Catalog All books
Léo Bersani
Homos Reassessing the Identity
What does it mean to be homosexual today ? Is it necessary to form communities and if so, why ? Is the primary aim equality in society such as it is, or the challenging of society itself ? Up to what point do homosexuals distinguish themselves ? Must there be a link between sexual claims and political dispute ? The gay and lesbian communities necessarily ask themselves these questions. On a wider scale, they also encourage a redefinition of the human being in contemporary societies. Already considered a classic in the United States, Homos presents an innovative, critical reflection on identity and the dangers in the withdrawal of a community from society. An expert in French literature, Leo Bersani is a professor at the University of California. He has notably published Baudelaire and Freud, and Theory and Violence.
Jean Dausset
A Nod in the Direction of Life The Great HLA Adventure
Jean Daussets finding that white blood cells play an active role in immunization won him the Nobel Prize for Medicine and opened a new area of biological investigation, both in pure and in applied research. The HLA system harbours a unique peptide which may be regarded as the essence of the self in opposition to everything else much as the pineal gland was regarded as the seat of the soul by Descartes. The distinction between the self and the non-self is an essential one in immunology where an individuals defensive system must fight off foreign bodies while at the same time defending his or her own system. In his book, Jean Dausset recounts the story of his discovery and introduces the reader to other fascinating aspects of his life and work.
René Frydman, Myriam Szejer
The Baby Through All Stages of Development Gypsy II Conference
Can communication be established with new-born infants? Is it true that certain forms of sensory information can be transmitted to foetuses? How can doctors detect medical disorders which are the expression of psychic suffering in infancy? Can psychoanalysis help to relieve such disorders? To produce this report, paediatricians, midwives, psychotherapists, psychoanalysts, and researchers pooled their experience to provide a better understanding of what makes human beings develop harmoniously. The Gypsy II Conference was held in association with the organisation known as "La Cause des Bébés".
Peter Reichel
Germany and its Memories
How has Germany absorbed the heritage of National Socialism? What became of the Nazi buildings in Munich and Berlin? Have they been destroyed, rebuilt or abandoned? What is the significance of the present state of the concentration camps of Buchenwald, Dachau, and Ravensbrück? Does their condition signify an active desire to commemorate the past, or rather of a wish to make it commonplace? Peter Reichel draws on examples from one city after another, and sometimes in one neighbourhood after another, to highlight the hesitations and the contradictions of a nation confronted with a past that will not, or should not, go away.