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Barbara Cassin, new AFP academician / François Guillot

The philosophy Barbara Cassin entered this month at the Académie française, chair 36 which was that of La Bruyère. Main task of any academician: working in the Dictionary and working to enrich the French language.

Armed with a high-tech sword in leather and fiberglass, on which is inscribed Jacques Derrida's formula " More than one language ", Barbara Cassin delivered her reception speech on October 17th . She becomes the ninth woman elected to the French Academy since its creation in 1634 and the fifth to sit today under the Dome. Philosopher and philologist, philosopher and translator, she insists on this conjunction of coordination which says growth as she likes to think between languages, to study the visions of the world that languages ​​carry. Traditionally, academicians offer a word and it is "force" that has been assigned. A word that goes perfectly to this new immortal who will henceforth sit at the Dictionary Commission which is currently developing the 9th edition, working on the letter V.

Author of the Dictionary of Untranslatables currently being translated into Wolof, Barbara Cassin also brings with her under the Cupola his love for the poet René Char, his friendship for left-wing intellectuals like Jacques Derrida or Alain Badiou and his taste for commitment collective and the otherness that make it work today on a Dictionary of three monotheisms and a glossary of the French administration that will decrypt the French bureaucratic vocabulary for newcomers. " To defend the French language is always to slip into differences and gaps with other languages, " she says.

► On video, a few words chosen by the philosopher and new academician: