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Category: Centres and Centralities

Pouvoir, autorité et centre: “What is authority” de Hannah Arendt

“Cum potestas in populo auctoritas in senatu sit” “Le pouvoir réside dans le peuple mais l’autorité siège au Sénat” (Cicero) Arendt, H. 1968. Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought. Penguin Books. Qu’est-ce que l’autorité? Dans...

L’invention des continents of Grataloup, how the centre invents its periphery

The book shows how “continents” have nothing natural: they are but all constructions and mere creations of humans who claimed to “discover” them. Grataloup demonstrates how the notion of “continent” is a trial to find a natural explanation of a politically-constructed divison of the world. His analyses stem from maps, works of art and political and religious documents.

Hereford Map, Jerusalem again as centre and the Translatio Imperii

We said that the “centre of the world” is a notion which always stems from social construction, from human perception and not from a physical reality. In this regard we do know, today, that Jerusalem is not a physical centre of our Planet; unless we followed the idea that all points of the Planet are its centre: so Jerusalem would be one out of an infinity.

Mapping Roman legions: how “limits” tell about the centre

Centrality can tell about itself right from the centre ‘where power dwells,’ even if its narrative is usually charged with ideology: discourse analysis of the centre can be useful when done in critical préjugés-free ways.

But how periphery, borders, frontiers, “outsiders”, “outskirts”, limits, limitates can tell about the centre and about power dwelling in this centre? How can they tell its development, apogee, decadence, decline and even collapse? We can see the example of the Roman Empire.