Interview with Jeanne Hyvrard

Born in Paris in 1945, Jeanne Hyvrard published her first novel, Les Prunes de Cythère (Minuit), in 1975, and her subsequent work ranges from prose novels to short stories, poetry, essays, and experimental texts which exceed the bounds of conventional genre definitions. Hyvrard claims to be articulating the emergence of a new organisation of thought, la tierce pensée, which will enable us to understand and to manage the economic changes brought about by the increasing globalisation of trade and by technological advances. She is an economist by training, and her writing manifests a deep concern with relationships of production, exchange and consumption between individuals, at the heart of which is the possibility of a renewed ethical relationship between the self and the other. This ethical stance influences Hyvrard's thought on themes as diverse as psychology, gender, education, literature, environmentalism, and immigration; and her holistic vision of the world, as structured by networks of interconnected relationships, is now attracting growing critical attention, as it strikes a chord with contemporary concerns about the effects of economic and cultural globalisation.