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  • Transmission(s), transfert(s), reappropriation(s)

    Scientific directors:  Chiara Lastraioli (CESR), Samuel Renier (EES), Cyril Syntez (CRJP)

    Research field 2024-2028

    By choosing to focus on transmission(s), transfer(s) and reappropriation(s), this transversal research axis of the MSH Val de Loire aims to bring together a multidisciplinary group of researchers in order to question the modes and modalities of circulation that these terms cover.

    The question of transmission crosses many fields and currents of research. It questions pedagogical and didactic processes, through the transmission of knowledge, know-how and life skills, both in the school field and in the wider field of lifelong learning. In this sense, it is possible to see in the question of transmission, that of the stakes of mediation and mediatization, linked to the processes, to the instrumentation and to the supports which convey it.

    On another scale, the transmission cannot be thought without speaking about the phenomena of cultural transfers, circulation of ideas, translation and intertextuality. The transmission can thus come to question the movements and the passages which from one time, from one cultural area to another generate phenomena of reception, appropriation even of reappropriation. It also questions the objects that it conveys: knowledge, languages, cultures, techniques, norms, values, etc., without forgetting the material dimensions linked to the objects and artifacts that are transmitted and allow us to question what is at stake in this transmission.

    Through this theme, it is thus a question of questioning the practical and pragmatic modalities of these phenomena, as well as thinking about the epistemological stakes and considering the social and ethical dimensions.

    From a more problematic point of view, the work undertaken within this axis is as much concerned with thinking about and studying the phenomena of transmission as it is with questioning its meaning and limits. The two “resistances of transmission” (Blais, Gauchet & Ottavi, 2014) testify as much to the attachment to transmit, in spite of everything, in the face of renunciations, or even the absence of desire or solicitation, as they do to the resistances to transmission.

    To think about transmission is, in this sense, to think at the same time about everything that is not transmitted. A work would be to engage here in order to determine the various forms that this definition by the negative can take: forgetfulness, loss, unspeakability, etc. What can be done when certain knowledge, certain experiences, certain trials cannot be said and transmitted? What transmission is possible for experiences that cannot be said and shared, insofar as they refer to elements that are of the unspeakable or inexpressible order? What forms can then take the acts of transmission, in order to translate these elements? Following J. Semprun who questioned the dialectic between “Writing or life” (1994), how to think the transmission in its relation to the lived, to the experiences and to the trials of the life? Such questioning cannot avoid a reflection on the forms, the modalities, the tools and the media by which such transmission can take place.

    This problematic also questions the transmission from the technical and experiential point of view of knowledge, know-how, knowledge-beings which are so incorporated that they become implicit and inexplicable. What is the possible history of these omissions that may represent the tacit non-transmissions? How can we envisage and accompany, from a didactic point of view, the emergence, the updating and the explicitation of this knowledge in order to transmit it? How can we think, socially, about the possible place of the loss represented by these transmissions that do not take place, this knowledge that is forgotten, these elements of cultural heritage that disappear and these skills that are not transmitted?

    The transmission, in the patrimonial sense, refers finally to a set of developments and perspectives that come to question the meaning of the inheritance and, sometimes, of the debt. By this angle, material questions are thus raised, as for the possible traces, locatable, usable by the researchers as by the citizens, in order to seize these inheritances. But such a reflection also concerns the symbolic dimension, and the very movement that the fact of inheriting or giving as an inheritance engages. What can and do we wish to transmit? What are the processes of choice, the possible actorialities, the possible power games thus mobilized? When it comes to receiving such an inheritance, similar questions arise as to the recipients, explicit or not, of this movement, as to the possible acceptance or refusal of an inheritance, of a debt, as to the recognition of what constitutes singularities or the shareable common.

    Questions under debate:

    Popularization and dissemination of knowledge: how to make knowledge accessible, how to appropriate it? What operations, what transformations does the diffusion and accessibility of this knowledge imply? What social and epistemological reconfigurations do they produce? In what way do the new information and communication technologies participate in this movement?

    The other side of transmission: thinking about transmission cannot be done without reflecting at the same time on what is forgotten, on what is not transmitted, on what is passed on in silence. What traces can we find of these phenomena? What do they tell us about the movements and times that generated them? How can we work scientifically on what is no longer, or even on what has been forgotten (sometimes irrevocably)?

    Epistemology of transmission, transfers and reappropriations : how do technological changes entail, generate or destroy certain transmission phenomena ?

    Ideological questions linked to transmission and its representations : what limits should be seen in the ideological readings and the theoretical frameworks that allow us to think about the phenomena of transmission ? Without such frameworks, do we not find ourselves confronted, on the contrary, with an impossibility to read certain phenomena and to understand what is at stake in transmission and the movements of transfer?

    Possible work/crossings within the MSH Val de Loire :

    Through the theme of this axis, several perspectives of work shared with other research axes of the MSH are conceivable and could give rise to occasional or regular collaborations, notably in the form of study days or joint publications.

    For example, the question of the transmission of norms, and of the norms of transmission, which has been treated until now in the “Mutation of norms” axis, will be integrated. The question of the circulation of knowledge and know-how could give rise to work shared with colleagues involved in the “Money and Finance” axis, in order to think about the movements and transfers that take place at the same time as economic exchanges.

    The same is true of the “Environmental Humanities”, which today, more than ever, calls for thinking about the phenomena of transmission and reappropriation in the context of the Anthropocene, or the “City and Urban Studies”, which constitutes a privileged framework of analysis for questioning and studying the spatial and environmental dimensions of these phenomena. Not to mention the various perspectives opened up by the “Models, modeling, simulation” axis, which could give rise to joint work on the modeling of transmission phenomena, as well as on the transmission of models and the very notion of model for thinking about transmission and learning.