Le livre est mort, vive le livre !

Is reading truly disappearing? At a time when screens, information flows, and permanent crises are disrupting our relationship with time and attention, the Théâtre de la Concorde opens the debate on the future of books and reading. A meeting to move beyond alarmist discourse, understand evolving practices, and question what reading still represents for our individual and democratic lives.

We are told that reading is collapsing; once again, we are announced the imminent death of the book. Is this one of those moral panics that our media environment is so quick to fabricate, or a serious threat? When the flood of catastrophes and crises tosses us about, and when everything in our daily lives seems designed to plunge us into a constant state of disquiet, there is perhaps something miraculous in the fact that we continue to decipher written signs for pleasure. How can we preserve what makes this singular and strange experience of reading possible? How can we put writing back in its rightful place? Because ultimately, what would we lose, as individuals and as a society, if we lost reading? Based on the Jean-Jaurès Foundation report, La République des lecteurs. Pour en finir avec la mort du livre, co-written by Diana Filippova and Arthur De Grave, this meeting brings together writers, researchers, book professionals, journalists, and field actors to cross-reference perspectives on our reading practices. The evening proposes taking the time to view reading not as a threatened practice, but as an experience to be preserved, shared, and reinvented.

Programme

The evening will be hosted by Diana Filippova and Arthur De Grave.

Roundtable 1: Ce que lire veut dire

With:

Alexandre Gefen, Paris III

Cécile Barth-Rabot, university professor Paris X

Martin Boujol, first French-speaking literary influencer (la.nuit.sera.mots)

Boris Razon, editorial director of ARTE France

Roundtable 2: Lire partout et tout le temps : la littératie au fondement de la démocratie

With:

Mathieu Larnaudie, founder of Inculte and Cercle Ouvert

Constance Rivière, GD of the Musée de la Porte Dorée and founder of the Maillage literary festival

Mehdi El Afani, GD of the festival des Littératures Urbaines

Céline Marault, bookseller at L’Expérience in Gonesse

The findings of an unprecedented study B