Luke O’Sullivan: “Theory TV: The Political Documentaries of Adam Curtis” (13/10)

Luke O’Sullivan, de la National University of Singapore, professeur invité à Sciences-Po St Germain en Laye (Univ. de Cergy-Pontoise), présentera sa communication “Theory TV: The Political Documentaries of Adam Curtis” le jeudi 13 octobre, de 17h30 à 19h30. Maison de la Recherche, 28 rue Serpente, Paris 6e , salle D421.

Résumé :

“Adam Curtis (b.1955) is a British film-maker who has worked for the BBC since the early 1980s.  Over the course of three decades he has built up an impressive body of work on twentieth century history and politics which has yet to be noticed by an academic audience. This is despite the fact that he has regularly addressed the impact on politics and society of the ideas of a long list of thinkers that includes Sigmund Freud, Walter Lipmann, Leo Strauss, Friedrich Hayek, Ayn Rand, Sayid Qutb, John von Neumann, James Buchanan, Franz Fanon, John Nash, Isaiah Berlin, and Richard Dawkins, to name only some of the best-known. This paper offers an introduction to his films, and investigates the pros and cons of attempting to tackle major historical and philosophical themes in the televisual documentary format. It argues that while Curtis has many original observations to make about the fate of contemporary Britain (and of Western modernity) more generally, the only way to truly appreciate his contribution is, ironically, to turn his work back into text.”
The following documentaries can be watched prior to the conference: Century of the Self; All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace; The Power of Nightmares; and The Trap. All of them are on YouTube.

Discutante: Karine Chambefort, U. Paris-Est Créteil

Selina Todd, autour de son livre The People: The Rise and Fall of the Working Class, 1910-2010

Selina Todd, de l’Université d’Oxford, ouvrira une discussion autour de son livre The People: The Rise and Fall of the Working Class, 1910-2010 (London, John Murray, 2014) le jeudi 17 mars de 17h à 19h. Maison de la Recherche, 28 rue Serpente, Paris 6e , salle D421.

En raison des contrôles de sécurité, les personnes extérieures à Paris IV souhaitant assister à ce séminaire sont invitées à se munir d’une carte d’étudiant ou d’une carte professionnelle, ou encore d’une carte d’identité et de cette annonce imprimée.

Discutant: Yann Béliard de l’Université Paris 3-Sorbonne Nouvelle

Podcast ci-dessous et sur le site de la SAS:

Présentation de l’éditeur : ‘There was nothing extraordinary about my childhood or background. And yet I looked in vain for any aspect of my family’s story when I went to university to read history, and continued to search fruitlessly for it throughout the next decade. Eventually I realised I would have to write this history myself.’

What was it really like to live through the twentieth century? In 1910 three-quarters of the population were working class, but their story has been ignored until now. Based on the first-person accounts of servants, factory workers, miners and housewives, award-winning historian Selina Todd reveals an unexpected Britain where cinema audiences shook their fists at footage of Winston Churchill, communities supported strikers and pools winners (like Viv Nicholson) refused to become respectable. Charting the rise of the working class, through two world wars to their fall in Thatcher’s Britain and today, Todd tells their story for the first time, in their own words. Uncovering a huge hidden swathe of Britain’s past, The People is the vivid history of a revolutionary century and the people who really made Britain great.