The Chinese Section of the Department of Asian Studies at ALLSH welcomes Romain Graziani—a professor of Chinese studies at the ENS in Lyon, a sinologist, philosopher, and translator—for a lecture and discussion on his book *Les Lois et les Nombres* (2025).
Long associated with Confucian ideology, which advocates personal example and governance through virtue, Chinese political culture was in fact a pioneer in developing impersonal and automatic methods for establishing order in the cosmos, the empire, and daily life. Drawing on traditional and previously unpublished sources—ranging from mathematics and divination to spiritual exercises, penal codes, the poetic fiction of Taoism, and the art of war— R. Graziani traces this process of depersonalizing authority that leads to the experience of the totalitarian state; he shows how this paradigm, based on laws and statistical data, made it possible to formulate, at a very early stage, a vision of society structured by information, surveillance, and security technologies.
David Auditorium (Pouillon Building)
ALLSH Faculty – Schuman Campus
29 Robert Schuman Avenue
13621 Aix-en-Provence Cedex 01
