Circulation of Ideas in Asia
Today, the formation of the political and religious field in modern and contemporary Asia can be examined through the prism of the social history of political ideas, whose analysis of cultural transfers as a phenomenon of the circulation of ideas is profoundly renewing intellectual history. The program aims to contribute to this renewal through a study of the processes involved in translating texts and concepts from European political philosophy to Asia, and through the notion of freedom of conscience.
The first approach is based on the observation that the process of translating European political philosophy into Asia has been underestimated. This has led to a neglect of the study of the phenomenon, its actors and the issues at stake. We have yet to map the circulation of texts and concepts, and the human and material networks behind them.
Within the framework of a social history of political ideas, the perspective of cultural transfer, which problematizes the process of translation, offers new possibilities for conceptual archaeology and understanding of the philosophical field of contemporary Asia. The project arising from this historiographical renewal was inaugurated in 2017 with an international colloquium devoted to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s political texts in Asia, as well as in the Arab and Turkish worlds (from which issue 30 of the journal Lumières emerged). It continued in 2021 with an international colloquium on the readings and uses of Montesquieu’s L’esprit des lois, which will be the subject of a collective publication, and will address other authors and texts in subsequent years.
The second area of research is aimed at renewing the study of the religious field in contemporary Asia, using the method of cultural transfer and the analysis of lexicon formation through the prism of conceptual archaeology. The object of study here is the notion of freedom of conscience. The approach, necessarily multidisciplinary, will take the form of:
1) an analysis of the formation of the lexicon (not only the notion of freedom of conscience, but also “freedom of belief” and “freedom of religion”) with regard to the translation process,
2) Identification of the actors and networks involved in the national, transnational and intra-Asian circulation of the notion,
3) the appropriation of the concept by states and its relationship with the phenomenon of secularization.
Coordinator : Eddy Dufourmont, Professor, Bordeaux Montaigne University
Project members
– Bai Zhimin (histoire, MCF LRU, Chine) : La rencontre France-Chinesur la route de la soie (et ses relectures): de Guillaume de Rubrouck à Joachim Bouvet, 1253-1685.
– Castets Rémi (science politique, MCF, TELEM, UBM) : Etat chinois et contrôle de l’Islam chez les Ouïghours du Xinjiang.
– Cherel-Riquier Evelyne (histoire, MCF, UMR 8173, LRU) : histoire de la Corée du Nord.
– Dufourmont Eddy (histoire, MCF HDR, SPH, UBM) : confucianisme, athéisme au Japon, rapports religions et politique dans le Japon moderne.
– Martine Raibaud (études chinoises, MCF LRU) : catholicisme en Chine.
– Vendassi Pierre (Post doctorant, Centre Emile Durckheim) : protestantisme en Chine contemporaine.
Scientific events
– Atelier de lecture pour l’Ecole doctorale de l’UBM en 2019, “ Démocratie et traduction au Japon : autour du “Rousseau de l’Orient” , Nakae Chômin (1847-1901) et du républicanisme français”
– Colloque international : 3-4 mars 2021 : « Montesquieu et l’Asie. Traductions, circulations et usages de L’esprit des lois hors d’Europe Occidentale ».