Newsletter March 2016

Even though Michel Foucault’s critical readings of health and health institutions have proved infinitely insightful and in turn, inspiring for the updating of these institutions, his enterprise did not only receive praises. One of the most rigorous and thorough critiques came from a budding celebrity, Jacques Derrida, who used to be a student of Foucault. Less than two years after the publication of Folie et Déraison (Madness and Civilization), Derrida presented the outcomes of his reflections about the project attempted by Foucault, during a lecture at the Collège Philosophique in March 1963 . . .

The possible meeting points between science and the thought of German phenomenologist Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) have often been tackled through the thinker’s later works on technology. While Heidegger truly brought crucial insights on the question of the 20^th century human and her use of technology, reducing to this sole question the possible intersections between science and Heidegger would be forgetting that the very foundation of Heidegger phenomenological approach to ontology is in itself a response to science . . .

Paris, Hôtel Chevalier. Jack (Jason Schwartzman), élégant, la trentaine, le regard dans le vide. Un coup de fil imprévu, et son ex-copine, interprétée par une attirante Natalie Portman aux cheveux courts, rentre en scène. Quelques mots, un peu de malaise, et la nature reprend ses droits. « Si je couche avec toi, je me sentirais comme une merde demain matin », dit-elle. « Ca me va », répond Jack . . .

In The Jungle and the Aroma of Meats (1999), French structuralist Francis Zimmerman attempts a discussion of ancient practices and conceptions of health in India, framed on a speculated geographical representation of the concerned populations. He argues that in ancient Hindu medical texts the land and fauna classification was directly related to bodily function, disease classification and therapeutics . . .