Trafficking in women’ has, in recent years, been the subject of intense feminist debate. This article analyses the position of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW) and the writings of its founder, Kathleen Barry. It suggests that CATW's construction of ‘third world prostitutes’ is part of a wider western feminist impulse to construct a damaged ‘other’ as justification for its own interventionist impulses. The central argument of this article is that the ‘injured body’ of the ‘third world trafficking victim’ (...) in international feminist debates around trafficking in women serves as a powerful metaphor for advancing certain feminist interests, which cannot be assumed to be those of third world sex workers themselves. This argument is advanced through a comparison of Victorian feminist campaigns against prostitution in India with contemporary feminist campaigns against trafficking. The term ‘injured identity’ is drawn from Wendy Brown's (1995) States of Injury, Power and Freedom in Late Modernity. Brown argues that certain groups have configured their claims to inclusion in the liberal state in terms of ‘historical ‘injuries’. Antoinette Burton (1998) extends Brown's analysis to look at Victorian feminists’ relationship to Empire, arguing that the ‘injured identities’ of colonial ‘others’ were central to feminist efforts to mark out their own role in Empire. This paper builds on Burton's analysis, asking what role the ‘injured identities’ of third world sex workers play in the construction of certain contemporary feminist identities. The notion of ‘injured identities’ offers a provocative way to begin to examine how CATW feminists position the ‘trafficking victim’ in their discourse. If ‘injured identity’ is a constituent element of late modern subject formation, this may help explain why CATW and Barry rely so heavily on the ‘suffering’ of ‘third world trafficking victims’ in their discourses of women's subjugation. It also raises questions about the possible repressive consequences of CATW's efforts to combat ‘trafficking in women’ through ‘protective’ legislation. (shrink)

This volume republishes forty-four essays, reviews, and miscellaneous pieces from 1939, 1940, and 1941. In his Introduction, R. W. Sleeper characterizes the contents of this volume as “vintage Dewey. Ranging widely over problems of theory and practice, they reveal him commencing his ninth decade at the peak of his intellectual powers.” “Nature in Experience,” Dewey’s reply to Morris R. Cohen and William Ernest Hocking, “is a model of clarity and responsiveness,” writes Sleeper, “perhaps his clearest statement of why it is (...) that metaphysics does not play the fundamental role for him that it had regularly played for his predecessors.”. (shrink)

Typescripts, essays, and an authoritative edition of _Knowing and the Known, _Dewey’s collaborative work with Arthur F. Bentley. In an illuminating Introduction T. Z. Lavine defines the collaboration's three goals—the "construction of a new language for behavioral inquiry," "a critique of formal logicians, in defense of Dewey’s _Logic,_"_ _and "a critique of logical positivism." In Dewey’s words: "Largely due to Bentley, I’ve finally got the nerve inside of me to do what I should have done years ago." "What Is It (...) to Be a Linguistic Sign or Name?" and "Values, Valuations, and Social Facts,’ both written in 1945, are published here for the first time._ _. (shrink)

This book explores solving the problem of complexity for science in the 21st century.

Under the direction of the Party Central Committee led by Chairman Hua, the movement by the Party and the military rank and file and all the people of the nation to criticize and expose the "gang of four" is in full swing. It is very important to expose and criticize the fallacies of the "gang of four" politically, ideologically and theoretically in this struggle of great historical significance. Our sagacious leader Chairman Hua has pointed out: in the movement to criticize (...) and expose the "gang of four," we "must expose and criticize the ultrarightist nature of the ‘gang of four's’ counterrevolutionary revisionist line and the manifestation of this line in various aspects and make criticisms from the philosophical, political-economic and scientific socialist theoretical viewpoints. We must wipe out the harmful effects of the ‘gang of four’ on all front lines through exposure and criticism". (shrink)

Politics and Modernity provides a critical review of the key interface of contemporary political theory and social theory about the questions of modernity and postmodernity. Review essays offer a broad-ranging assessment of the issues at stake in current debates. Among the works reviewed are those of William Connolly, Anthony Giddens, J[um]urgen Habermas, Alasdair MacIntyre, Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor and Roy Bhaskar. As well as reviewing the contemporary literature, the contributors assess the historical roots of current problems in the works of (...) Nietzsche and Max Weber. (shrink)

Philosophical reflections on creativity in science, humanities, and human experience as a whole.

A philosophical primer designed for the general reader as well as professionals in various fields, this book studies sex in itself and in its relation to love and compassion. It distinguishes between 'sensuous' and 'passionate' elements of sexuality and shows how sex in human beings is both appetitive and interpersonal. It then explores the ways in which our sexuality is always subject to aesthetic and moral valuation in relation to the appetitive and interpersonal coordinates.

In _The Deconstruction of Sex_, Jean-Luc Nancy and Irving Goh discuss how a deconstructive approach to sex helps us negotiate discourses about sex and foster a better understanding of how sex complicates our everyday existence in the age of #MeToo. Throughout their conversation, Nancy and Goh engage with topics ranging from relation, penetration, and subjection to touch, erotics, and jouissance. They show how despite its entrenchment in social norms and centrality to our being-in-the-world, sex lacks a clearly defined essence. (...) At the same time, they point to the potentiality of literature to inscribe the senses of sex. In so doing, Nancy and Goh prompt us to reconsider our relations with ourselves and others through sex in more sensitive, respectful, and humble ways without bracketing the troubling aspects of sex. (shrink)

Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) is rightly regarded as a thinker who extended the development of the so-called expressivist conception of language and world that Johann Georg Hamann (1730-1788) and especially Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) initially articulated. Being immersed as Humboldt was in the intellectual climate of German Romanticism, he aimed not only to provide a systematic foundation for how he believed linguistic research as a science should be conducted, but also to attempt to rectify what he saw as the deficiencies (...) of Kant’s philosophical system. My aim in this paper is to show how an expressivist thinker like Humboldt has the conceptual resources from within his own framework and, perhaps surprisingly, with some help from the 20th century philosopher of language and mind, Donald Davidson, to reject a criticism commonly made against expressivist conceptions of language and world. This is the charge that this sort of expressivism threatens the objectivity of the world by emphasizing the role of language in the constitution and disclosure of the world. Cristina Lafont makes just this charge against Humboldt (and other philosophers in the German expressivist-hermeneutic tradition). Specifically, she argues that expressivist philosophers of language are all ultimately committed to some pernicious form of linguistic idealism and relativism. In this paper, I first present Humboldt’s reflections on language and give some textual evidence for why he is often read – mistakenly in my view – as a linguistic idealist and relativist. Second, I briefly sketch Lafont’s charge of linguistic idealism and relativism against Humboldt. Third and finally, I show how she misunderstands Humboldt’s expressivist conception of language and world by connecting my rebuttal to her criticism with Davidson’s argument that successful communication does not require the sharing of explicit rules or conventions that govern in advance the use and understanding of words. (shrink)