Shadow of the Other is a discussion of how the individual has two sorts of relationships with an "other"--other individuals. The first regards the other as a s work apart is her brilliant utilization of a systematic dialectical approach to her subject, always maintaining the delicate balance between opposing tensions: masculinity and femininity, subjectivity and objectivity, passivity and activity, love and aggression, fantasy and reality, modernism and postmodernism, the intrapsychic and the intersubjective. Benjamin s work apart is her brilliant (...) utilization of a systematic dialectical approach to her subject, always maintaining the delicate balance between opposing other as a mental repository fo unwanted characteristics cast from the self. Jessica benjamin shows the implications of this dual relationship for male/female hierarchy and offers a possibility for balancing the two. This book continues the author's well-known explorations of the themes of intersubjectivity and gender, taking up issues at the forefront of contemporary debates in feminist theory and psychoanalysis. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.3 (2000) 286-290 [Access article in PDF] Letter to Lester Olson Jessica Benjamin Dear Lester Olson,I regret not having responded sooner to your communication. This is a matter of considerable importance to me, but you might imagine that it is difficult to read an analysis of events in which I was so involved that takes so little account of my/our point of view. Let (...) me add, after reading your response, that I do recognize that this is through no fault of your own, and as you indicated to me later, you assiduously strove to get more information. I believe it was Alfred Kazin who (I've heard) said that the movements of today make the dissertations of tomorrow. Since that is always a difficulty, I am sure that my experience is not singular. Unfortunately, in my view, the decontextualization of Audre Lorde's speech at that conference can serve to perpetuate the misunderstanding that underlay the destructive polarization that occurred at that time. To accept her view that the event was organized with no effort to include women of color by oblivious, racist white women is surely not what happened. In fact, the estrangement between white and black women at the time of the "Second Sex Conference" had much deeper causes (the enduring structures of racism in our country) for which I believe no individual could be held responsible.First, let me clarify an important fact. While we organizers of the conference invited numerous black and third world women to participate, we were consistently declined. For instance, Mary Helen Washington said she did not want to speak to an audience of only white women, and it was her experience that only white women came to feminist conferences. Indeed, at the time Michele Wallace, who probably would have been interested had she been available, was vociferously complaining about the lack of interest, indeed the rejection of feminism, among black women. Audre Lorde herself, one of our consultants, had been apprised of the participants for months and never named anyone who could participate. Similarly, Robin [End Page 286] Morgan had been consulted and had offered no suggestions of black participants. Yet ten days before the conference her young black protégé at Ms., Susan McHenry, appeared with a series of demands, including a list of black women she wished to see invited to the conference. Although I had met with Robin Morgan months before, she had never told me of Susan McHenry or proposed her as a participant, rather her interest had been focused on what would become the anti-pornography movement, similar to the interests of Kathy Barry who wrote about female sexual slaves. At the conference, Susan McHenry did speak; she expressed her indignation and outrage, and suggested that the entire conference was a racist gathering that should change direction and consider only the issue of racial exclusion.It is certainly true that the organizers were distressed by the same issue prior to the conference. After nearly a year of organizing, soliciting, and publishing open calls for participation, we were absolutely desperate to find participants who would reflect racial and ethnic groups other than white middle class. But in 1979 the institution of women's studies looked very different than it does now--feminism was a political movement not an academic institution, and only a few women in any university had become interested in it. And that does not even begin to address how few women, let alone black women, were in the universities in 1979!A second important point is that Audre Lorde was not speaking to an audience who disagreed with her; she was speaking to an audience who were already inflamed because they felt that certain identities had been left out of the conference. Despite the fact that it was an open conference, based on an open invitation--we had drawn scores of women to give workshops and papers whom we had never heard of--and despite the fact that we had organized the conference to address differences among women, the audience consisted of many women ready to protest... (shrink)

Necro-advertising refers to the use of deceased celebrities in advertising. This practice offers unique advantages to brands that seek to benefit from positive associations with timeless celebrities at a more affordable cost than celebrity endorsement. Nevertheless, how consumers actually respond to the use of deceased celebrities in advertising remains under-theorized. This research is the first to empirically examine consumers’ ethical judgments about necro-advertising practices. In particular, drawing from the signaling theory, it demonstrates the impact of consumer inferences about the existence (...) of a legal agreement for using deceased celebrities’ images on brand ethicality. The results of two experimental studies show that a low-equity brand is more likely to be perceived as unethical when using necro-advertising since consumers have limited knowledge about these brands. Conversely, our findings confirm how a high level of equity prevents from the aforementioned adverse effects since these brands’ assets send a credible signal about their capability to get approval from a deceased celebrity’s estate for the use of its image. While deepening current knowledge on the perceived ethicality of necro-advertising practices, this research uncovers the moderating effect of equity on consumer inferences about brand ethicality. The results also suggest managerial caveats and guidelines for low-equity brands. In particular, while necro-advertising may have a negative impact on the perceived ethicality of low-equity brands, disclosing a statement about a contractual engagement with the deceased celebrity’s estate can mitigate this negative effect by providing an unequivocal signal that the brand is acting ethically. (shrink)

"Der Text ist ein Wald, in dem der Leser der Jäger ist" notierte Benjamin für sein Passagen-Projekt. Das Buch erschließt Benjamins Arbeitsweise erstmals ausgehend von seiner eigenen Lektürepraxis. Als lesender Jäger und Sammler durchforstete Benjamin Texte von Goethe, Marx, Kafka, Freud und vielen weiteren Autoren. Angesichts der Heterogenität seiner Quellen ist erstaunlich, dass sich in der Art seiner Lektüre methodische Eigenheiten wiederholen. Burkhardt Lindner hat diesen Zugriff auf andere Autoren als Entwendung beschrieben, mit der Benjamin "den fremden (...) Text sich anverwandelt oder abstößt und damit in die eigenen Denkerfahrungen einsenkt". Der Band erkundet verschiedene Dimensionen dieses Verfahrens und schärft den Begriff der Entwendung durch Einzelanalysen. So werden Denk- und Schreibweisen sichtbar, die bislang nicht als ein von Benjamin werkübergreifend angewendetes Verfahren aufgearbeitet wurden. "The reader is the hunter in the forest of the text" (Benjamin, Arcades Project). As a reading hunter Benjamin trawled through texts by Marx, Kafka, Freud, and many more. For the first time, the volume Entwendungen. Walter Benjamin und seine Quellen scrutinizes Benjamin ́s method based on his particular reading practice. The volume investigates the various angles of this practice, sharpens the notion of "Entwendung" by means of single case studies. It uncovers ways of thinking and writing that have not been identified as a method traversing the entirety of Benjamin ́s oeuvre. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.3 (2000) 291-293 [Access article in PDF] A Reply to Jessica Benjamin Lester C. Olson I am grateful to Jessica Benjamin for making the time to write a letter concerning her experiences in 1979 at "The Second Sex Conference," where Audre Lorde delivered her speech "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House." The letter arrived on 4 March 2000, after (...) I had sent the final version of the essay on Lorde's speech to Philosophy and Rhetoric. Although the editor indicated that, despite the late date, it would be possible for me to revise the essay to account for Ms. Benjamin's statement, I instead asked the editor to publish the statement as a comment after the essay, because of the historical value of her firsthand experiences and understandings of the conference, and because her letter provides an opportunity to engage in a dialogue called for in the conclusion of my essay. In addition, the letter gives additional information about context, which impacts any interpretation of Lorde's speech. As such, it becomes an occasion to reflect on interpreting rhetorical texts in historical contexts.As a rhetorical critic, I have been working, periodically, on understanding the rhetoric of Lorde's speech for about three years now. During September 1997, I wrote to several scholar-activists who were well positioned to know about the audiences at the conference and whether there were audio or video recordings of the speech. I was anxious to secure a recording because I knew from my earlier experience in researching Lorde's other speeches that, at times, she revised the texts for printed versions of them. Except for archivists at New York University, nobody replied to my letters. In the meantime, I presented preliminary drafts of my interpretation of Lorde's speech at conferences of the National Communication Association--one paper analyzing the speech itself and a second on later critical commentaries on it. In addition, in undergraduate classes on rhetorical criticism, I used the speech as a sustained example during class discussions on doing rhetorical criticism. In addition to reading Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex (1949) because its publication was the basis for the entire [End Page 291] conference, I read some conference participants' later publications based on their conference papers. Having secured a formal acceptance of my essay, I decided to send a penultimate copy of it to the scholar-activists to whom I had written in 1997, hoping that it might elicit some replies. Two people sent letters during the last couple of months, one so brief that it would not have affected my interpretation of Lorde's speech. Ms. Benjamin's letter, however, mattered to me--both because of its historical importance in its own right and because of the ramifications it has for interpretations in the essay.My immediate response to the first paragraph of Ms. Benjamin's letter was defensiveness. It disturbed me to realize that Ms. Benjamin had experienced my essay as perpetuating the divisiveness and polarization at the time and as marginalizing her experiences. My intentions were not to continue a destructive practice, but rather to examine Lorde's rhetoric to identify pitfalls in coalition politics across multiple differences (both within and among social groups) to mitigate them to the extent possible. Subsequently, I realized that my own defensiveness exemplified one such pitfall. By asking the editor to publish Ms. Benjamin's letter, I could perhaps model a dialogue approach, which I had called for in the essay's conclusion; rectify in some measure the marginalization of Ms. Benjamin's account; and provide readers with additional information for their active reinterpreting of the speech, essay, and letter.Further, based upon Ms. Benjamin's letter, some aspects of the rhetorical context may merit attention in revising my essay. The comments about the organizer's efforts to include a range of social groups and about the resistance to those efforts deserve mention, because becoming audience members was already a rhetorical effect. If, as one black feminist suggested to Ms. Benjamin, "only white women" came to feminist... (shrink)

This volume presents the concept of Ecoscape as spatial interrelations, or spatially patterned processes, that are constitutive of an environment_an ecosystem. Contributors investigate environmental issues concerning the human impact on geohistory, food distribution, genetically modified biota, waste management, scientific mapping, and the rethinking of human identity.

Feminists continue to express concerns over the legalization of physician-assisted death. Some worry that women are more likely than men to request PAD due to societal stereotypes and the pressures put on women to be self-sacrificing. Others worry that women will have their requests ignored more often than men because women’s voices are traditionally silenced or disregarded in western culture. Rather than join in the above argument of speculating which way women may be marginalized, I accept PAD as potentially dangerous (...) and offer a solution in order to avoid the risks of injustice associated with PAD. I reframe the concerns as epistemological worries, and ultimately, I turn to Benjamin McMyler’s virtue epistemology as a way to avoid testimonial injustice in requests for life hastening medication, suggesting that the injustice comes from a narrow and individualistic perception of knowledge, and injustice can be avoided if we understand testimonial knowledge to be both cognitive and social. (shrink)

Ensayo bibliográfico de la obra de Manuel Barrios Casares, _La vida como ensayo y otros ensayos. Kundera, Benjamin, Ortega_ (Sevilla, Athenaica Ediciones, 2022).

ExcerptFrom the late 1970s to the mid-1990s, a series of critical remarks were traded between the historian and cultural critic Christopher Lasch and the psychoanalyst and feminist philosopher Jessica Benjamin. Researchers describe that exchange as involving competing perceptions of psychoanalysis, but the debate also covered mismatching approaches to critical theory and, more widely, to the ideals befitting a free polity. Lasch’s appeal to the traditions of the American past faced off against Benjamin’s advocacy of a substantial social (...) change whose fundamental step was challenging the patriarchy.1 The ideas that each of the two authors put forth are often cited for reproaching the worldview associated with the other. Supportive scholars credit Benjamin with working psychoanalysis into a feminist perspective that questions traditional gender roles and the social order based on them, an order to which Lasch seemed committed.2 On the other hand, critics of the psychoanalytic turn to which Benjamin was central echo Lasch when arguing that the resulting relational theory marginalizes personal responsibility and belittles the significance of individual conscience.3. (shrink)

This article demonstrates how Adorno and Horkheimer’s turn to psychoanalytic concepts like sublimation and intra-psychic conflict strengthened critical theory. The piecemeal collective psychology they produced was used to understand fascism and anti-Semitism. But the full significance of these psychoanalytic explanations was concealed by Adorno, who elsewhere denied the possibility of psychology proper after the death of the individual. Adorno and Horkheimer’s underhanded borrowing from psychoanalysis for social analysis had the effect of filtering collective psychology through the lens of regression. To (...) amend this, the article analyzes psychoanalytic explanations from an interpretive perspective, building upon Jessica Benjamin’s psychoanalytic feminism, to contest the tactics of immanent criticism and to revitalize the project of a less dystopic collective psychology. (shrink)

O presente artigo pretende discutir e refletir sobre as contribuições da chamada Teoria Crítica da Sociedade para o campo da educação em tempos de crescente desenvolvimento tecnológico. Para tanto, voltamos o olhar para as obras de três autores expoentes da Teoria Crítica: Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno e Herbert Marcuse, destacando as reflexões e análises desses autores e utilizando-as como subsídio no campo educativo. A educação autorreflexiva e autocrítica é pensada em seu potencial para a superação das condições de (...) dominação que permanecem em nossa sociedade, cada vez mais tecnificada e pretensamente democrática. Desse modo, pensar a práxis educativa se afigura como algo urgente e necessário para que se rompa com certas condições que mantêm nosso potencial à barbárie. (shrink)

In this article I explore love's relation to gendered power asymmetries by comparing Anna Jónasdóttir's, Jessica Benjamin's and Teresa Brennan's respective theorizations of this theme. Despite the considerable differences between these feminist frameworks, they can all be read in terms of what I call the figure of the Dominant and its Constitutive Other. This refers to the contradictory relation whereby the powerful and ‘independent’ existence of the one is premised on that which is other to it, as well (...) as on the denial and obscuring of this constitutive dependence. Via a dialogue with critical realist and metaReal themes I move from a concern with how the feminine ‘Other’ tacitly constitutes the masculine Dominant through practices of love, to thematizing the basic stratum of being as the constitutive Other of the oppressive economy of love. The structure of the self emerges as a central organizing principle in the oppressive relations considered, and the article explores what might be a non-violent mode.. (shrink)

The ArgumentThis essay examines Freud's construction of a mythical moment during early childhood, in which differences between male and female sexual identities are said to originate. It focuses on the way in which Freud divides fear and envy between the sexes, allocating the emotion of fear to men, and that of envy to women. On the one hand, the problems of this construction are pointed out, but on the other hand, it is shown that even a much-maligned myth may still (...) provide food for thought.Then, four critiques of Freud which have been articulated by prominent feminist psychoanalysts – Karen Horney, Nancy Chodorow, Luce Irigaray, and Jessica Benjamin – are presented, as well as the alternative visions of sexual identities which these thinkers have developed. The basic metaphors or economies guiding these visions of sexual difference are appraised in terms of their breadth and depth, with particular reference to their ability to acknowledge and integrate the presence of fear and envy as passions which are evoked but also repressed in the face of sexual difference.From this angle, the contributions of Nancy Chodorow and Luce Irigaray are found to be more limited than those of Karen Horney and Jessica Benjamin, since the former two theorists allocate fear primarily or exclusively to men, as Freud has done, while they remain completely silent on envy. Differences in the scope or reach of the four feminist approaches are explained as a result of the theorists' differing perceptions of the social, political, and cultural position of women in patriarchal society. (shrink)

Contemporary feminist theory is at an impasse: the project of reformulating concepts of self and social identity is thwarted by an association between identity and oppression and victimhood. In Sacrificial Logics, Allison Weir proposes a way out of this impasse through a concept of identity which depends on accepting difference. Weir argues that the equation of identity with repression and domination links "relational" feminists like Nancy Chodorow, who equate self-identity with the repression of connection to others, and poststructuralist feminists like (...) Judith Butler, who view any identity as a repression of nonidentity and difference. Through readings of Chodorow, Butler, Jessica Benjamin, Luce Irigaray, Jacqueline Rose and Julia Kristeva, Weir analyzes the relation of theories of self-identity to theories of women's identity, social identity, the identity of meaning in language and feminist solidarity. Drawing particularly on the work of Julia Kristeva, she argues for a reformulation of self-identity as a capacity to participate in a social world, and sketches a model of a self-identity which depends on a capacity to accept nonidentity, difference and connections to others. (shrink)

Vulnerability as a critique of the one-sidedness of the principle of autonomy is at risk of overemphasizing the positive dimension of vulnerability. Moreover, in the discourse on vulnerability, the threat of dehumanization (or moral vulnerability) has not been scrutinized enough ethically. Therefore, the ethics of vulnerability is insufficient when faced with the force of war that requires the conceptualization of vulnerability for political-ethics. The Russian war in Ukraine demonstrates this weakness in a striking way: the called-for openness to the other (...) as well as an active form of nonviolence, as promoted by Judith Butler, may not be an option in times of war. Continuing Jessica Benjamin’s psychoanalytic approach to mutual recognition, the essay shows that the task of morality does not rest upon broadening one’s vulnerability, but rather in understanding vulnerable agency as the dialectic of vulnerability and agency. For the further development of this dialectic, the triadic figuration is emphasized, complementing the dyadic relation of self and other. While the Third can take multiple figurations in the psychoanalytical setting, I understand the Third within the political-ethical context as the possibility of a “moral world” of nonviolence and respect. During war, the role of the bystander is to become a witness who, through the process of witnessing, advocacy, diplomacy, and justice, allows for the moral Third to reemerge. Among others, the ethics of vulnerability must spells out the price for the failure of taking on this responsibility, namely the eclipse of morality. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that despite Arendt's dislike of psychology, she, like all political theorists, relies on a particular understanding of human nature. Her account, which can be discovered with a careful reading of her work, including Eichmann in Jerusalem , The Human Condition and The Origins of Totalitarianism , resonates with the explicitly psychoanalytic one of Jessica Benjamin. When the two accounts are considered together one can find the outline of a very interesting conception of the (...) self which is neither the deconstructed, discontinuous self of postmodernism nor the strongly unified, rational subject of liberalism. This account also points to a way of under18 standing both the allure of evil and the political remedies that can stymie its realization. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.3 (2000) 259-285 [Access article in PDF] The Personal, the Political, and Others: Audre Lorde Denouncing "The Second Sex Conference" 1 Lester C. Olsen Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference--those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who are older--know that (...) survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those others identified as outside the structures in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish.--Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider 112Fifty years ago, in 1949, Simone de Beauvoir's book entitled The Second Sex was published in France. She did not consider herself a philosopher because, to her, a philosopher was "someone who has built a great system" (Simons and Benjamin 1979, 338). Her book, nonetheless, became a milestone in feminist philosophy, for it synthesizes elements of existentialism, phenomenology, and socialism in an account of women's situation in society. Central to this account is Beauvoir's concentration upon representations of "self" and "other." For example, Beauvoir affirmed, "The category of the Other is as primordial as consciousness itself. In most primitive societies, in the most ancient mythologies, one finds the expression of a duality--that of the Self and the Other. This duality was not originally attached to the division of the sexes; it was not dependent upon any empirical facts" (1993, xl). In an interview, Beauvoir stressed, "I believe that the Other is not simply an idealist relationship, it is a materialist relationship" (Simons and Benjamin 1979, 345). To develop her analysis, Beauvoir drew upon another binary, "master" and "slave." However, she concentrated on how women, as a category, had been subordinated as men's "other."Twenty years ago, in 1979, Audre Lorde delivered her best-known speech, "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House," at an international conference held in honor of the thirtieth anniversary of [End Page 259] Beauvoir's book. According to conference organizer Jessica Benjamin and reporter Lilly Rivlin, writing together in Ms. magazine, "[M]ore than 800 women from all over the world gathered at a conference on feminist theory, 'The Second Sex--Thirty Years Later,' sponsored by the New York Institute for the Humanities" (1980, 48). Like most of the conference participants, Lorde was a woman, a feminist, a socialist, a public intellectual, and an activist scholar. Lorde may have participated in the conference as a "consultant," a poet at a public reading, and a speaker at a plenary session 2 because her feminist philosophy is of resonance to Beauvoir's. Both women rejected biology as the basis for women's situation, believing instead that material conditions are most fundamental. Both commented upon the power of symbolism, especially myths about others, in perpetuating social inequalities and failing to differentiate categories for others. Both saw the relationship between "self" and "other" as a vital and creative tension.To understand this tension, Beauvoir drew explicitly on Hegel's ideas as they were treated in Sartre's oeuvre (Lloyd 1983). In contrast, Lorde may have drawn upon conceptions of double consciousness among black public intellectuals in the United States (Henderson 1989, 17-21). Unlike Beauvoir, Lorde was a lesbian, a mother, and a black woman for whom Beauvoir's analogies between the status of women and the status of "Negroes" were problematic. Confronting the conference participants on the last day, during the last panel entitled "The Personal and the Political," Lorde condemned the conference for its limited range of speakers, its substance, its very structure. Lorde examined the ramifications of failing to include others as equals. For in failing to do so, the conference had employed the same tools of oppression over others that the participants deplored in the politics of patriarchy. Lorde challenged the conference participants, who presumably understood that Beauvoir had represented woman as... (shrink)

The genre of advice to parents about children’s sleep proliferated between the mid-1980s and the beginning of the twenty-first century. This article reads that genre against itself, as symptomatic of larger political trends—the end of the privilege of the normative mid-century nuclear family and the advent of neoliberal ideology and political economy. Specifically, it argues that this wave of advice reflects an ambivalence about the autonomous individual within neoliberalism versus the need for attachment and the dependence of kinship. Returning to (...) Jessica Benjamin’s object-relations feminism, it shows how the oscillation between methods of sleep training that stress independent sleeping against those that align with attachment parenting reveal the same subject-object relations of power (with concomitant gender roles) that Benjamin outlined as central to domination. By embedding this analysis in its contemporary material conditions of class, race, and gender, the article argues that sleep practices try—and must necessarily fail—to create workers and family members who are both entirely autonomous and mutually supportive. It combines examination of the psychodynamics of family relationships as mutually informed by neoliberal rationality and an established critique of the politics of intensive mothering, with recognition of a post-2008 anxiety distinctive of millennial parenting, to show how children’s sleep has become a part of (gendered) work—a technology of the self—that carries the burden of forming the future citizen worker. (shrink)

In this article I critically re-examine Julia Kristeva's view that becoming a speaking subject requires psychical matricide: violent separation from the maternal body. I propose an alternative, non-matricidal conception of subjectivity, in part by drawing out anti-matricidal strands in Kristeva's own thought, including her view that early mother–child relations are triangular. Whereas she understands this triangle in terms of a first imaginary father, I re-interpret this triangle using Donald Winnicott's idea of potential space and Jessica Benjamin's idea of (...) an intersubjective space of thirdness. I argue that this space provides a maternal third term: a relation of connection and difference between two, a relation that inherits the affective, mobile, generative qualities of the maternal body as the infant (according to Kristeva) imagines it. This connecting space allows both mothers and children to emerge as subjects in their own right. I then suggest that potential-maternal space expands into language, so that language intrinsically allows the possibility of a speaking position of connection with the mother. Entrance into language need not entail separation or matricide: the problem is not language as such but the particular way that speech and logos have been defined historically. (shrink)

Building on the success and importance of three previous volumes, _Relational Psychoanalysis_ continues to expand and develop the relational turn. Under the keen editorship of Lewis Aron and Adrienne Harris, and comprised of the contributions of many of the leading voices in the relational world, _Volume 4_ carries on the legacy of this rich and diversified psychoanalytic approach by taking a fresh look at recent developments in relational theory. Included here are chapters on sexuality and gender, race and class, identity (...) and self, thirdness, the transitional subject, the body, and more. Thoughtful, capacious, and integrative, this new volume places the leading edge of relational thought close at hand, and pushes the boundaries of the relational turn that much closer to the horizon. Contributors: Neil Altman, Jessica Benjamin, Emanuel Berman, Jeanne Wolff Bernstein, Susan Coates, Ken Corbett, Muriel Dimen, Martin Stephen Frommer, Jill Gentile, Samuel Gerson, Virginia Goldner, Sue Grand, Hazel Ipp, Kimberlyn Leary, Jonathan Slavin, Malcolm Owen Slavin, Charles Spezzano, Ruth Stein, Melanie Suchet. (shrink)

In this paper, we theoretically address the relevance of unintentional and inconsistent interactional elements in human–robot interactions. We argue that elements failing, or poorly succeeding, to reproduce a humanlike interaction create significant consequences in human–robot relational patterns and may affect human–human relations. When considering social interactions as systems, the absence of a precise interactional element produces a general reshaping of the interactional pattern, eventually generating new types of interactional settings. As an instance of this dynamic, we study the absence of (...) metacommunicative abilities in social artifacts. Then, we analyze the pragmatic consequences of the aforementioned absence through the lens of Paul Watzlawick’s interactionist theory. We suggest that a fixed complementary interactional setting may be produced because of the asymmetric understanding, between robots and humans, of metacommunication. We highlight the psychological implications of this interactional asymmetry within Jessica Benjamin’s concept of “mutual recognition”. Finally, we point out the possible shift of dysfunctional interactional patterns from human–robot interactions to human–human ones. (shrink)

Most foundational texts on theological ethics address the person or the society; the point of departure determines, inevitably, fairly different trajectories. By starting with the experience of grief, this book posits the human as ineluctably social: grief is an epiphany that reveals how the human is inseparable from the collective. Indeed, grief inevitably summons us to grieve socially. Nothing discloses the human more rawly than grief that "it is not good for the human to be alone." Keenan then develops an (...) ethics of vulnerability, following Judith Butler, understanding it not primarily as a compromised state of being but rather as that which establishes the human as capacious for recognizing and responding to others. Mutual recognition, a theme that can be found from Georg Hegel and Sigmund Freud to Axel Honneth, Nancy Frasier and Jessica Benjamin, emerges as the first moral act of the vulnerable human. In light of vulnerability and recognition, Keenan shows how we can now understand conscience as guiding the activity of one who has first vulnerably recognized others. The second half of the book works out a Christian ethics of vulnerability, starting with discipleship, then grace and sin, then the virtues, and finally the communion of saints, the works of mercy, and the beatitudes. (shrink)

Are Hegel and Nietzsche philosophical opposites? Can twentieth-century Continental philosophers be categorized as either Hegelians or Nietzscheans? In this book Elliot Jurist places Hegel and Nietzsche in conversation with each other, reassessing their relationship in a way that affirms its complexity. Jurist examines Hegel's and Nietzsche's claim that philosophy and culture are linked and explicates the various meanings of "culture" in their work--in particular, the contrast both thinkers draw between ancient and modern culture. He evaluates their positions on the failure (...) of modern culture and on the need to develop conceptions of satisfied agency. It is Jurist's original contribution to focus on the psychological sensibility that informs the project of both philosophers. Writing in an admirably clear style, he traces the ongoing legacy of Hegel's and Nietzsche's thought in Adorno, Habermas, Honneth, Jessica Benjamin, Heidegger, Derrida, Lacan, and Butler. (shrink)

This article considers the process of commodification as a cultural means of the reproduction of subjectivity. The particular aim is to highlight the psychic processes that are tempted by commodification. Thus, at the background of this essay, there is a psychoanalytical notion of the self that has been developed in an examination of subjectivity and play, a notion based especially on the thinking of D.W. Winnicott and Jessica Benjamin. These analysts see an ambivalent self‐destructiveness of the self reformulated (...) in relation to the ‘potential space’ of play. In relation to this analysis, the influence of advanced capitalism on the self is discussed in some of its more competitive scenes of consumptions. The quiz show The Weakest Link, for example, is considered as a pale, commodified form of play. It is argued that the main seduction of the show is the dwindled and distorted potential space offered by its ultimate, destructive, and in the last analysis sado‐masochistic logic of exchange. In addition to The Weakest Link, a couple of relevant thematisations of commodified culture by contemporary Finnish literature are brought out. Moreover, the commodification of subjectivity by the means of play is loosely related to some general characterisations concerning the prevailing cultural situation. (shrink)

This essay explores notions of maternal desire within feminist psychoanalysis with an interest in challenging heteronormative frameworks of analysis. Providing close critical readings of texts by Jessica Benjamin, Julia Kristeva, Kaja Silverman and Hortense Spillers, I trace conceptual openings through which to interpret maternal sexuality as a mobile process of intersubjectivity that is grounded in changing historical relations of experience. I argue that Spillers’ approach transforms a critical process of reading desire away from the insularities and exclusions of (...) conventional psychoanalytic knowledges towards a democratic and reflexive process of representation and analysis. (shrink)

Dentre as releituras de Freud, Jessica Benjamin e Whitebook voltam-se ao domínio materno pré-edípico como salvaguarda de uma psicanálise feminista. Mas tal interpretação não mostra ser suficientemente crítica, pois transfere a preponderância do pai para a mãe, desconsiderando teorias não-binárias cujas fontes psicanalíticas se encontrariam em outras leituras não-oficiais de Freud. Tais seriam as visões de Loewald, Chodorow e Butler, que se concentram na complementaridade entre os desenvolvimentos pré-edípico e edípico ou na subversão interna do complexo de Édipo. (...) Desse debate culminam dois modelos críticos contemporâneos baseados em perspectivas de gênero: binário materno x não-binário. (shrink)

Research indicates that upwards of 80% of our students experience the devastation of bullying during their school years. To date, research on bullying has mainly employed empirical methodologies, including quantitative and qualitative approaches. This research has largely concluded that bullying is situated in a lack of skill, understanding, or self-control and involves intentional action directed toward status dominance. Based upon these assumptions current anti-bullying strategies focus on training students toward more appropriate avenues of status acquisition and social interaction. Against the (...) backdrop of an actual bullying encounter this paper employs a psychoanalytic philosophical lens to offer a fresh perspective on this enduring educational issue. Employing the philosophical work of Adam Phillips, Jessica Benjamin, and Emmanuel Ghent I ask the question: What is the desire to bully a desire for? Here I consider what is sought and what is at stake in the typical bullying encounter. Through careful analysis I argue that the domination represented in bullying is not simply situated in a lack of social skills or in disregulated aggression––skill deficiencies that require training. Instead, or perhaps in addition to these possibilities, I contend that bullying is foundationally a move toward establishing identity, a self. On this view bullying becomes an activity of self construction through attempted omnipotence. I argue that the status dominance inherent in bullying should be seen not as an end (a tool to secure resources or privilege), but as a means to something more foundational. I conclude that status dominance becomes a means toward the end of providing a secure place for the self to stand. Hence, instead of advocating that we train students to get along better this paper outlines the futility, as well as the insatiability of bullying, opening up new territory focused upon a re-construction of the bully through the relational bonding and differentiation available in the concrete Other. (shrink)

Are Hegel and Nietzsche philosophical opposites? Can twentieth-century Continental philosophers be categorized as either Hegelians or Nietzscheans? In this book Elliot Jurist places Hegel and Nietzsche in conversation with each other, reassessing their relationship in a way that affirms its complexity. Jurist examines Hegel's and Nietzsche's claim that philosophy and culture are linked and explicates the various meanings of "culture" in their work--in particular, the contrast both thinkers draw between ancient and modern culture. He evaluates their positions on the failure (...) of modern culture and on the need to develop conceptions of satisfied agency. It is Jurist's original contribution to focus on the psychological sensibility that informs the project of both philosophers. Writing in an admirably clear style, he traces the ongoing legacy of Hegel's and Nietzsche's thought in Adorno, Habermas, Honneth, Jessica Benjamin, Heidegger, Derrida, Lacan, and Butler. (shrink)

The hope of moving beyond formalism is one of two things that unites an otherwise diverse group of literary theorists who have begun to explore the role of desire in narrative. Peter Brooks, for example, in Reading for the Plot, says in more than one place that his interest in desire “derives from my dissatisfaction with the various formalisms that have dominated critical thinking about narrative.”3 Leo Bersani sees desire as establishing a crucial link between social and literary structures. Teresa (...) de Lauretis faults structuralist models for their inability to disclose the ways in which narrative operates, through the desire it excites and fulfills, to construct the social world as a system of sexual differences. Other names could be added, both within and outside the field of narrative theory—Nancy Armstrong, Roland Barthes, Georges Bataille, Jessica Benjamin, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, René Girard, Luce Irigaray, Fredric Jameson, Peggy Kamuf, Linda Kauffman, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Lacan, Jean Laplance, Catharine A. McKinnon, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick—for desire has become one of the master tropes of contemporary criticism. 3. Peter Brooks, Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative , p. 47; hereafter abbreviated RP.4. Leo, Bersani, A Future for Astyanax: Character and Desire in Literature , p. 13; hereafter abbreviated FA.5. Bersani and Ulysse Dutoit, The Forms of Violence: Narrative in Assyrian Art and Modern Culture , p. v; hereafter abbreviated FV. Although Bersani coauthored this book with Dutoit, for convenience I refer to it by Bersani’s name alone. This practice is justified by two considerations: first, most of the arguments about narrative, violence, and desire are elaborations of positions that Bersani has taken in earlier works; second, passages and examples in the sections with which I shall be dealing are reprinted with only minor changes from an article that Bersani published under his own name. Jay Clayton, associate professor of English at Vanderbilt University, is the author of Romantic Vision and the Novel and coeditor of Contemporary Literature and Contemporary Theory . He is currently completing a study of contemporary American literature and theory, Narrative Power. (shrink)

_Psychoanalysis and Women_, Volume 32 of _The Annual of Psychoanalysis_, is a stunning reprise on theoretical, developmental, and clinical issues that have engaged analysts from Freud on. It begins with clinical contributions by Joyce McDougall and Lynne Layton, two theorists at the forefront of clinical work with women; Jessica Benjamin, Julia Kristeva, and Ethel Spector Person, from their respective vantage points, all engage the issue of passivity, which Freud tended to equate with femininity. Employing a self-psychological framework, Christine (...) Kieffer returns to the Oedipus complex and sheds new light on the typically Pyrrhic oedipal victory of little girls. Section III broadens the historical context of contemporary theorizing about women by offering the personal reminiscences of Nancy Chodorow, Carol Gilligan, Brenda Solomon, and Malkah Notman. A final section, dedicated to "women who shared psychoanalysis," features historical essays on Ida Bauer, Anna Freud, Dorothy Burlingham, Edith Jacobson, and Therese Benedek, along with Linda Hopkins's revealing interview of Marion Milner. Of special note is Marian Tolpin's examination of three women - Bauer, Helene Deutch, and Anna Freud - who helped shape Freud's notion of the "femail castration complex," and Elisabeth Young-Bruehl's exploration of how two women - Anna Freud and Dorothy Burlingham - developed parent-infant observation. _Psychoanalysis and Women_ is an extraordinary chronicle of the distance traveled since Freud characterized women's sexual life as "the dark continent." The contributors vitalize a half century of theory with the lessons of biography, and they broaden clinical sensibilities by drawing on recent developmental, gender-related, and socio-psychological research. In doing so, they attest to the ongoing reconfiguration of Freud's dark continent and show the psychoanalytic psychology of women to be very much a revolution in progress. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.3 (2000) 259-285 [Access article in PDF] The Personal, the Political, and Others: Audre Lorde Denouncing "The Second Sex Conference" 1 Lester C. Olsen Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference--those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who are older--know that (...) survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those others identified as outside the structures in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish.--Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider 112Fifty years ago, in 1949, Simone de Beauvoir's book entitled The Second Sex was published in France. She did not consider herself a philosopher because, to her, a philosopher was "someone who has built a great system" (Simons and Benjamin 1979, 338). Her book, nonetheless, became a milestone in feminist philosophy, for it synthesizes elements of existentialism, phenomenology, and socialism in an account of women's situation in society. Central to this account is Beauvoir's concentration upon representations of "self" and "other." For example, Beauvoir affirmed, "The category of the Other is as primordial as consciousness itself. In most primitive societies, in the most ancient mythologies, one finds the expression of a duality--that of the Self and the Other. This duality was not originally attached to the division of the sexes; it was not dependent upon any empirical facts" (1993, xl). In an interview, Beauvoir stressed, "I believe that the Other is not simply an idealist relationship, it is a materialist relationship" (Simons and Benjamin 1979, 345). To develop her analysis, Beauvoir drew upon another binary, "master" and "slave." However, she concentrated on how women, as a category, had been subordinated as men's "other."Twenty years ago, in 1979, Audre Lorde delivered her best-known speech, "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House," at an international conference held in honor of the thirtieth anniversary of [End Page 259] Beauvoir's book. According to conference organizer Jessica Benjamin and reporter Lilly Rivlin, writing together in Ms. magazine, "[M]ore than 800 women from all over the world gathered at a conference on feminist theory, 'The Second Sex--Thirty Years Later,' sponsored by the New York Institute for the Humanities" (1980, 48). Like most of the conference participants, Lorde was a woman, a feminist, a socialist, a public intellectual, and an activist scholar. Lorde may have participated in the conference as a "consultant," a poet at a public reading, and a speaker at a plenary session 2 because her feminist philosophy is of resonance to Beauvoir's. Both women rejected biology as the basis for women's situation, believing instead that material conditions are most fundamental. Both commented upon the power of symbolism, especially myths about others, in perpetuating social inequalities and failing to differentiate categories for others. Both saw the relationship between "self" and "other" as a vital and creative tension.To understand this tension, Beauvoir drew explicitly on Hegel's ideas as they were treated in Sartre's oeuvre (Lloyd 1983). In contrast, Lorde may have drawn upon conceptions of double consciousness among black public intellectuals in the United States (Henderson 1989, 17-21). Unlike Beauvoir, Lorde was a lesbian, a mother, and a black woman for whom Beauvoir's analogies between the status of women and the status of "Negroes" were problematic. Confronting the conference participants on the last day, during the last panel entitled "The Personal and the Political," Lorde condemned the conference for its limited range of speakers, its substance, its very structure. Lorde examined the ramifications of failing to include others as equals. For in failing to do so, the conference had employed the same tools of oppression over others that the participants deplored in the politics of patriarchy. Lorde challenged the conference participants, who presumably understood that Beauvoir had represented woman as... (shrink)

Many critics view Irigaray's work as an extension or deconstruction of a Lacanian paradigm. Few actually analyse it as a direct challenge to Lacanian concepts of symbolic subjectivity, and the consequent, alternative framework this would envisage. This article discusses a poss ible beyond the phallus, in relation to mediating concepts of the female imaginary and symbolic within her work, and an understanding of the female imaginary and symbolic within different feminist interpretations of the maternal imaginary and symbolic, arguing that the (...) imaginary is crucial in delineating a non-separatist cultural sublimation of female desire. Feminist revisions of the Oedipal by Jessica Benjamin and Kaja Silverman are examined in relation to the question of a maternal imagin ary and symbolic. Irigaray objects to Silverman's privileging of a Lacan ian concept of symbolic castration because it cannot negotiate between the literal relation to the body, and the metaphors and language of our cultural symbolic. Her female imaginary and symbolic provide this mediating link in direct challenge to the overly literal penis of Freud's castration complex and the essentially metaphorical nature of Lacan's phallus. Her mediation is related to the work of diverse psychoanalytic thinkers such as Andrew Samuels, Cornelius Castoriadis and Anthony Elliott. Returning to a feminist reading by Margaret Whitford, this article finally negates a Lacanian understanding of these structures and goes on to explore Irigaray's creative bodily imaginary, within two of her papers on analytic practice. Elaboration of a bodily and creative imaginary within the clinical setting can represent necessary mediation between real and symbolic and between the psyche and culture: this HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES Vol. 10 No. 2 @ 1997 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi) pp. 41-60 [0952-6951(199705)10:2] mediation is personified through the hysteric, not through the Oedipal Law of the Father, which is finally the key question in culturally locat ing female desire, thereby connecting the theory of psychoanalysis with practice and with history. (shrink)

Using the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jessica Benjamin, I here describe the role of language in achieving intersubjective relationships among persons.

We perceive smells as perduring complex entities within a distal array that might be conceived of as smellscapes. However, the philosophical orthodoxy of Odor Theories has been to deny that smells are perceived as having a distal location. Recent challenges have been mounted to Odor Theories’ veracity in handling the timescale of olfactory perception, how it individuates odors as a distal entities, and their claim that olfactory perception is not spatial. The paper does not aim to dispute these criticisms. Rather, (...) what will be shown is that Molecular Structure Theory, a refinement of Odor Theory, can be further developed to handle these challenges. The theory is further refined by focusing on distal perception that requires considering the perceptual object as mereologically complex persisting odor against a background scene conceived of as a smellscape. What will be offered is an expansion of Molecular Structure Theory to account for distal smell perception within natural environments. (shrink)

We are immersed within an odorous sea of chemical currents that we parse into individual odors with complex structures. Odors have been posited as determined by the structural relation between the molecules that compose the chemical compounds and their interactions with the receptor site. But, naturally occurring smells are parsed from gaseous odor plumes. To give a comprehensive account of the nature of odors the chemosciences must account for these large distributed entities as well. We offer a focused review of (...) what is known about the perception of odor plumes for olfactory navigation and tracking, which we then connect to what is known about the role odorants play as properties of the plume in determining odor identity with respect to odor quality. We end by motivating our central claim that more research needs to be conducted on the role that odorants play within the odor plume in determining odor identity. (shrink)

Jessica Dubow’s In Exile – working through Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin and Franz Rosenzweig – reads Judaic thought from the Exodus as exile. With Rosenzweig, she understands this as pitting the (Judaic) singular of faith against the (Greek) universal of reason. This ‘bad universal’ was Hegel’s state, which Dubow also sees as Carl Schmitt’s state. Dubow sees this as it were universal of dominance in today’s Israeli state, against which she pits the singular of exilic thought.

Capital punishment—the legally authorized killing of a criminal offender by an agent of the state for the commission of a crime—stands in special need of moral justification. This is because execution is a particularly severe punishment. Execution is different in kind from monetary and custodial penalties in an obvious way: execution causes the death of an offender. While fines and incarceration set back some of one’s interests, death eliminates the possibility of setting and pursuing ends. While fines and incarceration narrow (...) one’s routes to happiness, death eliminates its possibility. Not surprisingly, there is much debate about the moral permissibility of capital punishment. This entry maps the terrain of this debate. The first section discusses justifications of the death penalty as they appear in major theories of punishment. The second section surveys moral objections to execution that apply to most justifications. The third addresses procedural criticisms, which do not target the morality of execution so much as the justice of its implementation. (shrink)

It has recently been suggested that a distinctive metaphysical relation— ‘Grounding’—is ultimately at issue in contexts in which some goings-on are said to hold ‘in virtue of’’, be ‘metaphysically dependent on’, or be ‘nothing over and above’ some others. Grounding is supposed to do good work in illuminating metaphysical dependence. I argue that Grounding is also unsuited to do this work. To start, Grounding alone cannot do this work, for bare claims of Grounding leave open such basic questions as whether (...) Grounded goings-on exist, whether they are reducible to or rather distinct from Grounding goings-on, whether they are efficacious, and so on; but in the absence of answers to such basic questions, we are not in position to assess the associated claim or theses concerning metaphysical dependence. There is no avoiding appeal to the specific metaphysical relations typically at issue in investigations into dependence—for example, type or token identity, functional realization, classical mereological parthood, the set membership relation, the proper subset relation, the determinable/determinate relation, and so on—which are capable of answering these questions. But, I argue, once the specific relations are on the scene, there is no need for Grounding. (shrink)