#NousSommes

The relation between the digital and the collective has become an urgent contemporary question. These collected essays explore the implications of this relation, around the theme of #NousSommes. This hashtag marks the point where the «personal» modalities of social media have become embroiled in collective expressions of unity, solidarity and resistance. As this volume demonstrates, the impact of this cannot be isolated to the internet, but affect philosophy, literature, cinema, politics and the public space itself. The contributors approach the issue of #NousSommes from a diverse range of disciplines and methodologies, bringing out both the continuity and discontinuity with other forms of collective expression. Important contemporary philosophers such as Nancy, Derrida and Deleuze are engaged here, as are issues of ecology, community, automation, postcolonial identity and addiction. Featuring eight academic essays and an interview, this volume testifies to the importance of French philosophy and culture in understanding the digital and the collective today.

Susie Cronin completed her PhD in French at the University of Cambridge in 2018. Her research focused on the evolution of assisted and online literatures in the French context from the 1960s to the present day. She is a former invited researcher of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. She has previously published on Italo Calvino and French digital literatures. Her most recent research engages particularly with the works of Serge Bouchardon, Annie Abrahams, Xavier Malbreil and Jean Pierre Balpe.　

Sofia Ropek Hewson completed her PhD in French at the University of Cambridge in 2018. Her research was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and focused on the work of Paul B. Preciado. She has published on Preciado, the work of Catherine Malabou, pornography, drag and queer theory. Her most recent work focuses on the history of contraception.

Cillian Ó Fathaigh is a Gates Cambridge Scholar at the University of Cambridge. His research focuses on contemporary French philosophy, political philosophy and phenomenology. He has been an invited student at the École Normale Supérieure (Ulm) and he is an elected scholar of St John’s College, Cambridge and of Trinity College Dublin. His PhD offers the first comprehensive account of Jacques Derrida’s philosophy of institutions.