Describing a thesis topic can quickly become a nightmare. Especially for Phd students who have just started their research. Of course, there’re also students who in one sentence sum up all their theories and the interest of their research brilliantly. Of course I don’t. I usually start with a grimace and I continue with a long speech which my interlocutor (who wonders why he had the idea to ask the question) and I, come out exhausted.

It’s not that I’m a bad student (am I ?). Before starting the great adventure that a phd represents, I was successively a party and rebellious high school girl (I still wonder how I got my high school diploma), a bachelor’s degree in political science, cinema, fine arts and literature, then I also got my master’s degree and others in literature, cinema, art aesthetics and so on. You’d think I’d know what it’s like to be a student by now. Yet, and this is probably the reason why I continue tirelessly, each experience is different, each material brings with it its share of surprises and unexpected obstacles.

Likely to be distracted, I saw in the creation of this blog several interesting perspectives. First, make me write regularly and stay focused on the subject of my thesis. But also and above all (because otherwise I could have remained alone locked at home and write for my cat only), because my subject deals precisely with human interactions. It seemed imperative to me to include, at least in part, a participatory dimension to this study, which I hope you will be inclined to join.

This is anecdotal, but the genesis of this thesis preparation goes back several years. At that time when I was still this young high school girl. I also happened to be very excited about the 1970s, the hippie movement, etc. (youth you know…). One day publicly deploring the disappearance of this era, I happened to learn about the existence of a festival on the other side of the Atlantic: the Burning Man (yeah, you see, we talk about it in the News from time to time, a week when a lot of people gathering to burn a giant wood man). At this time, I was presented with it as a space-time that took up all my optimistic and epicurean ideals (rightly or wrongly, we will probably discuss it again). I was enthusiastic about it for a while, but then it passed into this place of memory where you dispose the tender and crazy memories of your teenage youth.

At least, that’s what I thought. During my master’s degree in aesthetics and art philosophy, I was primarily interested in ephemeral art. You know, the one that is destroyed or allowed to be destroyed by nature. In any case, an art that does not last. I was wondering, but why create something, go to so much trouble, if in the end it would be destroyed? And then, I ended up going back to the Burning Man. After all, artworks are built there and they are destroyed at the end, right? However, my thesis work goes far beyond this one festival. It is only the tip of the iceberg. What I saw was a whole world of people from different backgrounds coming up to create something together. Something new, something beautiful. Obviously, sometimes these micro-societies have fun destroying what they create (not without reason, we will see it), but this universe is far from being just that.

And so we’re back here. Of course, it will serve so that I can clarify my ideas and write about subjects that I will meet but that I could not deal with in my thesis. But it will also be a place of exchange and sharing, since you’ll be able to participate by responding to all kinds of various surveys, which will focus on your personal vision of what is : gift, community, art, creation or destruction, society, culture, etc.

To learn more about the subject(s) that will concern us, you can go to the “About” page that goes into more detail about what will be discussed.

See you soon !

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