A discussion about the book Objets vivants

OBJETS VIVANTS : AUX FRONTIERES DE LA VIE 

A discussion about the book Objets vivants 

With Rahma Khazam, director of the book Objets vivants, Géraldine Aïdan, researcher in law who contributed to the book, Marie-Dominique Garnier, professor of gender studies at the University of Paris 8-St Denis, Gilles Hiéronimus, Ph.D. in philosophy and associate researcher at the Institut de recherches philosophiques de Lyon, Grégory Quenet, professor of environmental history at the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (Paris-Saclay).

The book Objets vivants explores the similarities and overlaps, but also the antagonisms and divergences between the living and the non-living. How the living and the non-living juxtapose or ignore each other, how the barriers between the living and the non-living disappear, what are the risks to which the living is exposed in its trade with the non-living – these are the questions addressed in this collection of texts. Beyond their topological/spatial relationships, it will also be a question of grasping life and non-life in their historical/temporal scope: the Montpellier vitalists, Henri Bergson, Richard Dawkins and, above all, the philosophers who think about our current situation are evoked throughout the pages.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

☞ Rahma Khazam is a researcher, member of the ACTE Institute, Sorbonne Paris 1, and affiliated to ENSADLab, Paris. She studied philosophy and art history, and holds a doctorate in aesthetics and art sciences from Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Her research focuses on modernism, image theory, speculative realism, new materialism and contemporary aesthetics. Among his recent publications:” Art, Science and the Mutant Object “, in Post-Specimen Encounters Between Art, Science and Curating (Intellect, 2020); ” Son et image : face au réel “, in L’Echo du réel (Mimésis, 2021); ” Clement Greenberg’s Modernism: Historicizable or Ahistorical? ” in Historical Modernisms (Bloomsbury, 2021); “Ikonische und spekulative Wende: Von Visualität zu Realität,” in Nach der ikonischen Wende. Aktualität und Geschichte eines Paradigmas (Kadmos, 2021). She edited the publication Une Poétique Pragmatiste: Considérations sur l’oeuvre de Franck Leibovici (Presses du réel, 2018).

☞ Géraldine Aïdan has a doctorate in public law (Prix Solennel de la Chancellerie des Universités de Paris), and is a research fellow at the CNRS. She is deputy director of the Center for Studies and Research in Administrative and Political Sciences (CERSA, UMR7106). Her research is devoted to interiority and the new questions it generates in law. Recently published works: Humain -Non humain. Repenser l’intériorité du sujet de droit (LGDJ, Coll ” Droit et Société, February 2021) and La vie psychique, objet du droit (CNRS Editions, 2022). 

☞ Marie-Dominique Garnier is a professor of gender studies at the University of Paris 8-St Denis, member of the LEGS Laboratory. Author of numerous articles on literature and its intersections with philosophies of difference (Deleuze, Guattari, Derrida) she counts among her recent publications an anti-dictionary (Alphagenre. Graphique et politique, L’Harmattan, 2016), an experimental translation of Madeline Gins (Helen Keller ou Arakawa. Portrait de l’artiste en jeune aveugle, Hermann, 2017). She has also directed or co-edited collectives on literature and photography (Jardins d’hiver, PENS), on the writing of H. Cixous (Cixous sous X, Parties de lecture), and recently co-organized the days “Guattari +30” at the University of Paris 8. She is a member of the editorial board of the journal Chimères, of which she has co-edited three recent issues (n° 98, Devenirs-étranger.es, n° 100, Intervenir, and n° 102, to be published, Guattari + 31, May 2023)

☞ Gilles Hieronimus holds a doctorate in philosophy and is an associate researcher at the Institut de recherches philosophiques de Lyon III – Jean Moulin. He co-edits with Jean – Jacques Wunenburger, at the Presses Universitaires de France, the critical edition of the philosopher’s works, and has established the first commented edition of La poétique de l’espace (puf, Paris, 2021). He has also published, in collaboration with Julien Lamy, Imaginaire et praxis, autour de Gaston Bachelard, Garnier Classiques, Paris, 2018; Imagination et mouvement, autour de Bachelard et Merleau-Ponty, EME éditions, Ottignies-Louvain-la-Neuve, 2011. He actively contributed to the exhibition Bachelard contemporain, as scientific and editorial advisor to the curator, Jean-François Sanz.

☞ Grégory Quenet is one of the pioneers of environmental history and environmental humanities in France. Since 2012, he is the first and still the only professor in environmental history in France, at the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (Paris-Saclay). Founder of the French portal of environmental humanities, he organized the 8th Congress of the European Society for Environmental History in Versailles in 2015. He created the first courses in the field at Sciences Po Paris in 2009 at the request of Bruno Latour, then at the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (Paris-Saclay), at the University of Lausanne and at the Sorbonne Abu Dhabi. He was a member of the French World Heritage Committee. At the University of Paris Saclay, he has been involved in the work of climatologists and ecologists. In recent years, he has developed close collaborations with artists, notably with Laurent Grasso, serving as scientific advisor for several projects.

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Published by ÉDITIONS MIMÉSIS in March 2023, the book Objets vivants is part of the collection Art, Esthétique, Philosophie directed by Jacinto Lageira, professor of Esthétique at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne; it has received the support of the ACTE Institute, School of Arts of the Sorbonne, University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.

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