Research

Since I was a student, I developed a deep interest in several aspects of the encounter of Europeans with Asia and endeavored to find intersections between the disciplines of my curriculum: French literature, English literature, and Religious Studies (Christianity, "classical" and modern Hinduism, Buddhism and language courses in Sanskrit and Tibetan). Ever since, the two basic aspects of my research have been travel history and intercultural encounters, and the perception and reception of Asian religions in/through European literary productions and performing arts. These two aspects intersect with a larger interest in interreligious dialogue, cultural transfers, and global studies, and can be divided into four interconnected topics.

Tibet, Travel and (Sacred) Landscape

In the framework of a larger reflection on landscape theory, the travel narratives of French explorers to Tibet and their perception of Tibetan landscapes and cultures became the focus of my doctoral research and have since developed into several interconnected research interests. This topic led me to address issues such as Orientalism, postcolonial theory and history of natural and human sciences (mainly geographical, geological, ethnographical, anthropological, religious and Asian studies). I also made field trips to Eastern Tibet on the tracks of several of the travelers who had written about their own encounter with the Amdo and Khams regions of the Tibetosphere one century earlier. Among the many questions raised, the European travelers' interest in and understanding of Tibetans' own perception and representation of landscape was a central point of my investigation. In particular, the notion of "sacred" landscape and its varied applications needed to be understood both from an epistemological perspective and from the travelers' specific agenda, education and background. In this regard, besides my 2010 book and a large series of academic articles on the subject, I have edited a woman traveler’s narrative to the Himalayas (Marie de Ujfalvy-Bourdon’s 1887 Une Parisienne dans l’Himalaya) and I am working on the edition of Alexandra David-Neel's first version of her travel account to Tibet and on the critical edition of Jacques Bacot’s travelogues to Tibet (1909 and 1912), based on thus far unexploited archival material. The most crucial corollary of this study has been the examination of the travel of Adrup Gönpo in 1908, the first Tibetan to spend time in France. This is the first step in the investigation of so-far neglected Asian representatives’ sojourns in France at the turn of the 19th century. Significantly, Gönpo described France in terms of a holy "hiddenland" (Tibetan: sbas yul), a salient feature that in turn triggered my present project (sponsored by the Khyentse Foundation), together with Prof. Anne-Marie Blondeau: the critical edition of the o rgyan chen po padma 'byung gnas kyi ma 'ong lung bstan snyigs ma'i sems can la sbas yul padma bkod kyi gnas yig, the first Tibetan guidebook to such a hiddenland to have had a significant impact on the perception of Tibetan religious culture in the European academic studies, esotericism and popular culture. As a further development, I have analyzed the inception, reception and transformation of the "myths" of Shambhala and Shangri-La as spiritual alternative models both in the Theosophical milieus and in Francophone modern and contemporary literature and poetry.

Tibetan Studies in France and Europe between Academia and Esotericism

As a side aspect of my research on Tibetan landscape, I have documented the historical acquisition process of knowledge on Tibet alongside the inception and development of Tibetan studies in France based on several archive collections (including personal papers and manuscripts, as well as photographic, object and art collections). Expounded in several articles, online publications and talks, this ongoing research addresses questions such as the transnational dynamics of academic studies, the national/international political and overarching entangled and imperial contexts, the agency of singular actors and their global networks and the role of women in academia. In the framework of a project sponsored by the French National Institute for Art History, I have shed light on several instrumental personalities and on the function of Tibetan object and manuscript collections that have circulated in France since the 19th century. As a consequence, the history of Tibetan academic studies can be redefined through the investigation of the presence of Tibetan culture and religions (and the strong focus on Tibetan religious culture) in art collections, museums and popular culture. In particular, and at the intersection of my other areas of research, the interaction of esoteric circles and scholarly milieus is a major feature of the rise of an interest in Tibet in France and Europe, as exemplified by several famous or forgotten actors identified in this project.

Modern Buddhism and the Performing Arts

Following on my ongoing research on travel to Tibet and the rise of Tibetan studies, the renewal of the perception of Tibetan Buddhism became a highlight of my investigation and strengthened my interest in Buddhist studies. While I have more generally dealt with the questions both of epistemological issues (notably literature and theater at the interplay between religious and medical/neurological discourse) and of intercultural phenomena in literature, I have particularly focused on the rise of an Asian, and more precisely Buddhist and Tibetan Buddhist cultural background in French, Belgian, Swiss, and Mauritian literatures (poetry, fiction and drama). I have especially examined the interaction of Buddhism and theater in French-speaking areas from the 19th to the 21st century in the scope of a scholarship awarded by the Swiss Science Foundation. This includes not only Buddhism as a topic or a "content", but rather as a driving force for change on the conceptions of theater writing, dramaturgy, acting, stage and performance since its reception under the various forms of "modern Buddhism" at the end of the 19th century. In particular, this investigation led me to identify "Parisian Buddhism" as a specific trend in fin de siècle culture of which there are manifold connections with the world of theater that I point out and analyze in several published and forthcoming works.

One specific aspect regards the growing presence of the character of the Buddha and his life story in dramas, operas, and performances of all kinds (a project supported by the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Program in Buddhist Studies). Written and performed mainly from 1890 to 1920, “Buddhadramas” triggered heated public debates on religion and theater worldwide. I have thus retrieved a large amount of items and analyzed the global dynamics of this neglected episode of world history which accounts for the complex processes of the making of modern Buddhism in the global public sphere. A side project linked to this study on "Buddhadramas" concerns the reemergence of the figure of the Buddha and the development of a Tantric turn in performing arts during the three last decades, in particular in the avant-garde, underground, drone and black metal scenes.

A second connected aspect relates to French famous explorer of Tibet Alexandra David-Neel’s early years in the 1890s as a Theosophist, a "Parisian Buddhist" and an opera singer. In particular, I have been tasked to edit o David-Neel’s first (unpublished) novel, her 1902 Le Grand Art: journal d’une actrice, one of the first European Buddhist literary pieces. I have also been charged to document David-Neel’s Oriental library. Since this first encounter with David-Neel’s archive collection stored at her house in Southern France, I have developed a deep interest in highlighting the multiple facets of this self-proclaimed European Buddhist and unique explorer of Tibetan geographical and spiritual territories. In particular, I have highlighted David-Neel’s indebtedness to her training as an actor during her travels and throughout her career as a writer, and have analyzed the theatrical dimensions of her translation of Tibetan Tantric Buddhism in her written work and live interventions. Based on the material I could access during this research, I have also started to document the history of engaged Buddhism and modern Buddhist networks in France.

Entangled Yogic Cultures and Global Religious History

My next expected major achievement would be an in-depth study of the reception of Indian and Tibetan yoga and meditation (1890–1960) in French and European modern entangled history with Asian religious representatives. This would be a crucial corollary to the previous topic: the ties of academia and esotericism in the perception and assimilation of Asian religions. Yoga studies in French-speaking countries are at a stage of infancy and the rich Francophone yoga history still needs to be highlighted against the backdrop of the European reception of yoga and the globalizing yogic culture. As I analyze the occult roots of modern yoga, the scholarly, artistic, and literary translation of yoga, and the portrayal of yogic figures, I adopt a decentered historiographical perspective and a global religious and literary approach. In particular, I emphasize the importance of literary dimensions in shaping yoga’s popularity, propose contextualized hypotheses on the success of specific trends and tags of yoga, reflect on the development of global yoga in comparison with the promotion of Buddhist meditation, analyze the "yogic" networks of key individual actors, and explore the advent of "Tibetan yoga" and in particular the shift from Indian to Tibetan Tantric yogis in the Western imagination. I recently took a first step in this direction in a forthcoming chapter on the translation of Tibetan magic in Alexandra David-Neel’s work.