Fraternité! The Forgotten Value of Brotherhood

Conversations, poems and music about the comeback of the 3rd pillar from the French Revolution.

20180118113858 1

Information

Date and time Friday 19 January 2018 22:00 tot 23:00 uur
Location Theater aan het Spui - Zaal 1

The longing for a strong collective feeling has once again become a source of social movements around the world. That "we"-feeling feeds passionate new emancipation and indentity groups. It also causes social fragmentation and conflict.

Brotherhood, the third pillar of democracy from the French Revolution, has long been viewed as a less inflammatory societal value compared with Freedom and Equality. But the comeback of a strong collective feeling is connected to high levels of polarization and conflict in society.

Bas Heijne, winner of the P.C. Hooft Prize for his essays and a prominent NRC newspaper columnist, investigated why the power of a longing for Brotherhood is underestimated, with the help of Flemish cultural historian and writer David Van Reybrouck, Turkish poet and philosopher Efe Murad, German novelist Fatma Aydemir and Polish novelist and journalist Grazyna Plebanek. Together they looked for the contemporary words to express a sense of collective bonding.

The conversations were accompanied by performances of poetry slam-talent Sanam Sheriff (India), by live drawn illustrations by Gerda Dendooven (Belgium) and by music performed by classical accordionist Oleg Lysenko (Netherlands) and soprano Elisabeth Sturtewagen (Belgium).

Line-up

Bas Heijne

(Nijmegen, NL, 1960) writes essays, short stories and plays, and is a columnist with the daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad. He published the novels Laatste woorden (Last words) and Suez and received the Henriëtte Roland Holst Prize in 2005. In 2011's Moeten wij van elkaar houden, het populisme ontleed (Do We Have to Love One Another? Populism Dissected) Heijne shows how globalisation and individualism pave the way for populism. Angst en schoonheid (Fear and Beauty) was published in 2013, an essay about Dutch writer Louis Couperus, whom Heijne admires. In the same year his documentary about Couperus was broadcast. In 2015 he hosted the five-part documentary De volmaakte mens (The Perfect Human). In 2016 his essay Onbehagen – nieuw licht op de beschaafde mens (Discontent - new light on civilized man) was published. In 2017 Heijne received the P.C. Hooft Award for his essayistic works.
20131029170754 1

Grażyna Plebanek

(1967) is a Warsaw-born novelist, columnist and playwright living in Brussels. A graduate of Polish philology at Warsaw University, she is the author of best-selling novels Girls from Portofino and Illegal Liaisons, published in the UK, US and Canada. Plebanek is also the author of the novels Box of Stilettos, A Girl Called Przystupa and The Boxer as well as a collection of literary essays, Robbermaid’s Daughters. In 2017 she published her sixth novel, Miss Fury. Her books show the difficult truths about the integration between cultures. She writes a regular column in the Polish weekly Polityka, as well as in Poland’s daily Gazeta Wyborcza and in Trendy magazine. She was awarded the Zlote Sowy Literary Prize for her contributions to promoting Poland abroad.
20171109112122 1

David Van Reybrouck

(Belgium, 1971) is an author, historian and archaeologist, known for his multifaceted contributions to literature and intellectual discourse. He is currently Philosopher Laureate of the Low Countries. Upon his appointment, he published De wereld en de aarde (The World and the Earth, 2025), in which he makes a groundbreaking proposal to radically broaden our thinking—and our politics. For the greatest security issue of our time is not the world with its mutual conflicts, but the earth, which is becoming increasingly disrupted. His oeuvre covers a range of genres, including historical non-fiction, poetry, and theater. Among his best-known works are Congo (2010), about the country's bewildering history, and Revolusi (2020), which places Indonesia's struggle for independence in a global perspective through eyewitness accounts. In addition to his literary work, Van Reybrouck is known as ‘one of Europe's leading intellectuals’ (Tagesspiegel), whose ideas relate to themes such as democracy, climate, and colonialism. He regularly publishes opinion pieces in international publications. 

Go to the website of David Van Reybrouck
Instagram: @david.vanreybrouck
20251015162805 1

Fatma Aydemir

(Karlsruhe, 1986) made a splash with her controversial debut novel Ellbogen (Elbow). The book won the Klaus Michael Kühne Prize. Aydemir, granddaughter of Turkish labourer immigrants, writes about a girl with Turkish antecedents who is so frustrated by the discrimination she encounters daily that, during a drunken spree, she pushes a student in front of the metro and then flees to Turkey. She feels no remorse. "Ellbogen is a punch in the gut. Or rather, two. One for the misogynistic Turkish community. And one for the hypocrisy of our oh so liberal society," wrote the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. Aydemir studied German and American Studies in Frankfurt. She writes for the newspaper taz about Turkish pop culture. She also set up the bilingual webportal taz.gazete as a reaction to the restriction of press freedom in Turkey.
20171101100848 1

Efe Murad

(Istanbul, 1987) studied philosophy at Princeton and is working towards his Ph.D. in Ottoman History and Arabic Philosophy and Theology at Harvard. He has published five books of poetry and five books of translations from the Iranian poets M. Azad and Fereydoon-e Moshiri and from the American poets C.K. Williams, Susan Howe and Lyn Hejinian in Turkish. Together with Sidney Wade, he prepared a selection from the œuvre of Turkish poet Melih Cevdet Anday. His poems, writings and translations in English have appeared in a wide range of journals, such as Guernica, Jacket, Five Points, and The American Reader, and in exhibitions including the 13th Istanbul Bienniale. He is currently working on the complete Turkish translation of Ezra Pound’s Cantos. He published Matter-Poetry Manifesto together with Cem Kurtuluş in 2004, and his new work combines paleography, Islamic manuscript tradition, found footage and soundscapes.
20171023125426 1

Sanam Sheriff

(India, 1995) is a poet and artist from Bangalore. In 2018 she graduated from Bryn Mawr College in Philadelphia, USA, with a BA in Creative Writing. She was a 2018-2019 Thomas J. Watson Fellow, a 2018 Pushcart Prize nominee, and the winner of the 2018 Button Poetry Video Contest. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Virginia Quarterly Review, The Offing, Vinyl Poetry & Prose, The Academy of American Poets, The Shade Journal, DW B, and elsewhere. She is currently an MFA candidate in Poetry at Washington University in St. Louis, where she is poetry editor of The Spectacle Magazine. Sheriff was a guest of the 2018 Winternachten International Literature Festival The Hague.
20201130132350 1

Oleg Lysenko

(Ukraine, 1974) studied at the music academies in Poltava, Kiew and Enschede. In 1999 he released his first CD, Awakening featuring works by a.o. Vivaldi, Bach, Pachelbel and Piazolla. He specialized in Argentine tango on bayan and bandoneon at Codarts Rotterdam. As a soloist, he won the 2005 National Accordion Competition in The Netherlands with his rendition of Victor Vlasov's "Five Views of the Land of the Gulag Archipelago", also the title piece of his 2012 CD Gulag. He prefers genre-transcending projects in which visual art, literature and music enhance and flow into one another. He developed such projects with writer and visual artist Armando, sculptor and illustrator Koenraad Tinel, and with writers, journalists and filmmakers, including Stefan Hertmans, Cherry Duyns and Peter d'Hamecourt, among others. For his double-CD De sneeuwstorm (The Snowstorm, 2022), Lysenko arranged and played on bayan Georgi Sviridov's music to Alexander Pushkin's story of the same name, recited by Martinus Nijhoff Prize-winning Pushkin translator Hans Boland. With fundraising events and benefit performances, Oleg raises money to pay for an ambulance for the Ukrainian region of Poltava, where his family comes from.
20230124154720 1

Gerda Dendooven

(Kortrijk, Belgium, 1962) won the 2017 Woutertje Pieterse Prize for her picture book Stella. In it, a drowning person is fished out of the sea and taken in by a foster family. She has been teaching graphic design at the Hoger St.-Lucas Institute in Ghent since 1992. Dendooven is famous for and has won many awards for her children's book illustrations. She received the Gouden Penseel (Golden Brush) in 2000 for her work in De verliefde prins (The Prince in Love) by Ron Langenus. She also writes plays and children's books and illustrates adult books and newspaper columns.
20171123111519 1

Elisabeth Sturtewagen

(Belgium) took cello lessons at the Lemmens Institute in Leuven as of age 15. She earned her Bachelor degree at the Royal Conservatory Antwerp and her Master at the Royal Conservatory Brussels. She has taken master classes in the Netherlands, Poland, France, Spain, Belgium and Belarus. In the summer of 2012 she met the world-famous cello teacher Vladimir Perlin, with whom she is still studying. Since 2014, she has been a cellist with the chamber orchestra Young Belgian Strings, directed by Dirk Van de Moortel, and is also a member of the Etereo Ensemble. She is co-founder and cellist with the cello quartet BRUXELLO, with which she performs at home and abroad. She also regularly performs with the visual Artist Koenraad Tinel. Sturtewagen plays an instrument built in Brussels  in 1911 by Hilaire Darche.
20171121101013 1

Discover

20 May 2026

Get your 2027 tickets!

Get your Early Bird tickets for the big festival nights, Friday & Saturday Night Unlimited!