Rakini Devi: Diasporic Subject and Agent Provocateur

Is sialylation of IgA the agent provocateur of IgA nephropathy?

Lectures Insidious Dopamine: Provocateur or Protective Agent in Parkinson’s Disease?

As the most efficacious drug for treating Parkinson’s disease, levodopa (L-DOPA), is oft viewed as a generator of reactive oxygen species (ROS), there is a question as to whether L-DOPA might accelerate progression of Parkinson’s disease. In this context we first review the potential of both L-DOPA and dopamine (DA) to generate ROS (including catecholquinones) in the presence of iron and melani...

Adherent-invasive E. coli in Crohn disease: bacterial "agent provocateur".

The role of adherent-invasive E. coli (AIEC) in Crohn disease (CD) has been in debate for decades. AIEC bacteria are found in the small intestine of patients with chronic CD, but it has remained unclear whether this infection is causal or secondary to underlying immune deficiencies in CD patients. In this issue of the JCI, Chassaing and colleagues demonstrate that AIEC bacteria express an adher...

Agent, Person, Subject, Self

Building on ideas developed in ‘The semiotic stance’ (2005), this essay outlines a social and semiotic theory of four seemingly human-specific and individual-centric capacities that, while essential for understanding modern social processes, are often confused and conflated. Loosely speaking, agency is a causal capacity: say, the relatively flexible wielding of means towards ends. Subjectivity ...

Diasporic walking sticks

As John Berger and Jean Mohr pointed out in The Seventh Man [5] an arresting photographic essay of European migrant labour in the 1970s the incapacitated and dying migrant is a murky presence within capitalism’s unconscious. Parodying the mounting tension between the global demand for healthy aspirational migrant workers and the responsibility for their long term well-being and care, Berger wro...