The IRL aims to promote collaborative research in philosophy (philosophy of language, philosophy of science, political philosophy and political theory), literature (literatures in French, world literatures, literary theory), linguistics, philology and the arts – with an opening towards the social sciences, especially on questions of democracy and environmental and medical humanities. It is based on a convergence of academic approaches: research grounded in disciplines yet open to interdisciplinarity (and to the way in which interdisciplinarity can recompose disciplines); a comparable emphasis on studies connected to specific spaces and contexts (area studies), as well as on comparative and transnational approaches; a shared desire to encourage research projects that shed light on major contemporary societal and political issues.

The following (non-exclusive) research clusters have been singled out:

• Decentering canons and broadening corpora: digital humanities, world literatures, area studies;
• Political theory and democracy studies, medical and environmental humanities;
• Truth, information, fiction;
• Language emergence;
• Textual and archaeological studies: history of writing, heritage preservation, ancient cultures

Note: The below research clusters do not constitute a restrictive list; the program will expand to include future projects.

Decentering canons and broadening corpora: digital humanities, world literatures, area studies

The University of Chicago and CNRS Humanities et Social Sciences place crucial importance on both the digital humanities and on studies grounded in specific spaces, times, and contexts, particularly those outside the West. At the University of Chicago, the strong investment in the cultures, languages and literatures of the South is characterized by a remarkable number of interdisciplinary “area studies” centers (Center for East Asian Studies; Center for Middle Eastern Studies; Committee on Southern Asian Studies, etc.) and, in the field of digital humanities, by an equally remarkable number of exceptional programs and centers. The Forum for Digital Culture (the research, creation and teaching center for the digital humanities in Chicago, of which the ARTFL project is a part) and OCHRE, in particular, will become privileged partners of the IRL: they offer sets of texts and metadata of major interest for the long-term history of literature and ideas, now accessible through innovative textual analysis tools.

Working on very large corpora seen “at a distance” by digital humanities and working on specific texts, histories and contexts, invites us to pluralize the scales of reading and analysis. The innovative aspect of research in the fields of digital humanities and areal studies is precisely that it enables us to decentralize and pluralize the canon, by opening up scholarly awareness to larger and less Western-centric corpora, ultimately leading to a truly global history of literature and the humanities. The IRL will thus be a place for reflection and dialogue between approaches and methods that are sometimes presented as irreconcilable: close reading and distant reading; study of large corpora and attention to the cultural, linguistic, poetic, historical (etc.) specificity of texts.

Political Theory and democracy studies, medical and environmental humanities

In the fields of philosophy and political theory, and at the intersection of democracy studies, empire studies and postcolonial studies, collaborations between the CNRS and the University of Chicago focus on the forms, conditions and functions of democracy, and the dangers that threaten it: imperialisms, populisms, authoritarianisms or renewed forms of censorship in a global and comparative perspective. Research is also being conducted on social movements and reforms, and collective mobilizations.  

Collaborations are underway on the ethical, historical, political, philosophical, discursive and social dimensions of medical practices and health care; of global health policies and inequalities.

Research projects and collaborations also focus on the planet as a place at risk and a damaged place; on theoretical, critical and creative methods to address, represent and conceptualize climate change and loss of biodiversity; on the interconnections and interdependence of the human and the non-human; on ways of measuring, conceptualizing and visualizing these environmental, social and political crises and transformations (through cartographies, aesthetic or artistic modes and media, etc.); on reparative measures and practices.

Truth, information, fiction

Epistemic questions cut across philosophy, literature, and linguistics. Starting from the notion of veridicality (the judgment made by a speaker about the truth of an utterance), as expressed by the resources of human language (modalities, epistemic verbs or adverbs that qualify the strength of the judgment, grammatical particles that modulate the speaker’s commitment to the truth of the utterance, etc.), will form the basis of a scientific program at the crossroads of linguistic theories and theories of knowledge and action. The exploration of this notion within the IRL will benefit from the presence, at the University of Chicago, of the Phronesis lab, an interdisciplinary research program in linguistics and philosophy of language, which aims to bring together students and researchers in linguistics, communication, philosophy, and computer science.

The IRL will stand at the heart of current reflections on “phronesis,” envisaged as a method of analysing communication oriented towards the agentivity of subjects in relation to acts of enunciation in public discourse: how subjects decipher the intentions behind an act of communication and detect the linguistic and communicative strategies intended for them. The IRL will also welcome researchers interested in studying the specific role of language in the emergence of rhetorical strategies such as “trolling” or “dog-whistling”, and research on social networks. What, for instance, are the winning rhetorical tropes in specific media (e.g. political discourse on Twitter, medical and epidemiological discourse on Facebook)? Which tropes are most effective in manipulation? How are truth or verisimilitude constructed in social networks? Why is fake news convincing? How is logical reasoning manipulated by language?

Questions about the notion of veridicality, and about linguistic resources and strategies aimed at mobilizing an agent’s judgment, are in line with more general questions about the division between truth and fiction, theories and boundaries of truth, which have been addressed in literary studies at a time when contemporary literary practices are blurring conventional divisions, the better to question them through practices of documenting reality and inventively transforming facts and testimonies.

Language emergence

How do new languages emerge? This fascinating question is made tractable for research thanks to sign languages (spoken in Deaf communities) and tactile languages (spoken in some DeafBlind communities). The CNRS and the University of Chicago are two of the world’s leading institutions for the study of sign languages and tactile languages.

One innovative element of this research concerns what might be called the “birth” of languages. Compared with spoken languages, homesign systems and emerging sign languages provide natural examples of linguistic creation, in the sense that the development process of these systems takes place in a context of linguistic deprivation (partial or total absence of input). The very diverse social contexts in which deaf children grow up enables us to explore the transition from a non-linguistic communication system to a linguistic one: sign languages are to date the only human languages whose birth we can directly examine.

Research shared between the University of Chicago and CNRS on language emergence also focuses on language and language-use among DeafBlind speakers. Some communities of DeafBlind speakers in the U.S. are made up of people who grew up Deaf and slowly lost their vision due to a shared genetic condition. As they become blind, their sign language (American Sign Language, or ASL) became inoperable. This problem was historically addressed via increased dependence on sighted interpreters. In the early 2000s, DeafBlind leaders of the “protactile movement’’ argued that DeafBlind people should communicate directly with one another, and over the next several decades, new patterns in interaction, as well as a new “protactile’’ language, emerged. Novel patterns have been emerging in DeafBlind communities in elsewhere. The following questions will be at the heart of a joint research program focusing on language emergence in DeafBlind communities: How does the structure of interaction and social and historical context contribute to the process?