Anne-Lyse Chabert and Gabrielle Halpern sign an original philosophical dialogue, carried by a lively and accessible pen, to finally rethink exchange with others.
How do you connect with the world when you can’t speak? How to express one’s thoughts, how to exist when speech is prevented? “Disability is first and foremost a disease of connection,” to use the words of philosopher Anne-Lyse Chabert, suffering from a neurodegenerative disease which now affects her ability to communicate with the outside world. What if this prevented speech went beyond the context of disability to question our entire society? How can we hear all those whose speech is prevented, whether a small child, the elderly person or a citizen, for example? If each of us takes a few years to learn to speak, why do we need a lifetime to learn to listen?
The key points
A philosophy of speech tested by reality: Based on the lived experience of Anne-Lyse Chabert, a philosopher whose neurodegenerative disease progressively hinders speech, this book questions what it means to think, exist and make connections when speech becomes fragile. Far from a testimony, the work transforms this ordeal into a philosophical lever: prevented speech becomes a privileged observatory of our relationship to language, vulnerability and recognition.
A political diagnosis of our society of the inaudible: The book reveals a disturbing inversion: the fragility does not reside only in hindered voices, but in our collective structures incapable of making room for them. Through the figure of prevented speech, it is the state of our democracy, our institutions and our public debate that is questioned. A society saturated with discourse can paradoxically become deaf: the challenge is no longer just to speak, but to make listening possible.
An embodied and profoundly contemporary philosophical dialogue: Constructed in the form of dialogue, the work combines theoretical reflection, cultural references and intimate experience in a demanding and lively exchange. It offers embodied thinking that articulates ethics, language and politics, and makes listening an act of responsibility. By rethinking speech based on its fragility, the authors outline another way of conceiving of living together.
The authors
Anne-Lyse Chabert is a research fellow at the CNRS at the IHRIM laboratory attached to the ENS of Lyon; she notably published Transforming disability (Érès, 2017) and Live your destiny, live your thoughts (Albin Michel, 2021).
Gabrielle Halpern is a philosopher and author of numerous books. Distinguished by ELLE-La Tribune among the “Thirty women who are transforming the economy and society” (2024), she gives conferences around the world.
Our Prevented Words, Anne-Lyse Chabert and Gabrielle Halpern, Ed. L’aubemars 2026, 168 p., 17 €.
