Keynote speaker: Laura Kipnis
With Laure Murat, Manon Garcia, and moderator Lauren Wolfe
In the wake of the #MeToo movement, which originated in the US, France began reconsidering its stance towards sex and sexual liberation. Its culture of seduction and gallantry have been accused of also allowing a pattern of harassment and sexual assault. Some critics complained that this movement, born on social media, went too far, creating a climate of paranoia that limits free behavior instead of building a healthier framework for relationships. How has this movement evolved and changed over the years and should social media become a public court of opinion?
Laura Kipnis is a cultural critic and former video artist whose work focuses on sexual politics. She is professor at Northwestern University. Among numerous books, she wrote Bound and Gagged: Pornography and the Politics of Fantasy in America (Grove Press 1996), Against Love: A Polemic (Pantheon Books 2003), How to become a scandal: Adventures in Bad Behavior (metropolitan Books 2010), and recently Unwanted Advances: Sexual Paranoia comes to campus (Harper Collins 2017).
Laure Murat is a French historian, professor at UCLA. She specializes in cultural studies, history of psychiatry, and queer theory. Among several essays, she wrote La Loi du genre: Une histoire Culturelle du troisième sexe (Fayard 2006), Une Révolution sexuelle? Réflexions sur l’après-Weinstein (Stock 2018).
Manon Garcia is a French philosopher. She is currently a Junior Fellow at the Society of Fellows at Harvard University and will be an assistant professor of philosophy at Yale starting in July 2021. She is the author We Are Not Born Submissive: How Patriarchy Shapes Women’s Lives (Princeton University Press, 2021).
Lauren Wolfe is an award-winning journalist and photographer who has written for publications from The Atlantic to The Guardian.
