Prix de thèse de la chancellerie des universités de Paris 2021: two Inalco PhDs win prizes

Two female doctors from Inalco have received the Prix en lettres et sciences humaines "toutes spécialités" awarded by the Chancellerie des universités de Paris :

- Monique Demarle Casadebaig for her thesis Gongsun Long 公孫龍 ; des noms à la désignation, la pensée du langage en Chine à l'époque des Royaumes combattants, under the supervision of Frédéric Wang (Inalco) and Stéphane Feuillas (Université de Paris).

- Mélanie Nittis for her thesis L'improvisation poétique chantée à Olympos (Karpathos, Grèce) : dynamiques contemporaines d'un rituel paraliturgique, under the supervision of Stéphane Sawas (Inalco) and Jerôme Cler (Sorbonne Université).

Monique Demarle-Casadebaig

Monique Demarle-Casadebaig was born in Saint-Malo on February 2, 1946. She studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, where she obtained an agrégation in philosophy. She is now retired, having taught philosophy in lycée and preparatory classes. Since 2004, she has also been studying Chinese at Inalco, where she obtained a licence. Having been introduced to classical Chinese by Valérie Lavoix, she went on to specialize in reading the texts to which her background in philosophy led her. She wrote her master's thesis "De la pertinence d'un penseur à contretemps, étude sur Gongsun Long". In 2017, she gave an agrégation course on Mozi at Paris VII. On September 10, 2020, she defended her doctoral thesis entitled Gongsun Long 公孫龍 : des noms à la désignation, la pensée du langage en Chine à l'époque des Royaumes combattants under the supervision of Professor Frédéric Wang (Inalco) and Professor Stéphane Feuillas (Paris VII). She is currently preparing a translation of Gongsun Longzi (Écrits de Maitre Gongsun Long), Deng Xizi (Écrits de Maitre Deng Xi) and Yin Wenzi (Écrits de Maitre Yin Wen) for the Belles Lettres Chinese Library, the authors most representative of what dialectics may have been in China in pre-imperial times, and who have been grouped together in Sima Qian's classification under the label of the School of Names (mingjia 名家).

Summary of his thesis
The thesis proposes the translation and commentary of the texts through which the teaching of Gongsun Long 公孫龍 (320-250) has been transmitted to us, centered on the question of the "rectitude" of names. To shed light on this debate, whose terms cannot be directly transcribed into the language of logic, linguistics or modern philosophy, we sought to reconstruct the issues at stake in the "School of Names" mingjia 名家. In an era of social disorder, this school rethought the Confucian requirement for the rectitude of names in conjunction with the need for classification of terms by extending it to specific interests, both in the field of law enforcement, and of nature. In this historical context the Gongsun Longzi 公孫龍子 can be understood as aiming to definitively accomplish the project of the School of Names, but in an original form foreign to the various modes of argumentation of the time. Gongsun Long would thus be, in his own way, the thinker of a moment of crisis in the transmission of the Confucian tradition. His method alienated him not only from his predecessors but also from his contemporaries, without whom we could not understand him, and his successors dismissed him as a kind of impostor, without perhaps having understood him. Through the clarifications it attempts to bring to this singular destiny, this work thus proposes the rudiments of an "apology of Gongsun Long", which attempts to make comprehensible the full depth of the thought of designation, which it strives to show that, even in the paradoxical style it requires for its expression, it is inseparable from and even revealing of an originalitý of the Chinese language, which it contributes strongly to bringing to light.

Mélanie Nittis

Hellenist and ethnomusicologist, Mélanie Nittis is a lecturer in ethnomusicology of Greece and Central and Eastern Europe at Inalco and a member of the CERLOM (Inalco), the SFE (Société Française d'Ethnomusicologie) and the SEN (Société d'Études Néohelléniques). Winner of the Maison des Cultures du Monde Prize in 2014, in September 2020 she defended her doctoral thesis entitled L'improvisation poétique chantée à Olympos (Karpathos, Grèce) : dynamiques contemporaines d'un rituel paraliturgique, prepared under the supervision of Jérôme Cler and Stéphane Sawas. Her research focuses on musical and poetic improvisation on the islands of southern Greece, where sung poetry is generally accompanied by the lyra fiddle.

Summary of her thesis
In the village of Olympos, located north of the Greek island of Karpathos in the Aegean Sea, sung poetic improvisation, known as mantinades, takes on a special character. It develops during ritual feasts called glentia, either during informal gatherings of the men in the café, or at the time of the celebration of Orthodox religious feasts with the whole community. An integral part of the village's vast musical repertoire, this sung poetic improvisation respects underlying codes, and the themes developed echo the daily life of the community, which has long lived in autarky. This study, based on fieldwork and highlighting the interaction of musical, corporeal, social and religious domains, focuses on the contemporary performance of these mantinades. In particular, it shows the role played by this improvisation within a community most of whose members currently live in emigration, and highlights the links this improvised performance has with the Orthodox liturgy that gives rhythm to village life.