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Regaining The Subject: Foucault And The Frankfurt School On Critical Subjectivity, Miguel Alirangues

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article “Regaining the Subject: Foucault and the Frankfurt School on Critical Subjectivity” Miguel Alirangues sketches a possible meeting place in which two currents of critical thought (Adorno and Horkheimer, on the one hand, and Foucault, on the other) can come into dialogue. Without these two currents and, more crucially, without the dialogue between them, as he points out, we cannot today think of political antagonism towards the social structures of domination and therefore we cannot think of praxis and agency. The essay proceeds as follows: firstly, the author notes the places in which Foucault spoke of his relationship …

The Eventualization Of Political Thinking: From The Arab Revolutions To The Trump Era, Oscar Barroso

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, "The Eventualization of Political Thinking: From the Arab Revolutions to the Trump Era", Óscar Barroso maps out some of the most important contemporary philosophies of the Event: those of Rancière, Badiou, Hardt and Negri and Žižek. These philosophies of the event are defined as post-humanist political proposals that entrust emancipation not to the realization of anthropological ideas but to the emergence of difference. Examining the pessimistic interpretation that these authors make of what has happened since the events of 2011, the author questions whether too much trust has been placed in the supposed virtue of difference and, …

“A New Way Of Thinking”: Frantz Fanon’S True Opinion On Violence, Caroline D. Renko

The Downtown Review

In an attempt to clear Frantz Fanon’s name, on account of his opinion on the role of violence in decolonizing a nation, this paper focuses on two important chapters in his last book, The Wretched of the Earth. By closely reading his articulation of the Algerian war and the wounds brought on by mental illness at such a time, Fanon’s true opinion concerning violence becomes clear. For too long, he has been seen and used as a proponent for inciting violence, but this is a misconception that has been perpetuated by devaluing the importance of his descriptions of the …

Table Of Contents, Rory J. Conces

International Dialogue

Table of Contents for Volume 8

Notes From The Editor, Rory J. Conces

International Dialogue

Notes from International Dialogue's Editor-in-Chief, Rory J. Conces for Volume 8.

The Nature Of Legal Interpretation: What Jurists Can Learn About Legal Interpretation From Linguistics And Philosophy, Triantafyllos Gkouvas

International Dialogue

Brian G. Slocum’s The Nature of Legal Interpretation: What Jurists Can Learn about Legal Interpretation from Linguistics and Philosophy is a formidable addition to an evolving trend in analytical jurisprudence that invites insights from jurisprudentially “extraneous” domains such as linguistics, philosophy of language and mind, metaethics and philosophy of action. A praiseworthy feature of this trend is the importance it attaches to keeping these insights as free as possible of prior translation in the occasionally cryptic or unnecessarily insular language of analytical jurisprudence and legal doctrine. It is precisely thanks to this feature that recent discussions on the relevance of …

The Life Of The Law In Palestine: The Abc Of The Opt: A Legal Lexicon Of The Israeli Control Over The Occupied Palestinian Territory Orna Ben-Naftali,, John Reynolds

International Dialogue

Through an accumulation of laws rather than by military means, a particular misery is intensified and entrenched. This slow violence, this cold violence, no less than the other kind, ought to be looked at and understood. (Cole 2015: 19) In September 2018, Israel’s Supreme Court confirmed that the planned eviction and demolition of the small West Bank village of Khan al-Ahmar, originally authorized by the Court earlier in the year, should go ahead. The residents of that village are Palestinian Bedouin who had been expelled by the Israeli state in 1952 from their original lands in the

Naqab desert. Six …

Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (And Why We Don’T Talk About It), Uğur Aytaç

International Dialogue

The demise of organized labor, the internationalization of capital movements, and technological changes are often believed to contribute to the decline in the bargaining power of employees vis-à-vis their bosses in the age of globalization. According to many, these radical socio-economic transformations are one of the explanatory factors behind the expanding income and wealth inequalities across societies. The emergence of these vast economic inequalities led social scientists to study the nature of these trends and search for possible institutional solutions. Similarly, the normative-philosophical discussions on the contemporary labor-capital relations have predominantly focused on the inequalities of economic resources such as …

Hate Speech Law: A Philosophical Examination, Eric A. Heinze

International Dialogue

Alexander Brown writes as an inter-disciplinary scholar at the intersections of law, ethics, philosophy, and politics. With Hate Speech Law: A Philosophical Examination he justly claims to have explored “numerous principled arguments for and against hate speech law by articulating a collection of key normative principles” (316). This ambitious book identifies and organizes conflicting values within the hate speech controversies. It aims to synthesize deeper questions about core concepts of liberalism, democracy, personhood, dignity, and tolerance with policy concerns about pragmatics and effectiveness. The most seasoned free speech scholars will find points and angles they had not previously considered.

The Roots Of Ethnic Cleansing In Europe, Andy Aydin-Aitchison

International Dialogue

H. Zeynep Bulutgil’s monograph, available now in paperback, has already received high praise and recognition, winning the American Political Science Association European Politics and Society Section book award in 2017. In this review, I set out what the book offers in terms of argument and evidence, and so outline its contribution to understanding ethnic conflict and ethnic cleansing. In the spirit of cross-disciplinary dialogue, I consider how Bulutgil’s approach and insights can contribute to developments in the criminology of atrocity. Taken together the political science approach exemplified by Bulutgil, and criminological approaches characterized by disciplinary openness, complement each other in …

The Iranian Metaphysicals, Elise K. Burton

International Dialogue

Anthropologist Alireza Doostdar’s first book, The Iranian Metaphysicals, is a well-written and theoretically sophisticated contribution to scholarship on modern Iranian history and society. Combining vividly portrayed ethnography with archival research and textual analysis, he offers an unprecedented account of Iranians’ experiences with and beliefs about the supernatural. The term ‘metaphysical’ emerges directly from his Iranian interlocutors, who use the Persian equivalents metafiziki or mavara’i to describe paranormal practices and phenomena ranging from sorcery and traditional occult sciences, to spirit possession and séances, to clairvoyance and teleportation. Although many elite Iranians, secularist and orthodox Shi‘i alike, have condemned interest in the …

Heat, Greed And Human Need: Climate Change, Capitalism And Sustainable Wellbeing, Gillian Brock

International Dialogue

In this wonderful book, Ian Gough shows how we can deal with climate change sensibly, by developing eco-social policy that promotes human wellbeing. The result is a tour de force. Demonstrating sophisticated knowledge of several relevant fields, Gough combines important multidisciplinary insights with his previous groundbreaking research on human needs. The result is a coherent, usable framework that has considerable value in guiding policy discussions. This impressive work is bound to become essential reading for anyone working on policy, climate change and sustainable human well-being.

Famine, Affluence And Morality, Owen G. Mordaunt

International Dialogue

The foreword of this text is significant because Bill and Melinda Gates, co-chairs of The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, make reference to the fact that in more than forty years the world has seen much improvement in curbing poverty. Less than half the world’s population lives in poverty and the proportion of children who die before the age of five has dropped even more. By 1990, it was around 10%, and now it is closer to 5%, even though 5% is still too many when you consider 6.3 million child deaths per year. Most of the deaths, however, are …

The Color Of Modernity: São Paulo And The Making Of Race And Nation In Brazil, Maria S. Arbeláez

International Dialogue

This The Color of Modernity is an outstanding examination of the role of race, regional, and nationalistic ideologies in the creation of modern-day Brazil. Barbara Weinstein focuses on the rise of the mainly white elite of the State of São Paulo as the prominent economic, political, and intellectual leader of the region and the country. The analysis articulates methodical theoretical approaches of cultural studies, discourse analysis, and politics of identity. It investigates the intricacies of how the coffee barons and intellectual Paulistanos managed to construct an image of modernity, entrepreneurship, and success as the paradigm of a new Brazil.What appears …

Heidegger And Jewish Thought: Difficult Others, David A. White

International Dialogue

This work is an anthology of fourteen articles on various aspects of Heidegger’s relation to the Jews and, more abstractly, what it means to be Jewish. The essays are arranged under three headings—Heidegger Thinks the Jews, Heidegger and Jewish Thinkers, Heidegger and Jewish Thought. The work also includes an introduction by Elad Lapidot and, as an appendix, Thomas Sheehan’s bibliography of Heidegger’s works (including English translations as of 2017). Lapidot’s introduction highlights the stimulus for the anthology, the publication of Heidegger’s “so-called Black Notebooks,” notes for the years 1931 to 1948. For Lapidot, “about a dozen passages” contain “strong anti-Jewish …

Not Enough: Human Rights In An Unequal World, Andrew Fagan

International Dialogue

These are troubling times, in which we appear to be facing an ever-expanding litany of harms and injustices entirely of our own making. Our awareness of these pathological conditions is expressed through various critical perspectives and platforms, which together reinforce a pervasive sense of crisis. We all contribute to the making of our world in a variety of ways. Few of us can claim to possess entirely clean hands when it comes to accounting for how the world could have become so disenchanted and so unpleasant for so many. However, some may wish to claim that the very purity of …

Evidence For Hope: Making Human Rights Work In The 21st Century, Brett J. Kyle

International Dialogue

In Evidence for Hope: Making Human Rights Work in the 21st Century, Kathryn Sikkink delivers a timely defense of the promise and progress of human rights movements, ideas, and institutions. Amid a seemingly ever-growing body of scholarship on the shortcomings of human rights, Sikkink contends that the human rights movement has helped to improve the human condition over the long term. As the title promises, there is much we should regard as progress in human rights and reason to be hopeful for the future. Sikkink was motivated to write this book for human rights activists “who say they have lost …

Is There A Crisis Of Sustainable Development?, Edward Sandowski, Betty J. Harris

International Dialogue

This article argues that there is a crisis of sustainable development. Sustainable development may mean a value system, but also may mean a set of societal development processes, manifested in political economy and culture. One crisis of sustainable development in either meaning arises from a combination of elements under neoliberalism. We stress three. (1) Sustainable development includes complex demands about justice. These involve conflicts among neoliberal justice and rival more philosophically plausible concepts of justice. (2) Care for the environment (basic to sustainable development) is complex, and generates multiple sometimes, conflicting demands on decision-making. (3)

Citizenship, Insurrection, And Recognition: European Critical Theory Before The Biopolitical Threshold: Citizenship; Violence And Civility: On The Limits Of Political Philosophy; Recognition Or Disagreement: A Critical Encounter On The Politics Of Freedom, Equality, And Identify, Miguel Vatter

International Dialogue

Étienne Balibar, Jacques Rancière and Axel Honneth are representative figures of a generation of political theorists who stand under the shooting star of May 1968, the high season of insurrectionary politics in the last half century. The books under review offer a welcome opportunity to consider the lessons they draw from this event and its aftermath at the twilight of their careers. However, taken as a whole these books also reveal the limits of this style of radical democratic theory that only in a very approximate way has registered the passing of the baton, which occurred roughly during the same …

Humanity Without Dignity: Moral Equality, Respect, And Human Rights, David Jason Karp

International Dialogue

This book aims to reject theoretical approaches that ground human rights in a notion of dignity, understood in terms of an equal rank, transcendental/spiritual quality and/or human capacity for rational agency. It argues instead that the idea of human rights should be grounded in a fundamental moral right of each person not to be treated as inferior. It defends this argument with reference to a substantive account of what it means to be treated as inferior in the relevant sense—dehumanization, instrumentalization, infantilization, objectification and stigmatization—combined with an account of when and why these are wrong. The book says that they …

Deliberation Or Simulated Deliberation?, Peter Levine

Democracy and Education

The work of Crocco and her colleagues, "Deliberating Public Policy Issues with Adolescents," combines two important fields—deliberative democracy and discussion as a pedagogy—with a study of policy deliberations in three classrooms. Their article yields valuable insights. As the authors note, the results are disappointing. This may be because the students were not actually asked to deliberate, if "deliberation" means discussing in order to make a decision. After all, the students could not decide US policy on immigration. Their discussion was a kind of simulated deliberation. Evidence suggests that we may see better results from real deliberations that occur within student-led …

A Blend Of Absurdism And Humanism: Defending Kurt Vonnegut’S Place In The Secondary Setting, Krisandra R. Johnson

Butler Journal of Undergraduate Research

This essay argues that Kurt Vonnegut blends a unique humanist stance into his absurdist plots and characters, ultimately urging readers to confront the absurd with a kindness and human decency his protagonists often find rare. As a result of this absurd and humanist synthesis, I defend and promote Vonnegut’s place in the secondary English curriculum, despite his rank on many banned books lists, since his characters’ journeys correlate thematically with the growth and process of postmodern adolescents and encourage moral responsibility without sentimental manipulation.

Focusing on Cat’s Cradle, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, and Slaughterhouse-Five as primary sources, specifically …

Money And Morality: Pathways Toward A Civic Stewardship Ethic (2012), Marcy Murninghan

New England Journal of Public Policy

Based on a plenary presentation made at the Ninth Harvard University Forum on Islamic Finance, held at Harvard Law School in 2010, less than two years after the 2008 financial crisis, this article argues for the restoration of ethical values and civic commitments in capitalism and economic enterprise, drawing on traditional religious, theological, and philosophical principles regarding the civic moral obligations associated with building and managing wealth. The article is divided into three main parts. It begins with an overview of reform measures emanating from the financial debacle, including the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, and an …

Corporate Civic Responsibility And The Ownership Agenda: Investing In The Public Good (1994), Marcy Murninghan

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article seeks to provoke broader public discussion about ways in which human and ecologic dignity, prosperity, and the civic ideal can be advanced through a revitalized and principled ownership agenda that features greater levels of corporate accountability and civic virtue. It draws from portions of what then was called an “Occasional Paper,” part of a series emanating from the early days of the University of Massachusetts Boston’s McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies. Written in 1994, it introduces a new paradigm for corporate governance called the “corporate covenant,” which casts ownership within the framework of citizenship. These …

Time To (Finally) Acknowledge That Fish Have Emotionality And Pain, Konstantin A. Demin, Anton M. Lakstygal, Allan V. Kalueff

Animal Sentience

The increasing work using fish as a model organism calls for a better understanding of their sentience. While growing evidence suggests that pain and emotionality exist in zebrafish, many deniers continue to ignore the evidence. Here we revisit the main conceptual breakthroughs in the field that argue clearly for pain and emotionality. We call for an end to denial and a focus on studying the mechanisms of fish pain and emotionality, and their translational relevance to human conditions.

If It Looks Like A Duck: Fish Fit The Criteria For Pain Perception, Julia E. Meyers-Manor

Animal Sentience

Whereas we have denied the experience of pain to animals, including human babies, the evidence is becoming clearer that animals across a variety of species have the capacity to feel pain (Bellieni, 2012). As converging findings are collected from pain studies and the study of cognition, it is becoming harder to deny that fish are among the species that do feel pain.

An Adaptationist Perspective On Animal Suicide, Timothy P. Racine

Animal Sentience

Peña-Guzmán’s discussion of suicide in nonhuman animals has broad implications. In this commentary, I focus on the logical relation between suicide and intention. Proximate cause must be distinguished from ultimate function in explanations of suicide. I briefly discuss two adaptationist accounts of suicidal behavior.

Pain In Fish: Evidence From Peripheral Nociceptors To Pallial Processing, Michael L. Woodruff

Animal Sentience

The target article by Sneddon et al. (2018) presents convincing behavioral and pharmacological evidence that ray-finned fish consciously perceive noxious stimuli as painful. One objection to this interpretation of the evidence is that the fish nervous system is not complex enough to support the conscious experience of pain. Data that contradict this objection are presented in this commentary. The neuroanatomy and neurophysiology of the fish nervous system from the peripheral nerves to the pallium is able to support the sentient appreciation of pain.

Can Neuroimaging In Dogs Have Practical Implications?, Tiffani J. Howell

Animal Sentience

Jealousy, or at least aggression, can be observed in dogs using neuroimaging techniques, but this response attenuates quickly following repeated exposure to the aggression-inducing stimulus. This may have a practical application. Early socialisation as a puppy, and habituation as an adult dog, could help prevent undesirable behaviours such as predatory behaviour. It is unclear whether these processes are the same, and affected only by the dog’s age. Neuroimaging could help us understand whether the same neurological processes underlie socialisation and habituation, and whether self-rewarding behaviours such as predatory behaviour could be stopped using socialisation/habituation techniques.

On Jealousy, Envy, Sex Differences And Temperament In Humans And Dogs, Eddie Harmon-Jones, Sylvia K. Harmon-Jones

Animal Sentience

Cook, Prichard, Spivak, and Berns (2018) find that dogs’ levels of trait aggression are positively correlated with their amygdala activation when observing their caregivers giving a food to a fake dog. The authors conclude that this may provide neural evidence in dogs for the experience of jealousy, an emotion that some psychologists consider to be unique to humans. Here we explain the difference between the emotions of jealousy and envy, suggesting some ideas for future experiments that may help disentangle the experience of jealousy from that of envy in dogs. We also propose ideas for future research that may yield …