Xavier Bernier est professeur des universités en géographie à Sorbonne Université Paris, où il dirige le laboratoire Médiations-Sciences des lieux, sciences des liens (Unité de Recherche de S.U.). Il est également membre du rhizome Chôros. Il étudie les sociétés au prisme de leurs mobilités et de leurs différentes façons de traverser l’espace. Ses travaux sur la notion de traverser le conduisent à interroger ce défi social à travers les figures spatiales qui lui sont associées.
Human hairs are easy to lay out and are strongly mobilised in the social presentation of selves. They have their own language, including synonyms, homonyms, and oxymorons. For a long time, they acted as formidable markers of communal allegiance. They are gradually becoming resources for individuals’ body freedom. [...]
The widespread use of GPS in route planners has opened the field to new relationships with mobility practices. It sometimes leads to mistakes, comical or tragic. This raises the question of our ability to integrate these new technologies without becoming "geographically challenged". This is not an abandonment of competence, but a temporary and agreed delegation of our own metrics. [...]
The fire at Notre-Dame, during the night of 15 to 16 April 2019, opened the site for its reconstruction. It also freed up words and debate around the various projects presented. As none of them can be understood only in terms of technical solutions, we must ask ourselves what are the meanings and political implications of the proposals. Even more so those of the solution chosen. [...]
An active conflict between those who aim at protecting threatened species and those who advocate for taking care of fragile societies is taking place in African forests and, beyond, in the World. This controversy seems intractable as long as stakeholders stick to antithetical moral injunctions. Dialog pathways can be paved if an ethical debate open to all inhabitants-citizens are be invited can start. [...]
The health crisis linked to Sars CoV-2 has profoundly modified the codes and forms of sociability. Beyond the barrier gestures, a different World is taking shape. This text is a poetic exercise to account for all that individuals and social groups have lost and beyond the impoverishment of urbanity in this period. [...]
A much listened program, no doubt also heard, the weather report whispers daily in the ears of viewers. If the course is strictly marked and walked in, if the remarks seem anecdotal and only detailed. But some other messages, more political, may interfere indirectly. [...]
In the context of the health crisis of 2020 and the ensuing collapse of air passenger traffic, several companies have successfully offered trips to nowhere. However, traveling without a specific destination is not a new practice, and these forms of mobility deserve to be questioned with regard to their spatial stakes. [...]
Beyond the emotional agitation, the question of the relations between dogs and humans does not only question human societies. It questions the whole humanity, in its capacity to project itself beyond itself. [...]
This work is an exercise in style that is new on a formal level because it is entirely done in "Twitter writing", in the form of alternating exchanges of 280 signs. It is also a reflexive work and a research on the figure of the passenger in the space of societies. It is emblematic of the contemporary world and allows us to question the passage as a fundamental motif of human spatiality. [...]
Is there a ‘sextinction’ in progress? The recent observation that sexual practices are experiencing a reduction among the younger generation deserves a close scrutiny. Paradoxically, the liberation from constraints and taboos that had impacted sexuality has eventually made possible its relativization with regard to other activities. As a language, ethic, and culture, sex is being reinvented within the moving picture of social life. [...]
