The Butterfly and the Diving Bell

The real Jean-Do Bauby with Claude Mendibil

We need narratives to make sense out of life, even when apparently there remains very little to live. Illness is often experienced as a disturbing break of the link between past, present and future, and therefore one of the ends of healthcare might be the recovery of some integrated experience by means of narrative. (Of course, narratives can be deceptive, but that does not invalidate the former.) I hope tomorrow we will see that when watching together The Butterfly and the Diving Bell; in addition, we will have the privilege of having Ezequiel Di Paolo watch the film with us. Then he will be sharing with us his research on Locked-in syndrome, published here:

Kyselo, M. and Di Paolo, E. A. (2015). Locked-in syndrome: A challenge for embodied cognitive science. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 14, 517-542.

Also, for a commentary of the film from a physician’s point of view, go here.

 

 

Why Asier, why?

Ok, so our international course on bioethics and film is here at last. I am very excited because it is a wonderful opportunity to test ideas in a multicultural and multidisciplinary environment, and this kind of group is usually very focused and enthusiastic about what we will be doing together in these two weeks: watch films, discuss them together, read articles, write papers, and explore new places.

The main goal is to understand a set of compelling bioethical issues by deliberating upon the common ground of stories provided by the movies, and to do it in a comparative way, paying attention at how cultural differences shape our ethical expectations and reactions. That’s one of the reasons why we selected Asier ETA biok (Asier and I), which at first sight is clearly not a film about healthcare. But it is a film about ethics, about the moral dilemmas that many people in the Basque Country have experienced in the last 50 years. Continue reading

Landscape and health

My colleague Laura Menatti defended her award-winning PhD dissertation at the UPV/EHU in late 2014; I was selected to serve in the evaluation committee and ever since it has been a pleasure to discuss and advance with her our common interests on landscape. We both want to account for both its culturalist and the naturalist aspects, giving each side its due. We argue that humans are in a co-determinant relationship with landscape: we perceive landscape as we live in it, but we also build it, and this double bind affects our health. How? To answer this question Laura and I have been working together for more than a year, and this is the first published result, in a top psychology journal:

Menatti L and Casado da Rocha A (2016) Landscape and Health: Connecting Psychology, Aesthetics, and Philosophy through the Concept of Affordance. Front. Psychol. 7:571. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00571

In this time not only I have learnt a lot from Laura, Leo, and Arantza; we are also building and developing this theory upon previous work published by members of our group such as Alvaro, Mateo, Xabier, Hanne, Ezequiel, and Argyris (check the references in the paper). It is not usual to find in the humanities such a good team work!

Intensive Course: Exploring Bioethics through Film

UNIVERSITY OF THE BASQUE COUNTRY (UPV/EHU), DONOSTIA – SAN SEBASTIAN, MAY 9-19, 2016

This is the 2nd time we host this international program in collaboration with Case Western Reserve University. Taught by faculty from CWRU and UPV/EHU this course offers students a cross-cultural perspective on bioethics in the United States and Spain. This course uses the medium of film, complemented by readings in bioethics, film criticism, and medical research, to introduce students to a number of compelling bioethics issues. Attendance to HEFA (Faculty of Education, Philosophy, and Anthropology) activities free of charge for IAS-Research members, UPV/EHU researchers, “Filosofía, Ciencia y Valores / Filosofia, Zientzia eta Balioak” master students and anyone who expresses an interest on the topic. Free registration and more info: antonio.casado@ehu.eus.

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Volar

Como dice la tarjeta, es un placer invitaros a las presentaciones (Logroño, Pamplona y Donostia) del último libro publicado por Pepitas de calabaza: Volar, de Henry D. Thoreau. La traducción de los textos del escritor norteamericano se debe a Eduardo Jordá, pero la idea original, selección y edición la hemos hecho a cuatro manos entre José Ignacio Foronda y yo. La mayor parte de los textos estaban inéditos en castellano; recorriendo los escritos de Thoreau desde 1837 a 1862 en busca de sus aves más representativas, hemos tratado de ofrecer un retrato vivo del autor en su entorno natural y social más inmediato a través de sus reflexiones y experiencias con los pájaros. Si queréis echar un vistazo, aquí tenéis las primeras páginas.

La tarea ética de la universidad, desde Islandia

En su último número (dedicado al debate sobre la mejora cognitiva) la revista Dilemata publica una reseña-obituario que me ha dado mucha satisfacción  escribir, aunque su peso en la contabilidad curricular sea ínfimo y la ocasión sea triste. Se trata de un comentario breve al (este sí definitiva y lamentablemente) último libro de Páll Skúlason, que fue rector de la Universidad de Islandia cuando estuve trabajando allí: A Critique of Universities: Reflections on the status and direction of the modern university (Reykjavík: University of Iceland Press, 2015). El texto completo puede descargarse abajo. A continuación resumo algunos puntos importantes: Continue reading

More on narrative ethics in health care

“Enduring tedium over real time in a confined space is what real courage is.” (David Foster Wallace). Well, academics know about this kind of courage, but the quote comes from an article using a short story by DFW to illuminate narrative autonomy in health care.You can download the full text here by courtesy of Cambridge University Press.

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Active and healthy ageing

Ageing is one of the main challenges of our time. We live longer, but for this to be a real achievement it has to be better understood and socialised. Active and Healthy Ageing (AHA) is a complex phenomenon and it requires a multidisciplinary approach such as the one SIforAGE is providing in Europe.

That’s why last Friday SIforAGEGISME and Jakiunde organised a public seminar in the framework of the Krisiak project, aiming at understanding crises as opportunities to develop social innovation, creativity and social change.

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Bioethics, literature, & narrative autonomy

Last summer we spent two very good months at the Philosophy Department, University of Bristol. Their wonderful hospitality made it possible for me to finish an edited volume that is forthcoming, and also this article, which I presented in a workshop there and has just been published in Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, first view. Continue reading

La crisis islandesa explicada a los niños

Pero ¿por qué acabó de tan mala manera el tiempo de la prosperidad? He tenido tiempo para reflexionar al respecto y casi puedo asegurar que la explicación es tan extraña como simple: ausencia de niños. Igual que su padre, el fascismo, el neocapitalismo fue creado por varones blancos sin hijos, que se divertían poniéndose elegantísimos y bebiendo cócteles a sorbitos con un grupo de personas de su mismo sexo, pero que en su inmenso amor a la sociedad se olvidaban de pensar en mujeres, hijos y las tres M (majaretas, mutilados y mayores). Porque en todos sus rasgos más significativos, el capitalismo se centra en que nada moleste al varón en su trabajo, mientras la mujer le lleve las camisas a la lavandería y no vengan niños al mundo y no haya que llevar a los mayores a un centro sanitario. Y es que el sistema alcanza su culminación en los lugares del mundo que están prohibidos a los niños, los campus universitarios y los barrios financieros de Estados Unidos.

Hallgrímur Helgason (trad. de Enrique Bernárdez)
La mujer a 1000º (Lumen, 2013)