In this article we address the issue of why democratic citizenship education should be incorporated more meaningfully into Islamic education discourses in formal institutions in the Arab and Muslim world. In the Arab and Muslim world civic and national education seem to be the dominant discourses. We argue that the latter discourses are inadequate to address some of the dystopias in the Arab and Muslim world such as the perpetuation of patriarchy, uncritical obedience to the state , and blind patriotism. (...) Consequently we posit that unless a culture of acceptance and hospitality is cultivated at Islamic educational institutions the possibility of democratic citizenship education unfolding is quite remote. That is, the future of Islamic education can only be re-envisioned if an amended version of democratic citizenship education can inform Islamic education discourses in institutions—one constituted by a culture of acceptance and hospitality. (shrink)

This article takes a critical look at three conceptions of Islamic education. I argue that conceptions of Islamic education ought to be considered as existing on a minimalist–maximalist continuum, meaning that the concepts associated with Islamic education do not have a single meaning, but that meanings are shaped depending on the minimalist and maximalist conditions which constitute them, that is, tarbiyyah (nurturing), ta`lim (learning) and ta`dib (goodness). I then explore some liberal conceptions of cosmopolitanism, showing how these notions connect with (...) meanings of Islamic education. Finally, I show how maximalist views of Islamic education connect with cosmopolitanism, while minimalist views of Islamic education seem to undermine the pursuit of cosmopolitanism. (shrink)

Deconstruction is decidedly unsettling in that it destabilizes the otherwise comfortably assumed understanding of the nature of translation. What is also controversial is that it may make translation impossible, considering that it explicitly acknowledges the impossibility of translation. Yet Derrida emphasizes the necessity of translation as well, thus foregrounding the need to negotiate with the non-negotiable, and for this reason, to translate the untranslatable. Deconstruction captures and elucidates the complexity of translation in relation to the variability and complexity of its (...) nature and practice. Despite the disconcerting observation of his devastatingly relativist overtone and open-endedness, Derrida does not uphold complete free play, as is repeatedly pointed out by himself and other scholars. This paper argues that the context of translation plays a regulating role and intends to unravel what he calls translation as both possible and impossible, both respectful and abusive. Inspired by Derrida's profound contention that translation is in a way more about ‘what is not there’ than ‘what is there’, this paper will map some of the multiple implications of meaning and various modes of representation in translation, in which different meanings can be played with so as to give rise to spaces for exploring and expanding the range of translation strategies and methods. (shrink)

Through a phenomenological perspective, we frame the experiences of “hospitality” of racialized immigrant student teachers as they recount their field placements in a number of Canadian schools. This article presents the following themes which emerged from the study, and which also serve as section titles: 1) The classroom door as threshold: Crossing workaday and festive worlds; 2) More foreign than foreign; Stranger than strange; 3) You are who I think you are; Not who you know you are; 4) Actively inviting (...) the threshold; Passively accepting the barrier; 5) Sensing the cold: The hostility in hospitality as hostil/pitality?; 6) The hiddenness of potential: Growing in foreign soil; 7) The strangeness of Canadian students: Hospitality beyond hospitality; 8) Inspiriting the festive: Pedagogy as hospitality. The paper concludes by showing that living hospitably with the foreign-other on the Canadian school landscape is not so much a problem as it is an invitation for teachers to realize the call of their vocation. (shrink)

Recent debates about the legacy (and, sometimes, surpassing) of Derridean philosophy have often oriented themselves around questions of a new austerity in relation to the implicit philosophical functioning of God. Indeed, an increasing philosophical vigilance about the death or nonexistence of God has begun to be presented as a hallmark of recent criticisms of earlier receptions of Derrida and, by way of messianic structures of time, of Derridean politics as well. We argue that the inflating value of atheism in recent (...) texts operates most effectively within a broader forgetfulness of the many modes in which a serial dying of gods constitutes a more fundamental quality of the religio-political archive than the stability or life of these gods. We find, moreover, there to be something comical about a reconfiguration of the ontotheological archive around a tableau of serially dying Gods, this God who cannot stabilize or maintain for long any system of divine life support. Most importantly, we find that our sense of comedy is itself indicative of important shifts within the stylistics of Derridean discussions of auto-immunity and supplement which have yet to be worked through with any real seriousness. In this respect, our reflections pair Bergson's reflections on the universe as a ‘machine for the manufacture of gods’ with Bergson's explorations of comedy as a fundamentally mechanical affair. The serially dying gods of our religious and philosophical traditions are best understood in the same modes as Bergson's comedy, often marked by an automatism of everyday mechanisms of life which outlive their useful functioning. (shrink)

Derrida always stipulates that deconstruction is not a ‘‘method’’. But deconstruction nevertheless involves a certain strategy and protocol: terms that both designate a process and serve as an example of that process. Derrida's deployment of these terms clarifies how his analyses of logocentrism anticipate the political texts of his later career. In his early texts, Derrida famously shows how the dyad of speech and writing is a ‘‘violent hierarchy’’ in which speech is everywhere privileged. I show how, by contrast, his (...) later analysis of law and force necessarily redoubles this strategy because each of these terms is privileged in rival traditions of political thought. (shrink)

I explore the limits of corporate responsibility standards – for example Social Accountability 8000 (SA 8000), the Global Reporting Initiative, the Fair Labor Association workplace code – by looking at these initiatives through Derrida's aporias of justice as set out in 'Force of Law: The "Mystical Foundation of Authority"'. Based on a discussion of SA 8000, I uncover the unavoidable aporias that are associated with the use of this standard. I contribute to the literature on corporate responsibility standards in general (...) and SA 8000 in particular by showing (a) that attempts to standardise corporate responsibility can only be successful insofar as we recognise that compliance with SA 8000's rules requires a 'fresh judgement' every time they are applied, (b) that SA 8000 should not be pushed down the supply chain as such coercion does not require a truly responsible decision by suppliers and eventually leads to moral mediocrity and (c) that the necessarily time-consuming reflections about the singular contexts within which SA 8000 is applied challenge the urgent need for implementing this standard. I discuss the implications of my analysis of SA 8000 for corporate responsibility standards in general. (shrink)

I explore the limits of corporate responsibility standards – for example Social Accountability 8000 (SA 8000), the Global Reporting Initiative, the Fair Labor Association workplace code – by looking at these initiatives through Derrida's aporias of justice as set out in ‘Force of Law: The “Mystical Foundation of Authority”’. Based on a discussion of SA 8000, I uncover the unavoidable aporias that are associated with the use of this standard. I contribute to the literature on corporate responsibility standards in general (...) and SA 8000 in particular by showing (a) that attempts to standardise corporate responsibility can only be successful insofar as we recognise that compliance with SA 8000's rules requires a ‘fresh judgement’ every time they are applied, (b) that SA 8000 should not be pushed down the supply chain as such coercion does not require a truly responsible decision by suppliers and eventually leads to moral mediocrity and (c) that the necessarily time‐consuming reflections about the singular contexts within which SA 8000 is applied challenge the urgent need for implementing this standard. I discuss the implications of my analysis of SA 8000 for corporate responsibility standards in general. (shrink)

In "The History of Sexuality", Foucault maintains that "Western man has become a confessing animal" (1990, 59), thus implying that "man" was not always such a creature. On a related point, Wittgenstein suggests that "man is a ceremonial animal" (1996, 67); here the suggestion is that human beings are, by their very nature, ritualistically inclined. In this paper I examine this crucial difference in emphasis, first by reconstructing Foucault's "genealogy" of confession, and subsequently by exploring relevant facets of Wittgenstein's later (...) thinking. While there are significant correlations between Foucault and Wittgenstein, an important disparity emerges in relation to the question of the "natural." By critically analyzing this, I show how Wittgenstein's minimal naturalism provides an important corrective to Foucault's more extravagant claims. By implication, we see why any radical relativist, historicist, and/or constructivist position becomes untenable on Wittgensteinian grounds, even though Wittgenstein himself is often read as promoting such views. (shrink)

Jacques Derrida’s ‘Faith and Knowledge’ presents an account of the complex relationship between religion and technoscience that disrupts their traditional boundaries by uncovering both an irreducible faith at the heart of science and an irreducible mechanicity at the heart of religion. In this paper, I focus on the latter, arguing that emphases in Derrida’s text on both the ‘sources’ of religion and its interaction with modern technologies underemphasize the ways in which a general ‘mechanicity’ is present throughout religion. There is (...) no faith, I contend, that is not in some way materially constituted according to a mechanicity operative not only at its origin but continuously and in ever-changing forms, and not only in its interactions with other fields and institutions but within its own structure and daily life. By closely examining ‘Faith and Knowledge’—along with examples from his essay ‘A Silkworm of One’s Own’ and Michael Naas’s Miracle and Machine—I argue that more attention should be paid to the mechanisms, both human and non-human, that populate and perform religion in its factical life. Mechanical bodies and practices are enlisted by religious traditions in order that these traditions continue to exist by continually reconstituting themselves in, for example, the repetitive use of religious objects or the vocal recitation of creeds. Such mechanical acts of religion are not ultimately opposed to the faithful experience that is often taken to be the wellspring of religious life; on the contrary, they are the conditions for the possibility of this experience. (shrink)

This paper argues that Jacques Derrida and Meister Eckhart both construe love as a gift that is entirely free of economic exchange, and both conclude on this basis that love cannot be grasped or identified. In my reading, Eckhart and Derrida do not rule out consideration of one’s own well-being, but their accounts do entail that calculated self-protection is external to love. For this reason, they suggest, lovers should not expect to balance love against a prudential restraint: although both demands (...) are indelible, they function at different levels. A gift of this sort is ineluctably dangerous, but Derrida and Eckhart suggest that unsettling darkness must be endured in order to preserve the possibility of love. (shrink)

Early intervention comes in-between the lives of children, families and teachers. This article uses part of a report written by an educational psychologist about a little girl to question the nature of intervention through Rancière’s writings. As children and parents are seen as put into the position of inadequacy, they require such intervention, which in turn makes them more inadequate. The article goes on to highlight the numerous ‘givings’ involved in early intervention, through Derrida’s writing. However, such giving is questioned (...) as creating expectations that receivers of the gift must fulfil, thus nullifying the gift. The conclusion suggests that starting from a perspective of equality and acknowledging the aporia involved could help the people in this scenario to take a different approach. (shrink)

Originally presented at Monash University, the two lectures offer a very accessible introduction to a number of the major aspects of the work of John D. Caputo, perhaps/probably the most original and consequential postmodern philosopher of religion. The first lecture contextualizes the place of Caputo’s thinking, contrasts his contribution to Mark C. Taylor’s “a/theology”, and examines Caputo’s postmodern figuration of the “Kingdom of God”. The second lecture focuses on Caputo’s philosophico-theological rendering of four key Derridean themes: justice, forgiveness, the gift, (...) and hospitality. Throughout the text, certain critical issues are raised, though the overall appraisal is one of affirmation and admiration. (shrink)

My paper examines Derrida's attempts to resist, on the one hand, what he thought of as the increasing international hegemony of American English as the technolanguage of communication, and, on the other hand, forms of linguistic nationalism, when using the resources of the French language to deploy the syntagma: démocratie à venir. It does this by investigating what happens when claims about democracy are made in such a way as to be singularly idiomatic – made from a cosmopolitan point of (...) view that takes into account, rather than vitiates à la Kant, the singular poeticity of idioms. It contrasts Derrida's analysis of the relationship between the national, democracy and idiomaticity with Tocqueville's nationalistic claims; examining, in particular, the issue of how language supposedly binds people together, the role of singularity and generality in thinking about idioms, the divide between originary and techno-scientific idioms, and Derrida's practice of writing in plus d'une langue. It also outlines how, paradoxically, it is a form of idiomaticity and not linguistic instrumentality that disrupts the logic of appropriation, the logic inscribed in the neighbouring, though different, conceptual values of idion, proprius and le propre. (shrink)

This paper launches a thought experiment the aim of which is to recover and defend an idea of nostalgia as something other than merely maudlin yearning after the days of yore. Much critical comment on nostalgia, in everyday parlance and in academic debate, begins from the standpoint that the time longed for was never really as it is now, nostalgically, imagined. The force and validity of this jibe is admitted in this paper, but it argues that the concept of nostalgia (...) can be reshaped and turned in quite different less reactive directions. A distinction between Nostalgia and nostalgias is coined in order to introduce a plural and critical version of nostalgic memory. The play of memory in nostalgias is exemplified through a focus on four topoi of experience which are strained, possibly even shattered, by the digitalisation and rationalisation of contemporary culture and society. Nostalgias of and for the body, nature, thought, and modernity itself are explored by comparison to themes of melancholy and utopia which arise in Frankfurt School critical theory as responses to a similarly perceived trauma and triumph of instrumental reason. I argue that ultimately the distinction between nostalgias and Nostalgia cannot be maintained - nostalgias are rather types or tropes of Nostalgia. However, through thinking Nostalgia along the lines of this neologism (nostalgias) we might come to see its dynamic and critical mnemonic potencies. Hence, the paper concludes that nostalgia ought not be simply contemned and dismissed as the conservative freezing of memories and images of a fake past. (shrink)

This paper explores the meaning of teacher–student relationships in the light of Derrida’s notions of hospitality and trust. Drawing on Derrida, the author delineates two aspects of educational hospitality: hospitality without determinacy and hospitality as self-surrender. It is argued that educational hospitality is underpinned by trust. A sound teacher–student relationship, the paper concludes, consists in educational hospitality and embedded trust.

This article contains a discussion on René Girard’s understanding of the positive sides of imitation—despite the ambivalent nature of desire. Historically speaking, the discovery of the scapegoat mechanism made a great contribution towards limiting violence. The decomposition of the scapegoat mechanism, and its power to find non-violent alternatives, has paved the way for a culture with numerous opportunities. Even if humans constantly rival one another, one must understand and define the close relationship between competition, cooperation, and rivalry. To be able (...) to see the positive sides of mimesis, one needs to have a robust understanding of human nature as competitive and, thereby, see friendship and competition as closely related. Learning and creativity can actually become optimal when there is a high degree of competition. Fierce competition today is allowed because of the taboo against violence. The decomposition of myth has destroyed archaic societies but, at the same time, created problems of an apocalyptic kind. Increasingly, cultures are now de- veloping without the shelter that sacrificial society previously provided. Positive human development, as is evident in the demystifying of violent myths and the increased concern for victims, cannot stem the power of global terror. Despite greater pessimism in his later works, Girard’s hope is that, through the model of Christ, people will finally learn to love their neighbours as themselves. A change of heart is to a certain degree capable to lead people towards the same kind of non-differentiated love as God. (shrink)

In crime-obsessed cultures, the rudimentary trajectories of criminalizing processes are often overlooked. Specifically, processes of accusation that arrest everyday life, and enable possible enunciations of a criminal identity, seldom attract sustained attention. In efforts at redress, this paper considers discursive reference points through which contextually credible accusations of ‘crime’ are mounted. Focusing particularly on the ethical dimensions of what might be considered a ‘lore’ (rather than law) of criminal accusation, it examines several ways that exemplary cases reflect paradigms of accusatorial (...) practice, accuser identity formation and accused response. With such assumptive grids in mind, the paper signals the potential value of rescuing accusation from fundamental attachments to (a criminally defined) order and disorder, as well as images of a distinct accuser and accused offender. It then alludes to the prospect of pursuing justice through less exclusive forms of accusation. (shrink)

Initially, deliberative politics offers a failure of self‐identity in that the literature dealing with it divides between its determinate elevation in terms of reason, and such, and its dissipation in response to the diversity of interests pressing on it. Next, drawing on the resources of poststructural jurisprudence and by way of locating law at a defining limit of deliberative politics, a similar divide is found in law itself. Then, more productively, law is shown to be constituted with‐in that divide and (...) to take characteristic content from it. Finally, the analysis is returned to deliberative politics where the divide found in the literature can now be seen as offering this politics possibilities of effective constitution and distinctive content. (shrink)

This essay argues that Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics, Jürgen Habermas's communication theory, and Jacques Derrida's deconstruction all fit together within one philosophical paradigm: metamodernism. Metamodernism, as defined, is opposed to both modernism and radical forms of postmodernism. Within metamodernism, a political conundrum provides the key clue for understanding the relations among Gadamer, Habermas, and Derrida as well as for elaborating the contours of the paradigm. Specifically, the political implications of the three philosophies are intransitive: they seem to shift around rather (...) than being in fixed relations to each other. So, for instance, Gadamer sometimes seems to the political right of both Habermas and Derrida, but then, at different times, he stands between them, and then again, at other times, he seems to be to the left of both. This political paradox suggests that the traditional political categories of liberalism and conservatism do not suitably reflect the critical positions within metamodernism. Gadamer, Habermas, and Derrida are far more concerned with explaining the possibility and techniques of interpretive and social critique, while remaining true to the metamodernist paradigm, rather than fitting themselves into the traditional liberal or conservative political camps. (shrink)

In this article, I demonstrate that Friedrich Nietzsche offers us a unique form of hermeneutic critique. In particular, I contend that when reading Nietzsche’s perspectivism and will to power in light of each other, they provide us with the tools to overcome habits of interpretation through the concepts of genealogy and creative hermeneutics. I show this in three sections. In section one, I introduce Nietzsche’s perspectivism and situate it within his concept of the will to power. In doing so, I (...) demonstrate that interpretations exist amidst a complex field of agonistic, reciprocal relations in life’s constant production of meaning. In section two, I then analyze how certain interpretations sediment into habits, forming harmful blind spots in interpretive activity. Such habits, Nietzsche shows, when privileged as prima facie ‘True’ and left uncontested exclude different ways of interpreting and existing, stagnating the production of meaning and denying the agonistic conditions of life. In the final section, I argue that Nietzsche critiques such habits in the two directions of genealogy and creative hermeneutics. Through the backward approach of genealogy, Nietzsche problematizes the habit, excavates its lowly origin, and deconstructs its supposed universality. Through the forward approach of creative hermeneutics, he overcomes and reinterprets them out of their origins, experiments with difference and multiplicity, and engages in an ongoing critique to open up new perspectives. (shrink)

This article examines the relationship between the principle of double effect and justification for separation surgeries for conjoined twins. First, the principle of double effect is examined in light of its historical context. It is argued that it can only operate under an absolutist view of good and evil that is compatible with the Bible. Given this foundation for application, scenarios for separating conjoined twins are considered against the criteria for the principle of double effect. It is concluded that the (...) principle of double effect cannot be applied to cases wherein one of the twins must be killed. However, it is noted that this does not leave decision makers without options. (shrink)

Efforts to develop democratic schools have moved along particular rules and standards of ‘reasoning’ even when expressed through different ideological and paradigmatic lines. From attempts to make a democratic education to critical pedagogy, different approaches overlap in their historical construction of the reason of schooling: designing society by designing the child. These approaches to democracy make inequality into the premise of equality, assuming a consensual partition of the world and the need for specific agents to monitor partitioned boundaries, thus reinserting (...) differences as the basis of practice. Democracy, however, according to Jacques Rancière, only becomes visible when its partitioning is challenged under the opinion of equality. Yet, undoing the epistemological dogma of planning embodied in the notions of ‘critical’ and deliberative democracy might also involve confronting the comparative style of thought which provides the epistemological ‘rules’ that insert inequality as equality. Deleuze and Guattari's rhizome and Derrida's justice help extend Rancière's democracy and equality into unfamiliar terrain. What implications might this have for thinking about educational policy and curriculum? The argument, ironically, maintains Enlightenment attitudes about reason and rationality, but while ‘trying’ different epistemological rules and recognizing how the epistemological and ontological fold into one another it provides an alternative understanding of education and democracy. (shrink)

In recent continental philosophy of religion there has been significant attention paid to the Abrahamic doctrines of creation ex nihilo and divine omnipotence, especially by deconstructive thinkers such as Derrida, Caputo, and Keller. For these thinkers, the doctrine represents a form of agency that does violence to various forms of alterity. While broadly supportive of their fundamental philosophical and ethico-political views, especially about the primordiality of alterity, I differ from them in that I argue that creation ex nihilo articulates the (...) very structure of the alterity they are concerned with. The essay proceeds through a reading of Derrida’s representation of the doctrine and a “deconstruction” of his view by means of a reading of Augustine and Anselm. (shrink)

The terms deconstruction and différence are central to both Jacques Derrida's work and to poststructuralism generally. These terms attempt to provide an alternative to metaphysical construals of linguistic meaning. I compare Derrida's discussion of linguistic meaning and reference with the contemporary pragmatist, Robert Brandom, arguing that Brandom has important similarities to Derrida. However, whereas Derrida remains committed to metaphysics even as he tries to contest it, Brandom, to his credit, more thoroughly rejects metaphysics.

Deconstruction is often depicted as a method of critical analysis aimed at exposing unquestioned metaphysical assumptions and internal contradictions in philosophical and literary language. Starting from Derrida's contention that deconstruction is not a method and cannot be transformed into one, I make a case for a different attitude towards deconstruction, to which I refer as 'witnessing'. I argue that what needs to be witnessed is the occurrence of deconstruction and, more specifically, the occurrence of metaphysics-in-deconstruction. The point of witnessing metaphysics-in-deconstruction (...) is affirmative: it is an affirmation of what cannot be conceived in terms of the system and yet makes this system possible. To the extent to which education is concerned with the 'coming into presence' of new beginners and new beginnings, it shares an interest with deconstruction. Through a discussion of the role of communication in education I indicate how we might witness the occurrence of deconstruction in education. Through this we may be able to identify openings that can become potential entrances for the coming into presence of new beginnings and new beginners. Such an engagement with Derrida's work is more than the application of 'his' philosophy to the 'field' of education and therefore also has implications for how we think of the very idea of philosophy of education. (shrink)

One way to characterise pragmatism is to see it as a philosophy that placed communication at the heart of philosophical, educational and political thinking. Whereas the shift from consciousness to communication can be seen as a major innovation in modern philosophy, it is not without problems. This article highlights some of these problems and suggests a way ‘forward’ by staging a discussion between pragmatism and deconstruction. Although there are striking similarities between pragmatism and deconstruction, it is argued that pragmatism and (...) deconstruction cannot sit as easily together as some authors assume. The reason for this is not that pragmatism and deconstruction are incompatible philosophies but rather that deconstruction occurs at the very heart of pragmatism. This implies that pragmatism can only retain its commitment to communication in philosophy, education and politics if it acknowledges and, in a sense, embraces the occurrence of deconstruction in communication. This suggests that the future of pragmatism as a philosophy for education o lies in its deconstruction, something which is expressed in the idea of a deconstructive rather than a deconstructed pragmatism. (shrink)

Repetition plays a significant, productive role in the work of both Derrida and Deleuze. But the difference between these two philosophers couldn''t be greater: it is the difference between negation and affirmation, between Yes and No. In Derrida, the productive energy of repetition derives from negation, from the necessary impossibility of supplementing an absence. Deleuze recognizes the kind of repetition which concerns Derrida, but insists that there is another, primary form of repetition which is fully positive and affirmative. I will (...) argue that there is nothing in Derrida''s philosophy to match the affirmative, primary form of repetition articulated by Deleuze. Moreover, it is precisely this difference that accounts for the most exciting features of Deleuze''s work: the possibility of breaking through to the other side of representation, beyond authenticity and inauthenticity, becoming-becoming. (shrink)

Because the pandemic has kept the world busy in the last two years, a revival of Derrida's writings on biology is an urgent prerequisite today. The tsunamic invasion of the Coronavirus or Covid-19 pandemic took more than two million lives and thousands are still being tested positive as I write. The speed of the virus and the seeming human inability to stop its spread necessitates a study on the relationship between Covid-19 and Derrida's deconstructive philosophy. Hence the portmanteau Coviderrida – (...) inspired by Hélène Cixous’ ‘ derridevilishly’ – attempts to demonstrate how the pathogen operates as an event or possibility to which Derrida's neologisms ‘différance’, ‘supplement’, ‘trace’, ‘archi-writing’, and ‘text’ testify. The main concern of this paper is to restore the deconstructive logic that Derrida advocates to restructure the relationship between life and death in his 1975-6 seminar La vie la mort, and reshape our notion of human survival in his 2001 interview with Giovanna Borradori, ‘Autoimmunity’. These two texts redefine the political and religious questions, which are ‘left hanging, uncertain, still in movement and therefore, yet “to come”’. (shrink)

The study aims to explore the development of a pan-African philosophy and system of thought while relying on the premise suggesting that the values and attitudes of a community determine how it relates to individuals from outside and how it builds trust and loyalty both inside the community and beyond. The paper shows how the development of a pan-African philosophy was based on a wish by Western academics to impose their principles on Africa by positing a single system of thought (...) representing all African societies. The article goes on to describe research by European and African thinkers and the emergence of studies recognising the individuality and originality of systems of thought in African communities. The author stresses the importance of understanding the values and attitudes and philosophies of individual countries and communities and shows how generalisation leads to stereotyping and dominance, and that teachers and trainers need to treat communities individually and recognise their values, especially in the African sub-continent. (shrink)

Between Sydney and Hong Kong: doing cultural research without guarantees.

What if deconstruction were as dangerous as its critics make it out to be? What if we actually advanced a more destructive deconstruction? In a world torn apart by various crises, what is required is a stronger, more ambitious deconstruction that moves beyond softer, descriptive versions. I propose a more ruthless deconstruction, one that is unashamed to “slay monsters”, especially the monster-traditions of Church, Capital, and “Democracy.” I begin by noting the significance and relevance of deconstruction during the present, a (...) time of “revolutionary stirring.” I then focus on Derrida‟s statement that he is “a very conservative person,” a remark unsatisfactorily explored by Caputo. I then show how Caputo‟s construal of traditions in this text is extremely problematic. However, his later thinking shows signs of a more radical deconstructive bent, one which leads downs the roads of revolution and communism (“a radical community of equals”. (shrink)