In the complex history of French receptions and practices of geopolitics, the creation in 2026 of a Geopolitical Institute of Advanced Studies at the École normale supérieure constitutes an important milestone. It confirms the recognition from which this discipline, long disdained or viewed with suspicion, now benefits in France.
Above all, it testifies to the topicality and relevance of the geopolitical approach, at a time when the international order set up at the end of the Cold War is disintegrating, leaving the world scene to fragment into competing blocs and spheres of influence prey to the logic of ideological and technological confrontation.
Anchored within the Ecole Normale Supérieure, the Geopolitical Institute for Advanced Studies aims to constitute a place for the production and dissemination of rigorous and effective knowledge in the service of the city. Working to develop a new geopolitics capable of confronting the unprecedented challenges of the moment in which it is born, it does not intend to make a clean sweep of the past. This is why he is devoting his inaugural conference to establishing a broad historical and critical inventory of geopolitics in France.
The conference will firstly look at the history of French receptions and uses of geopolitics. This return to the history of the discipline will be an opportunity to question the relationships, explicit or not, that some key figures in the human and social sciences have had with it, whether geographers, historians, philosophers, political scientists or even anthropologists. Particular attention will also be paid to the actors, whether diplomats, political decision-makers or even major international institutions based in France, who have contributed through their practices to concretely forging a French-style geopolitics.
Although it focuses on a national geopolitical tradition, the conference will give pride of place to other scales. In France as elsewhere, geopolitical knowledge and practices have in fact been at the heart of international circulations which it will be important to examine. We will thus question the links of French geopolitics with other national geopolitical traditions, placing particular emphasis on the way in which it has been received, adopted, adapted or criticized abroad.
In line with the geopolitics open to interdisciplinarity which the new Institute aims to promote, the conference will be an opportunity to give ample space to dialogue with researchers from many related disciplinary fields.
By crossing perspectives, analytical angles and issues, the conference will ultimately seek to determine whether there exists or existed one (or more) coherent French geopolitics, distinguishing itself from those produced and practiced elsewhere in the world. And to think about ways to continue and reinvent this tradition.
Programme
THURSDAY JUNE 18
9h-9h45 – INTRODUCTION
- Gilles Gressani (The Great Continent)
- Frédéric Worms (Ecole Normale Supérieure): “The geopolitical moment”
- Yves Lacoste (Paris VIII, IFG, founder of Herodotus): “By welcoming a new Institute of Geopolitics” (testimony read)
9:45 a.m.-11:15 a.m.: THE POLITICS OF GEOGRAPHERS
- Florent Parmentier (Cevipof, Sciences Po): “Thinking about the margins of Europe from France: Jacques Ancel and the Romanian space”
- Amaël Cattaruzza (Paris VIII): “Jean Gottmann, French geography and politics”
- Beatrice Giblin (Paris VIII, IFG, Rédactrice en chef d’Hérodote) : « Hérodote : trois générations de géopolitic française »
- Michael Foucher (Geographer, diplomat): “Geopolitics as practice”
- Jacques Lévy (EPFL, Polytechnic University of Hauts de France): “The emergence of political globalities: thinking by observing”
- President of Séance: Sophie Hou (Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne)
11:30 a.m.-1 p.m.: STORIES, SCALES AND GEOPOLITICS
- Maurice Aymard (EHESS) : « Fernand Braudel : géohistoire vs géopolitique »
- Pierre Singaravélou (Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, King’s College): “Does global history have a scale? HAS”
- Laurence Badel (Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne): “Decentering the gaze on the history of international relations”
- Cécile Chalmin (APHG): “The history-geography couple and geopolitics in French education”
- Président de séance : Florian Louis (VERB)
2 p.m.-3:30 p.m.: THE GEOGRAPHIC PROBLEM OF POLITICS
- Jean-François Kervégan (Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne): “Carl Schmitt seen from France: Kojève, Freund and a few others”
- Olivier Zajec (Lyon III, IESD): “Aron and the geopolitical approach to international relations: a strange misunderstanding”
- Sabine Jansen (CNAM): “Jacques Vernant: a geopolitical journey”
- Perrine Simon-Nahum (ENS, CNRS) : « Geopolitics of the irrational: actuality of the thought of Thérèse Delpech »
- Joël Roman : “Pierre Hassner, analyst of the ambivalence of international relations”
- Président de séance : Pierre Ramond (The Great Continent)
16h-17h30 : LA GÉOPOLITIQUE AND LE PROBLÈME IMPÉRIAL
- Dominique Combe (ENS) : « Geopolitics of Blackness »
- Norman Teach (University of Edinburgh): « Frantz Fanon. An anti-imperialist course »
- Elara Bertho (LAM, CNRS): “Paris, Pan-African capital”
- Émile Le Pessot (EHESS) : « Cornelius Castoriadis ou la géopolitique en révolution »
- Danilo Scholz (Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut Essen): “From one empire to another: France in the post-historical world according to Kojève”
- Vincent Duclert (CESPRA, EHESS-CNRS): « France face aux genocides »
- Président de séance: Ã confirmer
18h-19h : [Table ronde] MEDIATISER LA GÉPOLITIQUE
- Francis Bougon (Médiapart)
- Pierre Haski (France Inter)
- Christine Ockrent (France Culture)
- Delphine Papin (The World, Herodotus)
- Moderator: William Erner (France Culture)
7:30 p.m.-11:30 p.m.: EXCEPTIONAL SCREENING OF THE BATTLE OF GAULLE (reserved for conference speakers)
 Introduction par Julian Jackson (Queen Mary University of London)
 En présence du réalisateur Antonin Baudry
FRIDAY JUNE 19
9:30 a.m.-11 a.m.: IS GEOPOLITICS ALSO USED TO MAKE WAR?
- Julian Jackson (Queen Mary University of London): “The Current Affairs of Gaullism”
- Martin Motte (EPHE) : « Les idées géopolitiques et géostratégiques de l’amiral Castex »
- Jérémy Rubenstein : “From geostrategy to counter-insurgency, the psychological weapon as David Galula’s axis of reflection”
- Frédéric Gloriant (CIENS, ENS): “France’s nuclear trajectory”
- Héloïse Heuls (CNAM): “The new spaces of struggle for French jihadists”
- Président de séance : Philippe Boulanger (Paris IV)
11:15 a.m.-1:00 p.m.: THE GEOPOLITICS OF EXTREME AND RADICAL RIGHTS
- Olivier Dard (Sorbonne University) : “Geopolitics of the French Action ”
- Arnaud Miranda (INALCO, Sciences Po): “French receptions and connections of the Dark Lights”
- Pauline Picco (George Washington University) : « The Italian Modà ̈le »
- Georges-Henri Soutou (Paris IV) : « Géopolitique de l’“Ordre nouveau†»
- Président de séance : Baptiste Roger-Lacan
2 p.m.-3:30 p.m.: ANTHROPOLOGY, ANTHROPOCENE AND GEOPOLITICS
- Pierre Charbonnier (CNRS, Sciences Po): “Translatio imperii: from anthropological comparativism to the new climatic modernity”
- Philippe Descola (Collège de France): “Cosmopolitics of the Anthropocene”
- Frédéric Keck (CNRS): “Marxism and geopolitics in Lévi-Strauss”
- Baptiste Morizot (University of Aix-Marseille): “The Geopolitics of Housing ”
- Sarah Vanuxem (University of Côte d’Azur): “France in the planetary movement for the rights of nature”
- Président de séance : Clément Fontanarava (Paris I, IHMC)
16h-17h : [Table ronde] GEOPOLITICS IN A WORLD IN CRISIS
- Bertrand Badie (Sciences-Po)
- Beatrice Giblin (Paris VIII, IFG)
- Patrick Weil (University of Chicago)
- Moderator: Luiza Bialasiewicz (Ca’ Foscari University of Venise)
17h-18h30 : [Table ronde] HAPPY GLOBALIZATION?
- Suzanne Berger (WITH)
- Pascal Lamy (Jacques Delors Institute)
- Alain Minc
- Arnaud Now (EHESS)
- Modératrice : Aliette Hovine (France Culture)
6:30 p.m.-8 p.m.: READINGS: FRENCH AND GEOPOLITICAL LETTERS (reserved for conference speakers)
- Opening : Valérie Theis (Deputy Director of the Ecole Normale Supérieure)
- Lecture : Lambert Wilson
SATURDAY JUNE 20
9 a.m.-10 a.m.: FRENCH GEOPOLITICS SEEN FROM ELSEWHERE
- Antonio Ferraz de Oliveira (King’s College): “French geopolitics seen from the United Kingdom and the United States”
- José Arnaldo dos Santos Ribeiro Júnior (Federal University of Maranhão) :  « The French geopolitics view of Latin America »
- Edoardo Boria (La Sapienza University, Rome) « French geopolitics view of Italy »
- Customé Fashion (ASSN): “Geopolitics of resentment: anti-French speeches in West Africa”
- President of Séance: Delphine Allès (INALCO)
10 a.m.-11 a.m.: CRITICAL THEORIES AND GEOPOLITICS
- Frédéric Gros (Sciences Po, Cevipof): “Michel Foucault: a history of territory”
- Gisele Shapiro (CNRS, EHESS) : « Thinking about the géopolitique avec Bourdieu : impérialisme, hégémonie, échanges »
- Élisabeth Roudinesco : “Psychoanalysis is first and foremost a “geopsychoanalysis” (Jacques Derrida)”
- Quentin Badaire (ENS; International College of Philosophy): “The geosophy of Deleuze & Guattari against the geopolitics of the great powers in the age of Integrated Global Capitalism”
- Président de séance : Ludovic Tournès (University de Genève)
11 a.m.-12:30 p.m.: THE TRANSATLANTIC PROBLEM AND THE EUROPEAN QUESTION IN FRENCH GEOPOLITICS
- Michael Duclos (Montaigne Institute)
- Sylvie Matelly (Delors Institute Paris)
- Laurence Nardon (IFRI)
- Sébastien Treyer (IDDRI)
- Justin Vaisse (Johns Hopkins University, PPF)
- Tara Varma (German Marshall Fund)
- Moderator: Quentin Lafay (France Culture)
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