Numerous studies have found that many people believe that a provocatively dressed woman is at greater risk for sexual assault and bears some responsibility for her assault if she is attacked. Furthermore, in legal, academic, and public debates about sexual assault the appropriateness of the term ‘provocative’ as a descriptor of certain kinds of women’s clothing is rarely questioned. Thus, there is a widespread but largely unquestioned belief that it is appropriate to describe revealing or suggestive women’s clothing as ‘provocative’ (...) and that women who wear such clothing could provoke sexual assault and harassment from men. Yet it is rarely noted that only women’s clothing is described as sexually provocative. Men’s clothing, no matter how revealing, is never described as provocative. Why is this the case? This Article challenges the assumption that it is appropriate to describe women’s clothing as provocative. Drawing on on models of the legal defense of provocation and research on objectification and responsibility, this Article demonstrates that continued use of ‘provocative’ term normalizes and entrenches deeply problematic attitudes about women’s responsibility for men’s sexual behavior. The social interpretation of women’s clothing as provocative arises from the privileged social and legal status of men’s sexual arousal and the objectification of women’s bodies. Describing women’s clothing as provocative thus reinforces a problematic conception of women’s bodies and sexuality that is connected to women’s experiences of their bodies, their clothes, and shapes their vulnerability to sexual assault and social and legal attitudes to such attacks. (shrink)

What follows is a series of provocations, loosely interconnected, centered on the ambiguous relationship between liberalism and fascism in our age of democratic decline. Together they seek to trouble the established binaries and analytic frameworks that would position liberalism and fascism as antithetical and suggest instead that both emerge from the same condition of possibility: imperial racialism. In doing so, they reflect on the discursive function of fascism in sustaining liberal democracy as a project of white supremacy.

Most academics write in a dispassionate, third-person voice. That stylistic choice is so expected in academic contexts that when an evocative, first-person voice is used instead, it feels unsettling and out of place to many of us. But why should we react so negatively to such a subversion of expectations? Is it because of the subversion itself, or is it because of an inherent incompatibility between evocative writing and realist analytical traditions? In this paper I’ll show that the freedom of (...) first-person, evocative writing in autoethnography is a strength to be embraced rather than something to be avoided. I’ll further show how offering readers a more complete sensory understanding of experience and meaning isn’t incompatible with realist analytical traditions. I will do this through an exploration of my current research on childhood sexual abuse, which has inspired me to set aside my initial unease with evocative writing and embark on a journey from autoethnographic skeptic to advocate. (shrink)

There is a growing recognition of Levinas's importance. It can in part be attributed to an increasing concern that twentieth-century continental philosophy seems to have no place for ethics. In making ethics fundamental to philosophy, rather than a problem to which we might one day return, Levinas transforms continental thought. The book brings together some of the most interesting and far-reaching responses to the work of Levinas, in three different areas: contemporary feminism, psychotherapy, and Levinas's relation to other philosophers. It (...) includes a newly translated paper by Levinas on suffering, and a specially commissioned interview. (shrink)

The first detailed study of the effect of provocation on culpability in morality and law, this book traces the fascinating history of the legal doctrine of provocation, right up to present-day controversies over the scope of the doctrine's application in murder cases.

Reflections on the linkage between and the provocative force of problems in the analogy of city and soul, in the simile-bound characterization of the Good, and in the performative tension between what Plato has Socrates say about the philosopher's disinclination to descend into the city and what he has Socrates do in descending into the Piraeus to teach, with a closing recognition of the analogy between Socratic teaching and Platonic writing.

We explore a particular type of propagandistic message, which we call “provocative insinuation”. For example: ‘Iraqi refugee is convicted in Germany of raping and murdering teenage girl’. Although this sentence seems to merely report a fact, it also conveys a potentially hateful message about Iraqi refugees. We look at the argumentative roles that these utterances play in public discourse. Specifically, we argue that they implicitly address the question of the integration of refugees and migrants, and in fact aim to tilt (...) the audience against these groups by strongly inviting hearers to make generalisations based on “striking” properties. We examine different strategies to counteract the conveyed hateful message. (shrink)

Sentencing practices in cases of domestic homicide have been the object of critical scrutiny on previous occasions across a number of jurisdictions. It has been suggested by some that these practices reveal judges to be taking a more lenient approach to women who kill their violent male partners than to men who kill allegedly unfaithful female partners. This note evaluates claims of gender bias in sentencing practices in UK cases of domestic homicide following the Court of Appeal sentencing decision in (...) R. v. Suratan, R. v.Humes and R.v. Wilkinson [2002]E.W.C.A. 2982 concerning three men who killed their female partners. It will argue that in the wake of this decision current proposals to review both the substantive law of provocation and sentencing practices are to be welcomed. (shrink)

The daily work of the clinical ethics teacher and clinical ethics consultant falls into the routine of classifying clinical cases by ethical type and proposing ethically justified alternatives for the professionally responsible management of a specific type of case. Settling too far into this routine creates the risk of philosophical inertia, which is not good either for the clinical ethicist or for the field of clinical ethics. The antidote to this philosophical inertia and resultant blinkered vision of clinical ethics is (...) sustained, willing exposure to philosophical provocation. The papers in this clinical ethics issue of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy provide just such philosophical provocation related to core topics in clinical ethics: the distinction between clinical practice and clinical research; telemedicine, or medicine at a distance; illness narratives; the concept of the placebo effect; and sex reassignment. (shrink)

The argument against innatism at the heart of Cognitive Gadgets is provocative but premature, and is vitiated by dichotomous thinking, interpretive double standards, and evidence cherry-picking. I illustrate my criticism by addressing the heritability of imitation and mindreading, the relevance of twin studies, and the meaning of cross-cultural differences in theory of mind development. Reaching an integrative understanding of genetic inheritance, plasticity, and learning is a formidable task that demands a more nuanced evolutionary approach.

Increasing numbers of women in Turkey are murdered by their relatives, spouses or significant others. The perpetrators plead provocation for their crimes, claiming their actions are provoked by women’s initial acts which they deem to violate societal norms. Pleading provocation enables more lenient sentences. This article investigates the interplay of the legal rules and societal norms on ‘proper’ female behaviour in femicide, based on data drawn from the Journal of Legal Proceedings, which publishes select rulings of the Court (...) of Cassation – the Highest Court in the Turkish legal system – from 2004 to 2018. This article argues that there is a collision between cultural, societal norms and legal rulings in criminal law, and displays linkages between legal processes and social norms which perpetuate patriarchal structures. Accordingly, the article proposes that legal rulings on femicide reflect societal norms and traditional expectations on women’s roles in Turkish society through employing provocation defence. Consequently, law becomes complicit in femicide through provocation, and provocation could be seen as the legal system’s concession to patriarchy. (shrink)

Animal advocates cannot allow the idea to take hold that only the great apes and certain other “higher” animals are fit to be “persons.” Working to change the moral status of the great apes or sea mammals; for example; is a legitimate and important undertaking; but it should not be done at the expense of other animals. Such thinking is not only disconnected from real animals in the real world; it perpetuates the view that beings belonging to species deemed “nonpersons” (...) or “merely conscious” are of lesser; or no; moral significance until or unless; through an institutionalized system of painful; stressful; and demeaning experiments over decades or centuries; some of them might “prove” themselves worthy of being called persons or semi-persons or sort-of-persons entitled to whatever privileges such designations may confer. (shrink)

Pithy, direct, and bold: essays that propose new ways to think about old problems, spanning a range of philosophical topics. In Philosophical Provocations, Colin McGinn offers a series of short, sharp essays that take on philosophical problems ranging from the concept of mind to paradox, altruism, and the relation between God and the Devil. Avoiding the usual scholarly apparatus and embracing a blunt pithiness, McGinn aims to achieve as much as possible in as short a space as possible while covering (...) as many topics as possible. Much academic philosophical writing today is long, leaden, citation heavy, dense with qualifications, and painful to read. The essays in Philosophical Provocations are short, direct, and engaging, often challenging philosophical orthodoxy as they consider issues in mind, language, knowledge, metaphysics, biology, ethics, and religion. McGinn is looking for new ways to think about old problems. Thus he writes, about consciousness, “I think we have been all wrong,” and goes on to suggest that both consciousness and the unconscious are mysteries. Summing up his proposal on altruism, he remarks, “My suggestion can now be stated, somewhat brutally, as follows: human altruism is the result of parasitic manipulation.” He takes a moment to reflect: “I really don't know why it is good to be alive, though I am convinced that the standard suggestions don't work.” McGinn gets straight to the point and states his position with maximum clarity. These essays offer provocative invitations to think again. (shrink)

The article introduces some aspects of Levinas's writings which are important to review his reception within feminist circles. It then analyses his text `And God Created Woman', and shows to what extent his view of women can be criticized as being traditional and patriarchal. Finally, it deals with the relation between Levinas and feminism of difference, and rejects the idea that his theory can be effectively applied to move beyond the debate equality vs difference.

Experience indicates that the questioning and democratic nature of the community of enquiry can be demanding and unsettling for teachers, present.

In the heyday of functionalist sociology and anthropology it was common to speak of the 'functional requisites' or basic functions of societies, one of which was what Parsons called pattern maintenance, a term which referred primarily to the reproduction of social practices through the socialization of children. Marxists speak of the base of social formations, and include in this the reproduction of capitalist work relations. A common thread in the two concepts is the thought that there are necessary conditions for (...) the continuation of a given social form which are not 'external' but are integral to the social form itself. Academics and scientists arc in the business of mastering a tradition and passing it on, so one may ask an analogous question about the reproduction of academic or scientific perspectives: what is required for the continuation or reproduction of an academic or scientific perspective, and how does this 'requisite' exert a selective effect between perspectives in given environments? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:ProvocationsHerbert Fingarette (bio)Our Other LifeWe live, each of us, two interconnected lives. One we respect and take seriously. The other we dismiss as fantastical, accidental, and wholly unreal. I refer here, of course, to our waking life and our dream life.My concern with the dream life is not the one that has occasional popularity—the dream as the embodiment of rather arcane symbols which decipher into messages about our deep (...) unconscious life. Freud and others who have interpreted dreams in this way may have a point. But in any case it is not the point I want to make here.What is a dream, after all? It is an experience, an experience we live through. Often it has an intensity that surpasses the intensity with which we live our waking experience. Often the experience embodies flights of fantasy and imagination that are both amazing and wholly untypical of our experience in waking life.Whence come these startling, fantastic situations that we live when asleep? There is only one possible answer, the obvious one. They come from us. The dreamer is the creator. If there is amazing novelty, it is the dreamer whose imagination has created this.The dream-life is an often powerful, evocative, imaginative world which we create and in which we live a substantial part of our life. Why do we dismiss it?One obvious reason, perhaps the sole and only necessary reason, is that what happens in the dream is disconnected with the structure and content of our waking life. We view it as "unreal," and refer to waking life as "real" life.Yet a moment's reconsideration reveals that both of these lives are "real," they really happen, we really experience them. The difference lies not in their reality but in the seeming incompatibility of the two. What happens in the dream is not consistently continued when we wake. Moreover the way things happen in a dream is often strikingly different from the way they happen when we're awake. In my dream I am in one place, and then instantaneously in a very distant place. The person I dream is my mother but also my grown daughter, and yet at the next moment my daughter at a childhood age. [End Page 861]I live exciting, fearful, and strange situations in which I am being attacked. Such things have never happened in my waking life. I dream that I'm a professor who realizes he is grossly late for his class, and can't remember what the assignment was or what I am to lecture on. In my waking life I am also a professor, but I've rarely been late for class, and never have forgotten the assignment or the lecture material.Yes, there is at times an obvious connection—my role as professor, the identity of someone as my mother or daughter. But what happens, and the way it happens in one life are dramatically unlike and disconnected with the other life.Why should I dismiss my dream life? It constitutes a goodly portion of my total life. I live it. I feel it, I react emotionally. It reveals an extraordinarily free and intense imagination that I largely fail to use when awake. What if the question were put to one, but without context or prejudgments: Which life would you find more interesting, challenging, exciting—day life or dream life? Try to think about that question in its own terms, without bias.Am I proposing something contrary to human nature? Not at all. We know there are cultures ("primitive?") in which dream life is viewed as an important, meaningful dimension of one's existence. We in the contemporary Western world are the exceptions. We dismiss this other life of ours. As a result, we fail to fully appreciate it in its own right.Indeed, as I've said, there are often connections. One needs no arcane theory of unconscious symbols to recognize this in my professorial dream. My embarrassing dream life as an unprepared professor is obviously related to my quasi-obsessive concern when awake to be prompt and thoroughly prepared. Clearly, in this regard, my two lives form a... (shrink)

This case note considers the availability in the United Kingdom of the provocation defence in cases of intimate homicide in the context of the recent House of Lords decision in Rv. Smith [2000] 3 W.L.R. 654. The note argues that the expansion of the objective component of the defence to encompass the mental infirmities of individual defendants is dangerous for women. Although it has the potential to help some abused women who kill to use the defence, it has, at (...) the same time, exposed women who are abused by sexually possessive, violent men to even greater danger. It is thus argued that the defence should be restricted in the way envisaged by the minority judgement of Lord Millett so that abused women will still be able to use the defence, but by anon-medical route. Alternatively, the defence should be abolished and defences which pose no risk of encompassing violent men should be developed to accommodate abused women. (shrink)

Context: The debate around and about constructivism in German-language communication studies. Problem: The reception of constructivism in German-language communication studies exhibits all the features of an instructive lesson: it makes clear how an academic field reacts, and how it can react, to the introduction of specific theories. Moreover, this case highlights the persistent virulent fundamental conflict between realist and relativist epistemologies in conjunction with a matching catalogue of accusations raised – whether rightly or wrongly – towards all those representatives of (...) communication studies that have adopted a constructivist approach making use of constructivist arguments. Method: By reconstructing the debate as precisely as possible it is mapped onto the fundamental problems of the conception of constructivist theory. Results: It is demonstrated that the depicted reservations and accusations can essentially be mapped onto three fundamental problems of constructivist theory development. 1. The problem of practice-relevance. The central question is how the relationship between (constructivist) epistemology and everyday practice ought to be spelled out in concrete terms, because this very relationship is the source of many worries (“Constructivism undermines the journalistic ideal of objectivity,” etc.). 2. The problem of self-contradiction. It is essentially represented by the question of how one ought to present and promote a relativist epistemology – without at the same time, explicitly or implicitly, introducing absolute claims of validity that contradict one’s own initial premises. 3. The problem of terminological imprecision and referential confusion: concepts and terms such as “truth,” “reality” and “objective knowledge” are used in many different ways. It is not always clear whether an author wants to refer to an absolute reality or whether he or she is talking about a concept that is admittedly created within given frontiers of knowledge. (shrink)

O'Connor and Wyatt use more than 250 color photographs and illustrations to help us break out of the linear mode and see the world differently.