Martin Buber was an eighteenth-century European thinker, philosopher and scholar. Buber’s thoughts are very relevant and contemporary, even in today’s advanced digital, informational and technological age. We live in a time of heightened tensions and conflict; the article discusses geopolitical realities and the importance of dialogue. It goes over Martin Burrell’s ideas on dialogue. Further, it discusses understanding geopolitics in the light of dialogue. This article concludes that advanced technology is affecting core issues of geopolitics. Only dialogue can provide answers (...) to humanity’s challenges in this changing era. In such a time, the core principles of Martin Buber’s dialogue are more relevant than ever for a way forward that the entire world is looking for in relation to present geopolitical realities. (shrink)

Review of: Communauté (Gemeinschaft), Martin Buber (2018) Paris: Éditions de l’éclat, 157 pp., ISBN 978-2-84162-432-4, p/bk, €10.

This text was written first in Dutch in 2011. It is an adaptation of my BA thesis for the University of the Arts in Utrecht and I am still very excited that I wrote it in the way that I did, because it was written within an educational context of great creative freedom. This is to say that many of the things I state about language are based on experience working as a writer for stage productions, performance and poetry. I (...) allow myself to play with language, and create my own terminology as I go along; a terminology of my own, based in my own practice – this is what still makes it a valuable text to me and hopefully to others, one I would never be able to produce again in the same way. I had a bigger ability to wonder, and less knowledge, for instance about Mieke Bal’s concept of focalization, to lean back on. I continued my studies after writing this, which means that a lot of the theory on language philosophy could have been backed up by a more specified theoretical framework. It is important to keep this in mind while reading this publication. If anything, it is an invitation to take a look anew at the material of a writer: language, vocabulary. I would like to invite you to consider this while reading. This text comes from a source of genuine wonder about words and what they might mean. (shrink)

Is atheist spirituality an oxymoron and, if so, did Soviet citizens brought up in a definitively atheist environment have no spiritual pursuits? The author asks this question, drawing on Dostoyevsky’s dark prophecy and interrogating Yuri Levada’s model of a Soviet simple person as a distinct anthropological type. Taking on board Riegel’s concept of political religion and testing Marxism–Leninism as a source of wisdom for the Soviet nonbelievers, the author seeks to uncover a version of spirituality compatible with Soviet-style atheism. The (...) discussion also involves the examination of Russian literary tradition and Borodina’s philosophical theory of spirituality, which accords with Sharafutdinova accounting for the phenomenon of inner exile in the late Soviet period and Bekmetov’s reminder that Buddhist world-view had a significant influence on Russian cultural metalanguage. (shrink)

This article aims to contribute to healthcare communication literature by providing factors that result in mistrust and miscommunication for Deaf people. Deaf people experience a lot of health inequity, which can be, in large part, attributed to being a result of communication and misunderstanding between Deaf people and healthcare staff, resulting in mistrust. Presenting outcomes of practical experiments as well as theoretical reasons for the misunderstanding and mistrust allows to make suggestions about how to improve communication for the future. This (...) review can serve as guidance for factors that contribute to miscommunication that should be avoided by healthcare staff and for lessons learned from positive experiences that should be scaled up and applied to ensure more clear and supportive communication. (shrink)

Review of: Embodiment, Relation, Community: A Continental Philosophy of Communication, Garnet Butchart (2019) University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 199 pp., ISBN 978-0-27108-325-4, h/bk, $80.95.

This article analyses the consequences that disinformation phenomena have for a model of communication, focusing on the dangers that disinformation poses to democratic societies, especially when it is disseminated by the media. Disinformation is examined here from the perspective of social cognitive psychology, with special attention to the role played by motivated reasoning and confirmation bias in human cognition. From this perspective, disinformation phenomena should be studied not only through an analysis of how the media operate, but also through an (...) understanding of how we process information and what we use it for from a social cognitive point of view. This article emphasizes the role that intuition and affective persuasion play in communication processes, as key elements of motivated reasoning, and argues that once this cognitive dimension is integrated into communication theory, preventive strategies can be designed to protect democracies from the dangers caused by disinformation. Ideological polarization and a lack of consensus are highlighted here as being among the biggest dangers, preventing agreement on issues that affect the proper functioning of democracy. While a certain conception of communication posits reasoning, the media and education as the tools for resolving conflicts and preventing disagreements, this article concludes that the success of disinformation phenomena points to the need for a model that includes the cognitive elements mentioned above. (shrink)

This article explores the way sound, music, rhythm and movement reflect experiences of suffering, trauma and aliveness by reflecting on colonializing and decolonializing modes of understanding the role played by sounds and music in living through suffering, displacement, cultural devastation and illness. Music and sound practices offer people ways of connecting life narratives and coping mechanisms to deal with loss and suffering. A peculiar aliveness of the body is mediated by sound and rhythm. The experiences with personal and cultural suffering (...) of Richard Wilhelm, Simone Weil, Ludwig Wittgenstein and people in the author’s life are read against the background of the ethical and communicative dimensions of sound and music, in an ethnographic and auto-ethnographic as much a philosophical study. (shrink)