By tracing the genealogy of Lawrence Ferlinghetti's outlandish notion of the fourth person singular and its appropriation in The Logic of Sense, several keys concepts in Deleuze's thought such as the nonpersonal and pre-individual subjectivity can be rendered clearer to the understanding. While there is poetic licence in the use of the term by Ferlinghetti, the fourth person singular is heuristic for exploring the notion of free indirect speech and, more speculatively, the ideas of impersonal death and suicide. The fourth (...) person singular is thus a trope that sheds light on the ideas of humour, irony, lightness and becoming ‘without a verb’ in Deleuze's thought. Under close scrutiny is what Ferlinghetti designates as the ‘cool’ eyes of the fourth person singular. We shall work to differentiate these from so-called mad, Dada-esque ‘unblinking’ eyes. We shall ask how the poet in ‘obscenely seeing’ the impossible possibility of life can envision – perspicaciously – the immanent sense of death-in-life. From what standpoint does the poet gain access to the real? To consider this fully it is necessary to follow the Deleuzian interpretation of singularities as true transcendental events so as to clarify what gives life a ‘non-personal power, above individuals’. (shrink)

Analyses of embodied interaction still appear to explicitly or implicitly defend a human-centered approach to language and body in the material world. In this article, we propose to decenter our analytical position by acknowledging what artifacts, tools and architectural elements contribute to human activities and practices. Starting from a ‘ventriloqual’ perspective on communication, we demonstrate that the accountable character of people’s activities presupposes a form of material agency that tends to be neglected in our analyses. Far from neglecting human beings’ (...) contributions to their own activities, we show that this approach allows us to acknowledge their capacity to skillfully react and respond to what things indicate, say, or tell them to do. It is, we contend, in this back-and-forth process of actions and reactions that a certain dialogicity of things can be recognized. Decentering the analytical position by focusing on how things traceably contribute to shaping human interactions has, we contend, dramatic theoretical and methodological consequences. In the discussion we argue that resistance in taking a ventriloqual perspective to analyze the social life of things partially depends on its impact on the sensitive notion of responsibility. (shrink)

Worldwide, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced people to adapt quickly, and to reexamine interactions and responsibilities toward communities in creative ways. This paper presents a qualitative media analysis of 50 online news articles published between March 17th and August 6th, 2020 using the key-words “creativity” and “COVID-19.” Informed by a definition of creativity as actions that are considered both “new” and “appropriate”, articles describing a “creative action” were kept for analysis. These articles highlight creative responses to the COVID-19 quarantine in (...) various domains including architecture, fashion, and faith. In this paper, we discuss the themes derived during this analysis- “renewal and continuity” and “the multidimensionality of creativity” which elaborate and contextualize a perspective of socio-cultural creativity theory and propose two implications of this study. The first implication posits that creativity was an observable, cultural response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The second implication offers a broader concept of how cultural resources function as dynamic constraints or “affordances” within the Five A’s model of creativity. Discussion of further research through the lens of socio-cultural creativity is discussed. (shrink)

Women have been marginalized in different contexts and situations. Religion, and to be more specific Catholicism, is a tradition that has divided men and women but more importantly women themselves as they represent the dichotomy of good and evil. Michèle Roberts's heroines are inspired through biblical characters who will replace the binary system of being for dualities and pluralities in the same woman as part of their identities. This paper considers the feminist procedure of Adrienne Rich's re-visioning, re-imagining and re-writing, (...) Julia Kristeva's notion of abjection plus a touch of Bakhtinian `open bodies' in the light of Catholic myths. The conclusion of this essay aims to present and celebrate Roberts's heroines in relation to their sexuality and religion. (shrink)

The present paper aims to shed light on some post-oedipal moments of the Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalysis. Going beyond the stereotypical opposition between the oedipal psychoanalysis and the anti-oedipal schizoanalysis, it endeavors to reinvestigate the semiotic nature of theknotenpunktand thesinthomeby applying some Deleuzian and Bakhtinian concepts. Thus, theknotenpunktis described as a grotesque knot bringing together some heterogeneous elements. The involved disparate components establish a rhizomatic multiplicity irreducible to a common determiner. As far as thesinthomeis concerned, it is also illustrated as a grotesque (...) knot quilting the disseminated heterogeneous orders. In contrast to the dominant conception of the symptom with a complex mode of signifying (that is mainly bound to the oedipal topography), theknotenpunktand thesinthomehold a kind of hyper-formative mode of signifying. As a result, the latter may be regarded as pure formators irreducible to a meaning or a certain interpretation. Finally, the paper sets out to analyze and evaluate the relationship between thesinthomeand the foreclosure from a semiotic perspective. Accordingly, thesinthomeis explained as a reply to foreclosure which is specifically a perceptive-imperative (retroactive) contemplation (in the light of law according to the Peircean phaneroscopy) on the rhizomatic multiplicity of psychosis (the case of schizophrenia). (shrink)

RACINE L and PERRON A. Nursing Inquiry 2012; 19: 190–201 Unmasking the predicament of cultural voyeurism: a postcolonial analysis of international nursing placementsThe growing interest in international nursing placements cannot be left unnoticed. After 11 years into this twenty‐first century, violations of human rights and freedom of speech, environmental disasters, and armed conflicts still create dire living conditions for men and women around the world. Nurses have an ethical duty to address issues of social justice and global health as a (...) means to fulfil nursing’s social mandate. However, international placements raise some concerns. Drawing on the works of postcolonial theorists in nursing and social sciences, we examine the risk of replicating colonialist practices and discourses of health in international clinical placements. Referring to Bakhtin’s notions of dialogism and unfinalizability, we envision a culturally safe nursing practice arising from dialogical encounters between the Self as an Other and with the Other as an Other. We suggest that exploring the intricacies of cultural and race relations in everyday nursing practice are the premises upon which nurses can understand the broader historic, racial, gendered, political and economic contexts of global health issues. Finally, we make suggestions for developing culturally safe learning opportunities at the international level without minimizing the impact of dialogical cultural encounters occurring at the local and community levels. (shrink)

In this paper I want to analyse the meaning of education for democracy and thinking as this is generally understood by Philosophy for Children. Although we may be inclined to applaud Philosophy for Children's emphasis on children, critical thinking, autonomy and dialogue, there is reason for scepticism too. Since we are expected as a matter of course to subscribe to the basic assumptions of Philosophy for Children, we seem to become tied, as it were, to the whole package, without reservation. (...) Following ideas of Hannah Arendt, I draw attention to the instrumentalised nature of Philosophy for Children and the loss of originality that this instrumentalisation means. This does not mean that I wish to abandon Philosophy for Children. The point is rather that I want to examine whether or not another kind of philosophy for children is possible. (shrink)

The current study examines the micro-linguistic details of Twitter responses to the whistleblower-initiated publication of the Panama Papers. The leaked documents contained the micro-details of tax avoidance, tax evasion, and wealth accumulation schemes used by business elites, politicians, and government bureaucrats. The public release of the documents on April 4, 2016 resulted in a groundswell of Twitter and other social media activity throughout the world, including 161,036 Spanish-language tweets in the subsequent 5-month period. The findings illustrate that the responses were (...) polyvocal, consisting a collection of overlapping speech genres with varied thematic topics and linguistic styles, as well as differing degrees of calls for action and varying amounts of illocutionary force. The analysis also illustrates that, while the illocutionary force of tweets is somewhat associated with the adoption of a prosaic and vernacular ethical stance as well as with demands for action, these types of voicing behaviors were not present in the majority of the tweets. These results suggest that, while social media platforms are a popular site for collective forms of voicing activities, it is less certain that these collective stakeholder voices necessarily result in forceful accountability demands that spill out of the communication medium and thus serve as an impulse for positive social change. (shrink)