Freedom of research and ecology
Résumé
In light of recent attacks against the freedom of research, we seek to reassess and reflect on the right to this freedom today, in a global context. Taking into account the punctual, tendential or structural nature of the attacks against this right, we focus on its current situation, its personal and collective practices as well as the networks and associations supporting it, and its political prospects. We adopt an encompassing, grounds-up and agonistic understanding of the freedom of research, which includes forms of journalistic, artistic and civic inquiry as well as academic research, situating it in a web of social, political and economic interrelations, and stressing the importance of understanding it as a contested right and a tool in conflict rather than simply an entitlement supposedly guaranteed by any "non-authoritarian" State. Inviting scholars, artists, journalists and activists from diverse fields and countries, we seek, in large part through the exchange of experiences and efforts, to reflect collectively on a normative and politically motivated notion of freedom of research today.