This article engages new histories of the black frontline communities of the Underground Railroad to rethink both fugitive democracy and the transformative possibilities of sanctuary as its constitutive twin. We analyze the ways that communities of free blacks and fugitives in the border zones between the Antebellum US North and South crafted themselves as magnetic spaces of creative refuge that suggest we reconceive sanctuary as the generative twin of fugitivity. This insight enables us to theorize new ethical and political dimensions (...) of Sheldon Wolin’s concept fugitive democracy by illuminating how fugitivity as flight away from danger can be interwoven with sanctuary as flight into and toward alternatives. Specifically, we theorize three dimensions of fugitive democracy/transformative sanctuary—sanctuary tending, dramatic sanctuary, and disruptive hospitality. While some theorists have considered key motifs in Wolin’s fugitive democracy to be opposed to vital themes disclosed in contemporary theories of black fugitivity, we argue that the power of black frontline communities stemmed precisely from their capacities to dynamically entangle political approaches taken to be at odds. For example, we suggest a theory and practice of tending involving both nurturing care and militantly defensive action, dramatic sanctuary performances that amplify public power by oscillating between tricky concealment and flagrant publicity, and disruptive hospitality that interweaves law-breaking harbor with strategies for juridical and institutional change. These insights open onto an alternative imaginary that can also provide a toolbox for building grassroots democratic power today, particularly in the face of emergent neofascism and escalating displacement worldwide. (shrink)

The French writer, philosopher, and mystic Simone Weil (1909-1943) was one of the most original spiritual personalities of the 20th century. Now Coles presents a brilliant portrait of the beloved and controversial figure who was a spiritual influence on T.S. Eliot, Flannery O'Connor, Adrienne Rich, and Albert Camus.

Practices of listening, receptive corporeal traveling, and moving the democratic table among different constituencies and locations are vital to democratic struggles in a heterogeneous world. Marginalizing these practices weakens ethical-political vision and the strategic capacities of radical democracy. First, this article discusses the importance of moving beyond the accent on voice in a lot of democratic theory, to focus more on practices of listening. Second, it discusses the limits of listening and theorizes the need for practices of receptive corporeal traveling (...) beyond the power-saturated borders and scripted flows of human bodies that characterize most cities. Third, it suggests these insights might alter a fundamental metaphor underpinning many democratic theories, through a critical discussion of the imaginary of the solid democratic "table." It is better to construe democracy as "tabling": an activity in which the tables of engagement must be repeatedly altered by being moved and multiplied. (shrink)

We show that for every enumeration degree $a there exists an e-degree c such that $a \leq c , and all degrees b, with $c \leq b , are properly Σ 0 2.

Romand Coles here explores the writings of Augustine, Foucault, and Merleau-Ponty in order to fashion an ethos that emphasizes the value of dialogical relationships between the self and others. In his view, each of these thinkers has made significant contributions that must figure in any reconsideration of the relationship between the self, ethics, and power. Whereas Augustine saw depth as the dimension of freedom and truth, according to Coles's reading, Foucault regarded depth as "that dimension in which we rout out (...) the other and constitute ourselves in light of hegemonic norms implanted deep within us." After drawing out those aspects of Foucault's thought which point toward a "dialogical artistic ethics," Coles explores Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of depth, arguing that it elucidates the "intercorporeality" of the world in a way that emphasizes the value of our dialogical relations with different others. In conclusion, he brings the three thinkers together to assess their rhetorical and philosophical similarities and differences, and to argue against the tendency to see all postmodern thought as nihilistic and incapable of developing an ethico-political stance. Coles's highly original work seeks to provide an alternative to the positions that have structured most recent debate in political philosophy. Thus, his book points up difficulties in both the individualist and the communitarian readings of politics and ethics, even as it seriously explores the ethical dimensions and possibilities of postmodernist thought. His attempt to develop an ethos based on a specific conception of selves and the world enables him to cast provocative light on the continuing dialogue between rationalists and relativists about the nature of both selves and our social and political institutions. (shrink)

We investigate operators which take a set X to a set relatively computably enumerable in and above X by studying which such sets X can be so mapped into the Turing degree of K. We introduce notions of nontriviality for such operators, and use these to study which additional properties can be required of sets which can be completed to the jump by given operators of this kind.

We show that for every enumeration degree $a < 0'_e$ there exists an e-degree c such that $a \leq c < 0'_e$, and all degrees b, with $c \leq b < 0'_e$, are properly $\Sigma^0_2$.

This book draws on the authors' wide range of experience, to provide a greater understanding of the different dimensions of environmental engagement. It is essential reading for students, researchers, and practitioners of architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, design and health sciences.

These two texts come from a store of papyrus fragments which are at present being examined and worked over at Oxford. They are the property of the Egypt Exploration Society and will be republished in vol. xxxi of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri as Nos. 2544 and 2534; permission for their separate publication here has been granted by the Society in view of the relevance of the former of them to the article by Mr. W. S. Barrett which appears on pp. 58–71 (...) below. We are much indebted to Mr. Barrett and Professor Hugh Lloyd-Jones for many valuable suggestions and criticisms. The nature of both texts was recognized by R. A. Coles, of Magdalen College, Oxford, one of the collaborators in this article. (shrink)

No writer or public intellectual of our era has been as sensitive to the role of faith in the lives of ordinary Americans as Robert Coles. Though not religious in the conventional sense, Coles is unparalleled in his astute understanding and respect for the relationship between secular life and sacredness, which cuts across his large body of work. Drawing inspiration from figures like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Dorothy Day, and Simone Weil, Coles’s extensive writings explore the tug of war between faith and (...) doubt. As Coles himself admits, the “back-and-forthness between faith and doubt is the story of my life.” These thirty-one thought-provoking essays are drawn from Coles’s weekly column in the Catholic publication America. In them, he turns his inquisitive lens on a range of subjects and issues, from writers and painters to his recent reading and film viewing, contemporary events and lingering controversies, recollections of past and present mentors, events of his own daily life, and ordinary encounters with students, patients, neighbors, and friends. Addressing moral questions openly and honestly with a rare combination of rectitude and authorial modesty, these essays position Coles as a preeminent, durable, and trusted voice in the continuing national conversation over religion, civic life, and moral purpose. (shrink)

Theorists of affect and radical democracy have largely overlooked the importance of intentionally cultivating affective dynamics in the process of changing institutions. We address that lack by introducing the concept of musical groove as an intercorporeal feel for improvisational co-creation. Groove in a political context involves specific practices of modulating dynamics, receptivity, and affects in relationship to specific contexts, people, and practices to powerful effect. We explore how early democratic movements during the American Revolution sought to craft institutional forms capacious (...) enough for such democratic groove despite the fact that key intellectual leaders of the time, such as the Federalists and Benjamin Rush, feared the power of intercorporeal affective flows of democratic enthusiasm and popular improvisation. We read Rush’s critique and his efforts to diminish and control these emergences by harmonizing them in the order as a “negative image” of a radical democratic alternative that would foster improvisation and build enthusiasm for catalysing change today. We discuss how improvisation can, as Pierre Bourdieu perceived, simply function to reproduce the limits of a given socio-political game, which is deeply embedded within us as a “feel for the game” or set of affective dispositions. However, we turn Bourdieu’s own critique against itself to find openings for a habitus of political groove and democratic improvisation that he considered foreclosed. We conclude by fleshing out these insights in relation to affective dynamics among political organizing practices and modest institutional changes during a period of rich local transformation in which we participated in Durham, North Carolina. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Mystical Bedlam: Madness, Anxiety, and Healing in Seventeenth Century England. By Michael MacDonald. Making It Crazy: An Ethnography of Psychiatric Clients in an American Community. By Sue E. Estroff. Mind, Mood, and Medicine: A Guide to the New Biopsychiatry. By Paul H. Wender, M.D. and Donald F. Klein, M.D.

In this paper, I argue that the recent work on mirror neurons illuminates the character of our capacities for a politics of resonant receptivity in ways that both help us to comprehend the damages of our contemporary order and suggest indispensable alternative ethical-strategic registers and possible directions for organising a powerful movement towards radical democracy. In doing so, neuroscience simultaneously contributes to our understanding of the possibility and importance of a more durable radically democratic habitus. While the trope, ‘radically democratic (...) habitus’, may seem oxymoronic in light of Bourdieu’s extensive rendering of ‘habitus’, I suggest that research on mirror neurons discloses ways in which iterated practices and dispositional structures are crucial for democratic freedom.Keywords: radical democracy; mirror neurons; receptivity; political resonance; habitus; resonance machine; mimesis; affect. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: The Healer's Power. By Howard Brody.