Brownbags

This brownbag session is organised by DIMAS and PD Dr. Susanne Greilich (Romance Studies, UR)(external link, opens in a new window) (external link, opens in a new window), who heads the DFG project Transatlantic Knowledge Transfer and the Dynamics of Cultural Translation(external link, opens in a new window) (external link, opens in a new window) together with Prof. Dr. H.-J. Lüsebrink (Saarbrücken). We cordially invite all colleagues and students of UR and IOS to this lecture on Wednesday, 18 October at 14:00 in SG. 214.

As part of the DFG research project "Transatlantic Knowledge Transfer and Cultural Translation Dynamics. Text filiations, cultural transformations, (post)colonial asymmetries", (DFG-SPP 2130), the French scholar and author PD Dr David Diop from the Université Pau (France) will be a Mercator Fellow at the Institute of Romance Languages and Literature at the UR from 7-21 October 2023.

David Diop specialises in the 18th century and Francophone literature in sub-Saharan Africa, with a particular research focus on European-extra-European relations, translation and knowledge transfer processes and colonial history. He has also made a name for himself internationally as a writer. His second romance Frère d'?me (Engl: Our Blood is Black at Night), which has been translated into several languages, has won numerous prizes, including the International Booker Prize 2021 and the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens 2018.

Also as part of the DFG research project, the international conference "Nouveaux savoirs du monde/Savoirs du Nouveau Monde: encyclopédisme, processus de traduction et réorganisations du savoir au siècle des Lumières" [New(er) World Knowledge: Encyclopaedism, translation processes and knowledge reorganisations in the Age of Enlightenment] from 12 to 14 October 2023 at the University of Regensburg in the Vielberth Building, H 25. David Diop will give another lecture on the topic "Accueillir les savoirs du monde: la langue de l'Autre dans l'Histoire Naturelle de Michel Adanson".

The programme can be downloaded here(external link, opens in a new window) (external link, opens in a new window)

Abstract: Representations of non-European languages in 17th and 18th century travel reports

Joseph-Marie de Gérando, a pioneer of ethnology in France, complained in the late 18th century that travellers claimed to know a non-European society without knowing its language: For him, they are all impostors. There were certainly Europeans who learnt non-European and especially African languages in the 17th and 18th centuries. Their motives were varied and depended on the activity of the travellers, as missionaries, slave traders or scholars.

The missionaries had a tradition of learning indigenous languages in order to spread the gospel. Nevertheless, one can doubt their actual mastery of these languages: for example, they often misinterpret the names of the gods associated with the local religions (see Réal Ouellet for North America). The glossaries and vocabulary tables at the end of the European slave traders' travel reports, on the other hand, focus on terms relating to trade and political organisation.

Finally, a traveller like the naturalist Michel Adanson learned the language for scientific reasons, so that he could speak directly to African scholars about botany and pharmacopoeia. Beyond this pragmatic aspect, he claims to find a form of beauty in the Wolof language spoken in Senegal. This aesthetic assessment is all the more striking given that African languages were generally judged to be lexically and syntactically rudimentary in 17th and 18th century European travel reports.

The lecture (in French with German translation) will examine the outlined aspects using examples.

Following the pandemic, the ways in which mobile bodies are being administered and governed are in sync with advanced techniques of demographic control and digital surveillance on mobilities. Conversely, the neo-liberal economic order reifies speed/mobility and 'flows and networks' as important paradigms in a globalised world. From within this apparent dichotomy emerges a thrust toward normativizing digitally-aided mobility, which has a profound impact on how urban spaces are being reconfigured, curated and navigated. This talk examines the evolving nature of urban spatialities in the context of post-pandemic India. It explores the recent interferences of digital infrastructures, their 'affordances' in light of the pandemic, and how digitality as a phenomenon brings into 'being' certain conditions of spatialities otherwise illegible.

Avishek Ray (external link, opens in a new window) teaches at the National Institute of Technology in Silchar, India. He works at the intersection of literary, media and cultural studies. He is the author of The Vagabond in the South Asian Imagination: Representation, Agency & Resilience (2021, Routledge) and co-editor of the edited volume Nation, Nationalism and the Public Sphere: Religious Politics in India (SAGE, 2020).