Writing the desert: issues, sources, analysis

How is the history of the desert written? And which desert are we talking about, according to which cultural area? While studies devoted to Saharan spaces have taken new directions in recent years - notably around previously neglected issues such as mobility (McDougall & Scheele 2012; Rossi 2015) or networks (Brachet 2009; Lydon 2015) and the emergence of new Saharan identities in the wake of decolonisation (Lecoq 2010 & 2019), or in the context of new explorations of relations between the colonised and the colonisers (Pandolfi 2018; Lefebvre 2021), this symposium aims to create a space for reflection around the fundamental material of all academic research: On the one hand, the archives that feed the researcher's work, and on the other, the questions around which his or her investigation is structured. The aim is to go beyond the major chronological and geopolitical divides that have marked the relationship between France and the Sahara (Frémeaux 2008) - recently highlighted in the syllabus for the French competitive examinations (Vermeren et al. 2023) - by placing at the heart of our approach a comparative dimension that includes the desert areas of the English-speaking world, with the aim of proposing a reflection on the fundamental themes that have marked the «long history» of deserts.

At a time when the field of Saharan studies is regenerating and clearly extending beyond the borders of the French-speaking world (where it has long remained confined), this symposium proposes to exploit new archival avenues and to offer a historiographical assessment of the thinking around arid spaces, by also opening up perspectives on long-term history and towards the wider question of the role, representation and specificities of the desert in the trajectory of humanity. It will focus in particular on the following questions:
- Why and how is the history of desert territories written? What unique contributions have they made to world history?
- How can Saharan studies and desert studies more generally work together to provide a better understanding of human history?
- Who to listen to? Or the difficult question of sources and quoted voices in spaces where the written word is often scarce.
- What role does the environment play in the history of desert areas?
- What are the factors that have made desert regions, and in particular the Saharo-Sahelian zone, prone to repeated crises and conflicts since the end of the 20th century?