What part do feature films play in creating our notions of history? Using the example of Dutch and German feature films about the resistance, the author shows how these long-neglected films succeeded in injecting competing interpretations of history into public commemorative culture in both the Netherlands and Germany.

A COMPANION TO MOTION PICTURES AND PUBLIC VALUE A Companion to Motion Pictures and Public Value brings together original essays by world-renowned scholars investigating the varied intersections of the moving image and the public good. Covering a wide range of types and genres of cinema, this unprecedented volume explores the past, present, and possible future contributions of motion pictures to public value. With a cross-disciplinary approach, the text presents original conceptual work, global perspectives, philosophical arguments, historical discussion, (...) empirical research, and specific case studies of the direct and indirect public value developed through motion pictures. Organized into seven thematic sections, this Companion identifies and discusses the various kinds of values that motion pictures can deliver, including artistic and aesthetic, ethical and moral, spiritual and religious, cultural, environmental, political, and cognitive. Throughout the text, readers are provided with deep insight into the issue of public value as it relates to cinema and its positive impact on human life and society. A Companion to Motion Pictures and Public Value is an ideal textbook for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in Film, Media, and Cultural Studies, and is a valuable resource for scholars across a variety of disciplines. (shrink)

Interviews formed an integral part of Foucault's work alongside and complementary to the published works. It is primarily in interviews that he elaborates on the implications of his historical studies for thinking about the problems raised by social and political movements. Like his published books, Foucault's lectures sought to engage with the social, political, and intellectual present in which they were presented. In this sense, they are closer to the interviews. This chapter focuses on the developments in his thinking about (...) power as these are displayed in his lectures between 1976 and 1979. It also discusses the role of strategy in relations of power. Building on the centrality of freedom to this concept of power as action on the actions of others, Foucault asserts that there is an intransigence of freedom and a corresponding “agonism” at the heart of power relations. (shrink)

Norbert Elias’s project in The process of civilization involved reconstructing invisible movement—both the slow tempoof long-term historical change and the modification of psychic structures and embodied dispositions. To do this, he resorted to uncommon devices: treating historical texts as constituting a series amenable to a rudimentary discourse analysis, he constructed an imagined ‘curve of civilization’ serving as an approximation of the hidden process of change. Elias’s curve was not supposed to represent single past states, but movement itself, its direction and (...) pace. This novel concept of historical representation was related to the perception of cinema as a new medium making actual movement visible. But beyond making it possible to imagine how one could telescope long-term historical process, cinema also held the promise of serving as a microscope, making the minute movements of the human body, gestures and manners available for close inspection. While anthropologists were devising ways of using the new medium to document fleeting gestures and bodily postures, it was used by popular audiences as a source for remodelling behaviour and acquiring polite manners and body techniques, as noticed by such acute observers as Marcel Mauss and Joseph Roth. Hence, popular appropriation of the cinema gave rise to a heightened awareness of the historicity of gestures and the changing modalities of their transmission. Cinema was itself part of the accelerated motion of history, of a perceived change of pace in the process of civilization, which in its turn shed light on its historical antecedents and played an essential role in rethinking the notion of civilization and culture.Keywords: Norbert Elias; Marcel Mauss; Joseph Roth; Cinema; Gestures; Body; Discourse; Historiography; Sociology of culture. (shrink)

Documentary as Exorcism is an interdisciplinary study that builds upon the insights of postcolonial studies, critical race theory, theological and religious studies and media and film studies to showcase the role of documentary film as a system of signifying capable of registering complex theological ideas while pursuing the authentic aims of documentary filmmaking. Robert Beckford marries the concepts of ‘theology as visual practice' and ‘theology as political engagement' to develop a new mode of documentary filmmaking that embeds emancipation from oppression (...) in its aesthetic. In various documentaries made for Channel 4 and the BBC, Beckford narrates the complicit relationship of Christianity with European expansion, slavery, and colonialism as a historic manifestation of evil. In light of the cannibalistic practices of colonialism that devoured black life, and the church's role in the subjugation and theological legitimation of black bodies, Beckford characterises this form of historic Christian faith as ‘colonial Christianity' and its malevolent or ‘occult' practices as a form of ‘bewitchment' that must be ‘exorcised'. He identifies and exorcises the evil practices of colonialism and their present impact upon African Caribbean Christian communities in Britain in films such as Britain's Slave Trade and Empire Pays Back through a deliberate process of encoding/decoding. The emancipatory impact of this form of documentary filmmaking is demonstrated by its ability to bring issues such as reparations to the public square for debate, and its capacity to change a corporation's trade policies for the good of Africans. (shrink)

In this rich cultural history, Pamela Robertson Wojcik examines America's ambivalent and shifting attitude toward homelessness through a close study of film cycles from five distinct historical moments that show characters as unhomed and placeless, mobile rather than fixed: failing, resisting, or opting out of the mandate for a home of one's own. From the tramp films of the Silent Era to the Oscar-winning Nomadland in 2021, Wojcik shows how film cycles reveal a tension in the American imaginary between viewing (...) homelessness as, on the one hand, deviant or threatening, and, on the other, emblematic of freedom and independence. Blending social history with insights drawn from a complex array of films, both canonical and fringe, Wojcik effectively 'unhomes' dominant narratives that cast aspirations for success and social mobility as the focus of American cinema, reminding us that genres of precarity have been central to the American cinema (and American story) all along. (shrink)

In this essay I show that texts by early Caribbean women writers, such as the Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands, reveal and resist the effects of colonial paradigms by leaving textual traces of how such paradigms can effectively be countered and overturned. I arrive at such a reading of Seacole via an analysis of Frantz Fanon's reading of Mayotte Capécia's turn-of-the-century novel, Je suis martiniquaise, in light of advances in postcolonial and feminist theory. I argue that doing (...) so can bring us to recognize the contributions that early writings by Caribbean women have made to a broader understanding of the nature of being, across differences of “race,” class, and geography. I consider how we might recover in Capécia important models that Fanon himself replicates, yet dismisses, that predate Capécia's own text and that can be located in a text like Seacole's. In the end, I come to contend that Mary Seacole's text is more than a mere record of a “free colored” woman's life in the second half of the nineteenth century. It is, to use today's postcolonial parlance, an interventionist, hybrid text that attempts to subvert dominant discourse while participating in its circuits. (shrink)

This article develops and defends a full account of the nature and normativity of resistance to evidence, according to which resistance to evidence is an instance of input-level epistemic malfunctioning. At the core of this epistemic normative picture lies the notion of knowledge indicators, as evidential probability increasing facts that one is in a position to know; resistance to evidence is construed as a failure to uptake knowledge indicators.

This essay adopts three accounts of “the social” to get a clearer picture of why there is a barrier faced by the government when implementing contact tracing mobile applications. In Hong Kong's context, the paradox involves declining trust of the government's protection of data privacy and growing concern about data surveillance since the 2019 social unrest I argue that exploring the idea of sociality is valuable in that it re-reconfigures the datafication of pandemic control by revealing different sets of social (...) relations, particularly the asymmetrical power relation between the government and its people. The refusal to download or use the mobile app also shows that the public has a faith in human agency and human resistance in data-saturated cities. (shrink)

The success of movies like The Artist and Hugo recreated the wonder and magic of silent film for modern audiences, many of whom might never have experienced a movie without sound. But while the American silent movie was one of the most significant popular art forms of the modern age, it is also one that is largely lost to us, as more than eighty percent of silent films have disappeared, the victims of age, disaster, and neglect. We now know about (...) many of these cinematic masterpieces only from the collections of still portraits and production photographs that were originally created for publicity and reference. Capturing the beauty, horror, and moodiness of silent motion pictures, these images are remarkable pieces of art in their own right. In the first history of still camera work generated by the American silent motion picture industry, David S. Shields chronicles the evolution of silent film aesthetics, glamour, and publicity, and provides unparalleled insight into this influential body of popular imagery. Exploring the work of over sixty camera artists, Still recovers the stories of the photographers who descended on early Hollywood and the stars and starlets who sat for them between 1908 and 1928. Focusing on the most culturally influential types of photographs—the performer portrait and the scene still—Shields follows photographers such as Albert Witzel and W. F. Seely as they devised the poses that newspapers and magazines would bring to Americans, who mimicked the sultry stares and dangerous glances of silent stars. He uncovers scene shots of unprecedented splendor—visions that would ignite the popular imagination. And he details how still photographs changed the film industry, whose growing preoccupation with artistry in imagery caused directors and stars to hire celebrated stage photographers and transformed cameramen into bankable names. Reproducing over one hundred and fifty of these gorgeous black-and-white photographs, Still brings to life an entire long-lost visual culture that a century later still has the power to enchant. (shrink)

This book is about film's encounter with love throughout the medium's history. It is also about the philosophy of love... [it] outlines a new metaphysics and ontology of love as a reciprocal erotic relationship. This study argues that film's special narrative language is particularly well suited to depicting love in this way. It begins with early silent directors, such as Joseph von Sternberg, and concludes with contemporary filmmakers, such as Sophia Coppola; it also compares classical French and American love films (...) of the 1940s with modernist films by Luis Buñuel, François Truffaut, and Wong Kar Wai, amongst many others"--Page [4] of cover. (shrink)

Syntactic templates serve as schemas, allowing speakers to describe complex events in a systematic fashion. Motion events have long served as a prime example of how different languages favor different syntactic frames, in turn biasing their speakers toward different event conceptualizations. However, there is also variability in how motion events are syntactically framed within languages. Here, we measure the consistency in event encoding in two languages, Spanish and Swedish. We test a dominant account in the literature, namely that (...) variability within a language can be explained by specific properties of the events. This event-properties account predicts that descriptions of one and the same event should be consistent within a language, even in languages where there is overall variability in the use of syntactic frames. Spanish and Swedish speakers (N= 84) described 32 caused motion events. While the most frequent syntactic framing in each language was as expected based on typology (Spanish: verb-framed, Swedish: satellite-framed, cf. Talmy,2000), Swedish descriptions were substantially more consistent than Spanish descriptions. Swedish speakers almost invariably encoded all events with a single syntactic frame and systematically conveyed manner of motion. Spanish descriptions, in contrast, varied much more regarding syntactic framing and expression of manner. Crucially, variability in Spanish descriptions was not mainly a function of differences between events, as predicted by the event-properties account. Rather, Spanish variability in syntactic framing was driven by speaker biases. A similar picture arose for whether Spanish descriptions expressed manner information or not: Even after accounting for the effect of syntactic choice, a large portion of the variance in Spanish manner encoding remained attributable to differences among speakers. The results show that consistency in motion event encoding starkly differs across languages: Some languages (like Swedish) bias their speakers toward a particular linguistic event schema much more than others (like Spanish). Implications of these findings are discussed with respect to the typology of event framing, theories on the relationship between language and thought, and speech planning. In addition, the tools employed here to quantify variability can be applied to other domains of language. (shrink)

In recent times, it has become increasingly common that elected parties and leaders systematically undermine democracy and the rule of law. This phenomenon is often framed with the term democratic backsliding or democratic regression. This article deals with the relatively little-studied topic of resistance to democratic regressions. Chief amongst the things it discusses is the rather central ethical issue of whether resisters may themselves, in their attempts to prevent a further erosion of democracy, transgress democratic norms. But the argument (...) advanced in the article is not merely about the ethics of resistance. It begins, perhaps unconventionally, by addressing the affective dimension of resistance to democratic regressions, looking in particular at the powerful feelings of anger and despair that pro-democratic citizens living under a regressive government are likely to experience. As the article argues, these feelings have not only motivational but also epistemic potential, which must be adequately theorized in order to understand how resisters can respond to the ethical challenges facing them. (shrink)

Emotions play at least three key roles in cinema. First, many motion pictures present highly emotional situations, involving characters who fall in love, who endure unbearable loss, and who become hell-bent on revenge. To make sense of movies, we must identify the emotions that drive their characters. Second, motion pictures seem to arouse emotions. We go to tearjerkers that make us cry, splatter films that make us writhe, and action films that keep us at the edges of our (...) seats. Third, these emotional experiences are, ostensibly, part of cinema’s allure; we value movies that evoke strong feelings. One might summarize these three observations by saying that movie-going involves emotion attribution, arousal, and motivation. Each of these has been a domain of philosophical contestation. How are emotions attributed when experiencing a cinematic fiction? Are genuine emotions really aroused? And do emotional experiences really bring us to the box office? This discussion explores controversies along these three dimensions. (shrink)

This handbook brings together essays in the philosophy of film and motion pictures from authorities across the spectrum. It boasts contributions from philosophers and film theorists alike, with many essays employing pluralist approaches to this interdisciplinary subject. Core areas treated include film ontology, film structure, psychology, authorship, narrative, and viewer emotion. Emerging areas of interest, including virtual reality, video games, and nonfictional and autobiographical film also have dedicated chapters. Other areas of focus include the film medium’s intersection with contemporary (...) social issues, film’s kinship to other art forms, and the influence of historically seminal schools of thought in the philosophy of film. Of emphasis in many of the essays is the relationship and overlap of analytic and continental perspectives in this subject. (shrink)

Time is more than a line drawn from the past to the future. It is a form of life, marked by the ancient hierarchy between those who have time and those who do not. This hierarchy still governs a present which clings to the fable of historical necessity and its experts. In opposition to this, Jacques Rancière shows how the break with the hierarchical conception of time implies a completely different idea of the modern. He sees the fulfilment of this (...) in two arts of movement, cinema and dance, which at the beginning of the twentieth century abolished the opposition between free and mechanical people, and exposed the rift between the revolution of artists and that of strategists. (shrink)

This article sets up a neurophenomenological approach to understanding cinema spectatorship in order to investigate how embodied engagement with technologies of sound and motion can foster a sense of experiential realism. It takes as a starting point the idea that the empirical study of emotive, perceptual, motor, and cognitive processes involved in film spectatorship is impoverished without a phenomenological account of the lived experience under investigation. Correspondingly, engaging with neuroscientific studies enriches the scope of phenomenological inquiry and offers new (...) insights into the film experience. Analysis of diverse films including Interstellar, Leviathan, San Andreas and The Thin Red Line reveals how technological innovations dating from Hale’s Tours to contemporary D-BOX and Dolby Atmos systems have enhanced the audience’s sense of immersion and corporeal investment in the film experience. Building on the research of Vivian Sobchack and Vittorio Gallese, I argue that aesthetic techniques including the use of low frequency sound effects and wearable cameras facilitate shared affective engagement and a form of embodied simulation associated with kinaesthetic empathy and augmented narrative involvement. (shrink)

Designed for classroom use, this authoritative anthology presents key selections from the best contemporary work in philosophy of film. The featured essays have been specially chosen for their clarity, philosophical depth, and consonance with the current move towards cognitive film theory Eight sections with introductions cover topics such as the nature of film, film as art, documentary cinema, narration and emotion in film, film criticism, and film's relation to knowledge and morality Issues addressed include the objectivity of documentary films, fear (...) of movie monsters, and moral questions surrounding the viewing of pornography Replete with examples and discussion of moving pictures throughout. (shrink)

Christopher Nolan is the writer and director of Hollywood blockbusters like The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, and also of arthouse films like Memento and Inception. Underlying his staggering commercial success however, is a darker sensibility that questions the veracity of human knowledge, the allure of appearance over reality and the latent disorder in contemporary society. This appreciation of the sinister owes a huge debt to philosophy and especially modern thinkers like Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud and Jacques Derrida. (...) Taking a thematic approach to Nolan's oeuvre, Robbie Goh examines how the director's postmodern inclinations manifest themselves in non-linearity, causal agnosticism, the threat of social anarchy and the frequent use of the mise en abyme, while running counter to these are narratives of heroism, moral responsibility and the dignity of human choice. For Goh, Nolan is a 'reluctant postmodernist'. His films reflect the cynicism of the modern world, but with their representation of heroic moral triumphs, they also resist it. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to cast light upon the moral vision—the vision of what is good and what is obligatory —that governs many if not most of the motion pictures produced in the United States in recent years. I especially have in mind productions such as Pleasantville, Cider House Rules , and American Beauty , and will give special attention to these three movies in what follows. But the phenomenon in question extends far beyond these cases. The (...) basic idea governing these films is now a wide-spread and deep-lying conviction in the contemporary American soul. It is that moral rules and rigorous moral order in life, as traditionally understood, are meaningless or pointless at best, and really are repressive of the best aspects of human relationships, individuality and creativity . What would have traditionally been thought of as moral propriety and human goodness is now generally thought of as arbitrary and as harmful to life, if not downright vicious (at least in its effects), largely because they eliminate or repress feelings , the true elixir of life. (shrink)

Pack includes 2 titles from the popular Blackwell Philosophy Anthologies Series: Philosophy of Literature: Contemporary and Classic Readings - An Anthology Edited by Eileen John and Dominic McIver Lopes ISBN: 9781405112086 Essential readings in the philosophy of literature are brought together for the first time in this anthology. Contains forty-five substantial and carefully chosen essays and extracts Provides a balanced and coherent overview of developments in the field during the past thirty years, including influential work on fiction, interpretation, metaphor, literary (...) value, and the definition and ontology of literature Includes an additional historical section featuring generous selections of the writings of early pioneers such as Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, and Hume Serves as an ideal introduction to the philosophy of literature or the philosophy of art, as well as a handy compilation of contributions to the field by its leading figures Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures: An Anthology Edited by Noël Carroll and Jinhee Choi ISBN: 9781405120272 Designed for classroom use, this authoritative anthology presents key selections from the best contemporary work in philosophy of film. The featured essays have been specially chosen for their clarity, philosophical depth, and consonance with the current move towards cognitive film theory Eight sections with introductions cover topics such as the nature of film, film as art, documentary cinema, narration and emotion in film, film criticism, and film's relation to knowledge and morality Issues addressed include the objectivity of documentary films, fear of movie monsters, and moral questions surrounding the viewing of pornography Replete with examples and discussion of moving pictures throughout. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to explore the Irish dancing body by combining the growing social science interest in mobility with the established area of the body as a site of culture. On the basis of ethnographic observations and interviews about dance and culture in Ireland, I will discuss the Irish dancing body in relation to the construction of social memory, the embodiment of values linked to Irish national identity, mobility, dance competitions and global touring. First, I will detail (...) three distinct movement sequences from different dance forms in Ireland: competitive Irish dancing, dance theatre and Riverdance(the commercial Irish dance show). Second, I will look at how dance can be said to travel around Ireland, north and south, as well as back and forth to Ireland. The idea of the Irish dancing body offers an example of the unity of body and mind in dance, revealing also that abstract dance and movement communicate stories about their societies. In Irish dance, these stories feature displacement, longing and resistance, often steeped in the history. I conclude that this social memory connects a distinct Irish tradition with European modernity. (shrink)

Designed for classroom use, this authoritative anthology presentskey selections from the best contemporary work in philosophy offilm. The featured essays have been specially chosen for theirclarity, philosophical depth, and consonance with the current movetowards cognitive film theory Eight sections with introductions cover topics such as thenature of film, film as art, documentary cinema, narration andemotion in film, film criticism, and film's relation to knowledgeand morality Issues addressed include the objectivity of documentary films,fear of movie monsters, and moral questions surrounding the (...) viewingof pornography Replete with examples and discussion of moving picturesthroughout. (shrink)

In this book, Richard Dien Winfield builds upon Hegel’s Aesthetics to provide a comprehensive and systematic analysis of the individual fine arts, which remedies Hegel's inconsistencies and major omissions. In addition to conceiving the general aesthetics and particular stylistic forms of architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and literature, Winfield determines the fundamental character of the new arts of photography and cinema that the master thinkers of aesthetics never had the opportunity to consider. Winfield’s analysis covers a wide-ranging array of artistic creations (...) from diverse periods and cultures, while engaging in debate with the most important aesthetic theorists of the past and present. (shrink)

Focusing on a recent wave of international art cinema, Animal Worldsoffers the first sustained analysis of the relations between cinematic time and animal life. Through an aesthetic of extended duration, films such as Bestiaire(2010), The Turin Horse(2011) and A Cow's Life(2012) attend to animal worlds of sentience and perception, while registering the governing of life through biopolitical regimes. Bringing together Gilles Deleuze's writings on cinema and on animals - while drawing on Jacques Derrida, Jean-Christophe Bailly, Nicole Shukin and others - (...) the book argues that these films question the biopolitical reduction of animal life to forms of capital, opening up realms of virtuality, becoming and alternative political futures. (shrink)

Tractatus Logico-Pilosophicus, the only book published during Ludwig Wittgenstein's lifetime , has since attracted the imagination of generations of philosophers as a work of great philosophical genius. Nonetheless, even today, more than eighty years later, philosophers are struggling to reconcile its diverse themes within a single, coherent picture. The present work is an attempt to meet this challenge. ;Wittgenstein considered the single proposition as a concrete model for the fact. The challenge is to show how a system of propositions can (...) serve as a model of reality. My work concentrates on three pillars of the logic of the Tractatus: the picture theory, negation as "reversal of sense," the independence of elementary propositions. Using a simple scenario of the ordering of objects or letters on a line, I examine the conflict generated by the attempt to adequately accommodate all three themes and offer my own solution. My solution brings implications to the problem of negation and to the Tractatus's thesis that the possibilities of logical space are spanned by the possible configurations of the ultimately simple objects. One such implication, which stands in contrast to the common reading, is that in atomic facts we have 'complex objects' as constituents. ;The resolution offered, furthermore, exposes an intrinsic difficulty in the Tractatus, for which I have reserved the term arbitrary choice. The difficulty is manifested in the lack of assurance---from the perspective of logic---that a concept-word will preserve its 'standard' meaning when it is reapplied or when its scope of application varies. In this I uncover the seed of central themes in Wittgenstein's later philosophy, e.g. the rule-following argument, as present already in the Tractatus. ;In the concluding chapter, I suggest a new account for the nature of the proposition by connecting the analysis offered in the Tractatus with the subject of time and motion. The picture with which the work concludes then considers language not as corresponding to reality, but as engaged or synchronized with reality---if you will, it is a picture of language and reality in a dance. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Secrecy and Autonomy in Lewis CarrollSusan ShererVictorian novels quiver with morbid secrets and threatening discoveries. Unseen rooms, concealed doors, hidden boxes, masked faces, buried letters, all appear (and disappear) with striking regularity in the fiction of Victorian England. So many of these secret spaces contain children, and especially little girls, little girls in hidden spaces. The young Jane Eyre sits behind a curtain in the hidden window seat, escaping (...) the vindictive wrath of John Reed. Repulsed by her angry brother, Maggie Tulliver flees to the house attic, fantasizing that her family will fear that she has died. Little Dorrit withdraws from the common space of the Marshalsea into her private room above the prison, and Little Nell hides behind trees and walls, silently observing clandestine meetings. Finally the seven-year-old Alice falls down a rabbit-hole into a Wonderland, the dreamspace of her own psyche.Of these images, none can be more embedded in our cultural imagination than the child Alice dropping into the subterranean well of Wonderland. Indeed, of the many celebrated scenes in the Alice narratives, the most memorable, most potent, most quoted is Alice’s initial descent to the bottom of the rabbit-hole. The lastingness of this scene seems even greater when we realize that, although neither Carroll in Alice’s Adventures Underground nor Tenniel in the first edition of Wonderland illustrated the moment with a picture, it still became (along with the Mad Hatter’s tea party) one of the signature images of the Alice stories. Why, we must ask, did the Victorians retain, with a powerful tenacity, this vision of a little girl moving through a tight space toward the hidden world of Wonderland?The answer to this question is not—at least not wholly—that the scene simply represents a child’s metaphorical progress through the [End Page 1] birth canal 1 and that this, in turn, symbolizes some kind of rite of passage, a movement towards some deeper knowledge. For then how do we explain Alice’s conspicuous lack of internal development in both stories? Indeed, for a narrative that thematizes motion, Alice’s psychical growth remains disturbingly static. Throughout both narratives, Alice displays little emotional variation, for when she is not frustrated or anxious, she is, for the most part, vapid or expressionless. In fact, one is immediately struck by her coolness and indifference as she drops through the rabbit-hole. 2 Thus, because scene changes in Wonderland and Looking-Glass rarely betoken any emotional or intellectual modulations, Alice’s falling into Wonderland signals no internal transition.But the image does relocate her body and within this fictive world, location is everything. The scene gestures Alice’s departure, her separation, her movement towards an autonomy of which every child dreams when, in play, retreating to a hidden space. A child’s impulse to hide, to create a secret space, is one of the most compelling of all human wishes, the wish for autonomy and autarchy—“to be cut off from the word and yet owner of the world.” 3 Throughout Victorian literature, the fantasy of autonomy sets children dreaming of far-away worlds and hidden gardens. The young Cathy and Heathcliff flee to the isolated moors, filling the open, empty space with dreams of unrestricted freedom. Little Dorrit envisages the locked garden behind the Marshalsea as an alternative world to the foul prison atmosphere. And what are the Brontës’s Angria and Gondol but disconnected, self-governing realms imagined from the standpoint of childhood powerlessness? The image, then, of Alice’s fall begins to fulfill this powerful wish for autonomy, which culminates, finally, in Alice’s self-coronation at the end of Looking-Glass. Yet it is only within the child’s willing imagination that a secret space can encroach so closely upon autonomy, for as we shall see, secrecy and autonomy are irreconcilable not only in the demanding world of realism, but even in the more elastic world of Carrollian fantasy.IAlice’s descent into Wonderland and her entrance into the Looking-Glass kingdom would seem like ripe metaphors for Carroll to explore the thoughts and fantasies of Alice’s psyche. What could be more... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.3 (2002) 425-446 [Access article in PDF] Giving Orders: Theory and Practice in the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina Vicki Hsueh Indians. Of Edisto Ashapo and Combohe to the South our friends. Of Wando Ituan Sewee and Sehey to the north came to our assistance and were zealous and resolute in it 1000 bowmen In our want supplied us. Q. Spaniards. What we shall (...) doe to the Spaniards if we invade them we brake the peace, if we sit still we loose our reputation with the Indians our friends. Westoes. Inland man eaters. Country. To the northward more sickly, about Ashley River fertile and of a wonderful growth. Tatchequea. A very fruitfull Country 8. days jorney by the North west the Emperor our friend and enemy to the Westoes and to hard for them. Q. Settlem't. 500 people will secure the settlement 1000 perfect it. desires supplys of necessarys till that time Excerpt from Carolina Memoranda in the handwriting of John Locke, Esq., 15 September 1670 Within the last decade, scholars such as James Tully, Barbara Arneil, and Bhikhu Parekh have performed a crucial intervention on modern constitu-tionalism's behalf. 1 Not only has constitutionalism in the modern age been [End Page 425] plagued by assumptions of cultural uniformity and an on-going inability to adjudicate between competing cultural claims, but it has been unable effectively to diagnose those limitations and dilemmas. The root of the problem, James Tully suggests, is ultimately a matter of historical perspective. "[T]he tendency," he writes, "is not to notice the philosophical and ideological debates over the last three hundred years... only the result of these debates is seen—the victorious modern language of constitutional uniformity—and claims for recognition are viewed through its framework as if it were impartial and universal." 2 In response Tully and others have sought to tackle this predicament at its historical root. Identifying modern constitutionalism's colonial origins as a significant part of the problem, their studies address the development of constitutionalism and colonialism as an entwined phenomenon in the early modern period, focusing particularly on the British-American context. In this sense, Locke's Two Treatises of Government stands as an exemplary illustration of the period's entangled colonial and constitutional temperaments. Well-known for its influential articulation of compact and resistance, the Two Treatises, Barbara Arneil argues "were written as a defence of England's colonial policy in the new world against the sceptics in England and the counter-claims of both the aboriginal nations and other European powers in America." 3 Accordingly, present-day constitutionalism continues to bear the weighty legacy of those colonial rationales. "[T]he language of modern constitutionalism," Tully further explains, "which has come to be authoritative was designed to exclude or assimilate cultural diversity and justify uniformity. The design is difficult to see because this 'modern' language has become the customary way of thinking about, reflecting on and envisioning a just constitutional order." Ultimately, Tully submits, citing Wittgenstein, "A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably." 4This much-needed thickening of constitutionalism's historical context has enriched our awareness of constitutionalism's vexed origins, as it has proffered potent tools for interrogating current cultural adjudication. Yet, a troubling predicament persists. As if caught within the tenacious grip of the language of modern constitutionalism, Tully, Arneil, and Parekh insistently portray seventeenth-century British-American colonialism solely as a straightforward process of appropriation and assimilation without addressing or incorporating the [End Page 426] complex and contingent elements of that history in its emergence. Lacking the various negotiations and accommodations between settler and indigene in ambition and actualization, their portrayals crucially underplay the dynamic relationship between theories of constitutionalism and practices of colonialism—an approach that ultimately serves to reinscribe the narrative of triumphalist progress within their critiques. 5This problematic is the context for my reading of the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina,1669... (shrink)

This paper focuses on whether static images can depict motion. It is natural to say that pictures depicting objects caught in the middle of a dynamic action—such as Henri Cartier-Bresson’s (1932) Behind the Gare St. Lazare—are pictures of movement, but, given that pictures themselves do not move, can we make sense of such an idea? Drawing on results from experimental psychology and cognitive sciences, I show that we can. Psychological studies on implicit motion and representational momentum indicate that (...) motion is really perceived in some static images: our visual system is built in order to detect motion, even where it is only implied, and to anticipate the probable outcomes of others’ actions—even when the ‘others’ are only the subject matters of pictures’. I argue that, consequently, a range of popular depiction theories—perceptualist theories of depiction—can accommodate depicted motion. (shrink)

This study examines the effectiveness of the inoculation strategy in countering vaccine-related misinformation among Hong Kong college students. A three-phase between-subject experiment was conducted to compare the persuasive effects of inoculation messages, supportive messages, and no message control. The results show that inoculation messages were superior to supportive messages at generating resistance to misinformation, as evidenced by more positive vaccine attitudes and stronger vaccine intention. Notably, while we expected the inoculation condition would produce more resistance than the control (...) condition, there was little evidence in favor of this prediction. Attitudinal threat and counterarguing moderated the experimental effects; issue involvement and political trust were found to directly predict vaccine attitudes and intention. The findings suggest that future interventions focus on developing preventive mechanisms to counter misinformation and spreading inoculation over the issue is an effective strategy to generate resistance to misinformation. Interventions should be cautious about using health advocacy initiated by governments among populations with low political trust. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Secrecy and Autonomy in Lewis CarrollSusan ShererVictorian novels quiver with morbid secrets and threatening discoveries. Unseen rooms, concealed doors, hidden boxes, masked faces, buried letters, all appear (and disappear) with striking regularity in the fiction of Victorian England. So many of these secret spaces contain children, and especially little girls, little girls in hidden spaces. The young Jane Eyre sits behind a curtain in the hidden window seat, escaping (...) the vindictive wrath of John Reed. Repulsed by her angry brother, Maggie Tulliver flees to the house attic, fantasizing that her family will fear that she has died. Little Dorrit withdraws from the common space of the Marshalsea into her private room above the prison, and Little Nell hides behind trees and walls, silently observing clandestine meetings. Finally the seven-year-old Alice falls down a rabbit-hole into a Wonderland, the dreamspace of her own psyche.Of these images, none can be more embedded in our cultural imagination than the child Alice dropping into the subterranean well of Wonderland. Indeed, of the many celebrated scenes in the Alice narratives, the most memorable, most potent, most quoted is Alice’s initial descent to the bottom of the rabbit-hole. The lastingness of this scene seems even greater when we realize that, although neither Carroll in Alice’s Adventures Underground nor Tenniel in the first edition of Wonderland illustrated the moment with a picture, it still became (along with the Mad Hatter’s tea party) one of the signature images of the Alice stories. Why, we must ask, did the Victorians retain, with a powerful tenacity, this vision of a little girl moving through a tight space toward the hidden world of Wonderland?The answer to this question is not—at least not wholly—that the scene simply represents a child’s metaphorical progress through the [End Page 1] birth canal 1 and that this, in turn, symbolizes some kind of rite of passage, a movement towards some deeper knowledge. For then how do we explain Alice’s conspicuous lack of internal development in both stories? Indeed, for a narrative that thematizes motion, Alice’s psychical growth remains disturbingly static. Throughout both narratives, Alice displays little emotional variation, for when she is not frustrated or anxious, she is, for the most part, vapid or expressionless. In fact, one is immediately struck by her coolness and indifference as she drops through the rabbit-hole. 2 Thus, because scene changes in Wonderland and Looking-Glass rarely betoken any emotional or intellectual modulations, Alice’s falling into Wonderland signals no internal transition.But the image does relocate her body and within this fictive world, location is everything. The scene gestures Alice’s departure, her separation, her movement towards an autonomy of which every child dreams when, in play, retreating to a hidden space. A child’s impulse to hide, to create a secret space, is one of the most compelling of all human wishes, the wish for autonomy and autarchy—“to be cut off from the word and yet owner of the world.” 3 Throughout Victorian literature, the fantasy of autonomy sets children dreaming of far-away worlds and hidden gardens. The young Cathy and Heathcliff flee to the isolated moors, filling the open, empty space with dreams of unrestricted freedom. Little Dorrit envisages the locked garden behind the Marshalsea as an alternative world to the foul prison atmosphere. And what are the Brontës’s Angria and Gondol but disconnected, self-governing realms imagined from the standpoint of childhood powerlessness? The image, then, of Alice’s fall begins to fulfill this powerful wish for autonomy, which culminates, finally, in Alice’s self-coronation at the end of Looking-Glass. Yet it is only within the child’s willing imagination that a secret space can encroach so closely upon autonomy, for as we shall see, secrecy and autonomy are irreconcilable not only in the demanding world of realism, but even in the more elastic world of Carrollian fantasy.IAlice’s descent into Wonderland and her entrance into the Looking-Glass kingdom would seem like ripe metaphors for Carroll to explore the thoughts and fantasies of Alice’s psyche. What could be more... (shrink)

This paper argues that attempts to apply Alasdair MacIntyre’s positive moral theory to business ethics are problematic, due to the cognitive closure of MacIntyre’s concept of a practice. I begin by outlining the notion of a practice, before turning to Moore’s attempt to provide a MacIntyrean account of corporate governance. I argue that Moore’s attempt is mismatched with MacIntyre’s account of moral education. Because the notion of practices resists general application I go on to argue that a negative application, which (...) focuses on regulation, is more plausible. Large-scale regulation, usually thought antithetical to MacIntyre’s advocacy of small-scale politics, has the potential to facilitate practice-based work and reveals that MacIntyre’s own work can be used against his pessimism about the modern order. Furthermore, the conception of regulation I defend can show us how management is more amenable to ethical understanding than MacIntyre’s work is often taken to imply. (shrink)

We present an approach to understanding the origin of inertia involving the electromagnetic component of the quantum vacuum and propose this as a step toward an alternative to Mach's principle. Preliminary analysis of the momentum flux of the classical electromagnetic zero-point radiation impinging on accelerated objects as viewed by an inertial observer suggests that the resistance to acceleration attributed to inertia may be at least in part a force of opposition originating in the vacuum. This analysis avoids the ad (...) hoc modeling of particle-field interaction dynamics used previously by Haisch, Rueda, and Puthoff (Phys. Rev. A 49, 678, (1994)) to derive a similar result. This present approach is not dependent upon what happens at the particle point, but on how an external observer assesses the kinematical characteristics of the zero-point radiation impinging on the accelerated object. A relativistic form of the equation of motion results from the present analysis. Its manifestly covariant form yields a simple result that may be interpreted as a contribution to inertial mass. We note that our approach is related by the principle of equivalence to Sakharov's conjecture (Sov. Phys. Dokl. 12, 1040, (1968)) of a connection between Einstein action and the vacuum. The argument presented may thus be construed as a descendant of Sakharov's conjecture by which we attempt to attribute a mass-giving property to the electromagnetic component—and possibly other components—of the vacuum. In this view the physical momentum of an object is related to the radiative momentum flux of the vacuum instantaneously contained in the characteristic proper volume of the object. The interaction process between the accelerated object and the vacuum (akin to absorption or scattering of electromagnetic radiation) appears to generate a physical resistance (reaction force) to acceleration suggestive of what has been historically known as inertia. (shrink)

The article expounds the concept of substance as a unified system in which all of its properties cannot be determined by its components parts alone. Instead the system as a whole verifies the notion of existence. Everything that exists, noetic and aesthetic, animate or inanimate, is governed by the fundamental status of substance. Hence, none of the parts (humans, angels, rocks, bacteria) can claim for absoluteness against the other. This idea goes back to Ancient Greek scholars, such as Aristotle, while (...) it reaches its climax throughout the Byzantine Philosophy with John of Damascus theories. Accordingly and as the image is concerned, one can encounter this kind of ontology in various artworks, from the frescoes of Lascaux caves, to early Renaissance. Beyond the substance there is the un-substance, which is often confused with western philosophical duality course such as those of the matter and the idea, of the sensible and the intelligible, of the body and the soul and finally of the born and the unborn. Nevertheless, and as for the Byzantine philosophy, these entities are lodged into the unity of the substance irrespective of their tangibility because they all contain some kind of materiality at variance to the immateriality of the un-substance. The most representative version of this theory appears in archaic and late antiquity imagery, a type of imagery that has been scattering into early motion pictures and into late Technoetic practices. (shrink)

The essay examines local resistance to the New Deal rural electrification program in the United States before World War II as a crucial aspect of sociotechnical change. Large numbers of farm men and women opposed the introduction of the new technology, did not purchase a full complement of electrical appliances, and did not use electric lights and appliances in the manner prescribed by the government modernisers and manufacturers. These acts of 'transformative resistance' helped to shape artefacts and social (...) practices. (shrink)

The figure of the auteur continues to haunt the study of film, resisting both the poststructuralist charges that pointed to its absence and the histories of production demonstrating its pitfalls. In an era defined by the instability of identities and the recycling of works, Performing Authorship offers a refreshingly new take on the cinematic auteur, proposing that the challenges that once accelerated this figure's critical demise should instead pump new life into it. Performing Authorship is an illuminating analysis of films (...) by Jean-Luc Godard, Woody Allen, Agnes Varda, Orson Welles, Jean Rouch, Eduardo Coutinho and Sarah Turner that shows directors shifting between opposite movements towards authorial assertion and divestiture, palpability and disappearance, exposure and masking. In making this journey, Cecilia Sayad argues, the film author is not necessarily at the work's origin, nor does it constitute the end product. What the new concept of performing authorship describes is the making and unmaking of a subject"--Publisher website. (shrink)

Using metaphor is a common strategy in politics and other argumentative settings to support a particular claim or to promote behavioral change (e.g., Musolff, 2004). By painting a picture of the is...

Educational leaders in Ontario’s publicly-funded Catholic schools typically resist establishing Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs) on grounds that they contradict Catholic moral teaching and so cause scandal in the school. While the protection of GSAs in these schools is derived from recent provincial legislation, the government intervention has the potential to exacerbate religious-secular tensions in the school and society. This paper assumes that, in the Catholic Church’s current political climate, the only justifications for GSAs that will gain genuine traction and possibly deflate (...) this tension descend from within Catholicism’s own tradition of thought and educational practice. The first part of the argument critiques the Catholic hierarchy’s traditional, narrow conception of scandal, and replaces it with a revised, broader conception from within Catholic theology in which the traditional marginalization of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ) students is the true scandal. These two frameworks are used to analyze inconsistencies between the resistance Catholic schools show toward LGBTQ students wanting to establish GSAs, and the welcoming attitude they display toward pregnant and parenting students. The second part of the argument reveals that the main reason for this difference is that Church officials perceive all LGBTQ organizations as threats to their authority, and this perception is extended to GSAs. This internal critique provides sufficient reason to reverse the current negative Catholic evaluations of GSAs. (shrink)

The One Health approach to antimicrobial resistance (AMR) requires stakeholders to contribute to cross-sectoral efforts to improve antimicrobial stewardship (AMS). One Health AMR policy implementation is challenging in livestock farming because of the infrastructural role of antibiotics in production systems. Mitigating AMR may require the development of more stringent stewardship obligations and the future limitation of established entitlements. Drawing on Amatai Etzioni’s compliance theory, regulatory analyses and qualitative studies with stakeholder groups we examine the structural and socio-cultural dimension of (...) antibiotic use and AMS compliance in Australian beef and dairy production. We found a disconnect between how antibiotic use is conceptualised by farmers and the way in which AMS policies construe agricultural AMR risks. Under the umbrella of food safety standards and national-level prescribing restrictions, farmers and veterinarians interact around antibiotic use with different operating logics and compliance mechanisms. These parallel regimes service distinct and sometimes competing common goods of food security and antibiotic preservation. Further reforms to mitigate AMR need to account for the value orientations of different groups and the embeddedness of the constraints imposed by existing systems. Advocacy for greater AMR precaution in agriculture should acknowledge and compensate for erosions in competing common goods and the cost of proposed interventions. (shrink)

The emergence of global governance in several key areas calls into question conventional understandings of world politics in terms of conflicts of interests between sovereign states under conditions of anarchy. At the same time the new phenomena of anti-globalisation demonstrations, transnational social movements and an emergent global civil society point to developments in international relations that are both of profound importance and analytically complex. This volume's starting point is the hypothesis that one way of thinking about these processes is in (...) terms of a dichotomy between the politics of governance and the politics of resistance. Leading scholars from several perspectives reflect on the usefulness of this dichotomy and consider its application to several crucial areas of international relations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 8.2 (2003) 71-79 [Access article in PDF] "Explosion" Greta Gaard I. In the beginning there was only water, and you were a part of it. Never mind what else you have heard. This was your first relationship, your connection to water. And the quality of this relationship, the character of your beliefs about water, shapes all relationships in your life. The way you do one (...) thing is the way you do everything. You cannot separate one relationship from another, treat this water with reverence, this water with waste. Because water returns. Water knows there are no separations. You too should know this, for water has been teaching you, from the beginning.Imagine a creek flowing through the length of your life, from your birth to your death. Yes, your death. Water precedes you, water survives you. Consider the silence of blue-ice glaciers, ancient in their solitude, melting. Each winter the snowfall thick and wet, fluffy, or crisp and dry. Each spring the snows melting, glaciers growing and melting. Water flows down pine needles and cedar bark, flows down rocks and fallen logs, flows through moss and soil and sand.The lake gathers rainfall, gathers snowmelt and the plenitude of creeks. The lake overflows, spills, falls, exuberance of fullness, joy in motion, streaming downhill now, swelling the creek bed where it has made this journey so many times before.You have never seen this creek, the hidden water that flows through your days and nights, from one season to the next. Without it you would not live. You rely on this unseen water to flow forever. It has flowed here [End Page 71] before you were born, before you stepped into its flow, and you imagine it will outlast you, outlast whatever you might do to this water. You believe it is limitless, unending. You know its persistent force has carved rocks because you can see them, see the way water flows through stone, leaving its imprint in kettles, in the basins of water where rocks circulate, in the interlaced fingers of water and stone embracing at the falls.Water becomes you. But Narcissus-like, you look at water and see only your self. You believe you are alone. You are afraid. You need to con-trol this fear, this aloneness, this terrifying separation. You see the power of water and you want power. Power will give you control. You build dams and concrete channels and ditches, believing that by doing this you will control the power of water, the fertility of water, the fear of your separation. But water is patient. There are laws that govern the way of water, the ways of energy and power, the ways of land. There are consequences. Water bears no grudge, extracts no retribution. Your own actions, skillful or unskillful, determine the outcome. Your own relationship to water will poison you or save you. You decide.You believe blocking the flow of water gives you power.You believe blocking the flow of feeling gives you power.You believe harnessing the animals, fencing off the land gives you power. And for awhile, these strategies work.But there are consequences. That which is diverted, divided, suppressed, always returns with greater force, and when it returns, no one can control it. No one. II. Imagine a family. Picture the elders first. How many do you see? Where are the children? The sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, cousins and nephews and grandchildren? How many people are needed to form a family? Can you be a family of one?Look at it another way: is there a limit to the relations of family? Is there a certain number of people allowed in a family until a limit is reached? Do you say, "Families may only have ten people"? "The eleventh person will not be included." Or do you point to the basis of inclusion, the things that bind you, one to another, and say, "Yes, this person too"?How do you recognize a family?Do family members have to pulse with the same blood, or will love create a family where the blood... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 8.2 (2003) 71-79 [Access article in PDF] "Explosion" Greta Gaard I. In the beginning there was only water, and you were a part of it. Never mind what else you have heard. This was your first relationship, your connection to water. And the quality of this relationship, the character of your beliefs about water, shapes all relationships in your life. The way you do one (...) thing is the way you do everything. You cannot separate one relationship from another, treat this water with reverence, this water with waste. Because water returns. Water knows there are no separations. You too should know this, for water has been teaching you, from the beginning.Imagine a creek flowing through the length of your life, from your birth to your death. Yes, your death. Water precedes you, water survives you. Consider the silence of blue-ice glaciers, ancient in their solitude, melting. Each winter the snowfall thick and wet, fluffy, or crisp and dry. Each spring the snows melting, glaciers growing and melting. Water flows down pine needles and cedar bark, flows down rocks and fallen logs, flows through moss and soil and sand.The lake gathers rainfall, gathers snowmelt and the plenitude of creeks. The lake overflows, spills, falls, exuberance of fullness, joy in motion, streaming downhill now, swelling the creek bed where it has made this journey so many times before.You have never seen this creek, the hidden water that flows through your days and nights, from one season to the next. Without it you would not live. You rely on this unseen water to flow forever. It has flowed here [End Page 71] before you were born, before you stepped into its flow, and you imagine it will outlast you, outlast whatever you might do to this water. You believe it is limitless, unending. You know its persistent force has carved rocks because you can see them, see the way water flows through stone, leaving its imprint in kettles, in the basins of water where rocks circulate, in the interlaced fingers of water and stone embracing at the falls.Water becomes you. But Narcissus-like, you look at water and see only your self. You believe you are alone. You are afraid. You need to con-trol this fear, this aloneness, this terrifying separation. You see the power of water and you want power. Power will give you control. You build dams and concrete channels and ditches, believing that by doing this you will control the power of water, the fertility of water, the fear of your separation. But water is patient. There are laws that govern the way of water, the ways of energy and power, the ways of land. There are consequences. Water bears no grudge, extracts no retribution. Your own actions, skillful or unskillful, determine the outcome. Your own relationship to water will poison you or save you. You decide.You believe blocking the flow of water gives you power.You believe blocking the flow of feeling gives you power.You believe harnessing the animals, fencing off the land gives you power. And for awhile, these strategies work.But there are consequences. That which is diverted, divided, suppressed, always returns with greater force, and when it returns, no one can control it. No one. II. Imagine a family. Picture the elders first. How many do you see? Where are the children? The sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, cousins and nephews and grandchildren? How many people are needed to form a family? Can you be a family of one?Look at it another way: is there a limit to the relations of family? Is there a certain number of people allowed in a family until a limit is reached? Do you say, "Families may only have ten people"? "The eleventh person will not be included." Or do you point to the basis of inclusion, the things that bind you, one to another, and say, "Yes, this person too"?How do you recognize a family?Do family members have to pulse with the same blood, or will love create a family where the blood... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 8.2 (2003) 71-79 [Access article in PDF] "Explosion" Greta Gaard I. In the beginning there was only water, and you were a part of it. Never mind what else you have heard. This was your first relationship, your connection to water. And the quality of this relationship, the character of your beliefs about water, shapes all relationships in your life. The way you do one (...) thing is the way you do everything. You cannot separate one relationship from another, treat this water with reverence, this water with waste. Because water returns. Water knows there are no separations. You too should know this, for water has been teaching you, from the beginning.Imagine a creek flowing through the length of your life, from your birth to your death. Yes, your death. Water precedes you, water survives you. Consider the silence of blue-ice glaciers, ancient in their solitude, melting. Each winter the snowfall thick and wet, fluffy, or crisp and dry. Each spring the snows melting, glaciers growing and melting. Water flows down pine needles and cedar bark, flows down rocks and fallen logs, flows through moss and soil and sand.The lake gathers rainfall, gathers snowmelt and the plenitude of creeks. The lake overflows, spills, falls, exuberance of fullness, joy in motion, streaming downhill now, swelling the creek bed where it has made this journey so many times before.You have never seen this creek, the hidden water that flows through your days and nights, from one season to the next. Without it you would not live. You rely on this unseen water to flow forever. It has flowed here [End Page 71] before you were born, before you stepped into its flow, and you imagine it will outlast you, outlast whatever you might do to this water. You believe it is limitless, unending. You know its persistent force has carved rocks because you can see them, see the way water flows through stone, leaving its imprint in kettles, in the basins of water where rocks circulate, in the interlaced fingers of water and stone embracing at the falls.Water becomes you. But Narcissus-like, you look at water and see only your self. You believe you are alone. You are afraid. You need to con-trol this fear, this aloneness, this terrifying separation. You see the power of water and you want power. Power will give you control. You build dams and concrete channels and ditches, believing that by doing this you will control the power of water, the fertility of water, the fear of your separation. But water is patient. There are laws that govern the way of water, the ways of energy and power, the ways of land. There are consequences. Water bears no grudge, extracts no retribution. Your own actions, skillful or unskillful, determine the outcome. Your own relationship to water will poison you or save you. You decide.You believe blocking the flow of water gives you power.You believe blocking the flow of feeling gives you power.You believe harnessing the animals, fencing off the land gives you power. And for awhile, these strategies work.But there are consequences. That which is diverted, divided, suppressed, always returns with greater force, and when it returns, no one can control it. No one. II. Imagine a family. Picture the elders first. How many do you see? Where are the children? The sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, cousins and nephews and grandchildren? How many people are needed to form a family? Can you be a family of one?Look at it another way: is there a limit to the relations of family? Is there a certain number of people allowed in a family until a limit is reached? Do you say, "Families may only have ten people"? "The eleventh person will not be included." Or do you point to the basis of inclusion, the things that bind you, one to another, and say, "Yes, this person too"?How do you recognize a family?Do family members have to pulse with the same blood, or will love create a family where the blood... (shrink)

Jannie Pretorius and Michael Von Maltitz have identified some of the most pressing problems in South African education.1 They have argued that the education system is still suffering from the fragmented effects of apartheid and that the postapartheid government is struggling to set schools in motion to provide learners with authentic perspectives on the realities of their existence in a postapartheid South Africa. Naledi Pandor, the country's previous minister of education, painted a rather somber picture of the situation in (...) the Eastern Cape, one of South Africa's nine provinces:In a context in which there is ineffective system response on core obligations, it is very important to isolate those attributes that are .. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant’s theory of justifiable resistance to authority is complex and, at times, appears to conflict with his own practice, if not with itself. He distinguishes between the role of authority in “public” and “private” contexts. In private—e.g., when a person is under contract to do a specific job or accepts a social contract with one’s government—resistance is forbidden; external behavior must be governed by policy or law. In contexts involving the public use of reason, on the other (...) hand—e.g., when a person is faced with a moral decision or is engaged in a philosophical dispute—the freedom of conscience sometimes requires resistance, especially in cases where other persons inappropriately attempt to usurp authority over matters that are rightfully up to the individual to decide. In texts such as Perpetual Peace, Kant looks forward to a political situation wherein no political resistance (e.g., in the form of war) would be necessary. Yet in Metaphysics of Morals, he argues that a citizen never has the right to revolt against one’s government, suggesting we must cooperate even with war. On a personal level, Kant openly praised both the American and the French revolutions; yet when his own writings on religion were deemed by the censor to have come into conflict with the king’s edict, Kant failed to resist the (arguably unjust) authority; instead, he gave up his (apparently public) right to free philosophical expression, promising never to write or speak on religion again during the king’s reign. I shall argue that a key to resolving these tensions lies in the principle that universities must promote a healthy, public “conflict” between philosophers and all “private” employments of reason. The only ground for disallowing private resistance, therefore, is the underlying presence of genuine philosophical resistance. (shrink)

Rethinking “philosophy” to-day, it is necessary to think first of all about ontological foundations of the modern scientific universe description and rethink them on the ground of modern scientific knowledge, because until now there is no any precise scientific conception of the structure of the universe, of reasons and movingforces of its permanent evolution. All of it create basis to propose various unscientific ideas of creationism. Until now most of philosophers associate the motion of Matter on the whole only (...) with its motion in space and in time, mixing philosophical and physical aspects of these two principle categories. Generally speaking, the present-day ontological model of understanding the World, the Universe is constructed purely on the basis of only these two fundamental categories. However, a more deep reflection of the essence of Being, if to realize it on the basis of only these two global categories, brings us to the disappointing conclusion, that in this case we have nothing more except a mechanical motion, i.e. spatial displacement of a material point (or a system of points) relatively some point of counting off. To make it normal and logic we should add to the ontological model one more essential part – the motion in quality. So, in order to create the full and complete picture of the formation and evolution of the material World it is necessary to observe the motion of material forming in the three equivalentphilosophical categories: in space time quality. The ideas of the new conception of ontological model become actual supplementation of really scientific philosophical knowledge on the way of a more objective ontological comprehension of our Being, of the law of development of the human civilization and the Universe as a whole. This knowledge can be successfully used for the description of the realistic paradigm of Being, in explanations of the meaning of Life. (shrink)

Why you have the right to resist unjust government The economist Albert O. Hirschman famously argued that citizens of democracies have only three possible responses to injustice or wrongdoing by their governments: we may leave, complain, or comply. But in When All Else Fails, Jason Brennan argues that there is a fourth option. When governments violate our rights, we may resist. We may even have a moral duty to do so. For centuries, almost everyone has believed that we must allow (...) the government and its representatives to act without interference, no matter how they behave. We may complain, protest, sue, or vote officials out, but we can’t fight back. But Brennan makes the case that we have no duty to allow the state or its agents to commit injustice. We have every right to react with acts of “uncivil disobedience.” We may resist arrest for violation of unjust laws. We may disobey orders, sabotage government property, or reveal classified information. We may deceive ignorant, irrational, or malicious voters. We may even use force in self-defense or to defend others. The result is a provocative challenge to long-held beliefs about how citizens may respond when government officials behave unjustly or abuse their power. (shrink)

Skirting the Ethical offers highly original readings of six works, each noted for its politico-ethical stance. The first four (Sophocles' Antigone , Plato's Symposium and Republic and Hamann's "Aesthetica in nuce") have a recognized and honored place in the canon. The last two, Sebald's The Emigrants and Jane Campion's film The Piano , are exemplary for our contemporary scene. Nevertheless, the straightforward assumptions about justice, divine and state power, the good, and identity politics that every reader or viewer inevitably comes (...) upon are disrupted when one takes into account the role of language: both the way in which language is talked about and the way in which it performs. What emerges is a non-prescriptive ethics of another order that offers a resistance to power and simplistic conceptualizations of truth, an emancipation from the "must-be" that implies an ever-to-be-renewed renegotiation—a responsability that has much to do with the act of critique or interpretation. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In 1588 Tycho Brahe proposed a new cosmological system keeping a motionless Earth at the centre of the world. In the first half of the following century the reception of Tycho’s model within the Society of Jesus was characterized by a strong resistance at the beginning, followed by a long and winding path, and then a good fortune, whereas heliocentric models were increasingly investigated in European observatories. In 1651 a Jesuit astronomer, Giovan Battista Riccioli, published the Almagestum novum, (...) an encyclopaedic synthesis of astronomical knowledge where the Earth’s motions or rest were extensively discussed in order to prove the Earth's immobility. However, through the period 1650–1687 the Almagestum novum did not entirely fulfil its aims, rather seeming like the dying swan’s song of Tychonic or semi-Tychonic models. Contemporary scholars appreciated the encyclopaedic effort by Riccioli, but many were critical of his proofs. Even influential Jesuit astronomers showed a remarkable interest in the Copernican model, accepting geocentric models only on the basis of Holy Scripture’s authority. This conduct and the tacitly allowed circulation in Catholic Europe of openly Copernican books, indicate that Catholic science tolerated heliocentric theory, when presented as a computational device rather than a representation of reality, more frequently than we usually think. (shrink)