Working group Book presentation: The Flattening of the World Join Professor Olivier Roy as he presents his latest book Add to calendar 2022-12-08 14:00 2022-12-08 18:00 Europe/Rome Book presentation: The Flattening of the World Online and Sala Triaria, Villa Schifanoia YYYY-MM-DD Print Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Send by email When 08 December 2022 14:00 - 18:00 CET Where Online and Sala Triaria, Villa Schifanoia Organised by Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies MED: Middle East Directions Programme What does the increasing reference to 'identity' in the political discourse mean? What is the phenomenon laying behind the increase of safe spaces? The book L’Aplatissement du monde (‘The Flattening of the World') is about how the extension of individual freedom (political and sexual) since the Sixties led to a paradoxical extension of normative systems: inflation of laws and regulations concerning both the social life (workplace, garbage sorting, terms of address, health issues etc.) and the intimate life (explicit consent in sexual practices). This call for a systematic explicitation of do and don’t is the consequence of a crisis of the 'implicit', that is of a supposedly shared culture. When there is no more a shared culture, everything has to be turned into an explicit code of how to speak and how to act. The increasing reference to 'identity' in the political discourse, both on the left and on the right, is a failed answer to a deeper crisis of the very notion of culture. Identities are now defined by a limited set of traits (race, sexual preferences, eating habits) that don’t create a society but only sub-cultures that are looking for safe space, either on the left (campuses) or on the right (from gated communities to national border). Contact(s): Valentina Gorgoni Discussant(s): Researcher Théo Blanc (Europen University Institute) Scientific Organiser(s): Olivier Roy (EUI) Speaker(s): Olivier Roy (EUI)