Contributing to the current dynamic wave of scientific research on the history and cultures of Indian Ocean societies, this international conference will discuss material culture relating to private and emotional life in the Indian Ocean region. How have past and present societies given shape and depth to affection and emotion and to feelings of love through material culture? In a vein similar to the initial research seminar entitled ‘Témoins d’amour, témoins de vie: Objets et images de l’intime’ held on the 12th of November 2015, this conference will focus on the study and interpretation of love tokens and other reflections, representations and expressions of romantic and sentimental feelings and discourses over the centuries. One of the main concerns will be to question the functions and meanings of these material objects in intimate exchanges or in what Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly qualifies as the “deepest corners of the soul”. 

This event will be organized along (but not limited to) the following themes:

1. History of private life and material objects: archaeology of daily life, love relations and sexuality, private and public life. 

2. Conservation and archives of the Indian Ocean: The objects as vessels for heritage, collective and individual memory, conservation policies regarding objects and artefacts (museums, libraries, archives), the historian and memory, heritage, amateur historians and their contributions, the relation between family, popular and academic history.

3. Specificity of the objects of the Indian Ocean region: Role played by fetishism, the question of taboo, the object as work of art expressing love, the object as a sign (language and knowledge, symbol, hint), the social imagination: the status of the object which crystalizes people’s fears, desires, and memory. 

Sponsored by the Observatory for Indian Ocean Societies (O.S.O.I.-FED 4127) and the City of Saint-Denis, this event will be held on the first day at the University of La Reunion Moufia Campus in Saint-Denis and in the Old Town Hall, on the second day (Reunion Island).

This is a public conference with no admittance fee.