the conference so far

The conference in Perm has been going well. There are only two talks each day, which surprised me at first until I saw how they go– each talk plus the Q&A is extremely long. I’ve never seen audiences more attentive and serious for longer periods of time than Russians, or at least these particular Russians. Someone gives a 90-minute lecture and they pay attention to absolutely every word– undistracted, never checking cell phone text messages, never looking out the window, never whispering to their friends. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Today is the last day of the conference. Then there will be a bit of sightseeing tomorrow.

There are two alternating conferences venues: the Higher School of Economics (which dates to the early 1990’s and has branches in 5 cities) and the very nice Piotrovsky Bookstore, which is good enough that customers come regularly from Yekaterinburg, 6 hours by train to the east of Perm.

It looks like Publishers Weekly already noticed the store. I enjoy this quote from one of the store owners:

“The book retail scene in Perm and the Ural region is downright gloomy. To help reverse this situation, we have made an effort to provide 10 times more titles than what people expect to find—or read—in order to encourage them to read more, as they did before.”

For this event they have four of my books on a display table, along with some Latour. For today I was asked to give an overview of Quentin Meillassoux: Philosophy in the Making, which I’m told has already been discussed in Moscow at a public event as well.