The first Night of Ideas in Shanghai and mainland China will take place at Power Station of Art (PSA), China's largest museum of contemporary art, which also hosts the Shanghai Biennale.

The theme "Close" will be declined through that of the family, in a multidisciplinary way. It will be a question of questioning, in a Chinese and European context, the evolutions, definitions, norms, realities and representations of the family link and the couple, the question of desire, gender equality, the emancipation of women and the articulation between the private sphere and the public sphere.

To deal with these issues, three round tables will be organized, bringing together 8 well-known personalities, 3 French and 5 Chinese, as well as a moderator.

4 Chinese speakers and the audience will be in a 300-seat auditorium; the 3 French speakers and 1 Chinese speaker will participate remotely via Zoom and will appear on a large screen in the auditorium. A French-Chinese simultaneous translation system will be set up. The whole evening will also be broadcast live streaming.

Philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists, historians, essayists, novelists and artists will exchange among themselves and with the public during the following three sequences:

1/ What is the family tie?

François de Singly, Xiang Biao, Liu Qing, Zhang Nian

2/ How to be a couple?

Dominique Sigaud, Bi Feiyu, Zhang Nian, Xiao Ke

3/ Going out of the family?

Geneviève Fraisse, François de Singly, Liu Qing, Bi Feiyu

 

Speakers :

• François de Singly: sociologist, family specialist, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Paris, founder of the Centre de recherches sur les liens sociaux, CNRS-University of Paris. His work focuses on the family, the couple, education, childhood, divorce and gender relations.
• Geneviève Fraisse: philosopher of feminist thought, emeritus research director at CNRS/ CRAL. She was interministerial delegate and member of the European Parliament (1997-2004). She works on the political epistemology of feminist thought, along three axes: genealogy of democracy, concepts of citizen and artistic emancipation and problematization of the gender object.
• Dominique Sigaud: Independent war reporter, specialising in Black Africa and the Arab world, Dominique Sigaud received the AJF Prize in 1996 for his work on Rwanda. She devoted several years to literature, was noticed for L'hypothèse du désert and Dans nos langues, and in 2018 she received the SGDL prize for her body of work. In 2019 she publishes a survey La Malédiction d'être fille, the first global book on violence against girls throughout the contemporary world. Awarded the Human Rights Prize, she joined the city of Nancy until July 2020 to prefigure an Observatory of violence against girls and prevention tools. In 2021, she published Peau d'âne et l'ogre, incestuousness and rape of minors in France.
• Zhang Nian: Philosopher, Professor at the School of Humanities at Tongji University in Shanghai and author of numerous books. Her research focuses on feminism, political philosophy and cultural criticism.
• Liu Qing: Historian, Professor at the Department of History of the East China Normal University (ECNU) in Shanghai. His research focuses on the history of Western thought, political philosophy and the question of modernity.
• Xiang Biao: Anthropologist, Professor of Social Anthropology at Oxford University and Director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (Germany). His areas of research include immigration, labour, social reproduction, ethnic relations, business, China and India.
• Bi Feiyu: Writer, professor at Nanjing University. He is notably the author of TheShanghai Triads, Three Sisters, The Plain, The Blind, Don Quixote on the Yangtze River. His books have been translated into more than 20 languages throughout the world, including a large number of French translations. His books have been awarded numerous prestigious literary prizes, both Chinese and international. Several of her novels depict the lives and psychology of female characters in a changing society.
• Xiao Ke: choreographer, dancer and performer, originally from Yunnan and living in Shanghai. Xiao Ke presented the Chinese version of Jérôme Bel's Gala show in the fall of 2020. As part of a commission from the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Centre Pompidou x West Bund Museum in Shanghai, Xiao Ke and Jérôme Bel continue their collaboration and have created the show Xiao Ke.

Moderator

Xie Jing, Professor of Philosophy at Fudan University (Shanghai), fluent in French Her research is in the field of social philosophy and also focuses on feminism, approached from the perspective of comparative anthropology.

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