Three novels, an essay on philosophy, one on geography, four on history… Here is a brief review of nine outstanding works in this fortieth week of the year.
History. “The Death of the King”, by Olivier Bétourné
It is not certain that the execution of Louis XVI, on January 21, 1793, will continue to torment France. We can regret it, Olivier Bétourné seems to say throughout the book he dedicates to this “founding act of violence”. Not out of a desire to reopen old disputes about the moral nature of regicide, but because, precisely, we have yet to understand what and how it was so foundational. The editor and historian, to carry out research on the “transfer of sacredness” whose instrument was then the guillotine, he proposes to tell the events step by step, from the trial to death, searching at each stage for the signs of the passage from one world to another, the sacred body of the sovereign on one hand, he dreams of creating a “Republic of Equals” on the other. The spilled blood of the king – with which the citizens sprinkled themselves while shouting “Long live the Republic! » – acquires, under the documented and stimulating gaze of the author, a baptismal virtue. From there a France was born, in the form of an enigma that still remains to be solved two hundred and thirty years later. Fl.Go
“The Death of the King. Louis XVI before his judges and in front of history”, by Olivier Bétourné, Seuil, 318 p., 23 euros, digital 17 euros.
Geography. “Let’s live together!” For a new terrestrial urbanity”, by Michel Lussault
Many specialists date back to the 1950s. “great acceleration” of the transformation of the Earth under the effect of human activity, this “forcing” resources and natural balances that, under the name of Anthropocene, defines the era in which we have entered and that could cause a catastrophic erosion of the habitability of our planet. However, this period is also the one in which the urbanization of the world accelerated, to the point that “The Anthropocene would be above all an “urbanocene” », writes Michel Lussault.
The geographer has long placed this intuition at the center of his work. Years of research that his new book recapitulates and expands, bringing together studies on the history of urbanization, analysis on the “vulnerability of human habitats” and outline of a result, around the “resident virtues” what are they? “consideration, attention, care, maintenance”. That is, not the illusory retreat of a return to nature, but a way of seeking to repair the impact of cities on themselves, based on renewed relationships with the human and the non-human, without which the world is at risk. of being swallowed, and we with that. Fl.Go
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