What has been, and still is, the role of museums in cultural globalization, given their association with nationalization? Do we have enough material to consider a history of non-Western museums? If a global (comparative? transnational?) history is possible, how should it be approached, and at what cost?

Museums and the Globalization of Culture.

• Krzysztof Pomian, Honorary Research Director at the CNRS (France) and Emeritus Professor at Nicolas-Copernicus University, Toruń (Poland)

History of museum is a chapter of a much longer history of collecting: of treasuries which are an almost universal phenomenon, and of private collections born independently in ancient China and in ancient Rome, and rediscovered in the 15th century CE by social and cultural elites of Italy and France fascinated with the latter. The invention of museum, an act of serendipity, was possible only in such a climate of worship of Roman antiquity. Once invented, museum was confined to Italy, before propagating since the end of the 17th c. in Europe and the world. In the process, collecting focused on antiquity acquired an encyclopedic character being extended to all manifestations of culture and nature, the exhibition of objects according to predominantly aesthetic criteria left place to the one which follows the instructions of history and of science, the reign of laymen, mostly artists, was replaced with that of specialized professionals, and an originally elitist institution became a democratic one.

In the wake of the French Revolution museum was recognized as one of principal national institutions which must be open to all members of a nation. But it was the Industrial Revolution that implemented this idea. The Great Exhibition of Industry of All Nations (1851) launched at he same time the democratization and the globalization of museum: the adaptation of it to the requirements of visitors coming from the working classes; the entrance into European museums of objects coming from extra European civilizations and their promotion to the dignity of Art; the proliferation of museums outside Europe, in the Americas, in India, in Australia, and outside the realm of the European colonization: in the Ottoman Empire, in Egypt, an Japan and in China . In these new environments, in particular in the United States, museum acquired its present day characteristic features and its centrality in the social and cultural life of nations and cities.

Krzysztof Pomian is directeur de recherche émérite  at CNRS and professor emeritus of Nicolaus Copernicus University (UMK).  Deprived in 1968  of his position of  adjunct professor at the Faculty of Philosophy, Warsaw University because of his public criticism of official politics, he worked at the Department of Manuscripts of the Polish National Library (1969-1972). In 1973 he left Poland for France, where in 1984 he became directeur de recherche for the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS). In 1999/2000 – 2005/6 he was professor of the Nicolaus Copernicus University (UMK), Toruń, Poland. Among his numerous publications, the latest is a global history of museums: Le Musée : une histoire mondiale (I. Du trésor au musée ; II. L’ancrage européen,1789-1850; III. A la conquête du monde, 1850-1920), Paris 2020-2022.

 

This session, dedicated to Asia and its growing role in cultural globalization, aims to delve into two key points: 1) the de-Westernization of globalization, as evidenced by the increasing prominence of cultural productions from countries such as Japan, South Korea, and China in the global market; and 2) the strategies developed by governments and private actors to secure their presence in this global market, including through the use of digital media and imagery.

 

An East Asianization of Pop Culture: Hallyu as a case study.

• Vincenzo Cicchelli, Université Paris Cité, Sylvie Octobre, French Ministry of Culture.

The globalization of culture can be seen as a two-fold long-lasting process characterized by a more intense, rapid and broader circulation of goods, flows, imaginaires, iconographies, narratives and memories as well as a stronger competition between nation-states, geographic areas and civilizations to promote their visions of society, values and behaviors, social bonds and humanity. In the realm of pop culture, the contemporary world as never been so shared (in terms of the circulation of cultural references consumed by urban, educated global generations) and so plural (in terms of the multiplication of the centres of cultural productions).
The recent history of the globalization of pop culture is witnessing a great shift between the undisputed hegemony of the US and the emergency of new global actors localized in East Asia: Japan,  South Korea and China. Therefore the aim of this seminar is to explore the hypothesis of the East Asianization of Pop culture through a monographic approach (both multilevel and multiscalar) of the paradigmatic case study of Hallyu (the Korean Wave). This approach is based on the following four dimensions: a) the dimension of production by the observation of South Korean version of the global aesthetic capitalism (the entertainment capitalism); b) the dimension of global circulation by the analysis of the cultural counterflows coming from South Korea to the rest of the world (the alternative cultural globalization); c) the dimension of the symbolic and political contents of the South Korean cultural production (that we call sweet powder instead of soft power); d) the consumption of Hallyu in France that allows young people (the cosmopolitan amateurs) to develop skills and empower themselves, to affiliate themselves and tanscend cultural and social boundaries.
 
Vincenzo Cicchelli is an Associate Professor at Université Paris Cité (Ceped/IRD) and the Director of the International Relations of the Global Research Institute of Paris (GRIP, Université Paris Cité). Sylvie Octobre is a researcher at Deps (Ministère de la Culture, France) and associate researcher at Centre Max Weber (Lyon). Their most recent joint publications include: « K-dramas. Ces séries télé qui vous font du bien », Puf, forthcoming; « Pour l’amour de la K-pop », Réseaux, 2023 / 6 (N° 242), p.89-126; « K-pop, soft power et culture globale », Puf, 2022; « The Sociology of Hallyu Pop Culture », Palgrave, 2021; « La culture à l’âge global », Réseaux, 2021 / 2 (N° 226-227), p.19-43. They are the Editors-in-chief of the « Global Youth Studies » family of publications (BRILL Publishing, Leyden/Boston) composed of the Journal indexed in Scopus « Youth and Globalization »; the book series « Youth in a Globalizing World » and the series of short monographs « BRILL Research Perspective on Global Youth »: https://www2.brill.com/gys

• Christophe Charle, Honorary Professor, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne

 

The session will focus on the effects of technical systems on the global flow (or lack thereof) of images.

 

With Benoît Turquety (Université Paris 8) and Christine Ithurbide (CNRS Bordeaux)

 

Technical Networks and Imaginary Flows: Heavy Media Politics.

• Benoît Turquety, Professor at the université Paris 8,

For Gilbert Simondon, the industrial phase of technics is characterized by the dominance of technical networks over the individual objects and the small-scale technical ensembles. Technical networks are geographically extended, sometimes to the point of covering the world, and they are massive in every sense, as they are based on extremely heavy infrastructures: factories, laboratories, cables, roads, etc. Their enormous physical weight induces a long historical inertia. The production and circulation of images and sounds around the globe has been historically determined by such networks at every moment. In fact, the infrastructures which have governed cinema and other industrial phase media actually date back from the colonial era. This has engendered several major difficulties in African contexts, leading to dependencies that have continued after the formal national independences. By studying a few local situations, we will try to show how the weight of (post-)colonial infrastructures has been dealt with, and how networks have been deflected, hijacked, or, maybe, simply ignored.

Benoît Turquety is a Professor in film studies at the Université Paris 8 (ESTCA), director of the EUR ArTeC, and director of an SNF project on Nagra sound recorders.

 

The Case of Indian Media

• Christine Ithurbide, CNRS, Bordeaux

 

 

 

 

The International Circulation of Popular Fiction, Between Globalised Imaginaries and Industrial Dynamics

• Matthieu Letourneux, Université Paris Nanterre

 

Since they were designed from the outset to circulate as widely as possible, and because publishers and authors did not hesitate to imitate contemporary successes to achieve such broad distribution, popular fiction quickly gave rise to intense international circulation. What circulated were not only images, stories, and fictional genres, but also the formats and media through which they were conveyed—each shaped by its own constraints—engaging in a continuous dialogue between the homogenization of the imagination and the reconfiguration of narratives according to national contexts.

By drawing on examples from the 19th century (urban mysteries and serialized booklets), the early 20th century (focusing on the European circulation of crime and Western stories inspired by American dime novels), and the 1960s and 1970s (with the intense Franco-Italian exchange of crime and horror novels, photonovels, films, and comics), we will show how this international flow of serialized productions requires us to consider both popular imaginaries and the practices of industry professionals (publishers, producers, distributors) in tandem. These actors play a crucial role in enabling imported images, narratives, and genres to be assimilated into the media and cultural ecosystems that receive them.

Matthieu Letourneux is a Professor at the University of Paris Nanterre and a member of the CSLF. His research focuses on serial and media cultures (Fictions à la chaîne, Seuil, 2017), popular publishing (Aux origines de la pop culture with Loïc Artiaga, 2022, La Librairie Jules Tallandier, with Jean-Yves Mollier), humor (L’Empire du rire, with Alain Vaillant, 2020), and criminal imaginaries (Cinéma premiers crimes, 2015, Fantômas, Biographie d’un criminel imaginaire, 2013). He is the editor-in-chief of the journal Belphégor.

What are the new forms of cultural diplomacy, and their role in globalization? What is the place and role of digital media and algorithms in this process? Do they encourage a global circulation of artistic forms, or the closing of cultural communities?

 

Digital Soft Power of Heritage Media. Navigating Post-Human Environments

• Natalia Grincheva, Program Leader, LASALLE University of the Arts Singapore
  
  Digital Soft Power of Heritage Media conceptualises a phenomenon of digital soft power, identifying, describing, and explaining its main prerequisites, components, and manifestations in the context of online media activities of heritage institutions: galleries, libraries, archives, and museums. It focuses on three foundational digital soft power dimensions: content, audiences, and narratives, revealing how each of them emerge, transform, co-exist in, and shape the global media space. The book exposes cultural mechanics, political technologies, media strategies and global impacts of digital soft power exercised by contemporary cultural heritage institutions.
  
  Dr Natalia Grincheva is a Program Leader in Arts Management at LASALLE, University of Arts Singapore, and an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Digital Studio at the University of Melbourne. She is an internationally recognized expert on innovative forms and global trends in contemporary museology, digital diplomacy and international cultural relations. She is the author of three monographs Geopolitics of Digital Heritage (Cambridge University Press: 2024), Museum Diplomacy in the Digital Age (Routledge: 2020) and Global Trends in Museum Diplomacy (Routledge: 2019). Now she is working on a new monograph, Digital Soft Power of Heritage Media, to be published with Cambridge University Press in 2025.

 

• Anaïs Fléchet, Professor in Cultural History at Sciences Po Strasbourg.

This session, focused on music, raises three key questions: 1) the issue of the de-Westernization of cultural globalization, particularly through the growing role of non-Western countries in the process, while acknowledging that the channels of diffusion are still predominantly controlled by Western countries; 2) on a broader level, initiating a comparison between the processes of globalization in the field of music with those occurring in cinema and visual arts, specifically to explore whether a global field of music exists, similar to the international fields of publishing (as studied by Gisèle Sapiro) and art (as examined by Larissa Buchholz); and 3) how to incorporate the question of imagery into the discussion, for instance, by considering the global circulation of album covers and their visual impact.