Projecting into space: territory(ies), terroirs, landscapes and borders
Se projeter dans l’espace : territoire(s), terroirs, paysages et frontières
Published on Monday, May 12, 2025
Abstract
Ce colloque sera l’occasion pour les jeunes chercheur·euses de réfléchir ensemble aux interactions symboliques entre les individus, les sociétés et l’espace géographique et aux représentations qui y sont associées, dans une orientation résolument interdisciplinaire. Les échanges en marge du colloque seront l’occasion de décloisonner des concepts souvent enfermés dans les « frontières » disciplinaires.
Announcement
Argument
Territory, terroir, landscape, frontier, nation - all these terms refer to a way of appropriating space, of projecting oneself into it. Mankind projects its perception of geographical space onto maps, plans and models. These projections help reduce the complexity of real space, making it comprehensible and usable. They also project their intentions onto physical space through the planning of a “territory”, the result of cultural, social and economic choices. “[S]pace is never neutral”, writes Henri Lefebvre, “it is the product of the interaction between humans[1] and their environment, both condition and consequence of their social, cultural and historical existence.” (Henri Lefebvre, 1974). The dynamics of these individual and collective interactions are also symbolic. Man is constantly projecting his own subjectivity, values, symbols, cultural identities and folklore onto space. We would like to explore these symbolic interactions between individuals, societies and space at this young researchers' colloquium.
‘Territory’ must be one of the most polysemous term in the vocabulary of the humanities and social sciences, and therefore one of the most defined. The term territory is formed from the Latin root "terra", which designates both the earth, the soil, and a country, a region, and the suffix ‘- torium’, used to form nouns designating a place associated with an action or function. Etymologically speaking, territory has an anthropological dimension: it's associated with human action on the land, but also with a specific role or function.
The modern meaning of ‘territory’, whose use became widespread in the XVIIIth century in the French language as “étendue de païs, ou l'on a droit d'exercer la justice” (Antoine Furetière, 1690), seems to have been restricted to an administrative meaning (see Le Berre, 1995).
Works on the notion of territory developed particularly in geographical studies during the 1980s, in an attempt to move beyond its "fixed" and ‘delimited’ aspects to understand the territorial dynamics at work in the globalization process. Following in the footsteps of geographical studies, other disciplines are also questioning the notion, using their own methods and research objects: ethology, law, sociology and literature are all taking up the notion. Given the proliferation of definitions surrounding this notion, there is a growing reluctance to use a term that has become extremely polysemous and lacking in unity.
However, one constant stands out: the territory is not only a tangible, material, geographically determined reality, but also and above all a cultural product. As such, it takes on a material, symbolic and sometimes subjective dimension, intersecting with issues of power, culture, identity and memory. Joël Bonnemaison defines territory as “the other side of space”. According to him: “Territory is ideal, and often even ideal, whereas space is material. It is a vision of the world before it is an organization; it has more to do with representation than function, but this does not mean that it is devoid of structure and reality.” (Joël Bonnemaison, 2000).
The ‘agricultural’ equivalent of the term ‘terroir’ is typically associated with the French-speaking world. The term ‘terroir’ refers to a geographical area that is closely linked to, or even definable by, its natural, agricultural, material and cultural characteristics. Soil and climate condition agricultural possibilities, as do the skills of the people who work the land. The term closely combines the notions of nature and culture to bring out the idea that the taste and quality of a product are determined by the land that produced it and the hand that shaped it. From the Renaissance onwards “France began to construct, at least partially, its cultural identity by appealing to the causal power of the land to create differences in food, language and people” (Parker, 2017). Today, terroir and the concept to which it appeals carry a strong affective connotation for populations and are thus mobilized not only by tourism brands and companies but also in political discourse to call for environmental preservation to avoid soil alteration and consequently the inherent qualities of the land and its products.
The term ‘terroir’ is also associated with the ‘roman du terroir’, a literary genre that developed in Quebec between 1840 and the Second World War. It's a form of literature that celebrates rurality, with a strong ideological emphasis on identity and tradition. Today, however, the roman du terroir can also be identified with a whole range of contemporary French novels and writers. This type of work is also identified as "regional", written by authors who share an attachment to a certain geographical space, the use of terroir as context and/or narrative material (as in certain contemporary ‘territorialized’ thrillers - Jacquelin 2022) rather than a shared ideology. This is a type of literature that is present beyond the French-speaking world, where it is interesting to see how it is identified and named.
Another notion that highlights the subjective rereading to which geographical reality can be subjected is that of landscape. As Jakob points out, the relationship between nature and subject at the origin of this notion is never completely pristine and immediate: on the contrary, as can be seen by observing the birth and history of the notion of landscape in the various European languages, “the framework, orientation and character of landscape experience are [...] to a considerable extent pre-established by art, and it is only at a later historical moment [...] that there will be a real experience of landscape” (Ivi, pp. 10-11; on the notion of landscape see also, more recently, Besse 2018, D'Angelo 2021).
Although "in the process of constituting landscape, primacy belongs to painting" (Jakob 2005), literature has also played an early and important role in the history of the concept: we might mention, for example, the poetry of Petrarch and lyric poetry in general, which, being the poetic genre most closely linked to the expression of the subject, “seems particularly apt to express these subjective components of landscape experience” (Collot 2005). In historical and cultural periods in which subjectivity claims a greater place, literary landscape has a decisive and growing importance. This has been the case in modern literature since Romanticism: from Rousseau to Bonnefoy, from Goethe to Jaccottet, from Holderlin to Zanzotto, landscape represents for the lyrical subject or narrator an irreplaceable opportunity to know himself through the world (Jakob 2005: “in the experience of a landscape, and in a sense yet to be defined, what is at stake is the subject himself”).
Some poets and novelists have also taken up urban aesthetics in poems or entire novels, such as Baudelaire (Tableaux parisiens, in Les Fleurs du mal), Apollinaire (Zone, in Alcool) and André Frénaud (Gare de l'Est, in Les Rois mages and Suite de Paris, in Il n'y a pas de paradis) or Louis-Ferdinand Céline (Voyage au bout de la nuit and Mort à crédit) - novelist par excellence of early XXth-century Paris - and the German W. G. Sebald, who in Austerlitz gives pride of place to typical urban locations such as railway stations, also using the photographic medium. Some filmmakers and photographers also give landscape a prominent place in their work (see Bernardi 2006, Thomas 2022, Amiel - Moure 2020): in terms of urban representations, we might mention Roberto Rossellini's Germany Year Zero, in which the camera films Berlin in ruins, and, on the photographic side, Liam Wong, who proposes an aesthetic visual relationship to urban light, neon lights, materials and other elements emblematic of the artificiality of the Japanese metropolitan landscape in his work TO : KY : OO.
This symposium will provide an opportunity for young researchers to reflect together on the symbolic interactions between individuals, societies and geographical space, and the representations associated with them, in a resolutely interdisciplinary orientation. Discussions on the bangs of the colloquium will provide an opportunity to decompartmentalize concepts that are often locked within disciplinary “borders”.
On the basis of the above considerations, we propose the following lines of research:
1. Thresholds and borders
Papers could explore the notions of thresholds, limits or borders: the way space is divided up, the question of exploration and expansion of the known world, and the appropriation of a space by a person or group of individuals could all be interesting avenues to explore. Communicators could be led to question the permanence and mutations at work within these junction zones. From this perspective, the study of cross-border identities would be relevant. The crystallization of political and national identities on a border or territory could also be studied, from both a historical and contemporary perspective.
2. Imagination and space / imaginary spaces
Communicators may be interested in the anthropological link between the imaginary and space: how do populations symbolically appropriate a space? How do anthropological narratives contribute to creating a particular relationship with space? Papers may also address artistic and literary representations of landscape (natural and urban), in particular the stylistic, thematic and cultural constants of landscape representations in a given period of cultural history, or in the work of a particular author or artistic and literary movement.
3. Territories and societies / intimate territories
The evolution of the notion of territory can be seen as a witness to the mutation of societies. For example, a renewed understanding of the territory in the light of current concerns about the relationship between human societies and the living world could be studied. More broadly, particular attention will be paid to the concept of "inhabiting", as the construction of individuals and societies through space, and vice versa. Inhabitation can be considered in its multiscalar dimension, from domestic and private space to the territory itself. From this perspective, the links between cartography and power can be studied, as well as the cartography of intimate space, from a human or child's perspective.
4. Space practices
We'll be looking at how different ways of using space influence our representations. For example, papers could examine the way in which means of locomotion (train, car, plane, bicycle, etc.) and practices (hiking, skiing, climbing, etc.) contribute to forging and even transforming our representations of space, and to forging a particular relationship with the landscape and environment around us. The study of tourism, as a set of spatial practices, is also a relevant angle of study, paying attention, for example, to communication and territorial marketing. How is a territory or a terroir promoted, represented, or even constructed, through tourism communication and/or product marketing?
Submission of proposals
The colloquium, to be held on December 11-12 at the Université de Lorraine, is open to PhD students, post-docs and post-docs who have graduated within the last three years. Each paper will last a maximum of 20 minutes. Paper proposals may be submitted in French or English. Proposals, in .pdf format, should include an abstract of 500 words maximum, a reference bibliography (5 titles maximum) and a brief biobibliographical note on the speaker (200 words maximum).
Entries must be sent by July 15 at the latest,
to colloquedoctoralenancy@gmail.com; results will be announced by e-mail by September 15 at the latest. Publication of the proceedings is envisaged. For further information, requests or clarification, please write to colloquedoctoralenancy@gmail.com.
Scientific committee
Christelle Di Cesare, Alain Guyot, Giuseppe Sangirardi, Marie-Lou Solbach, Marine Soubeille.
Organizing Committee
Manon Barret, Nicolas Gony, Carolina Morello, Stefano Volta.
Selected bibliography
AMIEL Vincent, MOURE José, Histoire vagabonde du cinéma, Paris, Vendémiaire, 2020.
BAUD Pascal, Bourgeat Serge et Bras Catherine, Dictionnaire de géographie, Hatier, coll. « Initial », 2003 [plusieurs rééd.].
BEGAG Azouz et al, D’une frontière à l’autre : Migrations, passages, imaginaires, Toulouse : Presses universitaires du Midi, 2020.
BERNARDI Sandro, Antonioni, personnage paysage, Saint-Denis, Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 2006.
BESSE Jean-Marc, « Approches spatiales dans l’histoire des sciences et des arts », L’Espace géographique, vol. 39, no 3, Belin, 2010.
BESSE Jean-Marc, La nécessité du paysage, Marseille, Parenthèses, 2018.
BONNEMAISON Joël, La géographie culturelle, Paris, Editions du C.T.H.S, 2000.
BROSSEAU M., Des romans-géographes, Paris, L’Harmattan, coll. Géographie et cultures, 1996
BRUNET Roger et Théry Hervé, « Territoire », in Brunet, Ferras et Théry (dir.), Les mots de la géographie. Dictionnaire critique. Reclus, La Documentation française, 1993 (1e éd. 1992).
CAWS, M. A. (sous la direction de), City Images : Perspectives from Literature, Philosophy, and Films, Gordon and Breach, New York 1991.
COLLOT Michel, Paysage et poésie du romantisme à nos jours, Paris, José Corti, 2005.
COLLOT Michel, « Pour une géographie littéraire », dans Fabula-LhT, n° 8, « Le Partage des disciplines », dir. Nathalie Kremer, mai 2011, URL : http://www.fabula.org/lht/8/collot.html.
D’ANGELO Paolo, Il paesaggio. Teorie, storie, luoghi, Turin, Einaudi, 2021.
DESPORTES Marc, Paysages en mouvement : transports et perception de l’espace, Paris, France, Gallimard, 2005.
FOUCHER Michel, L’Invention des frontières, Fondation pour les études de défense nationale, Paris, 1986.
GOEURY David, Introduction à l’analyse des territoires : concepts, outils, applications, Paris, Armand Colin, 2016.
HATEM Fabrice : Le marketing territorial, Principes, méthodes et pratiques, Colombelles, EMS Editions, 2007.
JACQUELIN Alice, Territorialisation du polar européen, entre représentation pittoresque et écriture des marges, dans Belphegor, 2022, 20 (1).
JAKOB Michael, Paesaggio e letteratura, Florence, Olschki, 2005.
LE BERRE Maryvonne, « Territoires », dans A. Bailly, R. Ferras et D. Pumain, Encyclopédie de Géographie, Économica, Paris, 1995, p. 617-638.
LEFEBVRE Henri, La Production de l'espace, Paris, Éditions Anthropos, 1974.
LUGINBÜHL Yves, La mise en scène du monde. Construction du paysage européen, Paris, CNRS Editions, 2012.
PARKER, Thomas, Le goût du terroir, histoire d’une idée française, Tours, Presses universitaires FrançoisRabelais, 2017.
THOMAS Benjamin, De l’insistance du monde. Le paysage en cinéma, Caen, Passage(s), 2022.
WESTPHAL Bertrand, La Géocritique : réel, fiction, espace, Paris, Éditions de Minuit, coll. « Paradoxe », 2007.
[1] In the original quote, the word “man” is employed.
Subjects
- Representation (Main category)
- Mind and language > Representation > Cultural history
- Mind and language > Thought > Intellectual history
- Mind and language > Language > Literature
- Society > Geography
- Mind and language > Representation > Cultural identities
- Society > Geography > Geography: society and territory
- Society > Geography > Geography: politics, culture and representation
Places
- Université de Lorraine
Nancy, France (54)
Event attendance modalities
Hybrid event (on site and online)
Date(s)
- Tuesday, July 15, 2025
Attached files
Keywords
- espace, territoire, terroir, paysage, littérature, études culturelles, représentation
Reference Urls
Information source
- Nicolas GONY
courriel : nicolas [dot] gony [at] univ-lorraine [dot] fr
License
This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.
To cite this announcement
« Projecting into space: territory(ies), terroirs, landscapes and borders », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Monday, May 12, 2025, https://doi.org/10.58079/13wqv
