A Persian translation of William Shakespeare's Hamlet along with the original text.

A discussion of the connection between activism and academia in bioethics, highlighting the author’s own trajectory, exploring the extent to which academics have an obliation to be ‘judges’ rather than ‘barristers’ (as explored by Jonathan Haidt) and asking questions about the relationship of disability to positions in bioethics.

This article explores the Nuffield Council on Bioethics’ recent report about non-invasive prenatal testing. Given that such testing is likely to become the norm, it is important to question whether there should be some ethical parameters regarding its use. The article engages with the viewpoints of Jeff McMahan, Julian Savulescu, Stephen Wilkinson and other commentators on prenatal ethics. The authors argue that there are a variety of moral considerations that legitimately play a significant role with regard to (prospective) parental decision-making (...) in the context of NIPT, for example, views on the morality of abortion and understandings of the impact of disability on quality of life. The variable nature of such considerations, both singularly and combined, suggests that any approach to NIPT should be sensitive to and understanding of similarly variable parental assessments and decisions. The implications of the approach developed for current and future policies in this area are explored, along with the impact of such arguments on ideas about procreative beneficence. (shrink)

In the helpful article “Why Bioethics Needs a Disability Moral Psychology,” Joseph Stramondo adds to the critique of actually existing bioethics and explains why disability activists and scholars so often find fault with the arguments of bioethicists. He is careful not to stereotype either community—rightly, given that bioethicists endorse positions as disparate as utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics, and feminist ethics, among others. Although Stramondo never explicitly mentions utilitarians or liberals, it seems probable that these are the main targets of his (...) discontent. The disability community, as he concedes, is also a broad church. Yet for this reason, I do not believe that you can read off positions on bioethics questions from either disability embodiment or disability organization affiliation. (shrink)

Kierkegaard and the limit of analogy -- Distinctions : marks of the paradox -- The paradox is not one: transfiguring transcendence -- Monstrance : articulating the paradox -- Silhouettes : figuring the immanent paradox -- Satan's angel : the interruption of the demonic -- Kierkegaard, Spinoza and the intellectual love of God -- Conclusion : theology for creatures.

This book brings together scholars from a variety of disciplines to explore Kierkegaard's continuing relevance to political and social issues. Kierkegaard is often portrayed as an out-and-out individualist with no concern for interpersonal relations. These essays not only refute this caricature, they bring out the complex nature of Kierkegaard's engagements with questions of selfhood and society. What Kierkegaard has to say about love, the church, politics and justice is shown to test the limits of what we take for granted in (...) the modern (and postmodern) world. (shrink)

This article discusses the different contexts in which disabled people encounter and deploy humour, both as victims and as agents, and provides examples. It raises questions about identity and audience and interpretation and about embodiment itself.

Nurses’ bodywork: is there a body of work? The work that many nurses do involves the use of their own body as one of the tools of their occupation. Being a nurse, in many cases, means controlled, purposeful use of her or his own body oriented to the patient. This paper discusses some of the ways in which nurses’ bodies and the work that those bodies do are represented in professional and academic research accounts and made relevant in literature. Using (...) instances of bodies and bodily activity mentioned in a variety of literature, the paper discusses three categories of accounts of nursing bodywork: those which are problematised and where the nurse's body is seen as a topic for investigation, and those which are unproblematised either explicitly discussing bodily activity (for example, touch) or implicitly dealing with bodywork (for example, taking blood pressure). Four ways in which nurses’ bodies are made relevant in accounts are proposed: relational, corporate, instrumental and human.The paper discusses the prominence (or not) nurses’ bodies are given in professional and academic accounts, as a contribution to preliminary work of generating a topic for investigation and concludes with some suggestions as to how this investigative project might be taken forward, focusing primarily on an examination of methodic practices, or how bodywork is brought off and executed as a skilled but taken‐for‐granted activity. (shrink)

This chapter examines Soren Kierkegaard's relation to postmodernism, evaluating whether he was a relativising postmodernist rather than the father of existentialism. It discuses Gilles Deleuze's treatment of Kierkegaard in his Difference and Repetition and Jean-Paul Sartre's assertion in his Kierkegaard: The Singular Universal that Kierkegaard's impact should not be reduced to general truths described in his thought and that his importance lies in his withdrawal from such structures of comprehension.

The advent of prenatal screening technologies has neatly paralleled the evolution of disability rightsDisability rights. During the 1970s and 1980s, the disability movement in many countries campaigned for barrier removal, better provision and recognition.

This collection brings together an internationally known and interdisciplinary group of scholars, including a major new essay by Laruelle himself. Together they use non-philosophy to cross the boundaries between philosophy and performance.

This paper discusses a study examining how mentors in nurse education make professional judgments about the clinical competence of their pre‐registration nursing students. Interviews were undertaken with nine UK students and 15 mentors, using critical incidents in practice settings as a focus. The study was undertaken for the English National Practice‐Based Professional Learning Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. This paper reports on the conversation analytic thread of the work. The mentor role with pre‐registration nursing students is not only (...) supportive but involves formal assessment. Central to the relationship is communication. In professional education, communication is seen as a skill to be applied and assessed in practice settings but is also the medium mentors and mentees use to talk about the relationship. Analysis of excerpts of conversation in the interviews shows that episodes of communication are used as topics of conversation to establish professional identity. It also reveals that judgments about the extent of professional capacity of both students and mentors are grounded in everyday behaviours (for example, enthusiasm, indifference and confidence) as well as professional competence. In addition to focusing on clinical issues, mentors can and do use mundane communication as a resource for judgments about competence. (shrink)

A response to Kavita Shah's article Selecting Barrenness.

This chapter develops a schematic historical and political analysis of the rhetorical usages of social constructionism within specific social movement contexts. It is therefore an attempt to illuminate the essentialism/social constructionism debate, rather than to explore the social theoretical issues around constructivism itself. It is concerned with the power of such arguments to mobilize public support, and as instrumental interventions in the political process. -/- It is my suggestion that this very power consists in the ability of such discourse to (...) represent social reality in a way which individuals see as corresponding to personal experience, in the first instance, and to open up the space for dynamic social change, in the second. Social constructionism is a rhetorical strategy. Judgements are made by social actors in terms of their understanding of biographical experiences, the prospective political utility of the analysis offered, and the context in which they find themselves. Further, arguments appeal to two relevant constituencies: first, an indigenous community of interest, which I will explore further below, and second, the wider public including, critically, that section of the population with access to governmental power, notably legislators and other members of the ruling class. (shrink)

Shakespeare's Four Folios were published between 1623 and 1685. Although 'folio' refers to the large size of the books, it is also a reflection of the standing in which the plays and their author were held. Up until the publication of the First Folio , works of literature had never before been produced in such large and luxurious a format. In each of the folios, the 26 plays are arranged in genres of Comedies, Histories and Tragedies and include introductory notes (...) by the editors, Heming and Condell. Routledge/Thoemmes Press have re-published the Four Folios in their original size and format, as they would have appeared in the 17th Century. (shrink)

This essay offers a response to Pamela Sue Anderson’s book, Re-visioning Gender in Philosophy of Religion. It focuses on three key aspects of Anderson’s work: first, her concern with the often imperceptible reality of gender exclusions; secondly, her discussion of ineffability in dialogue with Adrian Moore’s work and thirdly, her defence of realism in response to Grace Jantzen. These themes constitute a welcome articulation of rationality within a feminist framework, whilst opening up rationality to the validity of non-propositional truths. The (...) essay ends by suggesting that Anderson does more to work out new conceptualizations of the divine, arguing that her work and that of Jantzen are not so far apart on this point as might first appear. (shrink)

First published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

For Derrida, the technological, automatic and mechanical could never simply be defined as external or opposed to the voluntary, conscious and spiritual. The articulation and repeatability of the trace means that there is something machinic that is inseparable from the possibilities of meaning, choice and faith. This paper will draw on various texts – including ‘Faith and Knowledge’, Without Alibi and On Touching – to explore the mutual unravelling of machine and flesh in the Christian doctrine of the incarnation. It (...) will argue that the incarnation should not be interpreted as the self-emptying of God, but as the productive resistance of the immanent world to being appropriated by a discourse of transcendence. Taking account of Derrida's engagement with Nancy, it will explore a deconstruction of Christianity that is not ‘mere Christian hyperbole’, but the ruin of salvation itself. (shrink)

This paper responds to the reviews by Edwards, Holm, Koch, Thomas and Vehmas of Disability Rights and Wrongs . After summarising the recent history of disability studies as a discipline, it explores: the political nature of disability research, questions of ontology and definition, and the uses and abuses of the expressivist argument. Disability is an emerging field of enquiry and constructive debate is to be welcomed.