Intersectionality has utilized various feminist theories that continue subculture of violence thinking about Black men and boys. While intersectional feminists often claim that intersectionality leads to a clearer social analysis of power and hierarchies throughout society and within groups, the categories and claims of intersectionality fail to distinguish themselves from previously racist theories that sought to explain race, class, and gender, based on subcultural values. This article is the first to interrogate the theories used to construct the gendered categories (...) and the assumptions behind Black male positionality under intersectional analyses. Contrary to its promises for more liberated Black identities, intersectionality merely replicates the pseudo-science of racist criminology and presents decades old theories as cutting-edge gender analyses. In short, while intersectionality has allowed Black women to create nuanced experiences and epistemological accounts of Black womanhood, the very same theory has confined Black male experience to the perpetration of violence and defined Black manhood as lesser—merely the exemplification of white masculinity’s pathological excess. (shrink)

This article examines how Žižek’s analysis of “subjective” violence can be used to explore the ways in which media coverage of a terrorist attack is contoured and shaped by less noticeable forms of “objective” (symbolic and systemic) violence. Drawing upon newspaper coverage of the 2017 London Bridge attack, it is noted how examples of “subjective” violence were grounded in the externalization of a clearly identifiable “other”, which symbolically framed the terrorists and the attack as tied to and representative of the (...) UK Muslim community. Examples of “systematic” violence were most notable in the ideological edifice that underpinned this framing but also in the ways in which newspaper reports served to draw upon British values in the aftermath of the attack. This directed attention away from the contradictions within the UK, towards narratives that sought to “fix” these contradictions through eradicating the problem of “the other” and/or by violently protecting the British values “they” seek to undermine. As a consequence, newspaper coverage worked to uphold the illusion that “peace” could be achieved by eradicating terrorism through further forms of objective violence, including, internment without trial; the “ripping up” of human rights; and, closer surveillance of Muslim communities. Indeed, it was this unacknowledged violence that worked to maintain British values in the press’ coverage. (shrink)

The Psychosis of Race offers a unique and detailed account of the psychoanalytic significance of race, and the ongoing impact of racism in contemporary society. Moving beyond the well-trodden assertion that race is a social construction, and working against demands that simply call for more representational equality, The Psychosis of Race explores how the delusions, anxieties, and paranoia that frame our race relations can afford new insights into how we see, think, and understand race's pervasive appeal. With examples drawn from (...) politics and popular culture--such as Candyman, Get Out, and the music of Kendrick Lamar--critical attention is given to introducing as well as explicating on several key concepts from Lacanian psychoanalysis and the study of psychosis, including foreclosure, phallus, the Name-of-the-Father, sinthome, and the objet petit a. By elaborating a cultural mode to psychosis and its understanding, an original and critical exposition of the effects of racialization, as well as our ability to discern the very limits of our capacity to think through, or even beyond, the idea of race, is provided. The Psychosis of Race speaks to an emerging area in the study of psychoanalysis and race, and will appeal to scholars and academics across the fields of psychology, sociology, cultural studies, media studies, and the arts and humanities. (shrink)

Sport poses a number of important and no less significant questions, which, on the face of it, may not necessarily seem very important or significant to begin with – a peculiarity that we believe to be integral to sport itself. This article introduces, explores and outlines the psychoanalytic significance of this peculiarity. It explores how the emotions stirred by sport are intertwined with a realm of fiction and fantasy. Despite its lack of practical utility, sport carries an undeniable gravity, encapsulating (...) the aspirations of communities, nations and continents. As a result, psychoanalysis can be used to critically reflect on the purpose and meaning of sport: that is, why do we need sport, and why, for large sections of the world’s population, do we rely on it? Ultimately, while psychoanalysis maintains a unique relation to a variety of unexpected fields of study – including art, culture and neuroscience – we seek to add to this expanding list of inquiry by including sport in this critical domain. By utilising sport as a platform to elucidate psychoanalytic concepts, it is recognised that sport can also prompt questions for psychoanalysis. In so doing, theoretical discussions on the social, cultural and political dimensions of sport through psychoanalytic theory are introduced and applied. (shrink)

Peter Carruthers argues that the global workspace theory implies there are no facts of the matter about animal consciousness. The argument is easily extended to other cognitive theories of consciousness, posing a general problem for consciousness studies. But the argument proves too much, for it also implies that there are no facts of the matter about human consciousness. A key assumption of the argument is that scientific theories of consciousness must explain away the explanatory gap. I criticize this assumption (...) and point to an alternative strategy for defending scientific theories of consciousness, one that better reflects the ongoing scientific practice. I argue there are introspectable inferential connections from phenomenal concepts to functional concepts that scientists can use to individuate the global workspace in terms of capacities that animals and humans share. (shrink)

Through examining the BBC television series, Black and British: A Forgotten History, written and presented by the historian David Olusoga, and in extending Paul Gilroy’s assertion that the everyday banality of living with difference is now an ordinary part of British life, this article considers how Olusoga’s historicization of the Black British experience reflects a convivial rendering of UK multiculture. In particular, when used alongside Žižek’s notion of parallax, it is argued that understandings of convivial culture can be (...) supported by a historical importance that deliberately ‘shocks’, and subsequently dislodges, popular interpretations of the UK’s ‘white past’. Notably, it is parallax which puts antagonism, strangeness and ambivalence at the heart of contemporary depictions of convivial Britain, with the UK’s cultural differences located in the ‘gaps’ and tensions which characterize both its past and present. These differences should not be feared but, as a characteristic part of our convivial culture, should be supplemented with historical analyses that highlight but, also, undermine, the significance of cultural differences in the present. Consequently, it is suggested that if the spontaneity of conviviality is to encourage openness, then understandings of multiculturalism need to go beyond reification in order to challenge our understandings of the past. Here, examples of ‘alterity’ are neither ‘new’ nor ‘contemporary’, but instead, constitute a fundamental part of the nation’s history: of the ‘gap’ made visible in transiting past and present. (shrink)

Exploring online criticisms of the ‘take the knee’ protest during ‘Euro 2020’, this article examines how alt- and far-right conspiracies were both constructed and communicated via the social media platform, Twitter. By providing a novel exploration of alt-right conspiracies during an international football tournament, a qualitative thematic analysis of 1,388 original tweets relating to Euro 2020 was undertaken. The findings reveal how, in criticisms levelled at both ‘wokeism’ and the Black Lives Matter movement, antiwhite criticisms of the ‘take the (...) knee’ protest were embroiled in alt-right conspiracies that exposed an assumed Cultural Marxist, ‘woke agenda’ in the tournament’s organization and mainstream media coverage. In conclusion, it is argued that conspiratorial discourses, associated with the alt-right, provided a framework through which the protest could be understood. This emphasises how the significance of conspiracy functions to promote the wider dissemination of alt-right ideology across popular cultural contexts, such as sport. (shrink)

The availability of large digital archives of historical newspaper content has transformed the historical sciences. However, the scale of these archives can limit the direct application of advanced text processing methods. Even if it is computationally feasible to apply sophisticated language processing to an entire digital archive, if the material of interest is a small fraction of the archive, the results are unlikely to be useful. Methods for generating smaller specialized corpora from large archives are required to solve this problem. (...) This article presents such a method for historical newspaper archives digitized using the METS/ALTO XML standard (Veridian Software, n.d.). The method is an ‘iterative bootstrapping’ approach in which candidate corpora are evaluated using text mining techniques, items are manually labelled, and Naïve Bayes text classifiers are trained and applied in order to produce new candidate corpora. The method is illustrated by a case study that investigates philosophical content, broadly construed, in pre-1900 English-language New Zealand newspapers. Extensive code is provided in Supplementary Materials. (shrink)

Sport continues to be one of the primary means through which notions of Englishness and Britishness are constructed, contested, and resisted. The legacy of the role of sport in the colonial project of the British Empire, combined with more recent connections between sport and far right fascist/nationalist politics, has made the association between Britishness, Englishness, and ethnic identity(ies) particularly intriguing. In this paper, these intersections are explored through British media coverage of the Canadian‐born, British tennis player, Greg Rusedski. This coverage (...) is examined through the lens of ‘performativity,’ as articulated by Judith Butler. Through a critical application of Butler's ideas, the ways in which the media seek to recognise and normalise certain identities, while problematising and excluding others, can be more fully appreciated. Thus, it was within newspaper framings of Rusedski that hegemonic notions of White Englishness could be performed, maintained, and embedded. (shrink)

From Basil Fawlty, The Little Tramp and Frank Spencer; to Jim Carey, Andy Kaufman and Rowan Atkinson... comedy characters and comic actors have proved useful lenses for exploring—and exposing—humor’s cultural and political significance. Both performing as well as chastising cultural values, ideas and beliefs, the comic character gives a unique insight into latent forms of social exclusion that, in many instances, can only ever be approached through the comic form. It is in examining this comic form that this paper will (...) consider how the ‘comedy character’ presents a unique, subversive significance. Drawing from Lacanian conceptions of the subject and television ‘sitcom’ examples, the emancipatory potential of the comedy character will be used to criticize the predominance of irony and satire in comic displays. Indeed, while funny, it will be argued that such comic examples underscore a deprivative cynicism within comedy and humor. Countering this, it will be argued that a Lacanian conception of the subject can profer a comic efficacy that not only reveals how our social orders are inherently inconsistent and open to subversive redefinition, but that these very inconsistencies are also echoed in the subject, and, in particular, the ‘true comedy character’. (shrink)

This article draws upon the work of Timothy Morton and Slavoj Žižek in order to critically examine how mountain bike trail builders orientated themselves within nature relations. Beginning with a discussion of the key ontological differences between Morton’s object-oriented ontology and Žižek’s blend of Hegelian-Lacanianism, we explore how Morton’s dark ecology and Žižek’s account of the radical contingency of nature, can offer parallel paths to achieving an ecological awareness that neither idealises nor mythologises nature, but instead, acknowledges its strange and (...) contingent form. Empirically, we support this theoretical approach in interviews with twenty mountain bike trail builders. These interviews depicted an approach to trail building that was ambivalently formed in/with the contingency of nature. In doing so, the trail builders acted with a sense of temporal awareness that accepted the radical openness of nature, presenting a ‘symbolic framework’ that was amiable to nature’s ambivalent, strange and contingent form. In conclusion, we argue that we should not lose sight of the ambivalences and strange surprises that emanate from our collective and unpredictable attempts to symbolize nature and that such knowledge can coincide with Morton’s ‘dark ecology’ – an ecological awareness that remains radically open to our ecological existence. (shrink)

This article approaches the COVID-19 pandemic as an inherently antagonistic phenomenon. To do so, it carries forward the philosophical contentions that Žižek outlines in his Pandemic! COVID-19 Shakes the World, as well as his wider work. With reference to the parallax Real and McGowan’s Hegelian contradiction, it is demonstrated that Žižek’s philosophical premises hold a unique importance in politically confronting COVID-19. Indeed, by drawing specific attention to the various ways in which our confrontations with the Real expose the limitations of (...) our socio-ideological orders, it is argued that it is in these very limitations that the limits of the Real are transposed through the various “fictions” we employ to fight and perceive it. In outlining this confrontation, a focused discussion on the Real as “impossible” – a “characteristic” that affords an important political significance for the present context and its ongoing limitations – is provided. In conclusion, if the COVID-19 pandemic demands a new “commons”, and if our response to the crisis should be one where the desires of the nation-state are regulated and controlled, then, it may not simply be enough that we “demand the impossible”. Instead, it is today that the impossible demands a new “us”. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to determine the form of teacher readiness and difficulty when implementing the mathematics curriculum in high school, measured from four teacher competency assessments. Schools in Indonesia are still 50% learning from home until 2022, this situation has an impact on the achievement of student learning outcomes. In 2020, the ministry conducted a survey of 4000 students and the results of the survey and out of 100% of the participants, 58% were of the opinion that (...) online learning was ineffective, 38% lacked attention from the teacher, 35% had poor communication, 62% had poor internet access, and 80% had difficulty learning mathematics online. The method in this research is descriptive qualitative. The technique of collecting data is by means of field observations, interviews and collecting documentary evidence. Data analysis techniques by presenting data, data reduction and intersecting data are drawn into conclusions. The number of people who were observed was 2 with a total of 58 and 13 people interviewed sources. Findings, difficulties arise from unprepared pedagogic competence and professional competence. Teachers have no self-constructed modules, difficulty writing symbols and mathematical proofs online. Students provide an assessment of teacher competence online, from 100% of respondents 80% disagree with pedagogic and 90% disagree with professional competence. This is due to the lack of readiness of the two competencies. In conclusion, online learning is expected by students and teachers to have their own modules. Students argue that the teacher's difficulties when writing symbols, providing examples of questions and proving mathematical formulas can be written in modules and modules can be given to students to study at home. (shrink)

Curry’s chapter “In the Fiat of Dreams” makes two strong claims about the definition of “black male” and the value of idealistic ethics for black men. Depending on what he means by the analyticity of “black male”, he either understates his desired conclusion for the severity of the black male’s condition, overstates his conclusion in rejecting idealistic ethics, or ends up in contradiction within the “world” or “society” he is talking about. Given the (...) most charitable reading of his argument, I show that he requires further explication, or merely a different argument, in order to make the claims that he intends to offer. (shrink)

This work has done aiming to find out the effect of Covid -19 on the level of Anxiety and level of depression among the undergraduate students who live and study in urban area. As we know that during pandemic situation all classes for schools and colleges has been performed online .This mode of education has come in practice first time in life of students. Hence a level of depression and anxiety may develop in mind of under graduate college going students (...) who have been preparing for graduation and competitive exam. Going through the literature we found that the Hamilton Depression Scale & Hamilton Anxiety scale are suitable to measure Level of anxiety and depression .Both online and offline mode have been used to collect data from male and female candidate .A sample of 50 students male and 50 students have taken from Gwalior and nearby area . Two tailed T test has been done to analyze significant difference between the mean value of level of anxiety and level of depression as well for male and female candidate .Correlation coefficient has been determined to find the relation of variance between level of anxiety and level of depression between male and female students. SPSS software, Microsoft word and excel is use to arrange data, calculation, Tabulation and formation of chart. After data analysis and result and discussion it has concluded that the level of thinking and condition of living standard is almost same for male and female student in urban area .Hence there is no significant difference pertaining to level of anxiety and level of depression between male and female undergraduate student living in urban area. It is also come out that the There is no significance relation in level of anxiety and level of depression between male and female candidate. As we know that the corona virus has been spread in all over the world and so many people had lost their lives .In view of safety measure the government of India imposed lockdown of around 50 days in each part of country. All college and schools are closed and the final exams have also cancelled and many competitive exams have postponed. During this period of lock down undergraduate students have faced so many problems for continuing their study for their end semester exam and competitive exam as well .Due to uncertainty of their exams and their offline classes they experienced some level of depression and anxiety during this period .This project work is the assessment of level of depression and anxiety induced in male and female undergraduate students staying in urban area . (shrink)

How should we explore the relationship between race and educational opportunity? One approach to the Black-White achievement gap explores how race and class cause disparities in access and opportunity. In this paper, I consider how education contributes to the creation of race. Considering examples of classroom micropolitics, I argue that breakdowns of trust and trustworthiness between teachers and students can cause substantial disadvantages and, in the contemporary United States, this happens along racial lines. Some of the disadvantages are academic: (...) high achievement is more difficult when one faces mistrust, ego depletion, effort pessimism, and insult. And within a knowledge economy, exclusion from knowledge work makes one vulnerable to injustice. But the problem goes deeper than achievement, for schools are contexts in which we develop self-understandings and identities that situate us as members of society. If students of color are systematically denied full participation in trusting conversations that create shared knowledge—especially, knowledge that holds power within the dominant culture—they are unjustly deprived resources to form flourishing selves that are suited to the positions of power and authority. The argument suggests that knowledge is not best understood simply as a commodity to be distributed, and opportunity is not just a matter of access. Moreover, even if access is granted, those who are motivated and talented can fail: they drain their willpower by coping with insults, or reasonably lose optimism about their efficacy. Over time, motivation may shift away from achievement, and under the circumstances this can be a rational response. The barriers to achievement are many, but true opportunity is impossible without trust and trustworthiness. (shrink)

The gendered occupational role can have an impact on both employees and organizations they work for. This study aims to explore different sides and factors that are related to experience, challenges, and coping mechanisms of male dry cleaners amidst gendered occupational roles. The methodology used were: Heideggeran Phenomenology, Semi- structured Interview Guide, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) by van Kaam and modified by Moustakas. This st udy had 15 participants. Based on the data collected, the following themes were identified in (...) this study; namely, (1) The Steadf ast, (2) and The Challenged. Likewise, the following sub themes were identified from the data- gathering and are based on their perspectives. Masculinity of a male laundry employee can really affect the perspective of an in dividual, the more the male look masculine the more that the people can easily conclude that his physique is not suitable on the jobs like laundry, because people always expect that men should work on a heavy work like truck, construction sites, etc. (shrink)

This paper investigates the cultural significance of black holes and suns as metaphors in continental European literature and art, drawing on theoretical insights from French continental authors such as Jean-François Lyotard and Ray Brassier. Lyotard suggests that black holes signify the ultimate form of the sublime, representing the displacement of humanity and our unease with our place in the cosmos. On the other hand, Brassier views black holes as a consequence of the entropic dissolution of matter, reflecting (...) physical reality's indifference to subjective or teleological significance. The study also presents a curated collection of literary works and artworks that employ black holes and suns as metaphors, examining the emergence of these metaphorical objects and identifying discursive and epistemological shifts in society. Furthermore, this collaborative research project, involving the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo and the Federal Fluminense University in Brazil, and the Charles University in Prague in the Czech Republic, aims to provide a valuable resource for further academic inquiry. (shrink)

This essay uses the concept of reconstruction to make an argument and an intervention in relation to the practice and study of black aesthetics. The argument will have to do with the parochialism of John Dewey, the institutional inertia of professional philosophy, the aesthetic dimensions of the US politics of reconstruction, the centrality of reconstructionist politics to the black aesthetic tradition, and the staging of a reconstructionist argument in the film, Black Panther (Coogler 2018). The intervention aims (...) to address the fact that arguments like these tend not to register properly because of certain reflexive and customary limits on some common forms of philosophical inquiry. The sort of professional philosophy I was raised to practise and value tends not to be particularly inclusive and open-minded, especially when it comes to subjects that bear directly on the thoughts, lives, and practices of people racialized as black. black aesthetics, by contrast, is an inherently ecumenical enterprise, reaching across disciplinary and demographic boundaries to build communities of practice and exchange. Hence the need for an intervention: to create the space for arguments and the people who work with them to function across disciplinary and demographic contexts. (shrink)

The Black woman has always been portrayed in clichéd images in the white media, stereotyping them in a racist and sexist manner. In Black Women Image Makers, Mary Helen Washington dwells upon such unfair portrayals as the tragic mulatto, the hot blooded exotic whore and the strong Black Mammy. And this is probably why the black mother frequently appears in literature as a figure of towering strength. In Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), (...) an old grandmother, a former slave, accurately describes her position in this society: "De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see". The black mother is not a woman with power, not a liberated woman, but a mule, picking up the burdens that everyone else has thrown down and refused to carry. To outsiders, the Negro mother appears to be the one-dimensional Rock of Gibraltar – strong of back, long of arm, incapable of destruction. The proposed paper would study the black mothers as portrayed in Alice Walker’s novels, The Third Life of Grange Copeland and Meridian. To Walker, the Black mother is an individual – profound, tragic, mysterious, sacred, and unfathomable – strong in many, but not in all ways. She claims that the assertion of the black mother as a superwoman is a myth, and she feels that the black mother isn’t always strong. A black man does have a history of ignoring his responsibilities, but the black mother has had no choice in any matter; she has had to pick up the burdens that no one else would carry. In her fiction, Walker introduces the real-feeling, caring, uncaring, disappointed, indifferent black mother to the world. (shrink)

Macroscopic irreversible processes emerge from fundamental physical laws of reversible character. The source of the local irreversibility seems to be not in the laws themselves but in the initial and boundary conditions of the equations that represent the laws. In this work we propose that the screening of currents by black hole event horizons determines, locally, a preferred direction for the flux of electromagnetic energy. We study the growth of black hole event horizons due to the cosmological expansion (...) and accretion of cosmic microwave background radiation, for different cosmological models. We propose generalized McVittie co-moving metrics and integrate the rate of accretion of cosmic microwave background radiation onto a supermassive black hole over cosmic time. We find that for flat, open, and closed Friedmann cosmological models, the ratio of the total area of the black hole event horizons with respect to the area of a radial co-moving space-like hypersurface always increases. Since accretion of cosmic radiation sets an absolute lower limit to the total matter accreted by black holes, this implies that the causal past and future are not mirror symmetric for any spacetime event. The asymmetry causes a net Poynting flux in the global future direction; the latter is in turn related to the ever increasing thermodynamic entropy. Thus, we expose a connection between four different “time arrows”: cosmological, electromagnetic, gravitational, and thermodynamic. (shrink)

This article explores Fanon's thought on dance, beginning with his explicit treatment of it in Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth. It then broadens to consider his theorization of Black embodiment in racist and colonized societies, considering how these analyses can be reformulated as a phenomenology of dance. This will suggest possibilities for fruitful encounters between the two domains in which (a) dance can be valorized while (b) opening up sites of resignification and resistance (...) for Black persons and communities-including a revalorization of Black embodiment as a kind of empowering danced experience. (shrink)

Whether in the form of testimonial injustice, hermeneutical injustice, or contributory injustice, epistemic injustice is characterised an injustice rather than simply an epistemic harm because it is often motivated by an identity prejudice and exacerbates existing social disadvantages and inequalities. I argue that epistemic injustice can also be utlised against some members of privileged social identity groups in order to preserve the dominant status of the group as a whole. As a case-study, I analyze how the harms to male (...) victims of sexual violence is exacerbated by the failure of the law to recognise the rape of men as a crime and the failure of other people to recognise the testimony of male rape victims as credible. Analyzing shifts in the legal concept of rape and examples from Project Unbreakable, I uncover how these failures of recognition undermine the victims’ status as legal, moral, and epistemic subjects and inflict epistemic injustice against them. (shrink)

The study examined the differential item functioning (DIF) of 2018 Basic Education Certificate examination (BECE) in Mathematics tests of National Examination Council (NECO) and BECE of Akwa Ibom State government in Nigeria. The invariance in the tests with regards to sex was considered using Item Response Theory (IRT) approach. The study area was Akwa Ibom state of Nigeria having a student population of 58,281 for the examination. The sample was made of up 3810 students drawn through a multi-stage sampling approach. (...) The multidimensional IRT (MIRT) package implemented in R-programming language software was applied in analyzing the data. The findings reveal that BECE of NECO displayed 23(38.3%) DIF items while BECE of Akwa Ibom State had 37 (61.7%) DIF items in terms of sex. The findings also revealed that, in the two examinations, more items favoured the male candidates more than the female candidates in terms of performance. It was recommended that IRT model should be adopted by test developers to determine item parameters for selection of good items to ensure quality of items before administration. Test equating of students who write equivalent form examinations conducted by different examining bodies was also recommended for admission and placement of candidates to determine actual group differences in performance. The study posits that research on Differential Item Functioning is inconclusive, so should be encouraged. (shrink)

Two diametrically opposed assumptions have influenced interpretations of circumcision rituals in ancient Judaism: either women performed the operation on their infant sons because children at birth and during infancy remained under the purview of the mother; or, conversely, men—specifically a ritual agent known as the mohel—performed circumcisions, because only they were typically granted authority to carry out the ritual. This study reassesses the pertinent texts, including Exodus 4 and passages from the books of Maccabees and the Babylonian Talmud (b. Šabb. (...) 134a; b. Yebam. 64b; b. ʿAbod. Zar. 27a), to determine whether women in ancient Judaism may have circumcised their infant sons; and shows that an older, family-based ritual practice in which either mothers or fathers performed the operation was being replaced by late antiquity by a specialist-based ritual performed by mohels from outside the household. (shrink)

This article explores the history of Vodou from outlawed African dance to revolutionary magic to depoliticized national Haitian religion and popular dance, its present reduction to Diaspora interpersonal healing, and a possible future. My first section, on Kate Ramsey’s The Spirits and the Law: Vodou and Power in Haiti, reveals Vodou as a sociopolitical construction of racist legal oppression of Africana dances rituals, and artistic-political resistance thereto. My second section, on Karen McCarthy Brown’s Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn, (...) a “postmodern ethnography” of intersectional oppressions and Black female Haitian resistance in the Diaspora, foregrounds the figure of Gedelia, a feminist variant on Papa Gede, central Vodou spirit (lwa) of resurrection and healing. Finally, my last section, on the “observing participant” analyses of Black dance anthropologist Yvonne Daniel’s Dancing Wisdom: Embodied Knowledge in Haitian Vodou, Cuban Yoruba, and Bahian Candomblé, finds a dancing Gedelia in her centering of Oyá, a warrior spirit of storms and death. On this basis, I propose the figure of tornadic black angels as a possible magical tool (in Vodou, a pwen, or “point”) intended to re-spiritualize and thereby re-politicize the secularized and whitewashed social Latin dance called “salsa” for social justice. (shrink)

This study aimed to determine the experiences of male and female students on Flexible Learning (FL) during the COVID-19. A qualitative method using a phenomenological approach was used to ascertain the students' experiences, while written questionnaires were utilized to gather the information. The 24 students taking Development Communication and Public Administration were chosen based on set criteria. Both male and female flexible learning participants appreciated its benefits, including convenience and reduced academic stress. They both faced technology-related challenges and (...) suggested improvements. However, differences emerged in their experiences. Males found FL fun, emphasizing family time, while females highlighted skill development and concerns about teaching methods. Females also mentioned practical skill development not emphasized by males. These variations may stem from differing learning preferences and experiences. Variations in male and female experiences in Flexible Learning highlight the need for teachers to tailor instruction, offer mental health support, and incorporate skill development. Improved teacher training and clear guidelines are crucial, as are gender-inclusive program design and regular feedback mechanisms to create equitable and effective educational experiences. (shrink)

Drawing upon empirical studies of racial discrimination dating back to the 1940’s, the Movement for Black Lives platform calls for the abolition of capital punishment. Our purpose here is to defend the Movement’s call for death penalty abolition in terms congruent with its claim that the death penalty in the U.S. is a “racist practice” that “devalues Black lives.” We first sketch the jurisprudential history of race and capital punishment in the U.S., wherein courts have occasionally expressed (...) worries about racial injustice but have usually taken such evidence to warrant reform but not outright abolition. We argue that the racial discrimination at issue flows in significant part from implicit biases concerning race, criminality, and violence, which do not fit comfortably within the picture of racial bias advanced by the courts. The case for abolition, we contend, rests on Black Americans as a class (not merely those who interact with the criminal justice system as capital defendants or as murder victims) being subject to such bias and thereby not being accorded equal status under the law. (shrink)

This book is discussing patterns of radical religious thought in popular forms of Black music. The consistent influence of the Five Percent Nation on Rap music as one of the most esoteric groups among the manifold Black Muslim movements has already gained scholarly attention. However, it shares more than a strong pattern of reversed racism with the Bobo Shanti Order, the most rigid branch of the Rastafarian faith, globally popularized by Dancehall-Reggae artists like Sizzla or Capleton. Authentic devotion (...) or calculated marketing?Apart from providing a possible answer to this question, the historical shift of Bobo adherents from shunned extremists to firmly anchored personifications of authenticity in mainstream Rastafarian culture is being emphasized. A multi-layered comparative case study attempts to shed light on the re-contextualization of language as well as expressed dogmatic perceptions and symbolism, attitude towards other religious groups and aspects of ethnic discrimination. Further analysis includes the visibility of artists and their references to practical and moral issues directly derived from two obscure ideologies that managed to conquer airwaves and concert halls. (shrink)

The binary between the figure of the child and the fully human being is invoked with regularity in analyses of race, yet its centrality to the conception of race has never been fully explored. For most commentators, the figure of the child operates as a metaphoric or rhetorical trope, a non-essential strategic tool in the perpetuation of White supremacy. As I show in the following, the child/human binary does not present a contingent or merely rhetorical construction but, rather, a central (...) feature of racialization. Where Black peoples are situated as objects of violence it is often precisely because Blackness has been identified with childhood and childhood is historically identified as the archetypal site of naturalized violence and servitude. I proceed by offering a historical account of how Black peoples came to inherit the subordination and dehumanization of European childhood and how White youth were subsequently spared through their partial categorization as adults. (shrink)

Fan culture has grown immensely over the past few years. People are constantly looking up to celebrities and personalities as role models for their fashion, identity, and success. During the stage of adolescence, it is normal for teenagers to admire well- known people and form fan attachments as part of their identity formation. However, this admiration of a specific media figure can be associated with one's personality, cognitive processes, and psychological well-being. Thus, the current study aims to investigate the correlation (...) between celebrity admiration and the self-esteem of 238 Filipino male teenagers. The research instruments, namely Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS) and Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) were both utilized through google forms. Results have shown high scores on celebrity admiration and the normal range of self-esteem of the participants. Using Pearson’s r correlation coefficient, it was found that celebrity admiration and self-esteem of Filipino male teenagers have a significant relationship that exists in a negative direction. (shrink)

Black theology is a contemporary mode of theology that critically engages with specific theological motifs in order to affirm the humanity of blacks and emancipate them from white racism. At present, much black theological discourse occurs in Christian contexts, and thus, Hindu religious traditions are bereft of the socially transformative insights that such discourse produces. However, in this paper, I demonstrate that black theological motifs are present within Hindu theological frameworks as well. Specifically, I construct a distinctively (...) Hindu black theology by drawing upon certain theological motifs present within the theological framework of the Caitanya Vaiṣṇava Vedānta tradition. After constructing this black theology, I demonstrate its socio-theological implications and explain how it can fulfil the black theological aim of liberating blacks from white racism. (shrink)

Feminist, critical race, and postcolonial theories have established that social identities such as race and gender are mutually constitutive—i.e., that they “intersect.” I argue that “cultural appropriation” is never merely the appropriation of culture, but also of gender, sexuality, class, etc. For example, “white hipness” is the appropriation of stereotypical black masculinity by white males. Looking at recent videos from black male hip-hop artists, I develop an account of “postmillennial black hipness.” The inverse of white hipness, (...) this practice involves the appropriation, by black men, of stereotypical white gay masculinity and/or non-American, non-white femininity. I also argue that Shephard Fairey’s recent images of (mainly militant) non-Western women of color can be read as a new form of white hipness that revises the traditional logic in two ways: (1) by appropriating non-white femininity rather than masculinity, and (2) by adopting the practice of postmillennial black hipness itself. (shrink)

In 2011, a 5,000-year-old “male” skeleton buried in a “female” way was discovered by an archaeological team just outside of modern-day Prague. This article queries the impulse to name such a discovery as evidence of transgender identity, and bodies, in an increasingly ancient past. To do so, it takes up the work of Denise Ferreira da Silva, Sylvia Wynter, and Hortense Spillers as a means to push back against the impetus to name such discoveries “transgender” in order to shore (...) up the legitimacy of contemporary trans identity. Each of these three thinkers offers a different vantage point for rethinking such naming practices that push the reader to consider how desires to name and place “transgender” in a distant past papers over the violence of plantation slavery, global imperialism, and the Enlightenment's shift toward scientific reason. This article argues not that such anthropological discoveries should not be considered transgender, but rather that the desire for them to be, or become, transgender does not legitimate contemporary transgender identity, and may instead treat certain iterations of transness as spatially and temporally universal. (shrink)

Gossip, commonly known as idle talk or rumour about others' personal or private affairs is the usual part of our daily communications. Gossip which is also known as dishing or tattling plays a significant role in the discourse of speech communities. This study which aims to investigate the difference between Afghan male and female gossip specifically about others' appearance, achievements and social information is conducted at the University Technology MARA (UiTM), Malaysia. Totally 10 students; 5 male and 5 (...) female postgraduate students participated in the study. Data was collected through a questionnaire and was analyzed and presented manually in tables using frequencies and percentages. The findings of the study revealed that females usually talk about others' clothes and personal appearance compared to males. In part of the achievement, it is a male who talks most of the time about others’ achievements compared to females. Similarly, in the part of social information; males talked more about others’ failures, problems at work, colleagues and others’ love affairs compared to females. Whereas, females talked more about friends, family members, and compatibility of couples and others who are dating compared to males. (shrink)

One of Fabio Rossi’s most important works analyses the themes of evil and suffering in 20th-century French philosophy. Among others, Rossi presents Louis Lavelle’s contribution on such themes and his reading of the mutual influences between philosophical reflection, emotional experience and religious transcendence. The article aims to make use of some of the conceptual tools made available by Rossi and Lavelle in order to understand François Mauriac’s treatment of evil and suffering in some of his novels, namely Le Mystère Frontenac, (...) Noeud de vipères and Le Mal. The role of family bonds, social rules, the body and its weaknesses, and nature are among the themes around which Mauriac centers his reflection about suffering and its inevitable presence in human life. (shrink)

The expression of fragility has always been a difficult and complex matter for African Americans, for the discourse of mainstream media is set up to sustain their fragility while at the same time misrecognizing it. Even though the black public sphere split off from the dominant public sphere after the Civil War to enable distinctive forms of expression, the “practiced habits” of which Coates speaks continued in the structures of the dominant discourse. My essay will analyze the structure of (...) America’s indifference to fragility in three parts. In the first section, I will introduce a normative problematic that can track how the hegemonic public sphere uses the rhetoric of formal equality to subordinate and silence African Americans speech while it also opens a space for black speech to be heard rather than dismissed. I then will trace the silencing structures back to the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision of 1954, for this “progressive” decision provided a template for what can be said and cannot be said. The next second section examines how Ralph Ellison thematizes and revises the encounter between the black and dominant public spheres. In the last section of the essay, I analyze the ways that Ta-Nehisi Coates exposes the contemporary forms of these discursive structures. (shrink)

This essay is to invite a new form of theorizing Baldwin’s intellectual archive beyond a work of protest or as being contributory to Queer writing. I argue that Baldwin’s thought often in the form of the polemic is a form of non-violent resistance. Baldwin’s contestation against whiteness and the methods of Black erasure in general and Black male annihilation in particular is why he is challenging the complexity of protest. In pushing against traditional or what has become (...) traditional ways of analyzing Black thought, my essay highlights why figures like Baldwin are read in fragmentation. Hence, my insistence on Baldwin being categorized as a Gender/Genre theorist more so than a Queer theorist. Because his writings are on the erasure of Black Male existence within and outside of heteronormative spaces. (shrink)

This chapter is devoted to the discussion of religious freedom and the anti-racist fight in the Black Diaspora in Latin America, considering the historical processes that involve such discussion, including legal apparatus such as Human Rights and local legislation. Therefore, as a starting point, we take the historical conditions of the emergence of Candomblé in Brazil, that are linked to the trafficking of enslaved African peoples and their resistance to keep alive in their memories, their religious beliefs and their (...) worldviews. Wherefore, it is a discussion in which religious freedom is not dissociated from the anti-racist struggle in the case of Brazil, where, in the 20th century, the myth of racial democracy is produced in the light of studies carried out by Gilberto Freyre in the midst of the 1922 post-week modernist movement. (shrink)

We introduce and discuss a knowledge-driven distillation approach to explaining black-box models by means of two kinds of interpretable models. The first is perceptron (or threshold) connectives, which enrich knowledge representation languages such as Description Logics with linear operators that serve as a bridge between statistical learning and logical reasoning. The second is Trepan Reloaded, an ap- proach that builds post-hoc explanations of black-box classifiers in the form of decision trees enhanced by domain knowledge. Our aim is, firstly, (...) to target a model-agnostic distillation approach exemplified with these two frameworks, secondly, to study how these two frameworks interact on a theoretical level, and, thirdly, to investigate use-cases in ML and AI in a comparative manner. Specifically, we envision that user-studies will help determine human understandability of explanations generated using these two frameworks. (shrink)

Abstract: In this article classical and Lacanian psychoanalysis is applied for interpretation of discourse and conduct of lieutenant Glahn, the protagonist of Knut Hamsun’s novel Pan. The analysis is based on the theory and case studies of psychoses from the main works by Sigmund Freud. The scene of Glahn shooting his hunting dog Asop – one of the most complicated episodes in a novel – became the starting point of this research. The application of psychoanalytic conception of paranoia to (...) the narrative helped throw light on the logic of action and clarify the connection between the protagonist’s deed and his discourse. A comparison of Hamsun’s text with Salvador Dali’s autobiographical writing The Secret Life of Salvador Dali and with the Lacan’s interpretation of the crime of Papin sisters helped identify paranoid mental structures in the narrative. (shrink)

Azaransky's work highlights the theological contributions of Howard Thurman, Benjamin Mays, William Stuart Nelson, Pauli Murray and Bayard Rustin. She makes a compelling case that each of these thinker-activists needs to be better appreciated for their cutting-edge theological insights based on their thought and life experience with Mohandas Gandhi and his spiritual activism. Each reinterprets their own Christian views based on this larger worldwide experience that they have gained through study and/or travel. In this way they prefigure or lay the (...) groundwork for more recent approaches to spirituality such as those held by the Black Lives Matter movement's leaders, which draws upon multiple religious traditions to find the spiritual guidance and sustenance needed to confront our world's current injustices. (shrink)

The social media platform Twitter platform has played a crucial role in the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. The immediate, flexible nature of tweets plays a crucial role both in spreading information about the movement’s aims and in organizing individual protests. Twitter has also played an important role in the right-wing reaction to BLM, providing a means to reframe and recontextualize activists’ claims in a more sinister light. The ability to bring about social change depends on the balance of (...) these two forces, and in particular which side can capture and maintain sustained attention. The present study examines 2 years worth of tweets about BLM (about 118 million in total). Timeseries analysis reveals that activists are better at mobilizing rapid attention, whereas right-wing accounts show a pattern of moderate but more sustained activity driven by reaction to political opponents. Topic modeling reveals differences in how different political groups talk about BLM. Most notably, the murder of George Floyd appears to have solidified a right-wing counter-framing of protests as arising from dangerous “terrorist” actors. The study thus sheds light on the complex network and rhetorical effects that drive the struggle for online attention to the BLM movement. (shrink)

In “Diversifying Effective Altruism’s Longshots in Animal Advocacy”, Matthew C. Halteman acknowledges the value of aspects of the EA method but considers two potential critical concerns. First, it isn’t always clear that effective altruism succeeds in doing the most good, especially where long-shots like foiling misaligned AI or producing meat without animals are concerned. Second, one might worry that investing large sums of money in long-shots like these, even if they do succeed, has the opportunity cost of failing adequately to (...) combat systemic injustice in the shorter term. This chapter explains each of these reservations and goes on to suggest some exciting new initiatives—institution-building in Black veganism, higher education, and religious communities—that could mitigate these reservations, energize and diversify the movement, and remain true to the EA method of supporting underexploited but potentially high-impact causes that produce non-fungible goods otherwise unlikely to be funded. (shrink)

“Black Star” music video was released two days before Bowie’s death. It bears various implications of dying and the notion of mortality is both literal and metaphorical. It is highly autobiographical and serves as a theatrical stage for Bowie to act both as a music performer and as a self-conscious human being. In this paper, we discuss the signs of mortality in Bowie’s “Black Star” music video-clip. We focus on video’s cinematic techniques and codes, on its motivic elements (...) and on its narrative in relation with music, lyrics, characters, and gestures. We also discuss the video’s intertextual references and the broader signification of the black star figure. We adopt a quasi-semiotic approach considering “Black Star” music video-clip as a text which can be investigated through its signs, codes, and conventions of the musical, visual, and cinematic languages as well. Our interdisciplinary tools derive from visual semiotics and audiovisual analysis models, without leaving outside Bowie’s musical-artistic and personal history. As it turns out, Bowie created a video clip that is philosophical in nature and poetic in structure, preserving the role of protagonist. With the visuals creating a psychedelic atmosphere, the lyrics often are heard as a personal confession. They both generate cognitive and emotional responses that influence the way the viewers-listeners may experience, decompose, and interpret Bowie’s artistic endeavor bridging life and death. (shrink)

Does intersectionality divide marginalized groups (e.g., women) along identity lines (e.g., race, class, and sexuality)? In response to the criticism that intersectional approaches to feminist and critical race theories lead to fragmentation and division, this paper notes that it relies on an ontological (mis)understanding of identity as a fixed entity. I argue against this notion of identity by engaging in a detailed case study of how Asian American women experience their Asian identity. The case study demonstrates that identity is lived (...) not as a pre-given static object but rather as a fluid and flexible process: what Asian identity means varies according to how this identity is related to the dynamics of power. I propose a tripartite taxonomy of identity-power relationships exhibited in Asian American women’s lives, in which identities are 1) constructed by and 2) used to reproduce power as oppression, as well as 3) used to build power as resistance. In particular, I explore Black and Asian feminist solidarities to show that those at the margins recreate their identities and, in doing so, build positive forms of power such as resistance and solidarity. The criticism that intersectionality leads to fragmentation does not hold, as it is grounded in a flawed notion of identity that fails to consider how identities are actually lived in their changing relationships to power—especially how marginalized groups, such as women of color, build solidarity to resist oppression by recreating their identities, rather than being fragmented into smaller and mutually exclusive subgroups. (shrink)

The accumulation of potentially toxic elements (PTEs) has raised public awareness due to harmful contamination to both human and marine creatures. This study was designed to determine the concentration of copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), cadmium (Cd), and nickel (Ni) in the intestine, kidney, muscle, gill, and liver tissues of local commercial edible fish, fourfinger threadfin (Eleutheronema tetradactylum), and black pomfret (Parastromateus niger) collected from Morib (M) and Kuala Selangor (KS). Among the studied PTEs, Cu and Zn were essential elements (...) to regulate body metabolism with certain dosages required while Cd and Ni were considered as non-essential elements that posed chronic and carcinogenic risk. The concentration of PTEs in fish tissue samples was analyzed using flame atomic absorption spectrometry (F-AAS). By comparing the concentration of PTEs in fish tissues as a bioindicator, the environmental risk of Morib was more serious than Kuala Selangor because both fish species collected from Morib resulted in a higher PTEs concentration. For an average 62 kg adult with a fish ingestion rate (FIR) of 0.16 kg/person/day in Malaysia, the estimated weekly intake (EWI) of Cd from the consumption of E. tetradactylum (M: 0.0135 mg/kg; KS: 0.0134 mg/kg) and P. niger (M: 0.0140 mg/kg; KS: 0.0132 mg/kg) had exceeded the provisional tolerable weekly intake (Cd: 0.007 mg/kg) established by the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) and oral reference dose (ORD) values of Cd (0.001 mg/kg/day) as provided by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) regional screening level, thus it posed chronic risks for daily basis consumption. Besides, the value of the carcinogenic risk of Cd (0.7−3 to 0.8−3) and Ni (0.5−3 to 0.6−3) were in between the acceptable range (10−6 to 10−4) of the health index that indicates a relatively low possibility cancer occurrence to the consumers in both Morib and Kuala Selangor. This study recommended FIR to be 0.80 kg/person/day to reduce the possibility of posing chronic and carcinogenic risks while at the same time obtaining the essential nutrients from the fish. (shrink)

In light of the theme of the 5th World Conference on Women's Studies 2019, 'Activism, Solidarity and Diversity: Feminist Movements Toward Global Sisterhood', this article contends that Sherley Anne Williams's Dessa Rose (1986) is an appeal for an American bond of sisterhood between feminists and womanists. In the process, it examines the relationship between the novel's two Black and White heroines, Dessa Rose and Ruth Sutton respectively, through the lens of Bonnie Thornton Dill's definition of sisterhood in her (...) seminal work, Race, Class, and Gender: Prospects for an All-Inclusive Sisterhood. While discomfort and distrust encircle their first encounter in the Sutton's Glen, equality, reciprocation, and trust adorn their sisterhood in their last encounter in jail. Such a sisterhood is the aftermath of both women's realization that they are both subjects to White men's patriarchy. Williams's use of both heroines as microcosms for Black and White women addresses the widening gap in the 1980s and today between feminists and womanists for an American sisterhood in black and white. (shrink)