Measuring responsiveness to gain accurate diagnosis in populations with disorders of consciousness (DOC) is of central concern because these patients have such complex clinical presentations. Due to the uncertainty of accuracy for both behavioral and neurophysiological measures in DOC, combined assessment approaches are recommended. A number of standardized behavioral measures can be used with adults with DOC with minor to moderate reservations relating to the measures’ psychometric properties and clinical applicability. However, no measures have been standardized for use with pediatric (...) DOC populations. When adapting adult measures for children, confounding factors include developmental considerations for language-based items included in all DOC measures. Given the lack of pediatric DOC measures, there is a pressing need for measures that are sensitive to the complex clinical presentations typical of DOC and that can accommodate the developmental levels of pediatric populations. The music therapy assessment tool for awareness in disorders of consciousness (MATADOC) is a music-based measure that has been standardized for adults with DOC. Given its emphasis on non-language based sensory stimuli, it is well-suited to pediatric populations spanning developmental stages. In a pre-pilot exploratory study, we examined the clinical utility of this measure and explored trends for test-retest and inter-rater agreement as well as its performance against external reference standards. In several cases, MATADOC items in the visual and auditory domains produced outcomes suggestive of higher level functioning when compared to outcomes provided by other DOC measures. Preliminary findings suggest that the MATADOC provides a useful protocol and measure for behavioral assessment and clinical treatment planning with pediatric DOC. Further research with a larger sample is warranted to test a version of the MATADOC that is refined to meet developmental needs of pediatric DOC populations. (shrink)

One of the most original thinkers of the twentieth century, Julia Kristeva has been driving forward the fields of literary and cultural studies since the 1960s. This volume is an accessible, introductory guide to the main themes of Kristeva's work, including her ideas on: *semiotics and symbolism *abjection *melancholia *feminism *revolt. McAfee provides clear explanations of the more difficult aspects of Kristeva's theories, helpfully placing her ideas in the relevant theoretical context, be it literary theory, psychoanalysis, linguistics, gender studies or (...) philosophy, and demonstrates the impact of her critical interventions in these areas. Julia Kristeva is the essential guide for readers who are approaching the work of this challenging thinker for the first time, and provides the ideal opportunity for those with more knowledge to re-familiarise themselves with Kristeva's key terms. (shrink)

In June 2016, Texas A&M University hosted its inaugural philosophy camp for teens. In this article, we address how running a philosophy camp for pre-college students can have a positive impact on both the campers and the staff, which included philosophy faculty, graduate students (Philosophy and English), and undergraduates. We designed the week-long (Monday through Friday, 9 a.m.–4 p.m.) philosophy camp with three aims: to introduce pre-college students to philosophical thinking and dialogue; to develop an intellectual community among the campers; (...) and to provide a space in which young people could engage as equal partners in a series of spirited philosophical discussions. Drawing chiefly from our local community, we enrolled a diverse group of campers. We organized the week around themes that we thought would be of particular interest to pre-college students while also providing a broad view of the discipline. What we did not anticipate was the intense friendships that were formed, based on a shared love of philosophical ideas. (shrink)

Introduction to genericity in the nominal, verbal and sentential domain.

Contrasting the work of Genevieve Lloyd, Elizabeth Grosz, and Moira Gatens with the poststrueturalist philosophy of Judith Butler, this paper identifies a distinctive “Australian” feminism. It argues that while Butler remains trapped by the matter/representation binary, the Spinozist turn in Lloyd and Gatens, and Grosz's work on Bergson and Deleuze, are attempts to think corporeality.

Using Deleuze and Guattari's concept of stratigraphy, it is possible to open the question of the limits and range of the Anthropocene. Geological stratification has enabled a view of time and the earth that has opened new horizons, but this mode of stratification is one among others. Other stratifications are possible, not only those that would be compossible with the story of the Anthropocene, but also incompossible stratifications, at odds with the history of man.

The paper investigates how field experimentation of genetically modified crops became central to the French controversy on genetically modified organisms in recent years. Initially constructed in the 1980s as a cognitive endeavor to be preserved from lay interference, field trials of genetically modified crops were reconceived as “an intrusion in the social space,” which had to be negotiated with actors from that space. In order to analyze this transformation, the authors suggest that it is necessary to develop an interpretive framework (...) that combines theoretical perspectives from science and technology studies and the sociology of social problems, and emphasizes the importance of the way in which actors compete in a heterogeneous public space, to put forward alternative framings of problems. The authors present a detailed analysis of the interactions and conflicts between actors in diverse social arenas in order to better understand the dynamics of this sociotechnical controversy. (shrink)

This book provides an up-to-date introduction to the study of generics and pursues the enterprise of the influential Generic Book edited by Gregory Carlson and Jeffry Pelletier, which was published in 1995. Genericity is a key notion in the study of human cognition as it reveals our capacity to organize our perceived reality into classes and to describe regularities. The generic can be expressed at the level of a word or phrase (ie the potato in The Irish economy became dependent (...) upon the potato) or an entire sentence (eg in John smokes a cigar after dinner, the generic aspect is a property of the expression, rather than any single word or phrase within it). This book gathers new work from senior and young researchers to reconsider the notion of genericity, examining the distinct contributions made by the determiner phrase (eg the notions of kind/individual) and the verbal predicate (eg the notions of permanency, disposition, ability, habituality, and plurality). Finally, in connection with the whole sentence, the analytic/synthetic distinction is discussed as well as the notion of normality. The book will appeal to both students and scholars in linguistics, philosophy and cognitive science. (shrink)

In this essay I explore three concepts: sex, the city, and the Anthropocene. I argue that the condition for the possibility of the city is the assemblage of sexual drives for the sake of relative stability, but that those same drives also exceed the city's self-preservative function. Further, I argue that the very conditions that further the city and that enable philosophical and scientific concepts to be formed rely upon a geological politics that enables new ways of thinking about what (...) counts as the political as such. (shrink)

This article is about recent attempts by scholars, database practitioners, and curators to experiment in theoretically interesting ways with the conceptual design and the building of databases, archives, and other information systems. This article uses the term ‘‘archive’’ as an overarching category to include a diversity of technologies used to inventory objects and knowledge, to commit them to memory and for future use. The category of ‘‘archive’’ might include forms as diverse as the simple spreadsheet, the species inventory, the computerized (...) database, and the museum. Using this protean concept, this study suggests that we are currently witnessing a time where close convergences are occurring between social theory and archive construction. It identifies a ‘‘move’’ toward exposure of the guts of our archives and databases, toward exposing the contingencies, the framing, the reflexivity, and the politics embedded within them. Within this move, the study examines ways in which theories of performance and emergence have begun to influence the way that archives of different kinds are conceived and reflects on the role of Science and Technology Studies scholars in their construction. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage collectif rassemble les résultats de travaux d'un vaste projet citoyen et académique mené dans le cadre d'un Programme International de Philosophie "Exil, Création, Philosophie et Politique". Ces réflexions s'articulent autour d'une préoccupation, les métamorphoses de la politique, de la violence de la guerre et ses incidences sur l'action et la pensée politique. Que peuvent nous apprendre des féministes matérialistes sur ces métamorphoses?

One of the ways in which one might chart the force of various forms of posthuman thought is to mark a reversal in the ways we think about relationality. Rather than distinct Cartesian subje...

This essay explores three deconstructive concepts – archive, anthropocene, and auto-affection – across two registers. The first is the register of what counts as readability in general, beyond reading in its narrow and actualized sense.. The second register applies to Derrida today, and what it means to read the corpus of a philosopher and how that corpus is governed by proper names. I want to suggest that the way we approach proper names in philosophy and theory is part of a (...) broader problem of our relation to what it is to read, and how readability intertwines with the human. (shrink)

This article analyses research that has explored the potential of a focus on indeterminate bodies for decision making, policy and politics. Drawing on different ways of conceptualising indeterminacy in scientific and policy domains it describes the Loweswater Care Project, a participatory ‘knowledge collective’ that attempted to avoid converting the complexities of vital cyanobacterial bodies into a purely social or managerial set of questions around water quality. Through a commitment to opening out the nature of ‘things’, participants in this collective honed (...) new questions and avenues of inquiry around cyanobacteria and its relations. The Loweswater Care Project was a kind of ‘open’ in Haraway’s sense, where questions and demands are put to bodies, and to the apparatus that allows us to sense them, in ways that do not shy away from the probabilistic character of entities and their relations. The implications of generating indeterminacies in this setting are explored for environmental decision making, policy and politics. (shrink)

In this article, we question to what extent origin-food labels, namely Geographical Indications and Slow Food Presidia, may effectively account for cultural biodiversity. Building on Foucault’s discourse theory, we question how the Slow Food movement and GI promoters have developed their own discourse and practice on CB, how these discourses contrast, and how they inform projects. Focusing on the practices to cultivate the microbiological life of three origin labeled cheeses, we have revealed the gap between these institutional discourses and what (...) happens on the ground. We argue that how actors’ relationships in the marketplace unfold, from public authorities to the collectives of producers to consumers, may threaten the effects that these experiences of alternative food productions may have in the defense of biodiversity, causing, for instance, the loss of diversity of the invisible microbial ecosystems of artisan raw milk cheese. However, we conclude that, despite limitations, the mediatized institutional narrative on CB can amplify the political voice of local actors by fostering community and social relationships between the farmers. (shrink)

Le XIXe siècle signe la découverte intellectuelle du bouddhisme par les Occidentaux, ouvrant alors de nouvelles perspectives. Cette nouvelle religion ne ressemble pas aux religions occidentales, elle désoriente et intrigue, mais remet aussi en question nos propres conceptions métaphysiques et religieuses. Ainsi, le bouddhisme est devenu un objet intellectuel dont les philosophes se sont emparés, et qui a tout à la fois influencé leur pensée, et atteint sous leur plume le statut de mythe. Ce ou ces mythes sont aussi des (...) déformations du bouddhisme, et révèlent à quel point le christianisme a eu un impact sur la perception de celui-ci, qui restera pendant longtemps relié au néant, au pessimisme et au nihilisme, associations qui occultent sa véritable teneur. (shrink)

This book is about an emotion constantly present in human culture and history: fear. It is also a book about literature and medicine, two areas of human endeavour that engage with fear most acutely. The essays in this volume explore fear in various literary and medical manifestations, in the Western World, from medieval to modern times. It is divided into two parts. The first part, Treating Fear, examines fear in medical history, and draws from theology, medicine, philosophy, and psychology, to (...) offer an account of how fear shifts in Western understanding from the Middle Ages to Modern times. The second part, Writing Fear, explores fear as a rhetorical and literary force, offering an account of how it is used and evoked in distinct literary periods and texts. This coherent and fascinating collection will appeal to medical historians, literary critics, cultural theorists, medical humanities' scholars and historians of the emotions. (shrink)

System-level change is crucial for solving society's most pressing problems. However, individual-level interventions may be useful for creating behavioral change before system-level change is in place and for increasing necessary public support for system-level solutions. Participating in individual-level solutions may increase support for system-level solutions – especially if the individual-level solutions are internalized as part of one's social identity.

Based on a sociological survey carried out in a camp for asylum seekers in Belgium, the article questions the modes of existence in this “out of place” and “out of time” that is the camp. Behind the apparent emptiness of waiting in a decelerated present, the investigation highlights three temporalities that together shape the breathing of the camp and the living conditions of asylum seekers: the rhythm of the framework that holds together daily life, the cycle and the passage that (...) gives a sense of the ordeal and finally the singular time of the articulations between present, past and future which characterize the “being in time” of asylum seekers. After exploring these three temporalities, the author proposes a concept that allows them to hold together in order to understand the texture of time that unfolds in these “out of place”, “out of time” that are the camps. (shrink)

McCarthy et al. have made an important contribution to the field of ethics by identifying the important similarities between Christian and secular bioethics that can be drawn on to further s...

Au viie s., l’extension des territoires d’Argos et de Sparte dans le Péloponnèse était telle que le mont Parnon est devenu la zone de contact entre les deux cités : après l’annexion de la Thyréatide par Sparte, au vie s., l’époque classique continue à être ponctuée de conflits entre les deux cités, Argos cherchant à en reprendre le contrôle. Les auteurs anciens sont de peu de secours pour démêler l’écheveau de l’histoire politique de cette région, sise aux confins des territoires (...) argien, arcadien et spartiate, aux ve et ive s. : ils la mentionnent rarement, celle‑ci étant demeurée hors des grands conflits. Aussi, les sources archéologiques prennent‑elles toute leur importance. Cette contribution s’efforce de prolonger les enquêtes topographiques conduites par nos aînés en recourant à l’étude des fortifications, source de choix pour appréhender l’histoire régionale. Ainsi, l’étude des ouvrages fortifiés de Thyréatide (enceintes urbaines, tours isolées) permet d’éclairer l’histoire de cette région si convoitée ainsi que certains points de l’histoire du Péloponnèse à l’époque classique. De la période archaïque à l’époque hellénistique, la Thyréatide a été à la fois un ensemble cohérent et une partie des confins (eschatiai) d’un ensemble politique plus vaste, une région frontalière, aux marges du territoire lacédémonien ou argien, qui a conduit à l’implantation d’un réseau de villes fortifiés et de tours de guet. Après avoir fait l’inventaire de ces fortifications, leur analyse architecturale comme celle de leur implantation topographique nous ont souvent permis, d’abord d’y distinguer plusieurs phases de construction, ensuite de replacer ces ouvrages dans le réseau fortifié auquel ils appartiennent. Enfin, on a pu proposer parfois qui, de Sparte ou d’Argos, était le commanditaire de ces ouvrages fortifiés et vers quels ennemis ceux‑ci étaient tournés. Nous avons ainsi pu montrer que plusieurs de ceux qui étaient attribués à Sparte sont en fait à considérer plutôt comme argiens. (shrink)

This paper considers one key aspect of doing Philosophy with Children; the use of children’s questions. In particular, the paper reflects upon the place and importance of children’s questions in McCall’s Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CoPI). Generally children are allowed, within Philosophy with Children practices to ask their own questions. In some approaches questions are set for the children to inquire into. These questions often come from teachers’ manuals. What is different about McCall’s CoPI is that the facilitator selects the (...) question for the inquiry and not the children. McCall’s CoPI is practised by facilitators with a background in philosophy, who are therefore able to recognise the philosophical potential in children’s own questions and who are also able to structure dialogue to stimulate and engender philosophical dialogue. In the article it is further suggested that not using children’s questions to promote philosophical dialogue, poses some fundamental questions about how children are perceived and how this may impact upon their place and potential voices in society. (shrink)

Young women’s identities are an issue of public and academic interest across a number of western nations at the present time. This book explores how young women attending an elite school for girls understand and construct ‘empowerment’. It investigates the extent to which, and the ways in which, their constructions of empowerment and identity work to overturn, or resist, key regulations and normative expectations for girls in post-feminist, hyper-sexualised cultural contexts. The book provides a succinct overview of feminist theorisations of (...) normative femininities in young women’s lives in western cultural contexts. It includes familiar sexist discourses such as sexual double standards, as well as more recent commentary about the regulation of young women’s subjectivities in neoliberal, post-feminist, hyper-sexualised cultures. Drawing on ethnographic research in the context of an elite girls’ secondary school, the author explores how empowerment for young women is constructed and understood across a range of textual practices. From visual representations of young women in school promotional material, to students’ constructions of popular celebrities, the question of how girls’ resistance to normative femininities begins to develop is examined. This rich empirical work makes a unique contribution to the study of elite schooling within the sociology of education, drawing on important insights from the field of critical girlhood studies, and posing a challenge to popular feminist notions about media literacy, young women and empowerment. It will be of interest to scholars and postgraduates in the areas of gender studies, sociology, education, youth studies and cultural studies. (shrink)

Dans son introduction à la collection Moving Words. Writing Dance consacrée à une analyse des évolutions de la recherche anglophone des années 1990 sur la danse, Gay Morris souligne l’héritage d’une historiographie « anecdotique, sans théorisation, et avec un appareil critique très rudimentaire ». Carol Brown confirme que l’histoire de la danse est fondée essentiellement sur l’écriture des « balletomanes » qui ont idéalisé le corps de la danseuse comme une entité anhistorique. Rattachée à un...

A unique new study which extends Deleuze's already radical philosophy into ideas of the post-human, truth, reading, sexual difference and gender politics.

There are four ways in which one might approach the concept of difference in the work of Jacques Derrida: difference as a poststructuralist critique of the supposedly post‐metaphysical attention to meaning as generated through systems; difference as the post‐phenomenological problem of time; sexual difference; and the difference between humans and non‐humans. This chapter deals with each of these problems of difference and the concept; but it is also important to begin by saying that différance is not a concept. It argues (...) with John Searle, Derrida made a claim for the force of concepts: a concept cannot have “fuzzy” boundaries, for a concept may only operate as a concept if it indicates a sense that would remain the same regardless of who speaks or how the concept is articulated: “when a concept is to be treated as a concept believe that one has to accept the logic of all or nothing. (shrink)

Ethics and Representationprovides a critique and overview of contemporary post-structuralist theory. Exploring the Kantian and phenomenological background of Derrida, Deleuze, Foucault, and Irigaray, this book raises some key questions and issues in critical theory. These questions are looked at from a number of angles including the notion of point of view and perspective, the critique of anthropologism from Kant to Deleuze, and the relation between representation and modernity. This is an original contribution to ethical and critical theory which situates poststructuralism (...) in its philosophical background, and in the sustained problematic of the enlightenment. (shrink)

Jacques Derrida: Key Concepts presents a broad overview and engagement with the full range of Derrida's work - from the early phenomenological thinking to his preoccupations with key themes, such as technology, psychoanalysis, friendship, Marxism, racism and sexism, to his ethico-political writings and his deconstruction of democracy. Presenting both an examination of the key concepts central to his thinking and a broader study of how that thinking shifted over a lifetime, the book offers the reader a clear, systematic and fresh (...) examination of the astounding breadth of Derrida's philosophy. (shrink)