Mapping Other and Self: Language, Space and Identity in the Modern European Geographical Imagination of Central Asia

This thesis investigates the European geographical imagination of language in Central Asia from the late 18th century to the First World War. While this “terra incognita” between Russia and India, China and Persia was shaped according to the interests of empires, it was also conceived by European scholars as the probable cradle of the Indo- European languages and civilisations. Using published as well as unpublished documents from German, French, Russian, Hungarian, Swedish and British archives and libraries, I sketch the lives, ideas, practices and networks of several key figures who contributed to this narrative of Central Asia as a mythical European “homeland”. The thesis opens by discussing the epistemological importance of linguistic questions in geography. It demonstrates how placing philology in spatial context enables us to uncover important dynamics of 18th- and 19th-century research on the Asian roots of European languages, as well as to introduce the role of language and translation in the Humboldt-inspired tradition of modern Western geography. It first suggests that Central Asia served not only as the chessboard of imperial interests as is usually argued in narratives focusing on the “Great Game”, but as a fantasised atopia in which Europeans mirrored their quickly-changing definition of themselves, notably as an imagined national cradle for several European countries. Thus it proposes to deconstruct the dead ends of this quest as well as to trace the diverging paths of geography, linguistics and anthropology not only in the legacy of their canonical ideas and practices but also in their thesir lesser-known controversies, failures and impasses. Focusing on the transnational and translingual lives and works of several geographers, philologists and explorers, it looks at the political horizons and epistemological premises of such narratives of origins and attempts a spatial analysis of the processes involved in the reconstructions of a primaeval European paradise in Central Asia. Lastly, it contends that the geographical quest for Indo-European origins was slowly replaced with a geographical narrative of globalised communication which transformed the linguistic search of an original European homeland in the centre of Asia into a quest for “Silk Roads”, and the traces of ancient civilisations and exchanges across Eurasia

Svetlana Gorshenina. L’Invention de l’Asie centrale. Histoire du concept de la Tartarie à l’Eurasie

This work uses mainly published sources to explore the intellectual history of the very idea of ‘Central Asia’ and cast light on important albeit largely forgotten terminological debates whose scientific and political significance is explained in detail. In the wake of the author’s valued bio-biographical dictionary and introduction to Western exploration in Central Asia (Explorateurs en Asie centrale, 2003) as well as of her Asie centrale. L’invention des frontières et l’héritage russo-sovié..

2021 Linguistic Geographies [online] seminar

Image source : https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/landkarte-der-dialekte-er-isst-die-eier-immer-ohne-salz-und.3720.de.html?dram:article_id=279450 This week marks the beginning of the linguistic geography I organise online, with some of my favorite researchers in the field joining the conversation this Winter and Spring, in English and French. More will follow later this year. Our first seminar on the history and methods of linguistic geography will be held online on Friday 8 January a..

"D'une langue dans l'autre" - Edouard Glissant (#lockdown reads)

« Alors encore vous entendez ces langages du monde qui se rencontrent sur la vague le mont, toutes ces langues qui fracassent l’une dans l’autre comme ces crêtes de vagues en furie, et vous entreprenez, tout un chacun applaudit, de bondir d’une langue dans l’autre, ça fait de grosses dévirades d’imprévu, puis vous coulez dans ce mystère des mots et voilà que vous quittez la débandade et vous défilez comme une rivière à sec dans le secret de son partage de la rivière, alors là pas un n’applaud..

Coquebert de Montbret and the birth of linguistic geography in France. A conversation with Sven Ködel

Sven Ködel was the first person I thought about when I decided to organise a seminar series on the history and methods of linguistic geography, having read about his fascinating research on the diplomat and savant Charles-Étienne Coquebert de Montbret (1751-1831), who carried out groundbreaking work on France's linguistic geography during the early 19th century. Sven, now deputy director of the library at the German Historical Institute in Paris, will present his research during our next semi..

"Crossing historical and contemporary boundaries in geography and linguistics" - a linguistic geography session at the RGS Conference

Extract of Georg Wenker's Linguistic atlas, via Sabine Kaufmann Philip Jagessar and I are organising a session at the Royal Geographical Society conference this year. It's rather broad title is "Crossing historical and contemporary boundaries in geography and linguistics" and we hope to attract participants with various backgrounds in geography. If you are interested, please get in touch wih me or Philip before 5 March 2021. Abstract: Language has a broad range of meaning to ge..

Anthropological and ethnographic photography in Russian Turkestan [NEW PUBLICATION]

Charles-Eugène Ujfalvy, "Kirghise", 1881, Bibliothèque nationale de France/Société de Géographie I spent the better part of 2016 and 2017 at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, where I had the chance to benefit from a Mark-Pigott fellowship to study lesser known series of photographs taken in Central Asia and presented at the French Geographical Society by European travellers during the late 19th century. Within this very extensive body of visual material taking the form of thousands ..

Mapping Other and Self: Language, Space and Identity in the Modern European Geographical Imagination of Central Asia

This thesis investigates the European geographical imagination of language in Central Asia from the late 18th century to the First World War. While this “terra incognita” between Russia and India, China and Persia was shaped according to the interests of empires, it was also conceived by European scholars as the probable cradle of the Indo- European languages and civilisations. Using published as well as unpublished documents from German, French, Russian, Hungarian, Swedish and British archives and libraries, I sketch the lives, ideas, practices and networks of several key figures who contributed to this narrative of Central Asia as a mythical European “homeland”. The thesis opens by discussing the epistemological importance of linguistic questions in geography. It demonstrates how placing philology in spatial context enables us to uncover important dynamics of 18th- and 19th-century research on the Asian roots of European languages, as well as to introduce the role of language and translation in the Humboldt-inspired tradition of modern Western geography. It first suggests that Central Asia served not only as the chessboard of imperial interests as is usually argued in narratives focusing on the “Great Game”, but as a fantasised atopia in which Europeans mirrored their quickly-changing definition of themselves, notably as an imagined national cradle for several European countries. Thus it proposes to deconstruct the dead ends of this quest as well as to trace the diverging paths of geography, linguistics and anthropology not only in the legacy of their canonical ideas and practices but also in their thesir lesser-known controversies, failures and impasses. Focusing on the transnational and translingual lives and works of several geographers, philologists and explorers, it looks at the political horizons and epistemological premises of such narratives of origins and attempts a spatial analysis of the processes involved in the reconstructions of a primaeval European paradise in Central Asia. Lastly, it contends that the geographical quest for Indo-European origins was slowly replaced with a geographical narrative of globalised communication which transformed the linguistic search of an original European homeland in the centre of Asia into a quest for “Silk Roads”, and the traces of ancient civilisations and exchanges across Eurasia

Shahin Mustafaev, Michel Espagne, Svetlana Gorshenina, Claude Rapin, Amridin Berdimuradov, Frantz Grenet (eds.). Cultural Transfers in Central Asia: Before, During and After the Silk Road. Paris/Samarkand, IICAS, 2013, 312 p.

International audienc

Cartographier l’archive saussurienne : Loïc Depecker, Saussure tel qu’en lui‑même. D’après les manuscrits, Paris : Honoré Champion, 2020, 266 p., EAN 9782745353177

International audienc