Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page 123-125.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 127-150 [Access article in PDF] They Who Burned Themselves for Peace: Quaker and Buddhist Self-Immolators during the Vietnam War Sallie B. KingJames Madison UniversityNhat Chi Mai was a lay disciple of Thich Nhat Hanh and member of the Order of Interbeing, an Engaged Buddhist order founded by Nhat Hanh. On May 16, 1967, Vesak, the celebration of the birth of the Buddha, she burned (...) herself to death outside the Tu Nghiem Temple, a nunnery. An idealistic young student with much to live for, she sacrificed herself in an effort to bring the war to an end. In a letter to the U.S. government she wrote, I offer my body as a torch to dissipate the dark to waken love among men to give peace to Vietnam the one who burns herself for peace. 1In her farewell letter to Thich Nhat Hanh she wrote, "Thay, don't worry too much. We will have peace soon." 2On November 2, 1965, Norman Morrison, a devout Quaker and ardent pacifist, drove from Baltimore to Washington and burned himself to death at the Pentagon, at a spot estimated to be 40 to 100 feet from the window of Robert S. McNamara, then Secretary of Defense and one of the chief American prosecutors of the war. Shortly before his death, he wrote to his wife, "For weeks even months I have been praying only that I be shown what I must do. This morning with no warning I was shown.... Know that I love thee but must act...." 3 Morrison took his baby daughter, Emily, along with him and held her in his arms as he prepared for his act. Somehow--accounts differ as to how it happened--she was separated from her father before the flames engulfed him and she emerged entirely unharmed, though her clothing smelled strongly of the kerosene with which Morrison had soaked himself. 4There were others who burned themselves to death during the war in Vietnam. The venerable Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc was the first. On June 11, 1963, [End Page 127] at a downtown crossroads in Saigon, he sat in the lotus posture and, in a state of meditative control, burned himself to death in protest of the Diem regime's repression of the Buddhist religion. Many Vietnamese Buddhist monks and nuns followed his example; I do not know all their names, or exactly how many they were.In America, to my knowledge, eight people burned themselves to death during the war. Two were Quakers: Norman Morrison and Alice Herz. Roger LaPorte, a former Trappist seminarian who had become a Catholic worker, burned himself to death one week after Norman Morrison. The others were: Hiroko Hayasaki, a Japanese-American Buddhist; Erik Thoen, a student of Zen Buddhism; another university student, George Winne; a high school student, Ronald Brazee; and Florence Beaumont, described as a "housewife." A number of others attempted self-immolation but survived. 5In this paper I will focus upon the self-immolations of Norman Morrison and Nhat Chi Mai. I will also have a few comments on Thich Quang Duc. My remarks are intended, however, to have relevance to all the Buddhist and Quaker self-immolators. 6Let us now consider in more detail some of the features of the self-immolations of Norman Morrison and Nhat Chi Mai, and some of the issues they pose to the Quaker and Buddhist communities, respectively. Precipitating Events While neither act was the result of a moment's impulse, we still would do well to ask what events most proximately precipitated the two self-immolations. In Norman Morrison's case, the precipitating events were two. The morning of the day he immolated himself he read a report of the American bombing of a village in Vietnam. Paris Match had published an interview with a French priest, recuperating in a Saigon clinic, who had witnessed and survived the bombing raid. The priest said, "I have seen my faithful burned up in napalm.... I have seen... (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page 119-120.

_Starve and Immolate_ tells the story of leftist political prisoners in Turkey who waged a deadly struggle against the introduction of high security prisons by forging their lives into weapons. Weaving together contemporary and critical political theory with political ethnography, Banu Bargu analyzes the death fast struggle as an exemplary though not exceptional instance of self-destructive practices that are a consequence of, retort to, and refusal of the increasingly biopolitical forms of sovereign power deployed around the globe. Bargu chronicles (...) the experiences, rituals, values, beliefs, ideological self-representations, and contentions of the protestors who fought cellular confinement against the background of the history of Turkish democracy and the treatment of dissent in a country where prisons have become sites of political confrontation. A critical response to Michel Foucault's _Discipline and Punish_, _Starve and Immolate_ centers on new forms of struggle that arise from the asymmetric antagonism between the state and its contestants in the contemporary prison. Bargu ultimately positions the weaponization of life as a bleak, violent, and ambivalent form of insurgent politics that seeks to wrench the power of life and death away from the modern state on corporeal grounds and in increasingly theologized forms. Drawing attention to the existential commitment, sacrificial morality, and militant martyrdom that transforms these struggles into a complex amalgam of resistance, Bargu explores the global ramifications of human weapons' practices of resistance, their possibilities and limitations. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the complex ethical dynamics of violence and nonviolence in Mahāyāna Buddhism by considering some of the historical precedents and scriptural prescriptions that inform modern and contemporary Buddhist acts of self-immolation. Through considering these scripturally sanctioned Mahāyāna ‘case studies,’ the paper traces the tension that exists in Buddhist thought between violence and nonviolence, outlines the interplay of key Mahāyāna ideas of transcendence and altruism, and comments on the mimetic status and influence of spiritually charged (...) texts. It is the contention of this paper that violent scriptural metaphors can create paradigms of enactment that are paradoxically illustrative of the core ‘non-violent’ Mahāyāna virtues of compassion, giving, patience, and vigor. The discussion will show that these virtues are underpinned by the Mahāyāna philosophical mainstays of non-duality, bodhisattvic transcendent altruism, skillful means, and dependent co-origination. (shrink)

A persistent worry in the ethical literature on care and empathy is that the agent is prone to self-sacrifice by the requisite state of engrossment in or engagement of the other. Addressing this worry particularly as expressed in feminist philosophy, I argue that the standard conceptions of self-sacrifice conflate four distinct relations of the self to its autonomous will: self-immolation (destroying one’s own autonomy), self-abnegation (disowning one’s autonomy), self-effacement (devaluing one’s autonomy) and (...) class='Hi'>self-donation (dedicating one’s autonomy). The latter, far from being vicious, is from an ethical standpoint the highest realization of autonomy; this claim finds echoes in Robin Dillon’s work on self-respect as well as the personalist philosophy of John Paul II. Self-immolation, self-abnegation, and self-effacement, on the other hand, are characterized by detachment from responsibility, corruption of the boundaries between self and other, and suppression of self-understanding. (shrink)

While suicide is typically associated with personal despair, people do sometimes kill themselves in the hope or expectation that their death will advance a political cause by way of its impact on the conscience of others, or in extreme cases simply as an expression of protest against a status quo felt to be unjust. Paradigm cases of such protest suicide may be public acts of self-immolation. This chapter distinguishes between instrumental and expressive protest suicide, examines the possible motivations (...) behind them, their possible moral justification, and their potential contribution to the meaning of the suicide’s life. It argues that when the value of the aim pursued by way of instrumental suicide is proportionate, killing oneself promotes it sufficiently, and other morally acceptable options are exhausted, instrumental protest suicide can be morally permissible and consistent with human dignity. It can even be an admirable act of self-sacrifice, provided that the agent’s motivations are suitable. Some of the standard moral objections to suicide don’t apply to such cases. But protest suicide remains morally risky, because one might be mistaken about the worth of one’s cause or the availability of alternatives, and because even these extreme acts typically have limited effect. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the complex ethical dynamics of violence and nonviolence in Mahāyāna Buddhism by considering some of the historical precedents and scriptural prescriptions that inform modern and contemporary Buddhist acts of self-immolation. Through considering these scripturally sanctioned Mahāyāna ‘case studies,’ the paper traces the tension that exists in Buddhist thought between violence and nonviolence, outlines the interplay of key Mahāyāna ideas of transcendence and altruism, and comments on the mimetic status and influence of spiritually charged (...) texts. It is the contention of this paper that violent scriptural metaphors can create paradigms of enactment that are paradoxically illustrative of the core ‘non-violent’ Mahāyāna virtues of compassion, giving, patience, and vigor. The discussion will show that these virtues are underpinned by the Mahāyāna philosophical mainstays of non-duality, bodhisattvic transcendent altruism, skillful means, and dependent co-origination. (shrink)

How things were a decade ago: The largest rain forest of our planet abides in the Amazon Basin, a tenth of the entire world biomass. It is one of the last great frontiers on earth; only the bottom of the sea presents terra incognita on so rich and grand a scale. Perhaps half the planet's species dwell in Amazonia, most of them still unknown to our own technological encampment. No mere ocean of green, this community is so intricately interwoven as (...) to constitute a single vast organism, the one true Leviathan, outweighing all the whales in all the oceans of the world that have ever lived. It is the last and greatest forest on earth, and now it is disappearing before it has been discovered: At nearly an acre a second, the TransAmazon highway system and the land clearing operations it has enabled are extinguishing the forest before it can be explored. From space, Landsat pictures show the burned-over patches spreading with the highway network year by year, magenta sores in the false-color images. We, the voracious Lilliputians now, antlike, are dismantling the greatest biochemical engine on earth at a scale so vast that the carbon dioxide economy of the entire planetary atmosphere suffers. In a century of genocides, perhaps the penultimate great extinction unfolds, prologue to the threatening self-immolation of our own species. (shrink)

This paper explores the theme of sacrifice as it appears in the writings of the Czech philosopher Jan Patočka from the 1970s on the subjects of history, metaphysics, and techno-civilization. The paper argues that the theme of sacrifice is best understood as part of an engagement with the problem of post-metaphysical philosophy, largely inspired by but also directed against the position of Martin Heidegger. These reflections are also best understood in relation to totalitarian resistance, exemplified by the self-immolation (...) of Jan Palach in the wake of the Soviet invasion in 1968, which remains a constant, if unacknowledged presence in the background of these writings. The conception of sacrifice that emerges, in contrast to mythico-religious forms, breaks with a reliance on patterns of exchange and reward in favor of an expression of metaphysical freedom, and in turn provides the fulcrum for Patočka’s commentary on the possibility of a “demythologized” Christianity. (shrink)

This essay engages an undertheorized form of democratic agency: the embodied spectacle that characterizes a strain of activist politics. Where an existing literature addresses “the spectacle” as a tactic of power, it does not do justice to how marginal groups have used radical bodily acts in order to intervene within the image-world of democratic politics (e.g., hunger strikes, die-ins, self-immolation). The essay argues that such performances represent a standing challenge to democratic theory and demand a more richly sensuous (...) approach to how political claims are made. Such forms of bodily theatre do not only “speak” in ways that exceed official civic discourses but, in so doing, they unsettle the space of citizenship. Ultimately, these bodies do something in being undone. (shrink)

National identity and attachment to national culture have taken root even in this era of globalization. National sentiments find expression in multiple political spheres and cause troubles of various kinds in many societies, both domestically and across state borders. Some of these problems are rooted in history; others are the result of massive global immigration. As US Secretary of State John Kerry tries to broker a new round of Israel-Palestine peace talks, the Israeli government continues expanding its settlements in disputed (...) territories. As this proposal is being written, Japanese citizens are debating whether their politicians should visit the Yasukuni Shrine (靖國神社), where the spirits of fourteen Class A war criminals from WWII and more than one thousand others convicted of war crimes by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East are honored with a distinguished resting place. As the Chinese government’s plan to bring economic prosperity to the Xinjian province unfolds, ethnic conflicts between Han Chinese and local Uyghur Muslims intensify. Tibetans still demonstrate to the Chinese government, some through the dramatic sacrifice of self-immolation, their determination to pursue a Tibet that is truly free and autonomous. The recent inflow of Muslim immigrants across Europa and North America forces those liberal democratic societies to rethink the meaning of multiculturalism. Should the state respect Muslim women’s freedom to wear burkas in public? What about other aspects of certain Muslim traditions such as arranged marriages or the honor killing of teenage girls who see boys their parents do not approve? Since these immigrants voluntarily moved from their homeland to a new society, do they have a duty to give up such practices, which conflict with their new societies’ fundamental commitment to individual autonomy? Eric Hobsbawm suggests that nationalism is a contingent phenomenon in history—it arises with important historical events such as industrialization and print journalism; eventually, it will disappear. Anthony Smith, on the other hand, argues that nationalism is deeply rooted in the human need for collective faith and dignity. How should we understand today’s nationalism? Is it a transient phenomenon that eventually will be eradicated from the world, or is it a timeless issue that confronts and will remain a challenge for every society? Is the conventional distinction between civic and cultural nationalism still relevant or helpful? The problems and ongoing challenges of nationalism are very much alive throughout East Asia where the myth of ethnically and culturally homogeneous nations is still paramount. In addition to the examples provided above, East Asian societies are increasingly multicultural, inevitably forcing their governments to come up with new immigration and border-control policies, revisit their laws regarding labor policies, sociopolitical discrimination, socioeconomic welfare, and, more fundamentally, rethink the constitutional make-up of the citizenry and the ideal of social harmony, one of their most cherished political values. Nevertheless, contemporary theoretical analyses, whether philosophical or empirical, of the phenomena surrounding nationalism, in all its forms, are almost exclusively focused on cases in western cultures and societies, preventing the East Asian people from developing a coherent idea of who they are or should be in a way that can track their deeply-held values and norms (such as Confucianism). One of the primary aims of this conference therefore is to address this ongoing neglect and explore new concepts and theories that are socially relevant in East Asia. Not only will this provide access to the particular experiences of nation, citizenship, and nationalism throughout East Asia but it will bring to bear philosophical concepts, approaches, and styles of reasoning about them that currently are not part of this critical debate. Providing an opportunity to hear these distinct and different East Asian voices and opening up these conceptual and methodological resources to scholars around the world will greatly advance the understanding and appreciation of nationalism. In addition to this primary aim, the proposed conference will achieve two other, novel, and important goals. First, by design, it will bring to bear a multi and interdisciplinary approach to the problems of nationalism. We are not privileging either conceptual or empirical studies in the organization of our conference and will bring together philosophers, political scientists, sociologists, and historians, making every effort to invite scholars who explicitly employ or are interested in exploring different and at times hybrid approaches. Second, we will draw together scholars from around the world: China, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, North America, and Europe, including leading figures in the field, who will serve as keynote speakers for the conference. Combining these two additional goals will enable us to organize a uniquely diverse conference, both in terms of intellectual discipline and national origin. Along with our primary aim of introducing East Asian voices and theories, this will make our event original, distinctive, and unprecedented in value. Our age is one in which it is unavoidable for people of different cultural backgrounds to live together in many different places. For the sake of justice and stability, a comprehensive re-examination of nationalism is both urgent and necessary. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 30.1 (2000) 25-48 [Access article in PDF] Postcolonialism's Archive Fever Sandhya Shetty and Elizabeth Jane Bellamy Jacques Derrida. Archive Fever. Trans. Eric Prenowitz. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996. ________. Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 1976. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. "Can the Subaltern Speak?" Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1988. 271-313. 1. (...) Reading the Subaltern Archivally--or, Back to Antiquity Many readers of "Can the Subaltern Speak?" have been disturbed by Spivak's controversial answer to her own question, which is that "no scene of speaking" can arise for the subaltern woman; no discursive space can emerge from which she could formulate an "utterance." 1 One way of rephrasing Gayatri Spivak's highly resonant question might be, Can there be such a thing as a "postcolonial archive"? The purpose of our essay is to demonstrate just how crucial the concept of an "archive"--perhaps even a "postcolonial archive"--is for a more sympathetic understanding of Spivak's now notorious "silencing" of the subaltern woman. The underread and scarcely commented-on third and fourth sections of Spivak's essay raise the question, Can we approach the gendered subaltern more productively if our project is to recover not "lost voices" but rather lost texts? In the process of unpacking the textual complexities underlying Britain's 1829 abolition of sati (the widow's self-immolation on her husband's funeral pyre), Spivak pushes us further back in time when she observes intriguingly that "the archival... work involved here is indeed a task of 'measuring silences'" [286, our emphasis]. 2 We contend that her [End Page 25] choice of the term "archival" is highly motivated and can serve as the long-overdue occasion for a return to the largely unread sections of "Can the Subaltern Speak?"We can think of at least two risks involved in our undertaking. For one thing, revisitations to well-known essays can often seem more regressive than innovative. We are well aware that we may have to overcome a certain indifference on the part of readers who, feeling confident that they know it well, judge that "Can the Subaltern Speak?" (now over ten years old) has had its theoretical "moment" and should now give way to more current efforts to locate nonelite, subaltern subjectivity within a politics of resistance. A second concern is that because our project of reading the subaltern woman "archivally" must necessarily reexamine and justify Spivak's career-long engagement with Derrida and with deconstruction, we must be aware of the extent to which her deconstructive feminism has been prematurely and unfairly associated with the supposed political shortcomings of Derridean deconstruction, the regrettable result being an almost reflex aversion to her deconstructive theory within both feminism and postcolonialism. Despite these risks, however, we hope that our use of the archive as the governing principle for our return to Spivak's essay can pave the way for a more sympathetic reading of Spivak's "silent" subaltern. Our essay will argue that "Can the Subaltern Speak?" deserves a foundational or canonical status within postcolonial theory and should experience a "staying power" on the current critical scene as far-reaching and significant as Edward Said's Orientalism.Spivak's essay at one point refers quite literally to the concept of an archive, that is, the colonial "archive" of the East India Company, consisting of the "correspondence among the police stations, the lower and higher courts, the courts of directors, the prince regent's court," and so on [298]--all the documents instrumental in British law's recodification of sati from "ritual" to "crime" (also, we might add, the archive of subaltern historiography). 3 However, as Foucault's concept of the archive reminds us, the [End Page 26] archive is not just "that whole mass of texts that belong to a single discursive [in this case, legal] formation," but can also be conceptualized more abstractly as the "law of what can be said, the system that governs the appearance of statements as unique events... (shrink)

This two-part, semi-gothic literary essay seeks a provisional definition of “benevolent capital” and a working description of types of artistic and scholarly work that have no value for Capital as such. The paradox observed is that such works may actually appeal to a certain aspect of Capital, insofar as present-day capitalism has within it forms of pre-modern political economy that may actually save Capital from its mad rush toward self-immolation.

Over the last few decades there has emerged a small, yet influential eco-Buddhism movement in South Korea which, since the turn of the millennium, has seen several S?n Buddhist clerics engage in high-profile protests and activism campaigns opposing massive development projects which threatened widespread ecological destruction. This article will survey the issues and events surrounding three such protests; the 2003 samboilbae, or ‘threesteps- one-bow’, march led by Venerable Suky?ng against the Saemangeum Reclamation Project, Venerable Jiyul’s Anti-Mt. Ch?ns?ng tunnel hunger-strike campaign (...) between 2002 and 2006, and lastly Venerable Munsu’s self-immolation protesting the Four Rivers Project in 2010. This article will additionally analyze the attempts by these clerics to deploy innovative and distinctively Buddhist forms of protest, the effects of these protests, and how these protests have altered public perceptions of the role of Buddhist clergy in Korean society. This study will additionally highlight issues relevant to the broader discourse regarding the intersection of Buddhism and social activism, such as the appropriation of traditional Buddhist practices as protest tactics and the potential for conflict between social engagement and the pursuit of Buddhist soteriological goals. (shrink)

This two-part, semi-gothic literary essay seeks a provisional definition of “benevolent capital” and a working description of types of artistic and scholarly work that have no value for Capital as such. The paradox observed is that such works may actually appeal to a certain aspect of Capital, insofar as present-day capitalism has within it forms of pre-modern political economy that may actually save Capital from its mad rush toward self-immolation.

As scholars have recently suggested, rhetoric has long been remiss when it comes to nondiscursive concerns beyond its traditional purview. While many have sought to broaden rhetoric's scope, no one has yet undertaken a nondiscursive rhetorical investigation of social change in an effort to reconcile the tension between a critique of agency and the perception of human responsibility. This article undertakes such a critique through Alain Badiou's concept of the event, a concept that, I contend, offers the discipline a means (...) of rethinking the opposition between relativism and flat ontology. Analyzing the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi through the frame of the event, I regard Bouazizi's act as an ontic occurrence exerting influence over protestors across the Arab world while demanding collective recognition to emerge as an event. (shrink)

Can the Transsexual speak? I investigate this question through the case of Ella Nik Bayan who self-immolated in Berlin (Germany) on September 14, 2021. I first argue that this self-immolation is unreadable within the current frameworks of Western democracies. The case, however, paradigmatically demonstrates that emancipation within the confines of neoliberal capitalism can only be read under the pretense of a toxic protection. I then move on to claim that Ella Nik Bayan’s self-immolation calls for (...) a completely different political order from the one we currently inhabit, which, with Namita Goswami, I call “ heterogeneous.” I argue that heterogeneous politics is a politics of radical hospitality that opposes institutions of private property in particular. Unlearning private property means to pre-enact a world without the kind of racist, transmisogynist, and antisemitic violence that killed Ella Nik Bayan. Anti-capitalist hospitality sets out to create the social and cultural resources that enable a world beyond (such) violence. (shrink)

The Zhuangzi is one of the richest early Chinese sources for exploring conceptualizations of the visceral human form. Zhuangzi presents the human frame as a corpus of flesh, organs, limbs, and bone; he dissects it before the reader's eyes, turning it inside out and joyfully displaying its fragmented joints, sundered limbs, and beautifully monstrous mutations. This body is a site of immolation and fragmentation that ultimately evokes a larger wholeness and completeness. Drawing and quartering the body, Zhuangzi paradoxically frees (...) it from ordinary mortality. -/- Sommer explores the fields of meaning of different terms for the human body found in the Zhuangzi: the body might appear there as a gong body 躬, a sanctimonious ritualized body; as a shen body 身, a site of familial and social personhood; or as a ti body 體, a complex, multilayered corpus of multiple parts, each of which is consubstantial with the whole. Most commonly, however, the body in the Zhuangzi is the xing 形, an elemental or structural form. Zhuangzi enlivens and develops the xing form in ways that are not seen in other early Chinese texts. He mutilates and mutates it such that boundaries between form and formlessness disappear, and the physical frame becomes incorporated into a larger common body that includes all of life and death. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Impossible Sacrifice of Poetry: Bataille and the Nancian Critique of SacrificeElisabeth Arnould (bio)When, at the very center of his Inner Experience, Bataille arrives at what he calls the “uppermost extremity of non-meaning,” he stages for us one of the principal scenes of his “sacrifice of knowledge.” It depicts Rimbaud, turning his back on his works, making the ultimate and definitive sacrifice of poetry. This scene, which complements two (...) other representations of the “supplice” of the experience—the crucifixion of God and the oncoming madness of Hegel—rounds out the triple sacrificial vocation of an experience of nonknowledge, at once “a-theological,” “a-gnoseological,” and “a-poetological.” It extends to poetry and language the critical and sovereign imperative of an experience that can only be called “inner” insofar as it renounces truth, knowledge, and, ultimately, speech.What exactly, however, does this sacrificial renunciation of words represent for Bataille and why did he choose to load it with all the transgressive weight of the experience of nonknowledge (“non-savoir”)? Why place the self-sacrifice of poetry at the very center of a book that would be annulled by an immolation of speech? Indeed, why make this final “supplice”—a sacrifice of words performed and dedicated “to” “nothing”—into the core of the book’s interior rapture? Isn’t this figure of death and silence incurably equivocal? Does it not attribute the traditional traits of a “nothingness” to this “rapturous heart” of finitude that Bataille always wanted to designate as the “impossible” object of his experience? And is it not, therefore, condemned to appropriate, through this representation, the nonmeaning of a finitude that Bataille, far from conceptualizing as simple nothingness, usually prefers to designate ambiguously as “nonknowledge”?Such are the questions I shall address in reevaluating Bataille’s concept of sacrifice in light of Jean-Luc Nancy’s critique. In his article “The Unsacrificeable,” Nancy was the first to point out the problematic nature of the sacrificial model in Bataille’s conceptualization of finitude. According to Nancy, sacrifice, including the self-sacrifice of Rimbaud so important to Bataille, is the vehicle of an “ontotheological” appropriation. And it is through sacrifice that Bataille’s reflection on finitude attempts to domesticate death while claiming to abandon it to the aporetic enunciation of a “nonknowledge.”I shall thus examine the problematic figure of poetry’s self-sacrifice in order to expose, with Nancy, the equivocality of its conceptual appropriation. In light of Bataille’s multiple stagings and interpretations of this figure, however, I shall also attempt to demonstrate how his writing on and of sacrifice already contains the seeds of its own critique and attempts to exceed itself. Bataille did not simply want to reveal, in Rimbaud’s self-sacrifice, the inexpressible truth of finitude; he also wanted to denounce the comical lie of the sacrificial appropriation. And it is this double valence of the Rimbaldian self-sacrifice that I shall try to bring forth. [End Page 86]Before elucidating the meaning and function of this figure in the specific context of Inner Experience and questioning its possible duplicity, one must examine the general notion upon which it is modeled. Poetry’s self-sacrifice is the “consummate” form 1 of a sacrifice that we find in the form of stagings and commentaries in Bataille’s work. As is well known, the question of sacrifice has always occupied a central place in Bataille’s thought. He has not only studied this protean ethnological phenomenon we call “sacrifice” but has also wanted to give sacrifice, beyond traditional “ontotheological” interpretations and recent anthropological reconstructions, a meaning that far exceeds these restricted determinations. Sacrifice is not simply, for Bataille, a theoretical object. A paradigmatic manifestation of the sacred and its transgressions, it marks rather a limit to conceptualization and constitutes a stumbling block to thought. As such, it is, for Bataille—or, as he himself maintains, for all thought—the locus of an interruption. Cross-culturally, sacrifice delineates the limit thought comes up against when it faces what it cannot think.As the negation of our corporeal and intellectual limits, as the bloody excess that erupts before the fascinated eyes of a spectator, sacrifice “represents,” for... (shrink)

Sunohara Yuuri and Akita Masami’s series of six seppuku films (1990) are solely constituted by images of fictionalized death, revolving around the prolonged self-torture of a lone figure committing harakiri. I contend that the protagonist’s auto-immolation mirrors a formal death, each frame ‘killing’ the moment it represents. My analysis aims to explore how the solipsistic nature of selfhood is appositely symbolized by the isolation of the on-screen figures and the insistence with which the six films repeat the same (...) scenario of protracted agony across the cycle. The centralization of suffering, I argue, parallels the distance between viewer and image with the isolating nature of embodied existence. Thus, this article seeks to probe the relationship between form and content, asking what the image of death reveals about the death of the image. -/- . (shrink)

The author contextualizes the Problem of Evil in Open Theism system, listing its main theses, primarily the logic-of- love-defense (and free-will-defense) connected to Trinitarian speculation. After evaluating the discussion in Analytic Philosophy of Religion, the focus is on the personal mystery of evil, claiming that, because of mystery and vagueness, the Problem of Evil is undecidable. Recalling other schools of thought (Pareyson: ontology of freedom; Moltmann: Dialectical theology; Kenotic theology; Original Sin hermeneutics), the author tries to grasp their common insights. (...) One of them is the evident explanatory failure of theodicies, expressed in the antinomian statements ‘God is not innocent’. The author follows these insights, developing the concept of Eternal Immolation (Bulgakov), arguing that, without a proper understanding of its mystery (what is, and what is not), theistic theodicy could remain compromised. ‘Eternal Immolation’ is considered consequent – or already present – in recent speculations, it stands or falls when we accept that these reveal some unresolved points in Christian doctrine. Hence, ‘Eternal Immolation’ becomes a coordinating-concept, able to bring together their assumptions: several kinds of kenosis, the ontology of freedom with a logic-of-love defense, strongly linked to a libertarian human freedom, and the acknowledgement of the unresolved mystery of evil. (shrink)

Throughout the Homo Sacer series, Giorgio Agamben takes seriously the political and philosophical significance of Christian ritual in his archaeology of Western political discourse. In Opus Dei, Agamben argues for the sacrifice of the Mass as the paradigm for the ontology of effectivity, an ontology he sees as still regnant in the West. This ontology depends on the discourse of duty or office, and it begins with the priestly office. The priest’s duty is to be an “animate instrument” in the (...) Mass. However, Agamben’s archaeology contains a massive gap between scholastic theology and Enlightenment political theory—the Protestant Reformation. I argue that Agamben’s hypothesis requires attending to the reformation of the Mass. Examining the works of Luther and Zwingli, I show that in spite of their rejection of the priesthood, the discourse of duty and operativity not only persists but expands through their respective sacramental theologies. (shrink)

Hate speech is one of the most important conceptual categories in anti‐oppression politics today; a great deal of energy and political will is devoted to identifying, characterizing, contesting, and penalizing hate speech. However, despite the increasing inclusion of gender identity as a socially salient trait, antipatriarchal politics has largely been absent within this body of scholarship. Figuring out how to properly situate patriarchy‐enforcing speech within the category of hate speech is therefore an important politico‐philosophical project. My aim in this article (...) is twofold: first, I argue that sexist speech, though oppressive, is not hate speech. Second, I argue that misogynistic speech is hate speech, even when it is intradivisional. This is important because recognizing that the concepthate speechapplies to certain forms of patriarchy‐enforcing speech is another step in clarifying what is wrong with the practice, and how bad it is in relation to other abuses. Consequently, this article provides a more nuanced account of the kinds of expressions that can and should count as instances of hate speech. (shrink)

In this article I analyse two complaints of white vilification, which are increasingly occurring in Australia. I argue that, though the complainants (and white people generally) are not harmed by such racialized speech, the complainants in fact harm Australians of colour through these utterances. These complaints can both cause and constitute at least two forms of epistemic injustice (willful hermeneutical ignorance and comparative credibility excess). Further, I argue that the complaints are grounded in a dual misrecognition: the complainants misrecognize themselves (...) in their own privileged racial specificity, and they misrecognize others in their own marginal racial specificity. Such misrecognition preserves the cultural imperialism of Australia’s dominant social imaginary—a means of oppression that perpetuates epistemic insensitivity.Bringing this dual misrecognition to light best captures the indignity that is suffered by the victims of the aforementioned epistemic injustices. I argue that it is only when we truly recognize difference in its own terms, shifting the dominant social imaginary, that “mainstream Australians”can do their part in bringing about a just society. (shrink)

This book aims to understand why women are the targets of online hate speech and how we can stop this from occurring. -/- Why are women so frequently targeted with hate speech online and what can we do about it? Psychological explanations for the problem of woman-hating overlook important features of our social world that encourage latent feelings of hostility toward women, even despite our consciously-held ideals of equality. Louise Richardson-Self investigates the woman-hostile norms of the English-speaking internet, the (...) ‘rules’ of engagement in these social spaces, and the narratives we tell ourselves about who gets to inhabit such spaces. It examines the dominant imaginings (images, impressions, stereotypes, and ideas) of women that are shared in acts of hate speech, highlighting their ‘emotional stickiness’. But offering strategies through which we may reimagine our norms of online engagement, the stories that justify those norms, and the logic that makes sense of it all, this book shows how we can create alternative visions of what it means to take up online space as a woman and to ensure that women are seen as entitled to be there. By exploring aspects of ‘social imaginaries’ theory and applying it to the problem of hate speech against women online, this book illuminates why woman-hating has become such a prominent feature of this environment and how we can make these spaces safer for women. (shrink)

Background The fourth section of the 1967 Abortion Act states that individuals (including health care practitioners) do not have to participate in an abortion if they have a conscientious objection. A conscientious objection is a refusal to participate in abortion on the grounds of conscience. This may be informed by religious, moral, philosophical, ethical, or personal beliefs. Currently, there is very little investigation into the impact of conscientious objection on service users in Britain. The perspectives of service users are imperative (...) in understanding the real-world consequences and potential impact of conscientious objection and should be considered when creating and reviewing policies and guidelines. This research provided a platform for women and those who can become pregnant to share their experiences and opinions at a time when these voices are largely excluded in the great tradition of Western political philosophy and law-making processes. Method Five service users were interviewed using a narrative interview approach to uncover their abortion journeys and experiences of conscientious objection. Findings The findings were presented as found poems and uncovered that doctors are not always: informing service users that they have a conscientious objection to abortion, giving service users enough information to access abortion (indirect referral), treating them non-judgmentally, and providing medically correct information. Service users did not experience burdens such as long waiting times and were still able to access legal abortion. However, service users did experience negative emotional effects, as they were often left feeling scared, angry, and hopeless when they were not referred and/or were mistreated. Conclusions Findings indicate that conscientious objection could work in practice. However, it is currently failing some individuals on an emotional level, as not all doctors are adhering to guidelines. Conscientious objection in Britain needs to be addressed, to ensure service users receive fair, impartial, non-judgmental care. (shrink)

This book provides a philosophical examination of the extent to which legalizing same-sex marriage can contribute to ending the discrimination and social stigma faced by LGBT men and women in the Western world.

ABSTRACT In this commentary I evaluate what McGowan’s project would conclude with respect to the treatment of professional Australian Football League player Adam Goodes, who was incessantly ‘booed’ by crowds for the final two years of his career. Analysing Goodes’ case in light of McGowan’s argument leads me to two observations. First, McGowan’s norm-enactment approach is incredibly useful because it explains how words like ‘boo’ (with unstable meaning) can constitute actionable discrimination. Second, however, I wonder if a narrow focus on (...) whether such speech is legally actionable might encourage an overestimation of the power of laws to shepherd new g-norms into social practices. (shrink)

The medical ethicist is a fairly recent addition to the clinical setting. The following four potential roles of the clinical ethicist are identified and discussed: consultant in difficult cases, educator of health care providers, counselor for health care providers and finally patient advocate to protect the interests of patients. While the various roles may sometimes overlap, the roles of educator and counselor are viewed as being more congruent with the education and training of medical ethicists than are the roles of (...) consultant and patient advocate. (shrink)

The past two decades have been a time of heightened interest in the moral aspects of the practice of medicine. This interest has been reflected in medical education by the establishment of medical humanities programs in both preclinical and clinical education in many medical schools. It has also been reflected in the literature with a dramatic increase in journal articles on medical ethics as well as the development of medical ethics in textbooks. A number of journals have developed that are (...) specifically devoted to medical ethics, including The Journal of Medical Ethics, The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, The Journal of Medical Humanities, Theoretical Medicine, Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, just to name a few. The literature includes both theoretical foundations and conceptual analyses of particular issues as well as practical advice and general suggestions for how to implement programs in medical humanities. (shrink)

In recent years, the theoretical work of Gilligan in women's psychological development has led to the development of the concept of moral orientation or moral voice in contrast to the concept of moral reasoning or moral judgment developed by Kohlberg. These concepts have been of particular interest in gender studies, especially as applied to adolescence. These concepts of moral orientation and moral reasoning are being increasingly employed in healthcare ethics studies in a wide variety of settings. The recent work has (...) included studies of physicians, nurses, dentists, veterinarians, social workers, teachers of medical ethics, and hospital ethics committees. However, the study of moral development in healthcare providers has been hampered because collecting the necessary data from healthcare workers has been labor intensive and extremely time consuming. More efficient methods are needed. (shrink)

This article identifies five genres of anti-queer hate speech found in The Australian’s Facebook comments sections, exposing and analyzing the ways in which such comments are used to derogate cisgender and (often) heterosexual women. One may be tempted to think of cis-het women as third-party victims of queerphobia; however, this article argues that these genres of anti-queer speech are, in fact, misogynistic. Specifically, it argues that these are instances of cis-hetero-misogynistic hate speech. Cis-hetero-misogyny functions as the “law enforcement branch” of (...) a cis-hetero-patriarchal gender order. Given the existence of such an order, it is clear that cis-het women’s liberation is inextricable from queer liberation (and vice versa). This article argues that to facilitate allyship and challenge this gender order—the order that elicits such hate speech acts—we need an epistemological revolution in the way we recognize and re-cognize human difference. (shrink)

In the wake of a pilot study that indicated that the experience of medical education appears to Inhibit moral development In medical students, increased attention needs to be given to the structure of medical education and the Influence it has on medical students. Interest in ethics and moral reasoning has become widespread in many aspects of professional and public life. Society has exhibited great interest in the ethical issues confronting physicians today. Considerable effort has been undertaken to train medical students, (...) interns, and residents In how to reason through medical-ethical dilemmas. Media attention has focused on Issues such as abortion, euthanasia, care of severely handicapped infants, organ transplantation, and so forth, producing heated debates in both the professional and lay literature over the morality of the various positions. The curriculum of medical education has paralleled and reflected this general Interest in medical ethics. Most medical schools now offer, and frequently require, course work in ethics. However, further research Is needed to better characterize and understand the relationship of medical education to moral development. (shrink)

In contrast to theoretical discussions about potential professional liability of clinical ethicists, this report gives the results of empirical data gathered in a national survey of clinical medical ethicists. The report assesses the types of activities of clinical ethicists, the extent and types of their professional liability coverage, and the influence that concerns about legal liability has on how they function as clinical ethicists. In addition demographic data on age, sex, educational background, etc. are reported. The results show that while (...) nearly one third (28.9%) of the ethicists regularly make recommendations about patient care, only 10.8% of them regularly make entries in the medical record; only approximately half (53.0%) of them are covered by professional liability (malpractice) insurance; and the vast majority (84.3%) of them say that concerns about legal liability do not influence the way they function as clinical ethicists. (shrink)

High moral standards and adherence to a moral code have long been strong tenets of the profession of medicine, even though there have been occasional lapses that have led to renewed calls for a revitalization of moral integrity in medicine. Certainly, a moral component has generally been held to be an important aspect of the concept of a physician.

The Norman Rockwell image of the American physician who fixed the broken arm of a child, treated the father for hypertension, and brought an unborn child into this world is now almost nonexistent. Since the time of the Rockwell portrait, a highly technical medical industry has evolved. Now two-thirds of physicians are board certified in subspecialties, and patients visit an average of 3–4 different physicians per year. Today's physicians see themselves less as “benevolent and wise counselors overseeing the patient's welfare (...) and more as objective scientists applying the latest technical methods to bring about the desired end.” The intimate patient-physician relationship that was once the norm in our society is rapidly disappearing. (shrink)