This article seeks to explore the theoretical contributions of Axel Honneth, particularly in his works, The Struggle for Recognition and Reification, aiming at diving deep into the debate on the contemporary ideological expressions and their incidence in the process of subjective constitution in teenage years. This particular interest springs from the need to interweave the concepts of reification, forgetfulness and recognition within a fruitful theoretical field in order to interpret a project work called Hip-Hop: cultures and identities, developed (...) with teenagers in a public school in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. From our point of view, the concepts of reification and forgetfulness are fundamental to identify how the conservative ideological expressions are present in the imaginary of adolescents in the contemporary world. Although rereading the concepts of reification and forgetfulness, as proposed by the author, is regarded as essential for understanding the ideological expressions that are based on and guided by consumption. However, even though we acknowledge Honneth's efforts toward moving forward with the concept of reification, it is crucial to emphasize the mediation concept Lukács explored in his work, History and Class Consciousness, so as to elucidate how the forgetfulness of the primary recognition relations is processed. (shrink)

The author explores how the discursive practices of social texts relate to the subjectivities of readers. Employing Dorothy Smith's notion of femininity as textually mediated discourse, the author analyzes how teenage girls read the depictions of femininity in the glossy advertisements of fashion magazines. Through interviews with 48 girls aged 13 to 17 years, she explores both why and how young girls negotiate “what it means to be a woman.” Most young girls in her study draw on stereotypical (...) meanings of adult femininity. By giving these stereotypes truth status, these readers valorize not only patriarchal meanings of womanhood but also naturalize associations between femininity and the commodities through which this femininity is expressed as the everyday doing of gender. The author concludes by discussing implications of this study for both a feminist theory and a feminist politics of culture. (shrink)

Esports is a rapidly growing industry worldwide, and it is making significant inroads in Hong Kong as well. However, owing to debates regarding the distinction between Esports and video gaming and the potential negative effects of engaging in Esports, its development in Hong Kong is still in its infancy. Therefore, this qualitative study investigated the perceptions and attitudes of teenagers and young adults toward Esports development and engagement, using the theory of planned behavior. Twenty-five teenagers and young adults participated in (...) this study, with their ages ranging from 15 to 29 years. Our results revealed the views of Hong Kong teenagers and young adults on the beneficial and deleterious outcomes, subjective norms, and barriers and facilitators of participating in Esports. Additionally, the results of this qualitative study may contribute toward a deeper understanding of Hong Kong Esports players to develop a theory of planned behavior construct for capturing the beliefs and perceptions of Hong Kong teenagers toward Esports. (shrink)

This article presents a genealogical examination of the emergence of governmental concern with ‘children having children’, focusing on the work of the London County Council and local voluntary organizations in the 1950s and 1960s. The article explores the moral-Christian discourse shaping governmental work with ‘unwed mothers’ and identifies the discursive shifts associated with the ascent of the problematization of ‘teenage motherhood’. It is argued that within the moral-Christian discourse, a woman’s subjectivity was delineated primarily according to her ‘character’ (...) not her age or her ‘maturity’. Furthermore, the prospect that a young unwed mother will raise her child was viewed positively as it was seen to contribute to the desired transformation of her character. The shift to a concern with ‘children having children’ was linked with a rise in the influence of psychological discourse on government work. Two psychological notions were particularly important: the proposition that teenagers are emotionally immature and the assertion that inadequate mothering has a lasting effect on the health of a child. The article concludes that unless contemporary scientific claims regarding young people’s psychological and physiological maturity are challenged, the ‘problem’ of teenage parenthood will persist in the years to come. (shrink)

Everything is a sign. We can consider the words we use, the texts we write, the movies or TV series we watch, photos or any content used in social media as a 'sign'. These signs are constantly telling us something as a representation. When considered from this point of view, it is inevitable that cartoons prepared for children will also be an sign. Based on this, it has been thought that the cartoon called 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles', which has (...) been broadcast all over the world for more than thirty years, both on television and in cinemas without losing its currency, may also be signs. For this reason, the aim of the study is to analyze the narrative of the cartoons and animations called 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' through the representations in this narrative, the characters and their names in the cartoons and animations, the weapons used by the characters, the food they eat, their clothes, the colors and places they use. In addition, what the subject discussed in Mutant Ninja Turtles in general represents was analyzed through the relevant characters. In the study, it has been seen that each sign examined semiotically is produced with a certain cultural meaning. The cultural heritage from the Renaissance to the present reflects the culture of a particular society. Therefore, the culture spread by mass media can influence different cultures from itself. (shrink)

This article discusses the effects of the 24 year-old rule in Denmark utilising Foucault’s understanding of the ‘subject’ within a governmentality framework. The 24 year-old rule is a good example of how a gendered knowledge about immigration becomes a reality that steers biopolitics, enables practices of normalisation and subjectifies immigrants in various ways. The article foregrounds the subjectivity of immigrant women through a narrative analysis of the constitution of the subject within discourses and in an asymmetrical relationship to power (...) in governance. This analysis reveals the complexity of empirical interactions between the ideational structure of legislative measures and personal meanings expressed by immigrant subjectivities. While I illustrate certain modes of subjectification in relation to the 24 year-old rule, I emphasise the ways subjects employ certain identity strategies by resisting, reworking or contributing to the practices of normalisation. (shrink)

Abstract:This paper explores multiple encounters between activist-survivors of Japanese military sexual slavery (“comfort women” or halmonis, meaning “elderly women” or “grannies” in Korean) and solidarity activists. I mainly focus on the stories of two foundational figures in the ongoing justice campaign for the survivors, both of whom faced that forceful military act (between 1932 and 1945) as teenage girls in colonized Korea, although in dramatically different ways: Yun Chung-ok, a leading scholar and activist who, having managed to escape the (...) fate of many other peers, first spoke out about Japanese military sexual slavery, and Kim Bok-dong, a survivor and human rights activist. This paper will address the multiple encounters and dialogues of memories to resituate subjects, which led to overcoming personal trauma and reaching out to others and continues to drive the redress movement. Drawing on oral history interviews, feminist ethnography, and various documented resources including survivors’ testimonies, which have been archived for around twenty years as part of my own scholar-activist work, I juxtapose these women’s lives to show how a community of responsibility has been formed to decolonize androcentric history. The women involved in the movement for the resolution of the Japanese military sexual slavery issue reinterpreted their experiences as having been formed by imperialism, colonialism, and patriarchy. While caring for and healing with one another, they suggested the possibility of a new subject formation. Through mutually constructed identities, activist-survivors broke away from social stigma and became agents who led transformation of a postcolonial society. (shrink)

Embodied Cognition is growing up, and How the Body Shapes the Mind is both a sign of, and substantive contributor to this ongoing development. Born in or about 1991, EC is only now emerging from a tumultuous but exciting childhood marked in particular by the size and breadth of the extended family hoping to have some impact on its early education and upbringing. As family members include computer science, phenomenology, developmental and cognitive psychology, analytic philosophy of mind, linguistics, neuroscience, and (...) eastern mysticism, just to name a few, EC has both benefited and suffered from a wealth of different and often incompatible ideas about who and what it is, what it should do with its life, even what language it should speak. Gallagher brings some cohesion and consistency to this situation, not by surveying and synthesizing these competing approaches, but by focusing on some fundamental issues, and carefully marshalling the evidence and developing the vocabulary to thoroughly consider them. (shrink)

La formación profesional tiene un carácter contextualizado que responde a las exigencias que la época, la sociedad y el país reclaman a las universidades. La Estomatología en Cuba no se encuentra al margen de estos preceptos por lo que desarrolla un plan de estudio que acentúa la flexibilidad para realizar modificaciones necesarias y pertinentes. El estudiante al culminar la carrera debe brindar una atención estomatológica integral donde las anomalías dentomaxilofaciales constituyen la tercera línea de trabajo. Estas ocasionan afectaciones estéticas que (...) repercuten en la autoestima y adaptación social de niños y adolescentes por lo que se necesita de una orientación sicoeducativa, acción para la cual el profesional deberá estar preparado. A partir de las insuficiencias detectadas en el proceso formativo del estomatólogo, el objetivo del presente trabajo es proponer un curso propio sobre la temática para favorecer la graduación de un profesional capaz de resolver los problemas que afectan el complejo estomatognático con un enfoque biosicosocial. Los métodos empleados fueron el histórico-lógico y análisis-síntesis. Professional training has a contextualized nature which reflects the demands that the time, society and the country require from universities. In Cuba, Stomatology is not out of these precepts and therefore it carries out a syllabus that emphasizes flexibility to make necessary and appropriate changes. When students graduate, they must provide a complete stomatological care where dental maxillofacial anomalies are the third line of work. They cause aesthetic harm that affects children and teenagers' self-esteem and social adaptation which makes psych educational guidance necessary; a situation professional must be prepared for. Starting from the weak points discovered in the training process of stomatologists, a crash course in the subject is suggested in order to favor the graduation of professionals who are able to solve problems that affect the stomatognatic complex with a biopsychosocial approach, through the use of required methods, techniques and procedures. (shrink)

Towards the end of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s fragment ‘The Triumph of Life’ there are some famous lines which raise most of the questions that will concern me in this essay. Never mind, for the moment, the context: the lines I have in mind are these: “I rose; and, bending at her sweet command, Touched with faint lips the cup she raised, And suddenly my brain became as sand “Where the first wave had more than half erased The track of deer (...) on desert Labrador, Whilst the fierce wolf from which they fled amazed “Leaves his stamp visibly upon the shore Until the second bursts—so on my sight Burst a new Vision never seen before.—1[…]Two kinds of things are happening here which I want to point out. The first is that even as the poem is attempting to represent the mind as passive and the experience of the mind as an empty succession of events, it is also making a quite contrary attempt to represent the mind as active and the succession as a structure. The lines dramatise how a play of mental events, as they are represented in language, may be reprocessed in such a way that some of them come to be classified as interruptions or breaks in the otherwise meaningful sequence composed by the others. As my first paraphrase suggested, it seems to make sense to recast Shelley’s narrative into the story of deer chased by a wolf, a story which is then interrupted by the wave which bursts on the shore and which threatens the coherence of the story by threatening to efface all sin that the deer have passed across the beach, have crossed the mind. 1. Percy Bysshe Shelley, ‘The Triumph of Life,’ in Shelley’s Poetry and Prose, ed. Donald H. Reiman and Sharon B. Powers , II. 403-11. The most illuminating reading of these lines is Paul de Man’s in The Rhetoric of Romanticism , pp. 99-100. John Barrell is professor of English at the University of Sussex and author of a number of books on literature and the visual arts, most recently Poetry, Language and Politics . The Infection of Thomas De Quincey and The Birth of Pandora will be published next year. (shrink)

'A fabulous journey through thirty years of political and intellectual ferment... will reorient our reading of Foucault's major works' Didier Eribon The Essential Works of Michel Foucault offers the definitive collection of his articles, interviews and seminars from across thirty years of his extraordinary career. This first volume, Ethics, contains the summaries of Foucault's renowned courses at the Collège de France, as well as key writings and candid interviews on ethical matters: from the role of the intellectual and (...) philosopher in society to friendship, sexuality and the care of the self and others. Edited by Paul Rabinow Translated by Robert Hurley and Others. (shrink)

The influence that the meditations of Husserl's later years may have had on the younger generation is, as yet, difficult to assess. And it is, in fact, not important whether this question can or cannot be answered. Husserl, obviously, was not less sensitive to the problems arising from the intellectual and cultural situation as it developed around 1920, than were those who have emphatically made the Lebenswelt the primary object of their inquiries and the starting point for the reconstruction (...) of philosophy. (shrink)

Although the use of pronouns has been extensively investigated in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), most studies have focused on English, and no study to date has investigated the use of subject pronouns in null subject languages. The present study aims to fill this gap by investigating the use of subject and object pronouns in 5- to 8-year-old Greek-speaking high-functioning children with ASD compared to individually matched typically developing age and language controls. The ‘Frog where are you’ (Mayer, 1969) (...) narrative task was used to elicit subject and object pronouns as well as DPs. Greek is a null subject language, and as a result, subject pronouns most often remain without phonological content. The results showed that both groups used more null than overt subject pronouns, indicating that children with ASD know that Greek is a null subject language. TD children used more null subjects than subject DPs, whereas children with ASD used an equal proportion of null subjects and subject DPs. In terms of object pronouns, both groups produced more clitics and object DPs than strong object pronouns, but the difference between clitics and DPs did not reach significance in either of the groups. Importantly, the groups did not differ from each other in the use of ambiguous pronouns in both the subject and object position. The ASD children’s avoidance to use pronominal subjects can be taken as evidence that they use a strategy to avoid infelicitous reference. This would suggest that the ASD children’s difficulties with pronouns is not due to difficulties in core grammar. (shrink)

Recent feminist theorizing has pointed to a `resurgent patriarchy' within neo-liberal postfeminist times, which re-orders and restabilizes the heterosexual matrix through a politics of `postfeminist masquerade' demanded of girls and women (McRobbie). This paper seeks to complicate this thesis, exploring the regulation and rupture of Butler's `heterosexual matrix' as a complex performative politics through which girls' conflictual relationships with themselves, and other girls and boys are staged and through which dominant versions of tweenage and teenage femininity are reinscribed but (...) also reworked, in race and class specific ways. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari's powerful conceptual repertoire for disrupting Oedipal logics in Anti-Oedipus, we offer a `molecular mapping', illustrating cracks and ruptures in what is a porous heterosexual matrix, exploring a rhythm of `deterritorializations' and `reterritorializations' of the normative in our respective ethnographic and narrative interviews with girls. We also trace more sustained ruptures of heteronormative femininity drawing upon Deleuze and Guattari's notion of `lines of flight' and Braidotti's concept of `alternative figuration'. We argue ruptures and alternative figurations are not constitutive of total `molar' resistance to norms, but are significant spaces of doing girl differently and crucial to map if we are to perceive the malleability and multiplicity of contemporary girl subjectivities, which exceed heteronormative femininity and phallogocentric desire. (shrink)

During the last twenty years in Latin America, there has been a rise in governments drawn from self-defining progressive political currents. Consequently a revitalization is underway of the debate on the viability, pertinence, and characteristics of the welfare state in the twenty-first century. In this context, the present article explores emerging social practices that redefine the various senses of the public space; practices that go beyond nation states, situated in a global territoriality, articulating languages and eliciting emotions capable of (...) producing new socialities. The multitude is discussed as a social subject capable of generating transformative practices. Specifically, the article analyzes the way in which the singularities of occupations raise further questions for nation states. The analysis focuses on global movements such as #Occupy camping out on squares. (shrink)

This book brings together over 25 years of Arindam Chakrabarti's original research in East-West 'fusion' philosophy on issues of epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of mind. Organized under the three basic concepts of a thing out there in the world, the self who perceives it, and other subjects or selves, his work revolves around a set of realism links. Examining connections between metaphysical stances toward the world, selves, and universals, Chakrabarti engages with classical Indian and modern Western philosophical approaches to (...) a number of live topics including the refutation of idealism; the question of the definability of truth, and the possibility of truths existing unknown to anyone; the existence of non-conceptual perception; and our knowledge of other minds. He additionally makes forays into fundamental questions regarding death, darkness, absence, and nothingness. Together with conceptual clarification and progress towards alternative solutions to these substantial philosophical problems, Chakrabarti demonstrates the advantage of doing philosophy in a cosmopolitan fashion. Beginning with an analysis of the concept of a thing, and ending with an analysis of the concept of nothing, Realisms Interlinked offers a preview of a future metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of mind without borders. (shrink)

In the past 20, years the impact of progressive educational theories have become influential in nurse education particularly in relation to partnership and empowerment between lecturers and students and the development of student autonomy. The introduction of these progressive theories was in response to the criticisms that nurse education was characterized by hierarchical and asymmetrical power relationships between lecturers and students that encouraged rote learning and stifled student autonomy. This article explores how the work of Michel Foucault can be (...) mobilized to think about autonomy in three different yet overlapping ways: as a historical event; as a discursive practice; and as part of an overall strategy to produce a specific student subject position. The implications for educational practice are that, rather than a site where students are empowered, nurse education is both a factory and a laboratory where new subjectivities are continually being constructed. This suggests that empowering practices and disciplinary practices uneasily co‐exist. Critical reflection needs to be directed not only at structural dimensions of power but also on ourselves as students and lecturers by asking a Foucauldian question: How are you interested in autonomy? (shrink)

Holiness in the Christian tradition has often been understood in a way that devalues embodiment and practical engagement with the world of one's time. The latter understanding, for example, led to Marx's critique and repudiation of Christianity. Both interpretations of holiness can be understood as mistaken efforts to express the dynamism for authenticity in contextualised human subjectivity. Vatican 2 opposed both views by addressing itself to all people of good will, declaring that everyone was called to holiness, and that (...) authentic Christian identity involved solidarity with the world of one's time, especially those who are poor. Vatican 2, therefore, provided an authoritative faith foundation for holiness expressed through social commitment and for viewing social commitment on the part of people of good will in whatever state of life as a form of holiness. This vision was also the conviction of leading spirituality writers of the period, like Thomas Merton, and inspired liberation theologians and the Latin American Catholic bishops at their conference in Medellín a few years after the Council. The argument of this article is that the emergence and development of a non-dualist Christian spirituality is grounded methodologically in the correct appropriation of the common innate dynamism for authenticity in concrete human persons and lived spiritual experiences consistent with and capable of enhancing this dynamism. (shrink)

Among the many developments in philosophy in the last several years has been the relatively recent wave of books and articles, especially in ethics, linking Kantianism with Aristotelianism. Hegelians are not surprised at this turn. For Hegel, there was a kind of logic to the key concepts in Aristotle and Kant that inevitably pushed us from one to the other, and something like that thought is behind his notorious summary statement in thePhenomenologythat ‘everything hangs on apprehending and expressing the (...) true not merely assubstancebut also equally assubject.’ Or as we might alternately put it with a narrower scope, everything about our interpretation of Hegel hangs on what in the world we take Hegel to mean by that assertion. Answering that requires us to take a stand on what constitutes Hegel’s idealism and what constitutes his version of naturalism. (shrink)

The history of philosophy is the history of entire knowledge, a definition made by Lenin.1 At the same time Lenin also pointed out that throughout the two thousand years of development of philosophy the struggle between idealism and materialism, between the lines or tendencies, has never come to a stalemate.2 Based on what Lenin had pointed out, Redanov [translation of the name in Chinese—Tr.] of the Soviet Union repudiated Alexandrov's definition of the history of philosophy. As a matter of (...) fact, in defining it as the history of knowledge, Alexandrov also drew his idea from Lenin's definition. The history of philosophy is the history of knowledge and also the history of the struggle between materialism and idealism. The two definitions should complement rather than exclude each other. However, in applying them a deviation will emerge as if the use of the one would invariably violate the other. In writing The History of Philosophy of West Europe, Alexandrov applied the idea that the history of philosophy is the history of knowledge; however, he did ignore the struggle between materialism and idealism and described the progress of knowledge as a peaceful, quantitatively gradual advance. Therefore Redanov's criticism of him was not without reason. After liberation, we accepted Redanov's definition and applied it to the study of the history of Chinese philosophy. Thus we developed another deviation: We only saw philosophers of the two camps fight with each other in the history of philosophy and devoted all our energy to assigning the previous philosophers into different camps instead of focusing our attention on the complicated course of an upward spiral of the progress of man's knowledge so as to sum up the experience and lessons of such a spiral development and its regular pattern. Some people now suggest that we repudiate Redanov's idea and revive Lenin's definition. There are also people who fear the repudiation of Redanov's definition would mean a repetition of Alexandrov's mistake. We believe Lenin's definition is correct and complete. Either Redanov or Alexandrov saw only one aspect of the matter to the neglect of the other. To overcome the one-sided emphasis in our research work, we must acquire a comprehensive understanding of what Lenin had defined. (shrink)

‘Neuroethics’ is a term which has come into use in the last few years, and which is variously defined. In the Preface to his book, Grant Gillett indicates the sense in which he is using it: the central questions in neuroethics, he says, are those of ‘human identity, consciousness and moral responsibility or the problem of the will’. His aim is to offer an account of human identity which can shed light on issues both in general philosophy and in (...) bioethics.The question which this account seeks to answer is stated in various ways in the book, but perhaps the simplest formulation is this: what is the difference between being somebody and being some body? The Cartesian answer, that the difference lies in the possession of an immaterial thinking substance, is rejected on the grounds that a thinking thing cannot be only a thinking thing: to think is to respond to the world in various ways, which requires bodily means of response. But the same argument also applies to the ‘Cartesian materialism’ which would identify ‘mind’ with ‘brain’. Instead …. (shrink)

Academics and professionals working with young women face a series of paradoxes. Over the last 20 years, the lives of young women in the UK and Europe have been transformed. They have gained considerable freedom and independence, but at the very same time, new, less tangible forms of constraint and subordination now play a defining role in the formation of their everyday subjectivities and identities. Young women have come to exemplify the pervasive sensibility of self-responsibility and self-organisation. This new (...) ‘gender regime’ demands both conceptualisation and practical response, drawing on educational research, social and cultural theory, and contemporary feminist thought. Within the overarching theme of pedagogical responses to these trends, through work in schools and within young women’s online and face-to-face communities, this book interrogates the field of sexuality and its visualisation across new and old media in the context of often predictable and endemic ‘moral panics’ about teenage pregnancy rates, sexually transmitted diseases, and internet pornography. In exploring how girls and young women respond to increasing expectations of them as the vanguard of economic, social, and cultural change, contributors to this volume interrogate the ways in which social and educational aspiration interact with young women’s developing and embodied identities. This book was originally published as a special issue of _Pedagogy, Culture and Society. _. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Butler on Subjectivity and Authorship: Reflections on Doing Philosophy in the First PersonAsher WaldenWhat drew me to theology a number of years ago was that it was the most personal kind of philosophy, to the extent that it deals with the most important issues of one’s own “personal” life. It used the tools of the philosophical tradition to address questions that the philosophers—especially those in the University (...) of Chicago’s analytically oriented environment—seemed not to want to ask; at least, not when I was an undergraduate there some years ago. My engagement with philosophy has always been about personal questions, and in the past I tended to eschew the political realm as being at best external to the more essential business of philosophy. But the questions I have been asking lately are rather different from the ones that concerned me back when I was still in Chicago. Largely due to the birth of my son two years ago, questions that before were only secondhand—questions about education, democracy, and debt—are now very personal and very, very important to me. I am perhaps a latecomer to the position that, as the saying goes, “The personal is the political.” But being a convert, like the earliest Christian Apologists, may afford me an opportunity and motivation to argue the position all the more earnestly.The way I have sought to incorporate these different questions and perspectives in my theologizing has primarily been through engagement with the Confucian philosophical tradition. The Confucian tradition is, in large measure, a series of reflections on the individual’s utter embeddedness in familial, sociopolitical, environmental, and sacred structures and forces. The tradition has its own resources for expressing and navigating this embeddedness, but what has become interesting to me is that the requisite resources are being developed independently, and perhaps more forcefully, within the realm of postmodern and postcolonial theory. Indeed, these newer articulations may [End Page 55] well be vital for present-day Confucian thinkers to consider in reformulating and re-presenting their own commitments and traditions in the current era.The questions posed to and for the current paper are, first, how does the religiously committed philosopher (or theologian, in a loose sense of the term) consciously incorporate political and economic considerations into her theological research and discursive product; and second, to what extent and in what ways is it necessary for her also to include and address her own personal life/history into the same. Naturally, these are questions which religious thinkers will ask and answer anew for themselves, and repeatedly. My own engagement with Judith Butler in the current paper will merely provide, I hope, one possible model for such an account of how the personal and the political may function in theological discourse. Generally, the model given here suggests that such considerations are not external add-ons to the more essential “hard-core” theologizing of the doctrines of God and Christology. It is not a matter of (first) theory and (then) application. Rather, theological discourse is one place where ethical subjectivity is attained, if provisionally, through conscientious and critical engagement with both one’s religious tradition and the sociopolitical-economic structures in which those traditions are practiced, and where one’s own place within those structures is both questioned and created.In her recent work Giving an Account of Oneself, Judith Butler continues her project of deconstructing the metaphysics of the substantive self, begun in her deservedly noted early work, Gender Trouble. In particular, she argues that the subject comes into being through processes and in contexts that, while not completely determinative of one’s subjectivity, do limit one’s ability to give a complete account of oneself, one’s actions and motivations. She asks the important question of whether this opacity of the conditions of one’s coming into being limits the possibility of taking responsibility, or being held responsible, for one’s actions. She ultimately finds, with Foucault, that selfhood is itself an ethical process, one occasioned and in large part constituted by the call, and subsequent attempt, to give an account.The question which drives Butler’s essay is, generally, if the subject comes... (shrink)

Arindam Chakrabarti is something of a connoisseur's philosopher, best appreciated by those who know him. Books by him have not piled up over the years of his lengthy career, books which might have made their way into the obtuse consciousness of departments of Western philosophy, which might have made Indian thought somehow sensible to those comfortable with the norms of the dominant Anglo-American analytic tradition. Yet there is hardly anyone working today who was so thoroughly trained in that Anglo-American (...) tradition, who also has at his command a wonderful range of Sanskrit philosophical materials, and is so well-positioned to write such... (shrink)

As the title suggests, Sebastian Luft’s book concerns Husserl’s mature thought, from the “transcendental turn” of Ideas I to the latest works of the 1930s. Even though its various chapters have been published separately before, it makes up a coherent whole and works well as a book. Transitional passages have been added to tie the chapters together. The book is clearly the work of a thorough and consummate Husserl scholar who has a grasp of all the works, published, posthumously published, (...) and still unpublished. And no wonder: Luft is a true insider, who worked in the Archives at Leuven for a number of years and edited one of the volumes (Hua XXXIV) of Husserliana.First, an aside prompted by the title and what I claim it “suggests:” The title doesn’t mention Husserl and there is no subtitle. Further, my copy has nothing on the back cover. So how do we know, before even opening it, that it is about Husserl? It would seem that “transcendental phenomenology” is just another name for Husser. (shrink)

Generating and Understanding Jokes by Five- And Nine-Year-Olds as an Expression of Theory of Mind The main aim of the presented research is to describe children's ability to generate and understand humorous stories and pictures drawn by their peers and older or younger children. From the perspective of research on children's theories of mind, we assume that in middle childhood we will observe a transition from the basic, copy theory of mind to the interpretative one. We examined 60 five- and (...) nine-year-old children in two phases. During the first phase, the children were asked to draw a funny picture and then justify what made it funny and they had also to present the funny story. Two months later, the children were presented with some pictures chosen after the first phase as the most typical one. They had to justify why these pictures are funny. The obtained results indicate that there is a relation between the age of the subjects and the kind of interpretations of funny pictures which are consistent with the author's intentions. Significantly more nine-year-olds than five-year-olds accurately understood the author's intentions when interpreting his picture. The presented data indicate that changes in the theory of mind take place also in middle childhood and lead to a complex, interpretative theory of mind which can be discovered when researching children's understanding of jokes. (shrink)

This essay analyzes the eco-religious “God’s Gardeners” group as they appear in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood as a possible model of capitalist “non-existence,” exploring the alternative potentials at which they arrive in relation to waste throughout the text. The Gardeners present an affective mode of consumer non-participation as a possible first step toward a reflexive awareness of the role trash plays in our subjective experiences of the world. Through a process of symbolic embodiment, (...) the Gardeners exist in marginalized space and so re-situate waste for themselves as objects and spaces with new potential boundaries. This leads to a confrontation with social reality itself, piercing the reality-building project of capitalist logic in order to uncover the fabricated “antagonism between the Excluded—the ‘animals’ according to global capital—and the Included—the ‘political animals’ proper, those participating in capitalism” that structures characters’ experiences. The focus here is not only on re-situating waste but re-inscribing it in the domain of social discourse in a way that subverts consumer expectations and challenges the limits of desire. In these texts, enjoyment is displaced onto waste objects as a point of psychological investment transmitted from subject to subject. In building reality through these kinds of direct relations, Atwood implies, one may challenge the imposition of ideology and expand its apparent limits in order to re-symbolize the spaces and objects marginalized as waste, proceeding in the end to a renewed interconnection between subject, object, and excess. (shrink)

Should society intervene to prevent the risky behavior of precocious teenagers even if it would be impermissible to intervene with adults who engage in the same risky behavior? The problem is well illustrated by the legal case of the 13-year-old Dutch girl Laura Dekker, who set out in 2009 to become the youngest person ever to sail around the world alone, succeeding in January 2012. In this paper we use her case as a point of entry for discussing the fundamental (...) question of how to demarcate childhood from adulthood. After summarizing the case, we identify a ‘demarcation dilemma’ that frames much of the public and expert debate. On the one hand, it seems morally imperative ‘to treat like alike’, which means that both children and adults should be allowed to undertake all actions for which they have the relevant competences. On the other hand, requiring proportional treatment of children and adults seems to neglect the special nature of childhood as a distinct stage in life that ends at a specific age. We introduce the notion of a ‘regime of childhood’ to deal with this problem. This regime includes several dimensions, including the limited liability for children, the supervisory responsibilities of parents, the role of age-based thresholds, and the overarching purpose of childhood as a context for developing autonomy. We argue that, all things considered, there are good reasons not to shift to a regime that offers individual children the option of qualifying for adulthood on the basis of age-neutral criteria. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 40.1 (2006) 35-53 [Access article in PDF] "Truth Is What Works": Francisco J. Varela on Cognitive Science, Buddhism, the Inseparability of Subject and Object, and the Exaggerations of Constructivism—A Conversation Francisco J. Varela Bernhard Poerksen Institut für Journalistik und Kommunikationswissenschaft Universität Hamburg Francisco J. Varela (1946-2001) studied biology in Santiago de Chile, obtained his doctorate 1970 at Harvard University with a dissertation on the (...) insect eye, and worked there for some time in the laboratory of Torsten Wiesel, the later Nobel Laureate for medicine. From his scientific beginnings as a researcher in biology, he not only studied and practiced biology but, resisting the dominating mainstream, pursued a research program that ignored and broke down traditional disciplinary boundaries. This research program is best characterized as experimental epistemology, a concept introduced by the neuropsychiatrist and cybernetician Warren S. McCulloch. Francisco J. Varela's great aspiration was to examine and answer the philosophical ur-question of cognition with scientific precision and with the help of the best possible theoretical framework. [End Page 35]Having obtained his doctorate, he went back to Chile to work as a professor of biology together with Humberto R. Maturana. He contributed to the writing of the theory of autopoiesis, which was to cause a furor in the world of science as a universally applicable explanatory model. After the overthrow of Allende and the installation of the dictatorship by the putsch general Pinochet, Francisco J. Varela first escaped to Costa Rica, then became a professor at the American University of Colorado and University of New York, and finally returned in 1980 to the University of Chile in Santiago for five years. Temporary positions as guest professor for neurobiology, philosophy, and cognitive science in Germany, Switzerland, and France led him to Paris in the end, where he worked as research director of the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique until his death on May 28, 2001.In his research work embracing cognitive science, evolutionary theory, and immunology, Francisco J. Varela, constantly inspired by his fundamental interest in the key questions of epistemology, gave the epistemological debate a new orientation. In his thinking he refuses to accept the strict separation of subject and object, of knower and known, which as a rule unites realists and constructivists alike. Francisco J. Varela rejects the fundamental dualism dividing mind and world, which had shaped Western philosophy from its earliest beginnings. He does not subscribe to the idea that human individuals can invent their own realities—blindly and arbitrarily, and without experiencing any resistance from the external world and all other things given. He equally distances himself, however, from the diametrically opposite position that overstates the eigenpower of the world of objects. The external world and all other things given cannot determine what happens in an organism. Varela's claim is that individual and world create each other. The Computational Model of the Mind Poerksen: The ancient key questions of philosophy are at the center of modern cognitive science. What is the essence of the mind? Do our conceptions represent a given world, which is independent from our minds? What is the formative power of external objects over our perceptions? How does cognition function? The search for an adequate answer and an improved understanding of the human mind has led many cognitive scientists to entertain the assumption that the brain is actually a kind of computer. Memory is taken to be a store. Thinking and perceiving are understood as data processing in the sense that an independent external world is computationally transformed into symbols and represented in the organism in this manner. You are very critical of this view. Why?Varela: If the brain is considered as a kind of computer, then cognitive research is limited to discovering certain self-sufficient shapes—the symbols—together with the rules [End Page 36] governing them—the programs. But this search for symbols and programs will never be profitable because it... (shrink)

Fan culture has grown immensely over the past few years. People are constantly looking up to celebrities and personalities as role models for their fashion, identity, and success. During the stage of adolescence, it is normal for teenagers to admire well- known people and form fan attachments as part of their identity formation. However, this admiration of a specific media figure can be associated with one's personality, cognitive processes, and psychological well-being. Thus, the current study aims to investigate the (...) correlation between celebrity admiration and the self-esteem of 238 Filipino male teenagers. The research instruments, namely Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS) and Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) were both utilized through google forms. Results have shown high scores on celebrity admiration and the normal range of self-esteem of the participants. Using Pearson’s r correlation coefficient, it was found that celebrity admiration and self-esteem of Filipino male teenagers have a significant relationship that exists in a negative direction. (shrink)

(1984). Gender Differences in Subject Preference and Perception of Subject Importance among Third Year Secondary School Pupils in Single‐sex and Mixed Comprehensive Schools. Educational Studies: Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 243-253.

This paper explores multiple encounters between activist-survivors of Japanese military sexual slavery and solidarity activists. I mainly focus on the stories of two foundational figures in the ongoing justice campaign for the survivors, both of whom faced that forceful military act as teenage girls in colonized Korea, although in dramatically different ways: Yun Chung-ok, a leading scholar and activist who, having managed to escape the fate of many other peers, first spoke out about Japanese military sexual slavery, and Kim (...) Bok-dong, a survivor and human rights activist. This paper will address the multiple encounters and dialogues of memories to resituate subjects, which led to overcoming personal trauma and reaching out to others and continues to drive the redress movement. Drawing on oral history interviews, feminist ethnography, and various documented resources including survivors’ testimonies, which have been archived for around twenty years as part of my own scholar-activist work, I juxtapose these women’s lives to show how a community of responsibility has been formed to decolonize androcentric history. The women involved in the movement for the resolution of the Japanese military sexual slavery issue reinterpreted their experiences as having been formed by imperialism, colonialism, and patriarchy. While caring for and healing with one another, they suggested the possibility of a new subject formation. Through mutually constructed identities, activist-survivors broke away from social stigma and became agents who led transformation of a postcolonial society. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the effects of religious denomination and patterns of church-going on the construction of political values for high-school students. I argue that religion plays a role in the formation of political attitudes among teenagers and it influences their political participation. I examine whether this relationship is constructed along denominational lines. From a theoretical perspective, previous research heralded the compatibility between Western Christianity and the democratic form of government. Samuel Huntington, in his famous Clash of Civilization, argued (...) that there is a natural symbiosis between Western Christianity and democratic forms of government, going insofar as to separate the world into religious civilizations. While, this approach essentializes religion as a fixed and immutable entity, Huntington also neglects the importance of dynamic historical, political and social contexts that can, and, in fact, do affect the functioning of religion in different countries, and hence their ability and willingness to accommodate democracy. Much research followed the Clash of Civilizations, either qualifying the central argument, by showing evidence of support for procedural democracy in most of the World, but without its liberal component or even arriving at the opposite conclusion that irrespective of religion, every country is “democratizable”. While I do not attempt to disconfirm fundamental huntingtonian thinking, I do raise the questions of how context can and does influence the intimate relationship between religion and politics. The analysis is conducted on survey data collected by the Center for the Study of Democracy (CSD) at Babes-Bolyai University with subjects of 14-15 years old, and the results show that, while Greek Orthodox students do not seem to differ in their political values form their Catholic and Protestant counterparts, they are more prone to participate politically. Nevertheless, their active participatory behavior is only more pronounced in what voting is concerned, an opposite effect being recorder for any other acts of political participation. (shrink)

ObjectivesConstant Installation of Present Orientation and Safety is a Eye Movements Desensitization and Reprocessing -derived technique, which is often used to prepare for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. It differs from the latter by involving cyclically recurring exercises in reorientation to the present, interspersed between brief periods of exposure to the traumatic material.While EMDR is well established as a therapeutic method, the efficacy and mechanisms of action of CIPOS have not been investigated so far. In this pilot study, an (...) experimental setting was used to record the subjective and physiological effects of the CIPOS intervention compared to a control condition with pure mental exposition.MethodsThe study was performed on 30 healthy volunteers aged from 20 to 30 years. Distress was induced using audio files of subjectively stressful situations. Subjective distress was measured via the Subjective Units of Distress Scale, while physiological indicators were used as measures for objective stress. For each condition, pre- and post-intervention comparisons were calculated.ResultsIn both groups, startle reflex potentiation and mean skin conductance level significantly decreased. In the group with CIPOS intervention, but not in the control group, a significant decrease in the SUD value was found.Conclusion and significanceThe results show that the CIPOS technique is as effective as pure mental exposition in reducing physiological stress. In addition, a superiority in reducing subjective distress was found compared to pure mental exposition. Possible explanations of these effects are discussed. (shrink)

This work focuses on augmented reality glasses and its aim is to analyse the knock-on effects on our everyday world and ourselves yielded by this kind of technology. Augmented reality is going to be the most diffused technology in our everyday life in the near future, especially augmented reality mounted on glasses. This near future is not only possible, but it seems inevitable following the vertiginous development of AR. There are numerous kinds of different prototypes that are going to come (...) out next year. Therefore, a study on how these modifications yield knock-on effects on the constitution of the object and subject is mandatory. This work tackles the topic starting from a phenomenological and post-phenomenological point of view and it analyses the modification yielded by such technology from a perceptual point of view using the analysis of the horizons of the object made by Husserl. We need this analysis because it is not only the hypothetical future that may never come, but it is the likely future very close to us that is putting pressure on us. (shrink)

The strong links between cities and queer culture and its expression have occupied numerous scholars, including Henning Bech and Matt Houlbrook. Indeed, London has been viewed as a focal point of British queer urban culture for over 200 years and, as this article demonstrates, the advent of the Second World War did not preclude this centrality but ensured that the city became a focal point for service personnel on leave. Yet, the emphasis placed on the metropolises in analysing space (...) and queer expression has rendered invisible the use of more transient spaces outside of the city. This article seeks to examine these ‘alternative’ or opportunistic sites of expression, using oral testimony from queer men who served with the British Armed Forces during the Second World War. The memories of these servicemen and the significance they place on space/locations demonstrate the need to engage with subjective sites or ‘geographies’ of queerness both inside and outside of the city between 1939 and 1945. (shrink)

This article analyzes the shift from emotion to affect in Caryl Churchill’s writing for the theatre, a process which becomes prominent in the later seventies and culminates in the production of A Mouthful of Birds, a project designed jointly with the choreographer David Lan. The effects of the transformation remain traceable in The Skriker, a complex play taking several years to complete. It is argued that there is a tangible and logical correlation between Churchill’s dismantling of the representational apparatus (...) associated with the tradition of institutional theatre—a process which involves, primarily, a dissolution of its artificially constructed, docile bodies into orificial ones—and her withdrawal from the use of emotional expression in favour of the affective. In the following examination, emotions are conceived as interpretative acts modelled on cognition and mediated through representations while the intensity of affect remains unstructured. Often revealed through violence, pain and suffering, affect enables the theatre to venture into the pre-cognitive and thus beyond the tradition of liberal subject formation. (shrink)

This article analyzes the relationship between cyberbullying profile by racist reasons and social abilities in a group of intercultural teenagers living in Spain. The study includes participants aged between 12 and 16 years old. Of these, 738 were male and 740 were female. A correlational study was carried out using online tools with suitable psychometrics parameters. The first one was a scale that measured social abilities, and the second one evaluated racist or xenophobic cyberbullying, differentiating the victim and aggressor (...) profiles. The results indicated five main findings: generally, the participants analyzed present all their social abilities; for the most part, these participants do not normally experience cyberbullying; a positive correlation exists between the majority of social abilities analyzed and the cybervictim profile. It was also observed a negative correlation between the social ability associated with the ability of making requests and this profile; there is a positive correlation among the six social abilities analyzed and the cyberaggressor profile; the racist or xenophobic cyberbullying are driven not only by the absence of social abilities, but in some cases, they are also driven by socio-demographic variables. Likewise, this work shows how the absence of some social abilities in some participants involve racist or xenophobic experiences as victims and as aggressors, which may be of interest for the analysis of teenagers’ behavior in intercultural contexts, as well as according to age and gender. More transcultural research need to be carried out to know the global perspective of the link between social abilities and the different profiles of racist and xenophobic cyberbullying, framed in the context of social psychology and studies of mass communication. (shrink)

This paper summarizes the findings of a three-year exploratory qualitative study of teenage childbearing in 20 low-income multigeneration black families. Teenage childbearing in these families is part of an alternative life-course strategy created in response to socioenvironmental constraints. This alternative life-course strategy is characterized by an accelerated family timetable; the separation of reproduction and marriage; an age-condensed generational family structure; and a grandparental child-rearing system. The implications of these patterns for intergenerational family roles are discussed.

Internationally, the need to advance science, technology, engineering and mathematics education is recognized as being vital for meeting social and economic challenges and developing a scientifically, mathematically, and technologically literate citizenry. In many countries, however, there are gender differences in the participation and achievement of girls and women in STEM education and STEM careers, usually to the disadvantage of females. This paper aims to identify challenges to female students’ participation in STEM both at post-primary level and beyond in the Irish (...) context. The research questions we aim to address in this paper are: what are student attitudes towards science, technology, engineering and mathematics as measured through interest and perceived ability in STEM, students’ valuing of STEM and students’ commitment to STEM? and what gender differences occur regarding students’ attitudes to science, technology, engineering and mathematics? A survey was completed by 308 post-primary students in Ireland as part of a one-year research project titled “STEMChAT: Women as catalysts for change in STEM education.” Data analysis compiled descriptive statistics, including response frequencies and percentages and median and interquartile range values, and compared gender differences in survey responses using the Kruskal–Wallis H Test. Results indicated that female students had significantly more positive attitudes to science compared to males while in comparison, males had significantly more positive responses to mathematics compared to females. Challenges regarding access to and understanding of STEM in the context of post-primary education are discussed. (shrink)

Both the sociology of knowledge and the philosophy of science are centrally concerned with the succession of scientific beliefs. In case studies of scientific debates, however, the emphasis tends to be placed on the outcome of disputes. This paper proposes that attention should instead be focused on the process of debate: that is, on scientific argumentation. It is shown how such a focus circumvents many traditional epistemological problems concerning the truth-status of scientific knowledge. By reference to the consensus conception of (...) truth, it is claimed that scientific arguments can be studied naturalistically whilst still honouring the orientation towards truth exhibited by scientists. Finally, the paper offers a brief résumé of recent studies indicating how this naturalistic study of scientific argumentation can be developed through the sociology of language. (shrink)

BackgroundThe diagnosis of Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is primarily dependent on parents’ and teachers’ reports, while children’s own perspectives on their difficulties and strengths are often overlooked.GoalTo further increase our insight into children’s ability to reliably report about their ADHD-related symptoms, the current study examined the associations between children’s self-reports, parents’ and teachers’ reports, and standardized continuous performance test data. We also examined whether the addition of children’s perceptions of ADHD-symptoms to parents’ and teachers’ reports would be reflected by objective (...) and standardized data.MethodsThe study included 190 children with ADHD, aged 7–10 years, who were referred to a pediatric neurologic clinic. A retrospective analysis was conducted using records of a clinical database. Obtained data included children’s self-reports of their attention level and ADHD-related symptoms, parent, and teacher forms of the Conners ADHD rating scales, Child Behavior Checklist, Teacher’s Report Form, and CPT scores.ResultsChildren’s self-evaluations of their functioning were globally associated with their teachers’ and parents’ evaluations, but not uniquely. Children’s self-reports of ADHD symptoms were not uniquely linked to a specific CPT impairment index, but to a general likelihood of having an impaired CPT. The CPT performance successfully distinguished between the group of children who defined themselves as inattentive and those who did not.ConclusionPrimary school children with ADHD are able to identify their limitations and needs difficulties and that their perspectives should inform clinical practice and research. The clinical and ethical imperative of taking children’s perspectives into account during ADHD diagnosis and treatment is highlighted. (shrink)

Sociological studies into alcohol use seem to find it difficult to deal with the substance itself. Alcohol tends to be reduced to a symbol of a social process and in this way the sociological research loses sight of effects beyond the social. This article suggests a new theoretical approach to the study of alcohol and teenagers' (romantic) relationships, inspired by actor-network theory (ANT). The central feature of ANT is to search for relationships, or rather networks, between all things relevant to (...) the phenomenon. All material and semantic structures, things, persons, discourses, etc. that influence a given situation are described as actants and are entered into the analysis. The aim of this article is to propose a way of including materiality in sociological analyses of alcohol and to explore ways of using focus group interview material in ANT-inspired analysis. By analysing a girl's development from being a non-drinker at the age of 14, to a heavy drinker at 16, the article investigates how the actants brought out by young people in the focus groups themselves constitute different forms of agency. The analysis is based on a qualitative study consisting of 37 focus groups conducted with teenagers in Denmark over a three-year period. (shrink)

Now that some years have passed, how does this picture of consciousness look? On the one hand, Dennett's work has vastly expanded the range of options for thinking about conscious experiences and conscious subjects. On the other hand, I suspect that the implications of his picture have been oversold (perhaps more by others than by Dennett himself). The rhetoric of _CE_ is radical in places but I do not sure that the actual implications for commonsense views of Seemings and (...) Subjects are nearly as radical. (shrink)