Frantz Fanon’s posthumously published one act play, The Drowning Eye (2018, 81–112), reframes French existentialism in a postcolonial context by examining both the absurd and racial identity. Divided into three parts, this article first discusses the many parallels between The Drowning Eye and Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit (1989), both one act plays set in one room with the entire action of the play consisting of a dialogue among three individuals in a love triangle. The second part explores the role of (...) the absurd in existentialism by looking at character and thematic similarities between The Drowning Eye and Albert Camus’s The Stranger (1982), both of which reject religion as a source of meaning in life and embrace acceptance of the absurd as a liberating force. Fanon’s echoes of French existentialist themes situated in the context of decolonialism are explored in the third part. Fanon diverges from the apolitical alienation of The Stranger by instead interrogating racial binaries of former colonial subjects who either embrace or reject black consciousness. The Drowning Eye foreshadows Fanon’s later work, Black Skin, White Masks (Fanon 2008) and lays the foundation for the analysis of decolonialism and national consciousness in The Wretched of the Earth (Fanon 2004). (shrink)

Frantz Fanon’s posthumously published one act play, The Drowning Eye (2018, 81–112), reframes French existentialism in a postcolonial context by examining both the absurd and racial identity. Divided into three parts, this article first discusses the many parallels between The Drowning Eye and Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit (1989), both one act plays set in one room with the entire action of the play consisting of a dialogue among three individuals in a love triangle. The second part explores the role of (...) the absurd in existentialism by looking at character and thematic similarities between The Drowning Eye and Albert Camus’s The Stranger (1982), both of which reject religion as a source of meaning in life and embrace acceptance of the absurd as a liberating force. Fanon’s echoes of French existentialist themes situated in the context of decolonialism are explored in the third part. Fanon diverges from the apolitical alienation of The Stranger by instead interrogating racial binaries of former colonial subjects who either embrace or reject black consciousness. The Drowning Eye foreshadows Fanon’s later work, Black Skin, White Masks (Fanon 2008) and lays the foundation for the analysis of decolonialism and national consciousness in The Wretched of the Earth (Fanon 2004). (shrink)

Samizdat, the underground circulation of unofficial and forbidden literature in the Soviet Union, is an example of how censorship can backfire. Ideological restrictions produced walls of monotony in libraries and bookstores, propelling readers to search for more interesting fare. Sensitive texts on religion, philosophy, human rights, and current events, as well as literary works, passed from hand to hand clandestinely from around 1960 until censorship was abolished in the late 1980s. Von Zitzewitz's study is itself interesting fare, uncovering the workings (...) of samizdat as both a distribution network, comparable to that of print culture, and a social network that developed bonds between people who shared a defined purpose outside the public space. By no means did they all think of themselves as dissenters. For many people who lived ordinary Soviet lives, it was simply that “reading samizdat increased [their] individual feeling of freedom and represented a personal act of resistance.”One merit of this book is its point-by-point comparison of the samizdat distribution network to the print-culture production chain of author-publisher-printer-shipper-bookseller-reader. Samizdat had an analogous chain, in which a text made its way from author to reader through a network of people, each performing a specific function—procuring manuscripts, housing them, typing (or photographing) multiple copies, and delivering copies to readers. There were others who served as compilers, translators, collectors, and even editors and “librarians” (although accepting this designation requires abandoning the notion of a library as a stationary physical repository).Since all participants in the network strove to hide their traces from the prying eyes of the security police, samizdat researchers are hampered by a lack of records and evidence. To help fill the information gap, von Zitzewitz (in collaboration with Memorial's Gennadii Kuzovkin) designed a sixty-three-question survey targeting former samizdat participants and posted online in 2017. Tables display statistics (from the first 122 respondents) on demographics (respondents’ gender, place and decade of birth, and education level) as well as information on which authors, genres, and subject matter were most read. Other survey questions were designed to elicit recollections that help us understand what it felt like to participate in samizdat culture, whether as an author or reader, or in some aspect of acquisition or distribution. The many quotations from the survey responses bring to life the intensity of this activity. Receiving a sought-after text with an injunction to return it (or pass it on) the next day might mean reading all through the night to get through hundreds of pages. And while it is intuitive to think of samizdat as walled off from official culture, this study argues persuasively that they were intertwined. There were plenty of gray areas and fuzzy boundaries, too. One owner of samizdat books had several of them confiscated during a KGB search of his apartment, only to find them later for sale in a bookshop.Having begun as a clandestine, makeshift response to the institution of censorship, samizdat became more sophisticated over time, evolving into an institution itself. It arguably contributed to the perestroika reforms and became unnecessary when censorship was given the heave-ho. Subsequently, samizdat activists who had managed the covert production and circulation of entire journals published full accounts of their activity and the operation of their networks. Von Zitzewitz makes good use of these sources and shows admiration for the role these men played. She notes, though, that their detailed descriptions omit names of any of the typists who gave up their leisure hours and nightly sleep for the pleasure of hammering out multiple carbon copies of forbidden literature, usually for no pay. The word typist, given its lowly connotation in both Russian and English, is unfortunate. Typists were samizdat's printing press, and without their commitment and sacrifice the whole enterprise would have collapsed. Von Zitzewitz suggests that it may never have occurred to the samizdat heavyweights to acknowledge them by name. They were just... women. On the other hand, the menial typist designation had its upside. It seems to have resulted in a shorter prison sentence for at least one of them.Von Zitzewitz argues strenuously that samizdat was first and foremost a social network. If you wanted to get hold of, say, The Gulag Archipelago, you needed to know someone with the connections to help you get it. To call samizdat a social network is, of course, to wade into comparisons with today's online social media networks. Von Zitzewitz notes parallels, but she finds that the differences overwhelm the similarities. Samizdat was a social network, but one that depended on mutual trust. (shrink)

Beyond the defiance of the young iconoclast—Wilde himself, of course—and the rather perfunctory curve of Dorian Gray to that gothic final sight , there is another, possibly less strident, but more central theme. That one is damned for selling one's soul to the devil is a commonplace in legends; what arrests our attention more, perhaps, is Wilde's claim or boast or worry or warning that one might indeed be poisoned by a book . . . and that the artist, (...) even the presumably "good" Basil Hallward, is the diabolical agent. Wilde's novel must be seen as a highly serious meditation upon the moral role of the artist—an interior challenge, in fact, to the insouciance of the famous pronouncements that would assure us that there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book or that all art is "quite useless." Wilde's genius was disfigured by his talent: he always sounds much more flippant, far more superficial, than he really is. So one always say about Dorian Gray, with an air of surprise, that the novel is exceptionally good after all—and anyone who has read it recently replies, with the same air of faint incredulity, yes, it is exceptionally good—in fact, one of the strongest and most haunting of English novels. Yet its reputation remains questionable. Gerald Weales virtually dismisses it as "terribly fin de siècle " in a rather flippant introduction to the novel, and it would be difficult to find a critic who would choose to discuss it in terms other than the familiar ones of decadence, art for art's sake, art as "the telling of beautiful untrue things." Joyce Carol Oates has written, among others, Bellefleur, Childhood, a collection of short stories, Nightside, and Son of the Morning. Her contributions to Critical Inquiry, include "Jocoserious Joyce" and "Lawrence's Gotterdammerung". (shrink)

Ulysses is certainly the greatest novel in the English language, and one might argue for its being the greatest single work of art in our tradition. How significant, then, and how teasing, that this masterwork should be a comedy, and that its creator should have explicitly valued the comic "vision" over the tragic—how disturbing to our predilection for order that, with an homage paid to classical antiquity so meticulous that it is surely a burlesque, Joyce's exhibitionististicicity is never so serious (...) as when it is most outrageously comic. Joyce might have been addressing his readers when he wrote to Nora in 1909: "Now . . . I want you to read over and over all I have written to you. Some of it is ugly, obscene, and bestial, some of it is pure and holy and spiritual: all of it is myself." Joyce Carol Oates is the author of, among others, them, Wonderland, and The Assassins. "Jocoserious Joyce" is part of a book on tragedy and comedy. Her contributions to Critical Inquiry, include "Lawrence's Gotterdammerung" and “The Picture of Dorian Gray: Wilde's Parable about the Fall". (shrink)

In his travels, and in his accompanying readings, he had come to the conclusion that the essential secret of life was harmony. . . . And he proceeded to put his philosophy into practice by forcing order into the established world, translating the mystic word harmony into the practical word organisation.1 Harmony becomes organization. And Gerald dedicates himself to work, to feverish, totally absorbing work, inspired with an almost religious exaltation in his fight with matter. The world is split in (...) two: on one side matter , on the other side his own isolated will. He wants to create on earth a perfect machine, "an activity of pure order, pure mechanical repetition"; a man of the twentieth century with no nostalgia for the superannuated ideals of Christianity or democracy, he wishes to found his eternity, his infinity, in the machine. So inchoate and mysterious is the imaginative world Lawrence creates for Women in Love that we find no difficulty in reading Gerald Crich as an allegorical figure in certain chapters and as a quite human, even fluid personality in others. As Gudrun's frenzied lover, as Birkin's elusive beloved, he seems a substantially different person from the Gerald Crich who is a ruthless god of the machine; yet as his cultural role demands extinction , so does his private emotional life, his confusion of the individual will with that of the cosmos, demand death—death by perfect cold. He is Lawrence's only tragic figure, a remarkable creation on a remarkable novel, and though it is a commonplace thing to say that Birkin represents Lawrence, it seems equally likely that Gerald Crich represents Lawrence—in his deepest, most aggrieved, most nihilist soul. · 1. All quotations from Women in Love are taken from the Modern Library edition. Joyce Carol Oates' works include the novels Childhood, Son of the Morning, and a collection of short stories, Night-Side. “Lawrence’s Götterdämmerung” is part of a larger work exploring tragedy and comedy. Her contributions to Critical Inquiry include "Jocoserious Joyce" , and "The Picture of Dorian Gray: Wilde's Parable about the Fall". (shrink)

The continuing spread and development of electronic data interchange in health care settings is fuelling a significant global debate about the practicality, ethics, and legality of such a practice. The uncertainties implicit in this debate are particularly acute in the context of disease or population groups for whom multidisciplinary, multipleagency teamworking has become acknowledged as the “best practice” for providing effective and timely care or support. The greying of the population is a demographic phenomenon that will have a profound impact (...) on the health care system, social care agencies, and caregivers, and will require a greater degree of service coordination in order to meet the complex care needs of both care-receiver and caregiver. (shrink)

The continuing spread and development of electronic data interchange in health care settings is fuelling a significant global debate about the practicality, ethics, and legality of such a practice. The uncertainties implicit in this debate are particularly acute in the context of disease or population groups for whom multidisciplinary, multipleagency teamworking has become acknowledged as the “best practice” for providing effective and timely care or support. The greying of the population is a demographic phenomenon that will have a profound impact (...) on the health care system, social care agencies, and caregivers, and will require a greater degree of service coordination in order to meet the complex care needs of both care-receiver and caregiver. (shrink)

New Tenth Anniversary edition of this classic text with a new preface by the author, compares myths about meat-eating with myths about manliness, and seeks to ...

The existential analysis -- The death of dasein -- The timeliness of dasein -- The derivation of time -- The time of being.

The British bestseller Straw Dogs is an exciting, radical work of philosophy, which sets out to challenge our most cherished assumptions about what it means to be human. From Plato to Christianity, from the Enlightenment to Nietzsche and Marx, the Western tradition has been based on arrogant and erroneous beliefs about human beings and their place in the world. Philosophies such as liberalism and Marxism think of humankind as a species whose destiny is to transcend natural limits and conquer the (...) Earth. John Gray argues that this belief in human difference is a dangerous illusion and explores how the world and human life look once humanism has been finally abandoned. The result is an exhilarating, sometimes disturbing book that leads the reader to question our deepest-held beliefs. Will Self, in the New Statesman , called Straw Dogs his book of the year: “I read it once, I read it twice and took notes . . . I thought it that good.” “Nothing will get you thinking as much as this brilliant book” ( Sunday Telegraph ). (shrink)

There has recently been a flurry of activity in the philosophy of language on how to best account for the unique features of epithets. One of these features is that epithets can be appropriated (that is, the offense-grounding potential of a term can be removed). We argue that attempts to appropriate an epithet fundamentally involve a violation of language-governing rules. We suggest that the other conditions that make something an attempt at appropriation are the same conditions that characterize acts of (...) civil disobedience. Accounting for attempts at appropriation is thus both a linguistic and socio-political endeavor. We demonstrate how these two facets of attempts at appropriation also help us understand the communicative features of civil disobedience. (shrink)

How to formulate the doctrine of relativism -- Evaluating the doctrine of relativism.

Does Anne Conway (1631–79) hold that the created world consists of a single underlying substance? Some have argued that she does; others have argued that she is a priority monist and so holds that there are many created substances, but the whole created world is ontologically prior to each particular creature. Against both of these proposals, this article makes the case for a substance pluralist interpretation of Conway: individual creatures are distinct substances, and the whole created world is not ontologically (...) prior to the individual creatures that compose it. The basic argument for such a view draws on Conway's claims about the freedom and moral responsibility of individual creatures. The pluralist reading is straightforwardly compatible with these claims, while the monistic readings are not. (shrink)

A great philosopher will change the way you think about your life. For most of human history, religion provided a clear explanation of life and death. But in the late 19th and early 20th centuries new ideas -- from psychiatry to evolution to Communist -- seemed to suggest that our fate was now in our own hands. We would ourselves become God. This is the theme of a remarkable new book by one of the world's greatest lving philosophers. It is (...) a brilliant and frightening look at the problems and opportunities of a world coming to grips with humankind's now solitary, unaided place in the universe. Gray takes two major examples: the belief that the science-backed Communism of the new USSR could reshape the planet, and the belief among a group of Edwardian intellectuals -- popularized through mediums and automatic writing -- that there was a non-religious form of life after death. Gray presents an extraordinary cast of philosophers, journalists, politicians, charlatans and mass murderers, all of whom felt driven by a specifically scientific and modern world view. He raises a host of fascinating questions about what it means to be human. The implications of Gray's book will haunt its readers for the rest of their lives. (shrink)

In this book, Carol Gould offers a fundamental reconsideration of the theory of democracy, arguing that democratic decision-making should apply not only to politics but also to economic and social life. Professor Gould redefines traditional concepts of freedom and social equality, and proposes a principle of Equal Positive Freedom in which individual freedom and social co-operation are seen to be compatible. Reformulating basic conceptions of property, authority, economic justice and human rights, the author suggests a number of ways in (...) which these principles could be realised in social institutions. She also discusses such issues as democratic control of technology, the nature of democratic personality, and the question of democracy in international relations. (shrink)

In this book, Carol Gould offers a fundamental reconsideration of the theory of democracy, arguing that democratic decision-making should apply not only to politics but also to economic and social life. Professor Gould redefines traditional concepts of freedom and social equality, and proposes a principle of Equal Positive Freedom in which individual freedom and social co-operation are seen to be compatible. Reformulating basic conceptions of property, authority, economic justice and human rights, the author suggests a number of ways in (...) which these principles could be realised in social institutions. She also discusses such issues as democratic control of technology, the nature of democratic personality, and the question of democracy in international relations. (shrink)

Chapter one JS Mill and the future of liberalism If there is a consensus on the value of Mill's political writings, it is that we may turn to them for the ...

This volume brings together exciting and provocative new feminist readings of famous classic and contemporary texts from Plato to Habermas.

Anne Conway rejects the view that creatures are essentially members of any natural kind more specific than the kind 'creature'. That is, she rejects essentialism about species membership. This chapter provides an analysis of one of Anne Conway's arguments against such essentialism, which (as I argue) is drawn from metaethical rather than metaphysical premises. In her view, if a creature's species or kind were inscribed in its essence, that essence would constitute a limit on the creature's potential to participate in (...) the divine good. It is this consideration that ultimately leads her to reject essentialism about species membership. The chapter concludes with an examination of some of the metaethical consequences of Conway's view as well as a lesson it can teach us about ideal adviser accounts of the good. (shrink)

Why is the human imagination to blame for the worst crimes of the twentieth century? Why is progress a pernicious myth? Why is contemporary atheism just a hangover from Christian faith? John Gray, author of Straw Dogsand Black Mass, is one of the most original and iconoclastic thinkers of our time. In this pugnacious and brilliantly readable collection of essays from across his career, he smashes through humanity's most cherished beliefs to overturn our view of the world, and our (...) place in it. 'If humans are different from other animals it is chiefly in being governed by myths, which are not creations of the will but creatures of the imagination.' 'No traditional myth is as untruthful as the modern myth of progress. All prevailing philosophies embody the fiction that human life can be altered at will. Better aim for the impossible, they say, than submit to fate. Invariably, the result is a cult of human self-assertion that soon ends in farce.'. (shrink)

Describes what the author sees as a suppression of the feminine in Western culture, technology, and philosophy and opens a feminist postmodern space from which fresh differences may emerge. This title explores underdeveloped themes in American and Canadian feminism. It offers a deconstruction of the phallocentric dichotomies of nature and culture.

Essai montaignien, maximes et fragments, confessions, exercice spirituel, journal, mémoires ou autobiographies, autant de genres abordés dans ce volume. Certains relèvent d'une tradition de la méditation et de l'exercice spirituel, alors que d'autres sont plus inventifs. Les interprétations proposées ici invitent à réssusciter ce mouvement qui animait l'écriture avant qu'il ne se fige.

There has recently been emphasis put on providing two-factor accounts of monothematic delusions. Such accounts would explain (1) whether a delusional hypothesis (e.g. someone else is inserting thoughts into my mind) can be understood as a prima facie reasonable response to an experience and (2) why such a delusional hypothesis is believed and maintained given its implausibility and evidence against it. I argue that if we are to avoid obfuscating the cognitive mechanisms involved in monothematic delusion formation we should split (...) the first factor (1 above) into two factors: how abnormal experience can give rise to a delusional ‘proto-hypothesis’ and how a ‘proto-hypothesis’ in consort with normal experiences and background information, can be developed into a delusional hypothesis. In particular I will argue that a schizophrenic is faced with the unusual requirement of having to identify an introspectively accessible thought as one's own, and that this requirement of identification is the central experiential abnormality of thought insertion, auditory verbal hallucination, and alien control (i.e. passivity symptoms). Additionally, I will consider non-experiential factors which are required for the formation of a delusional hypothesis. (shrink)

Deeply rooted structures of racism, ableism, misogyny, ageism, and transphobia hurt great numbers of people, exposing them to intolerance, economic exclusion, and physical harm around the globe. Billions of land animals suffer and die annually in concentrated feeding operations and slaughterhouses. Our planet and all who live here are in perilous straights as the climate changes. In the face of such grievous problems, people who want to find positive ways to respond often grapple with difficult questions about how to make (...) a difference. Effective Altruism has arisen as an attempt to help answer these questions, encouraging people to give as much money as they can in the most effective ways to address human and animal suffering. But the Effective Altruists’ answers support some of the very social structures that cause suffering, undermining its efforts to “do the most good.” The Good It Promises, The Harm It Does is the first book-length critique of Effective Altruism. It brings together a diverse group of activists and scholars to explore Effective Altruism’s failure to meaningfully address forms of human and animal suffering. (shrink)

In just a few years, the book became an underground classic. Neither Man Nor Beast takes Adams' thought one step further.

Pateman challenges the way contemporary society functions by questioning the standard interpretation of an idea that is deeply embedded in American and British political thought: that our rights and freedoms derive from the social contract explicated by Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau and interpreted in the United States by the Founding Fathers. The author shows how we are told only half the story of the original contract that establishes modern patriarchy. The sexual contract is ignored and thus men's patriarchal right over (...) women is also glossed over. No attention is paid to the problems that arise when women are excluded from the original contract but incorporated into the new contractual order. One of the main targets of the book is those who try to turn contractarian theory to progressive use, and a major thesis of the book is that this is not possible. Thus those feminists who have looked to a more "proper" contract- one between genuinely equal partners, or one entered into without any coercion- are misleading themselves. In the author's words, "In contract theory universal freedom is always a hypothesis, a story, a political fiction. Contract always generates political right in the forms of domination and subordination." Thus the book is also aimed at mainstream political theorists, and socialist and other critics of contract theory. The author offers a sweeping challenge to conventional understandings- of both left and right- of actual contracts in everyday life: the marriage contract, the employment contract, the prostitution contract, and the new surrogate mother contract. By bringing a feminist perspective to bear on the contradictions and paradoxes surrounding women and contract, and the relation between the sexes, she is able to shed new light on fundamental political problems of freedom and subordination. (shrink)

The theme of this year’s Spindel Conference was Social Ontologies of Race. This editorial introduction serves as both a general introduction to the topic of racial ontology and an introduction to this volume’s contributions. I will first explain some central ideas for discussions of ontology in general. I will then make some basic taxonomic distinctions common to discussions of racial ontology and suggest some clarifications. I will then go on to discuss the five contributions to this volume.

Friedrich Nietzsche has emerged as one of the most important and influential modern philosophers. For several decades, the book series Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung (MTNF) has set the agenda in a rapidly growing and changing field of Nietzsche scholarship. The scope of the series is interdisciplinary and international in orientation reflects the entire spectrum of research on Nietzsche, from philosophy to literary studies and political theory. The series publishes monographs and edited volumes that undergo a strict peer-review process. The (...) book series is led by an international team of editors, whose work represents the full range of current Nietzsche scholarship. (shrink)

It was only recently that people began to refer to God, occasionally, as “she.” Is it now possible to re-imagine divine power as a female force deeply related to the changing world? If so, then we can understand the deeper meaning of female images of divine power including depictions such as “The Goddess.” Carol Christ offers a new look at these female images of God in She Who Changes . She shows how many traditional ideas about divine power reject (...) the female body and connection to the natural world. She looks at the work of female theologians in Judaism, Christianity, and various religions that worship "The Goddess" to explore the way in which they are re-imagining both divine and human power as embodied both in a changing world and deeply related to all beings. (shrink)

I argue that standard explanations of Du Bois' theory of race inappropriately characterize his view as attempting to provide descriptive criteria for races. Such an interpretation makes it both susceptible to Appiah's circularity objection and alienates it from Du Bois' central project of solidarity—which is the central point of “Conservation.” I propose that we should understand his theory as providing a normative account of race: an attempt to characterize what some races should be in terms of what other races are. (...) In providing such an account I will also show how my interpretation of Du Bois' criteria avoids the circularity objection by making the criteria central to the project of solidarity. Thus, this interpretation avoids what I take to be the two main problems with standard descriptive explanations of Du Bois' criteria. (shrink)

David Rosenthal and Josh Weisberg have recently provided a counter argument to Ned Block’s argument that a Higher Order Thought theory of consciousness cannot accommodate the existence of hallucinatory conscious states . Their counter argument invokes the idea of mental appearances: a non-existent intentional object which is to aid in an account of subjective conscious awareness. I argue that if mental appearances are to do the work they are supposed to, we cannot draw a mental appearance/reality distinction. I provide an (...) alternative story that a HOT theorist can invoke to account for cases of conscious misrepresentation. Such a story will require denying the existence of hallucinatory conscious states while still accounting for conscious misrepresentation. This is a cost I believe the HOT theorist should be willing to pay. (shrink)

Mobile health tools are often said to empower users by providing them with the information they need to exercise control over their health. We aim to bring clarity to this claim, and in doing so explore the relationship between empowerment and autonomy. We have identified three distinct models embedded in the empowerment rhetoric: empowerment as information, empowerment as control, and empowerment as values. Each distinct model of empowerment gives rise to an associated problem. These problems, the Problem of Interpretation, the (...) Value Alignment Problem, and the Priority Problem, show that mobile health tools in their current form are either insufficient for empowerment or are self‐defeating. These digital health technologies encourage users to adopt an individualized conception of autonomy, one that may weaken the doctor–patient relationship and undermine practices in shared decision making, and ultimately may not deliver on improving the health outcomes for those that need it the most. (shrink)

The first part of this paper surveys the current literature in the history of nineteenth-century mathematics in order to show that the question “Did the increasing abstraction of mathematics lead to a sense of anxiety?” is a new and valid question. I argue that the mathematics of the nineteenth century is marked by a growing appreciation of error leading to a note of anxiety, hesitant at first but persistent by 1900. This mounting disquiet about so many aspects of mathematics after (...) 1850 is seldom discussed. The second part explores the issue of anxiety in mathematical life through an interesting account of an address made by a mathematician in 1911, Oscar Perron. The third and final part ventures some conclusions about the value of anxiety as a question for historians of mathematics to pursue. (shrink)