SEARCH Knowledge in anglophone space: Representations, Culture, History

The SEARCH research center (Knowledge in anglophone space: Representations, culture, history) studies the spatial order of the anglophone world and the discourses and practices used to legitimize it. Our scholars explore four main research avenues:

Borders in Progress: we highlight borders’ dynamic processes by reconsidering their so-called “objective” reality, their changing character and their fundamental instability. This in turn provides opportunities to question the construction, “invention” and “continuity” of borders and the associated discursive paradigm.

Crossing Borders: as borders always come with a perceived, more or less distinct “beyond”, we consider its function as a space of transfer and of crossing between two worlds, between here and there, between those who are the same as us and the others.

Framing, Codifying: borders are here approached as indications of the limits of artworks – physical, material and internal limits pointing to relationships between borders and knowledge.  

The Art of Mapping Space: in a field that is largely dominated by historians, geographers and sociologists, we attempt to redevelop a set of concepts specific to the “spatial turn” – geopoetics, critical geography, psychic geography, to bridge literature, art and civilization. This is another way to reconsider the place and nature of borders in our real world and in the imaginary world of representations.