In the year 2000 the artist Eduardo Kac made TV news by declaring he had ordered the « creation » of a genetically modified bunny. In 2004 the artist Steve Kurtz was detained by the FBI on the suspiscion of bioterrorism, because of the laboratory equipment he uses in installations that demistify biotechnology. The contrast between an artist-publicist who lends a showy allure to biotech and an artist-researcher who critiques its effects serves as the departure point for an examination of (...) the functions of science and art in a neoliberal society. Faced with trade secrets, the privatization of knowledge and ever-tightening control of laboratories, the artist-researcher can intervene to make public the research process and the consequences of commercializing a given discovery, particularly by using installations that allow the participant to manipulate both lab equipment and scientific concepts. But to do so, the artist must also interrupt the normal functioning of the neoliberal art world, where institutions supported by private sponsorship retain exclusive rights over fetishized products, destined to feed financial speculation. The article closes with a look at the work of Brandon Ballangee, an artist-researcher working in the field of ecology. (shrink)

In this article we examine the figure of the doctor in animated debates around public sector medicine in contemporary South Africa. The loss of health professionals from the South African public system is a key contributor to the present healthcare crisis. South African medical schools have revised curricula to engage trainee doctors with a broader set of social concerns, but the disjunctures between training, health systems failures, and a high disease burden call into question whether junior doctors are adequately prepared (...) or whether conditions of care extend beyond medical training. A concern with 'resilience' suggests a correct ethical relation to a putative obligation to provide care in a struggling system. By examining the ways in which trainee doctors are expected to 'cope' with the demands of medical practice, to adopt the correct moral posture in relation to the urgency of care, and to enact a desirable ethical relation to the broader social and political context of medical practice, we examine the picture of humanist concern that animates the subjectivities and techniques of the self called for by this training, and advocate for endurance as an alternative framework for understanding the political and ethical relations between doctors, patients and health systems. (shrink)

One rarely encounters a work of such metaphysical breadth and ambition. Ford offers no narrowly focused criticism or proposal, but, as the title claims, a transformation of process theism. This is no maverick project, but one based on careful critical analysis and appropriation of the thought of Whitehead and his major interpreters. Ford’s commitment to Whitehead’s thought, although evident, is not uncritical. He is prepared to make modifications, even radical ones, so long as the general tendency of Whitehead’s thought is (...) not abandoned. Thus, Ford seeks to develop Whitehead’s process theism but holds that Whitehead’s mature notion of God is inadequate and that his successors have not successfully addressed this inadequacy. Ford therefore undertakes the current project. His transformation of process theism involves jettisoning Whitehead’s notion of God’s primordial nature and reconceiving God as pure everlasting concrescence, indeed, as future activity. This last notion constitutes Ford’s most radical development. Fully aware that the notion initially appears perplexing, perhaps unintelligible, Ford devotes much attention to developing it and drawing out its implications. He divides his project into three parts: Whitehead’s thought and the unresolved problem in his notion of God; responses to that problem by Whitehead’s interpreters and followers; and Ford’s own transformative project. (shrink)