Marc Froment-Meurice
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Marc Froment-Meurice (born 30 October 1953 in Tokyo, died 25 June 2019 in Penguily) is a French and American writer and philosopher.
Born in Tokyo on 30 October 1953 to a French diplomat father and a mother Pupille de la Nation who met while both graduating from the École Nationale d’Administration (ENA).
Much of Froment-Meurice's youth and education occurred abroad, such as the USSR and Egypt.
In 1965, he moved with his family from Cairo back to Paris, France, where he attended Lycée Pasteur. Then in 1967–68, he studied at Lycée Louis-le-Grand. In May 1968, he participated in anarchist activism. In 1970 he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy.
From 1971 to 1974 Froment-Meurice travelled frequently in Greece, while studying Heidegger's philosophy with Professors François Fédier and Jean Beaufret. In 1975 got a Master in philosophy at University of Paris X Nanterre, with his work on Descartes and Rimbaud.
In 1975 he traveled alone from Paris to Bali, at first by train (Orient Express, from Venezia to Istanbul), and then by bus (some kind of Greyhound, from Istanbul to Erzurum, Teheran, Kandahar, and Kabul). In Sumatra he contracted malaria and nearly died in the jungle. He reached Bali for the native music but came back by plane to Zurich.
Career
In 1976 he worked briefly in the cinema industry. From 1977 to 1979 he worked as a teacher for the Education Nationale. While teaching, he went back to University to defend a "Doctorat de 3ème cycle", the equivalent of a Ph.D. from University of Paris-X Nanterre in philosophy (aesthetics), under the direction of Professor Daniel Charles (Paris VIII-Vincennes). The defense took place at Nanterre in the presence of John Cage as a member of the jury on 24 October 1979. The title of this dissertation is "La Pensée de John Cage". It was published in 1982 with the French title: Les Intermittences de la Raison - Penser Cage, Entendre Heidegger (Klincksieck, series directed by Mikel Dufrenne).
From 1980 to 1989 he lived in Paris, and worked mainly at Gallimard as an editor and reader. From 1980 to 1983 he also worked at the Centre de la Cinématographie (CNC), and at the Institut national de l'audiovisuel (INA) at the National Radiodiffusion (service of archives).
In 1987, as he published his first Literature book, La Disparue, he went back to the university to work on a second Ph.D. (this time, a "doctorat d'État") at the University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis. The dissertation directed by Professor Dominique Janicaud was defended in Nice on 11 November 1992. The title is "Poétique de Heidegger" and has been partially published as his first book in English as That Is To Say - Heidegger's Poetics by University of Stanford Press in 1998.
In 1989 he moved to Seattle where he taught for 2 years as a lecturer at the University of Washington, in the Department of Romance Languages.
In 1992 he taught at the Université de Montréal in the Comparative Literature Program and then at the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris.
In 1993, as his mother died on January 1, he moved to Irvine, CA, where he taught at UC Irvine as a lecturer in the French and Italian Department. Followed Jacques Derrida seminar whom he had met in the College International de Philosophie in 1989 (see Derrida, "Heidegger and the Question").
With a post-doctorate fellowship granted by the Centre National du Livre, on "Difference in Heidegger and Derrida", he lived in Billancourt, following Derrida's seminars at the HESS.
In 1995 he moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where he taught philosophy in the department of Philosophy and Religion at LSU.
In 1996 he moved to Nashville, Tennessee. From 1996 to 2016, he was a tenured full Professor at Vanderbilt University in the Department of French and Italian, where he was Director of the Bandy Center for Baudelaire Studies and chair of the department.
In 2006 he became a US citizen.
He retired at the end of 2016 and now lives in Brittany (Bretagne, France).
