University of Montreal Professor to Give Talk on Friendship
On听March 6, from听4 to 5:30PM听the McGillicuddy Humanities Center, as part of the Life of Ideas series, curated by Fr茅d茅ric Rondeau, will host scholar 脡ric M茅choulan. M茅choulan will give a talk titled 鈥淥n Friendship: A Brief History of the Concept from Aristotle to Facebook.鈥
脡ric M茅choulan is an early modernist and cultural historian with significant interests in critical theory and digital humanities. His early interest in the history of the book (first as a librarian and then as a cultural historian), as well as in collective memories have led him to work intermedially: from the very institutions that authorize communication to the materialities of communication (images as well as texts), M茅choulan argues that attending to the transmission of texts and images allows for a sharper understanding of aesthetic works.
His most recent book,听Lire avec soin听(Careful Reading) focuses on the idea that reading is not a simple decoding of signs. Rather, it must be integrated into a history of media and a theory of justice. M茅choulan uses the concept of an 鈥渆thics of care鈥 to make visible relations which previously went unnoticed, or the importance of which have been undervalued. M茅choulan focuses on the relationships in which individuals find themselves, considering that subjects are the temporary products of intertwined flows stabilized by media, cultural habits, institutions, in short, by life. His work is attentive to the 鈥減olitics of transmission鈥 in the sense that before thinking about听what听we say, we should think about听how听we say it:
听鈥淟earning to read carefully is not simply a matter of learning to see the latent content of discourses and situations, it consists, rather, of building a relationship of trust with events, things, and living beings in order to better understand and comprehend their multiple temporalities. Intelligence in this case is not vexed by questions of domination or mastery: as language suggests, it is, in fact, a question of being intelligent in the company of others鈥攂oth past and present鈥攖hat is to say, of creating a microsociety of readers. One is never intelligent alone.听鈥 (Lire avec soin听146).
脡ric M茅choulan is a professor of French Literature at the Universit茅 de Montr茅al, and also director of the Research Centre Virtuoso on digital uses, cultures, and documents. He is also the head of the committee of the Fondation Paul-Zumthor. From 2004 to 2010, he served as a听directeur de programme听at the听Coll猫ge international de philosophie听in Paris.
M茅choulan鈥檚听March 6听talk 鈥淥n Friendship. A Brief History of the Concept from Aristotle to Facebook鈥 will take place at the听Allen and Sally Fernald APPE space,听Stewart Commons IMRC.Refreshments will be served.听
The talk is part of the yearlong talk series 鈥淟ife of Ideas, Notions, and Concepts鈥 curated by MHC faculty board member Fr茅d茅ric Rondeau which included fall听and听spring听panels听of U海角社区 faculty, as well as upcoming guest speaker听Enzo Traverso.
Part of the McGillicuddy Humanities Center’s 2017-2018 symposium is Juvenescence/Obsolescence: Humanities Approaches to Aging across the Ages.