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Events

The Challenge of Humanism Today

19 March 2013

Time: 6:30pm
Venue: CANCELLED

CANCELLED

Due to unforeseen circumstances, Professor Julia Kristeva has had to cancel her visit to Queen Mary on 19-20 March 2013. It is hoped that she will be able to give her lecture and seminar at Queen Mary at some future date. Professor Kristeva wishes to convey her sincere apologies for this unavoidable change of arrangements.

Professor JULIA KRISTEVA

Humanism, emerging from Greek philosophy, Judaism and Christianity, crystallised in the Renaissance and developed particularly in the eighteenth century. Humanist thought opens horizons by promising contemporary forms of solidarity and renewal, while also taking directions that have been fiercely criticised by certain contemporary philosophers. After a brief evocation of the history of humanism (Erasmus, Diderot, Sade and Freud), Professor Kristeva will consider Sartre and Heidegger before proposing a re-reading of contemporary humanism from Freud onwards. The lecture will also explore new dimensions of humanism including hyperconnection, adolescence, women's rights and debates around maternity. With the return of religions, a reconstitution of humanism appears necessary in the light of what Professor Kristeva considers to be an anthropological need, namely the inseparability of the need to believe and the desire to know


Julia Kristeva is a psychoanalyst, literary and cultural critic, and novelist. Bulgarian by birth, her career has unfolded in France, with extensive stays in North America where she was Visiting Professor at Columbia University and the New School, New York, as well as at the University of Toronto. She has also been Head of the "Ecole doctorale Langues, Littératures, Images' at the University of Paris 7, and is the author of an important report, commissioned by the French government, on the cultural effects of France and the French language.
Professor Kristeva will answer questions on her talk and more generally on her work.

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