The main objective is an interpretation of the island parody, in particular a logical reconstruction of the parodying argument that stays close to the text. The parodied reasoning is identified as the proof in the second chapter of the Proslogion, more specifically, this proof as it is represented by Gaunilo in the first chapter of his Liber pro insipiente. The second task is a detailed comparison between parodied and parodying argument as well as an account of their common structure. The (...) third objective is a tentative characterization of the nature and function of parodies of arguments. It seems that parodying does not add new pertinent points of view to the usual criticism of an argument. (shrink)

This research delves into the potential of implementing artificial intelligence in architecture. It specifically provides a critical assessment of AI-enabled workflows, encompassing creative ideation, representation, materiality, and critical thinking, facilitated by prompt-based generative processes. In this context, the paper provides an examination of the concept of hybrid human–machine intelligence. In an era characterized by pervasive data bias and engineered injustices, the concept of hybrid intelligence emerges as a critical tool, enabling the transcendence of preconceived stereotypes, clichés, and linguistic prejudices. This (...) paper not only explores the applied and generative capacities of AI-enabled workflows but also suggests fundamental approaches that can enhance the creative process and confront the embedded biases and injustices within data-driven systems. (shrink)

Este ensaio pretende analisar uma ideia de Europa, delimitada pelo mar Mediterrâneo, através do filme de Manoel de Oliveira, Um Filme falado (2003), e dos conceitos filosóficos de espaço liso e território, segundo Gilles Deleuze e Félix Guattari. Current essay analyzes a specific idea of Europe, limited by the Mediterranean Sea, presented by the film called Um Filme falado (2003) by Manoel de Oliveira, and the philosophic concepts of space and territory expounded by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.

An advanced constitution is proposed to allow the age-old conflict of religion and reason to evolve and progress as have other human institutions. No specific resolution is imposed, but rather all sides are prohibited from dismissing in the disputation that which they have already accepted in practice. We work back from points at issue to the common ground, and then work forward using forms of inference accepted by all in practice. This method has the appearance of an argumentum ad hominem, (...) but the intent is to subsume all parties under the same principles. We are left with those who reject all reason as such, the insane, the frivolous, the fanatic, and the coercive. Our constitution is able to bring in even this troublesome and disruptive population by using an aesthetic appeal that meets them where they are and shows that even their madness can be turned toward the good. (shrink)

This collection brings together a strong ethnographic and theoretical field. The volume includes chapters that address issues of identity formation and change in relation to ‘educational’ political projects and politically coloured notions of citizenship. Drawing on their different ethnographies and on comparative analysis, the contributors address the problematic of the relationship between rulers and the ruled and between élite and non-élite groups, critically raising issues of legitimacy and responsibility in the management of power and political decision-making. The empirically based analyses (...) offered here graphically demonstrate that urban issues are at the forefront of political and social debates. More specifically, the contributors address, from different perspectives, the more or less successful attempts of the state to legitimise its approach and authority through urban policies. A collective reading of the chapters provides a powerful analytical framework for the study of the processes that underlie ideologically biased definitions of citizenship and of their effects on urban dynamics. (shrink)

This collection brings together a strong ethnographic and theoretical field. The volume includes chapters that address issues of identity formation and change in relation to ‘educational’ political projects and politically coloured notions of citizenship. Drawing on their different ethnographies and on comparative analysis, the contributors address the problematic of the relationship between rulers and the ruled and between élite and non-élite groups, critically raising issues of legitimacy and responsibility in the management of power and political decision-making. The empirically based analyses (...) offered here graphically demonstrate that urban issues are at the forefront of political and social debates. More specifically, the contributors address, from different perspectives, the more or less successful attempts of the state to legitimise its approach and authority through urban policies. A collective reading of the chapters provides a powerful analytical framework for the study of the processes that underlie ideologically biased definitions of citizenship and of their effects on urban dynamics. (shrink)

This article focuses on the analysis of the geo-politics and body-politics of being, and perception as the key concepts in the decolonial option grounded in the spatiality and corporeality of our cognitive and perceptive mechanisms. Revived spatiality refers in this case not only to a physical space that we inhabit but also to our bodies as specific spatial entities – the privileged white male bodies or the damned, non-white, dehumanized and often gendered and sexualized bodies from the underside of modernity. (...) The article presents a decolonial interpretation of the human/non-human binary aimed at rethinking the fundamental modern/colonial division into anthropos and humanitas and the subsequent animalization of large human groups. The main questions are then what does it mean to be animalized by and in modernity and what ways out are possible, desired and attainable for the dehumanized others? The main goal of the article is to further question liberal Western humanism from a decolonial perspective, without yet dropping this concept altogether, and considering instead another humanism model suggested by Sylvia Wynter. Contemporary critical anti-humanist and “other humanism” theories often find a much more accurate and immediate realization through artistic metaphors and activist art projects than traditional theory, problematizing the border between the human and the animal, the man-made and the natural, the individual and the communal. Therefore, the article dwells at some length on one such project balancing between art and critical anthropology – the works of the Northern Caucasus decolonial artist Taus Makhacheva. (shrink)

This paper highlights the dark side of power imbalance regarding its consequences in agri-food supplier–buyer relationships. We report on findings from two studies. The first study is based on a sample of 105 key informants, while study 2 is based on a sample of 444 key informants, all from the cocoa agri-food supply market of Ghana. While the first study focuses on the antecedents of power imbalance and its consequences, the second study explores the role of cooperatives/collective action in minimizing (...) supplier exploitation. Data from these studies were analysed using the partial least squares technique. Analysis of these findings shows switching costs’ impact on power imbalance to be curvilinear, while power imbalance has a curvilinear relationship with opportunism. The negative consequences of power imbalance are further exacerbated by dependency and the lack of joint action. Furthermore, we found the negative impact of power imbalance on financial performance to be stronger for non-cooperative members than for cooperative members, while, counterintuitively, we found the positive impact of economic satisfaction on financial performance to be stronger for non-cooperative members than for cooperative members. (shrink)

This article contributes to emergent scholarship that questions neoliberal discourses in agricultural policy, through a case study that challenges assumptions about the role of “the market” in explaining the recent expansion of Australian beef exports. Australia is the world’s largest beef exporter and its beef exports more than doubled between the mid-1980s and the turn of the 21st century. This expansion, however, can be explained through a particular conjunction of political conditions, which are unlikely to be repeated with equal force (...) in the current decade. Specifically, recent growth hinged upon a combination of (1) rapid growth of Japanese and Korean beef consumption in the early 1990s; (2) the operation of the US “cattle cycle” in the mid-1990s; and (3) the privileged position of Australian beef during this period, vis-à-vis Latin American competition, because of concerns over foot and mouth disease. However, because of their adherence to neoliberal assumptions about the supposed inevitability of trade liberalization, agricultural economists have mistaken these specific circumstances for a general condition in which Australian beef exports will continue growing. This deceptive envisaging of the bounty from liberalization leads not only to false expectations among industry participants, but encourages politics in which industry growth is fallaciously prioritized. (shrink)

Anticolonial theorists and revolutionaries have long turned to dialectical thought as a central weapon in their fight against oppressive structures and conditions. This relationship was never easy, however, as anticolonial thinkers have resisted the historical determinism, teleology, Eurocentrism, and singular emphasis that some Marxisms place on class identity at the expense of race, nation, and popular identity. In recent decades, the conflict between dialectics and postcolonial theory has only deepened. In _Decolonizing Dialectics _Geo Maher breaks this impasse by bringing the (...) work of Georges Sorel, Frantz Fanon, and Enrique Dussel together with contemporary Venezuelan politics to formulate a dialectics suited to the struggle against the legacies of colonialism and slavery. This is a decolonized dialectics premised on constant struggle in which progress must be fought for and where the struggles of the wretched of the earth themselves provide the only guarantee of historical motion. (shrink)

This article seeks to advance connecting the two societal priorities of environmental protection and what has been called ‘Indigenous reconciliation’ through arts-based communication (and particularly arts-based research), to help engage and inspire people towards sustaining a healthy planet and a just society. Through lenses of social justice, decolonizing critique and holistic environmental ideologies, this work explores theoretical and practical, real-world intersections of environmentalist, Indigenous and arts-based imperatives and ways of knowing. The goal is twofold: first, to seek to engage readers (...) in viewing the colonization of the planet and its First Peoples as intimately related, and ultimately, to bring together diverse literatures to suggest ideas, language and a model to foster communication aimed at redressing both of those colonialist evils. To acknowledge this intersection of environmental and Indigenous approaches in arts-based settings, the term ‘environmental conciliation’ is proposed and defined as ‘environmental protection in ways that acknowledge, address, and aim to redress imbalances in power among Indigenous people and non-Indigenous settlers honestly, respectfully, openly, creatively and positively. (shrink)

Good interlocutors are a blessing, and needless to say, I’m feeling very blessed today. This is especially true for a project in which _vision_ figures so centrally, since we often see most clearly through the parallax of another’s eyes. Contributors to this conversation have cast distinct lines of sight onto _Anticolonial Eruptions _that have allowed me to see both otherwise and better, to recognize which elements of my original argument remain incomplete or unclear, to glimpse what was overlooked or taken (...) for granted, and to realize other moments where I might have been wrong entirely. They have revealed how my book, despite diagnosing colonial hubris, might reproduce blindspots that are more or less hubristic in their own right. This apparent irony is anything but. Any book, especially one this short, slices into and across history and theory ways that are inescapably partial, leaving a generative remainder to be dealt with. But more than this, I find nothing but encouragement in how my comrade-readers have taken up the lenses provided—the colonial blindspot, the second sight of the colonized, and the decolonial ambush—to excavate and cultivate a radical second sight from the depths of the colonial blindspot. Whether diagnosing the paradoxical unseeing of ocular-centrism, my own blindness toward the revolutionary nature of care as community resistance, or the ways that tropes of inevitability might refract my political judgment, each of the critiques printed above offers, in Kevin Bruyneel’s words, “more ammo for the canon/cannon” (88). (shrink)

This paper aims to establish the meaning of Dharma as the principle of self-denial and emptiness. Dharma, a key concept in the religious thought of India, has the literal meaning of "supporter.” Something that supports something else does not exist for itself. Just as the truth supporting the universe is Dharma, so the four pillars supporting the roof of the house to prevent it from collapsing are also Dharma. The four pillars supporting the house do not exist for themselves, but (...) create an empty space in the house. In this respect, the essence of Dharma is self-denial, self-sacrifice. The traditional ascetic practices and religions in India is referred to as sanatana dharma, and the core is the complete extinction of I-ness. When individual consciousness is completely lost, mokṣa is achieved. The moment the eternal truth is achieved, the individual consciousness becomes zero, and this position can be likened to the center where the x- and y-axes meet in the coordinates of mathematics. Just as the center in the coordinates of mathematics is a place where the value of the x-axis is zero and the value of the y-axis is zero, the center of the universe, that is, nirvāṇa is achieved when individual consciousness is completely lost. Dharma is the path of becoming nothing to reach the zero point, and the process of self-denial is bound to entail pain. The pain involving voluntary self-denial can be rather a positive nourishment for the realization of Dharma. In fact, we can say that the core of the Hindu ethics of Aśrama-dharma and Varṇa-dharma is voluntary renunciation for the complete extinction of individual consciousness and renunciation concerning that which is possible. (shrink)