Wave: A Series of Miniature Poems

1999

The Goose ( Association for Literature, Environment, and Culture in Canada)

The Goose, 2014

2018

Utilising a range of psychogeographic practices, this project comprises a hybrid creative response to the natural landscape of West Wales, using the River Towy as a focal point. It is concerned with an exploration of the importance of identity, and with themes of the spiritual, land, gender, culture and history. The work’s originality results from the application of predominantly male urban writing practices in a rural Welsh environment from a woman’s standpoint. The journey recounted in the creative piece is understood essentially as a transformative, personal process of a transcendental nature, whilst also exploring and depicting the nature of the differing stages of the river and those who live in or come to the specific locations, including Carmarthen, the Cambrian Mountains, Llandeilo, Llandovery, and Llansteffan. It is informed by the belief that some places are imbued with energies that may cause specific types of human interaction and responses. The project was developed thr...

There is no sea without waves. The openness, the vastity, the amplitude of the immense surface of water is intrinsically associated with the idea of movement, from the little ripples that come ashore in the calm days of the Mediterranean to the gigantic tidal waves of the oceans. Agitated by both internal and external forces, by submarine currents, winds, and, in the Anthropocene, also by human navigation, the sea is perennially striated, as Deleuze would have put it. The liquid essence of the sea makes it the instable counterpart of the terrestrial world, a continuously changing mass of water that, exactly because of this mutability, both fascinates and terrifies. Waves are the visual patterns of the sea. They are a promise of topological order that constantly suggests a rhythm but constantly alters it into a myriad of variations. Waves are, also, the curvilinear result of the encounter between the rectilinear essence of water and the forces that bend it, that move it upwards or downwards, that cause its inflation and deflation, its inflexion and deflection. Waves are, then, an element of conjunction between two worlds, between earth and sea, between land and water, and between water and air. Winds touch the sea, the sea touches the land, and what results is an ungraspable spectacle of particles of water arranged into complex configurations. There lies the charm and the mystery of waves: they break the order of water, yet they also compose the visual order of the sea. They elude any attempt at calculation (thus representing a conundrum even for present-day physics), yet they constantly promise an order, or at least a range of patterns. Waves are also a force in themselves, combining the energies of water and air, of sea and wind, able to destroy but also to create power, that of ancient myths as well as that of modern wave-powerplants. Thus, whenever an instable material is inflected by forces that imprint on it some rhythmic, curvilinear configurations, humans recognize waves, not only in water, but also in air (soundwaves) or in even light, to such a wide extent that a certain quantum physics identifies waves as the primary constituent of the universe. Thus defined, waves are indeed everywhere in nature, in the rhythms and sounds of the human body, in those that are used to compose the voice of language, in the semantic patterns that grow and dwindle in culture, exactly like waves. Yet the most famous waves, the epitomic waves of all, remain those that seem to emerge from nothingness in the middle of an ocean, then run for long distances as delicate white horses, and finally break their crests against the cliffs of the world. The theory of catastrophes seeks to pattern this evolution, yet before modern mathematics traditional cultures too have sought to come to term with waves, denominating them, articulating them into types, naming these types in more or less detailed categorizations depending on how important waves were in the meshes of each culture. Waves are words, but waves are images too, in countless representations, and they are metaphors as well, of a force that mounts and declines, of a sudden burst of energy, of a rhythmic arrival, of everything that is wavy and undulating, that comes and goes, that rocks and breaks, that splashes and washes, that advances and withdraws, in the perennial, liquid oscillation that seems to beat at the heart of nature.

Le Simplegadi, 2019

Collège International de Philosophies / Centre Walras-Pareto, 2023

La question de savoir si l’économie peut ou doit proposer des analyses normatives et rationnelles des besoins et des préférences qui régissent les choix individuels et collectifs, et en établir une hiérarchie objective, est devenue, à la lumière des crises écologiques et environnementales, ainsi que des transformations socio-économiques nécessaires pour y faire face, l’une des questions sociales les plus cruciales. En effet, il est nécessaire de prendre en compte la nature des besoins et des préférences que diverses activités visent à satisfaire lors de l’évaluation des impacts de ces activités sur l’environnement et le climat. Ces impacts doivent être évalués différemment selon les besoins et les préférences qui sont à l’origine des activités puisque, par exemple, les activités visant à satisfaire les besoins fondamentaux doivent être privilégiées par rapport aux activités visant à faciliter les voyages sur la lune. Pourtant, historiquement parlant, la plupart des économistes ont été réticents à proposer des investigations approfondies des valeurs éthiques et des normes sociopolitiques régissant les préférences. Selon de nombreux économistes, les discussions sur les valeurs et les normes relèvent d’une démarche normative qui ne devrait pas jouer de rôle dans la recherche scientifique. Un nombre important de travaux, notamment en philosophie et en sociologie, ont déjà problématisé cette faible présence des considérations éthiques et politiques dans l’économie. Cependant, à l’exception de celles et ceux qui travaillent sur des écoles de pensée dites hétérodoxes (notamment diverses écoles institutionnalistes), l’économie écologique, l’approche des capabilités et les théories économiques de la justice, les recherches en économie évitent souvent de proposer des analyses substantielles des valeurs et des normes, ou lorsqu’elles le font, ces analyses sont souvent principalement formelles. Ce séminaire vise à mettre en évidence les recherches qui montrent le rôle décisif des questions normatives (éthiques, morales, politiques) dans les choix collectifs analysés par l’économie. Il s’agira de mettre en évidence les travaux en économie, en histoire de la pensée économique, ainsi qu’en philosophie de l’économie, qui permettent de penser et de repenser différentes manières d’intégrer des considérations normatives dans les analyses économiques des choix individuels et notamment collectifs.

2020