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Download PdfV Connecta amb l'Edat Mitjana (October'24-May'25)
“Institutional Identities and Representations of Collective Solidarities (9th-16th century)”
A few premises on institutional identities
Among many things that anthropological reflection accumulated since the 19th and mid-20th centuries, has bequeathed to our field of historical science is the general observation that the search for essences by collective subjects depends on processes that aim to sustain the bonds between the subjects of a group through codes of “identification” and “similarity” while following a historically created discursive path. Although artificial, because it derives from an invention of the human institution and not from a given of nature, the search for similarity between the individuals in many forms of collective is what engenders the conviction that identity represents the body (as a corpus mysticum-politicum, as macro or micro political bodi-es) in a way that makes a unitary and stable whole being. In the long history of the Middle Ages, this noti-on is essentially organic. It gives meaning to how the idea of ”individuality” is experienced by those who express themselves from the collective place, a place of multiple practices and experiences, jointly political, cultural, religious, legal, and especially artistic. After all, this also gives rise to the intricate problem of the manifestation of identity with the manifestations of solidarity between individuals of the same group, as well as the forms of interaction between distinct groups, in which the institution emerges as the profound mark of the discourses of similarity/differentiation marked by historicity in the lived record of the past. To reflect on those issues, we are now inviting our participants to think based on a previous notion of socio-historical institution, taking it as something on which the basic premise rests: institutions are the emulation of solidarity between individuals in a joint process of social-historical experience. The hypo-thesis that is proposed announces that individuals share their thoughts about their social participation and that even their referential position in each linguistic universe, that is, their self-signification as subjects, depends on this, leading to a “harmonization” of preferences that allows us to deal with an institutionali-zed common sense. It is according to this common sense, split from discourses of meaning and subordina-ted to a previous scale, that social decisions can be arranged and described in a specific political context since it is there that the “voices”, the analogies, the classifications, the identities, and a whole field of affec-tions of what can be operated by institutional language reside. To contribute to this reflection, we ask our invitees, coming from different areas of research and dedicated to different temporalities, to participate in this fifth edition of Connecta amb l’Edat Mitjana to think about the interaction between collective identities and the inventions of institutions. It is hoped that they will be able to bring, from their respective perspec-tives of analysis and research methodology, a strong collaboration that can be shared for the renewal of historical interpretation and the dissemination of a varied and broad debate noted by the new generation of European historiography.
PROGRAMME
1st Bloc – Early Middle Ages
15th October (4pm): Sergi Tella (Universitat de Lleida), De partibus Hispaniae ad nos confugerunt. Cohesion and Solidarity among displaced people from the Iberian Peninsula to the Carolingian Empire in the 9th Century.
12th November (4pm): William Curtis (University of Manchester), Saints cults and Lombard Ethnic Identity in Late-11th Century Salerno.
10th December (4pm): Mats Pfeifer (Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg), What does Burgundia signify in the 10th and 11th Centuries? Remarks on the Historiographical Perception and Diplomatic Representation of a supposed Burgundian Collective Consciousness.
14th January (4pm): Alicia Martín Rodríguez (Universidad de Salamanca), Territorial Conflicts and Local Identities in Early Medieval Northern Iberia.
30th January (4pm): 1st Round Table: moderated by Igor Santos Salazar (Università di Trento)
2nd Bloc – Late Middle Ages
11th February (4pm): Thomas Lacomme (Université Jean Moulin-Lyon III), How the memoria of a Lay Founder contributes to the Identity and Represen- tations of an Ecclesiastical Institution : Saint-Étienne de Troyes and similar cases of study (12th-15th).
18th March (4pm): Anna Floris (Università di Palermo), Forms of Collective Liability in Late Medieval Sardinia: Origins and Interpre- tations of the
Incarica Institution (12th-15th Century).
8th April (4pm): Laure Domont (Université d’Avignon-Université Paul Valéry-Montpellier III), Construction, Representation, and Competition of Powers in the Lordship of Montpellier (Early 13th-Late 14th Century).
13th May (4pm): Jaime Moraleda (Universidad de Castilla la Mancha), Kings, Nobles, Judges and Witnesses: Models of Identity and their Represen- tation in the Legal Texts of the 16th Century.
27th May (4pm): 2nd Round Table: moderated by Rogerio Tostes (Universitat de Lleida)
Contact: medieval@historia.udl.cat
Seminar link session (free access).
REGISTERED SESSIONS
