Contenu du sommaire : Figures d'intellectuels en Méditerranée, XIXe-XXe siècles

As a versatile figure, closely related to the specific political and cultural history of modern Greece, the Greek intellectual of the nineteenth century had not yet gained his social autonomy and economic independence. He often descended from rich entrepreneurial families of the Greek Diaspora scattered in the Mediterranean area. He was a cosmopolitan, polyglot, traveller, who developed his vast cultural networks from Alexandria to Marseille and from the Black Sea to Amsterdam. Dimitrios Bikelas' life and work illustrate the passage from the transnational world of business to the intellectual universe of cultural transfers between France, England and Greece in the last half of the nineteenth century.

With respect to the research output of philologists, only very few studies could be regarded as original. Their work is consisted mainly of grammar books (usually translations or adaptations of foreign works), anthologies of ancient Greek texts, books for educational purposes and dictionaries (often adaptations of foreign ones). The first generation of philologists not only had to contend with their actual educational shortcomings but also with the urgent priorities of a new State that needed to cover fundamental needs. One can explain this state of affairs if one takes into account the conditions of the Greek State's formation, which, in addition to its practical concerns, had to face the problem of the national homogenization of the populations within its borders.

It is well known that the intellectual as a public figure in the Modern world emerged in France at the time of the Dreyfus affair, although one of the first uses of the term which appears in Renan's writings (Cahiers de jeunesse, 1845) suggests that the invention of the Modern intellectual is not unrelated to the revolutions of 1848. Certain important figures, who participated in the Dreyfus affair, were also the acting agents in the wide political and cultural reforms that were taking place at the end of the nineteenth century. Yannis Psycharis (or Jean Psichari as known in France) was such a figure. He belonged to two cultural and political settings and made his mark in both of them. This article aims to follow his trajectory, bringing important information regarding his action and writings which explain his contribution in the ideological battles of the period. The exemplary case of Jean Psichari enlightens the role and the function of the intellectual in the cosmopolitan and multifaceted world of nineteenth-century Mediterranean.

Octave Merlier (1897-1976) and Roger Milliex (1913-2006) are two great Neohellenists and Philhellenes who played an instrumental role in cultural relations between France and Greece in the 20th century just as much through their personal work as through the official posts they fulfilled. They never hesitated to unequivocally take a stand in a personal capacity when it was necessary, particularly during the Second World War, but they were known above all for their vital contribution to the forming of Franco-Greek networks of intellectuals and artists thanks to initiatives that were as bold as they were original. Becoming the indefatigable mediators between the two countries, plainly it is the idea of a Mediterranean and, more widely, European culture that they served.

Having criticized the regime of the Restoration, the Spanish intellectuals constitute, from the middle of the twenties, a democratic and republican opposition because the monarchy bound its fate to the dictatorship. It is a question of explaining this phenomenon, of estimating the stake, of specifying the modalities, the stages and the impact of such a commitment in the Spanish historic context and in the European frame. We often accuse the intellectual or to make some politics without the counterweight of the real acts or to imagine a democracy without the people, or to give up this critical role for which we expect from him and for which we blame him quite at the same time.

Poetry, as a discursive genre, played a key part in the making of culture repertoires in emerging nations. The cultural agents who took part in this form of invention of tradition had to possess both the authority of professional intellectuals and the representativeness of organic intellectuals. In the context of arab-islamic world and of decolonization in Algeria, Jean el-Mouhoub Amrouche, Mouloud Feraoun and Mouloud Mammeri, from the 1930s to the 1980s, composed works of berber oral poetry translated in french. The linguistic and cultural tensions of their discursive situations where such that their agency cannot be defined by any model grounded on processes of national revival or decolonisation.

This paper aims to restore the consistency of the course of a significant intellectual in the Mediterranean, Greek and French, Cornelius Castoriadis (1922-1997). He arrived in France at the age of 23, as a young Greek revolutionary resistant, threatened with death by the Stalinists, while the enthusiasm for the USSR was at its zenith. Thus, he contributes to create, along with Claude Lefort, one of the most vivacious branches of the Radical Left, “Socialism or Barbarism”, which later became a legendary periodical, mainly for his leftist criticism of the so-called ‘communist' regimes. Economist, philosopher, psychoanalyst and political activist, Castoriadis is the author of an essential work for anyone interested in the question of the institution outside the framework of the State, especially with what can be considered as a leading work of the twentieth century, The Imaginary Institution of Society (1975). He has indeed stopped, by crossing historical analysis and psychoanalytic approach, to focus on thinking the conquest of autonomy as a condition for democratic deepening.

Review directors can often be seen as intellectuals. Yet this notion is problematic and definitions are contradictory. Our study focuses on Jean Ballard, director of Cahiers du Sud between 1925 and 1966 (but only between 1925-1939, between the wars). This literature review was published in Marseille. If we look at Ballard's work and take into account his lack of interest in the practical question, political involvement and power of conceptualisation, we come at a standoff and we will talk about « intellectuality » and « knowledge worker ».

Based on two groups of literary writers and intellectuals in the Mediterranean (the group of the Cahiers du Sud in Marseille, formed around Jean Ballard, and the group formed around the writer Stratis Myrivilis at Lesbos island, in north-eastern Greece), this study attempts a first parallel approach of these groups, considered as sources of literary and artistic creation and of dissemination of ideas. This article underlines the fact that the two groups' profile, the way in which they were formed, their regional position in relation to a cultural and artistic dominant center, including their symbolic perception of the Mediterranean Sea and the Aegean within the geopolitical context of the Mediterranean area are two parallel intellectual phenomena that require to be studied in the context of a Mediterranean intellectual history rather than in the context of a history of the intellectuals in the Mediterranean.