Envisager L’après-catastrophe — Par Pierre Zaoui et Mathieu Potte-Bonneville — Bétonsalon - Centre d'art et de recherche — Event — Slash Paris

Past: Wednesday, December 16, 2015 at 7 PM

IMAGINING THE POST-CATASTROPHE

A conversation between Pierre Zaoui & Mathieu Potte-Bonneville, in the framework of the Speculative Thinking Series conceived with Émilie Notéris.

The time that follows catastrophes seems doomed to be unthinkable: we can’t imagine it neither before (the particularity of a catastrophe is to thwart our anticipations); neither during (while we are too busy surviving it); nor after, while we are shunted between stupor, repetition, and compulsion. Should we then give up on stimulating our imagination, to only rely on the comfort of a still hurt sensibility or on the prudence of reason? Beyond the metaphors of the unpresentable, of the desert or fields of ruins, what uses and fictions remain possible? From the classical theories to the contemporary fictions, we will investigate if and how the imagination could, after the storm, help shaping the memory and the future.

PhD in Philosophy, Mathieu Potte-Bonneville is senior lecturer at the École Normale Supérieure at Lyon. Former president of the Collège International of Philosophy and co-founder of the tri-monthly magazine Vacarme, he has notably published Michel Foucault: L’inquiétude de l’histoire (PUF, 2004), Amorces (Prairies ordinaires, 2004), D’Après Foucault (avec P. Artières, réed. “Points essais”, 2013). He is in charge of “Ideas and Knowledges” at Institut Français, he has recently coordinated the collective book Game of Thrones — Série Noire (Prairies ordinaires, 2015), and he often collaborates with the programme La Grande Table at France-Culture.

Pierre Zaoui teaches Philosophy, Literature and Contemporary art at the University Paris Diderot. He is has notably written Spinoza, la décision de soi (Bayard, 2008), La Traversée des catastrophes (Seuil, 2010) and La Discrétion, ou l’art de disparaître (Autrement, 2013). He is member of editorial board of the magazine Vacarme.