Sixième séance du séminaire 2021-2022 d'AGORA

“History of Ideas and History of Knowledge” Research Seminar
AGORA research centre, CY Cergy Paris Université
Thursday afternoons 2.30-4 pm
Either online or in the "Chênes 2" (Cergy)

Organisers:
Prof. Emmanuelle de Champs, emmanuelle.de-champs[at]cyu.fr
Prof. Yann Giraud, yann.giraud[at]cyu.fr
Prof. Catherine Marshall, catherine.marshall[at]cyu.fr
Prof. Lissell Quiroz, lissell.quiroz[at]cyu.fr

 

• 19 May 2022 (in Cergy - Chênes 1, salle des Conseils and online):

María J. Santesmases (STS Department, Institute of Philosophy Spanish National Research Council – CSIC, Madrid)
"Penicillin and Gender: Their Circulation in Research and Industry, 1940s-1970s"

As a pioneering substance, the material culture of penicillin as antimicrobial and its industrial manufacture experienced permanent transits – from one research setting to others, from research settings to factories, and subsequently to pharmacies – through the medical authority that granted the drug its social life within a narrative of industrial production for health care. The cultures of penicillin crossed national borders: gendered practices travelled alongside the mould from which penicillin was extracted, the large fermentators in which the mould was cultured and the production line along which the substances were isolated, purified, weighed, labelled and sealed as prescription and consumption expanded. Embedded in the post-war recovery, penicillin’s voyages through time and across geographies – professional, political and social – were both material and symbolic. This powerful antimicrobial captivated the imagination of the general public, medical practice, science and industry, creating high expectations. This historical reconstruction of the social life of penicillin between the 1940s and 1970s – through the dictatorship to democratic transition – explores political, public, medical, experimental and gender issues. While fitting in the gendered social order, penicillin created expectations, captivating the imagination of the general public, medical practice, science and industry.

Link to join the session: https://cyu-fr.zoom.us/j/91980497379?pwd=NXQxWVNWNzZDVWovWXZlQlM3dDY0UT09

Previous sessions:

• Thursday 14 October 2021 (online):

Prof. Chandran Kukathas (Singapore Management University)
Presentation of his book Immigration and Freedom (Princeton University Press, 2021).

Summary of the book:
Immigration is often seen as a danger to western liberal democracies because it threatens to undermine their fundamental values, most notably freedom and national self-determination. In this book, however, Chandran Kukathas argues that the greater threat comes not from immigration but from immigration control. Kukathas shows that immigration control is not merely about preventing outsiders from moving across borders. It is about controlling what outsiders do once in a society: whether they work, reside, study, set up businesses, or share their lives with others. But controlling outsiders—immigrants or would-be immigrants—requires regulating, monitoring, and sanctioning insiders, those citizens and residents who might otherwise hire, trade with, house, teach, or generally associate with outsiders. The more vigorously immigration control is pursued, the more seriously freedom is diminished. The search for control threatens freedom directly and weakens the values upon which it relies, notably equality and the rule of law. Kukathas demonstrates that the imagined gains from efforts to control immigration are illusory, for they do not promote economic prosperity or social solidarity. Nor does immigration control bring self-determination, since the apparatus of control is an international institutional regime that increases the power of states and their agencies at the expense of citizens. That power includes the authority to determine who is and is not an insider: to define identity itself. Looking at past and current practices across the world, Immigration and Freedom presents a critique of immigration control as an institutional reality, as well as an account of what freedom means—and why it matters.

Discussant: Prof. David Owen (University of Southampton).

Link to join the session:
https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3aW5IXlKjoAk2ft1jihTJAB2FEo9k7XNJeKpjdsWAo2X81%40thread.tacv2/1633615267534?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22b8c19512-2aed-471d-a8d1-9b06e7da786a%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%2280315421-7163-440c-88b4-e8453557f220%22%7d
 

• 16 December 2021 (online):

Dr. Cléo Chassonnery-Zaïgouche (University of Cambridge, CRASSH)
“Contested Rational Decisions. Economic Expertise in the Comparable Worth Controversy, 1979-1989.”

Summary: 
The “comparable worth” principle – a call for a general readjustment of wages according to a measure of the worth of an occupation – gained a policy momentum in the United States in the early 1980s. A Supreme Court decision, multiple bills, congressional hearings as well as an arsenal of initiatives from women and labor groups all over the US shaped the debate as a technical as well as political issue. At the core of the quarrel lie diverse opinions on the criteria and practices of setting fair wages. Between 1979, the start of a national movement, and 1985, when all US government agencies declared the principle unsound, this paper follows the deployment of economic arguments on both sides of the controversy. The main shifts in the dominant position are the location of biases affecting pay settings and the criteria for rational wage determination: from the market to job analysts for the bias, and from bureaucratic procedures to market for the locus of rationality. I am documenting this shift using the discussions on scientific evidence brought by experts in legal and political hearings. The paper describes three moments in the relations between science and policy: first the scientisation of policy, the politicisation of science and finally, its weaponisation. 
 

Link to join the session:
https://cyu-fr.zoom.us/j/97669769713?pwd=L2J1aHZJVnZKMzlhdkpFaGRtZW5Odz09

Voir la captation vidéo de la séance

 

• 17 février 2022 (à Cergy - Chênes 2, salle Ananzie et en visioconférence, en français) :

Joanna Nowicki (CY Cergy Paris Université, LT2D)
autour de son dernier ouvrage (co-dirigé avec Chantal Delsol) :
La vie de l’esprit en Europe centrale et orientale depuis 1945, dictionnaire encyclopédique, éditions du Cerf, 2021, 1000 pages.

Les grands penseurs de l’Europe médiane restent insuffisamment connus du public français. Certains d’entre eux ont un profil unique en Europe – résistants au régime nazi, dissidents au régime communiste, participants actifs à la transition démocratique et parfois exerçant le pouvoir au niveau national ou international.

Difficilement décryptables selon les catégories classiques en occident, ils ont souvent une sensibilité de gauche tout en paraissant beaucoup plus conservateurs que leurs « équivalents » occidentaux (Mazowiecki, Kolakowski, Tischner, Skarga, Geremek, Havel). Ce sont des Européens convaincus souvent attachés à la culture classique qu’ils défendent tout en attaquant le communisme car ils y voient précisément un système anti-européen.

En même temps nombreux sont ceux qui ne sont pas en faveur de déconstruction car leur expérience de vie sous le régime communiste les a convaincus des méfaits de la volonté de création d’un « homme nouveau » dans une société totalement remaniée.

Ces voix sont assez inaudibles aujourd’hui en Europe occidentale. Ces penseurs, qui ont été victimes, témoins et acteurs des bouleversements majeurs que l’Europe a connus au XXe siècle ont pourtant vécu, décrit, agi et dialogué avec l’occident sur les enjeux de ces bouleversements.

La vie de l’esprit en Europe centrale et orientale depuis 1945 – dictionnaire encyclopédique publié en 2021 aux éditions du Cerf sous la direction de Chantal Delsol et Joanna Nowicki –tente d’en rendre compte. Mené pendant 5 ans, en réseau de chercheurs français et centres européens, il a mis en évidence à la fois les différences d’expériences vécues dans l’espace européen divisé, que de nombreuses similitudes dans la vie des idées malgré les ruptures.  Il en a proposé un panorama qui n’existait pas encore en langue française.

Lien pour rejoindre la session Zoom :
https://cyu-fr.zoom.us/j/97022988771?pwd=WlBXbzJjQ1NtUzlPVkNRMFpvcHlnUT09

Joanna Nowicki est Professeur des universités à CY Cergy Paris Université où elle directrice du Master d’Ingénierie Éditoriale et Communication (IEC). Membre du Laboratoire LT2D (Lexiques, Textes, Discours, Dictionnaires) et de la rédaction en chef de la revue Hermès (CNRS), elle est impliquée depuis sa création dans les travaux de l’Institut des Sciences de la Communication du CNRS. Ses travaux et ses publications portent sur la communication Est/Ouest, l’imaginaire collectif européen, la circulation et le transfert des idées en Europe et l’Autre Francophonie.  
 

• 17 March 2022 (en visioconférence) :

Dr. Christophe Salvat (CNRS, Centre Gilles Gaston Granger - Aix-Marseille Université)

Christophe Salvat est spécialisé en philosophie économique et éthique et a récemment publié L'utilitarisme aux éditions La Découverte.
Sa communication est intitulée : « L’utilitarisme : le plus grand bonheur constitue-t-il vraiment un devoir moral ? »

Lien pour rejoindre la session Zoom :
https://cyu-fr.zoom.us/j/95233555472
 

• 14 April 2022 (online):

Dr. Stephen Davies (Institute of Economic Affairs)
On his book The Economics and Politics of Brexit (AIER, 2020)
Discussant: Prof. Aurélien Antoine (Directeur de l’Observatoire du Brexit)

"The Economics and Politics of Brexit: the Realignment of British Public Life tells the story of the events that concluded with Britain formally leaving the EU on 31st January 2020, in all their twists and turns. It explains why events took the course they did, often to the surprise of experts, although much of it should have been clearly foreseeable to anyone who knew what was going on and there were people […] who did realise this and predicted much of what came to pass. The book also explains what the deeper underlying causes of Brexit were and how they were the British instance of a phenomenon that can also be found in many other countries, such as Germany, Sweden, France, and the United States. […] The key organising concept of the book is political realignment. This is a term much bandied about at the moment but seldom defined. What the book does is give a clear definition of what political alignment and realignment are and to then apply that to recent political events. The key theses are these: there is a realignment of politics underway in the UK and most other developed countries; in the UK it is now almost complete, thanks in no small part to Brexit whereas in some other countries it is still happening; Brexit did not cause this realignment, but it was caused by it; the decision to hold a referendum on EU membership was not frivolous, and the outcome of the referendum was much more likely than most people realised and should not have been such a shock; the paralysis and chaos of 2016-2019 was completely predictable [ … ] and was driven mainly by the reaction of the defeated side in the referendum to its result; the elections of 2017 and 2019 together show that a profound change has happened in UK politics or, to put it another way, that the realignment that led to the referendum and its result has now found expression in a transformation of one of the two main parties and a massive shift in voting patterns. […] The shifts in outlook and belief among voters that led to Brexit and the deeper changes in society that produced them in turn have not gone away but are continuing to work away in British society. Moreover, those shifts are only one local example of a wider pattern of change that can be discerned in most developed countries, not least the United States, and they have if anything been amplified and ramped up by the pandemic and the responses to it. Even if this is not visible at the moment, it soon will be. This book is not only about something that is now concluded (Brexit), even more it is about something ongoing, on both sides of the Atlantic. Soon, as the pandemic recedes, we will see that the trends it identifies are continuing everywhere, but with greater force.”
Stephen Davies, Brexit Matters More than Ever.

Stephen Davies, a Senior Fellow at AIER, is the Head of Education at the Institute for Economic Affairs in London.

Link to join the session:
https://cyu-fr.zoom.us/j/92327207255?pwd=cU5NelRvN1ZvZkwxSWwxRkNXQXFRQT09

Next sessions:

• 16 June 2022 (online):

Prof. Paola Bacchetta (University of California, Berkeley)
"Le féminisme queer aux Etats-Unis" (title to be confirmed)

 

• Reported to autumn 2022 due to travel restrictions :

Dr. Edmund Neill (New College of the Humanities, London)
“Contested conceptions of citizenship in Britain in the 1990s”.