Judith Butler's Kritik der ethischen Gewalt represents a significant refinement of her position on the relationship between the construction of the subject and her social subjection. While Butler's earlier texts reflect a somewhat restricted notion of agency, her Adorno Lectures formulate a notion of agency that extends beyond mere resistance. This essay traces the development of Butler's account of agency and evaluates it in light of feminist projects of social transformation.

Anarchists and homosexuals have periodically occupied similar positions in relation to US laws and policies: both have functioned as the needed outside against which the proper inside of political order can be established and maintained. Both have blurred the relation of words to deeds, speaking words that are forbidden because the words themselves are seen as dangerous deeds. Examining the deportation case of anarchist John Turner in 1903 and the 1993 Pentagon ban on homosexuals serving openly in the military, and (...) utilizing the intellectual tools provided by Judith Butler in her analysis of speech acts, this article investigates the process of criminalizing an identity category as well as the political context from which that criminalization can be challenged. My goals are to make use of Butler’s arguments about insurrectionary speech to understand anarchism’s historical role in the American political imaginary, and to supplement Butler’s analysis with greater attention to the histories of anarchist struggle. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Negative Capability Reclaimed: Literature and Philosophy Contra PoliticsIhab HassanI began a few years ago to try to make space in my reckoning and imagining for the marvellous as well as the murderous.Seamus HeaneyTwo concerns cross in this essay: the first, explicit, regards the current condition of the academic humanities, their idioms and axioms, especially in America; the second, implicit, regards my own need to confront criticism, its abstractions that (...) now enable, now disable, the profession and even more the experience of literature. Such concerns must mix speculation and autobiography, mix the pride with the pathos of mind.But I should admit it from the start: my title cries paradox. Negative capability reclaimed? Can reclamation dwell in “uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason,” as Keats thought, and can a critic aspire to the condition of a poet, in whom the “sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates consideration”? 1Mine, I repeat, is a hybrid critical discourse, touched by exasperation more than mystery. Yet negative capability can still serve us as emblem of certain qualities, attitudes, dispositions that we bring to literature, without turning that happy phrase into yet another slogan. Beyond the arrogance of transient ideologies, beyond the mawkishness of self-regard, negative capability may offer us a kind of patience, perhaps ascesis, the intellectual and, yes, spiritual equivalent of discipline in our moment. [End Page 305]IStated baldly, my proposition, which I will need continually to texture and qualify, is this: the prevalence of politics, the obsession with power, the unrelieved pressure of both in the university, skew our language, thought, values. Thus the ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy, between Homer and Plato, now cedes the field to a nastier agon between both and politics as GRIM (my acronym for the Great Rumbling Ideological Machine) grinds on. These are no abstractions; the clamorous evidence is all about, indicative even in its triviality, banality.Take a book blurb. Kathy Acker endorses a new, and quite intelligent work, entitled Male Matters, thus: “Calvin Thomas is able to hint at a way out of the prisonhouse of straight male identity.” Granted, this is but an ad in a university press catalogue. But what does the language reveal about the assumptions of academic discourse? “Prisonhouse,” really, for all unfortunate, straight males? Is a generalization of this kind permissible when blander generalizations about other groups raise such a hue and cry? Will straight African-American or Native American males feel “offended” by the statement? Or is it all a matter of restitution, categorical loyalty, political commitment? And when will that supreme fiction, the white, straight, bourgeois, rational male “subject” cease to prop up every ideological complaint?Thought blends into hype; words writhe; stereotypes become as transparent as the stereotypes they once repugned. But let us consider an example worthier of criticism. In his Inaugural Lecture as Robert Wallace Professor at the University of Melbourne, entitled “The Departure of English?” (the question mark risks disingenuousness), Professor Simon During inelegantly states: “The academic appropriation of the avant-garde transfiguration of values is happening as what I am calling the departure of English—in the relative decline of literary studies and cultural studies’ emergence.” 2 Professor During thus assumes, on behalf of cultural studies, the mantles of Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur Rimbaud, Alfred Jarry, Hugo Ball—where is Antonin Artaud?—and Walter Benjamin, though none really had a mantle to bequeath. For a moment, the mind reels: Nietzscheans and poètes maudits, Pataphysicians and Dadaists, as apostles of cultural studies, of political correctness, group think, and GRIM? Involuntarily, the lines of William Butler Yeats, in “The Scholars,” sing out: “Lord, what would they say / Did their Catullus walk that way?” [End Page 306]We are all free, of course, to reinvent our ancestors and to derive later authority from what an earlier generation derided—free, this side of ludicrousness. But Professor During’s argument, a sort of academic conceit, discourages mere ridicule; it has pedagogical consequences. Thus he continues: “I am certainly not claiming a causal relation between modernism circa 1900 and academic cultural studies today. Rather I want to argue that cultural studies... (shrink)

Since its publication in 1990, Gender Trouble has become one of the key works of contemporary feminist theory, and an essential work for anyone interested in the study of gender, queer theory, or the politics of sexuality in culture.

Reading fiction for pleasurable is robustly correlated with improved cognitive attainment and other benefits. It is also in decline among young people in developed nations, in part because of competition from moving image fiction. We review existing research on the differences between reading/hearing verbal fiction and watching moving image fiction, as well as looking more broadly at research on image/text interactions and visual versus verbal processing. We conclude that verbal narrative generates more diverse responses than moving image narrative., We note (...) that reading and viewing narrative are different tasks, with different cognitive loads. Viewing moving image narrative mostly involves visual processing with some working memory engagement, whereas reading narrative involves verbal processing, visual imagery and personal memory (Xu et al 2005). but Attempts to compare the two by creating suggest that existing research is flawed by attempts to create equivalent stimuli and task demands face a number of challenges, and we discuss these difficulties in comparative approaches. We then investigate the possibility of identifying lower level processing mechanisms that might distinguish cognition of the two media, and propose a focus on internal scene construction and on working memory as foci for future research. Although many of the sources we draw on are focussed on English speaking participants in European or North American settings, we also cover material relating to speakers of Dutch, German, Hebrew and Japanese in their respective countries, and studies of a remote Turkish mountain community. (shrink)

The problem of how to make the transition to a more environmentally and socially sustainable society poses questions about how such far-reaching social change can be brought about. In recent years, lifecourse transitions have been identified by a range of researchers as opportunities for policy and other actors to intervene to change how individuals use energy, taking advantage of such disruptive transitions to encourage individuals to be reflexive toward their lifestyles and how they use the technological infrastructures on which they (...) rely. Such identifications, however, employ narratives of voluntary change that take an overly optimistic view of how individuals experience lifecourse transitions and ignore effects of experiences of unresolved or unsuccessful transitions. Drawing on interview data from the Energy Biographies project at Cardiff University, we explore three case studies where the effects of such unresolved transitions are significant. Using the concept of liminal transition as developed by Victor Turner, we examine instances where “progressive” narratives of energy use reduction clash with other “narrative genres” used to make sense of change. Such clashes show how narratives that view lifecourse transitions as opportunities ignore the challenges that such transitions may pose to efforts to construct or sustain identities. (shrink)

Much of the research on the delivery of advice by professionals such as physicians, health workers and counsellors, both on the telephone and in face-to-face interaction more generally, has focused on the theme of client resistance and the consequent need for professionals to adopt particular formats to assist in the uptake of the advice. In this article we consider one setting, Kid’s Helpline, the national Australian counselling service for children and young people, where there is an institutional mandate not to (...) give explicit advice in accordance with the values of self-direction and empowerment. The article examines one practice, the use of script proposals by counsellors, which appears to offer a way of providing support which is consistent with these values. Script proposals entail the counsellors packaging their advice as something that the caller might say — at some future time — to a third party such as a friend, teacher, parent or partner, and involve the counsellor adopting the speaking position of the caller in what appears as a rehearsal of a forthcoming strip of interaction. Although the core feature of a script proposal is the counsellor’s use of direct reported speech, they appear to be delivered not so much as exact words to be followed, but as the type of conversation that the client needs to have with the third party. Script proposals, in short, provide models of what to say as well as alluding to how these could be emulated by the client. In their design, script proposals invariably incorporate one or more of the most common rhetorical formats for maximizing the persuasive force of an utterance such as a three-part list or a contrastive pair. Script proposals, moreover, stand in a complex relation to the prior talk and one of their functions appears to be to summarize, respecify or expand upon the client’s own ideas or suggestions for problem solving that have emerged in these preceding sequences. (shrink)

Husserl's proposed method for knowing the essences of universals, which he calls “free variation,” has been widely criticized for involving viciously circular reasoning. In this paper, I review existing attempts to resolve this problem, and I argue that they all fail. I then show that extant accounts are all guilty of a common mistake: they assume that circularity is inevitable as long as the exercise of free variation presupposes the ability to identify the universal whose essence is in question, that (...) is, the ability to recognize entities as instances of it. I reject this assumption: I argue on both Husserlian and independent philosophical grounds that knowledge of a universal's essence is not required for identifying it, but only for re‐identifying it at every possible world in which it is instantiated. I then defend a reading on which free variation's purpose is to move its practitioner from non‐essentialistic knowledge of a universal's identity (its actual instantiation‐pattern) to essentialistic knowledge of its transworld identity (its instantiation‐pattern in every possible world in which it is present). And I show that such a transformation is a non‐circular progression from non‐modal to modal knowledge. (shrink)

We seem to have private privileged access to our own minds through introspection, but what exactly does this involve? Do we somehow literally perceive our own minds, as the common idea of a 'mind's eye' suggests, or are there other processes at work in our ability to know our own minds? Rethinking Introspection offers a new pluralist framework for understanding the nature, scope, and limits of introspection. The book argues that, contrary to common misconceptions, introspection does not consist of a (...) single mechanism but rather a diverse range of mental states and cognitive processes with a broad spectrum of epistemic properties. Building upon this revised conception of introspection, the book illustrates and analyzes the variety of ways in which we introspectively grasp the contents of our own minds, from the immediate phenomenal knowledge generated by conscious experience to the self-deceptive possibilities enabled by certain kinds of inner speech. (shrink)

Though the overall numbers of women judges remain small, higher proportions of women have been appointed to many lower courts in common law, and particularly in civil law, countries. This paper investigates whether the experiences of judging and judicial work differ among women and men magistrates in Australia’s lower courts. The particular focus is satisfaction with their work as judges. In so doing, it helps build up a picture of the extent of the gendered nature of the judiciary as an (...) occupation. Measures of overall job satisfaction identify few gender differences; more refined measures highlight areas of divergence between men and women magistrates, suggesting gendered experiences of judicial work which result from particular characteristics of the occupation, as presently constituted, rather than the nature of judging itself. (shrink)

The essay explores the systematic relationship in the work of Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) between his monadology, his metaphysics as presented in works such as De la causa, principio et uno, the mythopoeic cosmology of Lo spaccio de la bestia trionfante, and practical works like De vinculis in genere. Bruno subverts the conceptual regime of the Aristotelian substantial forms and its accompanying cosmology with a metaphysics of individuality that privileges individual unity (singularity) over formal unity and particulars over substantial forms without (...) sacrificing a metaphysical perspective on the cosmos. The particular is individuated as a unique site of desire, continually transforming but able to entrain itself and others through phantasmatic ‘bonding’, the new source of regularity in Bruno’s polycentric universe. Bruno thus tries to do justice to the demands of intelligibility as well as transformative eros. The essay concludes with a note on Bruno’s geometry as it relates to his general conception of form. (shrink)

This paper contends that under a Sartrean framework, any moral judgment we make regarding our own action is never final; the meaning and moral value of our past actions always remains reinterpretable in light of what unfolds in the future. Our interactions with other people reveal that we are responsible for far more than we had initially supposed ourselves to be choosing when we began our project , such that it is in fact impossible to ever finish taking responsibility completely.

Ducklings were placed either singly or in pairs on a platform at two different heights. Both height and pairing influenced performance: More ducklings descended from the platform at low heights, and more single ducklings descended than paired ducklings. The social factor, pairing, made behavior more cautious and decreased the number of distress calls. A similar trend for pairing to influence performance was shown on the visual cliff. Without its peers, the duckling is a distressed animal. Previous careless behavior by ducklings (...) on the visual cliff may be ascribed to testing the ducklings outside their normal social environment. (shrink)

The burgeoning interest in arts-informed research and the increasing variety of visual possibilities as a result of new technologies have paved the way for researchers to explore and use visual forms of inquiry. This article investigates how collage making and concept mapping are useful visual approaches that can inform qualitative research. They are experiential ways of doing/knowing that help to get at tacit aspects of both understanding and process and to make these more explicit to the researcher and more accessible (...) to audiences. It outlines specific ways that each approach can be used with examples to illustrate how the approach informs the researcher's experience and that of the audience. The two approaches are compared and contrasted and issues that can arise in the work are discussed. (shrink)

Using birth stories as our object of inquiry, this article examines the ways in which normative discourses about gender, disability and Down syndrome construct the birth stories of three mothers of children with Down syndrome. Their stories are composed of the mothers’ recollections of the first hours after birth as a time when their infants are separated from them and their postpartum needs are ignored. Together, their stories illustrate socio-cultural tropes that position Down syndrome as a dangerous form of the (...) “other” and mothers who give birth to children with Down syndrome as implicated in transgressing cultural norms. (shrink)

The article explains my third argument for panpsychism, based on disolving all properties, including dispositional physical properties like mass, energy, and force, into phenomenal properties. I thus reject a dual-property version of panpsychism. I seek to show, contrary to Paul Churchland, that the general panpsychist hypothesis has some explanatory value, and makes a cosmology consisting in comparative psychology possible. The mental life even of so-called physical particles in physics is hypothesized to help explain their behavior.

Tradução do artigo "What is Critique? An Essay on Foucault's Virtue.".

Richard Kraut argues that Neo-Aristotelian ethics should include a com­mitment to “diluted hedonism,” according to which the exercise of a developed life-capacity is good for S only if and partly because S enjoys it. I argue that the Neo-Aristotelian should reject diluted hedonism for two reasons: first, it compro­mises the generality and elegance of the initial developmentalist account; second, it leads to mistaken evaluations of some of the most important and ennobling capacities and activities in human life. Finally, I argue (...) that a more plausible ac­count of the place of pleasure in the good life derives from Aristotle’s discussion in book X of the Nicomachean Ethics: pleasure is a supervenient good that signifies the value of the underlying capacity and activity, but it is not a necessary condition for their goodness. (shrink)

The paradigm according to which the cosmos is ordered by the demiurge is characterized in the Timaeus as ‘Animal Itself,’ while παράδειγμα in the vision of Er from the Republic denotes the patterns of lives chosen by individual humans and other animals. The essay seeks to grasp the animality of the paradigm, as well as the paradigmatic nature of animality, by means of the homology discernible between these usages. This inquiry affirms the value within a Platonic doctrine of principles of (...) persons over reified forms, of modes of unity over substantial natures, and of agency over structure. (shrink)