While the groundbreaking insights that contemporary theorists have formulated with regards to space---as a multiplicity without essence, as an active event, and as inseparable from subjectivity, power, Otherness and time---have ostensibly purged it of its traditional understanding as absolute, a specific visuality characteristic of Cartesian perspectivalism remains privileged in its theorization which force it to remain so. While the complexity of space cannot be recovered from an abstract contemplation of its visual geometry in a way that reflects these contemporary concerns, (...) there have unfortunately been relatively few attempts to imagine space away from the visual in a way that challenges its traditional absoluteness. To this end, it is argued that because sound and music contain implicit and explicit spatialities, the sonic represents a rich and unexplored area from which to imagine a radical non-visual space that discursively organizes space according to a different economy through which to challenge its assumed visuality. And yet, even when space has been approached through sound, there is a tendency to exteriorize sound into an object or a set of practices that robs it of its defining quality---its own "soundfulness". By breaking down those factors that are considered salient to how space is conceived today along sonic rather than visual lines, the argument is made that the "soundfulness" of sound's physical properties gives it a complex texture of excess that is corporealized within the body and forwards the philosophical possibility of unfolding the spatiality of sound according to vectors beyond the visible in a way that, while reflecting contemporary concerns, prevents its return to absoluteness. To take seriously this "soundfulness" thus allows us to recuperate the sonic as a philosophical and political way of experiencing and knowing the world, including that of space. The arguments, as well as being drawn from the insights of contemporary spatial theory, the physics of sound, the phenomenology of listening, rhizomatic and feminist theory, quantum mechanics and musicology, will be explained through an understanding of space as sound and exemplified in The Disintegration Loops, a post-minimalist musical piece by sonic artist William Basinski. (shrink)

Ordinary discourse is filled with discussions about ‘sexual orientation’. This discourse might suggest a common understanding of what sexual orientation is. But even a cursory search turns up vastly differing, conflicting, and sometimes ethically troubling characterizations of sexual orientation. The conceptual jumble surrounding sexual orientation suggests that the topic is overripe for philosophical exploration. This paper lays the groundwork for such an exploration. In it, I offer an account of sexual orientation – called ‘Bidimensional Dispositionalism’ – according to which sexual (...) orientation concerns what sex[es] and gender[s] of persons one is disposed to sexually engage, and makes no reference to one’s own sex and gender. (shrink)

This thesis examines some of the contested meanings of what it is to be a self, person and individual. The law of obligations sets the context for this examination. One of the important aspects of contemporary feminist philosophy has been its move beyond highlighting inconsistencies in political and legal theory, in which theoretical frameworks can be shown to rely upon an ambiguous treatment of women. The feminist theorists whose work is considered use these theoretical weaknesses as a point of departure (...) to propose different conceptual frameworks. I start by analysing contemporary work on the self from within both philosophy of science and feminist metaphysics to draw out common approaches from these diverse positions. These themes are then discussed in the context of the law. I then critically examine the concept of legal personhood in the work of Drucilla Cornell and her proposals for the amendment of tort law. This is juxtaposed with an analysis of the practical operation of tort law by adapting François Ewald's work on risk and insurance to English law. I concentrate on women's ambiguous position with regard to both risk and to the image of the individual that is the subject of Ewald's critique. This is followed by an examination of the changing position of women with regard to 'possessive individualism', 'self-ownership' or 'property in the person' in relation to contract law and social contract theory. There are a number of different social contracts discussed in the thesis: Cornell's reworking of John Rawls and the stories of Thomas Hobbes and of Carole Pateman. The final 'social contract' to be discussed is that of 'new contractualism', the employment of contract as a technique of government. I argue that Pateman's critique of possessive individualism continues to be relevant at a time when the breadwinner/housewife model has broken down. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger was not only one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century but also a supporter of and a contributor to one of the most discriminatory ideologies of the recent past. Thus, "the Heidegger's case" gives us philosophers an opportunity to work on discrimination from a philosophical perspective. My aim in this essay is to question the relationship between freedom and discrimination via Heidegger's philosophy. I will show that what bridges the gap between Heidegger's philosophy and a discriminatory (...) ideology such as the National Socialist ideology is Heidegger's conceptualization of freedom with the aid of a monolithic understanding of history--one that refuses to acknowledge the plurality and heterogeneity in the socio-historical existence of human beings. Accordingly, I will claim that the Heideggerian freedom depends on the social, if not literal, murder of the marginalized segments of a given society. However, I will refuse to conclude that Heidegger's philosophy is a Nazi philosophy and that it should never be appropriated as long as we want to purify our thoughts from discriminatory ideas. Rather, I will re-appropriate Heidegger, against Heidegger, to read and interpret Michel Foucault's and Judith Butler's philosophies. My aim here is to construct a social ontology that may justify anti-discriminatory policies. More specifically, through my Heideggerian readings of Foucault and Butler, I will argue that one's freedom is dependent on the cultural resuscitation of socially, and sometimes literally, murdered racial, sexual, ethnic, religious, and sectarian/confessional minorities. (shrink)

In this dissertation I examine ethical issues that concern fertility preservation (FP) technologies for women from a feminist perspective. FP technologies involve the removal, cryopreservation and subsequent storage of reproductive materials for future use. The aim of these technologies is to preserve the option of future genetic reproduction. FP technologies have been developed in the cancer context because infertility is one of the long-term side-effects of many cancers or cancer therapies. Many FP technologies are still experimental, but some technologies are (...) becoming available to healthy women who wish to guard against age-related infertility. Although FP technologies are expanding women’s reproductive options and benefitting some women by satisfying their desires for genetically-related children, these technologies pose numerous physical, emotional and financial risks to women. I maintain that a feminist examination of choice is necessary for the ethical provision of FP technologies within patriarchal contexts. My analysis begins by demarcating two oppressive social biases from one another: namely pronatalism and biologism. I argue that each of these biases can unduly influence women’s reproductive choices about FP technologies. I then consider how these biases might be identified and challenged in the FP decision-making context. I outline an ethical process of informed choice that is equipped to protect patient autonomy when such autonomy is threatened by these biases. I then consider whether the choice to use FP should be available to both women within and without the cancer contexts. I argue that both disease-related FP and age-related FP can be morally permissible. Finally, I consider whether there should be an upper age limit on women’s access to their stored reproductive materials. I argue that age can be morally relevant to reproduction and thus age limits on access to assisted reproduction are morally permissible. I conclude by suggesting how feminist insights might inform policies on FP technologies and related assisted reproductive technologies. In sum, my dissertation shows that a feminist analysis of choices about FP is essential for ensuring the ethical provision of FP technologies. (shrink)

This thesis draws on poststructuralism/postmodernism to present a feminist investigation into the human body, its modes of (self)identification, and its insertion into systems of bioethics. I argue that, contrary to conventional paradigms, the boundaries not only of the subject, but of the body too, cannot be secured. In exploring and contesting the closure and disembodiment of the ethical subject, I propose instead an incalculable, but nonetheless fully embodied, diversity of provisional subject positions. My aim is to valorise women and situate (...) them within a reconceived ethics which takes account of the embodied feminine. My project entails an analysis and deconstruction of the binaries of those dominant strands of postEnlightenment thought that shape epistemology, ontology, and ethics, which in turn set the parameters of modern bioethics. More importantly, it goes on to reclaim a radical sexual difference beyond the binary, in which the female is no longer the other of the male. My enquiry, then, is strongly influenced by the discursive approach offered by both Foucault and Derrida in differential ways, but I counter their indifference to feminist concerns by qualifying their insights in the light of strategies developed by Irigaray and Spivak, among others. The main method of investigation has been through library research of primary and secondary sources in mainstream and feminist philosophy, and in bioethics. In addition, archival work in both textual and iconographic collections was carried out at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine. The contribution made by this thesis is to go beyond modernist feminisms - which would simply revise and add women into existing paradigms - to radically displace and overflow the mechanisms by which women are devalued. And in developing a postmodern critique around some issues in bioethics, I have suggested a new ethics of the body which precedes the operation of moral codes. (shrink)

Dieses Dossier befasst sich mit der Gleichstellung der Geschlechter: Wie muss man sich Gleichberechtigung in der Kindererziehung vorstellen? Können auch Männer Feministen sein? Was ist feministische Philosophie? Welche philoso- phischen Theorien gibt es zu Männern und Frauen?

It is common today to see the world as increasingly unpredictable, and to see that unpredictability as a major source of anxiety. Many of the proposed cures for that anxiety, such as systems like Memex and MyLifeBits, have sought solutions in systems that collect and store a thorough record of events, at a scale from the personal to the global. There the solution to anxiety lies in the ability to play back the record, to turn back the clock and be (...) there then. Both this anxiety and its solution are best seen not simply as remedies for an immediate problem-of terrorism, for example-but rather as evidence of a more deep-seated set of cultural changes, which emerged early in the twentieth century. Paradoxically, the technological solutions offered, whatever the scale, embody the very thing, a lack of a connection to a community, that is both the source of the anxiety and a fundamental impediment to its elimination. (shrink)

This research aims to criticize the role of the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights, that is, the ASEAN’s Human Rights mechanism, in developing protections toward Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression, especially marriage rights, in this region. Since its formal existence in 2009 via ASEAN member’s ratification, this intergovernmental organization hasn’t provided any programs protecting the human rights of ASEAN peoples. However, Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression fares much worse because this issue becomes internalized as the particular state’s (...) responsibility, whenever there is an attempt to raise this issue to the international level, by asserting their right to non-interference from AICHR. The biggest constraint for SOGIE is that the state member’s understanding and perception is severely limited by their inability to link SOGIE issues with human rights. Moreover, SOGIE issues are regularly treated as illegal and/or immoral behaviors in many ASEAN states such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Myanmar. These phenomena illustrate that ASEAN state members are still living in the past by interpreting human rights according to the binary dichotomy of the sexes. Hence, Judith Butler’s idea on performativity would be suitable for critiquing this situation. Utilizing a Butlerian lens would show how sex, sexuality and gender is constructed and transformed by society over time. Finally, the study will collect and analyze the data via publications i.e. textbooks, factsheets and journal articles, to support the research’s argument and to represent how states normalize a constructed heterosexuality to the public. (shrink)

This paper offers an introduction to poststructuralist interpretivist research in information systems, through a poststructuralist theoretical reading of the phenomenon and experience of social networking websites, such as Facebook. This is undertaken through an exploration of how loyally a social networking profile can represent the essence of an individual, and whether Platonic notions of essence, and loyalty of copy, are disturbed by the nature of a social networking profile, in ways described by poststructuralist thinker Deleuze’s notions of the reversal of (...) Platonism. In bringing a poststructuralist critique to such hugely successful and popular social information systems, the paper attempts to further open up the black box of the computer ‘user’, extend interpretive approaches to information systems research to embrace poststructuralism, and explore how notions of the Self might be reflected through engagement with information system (IS), and how an IS appreciation of the phenomenon of global social networking may benefit from embracing such a poststructuralist approach. (shrink)

Many feminists (e.g. T. Bettcher and B. R. George) argue for a principle of first person authority (FPA) about gender, i.e. that we should (at least) not disavow people's gender self-categorisations. However, there is a feminist tradition resistant to FPA about gender, which I call "radical feminism”. Feminists in this tradition define gender-categories via biological sex, thus denying non-binary and trans self-identifications. Using a taxonomy by B. R. George, I begin to demystify the concept of gender. We are also able (...) to use the taxonomy to model various feminist approaches. It becomes easier to see how conceptualisations ofgender which allow for FPA often do not allow for understanding female subjugation as being rooted in reproductive biology. I put forward a conceptual scheme: radical FPA feminism. If we accept FPA, but also radical feminist concerns, radical FPA feminism is an attractive way of conceptualising gender. (shrink)

The characters of tragedy are in some sense responsible for their errors. However, given their ignorance of the consequences of their actions, it seems that they ought not be held responsible by others for what they have done. This is a paradox. The way to resolve the paradox is to distinguish two kinds of agent responsibility: accountability and culpability. Being accountable is primarily a private affair, whereas being culpable entails the possibility of just punishment.

In this paper, I outline the cumulative network model of the self. This model articulates the self as relational, recognizing social relations as constitutive of the self. The theory arises out of concerns about the individualistic paradigms of two main frameworks in the analytic philosophical literature on personal identity, namely, the psychological and the animalist approaches to personhood and is explicitly inspired by feminist theories on relational autonomy and self. I argue that “relationality” is not only social, but that the (...) self is relational throughout, psychologically, physically, biologically, culturally, semantically, as well as socially. Hence, the self is a network of relations. The model also aims to recognize that temporality or historicity is constitutive of the self, that the self is a process, not a static three-dimensional thing. Hence, the self is a cumulative network. (shrink)

Dance receives relatively little attention in the history of philosophy. My strategy for connecting that history to dance consists in tracing a genealogy of its dance-relevant moments. In preparation, I perform a phenomenological analysis of my own eighteen years of dance experience, in order to generate a small cluster of central concepts or “Moves” for elucidating dance. At this genealogical-phenomenological intersection, I find what I term “positure” most helpfully treated in Plato, Aristotle and Nietzsche; “gesture” similarly in Condillac, Mead and (...) Kristeva; “grace” in Avicenna, Schiller and Dewey; and “resilience” in Fanon, (Judith) Butler and Deleuze. With these analyses in place, I apply the four Moves in analyzing various forms of dancing (including salsa dancing and the pollen dance of the honeybee) and coordinate them to outline a comprehensive philosophy of dance. This philosophy points to certain conditions for an ideally flourishing, dancing society. And these conditions create the possibility for a coalition of sympathetic discourses (including critical race theory, queer theory, disability studies and democratic theory) united in pursuit of political virtue. The development of a philosophy of dance offers a deeper understanding of the intellectual values of a practice often identified with bodily immediacy and therefore judged uninteresting. It also reinvigorates philosophy with the dynamism and bodily relevance of the practice of dancing. Most important, it demonstrates the meaningful intersection of aesthetics and political ethics, by exploring how aesthetic practices underlie and inspire human flourishing. (shrink)

Las Brigadas Internacionales organizadas durante la Guerra Civil Española estaban compuestas por más de 35 mil voluntarixs provenientes de 53 naciones diferentes. Por su parte, las milicias del P.O.U.M. contaban con otrxs 10 mil milicianxs. Cerca de 9.000 judíxs voluntarixs lucharon por la República y la revolución, alistándose en las brigadas o las milicias. El objetivo de esta investigación ha sido recobrar una de aquellas identidades. Aquí, presenta la historia de una argentina anarquista de origen judío que buscó la revolución (...) mediante la lucha armada y la comandancia de una milicia del P.O.U.M. Micaela Feldman dejó un testimonio escrito de su combate: un discurso que funda una utopía. El artículo, fruto de una investigación de archivo, se centra en las cuestiones de género que surgen en el texto, las prácticas anarquistas propuestas por la protagonista de estas memorias y las significaciones estéticas de su escritura en torno al deseo y la práctica de la revolución. (shrink)

This thesis draws on Freud to understand the innate human need to create boundaries and argues that ambivalence is an inescapable dilemma in their creation. It argues that a re-reading of Freud’s major thesis in Totem and Taboo via an engagement with the Dionysos myth and cult scholarship allows for a new understanding of dominant forms of hegemonic psychic and social formations that attempt to keep in place a false opposition of polis and phusis, self and Other, resulting in the (...) perpetuation of oppressive structures and processes. The primary methodological claim of the thesis is that prior psychoanalytic engagements with cultus scholarship have suffered from being either insufficiently thorough or diffused in attempts to be comparative. A more holistic and detailed approach allows us to ground a psychoanalytic interpretation in the realities of said culture, allowing us to critique Freud’s misreading of Dionysos regarding the Primal Father and the psychic transmission of the Primal Crime. This thesis posits that Dionysos needs to acknowledged as a projection of the Primal Father fantasy linked to a basic ambivalence about the necessity of boundaries in psychosocial life. Using research from the classics and psychoanalysis alongside Queer and post-colonial theory, as well as extensive fieldwork and primary source analysis, this thesis provides a grounded materialist critique of psychoanalysis’ complicity in reproducing a false dichotomy between polis and phusis, a dichotomy that furthers the projection onto marginalised groups whose othering is linked to a fear and desire of a return to phusis and denial of its constant presence in the psyche and polis. This re-reading of Dionysos challenges the defensive structures, which are organised around ideas of subjectification that posit that phusis must be severed from polis/ego and projected onto Dionysos and all groups that threaten the precariousness of these boundaries. (shrink)

According to a standard interpretation of the term, ‘gender’ denotes sets of social roles and expectations conventionally associated with the sexual physiology of human beings. Originally introduced in psychology, the term is now widely used in the social sciences and humanities, as well as in the biological sciences. In this article we introduce and discuss the central themes of contemporary philosophical debates on gender. Particular attention is paid to recent feminist arguments concerning the distinction between sex and gender, and to (...) how feminist debates today intersect with neuroscience research on sex-related differences between human brains. (shrink)

The theoretical movement known under the heading of posthumanism has entered the academic field. Posthumanisms most prominent feature is to retrieve the concept of matter into the analytical framework. Matter is understood to be under-theorized within the social sciences as a result of the permeative focus upon language and discourse. A prevailing understanding of posthumanism that has been used within educational science and philosophy thus consists of moving the searchlight from language/discourse onto matter. Notably, these scholars are turning to the (...) philosopher Karen Barad in order to spell out their posthumanistic implications. The aim of the thesis is to give an account of the philosophy of Karen Barad in contrast to other prevailing renderings of her. The analysis is carried out using a contrastive methodological approach. In this study I demonstrate how my reading of Barad differs from the scholarly readings that I choose to engage with. The results show that with an alternative conceptual understanding of Barad’s posthumanistic theory the analysis is being steered towards the entanglement of matter and discourse rather than towards the materialistic components of a posed problem. In addition, the results also show how a focus on the ontological underpinnings of Barad’s theoretical framework can give crucial contributions when it comes to understanding the generative conditions of science and knowledge-making. (shrink)

Breath is a perceptual practice, a form of listening, of attending. These words begin to mark out the unique space of this thesis. It is ‘written from the breath’, a stance that breaks free of the silencing of breath in contemporary language theory. Importantly, the thesis makes the large claim that the closing down of conceptual breathing spaces in the twentieth century parallels the asphyxiation of a spiritual connection with the world. This is seen by Helen Sharp, the author of (...) this posthumous thesis, as ‘the loss of the profane halo’. Sharp acknowledges a debt to Georgio Agamben’s notion of the ‘Halo’ in The Coming Community as composed of a ‘tiny displacement’. She identifies such displacements as breath movement. ‘Each breath event develops as a potentiality of relationship where self is re-conceived and born anew in tiny little flutters…’ of each inhalation and exhalation. Here lies the core of her thinking where the movement of life surges forth in the ‘imperceptible trembling of the finite’. This, she writes, is equivalent to ‘the illuminated field of the breath as halo’. Moving into the realm of the artistic-poetic, the thesis itself comes to take on the character of a work of art. Its three edges are written dialogues, performance prologues, and breath practice including breath dialogue. (shrink)

As sexualities educators, we rarely examine the broader social context our sexualities are shaped within, nor do we often give meaningful instruction to students on how to come to terms with emotions and desire or choosing and being good partners. Some of the ways we 'do' masculinity, femininity and gender in this culture can compromise our ability to fully engage in loving relationships with our selves and others. Teaching sexualities as transformational learning, critical theory challenges us to do better, both (...) as individuals and as a society aware of and resisting oppression. Instead of teaching as though the body and spirit can thrive independently of one another, an authentic sexualities education would address the many dimensions of human experience, including morality, physicality and emotionality. (shrink)

Within art therapy discourses there is a dearth of scholarly literature related to the dilemmas of voicing lesbianism and picturing lesbians. This is the result of sustained discrimination and censorship worldwide. In order to address this issue, a research study was designed to investigate this topic and its relationship to informing art therapy. There were two research methods and two research processes used in the project. Autobiography and art based research were the methods, and intertextuality and reflexivity were the research (...) processes. The methodology that underpinned the project was postmodern-feminism. Autobiographical material created through an art-based research method was reflexively viewed. The newly created visual texts stimulated intertextual links to past visual and written texts. These texts were used to map and track deeply held assumptions found embedded in essentialist, dualistic and modernist paradigms. By the use of postmodernfeminism deconstruction and reconstruction the investigation exposed and interrogated paradigm shifts resulting in subsequent personal transformations. The study revealed how past personal experiences of homophobia, lesbian invisibility and mental health treatment were deeply embedded in gender/sexuality norms, visual art discourse and social stigmatisation. These experiences impacted significantly on the ability to verbally and visually reveal both lesbian and lesbianism, and as such impacted on perceptual shaping of multiple selves within self. The study further demonstrated how the postmodern-feminist investigation destabilised dominant paradigms and subverted their location in “truth”, allowing for reconstruction of selves to be explicitly pictured. The significance of the findings for art therapy is three fold. Firstly, by offering a postmodern-feminist perspective through a lesbian lens, embedded modernist paradigms central to art therapy discourse are challenged. Secondly, the creative process of image making, within a postmodern-feminist frame is showcased. Within such a process change can be mobilised and self perceptions can be transformed. Thirdly, the study has advanced art therapy towards a more contemporary and critically informed discipline, one that can reflect on possible dilemmas encountered by lesbian clientele when verbally or visually self representing. The implications of the study have several intersections for the broader arts and health care sectors. (shrink)

Paper presented at a meeting of the International Association for Philosophy and Literature, Stony Brook, New York, USA, May 2000. -/- Foucault rejects the idea of intellectuals acting as "prophets": telling others what must be done and what sorts of social and political goals they should pursue. I argue that in outright rejecting such prophecy, Foucault may not be pursuing the most effective means of eventually breaking it down. I locate in Foucauldian genealogical works such as Discipline and Punish a (...) rhetorical strategy through which the intellectual acts as a prophet while also distancing him/herself from this role: the genealogist speaks as a universal intellectual while also encouraging others to question the truths thus provided, as well as the role of the intellectual as prophet itself. I argue that in so doing the genealogist engages in a kind of exile, a term I borrow from Edward Said to denote a movement of distancing without effecting a clean break. This intellectual, rather than rejecting outright the role of the prophet, works within this role while yet distancing him/herself from it -- acting as (what I call) a “prophet in exile.”. (shrink)

This thesis inquires into our ‘human nature’ through an interdisciplinary approach that considers some of the radical changes in intellectual thought at those key points in Western culture in which this concept has been centrally deployed. The broad historical sweep that this study covers finds the preoccupation with defining who we are and what we are capable of inextricably linked with the focus, at most of the pivotal moments examined, on a dominant impulse to conceive human beings as moral creatures.

When women become perpetrators of suicide bombing, their agency – their ability to act upon and affect the world – is often denied. There are a number of reasons for this and one this thesis considers is that – as females – they are not expected to be violent. Accordingly, such women are judged to be coerced or incompetent, and so unable to rule themselves sufficiently as agents. Models of autonomy propose various frameworks for assessing whether acts or persons are (...) self-governing, and the relational approach in particular has garnered much support recently. However, some aspects of the relational account remain under-theorised, including how autonomy might be measured. In this thesis, I aim to bring these two elements together by examining whether an extension of the relational model may offer a way in which to estimate the autonomy of the bombers in a more nuanced fashion. I make two claims. First, that the relational conception of the agent and autonomy ‘fits’ the bombers. Second, that my spectrum view, which is rooted in the relational approach, maps the bomber’s autonomy approximately but in detail. As such, my spectrum view is a befitting notion of autonomy and allows a graded and comparative representation of the bomber’s autonomy. (shrink)

This article outlines the possibilities of autobiographical stories to criticize status quo iterations of International Relations. The article draws on the personal experiences of the author’s deportation order issued by the United Kingdom’s Home Office and its associated Border agency to challenge the accepted assumptions of a cosmopolitan world-view as it relates to orderly international institutional design. It highlights the possibilities of trauma when border management and personal mobility collide. It suggests that mobility trauma ensues when the expectations of human (...) mobility, outlined in Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, infringe the state’s role as security provider. It begins in part one with a challenge to the traditional role and understanding of international borders that sustain order within the international. It examines the unacknowledged role that human vulnerability plays within IR and institutional design while frankly engaging with human vulnerability and trauma in the second section. This section details the experiences of the author when her mobility rights were curtailed and the ensuing identity crisis prompted by such events. The final section investigates the ideas of critical cosmopolitan scholarship demanding that such discourses acknowledge and work through the possibility of failed agency when the demands of state security supersede individual mobility rights. It turns to the possibility of traumatic iterations of IR in order to probe such possibilities. The article suggests, in its conclusion, the possibility of storytelling and psychoanalysis to endorse unorthodox agency, and the possibility of a dynamic international institutional design, that challenges the status quo iterations of IR. (shrink)

This dissertation is based on Jurgen Habermas's theory of communicative action. Habermas uses communicative action as his main notion for distinguishing among four types of social actions: teleological, normatively regulated, dramaturgical and communicative action. The main characteristics of communicative action are: the interaction of at least two subjects capable of speech and action, who try to reach an understanding about the interpretation of what constitutes the action situation, and who try to coordinate their actions by way of agreement, or "consensus." (...) ;Our main task is to apply the lessons learned about communicative action to two pre-Han Chinese traditions in the context of "words-deeds." I will emphasize the prominence of li, ritual action in the Confucian tradition, and te, potency, and tzu-jan, spontaneity in the Taoist tradition. ;I shall inter-relate the Confucian li, t'i, cheng-ming, and tao and similarly wu-wei, wu-chih, wu-yu, t'i$\sb4$ and tao for the Taoists and show how they form an "integrated" concept cluster. This will bring about a rapprochement between the Confucian and Taoist as a "fusion of horizons." We can take our stance between the two traditions to give us a better perspective to discover the shift in paradigm from a more yang to a more yin tradition. Correlatively, the main thrust of Taoism is a criticism of the Confucian ideology of the "tao of moral suasion." ;In general, the Confucian and Taoist sages are expert hermeneutic practitioners. They can explicate the relation between words and deeds, which abound in the Analects and in Mencius. They also can interpret the polarity between knowledge and action, which, in the Taoist case, becomes the "discarding of knowledge" , and wu-wei, of acting in a non-interfering way. ;We would also stress the side of "communicative receptivity," which builds upon the "passive" and "active" aspects of communicative action. In this regard, the Taoist concepts wu-wei, wu-chih, wu-yu, emphasize the non-contending, non-competitive aspects of our communicative receptivities. We will advance a concept of Chinese "sweet reasonableness" instead of the Western stress on "rationality." The clue to this reasonableness is the paradigm exemplified in Chuang-tzu's "goblet rationality," which is a metaphorical-evocative method of creating new and startling meanings, values, and significances. (shrink)

Practice theory has lately taken a turn towards modelling the evolution of practices, which appear situated at the centre of the study of social action. I argue in this paper, following previous criticisms, that such centrality can be revised in order to better incorporate elements of agency and normativity, which are much determinant of the emergence and development of practices. The aim of this paper is to propose an alternative heuristic which advances on lefebvrean trialectics, in order to better account (...) for process in the study of practices. For this I rely on previous concepts from anthropology and sociology, such as fetishisation, ritualisation and bricolage. A relevant case study is merely outlined in order to illustrate how such a conceptual framework can identify agencies and situate practices in relation to power structures and performance at an early stage within the research process. (shrink)

This is a defense of the doctrine of scientific realism. SR is defined through the following two claims: Most essential unobservables posited by the well-established current scientific theories exist independently of our minds. We know our well-established scientific theories to be approximately true. I first offer positive argumentation for SR. I begin with the so-called 'success arguments' for SR: 1) scientific theories most of the times entail successful predictions; 2) science is methodologically successful in generating empirically successful theories. SR explains (...) these facts via inference to the best explanation. I combine Hacking's experimental argument for entity realism with Salmon's common-cause principle. I take entity realism to be foundational to SR: one may believe in the existence of some theoretical entities without believing in any particular theory in which these are embedded. Its motivation comes from experimental practice, where the manipulation of these entities often relies on incompatible theoretical accounts. The underdetermination topic is thereafter discussed. Several attempts to distinguish between an observable and an unobservable realm are critically discussed, as well as the possibility that for any given theory, there are empirically equivalents generated by means of algorithms. I present extensive argumentation to the effect that such algorithmic rivals are not to be taken seriously. Social constructivism is being critically treated. I proceed by distinguishing between a metaphysical, a semantic, and an epistemic variant of SC. I conclude that only a moderate metaphysical constructivism can stand on its own feet. Its claim is merely that some facts about the world are socially constructed. I finish with a plea for a selective SR, able to do justice to the presence of both instrumentalism and modest constructivism in scientific practice. (shrink)

The project Gender Perspective on Embedded Intelligent Systems – Application in Healthcare Technology financed by Vinnova is integrated into the research environment Embedded Intelligent Systems at Halmstad University. EIS is contributing to the regional Triple Helix innovation system Healthcare Technology by developing new technology for application within the health and care sector, and there is an outspoken need for a more articulated gender perspective within the research environment. The project is inspired by the Technoscientific gender research. It has a qualitative (...) and action research approach and is oriented toward development. In the project process the difference between epistemological cultures has been obvious. In the interaction between the researchers we realize that engineering and other technological sciences not only consider aspects of science to be separate from reality, but also seek positivistic proof in research, something not always possible in the more qualitative research of the social sciences. In the paper we discuss how to bridge and create understanding between sciences and different epistemological cultures. (shrink)

Uncontainable Life: A Biophilosophy of Bioart investigates the ways in which thinking through the contemporary hybrid artistico-scientific practices of bioart is a biophilosophical practice, one that contributes to a more nuanced understanding of life than we encounter in mainstream academic discourse. When examined from a Deleuzian feminist perspective and in dialogue with contemporary bioscience, bioartistic projects reveal the inadequacy of asking about life’s essence. They expose the enmeshment between the living and non-living, organic and inorganic, and, ultimately, life and death. (...) Instead of examining the defining criteria of life, bioartistic practices explore and enact life as processual, differential, and always already uncontainable, thus transcending preconceived material and conceptual boundaries. In this way, this doctoral thesis concentrates on the ontology of life as it emerges through the selected bioartworks: “semi-living” sculptures created by The Tissue Culture and Art Project and the performance May the Horse Live in Me by L’Art Orienté Objet. The hope is that such an ontology can enable future conceptualisations of an ethico-politics that avoids the anthropocentric logic dominant in the humanities and social sciences. (shrink)

Appeals to practices are common the humanities and social sciences. They hold the potential to explain interesting or compelling similarities, insofar as similarities are distributed within a community or group. Why is it that people who fall under the same category, whether men, women, Americans, baseball players, Buddhists, feminists, white people, or others, have interesting similarities, such as similar beliefs, actions, thoughts, foibles, and failings? One attractive answer is that they engage in the same practices. They do the same things, (...) perhaps as a result of doing things at the same site or setting, or perhaps as a result of being raised in a similar way among members of the same group. In the humanities, appeals to practices often serve as a move to point out diversity among different communities or diversity within the same community. Communities are distinct from one another in part because their members do different things or do things in different ways. The distinct and varied ways in which different communities enact social norms or formulate law, state institutions, and public policy might be explicable in part by the different practices their members are socialized into. Appeals to practices hold the promise of explaining these differences in terms of the different background practices of the groups, cultivated through a kind of cultural isolation or sense of collective identity. In the social sciences, appeals to practices have played a central role in fundamental theorizing and theory building. Appeals to practices in the social sciences are often much more systematic and theoretical, forming the core of the systematic theories of Pierre Bourdieu and Anthony Giddens in Anthropology and Sociology. Practice theory has thus become a growth industry in social scientific investigation, offering the promise of a central object of investigation that explains both unity and difference within and across communities and groups. But it is unclear just what practices are and what role, both ontological and explanatory, that practices are supposed to play. The term `practices' is used to pick out a wide range of things, and its relation to other terms, from `tradition' or `paradigm' to `framework' or `presupposition', is unclear. Practices are posited as ubiquitous, yet they are difficult to isolate and pin down. We are all said to participate in them, but they remain hidden. Their role, whether causal, logical, or hermeneutical, remains mysterious. After locating the historical origins of appeals to practices in the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger, my dissertation uses Stephen Turner's broad and systematic critique of appeals to practices to develop a new type of account. My account is a phenomenological account that treats practices as human doings that show up to people in material and social environments and make themselves available for specific responses in those environments. I argue that a phenomenological account is an effective alternative to accounts that treat practices as either shared objects with properties or shared and implicit presuppositions. I use a phenomenological account of practices to treat important debates in feminist philosophy and the philosophy of the social sciences, particularly debates over pornography's subordination of women and the classification of mental disorders in psychiatry. (shrink)

Commentary to Leslie McCall's 2005 paper "The complexity of intersectionality", with a review of her main points and some critical remarks.

The purpose of this article is to develop and illustrate an approach for making the commonplace visible in a natural, as opposed to manipulated, social setting. The key research task was to find a way of capturing the ongoing production or enactment of the self that provides some insight into the way in which it is produced in a routine, matter of fact way. The article takes a number of steps to develop a research approach to the task. First, gender-identity (...) was selected as a more specific aspect of self-production. Second, the concept of "flashpoints" was used to refer to a particular moment in the routine which achieves some significance or salience as a result of the participants seizing upon some otherwise unremarkable action or statement and twisting it to their purpose. In this study, the purpose was gender-identity creation. Primary school children in the classroom and their teachers were the participants of the study. Through the use of flashpoints, the article demonstrates how gender-identity production of these children can be caught in flight. The article concludes that this approach can be added to the researcher's toolkit. (shrink)

The spreading violence beyond Euromaidan space in Kyiv have become one of the main issues of Ukrainian society in winter 2013–2014. For Euromaidan supporters their relatively safe space of every-day interaction came under pressure of discourse which divided the whole world into “friends and enemies”. The naturalisation of collective identities of Euromaidan supporters and their opponents served the purpose of symbolic struggle and provided the simplified social worldview. The last one is, on the one hand, a useful tool of social (...) mobilisation but, on the other hand, this kind of worldview provokes violence. The topic of this article is a denaturalisation as an opposite strategy which creates the complicated worldview. The research issues of this article are the following: does denaturalisation exist within pro-Euromaidan discourse; in what kind of discursive strategies and modes does it appear? Online social networks, Facebook in particular, were chosen as a field of study. The research method is traditional analysis of text. The implication of this research is revealing of internal dynamic of pro-Euromaidan discourse. (shrink)

Resumen: Este trabajo se propone examinar algunos límites de la célebre descripción merleau-pontiana del cuerpo vivido en términos de “esquema corporal” y “cuerpo habitual”, teniendo en cuenta referencias alternativas del corpus textual del filósofo a ciertas dimensiones de la experiencia corporal que desbordan tal marco. Tras analizar en primer término estas primeras definiciones que esbozan el perfil de un cuerpo hábil y competente correlativo de un entorno pragmático, consideramos seguidamente instancias de comportamientos no teleológicos ni funcionales y espacialidades no objetivas (...) ni instrumentales para concluir mostrando la relación de estos análisis con la tematización merleau-pontiana más amplia de los horizontes naturales de la experiencia. En un segundo plano evaluamos las críticas de exégetas tales como A. Lingis y J. Butler a ciertos déficits de las tesis merleau-pontianas, y relacionamos estas últimas con desarrollos filosóficos que manifiestan ciertas afinidades específicas, tales como los de E. Levinas y R. Caillois.: This paper intends to examine some of the limitations of the well-known MerleauPontian account of the lived body in terms of "body schema" and "habitual body", by taking into account some alternative references of the philosopher’s textual corpus to certain dimensions of corporeal experience that exceed such frames. After analyzing these former definitions that outline the profile of a skillful and competent body correlative of a pragmatic environment, we consider cases of non-teleological and non-functional behaviors and non-objective and non-instrumental spatialities to end up by showing the relationship between these analyses and the wider Merleau-Pontian account of the natural horizons of experience. Secondarily, we evaluate critiques such as A. Lingis’ and J. Butler’s aiming to certain deficits of Merleau-Pontian theses, and we identify certain relations that these theses hold with philosophical developments showing certain specific affinities, such as E. Levinas’ and R. Caillois’. (shrink)