Conference Details

This interdisciplinary hybrid conference seeks to interrogate the multiplicity of meanings associated with ‘passages’ and welcomes contributions pertaining to the various Francospheres and encompassing as broad an historical range as possible.

The term ‘passages’ suggests not only spatial or temporal movement, but also passage from one world (as implied by the French term trépas) or state of being to another (the transition from wakefulness to sleep).  Every instance of passage can also be said to leave its mark, thus opening up human scientific reflections on textual transfer (palimpsest, intra-, inter- and metatextuality). The marks left by humankind would therefore seem to characterise passages of all kinds, since the term’s etymology comes from the Latin passus. 

Moreover, passage in the urban environment embodies a social construction, enabling connections between spaces, individuals and communities, as well as a codified human aesthetic (Walter Benjamin, Passagenwerk), in the context of fixed or more irregular (errance and the figure of the flâneur) journeys, even deviant behaviour (impasses, secret passages, moment of transition from day to night). In the rural landscape, the figures of the marcheur and the maquisard both embody the notion of passage, and a route towards resistance in the case of the maquisard (René Char).

In an oceanic context, the Middle Passage refers to the African slave trade and to colonial slavery, and also implies a dialogue with other time periods and spaces, which have themselves been affected by (forced) maritime and land crossings (people smuggling, migrants, refugees…).