Biography of Julia Kristeva, writer, psychoanalyst, and professor emerita
Julia Kristeva, born in Bulgaria, has been living and working in France since 1966. She is a writer, psychoanalyst, professor emerita at the University of Paris, and a full member and trainer at the Société Psychanalytique de Paris. She holds honorary doctorates from numerous universities in the United States, Canada, and Europe, where she regularly teaches. She was made Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour (2020), Commander of the Order of Merit (2011), and in December 2004 became the first recipient of the Holberg Prize (established by the Norwegian government to address the absence of the humanities in the Nobel awards). She also received the Hannah Arendt Prize in December 2006 and the Václav Havel Prize in 2008. She is the author of around thirty works, including novels. Her work has been fully translated into English, and most of her books are available in major languages worldwide.
Should we acknowledge that one becomes a stranger in another country because one is already a stranger to oneself?
A poem-chair
“I adopted the chair, this familiar object, a few decades ago, at a time when I wanted to create art on a human scale in public spaces, while everywhere else people opted for the monumental: it is an object shaped like the body and serves the body. It is difficult to feel exclusive ownership of an object so universally shareable. It is mine when I occupy it, but if I leave it, someone else can claim it as their chair.” Michel Goulet, artist-sculptor
The project Prendre position
Prendre position is a sculpture-installation project of 47 chair-poems to mark the 100th anniversary of the Cité internationale universitaire de Paris. They were installed in a flowered meadow created especially for the occasion by the campus estate service.
This artistic installation was conceived by the Quebecois artist-sculptor Michel Goulet, in collaboration with François Massut, founding director of the collective Poésie is not dead.
Each house on the campus is represented by a chair, thanks to a donation from the Maison des étudiants canadiens and the support of the Labrenne group. Each of the 47 chairs is a unique work.
History and architecture of the house
The first residence built at the Cité Internationale in 1925, the Fondation Deutsch de la Meurthe was born from the meeting of Paul Appell, a mathematician who became Rector of the University of Paris, and Émile Deutsch de la Meurthe, a wealthy industrialist from Lorraine who made his fortune in mineral oils and, together with his brother Henry, founded Pétroles Jupiter, which became the Shell Group in 1948.
