“To arrange in or analyse into classes according to shared qualities or characteristics; to make a formal or systematic classification” (OED). For many, classification provokes images of dull cataloging and arcane knowledge. However, in the eighteenth century it was neither dull nor arcane and had momentous import for natural philosophers and everyday individuals alike. Susannah Gibson has captured this expertly in her new book, and the subtitle accents the stakes: How Eighteenth-Century Science Disrupted the Natural Order. Although originating (...) out of a doctoral dissertation, this is not a dense monograph. Instead, Gibson targets a wider academic audience using compelling vignettes in digestible chapters with compact endnotes and helpful suggestions for further reading. On the whole, the book is a success, though more illuminating in some places than others. (shrink)

The widespread receptivity of Jewish communities around the world to Meir Kahane demands that we reconsider our narrative of modern Jewish history and religious thought. His racism, calls for violence, and protofascism are startling, given the standard presentation that liberalism and assimilation mark the modern Jewish era. Even more startling is that Kahane's name almost never appears in the major surveys of American Judaism, the history of Zionism, and modern Jewish thought. Yet, Kahane's influence is growing rapidly and already outweighs (...) the influence of most other modern Jewish thinkers and shows no sign of abating, especially with the rise of authoritarian regimes around the world. (shrink)

Patient advocacy organizations provide patient- and caregiver-oriented education, advocacy, and support services. PAOs are formally organized nonprofit groups that concern themselves with medical conditions or potential medical conditions and have a mission and take actions that seek to help people affected by those medical conditions or to help their families. Examples of PAOs include the American Cancer Society, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and the American Heart Association. These organizations advocate for, and provide services to, millions of people with (...) physical and mental conditions — such as cancer, mental illness, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease — via their outreach, meetings, counseling, websites, and published materials. A PAO usually seeks to raise public awareness of a disease’s symptoms, risk factors, and treatment options and promotes research to cure or to prevent that disease. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 3, March 2020, Page 21-24.

These essays survey the histories, the theories and the fault lines that compose the field of memory research. Drawing on the advances in the sciences and in the humanities, they address the question of how memory works, highlighting transactions between the interiority of subjective memory and the larger fields of public or collective memory.

Why is racism so tenacious? Drawing from recent methodological innovations in the study of racism, this essay explores the appeal of racism and the erotics of race within the imagination. The slippery nature of racism, and its ability to alter its manifestations with ease and hide behind various disavowals, facilitates the racialization of both religious thought and social institutions.

Gender transition may be figured as part of a broader creaturely process of being partners in our own becoming. Gender transition is explored through the lenses of transformation (including comparisons with theosis and with religious conversion) and neurodiversity. Humans are transformative creatures; trans and gender-variant people, like others, have the power to curate their own identities and are on a journey toward perfection. Our nature as humans, including our sexed and gendered nature, is not over-and-done-with. In this sense, our active (...) building and shaping of our identities and body-stories is not a rejection of a divine blueprint for human existence, nor an exercise of illegitimate human hubris, but rather a licit creaturely form of generativity. (shrink)

This essay places the recent academic fascination with trauma and victimhood in a psycho‐social context within which identifications with pure victimhood hold sway. The essay takes as its starting point Freud's description, in Civilisation and its Discontents, of the formation of the super‐ego via the small child's negotiation of ambivalence towards its first authority figure. It is argued that this process lacks secondary re‐inforcement in western urban postmodernity, where authority has become diffuse, all‐pervasive and unavailable as a point of identification. (...) In this context, aggression becomes harder to acknowledge and manage resulting in a tendency towards Manicheanism and the attenuation of ambivalence. Taking as its case‐study Marianne Hirsch's writings on the ethical aesthetics of postmemorial photography, the essay concludes that recent work on trauma and testimony fails to acknowledge that identifications may straddle victimhood and perpetration. This acknowledgement is only possible where some containment of aggression feels possible. (shrink)

We have two aims in this paper. The first is to provide the reader with a critical guide to recent work on relativity and persistence by Balashov, Gilmore and others. Much of this work investigates whether endurantism can be sustained in the context of relativity. Several arguments have been advanced that aim to show that it cannot. We find these unpersuasive, and will add our own criticisms to those we review. Our second aim, which complements the first, is to demarcate (...) the most defensible form of relativistic endurantism. A recurring theme of this paper is that even those philosophers who do worry about relativity have not taken it seriously enough. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 41, no. 3. © 2015 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 689 Susannah Bartlow White Fear in Universities: The Story of an Assata Shakur Mural No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them. No one will teach you your true history, teach you your true heroes if they know that knowledge will set you free. Theory without practice is just as incomplete (...) as practice without theory. The two have to go together. —Assata Shakur, quoted on a mural at Marquette University What does it mean to whitewash? To terminate? I have been tasting and retasting these words on my tongue after a mural of Assata Shakur at Marquette University was whitewashed, and I was fired—terminated —for having supported the mural, ending a fourteen-year career in feminist academia. As the founding director of the Gender and Sexuality Resource Center (GSRC), my job was to build an academic support office for women’s, gender, and LGBTQ+ education and empowerment. In the center’s third year, Amanda Smith (a Marquette senior) and Jeanette Martín (a community artist and program assistant at the center) envisioned, planned, and executed the Assata Shakur mural project as a way to invite greater community interest. In my role as director of the center, I supported the project, communicated it to senior leaders, and spread the word about the community-painting day in late March 2015. The mural was on display for six weeks at the GSRC before a storm of  Students fill in detail of the Assata Shakur mural at Marquette University’s Gender and Sexuality Resource Center. Photograph by Amanda T. Smith. News and Views 691 media coverage in mid-May prompted the university to cover the mural in white paint and fire me for my support of the project. My experience of this process was as rapid as it sounds: I received a few phone calls alerting me that the whitewashing of the mural was imminent and that there was a formal review of my leadership decisions, and I was fired twenty-four hours later. The idiomatic usage of “whitewash” tells us that something is shameful and that it has been, or ought to be, covered up. Whose cover-up was it—and whose shame? Over the six weeks it was on display at the center, the mural invited people into a quiet space off a hallway, and it had sparked discussion among staff, faculty, and students who used the space. The mural was one of very few images of a black woman anywhere on Marquette’s campus, and it contributed to a sense among many students of color that the GSRC was a space in which they were welcomed and safe and where they could be comfortable. Yet in the distortions of white supremacy, the mural looked like a threat, rather than an intellectual and community representation central to the university itself. Other recent cases of faculty repression, from Steven Salaita to Saida Grundy and Zandria Robinson, demonstrate how concerns about liability, finances, and public perception guide administrators ’ decisions about representation on campuses. Far from being liberal utopias, or even spaces that respect speech, universities remain testing grounds when students’ or educators’ actions present direct antiracist critique. What more clear or direct example of antiracist critique than the quotes we chose for the mural: Assata Shakur’s own words asserting the importance of street smarts and intellectual prowess, naming the power invested in knowledge systems and the importance of claiming that power for ourselves? Universities are, in our time, particularly responsive to pressure from the right. Private, nonprofit, advocacy organizations troll university websites looking for evidence of liberal bias; conservative media outlets publish student bloggers who feed the fantasy that the facts of United States history, presented without whitewashing, do not belong in classrooms. In particular, those who study the lives and knowledges of historically marginalized populations are in the crosshairs of right-wing attacks. In the case of the mural—and in each of the other cases cited above— it was either a right-wing news source or a powerful donor or decision 692 News and Views maker who raised concerns about leftist bias, civility, or... (shrink)

This is a book about how we see: the environment around us (its surfaces, their layout, and their colors and textures); where we are in the environment; whether or not we are moving and, if we are, where we are going; what things are good for; how to do things (to thread a needle or drive an automobile); or why things look as they do.The basic assumption is that vision depends on the eye which is connected to the brain. The (...) author suggests that natural vision depends on the eyes in the head on a body supported by the ground, the brain being only the central organ of a complete visual system. When no constraints are put on the visual system, people look around, walk up to something interesting and move around it so as to see it from all sides, and go from one vista to another. That is natural vision—and what this book is about. (shrink)

To commemorate 40 years since the founding of the Journal of Business Ethics, the editors in chief of the journal have invited the editors to provide commentaries on the future of business ethics. This essay comprises a selection of commentaries aimed at creating dialogue around the theme The Ethics and Politics of Academic Knowledge Production. Questions of who produces knowledge about what, and how that knowledge is produced, are inherent to editing and publishing academic journals. At the Journal of Business (...) Ethics, we understand the ethical responsibility of academic knowledge production as going far beyond conventions around the integrity of the research content and research processes. We are deeply aware that access to resources, knowledge of the rules of the game, and being able to set those rules, are systematically and unequally distributed. One could ask the question “for whom is knowledge now ethical’”? (See the Burrell commentary.) We have a responsibility to address these inequalities and open up our journal to lesser heard voices, ideas, and ways of being. Our six commentators pursue this through various aspects of the ethics and politics of academic knowledge production. Working with MacIntyre’s scheme of practices and institutions, Andrew West provides commentary on the internal good of business ethics learning and education. Inviting us to step out of the cave, Christopher Michaelson urges a clear-eyed, unblinking focus on the purposes and audiences of business ethics scholarship. As developmental editor, Scott Taylor uncovers some of the politics of peer review with the aim of nurturing of unconventional research. Mike Hyman presents his idiosyncratic view of marketing ethics. In the penultimate commentary, Julie Nelson attributes difficulties in the academic positioning of the Business Ethics field to the hegemony of a masculine-centric model of the firm. And finally, Gibson Burrell provides a powerful provocation to go undercover as researcher-investigators in a parallel ethics of the research process. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 4, May 2020, Page 108-110.

This paper explores the impact that developments in the field of neuroprosthetics will have on the ethical viability of healthy limb amputation, specifically in cases of Body Integrity Identity Dis...

The psychology of science typically lacks integration between cognitive and social variables. We present a new framework of team innovation in multidisciplinary science and engineering groups that ties factors from both literatures together. We focus on the effects of a particularly challenging social factor, knowledge diversity, which has a history of mixed effects on creativity, most likely because those effects are mediated and moderated by cognitive and additional social variables. In addition, we highlight the distinction between team innovative processes that (...) are primarily divergent versus convergent; we propose that the social and cognitive implications are different for each, providing a possible explanation for knowledge diversity’s mixed results on team outcomes. Social variables mapped out include formal roles, communication norms, sufficient participation and information sharing, and task conflict; cognitive variables include analogy, information search, and evaluation. This framework provides a roadmap for research that aims to harness the power of multidisciplinary teams. (shrink)

It is a mistake to think that any philosophical contribution to the study of psychopathology is otiose. I identify three non-exhaustive roles that philosophy can and does occupy in the study of mental disorder, which I call the agenda-setting role, the synthetic role, and the regulative role. The three roles are illustrated via consideration of the importance of Jaspers' notion of understanding and its application to specific examples of mental disorder, including delusions of reference, Capgras delusion and other monothematic delusions, (...) and clinical depression. Together the three roles assign to philosophy of psychopathology the task of determining how to situate the varieties of mental disorder within the system of interpretive and evaluative concepts that partially make up the dynamic but indispensable manifest image. (shrink)

The Sexual Politics of Time will be of interest tostudents and researchers of time, memory, difference and cultural change, in subjects such as Media and ...

Background In the early 2010s, a phenomenon known as do-it-yourself (DIY) fecal microbiota transplant (FMT) emerged as lay individuals began self-administering FMTs at home. Although prior research indicates that many individuals who perform DIY FMT have sought advice from healthcare providers, to date there has been no investigation of physicians’ experiences with DIY FMT. The objective of this qualitative study was to examine the attitudes of physicians who offer FMT regarding the practice of DIY FMT and to assess how they (...) navigated the ethical challenges of patient requests for DIY FMT.Methods We recruited physicians listed on two patient-created online databases of FMT providers. All physicians who indicated having been approached for advice about DIY FMT were included in the study. Semi-structured interviews with physicians explored their attitudes toward and experiences with DIY FMT.Results Of 18 physicians interviewed, one reported having provided counsel in response to an initial patient inquiry about DIY FMT, 2 indicated they explicitly advised against DIY FMT and refused to provide advice, and 15 fell in a middle category of discouraging DIY FMT and discussing reasons why. Among the physicians in this third category, four reported that they had changed their approach to providing counsel in response to a patient telling them they were going to perform DIY FMT anyway.Conclusions Physicians in our study employed a wide range of strategies for promoting safety in the DIY FMT context, from explicitly advising against the procedure to the provision of guidance aimed at mitigating potential harms. While there has been increasing attention to the practices of DIY medicine, this study underscores the need for greater attention to the ethically complex situations that physicians face when patients request guidance for unapproved at-home treatments. (shrink)

On this 200th anniversary of Marx’s birth, what can we learn from Fanon’s turn to Marx over 60 years ago? This paper reviews Fanon’s active engagements with Marx throughout his work from Black Skin...

Despite the increase in global research on health inequalities, more needs to be done to strengthen efforts to inform local interventions. In this article, we ask what determines the local capacity to engage in research on health inequalities. A bibliometric analysis identified Spain as the 10th highest global contributor to this research field (1966–2015), yet a significant proportion of this production was affiliated to just a few institutions in Barcelona. How and why has the city produced so much health inequalities (...) research over four decades? A realist explanatory case study was conducted to test and refine six causal mechanisms, and identify the contextual conditions that might have activated them to generate this outcome. Data was triangulated from 10 semi-structured interviews, and scientific and grey literature. Our findings confirmed that several of our proposed mechanisms - functioning under certain conditions over time - explain the large volume of health inequalities research in Barcelona. Based on these findings, key lessons from the city's experience are suggested. Further research is needed on this topic. (shrink)

The recognition that female embodiment and feminine experience are legitimate and specific sites of the revelation of God’s love has been one of the most significant developments in theology in the last hundred years. However, an over-emphasis on feminine experience as supervening on female embodiment risks erasing unusual sex-gender body-stories and perpetuating the idea that only some bodies can mediate the divine. Feminist Theology’s future must involve a re-examination and re-negotiation of what it is to be feminist theologians without fixed (...) gender essences. Does Feminist Theology have space to hear from and nurture the voices of those whose gender experiences challenge a binary, either-or model? Can Feminist Theology, in contrast to much secular feminist theory, give space at the table to those whose sex-gender life stories undermine the notion that there is such a thing as a common or biologically-contingent feminine experience in the first place? (shrink)

In Specters of Marx, Derrida suggests that a non-revolutionary — ‘spectral’ — Marxism could alleviate a contemporary crisis in imagining the future in the late twentieth century. This ‘presentist’...

As one of the foremost public intellectuals of the twentieth century, Hannah Arendt is well known for her writings on political philosophy. Less familiar are her significant contributions to cultural and literary criticism. This edition brings together for the first time Arendt’s reflections on literature and culture. The essays include previously unpublished and untranslated material drawn from half a century of engagement with the works of European and American authors, poets, journalists, and literary critics, including such diverse figures as Proust, (...) Melville, Auden, and Brecht. Intended for a wide readership, this volume has the potential to change our view of Arendt by introducing her not only as one of the leading political theorists of her generation, but also as a serious, committed, and highly original literary and cultural critic. Gottlieb’s introduction ties the work together, showing how Arendt developed a form of literary and cultural analysis that is entirely her own. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 35.4 (2005) 23-41MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]"With Conscious Artifice" Auden's Defense of MarriageSusannah Young-ah Gottlieb1 "Auden Said That?"The greatest lesson of life comes from Auden—sort of.In Mitch Albom's Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, A Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson, a line attributed to Auden forms the lesson around which the "runaway bestseller" revolves. As the first paragraph of the book explains and the last paragraph repeats, (...) the book recounts a pedagogical encounter between Mitch and a retired Brandeis professor of Social Psychology, Morrie Schwartz, who is dying of ALS: "The last class of my old professor's life took place once a week in his house, by a window in the study where he could watch a small hibiscus plant shed its pink leaves. The class met on Tuesdays. It began after breakfast. The subject was The Meaning of Life" [Albom, 1, 192]. Several years earlier Mitch had written his senior thesis under Morrie's direction. Upon learning of Morrie's condition from an episode of Nightline entitled "Life's Lessons," Mitch visits his dying teacher and finds his own feelings of "confusion and depression" [44] healed under Morrie's tutelage. From the first "class" of their renewed relationship Morrie emphasizes that contemporary culture condemns those under its influence to a "meaningless life" [43] and that the confusion Mitch experiences belongs to the entire era—and so, too, an urgent need for clarity. Mitch, in turn, sees in Morrie someone who, by virtue of his life-affirming wisdom and his proximity to death, can identify those "important things" that can fill the cultural vacuum about which he, as a sports reporter, knows all too well. On the fifth of their unofficial Tuesday "office hours," Morrie begins to fulfill his former student's expectations. Clarity comes in an imperative the old professor attributes to Auden:"Love is so supremely important. As our great poet Auden said, 'Love each other or perish.'""Love each other or perish." I wrote it down. Auden said that?[91]The line in question could scarcely be clearer, for it represents life in terms of a stark decision: love or death. Despite the simplicity of this choice, however, the scene is curiously complex, as if Mitch, against his explicit intentions, wants to dampen the effect of Morrie's wisdom. That Mitch writes down the line "Love each other or perish" is itself odd—even more so that he writes that he writes it down. As the beginning of the chapter explains at length, the conversation is being recorded, so that all of Morrie's wisdom may be preserved. The act of writing under these circumstances is less a sign of confidence in the supreme importance of the quotation in question than an indication of a degree of unresolved confusion: "Auden said that?" The confusion in this case cannot be attributed [End Page 23] to contemporary culture; rather, it consists in certain philological problems of citation: is Auden the author of the line, and if so, is it correctly rendered? Perhaps under the direction of another Brandeis professor, Mitch had learned and retained the famous last line of the penultimate stanza of Auden's "September 1, 1939": "We must love one another or die."1 Perhaps Mitch, or his publisher, having done some research, wants to signal an awareness of Morrie's misquotation but nevertheless remain faithful to the exact words of his teacher. And in any case who would care about such matters when something of great importance, indeed "life's greatest lesson," has just been articulated?Mitch's curiously inappropriate question does not, however, altogether disappear from Tuesdays. In response, Morrie does not so much insist on the accuracy of the quotation as on its goodness and truth:"Love each other or perish," Morrie said. "It's good, no? And it's so true. Without love, we are birds with broken wings."Say I was divorced, or living alone, or had no children. This disease—what I'm going through... (shrink)

True stories about people who triumphed over seemingly impossible medical diagnoses using untraditional, inventive therapies and perseverance--and about what scientists are discovering on the psychology of healing and the mind-body connection--from the author of theNew York TimesMagazinearticle about her own son, "The Boy with the Thorn in his Joints," which led to this book about other families.

Both the psychology of perception and the philosophy of perception seem to show a new face when the process is considered at its own level, distinct from that of sensation. Unfamiliar conceptions in physics, anatomy, physiology, psychology, and phenomenology are required to clarify the separation and make it plausible. But there have been so many dead ends in the effort to solve the theoretical problems of perception that radical proposals may now be acceptable. Scientists are often more conservative than philosophers (...) of science. I end, therefore, as I began, with a plea for help. (shrink)