Joelle M. Abi-Rached | Harvard University (original) (raw)
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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
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
'Asfuriyyeh: A History of Madness, Modernity, and War in the Middle East, 2020
book draws on this longue durée approach to examine the institutional history of psychiatry in mo... more book draws on this longue durée approach to examine the institutional history of psychiatry in modern Lebanon. However, as I hope the book shows, its implications go beyond the specific context of this pluralistic, if complex, society. It uses the history of psychiatry as a "sampling device" to illuminate questions related to modernity, medicalization, and social policy. 9 the medical doctors at ʿAṣfūriyyeh never had recourse to these spiritual means. Rather, they resorted to all the latest therapies in use in Europe, from occupation, work, and various somatic therapies (insulin-coma, electroconvulsive therapy, etc.) to psychotherapy. And as in other European and North American contexts, the introduction of powerful drugs (notably antipsychotics and antidepressants) was generally welcomed with enthusiasm.
Asfuriyyeh: A History of Madness, Modernity and War in the Middle East, 2020
Neuro: the new brain sciences and the management of the mind, 2013
What kind of beings do we think we are? This may seem a philosophical question. In part it is, bu... more What kind of beings do we think we are? This may seem a philosophical question. In part it is, but it is far from abstract. It is at the core of the philosophies we live by. It goes to the heart of how we bring up our children, run our schools, organize our social policies, manage economic affairs, treat those who commit crimes or whom we deem mentally ill, and perhaps even how we value beauty in art and life. It bears on the ways we understand our own feelings and desires, narrate our biographies, think about our futures, and formulate our ethics. Are we spiritual creatures, inhabited by an immaterial soul? Are we driven by instincts and passions that must be trained and civilized by discipline and the inculcation of habits? Are we unique among the animals, blessed or cursed with minds, language, consciousness, and conscience? Are we psychological persons, inhabited by a deep, interior psyche that is shaped by experience, symbols and signs, meaning and culture? Is our very nature as human beings shaped by the structure and functions of our brains? Over the past half century, some have come to believe that the last of these answers is the truest-that our brains hold the key to whom we are. They suggest that developments in the sciences of the brain are, at last, beginning to map the processes that make our humanity possible-as individuals, as societies , and as a species. These references to the brain do not efface all the other answers that contemporary culture gives to the question of who we are. But it seems that these other ways of thinking of ourselves-of our psychological lives, our habitual activities, our social relations, our ethical values and commitments , our perceptions of others-are being reshaped. They must now be grounded in one organ of our bodies-that spongy mass of the human brain, encapsulated by the skull, which weighs about three pounds in an adult and makes up about 2% of his or her body weight. This 'materialist' belief has taken a very material form. There has been a rapid growth in investment of money and human effort in neurobiological research, a remarkable increase in the numbers of papers published in neuroscience journals, a spate of books about the brain for lay readers, and many well-publicized claims that key aspects of human affairs can and should be governed in the light of neuroscientific...
The 1960s were in some ways the period during which there was a lot of stirring in the area of th... more The 1960s were in some ways the period during which there was a lot of stirring in the area of the brain sciences. W. A. R (Marshall et al., 1996, p. 287).
Journal of the History of the Human Sciences, 2021
Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society, 2018
In recent years, scholars have started to assess the transformation of the American socioeconomic... more In recent years, scholars have started to assess the transformation of the American socioeconomic landscape brought about by globalization and deindustrialization. Some, like Dora Apel (2015), have sought to analyze the dying manufacturing cities of America's industrial heartland, with its rusted factories and crumbling infrastructures 'scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation', to quote the dramatic metaphor of the forty-fifth president of the United States Donald Trump. However, such imagery is not peculiar to the United States. These modern ruins (or ruins of modernity) are becoming landmarks of a world increasingly marked by 'capitalism's fast-moving frontiers and built-in obsolescence, as well as political hubris and social conflicts', in the words of anthropologist Shannon Dawdy (2010, 771). These are the traces of dying epochs and of the brutal and unharnessed march of hypercapitalism and hypermodernity. Traces of the Future is a path-breaking, inspirational, and refreshing book that offers a close look at such vestiges of capitalism, modernity, and national and imperial ambitions. In this case, the book focuses not on the West's decaying landscapes but those of postcolonial Africa.
Jadaliyya, 2020
Historians often demure when asked what concrete lessons can be drawn from the past. Meanwhile, p... more Historians often demure when asked what concrete lessons can be drawn from the past. Meanwhile, purported irrelevance threatens the place of the humanities in higher education. That crisis of confidence, made more urgent by the COVID-19 pandemic, calls for a renewed engagement with practical questions and public audiences. What lessons can be drawn from the interrelated histories of disease, environment, and medicine? This roundtable invites four scholars of Middle East history to reflect on a series of questions to illuminate the current moment–in the region and beyond–with their research.