Last week was the Festival of Books in Bogota. Authors from all around the world come as its considered to be one of if not the most important such festivals in Latin America. Alissa's university hosted a panel discussion with Catherine M (Millet), famous for her unflinching memoir of her sexual deeds in the late 60's. I was really excited to hear her talk. She has just published a second book, Jealousy, which deals with, among other things, how jealousy rears its head even in sexually liberal and open circles where hangups are not supposed to exist. I thought it would be fascinating to hear her talk about these two things. Ugh. Not so. She didn't even come close to interesting me. Maybe she's doesn't like public speaking. Mabye she wasn't feeling well. But it wasn't fun.
Who was fun, though, was the other featured panelist Gilles Lipovetsky. If you're not familiar, he's a French philosopher (at the Univ. of Grenoble if I'm not mistaken) who deals with issues of hyper-modernity (preferred to post (*gasp*) modernity) and the individual. The topics are not new, but he deals with them in a thoughtful and insightful manner.
One of the big things that is on his mind is the continuation of the movement towards the supremacy of the individual. I especially like the way he discussed how the internet and globalization have altered social dynamics. I often am turned off by discussions of how our age is soooo different from other times. But his points here were well made. He discussed how parents don't have complete (or even most of the) control over information as well as family finances. Kids can hop online and see or read whatever they like. They can buy things at low cost from almost anywhere. And individual possession has altered dramatically. People from almost all economic classes can buy whatever they want. There aren't a lot of things that are exclusively the domain of one class anymore.
He didn't offer any anwers. He just offered the paradoxes that this creates in our society. I won't bore you with more details, but he talks about how this interacts with regulation, global science (global warming), industrialization and pollution, religion and government. I highly recommend at least checking out an article or two of his (at least), if you like this sort of thing.
If I haven't lost you by now, I have to mention the most successful part of this engagement (for me, that is). The panelists spoke exclusively in French. Headsets were provided for translation, but into Spanish. I can't understand a lick of Spanish not on the topic of food. So the headsets were no good for me. I had to give it a go listening to the whole talk in French. And... Success!! I understood the bulk of both talks. I'd put it at around 90%. To be fair, they were speaking slowly and clearly for the benefit of the translators, but still, I'm very proud of myself. My French has never been that great, I thought, but apparently a fair bit of it has stuck in my brain. So I learned that I can understand French okay in a roomfull of Spanish speakers in Bogota.
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