CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing can and has altered human genomes, bringing bioethical debates about this capability to the forefront of philosophical and policy considerations. Here, I consider the underexplored implications of CRISPR-Cas9 gene drives for heritable human genome editing. Modification gene drives applied to heritable human genome editing would introduce a novel form of involuntary eugenic practice that I term guerrilla eugenics. Once introduced into a genome, stealth genetic editing by a gene drive genetic element would occur each subsequent generation (...) irrespective of whether reproductive partners consent to it and irrespective of whether the genetic change confers any benefit. By overriding the ability to ‘opt in’ to genome editing, gene drives compromise the autonomy of carrier individuals and their reproductive partners to choose to use or avoid genome editing and impose additional burdens on those who hope to ‘opt out’ of further genome editing. High incidence of an initially rare gene drive in small human communities could occur within 200 years, with evolutionary fixation globally in a timeframe that is thousands of times sooner than achievable by non-drive germline editing. Following any introduction of heritable gene drives into human genomes, practices intended for surveillance or reversal also create fundamental ethical problems. Current policy guidelines do not comment explicitly on gene drives in humans. These considerations motivate an explicit moratorium as being warranted on gene drive development in heritable human genome editing. (shrink)

If, as asserted by the French collective Tiqqun, we are essentially living in a global colony, where the 1% control the 99%, then it follows that the revolutionary struggle should strategically reorient itself as guerrilla warfare. The agents of this war, Tiqqun characterize, in part, by drawing on ethnologists Pierre de Clastres and Ernesto de Martino, specifically their figures of the Indigenous American warrior and the Southern Italian sorcerer, respectively. Hybridizing these two figures into that of the “warrior-mage,” the (...) present article posits an actionable exemplar thereof in players of the massively popular trading and online card game, Magic: The Gathering (MTG). More specifically, I propose a strategic mapping of MTG’s five colors of magic onto the five divisions of a coalition against late capitalist Empire, which I call the “Warrior-Mage Guild,” including liberation clerics, animal rights activists, propagandists, anti-psychiatrists, hackers, saboteurs, and those who threaten decolonizing force contra Empire. (shrink)

The current fashions in both analytic and continental philosophy are staunchly anti-metaphysical. There is supposedly no way to talk about the world itself — the philosopher is confined to antiseptic discussions of language, or of other modes of human access to the world. In this provocative work, Graham Harman expands the discussion from his previous book, Tool-Being, arguing for a theory of "the carpentry of things" — a more accessible way of viewing the world that incorporates ideas from Husserl, Levinas, (...) Lingis, and other philosophers. (shrink)

The escalation of violence committed by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia guerrillas against noncombatant civilians triggered a shift in the theoretical orientation of scholars who study Colombia’s political economy. While previous explanations emphasized the sociopolitical “grievances” underlying guerrilla activities, recent explanations emphasize the “greed” motive, including guerrilla involvement in Colombia’s illegal narcotics trade. In this article, the author posits an alternative explanation using Charles Tilly’s theories of state formation to explain FARC activities in Caquetá, Colombia. Drawing from (...) a longitudinal data set that documents the war making, state making, extraction, and protection activities of the FARC between 1975 and 2007, in addition to historical sociological methods, the author finds that increases in FARC repression stem from the growing militarization and paramilitarization of the region, which pressured the FARC to extract resources from the local population in a way that no longer served that population’s legitimate protection interests. (shrink)

In a recent article Yvonne Chiu argues that nonuniformed combat is impermissible. However, her argument that by fighting without uniforms nonuniformed guerillas coerce civilians into participating in the armed conflict and thus into surrendering their immunity (their right not to be attacked) fails: there is no coercion, no participation, and no surrendering of immunity. Yet even if this argument of hers were correct, it would still not show that such “coercion” would amount to a rights infringement. Moreover, even if it (...) did, there are examples that show that such an infringement would sometimes be perfectly justified. Finally, if she were right that forcing civilians into a moral position that they have not accepted or chosen is absolutely wrong, then this would affect the moral status of uniformed combatants no less than it would affect the moral status of nonuniformed ones. (shrink)

This paper attempts to understand the nature of guerrilla warfare as taught by T.E. Lawrence in light of Clausewitz and Liddell Hart.

Full of drama, dedication, and humor, this book narrates the author's often frustrating experiences working as an experimental physicist in Cuba after the disintegration of the so-called socialist block. Lacking finance and infrastructure, faced with makeshift equipment, unpredictable supplies, and unreliable IT, Altshuler tells how he and his students overcame numerous challenges to make novel and interesting contributions to several fields of science. Along the way, he explains the science - from studies of ant colonies to superconductivity - either qualitatively (...) or quantitatively, but always at a level fully understandable to an undergraduate student of natural sciences or engineering. An even wider audience, however, may skip the technical sections without missing the essence. With numerous anecdotes, photographs and the author's own delightful cartoons, the book tells a remarkable, and often amusing story of how successful science can be performed against all odds. (shrink)

In dealing with the radical politicization of psychoanalysis from a geopolitical standpoint, this essay argues that psychoanalysis has to be capable to rethink and reembody itself with every contingent and immanent dislocations of its transcendental horizons. Through a reading of Slavoj Žižek and Alain Badiou on Mao Tse-Tung, we can think about the notion of dislocation and localization of the Idea. We will argue that this has historically happened in psychoanalysis in the transition from Freud to Lacan; however, the issue (...) is that this dislocation has undergone a retroactivity of necessity which makes a vanishing mediator out of the contingent scrap of reality that it initially relied on—and this forms the quilting point of the contemporary Lacanian ideology. Through Gabriel Tupinambá›s _The Desire of Psychoanalysis_, we will inspect the notion of generic psychoanalysis. We will insist that while generic psychoanalysis is crucial for the refiguring of psychoanalytic politics in a dislocative matter, we need to take this outlook to the end onto a psychoanalysis that is willing to impurify itself through localization as this is the only psychoanalysis worthy of the name. (shrink)

The article explores Chinese rural migrants’ perspective on work and their relations with each other and with the Chinese state by drawing upon the ethnographical study of a group of rural home renovators in Beijing in the 1990s. The rural renovators were dubbed “guerrilla” workers because of their physical mobility, irregular employment, and unregistered status. After considering the novelty of guerrilla workfare in China, the article demonstrates the bifurcation of migrants’ social networks along the lines of work and (...) everyday association, locates the politics of worker-state interaction at the place of their everyday living, and explores their understanding of work that is remarkably devoid of nostalgia for state socialism. (shrink)

This article examines the moral issues of guerrilla, and counter-guerrilla, warfare. Just war theorists who have studied the phenomenon tend to claim that the guerrilla tactic of wearing civilian clothes and hiding among the civilian population is rather difficult, if at all, to reconcile with the ius in bello principle of discrimination (the principle according to which combatants have to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants and may only target the former “directly”). I argue that this ever-repeated assessment (...) is profoundly confused. I also argue, conversely, against the claim that this guerrilla tactic makes it somehow easier for the counter-insurgents to comply with the principle of discrimination, thereby easily allowing them to resort to tactics like area bombardment. Finally, I demonstrate that, contrary to common opinion, guerrilla war does not face greater difficulties in complying with ius ad bellum requirements than conventional or counter-insurgency war does. (shrink)

Over the last few years, virtually all forms of non-state violence have been labeled as “terrorism”. As a result, differences between various forms of war and violence are lost in the analysis. This article proposes a conceptual distinction between terrorism and guerrilla warfare by analyzing their differences and similarities. Definitions of terrorism and guerrilla warfare are presented. Starting with these definitions, the question of the legitimacy of terrorism and guerrilla violence is answered with reference to just war (...) theory. Particular attention is paid to the issue of the so called “innocent victims” of terrorism. (shrink)

This paper explores how engaging in and with philosophy in the streets has unique and special potential for children doing philosophy both inside and outside the classroom. We highlight techniques drawn from research into the political, social and activist potential of street art, and we illustrate how to apply these techniques in a P4C context in what we call guerrilla philosophy. We argue that guerrilla philosophy is a pedagogically powerful method to philosophically engage students whose ages range from (...) 11-13. In calling attention to the power of guerrilla philosophy to engage students philosophically, we are tacitly assuming a Deweyan philosophical approach, which emphasises the importance of promoting civic-mindedness as a social value; the reliance on imaginative, creative and experiential forms of learning as essential to education ; and a vision of the classroom as an embodiment of the larger civic community to which we all belong and in which we all must cooperate and engage. This paper traces these three themes in Dewey’s philosophical views of education and democracy, and considers how they are given a twenty-first century interpretation through street art, guerrilla philosophy and children’s activism. (shrink)

In this article, I formulate a Deweyan argument in support of guerrilla gardening, or the political activity of reclaiming unused urban land, sometimes illicitly, for cultivation and beautification through gardening. Historically, gardening movements in the United States have been associated with relief projects during periods of economic downturn and crisis, urban blight and gentrication, as well as nationalism, nativism and racism. Despite these last few unfortunate associations, the American philosopher John Dewey detached gardening from the nativist’s tool-kit, portraying it (...) as a gateway for young people toward enriched adult experiences, not as a technique for assimilating immigrant children to a distinctly American way of life. One of those experiences that school gardening can prepare children for is political activism, particularly involvement in gardening movements. Dewey did not mention this collateral benefit. Nevertheless, an argument can be made that garden advocacy—or, more specifically, participation in politically-motivated gardening movements such as guerrilla gardening—is an acceptable interpretation, or elaboration, of what Dewey meant by “a civic turn” to school and community gardening. (shrink)

This work explores the concept of urban guerrilla, which was promoted and innovated by National Liberation Movement – Tupamaros, in Uruguay. After a thorough review of the “David Cámpora” Archive of Armed Struggle –located at the University of the Republic– and in–depth interviews with prominent Tupamaro members, this article analyzes the evolution of this particular revolutionary project. These pages address issues such as the factors that influenced the adoption of the urban guerrilla approach and the consequences and demands, (...) internal and external, that accompanied it. It also presents the influences, tensions and contradictions that have arisen regarding the use of violence, the dispute against the State or the adaptation to circumstances that have changed drastically in less than a decade – from a quality of democracy unparalleled in the region, to a dictatorial regime of military imprint. All of the above, without losing sight of the exceptional geopolitical dimension that the Latin American continent went through, and especially the Southern Cone, in the 60s and 70s of the last 20th century. (shrink)

The effort to build a political economy of war without politics is finding its limits. The question now is what comes next. How to put politics back in? This article compares systematically two non-state armed groups that participate in the Colombian conflict, the main guerrilla and the paramilitary. It shows that despite their similar financial bases, they appear to exhibit systematic differences— regarding both their social composition and their internal/external behavior—and claims that the key to understanding them is the (...) set of organizational devices that each group crafts in its process of survival and growth. All this suggests that a main tenet of the early political economy of war, that all non-state armed groups can be understood as being strategically identical, is flawed. It also poses a classificatory challenge. (shrink)

This article examines the work of the Australian performance artist, Stelarc, in terms of philosophies of mind and body. It argues that Stelarc's work can profitably be seen as a kind of performative `research' into the body; Stelarc's actions take the form of a hypothetical or speculative ontology which does not operate in order to represent possibility but to enact possibilities in real time and space. His work is compared with and shown to have some resonances with recent cybernetic and (...) systems theories of cognition, in which cognition is figured as a form of `enaction'. This being so, Stelarc's performances suggest an exemplary mode in which `hypotheses' about alternative corporeal existences may be creatively entertained. (shrink)

Los libros de literatura testimonial del secuestro en Colombia ayudaron a fundamentar el discurso contra-terrorista del segundo periodo presidencial de Uribe, puesto que no solo cuestionaron a la guerrilla de las FARC desde su discurso, sino desde su accionar visto desde adentro. A partir del análisis de cuatro libros testimoniales, se establecen las representaciones de la guerrilla como victimaria y de los secuestrados como víctimas. Estos libros develan un grupo armado “salvaje”, incompasivo, sanguinario, poco humano, que no expresa (...) coherencia entre lo que dice que hace y lo que realmente hace. A partir de diversas operaciones discursivas, se recrea a la organización alzada en armas y al sujeto guerrillero como el Otro violento que hay que derrotar, en tanto exhibe unas condiciones psicológicas e ideológicas sancionables. Sin embargo, se pueden establecer diferencias en la manera cómo los autores representan a la guerrilla y esto tiene que ver también con la manera cómo los testimoniantes se representan a sí mismos como víctimas. El hecho de haber presenciado los hechos victimizantes convierte a los autores de los testimonios en testigos por excelencia, cuya palabra debe creerse. Aunque una parte significativa de los relatos testimoniales está compuesta por las descripciones de los vejámenes de la guerrilla hacia los secuestrados y las pésimas condiciones en que estos vivían, los testimonios también son documentos de resistencia y recomposición de la identidad. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Foucaultian genealogy offers a critical approach to practices of remembering and forgetting which is crucial for resisting oppression and dominant ideologies. For this argument I focus on the concepts of counter-history and counter-memory that Foucault developed in the 1970’s. In the first section I analyze how the Foucaultian approach puts practices of remembering and forgetting in the context of power relations, focusing not only on what is remembered and forgotten, but how , by whom, (...) and with what effects. I highlight the critical possibilities for resistance that this approach opens up, and I illustrate them with Ladelle McWhorter’s genealogy of racism in Anglo-America. In the second section I put the Foucaultian approach in conversation with contemporary work in pragmatism and critical theory on the social epistemology of memory. In the third and final section, I explore some of the implications of the Foucaultian notion of resistance and what I term guerrilla pluralism for contemporary epistemological discussions of ignorance in standpoint theory and race theory. (shrink)

TŘEŠTÍK, M. 2016. Umění vnímat umění. Guerilla writing about art. Praha: Gasset. 228s. ISBN 978-80-87079-52-2.

This work explores the role that the French anti-colonial left had in active solidarity with Latin American liberation movements and guerrilla groups. To this end, the text reconstructs the process of emergence and development of the Solidarité organization, founded by veterans of the French networks in support of the Algerian FLN, and analyses the relationships established with Latin American revolutionary organizations, particularly in the Dominican Republic since the mid-1960s. The work is built with empirical evidence from the Solidarité archive (...) located in the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. Along with this, use has been made of various secondary sources, including biographies of key Solidarité activists, among others. (shrink)

The Moral Dilemmas of Fighting Terrorism and Guerrilla Groups discusses the most important ethical dilemmas associated with the fight against terrorist organizations and guerilla groups by providing readers with a rigorous, yet accessible analysis of how these forms of violence can be justified and how they ought to be fought by entities targeted by groups resorting to these strategies. It will be valuable to anyone interested in understanding the main ethical questions associated with these forms of political violence and (...) the way they can be addressed. After providing conceptual clarifications that will allow the reader to distinguish between terrorism and guerrilla warfare, it explains and discusses what the criteria are that can justify resorting to lethal violence on the part of the latter group as well as the criteria that can determine the identity of those who can legitimately be targeted by these groups. The book analyzes when terrorists ought to be targeted and how this can be done, focusing on the inherent problems associated with the solutions that are normally used against state actors in order to prevent attacks on their part, namely what can be coined as “non-violent alternatives to war”, such as economic or diplomatic sanctions, arm embargoes and non-violent resistance and, on the other hand, preemptive attacks. (shrink)

El presente artículo busca explicar el proceso de insurrección de la guerrilla del Partido de los Pobres, liderado por el maestro rural Lucio Cabañas Barrientos en Atoyac, Guerrero. El enfoque de esta investigación busca estudiar las violencias culturales y sociales cotidianas, como parte de un proceso histórico que formó parte del fenómeno de la violencia política-caciquil. El problema-eje de esta investigación será la contrarreforma agraria iniciada durante los años cuarenta del siglo XX, que hacia los años sesenta producirá en (...) Guerrero un acentuado problema agrario cruzado por el problema de la herencia de la tierra, las tensiones en torno a linderos y los pleitos familiares y comunitarios por el usufructo del trabajo familiar o colectivo. Se verá el alejamiento institucional del Estado para intervenir en las disputas y cómo el gobierno promovía una cultura de violencia, en la que los actores dominantes podrían legitimarse con la “ley del más fuerte”. Se estudiarán diversas reglas comunitarias no escritas, que establecían como legítimo el recurso de la venganza y la justicia por propia mano. En dicho contexto de furor campesino, agravado por el agravio económico de caciques locales, y el abuso de corruptos gobernantes, se explicará el salto de la violencia social a la política; el camino que los campesinos de Atoyac seguirían para organizar una lucha armada de pobres contra ricos. (shrink)

La República Democrática del Congo (RDC) es un país sometido a ciclos de guerras que conllevan asesinatos, violaciones a mujeres, reclutamiento de niños y niñas soldado, población deslazada, una generación perdida de niños y niñas de la calle, anulación de la educación más básica y cientos de casos que evidencian el constante incumplimiento de los derechos humanos.

The Cold War, extended from the popularization of its name in 1947 to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, functioned a bipolar order in which the White House and the Kremlin set the pace of events. In accordance with the decentralization of the axis of the shock [1], both superpowers chose to avoid direct confrontation and based their strategy on a kind of tactical movements carried out by third parties. The direct consequence was the creation of a breeding (...) ground in developing countries, victims of the competitiveness of both executives and in the specific case of Latin America, in a succession of political disorders that alternated the birth of revolutionary movements and the imposition of military dictatorships. (shrink)

Face à la sidération provoquée par la pandémie, devant l’incertitude des lendemains et un avenir anxiogène, il est nécessaire plus que jamais de mettre en valeur l’importance de nos affects, de nos émotions, et de retrouver du lien. Les ateliers d’écriture à l’hôpital et en Ehpad sont emblématiques de la place cruciale l’artiste, de l’écrivain, dans les lieux où résident les populations vulnérables. Il ne s’agit pas de saupoudrer une activité vaguement socio culturelle, afin de légitimer la place de l’art (...) dans la cité grâce à des intervenants bienveillants… mais d’inventer de véritables situations à l’intérieur desquelles prendra forme une communauté de dialogue. Le quatuor formé par le soignant, le patient, le parent (en pédiatrie), et l’auteure, instaure une dimension sensible qui viendra adoucir, transformer la médecine traditionnelle fondée sur le diagnostic et les traitements. (shrink)

El libro que reseñaremos a continuación fue publicado en el año 2003 como primer número de la colección Thesys de la Editorial de la Universidad Católica de Córdoba, Argentina. Una pequeña nota en la contrasolapa nos informa que estamos, con esta colección, delante de “...una selección de obras de múltiples disciplinas, elaboradas a partir de los trabajos de Tesis de posgrado, presentadas y defendidas públicamente por docentes e investigadores de la U.C. de Córdoba., en distintas institucione..