René Basset - Orientalism in the making

On December 18, as part of its "Orientalismes" lecture series, the Inalco Foundation will welcome the three editors of the book "L'orientalisme en train de se faire".
Couverture de l'ouvrage "L’orientalisme en train de se faire"
Conférence "L’orientalisme en train de se faire" © Inalco‎

"July 2014. A truck from the Vosges arrives in Paris. It contains two wooden boxes and dozens of cartons: the archives of René Basset, professor of Arabic and Berber at the Faculty of Letters in Algiers from 1880 to 1924. This colonial university, the only one in the French Empire, became one of the world's leading centers of scholarly Orientalism at the turn of the XXe century.

Based on this highly singular archive and at the end of a collective investigation, this book aims to grasp this Orientalism in the making, i.e. on a daily basis, on the Maghreb terrain, in classrooms, and right down to the intimacy of families. It thus invites us to rethink the category of Orientalism from colonial Algeria, through practices, from a social history perspective.

With contributions from Sarah Asset, Guy Basset, Marie Bossaert, Anna Anikpara Damon, Caroline Emin, Claire Fredj, Benjamin Guichard, Augustin Jomier, Gabriel Malek, Alain Messaoudi, Magali Nié, Elise Paysant, Juliette Ronsin, Naomi Russo, Margo Stemmelin, Emmanuel Szurek. "

The speakers

  • Marie Bossaert is a senior lecturer at the University of Clermont Auvergne (CHEC), her research focuses on the political, social and cultural history of scholarly Orientalism in Italy and the Mediterranean in the XIXe and XXe centuries.
  • Augustin Jomier is a historian of Algeria in the colonial period and the contemporary Maghreb. He is a lecturer in the Department of Arabic Studies at Inalco, and a researcher at CERMOM and IRMC in Tunis.
  • Emmanuel Szurek is a lecturer at EHESS, working on linguistic reformism in nationalist Turkey and the social and intellectual history of scholarly Orientalism.

Session moderated by: Alain Messaoudi, lecturer in contemporary history, University of Nantes and Emmanuel Lozerand, professor of Japanese literature at Inalco and Mémorialiste des Langues O'.

Book signing: L'orientalisme en train de se faire - Marie Bossaert, Augustin Jomier, Emmanuel Szurek - Editions EHESS

In collaboration with CERMOM and CETOBAC.