Analysts of political culture within the "civil religion" tradition have generally assumed that discourse in civil society is structured by a single set of enduring codes based on liberal traditions that actors draw upon to resolve crises. Based on two case studies of national crises and debate in Brazil during its transition to democracy, I challenge this assumption by demonstrating that not only do actors draw upon two distinct but interrelated codes, they actively seek to impose one or another as (...) dominant. In Brazil this is manifest in actors who defend elements from the code of liberty and its valuation of the freestanding citizen, and those who defend the corporate code and its valuation of the collectivity over the individual. In an earlier debate on crime the corporate code was dominant, but in a later debate surrounding presidential improprieties, the liberal code became dominant. This analysis makes two contributions to the literature: it highlights the importance of nonindividualist cultural codes, such as the corporate code, in animating discourse in the public sphere in democratizing societies, raising attention to the importance of the symbolic contestation between actors seeking to establish one or another code during political transitions. Second, it offers a subtle commentary on the literature on democratization: changes in collective representations in the public sphere may not proceed apace of institutional changes and may be contingent on the kinds of crisis events and actors willing to contest previously dominant codes. (shrink)

Despite recent interest in political ethnography, most of the reflection has been on the ethnographic aspect of the enterprise with much less emphasis on the question implicit in the first word of the couplet: What is actually political about political ethnography and how much should ethnographers pre-define it? The question is complicated because a central component of the definition of what is political is actually the struggle to define its jurisdiction and how it gets distinguished from what it is not. (...) In this article we aim to show how ethnography can actually lead us out of this conundrum in which the political is paradoxically both predefined and, at the same time, the open question that leads the process of inquiry. We do so by advancing a formal and relational approach that provides us with procedural tools to define the nature and specificity of the political bond not ex ante, but rather during the process of research itself. In the first part of the article we historicize the development of political ethnography as a distinct avenue for inquiry and show what have been the challenges to its normalization. This is followed by the article’s main section, which focuses on the four ways in which what is political has been conceptualized in contemporary socio-ethnographical literature. In the conclusion of the article, we advance a lowest common denominator definition proposal, with examples from other scholars as well as from our own research to illustrate how this approach would work. (shrink)

In this essay we explore Rancière’s ‘politics of equals’ as an alternative conception of the political. Central to this conception is a division between instances of political contestation that address fundamental questions of equality (‘the politics of equals’) and those that are part of the management of the division of resources and positions in society (‘the police’). This distinction provides a new way of thinking about theoretical and empirical questions over logics of political action.

Este artigo tem como objetivo compreender a institucionalização e o funcionamento do Conselho de Alimentação Escolar enquanto um conselho gestor de política pública no município de Ijuí, localizado no Noroeste do Estado do Rio Grande do Sul, bem como analisar sua atuação e os desafios da gestão. O referencial teórico utilizado foi de conselhos gestores de políticas públicas na perspectiva da gestão social. Trata-se de uma pesquisa exploratória, cuja estratégia de investigação foi o estudo de caso único, com abordagem qualitativa (...) dos dados coletados por meio de pesquisa documental e entrevistas. Os resultados apontam a atuação do CAE em Ijuí/RS como efetiva, apesar dos entraves enfrentados. O principal desafio identificado foi quanto à recomposição de seus membros, processo que está ocorrendo com êxito. Conclui-se que a institucionalização de um CAE ocorre a partir da interação entre os diferentes órgãos que compõem um programa governamental, como no caso do PNAE, e que o seu funcionamento depende da atuação efetiva de todos os atores envolvidos. (shrink)

Adorno’s negative dialectics wants to free the thought from the dictates of the system, taking position against the illusion to grasp the essence of reality by logic. Against that false idea of totality, Adorno devises a philosophy of fragment, a logic of disgregation that presupposes a different concept of totality: a fragmented, scattered and conflicting wholeness. The anti systematic thinking of Adorno is configured, however, as a systematic rejection of any systematic formulation: philosophy can at most claiming a pretension to (...) truth by the practice of interpretation. A dialectic configuration of fragments of totality is at stake here: so, the arrangement of such fragments can both produce an image of reality endowed with meaning and also unfold through heterogeneous combinations that are not definitive, but always renewable from time to time. In Adorno’s reflection are so expressed two different instances which are complementary at the same time: on the one hand it represents the critical and negative element against the system and its hybris, on the other hand it expresses the need of the thought to go beyond and overcome that fragmentation, showing how the need of unity of the system is a need of the thought in itself. (shrink)

El artículo propone trabajar junto al film Las mil y una (Navas, 2020, Argentina) y la noción de penumbra, para poner a reflexionar la noción de archivo y su temporalidad, los afectos y la sexualidad disidente. Para ello retoma la propuesta de Ann Cvetkovich de volver sobre el trauma queer para analizar la diversidad de respuestas colectivas que se pueden generar, condensadas en un posible archivo de sentimientos. Siguiendo a Natalia Taccetta, repaso allí las implicancias de un archivo que atienda (...) a las circulaciones sexo-afectivas y su relación íntima con la temporalidad, con la noción de crononormatividad de Elizabeth Freeman. El cine permite, apunta Taccetta, volver al pasado no solo cognoscible sino perceptible: Las mil y una integra el archivo de nuestras reflexiones sobre la identidad, las temporalidades en que con-vivimos y las economías afectivas que estas (des)habilitan. Poniendo en jaque la contemporaneidad, su título reenvía tanto al clásico relato de Scheherezade como a la expresión coloquial de una cadena de acontecimientos desafortunados, mientras recupera el nombre del barrio correntino que inspira y sitúa el film. Los personajes invitan a un parcours de orientaciones queer, en cuanto no heteronormadas pero tampoco clasificables en otras identidades. En un escenario sexoafectivo lejos de las apps y sus taxonomías, el film abre paso a las tensiones no resueltas entre la búsqueda y el escondite, la promesa y la amenaza que conviven en la penumbra. (shrink)

L’immanence de l’analyse a été une base méthodologique importante pour une éthique de l’interprétation, en retenant le texte comme la plateforme critique où les actes de communication doivent converger selon le principe régulateur de la consistance sémantique de l’entente ou du différend. Le périmètre textuel devrait fonctionner comme le plan d’homogénéisation des tensions herméneutiques potentiellement hétérogènes. Toutefois, l’hétérogénéité ne peut qu’émerger de nouveau dans la textualité; par exemple, pendant l’expérience perceptive de l’oeuvre d’art, les signifiants peuvent devenir des interprétants du (...) texte en démarrant d’autres articulations sémiotiques, détachées des grammaires qui ont permis l’accès prioritaire à la signification. La délimitation de l’objet artistique est déjà une question interprétative, l’oeuvre habitant déjà un espace d’implémentation publique où elle est en relation avec d’autres identités culturelles. Par ailleurs, on connait bien la question classique de l’intertextualité, tout comme la présence d’une intentionnalité liée au cadre pratique de la production historique de l’oeuvre. Aujourd’hui, les développements des études sur l’oeuvre d’art peuvent dépasser la simple accumulation des problématiques et la parataxe d’applications disciplinaires, afin de repérer une syntaxe d’approches coordonnées. Cette visée a besoin avant tout d’interconnecter les distinctions entre perception, interprétation, analyse et usage de l’oeuvre d’art avec les différentes déterminations spatiales de cette dernière : l’énoncé, l’énonciation, l’intertexte, l’espace d’implémentation. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

Participatory Budgeting has by now been widely discussed, often celebrated, and is now instituted in at least 1,500 cities worldwide. Some of its central features—its structure of open meetings, its yearly cycle, and its combination of deliberation and representation—are by now well known. In this article, however, we critically reflect on its global travel and argue for more careful consideration of some of its less well-known features, namely the coupling of the budgeting meetings with the exercise of power. We disaggregate (...) PB into its communicative and empowerment dimensions and argue that its empowerment dimensions have usually not been part of its global expansion—and this is cause for concern from the point of view of emancipation. We thus discuss the specific institutional reforms associated with empowerment in the original version as well as its analytic dimensions. We also address some of the specific dangers of a communication-only version of PB as well as some suggestions for reintroducing empowerment. (shrink)

The essay aims to discuss a global skepticism about epistemic justification called Agrippa's Trilemma. Based on its exposition, the article will deal with the infinitist alternative of justification, traditional foundationalism and the hypothesis of the infallibility of introspection. It concludes that introspection beliefs are not verifiable propositional attitudes, representing an advantage to the infinitist theory. Keywords: Skepticism; Infinitism; Agrippa’s Trilemma; Epistemic Justification.

In the 1950s, long before his ascent to international renown, Michel Foucault published a scant few works. His early writings on psychology, psychopathology, and anthropology have been dismissed as immature. However, recently discovered manuscripts from the mid-1950s, when Foucault was a lecturer at the University of Lille, testify to the significance of the work that the philosopher produced in the years leading up to the “archaeological” project he launched with History of Madness. Elisabetta Basso offers a groundbreaking and in-depth (...) analysis of Foucault’s Lille manuscripts that sheds new light on the origins of his philosophical project. She considers the epistemological style and methodology of these writings as well as their philosophical context and the scholarly networks in which Foucault was active, foregrounding his relationship to existential psychiatry. Young Foucault blurs the boundaries between biography and theory, exploring the transformations—and, at times, contradictions—that characterize the intellectual trajectory of a philosopher who, as Foucault himself put it, “turned to psychology, and from psychology to history.” Retracing the first steps of the philosopher’s intellectual journey, Basso shows how Foucault’s early writings provide key insights into his archaeological work of the 1960s. Assembling a vast array of archival sources—including manuscripts, reading notes, notes for lectures and conferences, and correspondence—this book develops a new and deeper understanding of Foucault’s body of work. (shrink)

This paper distinguishes between two arguments based on measurement robustness and defends the epistemic value of robustness for the assessment of measurement reliability. I argue that the appeal to measurement robustness in the assessment of measurement is based on a different inferential pattern and is not exposed to the same objections as the no-coincidence argument which is commonly associated with the use of robustness to corroborate individual results. This investigation sheds light on the precise meaning of reliability that emerges from (...) measurement assessment practice. In addition, by arguing that the measurement assessment robustness argument has similar characteristics across the physical, social and behavioural sciences, I defend the idea that there is continuity in the notion of measurement reliability across sciences. (shrink)

In this paper I focus on the emergence of the concept of the “historical a priori” at the origin of Foucault’s archeology. I emphasize the methodological function of this concept within Foucault’s archaeology, and I maintain that despite the different thesis it entails as compared to its philosophical sources, it pertains to one of the main issues of phenomenology, that is, the problematization of the relation between reality as it appears in its historicity, and transcendentality. I start from the interest (...) of the young Foucault in existential psychiatry, and I focus on the French philosophical context in which Foucault’s Introduction to Ludwig Binswanger’s “Dream and Existence” (1954) was conceived. My aim is to show that the first “phenomenological” phase of Foucault’s work is coherent, from a methodological point of view, with the development of archaeology intended as “historical epistemology.” I conclude by arguing that Foucault’s archaeology is methodologically linked to Canguilhem’s epistemology, in that the latter presents itself as an important attempt at linking together historicity and transcendentality. (shrink)

El 29 de junio de 2011 se sancionó en Argentina la Ley Nacional 26.691 que declara Sitios de Memoria a los lugares que funcionaron como centros clandestinos de detención, tortura y exterminio (CCDTyE) o donde sucedieron hechos emblemáticos del accionar de la represión ilegal desarrollada durante el terrorismo de Estado ejercido en el país hasta el 10 de diciembre de 1983. Como autoridad de aplicación, la Secretaría de Derechos Humanos de la Nación a través de la Dirección Nacional de Sitios (...) de Memoria reglamentó la Ley en el 2014 y se comprometió a garantizar la preservación, señalización y difusión de los sitios, así como también su gestión, y la promoción y asistencia de proyectos de nuevos espacios de memoria. De esta forma, se consolidó el trabajo interjurisdiccional que se venía desarrollando desde la Red Federal de Sitios de Memoria, creada en el 2006 en la órbita del Archivo Nacional de la Memoria. (shrink)

The article advances a new way of thinking about classifications in general and the classification of mental disorders in particular. By applying insights from measurement practice to the context of classification, I defend a notion of epistemic accuracy that allows one to evaluate and improve classifications by comparing different classifying methods to each other. Progress in classification arises from the mutual development of classification systems and classifying methods. Based on this notion of accuracy, the article illustrates with an example how (...) psychiatric classifications can be improved via circumscribed comparisons of different perspectives on mental disorders, without relying on complete models of their complex aetiology. When applying this strategy, the traditional opposition between symptom-based and causal approaches is of little consequence for making progress in the epistemic accuracy of psychiatric classification. (shrink)

This paper is based on the archives of Michel Foucault collected (since 2013) at the manuscripts department of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris. Our investigation focuses in particular on the documents of the 1950s, in order to study the role of the reflection on anthropology and phenomenology at the beginning of Foucault’s philosophical path. This archival material allows us to discover the tremendous work that is at the basis of the relatively few works that Foucault published in the 1950s. (...) The access to the 1950s documents enables us at last to investigate the reasons for the seemingly sharp break that divides these works from the works published by Foucault in the 1960s and the 1970s, in which emerges the archaeological refusal of phenomenology and anthropology, as well as the strong criticism against any form of psychopathological discourse. (shrink)

This paper focuses on one of the original moments of the development of the “phenomenological” current of psychiatry, namely, the psychopathological research of Ludwig Binswanger. By means of the clinical and conceptual problem of schizophrenia as it was conceived and developed at the beginning of the twentieth century, I will try to outline and analyze Binswanger’s perspective from a both historical and epistemological point of view. Binswanger’s own way means of approaching and conceiving schizophrenia within the scientific, medical, and psychiatric (...) context of that time will lead us to grasp the epistemological stakes at the origins of his project of reforming psychiatry by means of phenomenology. I will finally attempt to upgrade and update Binswanger’s project in light of the current reappraisal of phenomenology within the ongoing debate on psychopathology engaged by studies in the field of science and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Les articles réunis dans ce dossier proviennent pour l’essentiel de la journée d’étude organisée par Elisabetta Basso et Laurent Dartigues le 6 juin 2017 à l’ENS de Lyon, avec le soutien de l’Institut d’études avancées (Collegium) de Lyon, de l’UMR Triangle et de l’ENS de Lyon. Seul fait exception le texte d’Ugo Balzaretti, que nous avons eu plaisir à accueillir dans ce dossier. Cette journée d’étude s’inscrivait dans le contexte du projet de recherche intitulé « Rethinking anthropology in li...

From a reading of Sein und Zeit and contemporary courses, we are interested in examining the transcendental structure of Dasein to explain what we understand as its bidimensional character. For this, we analyze the function of the mood in the dynamics of the structure through the anxiety and profound boredom . We emphasize the affective disposition as an existential starting point and condition of possibility for two pathways, since in relation to being we observed tension between two dimensions that are (...) oscillated Dasein towards one concealment and one unconcealed motion of what happens. With this interpretation we intend to show that the tensive dynamics of the bidimensional structure of Dasein proposed here is the effect of the original givenness of being. (shrink)

En este articulo analizamos el fenómeno del Ereignis en la obra de Heidegger posterior a la Kehre para confrontar su origen conflictivo. Para esto, presentamos la influencia de su lectura del πόλεµοç de Heráclito y una interpretación de la estructura y sus dimensiones gracias a la tensión de las partes que se mantienen en continua oscilación por la naturaleza abismal de la donación. Asimismo, revisamos el camino que presentan los ensambles del fenómeno a la luz de su obra Beiträge zur (...) Philosophie. De esto modo, comprenderemos un poco más el sentido complejo de este fenómeno y su aporte al problema de la diferencia. In this paper we analyze the phenomenon of Ereignis in Heidegger's work after the Kehre, in order to question his conflicting origin. To do this, we show the influence of his reading of Heraclitus' πόλεµοç as well as an interpretation of the structure and its dimensions, thanks to the tension between the parts kept in continuous oscillation due to the abysmal nature of donation. We also revised the path shown by the gatherings of the phenomenon, in the light of his work Beiträge zur Philosophie. This way, we may get greater insights into the complex sense of this phenomenon and its contribution to the issue of difference. (shrink)

In dynamical systems models feedforward is needed to guide planning and to process unknown and unpredictable events. Feedforward could help Theory of Event Coding (TEC) integrate control processes and could model human performance in action planning in a more flexible and powerful way.

Gilles Deleuze's assertion that 'Sartre knew how to invent the New' suggests a vital aspect of the French philosopher, one that departs from the image that has often been presented of him. Criticism of the Soviet Union post 1956, together with the increasing prominence of anti-colonial struggles and a series of experiences that would find their condensation in 1968, pushed Sartre to a continuous rearticulation of his political ideas, on the basis of an intense confrontation with Marx. In Basso's (...) lucid study, here newly translated into English, the expression 'singular universal' seeks to capture the revolutionary potential of individual and collective subjects, illuminating the close but also unstable relationship between history and politics. (shrink)