“It has been our fate as a nation not to have ideologies,” Richard Hofstadter famously wrote, “but to be one.” Defining that “American ideology” or “American creed” obsessed scholars of the consensus era, who celebrated Americans’ allegiance to a limited liberal vocabulary of rights, freedoms, and markets. The cultural transformations begun in the 1960s seemed to question the very idea of a unitary culture or creed, but some historians responded by exploring alternative ideological founding myths to the liberal consensus. Over (...) the ensuing decades scholars mounted formidable efforts to support republicanism or millennial Christianity as challengers, but liberalism proved a resilient foe. And it seemed to have contemporary history on its side: during the Reagan revolution of the century's final decades the classic liberal combination of scaled-down government and free markets carried the day as Americans’ ideal if not their reality. The Lockean liberal tradition that Louis Hartz described a half-century earlier still appeared the only game in town, although scholars continued to argue over its terms, history, and boundaries. (shrink)

The contribution is an overview of the scientific work of Prof. Rodolfo Sacco.

Interdisciplinary studies that would create deep connections between science and the arts and humanities face the daunting task of bridging two diametrically opposed worldviews. The clash of the modernist Enlightenment values of science with the postmodern sceptical values of the humanities came to a dramatic height with the Sokal Hoax and so called ‘science wars’ of the 1990s. There is now an uneasy ceasefire, but the fundamental contradictions persist between the two cultures. Complexism is an attempt to create a new (...) synthesis suggested by the attitudes and worldview that arises from the scientific study of complex systems. An overview of key concepts from complexity science is offered. Complexism is then presented as a point-by-point analysis reconciling the diametrically opposed positions of modernity in the sciences and postmodernity in the humanities despite their apparently incommensurate paradigms. The special role of networks, and a corresponding process-oriented ontology, is proposed as an alternative to the flawed network theories current in the humanities. Finally two examples of how complexism can be applied are detailed. A complexist theory of authorship is offered, as is a new view of formalism in the arts. (shrink)

The article is an examination of the 1930 play Brain. A Play of the Whole Earth, by an obscure early twentieth-century British writer, Lionel Britton, in the light of the writings of Polish Jewish physician and philosopher of science Ludwik Fleck and the sociologist Émile Durkheim. A consideration of the notion of collectivity as depicted in the text, its complex representation of a posthuman existence, and the unusual generic characteristics of the play lead to the suggestion that Brain may be (...) regarded as a utopian bildungsroman whose main focus is the life of an idea in society. (shrink)

When discussing one of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novels, Mikhail Bakhtin ruminates on the poietic power of dialogue: in dialogue a person not only shows himself outwardly, but he becomes for the first time that which he is—and […] not only for others but for himself as well. To be means to communicate dialogically. When dialogue ends, everything ends. […] At the level of his religious-utopian worldview Dostoyevsky carries dialogue into eternity, conceiving of it as eternal co-rejoicing, co-admiration, concord. […] Two voices (...) is the minimum for life.1 Notably, Bakhtin's commendation of dialogue as a sine qua non ontological condition communicates both necessity and hope, implying the indispensability of an encounter... (shrink)

Languishing in exile after Louis Napoleon's coup d'état of December 1851 shut down socialist agitation, the followers of the utopian theorist Charles Fourier turned their attention to the New World as an "asylum" where Fourierism's communal ideals might be realized. In so doing they joined a long line of utopian dreamers who saw the young United States as a promised land of free expression and social experimentation. The head of the French Fourierists, Victor Considerant, made contacts with the remnant of (...) the American Fourierist movement, toured the United States in 1853, and was thrilled by the vast open spaces of Texas. Considerant discounted the fate of another French socialist group, the disciples... (shrink)

The nineteenth century was the time of the emergence of the concept of solidarity, which "to an extent replaced [the older term fraternity],"1 as well as of a dramatic increase in utopian thinking and writing.2 A notable place among the impressive body of utopian literature of the era belongs to feminist and antifeminist visions of alternative futures, especially from 1860s onward, which Lewes links with "middle class women's overwhelming frustration... with the apparent failure of the suffrage movement."3 The concept of (...) womanhood was also undergoing transformations at that time, variously defined with reference to contending and sometimes complementary tendencies: the cult of domesticity and the women's rights... (shrink)

This essay departs from conventional American Studies treatments to resituate Bellamy's utopia of 1888 within transnational debates over industrialism, socialism, and the state in European nations and their settler societies between 1890 and 1940. Building upon critical studies and information about the reception of Bellamy's utopia abroad, it offers three approaches: a genre-based analysis of the utopian hybrid that suggests textual bases for multiple readings; a transnational history of evolutionary socialism that helps explain Bellamy's global relevance in the 1890s and (...) again in the 1930s; and a comparative approach that contrasts the reception of Looking Backward in different national contexts. In the face of traditionally exceptionalist scholarship and the narrower, nationalistic frame of Bellamy's sequel, Equality, to understand Bellamy's global appeal we must recover the international context of Looking Backward and the internationalist views expressed in its pages. (shrink)

Fashion is defined by an infinite variation of a single tautology … stripped of content, but not of meaning. A kind of machine for maintaining meaning without ever fixing it, it is forever a disappointed meaning. … [I]t … becomes the spectacle human beings grant themselves of their power to make the insignificant signify; Fashion then appears as an exemplary form of the general act of signification, thus rejoining the very being of literature which is to offer to read not (...) the meaning of things but their signification.Meaning is distributed according to a kind of revolutionary grace; its power becomes so autonomous that it can act at a distance and in the end dissolve substance itself. … [M]eaning denies substance... (shrink)

Résumé Dans l’Histoire d’une Grecque moderne de Prévost (1740), plusieurs traits de style apparentent l’écriture romanesque à la galanterie littéraire, emblématisée au siècle précédent par Racine ou Lafayette ; c’est le cas en particulier de l’association à l’article indéfini des expressions qui désignent le personnage féminin. Trait de genre (la nouvelle historique et galante), mais aussi d’époque (le long XVIIe siècle), ce tour devient sous la plume de Prévost un marqueur de son style d’auteur. Toutefois, sous l’apparence de la continuité, (...) la valeur et le sens de ce legs stylistique se voient reconfigurés de fond en comble : Prévost orchestre un véritable détournement du style galant. En récupérant l’un des traits par lesquels la langue galante signalait sa littérarité et en l’accommodant à ses propres enjeux romanesques, au risque d’en modifier la signification en profondeur, Prévost offre un cas d’école pour s’interroger sur la propriété des faits de style. (shrink)

" L'expérience esthétique, n'est autonome, écrit Adorno, que lorsqu'elle se débarrasse du goût culinaire, la voie qui y conduit passe par le désintéressement.... ", à ce lointain écho de la rupture transcendantale au sein de l'Esthétique du goût, à ce déni pur et simple de la sensibilité et du plaisir " sensuel et grossier ", comme principes du goût, on préfèrera, ici, une présentation non morale, ou non kantienne, de la notion de goût ; une réflexion qui, de Voltaire et (...) Montesquieu à Brillat-Savarin, prend en compte le goût " lui-même " et non seulement sa métaphore ; on cherchera le raffinement et la délicatesse du goût non seulement dans les sphères supérieures de l'existence, mais aussi dans les relations primordiales de la vie, celle de la consommation, de la préparation et de la production, ainsi que le voulait Charles Fourier, (beau) frère de Brillat-Savarin. Dans les deux essais, ici étudiés, s'impose, en effet, la dimension organique et sensuelle mais néanmoins esthétique du goût, dans les choses de la nature et de l'art. L'Essai sur le goût de Montesquieu et La Physiologie du goût de Brillat-Savarin, témoignent, dans des domaines distincts mais étroitement liés, de l'Esthétique comme " science de la sensibilité ". Par leur rapprochement, on entend montrer que le goût n'est pas une " chose mentale " mais l'affaire de tous les sens, que l'âme qui goûte est l'âme qui sent. On cherchera à dépasser le divorce, qui semble s'être installé, entre le jugement esthétique et le plaisir esthétique, on tentera par là, de restaurer la continuité entre les deux pôles de la sensibilité gustative et de redonner, par une réévaluation du goût culinaire, une assise réelle, vitale et réconfortante à la notion de goût, comme sentiment délicat. (shrink)

Ce livre réunit les actes du colloque qui s’est tenu le 30 octobre 2013 à Nérac dans le cadre des agoras nationales de l’Association des Professeurs d’Histoire & de Géographie, auxquelles ont participé Éric Bonhomme, Yohann Chanoir, Franck Collard, Maurice Daumas, Didier Foucault, Thierry Issartel, Thierry Labarthe, Céline Piot et Yann Prouillet. Pour paraphraser l’humour de sa préface, ce colloque pourrait s’intituler « Et si Lysistrata était un homme…. » Car du masculin et du viril, il en e...

This article responds to Philip Galanter’s essay ‘Complexism and the role of evolutionary art’ to explore complexism in relation to postmodern and generative architecture. Galanter poses complexism as a new theoretical mode that can supercede the divides of modernism/postmodernism and the two cultures (sciences/arts and humanities). The author, rather than promoting complexism, examines it as if from afar, positioning it as our most recent scientifically informed paradigm. She asserts that, in many ways, complexism functions as an ideology permeating realms of (...) cultural and intellectual production. Examples range from contemporary advertising to economic theory, political and economic protests such as the Occupy Movement, to the rhetorical and computational strategies in generative architecture. The author demonstrates that postmodernism in architecture was always theoretically tied to complex systems theory. Further, she connects the vagaries of application and extrapolation of complexity theory, across realms of current-day cultural production, to the definitional vagueness of some of complexism’s key terms (system, selforganization, emergence). Finally, she argues that two collateral effects of complexism are: (1) the promotion of dependence on environmentally damaging computational devices and (2) the socio-economic and environmental expulsions occurring in the global economy, as recently argued by sociologist Saskia Sassen. (shrink)

The attributes that characterize the compelling world-view of Philip Galanter’s Complexism constitute a rich array that spans complexity theory, biological systems, cybernetics, computation and the phenomenology of affect. An ever-growing movement of transdisciplinary artists who engage and synthesize the unique combination of fields, theories and practices associated with Complexism suggests that this model – particularly its embrace of complexity theory – holds promise in the problem space of art and science. This article examines three contemporary artists and their collaborative teams, (...) each of whose work embodies a unique attitude and synthesizing model that expresses the ethos of Complexism. Their work arguably contributes to a higher synthesis of modernism and postmodernism and the coalescence of art and science through the progression of ideas that emerge from this union in direct correspondence to the larger culture. Furthermore, they do so through the embrace of evolutionary and generative processes, connectionist networks, and participatory practices that engender new discourse about contemporary life, moving us beyond the space of postmodernity. (shrink)

In 1677, Georges Pierre des Clozets visited Robert Boyle and told him that he had been approved for membership in the Asterism, a secret international society of alchemical masters, headed by Pierre's patron Georges du Mesnillet, the Patriarch of Antioch. Extensive correspondence followed, replete with gifts and bizarre claims, until Pierre vanished in August 1678. This paper links several new documents—articles in the Mercure galant and the Gazette de France and a manuscript account by another convinced admirer of Pierre—to (...) my previous study of him, particularly in regard to Pierre's claim to be working with the Patriarch to reunite Eastern and Western Churches. Dating from before and after Boyle's involvement, these sources add fresh details about Pierre and his other contacts, and show the consistency of Pierre's stories and the credibility he fashioned as he travelled around Europe convincing people of his claims alchemical and otherwise. (shrink)

This article is about the power of critical thinking through embryos and embryology in bioart. In this instance, critical thinking does not promise revolution or a takedown of bioengineering, but basic empowerment through scientific knowledge. I argue that the use of embryos in Jill Scott’s Somabook (2011) and Adam Zaretsky’s DIY Embryology (2015) constitutes an instance of what Philip Galanter identifies as complexism. In turn, the complexism of embryology reveals two modes of critical thinking. First, embryology distils the awe and (...) wonder that come with basic scientific literacy. In turn, scientific literacy provides agency for individuals through a trifecta of feeling, belief and pragmatism: based on the frisson of curiosity and wonder that comes with recognizing biological complexity, it frees individuals from the bounds of superstition and metaphysics while building a path to fact-based problem solving. Second, as works of art bearing embryos they are part of the politics and history of embryology that emerged in contrast to genetics almost a century ago. Distinct from the coding of genetics as nucleus-centric, separate, homogeneous, a matter of being, and male, embryology was coded as cytoplasmic, interactive, heterogeneous, a matter of becoming, and feminist. (shrink)

It is suggested that there is a strong connection between intentions and plans, and these plans are then taken to be programs of the sort suggested by Miller, Galanter, and Pribram in Plans and the Structure of Behavior. There is then a hierarchy of programs connected with intentions stretching from the macroscopic level of ordinary discourse to the neurological level. It is argued that as we proceed downwards we arrive at a threshold below which we can still describe the phenomena (...) but below which we can no longer speak of intentions. The paper concludes with a discussion of the criteria for the identity of intentions at various levels. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 45, no. 1. © 2019 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 209 Trysh Travis Toward a Feminist History of the Drug-Using Woman— and Her Recovery In 1995, public health scholars Laura Schmidt and Constance Weisner published “The Emergence of Problem-Drinking Women as a Special Population in Need of Treatment.”1 The article, aimed at specialists in the growing field of behavioral sciences, explored the history of medpsych attitudes toward women (...) drinkers. That history had been characterized, until the 1970s, by ignorance and neglect, but it began to shift in the wake of Second Wave feminism and what Schmidt and Weisner called “the women’s alcoholism movement.”2 To be fair, attitudes toward male drinkers had also long been inchoate. But beginning in the 1940s, advocacy by a handful of scientific and legal professionals, as well as the mutual aid group Alcoholics Anonymous (founded in 1935) and the National Council on Alcoholism (founded in 1944), created a new vision, which went on to be underwritten by federal funding and private insurance.3 “Alcoholism is a disease 1. Laura Schmidt and Constance Weisner, “The Emergence of Problem-Drinking Women as a Special Population in Need of Treatment,” in Recent Developments in Alcoholism, Vol. 12: Women and Alcoholism, ed. Marc Galanter (New York: Plenum Press, 1995), 309–334. 2. Ibid., 310. 3. The organization was originally called the National Committee for Education on Alcoholism; it became the National Council on Alcoholism in 1950 and changed to the current National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence in 1990. 210 Trysh Travis Books Discussed in This Essay Lady Lushes: Gender, Alcoholism, and Medicine in Modern America. By Michelle L. McClellan. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2017. The Recovery Revolution: The Battle over Addiction Treatment in the United States. By Claire D. Clark. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017. Addicted to Rehab: Race, Gender, and Drugs in the Era of Mass Incarceration. By Allison McKim. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2017. Through a Trauma Lens: Transforming Health and Behavioral Health Systems. By Vivian Barnett Brown. New York: Routledge, 2017. and the alcoholic a sick person,” argued National Council on Alcoholism founder Marty Mann in a host of magazine articles beginning in the late 1940s. From that assertion followed the beliefs that “the alcoholic can be helped and is worth helping” and that “alcoholism is a public health problem and therefore a public responsibility” (29).4 Behind Mann’s carefully gender-neutral language lay an image of the alcoholic as a white man from the respectable middle classes. The mid-century legitimation of that man’s problems, Schmidt and Weisner argue, paved the way for “problem-drinking women” to finally come into focus half a century later. Schmidt and Weisner’s article centers on the ways the Great Society funding streams that first steered funds to community-based alcohol and drug treatment changed during the 1980s. But along the way, they briefly explore organized feminism’s views of alcohol- and drug-using women. They note that Second Wave feminists had dealt aggressively with behavioral health issues such as domestic violence, child sexual 4. Marty Mann, “Can We Conquer Alcoholism?” Health (1947): 12–13, 29–30. Trysh Travis 211 abuse, and rape—all of which correlated closely with substance use and abuse. But they see no feminist activism around alcohol or drugs. Instead, “representatives from organizations in the broader feminist and women ’s health movements” were “conspicuously absent” from the women’s alcoholism movement, which consisted chiefly of activists motivated by alcohol issues, not gender.5 Interest in—and action on—women’s alcohol and other drug use consequently became the province chiefly of clinicians and policy makers, not movement women. Although many of those professionals saw substance-using women’s needs as important and worthy of services, few viewed them through the lenses of gender and power. The blind spot that Schmidt and Weisner observe among feminist activists is interesting not only for what it tells us about a conceptual boundary of Second Wave feminism (both liberal and radical) but also for the way it points to a gap in the feminist scholarship that is ostensibly a central legacy of the earlier movement. Like... (shrink)