The concept of imagination is today seen as as a legitimate object of study, having long been discredited by scientific research. However, in modern and contemporary literature, imagination is generally considered in a negative way, as a mental faculty that can cause disease, error, illusion or sin. By cons, its role was very important, because the imagination formed the necessary link between body and soul. So that was the preferred place to act to perform bodily healing as well as spiritual. We would go against this idea of imagination by studying intellectual tradition and alternative and misunderstood practice. Since the XIIth and XIIIth centuries until the early XIXth century, thinkers and practitioners from a diverse set of disciplines, expressing themselves from different institutional positions, supported the idea that imagination has great powers on the body and on the body and mind of others.

Seminar EHESS/CNRS organised by Elizabeth Claire (chargée de recherche au CNRS), Béatrice Delaurenti (maître de conférences à l’EHESS), Roberto Poma (maître de conférences à l’Université Paris Est-Créteil), Koen Vermeir (chargé de recherche au CNRS).

Argument

The concept of imagination is today seen as as a legitimate object of study, having long been discredited by scientific research. However, in modern and contemporary literature, imagination is generally considered in a negative way, as a mental faculty that can cause disease, error, illusion or sin. By cons, its role was very important, because the imagination formed the necessary link between body and soul. 

So that was the preferred place to act to perform bodily healing as well as spiritual. We would go against this idea of imagination by studying intellectual tradition and alternative and misunderstood practice. Since the XIIth and XIIIth centuries until the early XIXth century, thinkers and practitioners from a diverse set of disciplines, expressing themselves from different institutional positions, supported the idea that imagination has great powers on the body and on the body and mind of others.
Like last year, the seminar will work around texts in the manner of a workshop, and be joined to implement a collective work of discussion, analysis and comparison of sources over the long term.

Archives

2012–2013, 2013–2014, 2014-2015.

Programme

Fridays, 13:00 – 17:00, EHESS, 105, bd raspail, Paris 6th (tbc).

January 22

• 15:00–17:00 Roberto Poma (UPEC) L’effet placebo sous le prisme de la médecine magnétique (XVIe-XVIIe siècle).
• 15:00–17:00 Nicole Edelman (Université Paris Ouest Nanterre) De la lune à l’encéphale : l’imagination des somnambules magnétiques, des voyant.e.s, des médiums et de ceux (et celles) qui provoquent ces états somnambuliques ou hypnotiques au XIXe siècle en France.

March 25

• 13:00–15:00 Christian Delorenzo (UPEC)  De l’imagination à la fiction. Monstres, impostures et prodiges chez Ambroise Paré.
• 15:00–17:00 Isabella Mattazzi (Université de Ferrare) La mécanique merveilleuse des passions chez Tiphaigne de la Roche.

June 10

• 13:00–15:00 Frédérique Aït-Touati (CRAL/CNRS-EHESS) Météores, machines, merveilles : l’imagination en scène au début du XVIIe siècle.
• 15:00–17:00 Florence Dumora (Université Paris Diderot) titre à venir

June 24

• 13:00–15:00 Maaike van der Lugt (Université Paris Diderot) L’imagination de la mère (XIIe-XVe siècle).
• 15:00–17:00 Roberto Poma (UPEC) et Koen Vermeir (CNRS) L’effet placebo au XVIIIe et au XIXe siècle.

Contact : elizabeth.claire (at) ehess.fr ; beatrice.delaurenti (at) ehess.fr ; poma (at) u-pec.fr ; koen.vermeir (at) univ-paris-diderot.fr