Frank Mitjans is an architect who has worked in London since 1976. He was introduced to the significance of the figure of St. Thomas More by Andrés Vázquez de Prada, author of the biography, Sir Tomás Moro, Lord Canciller de Inglaterra. In 1977 Vázquez de Prada invited Mitjans to visit with him the Thomas More Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, which stimulated his interest in representations of More, his family and his friends. Since August 2002 he has given many (...) presentations and talks on the topography of More’s London to groups of students and other interested people in Britain, Ireland, and Sweden. Frank Mitjans, architecte qui travaille à Londres depuis 1976, fut initié au personnage de Saint Thomas More par Andrés Vázquez de Prada, auteur de la biographie Sir Tomás Moro, Lord Canciller de Inglaterra. En 1977 Vázquez de Prada l’invita à l’accompagner dans sa visite de l’exposition Thomas More à la National Portrait Gallery, évènement qui aiguisa son intérêt pour les représentations de More, de sa famille et de ses amis. Depuis août 2002 il a régulièrement fait des présentations et des exposés à des groupes d’étudiants et d’autres en Grande-Bretagne, Irlande et Suède au sujet de la topographie du Londres de Thomas More. The recent exhibitions of the works of Holbein in London and Basel, and scholarly publications such as Holbein and England, have rekindled interest in the Portrait of Thomas More and his Family, and in the late sixteenth-century versions of Holbein’s presumed lost original. The present paper analyses the differences between the sixteenth-century versions and Holbein’s 1527 composition sketch, and concludes that the sketch is a more reliable witness to Holbein’s lost painting than the later versions, as well as the only authentic witness to More’s intentions; though anything we learn from the drawing must be checked against what we know from More’s letters and writings and other biographical data. From the later versions, however, and in particular from the references to Seneca on them, we can learn about those who commissioned them and England’s peculiar historical circumstances. (shrink)

SummaryThis paper examines the role of health knowledge in the association between mothers' education and use of maternal and child health services in Ghana. The study uses data from a nationally representative sample of female respondents to the 2008 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey. Ordered probit regression models evaluate whether women's health knowledge helps to explain use of three specific maternal and child health services: antenatal care, giving birth with the supervision of a trained professional and complete child vaccination. The (...) analyses reveal that mothers' years of formal education are strongly associated with health knowledge; health knowledge helps explain the association between maternal education and use of health services; and, net of a set of stringent demographic and socioeconomic controls, mothers' health knowledge is a key factor associated with use of health services. (shrink)

Nonsense‐mediated RNA decay (NMD) represents an established quality control checkpoint for gene expression that protects cells from consequences of gene mutations and errors during RNA biogenesis that lead to premature termination during translation. Characterization of NMD‐sensitive transcriptomes has revealed, however, that NMD targets not only aberrant transcripts but also a broad array of mRNA isoforms expressed from many endogenous genes. NMD is thus emerging as a master regulator that drives both fine and coarse adjustments in steady‐state RNA levels in the (...) cell. Importantly, while NMD activity is subject to autoregulation as a means to maintain homeostasis, modulation of the pathway by external cues provides a means to reprogram gene expression and drive important biological processes. Finally, the unanticipated observation that transcripts predicted to lack protein‐coding capacity are also sensitive to this translation‐dependent surveillance mechanism implicates NMD in regulating RNA function in new and diverse ways. (shrink)

BackgroundThe wellbeing of people living with dementia and their family caregivers may be impacted by stigma, changing roles, and limited access to meaningful opportunities as a dyad. Group therapeutic songwriting and qualitative interviews have been utilized in music therapy research to promote the voices of people with dementia and family caregivers participating in separate songwriting groups but not together as dyads.ProceduresThis study aimed to explore how ten people with dementia/family caregiver dyads experienced a 6-week group TSW program. Dyads participated in (...) homogenous TSW groups involving 2–4 dyads who were either living together in the community or living separately because the person with dementia resided in a care home. The TSW program, informed by personhood, couplehood, family centered and group process frameworks, involved creating original lyrics through song parody and song collage. Qualified Music Therapists facilitated sessions and interviewed each dyad separately. Interviews were analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis.FindingsFive recurrent group themes were developed, indicating group TSW: was a positive shared experience, benefiting both members of the dyad and motivating further engagement with music; stimulated mental processes and reignited participants’ interests and skills; provided meaningful opportunities for reflection and connection with memories and life experiences; and prompted interaction and collaboration, leading to social connections, empathic relationships and experiences of inclusion. Participants also highlighted how: the facilitated process supported engagement, highlighting abilities and challenging doubts.ConclusionDyads identified group TSW as an opportunity to recognize strengths, voice ideas and opinions, share meaningful experiences, and do “more with music.” Participants valued TSW as a new, creative and stimulating experience that enabled connection with self and others and led to feelings of pride and achievement. Our findings further recognize how therapeutic intention and approach were reflected in participants’ engagement and responses regardless of dementia stage and type, dyad relationship, or musical background. This research may broaden perspectives and expand understanding about how people with dementia and their family caregivers access and engage in music therapy. (shrink)

Despite the fact that psychedelics were proscribed from medical research half a century ago, recent, early-phase trials on psychedelics have suggested that they bring novel benefits to patients in the treatment of several mental and substance use disorders. When beneficial, the psychedelic experience is characterized by features unlike those of other psychiatric and medical treatments. These include senses of losing self-importance, ineffable knowledge, feelings of unity and connection with others and encountering ‘deep’ reality or God. In addition to symptom relief, (...) psychedelic experiences often lead to significant changes in a patient’s personality and worldview. Focusing on the case of psilocybin, we argue that the peculiar features of psychedelics pose certain novel risks, which warrant an enhanced informed consent process–one that is more comprehensive than what may be typical for other psychiatric medications. We highlight key issues that should be focused on during the consent process and suggest discussion prompts for enhanced consent in psychedelic psychiatry. Finally, we respond to potential objections before concluding with a discussion of ethical considerations that will arise as psychedelics proceed from highly controlled research environments into mainstream clinical psychiatry. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IntroductionSpatial, Environmental, and Ecocritical Approaches to Holocaust MemoryEmily-Rose Baker (bio), Michael Holden (bio), Diane Otosaka (bio), Sue Vice (bio), and Dominic Williams (bio)The successful implementation of genocide during the Holocaust depended on the spatial organisation of mass murder. From the concentrated ghettos and camps delimited by walls and barbed wire to the open fields and camouflaged forests where victims were shot en masse, Anne Kelly Knowles et (...) al. argue, specific locations, patterns of migration, deportation and evacuation, and other spatial elements such as scale, were all central to the Nazi regime's creation of a "comprehensive geography of oppression."1 This is hardly surprising given the biopolitical logics and colonial fantasies underpinning Lebensraum ('living space'), the territorial concept guiding the genocidal aims of the Third Reich, which designated zones of life as well as the inverse on the European continent. The Holocaust was also experienced spatially by its victims, who were forced to navigate new (and at times familiar) sites and landscapes as those of genocide, and whose testimonies in the aftermath of the event conjured these very places in detail.In recent years, the spaces of the Holocaust have been variously revisited, reconstructed, and reimagined within Holocaust studies scholarship. As a broader part of the 'spatial turn' in the humanities, Holocaust scholars have increasingly employed spatial perspectives of the event to deepen our understanding of the environments in which the Holocaust took place and the transformation of these spaces over time—particularly in the fields of history and social science.2 While drawing on diverse modes of spatialisation from interdisciplinary perspectives, contributions from these fields have tended to privilege methods we might describe as variously 'forensic,' including mapping, model-making, and investigations of material traces of the past.3 This work has resulted in many significant insights, not only into the [End Page 1] contexts and structures of Nazi genocide and the perpetrator imaginings of space, but also the experiences of victims and survivors.4Another significant body of work has attended to space and culture within Holocaust contexts. From early on in the postwar period, particular locations and buildings became identified with the Holocaust, such as the notorious entrance guard house at Auschwitz-Birkenau, which appears on countless book covers as well as within films and artworks. Engaging with spatial insights and methodologies from the perspective of cultural and memory studies, scholars have attested to the production and mnemonic significance of these and less well-known sites, as well as the symbolic spatial worlds and experiences to which they give rise. These include Paul Jaskot and Gavriel Rosenfeld, who have turned respectively to Holocaust and post-Holocaust architectures as commonly overlooked sites of history and memory. Drawing attention to the construction of Holocaust space, Jaskot shows how reading architecture 'as process' rather than static structures laden with symbolic meaning reveals unique histories of forced labor in which "the goals of the SS intersected with victims' experience."5 Rosenfeld demonstrates the ways in which spaces built in response to Nazi genocide after 1945 have been variously "imbued with Jewish significance" by their users and creators, resulting in the rise to prominence of Jewish-identified architects.6 Along similar lines, Michael Meng's work has explored the ways in which Jews and gentiles interact with ruined synagogues, cemeteries and Jewish districts as important remnants of pre-war Jewish life in the post-war period in German and Polish cities.7Studies such as those noted above have tended to focus on cities and public buildings, as well as state and civic policy. But as the spatial histories and geographies of the Holocaust have helped to show, extermination often took place in rural settings (mostly located in Central and Eastern Europe), such as the killing fields where Jews were shot en masse; the forests where victims hid and were hunted by Germans and local collaborators; or the open spaces of the dissolving Reich through which former concentration camp inmates were forced to march during the final year of the war—sites in which, owing to less contained spatial dynamics, violence played out differently.8These kinds of sites, which are sparsely documented and often simply thought of... (shrink)

This paper builds a three-part argument in favour of a more transcendentally focused form of ‘postphenomenology’ than is currently practised in philosophy of technology. It does so by problematising two key terms, ‘constitution’ and ‘postphenomenology’, then by arguing in favour of a ‘transcendental empiricist’ approach that draws on the work of Foucault, Derrida, and, in particular, Deleuze. Part one examines ‘constitution’, as it moves from the context of Husserl’s phenomenology to Ihde and Verbeek’s ‘postphenomenology’. I argue that the term tends (...) towards different senses in these contexts, and that this renders its sense more problematic than the work of Ihde and Verbeek makes it appear. Part two examines ‘postphenomenology’. I argue that putatively ‘poststructuralist’ thinkers such as Derrida, Foucault, and Deleuze may be better characterised as ‘postphenomenologists’, and that approaching them in this way may allow better access to their work from a philosophy of technology perspective. Part three argues for a ‘transcendental empiricist’ approach to philosophy of technology. In doing so, it argues for a rewriting of contemporary philosophy of technology’s political constitution: since an ‘empirical turn’ in the 1990s, I argue, philosophy of technology has been too narrowly focused on ‘empirical’ issues of fact, and not focused enough on ‘transcendental’ issues concerning conditions for these facts. (shrink)

Introduction : Picturing technology -- A sense of the transcendental -- The blank page -- Embodiment conditions -- Three exceptional technologies -- Which way to turn? -- Conclusion : Exceptional technologies, not technological exceptionalism.

This article has two related aims: to examine how the Internet might be rendered an object of coherent philosophical consideration and critique, and to contribute to divesting the term “transcendental” of the negative connotations it carries in contemporary philosophy of technology. To realise them, it refers to Kant’s transcendental approach. The key argument is that Kant’s “transcendental idealism” is one example of a more general and potentially thoroughgoing “transcendental” approach focused on conditions that much contemporary philosophy of technology misunderstands or (...) ignores, to the detriment of the field. Diverse contemporary approaches are engaged to make this claim, including those of Verbeek, Brey, Stiegler, Clark and Chalmers, Feenberg, and Fuchs. The article considers how these approaches stand in relation to tendencies towards determinism, subjectivism, and excessive forms of optimism and pessimism in contemporary considerations of the Internet. In terms of Kant’s transcendental idealism, specifically, it concludes by arguing that contemporary philosophy of technology does not go far enough in considering the Internet as a “regulative idea”; in terms of transcendental approaches more generally, it concludes by arguing that openness to the transcendental has the potential to call into question presuppositions regarding what constitutes an “empirical” object of enquiry in philosophy of technology, thereby, opening the field up to important new areas of research. (shrink)

This essay considers the relationship between the work of contemporary artist Torsten Lauschmann and themes in a growing area of research: philosophy of technology. Themes considered include relations between technology and contemporary urban dwelling, technology and the “everyday,” and Heidegger’s problematic but canonical understanding of technology not as a set of “mere means” but as a “way of revealing.” I argue that Lauschmann’s art renders these themes relevant for our increasingly technologically mediated forms of everyday experience by engaging in a (...) paradoxical practice of creating what McLuhan called “anti-environments.” Part One relates Lauschmann’s art to three concepts surfacing in McLuhan’s late work: “figure,” “ground,” and “anti-environment.” Part Two relates Lauschmann’s art to Merleau-Ponty’s critique of photography in terms of the ontology of dynamic movement. Part Three relates Lauschmann’s art to Heidegger, implying a form of “affective critique” that — by questioning the environmental conditions that constitute works of art — points beyond vexed aspects of Heidegger’s approach, such as its apparent pessimism and tendency to homogenize disparate technologies. The essay’s broader argument is that Lauschmann’s art, like the philosophical reflections to which it is related, is engaged in a practice of challenging settled common-sense notions regarding technologically mediated experience. (shrink)

This book theorises technology and its host of social, material, and epistemic transformation techniques, tools, and methods as indeterminate through sixteen methodologically diverse contributions from media philosophy, art and architectural theory, mathematics, computer science, and anthropology scholars.

The expression “AI” has become as commonplace as “computer.” While many people have a relatively clear idea of what an AI system or a computer does or can do, fewer have an idea of how precisely th...

Psychiatric research often poses special ethical concerns. This chapter first provides historical context, including scandals that stoked public concern about psychiatric research and led to the promulgation of canonical documents and bioethics scholarship, and then explores issues related to the decision-making capacity and safety of participants—including the use of placebos and washout periods, the design of suicide prevention studies, and research in emergency psychiatry. The chapter then describes how shifting models of psychiatric nosology have precipitated conflicts in the determination of (...) research priorities. Finally, the chapter attends to emerging issues related to research in psychedelic psychiatry and the use of artificial intelligence and social media by investigators. (shrink)

This essay argues that important critical and political perspective can be gained on Deleuze's famous essay, ‘Bartleby; or, The Formula’ by viewing it as an attempt to move beyond the Sartrean framework of ‘bad faith’. The argument comprises four sections. In section one, I contextualise Deleuze's essay in terms of contrasting readings of Bartleby, from a prior account by Georges Perec, to contemporary accounts indebted to Deleuze, from Hardt and Negri's Empire to Gisèle Berkman's recent L'Effet Bartleby. The argument of (...) this section is that a problematically reductive image of Bartleby has emerged in the wake of Deleuze's essay, but that this can be challenged in favour of a more nuanced and politically significant reading by contextualising the essay as an attempt to overcome bad faith. In section two, I develop this by drawing out the nature and relevance of the threat posed by bad faith through a focus on Sartrean, Deleuzian and Badioucan critiques of Bartleby, before arguing, in section three, that attention to the concept of a ‘logic of presuppositions’ developed in Deleuze's essay shows how bad faith can be overcome. These sections all build towards the fourth and longest section, which draws out the wider political significance of what it means to overcome bad faith. To do so, I pay attention to how logics of presupposition function in Bartleby's story, and consider Deleuze's essay in relation to his work on ‘control societies’ and ‘collective assemblages of enunciation’. (shrink)

This article is an attempt to engage the Badiouian image of Deleuze’s thought at its most dogmatic. I develop a close reading of Badiou’s controversial work, Deleuze: The Clamor of Being. I argue that this text is counter-productive insofar as it obscures problems that Deleuze and Badiou share, in favour of emphasizing divergences in their solutions to them. As part of an attempt to engage these shared problems, the article focuses on the problem of ‘universal singularity’, arguing in favour of (...) what Deleuze and Badiou can bring to our understanding of it. To achieve this, I consider Deleuzian philosophy in terms of its capacity to contribute to new images of thought, through a development of its relation with the writings of Primo Levi. (shrink)

In Deleuze: The Clamor of Being, Alain Badiou sets up a “commonly believed” image of Deleuzian philosophy as “a conceptual critique of totalitarianisms,” concerned, above all, “with the respect and...

This short paper offers a series of responses to Jochem Zwier and Timothy Barker’s comments on my extended paper ‘Taking Exception: Philosophy of Technology as a Multidimensional Problem Space.’ Part one responds to questions concerning the modality of the renewed understanding of the theme of the transcendental that was argued for in my initial paper: I argue for the deep _contingency_ of such a move, against any sense that it is _necessary._ Part two takes this consideration of modality further, considering (...) the _possibilities_ that a renewal of the theme of the transcendental stands to offer philosophy of technology today. I argue that the contingency of our contemporary sense of the transcendental can be precisely what makes it valuable. Whereas parts one and two turn on incisive questions posed by Zwier, part three closes by reconsidering the claims for a ‘multidimensional problem space’ offered in my initial paper. In response to an acute insight from Barker, I close by arguing that philosophy of technology’s problem space should be explored in terms of a notion of ‘shared agonism’. (shrink)

This essay claims that Stiegler’s sense of metaphor gives his work an overlooked rigour. Part one argues that La Faute d’Epiméthée’s key claim opens an e...

This essay develops three key claims made in my 2018 book, Exceptional Technologies. Part one argues for ‘trivialising the transcendental’, to remove stigmas attached to the word ‘transcendental’ in philosophy in general and philosophy of technology in particular. Part two outlines the concept of ‘exceptional technologies’. These are artefacts and practices that show up as limit cases for our received pictures of what constitutes a ‘technology’ and that force us to reassess the conditions for the possibility of these pictures. I (...) focus on the case of autonomous vehicles here, arguing that Google Street View provides a relatively better picture for approaching philosophical issues at stake than the famous ‘Trolley Problem’. Part three then concludes with a focus on Heidegger’s ‘Question Concerning Technology’ essay. Heidegger asserts that philosophical questioning ‘builds a way’. I argue that philosophical approaches to technologies might better be considered in terms of a multidimensional problem space. (shrink)

We report the identification of a recurrent, 520-kb 16p12.1 microdeletion associated with childhood developmental delay. The microdeletion was detected in 20 of 11,873 cases compared with 2 of 8,540 controls and replicated in a second series of 22 of 9,254 cases compared with 6 of 6,299 controls. Most deletions were inherited, with carrier parents likely to manifest neuropsychiatric phenotypes compared to non-carrier parents. Probands were more likely to carry an additional large copy-number variant when compared to matched controls. The clinical (...) features of individuals with two mutations were distinct from and/or more severe than those of individuals carrying only the co-occurring mutation. Our data support a two-hit model in which the 16p12.1 microdeletion both predisposes to neuropsychiatric phenotypes as a single event and exacerbates neurodevelopmental phenotypes in association with other large deletions or duplications. Analysis of other microdeletions with variable expressivity indicates that this two-hit model might be more generally applicable to neuropsychiatric disease. © 2010 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

Broadening access to both computational and educational resources is crit- ical to diffusing machine learning (ML) innovation. However, today, most ML resources and experts are siloed in a few countries and organizations. In this article, we describe our pedagogical approach to increasing access to applied ML through a massive open online course (MOOC) on Tiny Machine Learning (TinyML). We suggest that TinyML, applied ML on resource-constrained embedded devices, is an attractive means to widen access because TinyML leverages low-cost and globally (...) accessible hardware and encourages the development of complete, self-contained applications, from data collection to deployment. To this end, a collaboration between academia and industry produced a four part MOOC that provides application-oriented instruction on how to develop solutions using TinyML. The series is openly available on the edX MOOC platform, has no prerequisites beyond basic programming, and is designed for global learners from a variety of backgrounds. It introduces real-world applications, ML algorithms, data-set engineering, and the ethi- cal considerations of these technologies through hands-on programming and deployment of TinyML applications in both the cloud and on their own microcontrollers. To facili- tate continued learning, community building, and collaboration beyond the courses, we launched a standalone website, a forum, a chat, and an optional course-project com- petition. We also open-sourced the course materials, hoping they will inspire the next generation of ML practitioners and educators and further broaden access to cutting-edge ML technologies. (shrink)

Children dependent on life-prolonging medical technology are often subject to a constant background risk of sudden death or catastrophic complications. Such children can be cared for in hospital, in an intensive care environment with highly trained nurses and doctors able to deliver specialised, life-saving care immediately. However, remaining in hospital, when life expectancy is limited, can considered to be a harm in of itself. Discharge home offers the possibility for an improved quality of life for the child and their family (...) but comes with significant medical risks.When making decisions for children, two ethical models predominate, the promotion of the child’s best interests or the avoidance of harm. However, in some circumstances, particularly for children with life-limiting and/or life-threatening illness, all options may be associated with risk. There are no good options, only potentially harmful choices.In this paper, we explore decisions made by one family in such circumstances. We describe a model adopted from risk management programmes beyond medicine, which offers a potential framework for identifying risks to the child that are morally permissible. Some risks and harms to a child, not ordinarily permitted, may be acceptable when undertaken in the pursuit of a specified desired good, so long as they are as low as reasonably practicable. (shrink)

Nursing has evolved, yet media representation has arguably failed to keep up. This work explores why representation has been slow in accurately depicting nurses' responsibilities, impacts on public perceptions and professional identity. A critical realist review was employed as this method enables in-depth exploration into why something exists. A multidisciplinary approach was adopted, drawing from feminist, psychological and sociological theories to provide insightful understanding and recommendations. One main feminist lens has been implemented, using Laura Mulvey’s ‘Male-Gaze’ framework for content analysis (...) of three nurse-related advertisements to explore how the profession's female status influences representation, public perception and how this might impact nursing. Nurse representation has important real-world consequences. It is essential to improve unnecessary negative portrayals and contest ingrained stereotypes as there are costs to public opinion and nursing's self-identity. Nursing's female status has an impact within a male-dominated media industry, with a leisurely approach adopted toward changing representation. Media images become societally ingrained, this reiterates the significance of accurate/positive depictions. Social media is an instant method of communication with the public to combat stereotypes and maintain engagement to provide better understanding of what nurses do. (shrink)

Which of the two dominant arguments for duties to alleviate global poverty, supposing their premises were generally accepted, would be more likely to produce their desired outcome? I take Pogge's argument for obligations grounded in principles of justice, a "contribution" argument, and Campbell's argument for obligations grounded in principles of humanity, an "assistance" argument, to be prototypical. Were people to accept the premises of Campbell's argument, how likely would they be to support governmental reform in policies for international aid, or (...) to make individual contributions to international aid organizations? And I ask the same question, mutatis mutandis, for Pogge's argument. (shrink)

Most theorists working on moral obligations to refugees conceive of western states as innocent bystanders with duties to aid refugees if they can do so at little cost to themselves. This paper challenges this dominant theoretical framing of global displacement by highlighting for the first time certain practices of western states in response to refugee flows such as border violence, detention, encampment and containment which may make us question whether states who engage in such practices are indeed innocent. This paper (...) provides the first normative analysis of these practices by seeking to classify them as either doing or allowing harm and invoking the fundamental moral imperative central to core common moral commitments - not to harm innocent people - to suggest that certain western states are not merely failing to aid refugees and allowing harm to come to them, but are instead responding to their calls for aid by harming them. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Osip Mandelstam and the Modernist Creation of TraditionHarold D. BakerOsip Mandelstam and the Modernist Creation of Tradition, by Clare Cavanagh; xii & 365 pp. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995, $39.50.The great, enigmatic poet of twentieth-century Russia, Osip Mandelstam (1891–1938), employed a poetics based on recollection. The word-soul or psyche is not contained within a linguistic body but hovers amorously over it, [End Page 257] fleeing any too crude (...) attempt at capture. The reader must trace out Mandelstam’s personal networks of association, both inside and outside the text, before a kernel of thought and emotion can be recognized (“only the moment of recognition is sweet to us,” goes a famous line from his “Tristia”). Although Clare Cavanagh’s book does not emphasize this theme, her tactics could hardly be better suited to Mandelstam’s peculiar poetic sensibility.Osip Mandelstam and the Modernist Creation of Tradition is an exhaustive exploration of historical and cultural context. It opposes itself explicitly to the traditional structuralist and semiotic approaches to Mandelstam, and takes his works in their “secular” rather than their “hermetic” aspect (to borrow terms from Robert Scholes). In that sense it seeks to recollect and bring to mind everything that might affect our understanding of Mandelstam’s oeuvre. This turns out to be a varied field: Pound and Eliot (coeval modernists whose ideas resonate significantly with his), François Villon, Byzantine and Gothic church architecture, the marginalized yet culturally dynamic position of the Russian Jew, Pindar (an exemplar of the social-economic relation of poet to state), Dante, the psychology of literary play, and even Charlie Chaplin. Although it does not use extensive biographical framing, the book proceeds through Mandelstam’s poetry and prose in chronological order, alternately pursuing aspects of context and concentrating on selected works by Mandelstam for sustained analysis.What results is perhaps the most serious comprehensive work on the poet produced so far. Cavanagh’s approach may appear diffuse at first, but it enables her to capture a great deal of this elusive genius without confining Mandelstam within a narrow critical purview. The book’s argument is that Mandelstam qualifies as a central modernist poet through his agonistic relation to an ideal of “world culture.” He attempts to recreate an authoritative literary and cultural tradition that his own innovative work would both continue and transform. And it is from this point of view that Mandelstam’s Jewishness appears so significant to Cavanagh (a chief issue in three out of eight chapters): it gives a precise formula for that position both inside and outside of the dominant culture. Cavanagh even contends quite suggestively that, for Mandelstam, both Dante and Chaplin function as avatars of Jewishness.All this is well-founded and important, but perhaps the best thing about her book is that its central argument doesn’t do justice to the richness of Cavanagh’s own materials. Her discussion does not weaken, for instance, as it leaves Mandelstam’s early period, when the notion of “world culture” was indeed an obsessive one for him. The book is equally effective on the brilliant late poems of the Voronezh cycle, by which time not only a place in world culture but even a secure place in human society seemed futile dreams to Mandelstam. Cavanagh’s readings of the prose and especially the poetry are flexible and sensitive; she gives beautiful accounts of the poetic wordplay and follows closely the ebb and flow of musicality in the verse from one period and [End Page 258] collection to another. More than a milestone in Mandelstam studies, this book brings the poet closer to realizing his fondest dream: a responsive, understanding readership or “interlocutor.”Harold D. BakerUniversity of California, IrvineCopyright © 1996 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

We all think that science is special. Its products—its technological spin-off—dominate our lives which are thereby sometimes enriched and sometimes impoverished but always affected. Even the most outlandish critics of science such as Feyerabend implicitly recognize its success. Feyerabend told us that science was a congame. Scientists had so successfully hood-winked us into adopting its ideology that other equally legitimate forms of activity—alchemy, witchcraft and magic—lost out. He conjured up a vision of much enriched lives if only we could free (...) ourselves from the domination of the ‘one true ideology’ of science just as our ancestors freed us from the domination of the Church. But he told us these things in Switzerland and in California happily commuting between them in that most ubiquitous product of science—the aeroplane. (shrink)

This study advances understanding of how a normative feminine beauty ideal is maintained through cultural products such as fairy tales. Using Brothers Grimm's fairy tales, the authors explore the extent and ways in which “feminine beauty” is highlighted. Next, they compare those tales that have survived with those that have not to determine whether tales that have been popularized place more emphasis on women's beauty. The findings suggest that feminine beauty is a dominant theme and that tales with heavy emphases (...) on feminine beauty are much more likely to have survived. These findings are interpreted in light of changes in women's social status over the past 150 years and the increased importance of establishing forms of normative social control to maintain a gender system. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Setting the Stage for a Dialogue:Aesthetics in Drama and Theatre EducationAlistair Martin-Smith (bio)For us, education signifies an initiation into new ways of seeing, hearing, feeling, moving. It signifies the nurture of a special kind of reflectiveness and expressiveness, a reaching out for meanings, a learning to learn.—Maxine Greene, Variations on a Blue Guitar1Examining the aesthetics of the complementary fields of educational drama and theatre is like looking through (...) a kaleidoscope. If you turn it one way, you see one colorful pattern; if you turn it the other way, you see yet another. The multiplicity of approaches to drama and theatre education, each with its own aesthetic pattern, often obscures the common ground they all share. As a result, in its unique emphasis on art, pedagogy, and society, each may have its own aesthetic pattern; yet only by looking closely at each distinct pattern can we understand more of the power of drama and theatre to develop human consciousness.In Western education, aesthetic learning seems incidental to the assessment of learning. How did this happen? For Descartes, whose Cartesian philosophy dissociated mind from body, aesthetic feelings are irrational, since they originate in the body's senses rather than in the mind. Theories of education focused on the primacy of cognition, denying feelings in the erroneous belief that learning is independent of its context. Conversely, aesthetic education is concerned with the quality of experience, how it is felt. Dewey believed that "learning by doing" was a "consummatory" experience for the learner; it was dramatic, dialogic, and felt. The confusion between subjective and objective aspects of the aesthetic experience makes aesthetic evaluation difficult, and this may be why cognitively dominated education has steered clear of aesthetics. Richard Courtney recognized that there is an important distinction to be made between aesthetic symbols and [End Page 3] artistic symbols: "Aesthetic symbols emphasize feeling; artistic symbols are context-dependent—they only have meaning in the context of art."2David Best argues that "the failure to recognise the distinction between the aesthetic and the artistic contributes largely to the trivialisation of the potential of the arts in education."3 He points out that "... it may often be necessary to take into account, at least implicitly, wider factors... in order to judge whether [an] appraisal was aesthetic or artistic."4 What are these wider factors, and how can audiences attend to them? As Christopher Havell reminds us,There is increasing pressure on drama teachers to use their teaching expertise purely for the development of social and life-skills training. This instrumental work may, at times, closely resemble the drama process, but the intentions will be confined to an experience that simulates or resembles those "real-life situations" that it is expected students will encounter. The aesthetic search for the "universal" at the centre of the particular will not be a relevant aim in any vocational training! One can only hope that the emerging interest in the aesthetic nature of drama and its place in a coherent arts education will encourage teachers and students to reflect on the final inadequacy of any instrumental view.5I believe that it is through the power of aesthetic education that audiences for drama and theatre will come to appreciate the artistic.In Caravaggio's painting David with the Head of Goliath (1606-10), the viewer is confronted with three time periods simultaneously. In his depiction of David, Caravaggio paints the shepherd-king of the Old Testament who prefigures Christ, but he is also modeled on Caravaggio's lover. David holds the severed head of Goliath down low in such a way as to engage the private viewer rather than to evoke the public spectacle.6 As I understood that the head of Goliath was actually a self-portrait of the painter not long before his death, I experienced a moment of instantaneity that shocked me into a new awareness of my own mortality, my relation to life and death. As it is Caravaggio's last journey, so is it our own. While Caravaggio's penultimate painting is recognized in terms of its artistic achievement, the moment of self-recognition on the part of the... (shrink)

One of the most significant developments in the art world of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s has been the rise to prominence of art made by minority cultures. Race, Sex, and Gender examines the controversial challenges these groups present to today's artists and critics. Works by African-Americans, feminists, homosexuals, and Latino-Hispanics - once considered marginal - have come to transform contemporary art. As this so-called minority art has moved into a more dominant position, museums - once official symbols of culture (...) - have formed a more secure alliance with the avant-garde. The result is that "minority" art has become, in effect, our most major concern. In this provocative volume, art historian Edward Lucie-Smith seeks to determine how these different groups came to acclaim, and how they have revolutionized the kind of art shown in museums and galleries. Cindy Sherman, Robert Mapplethorpe, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Nancy Spero, Hannah Wilke, Larry Fuente, Cheri Samba, and Martin Puryear are among those artists whose work is pictured and discussed as Lucie-Smith probes issues of racial identity, sexual orientation, and gender politics. Statements from the artists as well as from theoreticians and critics are given, offering additional commentaries on these crucial new topics. Organized by profusely illustrated chapters devoted to specific minority groups, Race, Sex, and Gender is a timely introduction to the issues that are shaping contemporary art. (shrink)

Explaining Attitudes offers an important challenge to the dominant conception of belief found in the work of such philosophers as Dretske and Fodor. According to this dominant view beliefs, if they exist at all, are constituted by states of the brain. Lynne Rudder Baker rejects this view and replaces it with a quite different approach - practical realism. Seen from the perspective of practical realism, any argument that interprets beliefs as either brain states or states of immaterial souls is (...) a 'non-starter'. Practical realism takes beliefs to be states of the whole persons, rather like states of health. What a person believes is determined by what a person would do, say and think in various circumstances. Thus beliefs and other attitudes are interwoven into an integrated, commonsensical conception of reality. (shrink)

How China’s expansive new era of urbanization threatens to undermine the foundations of rural life Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, China has vastly expanded its urbanization processes in an effort to reduce the inequalities between urban and rural areas. Centered on the mountainous region of Chongqing, which serves as an experimental site for the country’s new urban development policies, The End of the Village analyzes the radical expansion of urbanization and its consequences for China’s villagers. It reveals a (...) fundamental rewriting of the nation’s social contract, as villages that once organized rural life and guaranteed rural livelihoods are replaced by an increasingly urbanized landscape dominated by state institutions. Throughout this comprehensive study of China’s “urban–rural coordination” policy, Nick R. Smith traces the diminishing autonomy of the country’s rural populations and their subordination to larger urban networks and shared administrative structures. Outside Chongqing’s urban centers, competing forces are at work in reshaping the social, political, and spatial organization of its villages. While municipal planners and policy makers seek to extend state power structures beyond the boundaries of the city, village leaders and inhabitants try to maintain control over their communities’ uncertain futures through strategies such as collectivization, shareholding, real estate development, and migration. As China seeks to rectify the development crises of previous decades through rapid urban growth, such drastic transformations threaten to displace existing ways of life for more than 600 million residents. Offering an unprecedented look at the country’s contentious shift in urban planning and policy, The End of the Village exposes the precarious future of rural life in China and suggests a critical reappraisal of how we think about urbanization. (shrink)

In the first half of the twentieth century there was a remarkable convergence of art and design in De Stijl, Constructivism and the Bauhaus. But in the second half of the twentieth century fine art relinquished its liaison with design due to the influence of Dada and Surrealism's postromantic antagonism to practical-functionalism. Dada and Surrealism and postmodern fine art are characterized by a critique of the dominant social discourse of functionalism and the demand for a sublime poetics to be brought (...) into everyday life. This article argues that the apparent antipathy between postmodern fine art and design can be ameliorated if we critically analyse interpretations of evolutionary theory by postromantic philosophers such as Nietzsche, Bergson, and Deleuze and Guattari. When Bergson notes that practical-functional reasoning was created by evolution he reveals a flaw in the pursuit of an aesthetics that is totally opposed to commonsense and practical-functionalism. And when we turn to Deleuze and Guattari we find another valuable concept in the form of their notion of the machinic, which assists further in reconciling the postromantic emphasis on the sublime with the practicality of mechanism. Moreover, Deleuze and Guattari's notion of the machinic is informed by chaos theory, which allows further elaboration in terms of complexity theory. Complexity theory can be understood as a process philosophy that has no need to figure the sublime in terms of a mysterious force of nature because the mystery is located within complex interactions among a manifold of components, what one might refer to as a cosmic, machinic, combinatoire that arises out of what Christopher Langton has called the edge of chaos. This makes it possible to replace the emphasis on desire as the fundamental force of nature evident in Nietzsche, Bergson, Deleuze and Guattari with a complexity-theoretical concept of a cosmicmachinic combinatoire. It is then possible to formulate a machinic, evolutionary aesthetics that can reconcile the postromantic demand for sublimity with the demand for practical-functionalism that lies at the heart of the discipline of design. In place of the modernist machine aesthetic that informed De Stijl, Constructivism and the Bauhaus we would have a postmodernist machinic aesthetic. (shrink)

In the case of Re M, summarised in the paper by Julian Sheather, Justice Baker faced the difficult task of weighing up objectively whether or not it was in Mâs best interests to withdraw artificial feeding and to let her die.1 The judge concluded that M was ârecognisably aliveâ, and that the advantages of continued life outweighed the disadvantages. He compared her minimally conscious state favourably to that of a persistent vegetative state .2 It was clear that artificial feeding (...) would have been withdrawn if she had been in a PVS , but because she was in fact minimally conscious, the judge decided that treatment must continue. But does it make sense to treat MCS differently from PVS in this way? Is it better to be minimally conscious than unconscious? Similar questions have been raised before.3 In 2006, scientists reported results of sophisticated neuroimaging studies which suggested that some patients in persistent vegetative state , long thought to be unaware, had evidence of minimal consciousness.4 The question then was on the moral significance of this level of consciousness, and whether the presence of such evidence meant that treatment such as artificial nutrition must be continued.5 ,6There are several potential reasons why the presence of minimal consciousness might warrant continuing life-sustaining treatment. The first is that patients in minimally conscious state might have a better prognosis than those who are in PVS. There are relatively few studies …. (shrink)