Current health policy, high‐profile failures and increased media scrutiny have led to a significant focus on patient experience in Britain's National Health Service (NHS). Patient experience data is typically gathered through surveys of satisfaction. The study aimed to support a better understanding of the patient experience and patients' expression of it through consideration of the aspects of the patient experience on NHS wards which are by their nature impossible to capture through patient satisfaction surveys. Existential phenomenology was used to develop (...) an in‐depth exploratory narrative, expressed through the voices of the participants. Data collection involved in‐depth face‐to‐face interviews with 12 purposively sampled participants, with analysis by means of hermeneutics. Though the individuality of each experience was apparent and cannot be overemphasised, common factors emerging from the data included uncertainty and unexpectedness, suffering and finitude, the futility of feedback and bureaucracy and absurdity. Overall, participants demonstrated how their individual personalities and expectations affected their response both to illness or injury and to their hospital admissions, highlighting feelings of vulnerability and voicelessness as a response to hospitalisation. The findings of this study provide useful insight into the patient experience on British hospital wards, and the value of an existential–phenomenological approach is demonstrated. (shrink)

This article argues that present feminism has been translating its practical principles into a cultural and theoretical phenomenon. Drawing on her own genealogical achievement of freedom, the author discusses the main issues concerning present feminism – ranging from the intergenerational shift, feminist production and the control of its texts and practices – in order to construct her own understanding and doing feminism. Against a feminine feminist revival of traditional culture, the article focuses on creative and humanitarian agency. After having discussed (...) the relationships between second-wave and present feminism, the contradictions and misunderstanding of feminist ideas, the relevance of a rhizomatic assimilation of feminism by both feminists and not feminists, the article examines the dynamics that have led to a present static separatism, and proposes, as a line of flight, international feminist humanitarianism. It also suggests a way of rethinking a possible materialization of feminism into women activists and lay missionaries. (shrink)

Participatory deliberation, whereby diverse experts and publics collectively engage in decision‐making, can ensure a more informed and just decision by centering historically marginalized perspectives and engaging a spectrum of value systems. Broad and diverse participation is crucial for the equitable distribution of risks and benefits resulting from complex and uncertain decisions such as environmental gene editing. From an ethical position that gives intrinsic value to the nonhuman and recognizes the interconnectedness of species across generations, we argue that deliberation over environmental (...) gene editing must include the voice of nature and the voice of future generations. Inclusion of these key participant groups can encourage reflection on the human relationship with nature and help safeguard intergenerational equity of decisions reached. By drawing from the legal rights of nature movement, the Boardman River Dams Project, and methods for representative participation, we offer strategies for inclusion of nonhuman nature and future generations in deliberative processes about environmental gene editing and other crucial decisions about our shared environments. (shrink)

Medical decision making on behalf of unrepresented patients is one of the most challenging ethical issues faced in clinical practice. The legal environment surrounding these patients is equally complex. This article describes the efforts of a small coalition of interested healthcare professionals to address the issue in Colorado. A brief history of the effort is presented, along with discussion of the legal, ethical, practical, and political dimensions that arose in Colorado’s effort to address decision making for unrepresented patients through an (...) extension of the existing Colorado Medical Treatment Decision Act (CRS 15-18). A discussion of lessons learned in the process is included. (shrink)

Thaddeus Metz’s Meaning in Life is like a magnificent castle, covering vast ground, with towers high into the heavens, and astoundingly intricate architecture. It covers the literature on meaning with enviable completeness and weaves together the many and various strands within that literature, ‘towering’ over the debates and issues and provides a wide and inclusive perspective on them. Meaning in Life is a striking achievement and, just as the intricacy of those fortresses testified to the growing maturity of architecture, so (...) Metz’s book is a testament to the growing maturity of the literature on the meaning of life. But such castles had a dual purpose, which did not always cohere. They were fortresses intended to withstand armed assault, yet they were also supposed to manifest and project the aristocratic loftiness, status, and elegance of their masters. These purposes conflicted, especially in the design of a castle’s central tower, the keep or donjon, where elegant ornamentation was most necessary, but which could hamper or compromise its defensive functions. Meaning in Life likewise seeks to fulfil a dual purpose: on the one hand, to weave all the literature together into a coherent conception of meaning, including supernaturalist conceptions of meaning; and, on the other, to neutralize supernaturalist claims that only the existence of God or of an immortal soul could provide the necessary conditions for meaning. Does Metz’s synthesis stand, or has it compromised its defence? I argue in this Symposium piece that Metz’s methodology, as developed and deployed in Parts I and III of his book, is a poor weapon against supernaturalist skeptics, and develop an argument in the work of Blaise Pascal to explain why he, and those endorsing similar positions, would not be convinced by this type of argumentation. (shrink)

This study investigates the phonological development of Mandarin voiceless affricates produced by Mandarin-speaking children. Thirty-six monolingual Mandarin-speaking children and twelve adults participated in a speech production task. Auditory-based transcription analysis and acoustic analysis were utilized to quantify the relative order of affricate acquisition. Both methods yielded earlier acquisition of alveopalatal affricates at age three than retroflex and alveolar affricates, whereas they differed in the acquisition order of retroflex and alveolar affricates. The former revealed that both retroflex and alveolar affricates were (...) acquired at age five, regardless of aspiration, while the latter yielded earlier acquisition of retroflex than alveolar affricates. Possible reasons for the discrepancy are discussed in relation to the different nature of the two methods. Overall, the observed acquisition order of Mandarin voiceless affricates suggests that child speech development is a complex process, and is influenced by various factors including oromotor maturation and language-specific phoneme frequencies in the ambient language. (shrink)

In a revealing TEDxKC talk entitled "How My Mind Came Back to Life—And No One Knew", Martin Pistorius, author of Ghost Boy, shares his harrowing experience of living in a vegetative state with a locked-in syndrome for two long years. When his consciousness returned, Pistorius reflects on how he was unable to communicate the news of his recovery. Using his augmented and alternative communication device, Pistorius observes, "Your personality appears to vanish into a heavy fog and all of your emotions (...) and desires are constricted, stifled and muted within you. … It's a very dark place to find yourself because in a sense, you have vanished."Pistorius's speech is a commentary on voice and identity, and... (shrink)

1Neurology Department and Cyclotron Research Center, University of Lie`ge, Sart Tilman B30, 4000 Liege, Belgium 2Neurorehabilitation Medicine, Hoˆpital Caremeau, CHU Nıˆmes, 30029 Nıˆmes Cedex, France 3Department of Speech Therapy, Hospital Pitie´ Salpe´trie`re, Paris and French Association Locked in Syndrome (ALIS), 225 Bd Jean-Jaures, MBE 182, 92100 Boulogne-Billancourt, France 4Neurosciences et Syste`mes Sensoriels Unite´ Mixte de Recherche 5020, Universite´ Claude Bernard Lyon 1 – CNRS, 69007 Lyon, France 5Intensive Care Medicine, Hoˆpital Erasme, Universite´ Libre de Bruxelles, Route de Lennik 808, 1070 (...) Brussels, Belgium 6Anesthesiology, Reanimation and Pain Clinic, CHU University Hospital, Sart Tilman B33, 4000 Liege, Belgium 7German Association Locked in Syndrome LIS e.V., Evangelischen Krankenhaus Ko¨ningin Elisabeth Herzberge gGmbh (Lehrkrankenhaus der Charite´), Haus 30, Herzbergstrasse 79, 10365 Berlin, Germany 8Intensive Care Medicine, Centre Hospitalier Re´gional de la Citadelle, Boulevard du 12e de Ligne 1, 4000 Liege, Belgium 9Biomedical PET Unit, Hoˆpital Erasme, Universite´ Libre de Bruxelles, Route de Lennik 808, 1070 Brussels, Belgium.. (shrink)

Introduction -- What is journalism for? -- Truth: the first and most confusing principle -- Who journalists work for -- Journalism of verification -- Independence from faction -- Monitor power and offer voice to the voiceless -- Journalism as a public forum -- Engagement and relevance -- Make the news comprehensive and proportional -- Journalists have a responsibility to conscience -- The rights and responsibilities of citizens.

In this paper I argue that physics is, always was, and probably always will be voiceless with respect to tense and passage, and that, therefore, if, as I believe, tense and passage are the essence of time, physics’ contribution to our understanding of time can only be limited. The argument, in a nutshell, is that if "physics has no possibility of expression for the Now", to quote Einstein, then it cannot add anything to the study of tense and passage, and (...) specifically, cannot add anything to the debate between deniers and affirmers of the existence or reality of tense and passage. Since relativity theory did not equip physics with a new language with which to speak of tense and passage, I draw the further conclusion that relativity theory has not generated the revolution to our conception of time that is attributed to it. In the last section I discuss the motivations behind the continued but misguided attempts to integrate tense into a relativistic setting, and assess the manners in which relativity theory has nevertheless enhanced, albeit indirectly, our understanding of tense and passage. (shrink)

Sound symbolism refers to non-arbitrary associations between word forms and meaning, such as those observed for some properties of sounds and size or shape. Recent evidence suggests that these connections extend to emotional concepts. Here we investigated two types of non-arbitrary relationships. Study 1 examined whether iconicity scores (i.e. resemblance-based mapping between aspects of a word’s form and its meaning) for words can be predicted from ratings in the affective dimensions of valence and arousal and/or the discrete emotions of happiness, (...) anger, fear, disgust and sadness. Words denoting negative concepts were more likely to have more iconic word forms. Study 2 explored whether statistical regularities in single phonemes (i.e. systematicity) predicted ratings in affective dimensions and/or discrete emotions. Voiceless (/p/, /t/) and voiced plosives (/b/, /d/, /g/) were related to high arousing words, whereas high arousing negative words tended to include fricatives (/s/, /z/). Hissing consonants were also more likely to occur in words denoting all negative discrete emotions. Additionally, words conveying certain discrete emotions included specific phonemes. Overall, our data suggest that emotional features might explain variations in iconicity and provide new insight about phonemic patterns showing sound symbolic associations with the affective properties of words. (shrink)

What are the ethical responsibilities of the historian in an age of mass murder and hyperreality? Can one be postmodern and still write history? For whom should history be written? Edith Wyschogrod animates such questions through the passionate figure of the "heterological historian." Realizing the philosophical impossibility of ever recovering "what really happened," this historian nevertheless acknowledges a moral imperative to speak for those who have been rendered voiceless, to give countenance to those who have become faceless, and hope to (...) the desolate. Wyschogrod also weighs the impact of modern archival methods, such as photographs, film, and the Internet, which bring with them new constraints on the writing of history and which mandate a new vision of community. Drawing on the works of continental philosophers, historiographers, cognitive scientists, and filmmakers, Wyschogrod creates a powerful new framework for the understanding of history and the ethical duties of the historian. (shrink)

German nouns may alternate from singular to plural in two different ways. Some singular forms that end in a voiceless obstruent have a plural in which this obstruent is voiced. Another alternation concerns the vowel. Some singular forms with a back vowel have a plural form in which this back vowel is front. For each noun it has to be established individually whether it alternates or not. The voicing alternation is phonetically grounded, but the vowel alternation is not. Knowledge about (...) such alternations involves two things. First, it involves knowledge of which words alternate and which words do not and second, it involves the ability to extend the alternations to novel words. We studied the knowledge of which words alternate and the proportion to which they alternate in two corpus studies. We studied the knowledge of speakers concerning which words alternate and what generalizations can be based upon these words by means of a production study. The production study involved words and nonces. We asked twenty 5 year-olds, twenty 7 year-olds and tenth adults to produce the plural for a given singular word and a plural for a given singular nonce. In the corpus study we found that both alternations occur with the same frequency. In the production of alternations in words we found that participants in all age groups make few mistakes. With respect to the production of alternations in nonce words, we found that the proportion of voicing alternations decreases with age, while the proportion of vowel alternations increases. We explain this change in the ability to generalize the alternations to nonces on the basis of the confidence speakers can have in a generalization. Young children have a small lexicon and they can form relatively unreliable generalizations on lexical distributions, but they can have more confidence in their knowledge of phonetics. Adults have a large lexicon and can therefore confidently form based on their lexicon. (shrink)

Introduction: Philosophy in a Feminist Voice? /​ Janet A. Kourany History of Philosophy: Disappearing Ink: Early Modern Women Philosophers and Their Fate in History /​ Eileen O’Neill Philosophy of Persons: "Human Nature" and Its Role in Feminist Theory /​ Louise M. Antony Ethics: Feminist Reconceptualizations in Ethics /​ Virginia Held Political Philosophy: Feminism and Political Theory /​ Susan Moller Okin Aesthetics: Perceptions, Pleasures, Arts: Considering Aesthetics /​ Carolyn Korsmeyer Philosophy of Religion: Philosophy of Religion in Different Voices /​ Nancy Frankenberry (...) Epistemology: Voice and Voicelessness: A Modest Proposal? /​ Lorraine Code Philosophy of Science: A New Program for Philosophy of Science, in Many Voices /​ Janet A. Kourany Philosophy of Language: Semantics in a New Key /​ Andrea Nye Afterword: The Feminist as Other /​ Susan Bordo. (shrink)

Despite the fact that informal labour is a widespread phenomenon, the business ethics literature tends to describe it as a problem that needs to be overcome, rather than contemplating its merits. Informal labour is linked to poor working conditions, low-income and insufficient protection. However, it is also a survival strategy and upholds essential services, such as waste collection and recycling. Through the lens of postmodern ethics, we analyse 45 interviews with formal and informal waste management workers in Kinshasa. The study (...) explores the functioning and limits of recycling services in a metropolis, focusing on the experience of African workers and entrepreneurs. A complex picture of ethical challenges and individual business and survival strategies emerges from the analysis. Our findings demonstrate that labour decisions of voiceless people cannot be reduced to being rational or desperate choices, but that they reflect a careful elaboration of currently available options and strategies for the future. The study contributes to our understanding of entrepreneurship in a post-conflict context, the role of informal labour in the functioning of formal businesses in Africa and the contribution of postmodern theory to the study of businesses in non-Western societies. (shrink)

Originally published in 1972, Should Trees Have Standing? was a rallying point for the then burgeoning environmental movement, launching a worldwide debate on the basic nature of legal rights that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Now, in the 35th anniversary edition of this remarkably influential book, Christopher D. Stone updates his original thesis and explores the impact his ideas have had on the courts, the academy, and society as a whole. At the heart of the book is an eminently sensible, (...) legally sound, and compelling argument that the environment should be granted legal rights. For the new edition, Stone explores a variety of recent cases and current events--and related topics such as climate change and protecting the oceans--providing a thoughtful survey of the past and an insightful glimpse at the future of the environmental movement. This enduring work continues to serve as the definitive statement as to why trees, oceans, animals, and the environment as a whole should be bestowed with legal rights, so that the voiceless elements in nature are protected for future generations. (shrink)

Whether in journalism or medicine, education, law, or television, trans writers and trans studies scholars consistently develop this critique of the representational totalization of trans people, whereby they are and have been made whats, not whos; objects, not subjects; voiceless, not vocal; passive, not active; dehistoricized, not historical; and single, not multiple. In what follows, I aim to supplement this critique by attending to the role of curiosity both as a technique of (trans) objectification and as a practice of (trans) (...) freedom, on both the individual and social level. That is, I trace how curiosity—through the monadic and collective acts of gazing, inquiring, investigating, and imagining—functions as part of the project of the representational totalization of trans people but also as part of trans people’s own praxis of resistant de-totalization. (shrink)

Ice Cube "What's a brother gotta do to get a message through to the Red, White, and Blue?" Ice-T Rap music has emerged as one of the most distinctive and controversial music genres of the past decade. A significant part of hip hop culture, [1] rap articulates the experiences and conditions of African-Americans living in a spectrum of marginalized situations ranging from racial stereotyping and stigmatizing to struggle for survival in violent ghetto conditions. In this cultural context, rap provides a (...) voice to the voiceless, a form of protest to the oppressed, and a mode of alternative cultural style and identity to the marginalized. Rap is thus not only music to dance and party to, but a potent form of cultural identity. It has become a powerful vehicle for cultural political expression, serving as the "CNN of black people", or upping the high-tech ante, as their "satellite communication system". It is an informational medium to tune into, one that describes the rage of African-Americans facing growing oppression, declining opportunities for advancement, changing moods on the streets, and everyday life as a matter of sheer survival. In turn, it has become a cultural virus, circulating its images, sounds, and attitude throughout the culture and body politic. (shrink)

This essay reconsiders Paul Ramsey’s “medical indications” policy and argues that his reconstruction of the case of Joseph Saikewicz demonstrates that there is more room for caretakers to decline treatments for “voiceless dependents” than his interlocutors have sometimes thought. It furthermore draws on Ramsey’s earlier work to propose ways that Ramsey might have improved his policy, and argues that the shortcomings of Ramsey’s view arise from his bracketing of age in making determinations about what form of medical care is owed. (...) The reading of Ramsey set forth here suggests Cathleen Kaveny’s depiction of the ‘medical indications’ policy in Ethics at the Edges of Law is too rigid and inflexible, even while it affirms other aspects of her critique. (shrink)

Change is inevitable, and increasingly rapid and continuous in healthcare as organizations strive to adapt, improve and innovate. Organizational change challenges healthcare providers because it restructures how and when patient care delivery is provided, changing ways in which nurses must carry out their work. The aim of this doctoral study was to explore frontline nurses’ experiences of living with rapid and continuous organizational change. A critical hermeneutic approach was utilized. Participants described feeling voiceless, powerless and apolitical amidst rapid and continuous (...) organizational changes which fuelled apathy, cynicism and disengagement from the organization. However, critical analysis of the data showed that nurses actively engaged with power, voice and politics through resistant and transgressive behaviours in micro‐ethical moments of practice. There is a need to reconceptualize the concepts of voice, power and politics in nursing as there is dissonance between nurses’ beliefs about these concepts and what they are enacting in practice. Recognizing their enactment of power, voice and political agency at the micro‐level may empower nurses. Empowerment would mitigate the high levels of reports of powerlessness experienced in practice during organizational changes. (shrink)

This paper investigates the structure of networked publics and their sharing practices in Persian Twitter during a period surrounding Iran’s 2017 presidential election. Building on networked gatekeeping and framing theories, we used a mixed methodological approach to analyze a dataset of 2,596,284 Persian tweets. Results revealed that Twitter provided a space for Iranians to discuss public topics. However, this space is not necessarily used by voiceless and marginalized groups; and the uses are not limited to discussing controversial issues. The growing (...) body of conservative crowdsourced elites emerged to defend the regime’s ideology. Moreover, the dominant networked frames were shaped around normal and routine subjects in an election time. Thus, Twitter was not a platform for only seeking liberal demands. It was to some extent used to serve the regime’s political interests. Furthermore, while many ordinary users rose to prominence, mainstream media continued to act as powerful players. This study contributes to the existing literature into networked practices, digital democracy, and citizen journalism; particularly in restrictive contexts. (shrink)

In 21st century America, personhood is under daily assault, sometimes with dire consequences. Scientist, ethicist, and ordained minister Craig C. Malbon encourages the reader to consider such assaults on personhood endured by victims of abortion, ageism, Alzheimer's disease, drug addiction, mental and physical disabilities, gender, gender orientation, racism, sexual preference, identity politics, and our will-to-power over the "other." In exploring personhood status, Malbon poses difficult questions for us. Is personhood assigned as all-or-nothing, or is it a sliding scale based upon (...) criteria arbitrarily aimed at our vulnerabilities? Does the voiceless embryo and fetus have advocates who can speak to the moral question of abortion? Is the personhood of an economically insecure pregnant woman degraded to the point where lack of access to early termination of pregnancy results in "coercive childbearing?" Does being a member of the LGBTQI+ community target one for assaults on personhood, to the extreme of being killed? In delving into the biology and psychology of assaults of "self" upon the "other," Malbon sees powerful linkages of everyday assaults on personhood to darker, profound "original sins" that are foundational to the rise of the American empire, i.e., assaults on the indigenous Native Americans and assaults derivative to the institution of slavery upon Africans, African Americans, and their descendants. (shrink)

This article describes how nurses can use the Q methodology to include head and neck cancer patients in research. These patients are often excluded from participating in research based on temporary or permanent voiceless, disfigurement, or impaired communication. Q methodology is defined as the method for the study of subjectivity and related procedures seem to facilitate the participation of head and neck cancer patients. As so, this inclusive dimension should be taken into consideration in research project design also as an (...) ethical aspect of the study, in particular when involving these patients or others in similar conditions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Painting in Tongues:Faith-Based Languages of Formalist ArtKevin Z. Moore (bio)A philosophical problem is created by the incoherence between the earlier state and the later one.—Ian Hacking, Historical OntologyWhatever is happening to evidence-based treatment? When the facts contravene conventional wisdom, go with the anecdotes?—New York Times, "Science Times," February 14, 2006Cephalopods have a visual language that may be considered artful; humans have written and vocalized languages that are sometimes artful; (...) but it is doubtful that there is such a thing as a "language of art," particularly in the sense that twentieth-century formalists and their critics carelessly speak of one or many. Cephalopods flash color-forms on their hides to communicate intents and emotions, maybe even to project plans. They speak in tattooed tongues through neurologically embossed patterns and color field designs displayed on the skin. The large-eyed sea creatures communicate voicelessly in a visual language of pure color-forms, each species perhaps having its own dialect. Though not a full or official language by any means, their color-forms display the ideal that twentieth-century formalist artists sought to graphically realize (referential and conceptual immediacy, emotional coloring, communication via pure, that is, nonpictorial, form). Formalist inspired artists and their critic-expositors describe abstract pattern-painting as though it were a visual language equal to that of the cephalopod. Yet [End Page 40] although we can reasonably imagine cephalopods getting the correct message by observation, we cannot reasonably imagine observers getting any message at all, let alone the intended message, from abstractionist painting. This casts suspicion on the formalists' claims about visual language. Observers cannot and famously do not get anything "out" of formalist pattern paintings, though they do project quite a lot "into" them. The telling difference between octopus and artist? Cephalopods communicate visually—their survival depends on it. Formalists do not, though the survival and flourishing of their art depends upon the belief that they do.Notably, explanations of what exactly a formalist language of art is goes missing from accounts of sense and reference in the relevant literature, where we learn that this or that painting exhibits this or that language of art but never how this or that painting functions as a language of any sort. The "language of art" phrase, it seems, has the same force as mentioning truth or existence: it explains nothing. Talk of a language of art suggests merely that a painting exhibits a communicative intent; it does not explain how that intent is linguistically mediated. The phrase is ostensive and nominal, not descriptive and expository.Prior to the twentieth century there may have been some justification for this language since art was shaped by objective reference, identifiable codes (sign and symbol systems), and recognizable scenes (compositions) that made painting a language-like public media. Observers could see immediately or "read" paintings by observation as though they were reading a language. Images were shaped by observation; reference was fixed by convention. The formalist revolution in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries dismantled the public character of representation in painting. After the revolution, the new art that appeared was a sort of visual humpty-dumptyism, to invoke a language metaphor. Formalist imagery functioned the way words did for Mr. Carroll's Mr. Dumpty: they meant what the artist intended them to mean and not what observation or convention constrained them to mean. Reference and meaning were as arbitrary as the visual forms chosen to bear them. Once a communicative medium, painting became an expressive medium, the values of the latter superseding those of the former wholly or in part. Even when a formalist painting alluded to a conventional arrangement (a landscape or portrait, for example), the composition was as visually parodic of genre as Mr. Carroll's Jabberwocky was verbally parodic of narrative poetry, preserving syntax (form) but not the integrity of the formal agents of communication. Both are forms of nonsense, yet only one intentionally so.Styles of formalism do not facilitate the observation of intended reference; they are not effective forms of communication because they are not languages. If the basic function of a visual art is to communicate a specific... (shrink)

Philosophers are uniquely qualified to negotiate a balance between the reflective potential of globalization and the great routine powers of nations, states, tribes, and families. Here's how we can do it: we can teach the difference between playing a game and choosing a game. From time immemorial people of all tribes and cultures have marked a sharp distinction between those individuals deemed qualified by age, expertise, or status to choose or write the rules, and those other, lesser individuals who are (...) obliged merely to obey those rules. This is the traditional difference between a person, on the one hand, and a utensil, on the other: persona est sui iuris; servus non est persona ("A person chooses its own laws; a slave is not a person"). Persons, but not utensils such as shoes, have, and deserve, good will. To a person, a culture is a means of creating a sustainable humane environment. To a culture, a person is a means for the culture to replicate itself. Placing culture first is a tradition we can no longer afford to maintain, because it makes enduring peace impossible. The purposes utensils can be made to serve have become too terrible (and, with the advent of global communication, too obvious) for the human race to endure, and the capacity of the voiceless to express themselves violently is increasing without limit. Hence we must create new traditions in which we teach all our children reflective thought, with which rules are pragmatically justified rather than unquestionable. To that end I propose to distinguish random, routine, and reflective thought and action. Each of these three levels of thought and action has its costs and its benefits; together they contain the entire range of human possibility. Three familiar philosophical concepts support my claim that reflective thought and action can and must be taught to and learned by all. (shrink)

Conscience Across Borders aims to map a middle course between an ethics of over-confident deductive reasoning, and an ethics of relativism that treats moral choices as mostly idiosyncratic preferences. It dismantles all rationales for domineering - including one religious Way by another, the voiceless poor by the rich, society by the nation-state, individuals by civil and religious bureaucracies, women by men, the young by their elders, or the natural world by human beings.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Where the Wild Child IsRebecca TuvelSeshadri's book challenges us to consider the political potential of silence for race and animal studies. While acknowledging the many ways in which animals and inferiorized races have been (and continue to be) consigned to realms of speechlessness, their words rendered mute and ultimately irrelevant, Seshadri seeks the neutralizing power that resides in such exiled spaces. She asks: "When power uses a concept of (...) language to silence the other, to render this other a wretched hybrid of human and animal…is there, however, a possibility that in turn silences or further neutralizes power?" (Seshadri 2012, 13). Counter to intuitions that the space of silence is powerless, Seshadri urges readers to consider what this space opens up (rather than closes down). Seshadri asks: What happens when "powerful silence functions as a mode of refusal" (21)? Might silence open a "space for opposition" (21)?An engagement with Derrida and Agamben, among others, suggests yes—that insofar as the space of silence exposes the very operation of sovereign power, it can resist that power. Here lies what Seshadri calls silence's "nonsovereign power" (13). Consider the following: traditionally, you become a subject under the law only if you have speech. Even if it is not your own speech, if the law applies to you, someone speaks on your behalf (someone has given a "voice" to your "voicelessness"). The case of animal rights is exemplary here. By giving animals a voice, we bring animals under the law. When the protection of the law is withheld from you, however, you are silenced; you are denied access to speech. In short, your voice does not matter. The screams of an animal, the protests of a slave—they are simultaneously consigned to a realm of silence (either meaningless babble or speechlessness entirely) and to a realm beyond access to the law. In short, language and law are co-implicated. [End Page 186]And yet, if silence is a part of language, and this part of language has been exiled or liberated from the law, does not this also open a space where power can be offset? Following Agamben, Seshadri's logic here runs as follows: the law, in attempting to consign speechlessness to a realm outside the law (a realm of exile or a space of nonsubjection to the law) is by this very attempt admitting there is a space outside the law. It does this in two ways. First, in order for the sovereign to say who does and does not speak, the sovereign itself must in a sense be outside language and the law, for he can only create the rules from a place beyond the rules. Second, in order for the sovereign to push anything to a realm "outside" the law, the sovereign is admitting there is a space outside his totalizing control, a space of silent yet potent resistance.In what follows, I explore some implications of Seshadri's thesis concerning silence's neutralizing power for race and animal studies. I do so by focusing on Seshadri's discussion of the "wild child." Seshadri claims that the wild child represents the space of silence par excellence. The wild child refers to those cases of feral children seen in the woods at the outskirts of villages, captured, and brought into cities where attempts are made to civilize them. Peter the Wild Boy is a famous example. This feral child without language, home, or society, who lives among the animals, sits on the fence between humanity and animality—she is what Seshadri calls a humAnimal—a figure that ultimately eludes the law. The wild child comes with neither an identity card nor a language that might enable us to identify her, locate her origins, or her race. In short, the wild child has no belonging. But by virtue of her exile from the law and shared language, she occupies a space of powerful silence.In the interest of exploring the potential of the wild child figure further, I here pose two questions for consideration. First, exactly how might Seshadri's reflections on the wild child figure be productively extended to race and animal studies? And, second... (shrink)

Human trafficking for organ removal (HTOR) should not be reduced to a problem of supply and demand of organs for transplantation, a problem of organized crime and criminal justice, or a problem of voiceless, abandoned victims. Rather, HTOR is at once an egregious human rights abuse and a form of human trafficking. As such, it demands a human-rights based approach in analysis and response to this problem, placing the victim at the center of initiatives to combat this phenomenon. Such an (...) approach requires us to consider how various measures impact or disregard victims/potential victims of HTOR and gives us tools to better advocate their interests, rights and freedoms. (shrink)

Through its social and political activism goals, postcolonial feminist theoretical approaches not only focus on individual issues that affect health but encompass the examination of the complex interplay between neocolonialism, neoliberalism, and globalization, in mediating the health of non-Western immigrants and refugees. Postcolonial feminism holds the promise to influence nursing research and practice in the 21st century where health remains a goal to achieve and a commitment for humanity. This is especially relevant for nurses, who act as global citizens and (...) as voices for the voiceless. The commitment of nursing to social justice must be further strengthened by relying on postcolonial theories to address issues of health inequities that arise from marginalization and racialization. In using postcolonial feminist theories, nurse researchers locate the inquiry process within a Gramscian philosophy of praxis that represents knowledge in action. (shrink)

There is ongoing ethical and legal debate about withdrawing life sup- port for patients with disorders of consciousness (DOCs). Frequently fu- eling the debate are implicit assumptions about the value of life in a state of impaired consciousness, and persistent uncertainty about the quality of life (QoL) of these persons. Yet there are no validated methods for assessing QoL in this population, and a significant obstacle to doing so is their inability to communicate. Recent neuroscientific discoveries might circumvent that problem (...) and help shed light on QoL in DOCs. There is an ethical imperative to prioritize QoL research in this patient population, to provide evidence to inform treatment, research, and end of life decisions. A minimalist and pragmatic model of QoL is proposed, targeting positive and negative affect as domains for which there is po- tential to reach across the communication gap, and restore to these voiceless persons some measure of control. (shrink)

Vuyani Vellem was a distinguished scholar of black theology of liberation. A number of giants of black scholarship and theologians have written constructive tributes in recognition of his work, particularly in academia. He has rightly been lauded as an excellent academic, but very little has been said about his role as a churchman. Despite being an outstanding African theologian, Vellem’s ministerial formation was hewed in the context of the black-conscious minister from the African Christian missionary church enterprise. He was a (...) trailblazer, a voice of the voiceless within the church, in South African black communities, in ecumenical relations and globally. This article reflects on the crucial role of yobufundisi bonyana womgquba or womthonyama [ministry of the son of the soil, land or earth], in which Vuyani Vellem relentlessly served the church until his untimely death at the age of 50 years on 04 December 2019. The article argues that Vellem unrelentingly loved and served the Uniting Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa (UPCSA) with distinction as its first black general secretary at a transitional epoch in the postapartheid era where the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa came into union with the Presbyterian Church of Southern Africa in 1999 to form the current UPCSA. Contribution: The scholarly contribution of this article adds value and significant tribute to the ministry of Vellem, his quest for justice and unshackling of the church. It seeks to espouse ubufundisi bakhe [his ministry] within the UPCSA, his perpetual calling in serving the needy and downtrodden. Moreover, the article contributes a practica reflectere of his spirituality, black consciousness and life identity with underprivileged black churches and communities. (shrink)

Machine-generated contents note: Preface -- 1 - Introduction -- Section One: Race Relations and Racial (In)justice in Colonial New Zealand -- 2 - Missionary and Maori, 1840-1865 -- 3 - Voiceless at Parihaka, 1881 -- 4 - Anti-Asian Racism in 'White' New Zealand -- Section Two: Legislating for Godliness -- 5 - Keeping Quiet About the Sabbath, 1860-1930 -- 6 - Sunday or Fun-day, 1931-1990 -- 7 - The Battle of the Booze -- 8 - Uncorking the Bottle: The Alcohol (...) Issue, 1920-2000 -- Section Three: In Search of Utopia -- 9 - Women Count in the 1890s -- 10 - Social Gospel and Socialism -- 11 - The 'Great Depression', 1929-1935 -- Section Four: Issues of War and Peace -- 12 - Fighting for Peace, 1899-1918 -- 13 - Versailles to Vietnam (and Beyond): Issues of War and Peace, 1919-1989 -- Section Five: Combating Racism at Home and Abroad -- 14 - Racism and Religion in Pukekohe, 1959 -- 15 - No Horis in the Scrum: Rugby and Race, 1959-1980 -- 16 - Tackling Apartheid: The 1981 Rugby Tour Controversy -- 17 - Race in the Eighties: 'Not One Acre More' at Bastion Point -- Section Six: The Place of Sex in Society -- 18 - Sex and Celluloid: The Film Censorship Debate, 1965- 1976 -- 19 - Abortion in the Back Streets: 1930 to 1960s -- 20 - Life versus Life: The 1970s Abortion Debate -- Section Seven: Issues of Gender and Sexuality -- 21 - Liberation at Last: Second-wave Feminism from 1970 -- 22 - Good as You? Gay or Sad? Debate over Homosexuality, 1960-1986 -- Section Eight: Toward the Future -- 23 - Hikoi and Hope: Social Justice in the 1990s -- 24 - Afterword -- Notes -- Abbreviations -- Bibliography -- Index. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BreathrenKatherine Ibbett (bio)The French Reformation and its aftermath was a battle over breath: literally so, as a matter of life and death, but also because it represented a battle over the Holy Spirit, Saint Esprit, from the Latin spiritus, breath. Over decades of conflict both Catholics and Protestants claimed divine inspiration, arguing that they and only they were breathed on in the way Christ breathes on the apostles when (...) he asks them to receive the spirit (John 20: 22).On the Protestant (Huguenot) side of these early modern disputes, the term esprit is often displaced by a more vernacular and more bodily breath, souffle, so that God blows on his chosen people a little in the way his chosen people might blow on their soup. Souffle renders spirit as something humanly familiar, if still exemplary. In his account of the life and death of Jean Calvin (1564), the Protestant historian and polemicist Théodore de Bèze writes of breath as the last remaining sign of Calvin's presence: the day before his death Calvin is so weak "qu'il ne luy restoit plus que le souffle," ["only breath remained"] but he tells his followers nonetheless that he is still "uni d'esprit" ["joined in spirit"] with them. Like Christ's, Calvin's souffle and spirit inspired many, and the Protestant minority, under increasing and violent pressure from the Catholic state, met his example with a last gasp of their own. The term "souffle" is everywhere in the martyrologies of the many Calvinists executed by Catholics over the following century and more, which insist repetitively on the victim's praise of God "to the last breath."French Protestants also imagined breath as a political metaphor, frequently presenting the minority's right to live on French soil as a right to breathe, some sort of jus spiri: the late seventeenth-century Protestant historian Élie Benoist writes that Catholic violence turned "le Plaisir naturel de respirer l'air du païs natal en une espece de joug servile" ["the natural pleasure of breathing the air of one's own country into a kind of servile yoke"]. This frequent rhetoric of bad air gets re-ventilated in Benoist's account of the Refuge, the period after 1685 when Protestantism became illegal in France, at which point Huguenots fled in hope of what Benoist hopefully calls the "abundance" of air found on welcoming shores elsewhere. [End Page 163] The more upbeat refugee writing somewhat breathlessly celebrated the "change of air" that transnational solidarity brought about. Bref: breath is central to the Huguenot imaginary.A more painful formulation comes in one of the pamphlets that circulated from the 1660s on, throughout Protestant Europe, asking for new air to breathe. Many of these calls for international aid insisted on the sheer miracle of continued Protestant bodily existence, sketching a sort of Protestant vita nuda. A 1667 text published in parallel French and German recounts the misery of the Protestants banned from professional positions and living only "la vie, c'est à dire, un triste soufle qu'ils tirent de leurs tristes coeurs affligez" ["life, that is to say, a sad breath/sigh that they pull from their sad and afflicted hearts"]. But where Agamben's notion of bare life marks the extreme form of a particular model of Western sovereignty, imagining bare life as helpless and voiceless against sovereign power, the Protestant lifebreath is highly strategic, performing its bareness so as to imagine a new political role. The Protestant life retains and performs a "soufle" for its international audience, taking a breath before it speaks, eventually allowing for a new articulation of a Protestant voice that speaks multiple languages and can make itself heard internationally. In response to that voice, in the organizing of English and Dutch and German responses to Huguenot suffering, came a new organization of transnational political community. During the years of the Refuge, at a moment when European neighbors were prepared to take in refugees, the "poor breath" of the Protestant eventually makes room for a new kind of breath-ren. May their history breathe on us again today. [End Page 164]Katherine IbbettUniversity of OxfordKatherine Ibbett Katherine Ibbett... (shrink)

The suburban riots of November 2005 retrospectively appear as a testimony of an urge to express oneself without words : this movement of revolt was voiceless, within a society affected by a crisis of language. The opposition does not stand between institutions which talk and youth who do not speak. If there is indeed a breakdown, it is to be located at the level of transmission, not at the level of speech.

Which sounds composed the first spoken languages? Archetypal sounds are not phylogenetically or archeologically recoverable, but comparative linguistics and primatology provide an alternative approach. Labial articulations are the most common speech sound, being virtually universal across the world's languages. Of all labials, the plosive ‘p’ sound, as in ‘Pablo Picasso’, transcribed /p/, is the most predominant voiceless sound globally and one of the first sounds to emerge in human infant canonical babbling. Global omnipresence and ontogenetic precocity imply that /p/‐like sounds (...) could predate the first major linguistic diversification event(s) in humans. Indeed, great ape vocal data support this view, namely, the only cultural sound shared across all great ape genera is articulatorily homologous to a rolling or trilled /p/, the ‘raspberry’. /p/‐like labial sounds represent an ‘articulatory attractor’ among living hominids and are likely among the oldest phonological features to have ever emerged in linguistic systems. (shrink)

In this article, I want to reflect on the patient’s voice and why it is sometimes faint or goes altogether unheard. The patient may be too ill to speak or too incapacitated for her voice to express her autonomous wishes. She may speak a foreign language. She may be deaf and lacking an interpreter qualified to sign medical terminology. Her own views may be outshouted by a patient association that presumes to speak for her. Or she may be the target (...) of prejudice that makes it easy for socially privileged people to discount or ignore or not hear what she says.In this article, I examine a rather different, more subtle kind of voicelessness—one that is pervasive, causes moral... (shrink)

This article interrogates the interface between the older Pentecostal movement and politics in Zimbabwe. The country continues to face political violence and a breakdown in rule of law. The Zimbabwean populace is asking whether the Zimbabwean Pentecostal movement is ready and able to exercise its prophetic role in promoting real peace and democracy. Many Zimbabweans are asking this question, because the track record shows that whilst most mainline churches have been consistent in becoming the voice of the voiceless, some Zimbabwean (...) Pentecostal churches seem to have been sitting on the fence for too long by adopting a middle of the road stance, thereby avoiding a head-on confrontation with the corrupt Zimbabwe African National Union–Patriotic Front government. In this article, I argue that for many decades the Zimbabwean Pentecostal movement has taken what one might refer to ironically as a ‘smart approach to politics’–in which the image of the ZANU–PF government is sanitised by espousing what I call a ‘spiritualised political theology.’ I use this critique, whilst remaining cognisant of the fact that the primary motivation of the movement on which I focus in this article, was evangelism, not politics. Thus, for the purpose of this research, the Zimbabwe Assemblies of God Africa of Apostle Ezekiel Guti was sampled to investigate its prophetic voice in a polarised political environment. This article examines the history of Apostle Guti’s political subterfuge based on the reflections of his pastoral letters referred to as the ‘Ten-days prayer letters’ issued since 1975 up to the time of writing this article. It is important at this early stage to outline that these letters were not political statements or meant to address politics only but theological letters addressing different social ills including politics. Thus, reading this letter one shall see that Apostle’s political subterfuge demonstrated a continuous oscillation of a theological position on how the church should relate to politics. Furthermore, I undertake a brief examination of other few millennial Zimbabwean Pentecostal churches to see if this political subterfuge transcended elsewhere thereby propagating a spiritualised political theology.Contribution: What is key to note is the fact that the Zimbabwean Pentecostal movement remained insignificant with regard to democratization agenda even after the removal of President Mugabe. The above claim is evidenced by the Zimbabwean Pentecostal church founders’ continuous political subterfuge authenticated by a propagation of a spiritualized political theology. (shrink)

Philosophers are uniquely qualified to negotiate a balance between the reflective potential of globalization and the great routine powers of nations, states, tribes, and families. Here's how we can do it: we can teach the difference between playing a game and choosing a game. From time immemorial people of all tribes and cultures have marked a sharp distinction between those individuals deemed qualified by age, expertise, or status to choose or write the rules, and those other, lesser individuals who are (...) obliged merely to obey those rules. This is the traditional difference between a person, on the one hand, and a utensil, on the other: persona est sui iuris; servus non est persona ("A person chooses its own laws; a slave is not a person"). Persons, but not utensils such as shoes, have, and deserve, good will. To a person, a culture is a means of creating a sustainable humane environment. To a culture, a person is a means for the culture to replicate itself. Placing culture first is a tradition we can no longer afford to maintain, because it makes enduring peace impossible. The purposes utensils can be made to serve have become too terrible (and, with the advent of global communication, too obvious) for the human race to endure, and the capacity of the voiceless to express themselves violently is increasing without limit. Hence we must create new traditions in which we teach all our children reflective thought, with which rules are pragmatically justified rather than unquestionable. To that end I propose to distinguish random, routine, and reflective thought and action. Each of these three levels of thought and action has its costs and its benefits; together they contain the entire range of human possibility. Three familiar philosophical concepts support my claim that reflective thought and action can and must be taught to and learned by all. (shrink)