Modern, Stevie In the movie Exodus set in 1947, Paul Newman plays a Jewish 'people smuggler' Ari Ben Canaan in an amusing early scene where he disguises himself as a British soldier. Ben Canaan fools a commanding officer into signing off on the transport of recent holocaust survivors out of detention in Cyprus, making the officer believe the survivors would be shipped back to Germany.

In this article, I draw connections between Nietzsche's diagnosis of nihilism, his emphasis on the importance of the things “nearest” to us and often overlooked, and methodological issues in contemporary thought. In particular, the connection between “the devaluation of the highest values” and the task of transvaluation gives us a context for addressing nihilism as a crisis of orientation. I argue that Nietzsche's turn toward the “nearest” things as a new direction for philosophical thought seems to resonate with the priorities (...) recently identified by Laura Marcus as the “keywords” of our time: “embodiment, affect, the quotidian, singularity, contingency, intimacy, precarity.” In order to pursue the deeper implications of this affinity, I consider some recent engagement with Nietzsche in new materialist writings. I claim that Nietzsche's ideas about the “nearest things,” properly understood, may provide these theories with resources to contest nihilism at the level of value, without reinstating an uncritical appeal to the authority of “lived experience.”. (shrink)

Christine Delphy is a major architect of materialist feminism, a radical feminist perspective which she developed in the context of the French women's movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s. She has always been controversial and continues to make original and challenging contributions to current feminist debates. This informative volume profiles Delphy and discusses topics including her opposition to the idea that femininity and masculinity are natural phenomena. Her insistence that women and men are social categories, defined by the (...) hierarchical relationship between them rather than by biology, typifies the materialist school within French feminism. In this lucid introduction to Delphy's work, Stevi Jackson recounts the events in Delphy's life as a feminist activist and the social and political context of her work. This text is essential reading for anyone with an interest in feminism or cultural history, this is a readable and accessible introduction to a key thinker in the modern women's movement. (shrink)

This article explores the possibility of developing a feminist approach to gendered and sexual embodiment which is rooted in the pragmatist/interactionist tradition derived from G.H. Mead, but which in turn develops this perspective by inflecting it through more recent feminist thinking. In so doing we seek to rebalance some of the rather abstract work on gender and embodiment by focusing on an instance of ‘heterosexual’ everyday/night life – the production of the female orgasm. Through engaging with feminist and interactionist work, (...) we develop an approach to embodied sexual pleasure that emphasizes the sociality of sexual practices and of reflexive sexual selves. We argue that sexual practices and experiences must be understood in social context, taking account of the situatedness of sex as well as wider socio-cultural processes – the production of sexual desire and sexual pleasure (or their non-production) always entails interpretive, interactional processes. (shrink)

According to cognitive averaging theory, preferences for attractive faces result from their similarity to facial prototypes, the categorical central tendencies of a population of faces. Prototypical faces are processed more fluently, resulting in increased positive affect in the viewer.

This book explores the imaginative possibilities for philosophy created by Nietzsche's sustained reflection on the phenomenon of ecstasy. From The Birth of Tragedy to his experimental "physiology of art," Nietzsche examines the aesthetic, erotic, and sacred dimensions of rapture, hinting at how an ecstatic philosophy is realized in his elusive doctrine of Eternal Return. Jill Marsden pursues the implications of this legacy for contemporary Continental thought via analyses of such voyages in ecstasy as Kant, Schopenhauer, Schreber, and Bataille.

Attempts to formalize the diagnostic process are by no means a recent undertaking; what is new is the availability of an engine to process these formalizations. The digital computer has therefore been increasingly turned to in the expectation of developing systems which will assist or replace the physician in diagnosis. Such efforts involve a number of assumptions regarding the nature of the diagnostic process: e.g. where it begins, and where it ends. ‘Diagnosis’ appears to include a number of quite different (...) cognitive processes, some of which seem more subject to formalization than others. Underlying the difficulties inherent in these efforts at formalization, is the hierarchical structure of medical knowledge including that of diseases. (By ‘hierarchical structure’, I mean no more than that our descriptions of clinical objects necessarily refer to different levels of organization; atomic, molecular, cellular, physiological system, entire patient.) Since diagnosis is in part a form of classification, measures of similarity between the clinical findings of a particular patient and a potential disease, are needed. This is complicated by the fact that some diseases are described using the vocabularies of physics and chemistry, others with the vocabulary of psychology, and most, with terms taken from a number of different hierarchical levels. The differences between the descriptions made using these vocabularies will be seen to exert systematic (if not uniform) influences upon the diagnostic process. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

As researchers we often find ourselves grappling with social media platforms and data ‘at close quarters’. Although social media platforms were created for purposes other than academic research – which are apparent in their architecture and temporalities – they offer opportunities for researchers to repurpose them for the collection, generation and analysis of rich datasets. At the same time, this repurposing raises an evolving range of practical and methodological challenges at the small and large scale. We draw on our experiences (...) and empirical data from two research projects, one using Facebook Community Pages and the other repurposing Facebook Activity Logs. This article reflects critically on the specific challenges we faced using these platform features, on their common roots, and the tactics we adopted in response. De Certeau’s distinction between strategy and tactics provides a useful framework for exploring these struggles as located in the practice of doing social research – which often ends up being tactical. This article argues that we have to collectively discuss, demystify and devise tactics to mitigate the strategies and temporalities deeply embedded in platforms, corresponding as far as possible to the temporalities and the aims of our research. Although combat at close quarters is inevitable in social media research, dialogue between researchers is more than ever needed to tip the scales in our favour. (shrink)

"...No mere collection, but a wonderful synthesis of some of the best and most representative works of modern feminist scholarship, reflecting the richness and diversity of contemporary women's studies. It provides an informative and empowering perspective on feminist scholarly achievements of the last decades." -Dale Spender, Founding member of WITS (Women, Information, Technology, and Scholarship), is author of more than 30 books, including Feminist Theorists: Three Centuries of Key Women Thinkers and For The Record: the Making and Meaning of Feminist (...) Knowledge. "A stimulating introduction to women's studies and a really useful teaching tool." -Mary Ellen Brown, Television and Women's Culture Women's Studies: Essential Readings provides a wide range of readers with an entirely comprehensive selection of ever 140 readings on women's studies, representing the entire diversity of current feminist thinking. The book is a divided into fourteen sections that reflect primary topics within women's studies, covering theory and perspectives, including: feminist social theory; psychological and psychoanalytic theory; cross-cultural perspectives and historical perspectives, as well as themes such as: education and work; marriage and motherhood; sexuality; the law; crime and deviance; politics and the state; science, medicine and reproductive technology; language and gender; feminist literary criticism; and the media tool Features: Introductions to each section provide an overview of the main issues and debates. Commentaries on each extract locate the work of individual authors within wider debates and identify the perspective from which they are writing. Each section contains a guide to further reading. (shrink)

In this essay I explore what might be meant by the “nearest things” in Nietzsche’s philosophy. In the first part of the essay I contextualise Nietzsche’s concerns with “the closest things of all” in the “free spirit” period (1878–1882) and raise the question of how knowledge of them is possible. This idea is developed in the second part of the paper in relation to the claim that dominant (Platonic/christian) habits of thought impede our understanding of the body. In the third (...) section, I suggest that Nietzsche’s interest in Epicurean thinking in this period enables us to situate the nearest things within the political aesthetics of a transfigured physis. In the final section, I examine how Nietzsche’s 1881 notes on eternal return provide a less-well known locus for his philosophy of the nearest things, one which suggests that to “incorporate” eternal return we need to become “good neighbours” to what is close. (shrink)

In this book George Marsden responds to critics of his The Soul of the American University, and attempts to explain how, without heavy-handed dogmatism or moralizing, Christian faith can be of great relevance to contemporary scholarship of the highest standards.

Modern, Stevie The appearance of Ayn Rand's 'lost' novel Ideal, 80 years after it was written, gives us cause to examine the life and works of the humanist author, playwright and philosopher.

Modern, Stevie In a dark uniform, she walks swiftly through the tram carriage, her movements machine-like and efficient. Wordlessly, she punches passengers' tickets and passes money from the coin-changer strapped to her hip. The passengers pay small attention, their gazes vaguely forward. They do not see the face of evil, the anonymous official who stands above them returning their ticket stub. The tram clatters on through Berlin's streets.

Modern, Stevie March 15, 2016: A 19 year-old American tourist is arrested in Jerusalem. Police authorities had found him asleep in a prohibited cave area, deep under the Muslim quarter of the Old City. A search finds his backpack loaded with rubble dug with a pickaxe, at a site where myth tells of lost religious treasure. The tourist claims no memory of his actions. Israeli media reports the story as a possible case of 'Jerusalem Syndrome' - a religiously themed (...) psychosis. The syndrome affects nearly 100 people each year out of millions of tourists who visit Jerusalem. (shrink)

Modern, Stevie At its annual general meeting in May this year, the Council of Australian Humanist Societies voted in support of volunteer ethics teachers entering public schools and teaching ethics programs to students as a secular alternative in religious education. The motion was put to the meeting by the NSW Society with the support of the Humanist Society of Victoria. The motion was opposed by the Queensland, Western Australian and South Australian Societies. Here is why the motion is a (...) grave mistake, and why Western Australia moved its own motion against it. (shrink)

Modern, Stevie The September 11 Memorial Museum at Ground Zero opened in May this year, nearly 13 years from the date when 2,983 people were murdered by Islamist hijackers. It is 20 years from Al Qaida's first attempt to bomb the World Trade Center in 1993.

Details developments in feminist theory since 1970, with chapters on aspects such as feminist social theory, political theory, and jurisprudence, black feminisms, post-colonial feminist theory, lesbian theory, and feminist linguistic theories. Other topics include psychoanalytic feminist theory, postmodernism and feminism, feminist literary theory, feminist media and film theory, and women's studies. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

When the brother of the poet Anne Carson died she wrote an elegy for him “in the form of an epitaph.” Her 2010 work Nox is a beguiling and beautiful work, as difficult to characterize as the brother it seeks to commemorate. This article explores the sensory experience of reading Nox, a text, which appeals to an elusive awareness at the edge of memory and imagination. In describing her brother, Carson evokes “a certain fundamental opacity of human being, which likes (...) to show the truth by allowing it to be seen hiding.” The aim of this paper is to show how this opacity emerges in the encounter with this captivating work, to pursue what it means to let “night” appear. (shrink)

This commentary on Dipesh Chakrabarty’s Climate of History initially frames the work in the context of the ongoing transdisciplinary project of creating synergies or more precisely “consilience” between the sciences and humanities. When this project is engaged in on the premises of the humanities (and the social sciences), we end up with the Earth system and the planetary as the basic lifeblood of human society—what foregrounds existence in common. That this realization is already bringing forth new justificatory principles for governance (...) in a planetary age is then related through a history of ecological justice concerns. (shrink)