Lionel Ruffel is a literary scholar and publisher, and the chair of Comparative Literature at Université Paris 8 where he is the founding director of the creative writing program. Among his recent projects, he has convened (together with artist Kader Attia) “Theory Now” at La Colonie in Paris, “The Publishing Sphere” at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin) and “Radio Brouhaha” at Pompidou Center, Paris. His current research (covering literary theory, cultural studies, contemporary arts and literatures) is a global investigation of what the word “contemporary” means and the reasons for why the term imposed itself within the field of representations and practices. An English translation of his book, Brouhaha, Worlds of the Contemporary, is forthcoming from University of Minnesota Press.