With self-determination as its implication, freedom can create room for such psychological mechanism as internalization to perform the function of transforming the external social regulation into self-regulation. For this transformation to be viable, however, subject needs to be formed and subsequently social regulation becomes redundant, thanks to the formation of subject. Freedom as a necessary condition for the subject formation and this transfiguration of social regulation is often neglected in favor of social order. Drawing on (...) various intellectual resources, this article explores the inner logic and consequence of Legalism, in its segregation of politics (social order) and morality. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Michelangelo Antonioni, in his first full-length colour feature, Red Desert (Il Deserto Rosso, 1964), uses cinematic language to explore what contemporary psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva, decades later, has called the crisis of primary narcissism, one of the 'new maladies' afflicting the modern subject, that she describes in Tales of Love (1983). In examining the struggles of subject formation, Antonioni poetically describes the devastating breakdown of both subjectivity and intersubjectivity in conditions of late (...) modernity that Kristeva details through her own psychoanalytic account. Into Antonioni's infamous statement 'Eros is sick', we can read Kristeva's suggestion that Narcissus, our capacity for love and loss, separateness and idealization—the very foundation for our being with others—is in a state of serious affliction. Through the trials of his main protagonist, Giuliana, Antonioni reveals that the acquisition of a distinct, differentiated identity, one that allows the subject to establish and maintain meaningful relationships and ethical bonds, without the risk of psychic disintegration, has become highly problematic—reaching the level of a collective crisis, rather than remaining an issue of individual illness. For Antonioni, psychic survival in the modern world is not merely a question of seamless integration, but a form of (dis)adaptation: the recognition of severance and of separation, both from nature and our own nature, that allows one to affirm her environment and act as an responsive agent in the world, without being overwhelmed or engulfed by otherness, or alterity. In Kristeva's terms, this involves the capacity to bear and, even, to creatively elaborate, the necessity of loss and separation from the primal (m)other—a painful process to which Giuliana eventually submits. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 46, no. 2. © 2020 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 287 Julienne Obadia Responsibility, Respectability, Recognition, and Polyamory: Lessons in Subject Formation in the Age of Sexual Identity Introduction: It’s About Time “Sexuality” has become a strikingly capacious category in recent years. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans* have been joined by queer, questioning, intersex, pansexual, Two Spirit, asexual, and ally, as the acronym LGBT increasingly serves (...) as a base for expanded formulations such as LGBTQQIP2SAA. In light of this trajectory, perhaps it should not have surprised me to hear so many of my polyamorist interlocutors identifying polyamory as their sexual orientation. While polyamory’s emergence as a named practice in 1990 was more closely associated with the sexual revolution than the gay liberation movement, the increasing intelligibility of polyamory as a sexual orientation, I argue, offers important insights into how, and to what effect, the category of sexuality is expanding, and illuminates contemporary mechanisms of subject formation in American late liberalism. It is tempting to analyze this phenomenon solely within the historical context of the twentieth century rise of identity politics. However, a focus on recent decades is insufficient for understanding the increasing capaciousness of the sexual orientation framework. I argue that, more than simply demonstrating a proliferation of sexual identities, polyamory ’s reconfiguration also highlights the powerful demands made of subjects of sexual orientation to be respectable by espousing particular forms of intimacy over others. These demands call for a longer historical 288 Julienne Obadia view of marriage, monogamy, and whiteness as constitutive of US social, political, and legal recognition. Consider my encounter with Steve: At the 2013 annual “Poly Living” convention in Philadelphia, organized by the polyamory advocacy group, Loving More, I gathered with the other attendees in a large circle in the main hall. After a brief welcome by the organizers, we introduced ourselves one by one and then dispersed for drinks and informal mingling. I took a seat alone and, after a moment, a man in his sixties with a graying ponytail and wearing a Hawaiian shirt approached me. “You’re an anthropologist?” he asked. “Can I talk to you for a minute?” I smiled and gestured at the seat across from me, and he introduced himself, putting his beer on the table beside mine and sitting down. Fidgeting nervously, he explained that he and his wife had been married for over twenty years, but the last several years had been sexless, with her desire waning while his had not. After learning about polyamory, he cautiously suggested it and she reluctantly agreed to let him do some sexual exploring outside the marriage, but with tight restrictions: He could go to events like these and could have limited sexual interaction with others, but he could not have penetrative sex, nor could he pursue any emotional or more-than-casual intimacy with anyone. He found these constraints difficult, understandably so at such events, where people were in fact encouraged to seek out emotional intimacy and enjoy a wide range of consensual connections. Such limitations ran counter to polyamory’s ethos, which, as indicated by the organization’s name, sought more love, although particular arrangements varied significantly. As he elaborated on these details, I realized that Steve was not simply sharing as people often did, unprompted, at these events, which seek to foster open communication, curiosity, and self-exploration. He was torn about how to identify his sexual desire and make sense of his difficulty finding fulfillment within his wife’s conditions. He paused, looking at me searchingly with a mix of distress and hope, and asked if his desire to see other people was natural. “Is it possible,” he asked, “that being poly is a sexual orientation I was born with, like being gay?” He hoped that, precisely in my capacity as an anthropologist, I might have some definitive expert knowledge about human sexuality—an incontrovertible yes or no about the provenance of his desire and the legitimacy of his dissatisfaction. Julienne Obadia 289 As Steve’s conundrum makes clear, the intelligibility of polyamory as an immutable sexual orientation is very recent. Its inclusion marks a dramatic shift from Eve Sedgwick’s observation nearly three decades ago... (shrink)

1. Muhasibian Religious Subjectivity & the Travails of Sincerity -- 2. Living with Vulnerabilities: Muhasibian Moral Subjectivity and Self-Care -- 3. Belief Perspectives & the Nursian Religious Subject -- 4. Nursian Believer as Moral Subject.

Then UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s attendance at a Passover Seder organised by the radical leftist group, Jewdas, in April 2018, led to a brief but vitriolic controversy involving Anglo-Jewish umbrella organisations concerning who qualifies to speak as a Jew. This article uses this controversy to engage with Judith Butler’s attempt to address this question, suggesting that in decentring Zionist claims to Jewish subjectivity she fails to take account of how different Jewish subjectivities are formed, and thus ends up (...) proposing a ‘good Jew/bad Jew’ binary that dissolves Jewishness into universal humanism. Drawing on the work of the German-Jewish mystical anarchist Gustav Landauer (1870–1919), the article proposes a different way of understanding subjectivity that retains ontological inherency as a plausible precondition for ethical solidarity. As such, the article’s argument has implications not merely for a reworked understanding of Jewish subjectivity but for the politics of subject formation more broadly. (shrink)

Episodic memories are shaped by the representational format of their contents. These formats are not only determined by medial temporal lobe areas, but essentially also by the neocortical regions which these areas control. The representational formats of medial temporal lobe and neocortex are sufficient to determine both, memory contents and subjective memory qualities, without the further need for an attribution system.

Descartes’s Method: The Formation of the Subject of Science provides a systematic interpretation of Descartes’s method in Rules for the Direction of the Mind and related texts. The book reconstructs Descartes’s method in its entirety and concretely demonstrates both the efficacy of the method in the sciences as well as the unity of the method from Rules for the Direction of the Mind (1620s) to Principles of Philosophy (1644). The principal thesis of the book is that Descartes’s method (...) is a problem-solving cognitive disposition (or habitus) that can be actualized in a variety of well-defined ways, depending always on the nature of problem. The book divides into five parts and eleven chapters. Parts I–II (Chapters 1–4) develop an interpretation of the historical and conceptual foundations of Descartes’s method (its operations and acquisition), while the remainder of the book (Parts III–V, which include Chapters 5–11) demonstrates the fruits of the method in solutions to problems in the sciences (above all, mathematics and optics). (shrink)

This chapter begins by briefly considering Foucault's genealogies of the modern moral subject as the backdrop against which he conducted his inquiries on the ethical forms of subjectivation found in antiquity. It then turns at greater length to these inquiries, bringing them into focus in terms of possibilities for the self‐transformation of the subject today. To make sense of these possibilities, and defend them against familiar criticisms, the chapter introduces and defends a meta‐ethical distinction between “orientations” and “commitments” (...) in ethics. A long section of this chapter is devoted to showing how self‐transformation makes sense of a range of topics featured in Foucault's late ethical writings. The author focuses primarily on the care of the self (including aesthetics of existence and pleasure) and the philosophical way of life (including ancient parrhesia and modern critique). The chapter concludes by opening a window onto further possibilities raised by the foregoing discussion. (shrink)

The article considers the notary as a subject of active influence on the formation of postmodern democratic legal society, mediation of law in postmodern society. The constitutional definition of the state in this status does not mean that the civil law consciousness prevails in all spheres of its life. Since no person in society does not need this type of legal service, it is quite objective to consider this community as a subject whose activities should be considered (...) as a subject of formation not only of legal consciousness of society but also a leading subject of civil society. This primarily applies to private notaries, who, unlike public notaries, are fully responsible for the results of their activities. After all, a legal duty is organically combined with the responsibility from which the public notary is released. The study of the manifestations of the phenomenon of postmodernism is relevant to many disciplines, including - the philosophy of law. Modern research shows that classical types of legal understanding do not satisfy the understanding of postmodern law, which indicates the need to find a fundamentally new concept of law. The author concludes that the solution to this problem should be sought in the field of theories that offer new approaches to the interpretation of legal texts; this area is considered the most promising. (shrink)

This paper investigates the leaderless and leader-follower time-varying formation design and analysis problems for a group of networked agents subject to discontinuous communications. Firstly, a leaderless time-varying formation control protocol is proposed via the intermittent control strategy, where the control input of each agent is constructed by the distributed local state information and formation instructions in the communication time unit, but it is zero in the noncommunication time unit. Then, an explicit formulation of the formation (...) center function is determined to describe the formation movement trajectory of the whole networked agents. Leaderless time-varying formation design and analysis with discontinuous communications are given in the form of linear matrix inequalities. Moreover, the main results of the leaderless cases are extended to the leader-follower cases. Finally, two numerical examples are provided to illustrate the theoretical results of leaderless and leader-follower cases, respectively. (shrink)

The article explores the historicity of political subjecthood, making the case that through a process of subjectification “subjects of the king” gradually became the political subjects of the state. This in turn contributed to reconstitute the state as an abstract notion that nevertheless was real through the allegiance owed to it by its subjects. Addressing the making of subjecthood in relation to state formation helps fill an important lacuna in the literature on state formation, namely the double oversight (...) of subjecthood. Either studies of state formation have taken both territory and subjecthood—the two objects of state power—for granted, or, more recently, they have assumed that changes in subjecthood were a function of changes in territoriality. I propose to address this by inquiring into early modern subjecthood in its own right, through a historical exploration of the emergence of political subjecthood in English statutes during the Tudor period (1485–1602). Through gradual yet incremental changes in the relation between subject/king and subject/state, the political subject’s allegiance to the state changed and acquired a “taken-for-grantedness”—maintained and reinforced through constant legal reiteration. (shrink)

Disconcerting findings from nascent sociological research suggest that Western youth are developing subjectivities that reflect neoliberal discursive formations of self-interest, competitiveness, and materialism. However, propositions about: (1) the cognitive-affective mechanisms that explain how youth acquire and reproduce neoliberal ideology, or (2) the dispositions and behaviours that typify a neoliberal subject, remain vague. Therefore, this article provides a novel conceptualization of these two psychosocial facets that can help advance understandings and investigations of the emerging modes and societal consequences of neoliberal (...) subjectification, Specifically, it reviews major theoretical tenets from the respective literatures on neurocognitive development, social cognition, neoliberalism, and neoliberal hegemony. It then synthesizes these tenets within a modified habitus formulation to sketch a testable cognitive-sociological model to explain and explore some of the distinct dispositional values, attitudes, and practices that youth raised in societies with institutionally and culturally prevalent neoliberal norms and discourses potentially may develop and enact. (shrink)

The article explores the historicity of political subjecthood, making the case that through a process of subjectification “subjects of the king” gradually became the political subjects of the state. This in turn contributed to reconstitute the state as an abstract notion that nevertheless was real through the allegiance owed to it by its subjects. Addressing the making of subjecthood in relation to state formation helps fill an important lacuna in the literature on state formation, namely the double oversight (...) of subjecthood. Either studies of state formation have taken both territory and subjecthood—the two objects of state power—for granted, or, more recently, they have assumed that changes in subjecthood were a function of changes in territoriality. I propose to address this by inquiring into early modern subjecthood in its own right, through a historical exploration of the emergence of political subjecthood in English statutes during the Tudor period. Through gradual yet incremental changes in the relation between subject/king and subject/state, the political subject’s allegiance to the state changed and acquired a “taken-for-grantedness”—maintained and reinforced through constant legal reiteration. (shrink)

O artigo aborda a noção de sujeito de direitos humanos como central nos processos educativos de modo a entender a educação em direitos humanos não como uma tarefa ou uma atividade específica dentro da educação em geral, mas como parte substantivamente integrante da educação em geral. A formação do sujeito de direitos humanos é tarefa da educação como formação atual e presente, dado que os participantes dos processos educativos não só se preparam para ser sujeitos, mas podem experienciar o ser (...) sujeito no próprio processo educativo. Ou seja, o sentido fundamental da educação em direitos humanos está em promover processos multidimensionais e comuns que colaborem para que os seres humanos se façam sujeitos de direitos humanos. Para isso, buscará desenhar as bases ético-filosóficas que possam dar sustentação a esta compreensão, com o auxílio de referências filosóficas, éticas e pedagógicas, particularmente de Paulo Freire e Enrique Dussel. Palavras-chave: Direitos humanos. Educação. Sujeito. Enrique Dussel. Paulo Freire. (shrink)

본 논문은 신자유주의적 통치성에 복종화됨으로써 발생하는 주체의 문제를 분석하고, 유가철학의 인(仁)을 통해 저항적 주체의 형성 가능성을 모색하고자 한다. 먼저, 신자유주의는 시장에 교환이 아닌 경쟁을 도입하고, 경쟁은 사회를 통치하기 위한 통치 원리로 작용한다. 신자유주의적 경쟁은 주체를 자기 착취, 우울증, 고립 등의 한계상황에 직면하게 한다. 다음으로, 군자다운 경쟁은 타인에 대한 승리가 아니라 자기 성장을 목표로 한다. 군자다운 경쟁의 대표적인 예는 활쏘기이다. 활쏘기는 몸의 단련에 달려 있다. 몸의 단련은 자기반성을 통한 성장을 목표로 한다. 활쏘기는 자기반성을 문제 삼는다는 점에서 인(仁)을 익히는 과정이다. 끝으로, 인(仁)은 (...) 신자유주의적 성과 주체의 무한 경쟁, 자기 착취, 우울증, 고립 등을 극복할 수 있는 길을 제시한다. 인(仁)의 원초적 의미는 사랑이다. 인(仁)의 사랑은 타인에게 불쾌감을 일으키는 행동을 하지 않는 것이며, 타인이 타인답게 살아갈 수 있도록 돕는 것으로 확장된다. 인간은 인(仁)의 실천 속에서 타인과의 상호연관성을 자각하고, 연대와 화합의 길로 나아간다. (shrink)

Teacher Subject Identity in Professional Practicefocuses on a key, but neglected, element of a teacher's identity: that of their subject expertise.Studies of teachers' professional practice have shown the importance of a teacher's identity and the extent to which it can affect their resilience, commitment and ultimately their effectiveness. Drawing upon narrative research undertaken with a range of teachers over a period of 14 years, the book explores how subject expertise can play a significant role in teacher identity, (...) acting as a professional compass guiding teachers at all levels of their professional practice. It reveals powerful individual stories of meaning-making which highlight the dynamic importance of teachers' subject expertise The book's metaphor of a professional compass goes to the heart of teacher professionalism, and provides a valuable mechanism to enable teachers to respond to challenges they face in their daily practice. It enables teachers to consider the moral dimensions of their practice, and can constitute a significant component in professional formation and identity. Throughout the book the importance of subject expertise for teachers' professional practice is explored at a range of scales: from the classroom to broad education policy, and at different stages of a teacher's career which offers readers a deeper understanding of the importance of subject expertise for teachers. Teacher Subject Identity in Professional Practicemakes a significant contribution to an under-researched area. It identifies the role and significance of teachers' subject expertise as a dimension of their teacher identity. The book is key reading for teacher educators, policy makers and researchers with an interest in teachers' professional development and practice. (shrink)

This study seeks to explicate the philosophical foundations and theoretical outlines of grey systems theory by focusing on human perception, cognition, and understanding processes and by considering their functions in the process of producing knowledge. Primarily, the study investigates the processes of perception, cognition, and understanding, as well as their dynamicity. Then, it is explained how knowledge is produced through the interpretation/understanding of information and data and through the dynamicity governing this process. The findings reveal that human perception, cognition, and (...) understanding perpetually remain grey and imperfect, while lost sensatory data mark the very first aspect of greyness in such human capabilities. Furthermore, any piece of data, as a discrete and single entity, represents a determinate fact, symbol or signal from the world, while any set of data, no matter how large, remains incomplete and imperfect, and human beings always interpret inadequate sets of data in the world. Therefore, information and knowledge always remain grey and uncertain because they deeply rely on subjective understandings/interpretations and work with imperfect inputs and sets of data. The impact of knowledge on action and interaction and their effects on the world are some factors adding to the dynamicity of the world. Constant change in world data, outdated knowledge, defects in datasets, and human biases in understanding all confirm the infinitely grey nature of human knowledge of the world. (shrink)

Explanations of how identity is constructed are fundamental to contemporary debates in feminism and social theory. In this important addition to the literature, Beverley Skeggs demonstrates that class needs to be featured more prominently in theoretical accounts of gender, identity, and power. Class has been marginalized in feminist and cultural theory and it has become increasingly difficult to teach, research, or speak about class. Formations of Class and Gender identifies the neglect of class issues in favor of gender issues, and (...) shows how class and gender must be fused together to produce an accurate representation of power relations in modern society. In a sustained examination of the production of knowledge, detailed ethnographic research is used to explain how ôrealö women modify and reformulate our understanding of class, subjectivity, and sexuality. A critical examination of cultural representationùinformed by recent feminist theory and the work of Pierre BourdieuùFormations of Class and Gender is an articulate demonstration of how to translate theory into practice. Engaged with theoretical and methodological issues, this will be the standard referenced ethnography on class and gender. It will be required reading for students and researchers in womenÆs studies and sociology. (shrink)

The Kristeva–Lacan relationship has been a difficult one, with commentators tending to either collapse the former into the latter or insist on an absolute division wherein Kristeva emphasizes the m...

Abstract:This paper explores the formative role of substances of intoxication in the social and scientific establishment of the biological subject in late nineteenth-century Germany. Sourcing the emergence of substances of intoxication as "vital substances" from Brunonianism, this narrative traces their initial significance for Romantic physiology, followed by their rejection from neo-mechanical scientific physiology. Emphasis is placed on late nineteenth-century psychological research on the effects of intoxicants on the mind as the site of a dynamic encounter between theories of the (...) mind and the body, particularly through Kraepelin's concept of intoxication as model psychosis, and his related research. The biological subject, here, is anti-vitalistic, and, yet, conceptually distinct from neo-mechanism. (shrink)

Review of Dika, T. (2023). Descartes’s Method. The Formation of the Subject of Science. Oxford: Oxford UP.

Religious experience differs from the empirical experience of the subject by psychologicality, the transcendental vitality of understanding objective phenomena. The main criterion of a person's religious experience is his belief in the truth of the existing a priori and the interrelations of things and phenomena of the objective and subjective world revealed to him in personal experience. Faith is a sense of the interconnection between the subject and the object, which has an experienced transcendental character. Human experience in (...) this respect acts as a factor in the disclosure of depth and effectiveness: a subject-object relationship accepted on faith: the disclosure of the meaning and directions of its development relative to the object of faith; as a set of acts of self-knowledge in the context of the existence of the object and, only thanks to the object of faith, brought into a whole, meaningful existence. Thus, the self-knowledge of a person depends, first of all, on the choice of an object of faith for him, as the meaning of his development. (shrink)

This article attends to the transformation of national identity that occurs in the context of ‘the multicultural debate’ in the Netherlands, and unfolds on the terrain of Dutch (secular and sexual) exceptionalism. First, it explores the connections between two topics that are prominent in the ‘multicultural debates’ all over Europe and undergird the civilizational discourse of a post-Cold War geopolitical era: discussions about secularism on the one hand, and gender and sexual politics on the other. Through a mode of ‘secular (...) nostalgia’, which mobilizes the understanding of the Netherlands as a place par excellence of emancipation for both women and sexual minorities, the Dutch secular arrangement is restructured in new exclusionary ways. Second, it explores how dominant discourses on the symbolic and material borders of the nation interpellate young Muslim women who often figure as the central ‘subjects of debate’. I rely on the notion of interpellation (Althusser) to explore the question of subject formation, with a particular attention to the epistemological conditions of ‘talking back’ as a subject whose constituency and agency is always already informed by the terms in which she is addressed. (shrink)

The role of education in citizen training has been well mapped out in youth education. What has been less studied is how this role comes into being in adult education. By providing illustrative empirical examples from a recently completed study of adult students enrolled in adult education, this article aims to offer a theoretical response to the question of the role of adult education in adult student citizen subjectivity formation. Taking on Diken’s concept of ‘reactive nihilism’, we wish to (...) make the following arguments. First, that citizen formation in adult education, when students are asked about it, is actualised as processes of recovery of will in order to be a successful and happy citizen in society. Secondly, that these processes point towards a role of adult education as one where these formation processes work in tandem with those of the reactive nihilists. This means that the citizen formation processes made possible in this educational site are those marked out by the desire to mobilise one’s will formation so that it adapts to the prevailing societal situation—that of late capitalism, which is a situation not considered by the adult students as possible to change. (shrink)

The subject of this paper is Heidegger’s understanding of world and world-formation [Weltbildung] in his lecture The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics (GA 29/30) and his references to the idealistic philosophy of Schelling, the ancient thought of Aristotle and Heraclitus. I will put forward the following thesis: World is prevailing [Walten] and, as this prevailing, it is the being of beings as such as a whole in the projection of world that lets it prevail. In this paper, I will (...) clarify how the world prevails, how Dasein forms the world, and the significance of physis, logos and as-structure [als-Struktur] in this context. I will also show that Heidegger’s concept of world-formation can be thought together with his concepts of being-in-the-world and worldhood. Finally, I will discuss some of the difficulties in Heidegger’s understanding of the world and propose some solutions. (shrink)

The generation of companions who played a key part in writing the revelation continued this responsibility in maintaining the Sunnah and translating it to some extent. Since the Sunnah is the secondary source of religion, this activity of theirs is of great importance. In this regard, the fact that some of the companions documented the Sunnah when the Prophet was still alive or after his death yielded favorable outcomes in terms of Sirah science, which attempts to properly transmit his life (...) from birth to death. In the research, the location of the written material, which was penned by the companions and identified as “codex” or “kitāb”, in the formation process of the science of Sirah will be tried to be revealed. Because the codexes, which include the majority of the narrations relating to the ghazwa and seriyyas, are among the most important sources used by Tabi'un era Sirah scholars. In the research, the principal sources of Sirah and Islamic History were taken as a basis, recent literature was scanned and academic works on the subject were benefited from. It is seen that the offspring of the companions developed the codex, who inherited from their dads or grandfathers, with the narrations they received from third parties. This is why the research briefly mentions these important contributions they made. (shrink)

Gadamer's project in Truth and Method is as much about truth in the human sciences as it is about human subjectivity, for, following Heidegger, he claims that truth is reducible to method (technical rationality) only if one is misled by old Enlightenment subject/object dualisms. Posing the question of the possibility and nature of truth in scientific thinking, where a strict division between subjective and objective has fallen away, Gadamer belongs, as one of its inaugural figures, to an alternative tradition (...) of philosophical complexity, which implicates environmental systems (culture, ideology, institutions), embedded in language, in the constitution of human subjectivity.With these theoretical shifts in mind, what caught my attention in a press report concerning the trial of (subsequently convicted) serial killer, Stewart Wilken (“Boetie Boer”), was the strangely anachronistic question that dominated the front page of a Port Elizabeth newspaper: “Boetie: Is he Sick or Evil?” This question, in my view, harks back to a questionable framework of Enlightenment autonomy, which depends upon the easy technical rationality of clear-cut dichotomies. In what follows I hope to show that in acknowledging the role of complex interrelations between cultural and other systems, a tradition of philosophical complexity justifiably claims a more adequate framework for understanding self- formation than that underpinning the discourses at work in Wilken's trial. I shall draw on Gadamer's hermeneutic model of an “embedded”subject, which is based on his speculative model of “play” out lined in Truth and Method, and supplement this with Lacan's psychoanalytic account of subject formation. S. Afr. J. Philos. Vol.21(4) 2002: 258-273. (shrink)

This article is part of alarger project exploring the continuity betweentwo philosophical positions – that of Frenchpoststructuralist Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995)and John Dewey – that appear at first sight tobe separated by time, place and culture. Thescope of the present paper is necessarilylimited and focuses on one aspect of theproject, namely: the problematics ofsubjectivity, or subject formation, inDeleuze's philosophy. Deleuze's position isestablished as pragmatic by virtue of itssharing the value allotted by Dewey toexperiential and experimental inquiry inphilosophy. By drawing (...) initial parallels with anumber of selected Dewey's excerpts, this paperaims to open up a space for the imaginarydialogue between two philosophical thoughts soas to consider a possibility for applyingDeleuze's philosophy to educational theory andpractice in the context of current debates andin a manner continuous with the Deweyan legacy.The paper concludes by affirming Deleuze'splace in the contemporary scholarship on Dewey. (shrink)

The purpose of this analysis is to point out some elements of the Western tradition, as opposed to elements of the Eastern tradition, which enable us to better understand the possible consequences of China's unconditional assimilation of these fundamental aspects of the Western tradition. In this direction, I anticipate the main purpose of this text, which is, in my view, to explain the reasons why it is not possible for China to simply assume Western “values” as a natural consequence of (...) opening up to the market economy, without having to give up of what makes it what it is. The task, therefore, is to think about the relationship between modernity and tradition in China today, based on a certain conception of “modernity”, without disregarding, but also, without problematizing, the intense debate that has already occurred around the question itself. (shrink)

This commentary uses Paul Gilroy’s controversial claim that new technoscientific processes are instituting an ‘end to race’ as a provocation to discuss the epistemological transformation of race in algorithmic culture. We situate Gilroy’s provocation within the context of an abolitionist agenda against racial-thinking, underscoring the relationship between his post-race polemic and a post-visual discourse. We then discuss the challenges of studying race within regimes of computation, which rely on structures that are, for the most part, opaque; in particular, modes of (...) classification that operate through proxies and abstractions and that figure racialized bodies not as single, coherent subjects, but as shifting clusters of data. We argue that in this new regime, race emerges as an epiphenomenon of processes of classifying and sorting – what we call ‘racial formations as data formations’. This discussion is significant because it raises new theoretical, methodological and political questions for scholars of media and critical algorithmic studies. It asks: how are we supposed to think, to identify and to confront race and racialisation when they vanish into algorithmic systems that are beyond our perception? What becomes of racial formations in post-visual regimes? (shrink)

The theoretical framework of this research is the vocational pedagogy theory (Pastré, 2011) in a comparative perspective (Sensevy, Mercier & Schubauer-Leoni, 2000). This paper aims to describe some results of a qualitative research. The subject is one student of a Teacher Training University in Switzerland. The focus is the analysis of work activity of this student during his training in a primary school in order to understand the relationship between the different contracts (didactic and training). The results of this (...) research showed a gap between what the student wants to teach and what he knows about this knowledge. It results an activity centered more on doing than on learning. (shrink)

This article considers two themes in Butler's work: the dialectic of subject formation - that the autonomous subject is instituted through constraint - and the relation between the psyche and the social. With regard to the former, the introduction of a notion of historicity into a conception of the symbolic yields a concept of agency. Nonetheless, this concept of agency still lacks social specificity. By reconfiguring the psyche as an effect of the interiorization of social norms, Butler (...) introduces the destabilizing force of the category of the unconscious into constructivist accounts of identity. This sociocentric reworking of the psyche-social relations provides a nuanced account of gender identity, but it results in a negative model of action as the displacement of constraining social norms. It is also important for a conception of agency to include an account of the creative dimensions of action where actors actively appropriate conflicting socio-cultural values to institute new collective forms of identity. (shrink)

One of the main ideas of the article is the foresight that the organization of the ulama, which distinguishes itself from its counterparts in other cultures with its unique free and open-to-change structure, played a major role in the success of the Ottoman Empire. Carrying out educational activities in madrasahs, the higher educational institutions of the state, the ulama (the organization of ‘ilmiyyah) was at a level that could lead the society with its scientific accumulation, efforts to make sense of (...) life, and universal perspectives. This article discusses whether the rapid decline of the ulama in the 18th and 19th centuries has been manipulated or not. Another issue that the article pays attention to is the intellectuals who were opposed to the ulama under the influence of Western culture after the declaration of the 1839 Tanzimat Edict. These intellectuals started to replace the ulama in the Ottoman Empire in a short time and became a kind of representatives of the Western culture. A new dilemma was that these new reformists aimed to become Westernized while preserving Islamic values in the Islamic world. The aim of the article is to examine this paradox in its historical background and to reveal what kind of effect and perception it creates on the society. "Historical research method" was used in the research. Through this method, the period that constitutes the subject of the study has been critically examined and attempted to be analyzed correctly. (shrink)

I argue that Merleau-Ponty is right to claim that some shift in an agent's perspective on the world is partly constitutive of their forming a habit, but that he is wrong about what this shift is because he wrongly conflates habit and skill. I defend an alternative: the perspectiival shift constitutive of habit-formation is that habitual courses of action come to be and seem familiar.