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As well as his ground-breaking work in the field of molecular biology with Jacques Monod, François Jacob was a gifted and influential writer on science. His extraordinary capacity to make imaginative connections and to coin compelling metaphors informed both his work as a scientist and his writing on science. This article looks at the development of Jacob's distinctive constructivist conceptualization of science over the course of his career. Although Jacob was initially attracted to the metaphor of genetic material as a computer programme, he ultimately moved away from the mechanistic model of reproduction and evolution favoured by Monod. In a short paper published in the journal Science in 1977, he used the metaphor of bricolage as a way of conveying that biology evolution is a process of ‘tinkering’ with pre-existing materials rather than an elegant process of design. This conceptualization of the evolutionary process of building the new from the old has been highly influential in thinking on biology. In a more general sense, the concept of bricolage has a central role in Jacob's work, bringing together his thinking on evolution and science in general. The centrality of bricolage for Jacob positions him philosophically in many ways in the opposing camp to the Cartesian tradition, which was at the core of Monod's vision of science in the world.

This article considers Alain Ehrenberg's extensive analysis of individualism in contemporary France. It shows how he has traced the emergence of autonomy as a key social value, and it goes on to analyse the distinctive features of Ehrenberg's sociological approach. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Ehrenberg does not regard the growth of individualism in France as a tragic process of anomie and isolation. In fact, he is critical of what he sees as a pervasive French discourse of ‘declinology’, and he has expressed his growing frustration with this perspective more recently in explicitly political terms. Although he acknowledges that autonomy can be burdensome for individuals, he feels that the state should respond to the sociological fact of autonomy by supporting and empowering citizens as autonomous agents. The article concludes by drawing attention to the limitations of this political position.

Aim To provide dynamic guidance from a rigorous and up-to-date consensus on the safe implementation and application of transanal total mesorectal excision (TaTME) from an international panel of expert surgeons and educationalists supported by 14 international surgical societies. Method An adapted Delphi method and focus group discussion approach was implemented for this consensus process, with expert advice from a guidelines methodologist. Statements were generated focusing on three main topics relating to the safe implementation of TaTME: (1) indications, (2) quality and outcome measures, (3) training and implementation of TaTME. Results Five rounds of the Delphi consensus process were completed over a 13-month period. A total of 56 surgeons experienced in TaTME and surgical education participated in this project. By Delphi round four, 80.0% or greater agreement was reached for all statements except for two, which were further reviewed during a fifth round. More complex cases that are likely to benefit from TaTME were identified, with the recommendation that they should be referred to TaTME expert centres. The most agreed upon definition of expert centres is outlined. Conclusion We have provided a current framework of best practice related to implementation of TaTME. The statements are not indefinite and will continue to be 'dynamic' and updated as new evidence emerges.

This article considers the important contribution made by Edgar Morin and Henri Atlan – both members of the Groupe des Dix – to the theorisation of life and information. They have both played a major role in challenging the dominant determinist, mechanistic paradigm of molecular biology that emerged in the 1960s, and which has continued to influence thinking on biology up to the present day. The article will show how they explored key concepts, such as the principle of order from noise, in order to reorient thinking on life and information in terms of a new paradigm of complexity that stood as a radical challenge to the determinist paradigm. A key insight in this respect was the relationship between life, information and meaning.

This article provides an overview of the psychodynamic analysis of work associated primarily with Christophe Dejours. It explores briefly the roots of psychodynamics in the psychopathology of work that emerged as a field in France in the 1950s. It then goes on to look at the ways in which psychodynamics has proposed a critical framework for analysing the damaging consequences of isolation, atomisation and the erosion of collective solidarity in the neoliberal era. One of the central premises of psychodynamics is the idea that ‘real’ work often remains invisible. Work is, in this sense, enigmatic, since the investments made by individuals in their work may be expressed in drives and forms of sublimation of which they are not consciously aware. Psychodynamics has been criticised for being complicit with managerial agendas that seek to promote wellbeing with the ulterior motive of depoliticising the workplace. However, psychodynamics is not a ‘victimology’, and Dejours has raised important questions about work as both a subjective experience and as the main socialising force in contemporary society.

This article looks at three recent French novels in order to explore key themes in what has become known as the roman d’entreprise: Pierre Mari’s Résolution (2005), Nathalie Kuperman’s Nous étions des êtres vivants (2010) and Thierry Beinstingel’s Retour aux mots sauvages (2010). The figure of the entreprise functions both as a fictional representation of the post-Fordist workplace environment in companies such as France Télécom, and also as a means of tackling wider issues of work and social organisation in an era of neoliberal managerialism. The concepts of capitalist realism, organisational miasma and virtuality are used to analyse the ways in which the three novels convey the distinctive affective landscape of the contemporary entreprise. Fiction is used to consider the prolix and self-referential nature of the managerialist entreprise, which enables it to exert a significant influence on the individual and collective subjectivities of employees. The three novels focus on the capacity of the entreprise to capture language and impose an affect of silence on employees.

This chapter examines two recent French-language films that deal with the world of work: Deux jours, une nuit (2014) directed by the Dardenne brothers, and La loi du marche (2015) directed by Stephane Brize. By concentrating on the individualising dynamics of the contemporary workplace, the films depict what might be described as the tactical withdrawal of government and capital. In the context of this withdrawal, the symbolic order collapses and the panoptical gaze of the disciplinary regime has been supplemented by the lure of identification, encouraging individuals to scrutinise themselves and each other for signs of weakness, incompetency or inadequacy. As the chapter shows, one common tendency in workplaces where jobs are under threat is for employees to construct a fantasy of management as an all-powerful, capricious agency that must be appeased at all costs. Read in this way, Deux jours, une nuit and La loi du marche go beyond the realm of personal drama to show how workers are exposed to what Slavoj Žižek identifies as the ‘systemic violence’ of contemporary capitalism. Although capital as an organising and controlling force has a less tangible presence within these filmic landscapes than it would have had in the Fordist era, it still exerts control as a reference to spectral, global economic forces, mediated in the workplace by bland managerial newspeak and an overbearing surveillance infrastructure.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the disease free survival (DFS) and recurrence after the treatment of patients with rectal cancer with open (OPEN) or laparoscopic (LAP) resection. BACKGROUND: This randomized clinical trial (ACOSOG (Alliance) Z6051), performed between 2008–2013, compared LAP and OPEN resection of Stage II/III rectal cancer, within 12 cm of the anal verge (T1–3, N0–2, M0) in patients who received neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy. The rectum and mesorectum were resected using open instruments for rectal dissection (included hybrid hand-assisted laparoscopic) or with laparoscopic instruments under pneumoperitoneum. The 2 year DFS and recurrence were secondary endpoints of Z6051. METHODS: The DFS and recurrence were not powered and are being assessed for superiority. Recurrence was determined at 3, 6, 9, 12 and every 6 months thereafter using carcinoembryonic antigen, physical exam, computed tomography and colonoscopy. 486 patients were randomized to LAP (243) or OPEN (243), with 462 eligible for analysis (LAP=240 and OPEN=222). Median follow up is 47.9 months. RESULTS: 2 year DFS was LAP 79.5% (95%CI, 74.4–84.9) and OPEN 83.2% (95% CI, 78.3–88.3). Local and regional recurrence was 4.6% LAP and 4.5% OPEN. Distant recurrence was 14.6% LAP and 16.7% OPEN. DFS was impacted by unsuccessful resection (HR 1.87, 95% CI, 1.21–2.91): (composite of incomplete specimen (HR 1.65, 95% CI, 0.85–3.18); positive circumferential resection margins (HR 2.31, 95% CI, 1.40–3.79); positive distal margin (HR 2.53, 95% CI, 1.30–3.77). CONCLUSION: Laparoscopic assisted resection of rectal cancer was not found to be significantly different to OPEN resection of rectal cancer based on the outcomes of DFS and recurrence. MINI-ABSTRACT: Reporting of the secondary endpoint of the disease free survival of a multi-center non-inferiority randomized clinical trial (ACOSOG (Alliance) Z6051) performed between 2008–2013 comparing LAP and OPEN low anterior and abdominoperineal radical resection for Stage II/III rectal cancer. Disease free survival two years after resection was found to be similar for patients treated with laparoscopic or open techniques for proctectomy.