‘David Van Reybrouck’

The Dutch-speaking Belgian writer, poet and essayist, David Van Reybrouck is one of the most brilliant intellectuals of his generation.

His essay Congo: The Epic History of a People, which won the Prix Médicis and has been translated into many languages, has been widely read, as has his manifesto Against Elections, which aims to increase citizen participation in the democratic decision-making process.

David Van Reybrouck is also the author of several books, including stories, plays and poetry collections. His reflections are profound, fuelled by history and extremely influential.

For our forum, David Van Reybrouck has chosen to speak about the environmental future of our planet. According to David Van Reybrouck, even though we have never fully come to terms with the colonialism of the past, we have still not done anything about the dramatic way in which we are now colonising the future. Humanity is approaching the next century with the same insensitivity, greed and short-sightedness with which it appropriated continents in the past. In his conference, David Van Reybrouck will explore the "colonisation of the future" and will propose several solutions for this unacknowledged brutality.

He has chosen La colonisation de l’avenir as the title of his conference at our forum.