Exile: as liberation and reinvention of identity

Exile: as liberation and reinvention of identity - conference #4

One of the most important cultural and political themes of our time is the questioning of identity, on personal identity and also collective identity. Since modern times, China has begun a great transition towards its modernity, the scholars, representatives of the old civilization, have gradually transformed into intellectuals, actors of modernity. Enamelled with various stories of exile, an important part of this difficult process and a source of suffering. In a way, it was exile that freed scholars from their identity confinement and opened the door to the invention of a new individual and collective Chinese identity. Exile is always an act of distancing, distancing, annihilation, but it is also an event of enlargement, exchange, rebirth and reinvention, the history of human civilization shows us this well, modern China confirms this to us today.

• Speaker : Lun Zhang
• Respondant: pending

A series of 4 lectures on the intellectual trajectories of exile

Exile has never spared intellectuals. In the twentieth century and up to the present day, it has even been one of the usual conditions for the intellectual life. But if it obstacles thought and creation, it also sometimes leads them to blossom elsewhere, or even to be nourished by this situation made up of losses and constraints.

The series of lectures "Intellectuals in Exile: Humanism without Borders" seeks to make visible the complexity of these intellectual trajectories and their importance both for the renewal of thought and for democracy.

Each conference is organized around an exiled intellectual, most often hosted at the FMSH or the EHESS. Together with the specialists invited to present them, these intellectuals represent a wide range of backgrounds, whether it be their country of origin, their preferred discipline, or the period and conditions of their exile.

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