Discussion about the book ECHO DELAY REVERB with Elvan Zabunyan, editor of the book, and James Horton, member of the curatorial team at the Palais de Tokyo.

Throughout the 20th century, thinkers, activists and poets in the French-speaking world transgressed genres and changed perspectives on the contemporary world. However, beyond and sometimes before their recognition in France, their ideas were translated in the United States and used to create tools for a critical view of institutions, art and society, challenging social, aesthetic and linguistic norms and opening up new ways of seeing and acting.

While the flagship concept of French Theory was defined in the 1990s to evoke the enthusiastic reception that the United States reserved for authors such as Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida, other figures, such as Suzanne and Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Maryse Condé, Édouard Glissant and Monique Wittig, have been instrumental in the fields of art, postcolonial studies, feminism and gender studies. This book traces the history of the circulation of ideas, their resonance and appropriation by several generations of artists across the Atlantic, extending the eponymous exhibition conceived by Naomi Beckwith at the Palais de Tokyo.

• Where? At the Le-Monte-en-l’air bookshop, 2 rue de la Mare, 75020 Paris
• When? Wednesday 12 November 2025 at 7.30pm
• Who? An event organised by Éditions B42 and the Palais de Tokyo.