FINA BIRULÉSArendt, “an enthusiastic recycler”. Thinking from Fragments

“Arendt, “an enthusiastic recycler”. Thinking from Fragments" will focus on Hannah Arendt’s dialogue with Walter Benjamin and Karen Blixen, through their reflections on the irreversible rupture of the thread of tradition. The task Arendt proposes is not to restore the links with tradition and the past, but to discover ideas and values that have survived in a new form (to rescue “pearls and coral”) and that can be used for the sake of a new beginning. In her hands, to recycle is to give a new use to fragments of the past, sometimes as an antidote to struggle against the traditional legacy itself. We always think from inherited words and to do so is also to ask ourselves how to use and review them today. Hence Arendt’s gesture of examining in depth the remnants and fragments of political freedom, after having been devastated by totalitarian regimes.”  Fina Birulés

Fina Birulés is honorary professor in Contemporary Philosophy at the University of Barcelona and member of the Seminar on Philosophy and Gender at ADHUC (Research Centre for Theory, Gender, Sexuality) at the University of Barcelona and the Arendtian Group on Thought and Politics. Her lines of research are focused on two core themes: on the one hand, political subjectivity, history, and action, and on the other, feminist theory and female philosophical production, with special attention to the work of Hannah Arendt, being one of the most recognized experts. She has translated several works on philosophy, she is the author of numerous essays, and is the editor of volumes on Arendt and other contemporary thinkers, such as Simone Weil, Sarah Kofman, and Simone de Beauvoir. Her most recent publications include: L’embolic del gènere. Per què els cossos importen? (with Judith Butler and Marta Segarra, CCCB, 2019), Hannah Arendt: Llibertat, política i totalitarisme (Gedisa, 2019), Feminisme, una revolució sense model (CCCB, 2018), Hannah Arendt. El orgullo de pensar (Gedisa, 2018), the chapter «Hannah Arendt y la figura de Sócrates» in the collective book Hannah Arendt. El arte de leer (Eudeba y Katz Editores, 2017), Entreactes. Entorn del pensament, la política i el feminisme (El Trabucaire, 2014) and Una herencia sin testamento: Hannah Arendt (Herder, 2007). She has also translated several works on contemporary philosophy, is the author of numerous essays, and is the editor of collective volumes on the thought of Hannah Arendt and other contemporary thinkers, such as Pensadoras del siglo XX (Instituto de la Mujer, 2011) or Lectoras de Simone Weil (Icaria, 2013), both with Rosa Rius Gatell.

Thought-images

“Thought-images” gives the title to this cycle of conferences opening a space in Sismógrafo’s program to think images and through images. The purpose of these conferences is to unite the discursive and the image, to confront them, to recognize the potential of an image, of a fragment, rescuing vital experiences threatened in an uncertain present. This age, a turbulent and disturbing age, an age of pandemic, ecological, financial, political and social crises, these times of “post-truth” and "alternative facts” are "interesting times", to use the expression popularized by Eric Hobsbawm. Interesting times especially for thinking. Thinking is already contributing to a change. This cycle calls for a cooperation between the expressive strength of art and the precision of philosophy. Without a language that embraces images, images can blind us or say nothing. With these conferences, Sismógrafo seeks to take care of what Alexander Kluge calls a “garden of cooperation”, a place that preserves the moments when word and image converge in order to produce something new, a space for discrepancy and cooperation in the face of cacophonies of information, in the face of industrial manipulation and enslavement of feelings. In difficult times, times of divisions and segregations, cooperation presents itself as an antidote to tribalism (Richard Sennett). To open this garden, this space for debate and polyphony in the city, Sismógrafo has invited speakers linked to philosophy, aesthetics, art criticism, fine arts and cinema who, at different times and from different perspectives, will try to present a diagnosis of the present.

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