For decades, nursing as a discipline has tried to establish itself within the socio‐professional and the socio‐political arenas. To date, several theorists have attempted to thoroughly define the essence (ontology) of nursing while others have proposed means (syntax) to achieve this ‘collective’ objective. Considering that this preoccupation, rooted in essentialism, is pervasive in the nursing literature, our claim is that these quests should be criticized because they impede innovative and transdisciplinary approaches to nursing theory. Our criticism includes the perspective supported (...) by the so‐called ‘postmodern nursing theorists’. We argue that the oeuvre of some nursing postmodern scholars is as prescriptive and linear as the ones they critique. Like it was done before, the discourse of these thinkers perpetuates the status quo by excluding alternative forms of knowledge that cross the boundaries of the discipline of nursing. Using the work of Deleuze and Guattari, this paper proposes an alternative way to conceive the development of nursing knowledge, which, we think, could represent an alternative way to explore the discipline of nursing. (shrink)

In both her fiction and her essays on writing and feminist theory, Monique Wittig takes up and redeploys traditional themes and genres as well as recent theories of language, literature, and writing in order to force change in and through the dominant categories of thought and language. She has announced her project as one which would “do away with the category of sex” by way of reconfiguring the grammatically and conceptually enforced compulsory heterosexual order. I examine the specific linguistic mechanisms (...) by which Wittig accomplishes this abolition of “sex” and the political/philosophical/ linguistic consequences of her “lesbianization” of language. Throughout, I aim to suggest what the political importance of The Lesbian Body as a diversified and written corpus is. (shrink)

My research into Virtual Reality technology and its central property of immersion has indicated that immersion in Virtual Reality (VR) electronic systems is a significant key to the understanding of contemporary culture as well as considerable aspects of previous culture as detected in the histories of philosophy and the visual arts. The fundamental change in aesthetic perception engendered by immersion, a perception which is connected to the ideal of total-immersion in virtual space, identifies certain shifts in ontology which are relevant (...) to a better understanding of the human being. This understanding was achieved through a broad inquiry into the histories of Virtual Reality, philosophy, and the visual arts and has lead to the formulation of an aesthetic theory of immersive consciousness indicative of immersive culture. The primary subject of this discourse is immersion then: an experience which will be identified within the dissertation as the indispensable characteristic of Virtual Reality. The understanding of immersion arrived at here will be used to fashion a synchronous theory of art particularly informed by encounters and concepts of immersion into virtuality. To sufficiently address this subject in a scholarly fashion, I have researched, found and accumulated aesthetic and philosophic examples of immersive tendencies, as found within the histories of art and philosophy, which subsequently contributed towards the articulation of what I have come to call immersive consciousness. As a result of formulating such an immersive consciousness, a good deal of the basis for the questioning of the Western ontological tradition has been found in the Western tradition itself when we look with new eyes and ask new uncertain questions. Moreover, this immersive consciousness will be used to propose some abstract questions encircling today's electronic-based culture. Through the structuring of the argument within the thesis - and overtly within the conclusion - I have articulated a non-teleological creative strategy which provides the basis for an unconstraining integration of noologies (ways of semblancing the thinking process). This strategy provides a means of exemplifying - and for honoring - various methods of thinking. This structuring strategy is consistent with the 'hacker ethic' as defined by Steven Levy, as a demand that access to computers - and anything which might teach us something about the way the world works - should be unlimited and total. To follow this strategy, this dissertation has set out to understand how topical conceptions of virtual immersion connect to pre-existing systems of thought as revealed in art as they have extended out of antecedent ontological self-understandings, historical human self-understandings which have evidenced themselves in the elaboration of technological objectives. To do this I have forged a certain rhizomatic paternity/maternity for Virtual Reality within this dissertation by joining choice immersive examples of simulacra technology into mental connections with the relevant examples culled from the histories of art, architecture, information-technology, sex, myth, space, consciousness and philosophy. (shrink)

This paper argues that Wittgenstein considered himself an exile and indeed was a self‐imposed exile from his native Vienna; that this condition of exile is important for understanding Wittgenstein the man and his philosophy; and that exile as a condition has become both a central characteristic condition of late modernity (as much as alienation was for the era of industrial capitalism) and emblematic of literary modernism. The paper employs the notion of ‘exhilic thought’ as a central trope for understanding Wittgenstein (...) and the topography or geography of his thought and suggests that philosophy might begin to recognize more fully the significance of location and place in order to come to terms internationalization, multiculturalism and globalization, and with postmodern notions of subjectivity that embrace aspects of the condition of being an exile. (shrink)

In this article, which is based on twenty four months of combined online and off-line ethnographic research, I show the way that some Iranian diasporic bloggers use their weblogs as entrepreneurship resources during the ‘war on terror’. Through a discourse analysis of a documentary film about Weblogistan and interviews with diasporic Iranian bloggers in Toronto, I argue that Weblogistan is implicated in discourses of militarism and neoliberalism that interpellate the representable Iranian blogger as a gendered neoliberal homo oeconomicus. The production (...) of knowledge about Iran in transnational encounters between the media, think tanks, policy institutions and the Iranian diasporic self-entrepreneurs, relies on gendered civilizational discourses that are inherently tied to the ‘war on terror’. Following feminist scholars who have theorized militarism and gender, I argue that dominant representations of Weblogistan produce different gendered subject positions for Iranian bloggers. Although the masculine blogger soldier takes freedom to Iran through his active participation in proper politics (enabled by his freedom of speech in North America and Europe), the woman blogger finds freedom of expression in writing about sex and telling the truth of her sex in a confessional mode. It is in this war of representation that women bloggers negotiate their subjectivity while shuttling in and out of local and global politics, as subjects of politics (markers of freedom and oppression) and political abjects (not worthy of political participation). (shrink)

The relationship between anarchy and the law is, to say the least, an uncomfortable one. The so-called ‘classical’ anarchist position – in all its heterogeneous tendencies – is, usually, characterised by a total opposition against the law. However and despite its invaluable contribution and the ever-pertinent critique of the state of affairs, this ‘classical’ anarchist position needs to be re-examined and rearticulated if it is to pose an effective nuisance to the current (and much complex) mechanisms of domination and the (...) oppression of dogmatism and dominance of the law. Taking into account the aforementioned challenges, in this article, I examine and develop two notions of the philosophical thought of Gilles Deleuze, namely that of the institution and that of the nomos of the nomads. In doing so, I aim to think anew the relationship between anarchy and the law and, ultimately, to point towards an ethico-political account, of what I shall call an an-archic nomos which escapes(or, at least, tries to) the dogmatism and “archist” mentality of the law. (shrink)

Inspired by Deleuze and Guattari, the article discusses Roma Pentecostalism as nomad self-governance or self-ministry and political affirmation, in a dialectical conversation with stable apparatuses of power such as state and transnational polities advancing a neoliberal program of social integration as semiological apparatus of capture. The latter is upheld by expert social sciences as royal sciences, which translate alternative forms of self-governance into the conceptual apparatus of the state and transnational polities. On the other hand, Pentecostal self-ministry works as disaffected (...) power undoing the architecture of the state subject, authorizing new hermeneutics of the self to take control over semiological acts of translation, and engenders a political resubjectivation of the governed. The article identifies Roma Pentecostalism as a source of political reawakening of Romani civil society, a creative line of flight with an immense power of deterritorialization of the main domains of subjection. (shrink)

The human body has come to be seen as forever susceptible to both external and internal hazards, which in many circumstances require immediate, heroic, and expensive intervention. In response to this, there has been a shift from a treatment‐based healthcare model to one of prevention wherein nurses play an integral role by identifying and assessing risks for individuals, communities, and populations. This paper uses Deborah Lupton’s outline of the spectrum of risk and applies the theoretical works of Foucault and Plato (...) to demonstrate the means by which nurses maintain social order by identifying and counselling risk takers. It also utilizes the work of Deleuze and Guattari to illustrate how Plato’s framework for creating social order through the creation of the good citizen can be viewed as a micro‐fascist system, which has been adopted wholeheartedly by preventative health professionals. The goal of this paper is to present an alternate understanding of risk to provide nurses and other healthcare professionals with a non‐traditional appreciation of certain aspects of their practice as researchers and clinicians. (shrink)