Event

Barcelona Debate 2011 - Crisis

The shock of the economic crisis has rudely awakened us from the dream of well-being in which we slumbered. With almost no period of transition we have gone from a life free of concerns about what lay ahead of us to flock in despair towards an uncertain future about which pronouncements are taking the form of a constant flow of dark forebodings. Although the economy is the spearhead of the crisis, the feeling that everything is running down, that this is the end of an era, is similarly affecting other aspects of the present: the political power game, aesthetic judgement, the basic ethics of shared existence, our corners of intimacy, our relationship with the planet and our ability to imagine possible worlds. Yet are not crises also times of great agitation and creativity? Do they not always open up an interlude of freedom before the crystallising of a new order? The big questions have been raised once again. With what tools shall we face the challenge of providing answers?

Live streaming of the debate

Monday 17 January at 7.30 p.m.
«Crises and fables»
 
Soledad Puértolas, writer and member of the Royal Spanish Academy. She has recently published Compañeras de viaje (Travel Maids, Anagrama, 2010).
 
 
Tuesday 18 January at 7.30 p.m.
«Territory, authority, rights»
 
Saskia Sassen, Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University and author of Territorio, autoridad y derechos (Katz, 2010), which was published in English as Territory, Authority, Rights (Princeton University Press, 2006).
 
 
Monday 24 January at 7.30 p.m.
«Gender equality»    
 
Gosta-Esping Andersen, Professor of sociology at the Pompeu Fabra University and author of The Incomplete Revolution: Adapting Welfare States to Women’s New Roles (Polity, 2009).
 
 
Monday 31 January at 7.30 p.m.
«Beauty»
 
François Jullien, Sinologist and philosopher, lecturer at the Université Paris Diderot (Paris VII) and author of Las transformaciones silenciosas (Edicions Bellaterra, 2010), to be published in English as The Silent Transformations (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming May 2011), and Cette étrange idée du beau (Grasset, 2010). 
 
 
Monday 7 February at 7.30 p.m.
«Compromise»
 
Avishai Margalit, Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has recently published On Compromise and Rotten Compromises (Princeton, 2009).
 
 
Monday 14 February at 7.30 p.m.
«Political language»
 
Talk cancelled due to reasons beyond the control of the CCCB.

Claudio Lomnitz, Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University, New York.
 
 
Monday 21 February at 7.30 p.m.
«Love, reason, irony»        
 
Eva Illouz, Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and author inter alia of La salvación del alma moderna (Katz, 2010), which was published in English as Saving the Modern Soul: Therapy, Emotions and the Culture of Self-Help (University of California Press, 2008).
 
 
Monday 28 February at 7.30 p.m.
«If it wasn't for crisis we'd still be bacteria»
 
Jorge Wagensberg,physicist, Professor of Theory of Irreversible Processes at the University of Barcelona.
 
 
Monday 14 March at 7.30 p.m.
«The economy»
 
Antón Costas, Professor of Political Economy at the University of Barcelona.
 
 
Monday 21 March at 7.30 p.m.       
«Europe, final crisis?»
 
Étienne Balibar, Emeritus Professor of Moral and Political Philosophy at the Université Paris Nanterre (Paris X) and Professor of Humanities at the University of California, Irvine. He is author of Nosotros, ¿ciudadanos de Europa?(Tecnos, 2003), which was published in English as We, the People of Europe?: Reflections on Transnational Citizenship (Translation/Transnation) (Princeton University Press, 2003), and of Violencias, identidades y civilidad (Violence, Identity and Civility – Gedisa, 2006.