This essay offers a critical analysis of Hannah Arendt's notion of natality through the lens of Adriana Cavarero's feminist philosophy of birth. First, I argue that the strength of Arendtian natality is its rootedness in an ontology of uniqueness, and a commitment to human plurality and relationality. Next, I trace with Cavarero three critical concerns regarding Arendtian natality, namely that it is curiously abstract; problematically disembodied and sexually neutral; and dependent on a model of vulnerability that assumes equality rather than (...) asymmetry. This last issue is further developed in the final section of the essay, where I examine the idea that birth, for Cavarero, becomes the very concept by which we can distinguish and normatively differentiate acts of care and love from acts of wounding and violence. Upholding the normative distinction here depends on a conceptual distinction between vulnerability and helplessness. To maintain the ethical potential of the scene of birth, I argue that we have to insist on the very characteristics Cavarero attributes to it—ones, as this essay aims to show, that are ultimately missing in the Arendtian account thereof. (shrink)

Examines the relationship between time and sexual difference in the work of French feminists Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray. This book is the first to examine the relationship between time and sexual difference in the work of Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray. Because of their association with reproduction, embodiment, and the survival of the species, women have been confined to the cyclical time of nature—a temporal model that is said to merely repeat itself. Men, on the other hand, have been (...) seen as bearers of linear time and as capable of change and progress. Fanny Söderbäck argues that both these temporal models make change impossible because they either repeat or repress the past. The model of time developed here—revolutionary time—aims at returning to and revitalizing the past so as to make possible a dynamic-embodied present and a future pregnant with change. Söderbäck stages an unprecedented conversation between Kristeva and Irigaray on issues of both time and difference, and engages thinkers such as Simone de Beauvoir, Jacques Derrida, Sigmund Freud, Judith Butler, Hannah Arendt, and Plato along the way. “Revolutionary Time makes a distinctive contribution to contemporary feminist and continental philosophical thought. By engaging Kristeva and Irigaray in depth alongside one another, and making time the guiding thread for reading their work, the author generates insights that are not to be found elsewhere in the existing literature. Through its development of the concept of revolutionary time, the book offers rich resources for thinking about temporalization in its existential, ontological, and political dimensions, in ways that are particularly valuable for feminist projects of change and political transformation.” — Rachel Jones, author of Irigaray: Towards a Sexuate Philosophy. (shrink)

Baumard proposes a model to explain the dramatic rise in innovation that occurred during the Industrial Revolution, whereby rising living standards led to slower life history strategies, which, in turn, fostered innovation. We test his model explicitly using time series data, finding limited support for these proposed linkages. Instead, we find evidence that rising living standards appear to have a time-lagged bidirectional relationship with increasing innovation.

New and classic essays on Antigone and feminist philosophy.

Central and East Europeans have a great deal in common, both historically and culturally, with West Europeans and North Americans, but tend to be more interdependent. Interdependence has been shown to be linked to holistic cognition. East Asians are more interdependent than Americans and are more holistic. If interdependence causes holism, we would expect Central and East Europeans to be more holistic than West Europeans and North Americans. In two studies we found evidence that Central and East Europeans are indeed (...) more holistic than Westerners on three tasks, one of which examined categorization and two of which measured patterns of visual attention. These studies support the argument that cross-cultural differences in cognition are due to society level differences in independence/interdependence. (shrink)

Religious ethics was founded on a commitment to inclusion, welcoming projects from and about different religious and philosophical traditions. This paper argues that the increasing welcome of feminist ethics in the JRE also reveals a tension in the field between inclusion and critique: where feminist ethics is included as another tradition of ethical inquiry, its critical claims can be escaped by appeal to difference from the traditions it seeks to engage. The response to feminist critique should not be to applaud (...) its inclusion without responding to its claims. Where this occurs, religious ethicists must renegotiate the terms of inclusion and the borders of difference. Feminist critique thus requires a return to founding questions of this journal, and the field, about the terms on which different traditions can be discussed and engaged in a common, critical conversation of religious ethics. (shrink)

This essay examines Italian philosopher Adriana Cavarero's ontology of uniqueness through a reading of Alex Haley's novel Roots, and the recent television adaptation of that book. If Cavarero has insisted throughout her work that we need to challenge the philosophical privileging of abstract universality and focus instead on the irreducibility of embodied singularity, and if such a move in her work has always relied on a feminist analysis of the role women play in such a drama, I argue that attention (...) to issues of race and the institution of slavery both supports and complicates her analysis in meaningful ways. (shrink)

La pratique du copier-coller chez les étudiant.e.s est assimilée à du plagiat et la réponse apportée par l’institution se résume à « surveiller et punir ». Cette pratique mérite cependant d’être interrogée dans le cadre des littératies universitaires par rapport à la nécessaire prise en compte des littératies numériques. Le fait qu’elle soit conçue comme une « méconduite » d’un point de vue déontologique est à comprendre par rapport à un cadre normatif qui en appelle à l’honnêteté académique et institue (...) l’auteur et les sources comme des composantes essentielles des écrits de savoirs, sans guère en expliciter les enjeux. Comment penser le copier-coller et qu’en faire? En quoi peut-on passer de l’inacceptable au didactisable, et que prendre en compte? Dans la perspective d’une réflexivité critique dans le champ des littératies universitaires, nous proposons des éléments de contextualisation qui permettent de problématiser le copier-coller, en tant que geste d’écriture, en tant qu’objet de débats, et de manière à mieux outiller les étudiant.e.s face aux attentes universitaires et en termes de compétences littéraciques en général. Nous nous intéressons à la réception du copier-coller, à l’énonciation par copier-coller et aux confusions qui entourent les attentes à l’égard des écrits des étudiant.e.s. Le contexte est compris comme un cadre interprétatif qui sert à construire un objet didactique en tant que tel. (shrink)

Desde la mirada de los estudios de la cultura y la hegemonía del poder esta investigación explora desde la perspectiva de sus habitantes, el sentir popular y la apropiación de la celebración religiosa de San Pedro y San Pablo en la parroquia Picoazá (Portoviejo – Ecuador). Para el fin se acude a la metodología cualitativa, utilizando la entrevista como herramienta de corte etnográfico. Los resultados plantean un colectivo apegado a la religión con connotaciones significativas en la organización social y cultural (...) del entorno, dando paso a la reproducción de tradiciones heredadas de generación en generación. Las mismas que a la par, fetichizan y esencializan la actividad, e invisibilizan otros aspectos inherentes a las prácticas culturales. (shrink)

War often comes down to one thing: money. The role of economics in the study of both peace and war is arguably then the most important single factor when it comes to the study of defence. This excellent new book from Fanny Coulomb will be of interest not only to those involved in the burgeoning field of defence economics - it will also be of vital interest to students and academics from international relations, defence studies, philosophy and political science (...) backgrounds. (shrink)

Although the centrosome was first described over 100 years ago, we still know relatively little of the molecular mechanisms responsible for its functions. Recently, members of a novel family of centrosomal proteins have been identified in a wide variety of organisms. The transforming acidic coiled‐coil‐containing (TACC) proteins all appear to play important roles in cell division and cellular organisation in both embryonic and somatic systems. These closely related molecules have been implicated in microtubule stabilisation, acentrosomal spindle assembly, translational regulation, haematopoietic (...) development and cancer progression. In this review, I summarise what we already know of this protein family and will use the TACC proteins to illustrate the many facets that centrosomes have developed during the course of evolution. BioEssays 24:915–925, 2002. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Introduction The digital age has revolutionized the way we think, communicate, work, and enjoy life. Technology has increased the pace of life at an ...

In his essay "Différance," Derrida suggests that "the privilege granted to the present . . . is the ether of metaphysics."1 And in "Ousia and Grammé," he expresses this same idea, noting that "the entire history of philosophy" has "been authorized by the 'extraordinary right' of the present" and that "from Parmenides to Husserl, the privilege of the present has never been put into question."2 All temporal modes are ultimately thought in the form of presence (ousia): "The past and the (...) future are always determined as past presents or future presents" (OG 34). Being is "already determined as being-present" (OG 47), yet this determination, according to Derrida, remains unthematized within the tradition.The question of .. (shrink)

Focusing on the way in which sexual difference is articulated in Sophocles' Antigone , I offer a reading that reverses the dialectic most commonly ascribed to the play. While most interlocutors of this classic tragedy connect its heroine to divine law and the private realm and see Creon as a representative of human law and politics, I trace what I call a Sophoclean reversal at the core of the play, suggesting that, through a series of negations and contaminations, things are (...) the opposite of what they seem to be. Using Hannah Arendt's distinction between the private and public realms as my main point of departure, I show how such a reading reveals the internal contradiction and inherent impossibility of a society whose foundation is the exclusion of women from political life. Such a society, just like Antigone, is an anti seed : it carries within it the necessity of its own downfall. (shrink)

Dans la mesure où il achève l’histoire de la philosophie, Hegel se voit conférer un rôle tout à fait singulier dans la lecture heideggerienne d’une telle histoire. Penser après Hegel, c’est donc penser la fin de cette histoire, et par conséquent aussi son autre limite, à savoir son commencement. Or, la signification et la portée de celui-ci se voient bouleversés de part et d’autre de ce qu’il est convenu de nommer le tournant ( Kehre ) de la pensée heideggerienne. Dans (...) un premier temps, le dépassement de Hegel consiste à se recentrer pour mettre en lumière la temporalité constitutive de cet étant pour lequel il y a être, le Dasein, c’est-à-dire son écart fondamental. Dans un second temps, ce que Heidegger tâche, après Hegel, de rejoindre, répond à l’impensé du premier commencement grec, c’est-à-dire avant que la métaphysique, avec Platon, ne débute. Le chemin est alors paradoxalement celui qui, à travers le plus grand éloignement, tente de penser l’être-commençant. (shrink)

Le sens du nom grec de φύσις, et celui de la physique aristotélicienne, sont au cœur de la compréhension heideggerienne de la métaphysique, qu’il s’agisse, dans les années 1920, de refonder celle-ci en retrouvant ses possibilités initiales, ou, à la fin des années 1930, de l’assumer pour pouvoir la dépasser, puis de la laisser. De part et d’autre du tournant, la φύσις, dans sa surabondance et dans son dépliement, permet en effet de rendre compte de l’émergence de deux domaines, ceux (...) de la physique et de la métaphysique. Toutefois, la plurivocité diachronique et synchronique de φύσις, telle qu’elle est mise en lumière en 1929-1930, se trouve ensuite comprise de manière plus radicale. Il ne s’agit plus de repérer l’évolution du sens de φύσις et la coexistence de significations contemporaines, mais de mettre au jour le télescopage, dans la pensée aristotélicienne, de deux significations qui diffèrent de manière historiale. (shrink)

This research explores the spread of unreliable information on Facebook during the 2017 French presidential campaign. By analyzing information-sharing behavior on 252 Facebook pages, our study highlights the wide variety of information sources shared by several political communities, notably news published by partisan websites or activist blogs. Our results demonstrate that political parties – particularly, those on the extreme ends of the political spectrum – tend to re-share a large amount of information reflecting the same ideological positions as their own. (...) This trend is amplified by a phenomenon of endo-citation, that is, a “circular circulation” of information between Facebook pages within the same political community. Our results focus on the information practices of the far-right, tracing a clear over-representation of sources that are unreliable or likely to relay disinformation. We argue that this circular transmission of information creates an “unreliable information bubble” that characterizes far-right information-sharing behavior. (shrink)

Fantastic Antigones : The Tragic Legacy of Trans Grief.

Often celebrated as a model of development in Africa, Botswana nonetheless endured a severe HIV epidemic. This article describes the singularity of the Botswana experience in facing AIDS and creating the widest possible access to antiretroviral medications for its citizens. Through exploration of different sets of actors and the construction of their ethics of treatment, it is possible to examine how free and universal access was created within the national antiretroviral program. This article underscores the importance of the site and (...) the local dynamics in the advent of an ethics of access to treatment for Botswana citizens. At the intersection of national citizenship, pharmaceutical philanthropy, and biomedical collaborations, Botswana is an exemplary case (one of the first and unique in its kind) of global health programs for access to drugs in which patients' rights are tied to science and pharmaceutical development. As such it also bears some limitations and concerns over its sustainability. (shrink)

Now commonly accepted as the point of reference for musicians in the Western world, A 440 hertz only became the standard pitch during an international conference held in 1939. The adoption of this norm was the result of decades of negotiations between countries involving performers, composers, diplomats, physicists, and sound engineers. Although musicians and musicologists are aware of the variability of musical pitches over time, as attested by the use of lower frequencies to perform early music repertoires, no study has (...) fully explained the invention of our current concert pitch. In this book, Fanny Gribenski draws on a rich variety of previously unexplored archival sources and a unique combination of musicological perspectives, transnational history, and science studies. Tuning the World demonstrates the aesthetic, scientific, industrial, and political contingencies underlying the construction of one of the most "natural" objects of contemporary musical performance, itself the result of a cacophony of competing views and interests. (shrink)

This study examines the socio-cultural significance of dolls as Roman girls' toys. It focuses on a sample of ivory, bone, and cloth dolls, many of which have ornate hairstyles, molded breasts and, in some cases, delineated genitalia. As the only explicitly gendered toys from the Roman world, these constitute unique bodies of evidence for exploring questions of socialization and identity formation, and assessing ancient ideals. Often treated as relatively straightforward objects that prepared girls for futures as wives and mothers, this (...) study argues instead that they were more complex and conveyed mixed messages to their young owners. By isolating three specific features of the dolls , situating these in their historical and ideological milieux, and linking them with expectations for girls known from literary sources, the dolls' multivalence as artifacts of gender and status is revealed. (shrink)

Ethical decisions are contextualized in the dialectic of a multidimensional system, including situation, setting, culture, and generation. There may be further gaps between the ethical considerations of professionals and folk values. The experience of promoting equal opportunities in Hong Kong illustrates some of these challenges. Whereas the rule of law under a Western legal system advocates human rights, the traditional emphasis on harmony and preference for balancing in conflict resolution underlie the gaps in the interpretation of these ideals. The case (...) of the Hong Kong secondary school places allocation system highlights the conflicting perspectives of law, gender stereotypes, psychological knowledge, as well as ethical principles of justice and fairness in promoting equal opportunities in educational assessment and placement. The cultural perspective highlighted in this case illustrates the complex contexts of ethical decisions. (shrink)

Dans cet article, nous présentons une étude de faisabilité sur l’annotation des passages entre guillemets, phénomènes linguistiques polyphoniques qui résistent souvent à une lecture univoque et à un schéma d’annotation simplificateur. La faisabilité de l’annotation a été testée à travers une étude inter-annotateurs qui a montré, avec un accord pour 80% des annotations effectuées, que des valeurs stables (dénomination, citation, autonymie, commentaires modalisants) pouvaient être postulées. Les cas de désaccord, en partie inévitables face à la complexité du phénomène, peuvent être (...) en partie réduits par un repérage systématique des marques formelles (marques typo-dispositionnelles, éléments du lexique et formules syntaxiques) et un inventaire détaillé des contextes d’emploi pour chaque valeur. Certaines valeurs demeurant ambiguës, il convient toutefois de prévoir dans l’annotation des cas de cumul de valeurs (le passage entre guillemets cumule plusieurs valeurs compatibles) ou d’ambiguïtés (plusieurs interprétations différentes sont possibles) en cas de désaccord des annotateurs. (shrink)

En commandant à Rubens un cycle exclusivement consacré à sa gloire, Marie de Médicis entend affirmer à toute l’Europe son retour au pouvoir. Au-delà du récit biographique, l’œuvre picturale délivre un message politique fort qui justifie, et légitime, la reine mère dans le gouvernement. Pour parvenir à ses fins, et donner d’elle-même l’image d’une souveraine toute puissante sans transgresser ouvertement les principes monarchiques, Marie de Médicis joue de toutes ses qualités, de femme, de reine, de mère, dans un cycle complexe (...) qui articule le registre narratif sur le registre institutionnel, et mêle figures allégoriques et compositions historiques. En ce début de XVIIe siècle, c’est bien le problème de la représentation d’une femme de pouvoir qui est alors posé. (shrink)

Errors and their consequences are typically studied by investigating changes in decision speed and accuracy in trials that follow an error, commonly referred to as “post-error adjustments”. Many studies have reported that subjects slow down following an error, a phenomenon called “post-error slowing” (PES). However, the functional significance of PES is still a matter of debate as it is not always adaptive. That is, it is not always associated with a gain in performance and can even occur with a decline (...) in accuracy. Here, we hypothesized that the nature of PES is influenced by one’s speed-accuracy tradeoff policy, which determines the overall level of choice accuracy in the task at hand. To test this hypothesis, we had subjects performing a task in two distinct contexts (separate days), which either promoted speed (hasty context) or cautiousness (cautious context), allowing us to consider post-error adjustments according to whether subjects performed choices with a low or high accuracy level, respectively. Accordingly, our data indicate that post-error adjustments varied according to the context in which subjects performed the task, with PES being solely significant in the hasty context (low accuracy). In addition, we only observed a gain in performance after errors in a specific trial type, suggesting that post-error adjustments depend on a complex combination of processes that affect the speed of ensuing actions as well as the degree to which such PES comes with a gain in performance. (shrink)