The Algerian uprising known as the hirak is about to reach its second anniversary. Stalled by the COVID pandemic and confronting powerful entrenched interests, the protestors face crucial political choices. The current state of the movement and its possible future are discussed by three leading observers.
In the aftermath of the 2015 terror attacks in Paris, people paid tribute to the victims by bringing to the sites flowers, notes, candles, paintings – all sorts of offerings forming spontaneous memorials. Sarah Gensburger was one of the sociologists who documented their evolution, while the Paris Archives collected their contents. Similarly, Nora Philippe filmed the Women’s March on Washington…
Philosophy, in the 21st century, has changed: its practices and languages are no longer those of the previous century. A turning point has been taken by new generations and thinkers from diverse origins who, more than commenting on the old masters, are taking philosophy into new fields: health, ecology, neurosciences, security warfare, non-Western thought, trans-identities, the rights of non-human living…
Another Modernity is a rich study of the life and thought of Elia Benamozegh, a nineteenth-century rabbi and philosopher whose work profoundly influenced Christian-Jewish dialogue in twentieth-century Europe. Benamozegh, a Livornese rabbi of Moroccan descent, was a prolific writer and transnational thinker who corresponded widely with religious and intellectual figures in France, the Maghreb, and the Middle East. This idiosyncratic figure,…
Five years after her international triumph Girlhood, writer-director Céline Sciamma returns with a poignant feminist revision of the historical romance. In the late eighteenth-century, Marianne, a free-spirited painter, travels to a remote island off the coast of Brittany to paint a portrait of Héloïse, a young woman whose mother has recently taken her out of a convent to marry her to…
Thanks to the order of a Roman Emperor from 321 CE that allowed the municipal council of the Roman colony at the site of modern-day Cologne to compel Jews to service, we know that Jews were part of late Roman society in the northern European provinces at least 17 centuries ago. A tiny ring of similar age bearing a menorah…
Self-taught Outsider artists ("Art Brut") develop personal systems of expression to produce paintings, sculptures, drawings or textile works outside of official artistic circles. Sometimes unaware of social conventions, often resistant to cultural rules, they transgress (sometimes involuntarily) established codes and invent highly personal symbolic universes. In their works, Outsider artists invent subjects, modes of representation, systems of perspective, and technical…
Philosophy, in the 21st century, has changed: its practices and languages are no longer those of the previous century. A turning point has been taken by new generations and thinkers from diverse origins who, more than commenting on the old masters, are taking philosophy into new fields: health, ecology, neurosciences, security warfare, non-Western thought, trans-identities, the rights of non-human living…
Catherine Cusset is the award-winning, best-selling author of thirteen novels published by Gallimard. She taught literature at Yale between 1991 and 2002 and lives in New York City. Her novel Un brillant avenir received the Goncourt des Lycéens Prize in 2008 and her novel L’autre qu’on adorait was a finalist for the Goncourt Prize in 2016. The Story of Jane was published by Simon & Schuster in 2001 and Life of…
Man muss Hannes Stein glauben, wenn er im Prolog seines neuen Buches den Wunsch formuliert, er hätte rasch den Roman zur Pandemie geschrieben und nicht schon viele Jahre daran gearbeitet. Und doch mutet es unter heutiger Perspektive geradezu unheimlich an, wie sich die beiden Hauptfiguren, Julia Bacharach und Bodo von Unruh, in einer menschenleeren Hotelbar kennenlernen und miteinander zu flirten…