Month: July 2018

La naturalisation des qualités féminines et masculines, qui a servi à la répartition genrée des métiers, s’accentue au xix^e siècle. Les métiers d’homme sont alors souvent fondés sur la force physique, mais aussi sur l’exercice des hautes fonctions publiques et des professions de savoir et de pouvoir, tandis que les métiers de femmes relèvent davantage de la dextérité et du domaine des soins ou de l’éducation. La transgression de l’ordre du genre des métiers a créé nombre de « premières » dans leur profession depuis la fin du xix^e siècle, mais aussi quelques « premiers » jusqu’au début du xxi^e siècle. Leur histoire correspond notamment à la reconnaissance de droits accordés aux femmes et aux progrès de l’égalité professionnelle, sans aboutir toutefois à l’égalité salariale.

L’Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes, qui se tient à Paris en 1925 et réunit la production de pas moins d’une vingtaine de nations, majoritairement européennes, a notamment pour but de démontrer l’excellence du savoir-faire français. Bien des pavillons érigés en cette occasion font ainsi part d’une débauche de luxe, pour des réalisations se voulant modernes tout en montrant une inspiration puisée dans les grands styles français du passé. La manifestation ne peut cependant être réduite à ce faste et aux tendances dites traditionnalistes de l’art déco, ce qu’attestent en particulier les réalisations présentées par des créateurs aux conceptions plus modernistes. Par ailleurs, les participations étrangères à l’Exposition sont souvent marquées par une inspiration locale mettant en exergue les sentiments identitaires qui ne cessent de s’affirmer en Europe.

Cet article est en cours d’écriture, découvrez dès maintenant d’autres articles en lien avec ce sujet dans l’encadré « Aller plus loin ».

L’identité flottante des Tsiganes se construit peu à peu, à partir de leur arrivée en Europe occidentale au xv^e siècle. Malgré une fascination certaine, ils sont considérés comme des professionnels du nomadisme, du vol, du vagabondage et de la tromperie, au point qu’un arsenal législatif de plus en plus répressif est mis en place pour disloquer leurs groupes. La figure de la diseuse de bonne aventure incarne en partie les préjugés et les stéréotypes qui ont nourri l’imaginaire européen jusqu’à nos jours à l’égard des Tsiganes. La culture réprouvée de leur science curieuse, la chiromancie, est pourtant assimilée par l’Europe savante. Le succès des traités de physiognomonie et de chiromancie s’inspire du « savoir égyptien » apporté par les Tsiganes en Europe. À la science curieuse, populaire et orale de la chiromancie des Bohémiennes, s’oppose la chiromancie savante des lettrés. En ce sens, la culture tsigane influence et intègre la culture de l’Europe savante.

During the modern period, exiles were for a long time essentially masculine figures in representations. Yet the study of forced migration, whether of a political, religious, or sexual nature, shows that from the early nineteenth century onwards, women were also part of the phenomenon of exile, which we understand here in a broad manner as all forms of forced expatriation. While feminine exile figures were rare during the nineteenth century, the widespread nature of such mobility beginning in the early twentieth century also involved women, who little by little demanded access to functions of representation within exile groups, thereby upsetting the gendered norms of political commitment. After the adoption of the Geneva Convention in 1951, the first legal text to provide an international definition for refugees, women won recognition for their particular role in the phenomenon of exile and asylum. It was only in 1985 that the High Commissioner for Refugees held the first forum on women refugees, thereby emphasizing their uniqueness.

As a result of the expansion of space and acceleration of time that followed the upheavals of the French Revolution, and seized by the mobility and modernity of the moment, women flouted an epistolary medium that had largely been limited to the domestic sphere, and transformed their correspondence into a networking of the new European space. They transgressed both borders and gender differences, and mapped out a new cartography of the continent in which they had a role and visibility. They also built a constellation of epistolary exchanges, which they sometimes used to convey public opinion on the European scale. A transformation took place during the nineteenth century, as the epistolary medium became a public form of writing in publications that were specifically epistolary in character—Briefroman, letter novels, fictional correspondence, open letters—and that signaled women’s initial entry into the political sphere.

In the nineteenth century, women in Europe were still practically excluded from the world of science and technical fields in the name of their supposed natural inferiority. Only a few female intellectuals from the enlightened aristocracy contributed to progress and participated in scientific debates, with women occupying subordinate posts, and technical ones in particular. In the late nineteenth century, most European countries democratized access to education, sparking a de facto rise in the number of female students and researchers, despite sexist bias and even the denial of their discoveries. These pioneering women made a dent in this masculine world and were recognized for doing so, although they were awarded Nobel prizes sparingly. Since the mid-twentieth century, new generations of women scientists have proposed research issues ranging from pediatrics and neuroscience to food and the environment. Such female scientists nevertheless remain symbolic still today, being seen as exceptions rather than models.

International women’s peace movements took on different forms: in the 19^th century, internationally minded women pacifists often initially built contacts between two or three countries. In the first half of the 20^th century, international organisational structures were established. Moreover, some existing international women’s organisations turned towards peace work in the mid-1920s and 1930s. After 1945, European women’s peace work was confronted with new political constellations and global perspectives. Campaigning against the arms race led to new activities which were less formally organised but influenced female pacifism in many countries. In feminist pacifist discourse, peace was always linked to other topics which were seen as reciprocal, influential and highly important for future peacekeeping, such as women’s rights, democracy, nutrition and socioeconomic contexts, education or environmentalism.

The term transidentities, which appeared in Germany in the early twentieth century, refers to a series of practices for identifying with a gender different from the one assigned at birth. The definition of transidentities is located at the intersection of medical discourse, legal dictates, and social practices.  Medical and surgical progress since the first third of the twentieth century have made sex change possible, which depending on the country can include a therapeutic dimension and be accompanied by a change in civil status. Transidentities became more visible beginning in the 1960s, doing so at different paces according to the national political context. Medical and legal measures were adopted to take into account the demands made by “trans,” often under pressure from new international norms. Associations were created in the 1990s and Europeanized in order to depsychiatrize transidentity, and found an ally in the European Court of Human Rights for changing national legislation.

This entry focuses on a particularly significant moment in the history of historical writing in Europe. It posits that Renaissance humanism—an intellectual movement whose development can plausibly be located in early fifteenth-century Italy—gave birth to radically new ways of conceptualizing and representing the past. To some extent the changes were the result of a deeper engagement with the ancient Greek and Roman historians that the humanists took as their models. But the renewed interest in the classics was itself often embraced as a means of rising to the challenges posed by the need to interpret a rapidly changing political landscape. By way of illustration, this entry zeroes in on the work that can be seen as the foundation stone of humanist historiography: Leonardo Bruni’s History of the Florentine People. Bruni’s History is presented as the first stage in a general renewal of historical writing, one that moves outwards from Renaissance Florence to pervade Italy and eventually Europe as a whole.