Samuel Buchoul
PhD Candidate
French Philosophy
University of Cambridge
Samuel Buchoul is a doctoral student in the Department of French, University of Cambridge. His project aims at deepening the dialogue between Derrida’s grammatology and the existential philosophy of Heidegger and Sartre, in view of creating what he proposes to call an ‘existential grammatology’. Samuel is supervised by Prof. Ian James, and advised by Prof. Christina Howells (Oxford). Previously, he taught philosophy in high school, in France (2018-2023). Since the mid 2010s, then in Delhi, India, Samuel has founded several independent organisations offering alternative education and research programmes, including the Atelier des Pratiques Théoriques and the Institute for the Study of Texts.
Mail · Online profiles: University of Cambridge · ORCID · Research Gate · Google Scholar
Articles (peer-reviewed) & Book Chapters
‘De l’utilité: metaphysics as a writing tool.’ Labyrinth (forthcoming, 2024-2025)
2024-25 (forthcoming)
When metaphysics is placed back within the immediate reality of existence, Derrida and grammatology ask us one daring question: can we think, and practice, metaphysics as an instrument for writing?
‘Homo Scribens : vers une bio-graphie qui ne recherche plus rien’, in Repenser la logique du vivant après Jacques Derrida (2024)
2024 · Cairn
Chapter of the collected volume Repenser la logique du vivant après Jacques Derrida, ed. G. De Michele et al, May 2024, Editions Hermann.
‘Herodotus, First Orientalist?’ InterViews: An Interdisciplinary Journal in Social Sciences , 1 (2014)
2013 · Web
How far back in time can we trace Orientalism? Can it go beyond the period of colonisation? What would that mean if we find it already back in Ancient Greece?
Introduction. Herodotus, First Orientalist? (web)
I. Orientalism
I.1 Orientalism: The Theory (web)
I.2 Orientalism: Influences (web)
I.3 Orientalism: Resistances (web)
II. The First Orientalist?
II.1 Ancient Greece and the Barbaros (web)
II.2 An account of Egypt
II.2.1 Where is the Orientalist Hiding? (web)
II.2.2 On the Neutrality of the Historian (web)
II.2.3 Herodotus, or the Contagion of Foreignness (web)
Becoming Foreigner (web)
‘The Non-Self of Girard.’ Contagion: A Journal of Religion and Culture, 20 (2013)
Articles (other publications)
‘Around Our Corner’ / ‘Aux tournants des angles droits.’ Cahiers de la Fondation: Indialogues, 8 (2015)
‘Inflecting the Foreigner’s Discourse.’ Cahiers de la Fondation: Indialogues, 5 (2014)
Monographs (unpublished)
La gêne d'être au monde. Découvrir l'existence avec La Grande Bellezza
(The Embarrassment of Being in the World. Discovering existence with La Grande Bellezza)
2021 · Unpublished · First pages
A contemplative study of Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grande Bellezza (2013), as an expression of the existential burden and hopes of today, between sensuality, spirituality and truth.
De l'Infini: A Foreigner’s Metaphysics
2014 · Unpublished
An attempt at freeing foreignness from the sole categories of the political and the administrative, to explore its existential condition, and even, its metaphysics. A creative reading of works from Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida.
In-Finir (web)
Book I. Foreigner, There: History of a Political Capture (web)
Stories from a History (web)
I. Foreigners of the Antiquity (web)
II. The Foreigner Enters Reason (1500-1800) (web)
III. Centripetal Foreignness (1800-1920) (web)
Book II. Foreigner, Here: Existentialist Foreignness (web)
Particles of Foreignness (web)
I. On Departing (web)
II. On Being-Over-There (web)
III. Here and Now: Being a Foreigner (web)
Book III. Us, Foreigners: The Reconstruction of Foreignness (web)
Language and Reconstruction (web)
I. Hospitality: Ethics meets Culture (web)
II. Language and the Written: The Tool of Foreignness (web)
III. Philosophy: The Desire of Foreignness (web)
Book IV. Beyond The I’s: A Foreigner’s Metaphysics (web)
Metaphysics for Today (web)
I. The Space of a Foreigner (web)
II. The Time of a Foreigner (web)
III. The Knowledge of a Foreigner (web)
Opening. An Adressee's Resolution (web)
Articles (published on Samvriti)
‘After Anatta: Towards a Girardian Ethics’
2013 · Web
Follow-up article to "The Non-Self of Girard". Can this theoretical encounter help formulating a ’Girardian ethics’?
After Anatta : Towards a Girardian Ethics (web)
I. The Mimetico-Buddhist Connection (web)
II. Questioning the Supremacy of Reason (web)
III. Mimetic Ethics, Ethics Embodied (web)
III.1 Girard's Ethical Silence (web)
III.2 Non-Violence, Fundamental Ethical Principle? (web)
III.3 In Search of the Middle Path: The Ethics of Distance (web)
Bridges to Co-Responsibility (web)
‘Phenomenologies of Time’
2013 · Web
A review of three major conceptions of temporality within the phenomenological tradition.
Opening the Phenomenon of Time (web)
I. Husserl: Remembrance of Things Past (web)
II. Heidegger: Springs of Time Within (web)
III. Levinas: Otherwise, Time (web)
On the Dialogues of Philosophy and Science (web)
‘Behind the Glim’
2013 · Web
An attempt, through the lens of some recent hypotheses in Indian historiography, to interrogate the Western conception of historical periods, as inherited from the Enlightenment.
Beams and Dims (web)
I. Blinding Lights: For the Love of Frames (web)
II. Of 'Lightless' Enlightenments: Is India's Modernity in the Dark? (web)
On the Cohabitations of Exclusive Histories (web)
‘Levinas: For the Feminine Other’
2013 · Web
A review of various critical feminist and queer perspectives on Emmanuel Levinas' thought.
Introduction. Levinas: For the Feminine Other (web)
I. Levinas, The Patriarch (web)
II. Levinas, Benevolent Father? (web)
III. Levinas, Exploding Genders and Sexualities? (web)
A Taste for the Other (web)
‘Two Frenchmen in the Orient’
‘Justifying Corruption’
2013 · Web
If corruption is so prevalent around us and across history, there must be ways to justify it. A few theoretical propositions stemming out of three recent investigations from The Caravan Magazine.
Introduction. Justifying Corruption (web)
I. The Socio-Capitalist Cocktail (web)
II. Bureaucracy and the Race for Information (web)
III. The Competition of Pluralities (web)
Necessities and Structures of Corruption (web)
‘The Language of Foreignness’
2013 · Web
What does it mean to speak like a foreigner? What is unique to the foreigner's language?
Introduction. The Language of Foreignness (web)
I. Theoretical Tools
I.1 Defining the Foreigner: Existential Migration (web)
I.2. Methods of Analysis: Late and Post-Phenomenology
I.2.1 Heidegger: The Unheimlich (web)
I.2.2 Merleau-Ponty: Parole and Pensée (web)
I.2.3 Derrida: The Supplement (web)
II. The Language of Foreignness
II.1 The Humor of a Foreigner (web)
II.2 Writing in a Foreign Language (web)
II.3 When Foreign Becomes Home (web)
II.4 On the Ethics of Not Understanding (web)
Language, Foreignness and Philosophy (web)
’A Girardian Reading of Pornography’
2012 · Unpublished
An attempt at applying several key ideas from Girard's psychology and anthropology to the thorny field of pornography.
Introduction
I. Pornography Today
II. "I see, therefore I come": Pornography as Mimetic Desire
III. Pornography as Sacrificial Reminiscence
III.1 Public Sex in the Original Sacrifice
III.2 Ritualizing the Rape: the Everydayness of the Pornographic Ritual
III.3 The Mythical Dissimulation of Pornography
IV. Pornography in a Non-Sacrificial Modernity
Conclusion: On the idea of an ‘Ethical Pornography’
‘Reason and the Senses: A Dialogue Between Buddhism and Christianity’
2012 · Web
Differences and commonalities between Christianity and Buddhism, from reason to the senses.
An Encounter: Buddhism and Christianity (web)
I. Authorities: A Continued Dependency (web)
II. Metaphysics: The Clash of Reasons (web)
III. Sexuality: (Avoiding) the Repression of the Senses (web)
IV. Joining Reason and the Senses: the Mystics (web)
A Dialogue: Inside, Outside (web)
Short articles (published on Samvriti)
‘Science and the philosophers’
2013 · Web
A series of short articles on the encounter of singular philosophical figures with the methods and aims of the sciences.
At the edge of God: Leibniz (web)
Nietzsche's Hide-and-Seek: A Play with Science (web)
Heidegger and Science: Questioning the Question (web)
Science and interpretation: Girard and the Scientific Discourse (web)
‘Postcolonial Guilt, or the Evening out of Equality’
2013 · Web
Short article in response to Disgrace (Coetzee, 2000), and the question of ethics in postcolonial societies.
‘Dalit Self-Affirmation’
2013 · Web
Short article in response to Caste, Colonialism and Counter-modernity (Ganguly, 2005), on the question of collective self-definition in mutually interdependent sociocultural orders.
‘Kumararamuni Katha & Girard’
2013 · Web
Short article attempting an analysis of the undated Telugu myth of Kumararamuni Katha, through the anthropological theory of myth-making by René Girard.
‘The Symbols of Early Buddhist Art’
2011 · Web
Short article presenting key aspects and debates surrounding symbolism in Early Buddhist Art.
‘On Sarvastivada’
2011 · Web
Short article presenting the Sarvastivada school of Hinayana Buddhism.
‘Buddhist Sanskrit: Hybrid?’
2010 · Web
Short article presenting philological debates on the nature of the Buddhist Sanskrit language found in some Buddhist texts.
‘Trilaksana’
2010 · Web
Short article presenting the Three Characteristics of Existence according to Buddhism.
Short pieces (published online)
‘Of pebbles, springs and fates’
2019 · Web
Short piece on Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet, 1929), creativity and determinism.
‘Love Stories’
2017 · Web
Short piece on a passage from Derrida (Letters, 1967) and the (im)possibility of love stories.
‘Empty Echoes’
2017 · Web
Short piece on a passage from Artaud, quoted by Derrida (Writing and Difference, 1967), and the dream to let the body speak.
‘Writer-in-Progress’
‘That Blood on my Drum Set’
2015 · Web archive
Short piece reviewing Whiplash (Damien Chazelle, 2014) and the question of the master-disciple relationship.
‘Charlie's Face’ / ‘Le visage de Charlie’
‘Ready to Kick-Off’
2014 · Web
Short piece. A look at the political, economic and societal relevance of the 2014 Football World Cup, for France and its intellectual heritage.
‘Too Far from the Madding Crowd’
2014 · Web archive
Short piece, on the imperceptible importance of crowds to philosophical traditions.
‘Plays of the Copula’ / ‘Les jeux de la copule’
2014 · Web archive · Samvriti: EN · FR
Short piece reviewing Gone Girl (David Fincher, 2014) and the play-love of romance.
‘Beyond the Kiss’ / ‘Au-delà du baiser’
Short piece responding to the 'Kiss of Love' protest that spread through India in 2014.
‘Metaphysics of the Islamic State’
Short pieces exploring the existential and metaphysical signification of the emergence of ISIS.
‘A Kid Dreams’ (Web archive)
‘ISthetics, Westhetics’ (Web archive)
‘Asexual’
Short piece reviewing Nymphomaniac (Lars von Trier, 2013), and the becoming-asexual of sex.
‘Direction-Free’
Short piece (2014) reviewing the art project Tokyo Reverse (Simon Bouisson et Ludovic Zuili, 2014), and the experience of temporal multi-directionality.
‘Out of the Circle: Kentron’
2014 · Web
Short piece in response to What is nature? Culture, politics, and the non-human (Kate Soper, 1998), contesting the supposed inescapability from ethnocentrism of traditions of Western philosophy such as post-structuralism.
‘Ethical Adventures of an Evolutionary Theorist’
2014 · Web
Short piece in response to Philosophy of Biology (Elliott Sober, 2000), discussing the remaining gap between sociobiology and cultural studies.
‘From Myth to Philosophy’
2014 · Web
Short piece in response to Myth and Thought among the Greeks (Vernant, 1965), on the passage from myth to philosophy in Ancient Greece.
‘Greek Religion: Miasma in the Polis’
2013 · Web
Short piece on the political function of religion and the needs for 'purification' in Ancient Greece.
‘Tragedies of Imprudence’
2013 · Web
Short piece in response to Death and the King’s Horseman (Soyinka, 2002), and the centrality of imprudence in tragedies.
‘The Poetic Fulfillment’
2013 · Web
Short piece in response to “Four Quartets" (T.S. Eliot, 1941), discussing the expression of temporal experience through language.
‘Lifelines and Ashes of Beauty’
2013 · Web
Short piece. A linear reading of “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (Keats, 1819).
‘The Order of Madness’
2013 · Web
Short piece reviewing “Cogito and the History of Madness” (Derrida, 1967), and the debate that ensued with Foucault.
‘The Reluctance to Talk of the Self: A Literary Device?’
2013 · Web
Short piece in response to The Concealed Art of the Soul: Theories of Self and Practices of Truth in Indian Ethics and Epistemology (Ganeri, 2007), and the spiritual and epistemological strategy of denying one's ego.
‘Genealogy of a Temptation’
2013 · Web
Short piece discussing the reading of VD Savarkar's national vision through the critique of Ashis Nandy.
‘Humor and Historical Writing’
2013 · Web
Short piece in response to Textures of Time: Writing History in South India 1600-1800 (Narayana Rao, Shulman, Subrahmanyam, 2001), and the role of political resistance observed in local history writing during colonisation.
‘A Coup of Languages’
2013 · Web
Short piece in response to The language of the gods in the world of men (Pollock, 2009), on the relation of languages and political powers in medieval India.
‘Ayurveda and the Structuralist Beef’
2013 · Web
Short piece in response to The jungle and the aroma of meats: an ecological theme in Hindu medicine (Zimmermann, 1999), and the limitations of structuralist frames of analyses on complex cultural constructions.
‘Health and Philosophy’
2013 · Web
Short piece on the similarities between the philosopher and the madman.
‘The Author Function’
2012 · Web
Short piece reviewing "What is an Author?" (Foucault, 1969).
‘Muray’s Poetic Imagination’
2012 · Web
Original English translation of “Tomb for an innocent tourist” (2010), and an analysis of the place of imagination in Philippe Muray's poetry.
‘The Art of Cacolfacty’
2012 · Web
Short piece reviewing Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (Tykwer, 2006).
‘Is Buddhism a Philosophy?’
2012 · Web
Short piece analysing the similarities and differences of the Buddhist approach with philosophy.
‘How to re-appropriate historical conjunctures’
2012 · Web
Short piece in response to Literary Radicalism in India: Gender, nation and the transition to independence (Gopal, 2005), on the tensions between avant-garde literature and the Left parties, during the struggle for independence.
‘Khushia, or the Hesitant Gaze’
2012 · Web
Short piece in response to Priyamvada Gopal's analysis of the poem "Khushia" by Saadat Hasan Manto, and the political power of the senses.
‘The Double Dislocation’
2012 · Web
Short piece in response to The Other Side of Silence : Voices from the Partition of India (Butalia, 1998), and the destiny of women during the Indian Partition.
Op-eds
Op-eds for LILA-Interaction (2014-2015)
2014-2015
56 op-ed pieces (2014-2015) written in introduction to weekly debates on current affairs and cultural issues between two specialists, as the editor of the online platform LILA Inter-actions.
Ling: The G-Line of Control (web) · Passing Over: Beyond Fait(h) Accompli (web) · Tibet Recall: Meandering Concerns (web) · The Islamic State: Hiding in Plain Sight? (web) · The Union Budget: The Rules and the Divides (web) · Land Acquisition: Tectonic Shifts (web) · Delhi: Capital Sprawl (web) · Paanch Saal: Out of the Chrysalis of Dissent (web) · The Lankan Observer: Indefinite Vigil (web) · Fascism: (De)fences (web) · Constituting Nepal: From Cultures to Nation? (web) · Taxing Taxonomies: Governments, States & Tehsils (web) · Pravasi: Indian from the Outside (web) · Inter-actions: Dialogues in B·h·a·k·t·i (web) · Beyond the Seen: Santa-Clause (web) · Ferguson, etc.: Attention! (web) · Burial of the Unknown: Tragedies of Toxic Leadership (web) · Records & Scratches: History Lessons from Ayodhya (web) · HIV/AIDS: Closing the Legacy (web) · Ganga Rejuvenation: Old Water in a New Bottle? (web) · Children’s Day Out: Bringing Up Parents (web) · Brave New World: Order in Place? (web) · October, 1984: Spectres of Our Past (web) · Light: Sparks and Streams (web) · Fiji: Lessons in Democratic Creativity (web) · Internet Slowdown Day: Speeding Access (web) · Gandhi: Experimenting With (web) · Ebola: Treating Viral Cultures (web) · Dividing Waters: The Valley in Distress (web) · Fortifying the Brew: The Highs and Lows of Moderation (web) · Smart City: No Man’s Methodology? (web) · Ananthamurthy: Hearing the Here (web) · Our Warring Moves: Space, Conflict, Beauty (web) · Trans-Creating the Body: Allying the Human and the Cosmic (web) · The Promise of Gaza: Outstripping Confrontation (web) · Echoes of the Queer: Blurring the Frame (web) · Season Round-Up: Refractions off the Spheres (web) · Forced Labour: Over-timed Feudalism? (web) · Crimea: The Heart of Russian Pre-Occupation (web) · Football: Beauty on the Defensive? (web) · Haiku & Ghazal: The Metaphysics of Beauty (web) · Government: Of, By, For the People? (web) · Counting on Beauty: The Quantum of Our Values (web) · Us, Sex Workers: Means for a Meaning (web) · Vital Beauty: Of Stones, Flesh and Raptures (web) · Sri Lanka Times: Nations and Narratives (web) · See Lanka Today: Trapped Between Footprints and Voices? (web) · Contemporary Media: Tuning into Mis/Trust Channels (web) · Kathputli: A Vision of Urban Reinvention (web) · Plurality: Co-Writing the Wider History (web) · Northeast India: The Internal Other? (web) · Section 377: Responding (web) · Dhasal: Beyond Words (web) · From Khap to AAP: Encountering Dissent (web) · Liu Xia: Poet Planting Signs (web) · Muzaffarnagar: A Winter in Exile (web)
Conference presentations & invited talks
‘Writing and existence: Sartre, Derrida and the challenge of value.’ Interfaceing, Taipei, Taiwan (2024)
Online paper presentation (August 2024) on the concept of value as as a possible link between Sartre and Derrida's projects. Interfaceing conference, 2024, ‘From the Invention of Writing to the Emergence of Artificial Intelligence: Cultural Approaches to Information Technology’, at the National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.
‘The textual play of freedom: Derrida and Sartre.’ UK Sartre Society, Oxford, UK (2024)
Paper presentation (July 2024) assessing the function of Sartre's oeuvre through the Derridean understanding of textuality. 2024 UK Sartre Society Conference, at the Maison Française d'Oxford, Oxford, UK.
‘From Freedom to Writing: the curious case of value.’ Society for French Studies Annual Conference, Stirling, UK (2024)
Poster presentation (July 2024) on the concept of value as as a possible link between Sartre and Derrida's projects. Chairing of a panel on Sartre. Society for French Studies Annual Conference 2024, at the University of Stirling, Stirling, UK.
‘Sartre, Derrida et la création de valeurs : entre liberté et écriture.’ Colloque Groupe d’Études Sartriennes, Paris, France (2024)
Paper presentation (June 2024) assessing the concept of value as as a possible link between Sartre and Derrida's projects. Colloque annuel du Groupe d’Études Sartriennes, in Paris, at La Sorbonne (Université Paris 1).
‘Angst, serenity and the différance of Derrida.’ Derrida Today Conference, Athens, Greece (2024)
Paper presentation (June 2024) exploring an existential reading of a few key concepts of the early Derrida. 8th Derrida Today Conference, at the National and Kapodistrian University, Athens, Greece.
‘Sartre meets Derrida: agency and writing as reprise.’ Cambridge French Graduate Research Seminar, Cambridge, UK (2024)
Paper presentation (February 2024) on the concept of reprise as a possible connecting element between Sartre's freedom and Derrida's writing. French Graduate Research Seminar, at the University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
‘Homo Scribens : vers une bio-graphie qui ne recherche plus rien.’ Colloque ‘Plus d'une discipline : actualité de La vie la mort’, Université Paris 8, Paris, France (2021)
Paper presentation (October 2021) on the bridging of biology, writing and existence in Derrida's seminar La vie la mort, in Université Paris 8, Paris, France.
‘Derrida and Law.’ Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, India (2016)
January 2016 · Summary and handout
Invited talk on Derrida and law, at the Law Center, JNU, Delhi, India.
‘Negation and Action.’ Fondation Inde-Europe de Nouveaux Dialogues, Zagarolo, Italy (2015)
November 2016 · Text
Invited paper presentation during the Transcultural Encounters Forum workshop, at FIND, Zagarolo, Italy.
‘Derrida and (Art) Appreciation’ and ‘Derrida and Art (Appreciation).’ Jamia Milia Islamia University, Delhi, India (2015)
March 2015 · Handout
Two invited talks on Derrida and art, at the Department of Art History and Appreciation, JMIU, Delhi, India.
‘The Scandalous Anchor: A Girardian Reading of Pornography.’ Annual Conference of the Colloquium on Violence and Religion, Munich, Germany (2014)
‘From Anatta to Interdependence: Buddhist Philosophy and Mimetic Theory.’ Annual Conference of the Colloquium on Violence and Religion, Tokyo, Japan (2012)
Public discussions
Readers' Break: public discussions on literature, Delhi, India & online (2014-2019)
2014-2019 · Website · Facebook page
Readers’ Break: 99 public discussions on literature, in Delhi, India and online.
If Beale Street Could Talk (James Baldwin) (web) · Factotum (Charles Bukowski) (web) · Man’s Search for Meaning (Viktor Frankl) (web) · Letters to a Young Poet (Rilke) (web) · The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner) (web) · The Road (Cormac McCarthy) (web) · Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut) (web) · Moby-Dick (Herman Melville) (web) · The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (R.L. Stevenson) (web) · The Corrections (Jonathan Franzen) (web) · The Human Stain (Philip Roth) (web) · To the Lighthouse (Virginia Woolf) (web) · The · tation of Saint Anthony (Flaubert) (web) · Touched with Fire (Kay Redfield Jamison) (web) · Faust (Goethe) (web) · Rameau’s Nephew (Diderot) (web) · Sickness Unto Death (Kierkegaard) (web) · Fear and Trembling (Kierkegaard) (web) · Don Quixote (Cervantes) (web) · If This is a Man (Primo Levi) (web) · The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (Milan Kundera) (web) · Eugene Oregon (Alexander Pushkin) (web) · On the Road (Jack Kerouac) (web) · Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden) (web) · Lincoln in the Bardo (George Saunders) (web) · Shantaram (Gregory David Roberts) (web) · Siddhartha (Herman Hesse) (web) · Withering Heights (Emily Bronte) (web) · The Death of Ivan Ilyich (Leo Tolstoy) (web) · Chronicle of a Death Foretold (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) (web) · Disgrace (J.M. Coetzee) (web) · Stoner (John Williams) (web) · Midnight’s Children (Salman Rushdie) (web) · Joseph Anton (Salman Rushdie) (web) · The Museum of Innocence (Orhan Pamuk) (web) · My Name is Red (Orhan Pamuk) (web) · The Sellout (Paul Beatty) (web) · A Clockwork Orange (Anthony Burgess) (web) · My Mother’s Lover & My Father’s Book (Urs Widmer) (web) · The Vegetarian (Han Kang) (web) · Othello (Shakespeare) (web) · The Argumentative Indian (Amartya Sen) (web) · What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (Carver) (web) · The Tin Drum (Gunter Grass) (web) · Em and the Big Hoom (Jerry Pinto) (web) · The Inheritance of Loss (Kiran Desai) (web) · Kafka on the Shore (Murakami) (web) · The Prince (Machiavelli) (web) · The Shadow Lines (Amitav Ghosh) (web) · Brave New World (Aldous Huxley) (web) · The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde) (web) · The Trial (Kafka) (web) · Metamorphosis (Kafka) (web) · The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini) (web) · Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky) (web) · Look Back in Anger (John Osborne) (web) · The Fall (Camus) (web) · The Stranger (Camus) (web) · Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi) (web) · The God of Small Things (Arundhati Roy) (web) · Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov) (web) · Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen) (web) · Sakuntalam (Kalidas) (web) · The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald) (web) · Meditations (Marcus Aurelius) (web) · Symposium (Plato) (web) · 1984 (George Orwell) (web) · American Psycho (Bret Easton Ellis) (web) · Accidental Death of an Anarchist (Dario Fo) (web) · Waiting for Godot (Samuel Beckett) (web) · Frankenstein (Mary Shelley) (web) · Interpreter of Maladies (Jhumpa Lahiri) (web) · Les Fleurs du Mal (Baudelaire) (web) · Into the Wild (Jon Krakauer) (web) · The Catcher in the Rye (JD Salinger) (web) · Notes from Underground (Dostoevsky) (web) · City of Djinns (Dalrymple) (web) · Identity and Violence (Amartya Sen) (web) · On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge (Lacan) (web) · Theses on the Philosophy of History (Walter Benjamin) (web) · Works (Khushwant Singh) (web) · Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature (Deleuze & Guattari) (web) · A Lover’s Discourse (Roland Barthes) (web) · Works (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) (web) · The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Milan Kundera) (web) · The Myth of Sisyphus (Albert Camus) (web)
Writing Derrida: public discussions on Derrida's works, Delhi, India (2014-2016)
2014-2016 · Facebook: India Derrida group
Writing Derrida: 15 public discussions on the works of Jacques Derrida, in Delhi, India.
Specters of Marx (web) · The Post Card (web) · Faith and Knowledge (web) · The Other Heading & Philosophy in a Time of Terror (web) · Rogues (web) · Spurs (web) · Archive Fever (web) · Freud and the Scene of Writing (web) · Circumfession (web) · Force of Law (web) · Aporias (web) · Différance (web) · Monolingualism of the Other (web) · Learning to Live Finally (web) · D’ailleurs, Derrida (web)
Postgraduate level (through ist & apt)
‘Différer et disséminer : vers une pédagogie de la trace. Savoirs, institutions et métaphysique derridienne.’ Through the Atelier des Pratiques théoriques (2020-2021)
Study of excerpts from Derrida, Right to Philosophy, Of Grammatology, Margins of Philosophy, Writing and Difference, The university without conditions, and Nietzsche, On the future of our educational institutions, Untimely Meditations, Genealogy of Morals, followed by the discussion of 7 propositions towards the formulation of a derridian pedagogy. Online seminar, Atelier des Pratiques Théoriques, 30 hrs over 4 months.
‘Writing a Spiritual Autobiography : Augustine’s Confessions.’ Through the Institute for the Study of Texts (2017-2018)
2017-2018 · Web · Handout (example)
Study of excerpts from Augustine's Confessions (4th c. CE). Online seminar, Institute for the Study of Texts, 12 hrs over 3 months.
‘Romantic Boredom, Boring Romances : Madame Bovary.’ Through the Institute for the Study of Texts (2017)
2017 · Web · Handout (example)
Study of excerpts from Gustave Flaubert's, Madame Bovary (1856). Online seminar, Institute for the Study of Texts, 12 hrs over 3 months.
‘Derrida’s Of Grammatology : (Hi)stories of Writing.’ Through the Institute for the Study of Texts (2017)
2017 · Web · Handout (example)
Study of excerpts from Jacques Derrida's Of Grammatology (1967). Online seminar, Institute for the Study of Texts, 12 hrs over 3 months. Taught twice in 2017.
‘The Early Derrida : Down the Play.’ Through the Institute for the Study of Texts (2017)
2017 · Web · Handout (examples)
Study of excerpts from Jacques Derrida's Writing and Difference, Of Grammatology, and Speech and Phenomena (1967). Online seminar, Institute for the Study of Texts, 26 hrs over 3 months.
‘Becoming a Philosopher : Descartes’ Method.’ Through the Institute for the Study of Texts (2017)
‘Facing the Infinite : Ethics according to Levinas.’ Through the Institute for the Study of Texts
Study of excerpts from Emmanuel Levinas' Totality and Infinity (1961). Online seminar, Institute for the Study of Texts, 12 hrs. Course created and offered through the IST, not yet taught.
‘Ideal of Love and Love of the Idea : Phaedrus.’ Through the Institute for the Study of Texts
Study of excerpts from Plato's Phaedrus (4th c. BCE). Online seminar, Institute for the Study of Texts, 6 hrs. Course created and offered through the IST, not yet taught.
Undergraduate level
‘The Scene of Writing.’ Manipal University (2014)
Introduction to Derrida. Manipal Undergraduate Internship. 1.5 hr.
‘Philosophy and Methods: Thinking through Humour, Visuals and Emotions.’ Manipal University (2013)
Manipal Undergraduate Internship. 1.5 hr.
‘Foreignness.’ Manipal University (2013)
Manipal Undergraduate Internship. 1.5 hr.
‘Ethics, with Levinas.’ Manipal University (2013)
Manipal Undergraduate Internship. 1.5 hr.
High school level
‘Cours de Philosophie.’ Education nationale, France (2018-2023)
2018-2023 · TOC
Philosophy class for Terminale Générale and Terminale Technologique students (12th grade, main stream and technological stream), in the Lycée Notre Dame de la Tourtelière, Pouzauges (2018-2023) and the Lycée Sainte Marie, Chantonnay (2018-2020). Creation of a special module of philosophy with films (student assignments on a choice of 100+ films: list). 120/60 hrs per group over 10 months, yearly (September-June).
‘Cours de Humanités, Littérature, Philosophie.’ Education nationale, France (2019-2023)
Humanities class for Première Générale students (11th grade, main stream), in the Lycée Notre Dame de la Tourtelière, Pouzauges (2019-2023). 60 hrs over 10 months (September-June).
L'Atelier des Pratiques Théoriques is an association created in 2020 with Laurie Haffas. The Atelier offers philosophy seminars online, with a conscious pedagogical effort towards participative practices. Each group of study, intentionally small in size, approaches its corpus in view of coming up with new practical answers to a set problem. Visit the Atelier.
The Institute for the Study of Texts is an organisation created in Delhi, India, in 2017. The Institute offers term courses, crash courses, film analysis programs and writing workshops, through a network of civil society stakeholders. At the IST, every person with an original and rigorous vision can propose and lead a program of textual study. Visit the Institute.
The Institute for the Study of Texts is an organisation created in Delhi, India, in 2017. The Institute offers term courses, crash courses, film analysis programs and writing workshops, through a network of civil society stakeholders. At the IST, every person with an original and rigorous vision can propose and lead a program of textual study. Visit the Institute.
Readers' Break is a gathering of readers, online and offline. Between 2015 and 2019, ninety-nine free, open and participative events were organised to discuss major works of literature and philosophy, first in public spaces in Delhi, and then online. Visit Readers' Break.
Writing Derrida is a series of fifteen public programs organised in Delhi between 2014 and 2016, on the works of Jacques Derrida, around the Facebook community of the India Derrida Group. Visit the community.
Writing Derrida is a series of fifteen public programs organised in Delhi between 2014 and 2016, on the works of Jacques Derrida, around the Facebook community of the India Derrida Group. Visit the community.
Samvriti is a personal publication platform presenting twelve long format, serialised articles on philosophy, literature, art, etc., alongside over forty short pieces, written between 2011 and 2016. Visit Samvriti.
Samuel Buchoul is a doctoral student in the Department of French, University of Cambridge. His project aims at deepening the dialogue between Derrida’s grammatology and the existential philosophy of Heidegger and Sartre, in view of creating what he proposes to call an ‘existential grammatology’. Samuel is supervised by Prof. Ian James, and advised by Prof. Christina Howells (Oxford). Previously, he taught philosophy in high school, in France (2018-2023). Since the mid 2010s, then in Delhi, India, Samuel has founded several independent organisations offering alternative education and research programmes, including the Atelier des Pratiques Théoriques and the Institute for the Study of Texts.
Mail · Online profiles: University of Cambridge · ORCID · Research Gate · Google Scholar
Articles (peer-reviewed) & Book Chapters
‘De l’utilité: metaphysics as a writing tool.’ Labyrinth (forthcoming, 2024-2025)
2024-25 (forthcoming)
When metaphysics is placed back within the immediate reality of existence, Derrida and grammatology ask us one daring question: can we think, and practice, metaphysics as an instrument for writing?
‘Homo Scribens : vers une bio-graphie qui ne recherche plus rien’, in Repenser la logique du vivant après Jacques Derrida (2024)
2024 · Cairn
Chapter of the collected volume Repenser la logique du vivant après Jacques Derrida, ed. G. De Michele et al, May 2024, Editions Hermann.
‘Herodotus, First Orientalist?’ InterViews: An Interdisciplinary Journal in Social Sciences , 1 (2014)
2013 · Web
How far back in time can we trace Orientalism? Can it go beyond the period of colonisation? What would that mean if we find it already back in Ancient Greece?
Introduction. Herodotus, First Orientalist? (web)
I. Orientalism
I.1 Orientalism: The Theory (web)
I.2 Orientalism: Influences (web)
I.3 Orientalism: Resistances (web)
II. The First Orientalist?
II.1 Ancient Greece and the Barbaros (web)
II.2 An account of Egypt
II.2.1 Where is the Orientalist Hiding? (web)
II.2.2 On the Neutrality of the Historian (web)
II.2.3 Herodotus, or the Contagion of Foreignness (web)
Becoming Foreigner (web)
‘The Non-Self of Girard.’ Contagion: A Journal of Religion and Culture, 20 (2013)
Articles (other publications)
‘Around Our Corner’ / ‘Aux tournants des angles droits.’ Cahiers de la Fondation: Indialogues, 8 (2015)
‘Inflecting the Foreigner’s Discourse.’ Cahiers de la Fondation: Indialogues, 5 (2014)
Monographs (unpublished)
La gêne d'être au monde. Découvrir l'existence avec La Grande Bellezza
(The Embarrassment of Being in the World. Discovering existence with La Grande Bellezza)
2021 · Unpublished · First pages
A contemplative study of Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grande Bellezza (2013), as an expression of the existential burden and hopes of today, between sensuality, spirituality and truth.
De l'Infini: A Foreigner’s Metaphysics
2014 · Unpublished
An attempt at freeing foreignness from the sole categories of the political and the administrative, to explore its existential condition, and even, its metaphysics. A creative reading of works from Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida.
In-Finir (web)
Book I. Foreigner, There: History of a Political Capture (web)
Stories from a History (web)
I. Foreigners of the Antiquity (web)
II. The Foreigner Enters Reason (1500-1800) (web)
III. Centripetal Foreignness (1800-1920) (web)
Book II. Foreigner, Here: Existentialist Foreignness (web)
Particles of Foreignness (web)
I. On Departing (web)
II. On Being-Over-There (web)
III. Here and Now: Being a Foreigner (web)
Book III. Us, Foreigners: The Reconstruction of Foreignness (web)
Language and Reconstruction (web)
I. Hospitality: Ethics meets Culture (web)
II. Language and the Written: The Tool of Foreignness (web)
III. Philosophy: The Desire of Foreignness (web)
Book IV. Beyond The I’s: A Foreigner’s Metaphysics (web)
Metaphysics for Today (web)
I. The Space of a Foreigner (web)
II. The Time of a Foreigner (web)
III. The Knowledge of a Foreigner (web)
Opening. An Adressee's Resolution (web)
Articles (published on Samvriti)
‘After Anatta: Towards a Girardian Ethics’
2013 · Web
Follow-up article to "The Non-Self of Girard". Can this theoretical encounter help formulating a ’Girardian ethics’?
After Anatta : Towards a Girardian Ethics (web)
I. The Mimetico-Buddhist Connection (web)
II. Questioning the Supremacy of Reason (web)
III. Mimetic Ethics, Ethics Embodied (web)
III.1 Girard's Ethical Silence (web)
III.2 Non-Violence, Fundamental Ethical Principle? (web)
III.3 In Search of the Middle Path: The Ethics of Distance (web)
Bridges to Co-Responsibility (web)
‘Phenomenologies of Time’
2013 · Web
A review of three major conceptions of temporality within the phenomenological tradition.
Opening the Phenomenon of Time (web)
I. Husserl: Remembrance of Things Past (web)
II. Heidegger: Springs of Time Within (web)
III. Levinas: Otherwise, Time (web)
On the Dialogues of Philosophy and Science (web)
‘Behind the Glim’
2013 · Web
An attempt, through the lens of some recent hypotheses in Indian historiography, to interrogate the Western conception of historical periods, as inherited from the Enlightenment.
Beams and Dims (web)
I. Blinding Lights: For the Love of Frames (web)
II. Of 'Lightless' Enlightenments: Is India's Modernity in the Dark? (web)
On the Cohabitations of Exclusive Histories (web)
‘Levinas: For the Feminine Other’
2013 · Web
A review of various critical feminist and queer perspectives on Emmanuel Levinas' thought.
Introduction. Levinas: For the Feminine Other (web)
I. Levinas, The Patriarch (web)
II. Levinas, Benevolent Father? (web)
III. Levinas, Exploding Genders and Sexualities? (web)
A Taste for the Other (web)
‘Two Frenchmen in the Orient’
‘Justifying Corruption’
2013 · Web
If corruption is so prevalent around us and across history, there must be ways to justify it. A few theoretical propositions stemming out of three recent investigations from The Caravan Magazine.
Introduction. Justifying Corruption (web)
I. The Socio-Capitalist Cocktail (web)
II. Bureaucracy and the Race for Information (web)
III. The Competition of Pluralities (web)
Necessities and Structures of Corruption (web)
‘The Language of Foreignness’
2013 · Web
What does it mean to speak like a foreigner? What is unique to the foreigner's language?
Introduction. The Language of Foreignness (web)
I. Theoretical Tools
I.1 Defining the Foreigner: Existential Migration (web)
I.2. Methods of Analysis: Late and Post-Phenomenology
I.2.1 Heidegger: The Unheimlich (web)
I.2.2 Merleau-Ponty: Parole and Pensée (web)
I.2.3 Derrida: The Supplement (web)
II. The Language of Foreignness
II.1 The Humor of a Foreigner (web)
II.2 Writing in a Foreign Language (web)
II.3 When Foreign Becomes Home (web)
II.4 On the Ethics of Not Understanding (web)
Language, Foreignness and Philosophy (web)
’A Girardian Reading of Pornography’
2012 · Unpublished
An attempt at applying several key ideas from Girard's psychology and anthropology to the thorny field of pornography.
Introduction
I. Pornography Today
II. "I see, therefore I come": Pornography as Mimetic Desire
III. Pornography as Sacrificial Reminiscence
III.1 Public Sex in the Original Sacrifice
III.2 Ritualizing the Rape: the Everydayness of the Pornographic Ritual
III.3 The Mythical Dissimulation of Pornography
IV. Pornography in a Non-Sacrificial Modernity
Conclusion: On the idea of an ‘Ethical Pornography’
‘Reason and the Senses: A Dialogue Between Buddhism and Christianity’
2012 · Web
Differences and commonalities between Christianity and Buddhism, from reason to the senses.
An Encounter: Buddhism and Christianity (web)
I. Authorities: A Continued Dependency (web)
II. Metaphysics: The Clash of Reasons (web)
III. Sexuality: (Avoiding) the Repression of the Senses (web)
IV. Joining Reason and the Senses: the Mystics (web)
A Dialogue: Inside, Outside (web)
Short articles (published on Samvriti)
‘Science and the philosophers’
2013 · Web
A series of short articles on the encounter of singular philosophical figures with the methods and aims of the sciences.
At the edge of God: Leibniz (web)
Nietzsche's Hide-and-Seek: A Play with Science (web)
Heidegger and Science: Questioning the Question (web)
Science and interpretation: Girard and the Scientific Discourse (web)
‘Postcolonial Guilt, or the Evening out of Equality’
2013 · Web
Short article in response to Disgrace (Coetzee, 2000), and the question of ethics in postcolonial societies.
‘Dalit Self-Affirmation’
2013 · Web
Short article in response to Caste, Colonialism and Counter-modernity (Ganguly, 2005), on the question of collective self-definition in mutually interdependent sociocultural orders.
‘Kumararamuni Katha & Girard’
2013 · Web
Short article attempting an analysis of the undated Telugu myth of Kumararamuni Katha, through the anthropological theory of myth-making by René Girard.
‘The Symbols of Early Buddhist Art’
2011 · Web
Short article presenting key aspects and debates surrounding symbolism in Early Buddhist Art.
‘On Sarvastivada’
2011 · Web
Short article presenting the Sarvastivada school of Hinayana Buddhism.
‘Buddhist Sanskrit: Hybrid?’
2010 · Web
Short article presenting philological debates on the nature of the Buddhist Sanskrit language found in some Buddhist texts.
‘Trilaksana’
2010 · Web
Short article presenting the Three Characteristics of Existence according to Buddhism.
Short pieces (published online)
‘Of pebbles, springs and fates’
2019 · Web
Short piece on Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet, 1929), creativity and determinism.
‘Love Stories’
2017 · Web
Short piece on a passage from Derrida (Letters, 1967) and the (im)possibility of love stories.
‘Empty Echoes’
2017 · Web
Short piece on a passage from Artaud, quoted by Derrida (Writing and Difference, 1967), and the dream to let the body speak.
‘Writer-in-Progress’
‘That Blood on my Drum Set’
2015 · Web archive
Short piece reviewing Whiplash (Damien Chazelle, 2014) and the question of the master-disciple relationship.
‘Charlie's Face’ / ‘Le visage de Charlie’
‘Ready to Kick-Off’
2014 · Web
Short piece. A look at the political, economic and societal relevance of the 2014 Football World Cup, for France and its intellectual heritage.
‘Too Far from the Madding Crowd’
2014 · Web archive
Short piece, on the imperceptible importance of crowds to philosophical traditions.
‘Plays of the Copula’ / ‘Les jeux de la copule’
2014 · Web archive · Samvriti: EN · FR
Short piece reviewing Gone Girl (David Fincher, 2014) and the play-love of romance.
‘Beyond the Kiss’ / ‘Au-delà du baiser’
Short piece responding to the 'Kiss of Love' protest that spread through India in 2014.
‘Metaphysics of the Islamic State’
Short pieces exploring the existential and metaphysical signification of the emergence of ISIS.
‘A Kid Dreams’ (Web archive)
‘ISthetics, Westhetics’ (Web archive)
‘Asexual’
Short piece reviewing Nymphomaniac (Lars von Trier, 2013), and the becoming-asexual of sex.
‘Direction-Free’
Short piece (2014) reviewing the art project Tokyo Reverse (Simon Bouisson et Ludovic Zuili, 2014), and the experience of temporal multi-directionality.
‘Out of the Circle: Kentron’
2014 · Web
Short piece in response to What is nature? Culture, politics, and the non-human (Kate Soper, 1998), contesting the supposed inescapability from ethnocentrism of traditions of Western philosophy such as post-structuralism.
‘Ethical Adventures of an Evolutionary Theorist’
2014 · Web
Short piece in response to Philosophy of Biology (Elliott Sober, 2000), discussing the remaining gap between sociobiology and cultural studies.
‘From Myth to Philosophy’
2014 · Web
Short piece in response to Myth and Thought among the Greeks (Vernant, 1965), on the passage from myth to philosophy in Ancient Greece.
‘Greek Religion: Miasma in the Polis’
2013 · Web
Short piece on the political function of religion and the needs for 'purification' in Ancient Greece.
‘Tragedies of Imprudence’
2013 · Web
Short piece in response to Death and the King’s Horseman (Soyinka, 2002), and the centrality of imprudence in tragedies.
‘The Poetic Fulfillment’
2013 · Web
Short piece in response to “Four Quartets" (T.S. Eliot, 1941), discussing the expression of temporal experience through language.
‘Lifelines and Ashes of Beauty’
2013 · Web
Short piece. A linear reading of “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (Keats, 1819).
‘The Order of Madness’
2013 · Web
Short piece reviewing “Cogito and the History of Madness” (Derrida, 1967), and the debate that ensued with Foucault.
‘The Reluctance to Talk of the Self: A Literary Device?’
2013 · Web
Short piece in response to The Concealed Art of the Soul: Theories of Self and Practices of Truth in Indian Ethics and Epistemology (Ganeri, 2007), and the spiritual and epistemological strategy of denying one's ego.
‘Genealogy of a Temptation’
2013 · Web
Short piece discussing the reading of VD Savarkar's national vision through the critique of Ashis Nandy.
‘Humor and Historical Writing’
2013 · Web
Short piece in response to Textures of Time: Writing History in South India 1600-1800 (Narayana Rao, Shulman, Subrahmanyam, 2001), and the role of political resistance observed in local history writing during colonisation.
‘A Coup of Languages’
2013 · Web
Short piece in response to The language of the gods in the world of men (Pollock, 2009), on the relation of languages and political powers in medieval India.
‘Ayurveda and the Structuralist Beef’
2013 · Web
Short piece in response to The jungle and the aroma of meats: an ecological theme in Hindu medicine (Zimmermann, 1999), and the limitations of structuralist frames of analyses on complex cultural constructions.
‘Health and Philosophy’
2013 · Web
Short piece on the similarities between the philosopher and the madman.
‘The Author Function’
2012 · Web
Short piece reviewing "What is an Author?" (Foucault, 1969).
‘Muray’s Poetic Imagination’
2012 · Web
Original English translation of “Tomb for an innocent tourist” (2010), and an analysis of the place of imagination in Philippe Muray's poetry.
‘The Art of Cacolfacty’
2012 · Web
Short piece reviewing Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (Tykwer, 2006).
‘Is Buddhism a Philosophy?’
2012 · Web
Short piece analysing the similarities and differences of the Buddhist approach with philosophy.
‘How to re-appropriate historical conjunctures’
2012 · Web
Short piece in response to Literary Radicalism in India: Gender, nation and the transition to independence (Gopal, 2005), on the tensions between avant-garde literature and the Left parties, during the struggle for independence.
‘Khushia, or the Hesitant Gaze’
2012 · Web
Short piece in response to Priyamvada Gopal's analysis of the poem "Khushia" by Saadat Hasan Manto, and the political power of the senses.
‘The Double Dislocation’
2012 · Web
Short piece in response to The Other Side of Silence : Voices from the Partition of India (Butalia, 1998), and the destiny of women during the Indian Partition.
Op-eds
Op-eds for LILA-Interaction (2014-2015)
2014-2015
56 op-ed pieces (2014-2015) written in introduction to weekly debates on current affairs and cultural issues between two specialists, as the editor of the online platform LILA Inter-actions.
Ling: The G-Line of Control (web) · Passing Over: Beyond Fait(h) Accompli (web) · Tibet Recall: Meandering Concerns (web) · The Islamic State: Hiding in Plain Sight? (web) · The Union Budget: The Rules and the Divides (web) · Land Acquisition: Tectonic Shifts (web) · Delhi: Capital Sprawl (web) · Paanch Saal: Out of the Chrysalis of Dissent (web) · The Lankan Observer: Indefinite Vigil (web) · Fascism: (De)fences (web) · Constituting Nepal: From Cultures to Nation? (web) · Taxing Taxonomies: Governments, States & Tehsils (web) · Pravasi: Indian from the Outside (web) · Inter-actions: Dialogues in B·h·a·k·t·i (web) · Beyond the Seen: Santa-Clause (web) · Ferguson, etc.: Attention! (web) · Burial of the Unknown: Tragedies of Toxic Leadership (web) · Records & Scratches: History Lessons from Ayodhya (web) · HIV/AIDS: Closing the Legacy (web) · Ganga Rejuvenation: Old Water in a New Bottle? (web) · Children’s Day Out: Bringing Up Parents (web) · Brave New World: Order in Place? (web) · October, 1984: Spectres of Our Past (web) · Light: Sparks and Streams (web) · Fiji: Lessons in Democratic Creativity (web) · Internet Slowdown Day: Speeding Access (web) · Gandhi: Experimenting With (web) · Ebola: Treating Viral Cultures (web) · Dividing Waters: The Valley in Distress (web) · Fortifying the Brew: The Highs and Lows of Moderation (web) · Smart City: No Man’s Methodology? (web) · Ananthamurthy: Hearing the Here (web) · Our Warring Moves: Space, Conflict, Beauty (web) · Trans-Creating the Body: Allying the Human and the Cosmic (web) · The Promise of Gaza: Outstripping Confrontation (web) · Echoes of the Queer: Blurring the Frame (web) · Season Round-Up: Refractions off the Spheres (web) · Forced Labour: Over-timed Feudalism? (web) · Crimea: The Heart of Russian Pre-Occupation (web) · Football: Beauty on the Defensive? (web) · Haiku & Ghazal: The Metaphysics of Beauty (web) · Government: Of, By, For the People? (web) · Counting on Beauty: The Quantum of Our Values (web) · Us, Sex Workers: Means for a Meaning (web) · Vital Beauty: Of Stones, Flesh and Raptures (web) · Sri Lanka Times: Nations and Narratives (web) · See Lanka Today: Trapped Between Footprints and Voices? (web) · Contemporary Media: Tuning into Mis/Trust Channels (web) · Kathputli: A Vision of Urban Reinvention (web) · Plurality: Co-Writing the Wider History (web) · Northeast India: The Internal Other? (web) · Section 377: Responding (web) · Dhasal: Beyond Words (web) · From Khap to AAP: Encountering Dissent (web) · Liu Xia: Poet Planting Signs (web) · Muzaffarnagar: A Winter in Exile (web)
Conference presentations & invited talks
‘Writing and existence: Sartre, Derrida and the challenge of value.’ Interfaceing, Taipei, Taiwan (2024)
Online paper presentation (August 2024) on the concept of value as as a possible link between Sartre and Derrida's projects. Interfaceing conference, 2024, ‘From the Invention of Writing to the Emergence of Artificial Intelligence: Cultural Approaches to Information Technology’, at the National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.
‘The textual play of freedom: Derrida and Sartre.’ UK Sartre Society, Oxford, UK (2024)
Paper presentation (July 2024) assessing the function of Sartre's oeuvre through the Derridean understanding of textuality. 2024 UK Sartre Society Conference, at the Maison Française d'Oxford, Oxford, UK.
‘From Freedom to Writing: the curious case of value.’ Society for French Studies Annual Conference, Stirling, UK (2024)
Poster presentation (July 2024) on the concept of value as as a possible link between Sartre and Derrida's projects. Chairing of a panel on Sartre. Society for French Studies Annual Conference 2024, at the University of Stirling, Stirling, UK.
‘Sartre, Derrida et la création de valeurs : entre liberté et écriture.’ Colloque Groupe d’Études Sartriennes, Paris, France (2024)
Paper presentation (June 2024) assessing the concept of value as as a possible link between Sartre and Derrida's projects. Colloque annuel du Groupe d’Études Sartriennes, in Paris, at La Sorbonne (Université Paris 1).
‘Angst, serenity and the différance of Derrida.’ Derrida Today Conference, Athens, Greece (2024)
Paper presentation (June 2024) exploring an existential reading of a few key concepts of the early Derrida. 8th Derrida Today Conference, at the National and Kapodistrian University, Athens, Greece.
‘Sartre meets Derrida: agency and writing as reprise.’ Cambridge French Graduate Research Seminar, Cambridge, UK (2024)
Paper presentation (February 2024) on the concept of reprise as a possible connecting element between Sartre's freedom and Derrida's writing. French Graduate Research Seminar, at the University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
‘Homo Scribens : vers une bio-graphie qui ne recherche plus rien.’ Colloque ‘Plus d'une discipline : actualité de La vie la mort’, Université Paris 8, Paris, France (2021)
Paper presentation (October 2021) on the bridging of biology, writing and existence in Derrida's seminar La vie la mort, in Université Paris 8, Paris, France.
‘Derrida and Law.’ Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, India (2016)
January 2016 · Summary and handout
Invited talk on Derrida and law, at the Law Center, JNU, Delhi, India.
‘Negation and Action.’ Fondation Inde-Europe de Nouveaux Dialogues, Zagarolo, Italy (2015)
November 2016 · Text
Invited paper presentation during the Transcultural Encounters Forum workshop, at FIND, Zagarolo, Italy.
‘Derrida and (Art) Appreciation’ and ‘Derrida and Art (Appreciation).’ Jamia Milia Islamia University, Delhi, India (2015)
March 2015 · Handout
Two invited talks on Derrida and art, at the Department of Art History and Appreciation, JMIU, Delhi, India.
‘The Scandalous Anchor: A Girardian Reading of Pornography.’ Annual Conference of the Colloquium on Violence and Religion, Munich, Germany (2014)
‘From Anatta to Interdependence: Buddhist Philosophy and Mimetic Theory.’ Annual Conference of the Colloquium on Violence and Religion, Tokyo, Japan (2012)
Public discussions
Readers' Break: public discussions on literature, Delhi, India & online (2014-2019)
2014-2019 · Website · Facebook page
Readers’ Break: 99 public discussions on literature, in Delhi, India and online.
If Beale Street Could Talk (James Baldwin) (web) · Factotum (Charles Bukowski) (web) · Man’s Search for Meaning (Viktor Frankl) (web) · Letters to a Young Poet (Rilke) (web) · The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner) (web) · The Road (Cormac McCarthy) (web) · Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut) (web) · Moby-Dick (Herman Melville) (web) · The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (R.L. Stevenson) (web) · The Corrections (Jonathan Franzen) (web) · The Human Stain (Philip Roth) (web) · To the Lighthouse (Virginia Woolf) (web) · The · tation of Saint Anthony (Flaubert) (web) · Touched with Fire (Kay Redfield Jamison) (web) · Faust (Goethe) (web) · Rameau’s Nephew (Diderot) (web) · Sickness Unto Death (Kierkegaard) (web) · Fear and Trembling (Kierkegaard) (web) · Don Quixote (Cervantes) (web) · If This is a Man (Primo Levi) (web) · The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (Milan Kundera) (web) · Eugene Oregon (Alexander Pushkin) (web) · On the Road (Jack Kerouac) (web) · Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden) (web) · Lincoln in the Bardo (George Saunders) (web) · Shantaram (Gregory David Roberts) (web) · Siddhartha (Herman Hesse) (web) · Withering Heights (Emily Bronte) (web) · The Death of Ivan Ilyich (Leo Tolstoy) (web) · Chronicle of a Death Foretold (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) (web) · Disgrace (J.M. Coetzee) (web) · Stoner (John Williams) (web) · Midnight’s Children (Salman Rushdie) (web) · Joseph Anton (Salman Rushdie) (web) · The Museum of Innocence (Orhan Pamuk) (web) · My Name is Red (Orhan Pamuk) (web) · The Sellout (Paul Beatty) (web) · A Clockwork Orange (Anthony Burgess) (web) · My Mother’s Lover & My Father’s Book (Urs Widmer) (web) · The Vegetarian (Han Kang) (web) · Othello (Shakespeare) (web) · The Argumentative Indian (Amartya Sen) (web) · What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (Carver) (web) · The Tin Drum (Gunter Grass) (web) · Em and the Big Hoom (Jerry Pinto) (web) · The Inheritance of Loss (Kiran Desai) (web) · Kafka on the Shore (Murakami) (web) · The Prince (Machiavelli) (web) · The Shadow Lines (Amitav Ghosh) (web) · Brave New World (Aldous Huxley) (web) · The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde) (web) · The Trial (Kafka) (web) · Metamorphosis (Kafka) (web) · The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini) (web) · Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky) (web) · Look Back in Anger (John Osborne) (web) · The Fall (Camus) (web) · The Stranger (Camus) (web) · Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi) (web) · The God of Small Things (Arundhati Roy) (web) · Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov) (web) · Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen) (web) · Sakuntalam (Kalidas) (web) · The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald) (web) · Meditations (Marcus Aurelius) (web) · Symposium (Plato) (web) · 1984 (George Orwell) (web) · American Psycho (Bret Easton Ellis) (web) · Accidental Death of an Anarchist (Dario Fo) (web) · Waiting for Godot (Samuel Beckett) (web) · Frankenstein (Mary Shelley) (web) · Interpreter of Maladies (Jhumpa Lahiri) (web) · Les Fleurs du Mal (Baudelaire) (web) · Into the Wild (Jon Krakauer) (web) · The Catcher in the Rye (JD Salinger) (web) · Notes from Underground (Dostoevsky) (web) · City of Djinns (Dalrymple) (web) · Identity and Violence (Amartya Sen) (web) · On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge (Lacan) (web) · Theses on the Philosophy of History (Walter Benjamin) (web) · Works (Khushwant Singh) (web) · Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature (Deleuze & Guattari) (web) · A Lover’s Discourse (Roland Barthes) (web) · Works (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) (web) · The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Milan Kundera) (web) · The Myth of Sisyphus (Albert Camus) (web)
Writing Derrida: public discussions on Derrida's works, Delhi, India (2014-2016)
2014-2016 · Facebook: India Derrida group
Writing Derrida: 15 public discussions on the works of Jacques Derrida, in Delhi, India.
Specters of Marx (web) · The Post Card (web) · Faith and Knowledge (web) · The Other Heading & Philosophy in a Time of Terror (web) · Rogues (web) · Spurs (web) · Archive Fever (web) · Freud and the Scene of Writing (web) · Circumfession (web) · Force of Law (web) · Aporias (web) · Différance (web) · Monolingualism of the Other (web) · Learning to Live Finally (web) · D’ailleurs, Derrida (web)
Postgraduate level (through ist & apt)
‘Différer et disséminer : vers une pédagogie de la trace. Savoirs, institutions et métaphysique derridienne.’ Through the Atelier des Pratiques théoriques (2020-2021)
Study of excerpts from Derrida, Right to Philosophy, Of Grammatology, Margins of Philosophy, Writing and Difference, The university without conditions, and Nietzsche, On the future of our educational institutions, Untimely Meditations, Genealogy of Morals, followed by the discussion of 7 propositions towards the formulation of a derridian pedagogy. Online seminar, Atelier des Pratiques Théoriques, 30 hrs over 4 months.
‘Writing a Spiritual Autobiography : Augustine’s Confessions.’ Through the Institute for the Study of Texts (2017-2018)
2017-2018 · Web · Handout (example)
Study of excerpts from Augustine's Confessions (4th c. CE). Online seminar, Institute for the Study of Texts, 12 hrs over 3 months.
‘Romantic Boredom, Boring Romances : Madame Bovary.’ Through the Institute for the Study of Texts (2017)
2017 · Web · Handout (example)
Study of excerpts from Gustave Flaubert's, Madame Bovary (1856). Online seminar, Institute for the Study of Texts, 12 hrs over 3 months.
‘Derrida’s Of Grammatology : (Hi)stories of Writing.’ Through the Institute for the Study of Texts (2017)
2017 · Web · Handout (example)
Study of excerpts from Jacques Derrida's Of Grammatology (1967). Online seminar, Institute for the Study of Texts, 12 hrs over 3 months. Taught twice in 2017.
‘The Early Derrida : Down the Play.’ Through the Institute for the Study of Texts (2017)
2017 · Web · Handout (examples)
Study of excerpts from Jacques Derrida's Writing and Difference, Of Grammatology, and Speech and Phenomena (1967). Online seminar, Institute for the Study of Texts, 26 hrs over 3 months.
‘Becoming a Philosopher : Descartes’ Method.’ Through the Institute for the Study of Texts (2017)
‘Facing the Infinite : Ethics according to Levinas.’ Through the Institute for the Study of Texts
Study of excerpts from Emmanuel Levinas' Totality and Infinity (1961). Online seminar, Institute for the Study of Texts, 12 hrs. Course created and offered through the IST, not yet taught.
‘Ideal of Love and Love of the Idea : Phaedrus.’ Through the Institute for the Study of Texts
Study of excerpts from Plato's Phaedrus (4th c. BCE). Online seminar, Institute for the Study of Texts, 6 hrs. Course created and offered through the IST, not yet taught.
Undergraduate level
‘The Scene of Writing.’ Manipal University (2014)
Introduction to Derrida. Manipal Undergraduate Internship. 1.5 hr.
‘Philosophy and Methods: Thinking through Humour, Visuals and Emotions.’ Manipal University (2013)
Manipal Undergraduate Internship. 1.5 hr.
‘Foreignness.’ Manipal University (2013)
Manipal Undergraduate Internship. 1.5 hr.
‘Ethics, with Levinas.’ Manipal University (2013)
Manipal Undergraduate Internship. 1.5 hr.
High school level
‘Cours de Philosophie.’ Education nationale, France (2018-2023)
2018-2023 · TOC
Philosophy class for Terminale Générale and Terminale Technologique students (12th grade, main stream and technological stream), in the Lycée Notre Dame de la Tourtelière, Pouzauges (2018-2023) and the Lycée Sainte Marie, Chantonnay (2018-2020). Creation of a special module of philosophy with films (student assignments on a choice of 100+ films: list). 120/60 hrs per group over 10 months, yearly (September-June).
‘Cours de Humanités, Littérature, Philosophie.’ Education nationale, France (2019-2023)
Humanities class for Première Générale students (11th grade, main stream), in the Lycée Notre Dame de la Tourtelière, Pouzauges (2019-2023). 60 hrs over 10 months (September-June).
L'Atelier des Pratiques Théoriques is an association created in 2020 with Laurie Haffas. The Atelier offers philosophy seminars online, with a conscious pedagogical effort towards participative practices. Each group of study, intentionally small in size, approaches its corpus in view of coming up with new practical answers to a set problem. Visit the Atelier.
The Institute for the Study of Texts is an organisation created in Delhi, India, in 2017. The Institute offers term courses, crash courses, film analysis programs and writing workshops, through a network of civil society stakeholders. At the IST, every person with an original and rigorous vision can propose and lead a program of textual study. Visit the Institute.
The Institute for the Study of Texts is an organisation created in Delhi, India, in 2017. The Institute offers term courses, crash courses, film analysis programs and writing workshops, through a network of civil society stakeholders. At the IST, every person with an original and rigorous vision can propose and lead a program of textual study. Visit the Institute.
Readers' Break is a gathering of readers, online and offline. Between 2015 and 2019, ninety-nine free, open and participative events were organised to discuss major works of literature and philosophy, first in public spaces in Delhi, and then online. Visit Readers' Break.
Writing Derrida is a series of fifteen public programs organised in Delhi between 2014 and 2016, on the works of Jacques Derrida, around the Facebook community of the India Derrida Group. Visit the community.
Writing Derrida is a series of fifteen public programs organised in Delhi between 2014 and 2016, on the works of Jacques Derrida, around the Facebook community of the India Derrida Group. Visit the community.
Samvriti is a personal publication platform presenting twelve long format, serialised articles on philosophy, literature, art, etc., alongside over forty short pieces, written between 2011 and 2016. Visit Samvriti.