Conference presentations & invited talks
Articles (peer-reviewed) & Book Chapters
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This paper reviews the complex and nuanced treatment of metaphysics in the first major works of Jacques Derrida (1967-72), and it supplements deconstruction with existential themes in order to safeguard it from the accusation of nihilistic relativism. The critique of logocentrism, often systematized through a paradoxical \’ontology of the trace\’, has been embraced by phenomenology and post-deconstruction, but also seen as insufficient for today\’s challenges. Returning to Derrida\’s demonstrations, I explore why metaphysics must be textual if it is to produce two operations constitutive of thinking: a certain technology of forgetting and an experience of meaning as singularized in words. This textuality is, specifically, that of writing, which reveals how, beyond truth, it is meaning-making that is sought by metaphysics and its writers. The techne of writing, then, plays a special role in individual, existential empowerment, but this interpretation of the history of ideas as a power struggle does not amount to moral relativism, because writing can help us sustain a unique and constructive passion for the margins.
2024 · Cairn
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La voici, peut-être, la voie de sortie pour s’échapper de la vie la mort, entre logos et gramme, science et écriture : c’est ce drôle d’événement, la connaissance, trace d’un type particulier ou peut-être archétype de la trace, convoitée par les deux pôles, qu’il nous faut interroger. Pourquoi la vie a-t-elle eu le besoin de se connaître ? Pourquoi la trace devient-elle langage, et écriture restreinte, quand « arrive notre tour », quand ce n’est plus seulement des vivants qui se connaissent, mais chacun de nous, chaque existant qui tente de connaître la vie, et de se connaître soi, personnellement, individuellement, à travers cette connaissance de la vie ? Cette connaissance change-t-elle de nature, ou de forme, quand elle s’adosse sur l’écriture restreinte ? Quels sont les répercussions de ce progrès technique de l’écriture restreinte, sur l’expérience de la vie des vivants qui la développent, puis l’adoptent ?
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Chapter of the collected volume Repenser la logique du vivant après Jacques Derrida, ed. G. De Michele et al, May 2024, Editions Hermann.
2014 · Web
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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?
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Introduction. Herodotus, First Orientalist? (web)
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I. Orientalism
I.1 Orientalism: The Theory (web)
I.2 Orientalism: Influences (web)
I.3 Orientalism: Resistances (web)
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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)
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Becoming Foreigner (web)
Articles (peer-reviewed) & Book Chapters currently under review
Articles (other publications)
Manuscripts (unpublished)
(The Embarrassment of Being in the World. Discovering existence with La Grande Bellezza)
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2021 · Unpublished · First pages
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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.
2014 · Unpublished · First pages
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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.
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In-Finir (web)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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Opening. An Adressee\’s Resolution (web)
Articles (published on Samvriti)
2013 · Web
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Follow-up article to \”The Non-Self of Girard\”. Can this theoretical encounter help formulating a ’Girardian ethics’?
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After Anatta : Towards a Girardian Ethics (web)
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I. The Mimetico-Buddhist Connection (web)
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II. Questioning the Supremacy of Reason (web)
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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)
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Bridges to Co-Responsibility (web)
2013 · Web
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A review of three major conceptions of temporality within the phenomenological tradition.
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Opening the Phenomenon of Time (web)
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I. Husserl: Remembrance of Things Past (web)
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II. Heidegger: Springs of Time Within (web)
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III. Levinas: Otherwise, Time (web)
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On the Dialogues of Philosophy and Science (web)
2013 · Web
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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.
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Beams and Dims (web)
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I. Blinding Lights: For the Love of Frames (web)
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II. Of \’Lightless\’ Enlightenments: Is India\’s Modernity in the Dark? (web)
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On the Cohabitations of Exclusive Histories (web)
2013 · Web
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A review of various critical feminist and queer perspectives on Emmanuel Levinas\’ thought.
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Introduction. Levinas: For the Feminine Other (web)
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I. Levinas, The Patriarch (web)
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II. Levinas, Benevolent Father? (web)
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III. Levinas, Exploding Genders and Sexualities? (web)
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A Taste for the Other (web)
2013 · Web
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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.
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Introduction. Justifying Corruption (web)
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I. The Socio-Capitalist Cocktail (web)
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II. Bureaucracy and the Race for Information (web)
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III. The Competition of Pluralities (web)
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Necessities and Structures of Corruption (web)
2013 · Web
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What does it mean to speak like a foreigner? What is unique to the foreigner\’s language?
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Introduction. The Language of Foreignness (web)
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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)
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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)
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Language, Foreignness and Philosophy (web)
2012 · Unpublished
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An attempt at applying several key ideas from Girard\’s psychology and anthropology to the thorny field of pornography.
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Introduction
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I. Pornography Today
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II. \”I see, therefore I come\”: Pornography as Mimetic Desire
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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
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IV. Pornography in a Non-Sacrificial Modernity
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Conclusion: On the idea of an ‘Ethical Pornography’
2012 · Web
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Differences and commonalities between Christianity and Buddhism, from reason to the senses.
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An Encounter: Buddhism and Christianity (web)
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I. Authorities: A Continued Dependency (web)
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II. Metaphysics: The Clash of Reasons (web)
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III. Sexuality: (Avoiding) the Repression of the Senses (web)
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IV. Joining Reason and the Senses: the Mystics (web)
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A Dialogue: Inside, Outside (web)
Short articles (published on Samvriti)
2013 · Web
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A series of short articles on the encounter of singular philosophical figures with the methods and aims of the sciences.
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At the edge of God: Leibniz (web)
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Nietzsche\’s Hide-and-Seek: A Play with Science (web)
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Heidegger and Science: Questioning the Question (web)
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Science and interpretation: Girard and the Scientific Discourse (web)
2013 · Web
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Short article in response to Disgrace (Coetzee, 2000), and the question of ethics in postcolonial societies.
2013 · Web
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Short article in response to Caste, Colonialism and Counter-modernity (Ganguly, 2005), on the question of collective self-definition in mutually interdependent sociocultural orders.
2013 · Web
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Short article attempting an analysis of the undated Telugu myth of Kumararamuni Katha, through the anthropological theory of myth-making by René Girard.
2011 · Web
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Short article presenting key aspects and debates surrounding symbolism in Early Buddhist Art.
2010 · Web
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Short article presenting philological debates on the nature of the Buddhist Sanskrit language found in some Buddhist texts.
2010 · Web
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Short article presenting the Three Characteristics of Existence according to Buddhism.
Short pieces (published online)
2017 · Web
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Short piece on a passage from Derrida (Letters, 1967) and the (im)possibility of love stories.
2017 · Web
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Short piece on a passage from Artaud, quoted by Derrida (Writing and Difference, 1967), and the dream to let the body speak.
2015 · Web archive
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Short piece reviewing Whiplash (Damien Chazelle, 2014) and the question of the master-disciple relationship.
2014 · Web
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Short piece. A look at the political, economic and societal relevance of the 2014 Football World Cup, for France and its intellectual heritage.
2014 · Web archive
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Short piece, on the imperceptible importance of crowds to philosophical traditions.
2014 · Web archive · Samvriti: EN · FR
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Short piece reviewing Gone Girl (David Fincher, 2014) and the play-love of romance.
‘A Kid Dreams’ (Web archive)\n‘ISthetics, Westhetics’ (Web archive)
2014 · Web
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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.
2014 · Web
\nShort piece in response to Philosophy of Biology (Elliott Sober, 2000), discussing the remaining gap between sociobiology and cultural studies.
2014 · Web
\nShort piece in response to Myth and Thought among the Greeks (Vernant, 1965), on the passage from myth to philosophy in Ancient Greece.
2013 · Web
\nShort piece on the political function of religion and the needs for \’purification\’ in Ancient Greece.
2013 · Web
\nShort piece in response to Death and the King’s Horseman (Soyinka, 2002), and the centrality of imprudence in tragedies.
2013 · Web
\nShort piece in response to “Four Quartets\” (T.S. Eliot, 1941), discussing the expression of temporal experience through language.
2013 · Web
\nShort piece. A linear reading of “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (Keats, 1819).
2013 · Web
\nShort piece reviewing “Cogito and the History of Madness” (Derrida, 1967), and the debate that ensued with Foucault.
2013 · Web
\nShort 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.
2013 · Web
\nShort piece discussing the reading of VD Savarkar\’s national vision through the critique of Ashis Nandy.
2013 · Web
\nShort 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.
2013 · Web
\nShort 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.
2013 · Web
\nShort 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.
2013 · Web
\nShort piece on the similarities between the philosopher and the madman.
2012 · Web
\nShort piece reviewing \”What is an Author?\” (Foucault, 1969).
2012 · Web
\nOriginal English translation of “Tomb for an innocent tourist” (2010), and an analysis of the place of imagination in Philippe Muray\’s poetry.
2012 · Web
\nShort piece reviewing Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (Tykwer, 2006).
2012 · Web
\nShort piece analysing the similarities and differences of the Buddhist approach with philosophy.
2012 · Web
\nShort 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.
2012 · Web
\nShort piece in response to Priyamvada Gopal\’s analysis of the poem \”Khushia\” by Saadat Hasan Manto, and the political power of the senses.
2012 · Web
\nShort 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
2014-2015
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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.
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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)