This article explores what might happen to the concept of performativity within arguments that are understood as ‘topological’. It argues that we might ‘decline’ performativity, which is to say, elaborate the concerns that are expressed in the concept, but inclining it more boldly towards the complexities of a world whose elements are always in process of constitution, of reiterative enfolding. Taking a cue from Isabelle Stengers’ recent work in which she posits the notion of ecologies of practice, on the one (...) hand, and Whitehead’s concept of concern, on the other, the paper argues that emergent entities have differential requirements – not least according to the disciplines to which they appeal – and subtend different modes of implied obligation. An adherence to these requirements needs to be accompanied by persuasive presentation that obliges a community to affirm any entity. On many levels of abstraction, ecologies need to show concern for an entity to facilitate its emergence and to sustain its mode of being. In an expanded vision, then, human and non-human entities at all levels enter into multifarious relational modes of becoming, but these become of sustained consequence only through persuasion of communities, sometimes organized into disciplines. The survival of entities requires forms of differentiation, division and of value. The paper relates these arguments to forms of sociological enquiry that give glimpses of how sociology might respond. It ends with a hesitation around the radical anti-anthropomorphism of the stance developed, and argues that this does not entirely eclipse the importance of political hope. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis contribution emphasises the importance of conditions of production and relations of production in Discourse Studies. It argues that rather than constituting an extra-discursive realm that simply belongs to the economic sphere of a social formation, conditions and relations of production present a veritable concern for Discourse Studies. They constitute two central concepts of Marxism, and grasp two intertwined processes that assure the survival of a specific mode of production. It is not only the conditions of production that need to (...) be reproduced under certain relations of production. It is also these relations themselves that need to be reproduced discursively and ideologically. Hence, conditions and relations of production and their reproduction are fundamentally material-discursive. In the early days of discourse analysis in France, both concepts and a Marxist take on production constituted an important point of reference. Here, the conditions of production of discourse were more than the setting, context or the situation semiotic material is produced in. In today's Discourse Studies, however, conditions and relations of production are often conceived of as the ‘material other’ of discourse, and are rarely scrutinised explicitly on the theoretical, analytical, and political level. We argue that such an understanding not only obfuscates the materialist heritage of Discourse Studies. It also contributes to a depoliticised understanding of research, in which the conditions in which discourse is produced are strangely separated from the broader conditions and relations of production in late capitalism. (shrink)

: The paper shows that three heterogeneities in Freud and Kristeva (unconscious/conscious, semiotic/symbolic, and imaginary/symbolic) expose the historical emergence, significance, and demise of psychic structures that present obstacles to our progressive political thinking. The oedipal and narcissistic structures of subjectivity represent the persistence of two past, bad forms of authority: paternal law and maternal authority. Contemporary psychoanalysis reveals a humankind going through the loss of this past in a process that opens up a different future of sexual difference in Western (...) cultures. (shrink)

The paper shows that three heterogeneities in Freud and Kristeva expose the historical emergence, significance, and demise of psychic structures that present obstacles to our progressive political thinking. The oedipal and narcissistic structures of subjectivity represent the persistence of two past, bad forms of authority: paternal law and maternal authority. Contemporary psychoanalysis reveals a humankind going through the loss of this past in a process that opens up a different future of sexual difference in Western cultures.

This essay contributes to our understanding of the relation between the philosophies of Hegel and Sellars. While most treatments of this relation have focused on metaphysics or epistemology, I focus on ethics, and in particular on the formulation of moral agency. I argue that Hegel and Sellars arrive at a similar metaphilosophical rejection of individual moral agency in favor of conceptions of moral agency as the outcome of social mediation. To demonstrate this, I trace how Hegel and Sellars offer parallel (...) resolutions of the ‘Kantian paradox’: the apparent problem that, in Kantian ethics, moral agents must both freely self-legislate the moral law unto themselves and stand in a dutiful relation to the moral law as a necessary function of practical reason. Drawing Hegel and Sellars together in this way casts new light on Sellars’s understudied ethical theory and further evidences the contemporary relevance of Hegel’s moral philosophy. (shrink)

Some feminists have criticized Judith Butler's theory of performativity for providing an insufficient account of agency. In this article I first defend her against such charges by appealing to two themes central to Hans-Georg Gadamer's hermeneutics. I compare her emphasis on the sociohistorical nature of agency with Gadamer's insistence on the historical nature of knowledge, and I examine the significance Butler assigns to repetition and note its affinities with Gadamer's conception of play. In the final part of the article I (...) argue that in spite of providing an adequate account of agency, Butler's theory of performativity provides no way to allow us to evaluate performances. I show how Gadamer's account of festival, which builds on his concept of play, is useful in helping us make sense of how we might delineate true from false performances, and thus identities. (shrink)

Este artigo investiga as diferentes concepções de “Sujeito” de acordo com o corpus teórico do filósofo Paul B. Preciado. As categorias analisadas são: os processos subjetivos e técnicos de sujeição social e servidão maquínica na era farmacopornográfica; o sujeito Playboy e petrosexorracial; a Multidão, seus múltiplos devires e as micropolíticas de resistência à opressão; a metamorfose dos sujeitos em agentes revolucionários e os simbiontes políticos, postulados por Preciado em seu mais recente livro publicado, Dysphoria mundi. Como Preciado articula todas estas (...) concepções, considerando ainda as linhas de fuga da submissão, isto é, o horizonte filosófico de resistência onto-epístemo-política, metamorfose e até a possível superação da dominação capitalística? Os procedimentos metodológicos foram baseados na pesquisa bibliográfica (livros, artigos e crônicas), de modo a evidenciar o contraste, as semelhanças, diferenças e interstícios entre a teoria de Preciado e as suas principais referências. Os resultados obtidos indicam uma linearidade consistente entre-categorias, os desafios em materializar as teorias revolucionárias na realidade cotidiana, bem como estratégias práticas que contribuem para a organização ontopolítica proposta por Preciado. (shrink)

Phenomenologists define social impairments as key aspects of depression and argue that depression is irreducible to the individual. In this article I aim to further elaborate this non-reductionist notion of depression by claiming that depression not only corresponds to an impaired experience of social relations, but also arises from a socially impaired world. To pursue this goal, I will challenge the understanding of depression as an affective disorder blocking the affective communication between individual and environment. I will redefine feelings of (...) depression as situated affections, and hence suggest that they are products of the individual's situatedness in a depressogenic environment and they function in initiating an active withdrawal from such environment. (shrink)

‘Left melodrama’ is a form of contemporary political critique that combines thematic elements and narrative structures of the melodramatic genre with a political perspective grounded in a left theoretical tradition, fusing them to dramatically interrogate oppressive social structures and unequal relations of power. It is also a new form of what Walter Benjamin called ‘left melancholy’, a critique that deadens what it examines by employing outdated and insufficient analyses to current exploitations. Left melodrama is melancholic insofar as its use of (...) older leftist critical methods disavows its attachments to the failed promises of left political-theoretical critique: that it could provide direct means to freedom and moral rightness. Left melodrama is melodramatic insofar as it incorporates the specific melodramatic narrative, style and promise of the text that stands in for its disavowed attachments: the Manifesto of the Communist Party. Whereas the Manifesto's critical power promised radical political transformation, left melodrama incorporates the Manifesto's melodramatic style in an effort to revivify that promise. It thus inhibits the creation of new critical methods appropriate to our current historical moment and occludes Marx and Engels' warning that the possibility of radical transformation is diminished when the past furnishes the vision for the future. Left melodrama can be found in the texts of Giorgio Agamben, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri; their reincorporation of the Manifesto's melodrama both contributes to their widespread success and undercuts their critical capacities to examine and challenge the inequalities, injustices and unfreedom that shape the present moment. (shrink)

The language of ‘experience’ in nursing research This paper is an analysis of how the signifier ‘experience’ is used in nursing research. We identify a set of issues we believe accompany the use of experience but are rarely addressed. These issues are embedded in a spectrum that includes ontological commitments, visions of the person/self and its relation to ‘society’, understandings of research methodology and the politics of nursing. We argue that a poststructuralist understanding of the language of experience in research (...) opens up additional ways to analyze the relationship between the conduct of nursing research and cultural/political commitments. (shrink)

This paper examines Young’s conception of power, arguing that it is incomplete, in at least two ways. First, Young tends to equate the term power with the narrower notions of ‘ oppression ’ and ‘domination’. Thus, Young lacks a satisfactory analysis of individual and collective empowerment. Second, as Young herself admits, it is not obvious that her analysis of power can be useful in the context of thinking about transnational justice. Allen concludes by considering one way in which Young’s analysis (...) of power needs to be extended or perhaps modified in order to do justice to questions of transnational justice. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine Iris Marion Young's conception of power, arguing that it is incomplete in at least two ways. First, Young tends to equate the term power with the narrower notions of ‘oppression’ and ‘domination.’ Thus, Young lacks a satisfactory analysis of individual and collective empowerment. Second, as Young herself admits, it is not obvious that her analysis of power can be useful in the context of thinking about transnational justice. I conclude by considering one way in which (...) Young's analysis of power needs to be extended or perhaps modified in order to do justice to questions of transnational justice. (shrink)

In this paper, I respond to the critiques of my book, The Politics of Our Selves: Power, Autonomy, and Gender in Contemporary Critical Theory, made by Nikolas Kompridis, Paul Patton, Allison Weir and Moira Gatens. My response is organized around three overlapping themes that are raised in these four astute papers: a defence of my account of normativity, of my reading of Foucault’s conception of power, and of my analysis of gender subordination/identity.

The interventionist turn in science and technology studies increasingly involves researchers with practices of technology development and thus entails the need for appropriate methodologies. Based in software engineering, this article introduces the deconstructive technique of “mind scripting” as a method for analyzing processes of the co-materialization of gender and technology and as a tool to support cooperative, reflective work practices. Anchored in critical design approaches, “mind scripting” is a means for development teams to disclose discourses implicitly guiding work practices in (...) order to make negotiable the underlying value systems. After discussing its foundation in deconstructivist feminist theory, the author illustrates how the method is applied by drawing on selected empirical results. Generating insights into the reproduction of hegemonic social discourses in development processes, “mind scripting” enables the rethinking of established ways of doing. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the relationship between Foucault and psychoanalysis through the lens of problematization. Rather than asking the interpretive question of what was Foucault’s own attitude toward psychoanalysis, I analyze what sort of problem psychoanalysis might be thought to pose for a Foucaultian conception of critique. The bulk of the paper is devoted to a discussion of the three primary dangers that psychoanalysis is typically thought to pose for such a conception; these dangers are grouped under the headings (...) of normalization, the drives, and power. After arguing that these three dangers can be overcome – by which I mean that they do not amount to reasons for believing that psychoanalysis is conceptually incompatible with Foucaultian critique – I then turn to a discussion of how psychoanalytic concepts and categories are related to Foucault’s method of critical problematization. There I argue that psychoanalysis, far from being incompatible with Foucault’s understanding of critique, actually serves as a model for his own critical method understood as a radical approach to writing history. (shrink)

Feminist theory needs both explanatory-diagnostic and anticipatory-utopian moments in order to be truly critical and truly feminist. However, the explanatory-diagnostic task of analyzing the workings of gendered power relations in all of their depth and complexity seems to undercut the very possibility of emancipation on which the anticipatory-utopian task relies. In this paper, I take this looming paradox as an invitation to rethink our understanding of emancipation and its relation to the anticipatory-utopian dimensions of critique, asking what conception of emancipation (...) is compatible with a complex explanatory-diagnostic analysis of contemporary gender domination as it is intertwined and entangled with race, class, sexuality, and empire. I explore this question through an analysis of two specific debates in which the paradoxical relationship between power and emancipation emerges in particularly salient and seemingly intractable forms: debates over subjection and modernity. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault, I argue that a negativistic conception of emancipation offers the best way for feminist critical theory to transform the paradox of power and emancipation into a productive tension that can fuel critique. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Serene Khader’s effort to develop a decolonized approach to transnational feminism takes a helpfully nonideal approach. Much of decolonial theory has criticized universalism in order to espouse pluralism. Khader attempts to develop a form of minimalist universalism compatible with a significant dose of pluralism in regard to how we understand liberation from gender-based forms of oppression, and she effectively shows how the nonideal, meliorative approach can do this. I address three issues here: (1) the serious challenge her universalist account (...) poses to critical theory and some other trends in continental philosophy; (2) the persuasive analysis of, approach to, and critique that she makes of ‘gender role eliminativism’ and (3) the epistemic and dialogic questions left remaining in her defense of feminist universalism, in relation to who can theoretically formulate the universal. (shrink)

This article builds on recent accounts of diffuse and complex agentic practices in the global South by drawing on ethnographic data gathered in northwestern Ghana among the Dagaaba. Contemporary feminist discourses and theories, particularly in contexts in the global South, have sought to draw attention to the multifaceted ways in which women exercise agency in these contexts. Practices that in the past were perceived as instruments of women's subordination or as re-inscribing their oppression have been re/interpreted as agentic. Agentic practices (...) are theorized in more fluid terms than the binary pairing of agent/victim debates permit. Dagaaba contexts are deeply pervaded by beliefs in supernatural power forms, and these forces dis/empower certain forms of agentic acts. This article demonstrates that key factors combining with male power to regulate women's exercise of agency are perceived mystical forces. I argue that, in order not to risk missing agency—or rather “misdescribing” it—in the context of Dagaaba and most parts of sub-Saharan Africa, where the belief in mystical forces is profoundly pervasive, the role of these power forms as important determinants of the form that agentic practices assume—and more broadly, the way power works—needs critical attention in feminist theorizing. (shrink)

Müslüman kadınların İslami gelenekler tarafından bastırılmış mı özgürlüğe kavuşturulmuş mu olduğuna dair pek çok çalışma bulunmakta. Bu çalışmalardan bazıları başörtüsü gibi İslami geleneklerin bir baskı unsuru olarak görürken, bazıları da Müslüman kadınların bu gelenekleri uygularken kendi iradelerini ortaya koyduğunu, dolayısıyla bu geleneklerin bir baskı emaresi olarak görülemeyeceğini savunur. Bu çalışmada, Müslüman kadınların hayatlarının çok yönlü, ilişkisel ve mekân bağlamında şekillendiğini incelememizi sağlayacak, Deleuze felsefisi bağlamında ele alınan irade ve özgürlük kavramlarını kullanmak amaçlanmıştır. Diğer bir ifade ile Fransız filozof Gilles Deleuze (...) tarafından ortaya koyulan ilişkisel ontoloji Müslüman Kadın çalışmalarını sorgulamak için kullanılmaktadır. Bu ilişkisel ontoloji üzerinden, Müslüman kadınların dini söylemler çerçevesinde olumsuz resmedilmeleri sorgulanmakta ve bu kadınların deneyimlerine ve pratiklerine dair alternatif açıklamalar ortaya konulmaktadır. Böylece, Deleuze’in felsefesi bağlamında ele alınan irade ve özgürlük kavramları kullanılarak Müslüman kadınların dini katılım ve uygulamaları üzerinden pasif ve irade göstermeyen kadınlar olarak tasvir edilmesi sorgulanmaktadır. Müslüman kadınların durumsal uygulama ve deneyimlerini keşfedebilecek nitelikte akademik bir bakış açısı önerilmektedir. Özet: Bazı batılı kuruluşlar medeniyetler çatışması söylemini temel alarak tekil bir Müslüman dünyası tarif edip bu tek tipleştirilmiş tarifi Islama ve Müslümanlara karşı mücadele etmenin neden gerekli olduğunu gerekçelendirmek için kullanmaktadır. Müslüman kadınlar İslam gelenekleri ve Müslüman erkekler tarafından baskıya uğrayan bir gurup olarak resmedildiği için, bu söylemlerde Müslüman kadınlara dair konular önemli odak noktalarından birisi olmaktadır. Örneğin Müslüman kadın kimliğinin sembolü olarak görülen başörtüsünün bir baskı unsuru olup olmadığına dair tartışmalar görülür. Müslüman kadının başörtüsü ile bastırılmış mı özgürleştirilmiş mi olduğuna dair pek çok çalışma da bulunmaktadır. Bu çalışmalardan bazıları başörtüsü gibi İslami geleneklerin Müslüman kadınları baskıladığını ileri sürerken bazıları da kadınlar başörtüsü kullandığında bunu kendi iradeleri ile yaptığını tartışır. Örneğin Saba Mahmood irade, özgürlük, istek ve direnme gibi kavramların liberalizm temelinde anlaşılmasını sorgulayarak Müslüman kadınlar hakkındaki bu söylemlere karşı çıkar. Bu çalışmalardan bazıları da Müslüman kadınların ve onların iradelerini kullanmalarına dair konuların tarihsel ve mekânsal bağlamda yapılması gerektiğini savunur. Her ne kadar bu konuda yapılan çalışmalar olsa da, bu konu daha fazla araştırmaya ve yeniden ele alınmaya muhtaçtır. Bu çalışmada, bu konuyu çok yönlü, Müslüman kadınların deneyimlerini, isteklerini ve uygulamalarını ilişkisel ve mekânsal olarak ele alma imkânı vereceğinden, ilk olarak irade ve özgürlük kavramlarını Deleuze felsefesi temelinde ele alınmaktadır. Diğer bir deyişle, Fransız filozof Gilles Deleuze’a dayandırılan ilişkisel ontolojik bakış açısı Müslüman kadına dair tartışmalara uygulanmaktadır. Bu ilişkisel ontolojiye göre, dünya bedenlerin toplamından oluşur. Her varlık, biyolojik organizma, sosyal yapı ve soyut yapı bir bedendir. Bu bedenlerin her birisi, ister insan bedeni ister insana ait olmayan bir beden olsun, ister maddi ister madde dışı olsun, ister sosyal ister psikolojik yapılar olsun, ilişkilerin akımı ile şekillendirilir. İnsan bedeninin biyolojik, zihinsel, sosyal ve psikolojik bileşenlerini içine alan her yönü de çoklu ilişkiler ile oluşturulur. Bu yüzden, bir insan öznesi hakkında konuştuğumuzda, aslında karmaşık ve çoklu ilişkilere dair konuşuruz. Bedenin bu şekilde ele alınması irade kavramının da yeniden ele alınmasını gerektirir. İrade kavramının bu bağlamda ele alınması dikkati bedenleri üreten ilişkiler üzerine odaklar. Bedenler ilişkilerin akımı ile şekillendirildiği için, bedenlerin belirli şekillerde hissetme, davranma ve istemeye dair kapasiteleri de sahip oldukları ilişkilere göre şekillenir. Bu ilişkisel ontoloji temelinde, Müslüman kadınların bedenlerinin ilişkilerin akımı ile şekillenen çoklu elementlerin karmaşık bir araya gelişler olarak ele alınmalıdır. Bu kavramlaştırma Müslüman kadınların hayatının izole edilmiş dini gelenekler temelinde oluşmuş gibi resmedilmesini sorgulatmaktadır. Müslüman kadınların iradeleri, kapasiteleri ve sınırlılıkları kadar deneyimleri, pratikleri ve istekleri de sosyal-politik söylemler, aile içi ilişkiler, materyal yapılar ve ekonomik şartlar gibi çoklu faktörler ile kurulan ilişkiler üzerinden şekillenir. Diğer bir ifade ile bu kadınların belirli şekillerde davranmaya dair güçleri kendilerini çevreleyen bedenler ile kurdukları ilişkilere göre şekillenir. Bu bedenler dini veya seküler unsurlar olabilir, insan veya insana ait olmayan unsurlar olabilir, ya da maddi veya madde dışı faktörler olabilir. Sonuç olarak, Müslüman kadınların bedenleri ve irade gösterme şekilleri her zaman bir süreklilik içinde bağlantı kuran veya bağlantılarını koparan çeşitli elementler ile üretilmektedir. Deleuze felsefesi temelindeki bu beden ve irade kavramlaştırmaları Müslüman kadınların dini geleneklerine salt itaat temelinde resmedilmelerini sorgulamak için kullanılmaktadır. Bu kadınların hayatlarındaki çoklu yapısal denebilecek elementlerin aydınlatılması amaçlanmakta ve onların iradelerinin parçalı ve ilişkisel bir şekilde anlaşılması önerilmektedir. İlişkisel ontolojik lensler aracılığı ile Müslüman kadınlar resmedilirken görünmez kılınan veya fotoğrafın dışında bırakılan dinamik ve heterojen unsurlar tetkik edilmektedir. Bu amaç için, Deleuze felsefesi temelinde yapılan kavramlaştırılmalar 2018’de doktora çalışması için Başkent Kadın Platformunda yapılan bir röportaja ve Türkiye’deki bazı etnografik gözlemlere uygulanmaktadır. Ortaya konulan teorik bağlama daha uygun olacağından, bir gruptan ya da daha geniş bir çerçevede veri toplamak yerine, bu röportajdan elde edilen verilerin detaylı bir şekilde ele alınması amaçlanmaktadır. Bu ontolojik bakış açısını Müslüman Kadın konusuna uygulayarak, Müslüman kadınların hayatındaki çoklu ve ilişkisel etken güçlere odaklanılması amaçlanmaktadır. Müslüman kadının yalnızca dini söylemler temelinde negatif olarak tanımlanması sorgulanmakta ve Müslüman kadınların deneyimlerini ve uygulamalarını anlamak için alternatif modeller olabileceğine dikkat çekilmektedir. Diğer bir şekilde ifade etmek gerekirse Müslüman kadınların deneyimleri ilişkisel, çok yönlü, parçalı ve muayyen olarak ele alınmalıdır. Hayal edilen tekil bir grup yerine, çok yönlülüğün ve ilişkiselliğin keşfedilmesine ihtiyaç duyulmaktadır. Bu yüzden Müslüman kadınların belirli zeminler temelinde anlaşılmaya çalışılması önerilmektedir. Bu tur bir analizde, bir araştırmacının amacı Müslüman kadını çok yönlü bir özne ve irade anlayışı temelinde belirli zeminlerde keşfetmek olmalıdır ki iç içe geçmiş baskı ve özgürleşme şekilleri de anlaşılabilsin. Müslüman kadının kimliğinin kategorileştirilmesi ve marjinalleştirilmesi yerine, devam edegelen şekilde deneyimlerin ve uygulamaların oluşum ve yeniden oluşumlarının üzerinde durulmalıdır. (shrink)

In The Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel draws out the interdependency of unity and difference. In order to have a unity, there must be differences that compose it, as a unity unifies different elements. At the same time, in unifying these elements, they must not cease to be different from one another, as that would reduce the unity to a simple singularity.In this paper, I take up this interdependency of unity and difference, applying it to gender identities. I follow the psychoanalytically (...) oriented exchange between Judith Butler and Adam Phillips, in which they agree that gender identities are a farce, superimposed upon ungendered subjects, but disagree about the extent to which this artificial binary should be disassembled. Picking up their conversation at this point, I investigate how binary systems of identity can be both injurious and useful. Should they be cast off or does it make sense to keep them? Following this vein of thought, I end with a discussion of good and bad hate, arguing that there is an inescapable need for psychologically productive hate neutralized through empathy. (shrink)

This article theorizes and exemplifies reconceptualized teaching practices, both in early childhood education 1 and in a couple of programs within the new Swedish Teacher Education . 2 These programs are tightly knit to the last 12 years of reconceptualized early childhood education practices in and around Stockholm, built on deconstructive, co‐constructive, and re‐constructive principles, inspired by poststructural and feminist poststructural theories. The aim is foremost to work towards a dissolution and/or transgression of the modernist theory‐practice binary that dominates ECE (...) and teacher education practices, where theory is meant to be applied to practice. Student teachers, as well as pre‐school teachers, use what I have conceptualized as deconstructive talks, as a possibility of making visible the dominant discourses of childhood, identity, learning, play, and gender in the performed and documented teaching practices. In teacher education, students’ narratives are also deconstructed. The aim is to transgress teaching‐as‐usual; i.e. dominant and normative ways of thinking and acting in teaching and learning situations. I will suggest an ethics of ‘resistance’, affirmation and becoming, inspired by Derridean deconstructionist thinking, as a professional attitude and reflexive mode for teachers, teacher students and teacher educators. (shrink)

What is recognition and why is it so important? This book develops a synoptic conception of the significance of recognition in its many forms for human persons by means of a rational reconstruction and internal critique of classical and contemporary accounts. The book begins with a clarification of several fundamental questions concerning recognition. It then reconstructs the core ideas of Fichte, Hegel, Charles Taylor, Nancy Fraser, and Axel Honneth and utilizes the insights and conceptual tools developed across these chapters for (...) developing a case for the universal importance of recognition for humans. It argues in favour of a universalist anthropological position, unusual in the literature on recognition, that aims to construe a philosophically sound basis for a discourse of common humanity, or of a shared human life-form for which moral relations of recognition are essential. This synthetic conception of the importance of recognition provides tools for articulating deep intuitions shared across cultures about what makes human life and forms of human co-existence better or worse, and thus tools for mutual understanding about the deepest shared concerns of humanity, or of what makes us all human persons despite our differences. -/- Recognition and the Human Life-Form will appeal to readers interested in philosophical anthropology, social and political philosophy, critical theory, and the history of philosophy. It also provides ideas and conceptual tools for fields such as anthropology, education, disability studies, international relations, law, politics, religious studies, sociology, and social research. (shrink)

The concept of recognition has been pivotal in critical theory in recent years. This paper discusses how two goals of a critical theory of recognition – to explain and to morally evaluate social change – are interrelated. In doing so, this paper draws the limits of the concept of struggles for recognition. It is argued that if a social movement can be deemed illegitimate, this movement can no longer be understood as struggling for recognition. This implies that the two goals (...) of a critical theory of recognition cannot be fulfilled simultaneously: a moral standard that distinguishes between legitimate and illegitimate social struggles cannot distinguish between different types of struggles for recognition, but only between struggles for recognition and other types of social struggles. Drawing the limits of the concept of struggles for recognition in this way helps to better distinguish between different types of social struggle and contributes to a more precise understanding of what struggles for recognition entail. (shrink)

This paper presents a new interpretation of Michel Foucault’s critical project. It is well known that Foucault’s genealogical critique does not focus on issues of justification, but instead tackles “aspectival captivity,” that is, apparently inevitable limits of thought that constrain the agent’s freedom but that, in fact, can be transformed. However, it has not been recognized that, according to Foucault, critique can proceed along two distinct paths. In a key passage of “What Is Critique?,” Foucault states that critique is tasked (...) with questioning truth about its effects of power and with questioning power about its discourses of truth. We show that this “double movement” organizes Foucault’s critical project as a whole, giving it a significantly wider scope and a more complex structure than has been previously acknowledged. At the heart of the above-mentioned bifurcation lies an apparent tension between two contrastive roles Foucault assigns to truth-telling in the context of critique: on the one hand, truth-telling (as avowal) is a target of critique; on the other, truth-telling (as parrhesia) is one of critique’s methods. We argue that combining these two dimensions in a unified account is crucial for understanding and re-evaluating Foucault’s critical project as a whole. By showing that truth-telling remains an essential element of Foucauldian critique, this paper also rectifies some influential misinterpretations according to which Foucault’s critical project seeks to eliminate truth from the picture. (shrink)

Human dignity is one of the key concepts of our ethical evaluations, in politics, in biomedicine, as well as in everyday life. In moral philosophy, however, human dignity is a source of intractable trouble. It has a number of characteristic features which apparently do not fit into one coherent ethical concept. Hence, philosophers tend to ignore or circumvent the concept. There is hope for a philosophically attractive conception of human dignity, however, given that one takes three crucial turns. The negative (...) turn: to start the inquiry with violations of human dignity. The inductive turn: to consider the whole range of applications of the concept of human dignity in different areas of ethics. And finally, the historical turn: to take into account the historical bonds between human dignity and traditional conceptions of dignity. Taken together they point in the direction of an understanding of human dignity as universal nobility. (shrink)

Intersemiotic translation (IT) was defined by Roman Jakobson (The Translation Studies Reader, Routledge, London, p. 114, 2000) as “transmutation of signs”—“an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of nonverbal sign systems.” Despite its theoretical relevance, and in spite of the frequency in which it is practiced, the phenomenon remains virtually unexplored in terms of conceptual modeling, especially from a semiotic perspective. Our approach is based on two premises: (i) IT is fundamentally a semiotic operation process (semiosis) and (ii) (...) IT is a deeply iconic-dependent process. We exemplify our approach by means of literature to dance IT and we explore some implications for the development of a general model of IT. (shrink)

This interpretation of the Odyssey challenges conventional readings in a way that recaptures the strangeness in a text that has been colonized by interpretative strategies, interpretations that impose certain cultural and gendered stereotypes. My reading inverts and subverts some of these stereotypes, without claiming to reveal, or aiming to establish, true identities. Rather, my point is that identities are unstable and unpredictable; the main characters in the Odyssey can be understood best by analysing their characteristic style of dealing with these (...) uncertainties. In this light, Odysseus appears as much less stable and much less ‘in control’ than in standard readings. His presumed, and famed, autonomy is shown to be largely a product of self‐deception, deriving from an inability to confront himself. The women in the Odyssey, on the other hand, are stronger characters, both less helpless, and more helpful, than standard readings allow for. Calypso and Circe play a positive role in liberating and educating Odysseus. Penelope, for her part, turns out to be involved in a much more subtle and elusive form of self‐fabrication than Odysseus. Rather than applying stereotypes of cunning' or ‘faithful’, we should understand both Odysseus' and Penelope's actions as the product of their own idiosyncratic way of dealing with contingency, within the bounds set by cultural and natural circumstance. (shrink)

Melancholia is a hybrid concept, deployed in feminist and philosophical theories politics and aesthetics, but ‘properly” belonging to neither. This heterogeneity of melancholia as both an aesthetic and a political category allows us to interrogate the interrelationship between gender politics and aesthetics without, however, abolishing their differences. Reinterpreted in the context of a feminist aesthetics, melancholia not only points to art’s origin in the unjust and gendered division of labor and power but also to the ethical and political task of (...) art to bear witness to the mute suffering of women cut off from the signifying possibilities of language. Moving beyond the entrenched oppositions between historicism/subjectivism, subject/object, or formalism /materialism, my own approach to an aesthetics of melancholia in women’s modern novels stresses unpredictable, conflicting migrations of pain between subjects and objects, political oppression and autonomous art, language and affect. (shrink)

This paper discusses Butler’s theory on the possibility of precarity to serve as the nexus of ethical relations, while also exploring some of the pitfalls of her theorization to reconceptualize the pedagogical implications of a critical pedagogy for precarity. In particular, the paper asks: How can precarity—understood as an ambivalent concept, as a paradoxical nexus of both possibilities and constraints—function pedagogically in a way that challenges its moralization? How can educators engage with precarity in ways that ‘re-frame’ it so that (...) both the dangers and prospects of ethics and politics of precarity are properly acknowledged and critically interrogated in pedagogical practice? The risks and possibilities of a critical pedagogy for precarity are addressed, highlighting that there are several complexities involved as much as there are opportunities for ethical transformation and political action in school and beyond. (shrink)

This paper explores mourning and forgiveness not simply as sources of existential, political, or emotional meaning, but primarily as possible sites of reconciliation pedagogies . Reconciliation pedagogies are public and school pedagogical practices that examine how certain ideas can enrich our thinking and action toward reconciliation—not through a moralistic agenda but through an approach that views such ideas both constructively and critically. Mourning and forgiveness may constitute valuable points of departure for reconciliation pedagogies, if common pain is acknowledged as an (...) important aspect of rehumanizing the “enemy-other.” This work is difficult and the wider society may be skeptical; however, such work is about assisting a “never again” mentality develop in schools and civil society. (shrink)

En este ensayo, nos proponemos explorar los diferentes significados de los conceptos de vivibilidad y vida en el pensamiento de Judith butler. si bien es crucial para su obra temprana —butler se refiere por primera vez a este concepto en su introducción del libro, El género en disputa de 1999—, el concepto en sí emerge con más claridad y elaboración en su obra tardía. nuestra pregunta principal sería: ¿cuál es el hilo conductor que une las diferentes concepciones de vida en (...) el trabajo de butler? ¿cuáles son los lazos entre la vida abyecta, invivible, precaria, indolora, desechada y desposeída? De estas dos preguntas surgen otras más: como la cuestión de gradación de vivibilidad — qué vida importa, y “cuánto,” y cómo pensar este tipo de cuantificación de algo no-cuantificable—; y la cuestión de la universalidad. estas preguntas, obviamente, tienen que contar con evidencias bajo las cuales la vida es cualificada, calificada y contada como vivible. estas condiciones abarcan las normas que organizan las posibilidades de reconocimiento y los órdenes de reconocimiento tanto como la distribución diferencial de la humanidad. Y además engloban las maneras en las que estamos constituidos políticamente, pero también, las maneras en las que el “nosotros” se define como social y corporal. La cuestión de la vida vivible está, por ende, enmarañada con la problemática de la contraposición entre la voluntad individual y la idea del “nosotros”, que, como seres, necesitamos —en palabras de la propia butler— “para mantener y reproducir las condiciones de propia vivibilidad”. (shrink)

This paper formulates the categories of "ethics," "self," and "subject" for an analysis of classical rabbinic ethics centered on the text, "The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan." Early rabbis were concerned with the realms of life that today's scholars describe as ethics and self-cultivation, yet they had no overarching concepts for either the self/person or for ethics. This analysis, then, cannot rely only upon native rabbinic terminology, but also requires a careful use of contemporary categories. This paper first sets out (...) basic features of "Rabbi Nathan" and presents appropriate formulations of the relevant scholarly terms. The latter sections address possibilities for employing and revising these categories in descriptive and comparative studies more broadly, first surveying relevant scholarship on Christian, Muslim, and Manichaean sources, and then turning to ancient East Asian sources with a particular focus upon passages in the "Zhuangzi". (shrink)

In response to recent events that demonstrate the persistence of racial trauma, this essay revisits James Baldwin's claim that racism is a symptom of fundamental human tendencies and constraints. For Baldwin, we cannot understand the legacy of racism if we do not take seriously all too human attempts to evade, and deflect, death and its intimations. To flesh out this component of Baldwin's thought, I engage with the thought of Georges Bataille, an author who thinks generally about the fraught relationship (...) between the preservation of life and our responsiveness to suffering. To test the insights that Baldwin provides on racial matters, this essay engages recent discussions in black studies and queer theory around futurity, racial difference, and the category of the human. I maintain that we must think “the human” and racial difference together, as a tension-filled relationship, in order to understand the limits and possibilities regarding our efforts to change the order of things. (shrink)

Drawing on ethnographic research with two Orthodox Jewish outreach organizations, this article conceptualizes interpellative styles and offers a framework to analyze how styles are variously situated, mediated, performed, and disruptive. I mobilize a micro-interactional approach to parse out how these four dimensions shape ideological recruitment and their roles in the choreographies of identity disruptions and repairs. The two case studies illuminate why and how groups deploy different interpellative styles and what elements shape whether styles are effective. In these ways, the (...) article contributes to scholarship on how people become persuaded to take on new identities and provides insight into the resistance and failures groups encounter when attempting to interpellate others. I conclude with a discussion of how a theory of interpellative styles can be applied more broadly and used to investigate the overlap between cultural, physiological, and psychological processes in identity formation and alteration. (shrink)

Whilst the concept of the subject has been called into question by many diverse approaches within contemporary political and social theory, there remains a focus upon agency, now attributable to reformulated subjectivities or assemblages. I query the persistence of this grammar of agency and ask whether politics can do without a ‘scene of the subject’. Spinoza’s philosophy, in particular, his conception of conatus, has inspired and offered some basis for rethinking agency. I examine two such prominent positions and argue that (...) ultimately neither captures the political promise of Spinoza’s philosophy. Configuring a concept of morphology to analyse this scene, my argument detaches the conatus from a narrow focus upon human desire, and focuses attention upon the scene of the subject as it folded into a wider complex body. My approach also returns a study of power to the discussion: the conatus is the power to persist, but it is also a differential force and site of conflict. By placing the spotlight on the scene of subjectivity in this way, the contemporary political theorist avoids the false antinomy between agency and structure, whilst continuing to track the production and composition of subjectivity in new political forms. (shrink)

This article challenges the idea that individual and collective agency require centred, fixed identities to be efficacious and meaningful. In post-foundational political thought, this idea frequently underpins an understanding of the subject as something temporarily consolidated through constitutive exclusions and a claim that political and ethical thought must negotiate the necessity for and inevitable failure of these exclusions. Against this thesis, the article presents a reading of Nietzsche’s analysis of the drives and their relation to the ego, holding that for (...) Nietzsche drives are synthesized into a complex but still dispersed assemblage that generates the illusion of unity in the form of an ego or ‘I’. For Nietzsche, the article argues, concrete agency is located in this assemblage of differences, the semblance of a centre being important in the coordination of these differences, but having no causal efficacy itself. The article concludes by examining whether Nietzsche falls into a variant of the ‘homunculus problem’ before turning to the doctrine of eternal return and showing how Nietzsche links his ethics to using the semblance of identity in order to overcome the need to link subjectivity to identity. (shrink)

This paper will interpret Judith Butler’s theory of performativity and materialization as a theory of identity, and so put it into dialogue with a phenomenological account of habit formation. The goal is to argue that identity is developed already at a bodily level and that this takes place via the processes of habit formation. The constitution of subjectivity, in other words, requires at the most basic level some kind of bodily performativity. What follows intends to draw out the concept of (...) ‘the body’ in Butler’s work, the role of which is surprisingly meagre given her clear favour of language signification in the elaboration of her theory of performativity. Alternatively, this paper will provide a phenomenology of habit formation that re-introduces the body not as thematic materiality, but as lived materiality. The body will therefore be conceived as something which is already skilful and creative, sensitive and vulnerable, and ultimately, as Butler anticipates, responsive to the intertwinement of individual and social aspects of identity formation. In this regard, I will argue for a performative theory of (bodily) habitual identity. (shrink)

: This paper responds to the sense of "crisis" or "trouble" that dominates contemporary feminist debate about the categories of sex and gender. It argues that this perception of crisis has emerged from a fundamental confusion of theoretical and political issues concerning the implications of the sex/gender debate for political representation and agency. It explores the sense in which this confusion is manifest in a debate between Seyla Benhabib and Judith Butler.

This paper responds to the sense of “crisis” or “trouble” that dominates contemporary feminist debate about the categories of sex and gender. It argues that this perception of crisis has emerged from a fundamental confusion of theoretical and political issues concerning the implications of the sex/gender debate for political representation and agency. It explores the sense in which this confusion is manifest in a debate between Seyla Benhabib and Judith Butler.

Foucault famously claimed that in political theory the king’s head still needs to be cut off, proclaiming the imperative to move beyond a centralized and prohibitive conception of power and toward a more distributed, relational and productive understanding of power in political society. Ironically, Edmund Burke, famous for criticizing an actual revolutionary regicide in France, can be read as an ally in Foucault’s project of theoretical regicide and conceptual revolution. For although he staunchly defended existing monarchies in France and Britain, (...) Burke’s political theory in many ways encapsulates the kind of approach that Foucault sought to call forth. In this article, I argue for three particular resonances between Burke’s and Foucault’s views on power’s place and role in political society: one, power precedes subjects; two, power exceeds subjects; and three, subjects must negotiate with existing power relations (as opposed to ignoring or destroying them). Combined, these resonances remind us that political practice, reform and resistance are (almost) always situated in an unchosen context, thus happening in the middle of things rather than on a blank social canvas. Recognizing Burke’s interest in reform conditioned by the socio-cultural and historical circumstances and Foucault’s concern for resistance even though we can never be outside power allows us to appreciate the unchosen constraints that shape political practice of individual and collective subjects alike. (shrink)

In the series Dear White People, students at the fictional University of Winchester struggle for racial justice. We analyze how the series treats “race” and racism and how this relates to contemporary debates in the United States. While the series presents an imaginary environment, we recognize strong similarities to actual student life and students grappling with various experiences of oppression including sexual violence. We draw on theories of identity formation and intersectionality to uncover how the series portrays and complicates “Blackness” (...) as an identity-forming experience and as an experience shaped by converging forms of structural discrimination. While we highlight the merit of combining two theoretical approaches, we note that especially intersectionality helped uncover a major blind spot of the series. Although Black women are at the center of the series and the struggle for racial equality at Winchester, their particular experiences of violence are marginalized in seasons 1–3. This tendency to overlook the experiences of Black women reflects the larger debate around race, racism, and movements for social justice. (shrink)

This article is concerned with the possibility of conceiving a form of social critique that has its locus in the human body. Therefore I engage in a close reading of the work of Butler which can be analysed as an elaboration of a Foucaldian critical ‘virtue’. In order to elaborate and to refine my ideas I go deeper into the criticisms McNay has uttered regarding the very impossibility of taking any distance from a given social or political order within a (...) Foucaldian–Butlerian framework. I show that there is no need to have recourse to a phenomenological perspective, as McNay claims, in order to achieve ‘critical distance’. On the contrary, I argue that it is imperative to explore a register of bodily experience that entails self-expropriation and which is linked to an attitude or ‘ethos’ that renounces any judgemental perspective. (shrink)

In this article, I critically engage with a vital assumption behind the work of Paulo Freire, and more generally behind any critical pedagogy, viz. the belief that education is fundamentally about emancipation. My main goal is to conceive of a contemporary critical pedagogy which stays true to the original inspiration of Freire’s work, but which at the same time takes it in a new direction. More precisely, I confront Freire with Jacques Rancière. Not only is the latter’s work on education (...) fully predicated on the idea of emancipation. For both Freire and Rancière, literacy initiation practice can be seen as an archetypical model for understanding the emancipatory moment in education. For both, educational practices are never neutral, as they decide to a great extent on the fate of our common world. Reflecting on similarities and differences in both their positions, I will propose to conceive of critical pedagogy in terms of a thing-centred pedagogy. As such, I take a clear position in the discussion between teacher- and student-centred approaches. According to Rancière, it is the full devotion to a ‘thing’, i.e. to a subject matter we study, which makes emancipation possible. Over and against Freire’s defense of emancipatory education, I highlight with Rancière the importance of educational emancipation. (shrink)

In the past decade, the concept of recognition appears to have acquired an important theoretical position in the work and organization literature. While in principle recognition denotes a positive and social form of freedom, in current-day organizations recognition may be often negative or instrumental. In order to capture this ambivalence in organizational recognitive conditions, the recent work of the American philosopher Judith Butler appears particularly applicable. The purpose of this paper is to explore theoretically to what extent her views on (...) recognition shed new light on the variety of recognition patterns in current-day organizations. Towards that purpose, this paper first turns to the ‘master-slave’ episode in the work of Hegel and its influential interpretation by Kojève, which are at the heart of Butler’s reading and conception of recognition. As a second step, the ambivalent conception of recognition in the work of Butler is discussed and critically assessed, while in the final section this conception is extended to work and organizations. (shrink)