ABSTRACT As academics, we do not only produce and reproduce knowledge; we also produce our citizenship as a social and agonistic space. There are nuances embedded within academic citizenship – unqualifiable, but compelling in their production and reproduction of power dynamics, bringing into disrepute notions of academic citizenship as a homogenous or inclusive space. There are ways of being and becoming within citizenship that might be less readily conceivable, and hence, slip beneath the radar of scholarly scrutiny and debates.We have (...) yet to delve into how we come into the presence of one another. In offering an expanded understanding of academic citizenship as alterity, I argue that academic citizenship has to involve wading into a curious uncertainty about the other so that the immensity of diversity, its unknown-ness, is brought to bear on the university, not as fear and estrangement, but as a rupture with a continuity of Othering. (shrink)

Objectification, a phenomenon, in Foucault’s term, can be possible through “dividing practices” which divide the subject from others. It can be seen when the subject can be differentiated within the realms of good and bad, rich and poor, and powerful and powerless. Subject in Foucault’s notion is the diagnosis of what we are and how the power subjected the subject. It also echoes the idea of Stephen Best where he explains that a muted slave has not simply been objectified, but (...) thingified. J. M. Coetzee’s Foe traverses through the conduit of objectification of Friday, cannibals slave who has been muted by his master. This novel articulates the testament of power and latent limitations of language, language as an expression of truth and the antithesis of silence. Friday’s tongulessness is the mystery behind his submission and subjugation to slavery. It can be explored through the power of textaulity which has been controlled by the powerful. This novel intends to look upon the marginalized and voiceless condition questions the writing process of Susan Barton. It also echoes the phenomenon of Foucaultian concept of silence and resistance which has been tool to negate hegemonic power and it gives power for not being subjectivized. Therefore, it initiates the possibility of adaptation of the process of unbecoming to finish the authority of apparatuses as echoed by Althusser. Further, it portrays the hegemony in the construction of colonial subject by controlling the power of language, freedom to write and economic freedom. The paper in the context intends to examine the complex process of translating Friday into an object through the process of objectification. (shrink)

This article centres on the legal recognition of same-sex marriage with a view to exploring the issue of unspeakability; that is, the condition whereby some questions cannot be articulated because of a lack of words. More specifically, the article will explore what happens to those social practices that are not given legal speakability and thereby legal recognition/protection. To this end, I first focus on how words are produced in the sphere of everyday life and their dependence on the existence of (...) a widespread normality. I then discuss how the law sees to the preservation and the reproduction of normality by providing a set of categories which are made available to law-abiders to settle disputes when they arise. In doing so, I elucidate the twofold role played by law as both a selective and a creative device. To cast some light on the particular way law operates, I discuss an important decision by the Italian Constitutional Court in 2010, which provides a telling example of how legal officials are able to seal off the set of legal categories and to leave some issues in the sphere of the unspeakable. I then unearth a paradox: while unspeakability reveals a condition of powerlessness, the acquisition of speakability could bring about even harsher exclusionary effects. I conclude by arguing that the entry into the sphere of official law is always a Janus-faced achievement, but can play as an effective instrument of critique. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The question of non-Western difference has come to feature prominently across the field of comparative rhetoric, where it is often presupposed that an irreducible difference separates Western from non-Western rhetorical and cultural production. It is on the basis of this presupposition that critics have established a politics of comparative inquiry, whereby restituting the pure consciousness of a non-Western subaltern subject is understood to subvert the hegemony of Western thought. But what exactly is the nature of this difference? In this (...) article I examine the recent turn toward Latin America in the field of comparative rhetoric to argue that this presupposition serves as a constitutive topos—that the object of Latin America is invented rhetorically in the very act of comparative inquiry—and that this presupposition yields a political impasse that the field has yet to think through. Drawing on recent work in Latin American studies, I argue for a rearticulated notion of subalternity as a methodological approach for dealing with this impasse. (shrink)

This article explores the role of conventions in the normalization of cocoa production in Ecuadorian Amazonia. Convention theory provides key theoretical tools for understanding coordination among agents. However, conventions must be understood as cultural constructions with a strong Eurocentric background that must be substantially modified in originally non-European contexts. A creative application of convention theory can partially overcome bifurcation among Western and non-Western rationalities. First, it shows that Western values and forms of coordination are heterogeneous, conflictive and opposing. Second, it (...) provides key insight for understanding the transformation of subaltern subjectivities generated from non-Western rationalities that are closely associated with subjugated knowledges. Third, in applying the concept of compromise, it allows one to understand cognitive hybridization and coordination among indigenous and Western agents and thus the complexities of processes of resistance, subversion and empowerment carried by indigenous communities. This article is focused on how cocoa production in Ecuadorian Amazonia serves as an example of the confluence and coordination of indigenous (using the concept of “Good Living” or Sumak Kawsay) and Western conventions. The assertion of Sumak Kawsay is understood as a relevant transformation of Ecuadorian post-colonial relations. It is shown that relevant industrial upgrading processes are justified by, among others, Sumak Kawsay repertoires. Additionally, dialogue on knowledge and compromise among conventions, and especially concerning Sumak Kawsay and the market, have been key facets shaping the development of a differentiated quality strand that has promoted relevant changes in the subaltern positioning of indigenous farmers in the cocoa commodity chain. (shrink)

Science fiction has often been at the forefront of popular renderings and exploration of various “subaltern” groups, including that of nonhuman animals. I argue that science fiction’s freedom from the boundaries of what is currently possible allows writers such as Mary Shelley, H. G. Wells, Philip K. Dick, Olaf Stapledon, Daniel Keyes, Octavia Butler, Cordwainer Smith, and H. Beam Piper to explore ethical possibilities regarding animals that are diverse from those of the context in which they wrote. It is also (...) notable that the earlier science fiction writers only critique majority views regarding animals, whereas their antecessors go so far as to suggest the empowerment of the “Other,” in this case, nonhuman animals. (shrink)

Dans son introduction à la collection Moving Words. Writing Dance consacrée à une analyse des évolutions de la recherche anglophone des années 1990 sur la danse, Gay Morris souligne l’héritage d’une historiographie « anecdotique, sans théorisation, et avec un appareil critique très rudimentaire ». Carol Brown confirme que l’histoire de la danse est fondée essentiellement sur l’écriture des « balletomanes » qui ont idéalisé le corps de la danseuse comme une entité anhistorique. Rattachée à un...

In this article, I argue that revenge fantasies such as those found in the Oracles Against the Nations in Jeremiah 45-51 underscore the necessity for responsible Bible reading practices. I argue that to protect us from our own worst selves, the very human tendency to resort to revenge that inevitably leads to violence, one needs to read these biblical texts in terms of contemporary hermeneutical approaches that may play some role to bring an end to violence. A first such approach (...) that serves as an important tool to help us understand these revenge fantasies as found in the OAN is the relatively new field of inquiry of trauma hermeneutics that is particularly helpful in order to mitigate the violent aspects of these revenge fantasies. Moreover, I propose that recent approaches such as feminist and postcolonial biblical interpretation are also vital for nurturing ethical, just communities that actively pursue justice. (shrink)

Based on my study of the Rhodes Must Fall movement, I develop a rejectionist perspective by identifying the understanding and mobilization of epistemic disobedience as the core premise of such a perspective. Embedded in this contextual perspective, epistemic disobedience refers to the decolonization of the self and a fight against colonial legacies. I argue that, rather than viewing a rejectionist perspective as a threat, it should be integrated into the moral learning of contemporary institutions and businesses. This approach is important (...) in ensuring colonial legacies and biases do not create further racism or unequal situations for marginalized groups. The implication for critical management studies is that scholars from this camp should be more sensitive to issues of black consciousness and implement an authentic pragmatic ideal to promote black culture and historiographies in universities and curricula. It also highlights a need for the field of business ethics to apply more sensitive theory of marginalized stakeholders in order to prevent any escalation of violence by multinational corporations in the name of shareholder value creation and profit-maximization. (shrink)

Publication date: 27 August 2018 Source: Author: Chadi Chahdi This article throws into relief the tropes by which Hollywood has come to churn out identical Arabs bent on destruction, yet ones that need to be salvaged. However, the salvation process is never complete because the Arabs are not worthy of redemption, which sinks them further into the abyss of darkness. The representation of Arabs in Hollywood movies mostly aims at disseminating a stereotypical image that demeaningly homogenizes their cultures and identities. (...) Hollywood here participates in a process of imperial hegemony. The repetition in producing such imagined culture of Arabs and Muslims is seen as a hegemonic act of naturalizing orientalist ideologies that tend to over-idealize the Western culture and relegate the Eastern counterpart. In this light, this article attempts to deconstruct the visual representations produced to malign and vilify Arabs in Hollywood movies. Such movies are always premised upon a structure of binary oppositions that establish a motion picture of a civilized center dominating the margins, the so-called uncivilized subjects. (shrink)

This article explores the relationship between theory and praxis by contrasting three different models of intellectual endeavor: totalizing, particular and decolonial. Attending to the critique that Gayatri Spivak raised against Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze in Can the Subaltern Speak?, this article advocates a dramaturgical reading of texts as a model for political theory to address subaltern agency. It reads such agency in the smile that Pier Paolo Pasolini registers in his 1967 film version of Sophocles’ play, Oedipus Tyrannos. Dramaturgically (...) read, Oedipus reveals another text, the tragic history of a yet insufficiently explored democratic alternative that goes against the established democracy and its complicity with inequality in the continued naturalization of slavery despite its foundation in equality. This subtext demands understanding Oedipus as a political production from the speechless agency of dissident servants, a more subversive aspect of democratic politics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, the first paragraph of the review: "For those familiar with McWhorter’s work, the publication of "Racism and Sexual Oppression in Anglo-America" was long awaited. I had en-countered an early form of the argument McWhorter rehearses in thisbook in an article she published in 2004 in "Hypatia." At that time, it was one of very few published critical engagements with the intersectional model of oppression. It had come to seem to me that, as the model became (...) “mainstreamed”—that is, appropriated from Black feminists, who had introduced and elaborated the concept—the representational purposes to which intersectionality was now harnessed had changed. McWhorter pondered whether the increasingly vague gesture to intersectionality in feminist circles had become little more than “just a strategy to avoid charges of racism or classism.” (McWhorter, 2004, 38–39) What I found impressive about that article was its iconoclasm. McWhorter’sproject was to go beyond postulating that racial and sexual oppressions intersect—a claim rarely theorised in mainstream (that is, white-dominated) feminist theory. She argued that a genealogical investigation of the production of race and sex could illuminate their common investment with a form of power that, following Foucault, she termed “biopower”...". (shrink)

This article offers a Derridean analysis of Barack Obama’s statement that, as president, he would be willing to negotiate with political actors dubbed ‘terrorists’, ‘rogues’, ‘enemies’, or members of the ‘axis of evil’. The article argues that the Derridean concept of the ‘parergonal’ is useful, as is the Derridean distinction between hospitality and tolerance. This is because a parergonal approach to politics, evidenced in a willingness to listen to those that others have ignored, and to include those left out, illustrates (...) hospitality’s commitment to allowing alterity to remain untranslated: the other is accepted as other. Undoubtedly, this deconstructive aspect of Obama’s political outlook proves threatening to traditional Americans, for its hospitality could potentially rewrite America’s hegemonic position in the world arena. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that Hegel's treatment of Amerindian peoples is rooted in an exclusionary perspective of Reason, which establishes a particular form of life as its defining standard-bearer. This stance results in a distinct form of epistemic misrecognition and injustice that disregards the potential contributions of Amerindian resources and worldviews to the lexicon stablished throughout the modernity. To present an alternative viewpoint, I examine the insights of Yanomami shaman Davi Kopenawa, whose pluriversal conception of reason and history challenges (...) one-sided portrayals of rationality. My aim is not to ‘fit’ Amerindian concepts into our familiar modern philosophical vocabulary. Instead, I wish to consider Hegel's philosophy through the lens of encounters and epistemic recognition with those who have been denied it. In particular, the application of an ‘ethnographic pact’ as a mode of translation constitutes a valuable contribution to ongoing decolonial discussions. I assert that this approach calls into question Hegel's notions of progress and universal reason, suggesting that his philosophy of history might have taken a divergent path if it had not been entangled in a self-centric epistemic framework. While these considerations remain subject to further development, they offer a fresh perspective for comprehending Hegel's argument beyond his own epistemic limitations. (shrink)

-/- In the prime years of Hegel’s philosophical career, Prussia made progressive reforms to childhood education. Hegel had long supported reform. In his early Stuttgart Gymnasium Valedictory Address (1788), he had advocated for a public interest in widespread public education as a means for developing the children’s potential. Like Wilhelm von Humboldt, Hegel believed in education’s power to promote individual development (Bildung) as a path of freedom, which is achieved largely by expanding the student’s linguistic capacity since language, as Humboldt (...) understands it, is “the formative organ of thought [das bildende Organ des Gedanken]”. By combining Humboldt’s insights on language (especially his discussion of the power of Sanskrit) with themes in Hegel’s Science of Logic, I will demonstrate that the mind’s power to make judgments is a forward movement that can be arrested by epistemic injustice. Humboldt’s reflections on linguistic flowering and the factors that might impede it can help us understand epistemic injustice as an interference in linguistic cognitive mediation. -/- . (shrink)

Hannah Arendt has been criticized for her “blindness” to the sociopolitical significance of race and racism in the West, most notably, in her “Reflections on Little Rock.” I consider three prominent explanations for Arendt's wrongheaded conclusions in “Reflections.” First, the “category interpretation” presents Arendt's conclusions as resulting from her rigid application of philosophical categories—the public, the private, and the social—to events in Little Rock. Second, the “racial prejudice interpretation” presents Arendt's conclusions as resulting from her anti-black racism and her dismissal (...) of the political strivings of African Americans. Third, the “cultural interpretation” presents Arendt's conclusions as resulting from her misunderstanding of the sociopolitical significance of race and racism in the United States. Each of these interpretations advances our understanding of Arendt's oversights, but I contend that they do not go far enough. I argue that white ignorance constitutes a fundamental epistemic error in Arendt's work and, as such, strengthens current explanations of Arendt's “blindness” to the history and political strivings of African Americans. If accepted, my analysis—following Charles Mills's work on white ignorance—calls for increased theoretical work on epistemologies of ignorance, their function in Western political philosophy, and the affect of white ignorance on cognizers in American society. (shrink)

This paper argues that philosophical practice in the Western world, in particular analytic philosophy, suffers from problems that contribute to its lack of diversity in two senses: the exclusion of women and minorities, and a narrow choice of subjects and methods. This is not fruitful for philosophical exchange and the flourishing of philosophical thought. Three contributing factors are covered: a flawed execution when instilling intellectual humility; the gaslighting of women in philosophy; and an overemphasis on a narrow conception of intelligence. (...) The conclusion calls for a more humane and socially aware practice of philosophy. (shrink)

Contemporary Western feminism and transpersonalism are kaleidoscopic, consisting of interlocking influences, yet the fields have developed in parallel rather than in tandem. Both schools of praxis developed during the climate of activism and social experimentation of the 1960s in the United States, and both share a non-pathological view of the human experience. This discussion suggests loci of synthesized theoretical constructs between the two disciplines as well as distinct concepts and practices in both disciplines that may serve the other. Ways in (...) which a feminist-transpersonal perspective may catalyze social change on personal, regional, and global levels are proposed. (shrink)

This article attends to the transformation of national identity that occurs in the context of ‘the multicultural debate’ in the Netherlands, and unfolds on the terrain of Dutch (secular and sexual) exceptionalism. First, it explores the connections between two topics that are prominent in the ‘multicultural debates’ all over Europe and undergird the civilizational discourse of a post-Cold War geopolitical era: discussions about secularism on the one hand, and gender and sexual politics on the other. Through a mode of ‘secular (...) nostalgia’, which mobilizes the understanding of the Netherlands as a place par excellence of emancipation for both women and sexual minorities, the Dutch secular arrangement is restructured in new exclusionary ways. Second, it explores how dominant discourses on the symbolic and material borders of the nation interpellate young Muslim women who often figure as the central ‘subjects of debate’. I rely on the notion of interpellation (Althusser) to explore the question of subject formation, with a particular attention to the epistemological conditions of ‘talking back’ as a subject whose constituency and agency is always already informed by the terms in which she is addressed. (shrink)

This article traces not only some of the borrowings but also the differences between feminist and gay politics in the context of the post-1989 ‘multicultural debate’ and the hegemony of civilizational politics. This investigation is empirically grounded in one national context, that is, the Dutch case, which is exemplary when it comes to bringing politics of gender and sexuality to bear on national and cultural identity politics. The article recapitulates some insights on how feminist politics can get entangled with colonial (...) and imperialist politics and traces these connections in a Dutch context. It goes on to review some of the forms homonationalism and homonostalgia take in the Netherlands. And it concludes with a discussion of the resemblances and differences between the ‘saving women’ and ‘saving gays’ narratives that inform civilizational modes of feminist and gay politics. (shrink)

Although research on epistemic injustice has focused on the effects of prejudice in epistemic exchanges, the account of prejudice that emerges in Fricker’s (2007) view is not completely clear. In particular, I claim that the epistemic role of prejudice in the structure of testimonial justification is still in need of a satisfactory explanation. What special epistemic power does prejudice exercise that prevents the speaker’s words from constituting evidence for the hearer’s belief? By clarifying this point, it will be possible to (...) address two more general issues concerning the nature of prejudice: its resistance to counterevidence and the steps involved in overcoming prejudice. I propose a hinge account of prejudice, based on the recent perspective of hinge epistemology, to help clarify these aspects. According to the hinge account, prejudices share a fundamental feature with hinges: they work as norms of evidential significance, and as such, they determine what can and cannot count as evidence for belief. (shrink)

The Nordic countries have been major contributors to peacekeeping, often seen as particularly well suited due to their lack of ties to colonialism and supposedly peaceful nature. The article critically addresses this idea in relation to how gender equality has been conceptualized in peacekeeping taking as an example Icelandic peacekeeping. Iceland’s recent engagement in peacekeeping has strongly emphasized gender issues but has lacked an engagement with issues of power and domination and thus reflects a particular idea of ‘Nordic exceptionalism’. The (...) authors emphasize in their discussion the need to maintain critical feminist perspectives that take diverse relations of power into account. (shrink)

This article considers how Margaret Jane Radin’s theory of the feminist double bind can bring conceptual clarity to the difficulties feminisms face in engaging with political and legal institutions of global governance. I draw on her theory to reinitiate a conversation on ideal and nonideal theory, in order to answer the call of key proponents in international legal feminism to reevaluate methodologies in critiquing mainstream institutions. By providing an account of how to navigate the double bind, this article brings conceptual (...) clarity to the tension between resistance and compliance that has been argued to lie at the heart of the feminist project in international law. I demonstrate how this theoretical framework can foster greater pluralist perspectives in feminist engagement of ideal theories to temper the deradicalising and conservative risk of navigating feasibility constrained nonideal strategies. (shrink)

Although international law grants a distinct juristic personality to indigenous peoples, this subjecthood is premised on a hierarchical reading of ethnicity and indigeneity. Through illustrations of Adivasi experiences in India, this article interrogates the prejudices of the global juridical discourse that are reproduced by the domestic jurisdiction, exposing the voyeuristic performance of legality in constructing indigenousness.

Epistemologies have power. They have the power not only to transform worlds, but to create them. And the worlds that they create can be better or worse. For many people, the worlds they create are predictably and reliably deadly. Epistemologies can turn sacred land into ‘resources’ to be bought, sold, exploited, and exhausted. They can turn people into ‘labor’ in much the same way. They can not only disappear acts of violence but render them unnamable and unrecognizable within their conceptual (...) architectures. Settler systems of epistemic and conceptual resources and the relations among them are constructed to preclude certain forms of knowledge. This is not an accident; it is a central goal of colonial violence. Colonization and land dispossession would not be possible without the violent disruption of Indigenous knowledge systems and ongoing organized attempts to disrupt their survival. Violently disrupting the relationships of people to land is as much an epistemic project as it is a material one, and these two projects are inherently linked. The task of theorizing epistemic oppression is not only about epistemic oppression. Epistemic oppression is a story that gives language to a phenomenon in order to get past it, to carry on with the maintaining and reviving the forms of Indigenous and diasporic knowledge that colonialism has worked tirelessly to corrupt and silence. (shrink)

The new technologies of television viewership following the digital turn have introduced new anxieties and possibilities. While new screen cultures facilitate a transnational viewership, the importance of ethically and morally grounded representations cannot be overstated. In this context, Delhi Crime, the Emmy award-winning Indian series based on the Delhi gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old woman in Delhi, will be instrumental in informing the ethico-political concerns that ought to be prioritized while representing the subaltern subject and the novel socialites (...) fashioned through the new viewership patterns. This article attempts to understand the way in which the emerging screen economies provide new terrains for ethical representation and engendering digital publics. Thus, this article is interested in understanding the intersection of media ecologies and ethico-political concerns to introduce new dialectical possibilities. (shrink)

The question of Palestine has remained the ultimate test for intellectual and political consistency. In this article we canvass the discrepancies between two opposing French intellectual traditions in relation to Palestine, and scrutinise them in relation to Israel's investments in political languages designed for external constituencies. The article concludes with an observation on how French feminist voices are today shaping the conversation about the Palestine question in progressive ways.

North American writer Joan Didion’s eloquent testimonial speaks to the significance of storytelling in our lives. Personal storiesmake our lives meaningful. Part of this is because our stories, wittingly or not, become the means through which we fashion our identities for listeners. Or, as scholars from many disciplines have argued, identity and selfhoodare narrative accomplishments. In this formulation, an individual constructs a sense of self by telling stories or “personal narratives,” which describe “the evolution of an individual life over time (...) and in social context” (Maynes et al. in Telling stories: the use of personal narratives in the social sciences and in history. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2008, 2). While personal narratives contain unique autobiographical elements, the logics of storytelling and the values and beliefs of a particular time and place also influence the kinds of stories people tell. As feminist historian Mary Jo Maynes and her coauthors argue: “The stories that people tell about their lives are never simply individual, but are told in historically specific times and settings and draw on the rules and models in circulation that govern how story elements link together in narrative logics” (2008, 2). Put another way, even the most idiosyncratic story is always in some way social: what narrators decide to tell is often guided by the expectations of audiences (real or imagined); the conventions of various genres (such as life history or autobiography); as well as the broader cultural narratives located in particular historical times and places. In this light, personal narratives at once provide evidence of a storyteller’s viewpoint and experiences as well as the social and cultural milieu in which they live. (shrink)

: In this essay, I contend that feminist theories of citizenship in the U.S. context must go beyond simply acknowledging the importance of race and grapple explicitly with the legacies of slavery. To sketch this case, I draw upon W.E.B. Du Bois's "The Damnation of Women," which explores the significance for all Americans of African American women's sexual, economic, and political lives under slavery and in its aftermath.

In this essay, I contend that feminist theories of citizenship in the U.S. context must go beyond simply acknowledging the importance of race and grapple explicitly with the legacies of slavery. To sketch this case, I draw upon W.E.B. Du Bois's "The Damnation of Women," which explores the significance for all Americans of African American women's sexual, economic, and political lives under slavery and in its aftermath.

In this essay, I contend that feminist theories of citizenship in the U.S. context must go beyond simply acknowledging the importance of race and grapple explicitly with the legacies of slavery. To sketch this case, I draw upon W.E.B. Du Bois's “The Damnation of Women,” which explores the significance for all Americans of African American women's sexual, economic, and political lives under slavery and in its aftermath.

In this essay, I contend that feminist theories of citizenship in the U.S. context must go beyond simply acknowledging the importance of race and grapple explicitly with the legacies of slavery. To sketch this case, I draw upon W.E.B. Du Bois's “The Damnation of Women,” which explores the significance for all Americans of African American women's sexual, economic, and political lives under slavery and in its aftermath.

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

As reaction to the failures of the globalization process, which is based on a commodification of the whole life new resistance mobilizations occurred. The Occupy Wall Street Movement has underlined that the social consequences of the neoliberal empire call for new resistances, new visions of solidarity, and new ways of representation. It has become clear, that capitalism’s influence on democracy has made that concept insufficient. The sovereign biopower is regulating life and survival via granting access or exclusion from resources. It (...) not only disciplines and normalizes sexualities, bodies and gender but regulates health, security, etc. of everybody. Therefore responsible theology needs to expand Feminist, Gender and Queer critique and my approach is to offer a reaction by developing a critical Bio-Theology using Foucault’s critique of biopower and Castoriadis’ concept of the radical social imaginary. This paper uses inter- and transdisciplinary methodology bringing together ‘beyond liberation theology’ approaches with queer, postcolonial, epistemological intersectionality critique and post-secular debates. (shrink)

This paper underlines the surprising ways in which subject formation, agency and human flourishing emerge in counter discourses. As examples I offer a post-colonial critique of Rosa Parks in the USA and Fayza in the film Cairo 678. Economic and epistemic violence of neo-liberalism, neo-colonialism, racism, fundamentalism, nationalism, classism, sexism, homophobia, speciesism, etc. call for a critique of religion with corresponding answers. For such a project, the analysis brings together the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the post-colonial scholar Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, (...) and questions their notions of religion and gender as well as resistance and representation. Spivak’s critique of capitalism, the post-colonial condition and epistemic violence in terms of gender constructions is seminal. However, her understanding of ‘religion’ remains ambivalent, yet influences post-colonial theologies tremendously. Bonhoeffer is interesting for a de-essentialized understanding of religion in the post-secular context, because he keeps the tension between a secularized world, engagement with the world and the appreciation of religious knowledge. His final perspective on gender and representation might be more advanced than expected. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe starting point of this article is Clifford Christians’ argument that peace journalism presumes a liberal-contractual self and that it must transform its philosophy of the human, where “the liberal self be exorcised and replaced by a relational self.” In this article, the author discusses what the relational self is, how differently it can be conceptualized from the liberal-contractual self, and what difference it would make in terms of conflict reporting to presume a relational self instead of a liberal-contractual self.

Anti-racist education within the Academy holds the potential to truly reflect the cultural hybridity of our diverse, multi-cultural society through the canons of knowledge that educators celebrate,...