ENS de Lyon ERAMA junior laboratory (Expressions et Représentations de l’Autorité dans les Mondes Anciens / Expressions and Representations of Authority in the Ancient Worlds), is organizing a symposium on the ways of staging authority, on Thursday 21st and Friday 22nd November 2013 at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon. These representations of authority are often codified and form an integral part of authority itself, understood as being a process of the acceptance of hierarchy as legitimate, distinct both from rhetoric and violence. Authority becomes partly effective in proportion with the awareness of its representations and manifestations. Its perceived image, as well as the image it tends to give of itself to be established or enforced, must then be kept under control.
This call for papers is primarily targeted at doctoral students and young researchers working on Antiquity from various perspectives : literary, historical, philosophical, epigraphic, archaeological, etc. By combining these different types of research and fields of study, the symposium aims at a better understanding of this phenomenon, which can link and integrate political, economic, social and cultural aspects. In accordance with ERAMA’s vocation, we will mainly stick to the traditional time span from protohistory to the emergence of barbarian kingdoms and we intend to include the Greek and Roman worlds as well as other civilizations of the Mediterranean basin.
Understanding the ways of staging authority and highlighting what is specific to each authority includes taking into account both case studies and more general analyses, and deciphering specific mechanisms as well as analysing long-term evolutions. Thanks to a rational, chronological and thematic organization of the contributions of each participant, some characteristics of authority, common to our various fields of study, will be identified and defined : which means are used to outline, introduce, spread, put into practice or commemorate authority ?
The different interventions will have to fit into one of the following two axes :
The purpose of this first part of the symposium is to put into question the conception an authority has about itself by studying the different forms it takes according to the image of itself it wants to convey, whether it refers to literary or iconographic representations, specific trappings of power (such as the throne, the sceptre or the crown, etc.) or even ritual or ceremonial practices (initiation, inauguration ceremonies, triumph, funerals, and other celebrations), within a precise time and space framework.
This second part of the symposium will focus on the impact of authority through space and time, taking into account the ways and means people vested with authority resorted to in order to spread it and assert their position, either to establish, to maintain or to ensure its perpetuation in collective memory. Epigraphic inscriptions, architectonic choices, onomastic data, intertextual phenomena, economic and cultural exchanges, or the use of coins for monetary transfer are potential means and materials used in this respect.
Proposed papers must be sent through the Internet to ERAMA at erama@ens-lyon.fr, before 31st March 2013, in the form of a 300-maximum-word abstract. Please mention the title chosen and indicate precisely which axis you have selected. Answers will be sent within two months. Presentations, delivered either in French or in English during the symposium, should not exceed 25 minutes and may be used for further digital publication.
Proposals : erama@ens-lyon.fr
Informations : Jérôme Bastick
