Paradoxes and Misunderstandings in Cultural Transfers, Louvain-la-Neuve

Introduced in Cultural History in the late 1980s to cover the dead angles of comparative studies, the notion of cultural transfer refers to diverse phenomena of circulation, transformation and reinterpretation of cultural and textual goods across geo-cultural areas. As a research method intended to override national frameworks, Cultural Transfer Studies have inspired an increasing amount of interdisciplinary work in various fields such as Literary Studies (e.g., Lüsebrink 2008, Roland 2016), Translation Studies (e.g., Göpferich 2007, Roig-Sanz & Meylaerts 2018), or Cultural and Art History (e.g., Espagne 2013, Middell 2014). Beyond the sole idea of displacement between a source and a target culture, cultural transfers aim to do justice to the heterogeneity of each cultural zone and to the logics of intersection and hybridity by identifying enclaves, networks and vectors of exchanges. Inspired by the promises of ‘entangled history’/’Verflechtungsgeschichte’ (Werner & Zimmerman 2003) – which takes into account the reciprocity and multidirectionality of (re-)transfers –, recent studies have investigated the diversity, intertwining and non-linearity of a broad spectrum of transfer practices, including translations, thus giving voice to mediating activities and agencies largely ignored so far (e.g., D’hulst 2012).

Despite its conceptual relevance and the proliferation of case studies on mediators and border crossing phenomena, Transfer Studies seem to have reached a turning point. On the one hand and as already pointed out by Werner and Zimmerman (2003), even entangled objects, entities and practices do not escape pre-established categorizations and the essentialist pitfalls they entail. On the other hand, the insistence on coincidence and the methodological flattening out of any pre-existing borders, sometimes at the expense of historicity, risk to precipitate the methodological framework toward unproductive relativism. As a result, and because of a certain lack of consensus among theorists (Joyeux 2003), the added value and the merits of Transfers vis-à-vis related concepts in e.g. Postcolonial Studies, Translation Studies, transnational historiography or transcultural studies have been questioned.

What is the specificity of cultural transfers? Can it be thought outside the West European context? Can the notion of transfer help us to overcome disciplinary, national and linguistic borders? Or does it reaffirm them? How should we apprehend the (non-)linearity and asymmetry of transfer processes over various spaces and times? Is it possible to measure the impact of transfers and (how) can we evaluate their relative ‘success’?

Facing these questions and paradoxes, this conference would like to (re)think the viability of the concept of cultural transfer, its current and future challenges as well as its tools, objectives and epistemological framework(s) in an interdisciplinary perspective. The main issues we would like to discuss are related, but not limited, to four topics: (1) linearity, (2) borders/boundaries, (3) competing/connected concepts and (4) impact/success.

Program: 

Wednesday 22 May
Venue: Sénat académique

08.30 - 09.00 : Registration & Coffe

09.00 - 09.30 : Welcome word & Official Opening

09.30-10.30 : Keynote Elke Brems (KULeuven) : Reluctant rendezvous. The curious lack of literary transfers in Belgium

10.30-11.00 : Coffee & Tea Break

11.00-13.00 : Panel 1 Alternative approaches and perspectives to (re)write cultural history: defying borders and linearity

• Núria Codina (KULeuven): Generation and Rhizome: Two Complementary Approaches to Transcultural Literary History
• Raluca Tanasescu (University of Ottawa): Translation and Network Science: Or How Can we Measure the Effects of Transfers in Cultural Diplomacy?
• Petra Broomans (University of Groningen): Translators’ Dictionaries as Instrument and Source for the Writing of Cultural Transfer History
• Antje Dietze (Universität Leipzig): Cultural mediators and global history

13.00-14.00 : Lunch

14.00-15.30 : Panel 2 Multi-/trans- & heterolingualism: multicultural contexts against the background of 19^th-century nationalism

• Beatrijs Vanacker & Tom Verschaffel (KULeuven): Multilingual patterns and cultural transfer in Flemish journals in the 18th century Southern Low Countries
• Marjet Brolsma & Francis Mus (ULiège / KULeuven): Cultural transfers in literary internationalism. The case of De Nieuwe Europeesche geest in kunst en letteren (1920)
• Svetlana Cecovic (Université Nationale de Recherche - École Supérieure d'Économie, Moscou): Conflit vs. conciliation: quelques cas particuliers de la médiation culturelle franco-belgo-russe

15.30-16.00 : Coffee & Tea Break

16.00-18.00 : Panel 3 Translating/transferring knowledge, science and philosophy: impact and success

• Martin Dutron (UCLouvain) : La théologie comme objet de circulation, transformation et resémantisation dans la Revue des Sciences Religieuses de l’Université de Strasbourg dans l’entre-deux-guerres (1921-1933). Malentendus et « transferts culturels » des savoirs théologiques entre Allemagne et France.
• Stefania Caristia (Sorbonne Université): Succès, anomalies, malentendus. Quelques réflexions sur les transferts culturels à partir du cas de Sartre théoricien et critique littéraire dans l’Italie de l’après-guerre (1945-1970).
• Laurent Béghin (Université Saint-Louis / UCLouvain) : La création de la slavistique italienne et belge : un transfert culturel réussi.
• Arno Gimber (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) : Les intellectuels espagnols en dialogue avec Friedrich Nietzsche. Moments d'un transfert culturel asymétrique

18.00 : Drink at Sénat académique (salle de la Tapisserie)

Thursday 23 May
Venue: Musée L

09.00-10.00 : Keynote Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink (Universität des Saarlandes) : Penser l'échec d'un transfert culturel - malentendus, résistances, réinterprétations

10.00-10.30 : Coffee & Tea Break

10.30-12.00 : Panel 4 Translating/transferring philosophical thought: multi-directionality and non-binarity

• Thomas Franck (ULiège/ Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin): Pour une rhétorique des échanges culturels (Kulturaustausch) : la cas d’Adorno en France
• Charlotte Bollaert (UGent): Sartre Sovieticus or the early fate of Jean-Paul Sartre in the USSR
• Antoine Monemou (Chaire Unesco, Université Félix Houphouet-Boigny de Cocody, Abidjan): Les rites de la forêt sacrée : expression philosophique du peuple Konon de la Guinée qui a influencé la culture Yacouba (Côte d’Ivoire) de sacré

12.00-13.00 : Lunch

13.00-15.00 : Panel 5 From Post- to Trans-colonial. Conceptual questions and methodological reconfigurations

• Anne-Claire Collier (Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers): Les transferts culturels comme pratique sociale : retour d’enquête
• Valentina Tarquini (Université de Rome 3/ Université de Marconi de Rome/ Université de Macerata): La circulation du discours africain dans le canon littéraire français : le sujet anticolonial et transnational
• Evelyne Shamier (UCLouvain): ‘Yua olwees in mai haat’: Transcolonial perspectives on Javanese Dutchness in Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s Djongos + Babu (1948)
• Najib Sadikou (Europa-Universität Flensburg): Irritation et transfert culturel. Réflexions à travers la littérature contemporaine africaine et allemande

15.00-15.30 : Coffee & Tea Break

15.30-17.00 : Round table

• Lieven D’hulst (KU Leuven)
• Sébastien Fevry (UCLouvain)
• Maud Gonne (UNamur)
• Helga Mitterbauer (ULB)
• Wim Weymans (UCLouvain)

18.00 : Conference dinner

Friday 24 May
Venue: Musée L

09.00-10.00 : Keynote Diana Roig-Sanz (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya) : Shaping International Literary Exchanges. Ibero-American Modernity as a Case Study

10.00-10.30 : Coffee & Tea Break

10.30-12.00 : Panel 6 Competing/Connected concepts: Reconsidering Transfer

• Pieter Boulogne (KULeuven): The road from one jail to another. The arson of the Bank of France by the Russian artist Pavlensky as self-translation and cultural transfer
• Pierre-Alexis Delhaye (Université Polytechnique des Hauts-de-France): Transferts culturels et comparatismes : une opposition (in)dépassable ?
• Grâce Ranchon (Université Jean Monnet, CELEC): Apprendre et enseigner une langue-culture non-linéaire ou paradoxale

12.00-13.00 : Lunch

13.00-14.30 : Panel 7 The Limits of language: exploring the conditions of success and failure of cultural transfers

• Boyden Michael (Uppsala University) : Babel in Reverse: Postvernacularity as Cultural Transfer
• John D. Sanderson (Universidad de Alicante) : Screen Translation Sociolects and Cultural Boundaries: Transversal Film Genres and Socio-Linguistic Consequences

14.30-15.00 : Coffee & Tea Break

15.00-16.30 : Panel 8 Transfer Through Film: Cultural Memory and Traveling Concepts

• Alexandra Sanchez (KULeuven): PBS, Éxodocs, and Cultural Transfer: How to Map the Gap?
• Sara F. Hall (University of Illinois, Chicago): The Entanglement of Historical Reckoning in the German-American Transfer Film
• Sophie Dufays (UCLouvain): Réception et discussion du concept de transfert culturel dans les études culturelles latino-américaines. Réflexion à partir du cas du mélodrame filmique mexicain

16.30 : Closing remarks

Registration directly on the website before May 5th, 2019 : https://uclouvain.be/en/research-institutes/incal/ecr/events/cultural-transfers.html

Contact: transferts2019@uclouvain.be