Mehdi Belhaj Kacem

Mehdi Belhaj Kacem
Period: 2015-2016
Profession: Writer Mehdi Belhaj Kacem was born in 1973. He grew up in France after a childhood in Tunisia. He began to publish relatively young at the age of 21. His writing was immediately critically acclaimed, including
Cancer , his first novel,
Vies et Morts d’Irène Lepic (
Lives and Deaths of Irene Lepic ), or
L’Antéforme . His first theoretical works,
Esthétique du Chaos et
Society , were published in the 2000s The year 2006 marked his encounter with Gallimard, with whom he published
La psychose française (
The French Psychosis ) and a translation of Dante Alighieri’s first poem,
Vita Nova . His philosophical works of maturity, especially L’esprit du nihilisme, Être et sexuation, La Transgression et l’inexistant (
The Spirit of Nihilism, Being and Sexuation, Transgression and the Nonexistent ), have earned him recognition in diverse audiences, from academia (a lecture given at the École Normale Supérieure on his work in 2013) to artists, writers, or political activists. Discovered by the Éditions Tristram, Mehdi Belhaj Kacem has just published a new book with them about Antonin Artaud, which was a big success. He is currently working on several projects including a cyber-seminar and the preparation of an essay on philosopher Quentin Meillassoux as well as a novel. Mehdi Belhaj Kacem’s project at Villa Medici will initially consist of achieving a readable translation for the contemporary public of
The Triumphs , a didactic-dialectical poem of Petrarch, which he considers one of the five founding texts of Italian literature together with those of Dante and Boccaccio. The last translations date from the sixteenth century to the most recent ones in 1923 (almost unobtainable today), there is no accessible text for the contemporary French reader. Mehdi Belhaj Kacem will also be dedicated to writing a philosophical and aesthetic essay as an extension of many of his previous books on the translation of the author and the great impact that Petrarchism has exerted on Western art since the Middle Ages.