A CONVERSATION WITH DOMINIQUE RABATÉ
WHEN
WHERE
Institut d’Études Françaises, Villa Europa,
Kohlweg 7, 66123 Saarbrücken
LANGUAGE
FRENCH
PROGRAMME
“Is it really possible to put oneself in another’s position, to take oneself for someone else? Is this the secret that constitutes fiction and its particular mode of effect?”
Dominique Rabaté is professor of contemporary French literature at Université Paris Cité and has authored numerous books on twentieth- and twenty-first-century literature. In his latest book, Limites de l’empathie (2024), he asks about the literary mechanisms that lead readers to identify with characters, and he reflects on how literature constantly puts our capacity for empathy to the test. How can we step outside ourselves to explore worlds that are new to us – or radically different from what we know? And what kinds of resistance form when texts by authors such as Olivier Guez, Emmanuel Carrère, or Marie NDiaye allow us to penetrate the intimacy of disturbing characters – Nazis, murderers, or mothers who kill their children?
In a time marked by proliferating forms of identitarian ascription, Dominique Rabaté invites us to consider identification as a paradoxical, dynamic, and ambiguous process: one that involves an art of withdrawal, accompanied by a critical engagement with our subjective and moral boundaries.
Following the presentation of the book, the conversation will open up to the audience to reflect on how literature can be read and taught today – in schools as well as at university.
This event is organised in cooperation with the Institut d’Études Françaises / Villa Europa.
Please register by writing to culture@ief-saarbruecken.eu.
IN COOPERATION WITH
