Conference series: "Ville [Polis] C : Villes, Littératures, Sociétés" (City [Polis] C: Cities, Literatures, Societies)

Argument to the lecture series

In the constant tension between reality and reverie (Sansot 2004, p. 46), the urban experience appears as a space extremely shaped by human projections through social experiences and the collective imaginary. The city is never simply a neutral setting: it is continuously shaped by the needs, desires and conflicts of its inhabitants. Thus, questioning the essence of a particular place, or of a city in general, immediately brings us back to this dimension of incompleteness and plasticity, where the real is perpetually recomposed by the imaginary (Blanchot 1988, p.353). Literary descriptions, historical discourses or social analyses, just like individual narratives, contribute to producing a second, sometimes idealized reality, which forces us to rethink the relationship between lived city and represented urban space.

Examining the dialectical relationship between places and people reveals the extent to which the city becomes a terrain of collective projection, where national or community myths are elaborated and formed. The imaginary narratives generated by the symbolic appropriation of spaces often acquire a structuring function in the construction of identity. Looking back at the interactions between history, politics and the urban imagination allows us to examine the mechanisms by which a community (or a people) invests a place with meanings that go beyond mere spatial materiality. The city thus appears as a palimpsest: a space in which memory, narrative and ideological strata are superimposed, producing a constantly evolving topography of meaning.

Distinguishing the different levels of experience and imagination involves questioning the mediators of these urban visions: who dreams the city? who transmits its images? and in what ways do these representations crystallize into clichés? (Sansot 2004, p. 38). The human imprint, progressively deposited on places, engenders a form of utopia - in the etymological sense of a topos outside reality (ου/τοπία) - which, paradoxically, has a lasting influence on the collective imagination. The elementary gestures of urban existence, such as orienting oneself, living or moving around, ensure the transition between individual memory and the memory of the city itself (Ricœur 2000, p. 49). Each act of recognition thus renews the collective narrative, reinscribing lived experience in a broader memorial continuity.

Finally, the articulation of the destiny of space with that of time (Le Goff 1988, pp. 43, 44) helps us understand how the city narrated becomes an object of historiography. The grammatical imperfect, which marks a temporal distance, and the spatial adverbs, which situate the action, combine their effects to inscribe urban narratives in an organized system of places and dates. This narrative device erases the immediacy of lived experience in favor of a historical perspective: the here and now dissolve into a distanced temporality and spatiality. (Ricœur 2000, p. 183). Thus, the city, as a framework for action and memory, is transformed into a discursive space where the articulations between perception, memory and narrative are replayed, opening the way to a genuine poetics of urban space.

For this study, we focus on the relationships between city, society and memory, and to their shaping through the imaginary as it unfolds in literary texts, it is first necessary to clarify central notions such as lived space, urban imaginary, utopia, individual memory and collective memory. This theoretical and conceptual clarification forms the historical, political and methodological foundation on which the various contributions are based.

On this basis, the analysis of literary texts, historical narratives and testimonies enables us to examine the construction of urban representations, highlighting several lines of thought such as the relationship between city and identity, the symbolic uses of space, the tensions between urban reality and imaginary projection, as well as the mechanisms of patrimonialization, forgetting or rewriting the past. Particular attention is paid to cities considered as sites of memorial stratification.

Through the study of Bucharest, Iaşi, Athens, Constantinople, Famagusta, Alexandria, Vilnius and Paris, we interrogate the capital-city as a space of cultural competition, utopian projection, fabrication of the past and intellectual exchange, exposing how literary, artistic and political discourses construct, transform or redefine urban hierarchies and national and transnational imaginaries of the XXᵉ century. By analyzing these discursive constructions, we can question their political, cultural and memorial significance in contemporary societies. At the crossroads of this plurality of viewpoints, this is a crossing, where the voices of literature, history and the city intertwine to let the memory of places, their silences, fractures and unfulfilled promises emerge.

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Conference series program

- Friday February 6, 2026 at 3pm in Room 3.12 (3^e floor) at the Pôle des Langues et Civilisations, 65 rue des Grands Moulins Paris 13^e

• Alkisti Sofou (Sorbonne University): "Distorting mirror, critical gaze or reality: visiting Athens in the XIX^th century"
• Georges Kostakiotis (Inalco, CREE) : "From Constantinople "sister city" to Athens "capital of the Kingdom" in G. Theotokas"

Discussion

- Friday February 13, 2026 at 3pm in Room 3.12 (3^e floor) at the Pôle des Langues et Civilisations, 65 rue des Grands Moulins Paris 13^e

• Arnaud Bikard (Inalco, CERMOM): "Le mythe de Vilnius dans l'œuvre de Moï Ver et dans la littérature yiddish contemporaine"

• Dimitris Kargiotis (Strasbourg University): "Producing the authentic past: archaeology, photography and the politics of representation - the case of Athens"

• Discussion

• Presentation of Dimitris Kargiotis' book, From Greece to the Balkans : des voisins lointains, Études sur la constitution des espaces critiques, L'Harmattan, 2025

- Friday 20 February 2026 at 3pm in Room 3.12 (3^e floor) at the Pôle des Langues et Civilisations, 65 rue des Grands Moulins Paris 13^e

• Marie-Cécile Navet-Grémillet (Agrégée de Lettres, CEAlex): "Alexandria 1880-1916: les métamorphoses d'une ville sous la plume de Delta"

• Sylvain Briens (Sorbonne University): "Literary Topographies of Nordic Modernity (Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm)"

• Mary Roussou-Sinclair (University of Cyprus): "Famagusta: From Queen City to Ghost Town"

• Discussion

- Friday 13 March 2026 at 3pm in Room 3.12 (3^e floor) at the Pôle des Langues et Civilisations, 65 rue des Grands Moulins Paris 13^e

• Cécile Folschweiller (Inalco, CREE): "Bucarest / Iasi: lieux littéraires et concurrence culturelle en Roumanie"

• Martha Vassiliadi (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki): "Sick Alexandria: poetry and epidemics in the time of C. Cavafy"

• Discussion

• Presentation of the Cahiers Balkaniques volume: Destructions, constructions, déconstructions d'une ville : Thessalonique, Les Presses de l'Inalco, 2025.

- Friday April 17, 2026 at 3pm in Room 3.12 (3^e floor) at the Pôle des Langues et Civilisations, 65 rue des Grands Moulins Paris 13^e

• Elena Koutrianou (University of Peloponnese): "Paris and Odysseas Elytis: his encounters with poets and artists"

• Titika Karavia (University of Peloponnese): "A utopia in transition: Aspects of Athens in the Prose of Michalis Modinos"

• Discussion

Organization

• Georges Kostakiotis (Inalco, CREE)

• Martha Vassiliadi (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki)

Contact

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