Ashort film about Kracauer's concept of the Mass Ornament - illustrated with Kracauer's orginal quotes on the subject. I made this for a Master Seminar on City Symphonies during my master's degree in documentary film at St. Lukas College University for Art and Design in Brussels, Belgium – Debra De Pryck. - 1er XXe siècle – Nouvel article.

This article proposes an original analysis of the international debate on climate change through the use of digital methods. Its originality is twofold. First, it examines a corpus of reports covering 18 years of international climate negotiations, a dataset never explored before through digital techniques. This corpus is particularly interesting because it provides the most consistent and detailed reporting of the negotiations of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Second, in this paper we test an original approach to (...) text analysis that combines automatic extractions and manual selection of the key issue-terms. Through this mixed approach, we tried to obtain relevant findings without imposing them on our corpus. The originality of our corpus and of our approach encouraged us to question some of the habits of digital research and confront three common misunderstandings about digital methods that we discuss in the first part of the article. In addition to reflecting on methodology, however, we also wanted to offer some substantial contribution to the understanding of UN-framed climate diplomacy. In the second part of the article we will therefore introduce some of the preliminary results of our analysis. By discussing three visualizations, we will analyze the thematic articulation of the climatic negotiations, the rise and fall of these themes over time and the visibility of different countries in the debate. (shrink)

It is not unusual for researchers to complain about institutional review board (IRB) oversight, but social scientists have a unique set of objections to the work of ethics committees. In an effort to better understand the problems associated with ethics review of social, behavioral, and economic sciences (SBES) research, this article examines 3 different aspects of research ethics committees: (a) the composition of review boards; (b) the guidelines used by these boards to review SBES - and in particular, behavioral health (...) - research; and (c) the actual deliberations of IRBs. The article concludes with recommendations for changes in the review process and with suggestions for filling the gaps in knowledge about the way IRBs work. (shrink)

Challenges Beauvoir's self-portrait and argues that she was a philosopher in her own right.

Rape, traditionally a spoil of war, became a weapon of war in the ethnic cleansing campaign in Bosnia. The ICTY Kunarac court responded by transforming wartime rape from an ignored crime into a crime against humanity. In its judgment, the court argued that the rapists violated the Muslim women’s right to sexual self-determination. Announcing this right to sexual integrity, the court transformed women’s vulnerability from an invitation to abuse into a mark of human dignity. This close reading of the trial, (...) guided by the phenomenological themes of the lived body and ambiguity, feminist critiques of the autonomous subject and the liberal sexual/social contract, critical legal theory assessments of human rights law and institutions, and psychoanalytic analyses of the politics of desire, argues that the court, by validating women’s epistemic authority (their right to establish the meaning of their experience of rape) and affirming the dignity of the vulnerable body (thereby dethroning the autonomous body as the embodiment of dignity), shows us that human rights instruments can be used to combat the epidemic of wartime rape if they are read as de-legitimating the authority of the masculine autonomous subject and the gender codes it anchors. (shrink)

This paper breaks ranks with those philosophers and feminists who either ignore de Beauvoir or find her passé. It argues that de Beauvoir is fundamentally a philosopher; that one of her crucial contributions to philosophy was to identify the erotic as a philosophical category; and that we best understand de Beauvoir's place in the feminist and philosophical fields if we read her as a phenomenologist who reworks Husserl's theory of intentionality and who, in this reworking, steps out of Sartre's shadow (...) to develop an ethic of erotic generosity. This argument depends on reading de Beauvoir's texts with an ear for her two voices. It develops the idea that de Beauvoir's muted voice, in speaking of the erotic, the gift and generosity, offers us a coherent and fruitful way of thinking through the questions of embodiment, the flesh, the other and the “we”. (shrink)

Nietzsche's use of metaphor has been widely noted but rarely focused to explore specific images in great detail. A Nietzschean Bestiary gathers essays devoted to the most notorious and celebrated beasts in Nietzsche's work. The essays illustrate Nietzsche's ample use of animal imagery, and link it to the dual philosophical purposes of recovering and revivifying human animality, which plays a significant role in his call for de-deifying nature.

This paper may be read as a reclamation project. It argues, with Simone de Beauvoir, that patriarchal marriage is both a perversion of the meaning of the couple and an institution in transition. Parting from those who have given up on marriage, I identify marriage as existing at the intersection of the ethical and the political and argue that whether or not one chooses marriage, feminists ought not abandon marriage as an institution.

Cet article interroge la question des corpus en analyse multimodale des corpus oraux d’interactions filmées dans le cadre d’une linguistique qui intègre l’étude des gestes à celle du discours pour rendre compte des pratiques langagières dans leur globalité. Ce type d’approche est traditionnellement associé à des petits corpus supports d’analyses qualitatives. À l’appui d’un tour d’horizon de recherches contemporaines en analyse multimodale des interactions orales, nous montrons que l’étude linguistique des gestes se prête à une grande variété d’approches innovantes au (...) plan méthodologique. En pratique, il reste à ce jour difficile de construire des grands corpus pour l’analyse gestuelle, parce qu’il s’agit d’une entreprise longue et coûteuse (enregistrement, transcription, annotation) : les petits corpus sont nombreux parce qu’ils sont plus faciles à construire pour un chercheur seul ou une petite équipe de recherche aux moyens limités. Cette situation tend cependant à évoluer, et ce de plusieurs manières, grâce aux collaborations nationales et internationales et aux nouveaux outils numériques. Les « petits » corpus n’en restent pas moins sources de résultats précieux en analyse gestuelle. Pour diverses raisons, les standards internationaux de l’évaluation de la recherche tendent à valoriser l’analyse quantitative aux dépens de l’analyse qualitative, faisant oublier que ces deux types d’approches ont des objectifs certes différents mais complémentaires : ils permettent de répondre à des questions de recherche différentes (étroites ou larges) et de proposer des savoirs d’origines différentes (généralisabilité des résultats ou généralisabilité des processus observés), dont la légitimité est elle aussi de nature différente (réfutabilité des résultats ou consilience des experts). Nombre de travaux récents en analyse gestuelle encouragent à remettre en question la dichotomie traditionnelle entre analyses qualitatives et quantitatives, en intégrant les deux approches de diverses manières. (shrink)

This chapter distinguishes the oppression endured by “free” women from the oppression suffered by enslaved and colonized women and men to read The Second Sex's question: Why don't women rebel? in terms of the type of personhood offered to women – vassal freedom – the type of violence used to enforce this truncated mode of subjectivity – rape – and the threat to dignity that haunts women's lives – the body of the whore. Following Beauvoir's logic of woman's degradation as (...) the sex, noting that the epitaph whore is flung at women who assert their economic or political independence, and listening to the voices of self‐affirming prostitutes, I find that the fate of the women challenging the glass ceiling and of those who claim their dignity as sex workers are intertwined, for so long as some women are seen and shamed as the sex, all women's status as legitimate subjects is threatened. (shrink)

: Ofelia Schutte's relationship to Nietzsche is contentious. Sometimes she identifies him as an ally. Sometimes she calls him an enemy. Appealing to Nietzsche's abolition of the appearance reality distinction and to his discussions of women as skeptics, I turn to Ofelia's discussions of the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo to suggest that their protests can be understood as a Nietzschean politics of transvaluation where the myth of the mother and the materialities of women's bodies become the ground of (...) the demand for justice. (shrink)

Ofelia Schutte's relationship to Nietzsche is contentious. Sometimes she identifies him as an ally. Sometimes she calls him an enemy. Appealing to Nietzsche's abolition of the appearance reality distinction and to his discussions of women as skeptics, I turn to Ofelia's discussions of the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo to suggest that their protests can be understood as a Nietzschean politics of transvaluation where the myth of the mother and the materialities of women's bodies become the ground of the (...) demand for justice. (shrink)

: This paper may be read as a reclamation project. It argues, with Simone de Beauvoir, that patriarchal marriage is both a perversion of the meaning of the couple and an institution in transition. Parting from those who have given up on marriage, I identify marriage as existing at the intersection of the ethical and the political and argue that whether or not one chooses marriage, feminists ought not abandon marriage as an institution.

The testimonies of men raped by men in Uganda indicate that the meaning of rape as an aggression that enforces the gendering of women as vulnerable and therefore dependent on men's protection needs to be reformulated to account for the fact that being raped transforms a man into a woman. In describing their humiliation, these men reveal that gendered masculinity is grounded in a flight from vulnerability that depends on the presence of vulnerable/rapeable victim bodies. Their words teach us that (...) as long as men's illicit identity as autonomous and invulnerable is illegitimately secured by stigmatizing vulnerability, heterosexual and male-male rape will be used to denigrate women and men alike. They indicate that the antidote to the scourge of rape lies in delegitimizing gender systems that victimize vulnerability and in creating cultural norms that recognize vulnerability as inherent in the interdependence and dignity of the human condition. (shrink)

This article presents evidence regarding aspects of the gendered nature of care women with gynaecological cancer receive from their (usually) male surgeons and oncologists in Australia. We argue that despite women’s general preference for female gynaecologists, those with a gynaecological cancer develop a strong therapeutic relationship with their male medical specialist, not extended to their (usually) female nurses and other allied health professionals. Given the highly sensitive and sexualized nature of gynaecological cancer, this requires explanation. These findings can be partly (...) explained by examining the division of labour between nurses and doctors, specifically issues of control over this process and the development of specializations. The findings also bring into stark relief the way in which power and status differences can be used by medicine to create a positive therapeutic relationship with patients while simultaneously de-eroticizing the intimate procedures necessary in assisting women throughout their cancer treatment. Importantly, this relationship also has relevance for policy makers, particularly those concerned with the highly gendered division of labour of the medical specialty workforce in Australia. (shrink)

Without rejecting Simone de Beauvoir's often cited feminist agenda, this paper takes up her less frequently noted insight – that woman's existence as the inessential other is more than a consequence of material dependency, and political inequality. This insight traces women's subordinated status to the effect of a patriarchal desire that produces and is sustained by a political imaginary that is not economically grounded and is not undermined by women's economic or political progress. Taking up this insight, this paper reads (...) Beauvoir, Freud and Sade through each other, to critique the myths of femininity. It argues that unless feminists of the 21st century follow Beauvoir's logic of ambiguity to challenge the ways in which sexed and gendered subjectivity is currently structured, the place of the inessential other will be preserved, and the feminist vision will be betrayed. (shrink)

The chapters of the book do not situate Spinoza among the natural philosophical giants who opened the way to modern science. Rather they explore Spinoza's relation to the sciences in a variety of ways. Contributors: Joseph Agassi, Thomas Cook, Marjorie Grene, Hans Jonas, André Lecrivain, Genevieve Lloyd, Alexandre Matheron, Nancy Maull, Debra Nails, Michel Paty, Richard H. Popkin, David Savan, Heine Siebrand, and Joe D. Van Zandt.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.2 (2003) 289-290 [Access article in PDF] Monoson, S. Sara. Plato's Democratic Entanglements: Athenian Politics and the Practice of Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. Pp. 256. Cloth, $39.50. Sara Monoson is that rare exception to the rule that political theorists cannot sustain the interest of political philosophers: her training in ancient history and classical Greek gives her treatment of Plato's complicated relationship (...) to democracy a depth and richness that will repay the efforts of the most exacting of critics. The book under review has much to offer philosophers as well as historians of philosophy. Notably, Monoson answers the question, "What is democracy?" with attention to a whole constellation of "cultural practices and normative imagery" (237) constitutive of the Athenian polis, on which the narrow conception of democracy qua system of government depends. The experience of festival participation, including processions, theater, and funeral orations; multifarious opposition to tyranny; and parrhe sia, frank speech, were practices that contributed to the Athenian citizen's confidence and expectation that he should and could participate actively in the governing of his polis. One of Monoson's implicit arguments is that Platonic political philosophy is inextricably bound up with its context; thus, when we excise a Platonic "position" or argument and test its soundness, we are doing philosophy, not the history of philosophy.Monoson details the democratic practices and images that are woven into the dialogues, and she features passages others have neglected or treated as anomalous (e.g., Statesman 303a-d, Letter 7 342d), arguing convincingly that it is an unfair oversimplification to view Plato as anti-democratic, or indeed as a doctrinaire writer in any sense (133-137). Thus she does not describe Plato as simple-mindedly pro-democratic either. Rather, she does an impressive job of demonstrating just how very deeply ambivalence toward democracy runs in the dialogues, most markedly in the Republic and Gorgias,but even in the Laws. Plato was as attracted to democracy as he was wary of it, as committed to its institutions as he was apprehensive of their untoward effects.The parts of Monoson's book devoted to theater participation, frank speech, and opposition to tyranny—in relation to democracy and in Plato—are especially fine and contain a wealth of evidence that withstands scrutiny admirably. Her treatment of the funeral oration, including an interpretation of Plato's Menexenus, is less successful, but because her thesis is demonstrated without it, I need not digress from the book's virtues. Monoson's historical sections on the tyrannicides, the early Academy, and Plato's Sicilian involvement are lucid and compelling. All along in this book, one notes passages that serendipitously bear on contemporary debates and on widely shared—but controversial—interpretations of the dialogues. To take but one example from [End Page 289] what I think of as the centerpiece of the book on the realizability of the Republic's ideal city (130-133), consider the well known and variously interpreted passage suggesting how to realize the ideal the "quick and easy way": send away everyone over ten, and let the philosophers educate the remaining children (541a). The conclusion and crux of Monoson's thoughtful reply is, "I suggest we see in this passage an indication that Plato acknowledged that all governing regimes can be supported or unsettled by cultural formations. He is deeply involved here with the question of how it is that a person or people can imagine themselves out of a dominant discourse." (I should add that the book is remarkably free of jargon.) Although Monoson has given us so much so well, I am greedy to know what she makes of democracy in the Protagoras,how she views the success of sycophants after the Peloponnesian War, and how she would incorporate deme politics into her account.The deficiencies of the work as a whole are few and minor: the sole structural weakness of this excellent book is that Monoson sometimes cites, instead of evidence or argument, the judgments of others whose work... (shrink)

While the bioethics literature demonstrates that the field has spent substantial time and thought over the last four decades on the goals, methods, and desired outcomes for service and training in bioethics, there has been less progress defining the nature and goals of bioethics research and scholarship. This gap makes it difficult both to describe the breadth and depth of these areas of bioethics and, importantly, to gauge their success. However, the gap also presents us with an opportunity to define (...) this scope of work for ourselves and to help shape the broader conversation about the impact of academic research. Because of growing constraints on academic funding, researchers and scholars in many fields are being asked to demonstrate and also forecast the value and impact of their work. To do that, and also to satisfy ourselves that our work has meaningful effect, we must understand how our work can motivate change and how that change can be meaningfully measured. In a field as diverse as bioethics, the pathways to and metrics of change will likewise be diverse. It is therefore critical that any assessment of the impact of bioethics research and scholarship be informed by an understanding of the nature of the work, its goals, and how those goals can and ought to be furthered. In this paper, we propose a conceptual model that connects individual bioethics projects to the broader goals of scholarship, describing the translation of research and scholarly output into changes in thinking, practice, and policy. One of the key implications of the model is that impact in bioethics is generally the result of a collection of projects rather than of any single piece of research or scholarship. Our goal is to lay the groundwork for a thoroughgoing conversation about bioethics research and scholarship that will advance and shape the important conversation about their impact. (shrink)

In Why Some Things Should Not Be for Sale, philosopher Debra Satz takes a penetrating look at those commodity exchanges that strike most of us as problematic. What considerations, she asks, ought to guide the debates about such markets? What is it about a market involving prostitution or the sale of kidneys that makes it morally objectionable? How is a market in weapons or pollution different than a market in soybeans or automobiles? Are laws and social policies banning the (...) more noxious markets necessarily the best responses to them? Satz contends that categories previously used by philosophers and economists are of limited utility in addressing such questions because they have assumed markets to be homogenous. Accordingly, she offers a broader and more nuanced view of markets--one that goes beyond the usual discussions of efficiency and distributional equality--to show how markets shape our culture, foster or thwart human development, and create and support structures of power. (shrink)

In The Enemies of Perfection, author Debra Candreva argues that Plato's philosophy is among the most important influences on Oakeshott's thought, with his debts to Plato far outweighing his criticisms. Further, Candreva's examination of Oakeshott's treatment of Plato forms the basis of an argument against the view that a radical gap between ancient and modern thought renders ancient philosophy either inaccessible or irrelevant to current thinking.