Thanks for your reminder of the vacuity of some semiological speculation Sven :-)  I'm glad to say that I was never a fan of the theoretical elaboration of what had been, in Barthes' Mythologies, a quite straight-forward if perspicacious form of analysis. As implied by all your unresolved questions, a more practical response would involve a quick trip to Google, inserting "onfray" and "nice" and the third result is no less than a a link, via Onfray's page, to a video of the whole conference (you can even see me being ushered to a seat by a rather irritated member of staff). I include that link, as I know that you appreciate them so much :-)  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=r__Sx7AvY0w

As you will see if you use the link, the conference took place at the Centre Universitaire Méditerranéen on 19th June 2011.

In my photo in the diary Onfray's mike can just be seen between his knee and a woman's head.

Here's a photo of Onfray with mike, typical of about 95% of the conference (Guisbert didn't "hog" it at all):

 More interestingly, I think, one of my friends wrote a surprisingly critical report about it and I wrote a response defending Onfray. I later learned that my friend's  wife is not only a doctor but also a psycho-analyst, and Onfray has written a very critical book about Freud.

As an example of inaccuracy and yet more hyperbole, you say that when the guy intervened with some rant about Marx, there were "Security guards running in from all corners". In fact one security guy went to the guy and spoke to him quietly without touching him, though he kept on ranting. Yes, Onfray did sensibly and with good humour say that he would reply to the guy and people did applaud hoping the guy would shut up till later. When it was question-time Onfray did make a point of replying first to the guy's point about Marx.



Where was the "fawning adoration by Franz-Olivier Giesbert"? (He had said in his introduction that he admired Onfray, but this didn't affect the way he handled the session). He merely asked quite reasonable questions such as citing a philosophy book's title: "Why Philosophy ?" and he asked Onfray for his reasons for doing philosophy. Later, noting that Onfray has been accused of being polemical and aggressive, he asked why Onfray followed Nietzsche's idea of "philosophy with a hammer". Onfray replied that it was important to be clear and not hypocritical about some things and to express disagreements, without getting personal - as some of his critics HAVE done - even though you may not have read them. When a psychoanalyst in the audience asked a question Onfray welcomed this and said he was happy to discuss Freud's ideas rationally (and that some psycho-analysts had even said that his book had been valauble in causing them to rethink their attitude to Freud).



Contrary to your ludicrous claim that there was "little or no argumentaion", Onfray replied to the guy asking about Marx that he was not totally opposed to Marx, that he particularly appreciated Marx's early writing on alienation. He said that his approach was often to set a thinker in context, thus while discussing Descartes he would also give more attention than was often the case to Gassendi. In the case of Marx, Onfray also dealt with Proudhon and the anarchists, as well as English thinkers such as Robert Owen. I'm not easily impressed, but in general Onfray's responses to interviewer or members of the audience were models of lucid argument, this quality partly explains the great popularity of his books. Have you read any ? 


Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.