Jean-Claude Vuillemin

The recipient in March 2011 of the prestigious PSU Class of 1933 Award for Distinction in the Humanities, JC Vuillemin pursues research in 17th-Century French Literature and Philosophy; Post-structuralism and Reception theories; Baroque Episteme; Semiotics of Drama; Theater and Performance Theories; Continental Philosophy and Contemporary French Literature.

Inspired by the Foucaldian notion of épistémè, and by the "linguistic turn" combined to the "actor paradigm," JC Vuillemin has continually challenged the ideological perception of a "classical" France and advocated the pertinence of the Baroque as a pertinent concept to be applied not only to architecture and visual arts, but also to literature and philosophy.

Although it may be argued that a major methodological interest of the Baroque hypothesis lies in its very imprecision, his book, Épistémè baroque: le mot et la chose (Hermann, 2013) provides a new theory for a concept which JC Vuillemin associates with the epistemological breakdown Europe experienced in the wake of the emergence of Modern science.

As a conceptual framework in which poetics, politics, and epistemology interact, his conception of the Baroque is much less aesthetic than purposefully philosophical.

Vuillemin collaborated as well to the first Dictionary of Seventeenth-Century French Philosophers (Thoemmes Press / CNRS; trans.