Nous partirons du constat de la discrétion des thèmes de la ville et de la vie urbaine dans l’histoire de la Théorie critique : c’est un fait que, mises à part les analyses inspirées à Benjamin par sa lecture et son interprétation de l’œuvre de Baudelaire, il est très difficile de trouver une prise en compte explicite de la ville dans les écrits des principaux représentants de la Théorie critique de la société, toutes générations confondues, qu’il s’agisse de Horkheimer et (...) Adorno ou de Habermas et Honneth. Nous essaierons d’une part de comprendre les raisons de cette discrétion (pour ne pas dire plus) du thème de la ville dans la Théorie critique, et d’autre part de voir quels aménagements il faudrait faire subir à la Théorie critique pour qu’elle soit capable de mieux prendre en considération la ville : en particulier, éviter de dissoudre la dimension de la vie urbaine dans les domaines trop larges de la critique de la modernité, de la marchandise et du capitalisme. Nous verrons enfin dans quelle mesure les développements plus récents de la Théorie critique autour des thèmes de « l’accélération », de la « résonance » (chez Hartmut Rosa) ou de la « privation de monde » semblent prometteurs d’une meilleure prise en charge de la ville par la Théorie critique. (shrink)

On considère généralement que Marx n’a jamais envisagé le monde rural que comme un archaïsme condamné par le progrès de l’histoire. L’objectif de cet article est de problématiser cette idée, en examinant les différentes tensions qui travaillent la réflexion de Marx sur la terre et les paysans. Nous montrons que deux découvertes complémentaires le conduisent à relativiser sa croyance au caractère progressiste du développement capitaliste : la découverte des tendances écocidaires du capitalisme et celle de la vivacité des communes agraires. (...) De ces deux découvertes, il résulte que Marx critique finalement le capitalisme du point de vue de ses effets sur la terre et celles et ceux qui la travaillent. C’est donc aussi de ce point de vue que doivent être repensées la nature, la valeur et les conditions de réalisation du communisme. (shrink)

Introduction: the theory of rupture -- Belief -- Universality -- Solidarity -- Equality -- Freedom -- Singularity -- The inhuman -- Conclusion: theorizing from the rubble.

In this paper, we introduce the notion of ‘rupture’ from the French philosopher Michel Foucault, whose studies of discourse and governmentality have become prominent within nursing research during the last 25 years. We argue that a rupture perspective can be helpful for identifying and maintaining a critical potential within nursing research. The paper begins by introducing rupture as an inheritance from the French epistemological tradition. It then describes how rupture appears in Foucault's works, as both an (...) overall philosophical approach and as an analytic tool in his historical studies. Two examples of analytical applications of rupture are elaborated. In the first example, rupture has inspired us to make an effort to seek alternatives to mainstream conceptions of the phenomenon under study. In the second example, inspired by Foucault's work on discontinuity, we construct a framework for historical epochs in nursing history. The paper concludes by discussing the potential of the notion of rupture as a response to the methodological concerns regarding the use of Foucault‐inspired discourse analysis within nursing research. We agree with the critique of Cheek that the critical potential of discourse analysis is at risk of being undermined by research that tends to convert the approach into a fixed method. (shrink)

-rupture /ˈrəpCHər/ ; to breach or disturb a harmonious feeling, situation, or relationship From the Latin ruptura, from rumpere 'to break.' The verb dates from the mid 18th century.To rupture is to break from previously established ways of knowing. It is to trouble what is taken for granted, to reimagine the nature and scope of knowledge. When we speak of rupture, we are speaking of epistemological shifts1—reinscribing what knowledge is, how it can be acquired, and the extent (...) to which knowledge pertinent to any given subject informs concepts such as community, morality, politics, and identity. Rupture is a moment, a disruption in an epistemological... (shrink)

In areas of land conflict, fear and the threat of violence work to reproduce imaginaries of land as a resource that powerful people can grab. An urgent question for agrarian scholars and activists is how people can overcome fear so that alternative imaginaries might flourish. In this article, we argue for attention to the affective dimension of imaginaries; ideas of what land is and should be are co-constituted through the material and social, imbued with powerful emotions that enable imaginaries to (...) be reproduced, to be challenged, and even to be transformed. We draw from long-term research projects in Cambodia—a country known for plantation-fuelled dispossession—where the Prime Minister’s surprise announcement of a land titling campaign in 2012 ruptured the wave of land grabbing, creating openings to imagine different outcomes that are rooted in the potential for legal recognition of smallholder claims. Although the campaign was an uncertain rupture in land imaginaries, these moments matter. Land claimants sought to create affective ties with volunteer land surveyors that embedded hopeful land imaginaries in rural areas and into the national cadastral system. The land title in this context is the material bearer of a land imaginary that centres on rural people’s connection to the land, and also reinforces rural people’s connection to the Cambodian state and the potential to gain the state’s protection. We contribute to an emerging literature that locates the formative effects of hope as an orientation and as a method by exploring the possibilities inherent in rupture. (shrink)

Crisis, Rupture and Anxiety: An Interdisciplinary Examination of Contemporary and Historical Human Challenges brings together a range of original contributions that seek to critically interrogate the concept of 'crisis', a seemingly omnipresent and defining metonym of our times. Both international and interdisciplinary in perspective, the leading doctoral scholars and early-career researchers represented in this volume unsettle hegemonic notions of crisis (and possible remedies) by exploring both a very wide range of extant crises (in and of politics, economics, communities, technologies, (...) urban policy, literary representation, media studies, language learning, nationalisms and national identity, and the legitimation of the state), as well as the roots of our contemporary understandings of crisis and the politics of 'crisis representation'. The book is broadly divided into two sections, 'Politics and Society' and 'Arts, Media and Humanities'. Originating in the University of Salford Arts, Media and Social Sciences Postgraduate Research Conference of 2010, Crisis, Rupture and Anxiety provides both an accessible and wide-ranging general introduction to various applications of the concept of crisis, as well providing a more specialist resource for students exploring crisis in one of the many disciplinary fields represented in this collection. Crisis, Rupture and Anxiety will be of particular interest to students with interdisciplinary interests that encompass cultural studies, literary theory, media studies, politics, sociology and urban studies. (shrink)

Taking Poland as a case study, this article examines the sociological and historical-institutional factors that determine the relationship between the process of medical professionalisation and reproductive rights in transitional societies. Focusing on three periods in Polish history, (a) Partition era (1772–1918), (b) the Second Polish Republic (1918–1939), and (c) the post-war period (1945–1989), it identifies ruptures and continuities that have shaped the development of the Polish medical profession and its attitude towards abortion care today. Using insights from feminist historical institutionalism, (...) abortion studies, and the sociology of professions, the article applies the concept of ‘dialectical transformations’ to explain institutional and policy reproduction and change over time. It shows how professional and legal institutions are often transferred from one systemic context to another by individuals or organisations whose positions move from opposition to dominance. Understanding such processes is especially important in light of the retrenchment of reproductive rights across the globe. (shrink)

A question as old as the study of rhetoric itself, how we might conceive of the ethical basis of persuasion, is as pressing an issue today as ever. One of the earliest critiques of rhetoric comes from Plato's Phaedrus, in which rhetoric is likened to lust, seduction, domination, and even rape in its stance toward the other. Indeed, rhetorical scholarship has remained in contestation with these depictions of rhetoric as akin to coercion and violence.1 Unable to shake Plato's damning criticisms, (...) Plato has become a perpetual interlocutor and sparring partner in the debate regarding rhetorical ethics, leaving rhetorical scholars, as Michael Dues and Mary Brown claim, "boxing Plato's shadow" in attempts to... (shrink)

This dissertation offers an account of linguistic practices of Latinx people in the United States through the lens of critical feminist phenomenology. It examines how Latinx people are racialized on the basis of their language use, the normative logics that structure those processes of racialization, and the practices by which Latinx people resist and transform those logics. In this project, I develop a critical feminist phenomenological approach that locates itself within a tradition of Latina feminist phenomenology—a tradition that has prioritized (...) the articulation of situated, embodied experiences of oppressing⇔resisting relations lived by Latinx intersubjectivities in the context of the United States. I propose the concept of “linguistic rupture” in order to name the specific kind of experience at the center of this analysis. The analysis allows for a reconceptualization of language and linguistic practices that constructs Latinx speakers as actively resistant rather than just passively oppressed. While I do argue that linguistic rupture is particularly significant in understanding the racialization of Latinx populations in the United States, the account of linguistic rupture developed in this project has potential for application across a broad range of racializing processes and events not limited to U.S. Latinx experience. It thus invites further examination and critical engagement with the various ways in which ruptures experienced by minoritized and marginalized subjects in general expose hegemonic logics operating in multiple directions, as well as the ways in which linguistic engagements specifically anchor embodied intersubjectivity existentially. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the importance of practices of disidentification and imagination for democratic progress and change. To this end, I bring together certain aspects of Stanley Cavell’s and Richard Rorty’s reflections on democracy, aesthetics, and morality with Jacques Rancière’s account of the importance of appearance for democratic participation. With Rancière, it can be shown that any public–political order always involves the possibility (and often the reality) of exclusion or oppression of those who “have no part” in the current (...) order through a particular order of perceptibility, and that democratic action, therefore, requires rupturing acts of political agency on the part of self-proclaimed political actors through which disidentifications and constructions of difference against such existing orders become possible. With Cavell and Rorty, in turn, it can be shown that these rupturing moments, in order to actually become politically effective, require a responsive disposition and a willingness to engage in practices of imagination on the part of those who occupy dominant positions on existing orders, insofar as they must acknowledge the expression of others’ sense of injustice. The upshot of my discussion is that a comprehensive account of the aesthetic dimension of democratic politics must simultaneously address the interruption of political action on the one hand and responsiveness on the other, and that Rancière and the neo-pragmatists Rorty and Cavell complement each other insofar as they illuminate the blind spots of their respective approaches. (shrink)

Using specific examples drawn from Sartre’s oeuvre, I propose to treat the contemporary problem of critical method—or, more precisely, of critical interpretation—in literary texts. I begin by examining the meaning of Sartre’s The Flies, one of his earliest dramatic works.The themes of the play are easily grouped into pairs of opposing concepts: authenticity versus inauthenticity, lucidity versus bad faith, revolt versus conformism, atheism versus religion, revolution versus reaction, and so on. All these themes appear, and are organized, as a function (...) of the conflict between Orestes and Aegisthus. The drama is the embodiment of thematic oppositions. If these oppositions were overcome, the.. (shrink)

Tangled ruptures: discursive changes in Danish psychiatric nursing 1965–75Psychiatric nursing and psychiatric nurses have been referred to in various ways over the course of history. These articulations reflect and constitute the ways in which nursing is comprehended during specific periods. A rupture in these descriptions and conceptions of Danish psychiatric nursing over the period 1965–75 is identified using a discourse analytical framework, inspired primarily by Foucault. This rupture influenced all aspects of psychiatric nursing: the perception of the psychiatric (...) patient, the expertise and knowledge of the nurse and the care given by the nurse. The study raises questions about the cultural and social changes that occurred prior to the discursive rupture. (shrink)

The works of Sade portray the corrupt and libertine practices at the time of Louis XV's despotic regime, invariably referring to the boudoir as a privileged place for the transformation of mind and body as well as for philosophical production. The actuality of Sade's thought lies in the fact that he reveals - as do modem trends - the narcissic constitution of subjectivity that, in its social-political aspect, leads to political conformism. This article aims at presenting Sade's thought as a (...) radical critique of social relationships, which lead to the rupture of Rousseau's social contract. His relentless doctrine becomes negative philosophy in that it supplies the foundations for the critique of instrumental reason. A pessimist regarding the course of social totality, Sade's theory points to human 'animality' as a possible means of transcending the artificiality of social relationships.As obras de Sade procuram retratar as práticas corruptas e libertinas presentes no regime despótico de Luís XV, apontando invariavelmente a "alcova" como lugar privilegiado de transformação do corpo e da mente e, ao mesmo tempo, de produção filosófica. A atualidade do pensamento de Sade revela-se no fato de colocar como tendencia da modernidade, a constituição narcísica da subjetividade que, em sua variante político-social, aparece sob a forma do conformismo político. Este artigo pretende apresentar o pensamento de Sade como urna crítica aos liames sociais, o que conduz à ruptura da idéia de pacto social formulada por Rousseau. A doutrina sem compaixão de Sade torna-se filosofia negativa na medida em que fornece os fundamentos da crítica à razão instrumental. Sendo pessimista quanto aos rumos do existente, a teoria sadiana aponta a "animalidade" humana como possibilidade de transcendencia da artificialidade dos laços sociais. (shrink)

The concept of suture has long been an important and controversial concept in investigations of the relationships between narrative, diegesis, character, and spectator. The dominant understanding of suture has paid more attention to its Lacanian derivation – and to the account given by Daniel Dayan – than to the work of Jean-Pierre Oudart which first introduced suture into Film Studies. This article, however, follows the recent work of George Butte, who argues that the way Oudart understands suture is very illuminating (...) for the study of the complex forms of intersubjectivity that cinema so readily, and so richly, dramatises – famously by means of shot/reverse shot figures. It argues that certain key moments in Ridley Scott's Alien activate ideas of corporeality, desire, and intersubjectivity in ways that contribute to a wider thematic and figurative nexus at work in the film directed at the exploration of impossible intersubjectivities. The article also proposes that, via this nexus, the film offers an intriguing instantiation of Nietzsche's notion of the “human, all too human”, thereby demonstrating that there is much more in Nietzsche of relevance to Alien than the xenomorph's superhuman “will-to-power”. The android Ash's admiration for the alien's lack both of conscience and consciousness ironically indicates his own all-too-human recognition of the superfluity but inescapability of his own consciousness. The article concludes by drawing briefly on the work of Stanley Cavell on acknowledgment, proposing that much of the horror of Alien lies not only in how bodies are ruptured but in the fact that some subjectivities cannot even be sutured. (shrink)

Après 1850, la physique moléculaire laplacienne ou ampérienne s’est trouvée en compétition avec d’autres approches impliquant la thermodynamique et les théories cinétiques. Henri Poincaré est l’un des deux seuls savants français qui contribuèrent au développement de la mécanique statistique classique au tournant du siècle. Son ouverture à la physique étrangère et son engagement pour une physique des principes et pour un pluralisme méthodologique marquent une rupture avec l’autosuffisance prétendue de la physique française. Cependant, l’évolution des idées de Poincaré sur (...) le réductionnisme mécaniste ne peut se comprendre sans évoquer la cosmovision laplacienne, laquelle restait vivante vers 1880, à rebours d’une vision positiviste ou descriptive. Son apport à la mécanique statistique a des liens avec ce vieil engagement thématique des physiciens français, alors même qu’il s’ouvre aux idées de Maxwell et qu’il mobilise la mécanique céleste. Dans son cours sur la thermodynamique (1888-1889), il s’intéresse d’abord aux analogies mécaniques non-probabilistes proposées par Helmholtz pour les principes de la thermodynamique, en harmonie avec cette cosmovision. Vers 1893, il se rapproche des idées de Boltzmann et Maxwell et établit un rapport entre quelques résultats de mécanique céleste (récurrence, intégrales non-uniformes) et les fondements de la statistique. Il développe aussi un intérêt croissant pour les explications de l’irréversibilité thermodynamique. (shrink)

Moral injury is the trauma caused by violations of deeply held values and beliefs. This paper draws on relational philosophical anthropologies to develop the connection between moral injury and moral identity and to offer implications for moral repair, focusing particularly on healthcare professionals. We expound on the notion of moral identity as the relational and narrative constitution of the self. Moral identity is formed and forged in the context of communities and narrative and is necessary for providing a moral horizon (...) against which to act. We then explore the relationship between moral injury and damaged moral identities. We describe how moral injury ruptures one’s sense of self leading to moral disorientation. The article concludes with implications for moral repair. Since moral identity is relationally formed, moral repair is not primarily an individual task but requires the involvement of others to heal one’s identity. The repair of moral injury requires the transformation of a moral identity in community. (shrink)

"La solidarité que je ressentais avec les opprimés, avec ceux qui souffraient, a fait que je me suis spontanément`: tourné vers l'anarchisme - cette théorie qui traite des rapports de domination".

The COVID-19 pandemic has foregrounded the significance of time to everyday life, as the routines, pace, and speed of social relations were widely reconfigured. This article uses rhythm as an object and tool of inquiry to make sense of spatio-temporal change. We analyse the Mass Observation (MO) directive we co-commissioned on ‘COVID-19 and Time’, where volunteer writers reflect on whether and how time was made, experienced, and imagined differently during the early stages of the pandemic in the UK. We draw (...) on Henri Lefebvre and Catherine Régulier's ‘rhythmanalysis’, taking up their theorisation of rhythm as linear and cyclical and their concepts of arrhythmia (discordant rhythms) and eurhythmia (harmonious rhythms). Our analysis highlights how MO writers articulate (a) the ruptures to their everyday rhythms across time and space, (b) their experience of ‘blurred’ or ‘merged’ time as everyday rhythms are dissolved and the pace of time is intensified or slowed, and (c) the remaking of rhythms through new practices or devices and attunements to nature. We show how rhythm enables a consideration of the spatio-temporal textures of everyday life, including their unevenness, variation, and difference. The article thus contributes to and expands recent scholarship on the social life of time, rhythm and rhythmanalysis, everyday life, and MO. (shrink)

Using Foucault’s conceptual frame from The Archaeology of Knowledge to read Foucault’s late deployment of “spirituality,” this article argues that Foucault’s enigmatic gesture in using this concept reveals a refusal of “rupture” from the Christian pre-modern discourse of “spirit.” Despite attempts to alter the “field of use,” Foucault’s genealogical commitment ensures a Christian continuity in modern discourses of transformation. In a detailed examination of the 1982 Collège de France lectures, the article returns Foucault’s use of “spirituality” to the Alexandrian (...) joining of philosophy and theology and the specificity of Christian practice and belief. (shrink)

Caroline of Ansbach, wife of George II, occupied a crucial position in the public life of early 18th-century Britain. She was seen to exert considerable influence on the politics of the court and, as mother to the Hanoverian dynasty's next generation, she became an important emblem for the nation's political well-being. This paper examines how such emblematic significance was challenged and qualified when Caroline's body could no longer be portrayed as healthy and life giving. Using private memoirs and correspondence from (...) the time of her death in 1737, the paper explores the metaphorical potential of the queen's strangulated hernia, as well as the particular problems it posed for the public image of her dynasty. Through these investigations, the paper will comment upon the haphazard nature of public discussion in the early 18th century, and reveal the complex relationship between political speculation and medical diagnosis. (shrink)

Haraway foregrounds many stories that we, in a late capitalist era, tell ourselves in order to justify, or not even notice, actions that are harmful to all living things. While I am mindful of Haraway’s excellent attention to the ways that ‘stories tell stories, thoughts think thoughts, and knots knot knots,’ I argue that we must take great care when we, as educators, blur the lines between facts and fiction; reality and art. When everything becomes a story—with some stories simply (...) being more compelling than other stories—we run the risk of contributing to the very sense of unmooring that has led us to the status quo where arctic icecaps are melting, living things are becoming extinct, and humans are suffering from man-made pollution. In this paper, I trouble the use of stories to draw attention to the ecological harm we have done to our earth. While stories can be powerful, there are risks associated with how we tell stories; and particular risks when we blur the lines between critical storytelling and the idea of something as ‘factual’. Storytelling, and blurring the lines between stories and facts, can have negative implications for our quest to generate a sense of ‘response-ability’ for our planet and all who live on it. In order to make that argument, I first talk about my own story and the ways that I have used stories in the classroom. I then touch on Haraway and her particular use of stories. I then foreground the practice of telling truths with stories by exploring the use of critical fiction and narrative inquiry. I conclude with implications for pedagogy. (shrink)

What happens when a gallery space dedicated to exhibiting European art is interrupted by introducing African art objects? This essay reviews a temporary exhibition that introduced works of art from Africa, the property of Berlin’s Ethnologisches Museum, into the exhibition space of the Bode Museum, whose collection consists of European art objects from the Classical to the Baroque periods. I offer a reading that is quite different than the curators’, proposing art museums as institutions where philosophies are expressed in the (...) form of art objects. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 35.2 (2002) 138-152 [Access article in PDF] Respecting the Rupture: Not Solving the Problem of Unity in Plato's Phaedrus James L. Kastely Plato's Phaedrus is a particularly instructive example of the double nature and status of rhetoric, for it embodies a tension at the heart of rhetoric. The first half of the dialogue presents three examples of rhetorical practice, while the second develops a theoretical (...) justification of rhetoric as an art. Thus, the dialogue would seem to offer a productive negotiation of the practice/theory tension. What makes the dialogue interesting, however, is the fact that this negotiation does not occur. The dialogue does not bring theory and practice into a harmonious relation, for there is a troubling discontinuity between its two halves, and rhetorical practice feels fractured. The exploration of eros that had occupied the first half of the dialogue is abandoned before the beginning of the second half, and then, following a logic that is at best associational, Socrates and Phaedrus explore the standards that should govern the practice of rhetoric. The infelicity of this transition raises a question: why did Plato structure the Phaedrus in such a way that it emphasized the dissonance between the two halves of the dialogue? To pose the question this way, however, is to go in a direction different from many of the best contemporary interpretations of the dialogue, which either argue that the dialogue is unified (Griswold 164) or suggest that the dissonance between its two halves reflects a shift in Plato's approach to philosophy (Kahn 373; Nehamas 352). In contrast, I will argue that the rupture in the dialogue is thematically purposive, for it points to an inescapable schism within rhetoric that makes rhetoric philosophically interesting.Socrates' second speech, his palinode to Eros, is a rhetorical tour de force that closes the first half of the dialogue. The importance of the palinode, however, is not limited to its role as an exemplary rhetorical performance, [End Page 138] for it also plays a crucial role in resolving the problem of erotic madness that organizes the intellectual drama of the first half. It would seem reasonable to expect that such an important and powerful moment in the dialogue would, at the very least, play a significant role in the philosophical discussion that composes the dialogue's second half. But that doesn't happen. While Socrates does refer to the palinode in his theoretical discussion of rhetoric, he makes little use of it, and, more important, he is silent on the subject of eros. Both the dramatic organization of the second half of the dialogue and its theoretical discussion cooperate to turn the rhetorical triumph of the palinode into a problem. Why has eros been abandoned as a philosophic topic, and what does this abandoning imply about the erotically grounded rhetoric that Socrates practiced and defended?To make matters worse, Socrates himself dismisses the palinode as a serious effort. He characterizes the speech as little more than a pleasant game, one that is not without value only because "these two certain forms (of gathering and dividing) were stated by chance" (265c). Far from viewing the palinode as possessing philosophical significance, Socrates appears to value it principally for its being a so-so example of a work of rhetoric that has been shaped by dialectic. While it is hard not to take Socrates' dismissal of the seriousness of the speech as partially disingenuous (just prior to his dismissal, he refers to the palinode as serious and reverent [265b]), he also does seem to mean what he says. Whether he is being straightforward or ironic does not finally matter because in either case the problem that occupies him and Phaedrus in the first half has disappeared from the dialogue. And that creates a problem: for if the philosophic issues of the first half of the dialogue drop out, then the dialogue is not coherent.This incoherence is especially troubling given Socrates' explicit endorsement of coherence as an important rhetorical value. In fact, when he begins his... (shrink)

Conflicts of interest serve as a cipher for a radical rupture in the Flexnerian paradigm of medicine, and they can only be addressed if we recognize that health care is now practiced by institutions, not just individual physicians. By showing how "appropriate utilization of services" or "that which is medically indicated" is a function of socioeconomic factors related to institutional responsibilities, I point toward an administrative and organizational ethic as a needed component for addressing conflicts of interest. The argument (...) is developed by reviewing three important books. First, I consider Mark Rodwin's attempt to configure the economic structures of medicine so that classical fiduciary and scientific ideals can be fostered. Second, I consider E. Haavi Morreim's attempt to modify the classical ideals in order to account for new economic realities. Finally, by considering essays in a recent volume on conflicts of interest edited by Spece, Shimm, and Buchanan, I argue for a constructive dialectic between the approaches of Rodwin and Morreim. In order to properly address conflicts of interest, there must be a radical reassessment of medicine that accounts for the interrelation between scientific, ethical, and economic concerns. Until institutions come into view and professional ethics is developed to account for their role, legitimate interests and obligations of diverse parties cannot be harmonized. (shrink)

Dialogue is promoted as a key strategy to ‘solve’ the ‘problem’ of diversity in educational settings. Yet, “[w]hen we select words … We usually take them from other utterances, and mainly from utterances that are kindred to ours in genre, that is in theme, composition or style”. This article problematises the complexities of dialogic engagements with foreigner teachers in educational encounters. Bakhtin’s treatment of polyphonic dialogic encounters provides an analytical frame for explicating the intertextuality of foreigner teacher engagements as not (...) only temporally and culturally, but also individually volatile. The article suggests that dialogic encounters are unpredictably complex, alive and never neutral, and that dialogic engagements can be so fraught with fear that verbal or cross cultural engagements with teacher foreigners must be recognised as risky and dangerous, and not always smooth ‘solutions’ to a ‘problem’. A dual Bakhtinian/kristevan lens expands the analysis to expose the vulnerability of dialogue, through unconscious revelations of teacher subjects that are forever in process. The article culminates in an argument for the crucial importance of a receptive, attentive ethics of care in dialogic engagements with cultural foreigners in educational relationships, to avoid fearful exposure, lifeless dialogue and silence. (shrink)

The nineteenth century was the time of the emergence of the concept of solidarity, which "to an extent replaced [the older term fraternity],"1 as well as of a dramatic increase in utopian thinking and writing.2 A notable place among the impressive body of utopian literature of the era belongs to feminist and antifeminist visions of alternative futures, especially from 1860s onward, which Lewes links with "middle class women's overwhelming frustration... with the apparent failure of the suffrage movement."3 The concept of (...) womanhood was also undergoing transformations at that time, variously defined with reference to contending and sometimes complementary tendencies: the cult of domesticity and the women's rights... (shrink)

In this paper, confronted are two radical currents of thought about the film image. In a first step, demonstrated is how some Marxist theorists define the film image as ontologically grounded in alienation and the destruction of non-mediated presence due to its technical origin, as well as its effects. In a second step, I try to show how André Bazin, influenced by phenomenology and taking up identical premises as the Marxists, came to diametrically opposite conclusions: it isn’t but the film (...) image that discloses the real. Drawing on the work of Jacques Rancière, Jean-Luc Nancy and Giorgio Agamben, in a third step I establish a certain synthesis between these two currents and examine how spectacle is guarded, but also re-evaluated within the regime of film images. Through this re-evaluation, one gets a glimpse at the contours of an exigent aesthetic program that in some respects conforms to, while also deviating from eminent ideas on cinematic postmodernism. (shrink)

This article traces certain rhetorics of knowledge-change as well as a few models of such change. In particular, it focuses on models that emphasize novelty and sudden transformation. To this end, the works of Thomas Kuhn, and the debates surrounding his celebrated modeling of the paradigm, are explored. Having established – at least in an illustrative fashion – the role of novelty in Kuhn’s philosophy of science, we then look more briefly at the mid-career work of Michel Foucault (his Order (...) of Things and the Archaeology of Knowledge ), and the debate between Jürgen Habermas and Jean-François Lyotard to find (in Foucault’s case) analogies with the earlier models and debates surrounding Popper and Kuhn, and then (in the Habermas/Lyotard discussion), to see how revolutionary and reactionary status count in assigning value to models of knowledge. In all these inquiries, we seek less to criticize particular theorists (that has already been done) than to understand a dominant strand of understanding of knowledge and knowledge-change in the contemporary academy. (shrink)

In a period in which capital has been on the offensive for many years, using debt and financial crises as rationales for wielding austerity to hammer down wages and social services and terrorism as an excuse for attacking civil liberties, it is important to realize that the origins of this long period of crisis lay in the struggles of people to free their lives from the endless subordination to work within a society organized as a gigantic social factory. In both (...) the self-proclaimed capitalist West and socialist East the managers of that subordination, whether in private enterprise or the state, repeatedly found their plans undermined by people who refused to play by their rules and who elaborated activities and social relationships that escaped their control. The refusal of their rules meant crisis for the managers; the elaboration of other ways of being—whether characterized as the crafting of civil society or as autonomous self-valorization—meant crisis for and freedom from society-as-work-machine. As always, the capitalist response has involved instrumentalization and repression; basically its managers have sought to harness what they could and eliminate what they could not. For a long time instrumentali-zation was most obvious in the West and repression was most obvious in the East, yet both were always at play everywhere, and everywhere those responses were resisted and often escaped. It was that resistance and those escapes that led to the unleashing of the monetary weapons of financialization and their current employment to convert crisis-for-capital into crisis-for-us. It is in past and present resistance and escapes that we must discover both our weaknesses and our strengths in order to overcome capital’s current offensive and to elaborate new worlds. It is the overall thesis of this paper that Marx’s labor theory of value still provides vital aid in helping us understand these historical developments. (shrink)