Please join the French-Speaking Worlds: Then and Now talk with Professor Réjane Sénac (CEVIPOF, Sciences Po Paris).

"Radical and Fluid:  How French Social and Environmental Activists Imagine a Common Future Today"

Abstract: In the face of the ecological and social emergencies, how do French contemporary mobilizations against injustices address the issue of a fair and sustainable future? We will answer this question from a qualitative survey conducted in 2019-2020 of 130 association officials and activists on issues including social and environmental justice and the fight against racism, sexism and/or speciesism. These mobilizations combine a radical denunciation of inequalities that goes back to their root causes with an attachment to fluidity concerning the “who,” the “what,” the “how” and the “when” of emancipation. In particular, we will examine the way in which the emancipated common is part of a radical and fluid renewal of the relation to utopia by promoting both the diversity of tactics (advocacy, civil disobedience, border violence/non-violence) and the making (in) common. The activists interviewed address the link between local alternatives and the advent of a new global order in an elliptical, even enigmatic way, through metaphorical statements: “no big night, but shared gardens,” “the islets will make the archipelagos."

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Hosted by the French-Speaking Worlds: Then and Now Research Group, sponsored by the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages Research Unit and co-sponsored by the France-Stanford Center and Stanford Global Studies.

This event is part of Stanford Global Studies’ Global Research Workshop Program.