Season 2023-2024
Changing our narratives, exploring other imaginaries for a desirable future.
Narratives have always played a major role in the history of humanity and the emergence of our societies. The aim of this cycle is to re-interrogate our dominant founding narratives and imaginaries in the West, and welcome others that might help us to think about our humanity on earth at a time when it seems under threat.
10 October 2023 - Living in France in 2050
With Martin Vanier and Laurent Devisme
We hear and read a lot about the aspirations of the French as regards the way they live in their country, what they seek and what they reject. As far as the future evolution of society is concerned, lifestyle forecasting must remain a cautious exercise, as it seems easy to project onto it the injunctions, anxieties or dominant models of the present!
For this debate, everyone is invited to discuss a question that is both simple and terribly complex: “What are the prospects for living in France in 2050?"
Martin Vanier, geographer, academic and consultant. He teaches territorial prospective and has been working with local authorities for 20 years.
Laurent Devisme, professor of urban studies at Ensa Nantes, researcher at UMR Ambiances Architectures Urbanités, and vice-president of Nantes University in charge of sustainable development.
Tuesday 5 December 2023 - At the source of life
With Éric Karsenti
How did life “miraculously” come into being? And why is its diversity so exuberant? Why was it originally aquatic? How rich are the world's seas and oceans and their seabeds? This event takes us on a scientific odyssey from the first cell billions of years ago to the birth of humankind, to reintegrate our imaginations into the long story.
Éric Karsenti is a French biologist. Director of research at the CNRS, he was scientific director of the Tara Océans expedition.
Hosted by Guillaume Mezière, science journalist.
Tuesday 13 Febdruary 2024 - Inventing the dead
With Grégory Delaplace
Starting from a questioning of the place of the dead in the daily lives of nomadic shepherds in Mongolia, Grégory Delaplace has sought to lay the foundations for an anthropology of the invisible. This has led him to take an interest in subjects as diverse as spirit apparitions, the practice of shamanism, the relationship with history... He takes us into the multiple processes by which the dead are “invented” as partners in formal or intimate relationships, which subvert the institutional frameworks imposed by the state and the clergy.
Grégory Delaplace is an anthropologist and director of studies at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, member of the Groupe Sociétés Religions Laïcités and of the Institut Universitaire de France (2017-2022), CNRS bronze medalist in 2015.
Hosted by Julia Passot, artistic director of La Turbine.
Tuesday 19 March 2024 - A gymnastics of the edge
With Corinne Morel Darleux
About Alors nous irons trouverons la beauté ailleurs, published by Libertalia, 2023.
Corinne Morel Darleux's literary, political and geographical wanderings are part essay, part travelogue, part diary. Corinne Morel Darleux speaks of India and Rojava, novels, madness, degrowth, the uprisings of the Earth, changes of perspective and dreams. She blithely mixes genres.
Corinne Morel Darleux is an essayist and novelist. Involved in numerous ecologist, libertarian and peasant networks, she devotes her time to grassroots activism and writing books, including the highly acclaimed Plutôt couler en beauté que flotter sans grâce, published by Libertalia in 2019.
Hosted by Lisa Bienvenu, cultural mediator.
Tuesday 9 April 2024 - Beginnings: where to begin again?
With Claire Marin
What are the beginnings that punctuate our existence? What is a good beginning in life? Beginnings present themselves to us in many ways: from the sparkle of a child's birth to disasters and discoveries... Beginnings are also the excitement of novelty, the fear of uncertainty, the hope of surprise. Claire Marin examines our first times and new beginnings from the dual angle of philosophical knowledge and personal experience, and raises the question of the place of narrative in the construction of ourselves and our societies.
Claire Marin is a philosophy professor in classes préparatoires aux grandes écoles and an associate member of ENS-Ulm. After the bestseller Rupture(s) (L'Observatoire, 2019), Les Débuts (Autrement, 2022) is a great success.
Hosted by Lisa Bienvenu, cultural mediator.
