Papers by Joelle M. Abi-Rached
Foucault Studies, Dec 28, 2023
New England Journal of Medicine , 2024
Foucault Studies, 2023
Are critique and the "art of governing" antithetical? The aim of this article is to examine this ... more Are critique and the "art of governing" antithetical? The aim of this article is to examine this tension that was laid bare by the Covid-19 pandemic by introducing "critical friendship" as a conceptual framework for a constructive interdisciplinary engagement with science in a post-pandemic era. It does so by drawing on several works and insights: (i) Michel Foucault's notion of "critical attitude" as well as his assessment of philosophy as providing a "diagnosis of the present;" (ii) Bruno Latour and colleagues' idea of a "critical zone" or what I call a horizontal epistemology of critique; (iii) Aristotle's notion of friendship as being necessary for the "common good;" and finally (iv) Jacques Derrida's interpretation of the messianic character of friendship in the constitution of progressive democracies. Whereas critical theory has been described as either "explanatory-diagnostic" or "emancipatory-utopian," a critical friendship approach aims to be both diagnostic and emancipatory in an age of uncertainty and democratic backsliding.
Boston Review, 2023
Democracy depends on the free exchange of ideas. Help sustain it with a tax-deductible donation t... more Democracy depends on the free exchange of ideas. Help sustain it with a tax-deductible donation today.
Foucault Studies, 2023
Are critique and the "art of governing" antithetical? The aim of this article is to examine this ... more Are critique and the "art of governing" antithetical? The aim of this article is to examine this tension that was laid bare by the Covid-19 pandemic by introducing "critical friendship" as a conceptual framework for a constructive interdisciplinary engagement with science in a post-pandemic era. It does so by drawing on several works and insights: (i) Michel Foucault's notion of "critical attitude" as well as his assessment of philosophy as providing a "diagnosis of the present;" (ii) Bruno Latour and colleagues' idea of a "critical zone" or what I call a horizontal epistemology of critique; (iii) Aristotle's notion of friendship as being necessary for the "common good;" and finally (iv) Jacques Derrida's interpretation of the messianic character of friendship in the constitution of progressive democracies. Whereas critical theory has been described as either "explanatory-diagnostic" or "emancipatory-utopian," a critical friendship approach aims to be both diagnostic and emancipatory in an age of uncertainty and democratic backsliding.
New England Journal of Medicine, 2023
Arab Reform Initiative, 2020
The New Brain Sciences and the Management of the Mind
Neuro
This chapter focuses on the question of diagnosis of psychiatric disorders and examines the relat... more This chapter focuses on the question of diagnosis of psychiatric disorders and examines the relationship between neuroscience and psychiatry from this perspective. Despite the penetrating gaze of neuroscience, which has opened up the brain to vision in so many ways, psychiatric classification remains superficial. This neuromolecular vision seems incapable of grounding the clinical work of psychiatry in the way that has become routine in other areas of medicine. Despite the conviction of most practitioners that they deal with conditions that have a corporeal seat in the brain of the afflicted individual, psychiatry has failed to establish the bridge that, from the nineteenth century on, underpinned the epistemology of modern clinical medicine—the capacity to link the troubles of the troubled and troubling individuals who are its subjects with the vital anomalies that underpin them.
Arab Reform Initiative, Sep 30, 2020
Neuro, 2013
This chapter explores the neurobiological self. It argues that the emerging neuroscientific under... more This chapter explores the neurobiological self. It argues that the emerging neuroscientific understandings of selfhood are unlikely to efface modern human beings' understanding of themselves as persons equipped with a deep interior world of mental states that have a causal relation to their action. Rather, they are likely to add a neurobiological dimension to human beings' self-understanding and their practices of self-management. In this sense, the “somatic individuality” which was once the province of the psy- sciences, is spreading to the neuro- sciences. Yet psy is not being displaced by neuro: neurobiological conceptions of the self are being construed alongside psychological ones.
Arab Reform Initiative, Jan 15, 2021
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Papers by Joelle M. Abi-Rached
https://www.histhum.com/review-a%E1%B9%A3furiyyeh-a-history-of-madness-modernity-and-war-in-the-middle-east/