A basic activity of the human species, intellectual and artistic production (literature, religious thought, philosophy, sciences, arts ...) originates both from collective and creative thought and from a certain input of individual invention. What exactly is the individual's share in the intellectual output of Muslim societies? Consequently, what is the weight of communal conventions and mentalities? What margin of flexibility do scholars and artists have when faced with canons handed down by tradition, and how does society react to the creative individual? How are intellectual works born, and how do they evolve? The study of the progress of forms, literary clichés, ideas, decorative patterns on another level, an examination of impassioned debates provoked since the earliest periods by notions of taqlîd (the passive acceptance of authority) or ijtihâd (the freedom of interpretation of holy texts) should allow us to answer such questions.
If the thorough analysis of intellectual works gives us the possibility to measure the freedom left to a creative individual, it also leads us to ask another question: how do Islamic societies represent themselves? What is the self-image conveyed by intellectual and artistic production?
We can approach this dissertation about the self in many ways, and in particular through a study of iconographic heritage. Contrary to common belief, the Muslim world has produced a great deal of figurative art. This art does not consist only of a repertory of aesthetic forms and canons. It is the reflection of mentalities, individual and collective tastes, spiritual preoccupations ... Attempting to clarify the vision of the world which they express, and the self-representations reflected by them, should allow us to define what is most elusive about Islamic societies.
The study of biographies and autobiographies offers another angle of approach. Whether literary works or simple standardised notices like those found in biographical dictionaries, these materials lend themselves in particular to the elaboration of a typology of man's path through life. What are the high points in an intellectual's life, or in that of a saint, or of a Muslim prince? How are prominent events arranged in order of importance? On the other hand, what are the periods of silence and of oblivion? How is an exemplary existence defined? Finally, how is each life history divided between stereotypes and individual adventure? What are the limits of the unusual and the unique? These questions may lead us to a better comprehension of what an individual is in all of its most symbolic aspects. An examination of the evolution of the biographical genre through the centuries should also lead us to question the factors which, at various moments in Muslim world history, could have favoured the emergence of new individual "types".
It should be noted too that a study of literary genres and forms may also prove to be highly revealing. The appearance of new genres in the 19th century, such as the drama, or the Western-influenced novel, obviously accompany the emergence of the individual, with his/her emotions, impulsions, and convictions. However, are classic genres - scholarly poetry, chronicles, tales, epic novels - for all that only limited to convention and clichés? One may undoubtedly say about literary matters what has been said above about economic matters: they show evolutions, cycles, and discontinuance which are constantly echoed by the advances and the set-backs of the individuation processes.
The research should revolve around two areas of a broad range of cultural activities:
Manifestations of the Consciousness of Self on the part of the Creative Individual
The Processes of Inspiration and Innovation, and the Legitimisation of these processes.
With reference to the periodisation of the research, the 16th-19th centuries should he of particular importance. This was the period when the Ottoman Empire was the centre of a multitude of mutual exchanges, perceptions and circulation around the Mediterranean region in general. It is also a period which is under-researched and yet is a vital part of the heritage of those Islamic societies around the Mediterranean which emerged into the modern period in the 19th century. However this general chronological emphasis will in no sense lead to the exclusion of research themes which need to he pursued prior to the 16th, and beyond the 19th centuries.
Taking into account the current state of research, the work will he further subdivided as follows:
- Clothing and costume. (These will he studied through their function as markers of groups and individual identity.)
- Calligraphy. (This will focus essentially on the study of signatures, and the way in which calligraphers write about themselves and their art. Of particular relevance will be the accounts of dreams through which calligraphers justify going beyond the norms of their creative activities.)
- Belles lettres. (This would produce a study of the nature of individual expression in the traditional literary genres in Arabic and Turkish from the 16th century to the dawn of the modern period. In the 19th-20th centuries, the research will move on to the emancipation of Arabic and Turkish literature from traditional forms of social control (primarily legal and religious). It will proceed to the study of individuation as expressed in the subsequent phases of literary development: the neo-classical, the romantic, the age of socialist ideologies, and finally the various modes of modernism.)
- Portraits of marginality and normality. (These would be studied in relation to the framework planned for workshop 2, to bring in a complementary perspective.)
- Oral/popular literature.
- Teachers and institutions. (The accounts of their formation, both professional and personal)
- The religious sciences. (How individual scholars react to them and re-interpret them. This section should also include writings on the religious imagination and accounts of individual conversions.)
- Language and identity. (The means by which language mediates between individuals and groups. See also the phenomenon of multi-lingualism in the centuries under discussion.)
It is felt that this rubric is both broad enough and precise enough to encompass the different branches of our work.
Representations of the Person. Full advantage will be taken of the freedom provided by the modern theories of autobiography/biography in order to study the widest possible range of written material: in addition to the traditional examples of biography/autobiography and hagiography, we shall also investigate chronicles, and travelogues as voyage of self-definition. Memoirs, letters, and other personal documents can also be included here. Within the field of art and material culture, it has been proposed to study personal representation through calligraphers and their signatures, portraits from Ottoman times onwards, as well as dress and costume as marks of individual expression. The relationships between patrons and artists/artisans/builders/craftsmen are also relevant to this theme.
The second axis will revolve around more "marginal" expressions of individuality, which for the moment we designate as Marginal Voices, although it is clear that the concept of "marginality" poses theoretical problems. Here we will investigate genres which traditionally have not been considered central to Arabic and Turkish literature: one such example is apocalyptic literature as a vehicle of individual protest. Representations of characters such as buffoons, deviants, criminals, or villains are important in this respect. We are particularly concerned to bring together literary representations of such "deviants", and contemporary roles and narratives of such characters as viewed by anthropologists.
The third axis will be concerned with individual and space, in other words, representations of individuality in a variety of spatial contexts, and the nature of their relationships and their interactions with these spaces. The sources will be textual, pictorial and architectural, and important topics will include the transitions of individuals from private to public space via the house, the hammâm and the café, and the relations between individuals and the city or the countryside.
One problem which were are unable to solve satisfactorily for the moment is how to treat the role and position of the intellectual. It is obvious that in a research project entitled "Individual and Society in the Islamic Mediterranean world" this is a subject of key importance. We did not feel that we could deal with it in this atelier other than in an indirect way.
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