Subject:

The idea of creating this laboratory arose from a number of concerns we encountered during our time as students. First, despite the vitality of postcolonial studies in France, we observed that access to them remained difficult for students at the School, including those whose research focused on cultural regions where such studies are nonetheless fundamental. Furthermore, we began to sense the methodological limitations of this discipline. More specifically, it seemed to us that a certain ideological orientation frequently took precedence at the expense of the genuinely critical stance that any field of research should adopt. Added to this was a lack of communication among the various disciplines adopting a postcolonial perspective: those studying the colonial history of the British Empire do not always take into account the colonial history of Spain, and vice versa. As a result, each discipline develops theories that often prove to be limited, even though they are presented as universal.

For this lab, we aim to help break down the silos within postcolonial studies and move beyond the reductionist tendencies for which postcolonial studies have been criticized, by emphasizing the idea of relationship rather than the binary categories (colonized and colonizer, center and periphery) that have long structured these studies. In other words, we want to conceive of colonization as an event that creates relationships between colonizer and colonized, at the end of which both are transformed. This perspective avoids essentializing the category of “colonized” and viewing it exclusively as a victim, thereby beginning to conceive of it as an agent who, in turn, views and shapes the world in their own image. In this sense, the goal is to think about colonization—and the position of the colonized—without populism or miserabilism, to borrow the words of Pierre Bourdieu.

Laboratory Activities:

In 2026-2027, we are organizing a series of five seminars in which we will examine the senses from a postcolonial perspective. Initially, we will explore the ways in which our senses—that deceptively transparent threshold of our perception—can in fact become mechanisms that reproduce relations of oppression and coloniality. While this aspect of the senses has occasionally been studied, we will also examine its opposite: how they can also become agents of transformation and liberation.

We will hold a session every two months, during which a guest researcher will present their work, followed by a discussion. The sessions will take place at ENS de Lyon.

Session 1: Thursday, October 15, 2026 (5:00 p.m.)
Marcos Nuñez (Paris 3) and Occitane Lacurie (Paris 1) –  Voir Ouarzazate et mourir: Perspectives and the Colonial Production of Space in Hegemonic Cinema

The program and dates for upcoming sessions will be announced shortly.

Creation date:

September 2026

Closure date:

September 2028

Project leaders:

• Enrique BARILLAS GAYTÁN (Lyon 3)
• Marion PERRIN (ENS de Lyon)
• Gianluca BELLOMO (UMLP)

Associate members:

• Claire AVARO (Paris XII)
• Alexandra Savard-Chambard (Paris IV)
• Clément POZO (ENS de Lyon)
• Lou LASSERRE (ENS de Lyon)