18 November 2023

11:30 – 12:15

Amphithéâtre Faure

Maxime Abolgassemi

Maxime Abolgassemi teaches literature and general culture in preparatory classes at the Lycée Chateaubriand in Rennes. He holds a doctorate in literature (Université Paris-Sorbonne) and an agrégation in modern literature, as well as a master’s degree in theoretical physics (Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie). His work focuses on the Surrealists’ “objective chance”, the notion of counterfiction he introduced, and democratic transparency (to which he is devoting a forthcoming book). In 2017, he published Nuit persane, a first novel that plunges the reader into Tehran in the final years before the Iranian Revolution.

Conference: What energy can save democracy?

The modern democracy that came into being with the French Revolution in the 18th century was a turbulent period, whose actors were aware of an overflow of energy: chaotic, violent, but also utopian and full of inventions. The Enlightenment that preceded it was fascinated by this theoretical question of energy, and disseminated it through literature. Yet we are currently witnessing democratic societies under attack and threatened with paralysis (a feeling of impotence on the part of governments, the fracturing of antagonistic populations), which raises the serious question of whether this precious and fragile political system can be saved by the energy it seemed to produce from the outset. But let’s not forget how ambivalent energy can be…