The paper explores the semiotic and legal semiotic perspectives related to posthumous digital face. In doing so, the contribution also seeks to explore the complex relationship between AI-generated faces, including deep fakes, mourning, and posthumous rights. The article has five parts. In the introduction, we discuss the challenges of _posthumous existence_ and the issues related to respecting the deceased. We also examine some examples of ‘digital personhood’. In part two, we present three case studies and use semiotics to help us (...) distinguish between _posthumous existence_ and _digital resurrection_. In part three, we provide a semiotic classification of representation in the context of digital faces and our case studies. We suggest that there is a difference between the _phenomenological presence_ of a hologram and the _cognitive value_ of recreating someone’s identity, including their biography, face, and voice. In part four, we explore the topic of digital spectra and mourning, including the concept of _imputability_. In part five, we analyse how the law offers new insights into the ontology of the face of the deceased and posthumous existence in hologram form. In the conclusion, we summarise the article’s key findings and highlight open issues and potential future developments. (shrink)

During the twentieth century statistical methods have transformed research in the experimental and social sciences. Qualitative evidence has largely been replaced by quantitative results and the tools of statistical inference have helped foster a new ideal of objectivity in scientific knowledge. The paper will investigate this transformation by considering the genesis of analysis of variance and experimental design, statistical methods nowadays taught in every elementary course of statistics for the experimental and social sciences. These methods were developed by the mathematician (...) and geneticist R. A. Fisher during the 1920s, while he was working at Rothamsted Experimental Station, where agricultural research was in turn reshaped by Fisher’s methods. Analysis of variance and experimental design required new practices and instruments in field and laboratory research, and imposed a redistribution of expertise among statisticians, experimental scientists and the farm staff. On the other hand the use of statistical methods in agricultural science called for a systematization of information management and made computing an activity integral to the experimental research done at Rothamsted, permanently integrating the statisticians’ tools and expertise into the station research programme. Fisher’s statistical methods did not remain confined within agricultural research and by the end of the 1950s they had come to stay in psychology, sociology, education, chemistry, medicine, engineering, economics, quality control, just to mention a few of the disciplines which adopted them. (shrink)

This article discusses how the legal systems in several Western countries, with a special focus on Italy, address our present day animal rights movement and how these legal systems can faithfully reflect the movement’s values as well as promote them in a manner that will ultimately change the rights themselves and their cultural context: this is an extremely interesting issue for the semiotic study of the “humanization of animals”. Therefore, I will summarize several semiotic arguments using the model of the (...) four ontologies by Philippe Descola and the concept of prospectivism by Eduardo Viveiros De Castro. I expect several important changes will come about thanks to the ties between philosophical animal rights discourse and legal discourse and I also believe that the two most interesting issues will be animal labor and reproduction. I will concentrate on the debate over zoophilia laws in Denmark, Germany and Italy in order to propose a way to understand the threshold which separates humans and animals in our naturalistic ontology. Nowadays, “becoming animals” and “becoming humans” seem to be two central and open-ended semiotic processes: legal rights and animal rights philosophy help bring several issues into focus such as animal subjectivity and informed consent. (shrink)

This article addresses a tendency within postcolonial studies to place the work of Michel Foucault and Frantz Fanon in opposition. This has obscured the real, and potentially very productive, similarities between them. The most important of these links has to do with their shared critique of the sovereign subject of humanism: for Fanon and Foucault, this critique of the traditional humanist subject provides a way of opposing what they both see as the dangerous nostalgia for a lost moment of origin. (...) Furthermore, Fanon and Foucault both end in a moment of ethics, but it is an ethics without the sort of stable subjects assumed by humanism. I offer a consideration of some of the links that can be found in several texts by Fanon and Foucault. I then attempt to define the term I will be using to describe their shared strategy of an ethics without subjects: the “humanism effect.” I conclude by trying to suggest some of the strategic possibilities of an ethics without subjects in the postcolonial context. (shrink)

A critical engagement with Black Skin, White Masks in the wake of social construction theory and controversies over critical race theory.

I’m certainly not alone in noting that the year 2011 brings, for those of us who are students of the work of Frantz Fanon, two different anniversaries. This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Les damnés de la terre , Fanon’s final book and, for many, his most lasting achievement. But it also marks the fiftieth anniversary of Fanon’s death: he died, tragically young, on December 6, 1961, not long after the book’s publication. It is no exaggeration (...) to say that Les damnés de la terre was composed by Fanon from his deathbed, and that he was well aware that he was racing death as he rushed to complete the manuscript, as his publisher François Maspero remarked, “in pitiful haste.” Fanon had managed to complete it by July, although, as he told a friend, “I should have liked to have written something more.” As David Macey notes in his indispensable biography, “Fanon did see copies of his last book, but for its first readers, Les damnés de la terre was a posthumous work.” The book and Fanon’s death thus come to us bound inextricably together, fifty years later. So it would seem that we have an anniversary to celebrate (and in doing so, we would thus be celebrating the continuing relevance of a classic work, as this special issue intends us to do), but also a death to mourn. If I proceed to make a suggestion that will seem at first to be the height of perversity, let me preface it by saying that this suggestion is occasioned by what I believe to be Fanon’s greatest legacy, a legacy of unsparing intellectual and political commitment. For I want to begin by suggesting that this year brings us the mournful fact that fifty years on, Les damnés de la terre remains, in many ways, as relevant to our contemporary world as it was in 1961; but conversely, the anniversary of Fanon’s death offers us a cause for celebration. . (shrink)

Introduction : Fanon now -- Reading fanon anti-piously : on the need to appropriate -- The struggle within humanism : Fanon and Said -- The humanism effect : Fanon, Foucault, and ethics without subjects -- The futures of postcolonial criticism : Fanon and Kincaid -- "Enough of this scandal" : reading Gilroy through Fanon, or who comes after "race"? -- "Any decolonization is a success" : Fanon and the African spring -- Conclusion : singularity and solidarity : Fanonian futures.

This study is an investigation of both comprehension and production of Wh- questions in Malay-speaking children with a developmental language disorder. A total of 15 Malay children with DLD were tested on a set of Wh- questions, comparing their performance with two control groups [15 age-matched typically developing children and 15 younger TD language-matched children]. Malay children with DLD showed a clear asymmetry in comprehension of Wh- questions, with a selective impairment for which NP questions compared with who questions. Age-matched (...) controls performed at ceiling in all Wh- questions, while the language-matched group reported a subject/object asymmetry selective for the which NP, as reported in other languages. In production, both children with DLD and younger children showed a preference for questions with in situ Wh- elements, a structure that is allowed in colloquial Malay, but which is not produced by the age-matched TD group. Several non-adult-like strategies were adopted particularly by the children with DLD to avoid complex sentences, including substitution with yes/no echo questions, production of the wrong Wh- question, and use of a generic Wh- element. The study provides an insight on the mastery of Wh- questions in both typical Malay children and children with DLD. Implications for the definition of a clinical marker for DLD in a free word order language with Wh- in situ option will be discussed. (shrink)

Cet article analyse le rôle croissant, la signification et la fonction d’une couche logicielle intermédiaire : les intergiciels en tant que technologie de base dans un environnement en évolution rapide. Il montre leur rôle clé dans une nouvelle ère de moteurs modulaires.This article analyses the increasing role, significance and function of “middleware”, the intermediate software layer that drives interactive gaming, as a fundamental technology in a rapidly evolving environment, to illustrate its key role in the new age of modular game (...) engines. (shrink)

With the flowering of postcolonialism, we return to Frantz Fanon, a leading theorist of the struggle against colonialism. In this thorough reinterpretation of Fanon's texts, Ato Sekyi-Otu ensures that we return to him fully aware of the unsuspected formal complexity and substantive richness of his work. A Caribbean psychiatrist trained in France after World War II and an eloquent observer of the effects of French colonialism on its subjects from Algeria to Indochina, Fanon was a controversial figure--advocating national liberation and (...) resistance to colonial power in his bestsellers, Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth. But the controversies attending his life--and death, which some ascribed to the CIA--are small in comparison to those surrounding his work. Where admirers and detractors alike have seen his ideas as an incoherent mixture of Existentialism, Marxism, and psychoanalysis, Sekyi-Otu restores order to Fanon's oeuvre by reading it as one dramatic dialectical narrative. Fanon's Dialectic of Experience invites us to see Fanon as a dramatist enacting a movement of experience--the drama of social agents in the colonial context and its aftermath--in a manner idiosyncratically patterned on the narrative structure of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. By recognizing the centrality of experience to Fanon's work, Sekyi-Otu allows us to comprehend this much misunderstood figure within the tradition of political philosophy from Aristotle to Arendt. Reviews of this book: "The goal of this often brilliant and always engaging book is to 'read Fanon's texts as though they formed one dramatic dialectical narrative'; the principal subject of this dramatic narrative, according to Sekyi-Otu, is 'political experience'. It is his deployment of a dialectical analysis of Fanon's 'dramatic personae' that permits Sekyi-Otu's fresh and insightful readings to take place." DD--Anthony C. Alessandrini, Minnesota Review "Ato Sekyi-Otu departs from the postmodernist paradigm and ushers in an alternative hermeneutic that primarily considers Fanon's texts as forming 'one dramatic dialectical narrative,' that is a narrative whose complexity is correlative of the intricate configurations of African social experience during the post-independent era...[His] book is an invaluable contribution that offers broader scope for a new appreciation of Fanon's political thinking." DD--Marc Mve Bekale, Revue AFRAM Review [UK] "[I]mportant...The author succeeds in...revealing the complexity and nuanced character of Fanon's thought." DD--Choice "Those who would dismiss or exult Fanon as the high priest of revolutionary violence will be chastened by this patient and completely convincing exposition of his work. Sekyi-Otu produces a reflexive, 'Gramscian' Fanon who, working as a 'detective of the politics of truth,' has produced insights that need to be taken over into the core of democratic political thought." DD--Paul Gilroy, University of London. (shrink)

Séminaire de linguistique Responsable : Anne Carlier. Programme 20 octobre 2017 : linguistique anglaise Chris Barker : Vagueness, indeterminacy, and update Thomas Herbst : Restricting the rights of linguists 17 novembre 2017 : analyse de discours Paul Sambre : Multimodal socio-cognition and corpus-based Critical Discourse Analysis Giuditta Caliendo : Longitudinal changes in the EU’s discursive practices: a corpus-assisted critical dis...

The extremely extensive philosophical legacy of Roman Witold Ingarden, a student of Edmund Husserl, including papers in the fields of ontology, epistemology, and aesthetics, has been consistently arousing the interest of researchers from around the world for several decades. The year 2020 marked the fiftieth anniversary of Ingarden’s death. The present book constitutes a unique contribution honoring the philosopher’s memory and academic legacy. An ambitious project that brings together the thoughts of many intellectuals, the book includes research problems, contemporary interpretations (...) of Ingarden’s thought, and comparative studies, placing his philosophy in a broader historical and cultural context. This approach perfectly reflects the relevance, refinement, and depth of Ingarden’s theories. Although the essays presented in the book undoubtedly constitute a due tribute to an important figure in contemporary philosophy, this collection is not exclusively retrospective, but also shows the present and future development of philosophical thought inspired by Ingarden’s works. Including a substantial introduction by the editors, the book contains eight chapters from some of the most significant scholars in the field, covering the historical and comparative approach to Ingarden’s thought, as well as from young, ambitious scholars developing new interpretations of selected aspects of Ingarden’s theories. Specifically, the reader will find chapters on existential ontology (Peter Simons, Jan Woleński), Ingarden’s theory of questions (Giuditta Corbella), music ontology (Edward Świderski), empathy and aesthetic experience (Jeff Mitscherling), the aesthetics of computer games (Matthew Gladden), aesthetic attention (Harri Mäcklin), and Ingarden’s theory and aesthetics of time (Charlene Elsby). (shrink)

Thomas Benatouïl [Avec J. Atkins], The Cambridge Companion to Cicero’s Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. Arnaud Bouaniche Bergson. Une philosophie de la nouveauté, Paris, Ellipses, « Aimer les philosophes », 2022. « Bergson on Emotion and Ethical Mobilization », in M. Sinclair & Y. Wolf, The Bergsonian Mind, Oxford, Routledge, 2021, p. 264-270. Alain Cambier « Les Inconséquences du relativisme », La Pensée 408, 2022, p. 8-20. Giuditta Cailendo [avec Foubert, O. ] «...

This essay mobilizes Fanon as a point of entry into mapping the current state of postcolonial studies, and within that, reflects on what constitutes the postcolonial canon. Over a gradual course of the eighties and nineties, there has come about a transition from the field’s founding moments in which anti-imperialism, tricontinentalism, Third World nationalism and aesthetics of realism and resistance thrived, to the current trends that show a slant toward postmodernist fragmentation, multiculturalism, issues of diaspora, metropolitan narratives as well as (...) a proclivity toward theorizing the field itself. There are many reasons for this: the specific dynamics of the post-Cold War American culture within which these works were received; the compromised relationship between academic and commercial publishing culture, which made a jump from narratives of decolonization and neocolonialism to metropolitan multiculturalism; and the sway of postmodernism over academia as a whole, which led to a disregard for Marxist theories and, more importantly, to a neglect of realism as a mode and aesthetic in postcolonial theory. These factors have worked together to shape how the genealogy of postcolonial studies and its theory have come to be accepted as “obvious.” This has, in turn, had strong repercussions for the kind of literature and theory that have come to be celebrated and canonized within the field. The essay draws on Anthony Alessandrini's Frantz Fanon and the Future of Cultural Politics: Finding Something Different and Neil Lazarus' The Postcolonial Unconscious to offer a reconstructed genealogy of the field of postcolonial studies. (shrink)

Economic change, globalisation and harmonisation of European Law have brought new challenges to contract law. The contributions in this Volume by prominent legal scholars deal with current trends and perspectives in European and International Contract Law and their impact on the various domestic legal systems. The Compendium provides an analysis of new developments in formation of contract, performance and remedies, consumer contract law and the particularly controversial area of anti-discrimination law. Experts in their field examine the underlying legal principles and (...) problems arising in legal practice in Common Law and Civil Law. The essays written in English, German and French are the product of a series of lectures held in 2006 at the Centre for European Private Law at the University of Münster, Germany. The contributing authors are: John Adams, Hugh Beale, Giuditta Cordero-Moss, Barbara Dauner-Lieb, Michele Graziadei, Thomas Gutmann, Geraint Howells, Simon James, Paul Lagarde, Matthias Lehmann, Peter Møgelvang-Hansen, Salvatore Patti, Thomas Pfeiffer, John C. Reitz, Judith Rochfeld, Martin Schmidt-Kessel, Jürgen Schmidt-Räntsch, Alessandro Somma, Stefano Troiano, Christian Twigg-Flesner, Antoni Vaquer Aloy and Fryderyk Zoll. (shrink)