International Center for Cultural Studies

2019/02/18 Railways and Trains. A Set of Relations (4) - Belledent Céline

2019-02-18

Topic：Railways and Trains. A Set of Relations

Speaker：Belledent Céline (Jean Monnet University – Centre Max Weber.)
Date：2019/02/18 15:30-17:50
Venue：Room 106A, HA Building 2, Guangfu Campus, NCTU
*English Lecture series

Behind train journeys and their contemplative representations of the movement in literature and cinema, we find a set of relations affecting the space and the people traveling. In the 19th century in France, railways have been a colossal project to “implement progress and development” all over the colonial empire and its metropolis. This means of transportation is, from its starts until now, entangled between apparently contradictory governmentalities as public service and private profits. Furthermore, trains themselves can also be described as “intense spaces of transitory sociality” (Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion, 2014, p. 215).
In this speech, I propose to map this set of relations based on discourse analysis, observations, and interviews I conducted on a particular local train line in between Saint-Etienne and Lyon.

Biography:
Celine Belledent is an associate researcher in the sociology research department Max Weber (section Public Cultures) in Saint-Etienne (France). Her researches intend to map hegemonic and minoritarian relations of the contemporary, at a local and global level. Her PhD dissertation explored the links between sexuality and civilization concerns. She actually studies a local train line between Saint-Etienne and Lyon.
She teaches in the educational sciences and sociology departments of the University Jean Monnet as well as in a social workers school.