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Full-Text Articles in Philosophy
Beasts, Sovereigns, Pirates: Melville's "Enchanted Isles" Beyond The Picturesque, Gary Shapiro
Beasts, Sovereigns, Pirates: Melville's "Enchanted Isles" Beyond The Picturesque, Gary Shapiro
Philosophy Faculty Publications
Herman Melville's "The Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles," included in his signature set of shorter narratives The Piazza Tales, remains relatively unvisited by readers and critics. So too was the archipelago generally known as the Galapagos, before becoming a chic destination for natural history excursions and eco-tourism. These ten "sketches" relate a narrator's experiences on the Pacific islands, adding a number of travelers' stories, some extrapolated (more or less accurately) from known records, some creatively transformed. One informative, comprehensive handbook suggests that Melville's description of this volcanic archipelago as Encantadas or "enchanted" in the sense of bewitched-uncanny, weird, their very …
Subjecting Dasein, Ladelle Mcwhorter
Subjecting Dasein, Ladelle Mcwhorter
Philosophy Faculty Publications
"Das 'Subjekt' ist eine Fiktion," Nietzsche declares in aphorism 370 of Der Wille zur Macht. There is no such thing as an ego, a unitary center of personhood that can be appraised and approved for its virtue and wisdom or blamed for its premeditated transgressions and irresponsible beliefs. Subjectivity does not exist. Despite Nietzsche's pervasive influence, however, the question of subjectivity - the ontological nature, the ethical status, and the epistemological significance of the human subject - has been a preeminent theme in Continental philosophy for the entirety of the twentieth century. Virtually all Continental philosophers have found it …
Scientific Discipline And The Origins Of Race: A Foucaultian Reading Of The History Of Biology, Ladelle Mcwhorter
Scientific Discipline And The Origins Of Race: A Foucaultian Reading Of The History Of Biology, Ladelle Mcwhorter
Philosophy Faculty Publications
Foucault's "power-knowledge" is a controversial concept. Brought into English-speaking theoretical circles less than two decades ago, its meaning and range of applicability are still in dispute. While no one denies that some fields of social scientific knowledge (such as criminology) intersect institutionally with mechanisms of power, these intersections do not seem, to many, to constitute any essential relation of "mutual reinforcement" between knowledge and power. If, in rare cases, politics and scientific research are admitted to be mutually constitutive, the results of their mingling are typically dismissed as propaganda or pseudo-science. A few thinkers are willing to allow the entirety …
Self-Overcoming In Foucault's Discipline And Punish, Ladelle Mcwhorter
Self-Overcoming In Foucault's Discipline And Punish, Ladelle Mcwhorter
Philosophy Faculty Publications
Prisons are veritable universities of crime. Within them young offenders learn both the values and the techniques of hardened criminals. In addition to these lessons in professional ethics and theory, aspiring criminals also get hands-on experience within prison walls, for prisons are also centers of criminal activity: drug and arms trafficking, rape, gang warfare, and murder. And, like all good universities, prisons help their proteges make the contacts they need to further their budding careers.
Asceticism/Askēsis: Foucault's Thinking Historical Subjectivity, Ladelle Mcwhorter
Asceticism/Askēsis: Foucault's Thinking Historical Subjectivity, Ladelle Mcwhorter
Philosophy Faculty Publications
In the Introduction to The Use of Pleasure Foucault calls his work an askēsis, "an exercise of oneself in the activity of thought." The "living substance of philosophy," Foucault writes, is the essay, "which should be understood as the assay or test by which, in the game of truth, one undergoes changes, and not as the simplistic appropriation of others for the purpose of communication." Foucault's work, then, does not simply report to us his conclusions or theories. Foucault is not primarily interested in imparting information. What he offers instead is a kind of exercise book.
Foucault's Move Beyond The Theoretical, Ladelle Mcwhorter
Foucault's Move Beyond The Theoretical, Ladelle Mcwhorter
Philosophy Faculty Publications
Theory plays an important role in virtually every academic discipline currently vital. The specific functions of theory may differ from discipline to discipline, but it is difficult to think of any serious discipline that is able to dispense with it entirely; for theory, we usually assume, is quite simply the name of all instances of systematic speculation, all attempts at rational explication. Ordered mentation, most of us unwaveringly believe, is and must be theoretical. All that is not theoretical is either confused thinking – or, more positively, perhaps it is poetic – or it is not thinking at all, but …
Styling Nietzsche: A Review Essay Of Jacques Derrida Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles, Gary Shapiro
Styling Nietzsche: A Review Essay Of Jacques Derrida Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles, Gary Shapiro
Philosophy Faculty Publications
Any examination of a text by Derrida challenges us to begin with an inquiry into its style. ''The Question of Style" was in fact the originally announced title of this essay which Derrida has since changed to Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles (Èperons: Les Styles de Nietzsche). Style is often regarded as a somewhat extraneous aspect of the philosophical enterprise; it is thought to be a variable form or container which may obstruct our comprehension of the matter or spirit of philosophical communication. Now it is well known that Derrida's whole enterprise involves a challenge to the "logocentric" tradition of philosophy according …