Camus himself called The Plague his most anti-Christian text, and most theologically oriented readings of the text agree. This paper shows how the sermons of Fr. Paneloux—an Augustine scholar--as well as Dr. Rieux’s mother present an Augustinian picture of love. This love opposes the passionate concupiscence for possession of things with the divine love which wishes for the constant conscious presence of the beloved in the light of the good. Such is possible for us, as Augustine exhibits and helps (...) us practice, if one reads the world as it really is—temporal signs of the eternal goodness, wisdom and presence of God—which Augustine discovers “too late.” While the doctor describes Oran as a city “without intimations” many elements of the text intimate otherwise. In such an Augustinian sacramental reading the “problem of evil” disappears. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Facing Death Individuals and Shared Destinies Rats! A Note on Plague The Plague as Horror Facing Death Together: Being‐with‐Others.

During the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, one is drawn to engage with texts that deal with the topic of human suffering. Two texts will be considered in this article. The first is the novel The Plague by Albert Camus, and the second is the Bible. Two characters in Camus’ work will be discussed as representatives of different theological and scriptural responses to the issue of widespread human suffering. Following a literary analysis research methodology, this article argues that Christian responses (...) to the COVID-19 pandemic are not dissimilar to the perspectives held by Dr Rieux and Fr Paneloux. Theodicy is engaged with either a perspective that questions the Divine in the light of the suffering of the innocent or a perspective that subjects itself to a state of surrender to ‘the God who knows best’. The article then offers a third perspective, one held by Camus himself, suggesting that the question of theodicy could be reimagined from the notion of the absurdity of life.Contribution: This article provides a theological reflection on common Christian responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. It uses Camus’ novel, “The Plague” as a backdrop to differentiate between a deistic and a science-faith approach to suffering. (shrink)

Albert Camus’s 1947 novel La Peste and 1948 drama L’État de Siège, allegories of totalitarian power using the figure of the plague, remarkably anticipate Foucault’s celebrated genealogical analyses of modern power. Indeed, reading Foucault after Camus highlights a fact little-remarked in Discipline and Punish: namely, that the famous chapter on the ‘Panopticon’ begins by analysing the measures taken in early modern Vincennes following the advent of plague. Part III argues that, although Camus was cited as an inspiration (...) by the nouveaux philosophes, he does not accept the reactionary motif of the total bankruptcy of the modern cultural and political worlds as hopelessly implicated in the totalitarian crimes. Indeed, Part IV highlights how Camus defends modern, descriptive scientific rationality against its totalitarian appropriations, alongside ‘the power of passion, doubt, happiness, and imaginative invention’ – positions which Part V suggests as Camus’s continuing poignancy and relevance in the period after post-structuralism. (shrink)

_La Peste_, originally published in 1947 by the Nobel Prize-winning writer Albert Camus, chronicles the progression of deadly bubonic plague as it spreads through the quarantined Algerian city of Oran. While most discussions of fictional examples within aesthetics are either historical or hypothetical, Camus offers an example of "pestilence fiction." Camus chose fiction to convey facts--about plagues in the past, his own bout with tuberculosis at age seventeen, living under quarantine away from home for several years, and forced separation (...) from his wife who remained in Algiers while he was abroad in Nazi-occupied France. His own lived experiences undergird an imaginative account of shared human realities with which we can identify: vulnerability to the disease, isolation, fear, and finally humanitarianism. _The Plague_ teaches us to neither covet nor expect what we so casually took for granted. This collection of original essays on philosophical themes in _The Plague_ is of special relevance during and in the aftermath of Covid-19 but also provides reflections that will be of lasting value to those interested in this classic work of literature. The novel explores questions of enduring importance. Do we collectively meet the threshold of ethical behavior posed by Camus who wrote, "What's true of all the evils in the world is true of plague as well. It helps men to rise above themselves"? Or does the absurd undermine the compassionate? Do "heroes" dutifully fight a plague with "common decency," or does human nature resign itself to the normalization of uncontrollable suffering and death? There are myriad ways to approach the novel and this volume encourages readers to ponder human dilemmas in fictional Oran informed by our current pandemic. Series editor forward by Richard Eldridge. List of Contributors includes Steven G. Kellman, Jane E. Schultz, Andrew Edgar, Kathleen Higgins, Edward B. Weiser, Cynthia A. Freeland, and Margaret E. Gray; see "Introduction" by Peg Brand Weiser below. (shrink)

The Introduction provides a historical and literary context for the examination of Albert Camus’s 1947 fictional novel, The Plague, to suggest its relevance to our own lived experiences of the 2021 Covid-19 pandemic that brought the routines and expectations of our normal, daily lives to an unprecedented halt. Details of Camus’s life and work inform our reading of the narrative that give rise to multiple interpretations as well as intriguing questions of scholarly inquiry: How realistic are the (...) characters? Does solidarity eventually triumph over isolation? Does the popular novel inspire social change or fail in its aspirations? Facing the absurdity of a similarly unwelcome and unpredictable disease, have we managed our fear of death more successfully than the citizens of Oran? An overview of authors’ contributions sets the stage for new and unique perspectives: an invitation for readers to reflect upon our communal experience of immense grief. (shrink)

What’s true of all the evils in the world is true of plague as well. It helps men [sic] to rise above themselves.– Albert Camus, The PlagueMany novelists and philosophers have commented on the them...

This essay is a reflection on Albert Camus’s revival during the COVID-19 pandemic of the early 2020s. The popularity of Camus’s novel, The Plague, is considered alongside his other writing as something that speaks to many throughout their lives. Such appraisal is interspersed with personal reflections on family life during pandemic lockdowns and the ways that Camus’s thought resounds in our everyday selves. Written in two parts at different times – mainly in 2020 and with a (...) 2023 afterthought – the essay critically acknowledges how Camus instructs us to live together with meaning and dignity in an age of catastrophe. (shrink)

This article turns to Jack London’s and Albert Camus’ novels about contagion to try to tease out some of the moral meanings of the pandemic we are currently living through. In many ways, these works are prescient, and can thus serve as commentary on the situation we find ourselves in. In others, their narratives differ from each other and from our experience; the differences signal what is at stake in some of our circumstances. Camus’ ideal of solidarity focuses my discussion. (...) I show how certain conditions associated with an outbreak provide occasions for solidarity, but also examine several obstacles to it. Many of those obstacles, I contend, have to do with the limitations on what we can know – about ourselves, one another, and the world. In the end, I argue that complete solidarity may require us to reconceive our relationship to our communal past and the natural world. (shrink)

In January 1975, Michel Foucault contemplated the nature and formation of what in subsequent years he would come to know as governmentality. For Foucault, plague marks the rise of the invention of positive technologies of power, where these relations center around inclusion, multiplication, and security, rather than exclusion, negation, and rejection. In a point that might at first seem ancillary to his central argument, Foucault comments on stylized works about plague, such as those, according to the lecture series’ (...) editors, exemplified by Albert Camus. In footnote fifteen of the January 15, 1975 lecture, in reference to what Foucault deemed the “literary dream of” plagues, the editors list Camus’ 1947 novel La Peste, among other works, as representative of what Foucault described as “a kind of orgiastic dream in which plague is the moment when individuals come apart and when the law is forgotten.”. This article places Camus’ novel and other works in conversation with Foucault on governmentality, subjectivation, and truth to demonstrate the ways in which individualism itself can be viewed biopolitically. In so doing, it offers an urgent intervention that speaks powerfully to and is exemplified by the current global pandemic. Plague serves both as this literary dream and as a discursive mechanism engaged simultaneously with regimes of truth and the individuals constructing them. By pairing Foucault’s historical understanding of the invention of positive technologies of power with Camus’ treatment of “the absurd” in and out of the plague context, one uncovers the interrelation of governmentality, subjectivation, and truth. (shrink)

One of the most influential works of this century, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays is a crucial exposition of existentialist thought. Influenced by works such as Don Juan and the novels of Kafka, these essays begin with a meditation on suicide; the question of living or not living in a universe devoid of order or meaning. With lyric eloquence, Albert Camus brilliantly posits a way out of despair, reaffirming the value of personal existence, and the possibility of life (...) lived with dignity and authenticity. (shrink)

Translated by Anthony Bower With an Introduction by Oliver Todd 'A conscience with style' V.S. Pritchett The Rebel (1951) is Camus's 'attempt to understand the time I live in' and a brilliant essay on the nature of human revolt. Here he makes a daring critique of communism - how it had gone wrong behind the Iron Curtain and the resulting totalitarian regimes. And he questions two events held sacred by the left wing - the French Revolution of 1789 and the (...) Russian Revolution of 1917 - that had resulted, he believed, in the use of terrorism as a political instrument. In this towering intellectual document, Camus argues that hope for the future lies in revolt with revolution - a chance to achieve change without losing our freedom. 'The last French intellectual to take the side of humanity and talk its language... a figure of immense moral stature' Sunday Times Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. (shrink)

The abolition of slavery after the Revolution of 1789 has always been hailed by the French secular State as proof of the progressivist nature of the Republic. Nevertheless, there has never been any attempt to seriously confront the French involvement in the trade of slaves, which lasted for two centuries. France, a colonial power until the 1960s, which still retains several overseas possessions with an Afro-Caribbean population, has a large resident black population in the mainland which feels it has been (...) deprived of its memory and history and seeks official recognition of the role of the State in the trade of slaves. This article tries to show how a black collective identity and consciousness emerged around the fight for the recognition of slavery as a crime against humanity and the claim for financial compensation. This black collective identity competes with the Jewish community, which was granted financial compensation for the Shoah and which successfully lobbied the State to recognize that it was partly responsible for the genocide in World War II. While some radical black activists seek an alliance with part of the Islamic movement, they are also competing over the recognition of their collective identity by the State with the growing Muslim community whose memory is that of colonization and second-class citizenship. (shrink)

Praise for the French edition: "A wonderful book. In 1944 Camus had already published "The Stranger" and "The Myth of Sisyphus.

Is freedom a Western concept? As a multifaceted human experience it seems fairly transcultural. Freedom is hardly a focus of philosophical discourses in China as it is in the West, and I suppose this partly accounts for the difficulty in tracking freedom and closely related notions of agency, choice, and autonomy in Chinese philosophy.Over four decades ago Herbert Fingarette raised the controversial idea about the absence of freedom in Confucian ethics. Although not intending to denigrate, Fingarette raised a polemic that (...) has lingered to the present.1 A. C. Graham noted the sour upshot of the issue when writing that "the claim that the concept of moral choice is foreign to Confucius has offended... (shrink)

Camus is defined by many as an absurdist philosopher of revolt. The Plague, however, shows him working rigorously through a well-known division between ancient and modern ethics concerning the relation of reason, feeling and happiness. For Aristotle, the virtues are stable dispositions including affective and intellectual elements. For Kant, one’s particular feelings are either that from which we must abstract to judge moral worth, or are a constant hindrance to proper moral activity. Further, Kant claims “habit belongs to the (...) physical nature of the determination of the will,” which seems to imply habit cannot be a moral determination at all. A related disagreement regards virtue and happiness. Aristotle’s happiness is “an activity of the soul in accord with virtue.” For Kant and other moderns, happiness is an ideal of imagination, “a maximum of well-being in my present, and in every future, state,” all the elements of which “are without exception empirical.” Thus happiness seems more the constant counterweight to moral action than its fulfillment. Kant and Aristotle agree, however, in their judgment of many characters and actions, as is illustrated in The Plague. The novel provides realistic insights into a philosophical agreement between these supposed oppositions. In particular, I show how both philosophers would agree in their judgements concerning both the relative goodness and relative happiness of Joseph Grand and Raymond Rambert. The illustration of this agreement proves Camus is valorizing a traditional ethic. (shrink)

Metaphor study is a promising trend in present-day academia. Scholars of antiquity are already profiting from it in their study of early texts. We have yet, however, to harness the potentials of metaphor in East-West comparison. The article discusses what literary metaphors are, in particular how they generate images and perspectives that call into play a broad range of extra-textual information about the speaker and his milieu. Shared metaphors are doubly advantageous: they serve as hermeneutic tools for reading early texts (...) and are fulcrums for comparing views of different traditions. Archery is an example of a shared metaphor in the Confucian Analects and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. It seems that while both texts employ images that are close together, their meanings are far apart. (shrink)

Tomas Aquinas defined truth as the correspondence between things and understanding. Castro Alves paints the horror of the slave nautical traffic. In his essay On the Concept of History, Walter Benjamin reminds us: “The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘emergency situation’ in which we live is the rule.” This ‘emergency situation’ was Fascism. Albert Camus defended his romance La Peste against the accusation of Roland Barthes that is was “dehors de l’histoire”, pointing out that it was not (...) only about the recent historical phenomenon of Fascism, but also about the permanent risk of its rebirth. Agnes Heller associates faith with prejudice and alienation. The following article will explore the Thomist concept of truth, Benjamin’s concept of history, Camus’ allegory of the plague, Agnes Heller’s notion of faith and Castro Alves’ powerful denouncement of slave traffic, to better criticize the phenomenon of post-truth, a rebirth of fascist information practices. (shrink)

Not everyone faces “modern” death equally, whether in Oran or today’s world. In this chapter, I argue that the “difficulty” in Oran of “modern death” as described by Camus is still with us today in that Americans neither faced death together in any form of solidarity under the Trump administration nor faced death individually in any traditional “decent” manner (as proposed by the character Tarrou), that is, comforted by family or friends. One reason is overwhelming fear of death—what neuroscientists call (...) “existential anxiety”—that can motivate human behavior toward either selfishness or an ethics of care. As a result of lived experiences of the pandemic, a sense of “heroic solidarity” has perhaps been finally achieved that moves us from despair to hope, confirming Camus’s faith in humanity. (shrink)

In 1978, treatment and vaccination programs were recommended to control bovine trypanosomiasis and brucellosis in Ivory Coast. A single trypanocidal treatment of young calves dramatically reduced their mortality rate. A preliminary demonstration project was carried out in a limited area by the government agency SODEPRA, followed by demonstrations on nearly all the farms. The costs were covered by SODEPRA as one of their development projects. Over a period of time the farmers took charge of the treatments, both financially and physically. (...) In 1992, the trypanocidal treatments were still widely used. The reasons for this success could be its dramatic efficacy, the simple technology employed, the low cost that was progressively charged to the farmers, and the fact that this was a long term extension project with continuous farmer training. The brucellosis control program started with an initial vaccination of 1 to 10 year old females followed by an annual vaccination of 1 to 2 year old heifers. One year later, a 37% reduction in the abortion rate was observed. The vaccination were paid for and carried out by SODEPRA. The control program then stopped but, because of growing problems with brucellosis, vaccinations started again in 1992. There is still a question of how vaccinations will be accepted when the farmers are required to share the cost for the control of a largely inconspicuous disease. (shrink)

Metaphors have long been valued as powerful literary devices. Lately however the discovery of the cognitive content of metaphors is drawing the attention of contemporary scholars. For those of us engaged in comparative philosophy, metaphors seem to promise to be a much-needed hermeneutic tool for understanding independent traditions and working out balanced comparisons. In this paper, I shall examine two metaphors for virtue that are used in both the Confucian Analects and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. These common metaphors are archery and (...) the middle, or mean. If Confucius and Aristotle use similar images to speak of moral virtue, do they make the same claims about virtue? In other words, do these images convey the same meaning? My paper attempts to unpack the referential meanings of these metaphors by first contextualizing them and then by tracing the associated ideas and structures behind the images. (shrink)

The first English translation of Albert Camus' "Preface" to Albert Memmi's first book, La Statue de Sel (The Pillar of Salt). Translated with permission by Scott Davidson.

"I know of no safe repository of the utlimate power of society but the people. And if we think them not enlightened enough, the remedy is not to take power from them, but to inform them by education." Thomas Jefferson, 1820.

Metaphor is a significant tool in the recontextualization of specialized knowledge in popularizations transmitted through the mass media. This study explores metaphor in popularizations of scientific articles on cancer in the English press. Metaphors used for cancer and cancer research were identified and analysed in a corpus of 37 articles from The Guardian. Special attention was paid to the aspects emphasized and de-emphasized as they can have potential ideological implications. Fifteen conceptual metaphors were identified in the corpus, ranging from the (...) most frequent CANCER IS WAR to an isolated reference to Achilles' heel. The average was 2.9 metaphors per text. The quantitative data and contextual analysis indicate that no single metaphorical system is sufficient to represent the complexity of cancer-related knowledge. Metaphors are used in combination to perform three main functions, attracting the reader, structuring and explaining scientific concepts, and organizing the text into a narrative. (shrink)

Camus's description of the French hotel argues that architecture should please the senses and the mind.

This book explores the significance of archery as ritual practice and literary metaphor in classical Confucian texts. Archery passages in the Analects, Mencius, and Xunzi are discussed in the light of Zhou culture and the troubled historical circumstances of early followers of the ruist master Confucius.

For the want of something better to do, I sometimes reflect on democracy (in the Paris subway, of course). As you know, there is confusion in people's minds about that useful notion. And since I like to side with the greatest number of people possible, I look for definitions that might be acceptable to the largest number. That's not easy, and I don't pretend to have succeeded. But it seems to me that certain useful approximations are possible. To be brief, (...) here is one of them: democracy is the social and political exercice of modesty. Let me explain that. (shrink)

For the want of something better to do, I sometimes reflect on democracy. As you know, there is confusion in people's minds about that useful notion. And since I like to side with the greatest number of people possible, I look for definitions that might be acceptable to the largest number. That's not easy, and I don't pretend to have succeeded. But it seems to me that certain useful approximations are possible. To be brief, here is one of them: democracy (...) is the social and political exercice of modesty. Let me explain that. (shrink)

ABSTRACTZhi is an important Chinese notion that conveys among other things human capacity to set aims, to determine a course of action, or to persist in a resolve. The term naturally turns up in Chinese contributions to Western Free Will debate. In this paper, I explain zhi by working out a comparison that goes from East to West. I do a three-fold textual analysis of zhi focusing on the Mencius. I outline different usages found in the text, examine a nuanced, (...) dominant meaning suggested in 2A.2, and discuss notional features based on language patterns. My analysis yields a more homegrown understanding of zhi which I shall compare with Western expressions of moral agency. (shrink)

In this review, I highlight the valuable contributions of Wendy Wolford’s latest book, which rest on her extensive understanding of the diversity of the Brazilian countryside and her acute ability to weave together the impact that land-tenure patterns, labour regimes and regional cultures have had upon settlers of the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement. It also assesses the central claim of the book which suggests that the MST is often unable to retain its membership because the leadership reproduces an understanding of (...) peasant agriculture that is specific to the South of Brazil. The review argues that Wolford’s main argument falls foul of four shortcomings related to her methodology, her understanding of the MST’s ideology, her choice of not including the process of encampment and the MST’s commitment to radical social change in her analysis, and finally her problematic interpretation of the relationship between the grassroots membership and the leadership of the movement. (shrink)

"In association with the Eric Voegelin Society.".

Perhaps the most important philosopher of the twentieth century, Albert Camus (1913-1960), winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, is more relevant today than ever before. Personal Writing brings together, for the first time, thematically-linked essays from across Camus's writing career that reflect the scope of his personal preoccupations. Featuring a foreword by acclaimed Camus scholar Alice Kaplan (author of Looking for the Stranger), this volume will introduce a new generation of readers to a cultural icon.

The Nobel Prize winner's most influential and enduring lectures and speeches, newly translated by Quintin Hoare, in what is the first English language publication of this collection. Albert Camus (1913-1960) is unsurpassed among writers for a body of work that animates the wonder and absurdity of existence. Speaking Out: Lectures and Speeches, 1938-1958 brings together, for the first time, thirty-four public statements from across Camus's career that reveal his radical commitment to justice around the world and his role as a (...) public intellectual. From his 1946 lecture at Columbia University about humanity's moral decline, his 1951 BBC broadcast commenting on Britain's general election, and his strident appeal during the Algerian conflict for a civilian truce between Algeria and France, to his speeches on Dostoevsky and Don Quixote, this crucial new collection reflects the scope of Camus's political and cultural influence. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Fabuler la fin du monde: La puissance critique des fictions d’apocalypse by Jean-Paul EngélibertCyril CamusJean-Paul Engélibert. Fabuler la fin du monde: La puissance critique des fictions d’apocalypse [Fabulating the end of the world: The critical power of apocalypse fiction]. Paris: Éditions La Découverte, 2019. 239 pp. Print. 20€. ISBN 978-2-348-03719-1.Jean-Paul Engélibert is a well-established expert on apocalyptic and postapocalyptic fiction. His exploration of the genre thus far includes (...) the monograph Apocalypses sans royaume: Politique des fictions de la fin du monde, XX–XXIe siècles (2013), numerous articles, as well as the essay collection L’Apocalypse: Une imagination politique, XIXe–XXIe siècles (2018), which he co-edited. In his latest book, Fabuler la fin du monde, he returns to several texts and aspects of the genre previously covered, delving deeper into what he calls “fictions of the end of the world.” In the ten chapters, gathered in five parts, he approaches his subject as a seasoned scholar in the field of comparative literature, and his analysis draws from comparisons between modern fiction’s representation of apocalypse and biblical literature’s visions of apocalypse and messianism. The book also offers ecocritical insights into the specter of Anthropocenic manifestations in fiction, with reflections on the interrelated genres of utopia and dystopia, theories of cinema, and philosophical writings on the catastrophic history of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.The range of fictional works discussed is wide, including Jean-Baptiste Cousin de Grainville’s Le dernier homme (1805); Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818); Émile Souvestre’s Le monde tel qu’il sera (1846); Didier de Chousy’s Ignis (1883); Robert Merle’s Malevil (1972); José Saramago’s Blindness (1995); Antoine Volodine’s Minor Angels (1999); Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis (2003); Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006); Céline Minard’s Le dernier monde (2007); Davide [End Page 163] Longo’s The Last Man Standing (2010); and Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy (Oryx and Crake [2003], The Year of the Flood [2009], and MaddAddam [2013]). Engélibert also touches on feature-length movies such as Stanley Kramer’s On the Beach (1959), Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), Abel Ferrara’s 4:44 Last Day on Earth (2012), and Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell (1995), as well as on other literary and audiovisual fictions, such as E. M. Forster’s short story “The Machine Stops” (1909), Edward Bond’s dramatic trilogy The War Plays (1985), and the first season (2014) of Damon Lindelof and Tom Perrotta’s TV series The Leftovers (2014–17).Engélibert’s exegeses of the genre build around two aspects of the evolving relationship of apocalyptic narratives to the context of their production. Apocalypse (in the sense of “the end of the world” rather than the etymological sense of “revelation”) is no longer primarily a religious myth: the creation and use of the atomic bomb during the Second World War, the theorization of the Anthropocene, and the mainstreaming of concerns over climate change have made the term “apocalypse” a very real, tangible prospect for the future. Engélibert relies on Günther Anders’s Die atomare Drohung (1981) to highlight the importance of the A-bomb in bringing home the reality of potential annihilation to people’s collective consciousness. Yet his second contextual/historical point is that the Anthropocene (albeit unnamed at the time) actually started with the Industrial Revolution, and that thinkers and polemicists such as Charles Fourier or Eugène Huzar, as well as contemporary fiction writers, were already acknowledging the environmental impact of humans and their economic/industrial/technological activity as threats to human and nonhuman life, and to the health of the planetary system itself.1Citing the work of Jean-Baptiste Fressoz and Christophe Bonneuil on the history of climate science, Engélibert analyzes in detail several nineteenth-century novels (namely Le Dernier homme, Frankenstein, Le monde tel qu’il sera, and Ignis) and one early-twentieth-century story (Forster’s “The Machine Stops”) that denounce the harm that the idol of the time, Progress, was already wreaking on nature and human life... (shrink)

The Problem of Application investigates the multiple viewpoints in defining a critical aesthetic in applied arts practice. Amongst organisations, participants, and facilitators there are varying wants and needs in any creative project with an educational agenda. The product of arts based health initiatives often seek to inform and educate, whereby an aesthetic standard may seem contrary to this participatory approach. This research maintains that an aesthetic approach is a lively portion of the collaborative dialogue, which requires interrogation and consideration for (...) a successful outcome. Through the analysis of a participatory arts project completed in West Africa addressing youth issues and HIV/AIDS, The Problem of Application seeks to uncover the multiple facets surrounding the defining of aesthetics in applied practice. The project entitled Youth Visions: Transforming our Futures Together worked with students aged 17–21 to develop an outdoor mural and a live performance inspired by the traditions of local festivals. With an anthropological approach to aesthetic criticism, Youth Visions revealed the multiple layers that define our focus of appreciation. (shrink)

In this review, I highlight the valuable contributions of Wendy Wolford’s latest book, which rest on her extensive understanding of the diversity of the Brazilian countryside and her acute ability to weave together the impact that land-tenure patterns, labour regimes and regional cultures have had upon settlers of the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement. It also assesses the central claim of the book which suggests that the MST is often unable to retain its membership because the leadership reproduces an understanding of (...) peasant agriculture that is specific to the South of Brazil. The review argues that Wolford’s main argument falls foul of four shortcomings related to her methodology, her understanding of the MST’s ideology, her choice of not including the process of encampment and the MST’s commitment to radical social change in her analysis, and finally her problematic interpretation of the relationship between the grassroots membership and the leadership of the movement. (shrink)