College students who turn more or less consciously and hopefully to philosophy for enlightenment are, at bottom, in search of a satisfying life. They may have a pretty clear idea of what this includes. “It means,” said a football man whom I asked what he meant by a satisfying life, “employment, a fair income, the [...]
Last month I went to a debate organized at the Sorbonne, “Is the university burning?” (L’Université brûle-t-elle ?) Appropriately, it ended in chaos; but midway through, there was a bit of performance art. Actors in masks, some with stockings over their heads, made a pretend argument for burning the university. For the foreigners in the [...]
In the Philosophy Department at Paris-8, the biggest philosophy classroom is located just beside the department offices. It has a variety of curious things on its walls. A painted character hangs from a coat rack. He appears striped. Bald. Stretched out by the neck. Striped shoulderbag too. My friend Emmanuel proposes that we translate this [...]
Here we have a second testimonial of precarious life in French universities, one that comes not from a temporary worker but from a doctoral student struggling to finish her thesis. This one has to be filed under the genre of the public lament: a political genre which, it comes to mind in passing, deserves further [...]
When the report on precarity in higher education was first publicly released, the presentation was followed by a number of panel discussions. Here I’m going to try to translate a few people’s personal tales of precarity. Today we’ll start with that of Aurélie Legrand. Moderator: We have all been precarious at one time or another… [...]