Sister Society: Association Internationale Jacques Ellul
Sister Society: Association Internationale Jacques Ellul
Chicago, Illinois July 11-13, 2024
Roosevelt University served as the host site for this milestone event. As this year is the 70th anniversary of The Technological Society (and the 60th anniversary for the English edition), it is fitting that we revisit Ellul’s magnum opus with fresh eyes and critical engagement.
2024 Chicago conference program
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Montreal, Quebec, July 2022
Featuring…
Ellul’s perspective on the arts has rarely been considered. In The Empire of Non-Sense, Ellul analyses a range of artistic movements, including Pop Art, Art Brut, abstract expressionism, and Happenings, taking up critiques offered by Bernard Charbonneau, Theodor Adorno, Pierre Daix, Guy Debord, Marshall McLuhan and Abraham Moles, among others. Ellul claims that the most dramatic transformation has been modern artworks’ inability to symbolize beyond themselves, or beyond the values of Technique. In a technological society, writes Ellul, symbols become clichés or mere images, signaling a loss of place and meaning; they become technical phenomena or materialized theory. Ultimately, Ellul worries that the arts are incapable of confronting the hegemony of Technique; that, for the most part, they tend to reproduce dominant ideologies rather than create spaces for opposition.
A special thanks to conference lead coordinator Allyson Rodgers.
2022 Montreal conference program
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Strasbourg, France, 2022
View the Program PDF: Programme Colloque Ellul janvier 2022
View also posted papers from this conference
Twenty-five years after their death, Jacques Ellul (1912-1994) and Bernard Charbonneau (1910-1996) still have something to say to us — perhaps today more than ever. The challenges raised by the swell of technique and ecological devastation demand both a rigorous analytical framework and resolute ethical engagement. Such are the intellectual, symbolic, and practical resources which our two friends bequeathed to us: think globally, act locally, elucidate the declensions and effects of the “great molting,” and incite a presence in the world which testifies to freedom and hope through non-power. This conference proposes to probe the depths of the heritage of Ellul and Charbonneau, in their sympathies and their differences, to better understand our present and to promote a liberated engagement able to confront the ethical challenges which define our times.
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Vancouver, British Columbia, June 28-30, 2018
IJES members and associates convened for our biennial IJES Ellul conference on the beautiful campus of Regent College, situated just one mile from the coastline in the northwest tip of Vancouver, British Columbia. We had 25 presenters in total, and a paper by Walter Brueggemann was read at the banquet by his son, John.
Browse the Program 2018
Jacques Ellul is best known as one of the premier voices of the 20th century analyzing the emergence, characteristics, and challenges of the “technological society” — the growing and seemingly irresistible dominance of technological tools, processes, and values over the whole of life and the whole of the world. But the Bordeaux sociologist simultaneously produced almost as many works of biblical study and reflection as he did regarding works of sociology. In these studies, Ellul delivered brilliantly creative insights as well as provocative challenges to traditional theology. All serious students of Ellul, whether part of faith communities like Ellul (in the French Reformed Church) or not (like his colleague and best friend Bernard Charbonneau), have found interaction with his theological writings an essential complement to the study of his great sociological works. This conference sought a multi-perspectival hearing of Scripture stimulated by Ellul’s works.
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Berkeley, California, 2016
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Ottawa, Ontario, 2014
2014 Ottawa conference program
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Wheaton, Illinois, 2012