‘Meet the Thinkers: Rudi Laermans & Laurent de Sutter’

The Flemish Rudi Laermans and the French-speaking Laurent de Sutter are both outstanding thinkers who live in Brussels. Laermans is a sociology professor at the KU Leuven. He mainly studied cultural sociology and wrote on art and cultural politics. In his most recent work, Gedeelde angsten, he describes how fear has a social dimension. Laurent de Sutter is currently a major French-speaking thinker. In his essays, he covers topics ranging from dandyism to pornography. His book Pour en finir avec soi-même deals with today's egocentric culture. De Sutter and Laermans have a passion for culture and Brussels. With the possibility of being named European Capital of Culture in 2030, this is a very relevant topic for discussion. Essayist and cultural entrepreneur Harold Polis interviews both thinkers.