David Van Reybrouck – Wikipédia

David Greegian Van Reybrouck , born in Bruges the September 11, 1971 , is a scientist, historian of culture, archaeologist and Belgian writer of Dutch expression.

He won several Literary Grand Prix ^{[ first ]} .

David Van Reybrouck grew up in Flanders-Western in Assebroek (Bruges) in a Catholic family with a literary culture.

One of his grandfathers, Grégoire de Bouvere, strongly inspired by the youth of the Christian worker (JOC) where he militated, worked as a bookbinder at the Brugeois publisher Desclée de Brouwer. At his grandfather Van Reybrouck, David found something to appease his thirst for reading, among others many books published by the Davidsfonds ^{[ 2 ]} .

His father, Dirk Van Reybrouck (1939-2006), was an engineer of the railways and worked from 1962 to 1966 for the railways of Bas-Congo-Katanga (BCK) in Likasi (ex-Belgian Congo).

His mother, Bernadette de Bouvere, was a teacher (artistic education) and wrote poems. He himself is an admirer of Stijn Streams, Hugo Claus and Reteke.

He studied archeology and philosophy at the Catholic University of Louvain (Kul – Katholieke Universiteit Leuven).

He then obtained a Master of World Archaeology in Cambridge and in 2000 defended a thesis entitled: “In 2000 at the University of Leyden:” From primitives to primates: a history of ethnographic and primary analogies in the study of prehistory ” .

David Van Reybrouck lived and worked for a while in Barcelona and Paris.

In 1999 and 2000, he was a scientific coordinator of AREA (Archives of European Archeology), a European research network for the history of archeology ^{[ 3 ]} .

He then worked several years as a historian of culture at Kul where he conducted research on the history of Belgian archeology, as well as on the history and architecture of zoos in Western Europe. He was also editor -in -chief of the newspaper Archaeological Dialogues .

David Van Reybrouck is co -founder of the network The Archaeology of Zoos Under the aegis of the British Academy (2001-2005).
He participated in conferences on the subject in Dublin in 2001, in London in 2002, in Washington in 2003.

His academic interests focus on the history of the animal in his relationship with man to XIX ^{It is} And XX ^{It is} centuries, as much in its scientific aspects as archeology, anthropology and biology as in those of the popular and literary imagination.
His research which comes under anthropozoology has given rise to international publications in English.

He collaborated on exhibitions on human evolution (Kunsthal de Rotterdam), the monkeys (Royal Museum of Central Africa, Tervuren), the Neanderthals (Gallo-Roman museum, Tongres) and the Antwerp Zoo.

In 2007, Van Reybrouck left the university world to focus on his writer career.

He collaborates as a ticketist in the newspaper The morning , more particularly to the weekly supplement Zeno and literary supplement.

He publishes poems in the first issue of The lying rabbit (The liar rabbit), the poetry review of Jozef Deleu ^{[ 4 ]} .

In 2001, he published The scourge , a mixture of biography, autobiography and reporting. This book notably received the beginners’ award (nl) in 2002.

In 2004 his adaptation, with Josse de Pauw, of The soul of the ant is played in the theater.

A second text for the theater is N , about an encyclopedist in Africa. The text was staged by Peter Krüger in 2006 at the Toneelhuis of Antwerp ^{[ 5 ] , [ 6 ]} .

At the end of 2006, he was a writer in residence at the University of Amsterdam. In 2007, he published his first novel, Shadow , Puis, and Collaboration Avec Geert Buelens et Jan Goossens, What Belgium stands for , a plea for a serene and united debate on the future of Belgium.

In late 2006, his monologue Mission is represented at KVS (Royal Flemish theater in Brussels). The monologue was developed from conversations he had with old missionaries in Belgian Congo; For this work, he receives the prize Ark Prize . The jury praises the play for its flexible, consistent and original approach in contemporary debates on the social and ethical sciences ^{[ 7 ]} .

In 2009, he received Jan Hanlo Essays for his test Plea for populism ( A plea for populism ^{[ 8 ]} , not translated into French)

In the spring of 2010, he published his book Congo. A history ( Congo. A story ). Great sales success, he won the AKO literature award with this title ^{[ 9 ]} and the Libris history prize ^{[ ten ] , [ 11 ]}

The book is translated into several languages; English, French, German, Norwegian, Swedish, Italian and Spanish ^{[ twelfth ] , [ 13 ]} .

For the French version, he was a winner in 2012 of the Medici test price ^{[ 14 ]} .
In 2012 he was also award of the prize for the best foreign book and in 2013 he received the prize today.

In 2020, he published Revolusi: Indonesia and the origin of the modern world which applies to Indonesia the method he used to Congo – A combination of interviews with survivors of events that led to the independence of Indonesia with a historical interpretation.

In January 2011, Van Reybrouck, succeeding Geert Van Istendael, was elected president of the Pen Club of Flanders, the Flemish Branch of the International Penclub (founded in 1921), a global association of authors, which promotes peace and international understanding, Freedom of expression and resistance to any form of censorship ^{[ 15 ]} .

In 2011-2012, he was one of the initiators and animators of the G1000, an initiative bringing together a thousand Belgians from the two main linguistic communities, looking for a better organization of democracy in the country.

This experience made him in favor of a democracy by drawing lots ^{[ 16 ]} , at least in a system mixed with elective procedures, preferably enriched by an additional addition of deliberative procedures led by citizens drawn, as it specifies in his work entitled Against elections , published in 2013 ^{[ 17 ]} .

He is one of the protagonists of the documentary film Tomorrow by Cyril Dion and Mélanie Laurent, where he made two appearances in the democracy aspect of the film. He intervenes for the first time to report on the disintegration of Western democracies. He refers to the study ^{[ 18 ]} Researchers Martin Gilens, from Princeton University, and Benjamin Page, of Northwestern University, who concludes that the United States would have become an oligarchy ^{[ 19 ]} .

The second intervention is a reflection on the benefits of drawing for representative democracy ^{[ 20 ]} And relates in particular the deliberations which preceded the promulgation of the right to homosexual marriage in Ireland.

Literary and historical works [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

• The scourge [« The scourge. Silent Gnagen of Writers, Termites and South Africa »] ( trad. Dutch of Belgium), trad. by Pierre-Marie Finkelstein, Arles, France, Actes Sud, coll. “Dutch letters”, 2008 , 410 p. (ISBN  978-2-7427-7553-8 ) ^{[ 21 ]} .
• Mission [« Mission & the soul of the ant »] ( trad. from Dutch of Belgium), Arles, followed by the soul of the termites, trad. by Monique Nagielkopf, Actes Sud, coll. “Papers”, 2011 , 100 p. (ISBN  978-2-7427-9462-1 )
• In corn , ( In the corn ), trad. de Monique Nagielkopf, Arles, France, Actes Sud, coll. “Papers”, 2012, 80 p. (ISBN  978-2-330-00185-8 )
• Congo, a story , ( Congo. A history ), Trad. d’A Isabelle Rosselin, Arles, Actes Sud, 2012, 672 p. (ISBN  978-2-330-00930-4 ) .
• Against elections [«Against elections»], entered. Du Néerlandais de Belgique Par Isabelle Rossselin & Philippe Noble, Arles, Actes Sud, coll. «Babel / Essai» (No 1231), 2014, first ^re ed., 219 p. (ISBN  978-2-330-02820-6 ) , (BNF  43769027 ) .
• Peace, how to learn it? , with Thomas d’Ansembourg, trad. from Dutch of Belgium by Isabelle Rosselin, Arles, Actes Sud, Coll. “Le Domaine du Possible”, 2016, 64 p. (ISBN  978-2-330-02820-6 ) .
• Zinc [“Zink”], trad. from Dutch of Belgium by Philippe Noble, Arles, Actes Sud, 2016, 80 p. (ISBN  978-2-330-06920-9 ) .
• Odes , trad. Dutch of Belgium by Isabelle Rosselin, Arles, Actes Sud, 2021, 272 p. (ISBN  978-2-330-14409-8 ) .
• Revolusi. Indonesia and the birth of the modern world , trad. Dutch of Belgium by Isabelle Rosselin, Arles, Actes Sud, 2022, 736 p. (ISBN  978-2-330-16904-6 ) .
• We colonize the future , Arles, South acts, 2023, 64 p. (ISBN  9782330177645 ) .

Scientific publications [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

• (in) Cornelius Holtorf & David Van Reybrouck, “Towards an Archaeology of Zoos”, International Zoo News , Vol.50/4, No.325, June 2003 , p. 207-215 . (ISSN  0020-9155 )
• (in) David Van Reybrouck, “Archaeology and urbanism : railway stations and zoological gardens in the 19th -century cityscape”, Public Archaeology , Vol.4, No.4, January 1, 2005, p. 225-241 . DOI  10.1179 / Fall.2005.4.4.425 (ISSN  1465-5187 )
• Collective, preface to Heinrich Geiselberger ( trad. of German by Frédéric Joly (English and German) and Jean-Marie Saint-Lu (Spanish)), The age of regression , Paris, first parallel editions, April 13, 2017 , 316 p. (ISBN  979-10-94841-48-8 )

One of his works has obtained two literary prizes, a Dutchman and a French:

• The report by Colette Braeckman from Congo.
• Idesbald goddeeris et sindani e. kiangu, Congomania in Academia. Recent Historical Research on the Belgian Colonial Past , BMGN – Low Countries Historical Review 126, 4 (2011), p. 54-74 , to p. 61-62
• Pierre Jacquemot, David Van Reybrouck. Congo. A story , Contemporary Africa 4/2012 ( n ^O 244), p. 155-157 .
• Johnny Van Hove, Narrating Violence Empathetically: a Narratological Investigation of the Slave Trade in David Van Reybrouck’s Congo: a History (Critical test)
• Thibault Boixière, In Zinc David Van Reybrouck tells the death of Moresnet-Neutre (article)