This chapter contains sections titled: AIDS as a Gay Disease? Features of the Bareback Video Cultural Responses to the Bareback Video The Language of the Bareback Experience Plenitude and the Death Drive in Bareback Porn Notes.

How, if at all, are we to distinguish between the works that we call ‘art’ and those that we call ‘pornography’? This question gets a grip because from classical Greek vases and the frescoes of Pompeii to Renaissance mythological painting and sculpture to Modernist prints, the European artistic tradition is chock-full of art that looks a lot like pornography. In this paper I propose a way of thinking about the distinction that is grounded in art historical considerations regarding (...) the function of erotic images in 16 th -century Italy. This exploration suggests that the root of the erotic art/pornography distinction was—at least in this context—class: in particular, the need for a special category of unsanctioned illicit images arose at the very time when print culture was beginning to threaten elite privilege. What made an erotic representation exceed the boundaries of acceptability, I suggest, was not its extreme libidinosity but, rather, its widespread availability and, thereby, its threat to one of the mechanisms of sustaining class privilege. (shrink)

While humanists have pondered the subject of love to the point of obsessiveness, philosophers have steadfastly ignored it. One might wonder whether the discipline of philosophy even recognizes love. The word philosophy means “love of wisdom,” but the absence of love from philosophical discourse is curiously glaring. So where did the love go? In The Erotic Phenomenon, Jean-Luc Marion asks this fundamental question of philosophy, while reviving inquiry into the concept of love itself. Marion begins his profound and personal (...) book with a critique of Descartes’ equation of the ego’s ability to doubt with the certainty that one exists—“I think, therefore I am”—arguing that this is worse than vain. We encounter being, he says, when we first experience love: I am loved, therefore I am; and this love is the reason I care whether I exist or not. This philosophical base allows Marion to probe several manifestations of love and its variations, including carnal excitement, self-hate, lying and perversion, fidelity, the generation of children, and the love of God. Throughout, Marion stresses that all erotic phenomena, including sentimentality, pornography, and even boasts about one’s sexual conquests, stem not from the ego as popularly understood but instead from love. A thoroughly enlightening and captivating philosophical investigation of a strangely neglected subject, The Erotic Phenomenon is certain to initiate feverish new dialogue about the philosophical meanings of that most desirable and mysterious of all concepts—love. (shrink)

Current debates surrounding liberalism and communitarianism, modernity and postmodernity, ethical theory and narrative ethics fail to account for shifting foundations of personal identity in an increasingly computer‐mediated era of human communication. This paper aims to examine some of the conceptual assumptions about identity and community which are being radically undermined by rapidly evolving information networks and are therefore in need of redefinition. Additionally, I argue for an expansion of the literary imagination to include virtual, coauthored fiction sites where exploration of (...) personal identity will bear upon future ethical and political decision‐making. (shrink)

Taking a cue from Slavoj Zizek’s reading of the Qur’anic tale of the two sons of Adam, Abel and Cain, this paper examines an overlooked erotic layer of meaning archived in the key Qur’anic term for sacrifice; it also explores the nexus of eroticism and sacrifice in this tale. At the beginning of this text the Qur’an announces that the “truth” of this story will be told. However, that truth turns out to be the symbolic absence of the truth, (...) allowing for a range of interpretive possibilities. I will argue that in the Qur’anic narrative of Cain and Abel the “shame/penis” of the murdered brother is the site of the archive, and interpretive possibilities are conditioned by the function of the master-signifier, the phallus alluded to in the text by the presence of the penis. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

In response to the attractive moral and politicalmodel of cosmopolitanism, this paper offers anoverview of some of the conceptual limitations to thatmodel arising from computer-mediated, interest-basedsocial interaction. I discuss James Bohman''sdefinition of the global and cosmopolitan spheres andhow computer-mediated communication might impact thedevelopment of those spheres. Additionally, I questionthe commitment to purely rational models of socialcooperation when theorizing a computer-mediated globalpublic sphere, exploring recent alternatives. Andfinally, I discuss a few of the political andepistemic constraints on participation in thecomputer-mediated public sphere (...) that threaten thecosmopolitan ideal.``Nature should be thanked for fostering socialincompatibility, enviously competitive vanity, andinsatiable desires for possessions and even power.Without these desires, all man''s excellent naturalcapacities would never be roused to develop.'''' Theultimate destiny for mankind, according to Kant whowrote these words in 1784, is to achieve through theuse of reason a `cosmopolitan existence'' or ``thematrix within which all the original capacities of thehuman race may develop.'''' Ironically, however, as Habermas andothers have realized, Kant''s carefully developedvision for `perpetual peace'' among nations and `worldcitizenship'' is now murky even as the electronicallymediated infrastructure of that matrix is rapidlydeveloping. Globalization as a process has intensifiedto the point where a new social, political, andeconomic condition has taken hold in the global arena.Recently this condition has been termed ``globality'''' –a term denoting a networked world characterized byspeed, mobility, risk, insecurity, andflexibility. And a debate is forming around thequestion of whether we are still in late modernity andexperiencing the culmination of modernity''s inherentlyglobalizing tendency or instead we have entered thenetworked age, in which the tension between collectiveand transformative identities and the networking logicof dominant institutions and organizations heralds theend of civil society. Inthis paper assume the latter but wish to explorefurther the political and epistemic constraints onparticipation in the computer-mediated public sphere.These constraints seem certain to impact the viabilityof a cosmopolitan public sphere. In the first sectionI shall discuss James Bohman''s definition of theglobal and cosmopolitan spheres and howcomputer-mediated communication (hereafter CMC) mightimpact the development of those spheres. In the secondsection, I question the commitment to purely rationalmodels of social cooperation when theorizing a globalpublic sphere. I explore recently proposed alternativeways of thinking about this issue in section three.And finally, I discuss a few of the political andepistemic constraints on participation in thecomputer-mediated public sphere that threaten thecosmopolitan ideal. (shrink)

A psychiatrist who has received international recognition for her research on the neural basis of primate social cognition, Leslie Brothers, M.D., offers here a major argument about the social dimension of the human brain, drawing on both her own work and a wealth of information from research laboratories, neurosurgical clinics, and psychiatric wards. Brothers offers the tale of Robinson Crusoe as a metaphor for neuroscience's classic notion of the brain: a starkly isolated figure, working, praying, writing alone. But the famous (...) castaway of literature, she notes, came from society and returned to society. So too with our brains: they have evolved a specialized capacity for exchanging signals with other brains--they are designed to be social. This can be seen in the brain's sensitive attunement to the meanings of facial expressions and physical gestures and the way it assigns mental lives to physical bodies--a feat we too often take for granted. Brothers describes fascinating case studies that show that certain kinds of brain damage can destroy a patient's ability to interpret faces, leaving him or her with the sense that they are surrounded by zombies. She takes us down to the level of the individual neuron, exploring the response of brain cells to social events. Perhaps most important, she connects neuroscience, psychiatry, and sociology as never before, showing how our daily interaction creates an organized social world--a network of brains that generates meaningful behavior and thought. Our emotions and our sense of self have no existence outside of a social context. Brothers conducts her argument with grace and style. By broadening our approach to the brain, this groundbreaking book makes an important contribution to our understanding of the human mind. (shrink)

BackgroundSystems medicine is the name for an assemblage of scientific strategies and practices that include bioinformatics approaches to human biology ; “big data” statistical analysis; and medical informatics tools. Whereas personalized and precision medicine involve similar analytical methods applied to genomic and medical record data, systems medicine draws on these as well as other sources of data. Given this distinction, the clinical translation of systems medicine poses a number of important ethical and epistemological challenges for researchers working to generate systems (...) medicine knowledge and clinicians working to apply it.DiscussionThis article focuses on three key challenges: First, we will discuss the conflicts in decision-making that can arise when healthcare providers committed to principles of experimental medicine or evidence-based medicine encounter individualized recommendations derived from computer algorithms. We will explore in particular whether controlled experiments, such as comparative effectiveness trials, should mediate the translation of systems medicine, or if instead individualized findings generated through “big data” approaches can be applied directly in clinical decision-making. Second, we will examine the case of the Riyadh Intensive Care Program Mortality Prediction Algorithm, pejoratively referred to as the “death computer,” to demonstrate the ethical challenges that can arise when big-data-driven scoring systems are applied in clinical contexts. We argue that the uncritical use of predictive clinical algorithms, including those envisioned for systems medicine, challenge basic understandings of the doctor-patient relationship. Third, we will build on the recent discourse on secondary findings in genomics and imaging to draw attention to the important implications of secondary findings derived from the joint analysis of data from diverse sources, including data recorded by patients in an attempt to realize their “quantified self.”SummaryThis paper examines possible ethical challenges that are likely to be raised as systems medicine to be translated into clinical medicine. These include the epistemological challenges for clinical decision-making, the use of scoring systems optimized by big data techniques and the risk that incidental and secondary findings will significantly increase. While some ethical implications remain still hypothetical we should use the opportunity to prospectively identify challenges to avoid making foreseeable mistakes when systems medicine inevitably arrives in routine care. (shrink)

This article provides practical guidance for researchers who wish to enroll and collect data from pediatric research participants through online and mobile platforms, with a focus on the involvement of both children and their parents in the decision to participate.

Logical problems inherent in claims that biological neuroscience can ultimately explain mind are not anomalous: They result from underlying social interests. Neuroscientists are currently making a successful bid to fill a vacuum of authority created by the demise of Freudian theory in popular culture. The conflations described in the Gold & Stoljar target article are the result of alliances between certain apologist-philosophers, neuroscientists, and institutions, for the purpose of commanding authority and resources. Social analysis has a role to play in (...) addressing logical issues in the philosophy of neuroscience. (shrink)

There is a growing consensus that results generated through multiplex genetic tests, even those produced as a part of research, should be reported to providers and patients when they are considered “actionable,” that is, when they could be used to inform some potentially beneficial clinical action. However, there remains controversy over the precise criterion that should be used in identifying when a result meets this standard. In this paper, we seek to refine the concept of “actionability” by exploring one proposed (...) use for genetic test results. We argue that genetic test results indicating that a patient is at risk for developing a chronic health condition should not be considered actionable if the only potential value of that result is to motivate patients to make changes in their health behaviors. Since the empirical research currently available on this question is equivocal, we explore relevant psychological theories of human motivation to demonstrate that current theory does not support the assumption that information about genetic risk will be motivating to most patients in their attempts to make changes in health behaviors. (shrink)

This paper engages in a critical examination of Michel Henry’s (1922-2002) phenomenological study of the erotic relation. I argue that while Henry’s analysis sheds light on the nature of eros and how it might be renewed from the obscene objectivism to which it has largely been reduced in Western society today, his analysis of eros undermines his account of the phenomenological life of the subject as a radically immanent mode of appearing and calls for revision. I contend that it (...) is by acknowledging life as a movement of transcendence toward the world that we can resolve this issue and further refine Henry’s insights into the nature of eros and how it might once again be renewed in contemporary Western civilization. I begin by laying out Henry’s account of how the forgetting of life results in a reduction of the erotic (i.e., inter-subjective) relation to a merely sexual (i.e., inter-objective) one, and how this lays the groundwork for what he regards as the destructive sadomasochistic practices of voyeurism and pornography. Following this, I outline Henry’s account of the nature and limits of the erotic relation, and I demonstrate how Henry’s work harbours the latent suggestion that the failure of eros can serve as a step toward a higher union with others in a love of God. In the closing section, I show how Henry’s analysis of the erotic relation calls for a re-conception of life as a movement of transcendence. I outline how this re-conception better accounts for the complex exchanges between the non-objectifying drives of life and the objectifying acts of consciousness, and I show how this allows us to retain some of Henry’s insights into eros and its renewal while forcing us to modify others. (shrink)

In the twentieth century the question of the relationship of Terence's Heautontimorumenos to its Greek original has been largely neglected or else dismissed on the grounds that it presents no major problem. It is true that, because of the new light which the discovery of the Cairo codex of Menander shed on the nature and role of the chorus in Greek new comedy, there was a flurry of activity concerning the difficult passage 167 ff.; but the far more fundamental problem (...) of contaminatio in general and of the meaning and interpretation of lines 4 to 6 of the play's prologue has attracted comparatively little attention. H. Marti produced a two-part survey of work done on Terence in the years 1909 to 1959; in it he says that in the period under review the question of contaminatio in Heauton–in the sense of the fusion of two originals –has been totally abandoned, with the exception of one article by F. Skutsch in which he holds to his earlier views on the subject. Marti also refers to Kohler's earlier work on the same problem, and to the discussion to be found in Kuiper's more comprehensive work on Roman comedy, but that is all. (shrink)

Provider claims to conscientious objection have generated a great deal of heated debate in recent years. However, the conflicts that arise when providers make claims to the "conscience" are only a subset of the more fundamental challenges that arise in health care practice when patients and providers come into conflict. In this piece, the author provides an account of patient-provider conflict from within the moral tradition of St. Thomas Aquinas. He argues that the practice of health care providers should be (...) understood as a form of practical reasoning and that this practical reasoning must necessarily incorporate both "moral" and "professional" commitments. In order to understand how the practical reasoning of provider should account for the needs and commitments of the patient and vice versa, he explores the account of dependence provided by Alasdair MacIntyre in his book Dependent Rational Animals. MacIntyre argues that St. Thomas’ account of practical reasoning should be extended and adapted to account for the embodied vulnerability of all humans. In light of this insight, providers must view patients not only as the subjects of their moral reflection but also as fellow humans upon whom the provider depends for feedback on the effectiveness and relevance of her practical reasoning. The author argues that this account precludes responsive providers from adopting either moral or professional conclusions on the appropriateness of interventions outside the individual circumstances that arise in particular situations. The adoption of this orientation toward patients will neither eradicate provider-patient conflict nor compel providers to perform interventions to which they object. But this account does require that providers attend meaningfully to the suffering of patients and seek feedback on whether their intervention has effectively addressed that suffering. (shrink)

In this issue of the American Journal of Bioethics, Kraft and colleagues (2018) provide important insights into the role trust plays in donor's decisions to contribute data and samples to local bio...

THE closing lines of Act I, Scene n of Terence's Eunuchus pose certain difficulties; in particular it is far from clear when Phaedria and Parmeno leave the stage-if indeed they do so at all. Taking this small difficulty as a starting-point, I wish to examine the text of Eunuchus at this place in order to see what information can be gained about the structure of the play and about any alterations Terence may have made in adapting his Greek original. In (...) this I shall mainly be confining myself to Terence's adaptation of Menander's Eunuchus at this one point, and shall not re-examine the welltrodden ground concerning the introduction of the parasite and the boastful Captain from Menander's Colax. (shrink)

Since trauma is a thoroughly relational phenomenon, it is highly unpredictable, and cannot be made to fit within the scientific framework Freud so admired. In _Toward a Psychology of Uncertainty: Trauma-Centered Psychoanalysis,_ Doris Brothers urges a return to a trauma-centered psychoanalysis. Making use of relational systems theory, she shows that experiences of uncertainty are continually transformed by the regulatory processes of everyday life such as feeling, knowing, forming categories, making decisions, using language, creating narratives, sensing time, remembering, forgetting, and fantasizing. (...) Insofar as trauma destroys the certainties that organize psychological life, it plunges our relational systems into chaos and sets the stage for the emergence of rigid, life-constricting relational patterns. These trauma-generated patterns, which often involve denial of sameness and difference, the creation of complexity-reducing dualities, and the transformation of certainty into certitude, figure prominently in virtually all of the complaints for which patients seek analytic treatment. Analysts, she claims, are no more strangers to trauma than are their patients. Using in-depth clinical illustrations, Dr. Brothers demonstrates how a mutual desire to heal and to be healed from trauma draws patients and analysts into their analytic relationships. She recommends the reconceptualization of what has heretofore been considered transference and countertransference in terms of the transformation of experienced uncertainty. In her view the increased ability of both analytic partners to live with uncertainty is the mark of a successful treatment. Dr. Brothers’ perspective sheds fresh light on a variety of topics of great general interest to analysts as well as many of their patients, such as gender, the acceptance of death, faith, cult-like training programs, and burnout. Her discussions of these topics are enlivened by references to contemporary cinema and theatre. (shrink)

This paper examines the historical rise of both cardiopulmonary resuscitation and the do-not-resuscitate order and the wisdom of their continuing status in U.S. hospital practice and policy. The practice of universal presumed consent to CPR and the resulting DNR policy are the products of a particular time and were responses to particular problems. In order to keep the excesses of technology in check, the DNR policies emerged as a response to the in-hospital universal presumed consent to CPR. We live with (...) this historical concretion, which seems to perpetuate a false culture that the patient's wishes must be followed. The authors are critical of the current U.S. climate, where CPR and DNR are viewed as two among a panoply of patient choices, and point to UK practice as an alternative. They conclude that physicians in the United States should radically rethink approaches to CPR and DNR. (shrink)

This article asks how interracial sex and/or sexual attraction might be an integral part of cross-racial feminist work. Focusing on the work of black lesbian feminist poet Audre Lorde, I argue that for some black women sex and intimate relationships with white women during the Women’s Movement were an important part of their survival and their feminist and anti-racist praxis. Drawing on recent black feminist scholarship, I read Lorde’s work against the grain of the anti-pornography feminist movement contemporaneous with (...) her career and suggest that sex with white women was often a productive, enriching and necessary experience for her as she worked to build cross-racial political alliances. (shrink)

This paper examines the historical rise of both cardiopulmonary resuscitation and the do-not-resuscitate order and the wisdom of their continuing status in U.S. hospital practice and policy. The practice of universal presumed consent to CPR and the resulting DNR policy are the products of a particular time and were responses to particular problems. In order to keep the excesses of technology in check, the DNR policies emerged as a response to the in-hospital universal presumed consent to CPR. We live with (...) this historical concretion, which seems to perpetuate a false culture that the patient's wishes must be followed. The authors are critical of the current U.S. climate, where CPR and DNR are viewed as two among a panoply of patient choices, and point to UK practice as an alternative. They conclude that physicians in the United States should radically rethink approaches to CPR and DNR. (shrink)

Preview: /Commentary: Richard Shusterman, Ars Erotica: Sex and Somaesthetics in the Classical Arts of Love, 436 pages./ Richard Shusterman’s work is remarkable, among other things, for extending the range and power of the discipline of aesthetics, conceived by him as fundamental to many dimensions of human experience. Indeed, he has driven aesthetics into entirely new ranges of phenomena and strategies for research, and also perhaps returned to an ancient sense of the centrality of aesthetic concepts such as beauty to virtually (...) every human endeavor. In many ways, I think, Shusterman is fulfilling John Dewey’s vision as expressed in Art as Experience, as well as spelling out in detail the implications of his own early book Pragmatist Aesthetics, exploring the aesthetic dimensions of all sorts of human activities. Schusterman’s somaesthetics, however, takes what we might call the aesthetics, or ordinary experience, and centers it on the body in a way that Dewey could not have foreseen. The book might have been titled The Aesthetics of Sex, and as soon as he broaches the topic it strikes one that this subject has been remarkably neglected within philosophical aesthetics, or even in Western philosophy as a whole. Considered as dimensions or arenas of human experience, the aesthetic and the erotic, as Shusterman shows in replete multi-cultural detail, are bound up entirely and from the origins in many or even all cultures. (shrink)

Even though morally competent artificial agents have yet to emerge in society, we need insights from empirical science into how people will respond to such agents and how these responses should inform agent design. Three survey studies presented participants with an artificial intelligence agent, an autonomous drone, or a human drone pilot facing a moral dilemma in a military context: to either launch a missile strike on a terrorist compound but risk the life of a child, or to cancel the (...) strike to protect the child but risk a terrorist attack. Seventy-two percent of respondents were comfortable making moral judgments about the AI in this scenario and fifty-one percent were comfortable making moral judgments about the autonomous drone. These participants applied the same norms to the two artificial agents and the human drone pilot. However, people ascribed different patterns of blame to humans and machines as a function of the agent’s decision of how to solve the dilemma. These differences in blame seem to stem from different assumptions about the agents’ embeddedness in social structures and the moral justifications those structures afford. Specifically, people less readily see artificial agents as embedded in social structures and, as a result, they explained and justified their actions differently. As artificial agents will perform many actions with moral significance, we must heed such differences in justifications and blame and probe how they affect our interactions with those agents. (shrink)

Art and pornography are often thought to be mutually exclusive. The present article argues that this popular view is without adequate support. Section 1 looks at some of the classic ways of drawing the distinction between these two domains of representation. In Section 2, it is argued that the classic dichotomies may help to illuminate the differences between certain prototypical instances of pornography and art, but will not serve to justify the claim that pornography and art are (...) fundamentally incompatible. Section 3 considers those definitions of pornography that make an a priori distinction between pornographic and artistic representations. The difference between the ‘merely’ erotic and the pornographic is also discussed in this context. Section 4 provides a critical assessment of the most recent and elaborate arguments against the compatibility of pornography and art. Finally, in Section 5, a case is made for the existence of pornographic art, as a subcategory of erotic art. (shrink)

As genomic science has evolved, so have policy and practice debates about how to describe and evaluate the ways in which genomic information is treated for individuals, institutions, and society. The term genetic exceptionalism, describing the concept that genetic information is special or unique, and specifically different from other kinds of medical information, has been utilized widely, but often counterproductively in these debates. We offer genomic contextualism as a new term to frame the characteristics of genomic science in the debates. (...) Using stasis theory to draw out the important connection between definitional issues and resulting policies, we argue that the framework of genomic contextualism is better suited to evaluating genomics and its policy-relevant features to arrive at more productive discussion and resolve policy debates. (shrink)

As infancy is characterized by rapid physical growth and critical periods of development, disruptions due to illness or disease reveal vulnerability associated with this period. Spinal cord injury has devastating consequences at any age, but its onset neonatally, at birth, or within the first year of life multiplies its impact. The immediate physical and physiological consequences are obvious and immense, but the effects on the typical trajectory of development are profound. Activity-based restorative therapies capitalize on activity-dependent plasticity of the neuromuscular (...) system below the lesion and when provided to children with SCI aim to improve the child’s neuromuscular capacity, health and quality of life. This is a report of an infant with a cervical SCI at birth resulting in paralysis of leg and trunk muscles and paresis of arm and hands who was enrolled in an ABRT program at 3 years of age. After 59 sessions of ABRT, the child demonstrated significant improvements in trunk control and arm function, as well as social and emotional development. Despite the chronicity of injury and low expectations for improvement with therapeutic interventions, ABRT had a positive impact on the child’s physical capacity and provided benefits across multiple developmental domains. (shrink)

While humanists have pondered the subject of love to the point of obsessiveness, philosophers have steadfastly ignored it. One might wonder whether the discipline of philosophy even recognizes love. The word _philosophy _means “love of wisdom,” but the absence of love from philosophical discourse is curiously glaring. So where did the love go? In _The Erotic Phenomenon,_ Jean-Luc Marion asks this fundamental question of philosophy, while reviving inquiry into the concept of love itself. Marion begins his profound and personal (...) book with a critique of Descartes’ equation of the ego’s ability to doubt with the certainty that one exists—“I think, therefore I am”—arguing that this is worse than vain. We encounter being, he says, when we first experience love: I am loved, therefore I am; and this love is the reason I care whether I exist or not. This philosophical base allows Marion to probe several manifestations of love and its variations, including carnal excitement, self-hate, lying and perversion, fidelity, the generation of children, and the love of God. Throughout, Marion stresses that all erotic phenomena, including sentimentality, pornography, and even boasts about one’s sexual conquests, stem not from the ego as popularly understood but instead from love. A thoroughly enlightening and captivating philosophical investigation of a strangely neglected subject, _The Erotic Phenomenon _is certain to initiate feverish new dialogue about the philosophical meanings of that most desirable and mysterious of all concepts—love. (shrink)

Mobile devices with health apps, direct-to-consumer genetic testing, crowd-sourced information, and other data sources have enabled research by new classes of researchers. Independent researchers, citizen scientists, patient-directed researchers, self-experimenters, and others are not covered by federal research regulations because they are not recipients of federal financial assistance or conducting research in anticipation of a submission to the FDA for approval of a new drug or medical device. This article addresses the difficult policy challenge of promoting the welfare and interests of (...) research participants, as well as the public, in the absence of regulatory requirements and without discouraging independent, innovative scientific inquiry. The article recommends a series of measures, including education, consultation, transparency, self-governance, and regulation to strike the appropriate balance. (shrink)

Beginning in the 20th century, scientific research came to be dominated by a growing class of credentialed, professional scientists who overwhelmingly displaced the learned amateurs of an earlier time. By the end of the century, however, the exclusive realm of professional scientists conducting research was joined, to a degree, by “citizen scientists.” The term originally encompassed non-professionals assisting professional scientists by contributing observations and measurements to ongoing research enterprises. These collaborations were especially common in the environmental sciences, where citizen scientists (...) participated in counting wildlife and measuring environmental conditions. Later, patient groups began to play a more active role in supporting clinical trials and collecting health records from affected individuals. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Erotic Art and Pornographic PicturesJerrold LevinsonOnly in primitive art, with its urgent need to evoke the sources of fertility, are the phallus and the vulva emphasized, as it were innocently. By ancient Greek and Roman times there already existed the special category of the pornographic—graphic art or writing supposed, like a harlot, or porne, to sexually stimulate.1IAS REGARDS PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS of the opposition between the erotic and (...) the pornographic, there are a number of reasonable goals one might have: to preserve as many considered intuitions about the opposition as possible; to present the opposition in a clearer light than it enjoys when casually invoked; to modestly "sharpen" the standard opposition that either accounts for our experience in this domain more fully, or allows us to organize our thinking about the domain more perspicuously. I hope in this paper to make progress toward some of those goals. Though the scope of the erotic/pornographic opposition goes beyond the visual, my focus here will be the opposition as it exists in the visual sphere, and even more narrowly, in the sphere of images. In addition to preserving and clarifying a distinction between erotic art and pornography, I hope also to make an intelligible place for erotica, as something intermediate between the other two.Here, then, are some intuitions on the erotic and the pornographic: [End Page 228]1. the erotic and the pornographic are both concerned with sexual stimulation or arousal.2. while the term "erotic" is neutral or even approving, the term "pornographic" is pejorative or disapproving.3. while "erotic art" is a familiar, if somewhat problematic, notion, "pornographic art" seems an almost oxymoronic one.4. whereas pornography has a paramount aim, namely, the sexual satisfaction of the viewer, erotic art, even if it also aims at sexual satisfaction on some level, includes other aims of significance.5. whereas we appreciate (or relish) erotic art, we consume (or use) pornography. In other words, our interactions with erotic art and pornography are fundamentally different in character, as reflected in the verbs most appropriate to the respective engagements.In what follows I try to accommodate all of those intuitions. As I will need a distinction invoked in the first of them (between sexual stimulation and sexual arousal) let me spell that out before proceeding. By sexual stimulation I will mean the inducing of sexual thoughts, feelings, imaginings, or desires that would generally be regarded as pleasant in themselves. By sexual arousal I mean the physiological state that is prelude and prerequisite to sexual release, involving in the male, at least, some degree of erection. And by sexual release I mean something that I take it needs no spelling out.How to differentiate erotic art from pornography, and from erotica as well, is of course not the only important philosophical question about erotic art. Here are two others: 1) How is the erotic aspect of erotic art compatible with the disinterested or distanced frame of mind that seems required for aesthetic engagement with or appreciation of a work of visual art? 2) How is the degree of eroticness of a work of erotic art related to its artistic value? I will briefly address those two questions toward the end of the paper, but most of my effort will be devoted to the prior question, that of the differentiation of erotic art, erotica, and pornography.IIHow, then, to effect that differentiation in the domain of visual images to which I have restricted my inquiry? One possibility would [End Page 229] concern the specific kind of response aimed at. Thus, erotic art might be said to involve images intended to sexually stimulate, but also to reward artistic interest; erotica to involve images intended to sexually stimulate but not to reward artistic interest; pornography to involve images intended to sexually arouse in the interests of sexual release. Another possibility would be by the character of the sexual representation involved, so that pornography would involve sexually explicit images, erotic art would involve sexually inexplicit images, and erotica images would be intermediate in their explicitness, irrespective of the ends for which the images were fashioned. A third possibility would be by... (shrink)

In this essay I examine how compulsory military service and the Roman Catholic Church uphold and perpetuate an inadequate notion of masculinity in South Korea. I argue that the militaristic and Catholic definitions of masculinity significantly and pejoratively affect Korean culture. To unlearn these definitions, I propose an educational "readjusting" program that denounces any unjust discrimination on the basis of sex and gender.

The Symposium and the Phaedrus are combined here because of their shared theme: a reflection on the nature of erotic love, the love that begins with sexual desire but can transcend that origin and reach even the heights of religious ecstasy. This reflection is carried out explicitly in the speeches and conversations in the dialogues, and implicitly in the dramatic depiction of actions and characters. Thus, the two dialogues deal with a theme of enduring interest and are interesting for (...) both their literary and their philosophical character. In addition to the introduction, the book contains substantial commentaries and thorough endnotes. Key Greek terms are discussed for readers who are unfamiliar with the language. A special feature is a discussion on the importance of the dramatic and literary aspects of the dialogues for interpreting their philosophical content. The introductions deal with the nature of the dialogues themselves as philosophical texts and with Plato’s philosophical assumptions and key concepts, as well as with the necessary background of Athenian society. The endnotes clarify any ambiguities and obscurities in the original text, identifying all references to people, places, gods, et cetera. The commentaries are designed to open up the dialogues for the reader, showing the issues that have been debated by commentators and considering some of the responses to them. They are designed to stimulate further reflection. (shrink)

This book analyses contemporary gay "pig" masculinities, which have emerged alongside antiretroviral therapies, online porn, and new sexualised patterns of recreational drug use, examining how they trouble modern European understandings of the male body, their ethics, and their political underpinnings. This is the first book to reflect on an increasingly visible new form of sexualised gay masculinity, and the first monograph to move debates on condomless sex amongst gay men beyond discourses of HIV and/or AIDS. It contributes to existing critical (...) histories of sexuality, pornography and other sex media at a crucial juncture in the history of gay male sex cultures and the HIV epidemic. The book draws from fieldwork, interviews, archival research, visual analysis, philosophy, queer theory, and cultural studies, using empirical, critical, and speculative methodologies to better think gay "pig" masculinities across their material, affective, ethical and political dimensions, in a future-oriented, politically-inflected, reflection on what queer bodies may become. Spanning historical context to empirical and theoretical study, Bareback Porn, Porous Masculinities, Queer Futures will be of key interest to academics and students in sexuality studies, film, media, visual culture, cultural studies, and porn studies concerned with masculinities, sex and sexualities and their circulation across an array of media. (shrink)

The Middle English Pearl is known for its mixture of genres, moods and various discourses. The textual journey the readers of the poem embark on is a long and demanding one, leading from elegiac lamentations and the erotic outbursts of courtly love to theological debates and apocalyptic visions. The heterogeneity of the poem has often prompted critics to overlook the continuity of the erotic mode in Pearl which emerges already in the poem’s first stanza. While it is true (...) that throughout the dream vision the language of the text never eroticizes the relationship between the Dreamer and the Pearl Maiden to the extent that it does in the opening lines, the article argues that eroticism actually underlies the entire structure of the vision proper. Taking recourse to Roland Barthes’s distinction between the erotic and the sexual to explain the exact nature of the bond which connects the two characters, the argument posits eroticism as an expression of somatic longing; a careful analysis of Pearl through this prism provides a number of ironic insights into the mutual interactions between the Dreamer and the Maiden and highlights the poignancy of their inability to understand each other. Further conclusions are also drawn from comparing Pearl with a number of Chaucerian dream visions. Tracing the erotic in both its overt and covert forms and following its transformations in the course of the narrative, the article outlines the poet’s creative use of the mechanics of the dream vision, an increasingly popular genre in the period when the poem was written. (shrink)

In this article I read textual metaphors of ‘untouchability’ in ‘post-AIDS’ representation as an erasure of structures that condition HIV stigmatization in India. Throughout, my discussion is contextualised by the political economy of HIV and AIDS, which has been productive of particular modern sexual subjects. In the film My Brother…Nikhil, the stigmatization of Nikhil, a gay Indian man living with HIV, is constituted through visual and verbal caste metaphors, which draw on existing subject positions that are elided as ‘traditional’, residual, (...) and receding. This stigma is resolved textually through parental acceptance of the gay protagonist and his partner, projecting stigma as traditional and modernity as the resolution. Such metaphors of ‘untouchability’ prevent the representation of queer Dalit subjects in contexts of HIV and AIDS. Yet if addressing shame and social stigma are key to HIV treatment and prevention programmes, caste cannot be set aside simply as a metaphor. Expanding to include textual representations of queer Dalit subjectivity, the article reads a novel, The Boyfriend, and a poem, “Gandu Bagicha,” to show ways in which caste stigma and homophobia intersect in contexts of seroconversion risk. (shrink)

I came to the subject by attempting to reinterpret the well-known legend of the labyrinth and the status of its main characters: Theseus, Ariadne, Dedalus and the Minotaur. The conflict between the two invincible entities is a reminiscence, degraded by literaturisation of the first conflict - in the 'zero moment' of the mythical history of the Universe - between the principle of the Cosmos and the principle of the Chaos. From a hermeneutical perspective, the god's overcoming of the monster is (...) an act of ordering the Chaos, and thus of cosmogenesis. The ordered Chaos becomes Cosmos. (shrink)

Phaedrus performs an analogy between eros and writing that splits each term in two. The first orientation operates via a logic of ownership: lover of the beloved; writer/reader of text. The second orientation treats eros and writing as inventive activities that catalyze the self-overcoming of the lover and beloved—of the writer/reader and text. This orientation is heralded in Socrates’s palinode, but it has been overlooked by accounts of Socrates’s critique of writing. This article establishes the relationship between the beloved-as-reminder, established (...) in the palinode, and writing-as-reminder, established in the discussion of writing. Thinking about eros and writing in an analogous relationship has significant implications for scholarly literature on Plato’s orientations to writing and knowledge. Specifically, this analogous relationship changes the way the most basic function of writing is configured within the dialogue. It also, importantly, informs the “possessive” and “inventive” approach the text takes toward its performance of pedagogy. (shrink)

Abstractabstract:Phaedrus performs an analogy between eros and writing that splits each term in two. The first orientation operates via a logic of ownership: lover of the beloved; writer/reader of text. The second orientation treats eros and writing as inventive activities that catalyze the self-overcoming of the lover and beloved—of the writer/reader and text. This orientation is heralded in Socrates's palinode, but it has been overlooked by accounts of Socrates's critique of writing. This article establishes the relationship between the beloved-as-reminder, established (...) in the palinode, and writing-as-reminder, established in the discussion of writing. Thinking about eros and writing in an analogous relationship has significant implications for scholarly literature on Plato's orientations to writing and knowledge. Specifically, this analogous relationship changes the way the most basic function of writing is configured within the dialogue. It also, importantly, informs the "possessive" and "inventive" approach the text takes toward its performance of pedagogy. (shrink)

Masterpieces by Sarah Daniels has been described as a voice in the debate on pornography, expressing the anti-pornography position as opposed to the liberal feminist stance in this debate. Despite its ideological clarity reported by many reviewers and critics, the play has been commented upon as deficient or inadequate because of evoking conflicting interpretations and ambiguity. The paper argues that these deficiencies stem from the play’s concern with the distribution of agency and passivity along gender lines as well (...) as the influence of generic and essentialist notions of genders on the perception of social and individual power relations particularly in the domain of eroticism and sexuality. One of the key issues of the play is the question to what extent and in what ways human perception is conditioned by the place of the subject in relation to the agency/passivity dichotomy and his or her viewing/reading position in relation to erotic and pornographic material. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Knowing Better: Sex, Cultural Criticism, and the Pedagogical Imperative in the 1990sRichard Burt (bio) and Jeffrey Wallen (bio)Teacher Petting“A distinguished professor and her graduate student French-kissed in front of a semicircle of gaping students. Were they furthering ‘an exploration of the erotics of the relation between teacher and student’ as the professor says—or was it part of a pattern of sexual harassment as the student later charged?” So ran (...) the copy on an envelope advertising in 1994 an “extraordinary one-time offer $9.95 trial subscription” to Lingua Franca in 1994. 1 The enclosed letter relates an anecdote about two complaints against Jane Gallop filed by two female graduate students alleging she had sexually harassed them. Gallop defended having French-kissed a graduate student in a bar in front of other students in the same class by saying it was a pedagogical performance. The letter quotes from a Lingua Franca cover story that came to Gallop’s defense [Talbot].As sex between students and professors has become a topic of new interest in the wake of sexual harassment legislation, as colleges have adopted campus sexual conduct codes or debate doing so, and as debates and incidents involving sex and teaching have attracted widespread media attention, the anecdote has become central. Some critics might want to dismiss the Lingua Franca story as nothing more than titillating tabloid gossip or take it seriously only by regarding it as an effort to combat a right-wing agenda to smear innocent professors who, as feminist or queer, are politically and intellectually well to the left of the mainstream. But the anecdotal interests us precisely because it involves more than just a tabloid scandal in any simple sense. Sex is not merely a way one can slur kinds of criticism one doesn’t like by tarnishing its proponents (for teaching sexual, transgressive material to shock, pervert, or in the extreme case—as in this instance—literally seduce students) though it can sometimes function in this way. For sex comes up in anecdotes told by cultural critics to one another, and when it comes up, it comes up in the same way it does in “tabloid” coverage. The anecdote about sex is never really just about sex, about who did or didn’t (French) kiss, suck, and/or fuck whom: it is rather a story about something in the pedagogical relation that has gone wrong, about a connection that has gone off track. Anecdotes about sex and teaching are really stories about criticism, about pedagogy itself as a form of criticism, and about failed pedagogy as the occasion for self-criticism.Yet if the anecdote is not really about sex, sex is hardly irrelevant to the production of what the anecdote is really about, namely, criticism. Indeed, we want to focus on the question of sex between students and professors because it is precisely sexuality that puts pressure on different, key aspects of the project of cultural criticism and on the present contestation over it within and outside of academia. Campus codes are being introduced [End Page 72] as new pedagogical practices, and new courses are being introduced into the classroom: disruption though impersonation, performative strategies, bringing the personal and the erotic into the classroom, and classes making use of pornography, even hardcore visual pornography, often taught by feminist women. 2 According to leading cultural critics, destabilizing gender roles shows us how gender is constructed, and tells us about power in ways that are politically and performatively effective. 3But there is often a moment when the game breaks down in the classroom. Someone gets offended, and given the way that for some sexual harassment extends from unwanted sexual advances or trading grades for sexual favors to classroom materials (both written and visual), offense can easily move into complaint, legal action, media attention, and of course administrative and professorial panic. The usual rationale for transgressive pedagogy is that this disruption will be successful, not just anarchic: it will be successful in that it gets in the way of the replication and reproduction of power (this is the new mission for teaching: to disrupt the transmission and reproduction of patriarchal power structures... (shrink)