The History & Spirit of Personalism - A Conversation with Christian Roy

When I started Personalist Manifesto(s), everyone told me I needed to talk to two people: Daniel Cérézuelle and Christian Roy. I agreed with their suggestions. I spoke to Daniel in the first ever Personalist Manifesto(s) conversation, so you can check that out through the link below if you haven’t already. In this conversation, I speak with Christian. His research focuses not only on Personalism, but the expressions of it represented by Jacques Ellul, Bernard Charbonneau, and their colleagues and friends. We have a freewheeling conversation, not just about the history of Personalism, but its spirit and its relevance for today.

Bio

Based in Montreal, Christian Roy (Ph.D. McGill 1993) is a cultural historian, an art critic, a film scholar, and a multilingual translator, e.g., from German of Carl Schmitt and Paul Tillich and into English of Jacques Ellul (Theology and Technique, Wipf & Stock, 2024) and Bernard Charbonneau (The Green Light: A Self-Critique of the Ecological Movement, Bloomsbury 2018 and Mediatized Society in instalments). Roy’s independent research focuses on lesser-known strands of the Personalist intellectual tradition (such as the Ordre Nouveau group, the Bordeaux School, etc.), to dig up their roots in interwar Europe.

Links

Academia: roychristian.academia.edu

Patreon: patreon/christianroymedia

Additional Resources

Bernard Charbonneau, "La société médiatisée": https://www.amazon.ca/-/fr/soci%C3%A9t%C3%A9-m%C3%A9diatis%C3%A9e-Bernard-Charbonneau/dp/B09FS2VBYL

Bernard Charbonneau, "The Green Light: A Self-Critique of the Ecological Movement": https://www.bloomsbury.com/ca/green-light-9781350027091/

Frances Stonor Saunders, "The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and The World of Arts and Letters": https://www.amazon.ca/Cultural-Cold-War-World-Letters/dp/1565846648

What is Personalism? A Conversation with Danielle Cérézuelle: https://personalistmanifestos.substack.com/p/what-is-personalism-a-conversation-1d7