New York Underground ? Lives and destinies of French intellectuals exiled in the United States after 1940

The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Fondation Maison des sciences de l'homme are pleased to invite you to a second lecture on the theme of exile, with political scientist Laurent Jeanpierre.

During the Second World War, with the occupation of France, many French intellectuals took refuge in New York, including Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, André Breton, Pierre and Hélène Lazareff and Claude Lévi-Strauss.

His presence in New York had an enormous impact on American intellectual life, as well as on his own creative work, thanks to his contacts with American scientific and artistic currents.

It is this extraordinary intellectual and artistic adventure, this mutual fertilisation, that will be the focus of our debate, reminding us that the question of exile is a universal theme.

Speaker:

Laurent Jeanpierre, political scientist, Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne

•  Laurent Jeanpierre, political scientist, University of Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne
•  Elisa Klüger, sociologist, University of Aix-Marseille

A series of 5 lectures

Exile has never spared intellectuals. In the twentieth century and right up to the present day, it has even been one of the usual conditions for the life of the mind. But while it forces thought and creation to take a break, it also sometimes leads them to flourish elsewhere, or even to be nourished by this situation of loss and constraint.
The series of lectures entitled "Intellectuals in exile: a humanism without borders" seeks to highlight the complexity of these intellectual trajectories and their importance for the renewal of thought and democracy.

Each conference is organised around one or more exiled intellectuals, 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, in terms of their country of origin, their preferred discipline, and the period and conditions of their exile.