This study reassesses the concept of the Anthropocene as a new geological age as it is influencing contemporary debates in social theory. As a unit of geological time whose changes are allegedly caused, directly and indirectly, by human beings, this scientific concept challenges the existing constructions of theoretical binaries, such as nature/culture, environment/society, objectivity/subjectivity or happenstance/design, in social theory. The analysis suggests many understandings of the Anthropocene in social theory are politicized over-interpretations of natural events, and these moves appear to (...) be developing moral rhetorics of, and operational plans for, managing the Anthropocene to create specific outcomes for those who are the managers as well as the managed. The fact that human beings do not, in fact, have this measure of technical control is ignored by advocates of Anthropocenarian politics to advance their policy agendas. (shrink)

Therapeutic translations of the microbiome-gut-brain (MGB) axis are reconstructing the educational subject in a manner amenable to Foucauldian analysis. Yet, at the same time, under the sway of MGB research social scientists are taking a biosocial turn that threatens the integrity of Foucault’s historicizing philosophical project. Meeting that challenge head-on, this article argues that the MGB axis augments the neurobiological constitution of the educational subject by means of a dietetic mode of subjectivation. Absent a pedagogical element, there is a hollowness (...) to critical academics’ claims that holobiontic self-conceptions springing from the axis can elicit a resistant subjectivity. Though wild pedagogies might inform a resistant tactics of the self, contemporary self-technologies are – as Foucault has taught us – a pale shadow of the ancient Greek conception of dietetics as an holistic, embodied and ensouled practice. At the intersection between the disciplinary apparatuses of criminology and education, therefore, the MGB-driven biosocial turn unambiguously reinforces the social control function of schooling. (shrink)

This article draws upon work by Gilles Deleuze, Sanford Meisner, and William Connolly to argue that the practice of acting helps citizens to encounter unsettling circumstances in daily life; respond to and connect with others in more open, interactive ways; and expand the relatively stable repertoire of selves each person cultivates through life. Considering scenes from the films of Anna Magnani, Ronald Reagan, and Joan Crawford, I argue that acting spaces can be sites where an exploration and decentring of subjectivity (...) can proceed and new modes of democratic interaction and togetherness can be enacted. (shrink)

Disability studies has begun to employ Rosi Braidotti’s posthumanism, as a means to challenge the exclusionary model of man, dominant both in the academy and in everyday life. Braidotti argues that we must embrace a new form of subjectivity to effectively address the academic, environmental and species challenges characterizing the posthuman condition. This critical posthuman subject is inspired, in part, by Baruch de Spinoza, read as a monistic philosopher of difference. In this article, I compare Braidotti’s posthuman philosophy with Spinoza’s (...) Ethics, read through a Deleuzian lens. The two projects are extremely different. My arguments are twofold: first, that Braidotti’s subjective reading overlooks Spinoza’s anti-subjective rationalism; and, second, that we must be cautious about Braidotti’s demands that we jettison all vestiges of man from philosophy, exploring disability or anything else. I make my case using the example of phenomenology. I end by asking what an expanded understanding of Spinoza’s philosophy means for disability studies, for posthumanism and for other forms of radical philosophy in the future. (shrink)

This article explores the relevance of ontological assumptions for justifications of agency and ethics. It critiques Kantian ethics for being based upon an ontological imaginary that starts from the substantialism of Newtonian physics. Substantialism shapes Western political philosophy’s view about who we are as subjects and how the world works. In this ontological imaginary, validation of ethics is based upon universality and abstractions. Furthermore, Kantian ethics underscores an anthropocentric and theocratic vision of how to govern societies. I argue Kantian criteria (...) are not only insufficient to make good choices but are also conducive to wrong ones, since they elicit self-appeasement in international intervention, and contribute to the conceptual repertoire of coloniality. I propose that an ontology of entanglements opens possibilities for overcoming the shortcomings of an ethos based upon abstractions and possibly for correcting some of its moral failures. In a quantum ontological imaginary, the validation of ethical choices relies instead upon the exploration of the apparatuses we deploy, as well as upon careful situational evaluation. Specific practices, rather than an abstract humanity, are the referents for devising such ethos. This position, I argue, resonates with the critical project of decoloniality and its acknowledgment of the political salience of ontological imaginaries. (shrink)

Tragedy is a founding theme in disability studies. Critical disability studies have, since their inception, argued that understandings of disability as tragedy obscure the political dimensions of disability and are a barrier facing disabled persons in society. In this paper, we propose an affirmative understanding of tragedy, employing the philosophical works of Nietzsche, Spinoza and Hasana Sharp. Tragedy is not, we argue, something to be opposed by disability politics; we can affirm life within it. To make our case, we look (...) to an ongoing ethnography of two Canadian children’s rehabilitation clinics. Looking to the clinical experience of Canadian boys and young men diagnosed with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy and those of their families, we show how this affirmative understanding of tragedy allows us to pursue the themes of disability politics within tragedy. Contrary to an optimism that would eschew tragedy at all costs or a pessimistic approach that declines to act in the face of tragic circumstance, we argue that a revised understanding of tragedy allows us to situate the occasionally-tragic clinical experience of disability in a philosophy of life. Both disability and tragedy point us to the shared entanglements that make life what it is. (shrink)

Contemporary educational policies have recently prioritised the development of generic, core, and transferable skills. This essay reflects on this tendency in the context of the ‘algorithmic condition’ and those discourses that tend toward an image of education that privileges dematerialised skills, practices, and knowledge. It argues that this turn towards dematerialisation is resonant with shifts in a number of diff erent domains, including work, and explores some of the implications of this shift. Instead I suggest an approach to education that (...) understands it as turning towards the world, loving the world, and creating a common world. In order to understanding thinking and knowing as material practices, the concept of ‘material thinking’ is developed that refuses binaries of theory and practice, but that instead understands thinking, particularly in educational contexts, as material and a practice of thinking with something, and a turning towards the world. I draw upon the work of Susan Oyama, Elizabeth Grosz, Tim Ingold and Isabelle Stengers, and explore the example of Barbara McClintock’s research as a cytogeneticist researching maize. Here I am particularly interested in the importance of deep engagement with a subject matter in terms of developing the skilfulness that is associated with what I am calling ‘material thinking’. This allows us to think about education in a way that pays attention to the plurality of practices of material thinking that engage with the natural history of humankind, and the story of the world. (shrink)

After considering core ‘interruptions’ of identity and justice in the post-secularist agonisms of Connolly and Levinas, I mine their views for core practical insights about the possibilities for theist-atheist respect. After considering Connolly on ‘content v. comportment’ and after exploring the virtue of mystery as part of a mystery/contestability/generosity triad, as well as Connolly’s, Levinas’, Nietzsche’s and Bergson’s levels of optimism and pessimism about theism, I end by pointing to cracks in Connolly’s path to pluralism, and I recommend that the (...) ‘open and trembling’ mood of Levinas’ phenomenology serves as an important model for the kind of generous comportment that atheists and theists need on our path to respectful agono-pluralism. (shrink)

In this article, I highlight systemic oppression related to identity construction and ontological performativity. I introduce the concept of inter-relationality as a discursive tool that builds upon intersectionality, feminist theology, and quantum entanglement theory. For a case study, I recount my experience observing sex-trafficked boys in Thailand in order to demonstrate the analytical model I present. My chief analytical guiding principle in the treatment of the case study is the way masculinity operates to re-enforce oppression. I propose queering masculinity using (...) an inter-relational perspective for the purpose of de-constructing oppressive systems and replacing them with liberative ones. (shrink)

Although there is much feminist work that has examined the intersection of gender and neoliberalism, critical work on men and masculinities remains underdeveloped in this area. This article suggests that complexity theory is a crucial resource for a critical analysis of the ways in which masculinities contribute to the ongoing maintenance of neoliberal socio-economic systems. Critical work on neoliberalism and capitalist economics has recently been drawn to complex systems theory, as evidenced by the work of scholars such as Sylvia Walby, (...) William Connolly and Brian Massumi. Their work produces important insights into neoliberalism, but does not develop a sustained reflection on the place of men and masculinities in this domain. In order to develop a critical account of the relation of masculinity to complexity, the article draws on the work of Judith Butler and Bonnie Mann. It suggests that Butler’s theorising on precariousness contains important resources for understanding how hegemonic masculinities are positioned in relation to the complexity of neoliberal systems, as illustrated in Mann’s concept of ‘sovereign masculinity’. Finally, drawing on two different examples of the enactment of masculinities in neoliberal contexts, the article argues that hegemonic forms of masculinity can be understood as technologies for the amelioration of the complexities and insecurities generated by neoliberal markets. (shrink)