Regards Croisés – Commodification 360°

With: François Cusset

Framework: Simon Fujiwara. A Whole New World

Language: EN

Access: 10€ 

Max 20p

Booking required:

mudam.com/rsvp-fujiwara-philosophy

Challenging the eye-pleasing aesthetics of the exhibition AWhole New World by bringing to the surface its much darker meanings, this tour will reveal the underbelly of pop culture, consumer society, new media and entertainment and how it has shaped the way we perceive our world.

Commodification has taken over every aspect of contemporary life, an inescapable condition that Fujiwara’s exhibition compels us to confront head-on. This tour will introduce participants to philosophical concepts that can help make sense of our deranged world, as well as process its intersection of leisure, commerce and control. Beyond the theme-parkification of the museum, participants will be invited to reflect critically on the many contradictions that Fujiwara brought to the surface in A Whole New World.

In this Regards Croisés guided tour, intellectual historian François Cusset will examine Fujiwara’s work with concepts from post structuralism, the so-called French Theory and cultural studies.

Authors such as Foucault, Lacan, Baudrillard and more will be referenced in Cusset’s analysis, enabling participants to experience the exhibition through a different lens.

Biography: 

François Cusset (1969, Paris) is a writer and intellectual historian who lives in Paris. A professor of intellectual history and American studies at University of Paris Nanterre, he also gives seminars at Sciences-Po Paris, in various Swiss and Belgian art schools, as well as graduate schools in the US. He started his professional life in New York City (1991-2000) holding successive positions as a journalist, cultural attaché, and literary agent. The author of twelve acclaimed works of nonfiction, from political pamphlets to global intellectual history, he has also authored three novels and an experimental narrative on the 2020 Covid lockdown. Among his books translated from the French: French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze & Co. transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States (University of Minnesota Press, 2008), The Inverted Gaze: Queering French Literature in America (Arsenal Pulp, 2011), How the World Swung to the Right: Fifty Years of Counterrevolutions(Semiotext(e)/MIT Press, 2018), and The World Unleashed: New Logics of Violence (n-1 edições, 2025). He is currently working on a book about machofascism and the future of masculinity, forthcoming in 2027.