In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 30.2 (2000) 113-126 [Access article in PDF] Dissenting Words:A Conversation with Jacques Rancière 1 Davide Panagia:In your writings you highlight the political efficacy of words. In The Names of History, for instance, this emphasis is discussed most vividly in terms of what you refer to as an "excess of words" that marks the rise of democratic movements in the seventeenth century. Similarly, in On The Shores of Politics, (...) you begin your discussion with an excursus on the end of politics as the end of the promise. Finally, in Dis-agreement you speak of "the part of those who have no-part" as voicing a "wrong" for the sake of equality.In each of these instances, however, your treatment of words (and language more generally) is very different from those thinkers of the "linguistic turn" in political philosophy who expound on an ethics of deliberation as the first virtue of modern democracies. For that matter, your approach is quite different from those thinkers who focus on the aporias of language as such.Could you discuss this thematic of the proliferation of words in your thinking about democratic politics?Would it be fair to characterize your research on and exposition of democratic thinking as a "poetics of politics"?Rancière's Reply:In order to address your question adequately, it would be wise to enlarge the sense of "linguistic turn" you invoke. In its most generally accepted sense, the linguistic turn in philosophy consists in ascribing to linguistic processes certain phenomena and specifiable modes of relating objects attributed, in a previous instance, either to factual processes or lines of thought. This approach is not limited to the two figures you invoke in your question. The linguistic turn also has two stages of development that, from my experience, have been more noticeable in France than in the United States. The first phase, then, emerged with Lévi-Strauss and his structural approach to social relations founded on a linguistic model of relationality, subsequently reprised in Lacan's psychoanalytic notion that "the unconscious is structured like a language" that, in its turn, conjoins the energetic mental processes Freud discusses to linguistic practices. The primacy of "the linguistic" thus granted language all the properties of the Freudian unconscious [End Page 113] along with those of a Marxist notion of infrastructure. The Saussurian opposition between langue and parole provided a privileged status to a linguistic model whose role was that of a general law that unconsciously structures the behavior of individuals and societies. It is on the basis of these parameters that the structuralist moment of the linguistic turn was constituted. At one and the same time, the analysis of speech acts became first and foremost a "symptomatic" analysis of those procedures of misrecognition that linguistically structured both the behavior of individuals and social relations. When we "read" Le Capital with Althusser, the interpretive and methodological schema for linguistic phenomena operated like a kind of "policing of the enunciated": that is, a search for those unsuccessful (i.e., inadequate) modes of expression that exemplify such symptomatic procedures of misrecognition.The second phase of the linguistic turn constituted itself more ambiguously. For those who shared intellectual experiences similar to my own, this version involved a critique of the langue/infrastructure model; that is, a further and more favorable consideration of the value of the political and the linguistic games therein that, according to the Althusserian/Marxist model (and, indeed, with structuralism more generally), were to be treated as ideological artifacts. In a very real sense, it all began with the May '68 assertion that "we are all German Jews"--an entirely ideological statement, the validity of which, if analyzed at the level of its content, one finds to rest entirely on the capacity to overturn the political relationship between the order of designations and that of events by emphasizing the gap that separates subject and predicate. From there, an entire field of understanding speech acts as political gestures opened up: a field that reconfigured the division between words and things while rearranging the distinction between legitimate... (shrink)

This piece, included in the drift special issue of continent. , was created as one step in a thread of inquiry. While each of the contributions to drift stand on their own, the project was an attempt to follow a line of theoretical inquiry as it passed through time and the postal service(s) from October 2012 until May 2013. This issue hosts two threads: between space & place and between intention & attention . The editors recommend that to experience the (...) drifiting thought that attention be paid to the contributions as they entered into conversation one after another. This particular piece is from the BETWEEN INTENTION & ATTENTION thread: Jeremy Fernando, Sitting in the Dock of the bay, watching... * R.H. Jackson, Reading Eyes * Gina Rae Foster, Nyctoleptic Nomadism: The Drift/Swerve of Knowing * Bronwyn Lay, Driftwood * Patricia Reed, Sentences on Drifitng * David Prater, drift: a way * * * * * ‘Kraftledningarna / spända i köldens rike / norr om all musik.’ TOMAS TRANSTRÖMER Attention! You are not dreaming, you are drifting into sleep. You are feeling veeeerrry sleepy now. The curvature of the earth is causing you to shift away from the pinpoint that you circled yesterday on a map, your eyes hazed. That was also a today, in a novel fashion—the today of days long gone, of clouds long transformed into rain, or else snow drifts. That’s okay, you know this: in cathedrals of bone we find arcs that keep us warm. In drift- wood we find the puzzles that madden us all night, Tetris dreaming. In from our past, deriving steam, straight lines, axes, branches, kindling. Attention! Does anyone here speak Spanish? Si? Bueno! Dream with me. Cry out in your sleep. Step fearfully out onto the ice and drift awhile, inside a massive Perspex speech-bubble dream. A massive bubble longing to become detergent. The louvres of a ribcage snapping shut. Awe. Curvature of the earth is a con job: ask a dervish. Hail an imaginary cab in a hail-struck avenue and wait for the popcorn to drop. Stop, drifter! In the pharmacies and in the alleys, popping rocks while money men drift by in stockings, purling and unfurling their ways, their means. Attention, people!ion hurts. Reading too much into things I know nothing about, the niceness of the void or else a philosopher’s mouth sewn shut. I know about that, at least: the madness of seeking asylum in antipodean dreams, drifting for weeks at a time on a boat more abstract than surreal. Oh, fuck Life of Pi! Heaven basks like a warm, square meal but I can’t get there from here. There is no shark travelling at speed X while I zoom at speed Y in the opposite direction. I can’t use a lasso. I no longer have fits. I am no, mad. Too bad. Attention! Ambient doom slash moon. Over! The curvature of a yawn, a dream sewn shut. This skin, that knows my dreams, forgets me. Fruit tingles, wet on the tongue: get me some analogue hits, expressways to frozen, lakeside moon-dream voiceovers. The narrator’s cues infuse the afternoon, the canoes, with nostalgia. Somewhere, out there, we become driftories. We lie down in atoms and the clinamina bore. We fight against our own handwritten lies, type marching letters into files and save. Awe. Fidelity is a kind of surveillance. Current A. Attention! It was never my intention to score cheap points at the expense of polar bears, of driftwood, shores. The cockatoos roar. Their explosive chatter could strip a pine tree raw. Implant in me some destructive grace, to drift. Planetoid lamps all along the turnpike’s busy arcs. Extreme emissions of things. Drift-rings. The target of my gaze, sewn shut. Your eyes rising slower than a star from what you read, condensed into steam, here, north of all music. Driftories, signal fires, smoke: disappear. Go back to sleep now. No, we were never here. (shrink)

Army Officers face increased moral pressure in modern warfare, where character judgement and ethical judgement are vital. This article reports the results of a study of 242 junior British Army officers using the Army Intermediate Concept Measure, comprising a series of professionally oriented moral dilemmas developed for the UK context. Results are suggestive of appropriate application of Army values to the dilemmas and of ethical reasoning aligning with Army excellence. The sample does slightly less well, however, for justification than for (...) action reasoning, and there are differences following initial training for infantry and artillery officers versus other branches of service. Dilemmas involving anti-torture methods and not covering up soldiers' failings generated best results compared to those requiring balance between compassion and mission, and negotiating personal relationships with military needs. Gender differences favouring women were less than those observed for other professional groups using similar measures. This research further develops a much-needed measure of ethical reasoning among junior Army officers, with potential for use among other ranks. This approach is advocated for other professional groups. (shrink)

Based on an 1839 boat trip Thoreau took with his brother from Concord, Massachusetts, to Concord, New Hampshire, and back, this classic of American literature is not only a vivid narrative of that journey, it is also a collection of thought-provoking observations on such diverse topics as poetry, literature and philosophy, Native American and Puritan histories of New England, friendship, sacred Eastern writings, traditional Christianity, and much more. Written, like Walden, while Thoreau lived at Walden Pond, and published in 1849, (...) A Week (his first book) shares many themes with Walden, published in 1854. Both dramatize the process of self-renewal in nature and resolutely rail against the official culture and politics of the "trivial Nineteenth Century." Blending keen observation with a wealth of perceptive and informed reflections, Thoreau develops a continuous and lyrical dialogue between the past and present, as particular scenes on shore trigger reflections on the region’s history and legends. Originally conceived as a travel book, A Week eventually became much more — one of the most intellectually ambitious works of 19th-century America, and a requiem for Thoreau's brother John, who died from a sudden illness in 1842. Of Thoreau and this work, Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "H. D. Thoreau is a great man in Concord, a man of original genius and character.... I think it [A Week...] is a book of wonderful merit, which is to go far and last long.". (shrink)

Sense and Sensitivity explores the semantics and pragmatics of focus in natural language discourse, advancing a new account of focus sensitivity which posits a three-way distinction between different effects of focus. Makes a valuable contribution to the ongoing research in the field of focus sensitivity Discusses the features of QFC, an original theory of focus implying a new typology of focus-sensitive expressions Presents novel cross-linguistic data on focus and focus sensitivity Concludes with a case study of exclusives (like “only”), arguing (...) that the entire existing literature (reviewed in detail) has missed crucial generalizations, and that the focus sensitivity of these expressions must be understood in terms of their meaning and discourse function. (shrink)

We discuss presupposition, the phenomenon whereby speakers mark linguistically the information that is presupposed or taken for granted, rather than being part of the main propositional content of a speech act. Expressions and constructions carrying presuppositions are called “presupposition triggers”, forming a large class including definites and factive verbs. The article first introduces the range of triggers, the basic properties of presuppositions such as projection and cancellability, and the diagnostic tests used to identify them. The reader is then introducedto major (...) models of presupposition from the last 50 years, separated into three classes: Frege-Strawson derived semantic models, pragmaticmodels such as that offered by Stalnaker, and dynamic models. Finallywe discuss some of the main current issues in presupposition theory. These involve accommodation, which occurs when a hearer's knowledge state is adjusted to meet the speaker's presuppositions; presupposition failure, which occurs when a presupposition is false; the interaction between presuppositions and attitudes; and the triggering problem, i.e., the problem of explaining why presuppositions occur in the first place. (shrink)

We consider the set of jumps below a Turing degree, given by JB={x':x≤a}, with a focus on the problem: Which recursively enumerable degrees a are uniquely determined by JB? Initially, this is motivated as a strategy to solve the rigidity problem for the partial order R of r.e. degrees. Namely, we show that if every high2 r.e. degree a is determined by JB, then R cannot have a nontrivial automorphism. We then defeat the strategy—at least in the form presented—by constructing (...) pairs a0, a1 of distinct r.e. degrees such that JB=JB within any possible jump class {x:x'=c}. We give some extensions of the construction and suggest ways to salvage the attack on rigidity. (shrink)

This essay serves as a guide for scholars, especially those in education, who want to gain a better understanding of Heidegger's essay, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’. The paper has three sections: an interpretive summary, a critical commentary, and some remarks on Heidegger scholarship in education. Since Heidegger's writing style is rather opaque, the interpretive summary serves as a map with which to navigate the essay. The critical commentary offers a careful analysis of some of the central concepts in the essay. (...) These concepts, which include bringing‐forth, challenging‐forth, and gestell, are intriguing but problematic. The problems and possibilities of these ideas are analyzed, and an overall assessment of Heidegger's ideas on technology is offered. In the final section, the work of several scholars in education is examined. Some of this work is excellent, but there is also a significant amount of confused and confusing scholarship. (shrink)

In January 2019 the Faculty of Philosophy of the Lomonosov Moscow State University held the round table “Problems of Consciousness: Research Opportunities.” It was dedicated to problems of interdisciplinary studies of consciousness. Many famous Russian specialists whose academic interests include consciousness, brain and mind took part in this event: K.V. Anokhin, D.I. Dubrovsky, T.V. Chernigovskaya, M.A. Piradov, A.A. Potapov, V.Y. Sergin, V.V. Vasil’ev, Z.A. Zorina and others. At the round table, the following problems were discussed: the specificity of consciousness problem, (...) its relevance in various academic disciplines, contemporary research possibilities for consciousness studies to solve the problems that specialists actually face. Much attention was paid to the problems of neurobiology, empirical research of consciousness. Nonetheless, participants showed in their speeches that the problem of consciousness is also a philosophical problem. Hence it requires thoughtful consideration of philosophers. Participants decided that to progress in solving this problem researches from various disciplines have to cooperate. (shrink)

This article defends an affirmative answer to the question indicated in its title using an approach to the Mind-Brain problem developed by the author. Thought reading is possible through deciphering the brain’s neurodynamic code for a given phenomenon of subjective reality. During the past two decades, significant results in that regard have been achieved in the area of neuroscience called “brain reading.” Using examples of these results, the author examines the problem of deciphering the brain’s codes for mental phenomena, the (...) theoretical and methodological challenges involved, and the prospects for further development related to new methods of visualizing and mapping brain activity. The article also shows the primary importance of thorough research on a wide range of social and human questions that this trend in modern neuroscience raises. (shrink)

"Scientific materialism" is one of the most influential currents in modern Anglo-American philosophy. An examination of its content and the paths that have emerged for its further evolution is of prime interest for Marxist philosophers. "Scientific materialism" was born in the fifties and has developed rapidly on many levels, signaling a sharp increase in materialist tendencies in contemporary bourgeois philosophy and an attendant intensified confrontation between materialism and idealism. This, of course, deserves especially careful attention.

An introduction to category theory as a rigorous, flexible, and coherent modeling language that can be used across the sciences. Category theory was invented in the 1940s to unify and synthesize different areas in mathematics, and it has proven remarkably successful in enabling powerful communication between disparate fields and subfields within mathematics. This book shows that category theory can be useful outside of mathematics as a rigorous, flexible, and coherent modeling language throughout the sciences. Information is inherently dynamic; the same (...) ideas can be organized and reorganized in countless ways, and the ability to translate between such organizational structures is becoming increasingly important in the sciences. Category theory offers a unifying framework for information modeling that can facilitate the translation of knowledge between disciplines. Written in an engaging and straightforward style, and assuming little background in mathematics, the book is rigorous but accessible to non-mathematicians. Using databases as an entry to category theory, it begins with sets and functions, then introduces the reader to notions that are fundamental in mathematics: monoids, groups, orders, and graphs—categories in disguise. After explaining the “big three” concepts of category theory—categories, functors, and natural transformations—the book covers other topics, including limits, colimits, functor categories, sheaves, monads, and operads. The book explains category theory by examples and exercises rather than focusing on theorems and proofs. It includes more than 300 exercises, with solutions. Category Theory for the Sciences is intended to create a bridge between the vast array of mathematical concepts used by mathematicians and the models and frameworks of such scientific disciplines as computation, neuroscience, and physics. (shrink)

Expression of transgenes in mice, when examined with assays that can distinguish individual cells, is often found to be heterocellular, or variegated. Line‐to‐line variations in expression of a transgene may be due largely to differences in the proportion of cells in which it is expressed. Variegated silencing by centromeric heterochromatin is well described, but other factors may also affect transgene silencing in mice. Tandem arrays of transgenes themselves form heterochromatin, and some cell lineages may tend to silence transgenes because of (...) extensive facultative heterochromatin in their nuclei. The cis‐acting transcriptional control elements within a transgene inhibit silencing, and strainspecific differences in chromatin proteins may strongly influence the extent of variegation. The accessibility of multiple differentiated cell lineages in mice suggests that they may provide a tool for dissecting the role of chromatin‐mediated silencing in cell differentiation and tissue‐specific gene expression. (shrink)

The extremely high level of simulated violence in certain recent video games has made some people uneasy. There is a concern that something is wrong with these violent games, but, since the violence is virtual rather than real, it is difficult to specify the nature of the wrongness. Since there is no proven causal connection between video-game violence and real violence, philosophical analysis can be particularly helpful in locating potential sources of wrongness in ultra-violent video games. To this end, this (...) paper analyzes video game violence through the lens of utilitarian, Kantian, and post-modern perspectives. Through these analyses, several explanations of the wrongness in violent video games emerge. (shrink)

The Gold and the Dross: Althusser for Educators is an introduction to the philosophy of Louis Althusser for educators, activists, and those who are new to theory in general.

This essay serves as a guide for scholars, especially those in education, who want to gain a better understanding of Heidegger's essay, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’. The paper has three sections: an interpretive summary, a critical commentary, and some remarks on Heidegger scholarship in education. Since Heidegger's writing style is rather opaque, the interpretive summary serves as a map with which to navigate the essay. The critical commentary offers a careful analysis of some of the central concepts in the essay. (...) These concepts, which include bringing‐forth, challenging‐forth, and gestell, are intriguing but problematic. The problems and possibilities of these ideas are analyzed, and an overall assessment of Heidegger's ideas on technology is offered. In the final section, the work of several scholars in education is examined. Some of this work is excellent, but there is also a significant amount of confused and confusing scholarship. (shrink)

Van der Pijl et al outline data suggesting an alarmingly high incidence of violation of the bodily integrity of patients in labour, including episiotomies performed without patients’ consent, or over their explicit objection.1 Similar data have been reported from the USA and Canada.2 The authors appropriately conclude that explicit consent is required at the time of all invasive obstetrical procedures, including episiotomy. Commonsense adjustments to the duration and detail of consent under conditions of clinical urgency are appropriate and should be (...) familiar to any clinician involved in perinatal care, as well as non-obstetric proceduralists caring for acutely ill patients. However, complete omission of consent for any of these procedures is both disrespectful to patients’ autonomy and strongly associated with morbidity from birth-related psychosocial trauma.3–5 The true incidence of obstetrical procedures performed without patients’ consent is difficult to determine for multiple reasons, including sample selection, recall bias and patients’ reluctance to reengage with traumatic experiences; however, …. (shrink)

In this paper the Centering model of anaphoraresolution and discourse coherence(Grosz et al. 1983, 1995)is reformulated in terms of Optimality Theory (OT)(Prince and Smolensky 1993). One version of the reformulated modelis proven to be descriptively equivalent to an earlier algorithmicstatement of Centering due to Brennan, Friedman and Pollard(1987). However, the new model is stated declaratively, and makesclearer the status of the various constraints used in the theory. Inthe second part of the paper, the model is extended, demonstratingthe advantages of the (...) OT reformulation, and capturing formallyideas originally described by Grosz, Joshi and Weinstein. Three newapplications of the extended OT Centering model are described:generation of linguistic forms from meanings, the evaluation andoptimization of extended texts, and the interpretation of accentedpronouns. (shrink)