In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 30.3 (2000) 28-39 [Access article in PDF] Chateaubriand and the Politics of (Im)mortality Marie-hélène Huet In the twenty-sixth book of his Mémoires d'outre-tombe, Chateaubriand recounts his 1821 arrival at the French embassy in Berlin. He cites a flattering portrait of him written by the Baroness of Hohenhausen and published in the morning press on March 22: "M. de Chateaubriand is of a somewhat short, yet slender, stature. (...) His oval face has an expression of reverence and melancholy. He has black hair and black eyes that glow with the fire of his mind." 1 At this point, Chateaubriand flatly adds: "Mais j'ai les cheveux blancs; j'ai plus d'un siècle, en outre, je suis mort" ("But I have white hair; I am more than a century old, besides, I am dead") [2:39]. 2 Of course, those startling words, "en outre, je suis mort" do not refer to the year 1821, nor to the time Chateaubriand is writing this account. Rather, they refer to the time we, readers, turn to this specific page of the Mémoires: as you are reading this, Chateaubriand reminds us, I am dead. The words wrest us away from the event he is relating, his arrival in Berlin, to remind us in the most direct terms that our reading of these words necessarily entails the death of their author. Moreover, the French en outre brings us back to the very title of the Mémoires d'outre-tombe: outre-tombe, from beyond the grave.In 1836, Chateaubriand signed a contract with a society of shareholders: in exchange for an immediate payment of 156,000 francs and a life annuity, he sold "the literary ownership of his Mémoires as they existed and as they would exist at his death." 3 Commenting on this transaction, Maurice Levaillant notes: "With this agreement, Chateaubriand bought material security at the price of a concession that he never got over: instead of appearing after a period he had first prescribed as fifty years after his death, his Mémoires would suddenly appear, so to speak, live from his grave" [xv]. As Chateaubriand put it in his avant-propos, the publication would take place "as soon as my bell tolls!" [1:1].The contract for the Mémoires is described as a painful necessity: "No one can know how much I have suffered from having been required to mortgage my grave" [1:1]. The formula "mortgage my grave" is suggestive in that it metonymically shifts the object of economic exchange from the work being sold, that is, the Mémoires, to the grave, which Chateaubriand always associated with literary creation. Indeed, the association between memoirs and tomb that provides the title of the work is echoed and amplified by a constant relation within the text between the grave and the act of writing. [End Page 28]In the avant-propos, a few lines after lamenting the mortgaging of his grave, Chateaubriand also reports that he has secured an islet in the bay of Saint-Malo, the Grand-Bé, to serve as his burial site. 4 Proposing an arrangement rigorously parallel to the desired legal agreement for the Mémoires, he adds that, should he die outside of France: "I wish that my body not be brought back to my homeland until fifty years after an initial burial" [1:3]. A half-century of silent mourning seemed to be the ideal length of time for the public to wait before discovering, and possibly disturbing, both his mortal remains and his immortal work.Not that this intimate relationship between death and writing resulted from the specific circumstances of the Mémoires. Twenty years earlier, in the second preface to the Essai sur les Révolutions, Chateaubriand had already described himself as "a writer who believed he had reached the end of his life, and who, in the destitution of exile, had nowhere to write, but upon his own gravestone" [7]. The tomb stands for death, just as it stands for Chateaubriand's creative works. In an essay... (shrink)

Reflecting Alan Robinson's fundamental contribution to computational logic, this book brings together seminal papers in inference, equality theories, and logic programming. It is an exceptional collection that ranges from surveys of major areas to new results in more specialized topics. Alan Robinson is currently the University Professor at Syracuse University. Jean-Louis Lassez is a Research Scientist at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center. Gordon Plotkin is Professor of Computer Science at the University of Edinburgh. Contents: Inference. Subsumption, A Sometimes (...) Undervalued Procedure, Larry Wos, Ross Overbeek, and Ewing Lusk. The Markgraf Karl Refutation Procedure, Hans Jurgen Ohlbach and Jorg H. Siekmann. Modal Logic Should Say More than it Does, Melvin Fitting. Interactive Proof Presentation, W. W. Bledsoe. Intelligent Backtracking Revisited, Maurice Bruynooghe. A Science of Reasoning, Alan Bundy. Inductive Inference of Theories from Facts, Ehud Y. Shapiro. Equality. Solving Equations in Abstract Algebras: A Rule-based Survey of Unification, Jean-Pierre Jouannaud and Claude Kirchner. Disunification: A Survey, Hubert Comon. A Case Study of the Completion Procedure: Proving Ring Commutativity Problems, Deepak Kapur and Hantao Zhang. Computations in Regular Rewriting Systems I and II, Girard Huet and JeanJacques Levy. Unification and ML Type Reconstruction, Paris Kanellakis, Harry Mairson, and John Mitchell. Automatic Dimensional Analysis, Mitchell Wand. Logic Programming. Logic Programming Schemes and Their Implementations, Keith Clark. A Near-Horn Prolog for Compilation, Donald Loveland and David Reed. Unfold/Fold Transformations of Logic Programs, P. A. Gardner and J. C. Shepherdson. An Algebraic Representation of Logic Program Computations, Andrea Corradini and Ugo Montanari. Theory of Disjunctive Logic Programs, Jack Minker, Arcot Rajasekar, and Jorge Lobo. Bottom-Up Evaluation of Logic Programs, Jeffrey Naughton and Raghu Ramakrishnan. Absys, the First Logic Programming Language: A View of the Inevitability of Logic Programming, E. W. Elcock. (shrink)

This article explores the relations between Leibniz and the French erudite Pierre-Daniel Huet in the context of their shared anti-Cartesianism. After an introductory survey of the available commentaries and primary texts, I focus on a publication by Leibniz in the Journal des sçavans from 1693, where he fully endorses the critique of Descartes developed by Huet in his 1689 Censura philosophiae cartesianae. Next, I provide some indications as to Leibniz’s motivations behind this public approval of Huet. First, (...) I show how Leibniz throughout the 1690s was attempting to have his 1692 Animadversiones in partem generalem Principiorum Cartesianorum and other anti-Cartesian items annexed to a reedition of Huet’s Censura. I finally show how these attempts to team up with Huet were prompted by Leibniz’s dislike of certain German Cartesians, in particular J. E. Schweling, and by his fear that orthodox Cartesianism might do irremediable damage to the intellectual ethics of the Republic of Letters. (shrink)

Image has been considered an influential factor in tourists’ perceptions and evaluations of a destination. This paper analyzes the formation of the tourist destination image of Segóbriga Archaeological Park, a cultural destination of great heritage value, located in the province of Cuenca (Spain). The image is analyzed using a multidimensional approach, considering not only its cognitive and affective components, but also the unique-image component. The latter has received less attention in the literature and is a novelty in the context of (...) this type of cultural destination. The results show that this component is essential to the overall image of an archaeological destination and that it is not influenced by information sources. PLS-SEM was used. (shrink)

Recent studies indicate that mammalian chromosomes contain discretecis‐acting loci that control replication timing, mitotic condensation, and stability of entire chromosomes. Disruption of the large non‐coding RNA gene ASAR6 results in late replication, an under‐condensed appearance during mitosis, and structural instability of human chromosome 6. Similarly, disruption of the mouse Xist gene in adult somatic cells results in a late replication and instability phenotype on the X chromosome. ASAR6 shares many characteristics with Xist, including random mono‐allelic expression and asynchronous replication timing. (...) Additional “chromosome engineering” studies indicate that certain chromosome rearrangements affecting many different chromosomes display this abnormal replication and instability phenotype. These observations suggest that all mammalian chromosomes contain “inactivation/stability centers” that control proper replication, condensation, and stability of individual chromosomes. Therefore, mammalian chromosomes contain four types ofcis‐acting elements, origins, telomeres, centromeres, and “inactivation/stability centers”, all functioning to ensure proper replication, condensation, segregation, and stability of individual chromosomes. (shrink)

La religión ha sido la institución más afectada por la pluralización de la realidad social. Esto es debido a que el papel simbólico y global de la religión, en tanto que institución integradora y significativa, queda socavado desde la plausibilidad de sus definiciones sociales de la realidad. La causa de esta situación se encuentra en que las personas viven -conciencia subjetiva- nuevos roles institucionales, nuevos esquemas interpretativos, nuevos valores y creencias. Sin embargo, si algo permanece invariablemente constante en la vida (...) diaria de las personas es, afirma Berger, el temor a las situaciones marginales y a la anomia. Ni el proceso de secularización con sus universos simbólicos (filosofía diurna y teodiceas seculares), ni el resurgimiento religioso y global (desecularización público-política) han podido dar una explicación plausible y convincente de estos fenómenos que tanto afectan a la conciencia y a las identidades subjetivas de los individuos. En este sentido, y tras el fracaso de las anteriores cosmovisiones en su intento de dotar de sentido a la realidad y la vida ordinaria de las personas, Berger recurre a una nueva instauración del «nomos religioso» Religion has been the institution most affected by the plurarization of social reality. This is because the overall symbolic role of religion as an institution inclusive and meaningful, is undermined from the plausibility of their social definitions of reality. The cause of this situation is that people live-subjetive consciousness-new institutional roles, new interpretative schemes, new values and beliefs. If something always remains constant in the daily lives of the people, says Berger, the fear of marginal situations and anomie. Neither the process of secularization with its symbolic universe (diurnal philosophy and secular theodicies) and the religious revival and global (desecularization public-politic) could give a plausible and convincing explication of these phenomena that affect the subjective consciousness and identity of individuals. In this regard, and after the failure of previous worldviews in their attempt to give meaning to reality and the ordinary life of people, Berger uses a new establishment of «nomos religioso». (shrink)

Subjective reports and theories about memory may have an influence on other beliefs and behaviours. Patients with schizophrenia suffer a wide range of deficits affecting their awareness of daily life, including memory. With the Metamemory Inventory in Adulthood we ascertained patients’ memory knowledge and thoughts about their own cognitive capacities and about several aspects of cognitive functioning: personal capacities, knowledge of processes, use of strategies, perceived change with ageing, anxiety, motivation and mastery. The participants’ ratings were correlated with their intellectual, (...) cognitive and psychiatric data. Patients felt they had a lower capacity and marginally lower mastery over their memory than comparison subjects. They reported less recourse to strategies, and higher levels of memory-related anxiety. However, their knowledge of basic memory processes, motivation to succeed, and perception of ageing effects were similar. So patients with schizophrenia do not suffer a general and non specific impairment of their metacognitive knowledge. (shrink)

A historical investigation of the exclusion of Africa and Asia from modern histories of philosophy.

The monster and the woman thus find themselves on the same side, the side of dissimilarity. “The female is as it were a deformed male,” added Aristotle . As she belongs to the category of the different, the female can only contribute more figures of dissimilarities, if not creatures even more monstrous. But the female is a necessary departure from the norm, a useful monstrosity. The monster is gratuitous and useless for future generations. Aristotle’s seminal work on the generation of (...) monsters posited a rigorously physical definition that was not necessarily linked to deformities: “Monstrosities,” he wrote, “come under the class of offspring which is unlike its parents” . Further, while a “monstrosity, of course, belongs to the class of ‘things contrary to Nature,’ … it is contrary not to Nature in her entirety but only to Nature in the generality of cases” .The monster, defined repeatedly by its lack of resemblance to its legitimate parents, is also monstrous in another important way, one that Aristotle described as a false resemblance to different species: “People say that the offspring which is formed has the head of a ram or an ox; and similarly with other creatures, that one has the head of another.… at the same time, in no case are they what they are alleged to be, but resemblances only” . The monster is thus a double imposture. Its strange appearance—a misleading likeness to another species, for example—belies the otherwise rigorous law that children should resemble their parents. Further, monsters offer striking similarities to categories to which they are not related, blurring the differences between genres, and disrupting the rigorous order of nature. Thus, if the monster were defined in the first place as that which did not resemble him who engendered it, it nevertheless displayed some sort of resemblance, albeit a false resemblance to an object external to its conception. Marie-Hélène Huet is William R. Kenan Professor of Romance Languages at Amherst College. She is the author of Rehearsing the Revolution: The Staging of Marat’s Death, 1793-1797 and is currently completing a book on literature and tetratology. (shrink)

La idea de esta comunicación es hacer un breve análisis sobre cómo diferentes formas de injusticas se ven configuradas por el lenguaje y dirigidas siempre por la identidad social. Partiré de la ontología social que defiende Haslanger para examinar qué papel asume el lenguaje en tanto que técnica cultural y práctica concreta en la consumación de injusticias, intentado responder a las siguientes preguntas: ¿cómo interviene el lenguaje en la ontología social, es decir, en la construcción de entidades sociales? ¿son los (...) términos que refieren a los tipos sociales descriptivos o normativos? ¿cómo se vincula el uso del lenguaje con el fortalecimiento y la constitución de ideologías? El objetivo es sacar a relucir en qué medida ciertas condiciones para la agencia están bloqueadas o predeterminadas por elementos culturales o estructurales y examinar en qué medida considerarlo a través de este esquema puede ofrecer al menos algunas vías de acción que, empezando por señalar el problema, puedan dar lugar a algunas respuestas críticas. (shrink)

El Sistema para la Autonomía y Atención a la Dependencia, es un recurso de enorme calado cuyo proceso de implementación y optimización está sometido a permanentes debates sobre sus necesidades de reforma. En este artículo se ofrecen resultados de aplicación de una encuesta a personas en situación de dependencia y un estudio Delphi a personas expertas. Los resultados arrojan tres elementos clave poco tratados en la literatura sobre el tema: 1. En términos demográficos, existe un amplio grupo poblacional potencialmente relacionado (...) con el SAAD, pero fuera de su radio de acción. 2. La incertidumbre, como variable de análisis, explica en gran parte la posición de los usuarios ante el sistema, en sus diferentes etapas. 3. El medio rural es básico para la reforma del SAAD, constituyéndose en sí mismo como un foco de dificultad, pero también una herramienta de transformación. (shrink)

Environmental functions are defined as the possible uses of the non-human-made physical surroundings on which humanity is entirely dependent. Competing functions are by definition economic goods, indeed the most fundamental humanity disposes of. Environmental sustainability is defined as the dynamic equilibrium by which vital environmental functions remain available for future generations. Environmentally sustainable national income (eSNI) is defined as the maximum attainable production level by which vital environmental functions remain available for future generations. Thus the eSNI provides information about the (...) distance between the current and a sustainable situation. In combination with the standard national income (NI), the eSNI indicates whether the part of the production that is not based on sustainable use of the environment is increasing or decreasing in the course of time. Calculation of the eSNI involves the use of environmental models and a static general economic equilibrium model. It is shown that asymmetric entries are obscuring what is happening with both environment and production and that there is no conflict between employment and safeguarding the environment. (shrink)

Un amer constat paraît traverser l’air du temps, peut-être même le constitue-t-il. Les alertes et l’urgence face aux problèmes constitutifs de notre modernité se redoublent et se démultiplient, aussi bien quantitativement que qualitativement, fruits d’une interdépendance qui appelle des catastrophes en chaîne, sans que semble pouvoir pointer, même à l’horizon, ce spectre de réponses capables d’apaiser la détresse environnante, actuelle et à venir. Non pas que ces réponses soient impossibles :...

Different forms of oppression are exercised in the manosphere, some explicit and intentional and others implicit and structural. In this paper I assess, from a structural approach, the role that active ignorance plays in maintaining epistemic oppression on these websites, and to what extent this constitutes an obstacle to critical thinking. My argument is that the polarization motivated by the dynamics of the Internet promotes active ignorance, and consequently the resilience of unjust forms of organization is reinforced. Due to this, (...) the space for critical reasoning is limited. (shrink)

Dans de nombreux domaines, la transparence s’est imposée comme un élément incontournable. Qu’en est-il de son application à la science, et plus particulièrement à l’expertise scientifique en tant que contexte paradigmatique des relations entre science et société ? En analysant le cas des controverses publiques sur le réchauffement climatique d’origine anthropique, cet article veut souligner les difficultés de mise en œuvre de la transparence pour formuler une éthique de l’expertise et proposer des pistes pour y remédier.