Writing in Dark Times
Carolin Emcke
Narrating, Despite Everything
Debate
The philosopher and journalist Carolin Emcke, on this occasion of the publication of her most recent book Was wahr ist. Über Gewalt und Klima (What Is True: About Violence and Climate – in Catalan, El que és veritat, Arcàdia, 2025), upholds writing as an act of resistance and creation of new imaginaries for the future.
For Carolin Emcke, the truth is not an immutable, rigid fact. Being able to understand what is true from the standpoint of human experience requires words, dialogue, conversation, and creating communication among facts, stories, and ideas. In a present where making visible what is true seems to be an ever more difficult task, Emcke proposes that we should recover words and make them ours so we can create the possibility of a different world. Storytelling is creating, that is why it is essential to put into words desirable and possible utopias that help us resist the dehumanizing scenarios that paralyze us today.
In this session, Carolin Emcke suggests that we can resist present forms of violence by recovering the ability to weave stories that return hope in a world where human life is at the centre.
Participants: Carolin Emcke
This activity is part of Writing in Dark Times
