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Facing emerging zoonose SARS-CoV-2, states decided unilaterally to close borders to individuals and revealed deep processes at work ‘bordering of the world’. Smart borders promoted by international organizations have allowed the filtering of indispensables (merchandise, data, capital and key workers) from dispensables (human beings) and, above all, the redefinition of the balance of biopolitical power between state and society. The observation of the unprecedented phenomenon of the activation and generalization of the global border machinery captures a common global dynamic. After a round-the-world tour of border closures between 21 January and 7 July 2020, we concentrate on a few emblematic cases: the Schengen zone, the USA–Canada and USA–Mexico borders, Brazil–Uruguay, Malaysia–Singapore and Morocco–Spain. We interrogate the justification and the strategies of border closure in a context of the global spread of an emerging epidemic, going beyond the simple medical argument. Choices appear to be dependent on ideological orientations henceforth dominant on the function and role of borders. We will discuss the acceleration of the bordering of the world, the forms of its outcome and its difficult reversibility

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Although the history of philology is merely an addition to the rediscovery of textual traditions which have been neglected for too long by academic philology, it is nonetheless an important one for its ability alone to provide an explanation of the existing asymmetric situation. When the world opened up after the 16th century following transoceanic navigations, European encounters with written traditions in America, Africa and Asia led to a variety of attitudes—from denial to fascination, from destruction to collection. These “philological encounters”, both material and conceptual, largely contributed to shape the views of the European Renaissance and the Enlightenment regarding language and writing. To understand the semiological and epistemological consequences of these views, this paper focuses on a single text produced at the time of the Spanish conquest of Mexico, the Codex Mendoza, and on the different interpretations to which the latter was subjected in Europe after crossing the Atlantic. The history of the Codex Mendoza would have us believe that it was during the 18th century, and not before, that writing became exclusively synonymous with alphabet, resulting in the marginalisation of non-alphabetic written systems—and this mainly for historiographical reasons.

Cet essai porte sur la simultanéité comme figure discursive de l’histoire globale. Sa question est simple : pourquoi l’histoire globale se contente-t-elle parfois de constater des simultanéités pour démontrer des connexions ? Après quelques exemples tirés de l’historiographie récente (Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Serge Gruzinski, Romain Bertrand), nous voudrions illustrer le fait que le problème de la simultanéité dans ses rapports à l’histoire à grande échelle ne date pas d’hier. Sans prétendre à quelconque exhaustivité, nous nous arrêterons sur quelques cas (Polybe, Eusèbe de Césarée, João de Barros, Joseph Scaliger) qui démontrent combien la simultanéité constitue l’un des soucis les plus anciens de cette volonté d’embrasser l’ensemble du monde connu à un moment donné, et d’en proposer une histoire. Pour finir, nous reviendrons à la question de l’écriture de l’histoire de nos jours pour me demander si la question de la simultanéité ne nous impose pas de basculer d’une science des conditions de possibilité (Michel Foucault) à une science des conditions de disponibilité