La transplantation cardiaque : performance technique ou aventure métaphysique ? Réflexions à partir d’une lecture de L’Intrus de Jean-Luc Nancy

Abstract

The philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy underwent a heart transplant in 1992. Eight years later, he wrote L'Intrus (The Intruder), which attempts to reconstruct the mental chaos he experienced after the operation, describing how all the certainties about the identity of the subject and the relationship with the body were shattered. This article offers a few thoughts to further explore Nancy's ideas as expressed in this text. Even if it is widely accepted that a transplant cannot be reduced to replacing a failing organ with a healthy one, it is useful to understand how such a 'repair' may be experienced, and how it questions one's relationship with oneself and one's own body. Therefore, we need a phenomenology of the body. By drawing on analyses developed by Sartre and others, the move from the body-object to the body-subject could be clarified.