The Skin Remembers Capital: Piramal Pharma, Dermatological Capitalism, and the Pharmakon of Neoliberal Care

Posted on 29th October, 2025 (GMT 03:49 hrs)

Editor’s Note:
This essay continues our investigation into the moral and epistemic architecture of India’s pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries, following earlier reports on Piramal Pharma’s Lacto Calamine and Tetmosol. Here, the inquiry shifts from reportage to philosophy — exploring what it means for care itself to become a site of harm.

ABSTRACT

This essay interlaces embodied testimony, regulatory critique, and philosophical reflection to examine the moral and epistemological crises surrounding Piramal Pharma’s Lacto Calamine and Tetmosol. Framed as a confession of corporeal and existential disillusionment, it argues that these consumer products—marketed as instruments of care—operate as pharmakon in Derrida’s sense: both remedy and poison, soothing and subjugating. Drawing on psychodermatology, Foucault’s biopolitics, Derrida’s deconstruction, Nancy’s ontology of exposure, Levinas’s ethics of touch, and Kleinman’s illness narratives, the essay situates dermatological suffering as both symptom and allegory of late-capitalist pathology. Through this fusion of narrative and critique, it proposes the concept of dermatological capitalism—a regime that commodifies distress, aestheticizes anxiety, and monetizes the epidermis as both site and symbol of neoliberal discipline. Engaging theoretical lenses such as moral contagion, the theology of touch, and economic penance, it exposes how regulatory loopholes, celebrity endorsements, and psychosomatic commodification sustain a moral economy of the skin. Ultimately, it reclaims the epidermis as a moral archive of neoliberal harm, urging re-sensitization of ethics, regulation, and embodied care in an age where wellness itself has been corporatized. This essay forms the third part of an ongoing inquiry into the ethics of exposure within India’s pharmaceutical-industrial landscape.

Keywords: pharmakon, dermatological capitalism, Piramal Pharma, biopolitics, affective labor, necropolitics, environmental justice.

For those whose bodies bear the memory of exposure…

In Continuation With

Epigraph

Derrida described the pharmakon as never solely a remedy or a poison; it is always both, intricately bound in its own ambiguity. It resists simple binaries, revealing that every act of care—medical, cosmetic, or socio-economic—carries both relief and risk. The pharmakon thus functions as a moral and semiotic site: it soothes while it subjugates, heals while it controls, exposing the entanglement of efficacy, ideology, and ethical responsibility in every encounter with the corporeal.

Thus we begin amid the ambiguities of the “in-between,” navigating the uncontradictory contradictions inherent in neoliberal capitalism—its surfaces glossy, its ethics raw.

1. Skin as Ledger

The body in late capitalism is not merely flesh; it is a ledger, a record of transactions inscribed on the epidermis, each mark a signature of systemic extraction. Piramal Pharma’s acquisition of DHFL exemplifies this economy of skin and finance: assets worth 45,000 crores were shuffled under judicial scrutiny, yet the public body—metaphorical and literal—remained exposed to violation and erosion. Stress, precarity, and ethical ambivalence manifest in dermatological eruptions: eczema, urticaria, psoriasis. Each lesion resonates with the financial and moral lesions inflicted upon the citizen-subject (Gupta & Gupta, 2013).

The skin functions as a semiotic surface, recording injustice. Kleinman (1988) reminds us that the body is a medium of moral experience; it is simultaneously witness and participant. Scratching becomes a gesture of testimony, each action enmeshed in what Žižek (2008) frames as the “ideology of the body”: economic malfeasance enters the bloodstream, producing corporealized anxiety. The subject is both debtor and victim, caught in a psychosomatic cycle of exposure, consumption, and moral ambivalence.

As Byung-Chul Han (2015) observes, neoliberal life manifests as burnout—a pathology of overexposure and transparency. The skin, perpetually visible and disciplined, mirrors this exhaustion. In this sense, the epidermis is more than a boundary—it is a ledger of ethical and economic debts, a membrane where personal distress intersects with public malfeasance. The itch is both symptom and annotation, marking the body as an ethical document of late-capitalist violence.

2. Psychodermatology: The Itching Soul

Psychodermatology demonstrates that mind, body, and environment are inseparable. Stress triggers dermatological reactions; trauma becomes etched into skin. Embryologically, skin and brain share origins (ectoderm), producing a porous interface where social, political, and economic forces imprint themselves (Gupta & Gupta, 2013).

Psychophysiologic disorders reveal this entanglement. Primary psychiatric disorders involve self-inflicted harm; secondary disorders emerge when chronic skin conditions induce anxiety, depression, or compulsive behaviors. The late-capitalist subject inhabits all three domains simultaneously. The epidermis becomes both symptom and sign, intimate yet public.

Lacto Calamine and Tetmosol exemplify Derrida’s pharmakon: simultaneously remedial and controlling, they mediate between subjectivity and ideology. Each application is a ritualized reaffirmation of market authority. Relief is never neutral—it is always entwined with complicity. Here, the itch is epistemological: dermatological crisis cannot be separated from the moral economy of consumption.

3. Piramal’s Pharmakon: Between Cure and Commerce

Lacto Calamine, composed of kaolin, zinc oxide, glycerin, aloe vera, parabens, and witch hazel, is a liminal object. Individually, these ingredients are innocuous; collectively, they perform an unregulated pharmaco-political function. Advertising—promises of “oil control” and “pimple-free glow”—signals therapeutic efficacy without the obligations of formal drug testing under the Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act, 1954.

Tetmosol, marketed as scabies soap, functions as moral detergent: it purifies surfaces while leaving systemic inequities intact. Bataille (1985) theorized that excess is socially contagious and ethically destabilizing; the consumer internalizes both product and ideology. Touch, in this framework, becomes an ethical vector: skin receives care and corruption alike.

This dynamic unfolds within what Mbembe (2019) terms the necropolitical order, where some bodies are protected while others are exposed to slow forms of toxicity and neglect. The regulatory ambiguity around these products highlights the pharmakon’s double bind. Consumers participate in rituals of cleansing and care, yet the system consolidates corporate power while sustaining public vulnerability.

4. Moral Contagion and the Theology of Touch

Douglas (1966) and Agamben (1998) emphasize that contamination is simultaneously physical and moral. Cosmetic contact enacts a theology of contagion: purity is promised, impurity persists. Touch is ritualized: Tetmosol washes, Lacto Calamine smooths, yet these acts normalize complicity in systemic exploitation.

Levinas (1969) foregrounds ethical encounter in the tactile face-to-face; Nancy (2008) describes the body as “exposed being.” The consumer’s skin is implicated: it negotiates between relief and submission, cleanliness and ethical compromise. Epidermis functions not only as biological barrier but as moral membrane, absorbing ethical as well as chemical stimuli.

Recent influencer campaigns in India (2024–2025) applied Lacto Calamine or Tetmosol, emphasizing care while erasing labor and regulatory precarity. The skin mediates ethical and aesthetic economies, negotiating between the promise of relief and the reality of systemic harm.

5. Economic Penance and the Aesthetics of Redemption

DHFL’s financial collapse functions as economic penance. Anxiety manifests somatically—scratching, eczema, insomnia—performative and corporeal. Purchasing Lacto Calamine becomes quasi-sacramental: it soothes while reaffirming allegiance to the market. Benjamin (1968) and Taussig (1980) note that commodities mediate moral and magical economies; efficacy resides less in chemistry than in performativity.

Berardi (2015) situates this in affective economies: anxiety commodified, stress monetized, the self disciplined through consumption. Repetitive application transforms ethical and financial suffering into market participation. Capitalism is experienced as dermatological pathology: skin as site of both suffering and complicity.

6. Regulatory Commensurability and the Magic Drug Law

The Drugs and Magic Remedies Act (1954) prohibits unverified therapeutic claims. Piramal Pharma circumvents this through semi-medical language: “oil balance,” “pimple control,” “rash soothing.” Controlled ambiguity transforms regulatory safeguards into theatrical legality (Foucault, 1973).

Furthermore, India’s 2024 draft cosmetics regulations under CDSCO blurred distinctions between therapeutic and cosmetic categories, echoing what Stengers (2018) critiques as “fast science”—regulation captured by corporate tempo.

Parameter	Pharmaceutical Drug	Cosmetic (e.g., Lacto Calamine)
Governing Body	CDSCO	State Drug Licensing Authority
Required Data	Clinical trials, efficacy, toxicity	None (safety declaration only)
Advertising Restrictions	Prohibited under Magic Remedies Act	Permitted under consumer law
Labeling	Therapeutic claims only if verified	May use “beautifying” or “protective” claims
Pharmacovigilance Obligation	Mandatory	Voluntary / None
Retail Access	Prescription or OTC	OTC / Cosmetic counters

Such legislative latency reveals that the politics of skin is inseparable from the politics of evidence.

Regulatory capture is implicit: corporations leverage celebrity endorsements and lobbying to navigate loopholes, framing compliance as ethical while consolidating market control.

7. Capitalism as a Psychosomatic Disorder

Chronic stress, financial precarity, and economic uncertainty produce cyclical eruptions—both corporeal and financial. The neuro-immuno-cutaneous-endocrine system mirrors market volatility (Gupta & Gupta, 2013). Žižek (2008) frames this as the “itch of ideology”: compulsive consumption of one’s own relief. Lacto Calamine and Tetmosol translate suffering into participation, converting corporeal anxiety into loyalty.

Sara Ahmed (2010) and Lauren Berlant (2011) show how affective economies sustain structural harm: desire for relief perpetuates the very conditions that produce suffering. Each dermatological flare is a ritual of faith; the epidermis becomes both site and symbol of ideological inscription.

The skin does not lie. It merely records what power wishes to forget.

8. Anthropogenic Skin: Climate, Capital, and Care

The pharmakon’s reach does not end at the cosmetic counter—it proliferates across the pharmaceutical-industrial complex itself. Dermatological capitalism thus converges with pharmaco-capitalism, wherein care and contamination are two faces of the same system. Under semiocapitalism, affective labor extends even to the epidermis: every act of self-soothing reproduces the moral economy of neoliberal control. The skin becomes both product and producer—its calmness an index of psychic compliance. Yet beneath this aesthetic surface lies another skin: the earth’s, inflamed by chemical effluents and pharmaceutical waste. Sites such as Digwal in Telangana, where Piramal Pharma’s decades-long operations have generated chronic dermatological and respiratory ailments, materialize this necropolitical exposure. The human and the planetary epidermis thus suffer together, each bearing witness to the same economy of harm.

Skin mediates environmental exposure. Urban pollution, chemical contamination, and anthropogenic climate change exacerbate vulnerability. Capitalist extraction and neoliberal governance intensify exposure while promising remediation through commodified care.

Microplastics, parabens, and endocrine disruptors are more than chemical irritants—they index environmental and systemic violence (Haraway, 2016; Ghosh, 2016; Nixon, 2011). Epidermis archives ecological injustice, converting planetary grief into corporeal irritation. Lacto Calamine and Tetmosol, promising calm and cleanliness, operate within this broader nexus: the pharmakon is ecological as well as moral and economic.

Chakrabarty’s (2009) notion of the Anthropocene as historical rupture underscores this: the skin becomes the first frontier where planetary crisis meets capitalist care.

9. Tetmosol as Metaphor: Cleansing the Stain

Tetmosol is both antiparasitic soap and metaphorical cleanser of conscience. It allows the user to feel clean while systemic sources of contamination persist. Derrida’s pharmakon functions simultaneously on chemical, moral, and symbolic registers.

The ritual of lathering obscures structural violence while marking the skin as canvas and ledger. Ethical cleanliness is performative, providing immediate reassurance while masking systemic harm. Greenwashing, celebrity campaigns, and CSR rhetoric amplify this paradox.

10. Toward a Philosophy of the Itch

The itch is ethical, semiotic, and political. Beneath each flare lies the friction between care and control, healing and hegemony. Scratching exposes; soothing submits. Lacto Calamine and Tetmosol promise calm yet deliver complicity: each application is a liturgy of faith in market benevolence.

Philosophy must descend to the surface of the skin, where ontology and ethics converge. The pharmakon—chemical, moral, ecological—demands confrontation, not resolution. The itch persists: the body’s ledger of unredeemed debts, the moral remainder of what the market cannot cleanse.
To scratch is to remember; to soothe is to forget.

Postscript: Toward a Dermatological Ethics

If dermatological capitalism reveals the skin as both symptom and scripture, then ethics must begin at the surface. Han’s exhaustion, Mbembe’s exposure, and Stengers’s call for slow science converge here: the need for opacity, vulnerability, and regulatory patience. Care must be reimagined beyond profit, beyond visibility, toward a sensuous ethics that touches without subjugating. In reclaiming the epidermis as moral archive, we restore to care its most radical potential—the possibility of touch as resistance.

Closing Reflection

The pharmakon reminds us that care is never neutral. Consumers, regulators, and corporations alike are implicated in dermatological capitalism. Recognizing the pharmakon is a first step toward ethical vigilance: toward products, laws, and practices that soothe without exploiting, clean without concealing, and touch without subjugating. The itch becomes a call to action—a corporeal prompt to rethink ethics, regulation, and embodied care in India and beyond.

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