Agnieszka Halemba au GSRL les 11 et 12 mars 2025

Les 11 et 12 mars, le GSRL aura le plaisir d'accueillir Agnieszka Halemba, de l'Institut d'Archéologie et d'Ethnologie de l'Académie des Sciences de Pologne, anthropologue, spécialiste du religieux en Allemagne, Ukraine et Sibérie, qui effectuera deux présentations dans deux séminaires au format hybride (voir informations ci-dessous). Le premier séminaire aura lieu le mardi 11 mars de 14h à 16h, en salle 4.083, du bâtiment Nord du Campus Condorcet, dans le cadre des activités de l'Axe "Interactions et créativité religieuses : perspectives anthropologiques" du GSRL, coordonné par Detelina Tocheva et Virginie Vaté, Agnieszka Halemba fera une communication en anglais intitulée : 

What is a church tower for? Religious materiality in a secularised society.

Résumé :
Church buildings, because of their prominent presence and visibility, but also because of their connection to religion, which by definition has a special status in secular states, can be focal points for the examination of important social issues such as social justice, the liberal economy, social memory, democracy as practice or public/private debates. This is also, or perhaps especially, true for buildings located in regions where they are not (anymore) needed for daily religious worship. If one looks at the struggles involved in their maintenance and restoration as processes, one can see that economic issues come to the fore, including a critique of neoliberal capitalism and in East Germany in particular, a critique of the post-1990 transformation, and struggles over access and private/public ownership. The church buildings, and especially their towers, ask questions and demand action that address wider social issues.
La seconde présentation aura lieu le mercredi 12 mars de 14h à 16h en salle 5.067, du bâtiment Nord du Campus Condorcet, dans le cadre du séminaire des études sibériennes / Siberian Studies Seminar, organisé par Dmitriy Oparin (UMR Passages) et Virginie Vaté (GSRL), avec le soutien du GDR AREES.
Agnieszka Halemba fera une communication en anglais intitulée :

There are no spirits of Altai Mountains: New Materialism as an Alternative to Dualistic Ethnographic Description.

Résumé :
In recent years an important body of ethnographic works concerning personhood and sociality in relation to Andean mountains has been developed, discussed and criticised. In his 2018 article Peter Gose critically reviewed some of those debates arguing especially against political ontology approach, which, in his view, underestimates  the extra-human world’s importance, autonomy and power. Gose claims that the political ontology approach goes on the one hand too far when it seems to postulate existence of separate ontologies; on the other hand however, it does not go far enough because it remains human-focused and does not make space for non-human  autonomy.
In my presentation I take this approach as a starting point to develop a reflection on personhood and sociality with regard to mountains in Inner Asia and in particular in Altai. I re-examine my research material collected in the Republic of Altai and other works which use the concept of  master or guardian “spirits of mountains”. I argue that we might produce more adequate descriptions of the place that mountains take in social networks if we restrict or even abandon a use of word “spirits”. I present an alternative based partly on Karen Barad’s relationality approach.
Nous espérons vous retrouver nombreux!
Dmitriy Oparin (dimaoparin@hotmail.com), Detelina Tocheva (Detelina.tocheva@cnrs.fr), Virginie Vaté (virginie.vate-klein@cnrs.fr).