Subversiver Messianismus

The same world - and yet everything is different. This could be a succinct formula for what the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben seeks to expose in his studies: categories of a new way of thinking, of a different use and form-of-life, in which natural life cannot be separated from social life and in which the logic of exclusion and the violence of domination are suspended. Starting from the last volume of the Homo-Sacer project, the studies in this volume trace Agamben's search for a "destituent potential" that opens a way out of the state of exception we are living in. Such a "subversive messianism" moves between politics and theology, ontology and poetry; it works archaeologically through the Greek and Roman, Jewish and Christian roots of Western culture in order to open them up to a new use in surprising constellations. With contributions by Daniela Blum, René Dausner, Daniel Kazmaier, Martin Kirschner, Aaron Looney, Edda Mack, Moritz Rudolph, Joost van Loon, Josef Wohlmuth, Peter Zeillinger, Michael Zimmermann

Strasbourg, Heidelberg, and New Orleans: 1935–1942

DeBakey travels to Europe for a year to study and train with the famed French surgeon Rene Leriche and his German counterpart Martin Kirschner. DeBakey becomes a trusted assistant to Leriche. In Germany, he admires the disciplined surgery teams, and their efficiency influences DeBakey’s later development of his own surgical program. He joins the faculty at Tulane, and he and Ochsner compose ground-breaking papers on abdominal infections and, especially, the link between smoking and lung cancer. After Pearl Harbor, Tulane mobilizes its medical staff as a General Hospital. DeBakey is, however, deemed “essential” and can neither enlist or be drafted.