Cornel Zwierlein, de la Ruhr-Universität Bochum, présentera sa communication « The French and British in the Mediterranean, 1650-1750 – and the questions a History of ignorance asks for » le jeudi 20 octobre 2016, de 17h30 à 19h30. Maison de la Recherche, 28 rue Serpente, Paris 6e , salle D421.

Résumé :

The history of the French and British trading empires in the early
modern Mediterranean is used as a setting to test a new general approach
to a history of ignorance: how can we understand the very act of
ignoring – in all kinds of political, economic, religious, cultural and
scientific communication – as a fundamental trigger that sets epistemes
in motion? Is the ‘structure’ of the Scientific Revolution between 1650
and 1750 just one specific type of what were in fact many epistemic
movements taking place at the same time – different, but comparable?
What was the role here of the European empires? The book deconstructs
central categories like the mercantilist ‘national’, the exchange of
‘confessions’ between Western and Eastern Christians, and the bridging
of cultural gaps between Europeans and Ottoman subjects, into forms of
communicating unknowns. Making those multiple unknowns explicit in a new
reflective way was the core of ‘enlightenment empires’.

Discutant: Daniel Foliard, Université Paris Nanterre