Books & ideas

The Birth of Fake News

Sarah Maza — 2020-05-07T07:00:00Z

While the expression “fake news” appeared recently, the problem itself, Sophia Rosenfeld argues, can be retraced to the very birth of democracy. Drawing upon the history of ideas, Democracy and Truth investigates the roots of current tensions around the question of truth in politics.

Knowledge Decolonized

Laura Singeot — 2020-03-23T08:00:00Z

While the “cognitive empire” feeds on a single conception of knowledge forged by European modernity, epistemologies of the South validate the knowledges produced by the resistance of groups having systematically suffered oppression.

Politics as an Art of Living

Solange Chavel — 2020-03-12T08:00:00Z

What if it were necessary, in politics, to allow ourselves to be guided by our affinities rather than trying to build a general and often too distant theoretical position? And what if proximity had more value than truth? This is Valérie Gérard's hypothesis, in an open-minded and stimulating book.

The Regime of Opinion

Alain Policar — 2019-05-06T07:00:00Z

The present era tends to blur the line between the true and the false. Democracy, which is based on the conflict of opinions and hence the horizon of a common truth, is consequently compromised. Yet for Myriam Revault d'Allones, this threat also hangs over the imagination.

Truth-Making in Early Islam

Elias Saba — 2017-12-07T08:00:00Z

When Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses was published in 1988, the book both garnered praise and stirred a political controversy. Yet it did not invent anything as it relied on the very well documented ‘Satanic Verses incident'. Addressing this infamous historical episode, Shahab Ahmed's work investigates how different interpretive methodologies can quarrel over what constitutes truth and how to make a truth-claim.

This is their body

Sébastien Roux — 2016-03-24T07:22:18Z

How did the body come to play such a crucial part in the definition of contemporary identities? Relying on studies on transplants, childbirth or people's relation to corpses, Dominique Memmi brings to light what is socially and politically at stake in the fact that the self is rooted in the body.

Living the Enlightenment

Christophe Litwin — 2015-05-18T05:30:00Z

Enlightenment philosophy was invented in salons and coffee houses. It was spread by men and women of letters, but also in the dynamic context of major cities. In his book, Stéphane Van Damme explores the history of these Enlightenment practices.

Confess and Obey

Frédéric Gros — 2014-09-04T07:00:00Z

In the lecture delivered between January and March 1980, Michel Foucault, after completing his studies of “power-knowledge,” attached new importance to the subject—specifically, to a form of subjectivity experienced in the injunction to speak of oneself, to better submit onself to others.

Foucault: Truth in Action

Dinah Ribard — 2008-10-23T07:33:15Z

Michel Foucault's lectures at the Collège de France were dedicated, in 1982-1983, to “the drama of truth”, that is to say to the manner in which the enunciation of truth changes he who has the courage to speak it. Because, for Foucault, philosophical discourse is not only the bearer of rational thought, but also and above all thought in action.