Recent corporate social initiatives (CSIs) have garnered criticisms from a wide range of audiences due to perceived inconsistencies. Some critics use the label “woke” when CSIs are perceived as inconsistent with the firm’s purpose. Other critics use the label “woke washing” when CSIs are perceived as inconsistent with the firm’s practices or values. I will argue that this derogatory use of woke is stigmatizing, leads to claims of hypocrisy, and can cause stakeholder backlash. I connect this process (...) to our own field by considering inconsistencies in our organizations and in our teaching that could garner similar criticisms. After describing the stigmatization process, I consider the moral implications of inconsistencies for CSIs and draw parallels to our field. I end by suggesting next steps for our field in response to the stigmatization of CSIs and to guard against the stigmatization of our own work. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Rima Basu and I have offered separate accounts of wokeness as an anti-racist ethical concept. Our accounts endorse controversial doctrines in epistemology: doxastic wronging, doxastic voluntarism, and moral encroachment. Many philosophers deny these three views, favoring instead some ordinary standards for epistemic justification. I call this denial the standard view. In this paper, I offer an account of wokeness that is consistent with the standard view. I argue that wokeness is best understood as ‘group epistemic partiality’. The woke (...) person does extra epistemic work before forming a negative belief about a member of an oppressed social group. Just as we do extra epistemic work when forming belief about our friends, so the woke person does for members of oppressed social groups. I first outline the account. I then raise questions about the scope of wokeness and belief formation. After this, I demonstrate that the group partiality view is consistent with the standard view in epistemology. The partiality view, therefore, should appeal to epistemologists who have adopted the standard view because it is consistent with ordinary standards of justification. I conclude that wokeness as a concept in epistemology should not be controversial for those who endorse the standard view. (shrink)

This is an attempt to clarify the nature of extreme, or complete, “wokeness” in its modern sense. The central thesis is that it is an inverted form of fascism, and thereby even worse than some of its critics assume. In fact, it is far worse than ordinary fascism whether or not it is correct to see it as an inverted form. As this is a thesis, it is not a definition. Therefore, this thesis could certainly be mistaken. But if it (...) is, then sound criticisms of the explanation would be needed to refute it. (shrink)

Lacey J. Davidson (2023) raises several insightful objections to the group partiality account of wokeness. The paper aims to move the discussion forward by either responding to or developing Davidson’s objections. My goal is not to show that the partiality account is foolproof but to think about the direction of future discussion—future critique, modification, and response. Davidson thinks that the partiality account of wokeness does not sufficiently define wokeness, as the paper sets out to do. Davidson also alleges that the (...) account appropriates the term from minority communities. (shrink)

Humor can be used as a tool for a wide range of tasks, including fighting for social justice. How to most effectively use it, however, is a matter of contention. Jokes that alienate members of an out-group can be called “Otherizing,” and can cause harm by virtue of the alienation. Woke comics, like Hari Kondabolu, intentionally avoid Otherizing in general, but may engage in a version of it that seeks to defang stereotypical treatments of out-groups by replacing the alienating (...) content with something benign. We term this use of Otherizing, “mOtherizing.” Pride comics, like Russell Peters, take a different approach and try to usurp the power of Otherizing by over-engaging in it. The intention is to use the jokes to cobble together a coalition of out-groups that turns itself into an in-group. We term this use of Otherizing, “brOtherizing.”. (shrink)

Hilde Lindemann argues that personhood is the shared practice of recognizing and responding to one another. She calls this practice holding. Holding, however, can fail. Holding failure, by stereotyping for example, can inhibit others’ epistemic confidence and ability to recall true beliefs as well as create an environment of racism or sexism. How might we avoid holding failure? Holding failure, I argue, has many epistemic dimensions, so I argue that moral encroachment has the theoretical tools available to avoid holding failures. (...) The goal of this paper, therefore, is to articulate and understand the epistemology of holding in an attempt to remedy holding failure. I show that the virtue of wokeness emerges from an epistemic environment tainted with moral encroachment. I argue that as long as an individual is woke, she will have a tendency to avoid holding failures. Wokeness and moral encroachment, consequently, are fundamental to the epistemology of holding and consistent proper holding. (shrink)

Being woke, that is, being aware of the appalling injustices borne by many in American society because of certain identities or features and wanting to act to redress these injustices, seems to put one in a quandary: either one can accept a role in the struggle against injustice that seems obviously inefficacious or, if one insists on doing more, one must, it seems, engage in epistemic imperialism, thereby wronging some of those one is endeavoring to help.

Our contention is that while what may be termed woke capitalism is the result of real changes in both the material structure of capitalism and its ideological superstructure, those are not changes pulling in the same direction. The main material development is the consolidation of the shift from a quasi-deterministic to a more pronouncedly probabilistic nexus of class and race. But it is unclear that this makes much difference to the material prospects of the vast majority of people of (...) color or indeed of people in general. Indeed, the racial permeability of the upper classes is accompanied by an increased and inverse racial permeability of the underclass. Diversification is so elite-driven that it is unlikely to proceed beyond the cosmetic, and for that reason it seems that diversification does not necessarily correspond to any major structural changes in the relations between groups of people, whether we consider them as arranged by class, race, or the intersection of the two. It follows that the politics of representation should not be regarded as a vehicle for the agenda of the materialist left. We propose instead a responsive universalist approach—responsive to racism and all other forms of marginalization and different from the homogenizing universalism of class-only politics. (shrink)

Wokeism—as an ideology—is a potent enabler of group polarization. Secondly, polarization among its upholders results from the fact that they often display those behavioral patterns typical of behavioral conformity. Thirdly, groupthink and behavioral conformity jointly lead the upholders of wokeism to disbelieve any view that question theirs.

These are challenging times for leaders who believe schools must teach history honestly, be laboratories of democracy, and honor differences while finding common cause. This book, grounded in two decades of work in diverse school settings, provides guidance to help us remain steadfast in the work. -Racial justice: Beyond proclamations, how can school leaders reallocate resources to support substantive anti-racist school reforms? -Democratic practice: How can school leaders who have significant authority in a hierarchical system wield their power in support (...) of democracy? -Restorative justice: With time in short supply, how can schools truly embrace restorative practice, which calls for slowing down to repair and prevent harm? -Student activism: How can school leaders uphold rules while also supporting students who disrupt in the name of justice? -Counter-extremism: White supremacist threats are a danger to our communities. How can school leaders carefully confront the extremism of these troubled times? Compelling stories drawn from contemporary school contexts help illuminate each of these questions in fine detail. Each chapter concludes with a list of concrete actions every school leader can take in pursuit of answers. Administrators, teacher leaders, and those who support school reform with justice in mind will find both practical guidance and inspiration. (shrink)

If you're woke, you're left. If you're left, you're woke. We blur the terms, assuming that if you're one you must be the other. That, Susan Neiman argues, is a dangerous mistake. The intellectual roots and resources of wokeism conflict with ideas that have guided the left for more than 200 years: a commitment to universalism, a firm distinction between justice and power, and a belief in the possibility of progress. Without these ideas, Neiman argues, they will continue (...) to undermine their own goals and drift, inexorably and unintentionally, towards the right. In the long run, they risk becoming what they despise. One of the world's leading philosophical voices, Neiman makes this case by tracing the malign influence of two titans of twentieth-century thought, Michel Foucault and Carl Schmitt, whose work undermined ideas of justice and progress and portrayed social life as an eternal struggle of us against them. A generation schooled with these voices in their heads, raised in a broader culture shaped by the ruthless ideas of neoliberalism and evolutionary psychology, has set about changing the world. It's time they thought again. (shrink)

The role education plays in society has been contested in the United States since the inception of public education. Historically this contention has produced a delicate balance between promoting the social justice concerns of educating democratic citizens and the disciplinary concerns of individual intellectual development. Teacher preparation programs in American normal schools, colleges, and universities have traditionally struck a similar balance between theory and practice. In the past several decades, however, the rise of neoliberalism in American politics has shifted the (...) balance away from equity, diversity, and inclusivity. The purpose of this study is to provide an account of the lived experiences of teacher candidates with the phenomena of being and becoming “woke” within a teacher education program that reflects neoliberal values but maintains a stated commitment to social justice. This study includes narrative vignettes that explore the phenomenality of “wokeness” as it manifests in the public-school environment and the teacher education program. It also addresses the effects of neoliberalism on teacher candidates’ willingness and ability to take up social justice for themselves, their students, and society. (shrink)

The social group named after the various discourses of individuals who define themselves as the champions of the men's rights movement on social media is called the “Manosphere” in the literature. “Oneitis”, a concept in the jargon of the manosphere, basically refers to a disease state used to represent situations in which a man invests excessive attention in a woman who is not equally interested in him. For the Red Pill movement, the most influential group in the manosphere, oneitis is (...) criticized as a pattern of behavior that should be avoided by men. Red Pill philosophy is also often associated with alt-right ideologies due to its anti-feminist and pragmatic views. Red Pill thought can therefore often be seen as contrasting with Woke Culture, a counter-cultural movement that advocates the constant practice of vigilance against political discourses that oppress certain social groups through structural mechanisms of oppression such as racism, anti-blackness, and anti-feminism. In this paper, I argue that the concept of oneitis, when suspended from its anti-feminist and commodifying contexts, can in fact be read as a critique of a conception of love that is deeply rooted in traditional gender roles that are often criticized from perspectives such as feminism or Woke Culture. When the liberation from oneitis is considered independently of the manosphere framework, it can be read as a critique of coercive social practices in terms of romantic relationships. (shrink)

This article aims to give an analysis of the phenomena of unjust misappropriation of marginalised groups’ terms online, using the example misappropriation of ‘woke’ from the Black community on Twitter. I argue that using terms such as these outside their original context warps their meaning, decreasing the intelligibility of the experiences of the marginalised agents who use them when attempting to express themselves both within their community and without. I intend to give an analysis of this phenomena, with the (...) expectation that understanding it better will provide a crucial step in combatting it. To this end, I argue it can be understood as a specialised form of what Kristie Dotson calls ‘contributory injustice’, injustices which involve the suppression of a marginalised community’s existing hermeneutical resources, combined with a specific consequence of what Boyd and Marwick call ‘context collapse’, the removal of social norms created through the homogenising effect of social media sites like Twitter. The result is a novel misappropriation phenomenon, I label ‘Context-Collapsed Contributory Injustice’ or ‘CC.CI’. This type of misappropriation is particularly harmful due to it being faster-acting than historical varieties of misappropriation. Furthermore, unchecked continual cases of CC.CI can cause a novel from of what Miranda Fricker calls ‘hermeneutical injustice’, which is demarcated from standard cases by its ability to reintroduce conceptual lacunas through undermining existing hermeneutical resources. I finish by disambiguating cases of CC.CI from natural meaning change and critically analysing some existing philosophical treatments of “woke”. (shrink)

Standpoint theorists have long been clear that marginalization does not make better understanding a given. They have been less clear, though, that social dominance does not make ignorance a given. Indeed, many standpoint theorists have implicitly committed themselves to what I call the strong epistemic disadvantage thesis. According to this thesis, there are strong, substantive limits on what the socially dominant can know about oppression that they do not personally experience. I argue that this thesis is not just implausible but (...) politically pernicious; it is an excuse for ignorance and silence that stifles our ability to address many injustices. Moreover, I argue that if we are to avoid lending support to the SEDT while working within a standpoint theory framework, we must hold that the socially dominant can achieve marginalized standpoints. So, we must hold that men can achieve feminist standpoints, that white women (and men) can achieve black feminist standpoints, and so on. (shrink)

“Woke” and cancel culture have become mainstream methods for ideological leftists to express their sense of hopelessness and frustration. And while many agree that improving social harmony is an admirable goal, policing the use of pronouns while carefully maintaining the status quo of capitalism’s production, destruction and inequality does little to address the underlying structural problems that create the conditions for social disharmony. It is on this point that Žižek finds agreement with commentators on the ideological right. But at (...) both ends of the ideological spectrum we find little to hope for. This paper is about what happens when important discussions are hijacked by extremists on both ends of the political spectrum. Surely, there must be more than politically correct totalitarianism and the irrational outbursts of conspiratorial fanatics. As Žižek has long argued, we should, perhaps, hold out for the worst option in the hope that real change might still be possible. I make this case with reference to popular events and culture, and a wide array of Žižek’s scholarly and popular works. (shrink)

El artículo, sin ánimo de llevar a cabo una minuciosa retrospectiva histórica acerca de los inicios, recorrido y actualidad de la evolución de la denominada como “Doctrina woke”, la evolución y el cariz de los acontecimientos protagonizados por sus defensores y simpatizantes en la última década, plantea algunas reflexiones que permitan entender de dónde parte y en qué se ha transformado este fenómeno. Básicamente, al albur de los hechos, trata de dilucidar cómo y en qué medida este planteamiento ideológico (...) y sus principales ramificaciones inciden negativamente en aspectos fundamentales del orden democrático constitucional. (shrink)

This text goes into depth on how the new woke books, ideologies, workshops, and seminars have charged—sometimes covertly—into the schools.

Exploring online criticisms of the ‘take the knee’ protest during ‘Euro 2020’, this article examines how alt- and far-right conspiracies were both constructed and communicated via the social media platform, Twitter. By providing a novel exploration of alt-right conspiracies during an international football tournament, a qualitative thematic analysis of 1,388 original tweets relating to Euro 2020 was undertaken. The findings reveal how, in criticisms levelled at both ‘wokeism’ and the Black Lives Matter movement, antiwhite criticisms of the ‘take the knee’ (...) protest were embroiled in alt-right conspiracies that exposed an assumed Cultural Marxist, ‘woke agenda’ in the tournament’s organization and mainstream media coverage. In conclusion, it is argued that conspiratorial discourses, associated with the alt-right, provided a framework through which the protest could be understood. This emphasises how the significance of conspiracy functions to promote the wider dissemination of alt-right ideology across popular cultural contexts, such as sport. (shrink)

Woking Borough Council in the United Kingdom has long been committed to protecting the environment, a goal explicitly stated as one of the borough's top three priorities. Woking is also known for its pioneering approach in operating an extensive networked electricity and district heating system based on co- and trigeneration, as well as what is understood to be the United Kingdom's first commercially operating 200kWe fuel cell. Its other innovative measures to protect the environment and to reduce pollution include the (...) adoption of energy- and water-saving techniques for council-owned buildings and public places, with revenue savings reinvested back into still additional measures to further improve sustainability. These various initiatives are providing a practical framework for advancing a more equitable, clean, decentralized, and socially cooperative energy system in service to Woking's inhabitants. (shrink)

I experienced the 2016 Presidential election as a loss of innocence. For the first time in my life, the prospect of losing my most basic rights and freedoms did not feel so remote. Confronting this possibility prompted the musings in this article. I call them ‘musings’ because the article is not a systematic defense of a clearly demarcated position. It is, rather, a somewhat circuitous exploration of the many questions that pressed themselves upon me as I struggled to understand what (...) distinguishes reasonable accommodations to injustice from morally unacceptable accommodations. When is a commitment not really a commitment? When does reasonable fear become shameful cowardice? When does my knowledge that I can do something to resist injustice give me good enough reason to resist? Under what conditions is my reason an enemy of my ideals? What is the proper balance between valuing myself beyond price and appreciating that many, many things matter far more than my own life and security? In grappling with these questions, I have been reminded of the extent to which moral discernment does not involve applying a ‘philosophy’ and the extent to which it cannot be secured by prior training. (shrink)

This engaging book explores Senator Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign, a radical movement that represented a diverse voter base. As such, it had to navigate the complexities of class, identity, and their interrelation. The thesis author Marc Léger seeks to defend is that the campaign ultimately failed in this endeavor. Rather than reassert the centrality of class in socialist politics, he argues, the campaign indulged a dubious politics of division.

Emancipatie is goed, identiteitspolitiek is fout, zo luidt de strekking van het recente boek van politiek filosoof Gijs van Oenen, getiteld Culturele veldslagen: Filosofie van de culture wars. Kritiek op identiteitspolitiek - vooral die in de woke vorm – is vandaag de dag niks bijzonders. Ook de analyse van Van Oenen dat er net zo goed een identiteitspolitiek van rechts als van links bestaat is niet nieuw, evenmin als zijn ‘oplossing’ namelijk liberalisme en de rechtsstaat – beide treffen we (...) bijvoorbeeld aan bij Anthony Appiah’s The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity (2019). Nieuw is wel dat Van Oenen - die zich als links intellectueel afficheert – hierbij etiketten gebruikt die momenteel gangbaar zijn in de hoek van alt right. De termen ‘cultuurmarxisme’ en ‘culture wars’ - zie de titel van zijn boek - worden door hem als neutraal gepresenteerd, maar het is de vraag wat hij daarmee binnen haalt. (shrink)

, WOKING PREFATORY NOTE THIS essay is an attempt to follow critically the development of Kants metaphysical thought with special reference to the concept of God ...

On 2 June I woke to the news that Michel Serres, philosopher, mountaineer, broadcaster, grandfather, historian of science, lover of rugby, mathematician, and inimitable writer, had passed away at the age of 88. This sad news came at a moment when I found myself deeply immersed in Serres’ writing, putting the finishing touches to a monograph on his work. In the days that followed his death I found myself reflecting at length on the fascination that Serres’ thought has held (...) for me since my first, felicitous encounter, and why it is needed today more than ever. I had never written a full-length academic monograph on a single thinker before I decided to embark on Michel Serres: Figures of Thought. I may never do so again. So what led me to spend four years of my life up to my neck in the writing of a thinker who had never featured in a course I have taken, whose books had never been recommended to me, and whom I never met? This article is my attempt to answer those questions, and to reflect upon his singularity and importance as a thinker. (shrink)

When I woke up a few days ago, the following thoughts ran through my mind. ‘I need a haircut. If I don't get it first thing this morning, I won't have another chance for two weeks. But if I go to the barber down the road, he'll want to talk to me about philosophy. So I'd better go to the one in Camden Town. The tube will be very crowded, though. Still, it's a nice day. Why don't I just (...) walk there? It will only take twenty minutes. So I'd better put on these shoes now, have breakfast straight away, and then set out for Camden.’. (shrink)

Suppose that you're lying in bed. You just woke up. But you're alert. Your mind is clear and you have no distractions. As you lie there, you think to yourself, ‘2 + 2 = 4.’ The thought just pops into your head. But, wanting to be sure of your mathematical insight, you once again think ‘2 + 2 = 4’, this time really meditating on your thought. Now suppose that you're sitting in an empty movie theatre. The lighting is (...) normal and the screen in front of you is blank. Then at some point an image of a peach is flashed on the screen. The image isn't up there for long. In fact, it's only on the screen for what seems like an instant—just long enough for you to see it. These two scenarios are a bit mundane. But, as I will show, reflection on them can yield significant results concerning the nature of persons and their persistence through time. First I will show that thought and perception have temporal constraints whereby your thinking or perceiving in the above scenarios implies that you exist through a temporally.. (shrink)

In her “Saving the Appearances in Plato’s Cave,” Dr. Adriel M. Trott argues that “the philosopher’s claim to true knowledge always operates within the realm of the cave.” In order to probe her claim, I challenge her to make sense of “politics in the cave,” namely the status and practices of two categories of people in the cave: “woke” cave dwellers (namely, those who recognize shadows as shadows but have not left the cave) and “woke” puppeteers (namely, philosophers (...) ruling within the cave). (shrink)

Bajo el título «Utopías, distopías y otras nostalgias», la cuarta edición del Congreso de Pensamiento Interdisciplinar, organizado por alumnos del grado de Filosofía, Política y Economía de la Alianza 4 Universidades, abordó el controvertido fenómeno woke, una supuesta mezcla de izquierda identitaria y progresismo políticamente correcto al que se acusa de promover la censura y la llamada «cultura de la cancelación». Sobre esta cuestión conversaron la escritora y filósofa Elizabeth Duval, la investigadora Ayme Román y el director académico y (...) profesor del Instituto Superior de Sociología, Economía y Política (ISSEP), Miguel Ángel Quintana Paz, en un debate moderado por dos de los alumnos organizadores del congreso, Guzmán Díez e Isabel Rodríguez. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Semi-Personal Story from a Ukrainian NGO Professional (or a Semi-Professional Story from a Ukrainian Person) Living through the WarYuliya NogovitsynaI live in Kyiv with my husband and two daughters. On 24 February 2022, my husband woke me up at 5 am tapping me on the shoulder and saying, “Yulia, wake up. There are bombings outside. The war started”. [End Page 160]That day was our younger daughter’s birthday. (...) She turned six. We had planned a birthday party for her with friends, cake, candles and birthday gifts. Instead, we had to move both daughters to the bathroom where there are no windows so that broken glass did not hurt them if a missile hit.I am the Program Director at Tabletochki Charity Foundation, Ukraine’s largest childhood cancer NGO (https://tabletochki.org/en/). For 11 years before the war, we have been fostering childhood cancer care in Ukraine—through our direct assistance to families, support of pediatric oncology units, professional development of medical personnel, and advocacy.The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 dramatically changed the healthcare system landscape in Ukraine. The physical threat, treatment disruption, exposure of immunosuppressed patients to improper conditions in bomb shelters and cellars, interruption in supplies, infrastructure damage, logistics failure, and funding constraints have been among the most manifested immediate and deferred implications of the war for the health-care system in Ukraine.That said, the biggest professional challenge was uncertainty and inability to plan. You have nothing to rely on in developing at least a short-term strategy. This may sound speculative and unimportant—who bothers about uncertainty when there is a physical threat to your life? But this is a wrong perception—uncertainty paralyzes and disables long before a bullet or missile reaches you.War also brings the collapse of relationships, partnerships, and coalitions. It depletes and limits resources, whether human, financial, or emotional. Scarce resources make hospitals, healthcare professionals, and NGOs compete for patients, donors, and financing. The war and the external threat unite only for a short period of emergency response. Once the situation transitions to a protracted conflict, people and institutions start fighting for their own survival.My family stayed in Ukraine but moved to Lviv, a city in Western Ukraine, which turned into an evacuation hub for children with cancer. More than 1,000 children with cancer were evacuated and referred for treatment abroad through the SAFER Ukraine collaborative initiative by St. Jude Global, Tabletochki, West-Ukrainian Specialized Children’s Medical Center (WUSCMC), and other international and local partners.During the first months of the war, we worked hand-in-hand day and night to bring critically ill children to safety and treatment. We sent evacuation convoys from Lviv to Poland twice a week, the largest one with 71 families, included four buses and 11 ambulances. We slept 4-5 hours per day. Within two weeks, my hands and legs were trembling from constant tension, concentration, and tiredness.And even this extremely fast-responding and effective evacuation may be questioned. We have been facing an ethical dilemma—whether the safety needs of the existing patients prevail over the needs of future patients in diagnostics and treatment in Ukraine. We discussed more than once whether we should stop evacuation and referral of children to European hospitals to sustain the Ukrainian childhood cancer care system and prevent it from degradation. It is very uncomfortable to confront such questions. Could our heroic efforts to evacuate as many Ukrainian children with cancer as possible turn into an evil for future patients to come? By evacuating patients, we left pediatric oncology units empty, without work for Ukrainian pediatric oncologists, and the usual pathways for diagnostics and treatment were disrupted. A healthcare system without patients is like a cardiovascular system without blood.My family returned to Kyiv in August 2022 for our daughters to continue their schooling. There were (and still are) only five to seven kids in a class; other children left Ukraine or switched to online studies. My husband and I decided that our children will attend school offline—despite the regular missile attacks. This is a private school; we pay for it. In such a way... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Wuthering Heights: The Romantic AscentMartha NussbaumI“If I were in heaven, Nelly,” she said, “I should be extremely miserable.”“I dreamt, once, that I was there.... [H]eaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out, into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights, where I (...) woke sobbing for joy.” 1Cathy’s soul cannot live in the Christian heaven. For her soul, she explains, is the same as Heathcliff’s soul, and the heavenly soul of Linton is as different from theirs “as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire” (p. 95). Much later, as she lies on her deathbed, now the wife of Edgar Linton, thinking the Linton thought that what she wants is an escape into “that glorious world” of paradise and peace, Heathcliff watches her with burning eyes. At last she calls to him:In her eagerness she rose and supported herself on the arm of the chair. At that earnest appeal he turned to her, looking absolutely desperate. His eyes, wide and wet, at last flashed fiercely on her; his breast heaved convulsively. An instant they held asunder, and then how they met I hardly saw, but Catherine made a spring, and he caught her, and they were locked in an embrace from which I thought my mistress would never be released alive: in fact, to my eyes, she seemed directly insensible. He flung himself into the nearest seat, and on my approaching hurriedly to ascertain if she had fainted, he gnashed at me, and foamed like a mad dog, and gathered her to him with greedy jealousy. I did not feel as if I were in the company of a creature of my own species: it appeared that he would not understand, though I spoke to him; so I stood off, and held my tongue, in great perplexity.(pp. 188–89) [End Page 362]Brontë’s description alludes to the imagery of the Christian ascent tradition. As in Augustine and Dante, love is a flame that animates the eyes, a lightning bolt that pierces the fog of our obtuse daily condition; as in that tradition, love’s energy causes the lover to leap away from the petty egoism of the daily into an ecstatic and mutually loving embrace. But we know we are far from the world of the Christian ascent, even its erotic Augustinian form. Cathy’s spring is not an upward, but a horizontal movement—not toward heaven, but toward her beloved moors and winds, severed from which she would find heaven miserable; not toward God but toward Heathcliff, the lover of her soul. Nor is there redemption into heaven in this work; there is, if anything, a redemption from a world dominated by the imagination of heaven, into a world that the pious Ellen Dean can recognize only as an animal world, a world inhabited by creatures of a different species, who probably do not understand language, so thoroughly are they identified with the energy of the body. A few hours after Cathy’s death Heathcliff, as Ellen Dean tells us, in a sudden “paroxysm of ungovernable passion,” dashes his head against the knotted trunk of a tree, splashing the bark with blood, “and, lifting up his eyes, howled, not like a man, but like a savage beast being goaded to death with knives and spears” (p. 197). It is in his world alone, it would seem, that flame is truly found. As Cathy said to Edgar Linton, “Your cold blood cannot be worked into a fever: your veins are full of ice-water; but mine are boiling, and the sight of such chillness makes them dance.”Brontë’s novel situates itself within a long tradition of writing about love and its ascent or purification. This tradition, inaugurated by Socrates’ description of the ladder of love in Plato’s Symposium, is continued by later Platonists, and radically reformulated by Christian thinkers, who stress, against Plato, the soul’s receptivity and vulnerability to the inscrutable operations of grace. In both the Platonic and... (shrink)

Suppose you woke up one morning having utterly forgotten what year it was, or, indeed, what century and what millennium it was, but with all your cognitive faculties otherwise intact. In particular, you remember that human population increases monotonically with time, implying that, in later years, there are far more positions you could be occupying in the whole set of all persons who have ever lived or will live. Then, John Leslie tells us, you will apply your knowledge of (...) probability theory in a certain way and conclude that, whatever year you may be in, it is probable that it is uncomfortably close to the point at which the human species meets its quietus. You think, “My God, I’ve overslept and missed most of history.”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume and Tetens Manfred Kuehn Kant was neither the only nor even the first German philosopher who publicly responded to Hume. Indeed, there were many. But there were none who came as close to appreciatingHume as didJohann Nicolaus Tetens, who, in his two main works, the Über die allgemeine speculativische Philosophie or On General Speculative Philosophy (1775), and the Philosophische Versuche über die menschliche Natur und ihre Entwicklung or (...) Philosophical Essays on Human Nature and itsDevelopment (1?7), not only argued that Hume was a philosophical force to be reckoned with, but also seemed to think that philosophical progress wasimpossiblewithoutan extensionandfurtherdevelopment ofHumean views. This alone would make him an interesting figure in the history of the reception of Hume's philosophy, but, since Tetens is one ofthe most important representatives ofempiricism in eighteenthcentury Germany, and since he put forward ideas that demonstrably influenced Kant, he is perhaps still more interesting. In any case, it is most regrettable that he still is so little studied in Germany today, and that he is almost completely unknown in English-speaking countries. Though Lewis White Beck has offered an interesting discussion of Tetens' critique ofHume in his book on Early German Philosophy, and though some Anglo-American Kant scholars are somewhat aware of Tetens' influence upon Kant, his name is almost never mentioned by philosophical scholars concerned with Hume. If this paper were to remind them of Tetens and his possible importance for the discussion ofissues raised by Hume, I would be very happy. Nevertheless, I must admit to an ulterior motive, for I am not interested in the relationship ofTetens and Hume per se, but rather in how Tetens' discussion ofHume might have influenced Kant's conception of "Hume's problem." My question is: "What could Kant have learned from Tetens about Hume in 1777, that is, about four years before the publication of his Critique ofPure Reason?" To this end, I shall first briefly review the evidence for Kant's study of Tetens; secondly say something about Tetens' discussion of the self; thirdly sketch his theory ofthe causal principle as a special case ofhis laws of association; fourthly represent an important part of his theory of objectiveornecessarytruth; andfinallytryto showhowall ofthismight be significant for our understanding of the development of Kant's position vis a vis Hume. Volume XV Number 2 365 MANFRED KUEHN IL Johann Georg Hamann, always interestedinliterarygossip and always ready to spread it, wrote to Johann Gottfried Herder on May 12, 1779 that Kant was writing on his Critique, and that he had "always open on his desk" Tetens' work. Two years earlier, on October 12, 1777, he had already told him that Kant was "said to be very full of... Tetens." Hamann, mischievous as he could be, not only wanted to bring Kant's former student up to date on the work of his teacher, but clearly also made a comment on Kant's originality. But there are other indications that Kant carefully studied Tetens between 1777 and 1781. Thus, Kant's correspondence with Herz in 1778 contains references to Tetens as having said things of importance, and his reflections of the period also mention him. One ofthe most telling indications ofhis rather close reading ofTetens is to be found in one ofhis letters to the publisher of his first Critique: On October 15, 1780 he writes to him that he would prefer not to have the book set in the type of Tetens' Essays because the latter is "really tiring" to his eyes. That Tetens' work did not only tire his eyes, but also stimulated his thoughts can be seen from one of his preparatory manuscripts to his Prolegomena of 1783, for there Kant suggested that Tetens could have given people occasion to think about the very problem of the Critique. Though he considered Tetens' attempt concerning the possibility of a priori knowledge as failed, he also viewed it as one of the most important attempts in that direction.??. It is well known that Kant himselfclaimed that "Hume's problem" was what first woke him from his dogmatic slumber. Though there is no similar pronouncement by Tetens, it is clear that he not only knew Hume well, but... (shrink)

Michel Foucault’s philosophy has recently come under sharp criticism across the political spectrum. While right-wing and centrist commentators identify Foucault as the intellectual progenitor of “woke” dogmatism and an irrationalist hostility to science, left-wing critics associate his work with neoliberalism and animosity towards the welfare state. Neither critique is grounded in an accurate understanding of the epistemological motivation of Foucault’s project.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Liberating BreathElizabeth DotsenkoFunding. Elizabeth Dotsenko, MD, is supported by the Loyola University Chicago–Ukrainian Catholic University Bioethics Fellowship Program, funded by the National Institutes of Health Fogarty International Center (D43TW011506).The war in Ukraine started not in 2022, but in 2014. Some of my relatives have been living under occupation for the past nine years. After a year of occupation, parts of Ukrainian society stopped paying attention.But on February 24th (...) 2022, that changed. The whole country was awakened by missile attacks in almost every region. Kyiv, the capital, was heavily shelled by air strikes, and from the North, South, and Eastern borders, Russian troops entered our territory with long convoys of military vehicles. In one moment, we all woke up in a country at war.I have experience working in conflict zones. In 2017, I worked in Iraq in Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps for one year. On the 25th of February, 2022, my colleagues and founders of STEP-IN, the NGO with whom I used to work in Iraq, initiated a Zoom call. We decided immediately to start work in Ukraine—without any funding. Although my only previous work experience was being a doctor, I ended up taking on managerial responsibilities and established a Ukrainian branch of STEP-IN. I was also mother of a 1.5-year-old girl in a country of war. To say it was challenging is an understatement.In the first week of the full-scale invasion, STEP-IN opened a crisis intervention point on the Ukrainian-Slovak border crossing, where people could get psychological help and warm meals. We provided shelter and a place to sleep for those waiting in overcrowded border points.As soon as we received our first grant, we started a mobile medical team in the Western part of Ukraine, where thousands of IDPs were relocated. They were living in schools, huge sports halls without any privacy, kindergartens, churches, and at the end, any building that could provide shelter from winter weather.My colleague and I assessed the region and settled on ten permanent, consistent locations for biweekly visits. Aside from my role as coordinator, I also worked as a doctor for the first few weeks because we struggled to recruit any Ukrainian doctors. However, within a month, we had a full team with a psychotherapist and medical doctor. The team traveled through the Trascarpathian region in Western Ukraine and provided free consultations with physicians and psychotherapists as well as medicines, hygiene kits, and social services.After the de-occupation of northern Ukraine, the tension and hopelessness seem to have decreased. People started smiling on the streets. I feel like I can finally breathe and live. At the beginning of the war, my husband and I, with our young daughter, fled from Kyiv and were not sure we would ever be able to return. After the de-occupation, life started to feel more stable. During one of STEP-IN’s assessment trips, my husband and I visited our home. In such a situation, very small things unexpectedly become [End Page E1] very valuable to me. I was so happy to see pictures on the wall, a ceramic bowl I brought from Iraq and our child’s favorite toys.The project in the Transcarpathian region had been ongoing for a few months, and in October 2022, I went to work there for a week as a physician to cover for someone else. We were searching for a new candidate and didn’t want our beneficiaries to remain without medical help, especially in the peak flu season.There is a day that I remember vividly in all its details. I remember the smell in the room and how the light from the window lay on my patient’s face. It was Tuesday, and each Tuesday, we went to the Protestant church guesthouse, where around sixty IDPs were hosted. The church was one of my favorite places to work because the administration was very supportive and caring toward IDPs. Unfortunately, that was not the case everywhere. From the moment I arrived at a location, it was apparent how the IDPs were treated. Their eyes were the best... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Life in LimboM. ChiuWhen my son was 7 years old, he began complaining of headaches. They were frequent, but never seemed severe. “I have a headache!” was always followed by “Can I watch TV?” I didn’t believe the pain was real until it woke him up in the middle of the night. I knew then that something must be wrong. I approached our pediatrician, who said it sounded (...) like migraines, but we should order an MRI to rule anything out. The appointment was scheduled several months in advance, and I always had the urge to cancel it. I was pretty sure my son just wanted to watch TV. The pediatrician told me I might as well do the MRI. He told me that if we skipped it and something was wrong, I would never be able to live with the regret. We kept the Monday morning appointment, and went to the MRI expecting reassurance that nothing was wrong. Instead, we got a phone call later that day. They needed to see us on immediately, but wouldn’t tell me why. Of course, I knew something was wrong. “Is it a tumor?” I asked. “This isn’t something we can discuss on the phone” was the answer I got. An appointment was scheduled for Wednesday. Two days might be “immediately” to medical professionals, but to a parent who just heard that her child had an abnormal MRI, it was an eternity. I planned my son’s funeral in those two days.Our meeting with the Neurologist began with reviewing the MRI. “See this spot here? It shouldn’t be there”. A tumor. 1 ½ × 1 ½ × 2 ½ cm tumor, in the right thalamus. Small, they said. Looks like a Low Grade Glioma they said. The kind of tumor you want to have, if you have to have a brain tumor. A biopsy was scheduled for two weeks later. The [End Page E2] biopsy confirmed it was a Juvenile Pilocytic Astrocytoma (JPA). The neurosurgeon was confident she could remove all of the tumor. We were at one of the best Children’s Hospitals in the world. We were in good hands.A few days before the surgery, a friend who is a medical doctor suggested we get a second opinion. “It couldn’t hurt, it could help”, my husband said. Fortunately, he just sold a start–up company, and was planning to take a few months off from work before starting his next venture. He had time to research, talk to friends in the medical field and make phone calls.Our second opinion from another leading hospital reviewed the MRI’s with us. The neurosurgeon asked, “Did they say tumor? One?” Yes, they did. “See this here?” he said, pointing to a second spot on the MRI. He said it was possibly a second tumor, or more likely, an extension of the first. It was in inoperable location. Surgery wasn’t an option. Chemo would be our best choice. Why would we cut into our son’s brain to remove part of the tumor when he would need to do chemo anyway? Why not try chemo first?I would like to say that we do not fault our original neuro–oncology team for missing this second abnormality. It is hard to notice an ant in the room when there is an elephant staring at you. People make mistakes, and tumors don’t always look the same. That’s what second opinions are for. That is why doctors should encourage patients to get second opinions.We scheduled the surgery for port implantation, and got busy educating ourselves about chemo regimes. It was going to be a long journey. 18 months of transfusions with a pretty low success rate and a high rate of secondary complications. Unsure if we were doing the right thing, we got a third opinion. I am so grateful that my husband was between jobs and had time to devote to finding the best possible treatment for our son. We were financially stable and had great insurance. What do people do when they don’t have this luxury?By now, several months had passed since our first MRI. Our... (shrink)

That each of us is unique is probably why I find drawing and painting the human form a constant challenge. Searching for that spirit within is what it's all about for me—whether best expressed through the tilt of the head, The curve of a wrist or through an expression in the eyes. For many years I have kept a sketch pad and pen, or charcoal, In a separate purse, just in case something or someone of interest might appeal to me, (...) To draw as I pass the time, In doctors' offices, airports and bus stations, places where I seem to be spending more of my time, waiting for my number to be called. It occurred to me these were ideal opportunities to people watch—opportunities for a moment in time to be captured, To be revealed—before he, she or they became conscious of being watched. If I feel that anyone is puzzled by my staring, or made uncomfortable by my intrusion, I wave a hand, turn the sketch toward them, and share what I am doing. Once, at the airport, I saw a toddler who had fallen sound asleep in his chair. I asked the father if I could sketch his son. He acquiesced, with one caveat: "Don't wake him up." After 15 minutes, simultaneously, I finished, The child woke up, And The announcement came over the PA system. Time to get in line. Trying to convey what seems to be special about a person—it takes awhile to see what I want to record. But in these sketches I look for what speaks to me, when I am not making an effort to get a likeness, and am led by JOY. It's so satisfying for me, and takes me into another kind of world. - Mary Cobb. (shrink)

Annawe live where people used to keep cowsin a stifling polyethylene sunwe make holes for love therewhen the water is high we walk on itfrom the bed to the chair then the windowsillthere we hang like rags on the edge of lightonce we woke in history melancholycan't fall back asleep circumambulatelike a child's sobs in a dead bellywar: the worst day of my lifeTatyanacurfew cage bars are made of waxwhen we set ourselves on fire, the light goes on in (...) the houselike a sunflower on the pan of a deep fieldit's as if we were still alive but then night deliversthe viper of the widow's ribbon under every doorlet them get up and go, it's not about the eyes of othersour faces are under the washed-out water of tearsbut they don't go we don't goit is where thyme once was picked up and memory grewgathering songs in tufts of hair, the sacks of Augustwere pregnant with hope for a new summerwhere we still speak for ourselveslet them get up and go, our time is running outleaving sand on things so they get water back laterwe outlive ourselves, we hold the earth by the throatlike the bird of an old love on the lining of a fashionable dressTamarathey just came and shut the passage of flowering timeinto a nailed-up victory box, as if we were snow dyingin the arms of cut-down apple trees in a cesspool of guiltnow my man and I go to get our pensions like cons off to rollcallbut even there they say: special people live in Donetsk:here you would say: and their special gods:occupation: its shimmering rhythm keeps trouble at baysilence: its dirty threads stitch up everyone's mouthswith porous fingers of laughter, from ear to eara train forgets itself and digs into the groundit's making to remember passenger lovesdoesn't know why it's here and what to do with so many namesFainathe rotten cabbage of despair knocks at the doorof invisible night with its severed head, the world still like waterscorched by screams a bird's throat makes threatswhile we go down into memory deeper and deeperwhile we root out the weeds of languagelike eglantine wind from a wound in the landscapepast the gates of death, empty nests of rootsstone light over the great junkheap of loveinfantile fears in the frozen cradle of breathwe leave lists of traces like snow in the marginsstained with blood of freedom from textualitythey will someday return home with our traces, the treesbeasts squint there from the swings of fire and guiltthey laugh over the ravine of this shameful feastthey don't feel the ground shifting beneath themin a long echo's noose tolls the hollow heartFor Oleh Kotsarevwe shall inter civilization in the woodsso that the waking sunhears the green record of sunrisenaked enter the running dance circlebreak into the childish laughter of natureearth shall not know earth in the mirror of our movementsearth shall not know us everso water leaving the memories of fireplace beaststurns to snow in the see-through cupped hands of cloudsso trees pushing roots into rainturn to sky in the arms of birdswe are not afraid, we shall say,to be or not to be in the umbilical cord of timewe shall tie together white kerchiefs of tears in the house of love. (shrink)

Airedale NHS Trust v Bland establishes three principles among which is the controversial idea that people in a PVS, though not dying, have no best interests and no meaningful life. Accordingly, it is argued, they may have their food and fluids, whether delivered by tube or manually, removed, with the result that they die. Laing challenges this view arguing that not only is this bad medical science, it is unjustly discriminatory and at odds with our duties to the severely disabled. (...) Laing highlights research by Keith Andrews et al and points out that Andrew Devine, in the same Hillsborough disaster, woke up some years after Tony Bland was decided.(Post script) Laing argues elsewhere that after the Mental Capacity Act 2005 the case has become a dangerous springboard for new third parties' to require the removal of food and fluids from the vulnerable incapacitated. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:610 Feminist Studies 43, no. 3. © 2017 by Raina J. León Pandora’s Box Opens and Terence Crutcher Dies Raina J. León Fresh from the bath, my husband comes nude, beard trimmed, still glistening and pinked. He shares the fullness of his skin, freckles and moles in their constellations. What little fat on his lank jiggles, begs for pinch as he turns to the closet to dig. I am (...) encapsulated by covers. No sleep for hours since I woke to watch the video I couldn’t with him awake. How I watched it, over and over, and knew this might be how I die: a broken-down car, my hands up, helicopters above with a man saying, a real bad dude, must be, and then shot, because Terence is me, like Sandy and Aisha... because just that day, earlier, I was transformed into child, questioned on the body of my work, made invisible and hypervisible, bleeding shadow for another’s feet. One leads to another in a mass of entangled links. Now, he moves. He does not feel the cold I dread out there where reality gnashes. Raina J. León 611 Inside the cocoon, the smell of last night’s tremble sweat, I can imagine entrance into another dreaming, breathe in and out our twining. He slips on boxers, then soft cotton shirt, then jeans. All black, his style. In my mourning, I call him close, and he comes to bed. With his body, he creates another womb as suddenly the weeping starts, says, when you are ready, tell me, because he doesn’t know how the world turns, yet in that moment, there is a hope.... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 30.3 (2000) 53-71 [Access article in PDF] Ghostly Politics Jann Matlock [Figures]The failure of the Second Republic, as we know well, thanks to Marx, was a matter of ghostly politics.1 Successful revolutions succeeded—claimed Marx—in "waking the dead" in order to glorify the new struggles. Unsuccessful revolutions parodied, as in 1848, the old ones. The Second Republic failed to find again "the spirit of revolution" ("den Geist der Revolution"); (...) instead, it made its "ghost walk about again" ["Der 18te Brumaire" 116].2The "conjurations of the dead" ("Totenbeschwörungen") [115] of the failed Second Republic—and of the Second Empire, which crowned its disastrous experiment—were nowhere more apparent than in the obsession that swept France in 1853 within months after Louis-Napoléon declared himself Emperor in the spectral shadow of his great-uncle, as contemporary Louis Figuier described:Suddenly—it was near the last days of April 1853—Paris woke up prey to the [Table-]turning epidemic, and the newspapers, which finally had to break the silence, informed us that [the epidemic] had simultaneously burst forth in Strasbourg, in Marseille, in Bordeaux, in Toulouse, and in all our other great population centers. For the public, it was, at first, only a simple amusement to which people everywhere surrendered themselves amidst great bursts of laughter. Pedestal tables [guéridons], [other kinds of] tables, hats, plates and washbasins—everything that was within reach—were called into service. Some people succeeded. Others—and these were the greater number—failed at the experiment; they accused the successful of deception [supercherie], and the successful, in their turn, accused the unsuccessful of failing to believe. "They turn; they donít turn": that summed up all the debates on this subject, and these were the only two terms through which, among the vulgar, the question of the tables was thrashed about. In our country, always quite frivolous about serious matters, though sometimes extreme in its credulousness and sometimes absurd in its skepticism, the tables were for the larger share of people only an amusement, only a way to kill time in society. Quarrels were frequent [End Page 53] on this subject. People denied. People confirmed. People laughed—when they were not losing their tempers.Nevertheless, the phenomenon soon appeared to make progress, and this was quite another story. Not only did the tables turn, but they spoke and wrote; they rose up and held themselves in the air without any strings—or at least without any visible ones. The tables gave consultations, discovered secrets buried in the most profound mystery, put the world of the living in communication with the world of the dead, and finally, behaved in such a way to let people believe they were haunted by spirits [hantées par des esprits]. [294-95] The Baron Du Potet, editor of the Journal du magnétisme, remarked in the summer of 1853 that "The tables are making one hell of a noise! —Enter into the porter's lodge, you'll see him make his table turn; go to the home of a judge, of a lawyer, of an archbishop even, and their tables are turning—after dinner, of course. It seems that they are even interrogating tables in palaces" [643]. Alexandre Erdan, author of an 1855 book on "the religious excentricities" of contemporary France, denounced the table turning as "a universal monomania" and declared it the "the characteristic event" of the year 1853, "that memorable period of universal mental estrangement" [71]. Daumier honored the trend in May and June 1853 with a series of a dozen caricatures called La Fluidomanie.3 Caricaturist Cham continued to ridicule its believers well into the year 1853 [Fig. 1].4 Louis Huart, author of a series of satirical articles in the opposition newspaper Le Charivari recounted a debate between two scholars on the subject: "Sir, are you for tables turning or for tables not turning," asked the first. The second replied, "It's all the same to me so long as the table is well served and it doesn't turn while I'm eating." Huart's conclusion, not dissimilar to that of most... (shrink)

Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, Volume 21, Issue 3, Page 223-239, July 2022. Contributing to the debate on decolonising the curriculum, this reflective article questions: What does a safe space in a decolonised classroom mean? For whom is it safe? And at what cost? Must we redraw the parameters of ‘safe’? Prompted by a real-life ‘n-word incident’ in the classroom, this article unpacks the collision of decolonising the curriculum to continue making teaching and learning more pluriversal and inclusive, with (...) the enactment of the ‘wounded attachments’ of identitarian politics and the playing of ‘Privilege or Oppression Olympics’. Using snippets from British parody and satire on decolonising the university, we query how far wokeness in a university setting can become political correctness taken to extremes that threaten decolonising efforts. In its concluding reflections, the article makes tentative recommendations for setting up safe spaces, away from self-silencing or censoring, and backing away from contention and provocation in the classroom. (shrink)

Bringing Flowers HomeWe try to put a bandage on the wound,offering a vague apology:Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home.Towers turn out to have been built on sand.Regimes collapse. No use in asking whywe ripped the bandage off that bleeding wound.An earthquake followed by a hurricane,fires, floods: they've passed some of us by.Us. And who is we? And what is home?Last week an enormous yellow moonhung low in a corner of the sky.Beauty is no bandage for the wound,hole in (...) the future much too big to mendor even to imagine, though we tryto camouflage it, bringing flowers home.You said, when we were talking of the end,that no one teaches us to say goodbye,or how to ease the bandage from the wound.Forgive me, death. I brought these flowers home.Moving the PianoCompact, gleaming, black and white,this sturdy Yamaha uprightstood staunchly in one room for yearsuntil, maneuvered through several doorstoday by two young slender menand up a ramp into their van,it ventured briefly out into the world again.The change of space, the space of change:the walls look naked, empty, strange.Heavy has given way to light.Habitual soliditytoo familiar to seeyields to possibilitytoo unfamiliar to see.Late and early, early, late,end, beginning—all are swirledinto a mist that veils the world.The black and white of status quoblends to a color I don't know,transition that I cannot name,but I salute it all the same.Goodbye, piano, and hello.So where is the piano going?Where will it find another life,music and memories unpackedin an unfolding second act?North Carolina, near a riverwhose stream, like time, is always flowing.My son lives there with his wife.Beloved, nothing is forever.You can't step twice into this life.Nap at Stony PointMy cousin and my friendon their respective recent deathbedsslid from my mind. I noticedthe scarlet splash of a cardinal perched on a cannonon a bluff above the Hudson.I lay down on a picnic table,sun on my face, five turkey vulturescircling overhead, and closed my eyes.And when I opened them I felt as pleasedas if I had completed some needful taskinstead of having forgottenhow my friend in January and my cousin in March,both of them alert and wry and tranquil,had faced what each of them clearly saw approaching—more, had recognized and greeted it,instead of ignoring it by looking through it,the way some people, even iftheir office is two doors down the hall,look right through you, pretending not to see you.Or maybe they don't see youany more than one envisions deathon a sunny April afternoon.The Last Lecture HallTheaters that were never ours,classrooms empty and refill.Nor do the trees belong to us.We cross the stage and disappearor venture in among the treesand lose ourselves there.Feverish categories blur.Genre distinctions: what for?The empty theater becomesa lecture hall. A classroom morphsinto a forest murmuringwith voices. Words pelt down like rainor rise like mist and dissipate.The rustling trees swell to a roar.But they were never still.Theater, classroom, maple, fir:feverish categories blur,presences pressing through the veilof the phenomenal;a leopard padding down the aisle.Tiger-masked students fill the seatsof the amphitheater.The old professor, looking outover the upturned faces, said“You are all allegoricalfigures to me. I will not learnyour names.” Did the students laugh?Tragedy, satire, comedy:genres are deciduous.Modes blur, leaves spin and fall.The leaves of memory seemed to makeA mournful rustling in the dark(Longfellow, “The Fire of Driftwood”).Lights go on in the theater.Class is over. We stumble out.The GatesWhen I woke up I had walked through a gate.I looked around the room—trickle or torrent, stepping into time—and bent my head to drink at a black stream.I look around a roomthick with the dust of after and before.Am I meant to drink from this black stream?My lips are dry,thick with the crust of after and before,gate of ivory and gate of horn.My lips are dry, I'm thirsty.Heat, cold, fire, snow, sun.Gate of ivory and gate of horn:to cross a threshold ends one story(firelight; snow squeaking; winter sun)and begins another.To cross a threshold ends one story(ever after? or a transformation?)and begins anotherthere is no law compelling us to enter.Ever after or a transformation.Torrent, trickle: we set foot in time,but there's no law compelling us to enterstory once we've latched the gate of dream.FilamentsYour past is thickening. You can seeits filaments, as carefullyyou begin to part the strands(they're all connected) with both hands,and clear a path. Now warilyenter the web—not all the way,but toward some kind of clarity.We have been rightly taught that wecan't finish, but must do, the work.Partway through the leafy murk,crisscrossing dapple of the trees,so tough and so precarious,you find yourself in the dawn air,the circle's center everywhere.Along the PromenadeReading a book about transitioningin the twenty-first-century meaning of the wordblends with plans for my son's upcoming weddingand scraps of conversation overheardat the Japanese-themed street fair today.Somnambulists along the promenadefloat in the warm currents of Broadway,eat talk look linger in the sun and shade.Then to the park: October leaves still green(climate change or merely Indian summer?).Snatched memories, I catch them on the wing:Samos Septembers, pomegranate tree,lemon tree, okra, a chameleon,the little summer of Saint Dimitri,they called it. All this happened; but to me?Streams of conversation flowing by.The sound artist described his work like this(if work is the right word): “Accidentallyuploading seemingly private messages,”which describes, also, dreams and poetry,the drifting crowd, incessant carousel,city and weather, time and holiday,all lived, palped, tasted, tested, overheard.Somnambulists along the promenadehave set up booths, their dreams... Bookending my dawn dream: symmetricalsoaking sponges dripping... DNA?Destiny, temperament, personality:the cards we're dealt and that we have to play,except we now can change them gradually.Transition: he or she or rather they,constructed, deconstructed, rearranged,the tarot spread of genealogy,inheritance as aleatoric play.We walked west to Eleventh Avenue,drawn by rumors of Ad Reinhardt's blue,which buzzed and throbbed. Stand still: my head was spinning.Allusions to water or to sky,dense, deep, alarming, ending or beginning... I sat awhile and watched the crowd glide by,enchanted promenaders all drawn inon the exhibition's last dayby the silence's cerulean humming.And then they climbed the stairs, and so did we,to lighter textures on an upper floorwhere Ruth Asawa's baskets in midairweightlessly demonstrated gravity,twigs, trees, crowns, bubbles dancing in white space.Next week my class will read “On Being Ill.”“Blogs,” I'll tell them, is the word we nowuse, not “essay,” for the moving mind,that saunterer who takes note and leaves behindand doubles back and ponders and regretsamidst the wash of vision, the flowand tidal pull of what we see and know,what we've dreamed, what we have said and heard,the thrumming colors and the floating crowd,as if the bubbly brew of sunny dayand anxious dreams could somehow all be caughtup in one enormous, one all-encompassing word. (shrink)

June 2022 A Revolutionary New Metaphysics, Based on Consciousness, and a Call to All Philosophers We are in a unique moment of our history unlike any previous moment ever. Virtually all human economies are based on the destruction of the Earth, and we are now at a place in our history where we can foresee if we continue on as we are, our own extinction. As I write, the planet is in deep trouble, heat, fires, great storms, and record flooding, (...) weather patterns drastic everywhere. Capitalism has been so successful in supplying us with an endless array of consumer items, that we have never noticed there is a cost. But there is a cost, the cost is the very life of the Earth herself, and now the day of reckoning is here. Days of reckoning are most often days of rath. But I am hoping that this is a day of major Awakening over the entire planet. We have caused a crisis so great for the Earth we can hardly get our minds around it. But I am proposing that deeply embedded in the crisis are ideas, about who and what the Earth is, Ourselves, and what we are here for. I am proposing that this is a call to all philosophy and philosophers to rethink ourselves from the ground up. The human race has never gotten the Earth right and now we must, for the Earth is the true foundation for civilization. We are in deep trouble with the Earth, and it owes to the fact that the great male thinkers never got the Earth right, they could never make the connection between the life of mind and the life of the Earth. I am proposing that deeply embedded in the crisis we are in are ideas. And that in fact the planet is in the grip of a false metaphysics, and scientific image of nature that really comes most recently from Descartes. His conviction that matter, and with it the Earth, are simply the weighable, the measurable the extended in space and time, utterly devoid of any inner life of mind thoughts or Consciousness. This view of matter and the Earth goes back to the very dawn of thought, Descartes is just its most recent and comprehensive version of things. This view of matter is really a false metaphysics that dominates most of the modern world and underpins the whole scientific image of nature itself. I am proposing this is a false metaphysics and offering a new version of things based on Consciousness. If there is a single idea fueling and driving the destruction of the planet, it is the conviction that the Earth is something without Consciousness. When you intend to ravage and savage the planet, turn it into consumer items to be converted into money in the bank, first pretend that all of the bright beings in the natural world are devoid of Consciousness, just “things” you do not have to have any conscious about destroying them. I am proposing that this term Consciousness, that has appeared as term and a problem for modern science, is the key to getting ourselves right with the Earth. I propose this new theory for science will ramify into every other disciplines as well, and the ways we think just about everything. This old paradigm based on a false theory of matter, has run its course, it has brought us to the brink of our own extinction. We need new ideas, and we need them now. You will find my recent work in the Scientific God Journal under the title: Consciousness as the Organizing Principle, and a very complete version of my arguments for this term Consciousness, along with radical reinterpretation of modern science itself, on the Galileo Commission site. It is a radical moment for all of the thinkers among us, take this as my small contribution to rethinking ourselves in new terms, based on my understanding that the true basis for the whole of Being, the Universe, the Cosmos, and with them Ourselves, is this term Consciousness. And unpack it. And I predict that with this term Consciousness every intractable human problem in both science and the modern world will go down like a line of dominos before it. And so, here are a few new ideas I would offer you. These are the times of the Reappearance of the Feminine, a great Awakening as of Springtime after a long dark and lonely Winter. We are leaving behind us an old civilization based on male dominance, fear lies and control, now in decay, disease, and death disintegrating all around us. We are moving into a whole new civilization based on Love and Truth. A new civilization requires new basic terms values and first principles. And so, I return to Descartes. 1. Just over 300 years ago a young man travelling with the army found himself stranded in a foreign town in a bare room lit by a candle with nothing to do but think. And in a couple of nights Descartes laid the entire thought foundations for modern science and most of the modern world. It isn’t clear that modern philosophers with their funding sources of grants, their graduate students, their reputation and all the perks and privileges of academia can do any better. Descartes claimed there are just two principles in the Universe, Matter and Mind. God was pure mind; human beings were mind and matter. And we are the only ones on the planet with mind. Everything else all of the bright array of beings who share the planet with us are simply matter. And matter? The weighable the measurable the extended in space and time utterly devoid of any inner life of thoughts, feelings, or Consciousness This classification was a boon for developing science. Scientists did not have to worry about any inner life in nature, ideas or Consciousness, they could just set about weighing and measuring, as they have until the present day. But it was a disaster for the Earth. Earth was once worshiped as a Goddess. With Descartes she became almost overnight “things.” Simply commodities and resources, an endless of supply of consumer items, to be turned into money in the bank. And now Descartes concept of matter is up for us. If there is a single idea that is enabling and driving the destruction of the Earth, it is the conviction that Earth is something without Consciousness. This whole scientific image of nature as something devoid of Consciousness is driving the destruction of the Earth, and driving us all insane, and it needs to change. Ever since Descartes formulated Dualism, scientists and philosophers have been trying to get rid of it. They have done this by attempting to make matter the fundamental term of reality, and to explain mind or Consciousness in terms of matter. And now, Consciousness has emerged as term and a problem for modern science. 2. The prevailing Universe picture has been mainly based on the belief that Consciousness appears only at the end of evolution in ourselves and some of the higher animals when matter attains “a certain state of complexity” and it is produced by neurons in the brain. But Consciousness is nothing real in itself, the neurons are doing the work, Consciousness is simply a byproduct of neural activity. As William James summed up this position, not his: Consciousness is to the brain as a shadow to the runner, it runs beside him but never influences his stride. And so, the great problem of neuroscience: How do neurons produce Consciousness? So far, no one has been able to say how. All we have is parallelism. Two processes are running in parallel a train of neural events and a train of Consciousness events. And so, which one is primary? The face of neuroscience and much of the modern world is that the neural events are what is really real, Consciousness is secondary. The conviction that Consciousness is something produced by neurons is so deeply held and has been so for so long, that it seems like an obvious fact. It is in fact an assumption and a theory, and it could all well be the other way around. The scientific image of nature as something devoid of Consciousness is now up for us. It has enabled the destruction of the Earth, and we are now at a unique place in our own evolution where we can foresee if we continue on as we are, our own extinction. And so, there are the best reasons for rethinking Descartes concepts of matter. Scientists and philosophers have been trying to escape dualism by making matter the fundamental term. And now, this has not worked. In a nutshell: The mind body problem, the “hard problem of Consciousness” ---how do neurons in the brain, atoms and molecules give rise to ideas thoughts and feelings and who what and where is the “I” who sees them? And then, the near-death experience. I remind you of the truth of the near-death experience. The body in the bed is brain dead eeg flat, but the patient, pure Consciousness is hovering at the ceiling watching the doctors work over the body below, able to read dials he could not have seen from the bed, sometimes able to events in the corridor beyond the room, all subsequently confirmed by the doctors. Evidence as good as it gets that the patient really was out of his body. And so, the patient is able to see without eyes, hear without ears and to think and remember without a brain. There is not a single scientific principle that can account for this. And I am proposing that the near-death experience is a threshold and a key for a much deeper understanding of the Universe. These three problems are so hard they cannot be solved by present scientific principles and therefore call all present principles and ways of thought into question. When your axioms cannot account for the data, it is time to drop them and find better fundamental terms. We have not been able to solve the problems of Consciousness with the assumption that matter is the most basic and fundamental term. And so, if Cartesian dualism is to be overcome at all, we need to try it the other way around. 3. We are in the position of Copernicus. Remember Copernicus? He was making his calculations on the assumption that the Earth was the center of the Universe until they became so unwieldy that he decided to try it all the other way around. To make the sun the center, the Earth revolving around it. And lo, all of his data fell neatly into place. I am proposing a whole new Universe picture. Evolution makes us continuous with every other being, Consciousness would not be in us if it were not in them also, and then, in the atoms and molecules and cells that make up living beings. I propose to make Consciousness the most basic term and see what follows. I am in fact, proposing a new Copernican Revolution, that Consciousness is the true basis for the Universe and the right fundamental term, for science itself all other disciplines as well, and the whole of the modern world. And I predict that every intractable problem in science or the modern world, will go down like a line of dominos before it. In a nutshell: Consciousness and not matter is “first and fundamental” in the Universe, it is there from the very “Beginning” everything has it and all of the true causalities, the explanatory principles belong to it. Not to matter. What then is matter? All matter is an Appearance of something much more real, Consciousness. All matter is an expression of Consciousness, even the least little bit of matter contains Consciousness, and is an expression of Consciousness. And so, we revise the scientific image of nature. Science at present is two termed, matter/energy. It needs to become three termed: Matter/energy/Consciousness, with the recognition that all of the basic principles, the true causalities of events, and of the Universe belong to Consciousness. And now physics. To accommodate this new Universe picture physics needs to alter just one term, energy. All energy contains Consciousness, that idea alone will change our world forever. The animals the trees the plants are just as conscious as we are, as is the Earth herself, a continuum of many forms of Consciousness of which our own is one. The Earth consists of interacting and intersecting forms of Consciousness, Consciousness within Consciousness within Consciousness within Consciousness. A remarkable work has just appeared entitled “Beyond Words What Animals Feel and Think.” Describing in detail how like ourselves all of the animals are. And the more we can see how like us everything else really is, the harder it will be for us to do them all in, in the interest of turning them into consumer items. And so, here is a new principle of understanding, that entails completely new forms of explanation, and a whole new Universe picture to be spelled out in terms of Consciousness and its various properties. This is a Universe that is aware awake and Enspirited throughout. And so, there is only one principle, not two. And so, how does Consciousness work? There is “no mind/body problem.” My Consciousness is aligning the Consciousness of neurons in the brain, that aligns the Consciousness of all other cells in the body, that aligns the Consciousness of molecules and atoms themselves. Mainly from the top down, but also interactive, and not reduction to the purely physical forces. 4. And so, here is a radical new Universe picture, and with it a new way to think about the Universe itself, the Earth, Ourselves, and Spirit. It requires a complete revision of both of the terms of modern science itself. The problem of the modern world owes in deep measure to Descartes concept of matter as something devoid of interior life. But he is only the most powerful and simple expression of a whole tradition of thought that predates him, that goes back to the very dawn of thought itself. It owes to the conviction of both Plato and Aristotle that the Earth was something devoid of reason, or mind, and therefore something to be held in complete contempt. We are emerging from a civilization based on contempt for the Earth, and down the road, it will become contempt for the body, sex, women, the Native people, and people of color everywhere. And so, this entire tradition is now up for us, it has brought us to the brink of our own extinction, and we need to get beyond it. I am proposing that this term Consciousness is the way out. The missing piece of the puzzle and the idea whose time has come. And it will enable us to move into a completely new civilization based on respect for the Earth, women, sex, people of color, that honors everyone and has a place for all. Revolutions in science occur when new data show up that cannot be accounted for by existing paradigms (Thomas Kuhns: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). Consciousness, and all the properties and problems of Consciousness are just such data, and they compel a new scientific revolution. But we are a scientific age. A new Copernican revolution in science is such as revolution everywhere. And Consciousness is the key to getting every other reality at all levels and depths right as well. It will enable us finally to get the Earth right, get ourselves right with the Earth, and with one another. Archimedes: Give me a place to stand, and I will move the world. I am proposing a new synthesis among our fundamental terms in which this term Consciousness is the new lynchpin. And so, I return once more to Descartes. Descartes in the Mediations was a dualist, they were two realities interacting in the pineal gland mind and body. But Descartes age was high on “Cartesianisms,” on Descartes concept of matter. Animals were simply cleverly wired machines (Hobbes called them automata). Rumor had it that Descartes followers went about kicking dogs reasoning that their howls were not due to any feelings of pain, but simply the wiring of the machine. We have been doing this to the Earth ever since, and now the Earth is not going to stand for it any longer. It is time we all woke up. There is no matter in Descartes sense of it, or in Plato and Aristotle’s sense of it. This old concept of matter is embedded in all of the crisis and catastrophes---fires, drought, pandemics, over population, the disintegrating economies, our ways of life, capitalism and consumerism themselves. All matter is Enspirited, contains Consciousness, and is an expression of Consciousness. Now I tell you something about Descartes you may not know. In the Mediations was a dualist, there are minds and bodies. But by the end of his life, he knew the truth. Descartes guided his whole life by these vivid dreams, and toward the end of his life he had this dream: He saw the Universe as a giant machine and in the heart of the machine propelling the whole, was Consciousness. And so, out of the shades and shadows and into the light of day. Here is a renewed and a new science, a new cosmology. And with it, a revolutionary new metaphysics. The whole of the modern world is in the grip of a false metaphysics, based on Descartes theory of matter. Here is a new, and finally true metaphysics based on the single term, Consciousness. 5. And in all my works, I spell out this new metaphysics based on Consciousness, and what it means for how we think about virtually everything: The Universe, the Earth, Ourselves, and Spirit. Of who, what and where Spirit is, that we may connect with Spirit everywhere. There is only one term for the Universe, and not two, this single term Consciousness, that manifests itself in two modes: Consciousness in Form, Consciousness Formless. And so, here is a sketch of what this new term Consciousness really means. For four great aspects of the real, four new cornerstones for a whole new civilization on Earth, based on Love and Truth. A. For the Universe: New causalities, all matter is an expression of Consciousness, awake and aware, Enspirited throughout, which has a place for the causalities of love ideas intent plan and purpose, what Aristotle called final causality, that for the sake of which. And it has a place for subjectivity, the greatest mystery in the whole of the Universe, knowable only in ourselves, but there in everything else as well, bedrock in the chain of causalities. The buck stops here. Here are two very different Universe pictures. The Cartesian Universe consists of things, pushed, and pulled around by the physical forces that function blind. The true Universe consists of selves and not things. Selves at least in ourselves, are organized and focused about an I, an I am, or a sense of self in everything, ever other being dear to itself. Just one aspect of subjectivity. And so, it is Consciousness all the way down, and subjectivity all the way down. Science proceeds on the basis of the negligible of what it can leave out as unimportant. Subjectivity is the ultimate animating principle of the Universe. What Descartes really did was to strip from nature what is most essential about it, its animating principle Consciousness. And so, we come out of a long history of “clunk.” The great male thinkers have killed creation. First in concepts and now in the lived life. And so, after centuries of fruitless search, not all of it in vain, finally, and just in time the true basic principle for the Universe has shown up in virtually all disciplines, this term Consciousness. B. And so, the Earth: What does this term Consciousness really mean for the Earth? It means that all of the bright array of beings around us have Consciousness. And the more we can realize how like us they are, the harder it will be to do them all in. Is this what it really means to be “made in the image of Spirit?” To destroy ever other living being? The god of Genesis is a creator god who has created billions and billions of living forms. Man, taking himself to be made in the image of Spirit has destroyed virtually all of it. The Earth is not things, not commodities and resources, not an endless array of consumer goods. The Earth consists of conscious living spiritual beings like ourselves, who need to be honored and respected, nurtured and cared for, to be Loved. And if the human race can finally pull it off and bring Love here and start helping the Earth rather than destroying her, even our vast numbers now at 8 billion, may not matter. Deeply embedded in the modern world is a false cosmology based on the hitherto useful but ultimately false metaphysics of Descartes. In particular it owes to Descartes concepts of matter, and of the Earth, as something devoid of Consciousness. And now this concept is up for us. If there is a single idea enabling and driving the destruction of the planet, it is the conviction that the Earth is something devoid of Consciousness. And we all have a vested interest in keeping this false concept in place. When you intend to ravage and savage the Earth, to turn it into consumer items, and money in the bank, first pretend she has no Consciousness that way we need not have any conscious about it. We are in deep trouble with the planet. Virtually all human economies are based on the destruction of the Earth, and we are now at a place in our history where we can foresee if we continue on as we are, our own extinction. And so, here are a few new guiding principles for the planet, based on Consciousness. Consciousness has field properties. The Earth is Consciousness throughout, connected and interconnected throughout, intersecting and interacting fields of Consciousness of which our own is one. To harm one is to harm all. Only this understanding of the Earth can set our destructive technologies, and capitalism, their goals, and their limits. The real problem with capitalism, and with civilization itself is it has no true understanding of the Earth, all the exquisite networks and webworks that connect all beings with one another. Nor it is about to admit that the Earth is our “life support system,” reason gone insane in the modern world. We are destroying our life support system, capitalism is the full expression of the human death wish in the modern world, and it needs to change. And now, let the barriers between ourselves and all other beings go down. C. And so, Ourselves. This new Universe picture based on Consciousness opens into and has a place for new concepts of human identity. In particular, it has a place for reincarnation, a process whereby one Consciousness dons’ bodies again and again and lays them down. This is a process wholly impossible on materialistic theories. This new view of things puts a higher perspective on Freudian determinism, which is a partial knowing in a greater account. We are something more than the victims of genes drives and childhood. We are immortally eternal evolving spiritual beings who take on a cycle of earthly lives in order to achieve certain goals and abilities, and then, our earthly cycle complete, we depart the Earth plane for other areas of the Universe physical or purely spiritual, to continue our evolution elsewhere. The scientific evidence for reincarnation is increasing on all sides, see for example the work of Michael Newton, a mainstream scientist forced to confront the fact of reincarnation. A completely new reincarnational picture is now emerging everywhere. We choose our parents for abilities we could acquire through them. We all come here with reasons for being here, and we all have free will, an original property of Consciousness, and we work out our issues accordingly. We all come here with the same reason for being here. It is to experience the Earth plane and human society at all levels and depths, in every social role, every climate, both sexes male and female and in all races. We are all here to acquire a deep understanding of the Earth plane with all its challenges and all of its present problems. We are not here to devour and consume the Earth, but to honor her for the learning experience she makes available for us. And so, reincarnation is the great equalizer, the fundamental basis for any bill of rights. Many of the problems of the modern world owe to the fact that reincarnation has not been taught in the West. Reincarnation was the center piece of Jesus teachings. It was banned by a fourth century council that decided the populous could best be controlled through fear. They edited all mention of reincarnation from the scriptures, and inserted fear terms instead, a judgmental god, and so on. If reincarnation had been taught, there would have been no suppression of women, but the gift of both sexes would have been honored and developed. And there would have been no reason for contempt for people of color because who they are, we have been or will be. There is no reason to look down on anyone when we know that our own identity includes membership in theirs. The truth of reincarnation needs to be the foundation for getting ourselves right with the Earth, and with one another. D. And so, Spirit. This new Universe picture, based on Consciousness, has a place for Spirit as simply Infinite Consciousness. All universes all worlds are formed out of this Consciousness, divine and sacred throughout. And Spirit is everywhere in the Earth and can be connected everywhere. And the Native North American people had things right. Everything has its own Spirit, and without contradiction is also an expression of Spirit. And what I am really doing in terms of concepts of modern science is presenting the Native North American version of the Real. And this new Universe picture has a place for the essential insight of all religions almost smothered by church tradition: Love. Not an emotion but a great Oneness, that can be found everywhere, even in a busy city street. But especially in the Earth, that is levels and depths of Oneness everywhere. And so, for the first time in their long and bitter antagonistic history, science and religion now share a common base with this term Spirit, the lynchpin in a new conceptual framework. And I offer an interpretation of where we are in our history, this present moment of historical grace, and these tumultuous times in which we live, the return of the Goddess and the Divine Feminine, the Reappearance of the Feminine in history, the Advent of Women, this great Awakening, as of Springtime after a long dark Winter, the Awakening, the Second Coming. And so, stay tuned! (shrink)

This article aims to explain the behaviour of public intellectuals, celebrities, and media audiences in the construction of anti-emotional narratives in the online culture wars. In the investigation of how these narratives are constructed on YouTube, the article focuses on the rhetorical juxtaposition of rationality and emotionality surrounding the viral argument between public intellectual Sam Harris and Hollywood star Ben Affleck on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, uploaded to YouTube. The video is an apt example of the positioning dynamics (...) on YouTube, where an increased integration of media content with its context of reception unsettles the positioning process by which the authority of both intellectuals and celebrities is negotiated and culture war narratives constructed. In conclusion, the article reflects on the relationship between the increasingly affective nature of online communication and the simultaneous emergence of a strict dichotomy between rationality and emotionality in anti-woke culture war narratives. (shrink)

Author Marc James Léger responds to Elias Khoury’s review of his book _Bernie Bros Gone Woke: Class, Identity, Neoliberalism_, which was published in volume 17 of the _International Journal of __Žižek Studies_. While Léger accepts the one mistake in the book that Khoury correctly identifies, he takes issue with nearly everything else in Khoury’s review, which involves fallacies, misquotations, reductive arguments, misdirection and failure to mention anything that would contradict Khoury’s generally false claims. Léger describes the possibility of academic (...) foul play in the context of a public secret directed against him and that he has been struggling against since the late 1990s. (shrink)

This article offers a semiotic perspective on the debate over critical race theory (CRT) bans in the United States. It presents the debate as unfolding in three stages. In the first stage, CRT is created by an opportunistic journalist as a catchall category for white grievances, and the bans themselves are seen as consistent with freedom of speech, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of a colorblind society. A semiotic rupture, occasioned by Timothy Snyder’s 2021, _New York Times Magazine_ article (...) “The War on History is a War on Democracy,” ushered in a second stage. By comparing CRT bans to Vladimir Putin’s use of law to deny Soviet past crimes (especially regarding Ukraine), Snyder exposed the CRT bans as willful acts of forgetting past crimes, while indirectly highlighting Putin’s own anti-woke initiatives. This led to the third stage, in which some CRT ban supporters began to view critical race theory as form of communism. Sometimes this use was tactical; in other instances, it reflected a belief that a conspiracy theory, one consistent with white nationalism, according to which cultural Marxists were destroying American society from within. (shrink)