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To mark the publication in Italy of Autobiographie d’un poulpe, Vinciane Despret, philosopher of science, will be at Villa Medici for a meeting in the Grand Salon. She will be in conversation with Emanuele Coccia, a philosopher specializing in the living world and domestic space, who wrote the preface. The meeting will be hosted by Paolo Pecere, professor of philosophy at Roma Tre, and will focus on the environment, the relationship between living species and architecture, as a prelude to the Festival des Cabanes opening at Villa Medici on May 24. The meeting will be followed by a book signing of Vinciane Despret and Emanuele Coccia’s most recent works, organized in partnership with the Libreria Stendhal – Librairie française de Rome.
Autobiography of an octopus
Do you know the vibratory poetry of spiders? the sacred architecture of wombats? the ephemeral aphorisms of octopuses? Welcome to “therolinguistics“, a major scientific discipline of the 3rd millennium that studies the stories animals are constantly writing and telling. Giving free rein to an overflowing imagination, with his latest book Autobiographie d’un poulpeVinciane Despret plunges us into the heart of fascinating scientific debates, set in an indeterminate future.
By blurring the lines between science and fiction, she creates a fascinating confusion: what if, indeed, spiders were calling out to us to stop the hubbub of our machines? What if the constructions of wombats testify to a welcoming cosmology, offering a formidable lesson in conviviality? And what if octopuses, adepts of metempsychosis, despaired of not being able to reincarnate due to overfishing and ocean pollution? In this astonishing thought experiment, Vinciane Despret practices a salutary decentering that opens the way to other ways of being human on Earth…
It’s not a question of disputing interference – what is communicating from one species to another if not interfering? – but to do so in the knowledge that in doing so we are breaking the spiders’ pact of silence. Perhaps we should learn to do this with the politeness and courtesy of those entering another home.
Nature is but a vast reservoir of peoples and civilizations to which we have not yet grasped the key. Scientific research on other living beings should be seen as a vast exercise in the ethnography of the non-human.
Vinciane Despret
Vinciane Despret is a philosopher, psychologist and professor at the University of Liège. After discovering the work of ethologists, she turned her research towards the philosophy of science.
Examining and questioning our relationship with animals is at the heart of her work. Her numerous publications include Quand le loup habitera avec l’agneau (2004), Penser comme un rat (2009), Le Chez-Soi des animaux (2017), Que diraient les animaux… si on leur posait les bonnes questions? (2018) and Habiter en oiseau (2019). With the Bento association of architects, Vinciane Despret has curated the Belgian pavilion for the 2023 edition of the Venice Architecture Biennale.
In May 2023, to coincide with the publication in Italy of Autobiographie d’un poulpe, Vinciane Despret invited Emanuel Coccia and Paolo Pecere to Villa Medici to talk about the environment, the relationship between living species and architecture. This exchange was also a prelude to the third edition of Villa Medici’s Festival des Cabanes.
Emanuele Coccia
Philosopher and lecturer at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Emanuele Coccia is one of the protagonists of today’s philosophical scene. His interests range from the living to fashion, from contemporary creation todomestic space. He originally trained in agronomy, before turning to philosophy and philology. After studying in Florence, where he obtained his doctorate in 2005, he was invited as a research professor by the universities of Tokyo (2009), Buenos Aires (2010), Düsseldorf (2013-2014), Columbia (2015-2016), Weimar (2019) and Munich (2020). He is the author, published by Payot et Rivages, of La vie sensible (2010) and Le bien dans les choses (2013),
Plant life. A metaphysics of mixing (2016), Métamorphoses (2020) and, most recently, Philosophy of the home. Domestic space and happiness (2021), translated into several languages.
Paolo Pecere
Paolo Pecere teaches the history of philosophy at the University of Roma Tre. He is interested in the relationship between philosophy, the natural sciences and psychology in modern and contemporary times. His books include La filosofia della natura in Kant (Pagina 2009),
Dalla parte di Alice. Consciousness and the Imaginary (Mimesis 2015), Soul, Mind and Brain from Descartes to Cognitive Science. A Critical History (Springer 2020). He writes about travel and books in Treccani’s “Pocketbook”. He has published the novels La vita lontana (LiberAria 2018) and Risorgere (Chiarelettere 2019) and the narrative essay
Il dio che danza. Journeys, trances, transformations (nottetempo 2021). His latest book is The Nature of Mind. From Descartes to cognitive science (Carocci 2023).
Practical information
Monday, May 22, 2023, 7:30 pm Grand Salon, Villa Medici Event in French with consecutive translation into Italian Event free of charge In partnership with theUniversità Roma Tre, theInstitut français de Rome and ContrastoBooks publishing house
We kindly ask you to cancel your reservation if you no longer wish to attend, to give other people the opportunity to take part in the event.
