LASLAR doctoral day (University of Caen)
May 26, 2025
The “counter-analysis of society”, from the Grand Siècle to the present day
(Letters, Theater, Cinema)
For our next annual meeting of the LASLAR doctoral students' day, we propose to explore the notion of “counter-analysis of society” in the arts. Coming from the work of Marc Ferro on cinema, counter-analysis would constitute “the material for a story other than History”[1]where the film, integrated “into the world which surrounds it and with which it communicates”[2]is conceived as a work revealing an internal reflection relating both to the space-time that it represents and to that from which it comes. Even more, it would have the effect of “destructuring [l’Histoire] that several generations of statesmen and thinkers had succeeded in organizing into a beautiful system.[3]and would destroy the image “that each institution, each individual, had created before society”[4].
The counter-analysis of society would thus follow the official analysis of events and call it into question, revealing “the latent behind the apparent, the non-visible through the visible”[5]. Counter-analysis therefore becomes a critical tool that questions social structures, ideologies and collective imaginations, offering an image of the margins, anomalies and discontinuities. If the counter-analysis also has the principle of revealing “the other side of a society”[6] and therefore a “reality which is not communicated directly”[7]it will correspond to a part of criticism based on a practice of the implicit or the suggestion, unlike the official analysis which is intended to be educational and easily received by the public.
This power conferred on cinema by Marc Ferro, however, seems not to be limited to this discipline alone and would benefit from being extended to other modes of representation such as theater and literature: the images produced there are also susceptible to provide access to what institutional or consensual narratives can neglect, distort or make invisible. Indeed, the “social world” and its political and genealogical issues have since the 17th century been the subject of artistic representations more or less discreetly misaligned with state discourses: let us think of the theater of Molière and the Tartuffe quarrel, of the Persian Letters by Montesquieu, to the forms that justice takes in Les Mystères de Paris by Eugène Sue or even to Ionesco's plays such as Rhinocéros… so many examples which under entertainment show less expected aspects of society and its history. We will therefore seek to clarify a conception or possible conceptions of counter-analysis as they can emerge within a multidisciplinary approach, and this through the following three axes:
Axis 1: Methodological aspects: definitions, applications and openings (cinematographic, literary and theatrical)
This will involve studying examples of films, plays and literary texts which include elements of counter-analysis of society, as well as thinking about the specific tools that this approach implies for each genre. Marc Ferro, for example, is interested in cinematic slips of the tongue and cites the film Dura Lex (Lev Koulechov, 1925): when the actor orders a “Russian-style” meal in a restaurant located in British territory, it would be “Russia, l 'USSR of the first trials'[8] who would guess “under the mask of Canada”[9]. These slips of the tongue or “missteps” (not necessarily involuntary) could be expressed in literature through stories of conscience, practices of memory writing, ironic modalization games or narrative structures revealing underlying tensions; the theatrical staging could for its part allow a glimpse of a hidden meaning through gestures, silences or stage details.
These examples will provide an opportunity to reflect on the semantic scope of the term “analysis”, in connection with other terms such as “counter-expertise”, “counter-text”, “counter-history”, “counter- test”, etc.
- What examples of films can be considered as “counter-analyses of society” and by what processes do they highlight invisible or little-known aspects?
- What tools could be considered specific to the “counter-analysis of society” in literary and theatrical works?
- How do the concepts associated with the prefix “counter” enrich the notion of counter-analysis and can we consider these terms as specific forms of the same critical approach?
Axis 2: The author and his relationship to Memory: between completion and confrontation?
Since the counter-analysis of society is defined in relation to official history, it is necessarily part of a balance of forces involving the construction, diffusion and rooting of collective memory. Whether it is a question of completing a partial or biased historical discourse, or of correcting or even deconstructing the consensus, we will have to consider the possibly polemical and contestatory dimension of counter-analysis, which seems to be able to become the prerogative of a certain caste of artists possibly linked to a behind the scene, or who on the contrary placed at the heart of institutions would ultimately disavow their absolute power.
- Does the counter-analysis of society seek to complement dominant narratives, or to deconstruct them entirely?
- How does the counter-analysis carried out by these mediums contribute to enriching our understanding of History and social structures?
- Who produces the counter-analysis, and by virtue of what legitimacy?
Axis 3: Reception as a mirror of society’s counter-analysis
Reception, by constituting a critical act in itself, enriches the meaning of the work and can therefore influence its counter-analytical scope. After the broadcast of the film The Strike (1925), Sergei Eisenstein observed for example that “if the allegory of butchery […] created the desired effect in the towns, in the countryside on the contrary it left indifferent the peasants accustomed to seeing blood flow in this way. It will therefore be essential to examine how reception can itself become a form of counter-analysis of society, with censorship or rejection of a work being able to reveal implicit aspects of our communities and thus highlight tensions. social issues, ideological resistance, or even cultural divides.
- How does the reception of a work contribute to its critical role or to its transformation into a “counter-analysis of society”?
- Can the divergence in receptions of a work reveal social tensions or cultural divides between or within societies?
- What are the effects of censorship or rejection of a work on the understanding of the norms, values or resistance of the receiving society?
[1] FERRO, Marc. “The film, a counter-analysis of society? “. In Annals. Economies, societies, civilizations. 28th year, No. 1. Paris: Gallimard, 1993, p. 113.
[2] Ibid., p. 114.
[3] Ibid., p. 113.
[4] Id.
[5] Ibid., p. 114.
[6] Ibid., p. 113.
[7] Ibid., p. 114.
[8] FERRO, Marc. on. cit.p. 117.
[9] Id.
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Submission conditions:
The proposals, of approximately 3000 characters (one page), accompanied by a short biography, must be sent by March 10, 2025 to the following two addresses:
[email protected] et [email protected]
Each intervention will last approximately twenty minutes and will be followed by a time for discussion. These terms may vary subsequently, depending on the number of interventions.
The selected proposals will be announced on March 20.
We will have the pleasure of hearing the communications on May 26, 2025 in the Salle des Actes of the MRSH (Campus 1) of the University of Caen Normandy.
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Scientific and organizational committee:
Audrey Milet and Michael Issa El Helou (doctoral students at LASLAR, UR4256).
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Indicative bibliography:
BENJAMIN, Walter. “On the concept of history”. In Works, t. III. Paris: Gallimard, “Folio. Essays”, 2000.
CAUNE, Jean. Make theater of everything. Space, time and place of the spectator. Montreuil: Éditions théâtres, “On the theater”, 2021.
CHENETIER-ALEV, Marion (dir.), VIGNAUX, Valérie (dir.). The critical text: Experiencing theater and cinema in the 20th-21st centuries. Tours: Presses Universitaires François Rabelais, “iconotextes”, 2013.
DUFOUR, Eric. What is social criticism? Parody, resistance and gender. Paris : Hermann, 2023.
FABIANI, Jean-Louis. “The novel that reflects society? “. In Human Sciences, No. 26. Paris: Éditions Sciences Humaines, 2021. [En ligne] URL : https://doi.org/10.3917/sh.hs9.0096
FERRO, Marc. “The film, a counter-analysis of society? “. In Annals. Economies, societies, civilizations. 28th year, No. 1. Paris: Gallimard, 1993.
GIAVARINI, Laurence. “History, literature, truth. On literature as a historiographical gesture. In Review of modern and contemporary history. 65th year, No. 2. Paris: Belin, 2018.
GINZBURG, Carlo. Power relations: history, rhetoric, proof. Translated from Italian by Jean-Pierre Bardos. Paris: Gallimard, “Le Seuil”, 2003.
JAUSS, Hans Robert. For an aesthetic reception. Translated from German by Claude Maillard, Paris: Gallimard, 1978.
KERBRAT-ORRECHIONI, Catherine. The implicit. Paris : Armand Colin, 1986.
LAGNY, Michèle. On the history of cinema: historical method and history of cinema. Paris : Armand Colin, 1992.
LEDENT, David. “Can we speak of an implicit sociology of the novel? “. In Journal of Anthropology of Knowledge. Flight. 9, No. 3. Paris: SAC, 2015.
MAZEAU, Guillaume. “Sensitive story. A critical experience between theater and history.” In Writing History. No. 15. Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2015. [En ligne] URL : https://doi.org/10.4000/elh.687
SAPIRO, Gisèle. The sociology of literature. Paris: La Découverte, “Repères”, 2014.
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