The Cervantes Institute hosts the Camusian conference 'Against the conspiracy of silence'
The Cervantes Institute is hosting the seminar 'Against the conspiracy of silence' at its headquarters on Monday, which brings the Trobades & Premis Mediterranis Albert Camus de Menorca to Madrid for the first time. Leading thinkers, writers and journalists will discuss the ideas of the French author and philosopher after whom they are named (1913-1960), in a Camusian day that will be opened (12:30 pm) by the Minister of Culture, José Manuel Rodríguez Uribes, and the director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero.
The seminar will be a prologue to the III Trobades Mediterrànies to be held in Menorca, whose director, Sandra Maunac, will also take part in the presentation in Madrid, as will Carol Marquès, the mayoress of Sant Lluís, the Menorcan town that will host the meetings on June 19th and 20th.
The seminar will be held, with limited seating, at the Cervantes Institute (c/ Barquillo, 4, Madrid). It can be followed live on the Institute's Canal Directo 1 and YouTube.
The first of the round tables at the Instituto Cervantes will be entitled 'Agitar la indiferencia. Por un periodismo de ideas', ('Shaking up indifference. For a journalism of ideas'), and will bring together three journalists: Edwy Plenel, president and co-founder of Mediapart; Joumana Haddad, Lebanese writer, artist and human rights activist; and Jesús Maraña, director of Infolibre (13:00). They will address this profession, which the journalist Albert Camus also considered to be one of the most beautiful. As the author of The Plague argued, "everyday historians" should develop a journalism which is critical and committed to the miseries of the present.
The second debate (6 p.m.), 'Insufflating Oxygen. Disarticulating silence', will bring together three thinkers and creators: Hocine Rahli, French-Algerian philosopher and professor; Elena Medel, writer and editor; and Marina Garcés, philosopher, who will advocate the need to mobilise against the silence and lack of response denounced by the 1957 Nobel Prize winner for Literature.
The Camusian day will conclude (19:30) with a colloquium by the writer and philosopher Javier de Lucas, researcher and founder of the Human Rights Institute of the University of Valencia, and the French political scientist and philosopher of Algerian origin, Naïr Sami. Both will take stock of the day, organised to publicise the work of the Trobades, promote dialogue and encourage a critical spirit.
The aim of the Trobades - and of its premiere in Madrid - is to recover the thought of Albert Camus, a world reference of rebellion, justice and humanism, in order to provide answers and try to open up new perspectives through the act of thinking. The participants will delve into the lack of dialogue, one of the evils that beset today's hyper-digitised societies, aggravated by a kind of fear that prevents us from speaking. In short, to contribute to restoring dialogue and open conversation in the face of silence, polemics and insults which, according to Camus, lead us to live "not among men but in a world of silhouettes".
Submitted by José Antonio Sierra, Hispanismo advisor.
