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from April 4, 2024 to April 5, 2024
Published on February 28, 2024– Updated on February 28, 2024

Territories, Societies and People Living in "The In-Between": From Antiquity to the Present Day

Venue: CY Cergy Paris Université, Les Chênes, Cergy

International conference coordinated by Alexandre Ruelle, CY AGORA laboratory.

 
This seminar offers a review of the notion called "the in-between," or l'entre-deux, which is usually reduced to describe the frontier, or the step into its medieval dimension. This vague definition can lead to an over mischaracterisation of the term. Therefore, it is necessary to bring awareness to the unique and diverse (geo)political, geographical, institutional, social, cultural, and even linguistic experiences that it produces. These intermediate spaces create territories, societies, and individuals which cannot be reduced to being marginal to the centres by which they are supposed to be defined. Based on the interactions between "the in-between" people and their territory(ies), this colloquium highlights the political, military, economical and social practices, as well as the creation of hybrid or fragmented identities through three points:
  • Conceptualisation(s) and theorisation(s) of the 'in-between'. The aim is to identify the factors and/or concrete conditions that enable a person, a territory or even a society to be considered as “in-between”.
  • Experiences and experiments of "the in-between". By confronting the visions from above and below, this paper focuses on the creation - both voluntary and involuntary - of unique and adaptable foreign bodies - both permanent and ephemeral.
  • (De)constructions of representations of the "in-between" that seem to have settled into the collective imagination as unstable and uncertain constructs. This raises questions about the limits of this reductive concept.


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