Programme

Wednesday 21st of November: Moufia University Campus,

Arts and Social Sciences Faculty, Saint-Denis, Reunion Island

Elie Amphitheater (150)

8:30-9:00: Registration of the participants

9:00-9:45: Opening addresses of the conference

- Frédéric Miranville, President of the University of La Réunion

- Jean-Claude Carpanin Marimoutou, Vice-Dean of research at the Arts and Social Sciences Faculty

- Corinne Duboin, Director of DIRE laboratory

- Jean-Philippe Watbled, Director of the LCF laboratory

- Laurent Segelstein, Architectural and Heritage Animator, City of Saint Denis

9:45-10:00:General introduction by the organisers of the event

Session 1: Material Culture, Heritage and Sentiment

Chair: Vilasnee Tampoe (Université de La Réunion)

10:00-10:25: Pamila Gupta (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa), ‘Balcony, Shutter, Door: Baroque Heritage Making in Stone Town (Zanzibar)’

This paper is based on recent ethnographic fieldwork in Stone Town (October 2012 and July 2015), and suggests new ways to address the politics of cultural heritage making in historic Zanzibar by way of an understanding through the materiality of beloved objects—the balcony, shutter, and door—, and ideas of the baroque.

10:25-10:50: Pedro Pombo (Goa University, Goa, Inde), ‘Ruins, Written Walls and Personal Museums: Belonging, (Dis)place and Memories at Two Indian Ocean Margins’

This paper presents a reflexive analysis on the modes of registering and sharing memories of displacement at two opposite margins of the Western Indian Ocean: South Mozambique and Western India. This allows us to see the history in the landscape and inside home spaces, calling for a sensibility to perceive the aesthetics of the heart and the space, the colours, sounds and objects that surround narratives, memories and descriptions of personal stories.

10:50-11:05: Question time and discussions

11:05-11:20: Coffee break

Session 2: Traditional Artefacts, Rituals and Sentimentality 

Chair: Issa Kanté (Université de La Réunion)

11:20-11:45: César Cumbe (Universidade Pedagógica, Maputo, Mozambique), ‘Le Mozambique du cœur ouvert : quand artisanat et écriture populaire s’adonnent à l’amour sans langue de bois’

The graphic gesture of Mozambican craftsmen exhibits a multilingual, interactive and performative scriptural environment through traditional objects ready to be offered. It allows us to read and see the open heart of Mozambique without unnecessary waffle.

11:45-12:10: Kutlwano Cele (Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, Afrique du Sud), ‘Beaded Expressions: A Comparison between Traditional Zulu Beadwork and Contemporary Jewellery’

Zulu beadwork can be seen as playing a significant role in Zulu culture in almost every aspect of daily life, from communicating love messages to displaying status and wealth. By drawing a comparison between traditional Zulu beadwork and contemporary jewellery work, I use the notion of deconstruction as a means to help me construct my own aesthetic while re interpreting the aesthetics used within traditional Zulu beadwork from a 21st century contemporary point of view.

12:10-12:25: Question time and discussions

12:30-14:00: Lunch break (Labourdonnais University Restaurant, Moufia University Campus)

Session 3: Popular Culture, Love Tokens and Memory

Chair: Corinne Duboin (Université de La Reunion)

14:00-14:25: Samia Khatun (University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh, Dacca, Bangladesh), ‘Love ballads and Textile Industries in Modern Bengal’

This paper examines the love ballads that emerged in Bengal from the late 17th century as an archive for understanding the historical imaginations of workers in the Bengal delta.

14:25-14:50: Françoise Sylvos (Université de La Réunion), ‘Le reggae de l’océan Indien comme gage d’amour’

Based on interviews with artists and reggae songs from the Indian Ocean, this conference will consider the song as a pledge of universal or personal love.

14:50-15h15: Felicity Hand (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelone, Espagne), ‘From Diego with Love: Cultivating Memories from the Chagos Islands’

The Chagossian people, forcibly deported from the Islands in the late 1960s, have kept their culture alive through three manifestations of material culture. Séga music and dance, food and a love of the soil still inspire them to remember and cherish their lost homeland.

15:15-15:30: Question time and discussions

15:30-15:45: Break

Session 4: Literature, Material Culture and Love  Tokens  

Chair: Bénédicte Letellier (Université de La Réunion)

15:45-16:10: Esther Pujolràs-Noguer ((Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelone, Espagne), ‘History, Memory and Desire in M.G. Vassanji’s The Book of Secrets’

Pius Fernandes, the narrator of M.G.Vassanji’s The Book of Secrets, utilises a material culture approach to the reconstruction of the East African past via the object, Alfred Corbin’s colonial diary, around which the novel develops. Considering the literary essence of the object of study and the fascination and mystery that envelops it, I contend that Vassanji’s novel exposes literature itself as a forceful manifestation of material culture.

16:10-16:35: Anne-Cécile Le Ribeuz-Koenig(Université de La Réunion), ‘Objet, image et voix de l’amour, le miroir parlant dans L’Espinette amoureuse de Jean Froissart (1369)’.

At the heart of a poetic medieval story in French, a talking mirror, the pledge of someone’s love, becomes an emblem of written poetry. The magical object reveals itself as the repository of a rich cultural tradition, while at the same time reflecting on the changing conditions of production and reception of lyrical poetry that passes from voice to sight.

16:35-16:50: Question time and discussions

17:00: End of first day

19:30: Conference dinner for participants and organisers (Restaurant Ainsi Parlait Zarathoustra, Carré Cathédrale, 13 ruelle Édouard, Saint-Denis)

Thursday 22nd of November

Saint-Denis Old City Hall, Wedding Hall (1^st floor)

8:30-9:00: Registration and coffee

9:00-9:30: Opening speeches

9:30-10:00: Keynote address: Françoise Barret-Ducrocq, Professeure Emérite (Université Denis Diderot, Paris), ‘De l’universel au particulier : les gages d’affection dans les classes populaires à Londres au XIX^e siècle’

Session 5: Love Tokens and Intimacy

Chair: Sophie Geoffroy (Université de La Réunion)

10:00-10:25: Penny Russell (University of Sydney, Sydney, Australie), ‘The Value of a Silk Visite: Love, Theft and Commerce in Colonial Sydney’

This paper explores the meanings of a silk visite stolen by a draper’s assistant of Sydney as a gift for his fiancée in 1851, tracing its transitions from item of commerce to token of love and, ultimately, to identified stolen goods that led to Thomas Skinner’s arrest and imprisonment for larceny. Although the garment itself has not survived, it is still possible to trace the knotty threads that bound it to Thomas Skinner’s sorry history of love and labour, and a family’s fragile grasp on respectability in a colonial town.

10:25-10:50: Angélique Gigan (Université de La Réunion), ‘Désirs sous les tropiques : les Bourbonnaises, objets de plaisir.

Through a series of period testimonies by administrators and travellers, this paper will attempt to show that the description of Bourbon women highlights a scopic drive that refers to everyday objects of intimacy.

10:50-11:05: Question time and discussions

11:05-11:20: Coffee break

11:20-11:45: Alecia Simmonds (University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australie), ‘Possessive Love: The Legal Life of Romantic Objects in Early Twentieth-Century Australia’

Focusing on the engagement ring and the trousseau, this paper examines the relationship between love, law and material culture in early twentieth century Australian courts. It traces the life-path of these romantic objects from the private world of romance to the spectacular moral theatre of law, where they served as tangible proof of the existence of a love relationship. In contrasting the fate of these two objects we can begin to unravel the multiple meanings ascribed to the material culture of romantic life in the early-twentieth century.

11:45-12:10: Patricia-Marie Ducret(Université de La Réunion), ‘Les échanges épistolaires entre Bourbonnais au cours des XIX^e et XX^e siècles :  expressions de l’amour filial, de l’amour platonique ou de l’amitié’

Filial love, platonic love or simply friendship between two people revealed by epistolary exchanges between Bourbonnais from 1800 to the beginning of the 20th century.

12:10-12:25: Question time and discussions

12:30-14:30: Lunch break (Grand Marché de Saint-Denis, first floor, 2 Rue du Maréchal Leclerc, Saint-Denis)

Session 6: Endangered Tradition(s) and Historical Inheritance

Chair: Sandra Saayman (Université de La Réunion)

14:30-14:55: Anna Clark (Australian Centre for Public History, University of Technology, Sydney), ‘Passing on the Past: Contemplating Historical Consciousness and Inheritance’

Drawing on Australian research, this paper explores the relationship between inheritance and historical consciousness. It discusses the materiality of historical inheritance, but also raises questions about using material cultural analysis in settler-colonial societies where Indigenous history is frequently characterised by silence and erasure as well as continuity.

14:55-15:20: Martinho Pedro (Universidade Pedagógica, Maputo, Mozambique), ‘De l’art du familier et du privé à l’imaginaire social chez les Va-Makonde du Mozambique’

Faced with a possible disappearance in the colonial and post-colonial period, the Makonde cultural heritage is now expressed in art and represents the imagination of this ethnic group.

15:20-15:45: Gabrielle Manglou (Artiste, La Réunion), ‘Hypothèse de l’objet en creux’

Where are the objects from Reunion Island's past? Not the usual corn grinder, “karo lontan”, “bertel”, “grègues” and Guigoz milk boxes, but the others? Jewellery, glasses, clothes, cherished objects? Where are these objects? On which shelf?

15:45-16:00: Question time and discussions

16:00-16:30: Conclusions and perspectives

16:30: End of the Conference