Event

Barcelona Debate 2010 - Thinking the Future

After many years of living in the present continuous, it would seem that some interest is again being shown in the future. The world has been like an immense room without views in which a present in accelerated movement has not been letting through any ray of light coming from the past – which only led back to war or mayhem – or casting us in the direction of any minimally distant future – which was seen as a blurry horizon. However, all of a sudden, with the present crisis, people are beginning to look out. Thinking the future is a necessity. Not for seeking some ideal solution but for glimpsing what risks we shall be taking if we keep on doing things the way we are now. What does humanity mean in the coming world and what might be the moral and cultural references of our society? Thinking the future means bringing the great eternal questions up to date once again: What can I know? What must I do? What can I expect?

Monday 18 January, at 7.30 p.m.
“The Future of the Museum and of the Novel”
Orhan Pamuk, writer, Nobel Laureate in Literature 2006. He has recently published The Museum of Innocence, Knopf, 2009 (published in Catalan as El museu de la innocència, Bromera, 2009; and in Spanish by Mondadori, 2009).


Monday 25 January at 7.30 p.m.
“The Future of Work”
Sidi Mohammed Barkat, philosopher, expert in ergonomics, lecturer at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.


Monday 1 February at 7.30 p.m.
“The Future of Islam”
Faisal Devji, historian, lecturer at the University of Oxford and author of Landscapes of the Jihad: Militancy, Morality, Modernity, Cornell University Press, 2005 (published in Spanish as Paisajes del yihad. Militancia, moralidad, modernidad, Edicions Bellaterra, 2007),


Monday 8 February at 7.30 p.m.
“The Future of Biomedicine”
Jordi Camí, Professor of Pharmacology at the Pompeu Fabra University of Barcelona and General Director of the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park and of the Pasqual Maragall Foundation.


Monday 15 February at 7.30 p.m.
“The Future of the Family”
Anna Cabré, Director of the Centre of Demographic Studies and Professor of Human Geography at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.


Monday 22 February at 7.30 p.m.
“The Future of Democracy and of the Imagination”
Azar Nafisi, writer and lecturer at Johns Hopkins University, author of Reading Lolita in Teheran, Random House 2003 (published in Spanish as Leer Lolita en Teherán, El Aleph, 2003) and Things I’ve Been Silent About, Random House, 2008 (published in Spanish as Cosas que he callado, Duomo, 2010).


Monday 1 March 7.30 p.m.
“The Fragile Future of Utopias”
Francisco Jarauta, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Murcia.


Monday 8 March 7.30 p.m.
“The Future of the Soul”Eva Illouz, Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and author of Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, University of California Press, 1997 (published in Spanish as El consumo de la utopía romàntica, Katz, 2007).


Monday 15 March 7.30 p.m.
«The Future of Chance»
Antonio Tabucchi, writer.