This essay offers an extensive rehabilitation and reappraisal of the concept of childhood innocence as a means of testing the boundaries of some prevailing constructions of childhood. It excavates in detail some of the lost histories of innocence in order to show that these are more diverse and more complex than established and pejorative assessments of them conventionally suggest. Recovering, in particular, the forgotten pedigree of the Romantic account of the innocence of childhood underlines (...) its depth and furnishes an enriched understanding of its critical role in the coming of mass education––both as a catalyst of social change and as an alternative measure of the child-centeredness of the institutions of public education. Now largely and residually confined to the inheritance of nursery education, the concept of childhood innocence, and the wider Romantic project of which it is an element, can help question the assumptions underpinning modern, competence-centred philosophies of childhood. (shrink)

Today childhood takes place within amultimedia context where education, marketingand entertainment operate together in one bigmelting pot. Childhood is commodified, asituation not everybody seems happy with. Dueto increasing exposure with violence and sexualactivities, for example in children's games,children seem to lose the chance to be realchildren. In the discussions about thiscommodified childhood, innocence and nostalgiaseem omnipresent concepts. In this article wefirst analyse the discourse about the innocenceof childhood as presented by Neil Postman inhis bestseller ``The (...) Disappearance ofChildhood.'' Here, childhood is seen as a periodwhich can mainly be characterised in terms of a``not yet.'' However, Postman's view on childhoodpresents only one side of the romanticcontinuum. The other side – in which the childappears as having a nature of her own – can beillustrated by ``On naïve and sentimentalpoetry,'' an essay written by Friedrich Schillerin 1795. Both opposing views on childhood canlead to a different interpretation of theinnocence of childhood. Finally, Schiller'sdichotomy – the naïve versus thesentimental poet – can be seen as a useful legup to the clarification of nostalgia whichseems to go hand in hand with the feeling ofthe loss of childhood. (shrink)

With his concept of ‘potentiality,’ Agamben offers a promising means of approaching questions of power and agency. Yet arguably, by situating potentiality as a reserve created through the sovereign ban, Agamben neglects the inter-subjective context of ordinary everyday agency. This means that while Agamben’s theory is particularly well suited to the analysis of interactions between states and their citizens, and those excluded from citizenship, it provides poor tools for understanding how social disparity develops within communities, understood as networks of individuals (...) of varying capacities and ways of being. By revisiting Aristotle’s discussion of potentiality from which Agamben’s concept is drawn, the essay develops from potentiality ways of thinking about agency. The essay focuses upon a class of individual who are increasingly seen to embody the political community’s potentiality, to the extent that their ability to exercise agency is reduced: that is, the ‘innocent child’—glossed at once as humanity’s future and best hope, and as its most vulnerable and unrealised quotient. While human potentiality is thought only in terms of childhood innocence, not only will these individuals’ agency be stymied, but citizens will also continue to separate themselves from their own unrealised potentials and frailties. (shrink)

This paper argues that the figure of the child performs a critical function for the middle-class social imaginary, representing both an essential “innocence” of the liberal individual, and an excluded, unconscious remainder of its project of control through the management of knowledge. While childhood is invested with affect and value, children’s agency and opportunities for social participation are restricted insofar as they are seen both to represent an elementary humanity and to fall short of full rationality, citizenship and (...) identity. The diverse permutations of this figure, as it develops in the middle-class imagination, are traced from the writings of John Locke to the films of Michael Haneke (via Charles Dickens and Henry James), to interrogate what this ambivalence regarding childhood reflects about middle-class, adult identity. (shrink)

Since the 19th century, innocence has been a hallmark of childhood. The innocence of children is seen as both a sanctity worth defending and a feature that excuses the unavoidable mistakes of adolescence. While beneficial in many settings, notions of childhood innocence are often entangled with values judgements. Inherent in innocence is the notion that that which we are innocent of is undesirable. Further, attributing innocence to some implies the tolerability of blame for (...) others. This has unique implications in a medical setting. This essay explores the implications of espousing the innocence of paediatric patients. Ultimately, because attribution of innocence is both prone to bias and rooted in the same framework as blame, it degrades patient-centred care and compromises the patient–provider relationship. I argue that avoiding such characterisations may allow providers to more effectively promote paediatric health. (shrink)

In this fascinating new book, Affrica Taylor encourages an exciting paradigmatic shift in the ways in which childhood and nature are conceived and pedagogically deployed, and invites readers to critically reassess the naturalist childhood discourses that are rife within popular culture and early years education.Through adopting a common worlds framework, Reconfiguring the Natures of Childhood generates a number of complex and inclusive ways of seeing and representing the early years. It recasts childhood as:messy and implicated rather (...) than pure and innocent; situated and differentiated rather than decontextualized and universal; entangled within real world relations rather than protected in a separate space.Throughout the book, the author follows an intelligent and innovative line of thought which challenges many pre-existing ideas about childhood. Drawing upon cross-disciplinary perspectives, and with international relevance, this book makes an important contribution to the field of childhood studies and early childhood education, and will be a valuable resource for scholars, postgraduate students and higher education teachers. (shrink)

This article contributes to current discussions of the origins of modern sexuality by exploring an episode from Book II of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions (1782), in the context of eighteenth-century childhood hygiene theory. In this episode, the sixteen-year-old Rousseau is the object of an aggressive sexual advance on the part of another young man, and witnesses this young man’s orgasm. By stressing his unusual immunity to understanding the sexual nature of this encounter, Rousseau places himself outside the cultural argument that (...) moral degradation was bringing on premature puberty (ejaculation, in males) and thus degradation of the human species in eighteenth-century Europe. (shrink)

The examination of the modern construction of subject is not over yet. Although many thinkers have exhausted its conceptual ambiguities and practical consequences, its impact is far from fully understood without an analysis of the construction of childhood for the future subject. In this essay, I problematize five constructions of childhood that emerged in the modern time and scrutinize the impasses of logic or conceptual ambiguities within, along with the practical consequences thereof. I explore how the modern construction (...) of childhood is problematic in and of itself, as well as the light it sheds on the deeply embedded ambiguities and aporia :75–88 2007) in the construction of the modern subject. This paper will untangle the problems associated with each of these constructs and their respective implications for the making of the modern subject. (shrink)

Childhood innocence has often been treated by scholars as an empty, idealised signifier. This article contests such accounts, arguing that innocence is best regarded as a powerfully unmarked training in heternormativity, alongside class and race norms. This claim will be demonstrated through attention to two recent films addressing childhood: Celine Sciamma’s Tomboy and P.J. Hogan’s Peter Pan. The films characterise young femininity as an ‘impossible space’, in which subjects face the contradictory, schizoid demands to simultaneously show (...) both childhood innocence and heteronormative femininity – or else face the threat of a spoiled identity. The plot of each film traces how the protagonist attempts to manoeuvre in the face of and precisely using this contradiction. In dramatising such manoeuvring, the films reveal the surprising forms of subjectivity that can be inhabited for a time in the interstices between age and gender norms, and which might have lasting value. Both films thus drama... (shrink)

This article explores the necessary requirements for effective teacher facilitation of community of philosophical inquiry sessions among children, and suggests that the first and most important prerequisite is the capacity to listen to children, which in turn is based on a critical and reflective interrogation of one’s own philosophy of childhood —the set of beliefs and assumptions about children and childhood which adults tend to project onto real children. It argues that the most effective way to explore these (...) assumptions is in community of philosophical inquiry, where we encounter the same concepts—nature, person, good and evil, innocence, etc.—which underlie more general philosophical inquiry. It then describes the work of the American educator Patricia Carini, who developed the Descriptive Review Process as a phenomenological approach to understanding the children with whom one is in relation, and identifies the Descriptive Review Process as another form of the practice of philosophy of childhood which, together with the regular practice of POC-CPI among teachers, offers us a grounded, integrated methodology for schools dedicated to adult-child dialogue and to school as a site for cultural reconstruction. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Ethics in Light of ChildhoodDavid Cloutier (bio)Review of Ethics in Light of Childhood John Wall Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2010. 204 pp. $34.95.John Wall’s ambitious volume contends that “considerations of childhood should not only have greater importance but fundamentally transform how morality is understood” (1). He rightly suggests that “the story of childhood cannot be told in one-dimensional formulas of either innocence and (...) vulnerability or unruliness and undevelopment” (7), but instead require a new paradigm for ethics: “childism.” He questions three historical views of childhood: the “top-down,” the “bottom-up,” and the developmentalist. Wall splendidly moves beyond these views and demonstrates that considering children should instruct us in the limitations of ordinary approaches to ethics—not only for children’s sake but for adults too.How so? Wall’s constructive section considers ontology, teleology, and de-ontology. In them, relying heavily on twentieth-century continental philosophy, supplemented by some social-scientific literature and numerous anecdotal examples, he develops an overall approach to the moral life. First, he argues for an ontology of “restless and endless play” (36) reflective of the human capacity for creativity possessed by both children and adults. Secondly, the moral life has a teleology of “narrative expansion,” with a constant movement toward a “more richly diverse life story” (60). Finally, moral obligation involves a constant “decentering” of the self in which “the world I create for myself should be disrupted and stretched out as far as possible by genuine human difference” (88). Building on the insights of top-down and bottom-up traditions, and going beyond the “flatly unilinear assumptions” of developmental “stageism” (81) ethics involves a constant circularity, exemplified in the final three chapters on specific issues. For example, families who “create increasingly expansive family worlds” engage in top-down transmission of tradition, developmental formation of relationality, and bottom-up nurturing of otherness (149). These qualities apply not only to children but to parents as well, and thus satisfy Wall’s desire for an ethics that is fully “child-inclusive” and that does not privilege adult agents. He succeeds admirably at demonstrating that the real agency children actually possess and exercise, as well as their vulnerability and passivity, are not simply incomplete versions of what adults possess fully.I would raise two concerns. First, the book works so hard to avoid any kind of linearity that criteria enabling judgment seem lacking—for example, surely some [End Page 195] forms of “disruption” are not to be welcomed (especially by children). The telos of “narrative expansion” so strongly refuses to privilege any perspective that it threatens to empty out what one might gingerly call “adult commitments”—to stable love, production, civic life, and fine arts—all of which require virtue (absent here), and which seem necessary for children to flourish. Aspiring “to go on creating oneself endlessly” (58) can be a fruitful depiction of adult life, or it can be an immature escapism. Without a thicker telos, the distinction is difficult to make.Second, his category of “childism” (3) forces him to artificially avoid any telos of maturation. In parallel with other “isms” (e.g., feminism), he argues that children are “full human beings,” live in “fully meaningful moral worlds,” and are “full participants in... human moral experience” (29). “Full” appears throughout, but the inclusion parallel clashes with maturation in human life. True, children and adults have both agency and vulnerability (39), but children, generally speaking, are more vulnerable and are less capable agents, and thus will have particular needs (and also offer particular gifts to adults). “Childism” sometimes obscures the particularities of childhood, and how we are bodily and culturally directed toward some “maturity.” Yet these concerns should not diminish Wall’s achievement in displaying how childhood can teach adults much about ethics.David CloutierMount St. Mary’s UniversityDavid Cloutier David Cloutier is an associate professor of theology at Mount St. Mary’s University. He received his BA from Carleton College and his PhD from Duke University. He is the author of Love, Reason, and God’s Story: An Introduction to Catholic Sexual Ethics (Anselm/St. Mary’s Press, 2008) and editor of Leaving... (shrink)

In the sparse literature that is concerned with Wittgenstein’s views regarding children and childhood, in his later work, it is often suggested that Wittgenstein presents, or at least is committed to, a romantic notion of the child according to which children should be conceived of as innocent beings who are ontologically different from adults. In this paper I argue that Wittgenstein’s remarks do not support such an interpretation. First, I investigate the arguments for this view presented by Stanley Cavell, (...) Yasushi Maruyama, and Philip Shields. Second, I consider an anti-essentialist understanding of Wittgenstein’s concept of childhood that has been suggested in opposition to the treatment of the child as the ‘ontological other’ and argue that Wittgenstein refers to the child as intermediate link with which to state grammatical facts. In contrast to these various views, I hold, third, that the PI is committed to a strong and substantial concept of childhood. I argue for this claim on the basis of the ‘Motto’ of the PI; Wittgenstein’s reference to the philosopher Augustine; and the use of ‘primitive’. I conclude that Wittgenstein’s concept of childhood in his later works neither romanticises nor dispraises the child as the ‘ontological other’. (shrink)

This article focuses on the narratives of two dalit women which offer new, enabling imaginings of community that open up radical possibilities for rethinking questions of childhood and gender. These texts turn a critical gaze on an upper caste feminist practice and the discourses of childhood, schooling and emancipation that are tied to it. Childhood has been hegemonically represented as a state of innocence and vulnerability and is marked off from the world of adult anxieties and (...) responsibilities. Such representations are generally implicated in abstract, internationalist notions of child rights and remain disengaged from the historical contexts that shape children’s lives. The dominant discourse of the girl child does not problematize the field qualifying as childhood; instead, it proposes that the female child has been excluded from the same. The cause of this exclusion is identified as gender discrimination, reinforcing the primacy of sexual difference and allowing it to subsume all other forms of differences — caste, class, region or community — that exist among children. The article argues that these two narratives disrupt the neat separation between the modernizing nation/ emancipatory self and the regressive community. As each narrative takes us through the life of a dalit girl, it articulates a critique of gender as a category abstracted from material circumstances that constitute women’s lives. Gender in these narratives emerges as complexly intermeshed with caste and community. (shrink)

Childhoods in contemporary Kenya are entangled with discourses of care in a post-colonial landscape. Such imaginaries of childhoods through discourses of ‘care’ and ‘charity’ are well established through Western lenses. Another lens that is often enacted is the lens of de-commercialised, un-spoilt, pure and innocent childhoods in the Kenyan landscape. In this study, the authors utilize Nel Nodding’s concept of an ethics of care, and a feminist lens, to explore this binary of Western views through real experiences of childhoods. This (...) paper provides an analysis of childhoods as lived experiences in Kenya, and challenges constructions of children/childhoods as vulnerable, based upon observations and interviews conducted in Kenya in the remote area of Kwale County. (shrink)

Preface In his book, African Philosophy, Theophilius Okere, after arguing that the way to African philosophy is the path of hermeneutics of culture, ...

In this paper, I tried to show how Western attitude to reality can be traced to the divisive exclusivist type of mind-set behind Aristotle’s conception of the world. I gesture toward some of the severest consequences of approaching the world with such a mind-set, and how such has complicated matters in some of the major debates in African philosophy. By recourse to ibuanyidanda or complementary philosophy, the author explores ways of addressing some of the challenges approaches of this kind present (...) in view of resolving issues that have relevance for authentic existence. Keywords : Aristotle, ibuanyidanda, complementary ontology, Tempelsian Damage, ihe mkpuchi anya, missing link of reality. (shrink)

This research analyses media and online discourses produced by the Indigenous People of Biafra, a Nigerian separatist/secessionist group that seeks a referendum for the independence of the Igbo ethnic group of Nigeria. The research examines discourse structures, such as language use that clearly or implicitly produces propositions of conflict and war, tribalism and hate-speech. Discursive strategies such as labelling, exaggeration, metaphor and contradiction applied by the group to produce ideological discourses of outrage are also analysed. Moreover, conflicting discourses produced by (...) the Igbo politicians and factions of IPOB and other Biafra campaign groups are analysed in terms of their political implications to the overall self-determination efforts of the Biafra nation. The study concludes that the pragmatic implications of discourses that reflect opposing views, as well as varied ideological perspectives by group members, suggest that Biafra is a nation divided against itself and are a people incapable of the separate nation that they seek. (shrink)

This paper avers that most attempts at formulating viable theories in African philosophy are saddled with intrusions of ethnophilosophic and ethnocentric types: The author identifies this as the phenomenon of “unintended ethnocentric commitment”. He uses communalism, a socio-political theory in African philosophy, to illustrate his point. He further argues that overreliance on the method of synthetic deduction - as is widely practised in African philosophy - can impact adversely on the universal outreach of theories and limit our knowledge of the (...) world. The paper contends that any theory that aspires to give us a clearer picture of the world should be in a position to contain the distortions arising from the promptings of sense experience. Likewise, such a theory should show clear evidence ofanalytic insight into the mechanisms and phenomena on the basis of which our knowledge of the world can be broadened and our judgement thereof improved. By recourse to the method and principles of ibuanyidanda (complementary reflection) philosophy, a systematic methodological approach to theory formulation in African philosophy, the author shows how theories in African philosophy can be articulated more resourcefully with a view to upholding their systematic and universal relevance. (shrink)

This introduction to a Special Issue of Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) – dedicated to showcasing scholarly research into the language of conflict and peace, describes the general conceptual character of language in conflict initiation as well as in peace process. It further examines the potentials of linguistic representation in the construction of social and political realities that have strong implications for conflicts not only at the interpersonal level but also have consequences in terms of national and global security. It argues (...) that critical discourse analysis provides sufficient and interesting methodological resource for analyzing conflict and peace discourses. Then, it briefly summarizes the various topics covered in the Special Issue highlighting the approaches adopted by the authors. Drawing from different contexts and scenarios, the authors demonstrate how methods in linguistics and discourse studies are applied to analyzing conflict and peace processes. Hence, this introductory piece, shows how this Special Issue contributes to scholarly understanding of the roles of language within the context of conflict or peace, as well as illustrate in some interesting extent, how to research the language of conflict and peace in discourse studies. (shrink)

This study focuses on analysing the ways in which vehicle stickers construct individual and group identities, people's religious faith and social vision in the context of religious assumptions and practices in Nigeria. Data comprise 73 vehicle stickers collected in Lagos and Ota, between 2006 and 2007 and are analysed within the framework of the post-structuralist model of discourse analysis which views discourse as a product of a complex system of social and institutional practices that sustain its continuous existence. Results show (...) that through stickers people define their individual and group identities within religious institutional practices. And as a means of group identification, they guarantee social security and privileges. In constructing social vision the stickers help mould the individual aspiration about a future which transcends the present. Significantly, stickers in the data also reveal the tension between Islam and Christianity and the struggle to propagate one above the other. (shrink)

NaijaPalsandNolitics, respectively a hosting site and a discussion forum by and for Nigerians, provide an opportunity for the citizens’ social and political participation. As a hosting website with social networking and blogging activities,NaijaPalsmaintains an online community, withNoliticsas a discussion forum solely dedicated to social and political debate. Members exchange information and engage in critical analysis of Nigeria’s political system. A total of 104 ‘posts’ are analyzed in the framework of Computer-Mediated Discourse Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis. The analysis highlights the (...) roles of political discourse inNolitics, mainly as social critique, with the aim of shaping political leadership and involving the citizens in political governance. Discourse in this context is viewed as discursive practice, in the form of political propaganda; anti-corruption campaigns; socio-political mobilization; and recommendations for growth — all of these mediated in written texts. The analyses also show that metaphors, directive speech acts and questioning are used as discursive strategies. (shrink)

This study analyses news reports of public reactions to the controversial legislators’ monthly/annual income in Nigeria in 2019, which was presumed to far exceed the salaries of legislators worldwide. Data for this study are news and opinion articles published between 2017 and 2019 that represent public response to the salary scandal involving public officers and National Assembly members. Critical discourse analysis is adopted in the analyses of media representations of the main actors in and situations of the scandal. Hence, discursive (...) strategies identified in the resistance discourse of the news media are qualitatively analysed. The study argues that lack of accountability and widespread corruption in the Nigerian political economy is a reflection of weak political institutions, such as those that empower legislators to enrich themselves. (shrink)

This study examines online advocacy campaigns by five women action groups in Nigeria and Ghana. Based on modern social movement theories, the study utilizes computer-mediated discourse analysis to qualitatively analyze the content of the websites and social media platforms of these groups. Findings show that social media provide women advocacy groups a voice that tend to defy intimidation and the traditional patriarchal stereotypes to demand the rights of women to political leadership. Discourse structures of protest discourses include imperative statements or (...) direct acts that demand change by all means. Through online activism, the advocacy groups extend their voices, and activities to reach national and international audiences and communities of people – also reaching out to the most vulnerable rural women and the underprivileged. However, only a small percentage of women in rural areas have access to the Internet, thereby limiting participation in online activism in cities and urban centers. (shrink)

This study applies a computer-mediated discourse analysis to the study of discourse structures and functions of ‘419’ emails — the Nigerian term for online/financial fraud. The hoax mails are in the form of online lottery winning announcements, and email ‘business proposals’ involving money transfers/claims of dormant bank accounts overseas. Data comprise 68 email samples collected from the researcher’s inboxes and colleagues’ and students’ mail boxes between January 2008 and March 2009 in Ota, Nigeria. The study reveals that the writers of (...) the mails apply discourse/pragmatic strategies such as socio-cultural greeting formulas, self-identification, reassurance/confidence building, narrativity and action prompting strategies to sustain the interest of the receivers. The study also shows that this genre of computer-mediated communication has become a regular part of our internet experience, and is not likely to be extinct in the near future as previous studies of email hoaxes have predicted. It is believed that as the global economy witnesses a recession, chances are that more creative and complex ways of combating the situation will arise. Economic hardship has been blamed for fraud/online scams, inadvertently prompting youths to engage in various anti-social activities. (shrink)

This study adopts a discourse-pragmatic analytical approach to examine the various ways youths construct themselves and their group identities, their environment and socio-economic aspirations using T-shirt messages and slogans. Two institutions of higher learning in Nigeria are examined. Findings show that T-shirts combine fashion and youth popular culture with need and identity negotiation. The youth not only assert who they are and what they wish to be known for, but also express their aspirations for a better socio-economic and political society. (...) The needs for love and money are particularly stressed. The study also describes the linguistic structures and style of T-shirt messages. (shrink)

When we ask modern questions about democracy and democratization, we have to clarify the meaning of these words. It has been 21 years since the Velvet Revolution and we still think that it had to do with democracy and the democratization of our Czechoslovak society in that time, as if the common use of the word "democratization" makes possible the expression or the vindicate one´s own opinion. There is a question whether the majority of our society was thinking this way. (...) In this context it would be very interesting to see the practical purposes of our Church society during the revolution, as hierarchic or as non-hierarchic. Also there are still the voices of some people that echo the unpreparedness of the Church for this modern world, especially when communicating with the faithful and the society. . (shrink)

This article will discuss the epistemology of symbols employed by African traditional medical practitioners in treating their patients and the essence of such symbols among traditional communities across the continent. Relying on diverse studies by other researchers and my own investigation conducted among the Igbo of south-eastern Nigeria, this paper will explore relevant aspects of African traditional medicine as they relate to symbols employed by the practitioners in their effort to offer health care and general wellbeing to their clients.

Have you ever doubted Greek origin of Western Philosophy or wondered about the irony that Greek government persecuted Socrates and Plato for corrupting the youth? This volume shows that African priest-scholars of the Egyptian Mystery System originated philosophy; that Thales, Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle lived in Africa and studied under these priests. Some Greek historians: Plutarch, Diogenes Laertius, Herodotus, Plato, Aristotle; and modern writers: William Stace, Alfred Benn, James Breasted, etc. testify to Greeks' studentship in Egypt. Citing Egyptian texts, the author (...) reveals that the doctrines of Greek philosophers have their prototypes in earlier Egyptian philosophy. However, in their determination to maintain racial and intellectual superiority over Africans, Western historians, since the 18th century, subverted history by attributing the origin of philosophy to the Greeks. The author calls for the restoration of 'truth' to the history of the 'king' of disciplines---Philosophy. (shrink)

Academic dishonesty (AD) is a threat to quality education, ethics of professional practices and career outcomes. Psychopathy is connected to AD. This study investigated whether academic confidence (AC) mediates the relationship between psychopathy and AD. University students (N = 335, mean age = 18.38 years) completed measures of relevant variables, in addition to providing demographic details. Results of statistical analysis showed that AC mediated the association between primary psychopathy and AD. Considering the extent of students' belief, trust and expectation that (...) they can execute their academic tasks by themselves could be important target in enhancing ethical behaviors among students. (shrink)