New Delhi, Sep 3 (IANS) French philosopher, writer, filmmaker and illusionist Yann Kerninon has found a new segment of readers: young urban Indians with a philosophical streak.
His book ?An Attempt to Assassinate My Inner Bourgeois?, a critical introspection into the modern bourgeois state of mind, has been published in India by the capital-based Full Circle, which has opened its doors to emerging foreign writers.
?I am amazed that my book has been translated and published in India. I hope it sells and the readers like it,? Kerninon told IANS.
The writer was here Friday to present his book in a conversation with writer Rana Dasgupta, the winner of the Commonwealth Prize for Literature.
The presentation was followed by an act of Kerninon’s close-up illusion tricks. ?I know a few basic mind-reading tricks like the wild card magic which I perform to small audiences in Europe,? Kerninon said.
Like his two earlier philosophical treatises, Kerninon’s new tome is a wordy battle between small compartments that exist in human minds – the inner bourgeois – and the right to live in a vibrant and free society.
A champion of freedom, Kerninon says that the history of 19th and 20th centuries is essentially that of the struggle against the bourgeois spirit and the failure to defeat it.
‘Nietzsche, Baudelaire, Marx, Freud, Heidegger – all screamed the same thing: the bourgeois spirit has to be crushed,’ the writer said.
?I would say that the heart of what I am dealing with is disenchantment as French philosopher Marcel Gauchet advocated. Magic has disappeared from modern life. Institutionalized (codified) religion and greed control everything – and nothing makes sense. Personally, I am dealing with the question of modernity – where everything is planned, calculated and governed by technology. We are almost god,? he said.
?Man will be able to control and know everything; we can open an atom and build a bomb,? he said.
‘But the irony is that while people define their lives with technology and live alone with big machines, there is a risk of becoming slave of technology,’ Kerninon added.
?Every day we go to the workplace – the venue of production – and are controlled by it,? the 38-year-old writer said.
?We may not be able to give sense to technology after a point of time and technology without meaning is a trap. My goal in my books is to find concepts, examples and inspiration to give a measure of sense to this world… re-enchant it. Millions of people fall into the trap of religious terrorism. It is not a sign of gods being alive. The gods are dead,? Kerninon said.
In his book, he compares the bourgeois spirit to cancer, ?which is neurotic and perverse… almost like the lymphoma that killed my father?.
Kerninon seeks freedom in ?Dada? – a form of early 20th century free artistic expression that believes in nothing but just in loving life itself.
(Madhusree Chatterjee can be contacted at madhu.c@ians.in)
