In the international landscape of institutions of learning, the Collège de France is said to be unique in that it teaches "not the branches of science that have been made, but those that are in the process of being made". For Ernest Renan and all those who adopted his formula, this ideal would have an institutional manifestation: the free transformation of chair titles. In this way, the Collège de France would escape the reproduction of disciplinary divisions to which educational institutions are a priori bound. Through successive innovations in the titles chosen, it would also be a driving force for the renewal of knowledge.
The aim of this symposium is to examine the historicity of this self-definition and of the knowledge-sharing operation that is the creation of chair titles. Entering the workshop of titles brings to light the complex relationships between claims for innovation and the perpetuation of the traditions of a centuries-old institution. This will reveal the arguments used, the French or foreign models claimed, the exchanges and controversies between institutions and between scholars, and the role of political and economic factors in the processes of differentiation and hierarchization of knowledge in context.
Organized as part of the Collège de France's "Passage des disciplines" program (directed by Antoine Compagnon in collaboration with Céline Surprenant), with the support of the labex Hastec, the Centre Alexandre Koyré (UMR 8560), the Institut d'Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine (UMR 8066), the "Anthropologie et Histoire des Mondes Antiques" laboratory (Anhima - UMR 8210) and the Société Française pour l'Histoire des Sciences de l'Homme (SFHSH).
