VioramilPS

Call for Papers

The symposium “Violence and militant radicalisms in France’s public sphere from the 1980s to the present day” is part of the Vioramil program, selected and funded by the French National Agency for Research (ANR) (http://vioramil.univ-lorraine....). Based on field surveys and/or corpus analyses, the contributions will cover four areas, exploring some of the following questions:

1. Mobilization and Communication Strategies of Radical Movements

Chair: Béatrice Fracchiolla and Anne Piponnier

Radical movements deploy numerous communication strategies to make themselves visible. How do activists acquire the knowledge and skills necessary for media practice? How is the radicality of opinions expressed and justified? How do militant media help to institutionalize and make visible opposition discourses? How are the “operation scenes” selected (public spaces, areas to defend, sites at risk, etc.)? By whom and by what means? How are the mobilization strategies, the militant acts and the organization of their visibility involved? How do journalists position themselves in terms of these practices (from connivance to criticism)? Are new forms of mobilization and transgression created in the public sphere?

2. Media Coverage, Narratives and Fictionalization of Militant Violence

Chair: Jean-François Diana and Arnaud Mercier

Any form of political violence, even the most socially rejected, generates fascination. What are the media rules in terms of the coverage of these acts? Is the logic of their spectacular mediation akin to a mechanism of encouragement and celebration? Or, is there a risk of euphemizing radicalism by inscribing it in the banality of the ordinary by repeating fictitious and aesthetic expressions? How can we analyze the dramatic force of images (accentuated by the continuous flow of information on TV channels and social media) and, at the same time, how can we put things into perspective? How do perpetrators of militant violence report their actions, and how does Justice and the State respond to them, through censorship or counter-narratives? What is the role of the stratified and divergent public receptions in the process of the narrative construction of violence and radicalism? 

3. Militant Violence: A Category under Discussion

Chair: Marieke Stein and Sylvie Thiéblemont-Dollet

Media representations tend to associate militant action with violence. Qualifying violent acts as deliberated “militant violence” is indisputable in cases such as terrorist attacks. However, it may also be debatable, when it comes, for example, to property damages on the fringes of demonstrations, or symbolic non-physical and non-material aggressions. This leads to questions about what is understood by “militant violence”. Contributions within this axis will focus on the way the category of “violent militant act” is constructed through the mediated discourses of different protagonists: activists, journalists, bloggers, youtubers, politicians, researchers, etc. The figure of the “expert” as part of the mediation process that forges the meaning of radicalization and violence needs also to be explored and defined. The processes by which acts can be signified as “violent” as well as their instrumentalizations and limits are also of major importance.

4. Traces of Violent Acts: Commemorate, Celebrate, Archive...

Chair: Béatrice Fleury and Jacques Walter

Commemorations are widely present in the public sphere. Whereas analyses from the victims’ point of view are frequent, research on radical activists is not only uncommon, but raises complex issues to be discussed and solved. The latter may, for example, be linked to the prohibition of some events, to the difficulty to get in touch with their protagonists, etc. For all those reasons and despite the difficulties, it is this dimension that we wish to see invested in this axis. Contributions will focus on the events that engender commemorations as a means to legitimation. They may also analyse the tributes published on the web concerning radical movements or/and their leading personalities. They could delve into the processes of preservation of the documents that mark the history of an action, which are generally kept, often discreetly and in private settings, by activists or nostalgic fans, etc.

Terms of submission

Proposals specifying the chosen axis (2,000 words maximum, including bibliography) should be sent to: jacques.walter@univ-lorraine.fr and beatrice.fleury@univ-lorraine.fr.       

An acknowledgment of receipt will be sent by email.

Proposals will go through a double-blind evaluation: indicate the author’s contact information only on the first page (last name, first name, email, research unit, institution). After evaluation, the accepted complete texts will be published in a volume of the collection “Violence and Radical Activism in France” at Riveneuve Éditions.

Scientific Committee

François Audigier (Université de Lorraine, Centre de recherche universitaire lorrain d’histoire, France)

Gérald Bronner (Institut universitaire de France, Université Paris-Diderot, Groupe d’étude des méthodes sociologiques de la Sorbonne, France)

Fanny Bugnon (Université Rennes 2, Tempora, France)

Olivier Dard (Université Paris-Sorbonne, Sorbonne, Identités, relations internationales et civilisations de l’Europe, France)

Jean-François Diana (Université de Lorraine, Centre de recherche sur les médiations, France)

Béatrice Fleury (Université de Lorraine, Centre de recherche sur les médiations, France)

Béatrice Fracchiolla (Université de Lorraine, Centre de recherche sur les médiations, France)

Sarah Gensburger (CNRS, Institut des sciences sociales du politique, France)

Fabien Jobard (Centre Marc-Bloch, Germany)

Amandine Kervella (Université Lille 1, Groupe d’études et recherche interdisciplinaire en information et communication, France)

Nicolas Lebourg (Université de Montpellier, Centre d’études politiques de l’Europe latine, France)

Corinne Martin (Université de Lorraine, Centre de recherche sur les médiations, France)

Arnaud Mercier (Université Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas, Centre d’analyse et de recherche interdisciplinaire sur les médias, France)

Claudine Moïse (Université Grenoble Alpes, Laboratoire de linguistique et didactique des langues étrangères et maternelles, France)

Nathalie Pignard-Cheynel (Université de Neuchâtel, Académie du journalisme et des médias, Swiss)

Anne Piponnier (Université de Lorraine, Centre de recherche sur les médiations, France)

Jenny Raflik-Grenouilleau (Université Cergy-Pontoise, Civilisations et identités culturelles comparées des sociétés européennes et occidentales, France)

Romain Seze (Institut national des hautes études de la sécurité et de la justice ; École pratique des hautes études, CNRS, Groupe Sociétés, religions, laïcités, France)

Isabelle Sommier (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Centre européen de sociologie et de science politique, France)

Marieke Stein (Université de Lorraine, Centre de recherche sur les médiations, France)

Danièle Tartakowsky (Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis, Centre de recherches historiques : histoire des pouvoirs, savoirs et sociétés, France)

Sylvie Thiéblemont-Dollet (Université de Lorraine, Centre de recherche sur les médiations, France)

Gérôme Truc (CNRS, Institut des sciences sociales du politique, France) Jacques Walter (Université de Lorraine, Centre de recherche sur les médiations, France)