A sociological conceptualisation of space moves beyond the material to the relational, to consider space as a social process. This paper draws on research that explored the reproduction of legitimated knowledge and power structures in intensive care units during encounters, between patients, who were experiencing mental illness, and their nurses. Semi‐structured telephone interviews with 17 intensive care nurses from eight Australian intensive care units were conducted in 2017. Data were analysed through iterative cycling between participants' responses, the literature (...) and the theoretical framework. The material and relational aspects of space in this context constitute a dynamic process that is concerned with the reproduction of everyday life, the preservation of the biomedical authority of intensive care, and the social othering of people experiencing mental illness. The work of theorists such as Löw, Harvey and Foucault underpins the exploration of space as a multi‐dimensional, malleable social process that both produces and is the product of social interaction and the social world. In this paper, we argue that the performative work of knowledge and power production and reproduction, considered here in relation to intensive care spaces, enables ongoing othering and disenfranchisement of people experiencing mental illness. (shrink)

It has become an academic self-evidence that space can only inadequately be conceptualized as a material or earth-bound base for social processes. This could commend a theoretical view of space as the outcome of action, which brings both social production practices and bodily deployment into focus. The action-theoretical perspective allows the constitution of space to be understood as taking place in perception. Not only are things alone perceived but also the relations between objects. This article develops (...) a space-theoretical concept according to which space is constituted through acts as the outcome of synthesis and positioning practices. This opens up a theoretical perspective defining atmospheres as an external effect, instantiated in perception, of social goods and human beings in their situated spatial order/ing. Exclusion and inclusion are accordingly comprehended in terms of perception of the attunement of places. With reference to Anthony Giddens, this article discusses how space can be understood as a duality of structural ordering and action elements. (shrink)

The foremost aim of this paper is to realize the fourth part of the Aufbau. This part, which provides an actual phenomenalistic constitution system, is interpretable from a Kantian perspective (§§1-4). But Carnap plotted to overcome Kant’s old style of philosophy as well. We review this aspect of his constitution, focusing on space (§§7-13) and time (§§5-6), especially.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This volume is a comprehensive collection of critical essays on The Taming of the Shrew, and includes extensive discussions of the play's various printed versions and its theatrical productions. Aspinall has included only those essays that offer the most influential and controversial arguments surrounding the play. The issues discussed include gender, authority, female autonomy and unruliness, courtship and marriage, language and speech, and performance and theatricality.

The work of Foucault and Elias has been compared before in the social sciences and humanities, but here I argue that the main distinction between their approaches to the construction of subjectivity is the relative importance of space and time in their accounts. This is not just a matter of the “history of ideas,” as providing for the temporal dimension more fully in theories of subjectivity and the habitus allows for a greater understanding of how ways of being, acting (...) and feeling in different spaces are related but largely unintended. Here I argue that discursive practices, governmental operations and technologies of the self (explanatory claims of both Foucault and the Foucauldian tradition) take shape as processes within the continuities of the figurational flow connecting people across space and time. Continuity should not be understood as stability or sameness over time, but as the contingent relations between successive social formations. As Elias argues, there is a structure or order to long-term social change, albeit unplanned, and this ultimately provides the broader social explanation for the historicity of the subject. Though discursive practices happen in particular spaces, we must recognise these spaces, and the practices therein, as socially constructed over time in response to largely unplanned moral and cultural developments. (shrink)

In this paper, we sketch out a simple scheme to evaluate different ways in which Western society has coped with the momentous and hidden problem of envy; afterward, we consider the consequences for the constitution of the social space that these changes entail. We will argue that envy, when considered as a primal feeling, can shed light on René Girard’s notion of metaphysical desire and on diasparagmos rituals. Then, taking into account Jean-Pierre Dupuy’s endogenous fixed point thesis—concerning the (...) constitution of autotranscendent social structures that configure themselves around an attractor, a fixed point, revealed to be a product of the process of constitution, an effect and not a cause—we will consider envy as the main feedback in the system. Starting from this theoretical scenario, we will envisage three steps—on a line sketched according to mimetic theory—marked by the particular conditions and role of the feedback. We will show what kind of balance was guaranteed to Athens (taken as an exemplar archaic society, starting from its self-representation as given by Sophocles in Oedipus the King) by the complementary rituals of pharmakos and ostrakos; what equilibrium was offered to Christian medieval social structures by the doctrine of the deadly sins; and, finally, we will take a look at our own secularized society. Our aim is to apply René Girard’s theory systematically, to show how the philosophy of history that we can infer from his works can help us to detect a curious and at the same time quite dramatic change as far as the homeostatic equilibrium of our society is concerned. Thanks to this exercise, we will be able to show how the transcendental social space— by which we mean the region of possible outcomes, in terms of constraints and possibilities, of a human life in a social context—is constituted through the victimage mechanism as defined by Girard and how this constitution is affected by the performative unveiling of the mechanism itself. (shrink)

In recent years, the ideas of the mathematician Bernhard Riemann have come to the fore as one of Deleuze's principal sources of inspiration in regard to his engagements with mathematics, and the history of mathematics. Nevertheless, some relevant aspects and implications of Deleuze's philosophical reception and appropriation of Riemann's thought remain unexplored. In the first part of the paper I will begin by reconsidering the first explicit mention of Riemann in Deleuze's work, namely, in the second chapter of Bergsonism. In (...) this context, as I intend to show first, Deleuze's synthesis of some key features of the Riemannian theory of multiplicities is entirely dependent, both textually and conceptually, on his reading of another prominent figure in the history of mathematics: Hermann Weyl. This aspect has been largely underestimated, if not entirely neglected. However, as I attempt to bring out in the second part of the paper, reframing the understanding of Deleuze's philosophical engagement with Riemann's mathematics through the Riemann–Weyl conjunction can allow us to disclose some unexplored aspects of Deleuze's further elaboration of his theory of multiplicities and profound confrontation with contemporary science. This finally permits delineation of a correlation between Deleuze's plane of immanence and the contemporary physico-mathematical space of fundamental interactions. (shrink)

This paper tackles the problem of the nature of the space of perception. Based both on philosophical arguments and on results obtained from original experimental situations, it attempts to show how space is constituted concretely, before any distinction between the “inner” and the “outer” can be made. It thus sheds light on the presuppositions of the well-known debate between internalism and externalism in the philosophy of mind; it argues in favor of the latter position, but with arguments that (...) are foundationally antecedent to this debate. We call the position we defend enactive externalism. It is based on experimental settings which, in virtue of their minimalism, make it possible both to defend a sensori-motor/enactive theory of perception; and, especially, to inquire into the origin of the space of perception, showing how it is concretely enacted before the controversy between internalism and externalism can even take place. (shrink)

In this paper I offer a fresh interpretation of Leibniz’s theory of space, in which I explain the connection of his relational theory to both his mathematical theory of analysis situs and his theory of substance. I argue that the elements of his mature theory are not bare bodies (as on a standard relationalist view) nor bare points (as on an absolutist view), but situations. Regarded as an accident of an individual body, a situation is the complex of its (...) angles and distances to other co-existing bodies, founded in the representation or state of the substance or substances contained in the body. The complex of all such mutually compatible situations of co-existing bodies constitutes an order of situations, or instantaneous space. Because these relations of situation change from one instant to another, space is an accidental whole that is continuously changing and becoming something different, and therefore a phenomenon. As Leibniz explains to Clarke, it can be represented mathematically by supposing some set of existents hypothetically (and counterfactually) to remain in a fixed mutual relation of situation, and gauging all subsequent situations in terms of transformations with respect to this initial set. Space conceived in terms of such allowable transformations is the subject of Analysis Situs. Finally, insofar as space is conceived in abstraction from any bodies that might individuate the situations, it encompasses all possible relations of situation. This abstract space, the order of all possible situations, is an abstract entity, and therefore ideal. (shrink)

0. The ancient and honorable role of philosophy as a servant to the learning, development and use of scientific knowledge, though sadly underdeveloped since Grassmann, has been re-emerging from within the particular science of mathematics due to the latter's internal need; making this relationship more explicit (as well as further investigating the reasons for the decline) will, it is hoped, help to germinate the seeds of a brighter future for philosophy as well as help to guide the much wider learning (...) of mathematics and hence of all the sciences. 1. The unity of interacting opposites "space vs. quantity", with the accompanying "general vs. particular" and the resulting division of variable quantity into the interacting opposites "extensive vs. intensive", is susceptible, with the aid of categories, functors, and natural transformations, of a formulation which is on the one hand precise enough to admit proved theorems and considerable technical development and yet is on the other hand general enough to admit incorporation of almost any specialized hypothesis. Readers armed with the mathematical definitions of basic category theory should be able to translate the discussion in this section into symbols and diagrams for calculations. 2. The role of space as an arena for quantitative "becoming" underlies the qualitative transformation of a spatial category into a homotopy category, on which extensive and intensive quantities reappear as homology and cohomology. 3. The understanding of an object in a spatial category can be approached through definite Moore-Postnikov levels; each of these levels constitutes a mathematically precise "unity and identity of opposites", and their ensemble bears features strongly reminiscent of Hegel's Science of Logic. This resemblance suggests many mathematical and philosophical problems which now seem susceptible of exact solution. (shrink)

There is a growing body of scholarship that is addressing the ethics, in particular, the bioethics of space travel and colonisation. Naturally, a variety of perspectives concerning the ethical issues and moral permissibility of different technological strategies for confronting the rigours of space travel and colonisation have emerged in the debate. Approaches ranging from genetically enhancing human astronauts to modifying the environments of planets to make them hospitable have been proposed as methods. This paper takes a look at (...) a critique of human bioenhancement proposed by Mirko Garasic who argues that the bioenhancement of human astronauts is not only functional but necessary and thus morally permissible. However, he further claims that the bioethical arguments proposed for the context of space do not apply to the context of Earth. This paper forwards three arguments for how Garasic’s views are philosophically dubious: (1) when he examines our responsibility towards future generations he refers to a moral principle (which we will call the principle of mere survival) which, besides being vague, is not morally acceptable; (2) the idea that human bioenhancement is not natural is not only debatable but morally irrelevant; and (3) it is not true that the situations that may arise in space travel cannot occur on Earth. We conclude that not only is the (bio)enhancement of humans on Earth permissible but perhaps even necessary in certain circumstances. (shrink)

Practices – specific, recurrent types of human action and activity – are perhaps the most fundamental "building blocks" of social reality. This book argues that the detailed empirical study of practices is essential to effective social-scientific inquiry. It develops a philosophical infrastructure for understanding human practices, and argues that practice theory should be the analytical centrepiece of social theory and the philosophy of the social sciences. -/- What would social scientists’ research look like if they took these insights seriously? To (...) answer this question, the book offers an analytical framework to guide empirical research on practices in different times and places. The author explores how practices can be identified, characterised and explained, how they function in concrete contexts and how they might change over time and space. -/- The Constitution of Social Practices lies at the intersection of philosophy, social theory, cultural theory and the social sciences. It is essential reading for scholars in social theory and the philosophy of social science, as well as the broad range of researchers and students across the social sciences and humanities whose work stands to benefit from serious consideration of practices. (shrink)

My thesis is that modern neurological discoveries overthrow the classical dualism which assigns all the constitutive activity of perception to the mind and leaves the body a purely passive role. The paper is in four parts: first I will present the traditional theory, using Berkeley's concept of activity as the key; then I will summarize the relevant aspects of contemporary neurology; third, the incompatibility of these two approaches will be discussed; finally, I will propose that we must reject the materialistic (...) notion of the body and grant it a power of activity which was formerly held to be the monopoly of the mind. Throughout, I will take the spatialization of sensation as the prime example of a constitutive activity. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the usefulness of the concept of possibility , and not merely that of actuality , for an inquiry into the bodily constitution of experience. The paper will study how the possibilities of action that may (or may not) be available to the subject help to shape the meaning attributed to perceived objects and to the situation occupied by the subject within her environment. This view will be supported by reference to empirical (...) evidence provided by recent and current research on the perceptual estimation of distances and the effects brought about by the use of a tool on the organisation of our perceived immediate space. (shrink)

Social interaction and the constitution of mediated and nested space in the court of appeal -- Conclusion -- Concluding remarks: On becoming juridical -- Ways of spacing law and politics -- Becoming juridical -- Towards hybrid juridical spaces -- References -- Index.

Summary. The article deals with the close link between the diminishing influence of the Moscow Patriarchate on social and political processes in Ukraine and the restoration of the Ukrainian cultural and civilizational space. Namely, the gradual deprivation of Orthodox believers of the post-imperial syndrome, including attitudes, perceptions, behavioral models, etc., associated with the stay of Ukrainians in the foreign-language and other people's mentality and culture of the empire. It is noted that the receipt of the Tomos on recognition of (...) autocephaly and the constitution of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine by Orthodox believers of Ukraine has a positive impact not only on the development of the OCU itself, but also the level of patriotism, restoration and development of the Ukrainian-speaking environment, archetypal traditions, rituals, behavior models, etc. The conclusion is about the religious aspect of promoting Ukrainian development from the Asian to the European cultural and civilizational model. (shrink)

This paper examines the changing context for sexual images and the spaces that give law meaning. The details are evident in Congressional efforts to regulate sex on the Internet and the Supreme Court’s response as well as changing contexts for encountering forbidden images from the old stag films and peep shows to the local public library and sex sites on the web. The paper is part of a larger project on seeing law and the idea that Lady Justice is blind.

This paper investigates the question of, and the degree to which, Newton’s theory of space constitutes a third-way between the traditional substantivalist and relationist ontologies, i.e., that Newton judged that space is neither a type of substance/entity nor purely a relation among such substances. A non-substantivalist reading of Newton has been famously defended by Howard Stein, among others; but, as will be demonstrated, these claims are problematic on various grounds, especially as regards Newton’s alleged rejection of the traditional (...) substance/accident dichotomy concerning space. Nevertheless, our analysis of the metaphysical foundations of Newton’s spatial theory will strive to uncover its unique and innovative characteristics, most notably, the distinctive role that Newton’s “immaterialist” spatial ontology plays in his dynamics. (shrink)

In this paper I attempt to trace certain aspects of the evolution of theories of space-time and mechanics as revealed by a brief comparative study of Newtonian theory, Robb's theory, general relativity, and Milne's kinematical relativity. The first object is to emphasise how each theory leaves us in a position in which the succeeding one appears as a perfectly natural next step in the development of ideas. The second object is to show how, in spite of superficial differences in (...) character, the theories all necessarily possess the same general structure constituted by the presence of hypotheses, from which certain general mathematical relations are deduced, which in their turn are used to predict relations between observable quantities. (shrink)

I argue that Isaac Newton's De Gravitatione should not be considered an authoritative expression of his thought about the metaphysics of space and its relation to physical inquiry. I establish the following narrative: In De Gravitatione (circa 1668–84), Newton claimed he had direct experimental evidence for the work's central thesis: that space had "its own manner of existing" as an affection or emanative effect. In the 1710s, however, through the prodding of Roger Cotes and G. W. Leibniz, he (...) came to see that this evidence relied on assumptions that his own Principia rendered unjustifiable. Consequently, he (i) revised the conclusions he explicitly drew from the experimental evidence, (ii) rejected the idea that his spatial metaphysics was grounded in experimental evidence, and (iii) reassessed the epistemic status of key concepts in his metaphysics and natural philosophy. The narrative I explore shows not only that De Gravitatione did not constitute the metaphysical backdrop of the Principia as Newton ultimately understood it, but that it was the Principia itself that ultimately lead to the demise of key elements of De Gravitatione. I explore the implications of this narrative for Andrew Janiak's and Howards Stein's interpretations of Newton's metaphysics. (shrink)

This paper argues against the priority of temporality over spatiality, which Heidegger defends in Being and Time . The argument, however, does not follow the turn in Heidegger's philosophy and his later retrieval of the spatial but is developed as a delimitation—that is, as an internal critique and reconstruction—undertaken within the transcendental framework of his early thinking. This delimitation proposes a demonstration of the fundamental role of spatializing, defined as dissemination, in the constitution of human Being-in-the-world. A rethinking of (...) human Being-there in terms of the co-originality of spatiality and temporality permits a revisiting of the question of the transcendental and makes it possible to pursue the overcoming of a philosophy of the subject that, critics often point out, Heidegger unsuccessfully sought to transgress in his early work. (shrink)

Classical mechanics in phase space as well as quantum mechanics in Hilbert space lead to states and observables but not to objects that may be considered as carriers of observable quantities. However, in both cases objects can be constituted as new entities by means of invariance properties of the theories in question. We show, that this way of reasoning has a long history in physics and philosophy and that it can be traced back to the transcendental arguments in (...) Kant’s critique of pure reason. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Heidegger and the Issue of Space: Thinking on Exilic GroundsGilbert LepadatuAlejandro A. Vallega. Heidegger and the Issue of Space: Thinking on Exilic Grounds. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003. Pp. xii + 202. Cloth, $55.00.As the author himself clarifies, this book is not a rehearsing of what Heidegger says, or a commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time. It is rather an "engagement with issues essential (...) to his thought." And the essential issue with which Vallega is primarily concerned is the issue of space. What is indeed interesting about Vallega's engagement with Heidegger is the way in which he understands to approach spatiality: spatiality as a figure of alterity indicating the "exilic" character of thinking. If "exile" refers to one having to live outside his country of origin, "exilic," by contrast, refers to that specific experience where one not only has to live beyond his source of identity, but has no possibility of returning to his origins, anddue precisely to this becomes open to transformations that may lead to new possibilities of being. And by alterity of thinking Vallega refers to that aspect of thinking which, although constitutive of the very nature of thinking, has always been suspended or covered over in the determinations of thinking as provided by traditional metaphysics, and as such functions as a challenging and distressing limit to thinking itself.More specifically, in taking up the question of being, Vallega tells us, thinking becomes an issue for itself in its temporality or finitude, and is forced to reach a limit requiring an [End Page 217] engagement with issues that can no longer be addressed in terms of a traditional philosophical discourse. It is this loss of a familiar ground, the adaptive transformation called for by such a loss, the intimation of new unsuspected resources for thinking, all occurring out of thought's new awareness of its own finitude, that Vallega refers to by the name "exilic." Vallega's proposal thus is that spatiality as a figure of alterity indicates the exilic character of thought.It is unclear to what extent exilic experience can be thought of in terms other than Heidegger's. Vallega spends a great deal talking about alterity ascan be taken to arise within Heidegger, but the only conceptual apparatus available to him isprovided actually by Heidegger. The way he defines "exilic" is greatly, if not totally, dependent on Heidegger's interpretation of the attempt to overcome traditional ontology. I have my doubts that the rather exotic or quixotic term "exilic" brings something significantly new to the table. Exilic thought and alterity of thinking are based on Heidegger's fundamental insight that metaphysics has forgotten being, has forgotten the fundamental dimensions of temporality and finitude. It seems to me that what Vallega calls "exilic" is just a recasting in different terms, or a new term for one aspect of, Heidegger's engagement with the finitude of thinking. To say that the exilic character of Heidegger's thinking lies in the fact that Heidegger's critique of traditional ontology cannot go back to metaphysical origins and is as such open to "a thought to come," and to localize where this actually happens, does not appear to me to be a significant philosophical gain. Whether "exilic" experience and "alterity" of thinking bring anything new to what Heidegger has already thought of the overcoming of metaphysics should remain an open question, as should remain the question whether the recasting of Heidegger's struggling with the issue of finitude in terms of alterity of thinking or exilic experience is truly an engagement with "issues essential to his thought."Regardless of the issue of alterity and exilic thought, the book is still an excellent detailed analysis of how spatiality reveals the limits of traditional ontology as exemplified by Plato and Aristotle, and Heidegger's temporal ontology, and the difficulties, made apparent by such limits, facing the attempt of thinking being and thinking in their essential finitude. Vallega's undeniable merit lies, in my view, in his tracing Heidegger's own engagement with the issue of spatiality as a limit of his discourse on temporality and in showing how concretely spatiality figures in... (shrink)

"An important contribution to contemporary jurisprudential debate and to legal thought more generally, Just Interpretations is far ahead of currently available work."--Peter Goodrich, author of Oedipus Lex "I was struck repeatedly by the clarity of expression throughout the book. Rosenfeld's description and criticism of the recent work of leading thinkers distinguishes his work within the legal theory genre. Furthermore, his own theory is quite original and provocative."--Aviam Soifer, author of Law and the Company We Keep.

‘Space does not exist fundamentally: it emerges from a more fundamental non-spatial structure.’ This intriguing claim appears in various research programs in contemporary physics. Philosophers of physics tend to believe that this claim entails either that spacetime does not exist, or that it is derivatively real. In this article, I introduce and defend a third metaphysical interpretation of the claim: reductionism about space. I argue that, as a result, there is no need to subscribe to fundamentality, layers of (...) reality and emergence in order to analyse the constitution of space by non-spatial entities. It follows that space constitution, if borne out, does not provide empirical evidence in favour of a stratified, Aristotelian in spirit, metaphysics. The view will be described in relation to two particular research programs in contemporary physics: wave function realism and loop quantum gravity. (shrink)

The focus of this paper is Cassirer’s Neo-Kantian reading of Kant’s conception of unity of space. Cassirer’s neo-Kantian reading is largely in conformity with the mainstream of intellectualist Kant-scholars, which is unsurprising, given his own intellectualist view of space and perception and his rejection of the existence of a ‘merely sensory consciousness’ as a ‘formless mass of impression’. I argue against Cassirer’s reading by relying on a Kantian distinction first recognized by Heinrich Rickert, a neo-Kantian from the Southwest (...) school, between Kenntnis (roughly knowledge by acquaintance) and Erkenntnis (roughly propositional knowledge). Correspondingly, I claim that concepts and categories are conditions for Erkenntnis of objects as such, namely for thinking of and apprehending the pre-existing unity as an object, rather than for the ‘constitution’ of this very unity. (shrink)

The book consists of two major parts of three chapters apiece which are framed between: an introduction, which succinctly explains the primacy of the phenomenological dimension of depth, which concerns the distance between ourselves and things prior to any quantitative or inferential objectivization of experience; and a conclusion, which deals with some of the ethical implications stemming from our phenomenological construction of space. The focus of part 1 is to present the sense of the body as consisting of an (...) expressive topology based upon features such as mobility and other developmental factors, while part 2 demonstrates how our concept of place contributes to our sense of depth and orientation within a social environment. Forging such a sense of space in our dynamic relation to the world requires, according to Morris, that we eschew approaches which trade upon inferences drawn from a reduction of experience to an underlying order that exists prior to perception, and that we realize that it is we ourselves who actively constitute our sense of space. What this means, says Morris, following the example of ecological psychology, is that the emergence of perception is analogous to other phenomena that spontaneously arise from processes of self-organization. Morris cites Berkeley, whose dismantlement of dualism led the way to a better appreciation of the complete coordination of previously segregated facets of experience, as the forerunner of the intrinsic approach to the ordering of experience. (shrink)

I argue that Husserl’s manuscripts on intersubjectivity discover a decisive role for self-movement in the constitution of the shared world. I explore two complementary constitutive functions. The first enables empathetic apperception by closing the divergence in sense between the original ego, which does not find itself at a location, and the alter ego, which is found over there. By traversing distances with its organically articulated Leibkörper, the original ego establishes an analogy between self-movement and thing-movement that guides the recognition (...) of another ego in space. The second accounts for the exchangeability of perspectives between differently located subjects. The restricted motility of the Leibkörper is discovered against the background of ideal but motivated possibilities of going to any distant perspective. These possibilities are rooted in the purely kinaesthetic potential of the Leib. To inhabit another perspective need not involve changing the world. This evidence underlies the Weltanschauung according to which what appears from the other’s perspective is a possible appearance for me. Taken together, these two constitutive functions show how self-movement discloses a definite but accidental location from which the ego shares the world. (shrink)

Sociological theories of space have so far not provided an in-depth analysis of online spaces. The paper addresses this issue by means of Löw’s relational theory of space. As this theory mainly focuses on material spaces, it is necessary to embrace the phenomenological perspective in order to apply it to the virtual realm. More recent phenomenological research has highlighted the ongoing mediatization or virtualization of the life-world. These theories, and presence research more generally, are useful for examining the (...) layers of virtual presence. This paper focuses on two emblematic types of spaces: multiplayer online role-playing games and Skype video chats. The first represents an online version of a Schutzian finite province of meaning, while Skyping is an example of how the paramount reality of everyday life expands into the virtual realm. Albeit differently, actors in both cases constitute hybrid, virtual-material spaces with various forms and degrees of virtual presence. User experiences in these spaces are in line with contemporary sociological diagnoses indicating the vanishing experience of living in space and the general tendency of late modernity to question previous social forms of modernity. (shrink)

Since at least the late nineteenth century, a world-level moral culture has developed, providing a space for certain persons to be presented as global moral icons. This global moral space was already pointed to by Kant as an emergent form, and was later theorized by Durkheim. This article shows that an important institutionalization of global moral culture involved the founding of the Nobel Prizes, the subsequent mutations of which were also important in the constitution of that culture. (...) These, and other awards which imitated them, are performative in a profound sense: they simultaneously reflect and help bring into being a planet-spanning culture which demands moral icons which both exemplify and partly constitute it. How the Nobel Prizes and their imitators work to create moral iconicity that is globally relevant is explored. The case of Gandhi is taken as an example of how, despite not being awarded a Nobel Prize, some moral icons are also brought into being through symbolic contact with other such icons, including Nobel Prize winners. The article considers the lingering, powerful, but generally invisible, influence today on world moral culture of the innovations pursued by the early Nobel Prize committees. (shrink)

Contemporary protest movements are skeptical of mainstream media outlets, and so to communicate, they make extensive use of social media such as YouTube, Instagram and Twitter. Most research to date has considered how protest movements, as preexistent entities, use such social media to communicate with stakeholders, but little, if any research, has considered how a protest movement is constituted in and through communication. Using the Montreal School’s ventriloquial approach to communication and using YouTube video footage of the gilets jaunes – (...) a contemporary French protest movement – in action, the purpose of this article is to explicate how a protest movement that resists the state’s authority is constituted in and through a textual artifact. Findings indicate that the protest movement is not only discursively constructed through the commentary that accompanies the video, but it is also constituted by non-human actants such as space, buildings and clothing. The protest movement mobilizes networks of human and non-human actants that invoke a moral authority that resists legally authorized state-sponsored networks which are also made up of human and non-human actants. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 47, no. 1. © 2021 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 15 Candice Lyons Behind the Scenes: Elizabeth Keckley, Slave Narratives, and the Queer Complexities of Space In the fall of 1867—just two years after the conclusion of the American Civil War—former First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln, finding herself in dire financial straits, traveled incognito to New York. She hoped to sell select pieces from her famed wardrobe (...) in order to supplement her income, which was, at the time, rather meager. Accompanying the recently widowed socialite was her self-described “modiste” and “confidante ” Elizabeth Keckley, a formerly enslaved African American dressmaker who had been “intimately associated” with Lincoln for years.1 Despite the various measures undertaken to ensure the scheme’s success, including attempts to extort monied East Coast Republicans and strategic appeals to the press, it ultimately proved fruitless. Political nemeses seized on the opportunity to publicly mock Lincoln, who was seen as an “extravagant and improper” social climber, for her “pecuniary embarrassment,” treating the public auction of her clothing as a spectacle akin to the World Fair.2 Eventually, the former First Lady was forced to retreat to her home in Chicago, leaving Keckley behind to tend to her affairs. 1. Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House (New York: Open Road Integrated Media, 2015): Location no. 406, 54, 53. 2. Carolyn Sorisio, “Unmasking the Genteel Performer: Elizabeth Keckley’s Behind the Scenes and the Politics of Public Wrath,” African American Review 34 (2000): 20; Keckley, Behind the Scenes, Location no. 1321. 16 Candice Lyons This decision, however, left the ordinarily sought-after seamstress in dire straits of her own, given that the time she was compelled to dedicate to what would come to be known as “The Old Clothes Scandal ” necessitated closing down her then-thriving business in Washington, DC.3 This, coupled with the fact that indemnification for her services was not forthcoming from Mrs. Lincoln, was likely at least partially at the root of Keckley’s decision to publish her now-infamous memoir, Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years A Slave and Four Years in the White House in 1868.4 Keckley explained that she penned her autobiographical text in a bid to “defend [her]self” and Lincoln against charges of impropriety following the New York incident. However, perhaps unsurprisingly, the book’s release had the exact opposite effect: Keckley’s literary disclosures were met with scorn, regarded by large swaths of white Americans, including some of the same people who had been most vocal in their condemnation of Mary Todd Lincoln, as constituting a set of socially impermissible transgressions of class, race, and gender. Sales of the book were subsequently suppressed, Keckley’s relationship with Lincoln (who had been caught off guard by the text’s release) came to an abrupt end, and there was even a brief, parodic pamphlet produced, titled Behind the Seams; by a Nigger Woman Who Took in Work from Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Davis, which cast the entire ordeal as a sort of (racist) cautionary tale.5 Given the clear disdain held for Lincoln by people across the political spectrum at the time, it can be difficult to make sense of the visceral reaction prompted by Keckley’s airing of the controversial figure’s dirty laundry (pun intended). Considering the ways Behind the Scenes implicitly challenged the fixity of hierarchical distinctions between Black and white, employee and employer, however, repudiation of the work might be understood as inevitable. Further, given the “intimate” and ambiguous nature of Lincoln and Keckley’s relationship, the book may also 3. Sorisio, “Unmasking the Genteel Performer,” 19. 4. The text’s infamy is in part attributable to its anomalous structure, which rendered it distinct from many of the era’s other book-length slave narratives ; whereas monographs such as Harriet Jacobs’s 1861 Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl centered on the author’s experience of and eventual escape from slavery, Keckley’s work deals only briefly with these matters, primarily concerning itself with the intimate affairs of the author’s (white) employer. 5. Sorisio, “Unmasking the Genteel Performer,” 19. Candice... (shrink)

As Friedman has argued, Kant's argument for the ideality of space turns on the nondeductive character of geometrical reasoning in Euclid's system. Since geometry can be axiomatized, this argument fails. But ("pace" Russell) Leibniz's argument based on the unreality of constitutive relations is not thereby answered as well. I argue that what is needed in response to Leibniz is a properly post-Kantian conception of concepts as inferentially articulated. This conception, I suggest, is based on the same fundamental insight that (...) underlies the axiomatization of geometry. (shrink)

Friendship, as a unique form of social relationship, establishes a particular union among individual human beings which allows them to overcome diverse boundaries between individual subjects. Age, gender or cultural differences do not necessarily constitute an obstacle for establishing friendship and as a social phenomenon, it might even include the potential to exist independently of space and time. This analysis in the interface of social science and phenomenology focuses on the principles of construction and constitution of this specific (...) form of human encounter. In a “parallel action,” the perspective of social science focuses on concrete socio-historical constructions of friendship in different time periods. These findings are confronted with the description of principles of the subjective constitution of the phenomenon of “friendship” from a phenomenological perspective. The point of reference for the study is the real type of the symbolically established and excessively idealized form of friendship intended for eternity which was especially popular in eighteenth century Germany. Analogous to the method of phenomenological reduction, three different levels of protosociological reduction are developed for the exploration of the unique social phenomenon of friendship. (shrink)

The first two decades of the twenty-first century have continued a long tradition of diligent efforts of theorists, historians, and practitioners to establish novel and procreative connections between utopia and architecture. These, however, suffer from a lack of unitary articulation on the dynamics through which utopian ideals transact with reality—on where and how utopia, both as a concept and a construct, subsists among the processes of space production. Specifically dwelling on spatial ideals constituted primarily as works of architecture this (...) text aims to illustrate this interstitial domain between existent and utopian space, and the agents, forces and percolators therein. On this ground, as an attempt to map the internal dynamics of space production in relation to the utopian imaginary, it builds upon Bloch's, Lefebvre's, Jameson's, Harvey's, Levitas's, and Soja's theoretical conceptualizations that specifically expound the processes of utopianism through a comparative and critical reading. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss the development and piloting of a new methodology for illuminating the socio-material constitution of data objects and flows as data move between different sites of practice. The data journeys approach contributes to the development of critical, qualitative methodologies that can address the geographic and temporal scale of emerging knowledge infrastructures, and capture the ‘life of data’ from their initial generation through to re-use in different contexts. We discuss the theoretical development of the data journeys (...) methodology and the application of the approach on a project examining meteorological data on their journey from initial production through to being re-used in climate science and financial markets. We then discuss three key conceptual findings from this project about: the socio-material constitution of digital data objects, ‘friction’ in the movement of data through space and time and the mutability of digital data as a material property that contributes to driving the movement of data between different sites of practice. (shrink)