Olivia-Jeanne Cohen
Olivia-Jeanne Cohen, Doctor of Letters and Knight of the National Order of Academic Palms, is passionate about literature and philosophy. She participates in various forums on literature and philosophy, addressing questions of being-in-the-world, aesthetics, and the arts, including painting, theater, and dance. For many years, she taught at the Sorbonne (Department of French Literature and Civilization, Department of Cinema, Arts and Media, History, etc.). Literature, which she believes is inseparable from philosophy in its understanding of being-in-the-world, is rooted in this reflexive necessity between the finite and the infinite. An essayist, novelist, playwright, and director, as well as editor of the "Résonances" collection, she is deeply interested in the world of yesterday and today in all its complexity and allusions. She is also the author of several books of interviews, scholarly articles, edited volumes, and studies on aesthetic issues (in art and the performing arts). She collaborates on various collective projects (theater, film, dance) and has produced several monographs on dance and painting, as well as on film, where she has worked as a screenwriter, voice-over artist, and reader for Radio France's "Archivox" program for several years. She is also a French-Korean co-translator of critical works on theater, dramaturgy, scenography, and plays from the contemporary French repertoire.
Reflecting on self-image immediately raises questions about the nature of this noun phrase, namely the noun, the image, and its complement, the reciprocity of the self. The mere mention of this expression sets its own meaning in motion, a source of multiple questions. Is it self-being, a double of myself that I present to others, an identity, an ephemeral construct? How can we grasp its definitions and contours? How should we approach it? This work examines the situation of being-in-the-world from various angles, insofar as we can understand its foundations and implications. Reflections on this quest for identity, an expression of different states of self explored to varying degrees and through different philosophical, sensory, and literary approaches, also express the author's positions and commitment, particularly in the second part of the work: the writing of a shock, that of October 7, 2023, which reopened the stage of abomination, summoning shadows, hallucinations, and fantasies. October 7 reactivated the vehement, obsessive image. A nomadic gaze that has encountered other gazes, those of History and a thousand lives, the expression of these aspects of being-in-the-world, of ontological questions about immanence, about the relativity of one's situation in the world and in one's relationship to the other, through an observant gaze, one that has also been honed over many years in the guise of Thought, imbued with literature and philosophical reflection. Publication date: April 1, 2024 Order now
A novel of extremes, both radiant and tragic, *L'Immédiat* tells the story of a woman in search of freedom and love, amidst the captivating landscapes of the South, which overwhelm the senses. The urgent need to live, palpable on every page, feverishly questions existence, the inner self, and one's place in the world. Sensuality resonates within the writing of these pages, made of flesh and blood. Publication date: February 1, 2024. Order now
