We are delighted to welcome the French researcher Anne Simon for a talk on "Literature and animality: zoopoetic renewals" as part of the Mois de La Francophonie 2023.
What is more specifically human – more characteristic of our species – than literature? Myths, poems and novels bring our linguistic practices to their highest degree of complexity: classical rhythms, unrealistic metaphors, texts that echo each other seem to oppose literature to animality.
This division needs to be put into perspective. Based on the expressiveness of animals, on our own animality, on our roaring and snaking alphabet, on the self-portraits of writers as owls, ants or flies, the talk will explain what "zoopoetics" is. Literature, far from cutting us off from the world, is a populated, welcoming and vital ark.
About the speaker :
Director of research at the CNRS, Anne Simon is director of the Centre international d’étude de la philosophie française contemporaine/PhilOfr within the unit République des Savoirs, at the École normale supérieure (Paris). She is the editor of the research notebooks PhilOfr, Pôle Proust and Animots. Her publications include a zoopoetics essay, Une bête entre les lignes, Wildproject, 2021 ; La Rumeur des distances traversées. Proust, une esthétique de la surimpression, Classiques Garnier, 2018 ; Trafics de Proust. Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Deleuze, Barthes, Hermann, 2016 ; Proust ou le réel retrouvé, PUF, 2000.
Conference in French, Q&A in French or English
Thursday 2 March at 6pm
FREE EVENT
Booking in advance is advised.
Book your ticket online or contact us at 0131 285 6030.