Is the universal everywhere?

The cycle of four annual meetings entitled "Monde en crises, civilisations en récits" ("World in crisis, civilizations in narratives") aims to share the ongoing research of the DÉCRIPT program, and is open to all audiences. It is supported by Bpi, BULAC and Inalco.
Magdalena Abakanowicz, Negev
Magdalena Abakanowicz, Negev, Israel Museum © Flickr‎

Criticism of globalization and post-colonial logics has profoundly challenged the notion of the universal, whose very ethics and possibility now appear contested. Yet the aspiration to think about, and even the claim to organize, the world as a whole is far from being the exclusive preserve of Western political thought. We are thus seeing the emergence of new universalizing claims, rooted in cultural frames of reference, some of which, such as the "global civilization initiative" put forward in 2023 by Chinese President Xi Jinping, are brandished in a competitive logic towards international norms and institutions whose universalism is contested and reduced to a Western singularity.

This meeting on the universal inaugurates the cycle supported by Bpi, Bulac and Inalco: "World in crisis, civilizations in narratives".

Rather than adopting a normative logic (which would posit the universal as an absolute to be attained, while prescribing what it should be), a culturalist one (which would make it the product of a particular culture) or a teleological one (which would conceive of it as the necessary outcome of a historical process), the round table invites us to think of the universal as the moving product of a situated, contingent and conflictual process. Participants will analyze its production, circulation and uses, examining the social, discursive and institutional practices that claim global validity. The challenge is also to explore the conditions of encounter between distinct conceptions of the universal and thus the possibility of a relational universal, freed from the logics of imposition or exclusion that have historically marked universalist claims.

With :

  • Delphine Allès (professor of political science at Inalco, scientific director of the DÉCRIPT program)
  • Antoine Lilti (professor at Collège de France and director of studies at EHESS)
  • Anne Lafont (director of studies at EHESS)
  • Rony Brauman (former president of Médecins sans frontières)
  • Meeting moderated by Joris Zylberman (RFI)

Conference registration:

Registration link

This cycle is organized as part of the DÉCRIPT research program, which benefits from state aid managed by the Agence nationale de la recherche under France 2030 (ANR-24-RSHS-0002).