people of paris text by EMANUELE COCCIA Like many foreigners, like most non-Parisian French people, my first contact with Paris dates back to the years of my studies. Not that I had in mind the names of people who would have to be followed. I wasn’t even sure I knew what I wanted to do for my PhD. But I had spent the last few years in Berlin and Florence, and I had the impression that it was only in Paris that you could understand what to do. I arrived here, as said in ancient times, to visit the oracles. As if only within the perimeter of this city could knowledge (in its most different forms) find its relationship to desire and passion — to every form of it, even the strangest, the most absurd, the most neglected. After all, that’s what this is all about: something like a strange…