Dark Networks: Imaginaries of Shady Connections and the Global Underworld from the Nineteenth Century to the Present

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Dark Networks: Imaginaries of Shady Connections and the Global Underworld from the Nineteenth Century to the Present

Organizer
Sarah Frenking (GHI Washington DC/ Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam), Christoph Streb (GHI Paris), Anne-Emmanuelle Demartini (Univ. Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), Mathilde Darley (CESDIP, Paris); Partners: Käte Hamburger Research Centre global dis:connect (LMU Munich), Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam; With generous financial support of Fritz Thyssen Foundation
Venue
German Historical Institute Paris, 8 rue du Parc-Royal
Funded by
Fritz Thyssen Foundation
ZIP
75003
Location
Paris
Country
France
Takes place
In Attendance
From - Until
20.11.2024 - 22.11.2024
By
Sarah Frenking, GHI Washington DC

Dark Networks: Imaginaries of Shady Connections and the Global Underworld from the Nineteenth Century to the Present

This exploratory conference deals with images and narratives of secret connections, sinister entanglements and the global underworld from the nineteenth century to the present. The contributions will focus, among others, on imaginaries of crime, espionage and conspiracy, and ask what ideas of "dark networks" reveal about the normative orders of global modernity. The in-person event will take place at the German Historical Institute in Paris. Working languages will be French and English.

Réseaux obscurs : l’imaginaire des mises en connexion secrètes et des bas-fonds transnationaux du XIXe au XXIe siècles

This exploratory conference deals with images and narratives of secret connections, sinister entanglements and the global underworld from the nineteenth century to the present. The contributions will focus, among others, on imaginaries of crime, espionage and conspiracy, and ask what ideas of "dark networks" reveal about the normative orders of global modernity. The in-person event will take place at the German Historical Institute in Paris. Working languages will be French and English.

Dark Networks: Imaginaries of Shady Connections and the Global Underworld from the Nineteenth Century to the Present

Observers of modern life have not always been optimistic about transnational connections. From the nineteenth century to the present day, the cosmopolitan ideal of a united world has been challenged by widespread anxieties about mysterious and dangerous networks. Contemporaries worried about espionage and international crime, fantasized about anarchist or Jewish conspiracies, and developed a deep, ambivalent fascination with a clandestine milieu of vice and crime that stretched across continents and oceans. Journalists, criminologists and international organizations all focused on the cross-border mobility of shady characters or dangerous ideas. By 1900, images and stories about sinister connections formed a major cultural pattern.

This exploratory conference critically examines the cultural and political significance of these imaginaries of dark networks from the nineteenth century to the present. Drawing on a series of historical case studies, we suggest to take three key features as a point of departure: figures such as traffickers, clandestine migrants, or spies; spaces such as ports, borderlands, or tunnels; and goods such as weapons, counterfeit money, or revolutionary pamphlets. We ask how imaginaries of dark networks were produced, why their relevance increased or decreased, which moral agendas they served, and which orders of property, race, and gender they defended. Doing so, the conference will make a fresh contribution to scholarship on deviant globalization, representations of crime, and the production of social knowledge in the modern world.

Réseaux obscurs : l’imaginaire des mises en connexion secrètes et des bas-fonds transnationaux du XIXe au XXIe siècles

L’imaginaire moderne d’un monde connecté a un côté »sombre«. Au XIXe siècle déjà, le cosmopolitisme, l’appel à la coopération internationale, ou les nouvelles possibilités de communication, de commerce et de voyage ne suscitent pas un enthousiasme unanime. En effet, les contemporains imaginent au même moment aussi un dangereux milieu de vice et de crime, défini par des flux illicites et peuplé de personnages louches. Les angoisses liées à l’espionnage, aux conspirations et aux complots secrets sont un phénomène répandu. Depuis lors, une sinistre mythologie ne cesse de captiver l’imaginaire moderne: sous le monde réel se cacherait un monde souterrain connecté, fait de mouvements et de liens clandestins qui transcenderaient les frontières et s’étendraient à travers les continents et les océans.

Ce colloque exploratoire étudie de façon critique la signification culturelle et politique de ces imaginaires des »réseaux obscurs« du XIXe siècle à nos jours. En nous appuyant sur une série d’études de cas historiques, nous proposons de partir de trois éléments empiriques typiques: des figures sociales – trafiquants, migrants clandestins, ou espions; des espaces – ports, zones frontalières, ou tunnels; et des biens – armes, fausse monnaie, ou pamphlets révolutionnaires. Nous examinerons comment et par qui ces imaginaires des réseaux obscurs sont produits, pourquoi leur pertinence augmente ou diminue, pour quels arguments moraux ils sont mobilisés, et quels ordres de propriété, de »race« et de genre ils sont censés défendre. Ainsi, le colloque apportera une nouvelle contribution à la recherche sur les aspects déviants de la globalisation, sur les représentations de la criminalité, et sur la production de savoirs sur le social dans l’histoire du XIXe et du XXe siècle.

Programm

Wednesday, 20 November 2024

09h30-10h00 Welcome Coffee

10h00-10h30 Introduction

10h30-12h00 The Construction of a New Imaginary of Shady Connections in the Nineteenth Century
Chair: Anne-Emmanuelle Demartini, Univ. Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

- Francesco Benigno (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa): The Evil Sect in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Loans and Influences
- Alexandre Dupont (Univ. Strasbourg): L’internationale blanche, un “réseau obscur”? Représentations et répression de l’internationalisme contre-révolutionnaire (1820–1880)

12h00-13h00 Lunch

13h00-14h30 From a Crisis of Social Knowledge to Imaginaries of Dark Networks
Chair: Sarah Frenking, GHI Washington DC/ Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam

- Suhail Gharaibeh (Columbia Univ.): “Les célébrités des sphères interlopes”. Les dessous du nouveau Paris, selon Édouard Drumont et Cie. 1864–1904
- Christoph Streb (GHI Paris): “Modern Sin” in a “Webbed Social Life”. Modernity and the Downsides of Connectivity in the Social Psychology of Edward Alsworth Ross

14h30-16h00 Anarchists as Social Figures of the Underworld
Chair: Corentin Marion, GHI Paris

- Carolyn J. Eichner (Univ. Wisconsin-Milwaukee): “Impulsive Insanity of a Mildly Homicidal Type”. Louise Michel and the Threat of International Dissident Networks
- Robert Kramm (LMU Munich): Black Kraken. Anarchism, Imperial Japan, and Decentering Connectivity

16h00-16h30 Coffee break

16h30-18h00 Port Cities as Spaces of the Underworld
Chair: Eleonora Marchioni, GHI Paris

- Lasse Heerten (Univ. Bochum): Unterwelthafen Hamburg. Trading, Smuggling, and Policing Alcohol, Arms, and Humans in the Port of Hamburg, c. 1888–1914
- Laurence Montel (Univ. Poitiers): Circulations internationales et “envers” marseillais au prisme du genre et de la “race” (années 1920–1930)

18h30 Dinner

Thursday, 21 November 2024

09h30-11h00 Networks Against Networks: Imaginaries and Practices
Chair: Christoph Streb, GHI Paris

- Margarita Lerman (Simon Dubnow Institut Leipzig/Hebrew Univ. Jerusalem): A Fine Line? Gray Areas in Habsburg Policing Endeavors, 1860s–1910s
- Daniele Toro (Univ. Bielefeld): From “Judeo-Bolshevism” to the “Spider’s Web”. Conspiracy Narratives and the Emergence of Transnational Fascist Dark Networking in the 1920

11h00-11h30 Coffee break

11h30-13h00 From Imaginaries of Dark Networks to Migration Control
Chair: Mathilde Darley, CESDIP Paris

- Roxane Bonnardel-Mira (Univ. Tours): “Faux papiers”. Ce que l’imaginaire du réseau obscur fait au contrôle de l’immigration à Paris dans les années 1920
- Elisa Camiscioli (Binghamton Univ.): The “Traffic in Women” and Migration Control in Early Twentieth-Century Europe and the Americas

13h00-14h00 Lunch

14h00-16h00 Traffickers as Social Figures of the Underworld
Chair: Alexandre Bibert, GHI Paris

- Paul Franke (Univ. Marburg): Dark Mirrors, Broken Gods, and Fearful Plots. Images and Imaginaries of Legal and Illegal Networks and Practices of the Global Art Market between 1860–1930
- Kostis Gkotsinas (National Hellenic Research Foundation, Athens): “The Greek Opium Kings”. Representations of Drug Smugglers in Interwar Greece
- Andreas Guidi (Inalco, Paris): Lucky Luciano’s Mediterranean Shadow. Smuggling Networks in the Wake of (Under)World War II

16h00-16h30 Coffee break

16h30-18h00 Fictions and Sensations of the Underworld
Chair: Nicolas Picard, Univ. Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

- Sarah Frenking (GHI Washington DC/Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam): “Vice, Inc”. Sensationalist Journalism and the “Traffic in Women” in Germany, France and North Africa in the 1950s
- Sébastien Le Pajolec (Univ. Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne): Italia Oscura, secrets à l’Italienne. Le dévoilement des réseaux dans le cinéma populaire italien (1968–1978)

18h30 Dinner

Friday, 22 Novembre 2024

09h30-11h30 Tracing Networks, Imagining the Enemy
Chair: Laurence Badel, Univ. Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

- Ariane Mak (Univ. Paris-Cité): Hunting Down Enemy Spy Codes. Suspicious Graffiti in Britain during the Second Word War
- Caroline Ziani (Univ. Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne): “L’automne des espions”. Le démantèlement de réseaux d’espionnage clandestins à l’épreuve de la télévision
- Maurice Cottier (Univ. Fribourg): Whitewash and “Organized Crime”. Switzerland’s Crisis-Ridden Transition from the Cold War to the Era of Globalization

11h30-12h00 Coffee break

12h00-13h00 Concluding discussion

Contact (announcement)

frenking@ghi-dc.org; CSTREB@dhi-paris.fr