The State of the Arts of Mathematics in France

Children don´t like mathematics in school, and it´s not only their fault. Actually, the biggest share of this disgrace is due to the old methodologies and lack of understanding, at the institutional level, about the importance of this domain to everyday life.

The series: Conversation sur les mathématiques is part of a collection of publications aimed to outline various scientific domains and their relevance for the everyday life and institutional politics. It reunites dialogues between experts in a domain of study on topics related not only to theoretical and conceptual approaches but also to common relevance.

For instance, why mathematics are important for the everyday life? For instance, for being able to manage your costs and savings, or medical reasons or for setting up your business? What distinguishes a certain policy in the field from a country to another? What are the geopolitics of mathematics nowadays? What happened to France and what are the consequences of the daily decline of the educational measures in this field? What are the failures of communication between the French mathematicians and other scientists?

I´ve read this book of dialogues - among mathematicians with very complex life trajectories - as a long intellectual story, with fascinating insights into the everyday struggles of the scientific elites. I can´t wait to read the other conversations on other theoretical topics as well.

Rating: 4 stars

The Poles of Tehran

From the early 1940s until the end of WWII, Iran hosted between 114,000 and 300, refugees from Poland, that come on the way from Siberia via Uzbekistan. They arrived to the port city of Bandar e-Anzali and they settled in Tehran, but also in Isfahan and other locations like Ahvaz. Most of them left either back to Poland, after the war, or left for New Zealand or UK, but there were also a few - some hundred - that stayed there, settled and eventually married.

Some of the stories of those refugees are the topic of a documentary movie made by the film director and author Khoshrow Sinai, who died this August of Covid 19, The Last Requiem available for free on YouTube (it lasts 1h35). He gathered testimonies of the then refugees between 1971-1983, to which archive films and photos were added.  He is not the only one to cover this topic, among those who documented this Exodus being the photographer Gholam Abdol-Rahimi. 

The wandering started once Poland was occupied by the Germany, with hundred of thousands of people running - sometimes on foot - to the Soviet Union, where they were sent to camps in Siberia. Malnourished and maltreated, some were able to go out and reached Iran, where according to the testimonies they were welcomed with open heart, fed and hosted by the locals. ´They made us feel humans again´, says one of the person interviewed then. Many were sent back to the front but there were many who temporarily or for good worked here, as nannies or music teachers. Polonia, a former bar and restaurant in the centre of Tehran, was a meeting point not only for the local Polish but also by the American and British soldiers stationed in the capital. Sinai is wandering though the Christian cemetery in Tehran or visiting the local church trying to understand what they feel and how they feel now about their past. 

At the time of the production, given the so-called ´friendly´ relations between USSR and Poland, the movie was not distributed in the country, as it openly approaches the hardships the Poles had to suffer on behalf of the Russians. After the end of the Cold War though, Sinai was awarded a high Polish state distinction for his contribution to the understanding of this specific chapter of common history.

Among those hundreds of thousand of refugees, there were also around 1,000 Polish Jews that were saved from the Nazis while being offered temporary refuge in Iran. The survivors, calling themselves ´Tehrani´, do still reunite once the year in Israel to celebrate their escape through Iran. Unfortunately, this topic is not approached in the movie, but in those demented times we live now, it is a good reminder that, in fact, the kindness of the people can easily overpass the craziness of the political regime in power in Tehran. 

Book Review: China´s Next Strategic Advantage. From Imitation to Innovation

 

China´s Next Strategic Advantage. From Imitation to Innovation by George S. Yip and Bruce McKern is an useful introduction to doing business in China, especially for multinational companies. It helps at a great extent - but mostly at a theoretical level - to understand the details of mergings and business management in this country, as well as the state policies in the field of development and innovation.

It combines the features of a business guidance book based on a variety of case studies from various industries. For someone interested in doing business in China, this book can help at a significant extent. For those already operating on the ground, not so much, as they are probably well acquainted already with the limitations of a party system that is present through its structures in any middle-sized entreprise as well as the frequent harassment foreigners operating in the mainland especially are targeted (both legally as physically with police officers visiting them late at night apparently for some regular documents checking). I personally think that such aspects cannot be ignored, especially in a book that has to do with the business developments aimed at a foreigner audience.

Rating: 3 stars

Russia´s Ghosts are Never Dead

Academics tend to disapprove and disgrace journalistic inquieries as lacking a theoretical and ideatic basis, but for contemporary analysts of political events they need the backbone provided by journalists in order to create realistic interpretations of facts. 

Russia is not an easy topic to write about and live in. Under Putin´s reign for too many years to remember when it really started, the country is playing the maskirovka game internationally where its people are battling poverty and restriction of their basic rights. Internationally though, and in the field of memory policies, there is business as usual, with new and old ideologies being concocted for political survival reasons.

The Long Hangover: Putin´s New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past is a work of journalistic investigation into the genesis of the memory revival and policies underwent by Putin. Through interview with simple people, some of them inmates in the Gulag or former participants to WWII-related events, Shaul Walker the then Moscow correspondent of The Guardian, offers a lot of hints about the directions of the politics of memory as dictated by Putin and his trustees. Taking over a country in a desolate state of affairs the Russian president played hard the cards of pride and identity, reshaping collective memory and reigniting feelings of pride and self-reliance. Such moves operate on medium-term and according to the interviews related in the book, almost succeeded. 

I would have been keen to read - or hear, as I had access to the book in audio format - more critical perspectives and maybe some theoretical sources too, but journalistic work, as I know myself well, does not have too much time to deal with this part of the investigation, as it needs to stay connected on facts and specific details.

At the history scale, the strategies and policies implemented in the field of memory policies deserve a more extended academic consideration. I would be very curious to explore more into detail those moves and their unique genesis applied to other countries from the region, including former Soviet republics, as Russia and the Soviet Union in general is part of their history and everyday life.

Neglected for various reasons, this part of the world continue to offer interesting topics of study for academics and researchers of contemporary politics and mentalities. No matter how fast the geopolitical interests are shifting, keeping an educated eye into this region is rewarding and always intellectually challenging.

Rating: 3 stars

What´s in a Name?

At the beginning of a very inspirational workshop I took part to at the beginning of this week, organised by LADS Akademie in Berlin, on topics of anti-racism, the participants were asked to tell the story of their name: what does it mean, what is the origin, what is the story or the stories associated with it.

A very good start of a long discussion about racism and discrimination, in Germany and elsewhere, because, more often than not, a name may carry a heavy history. A name is not only a choice of your parent - with all the positive and negative aspects involved by that - but especially for those living as minorities or displaced from their countries of origins, it carries a tragic destiny. 

Especially when, in Berlin, for instance, a foreign-sounding name (especially if labelled of outside Western Europe, Arabic or Slavic) may limit your chances to rent an apartment. Or, when you are forced to change it for a more ´majority´-sounding one, in order to better fit the sound and the music of oppressive majorities.

When your own place of birth changes political hands, your name may be despised as belonging to a relative minority or majority. It can be wrongly written and pronounced in official contexts and, eventually, changed against your will. Your identity documents are the proof of how one or another authority decided against your will to modify your name. According to one hilarious family story, the brothers of my maternal grandfather were each and every one of them had their family name written completely different up to the various moods and levels of literacy of the officials that registered their births. At least in one instance, my great-great parents were told: What name is that? Doesn´t sound local? So they automatically made it sound so...

Learning how to correctly pronounce one name is a sign of respect and consideration, the first step towards acknowledging someone´s identity, and therefore respecting it. 

Everything starts with a name and indeed, a name means so much. Sometimes, a whole rich story extended across time, geography and generations.

Essay on the New French Elites

It was a long time since I´ve read a French-language essay, by Pierre Birnbaum, about the circulation of elites. His latest, Où va l´Etat. Essai sur les nouvelles élites du pouvoir published in 2018 by Seuil was an easy yet informative read on the changes underwent lately by the French elites. 

Despite the general tone, the book has to do with France - and only France. Birnbaum is a writer I used to quote often during my SciPo university classes and actually I was partially agreeing with his methods and conclusions. His researches are following the sociological methods integrated into a perspective of the historian of the state and I appreciate the mix of research perspectives and methods.

The analysis of Birnbaum starts with the raise to power of president Macron and inferrs further that the French state is currently under threat by the private sector, whose representative the current resident of the Elysée is. 

Long before Macron administration, the traditional path of circulation of elites - mostly via the Ecole Normale Supèrieure (ENA), the classical network of political representatives both at the local and central level - began to erode. Nowadays, according to Birnbaum whose analysis is based on research of professional CVs of the power representatives, the percentage of people belonging to the economic environment is over 50%. Besides a statistical account of persons, this challenge means that concepts of public management are entering the French political space which may on the long term challenge France with the concepts of the American society ´ouverte à tous les vents au monde du privé´. Besides the French existential fears when confronted with the American interference, Birnbaum also fears a higher occurence of corruption and he brings as arguments the increased frequency of mismanagement of public funds by political representatives from the last decade. The next effect of such changes may be the weakening of the state and the threat of populism.

I personally use this method of professional CV analysis when it comes to identify patterns and trends among elites. It is the easiest way to read the changes taking place within a society as well as the old and emerging centers of power.

However, only this approach is not enough for understanding a complex political system. For instance, Birnbaum´s analysis does not mention the fact that Macron won the power based on the support of a political party newly created. The essay does not have in any case any analysis about the situation of the current political party which is a pity for the overall evaluation of the situation. 

On the other hand, the fact that the traditional channels of power created by the selection of elites via ENA, for instance, is becoming obsolete is not necessarily a bad news as competition to this channel can offer more diversity and opportunities for the state configuration. 

Personally, I would have expect more than an essay about the new French elites, but I promise to return with more French analysis about the current system and its challenges, especially at the level of the intellectual elites. 

Rating: 3 stars

Hegel´s Lessons on Plato

When a philosopher is reading another philosopher, either it is having a critical stance or agrees with, in the end the aim will be to promote his or her own philosophical concepts and theories. This is especially when you have to deal with big names of the history of philosophy, in this case Hegel´s reading on Plato. A reading which is incomplete, fragmentary, subjective and in the end, serves exclusively the main philosophical narrative of the author. It does not reveal anything new and the observations and conclusion shall be regarded with a very critical eye. 

Reading Hegel again, although in a translation of the French translation from the original German - experience taught me to be vigilent to any philosophical French translation from German as it embelishes the vocabulary but does not always have the right liguistic tools to convene the original German meanings - was a novel intellectual experience for me. 

There, in the secret chamber of the lost books, Plato and his dialogues were as fresh as I left them more than a decade ago. Hegel and his acrobatic Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis - a triptic that I use often in various intellectual constructions by default - were also there. Only that my critical thinking evolved meanwhile which meant that I can read in many ways the use and often misuse various philosophical sources in order to build a different system of thought. It is an intellectual reflex of the modern age, overwhelmed with so much information and texts from the Antiquities onwards. Our age is left therefore only with the critical part. We rarely want to build anything and creating systems is a feareful approach which announces intellectual theologies - with low regard, if any, to individual freedoms. 

Philosophical exercises are useful mind-games but I don´t believe in the philosopher-king. I never did.