This article provides an affirmative feminist reading of the philosophy of Henri Bergson by reading it through the work of Karen Barad. Adopting such a diffractive reading strategy enables feminist philosophy to move beyond discarding Bergson for his apparent phallocentrism. Feminist philosophy finds itself double bound when it critiques a philosophy for being phallocentric, because the setup of a master narrative comes into being with the critique. By negating a gender-blind or sexist philosophy, feminist philosophy only reaffirms its parameters, and (...) setting up a master narrative costs feminist philosophy its feminism. I thus propose and practice a different methodological starting point, one that capitalizes on “diffraction.” This article experiments with the affirmative phase in feminist philosophy prophesied by Elizabeth Grosz, among others. Working along the lines of the diffractive method, the article at the same time proposes a new reading of Bergson (as well as of Barad), a new, different metaphysics indeed, which can be specified as onto-epistemological or “new materialist.”. (shrink)

: Henri Bergson's philosophy has attracted increasing feminist attention in recent years as a fruitful locus for re-theorizing temporality. Drawing on Luce Irigaray's well-known critical description of metaphysics as phallocentrism, Hill argues that Bergson's deduction of duration is predicated upon the disavowal of a sexed hierarchy. She concludes the article by proposing a way to move beyond Bergson's phallocentrism to articulate duration as a sensible and transcendental difference that articulates a nonhierarchical qualitative relation between the sexes.

Henri Bergson's philosophy has attracted increasing feminist attention in recent years as a fruitful locus for re-theorizing temporality. Drawing on Luce Irigaray's well-known critical description of metaphysics as phallocentrism, Hill argues that Bergson's deduction of duration is predicated upon the disavowal of a sexed hierarchy. She concludes the article by proposing a way to move beyond Bergson's phallocentrism to articulate duration as a sensible and transcendental difference that articulates a nonhierarchical qualitative relation between the sexes.

This paper critiques the rise of scientific approaches to central questions in the humanities, specifically questions about human nature, ethics, identity, and experience. In particular, I look at how an increasing number of philosophers are turning to evolutionary psychology and neuroscience as sources of answers to philosophical problems. This approach constitutes what I term a biological turn in the humanities. I argue that the biological turn, especially its reliance on evolutionary psychology, is best understood as an epistemology of ignorance that (...) contributes to a climate of hostility and intolerance regarding feminist insights about gender, identity, and the body. (shrink)

After a time dominated by nature-phobia, a naturalistic turn is emerging within feminist theory. Welcoming this new theoretical embrace of nature and sympathising with its insistence that nature is not feminism’s enemy, this article nevertheless points to some problematic features of this turn. Focusing on Elizabeth Grosz’s postmodernist readings of Charles Darwin, I suggest that their emphasis of nature’s dynamic, indeterminate and enabling qualities both implies a politically unmotivated glorification of the dynamic and unruly, and as such obscures the important (...) fact that nature also works as a constraining factor on societies. I demonstrate, from the point of view of a Marxist-realist perspective, why an acknowledgement of nature’s limiting force is crucial for the coherence of any theoretical account of the workings of social systems. The article also addresses the feminist imperative to transcend the dualism between nature and culture, and shows how the concept of emergence offers a solution to dilemmas that tend to appear in connection to such efforts of transcendence. (shrink)

The study of world politics in theoretical and empirical terms has recently witnessed an upsurge of interest in the question of complexity, drawing upon complexity theory; particularly, renewed interest in emergent properties and the aleatory nature of the political. This article seeks to demonstrate, primarily via an exploration of the work of Gilles Deleuze and Manuel DeLanda, the possibilities for a type of thinking about the ‘international’ that utilises the notion of social complexity as its primary mode of enframing the (...) major dimensions to world politics. As such it argues for a theoretical reconceptualisation of the system of states, markets and societies as individual and overlapping scale-entities, each possessing causal agency, with overlapping and enmeshed boundaries, situated in their historical and concrete manifestations. The reified concepts of polity, economy and society are re-cast in the language of assemblage theory as ordering, exchanging and cohering, thus highlighting process in world politics and providing a theoretical base better equipped to cope with complex social processes and practices. And this I conclude clears the way to re-situate international space theoretically as a complex adaptive system. (shrink)

Research on the status and experience of women in academia in the last 30 years has challenged conventional explanations of persistent gender inequality, bringing into sharp focus the cumulative impact of small scale, often unintentional differences in recognition and response: the patterns of 'post-civil rights era' dis­crimination made famous by the 1999 report on the status of women in the MIT School of Science. I argue that feminist standpoint theory is a useful resource for understanding how this sea change in (...) understanding gender inequity was realized. At the same time, close attention to activist research on workplace environment issues suggests ways in which our understanding of standpoint theory can fruitfully be refined. I focus on the implications of two sets of distinctions: between types of epistemic injustice (and correlative advantage) that may affect marginalized knowers; and between the resources of situated knowledge and those of a critical standpoint on knowledge production. (shrink)

Erin E. Edwards’ "The Modernist Corpse: Posthumanism and the Posthumous" offers a unique study of the critical and creative potential of the corpse in the context of (primarily) American modernist literature and other media. Dead bodies, oftentimes “radically dehumanized” (p. 1) and depicted en masse in direct relation to atrocities of colonialism, slavery and World War I, populate modernist literature and art. While many literary theorist whose work focuses on American modernism (as Edwards herself notes), looks at death and corpses (...) through the critical lens of studies on mourning, loss and trauma (e.g. Moglen 2007) and are clearly anchored in the traditional idea of the human subject, Edwards grounds her own “necrocentric perspective” (p. 14) in (feminist) posthumanist theorising. For her, “the corpse in American modernism is involved in a trenchant re-examination of who – and what – counts as human and as ‘alive’ in the early twentieth century” (p. 2). (shrink)

This aim of this study is to investigate the manner in which Deleuze’s individual and collaborative work can be productively understood as being concerned with the question of living well, where it will be suggested that living well necessitates that we not only become aware of, but that we also explore, the forever renewed present possibilities for living otherwise that each moment brings. In particular, this study will make an original contribution to existing Deleuzian studies by arguing that what legitimises (...) this conception of living well, and what can motivate us to engage in such a practice, is that a life that becomes aware of and explores the open field of present possibilities for living otherwise that each moment engenders is a life that reflects, or that is lived in accordance with, the challenging ontological account that can be discerned throughout Deleuze’s individual and collaborative work; a life lived in accordance with his open, dynamic and thoroughly temporal theory of Being or what I will suggest he came to refer to simply as ‘Life’. In addition, I will argue that in so far as each individual human being is to be understood as an ongoing and immanent expression of Life, an immediate expression of Life understood as a universal, impersonal and pre-individual dynamism, then a life that strives to explore the forever renewed present possibilities for living otherwise that each moment brings - a practice that I shall propose also necessitates that each individual strives to resist the diverse ways in which their present possibilities are continually hindered, thwarted and negated - is not only a life that strives to live in accordance with the temporal dynamism of Life, but is also a life lived in accordance with our own dynamic and thoroughly temporal being. (shrink)

Professional higher education is expected to educate large numbers of students to become innovative professionals within a time frame of three or four years. A mission impossible? Not necessarily, according to Henriëtta Joosten who is a philosopher as well as a teacher. She uses the experimental, liberating, but also dangerous ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche to rethink contemporary higher professional education. What does it mean to teach students to strive for better in a professional world where horizons tend to disperse and (...) the possibility of long-term orientation is disappearing? Following Nietzsche, five key elements of striving for better are explored: uncertainty, excellence, critical thinking, truth seeking friendship, and learning through ups and downs. From these five perspectives, Joosten scrutinises existing educational discourses on professional higher education in search for openings to transform these discourses into new, more appropriate ones. Understanding excellence as rising above oneself, she argues for a learning environment in which all students are encouraged to excel. Such an environment allows for uncertainty and learning through ups and downs. Furthermore, teachers are prepared to risk their certainties in order to let a joined quest - that is, a quest of students and teacher - for better truths arise. Using the Nietzschean-inspired notions which have been developed in the study, Joosten describes two factual cases. One case relates to a course in close reading: first-year students jointly read philosophical and scientific texts. The second case involves a group of eleven senior students developing a course in project management. These descriptions and the recommendations serve as a catalyst for constructive debate on the question of how all students can be equipped for a dynamic professional world. (shrink)

This article considers the relationship between art and sciences, particularly through cultural research in science. It offers information on the science of cellular regeneration and its conflict with humanities. The author explores the possibility of science that leads to a passion for creating a new possibility and not towards the sense of power which comes with discovery.