Tag: French

August 26, 2013

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…

May 10, 2013

Two Frenchmen in the Orient – Part 3
Since I have been abroad, quite a few travelers have gotten in touch with me. Whether friends who had promised (often in vain) to pay me visit, or complete strangers, they show an enthusiasm that reminds me, not without nostalgia, of my early days here…

May 10, 2013

The Language of Foreignness – Part 2.2
And as for the language, well I don’t know. English is comfortable, or rather, comforting. A foreign language, for the one who always found himself to be the foreigner. The easy foreign language, so foreign that it is even foreign to most people one encounters in India. Funny thing. And foreign to me, indeed. A safe terrain to express my thoughts…

November 12, 2012

French poet, writer and philosopher Philippe Muray was one of those brilliant artists who waited to be dead to become famous. In 2010, four years after Muray’s demise, the adulated French actor Fabrice Luchini would read some of his poems as a part of his acclaimed theatrical performances…

October 1, 2012

When Michel Foucault addresses the question of the author, his horizon is already that of the systems of ideological controls of modern society. In 1969, Foucault presented a lecture entitled “What is an Author?” echoing the postmodern considerations of Barthes’ “Death of the Author”, published two years before…