Death and scenic devices

This international colloquium is intended as a space for exchange on questions relating to death and the uncertainty it raises.

They have been and are driving forces behind the production of beliefs (and superstitions) to imagine, prepare for and protect against it, or to affirm the relationship between life, death and the afterlife, sometimes constituting a parallel and invisible world, but very present and real in the collective imagination of a community.

This colloquium invites researchers to think about death from the angle of its representation and, in particular, the scenic device that is put in place for this purpose; whether through literature, the visual arts, theater or any other form likely to put death, dying or life after death into image (or stage). The aim is to examine the ways in which death is named and represented in relation to societies, while analyzing changes, detour, uprisings, simulations and occultations. Among other things, we'll be looking at the role and agentivity of actors around these devices (the dead, the living, spirits, ghosts, the undead). In this background landscape, real or imagined, what stories and narratives (narrative and scripting) are told? How are they received and circulated? What forms of memorial construction through scenic devices?

This event is organized by the Écritures research unit of the Université de Lorraine and the UMR 9022 Héritages of CY Cergy Paris Université.

A publication is already planned in the Revue Frontières, UQAM (Canada), for winter 2027.

An information webinar on the symposium program will take place on April 7.

Information and registration:
https://mort-dispositif.sciencesconf.org/
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