Tribute to Michel Foucault (1984-2014) – Reading by Pierre Guyotat

Debate. Transgressing Today?

With Judith Revel (philosopher, Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne University), Guillaume Le Blanc (philosopher, Bordeaux III University), Donatien Grau (member of New College, Oxford University), Frank Madlener (Director of IRCAM).

Reading. Éden, Éden, Éden, by Pierre Guyotat (© Éditions Gallimard)

To transgress: simultaneously asserting a boundary and its limit. The gesture underpinning IRCAM’s ManiFeste-2014 belongs to savage singularities, as seen in Pierre Guyotat’s oeuvre.

What transgressions are neither conventional scandals, nor institutionalized subversiveness? Theorist of power, of knowledge, and of self-invention, Michel Foucault remains a precious advocate for aesthetic, philosophic, and political questions that transgress sharing disciplines today.

At the end of this debate marking the 30 th anniversary of Michel Foucault’s death, Pierre Guyotat will read Éden, Éden, Éden (© Éditions Gallimard). In 1970, the publication of this book, a historical explosion, led to critics, bans, and admirative defenses, including that of Foucault, “You had to break all forms and all bodies, accelerate the great machine of sexuality, and let it repeat itself along the straight line of time. You promise yourself, I am afraid, of the opposition… There will be a scandal, but it will be about something else.”

An exceptional evening at the Centre Pompidou.