The beginning of a future for the Left

Reflections on the contemporary contradictions of progressive thought.

How did the left find itself trapped within the system it fights against? Analysis of an insidious drift and sketch of a possible renewal. The progressive habituation to liberalismThe left, defender of a solidary society, has progressively (…)

Reinventing cultural projects with youth?

Proposal of questions.

While public cultural action aims to reach people in their great diversity, it is clear that it is often difficult to mobilize youth. However, young people (from children to young adults) have an intense cultural consumption, especially online in (…)

Generative AI, Education and Culture: Recommendations Drafted Across Three Countries

A look back at the colloquium “Between Creation and Simulation”, held within the framework of the Weimar Triangle (France, Germany, Poland) by the Genshagen Foundation and the Initiative Urheberrecht, 7–9 July 2026.

From 7 to 9 July 2026, twenty-two experts from France, Germany and Poland worked together on educational policy recommendations in response to generative AI. I took part in it. Here I recount the purpose of this gathering, its working method, and (…)

Blitzkrieg

The transformative power of speech

On what living speech brings into being, and the work that makes it possible.

In French culture, the written word prevails over spoken speech, which is held to be fleeting and less solid. From years of facilitating groups, I have come to see that this hierarchy is false. Living speech is a mode of thought in its own right, (…)

Contract

Imminence and law

The political dimension of the relationship to time.

Imminence, this relationship with hurried time, transforms our reality. Our laws, predating this shift, have become inadequate. A critical awareness is necessary to rebuild a politics of time. The Concept of ImminenceThe concept of imminence (…)

Cultural Rights and Digital Technology

Rethinking digital tools in service of cultural democracy.

How can digital technology become a lever for cultural emancipation rather than an instrument of dependence? I propose a digital implementation of the eight fundamental rights, to open concrete democratic pathways. From democratization to (…)

The cage of representations

When the absence of care locks the other in our imaginary constructions.

Human relationships break down less through conflict than through construction: we fabricate characters, we assign them roles, and in this seemingly innocuous gesture lies a violence that can go so far as to symbolically kill the other. The (…)

Presence and earth

A short introduction to critical thinking on the eco-capitalist doxa.

We are present on Earth, nourished by it, yet we exploit it without coherence. Our so-called ecological awareness is accompanied by a blindness to the real impacts of our technological lifestyles. Three definitions of EarthEarth refers (…)

The writing being

Writing, identity and world transformation.

Writing shapes us. Beyond the traditional writer, the “writing being” encompasses anyone who writes—from journalists to social media users—whose words transform reality and construct identity. The “Writer” Before and After the Internet (…)

Greed

What we avoid seeing when we defend culture

When young people are forced to go to the theater under threat of sanction, the promised emancipation can become suffered oppression.

Calls to defend funding for arts and cultural education are multiplying in the face of budget cuts. While these commitments are legitimate, they often reveal a significant “unthought”: the absence of a critical analysis of our own practices and (…)

The True False Cultural Freedom

When defending creative freedom masks a corporatist conflict.

Faced with recent film deprogrammings by elected officials from various political sides, a collective statement expresses outrage at political interference in cultural programming. Yet this corporatist indignation obscures a structural reality (…)

Creative Freedom and Cultural Rights

A dialectic at the heart of cultural policies.

French cultural policy today finds itself at the crossroads of two fundamental principles, both enshrined in law: creative freedom and cultural rights, which everything seems to oppose. How can they be reconciled? Two pillarsCreative freedom, (…)

Artificial Intelligence and Educational Institution

For a large language model in service of the republican project.

The announcement in September 2025 by the Ministry of National Education of an artificial intelligence intended for teachers constitutes a good first step, which is necessary. For my part, I suggest going further, through the creation of a (…)

The presence of we

When universalism masks domination.

Many texts employ an undefined “we” that claims to speak for everyone. This posture denies otherness and creates antagonisms. Preferring “I” allows respect for differences and opens a truly democratic space. Should we think for others?In (…)

Pandemic or epidemic?

On the politics of words.

The use of the word “pandemic” for Covid-19 illustrates how language shapes our perception. This lexical choice, adopted by everyone, contributes to a distorted view of the reality experienced. Beware of Assumed TruthsThe words we use as (…)

Presence, commitment and denial of fear

A new approach to civic engagement.

Current political engagement, based on the denial of fear rather than authentic presence, creates fertile ground for figures like Trump and perpetuates the very system he claims to oppose. Reality and Fantasy of Political EngagementAt the (…)

What is a cultural policy? Why is culture political? And what is political in culture?

A critical approach to cultural policies through the lens of cultural rights.

All culture is political because it imposes rules of belonging and worldviews. Exploring this dimension illuminates the democratic stakes of cultural policies. Why is culture necessarily political?The answer is obvious. A culture represents a (…)

The future of audiovisual media in libraries, an undertaking that is just beginning

The French national project for the future of audiovisual media in public libraries, told from the steering committee, where I championed the question of the political meaning of libraries in their territories.

The national project for the future of audiovisual media in public libraries held its concluding presentation day on 6 July 2026 at the BnF, the French national library. That day was not an ending: the work accomplished is a foundation for what (…)

Land of love

Re-engaging France’s public cultural sector as a good corporate citizen

Avenues of action for a permanent future.

Facing budget cuts, the public cultural sector must reconnect with its democratic mission. Beyond corporatism, professionals must strengthen their ties with citizens and fully assume their political responsibility. An entrenched phenomenonIn (…)

“On the ineffectiveness of our works in real life”.

Commentary on the text by Eva Doumbia & Kader Attia (2023).

In July 2023, visual artist Kader Attia and director Eva Doumba published a text (in Analyse Opinion Critique) in response to the youth “riots” that followed the killing of young Nahel by a policeman. Their text questions the usefulness of (…)

The Hypocrisy of Cultural Actors’ Independence

When the fear of political alternation reveals the unspoken truths of the French cultural sector.

Cultural actors have been regularly mobilizing for some time against an alleged threat to their programming and creative freedom. But does this independence they claim really exist? An analysis of the relationships between culture and politics in (…)

Digital politics

When clicking becomes voting: the hidden face of our technological choices.

Code is law: digital tools are not neutral. Our daily technological choices are political acts that shape the world. Here are concrete elements for personal and collective awareness and action. The Choice of Hosting: A Masked Political Decision (…)

The descent

Collective film (4’33s, 2015).

Stairway to freedom.

Between two waters

The Lack of Nuance in Thought

When self-proclaimed intellectual virtue masks voluntary servitude.

The Covid crisis acted as a revealer of the fragility of critical thinking among those very people who proclaim themselves its guardians. A reflection on intellectual ethics in the face of fear and power. The mirage of intellectual virtue, or (…)

Art and artists as society’s infrastructure

What cultural rights oblige us to say about the political function of artistic practice.

A society without artists cannot stand. The claim is easy to state and hard to argue for. Here I try to ground it, by bringing together a proposal from Australia, the surveys on amateur artistic practice, and what cultural rights teach us about (…)

Is Culture Serving the Public?

Reflections on the dead ends of French cultural policy.

Do the 4 billion euros of the national culture budget truly serve the general interest? This question deserves to be asked pointedly, as budget cuts continue to accumulate. On the ground, committed professionals who have long been asking this (…)

Camouflage

The prince

Taking back control of our data

A cultural path, not just a technical and legal one.

When American law reigns over European data, the only response is to rebuild a culture of digital sovereignty, piece by piece, NAS by NAS, one step at a time. The European “sovereign cloud,” a legal illusionIn December 2025, a legal analysis (…)

The Representation of One’s Cultural Role

What the Association of French Mayors survey reveals about the cultural imaginary of local authorities.

What do we presuppose when we speak of “audiences distant from culture”? The AMF survey, read as an anthropological document, unveils the unexamined assumptions of a cultural policy struggling to become democratic. The good news of a surveyThe (…)

Are Polls and Surveys Objective?

Toward a Sociological Critique of Information Production Devices.

Presented as objective data, polls nonetheless shape the reality they claim to measure. An analysis of the mechanisms at work. The Illusion of Media ObjectivityStudies, surveys, projections, and polls are almost always presented as objective (…)

The Dramatization of Mistrust

When cultural venues stage the opposite of their own rhetoric.

An evening at the theater in a left-leaning city reveals a troubling paradox: the welcoming procedures produce exactly the opposite of the democratic promise. A testimony and analysis. Theater begins before the stageA National Dramatic Center (…)

What kind of world do we want?

A film by Benoît Labourdette (0’54s, muet, 2020).

Bibliography in 2020 for the emancipation of women and men.

Presence and value

To multiply human capacities.

Our presence in the world is guided by values whose roots are contingent and anecdotal. Becoming aware of this makes us more flexible in exploring new experiences where presence and value multiply each other. Why be aware of the value of one’s (…)

Anthropology of the Electricity Pylon

On the technical mythology of a country that never debates its infrastructures.

In December 1999, the storms Lothar and Martin brought down more than a thousand high-voltage pylons in France and cut off electricity to 3.7 million households, sometimes for three weeks. Neighbouring Germany, crossed by the same winds, remained (…)

Resistance

Authorization Regime and Freedom Regime

When the confusion between authorization and freedom reveals a deep democratic crisis.

The management of the Covid-19 crisis revealed a fundamental confusion in our societies: we have overwhelmingly accepted to call “freedom” what was its exact opposite. This misunderstanding is not anecdotal but symptomatic of a deep cultural (…)

Attestational Dramaturgy

A concept for understanding the journalistic staging of reality, in dialogue with Bourdieu, Debord, Baudrillard, Chomsky, Colon, Deleuze, Watkins and Virilio.

Journalism traditionally presents itself as privileged access to reality. Its everyday practice, however, very often consists of summoning the real as an illustration of narratives decided in advance. How can we name, with some precision, this (…)

Presence of abandoned luggage

On the security fantasy.

When fear of the unpredictable transforms forgetting into threat, an entire society tips into a security fiction. In French public transport, a simple forgotten bag is enough to paralyze the system. Behind this excessive reaction, a (…)

Welcoming radicalized people to cultural venues

For a truly inclusive cultural democracy.

Do cultural venues filter their audiences, consciously or unconsciously, according to criteria of radicalism? This question reveals our contradictions about violence and extremism. Proposals for exercising democracy. What is a radicalized person? (…)

The False Public-Private Debate in the Cultural Sector

What is at stake in cultural policies is not the public-private opposition, but a transformation in what we expect from culture.

The rhetoric of scarcity masks deliberate political choices. Deconstructing the false public-private debate allows us to think differently about the place of cultural actors in the contemporary ecosystem. The Myth of Scarcity: A Political Lie (…)

Politics and Digital Technology: The Cascade of Rules

How CSS Language Illuminates the Mechanisms of Automated Exclusion in Our Digital Societies.

Social exclusion no longer proceeds solely from individual decisions or explicit ideologies. It now operates through the automatic propagation of rules embedded in our technical infrastructures. Technofascism or Exclusion by CascadeLennie (…)

Sovereign Digital, a Micropolitical Choice

Escaping the Hegemonic Imaginary of Digital Tools.

Our daily choices of digital tools lock us into a capitalist imaginary. Moving from Microsoft to Free Software is not just a technical issue: it is a political act. Why and how. The Unconsciousness of Our DependencyWe are prisoners of a (…)

Crafting cultural narratives with artificial intelligence

A one-day training session for the staff of a local authority’s cultural service.

A proposal for a one-day training session for staff of a local authority’s cultural service. The aim: that participants leave able to produce, on a regular basis and using methods drawn from collective intelligence and artificial intelligence, (…)

Cultural rights and the “fight” against the far right

How to rebuild democracy in our cultural spaces.

How the discourse of “fighting against the far right” stigmatizes voters, compromises democratic dialogue and becomes hate speech. It would be better to “fight for democracy” while respecting everyone’s dignity. Warlike representationsPeople (…)

Emergency

A clear conscience as a system

When the cultural sector funds its own critique without changing its practices.

The most resilient structures of domination are sometimes the ones their beneficiaries believe they are fighting. The subsidised performing arts sector, of which I am part, offers a ground for observing this, and I want to share that observation (…)

The political dimension of organisational frameworks

When forms contradict intentions: organising cultural democracy.

We talk about cultural democracy, horizontality, cultural rights. But the concrete frameworks we put in place often tell a very different story. This inconsistency, which I have observed for years in my own practice and in that of my peers, (…)

I have chosen

A film by Benoît Labourdette (2’12s, silent, 2018).

We’re actors in our absurd world.

Culture and political power: from a marriage of convenience to a consummated divorce

From Louis XIV to Rachida Dati: anatomy of a rupture between subsidized culture and political legitimacy.

Culture is no longer the theater of power. Once an instrument of political influence, it now struggles to justify its public funding. How can we renew democratic dialogue in a context where cultural practices have profoundly evolved, under the (…)

How to Enact Freedom?

The collective and transgressive dimension of a fundamental political exercise.

Faced with the erosion of associative freedoms, rethinking freedom as a collective and transgressive practice becomes an urgent democratic necessity.The French Republic bears three words on the pediments of its public buildings: Liberté, (…)

Presence, care and politics

When self-care becomes an act of political resistance.

Presence, care, and politics are intimately linked. Faced with contemporary biopower that controls bodies and attacks our free will, cultivating inner presence becomes resistance and a path towards true democracy. Definitions Presence is an (…)

Presence and governance of minds

Control as a culture of death, presence as a path to life.

Faced with the emergence of a “psychopolitics” that governs our interiorities, presence to oneself seems to me to be the necessary antidote to the normative controls that colonize our minds and affects. Law enters the psyche as a new form of (…)

Six Fears About AI, Six Shifts in Thinking

Responding to defensive rhetoric with a philosophy of transformation.

Surveillance, relational isolation, environmental destruction, robotic warfare, existential threat, billionaire power: the dominant discourse on AI accumulates perils. These concerns deserve examination. But their very formulation prevents us (…)

Audiovisual media in libraries is a political subject

Why public support for audiovisual media in libraries begins with local political backing for libraries themselves.

As part of the French national project on the future of audiovisual media in public libraries, a series of so-called “political” hearings was held in June 2026. Here I set out what they taught us, together with the personal convictions I carry, (…)

Understand

When young people get involved

A film by Benoît Labourdette (1’08s, silent, 2019).

Younger generations are always more engaged than we think.

Conformism versus Sovereignty

The comfort of digital dependence versus the requirement of data mastery.

Our digital lives rely on standardized tools. While this conformism simplifies usage, it exposes us to a loss of control. Let us reflect on this societal choice that shapes our collective future more than we think. The Seduction of Digital (…)

On the role of artists

For a politics of the artist.

The political role of the artist is never neutral. Whether they want it or not, their social position and aesthetic choices reflect an engagement, conscious or unconscious, in the life of the community. Becoming aware of it and defining it allows (…)

Culture and politics: the forgotten lesson of sanitary totalitarianism

Reflections on the submission of the cultural sector in the face of authority.

In 2025, the French cultural sector is alarmed by the rise of the Rassemblement National. However, its behavior during the Covid period reveals a troubling propensity for submission that questions its capacity for future resistance. The cultural (…)

On the Fragility of Corporatism

When the defense of cultural privileges masquerades as freedom of expression.

The recent condemnation of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region has aroused enthusiasm among performing arts professionals. Yet, this provisional legal victory masks, in my view, a real problem: the corporatist defense of a caste at the expense of (…)

The paradox of digital criticism

When intellectual posturing masks our own contradictions.

Critics of digital technology abound: Airbnb is destroying city centers, instant access to everything is destroying our relationship with time, consumption is spiraling out of control. Yet these same critics massively use what they denounce. This (…)

Cognitive dissonance and Artificial Intelligence

For an authentic commitment to technology.

We criticize tech giants while using their services daily. This contradiction reveals our ambiguous relationship with technologies and calls for rethinking our political engagement. Industrialists: opportunists rather than ideologuesIt has (…)

Delegated Thinking

Why intellectuals suspend their critical thinking on certain topics.

An intellectual person close to me asserts to me one day, as an established fact, what she has read on the cover of Le Monde: that the newly elected far-right mayors are already “uninhibited.” She has not read the article itself. I had seen that (…)

Peace Treaty

Kino season 3.2 : “Revolt” (Gap - France)

As part of the session « Revolt » Friday, January 23, 2015 at “The cat in the tea-pot” place in Gap (France), screening of the film :The puddle of vomit (Benoît Labourdette 2’00s, 1998).

Freedom and Cultural Rights

A renewed approach to democratic dignity, through the contribution of two new rights.

Cultural rights, seemingly guarantors of human dignity, are emptied of their meaning when they fail to forcefully articulate the question of freedom. Their full recognition requires renewed vigilance, particularly against any authoritarian (…)

For a Political Consciousness of Digital Technology

When our technological choices shape tomorrow’s world.

Every click, every application used, every digital service adopted constitutes a political act that participates in building our collective future, far beyond our individual uses. Digital technology as an artificial environment of existenceI (…)

The elsewhere of the in-itself

Conceptual and methodological proposal for complementarities between in situ and remote cultural projects.

The Covid-19 crisis revealed the potential of remote cultural mediation, but it seems that the public cultural sector has largely returned to focusing on physical presence. I propose a complementary approach between the “in-itself” (digital and (…)

The value of cultural practices for young people

Towards a coherent, cross-functional youth culture policy.

Cultural practices, whether traditional or digital, are essential to young people’s development. It seems important to me to open up reflection on their symbolic value and the place of public policies. Understanding the symbolic value of cultural (…)

Political awareness and political conscience

Between social conformity and authentic commitment.

What are our moral values worth when tested by reality? Between deep conviction and reassuring conformism, how do we distinguish authentic engagement from the illusion of good? What separates those who risk for their ideas from those who follow? (…)

“Image and mobility”

Interview of Benoît Labourdette by Guillaume Renoud-Grappin (MCD n°78 “La conjuration des drones” - 2015).

For several years, Benoît Labourdette, director and teacher at La FEMIS, has been pursuing creative (experimental films) and educational (workshops) work around the “new images”. Pocket cameras, cell phones and drones allow everyone to produce (…)

The Non-Institutional Cultural Institution

For a citizen reappropriation of creation.

Rethinking culture beyond institutional walls: how spontaneous practices redefine our relationship with creation and question established cultural policies. The legitimacy of spontaneous cultural practicesWhen people organize in their homes, (…)

Digital sovereignty, a democratic emergency

When our public institutions jeopardize our collective autonomy.

The loss of our digital sovereignty does not result from the thoughtlessness of citizen-users, but from a form of political unconsciousness regarding the power issues carried by industrial tools, including and particularly digital tools. This (…)

The drone, a creative tool

Article published in Théorème 29: “Mobiles: artistic and aesthetic issues” (2016).

How can a drone be a tool of cinematographic creation at the service of an artistic and political project, and no longer be considered as a neutral technical tool, which it absolutely is not? Theoretical argument based on creative experience. (…)

Cultural investigation with artificial intelligence

Towards an open, non-directive methodology for revealing the unexpected.

How can we transcend the limitations of traditional cultural surveys? By combining spontaneous dialogues and AI analysis, a new approach could allow us to discover what we would never have thought to look for. The limits of traditional surveys: a (…)

“Culture differently: postures and methods for tomorrow”

“L’expert du jeudi”: lecture by Benoît Labourdette for the Cultures du Cœur network (March 26, 2026).

On March 26, 2026, I gave a talk for the national network of Cultures du Cœur, as part of their “L’expert du jeudi” format, a regular videoconference that allows regional coordinators across the network to step back from their daily practice and (…)

The Book Archipelago

A proposal to elected representatives: making plural bookshops the backbone of territorial cultural policies.

Faced with the tensions running through the bookshop sector today, it is time to put an end to the sanctuary myth. Rather than seeking an unattainable neutrality, let us accept the editorial radicality of each bookshop and publicly support their (…)

Do

The carrots are cooked

In a small Thai restaurant, two retired women face each other, seated at a small table, in front of a small street window. Another piece of writing in a shopping area.They feel very important, especially the one who talks the most, who shows (…)

The post-covid inversion of power

Political absence in times of crisis.

The Covid crisis revealed how censorship, lies and manipulation of information by public authorities and mainstream media weaken our democracies. Today, the inversion of power fortunately rehabilitates yesterday’s dissident voices, but (…)

Why Are Cultural Actors So Fragile?

A plea for a democratic refoundation of cultural institutions in the face of political arbitrariness.

From Arcadi in Île-de-France in 2018 to the Agence culturelle Grand Est in 2025, cultural agencies are disappearing into indifference. Beyond the observation, a reflection on the conditions for a sector’s resilience. When Cultural Institutions (…)

Creativity as a political weapon against the society of the spectacle

Toward an Emancipatory Media Education Through Artistic Practice.

Media education cannot be limited to decoding messages. It must enable people to create, experiment, and think for themselves in the face of the spectacular flow that colonizes our consciousness. The Media Spectacle as a Totalizing SystemWhen (…)

Political Fiction

When narratives shape reality beyond truth and falsehood.

Politics is not played out solely in the arena of budgetary or social decisions, but on the media stage. This staging is not just an appearance; it constitutes the very heart of political action, producing a fiction that profoundly modifies our (…)

Power, potency, domination

Can one take power without becoming a dominator?

We often confuse power with domination, as if wanting one meant wanting the other. By distinguishing them, and by adding a third term, the capacity to act, we can conceive of a form of power that does not turn into domination. This is what I (…)

The word

Presence and Explanation

For a critical mind based on inner grounding rather than on the accumulation of information.

Faced with fears, we seek unique and reassuring explanations. Only “presence” opens us to multiple explanations and grounds critical thinking. The universal need for explanationAll human beings, in their infinite diversity, children, (…)

The Simulacrum of Presence

Towards an Epistemology of Personal Engagement.

I explain here why expert discourses that claim to objectively describe the world are simulacra, and why they can only lead to immobilism. I argue for an acknowledged recognition of our subjectivities, and I indicate how this is a path toward (…)

“I Am Not an Activist, I Am Engaged”

Denis Robert and the Trap of Rationality.

On 14 April 2026, Denis Robert, founder of the independent media outlet Blast, was heard, alongside Ivan du Roy (Basta!) and Johan Weisz (StreetPress), by the French Senate’s information mission on the “grey zones of information”. He attempts to (…)

Cultivating digital sovereignty

For a democratic reclaiming of our digital spaces.

Faced with our growing dependence on tech giants, digital sovereignty is becoming a major democratic challenge. It’s time to act collectively. The foundations of digital sovereigntyDigital sovereignty refers to the ability of a State, (…)

France’s cultural sector faces the urgent need for a rethink

From 1959 to 2025, history repeats itself... in reverse.

French cultural sector funding is crumbling. Malraux’s “colonial” heritage (1959) is obsolete in the face of digital technology and political attacks. Vital urgency: decolonize or disappear. A troubling historical parallelThe French cultural (…)

The harvest

Composed and performed by Benoît Labourdette (4’37s, 2023).

This calm waiting of human beings is the robots’ waiting for the harvest. Some scream and revolt; they can’t stand their fear of death. But most have grown accustomed to arbitrary violence. And they collaborate for their ephemeral survival.

DVD set “I’m not a feminist but ...”

Monitoring of design, encoding, authoring and mastering of a 2 DVD box set. ErgonomicsOne of this two DVD set contains a primer. Some letters of the alphabet refer to a short film, others to several. I accompanied the work of ergonomic design, (…)

Media Literacy: Should We Judge or Guide?

Reflections based on the National Meeting of Regional Centers for Media Literacy (Rouen, March 16–17, 2026).

On 16 and 17 March 2026, Normandie Images organised in Rouen the national meeting of France’s regional image education centres (pôles régionaux d’éducation aux images), entitled “Le temps des regards” (“The Time of Gazes”). A hundred and fifty (…)

Domination at the Heart of Culture

How laudatory terms mask power relations in the cultural sector.

The praise we bestow upon “great artists” reveals, beneath its flattering appearances, a structure of domination. Behind admiration lies the legitimization of a power that operates against cultural democracy. The Vocabulary of Admiration as the (…)

The White Paper on Cultural Decentralisation

Material for Dialogue and Self-Transformation.

In late March 2026, the Observatoire des politiques culturelles (the French Cultural Policies Observatory) published a White Paper compiling contributions from some forty national networks on the future of cultural decentralisation. Rather than (…)

The work of art in the age of digital mediation

Conceptual update of Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1935).

During an experiment in artistic mediation integrating digital techniques, it became clear to me that the typologies of status and function of artistic works that Walter Benjamin defined in 1935 are now being modified by digital practices of (…)

Sovereignty or Security?

Digital responsibility put to the test of reality.

The fire at a state data center in South Korea in September 2025 proves human fragility in the face of digital storage. Between risky sovereignty and secure dependency, what price are we willing to accept for our digital heritage? The Illusion of (…)

The Misguided Debate on Funding Cuts for Culture

Rethinking the Role of Public Funding Beyond the Numbers

In 2025, debates over funding cuts for culture are heating up, following unprecedented reductions in public subsidies and a political shift in this direction. It is not “culture” that is under threat, but the subsidized cultural sector. The real (…)

Is pedagogy revolutionary?

For an education policy.

Education is torn between two visions: preparing for a competitive world or fostering democracy in schools. In my view, true effectiveness lies in cooperation, making pedagogy an inherently revolutionary act. Two Pedagogical ApproachesIn The (…)

The Digital as Living Environment: Rethinking Cultural Practices in the Anthropocene Era

Presentation by Benoît Labourdette at the Graduate Schools Seminar “Imaginaries of the Anthropocene and New Contexts” (University of Burgundy, December 11, 2025).

On December 11, 2025, at the invitation of Alain Chenevez, Senior Lecturer (HDR) in Sociology at the University of Burgundy, I spoke alongside Olivier Servais, digital anthropologist at the Catholic University of Louvain, as part of the Graduate (…)

Film art and drones

Article by Benoît Labourdette.

Filming with a drone singularly changes the way we look at the world, and perhaps the way we write film, in both political and sensitive dimensions. The drone’s gazeRecently, drones equipped with cameras have become accessible to the general (…)

Power is taken

Pompidou Center (Paris - France) : “Drone altitude” workshop

Exploring the issues of pictures made by drones, in workshops for children.On 27 September 2014, as part of the launch day of the season for young audiences at the Pompidou Centre (Paris, France), I proposed a foreshadowing workshops (…)

Distraction

For a Permanent Cultural Transformation

Moving beyond political infantilization to rebuild our institutions.

Faced with budget cuts in arts education, cultural actors appeal to those in power. This posture of supplication reveals, in my view, a dead end. It is time to think differently about our action. The political choice to miseducateProfessional (…)

Critical Thinking Against Archetypes

How the greatest minds can fall into obscurantism, and why understanding this matters for forgiveness.

Rigorous scientists can defend irrational and inhumane positions, devoid of any ethics, on certain subjects. This paradox reveals the deep mechanisms of conformism and collective fear. The Blind Spots of the Scientific MindEven the most (…)

Foreign affair

Raising awareness of cultural rights - Nantes métropole (September 30, 2022)

Co-design and co-hosting of a one-day event for Nantes’ cultural players.

Taking ownership of cultural rights concepts and approaches through cooperative creativityA small group of cultural players from Nantes, led by Véronique Guiho-Leroux, Head of the Publics and Cultural Citizenship Mission at the Directorate (…)

The Too-Rapid Inversion of the Value System

For a Democracy of Dialogue in the Face of New Totalitarianisms.

Faced with the rise of extremisms, let us question our collective responsibility in the stigmatization of the other. I propose paths to reconnect with authentic democratic dialogue. The Banality of Evil and the Trap of DemonizationSince Donald (…)

Too Easy Forgiveness

When indulgence toward elected officials betrays the democratic pact.

Following an exchange with a member of parliament, one question obsesses me: why do we so easily forgive the moral failure of those who govern us, when their function demands exemplary probity? The genesis of indignation: the denial of faultMy (…)

Towards voluntary evaluation of cultural projects

For “cultural prevention” policies.

The subsidized cultural sector is going through a crisis of legitimacy after betraying its democratic values. I believe that a refoundation through sincere evaluation is necessary. A sector in crisis that refuses to see its contradictionsIn (…)

An advocacy document written by twelve people in one afternoon

Account and method of the collective writing workshop held on 6 July 2026 at the BnF, during the closing day of the French national project on the future of audiovisual media in public libraries.

During the closing day of the national project on the future of audiovisual media in public libraries, on 6 July 2026 at the BnF, I facilitated a workshop devoted to writing an advocacy document addressed to elected officials. I recount here what (…)

Should We Feed Artificial Intelligences?

A new stage in our collective relationship with knowledge.

Three years after ChatGPT, AI access to digital heritage raises questions. Between technical costs and civilizational challenges, I defend the necessity of maintaining this feeding. Generative AI, an anthropological mutation of our relationship (…)

“Careful, it’s slippery”

Making an ABC of the words at work in cultural policies.

At the Cerisy conference « Transformations of Cultural Policies », in June 2026, I built an online ABC of the words that were debated over six days. This is the story of how the object came to be, starting from a joke in the room, and of how a (…)

On Warrior Absence

Reinvesting in a radical philosophy of pacifism.

War is the abdication of our humanity, pacifism its highest affirmation. Between the absence from self imposed by violence and the presence to the other demanded by peace lies, in my view, the ethical destiny of humanity. War as denial of (…)

Social media, mirror of our gaze

Rather than judging tools, let’s analyze what our perspective reveals about ourselves.

Social media, neither virtuous nor vicious. What if the real subject wasn’t these platforms, but the partial and subjective gaze we cast upon them? I invite nuance and introspection. The illusion of a single realityInstitutional discourse (…)

Presence and freedom of expression

Who is responsible for freedom?

Freedom of expression, a democratic pillar, is threatened by shifting censorship depending on those in power, even those who claim to be democrats. To preserve our democracy, let’s create micro-citizen assemblies where all speech is allowed, to (…)

Cease, anxious world

Observatory of Cultural Policies: “Territorial Projects and Cooperation”

Territory, digital, culture, participation, participation, creativity... keys to understanding and methodologies for relevant and innovative projects.The Observatory of Cultural Policies in collaboration with l’office organized from 30 January (…)

Theater and life

Short reflexion on the definition of reality.

We differentiate between “real life” and theater, like reality and fiction. Understanding more finely the entanglement of the two can undoubtedly allow one to better touch one’s own “truth.”Protest against the separate idea we have of (…)

“When it comes to culture, there exists today on the left a philosophically reactionary mode of thought that fails to recognise itself as such”

Interview of Benoît Labourdette by Cyril Lemieux (revue {Germinal} #8 – May 2024).

This interview appeared in May 2024 in issue 8 of the journal Germinal, devoted to critical culture and to the relationship, long essential and then neglected, between socialism and culture. Founded in 2021, Germinal brings together young (…)