars to participate in our conference.

Conference Website / Abstracts / Download interactive programme / Download programme

Le Centre d'histoire est membre du réseau APH qui se consacre notamment à la formation et aux échanges doctoraux en histoire politique.

CAMILLE RICHERT PHD THESIS

JUNE 9, 2021 03:00 PM

On Wednesday June 9, 2021 at 3:00 pm Camille Richert will defend her PhD Thesis in History, specializing in Art History, with a view to obtaining a doctorate from IEP Paris.

"A motif for historiography of labor. Depicting working bodies, 1968-2020

It was prepared at CHSP under the supervision of Madame Laurence Bertrand Dorléac, University Professor. 

The jury:

Laurence Bertrand Dorléac (Directrice de recherche), Professeure des universités, IEP Paris

• Eric de Chassey (Rapporteur), Professeur des universités, ENS Lyon
• Nicolas Delalande, Associate Professor HDR, IEP Paris
• Thomas Schlesser (Rapporteur), Professeur chargé de cours, HDR, Ecole polytechnique
• Giovanna Zapperi, Professeure des universités, Université de Tours

 Summary:

A motif for a historiography of labor. 
Depicting working bodies, 1968-2020

Camille Richert

Directrice de Thèse :
Laurence Bertrand Dorléac

This thesis proposes to examine how work has been represented in the West from 1968 to 2020. As a theme lacking nobility in the history of art, work became a motif of choice as of the Second Industrial Revolution. This motif became stronger in countries with a service-based economy emerging after World War II. The “world revolution” of 1968, to cite Immanuel Wallerstein, contributed to this development: as a transnational cultural revolution, 1968 challenged the great unifying narratives of Western modernity. The professional activity, regardless of the industry, is no longer represented as taking part to the political regimes in which it is performed, but as the motive of a social critique seeking to be de-ideologized.
From then on, the works depicting labor have far less to do with the political function of art that occurred in the middle of the 19th century, according to Walter Benjamin’s terminology, than with a demystifying function. The chapters of this thesis explore its main declinations that share the historicization of work as a common feature. Work is no longer represented as an an-historical visual subject of politics, but as a historicized expression of the political. Moreover, after 1968 it isn’t one, but two myths that are debunked in the same fall: not only the mythologies surrounding work, but also the myth of this myth, supported by the idea that nature is controllable, and that this is something desirable as long as nature would provide the energy required for fulfilling the dreams and ambitions of social progress in the 19th and 20th centuries. Work was both its means and its emblem.