Law’s System : representations, discourse and fantasies from the  
XVIIIth century to today.

International conference. Université de Montpellier 3, IRCL.

Friday 4 October to Saturday 5 October 2013.

Call for papers

  During bubbles and financial crises, media commentary often cites  
John Law and his system as a paradigm and historical example of one of  
the first financial crises to have its roots in speculation. These  
references and allusions, however, do not generally examine the  
specificities of a bubble which was not limited to France but which  
also drew in England and Holland, the countries in Europe most closely  
involved in the emergence of financial capitalism in the XVIIIth  
century.
  Building on the work of Paul Harsin, who published in 1934 an  
edition of the complete works of John Law (as well as a first edition  
of the writings of Law’s close collaborator, Dutot), and Edgar   
Faure , historians and economic historians have since defined the  
various stages and analysed the chain of events that led to the  
bankruptcy of the first royal bank and gave rise to an enduring  
distrust of finance and money in its fiduciary form. While this  
research has established a chronology of the crisis and has shed light  
on many aspects of the System (for example, the recent research by the  
historian Antoin E. Murphy on unpublished writings of Nicolas Dutot),  
there has been little transversal or global analysis of the events.  
Litterature specialists have also identified allusions to the drama of  
1720. These can be more or less allegorical passing references (as in  
Montesquieu’s Lettres Persanes) or can also be more ingrained,  
influencing, for example, how money or transactions are represented .  
In 2006, two articles on the representations of Law's bankruptcy were  
published by litterature specialists, both of which sought to analyse  
the fiction of that period in the light of the historical economic  
events. Yves Citton interprets a text penned by Jean-François Melon, a  
close associate of Law, Mamhoud le Gasnévide, that chronicles  
allegorically the events which took place under the Regency . Erik  
Leborgne, on the other hand, analyses contemporary texts with a view  
to highlighting the fantasies behind the representations therein of  
money and speculation . This project aims to build on this work, to  
encourage an interdisciplinary approach to the subject, and to  
synthesise a new vision of this event, which can be considered as a  
traumatic and formative influence on modern France, by proposing three  
non-exclusive approaches:

- An original generic and temporal analysis : periodicals, journals  
and chronicles.

Participants are invited to undertake a synchronised study of texts  
produced around the events of 1719 to 1720 under the Regency. For  
example, no systematic analysis has been made of periodicals from  
1720, the year of the bankruptcy itself, despite these potentially  
providing a valuable contemporary perspective of the events and a  
useful context for interpreting the different points of view.  
"Journals", such as those of Buvat or Barbier, can provide a precise  
chronicle of the events, even if they have been reworked. On yet  
another level, chronicles further removed from the events offer a body  
of text, often rewritten, often published several years later, yet  
based on first-hand commentaries (Marmont du Hautchamp, Eon de  
beaumont).

- The spatial aspect of the events: different perceptions within  
Europe, iconographic treatment, impact on public space.

We would like to encourage studies that address national differences  
in the representation of the rise and fall of financial systems. In  
this grain, for example, Catherine Labio has already sought to set out  
the national differences in the development and perception of market  
crises through her study of the Dutch in-folio collection of satirical  
texts and engravings published in the weeks that followed the crash,  
Het groote tafereel der dwaasheid .
Analysis of the transnational dimension of the phenomenon might also  
shed light on how the distribution and adaptation of images and  
iconography of the events were shaped by the context of each recipient  
national market.
Finally, John Law's financial innovations often led to a variety of  
attempts to modify public spaces (decoration, painting, architectural  
restructuring of the district surrounding the royal bank, traffic  
management, policing). Urban interference on this scale provides an  
indication of the impact of the events on citizens at the time.

- Lasting trauma: shock wave and after-shocks.

We invite contributions that consider the long term influence of the  
1720 crisis, in particular in terms of its influence on how paper  
money and financial transactions were represented, the morality of  
transactions, and the denotative and connotative uses of the financial  
and commercial lexicon. Our target here is the symbolic and  
fantasmagorical dimension of an episode that Jean-Michel Rey has  
suggested was one of the formative elements of a national subconscious:

Ruin, insolvency and other similar processes: in other words, these  
unforseen shifts that bring to a swift and brutal end that which would  
shortly after come to be known as "the wealth of nations"; beg the  
question what exactly is this "wealth", how does it manifest itself,  
how can it be obtained and what future does it hold .

"Wealth", "ruin", "heritage": the polysemy of these terms reveals more  
than simply the shared Indoeuropean origins of the vocabularies of  
sentiment and economy. Dominant and domineering, our early XXIst  
century economy seeks to impose a model of language and reason. This  
is more than a thematic or disciplinary field but a paradigm that  
seeks to influence how we represent the world. While the historical  
episode with which this project is concerned cannot be considered as  
the mythical birth of a capitalism which is reborn and metamorphoses  
with each passing era, it does represent the first, or at least the  
most resounding, example of an economic event becoming an event of  
absolute social significance, an event relayed throughout society on  
the one hand by State propaganda and on the other by the System's  
bitter opponents.


Participants are invited to submit proposals, in French or in English  
before the 15th July 2013 to :

[log in to unmask]


Scientific Committee : Catherine Labio (U. of Colorado at Boulder),  
Erik Leborgne (U. Paris III), Florence Magnot-Ogilvy (U. Montpellier  
III), Arnaud Orain (U. Paris VIII), Martial Poirson (U. Grenoble III),  
Jean-Michel Rey (U. Paris VIII).



-- 
Ce message a ete verifie par MailScanner
pour des virus ou des polluriels et rien de
suspect n'a ete trouve.