Résumé La critique situationniste a transformé l’art en pratique de la vie quotidienne. Les punks y ont ajouté le pullulement des groupes autoproduits et le souci de subvertir les moyens de communication de masse. Les cercles underground, l’art vidéo et les sound systems ont fait le reste. Internet a pu brancher le monde sur la contre-culture. Le 18 Juin 1999, de nombreux centres financiers, à commencer par celui de Londres, ont été attaqués par les masques multicolores de Reclaim the Streets (...) et d’autres groupes disparates, qui multipliaient les activités joyeuses depuis plusieurs années. Le net.art a pris le relais de ces carnavals dans l’expression des multitudes insurgées. (shrink)

Résumé La critique situationniste a transformé l’art en pratique de la vie quotidienne. Les punks y ont ajouté le pullulement des groupes autoproduits et le souci de subvertir les moyens de communication de masse. Les cercles underground, l’art vidéo et les sound systems ont fait le reste. Internet a pu brancher le monde sur la contre-culture. Le 18 Juin 1999, de nombreux centres financiers, à commencer par celui de Londres, ont été attaqués par les masques multicolores de Reclaim the Streets (...) et d’autres groupes disparates, qui multipliaient les activités joyeuses depuis plusieurs années. Le net.art a pris le relais de ces carnavals dans l’expression des multitudes insurgées. (shrink)

Résumé Black Sea Files, d’Ursula Biemann, et Corridor X, d’Angela Melitopoulos, sont des vidéos projetées sur double écran qui explorent la construction d’infrastructures : le pipeline BTC (Bakou-Tbilissi-Ceyhan) et le corridor paneuropéen de transport allant de Salzbourg et Budapest à Sofia et Thessalonique. Chacune se confronte au caractère abstrait des espaces produits par les processus de planification capitaliste contemporains ; mais chacune se détourne dans le même temps vers « une myriade de trajectoires humains qui se déroulent au niveau du (...) sol ». Elles y découvrent la production d’un milieu existentiel vécu et façonné par ses habitants, un espace vital ouvert aux devenirs les plus inattendus, et en même temps intérieurement contradictoire de par sa multiplicité même. C’est ce que Lefebvre appelait « l’espace différentiel ». Mais entre l’époque de Lefebvre et la nôtre, il y a eu une floraison d’enquêtes féministes et d’historiographies postcoloniales, qui ont prêté une attention particulière aux interactions entre la positionnalité des sujets et les savoirs situés (y compris les savoirs d’expression). Ces réflexions induisent un nouveau traitement du récit, une démultiplication de sa texture gestuelle et narrative, qui élargit la production de l’espace à travers le montage vidéographique lui-même. La recherche artistique donne forme à une géographie différentielle, c’est-à-dire à un mode de connaissance (de reconnaissance, d’auto-connaissance) qui permet aux sujets d’inscrire dans la trame gestuelle du récit leur propre positionnalité, tout en exposant ses déterminations socioéconomiques au flux du temps intersubjectif et à la fluctuation électronique de l’image vidéo. (shrink)

Résumé Black Sea Files, d’Ursula Biemann, et Corridor X, d’Angela Melitopoulos, sont des vidéos projetées sur double écran qui explorent la construction d’infrastructures : le pipeline BTC (Bakou-Tbilissi-Ceyhan) et le corridor paneuropéen de transport allant de Salzbourg et Budapest à Sofia et Thessalonique. Chacune se confronte au caractère abstrait des espaces produits par les processus de planification capitaliste contemporains ; mais chacune se détourne dans le même temps vers « une myriade de trajectoires humains qui se déroulent au niveau du (...) sol ». Elles y découvrent la production d’un milieu existentiel vécu et façonné par ses habitants, un espace vital ouvert aux devenirs les plus inattendus, et en même temps intérieurement contradictoire de par sa multiplicité même. C’est ce que Lefebvre appelait « l’espace différentiel ». Mais entre l’époque de Lefebvre et la nôtre, il y a eu une floraison d’enquêtes féministes et d’historiographies postcoloniales, qui ont prêté une attention particulière aux interactions entre la positionnalité des sujets et les savoirs situés (y compris les savoirs d’expression). Ces réflexions induisent un nouveau traitement du récit, une démultiplication de sa texture gestuelle et narrative, qui élargit la production de l’espace à travers le montage vidéographique lui-même. La recherche artistique donne forme à une géographie différentielle, c’est-à-dire à un mode de connaissance (de reconnaissance, d’auto-connaissance) qui permet aux sujets d’inscrire dans la trame gestuelle du récit leur propre positionnalité, tout en exposant ses déterminations socioéconomiques au flux du temps intersubjectif et à la fluctuation électronique de l’image vidéo. (shrink)

What is an imperial infrastructure ? The article briefly retraces the military, academic and commercial history of the Internet, to show how its logical constitution achieves the integration of the largest possible number of machines, networks and users. It then enquires into the fold whereby this normalizing device helps unleash an original form of activist social critique. The military principle of interoperability gives way to an unpredictable dynamics of free association, marked by the organizational figure of the swarm. But the (...) Internet remains a control technology, overwhelmed or subverted by constituent powers. (shrink)

Situationist critique has transformed art into a practice of the everyday. Punks have added themselves to that massing of self-organised groups committed to subverting the means of mass communication. In underground circles, video art and sound systems have done the rest. The internet has been able to extend counter-culture across the world. On 18th June 1999 several financial centres, most notably London, were attacked by the multi-coloured masks of Reclaim the Streets and other disparate groups who have multiplied their joyful (...) activities for a couple of years. net.art relays these carnivals through the self-expression of these insurgent multitudes. (shrink)

Résumé Comment s’est-il autonomisé de la fonctionnalité sociale pour devenir l’institution dominante du capitalisme contemporain? Cet article examine deux performances. La première est celle de l’artiste australien Michael Goldberg : installé dans une galerie de Sydney pendant trois semaines, il spécule artistiquement sur des produits dérivés de News Corp., l’empire médiatique de Rupert Murdoch. La deuxième est un projet du collectif ephemera — theory & politics in organization : après avoir identifié le « pouvoir arbitraire » du capitalisme financier, environ (...) quarante participants tentent de créer collectivement un autre imaginaire, via une conférence / événement artistique organisée dans le Transsibérien. L’article emprunte à la sociologie lacanienne de Karin Knorr Cetina pour décrire le « rapport postsocial » des courtiers de bourse aux « objets en cours de déroulement » qui prennent forme sur leurs écrans. Il fait ensuite appel aux Cartographies schizoanalytiques de Guattari pour cerner la manière dont les éléments matériels et discursifs d’un imaginaire extériorisé peuvent se recombiner pour créer le miroir déroulant, à multiples facettes, où une subjectivité se réfléchit en mouvement. (shrink)

What is the imaginary of finance ? How did it separate off from any social functionality, to become the dominant institution of contemporary capitalism ? This article examines two performances. The first is by the Australian artist Michael Goldberg : installed for three weeks at a Sydney gallery, he speculated artistically on derivatives of News Corp., the media empire of Richard Murdoch. The second is a project by the ephemera collective, who work on « theory & politics in organization ». (...) Having identified the « arbitrary power » of finance capitalism, some forty participants attempted the creation of another imaginary, through a conference and art event on the rails of the trans-Siberian train. The article borrows from the Lacanian sociology of Karin Knorr Cetina to decribe the « post-social relation » between traders and the « unfolding objects » that coalesce into form on their screens. It then calls upon Félix Guattari’s Schizoanalytic Cartographies to find out how the material and discursive elements of an externalized imaginary can be recombined to form the multiply facetted unfolding mirror where a subjectivty in movement can be reflected. (shrink)

Résumé Comment s’est-il autonomisé de la fonctionnalité sociale pour devenir l’institution dominante du capitalisme contemporain? Cet article examine deux performances. La première est celle de l’artiste australien Michael Goldberg : installé dans une galerie de Sydney pendant trois semaines, il spécule artistiquement sur des produits dérivés de News Corp., l’empire médiatique de Rupert Murdoch. La deuxième est un projet du collectif ephemera — theory & politics in organization : après avoir identifié le « pouvoir arbitraire » du capitalisme financier, environ (...) quarante participants tentent de créer collectivement un autre imaginaire, via une conférence / événement artistique organisée dans le Transsibérien. L’article emprunte à la sociologie lacanienne de Karin Knorr Cetina pour décrire le « rapport postsocial » des courtiers de bourse aux « objets en cours de déroulement » qui prennent forme sur leurs écrans. Il fait ensuite appel aux Cartographies schizoanalytiques de Guattari pour cerner la manière dont les éléments matériels et discursifs d’un imaginaire extériorisé peuvent se recombiner pour créer le miroir déroulant, à multiples facettes, où une subjectivité se réfléchit en mouvement. (shrink)

Two short articles recount the concept and program of Makrolab. The idea of a mobile stage that could be used not only for representation but for work with reality came in a flash to the Slovene artist Marko Peljhan one sunny day in 1994 on the island of « Krk, » off the coast of Croatia which was then embroiled in war. The goal was to pursue an artistic experimentation in direct contact with the latest technical developments, beyond the failing (...) frameworks of the nation-state. The Makrolab, a « Laboratory-Theater in Time, » is a nomadic architecture that can be disassembled and transported. It is inhabited by teams of artists and researchers who explore the natural environment, the migrations of animals and humans beings, and the events of the electromagnetic spectrum, conceived as the invisible side of the world political space. (shrink)

Originally published 1967, this title reveals how the missionaries, so often misguided and short-sighted, were in fact pioneers of modernization, science and freedom. The structure of the book allows for comparative analysis and the volume illustrates how some of the social consequences of action through the schools could be foreseen. In addition light is thrown on the results of Imperial rule during the nineteenth century and on the nature of the impact of Western education in Asia and Africa.

Molecular Revolution in BrazilFélix Guattari and Suely Rolniktranslated by Karel Clapshow and Brian HolmesYes, I believe that there is a multiple people, a people of mutants, a people of potentialities that appears and disappears, that is embodied in social, literary, and musical events.... I think that we're in a period of productivity, proliferation, creation, utterly fabulous revolutions from the viewpoint of this emergence of a people. That's molecular revolution: it isn't a slogan or a program, it's something that I (...) feel, that I live....--from Molecular Revolution in BrazilFollowing Brazil's first democratic election after two decades of military dictatorship, French philosopher Félix Guattari traveled through Brazil in 1982 with Brazilian psychoanalyst Suely Rolnik and discovered an exciting, new political vitality. In the infancy of its new republic, Brazil was moving against traditional hierarchies of control and totalitarian regimes and founding a revolution of ideas and politics. Molecular Revolution in Brazil documents the conversations, discussions, and debates that arose during the trip, including a dialogue between Guattari and Brazil's future President Luis Ignacia Lula da Silva, then a young gubernatorial candidate. Through these exchanges, Guattari cuts through to the shadowy practices of globalization gone awry and boldly charts a revolution in practice.Assembled and edited by Rolnik, Molecular Revolution in Brazil is organized thematically; aphoristic at times, it presents a lesser-known, more overtly political aspect of Guattari's work. Originally published in Brazil in 1986 as Micropolitica: Cartografias do desejo, the book became a crucial reference for political movements in Brazil in the 1980s and 1990s. It now provides English-speaking readers with an invaluable picture of the radical thought and optimism that lies at the root of Lula's Brazil. Félix Guattari, post-'68 French psychoanalyst and philosopher, is the author of Anti-Oedipus, The Anti-Oedipus Papers, 2006), and other books. Semiotext has published the first two volumes of his complete essays, Chaosophy and Soft Subversions, and will publish the final volume, Chaos and Complexity, in 2008. Suely Rolnik is a psychoanalyst, cultural critic, and curator who lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil. She was a close collaborator of Guattari during her exile in Paris from the military dictatorship in Brazil. (shrink)

Résumé La question des fondements d’un revenu garanti n’est pas une question d’experts, réservée aux spécialistes du capitalisme historique ou de la crise de l’État-providence. Par delà la caution élégante ou l’habillage théorique qu’elle peut fournir, la philosophie de Spinoza, en tant qu’elle se formule comme projet d’augmentation de la puissance d’agir, permet à la fois de comprendre tout ce peut nous apporter un revenu garanti dans la conjoncture actuelle, et de problématiser un certain nombre de débats, propositions, critiques, qui (...) se font jour autour de cette revendication. La petite fantaisie métaphysique que se permet le défenseur du RG quand il lit Spinoza l’amène à problématiser deux choses : la justification du RG, de manière générale, à partir des transformations sociétales les plus récentes (théorie du postfordisme), et, plus particulièrement, sa justification en termes de revenu primaire rémunérant l’activité au-delà du travail directement productif. (shrink)

Philosophy and Kafka is a collection of original essays interrogating the relationship of literature and philosophy. The essays either discuss specific philosophical commentaries on Kafka’s work, consider the possible relevance of certain philosophical outlooks for examining Kafka’s writings, or examine Kafka’s writings in terms of a specific philosophical theme, such as communication and subjectivity, language and meaning, knowledge and truth, the human/animal divide, justice, and freedom.

Our world is full of fictional devices that let people feel better about their situation - through deception and self-deception. The legal realist, Felix Cohen, argued that law and legal reasoning is full of similarly dubious labels and bad reasoning, though of a special kind. He argued that judges, lawyers and legal commentators allow linguistic inventions and conventions to distort their thinking. Like the ancient peoples who built idols out of stone and wood and then asked them for assistance and (...) guidance, Cohen argued that within the legal world people tend to create legal concepts and then think that these concepts do or should determine how social disputes must be The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein similarly spoke of the way we fool ourselves, when we use a noun for some matter, and then assume that, because nouns usually name objects, here as well there must be some entity that exists out in the world, whose nature can be discovered. Our grammar misleads us. This article explores some of the ways, particularly in contract law and family law, that we have been led astray by our legal language. Because we only rarely have an Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., or a Felix Cohen to keep us in line, we need to learn to do the important work ourselves. The great danger is the way that inaccurate language can so easily change our substantive views about what is natural or what is right. If transparency is difficult in legal language, much of the fault may lie with lawyers and judges who want to make their conclusions sound more reasonable, less controversial, and more appealing: so we call it "consent" and "waiver" and "meeting of the minds" and "best interests of the child," when it is in fact something quite different. And at least in the common law systems the process of reasoning and law-making is tied strongly to the past. The new case has to fit into the categories and concepts that we created for a prior case - fitting cases that came up hundreds of years before, in a different society, with different technology, facing a different set of problems. So judges often end up stretching the meaning of concepts, or using legal fictions to bridge the old rule with the new equities. We may never entirely escape the tendency of our own language to mislead us, but clarity in thought and analysis is something towards which we should struggle constantly, and with determination. (shrink)

Lochner represents a crucial case in American constitutional law. An investigation of the decision highlights important philosophical aspects of the place of law in a democratic society. Analysis of contemporary stances on Lochner, the actual Lochner opinion (including the dissents by Harlan and Holmes) and how judges following the legal philosophies of John Dewey, Ronald Dworkin and Richard Posner (“Dews,” “Dworks,” and “Poses”) would have decided the case shows that Dewey’s theory of law and democracy emerges as the most (...) attractive alternative. (shrink)

The Metaphysical Club, a gathering of intellectuals in the 1870s associated with Harvard, is widely recognized as the crucible where pragmatism, America's distinctively original philosophy, was refined and proclaimed. Louis Menand's bestseller about the group was a dramatic publishing success. However, only three actual members - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Charles S. Peirce, and William James - appear in this book, alongside other thinkers such as John Dewey who were never in the Club. The Real Metaphysical Club tells the (...) full story of how this influential group shifted the course of philosophy in America. In addition to pioneering pragmatism, the group explored radical empiricism and idealism, and formulated personalism and process philosophy, equally important developments. This volume contains thirty-seven important writings dating from 1870 to 1885 by the real members of the Metaphysical Club. The first section centers on pragmatism and science; the second part collects writings of the lawyers; and the third part covers idealist and personalist philosophers. Many of these writings have never been reprinted before, and nothing like this impressive collection has ever been attempted. A general introduction provides a narrative history, and the editors' three introductions to the volume's sections vividly bring to life the intense meetings, sustained debates, and pioneering thought from the Metaphysical Club. (shrink)

What interests us and claims our attention in Nazism is, essentially, its ideology, in the definition Hannah Arendt has given of this term in her book on The Origins of Totalitarianism. In this work, ideology is defined as the totally self-fulfilling logic of an idea, an idea “by which the movement of history is explained as one consistent process.” “The movement of history and the logical process of this notion,” Arendt continues, “are supposed to correspond to each other, so that (...) whatever happens, happens according to the logic of one ‘idea.’”2Ideology, in other words, interests us and claims our attention insofar as, on the one hand, it always proposes itself as a political explanation of the world, that is, as an explanation of history on the basis of a single concept—the concept of race, for example, or the concept of class—and insofar as, on the other hand, this ideological explanation or conception of the world seeks to be a total explanation or conception. This totality signifies that the explanation is indisputable, leaving neither gaps nor remainders—unlike philosophical thought, from which ideology shamelessly draws the greater part of its resources but which is characterized by a risky, problematic style, what Arendt calls the “insecurity” of philosophical questioning . 2. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism , p. 469; hereafter abbreviated OT. Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy teach at the University of Human Sciences of Strasbourg, France, and are also visiting professors at the University of California, Berkeley. They are coauthors of The Literary Absolute and, related to the topic of politics, “The Jewish People Don’t Dream” . Lacoue-Labarthe is also the author of Typography and La Fiction du politique . Nancy has written “Sharing Voices” in Transforming Hermeneutics and La Communauté désoeuvrée . Brian Holmes is a doctoral candidate in romance languages and literatures at the University of California, Berkeley, and editor of the journal Qui Parle. He is currently at work on the parody of authorial identity in Cervantes and Flaubert. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Psychedelics, including psilocybin, and other consciousness-altering compounds such as 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), currently are being scientifically investigated for their potential therapeutic uses, with a primary focus on measurable outcomes: for example, alleviation of symptoms or increases in self-reported well-being. Accordingly, much recent discussion about the possible value of these substances has turned on estimates of the magnitude and duration of persisting positive effects in comparison to harms. However, many have described the value of a psychedelic experience with little or no reference (...) to such therapeutic benefits, instead seeming to find the experience valuable in its own right. How can we make sense of such testimony? Could a psychedelic experience be valuable even if there were no persisting beneficial effects? If so, how? Using the concept of psychological richness, combined with insights from the philosophy of aesthetics and the enhancement literature, this essay explores potential sources of value in the acute subjective experience, apart from the value derived from persisting beneficial effects. (shrink)

This essay reexamines Holmes Rolston’s evocative notion of “storied residence” and evaluates it for its fitness for environmental virtue ethics. Environmental virtue ethics (or EVE) continues to garner attention among environmental philosophers, and recently Brian Treanor has argued for the indispensability of narrative approaches as part of that discourse. In this paper, I endorse this indispensability thesis generally, but I argue that narrative environmental virtue ethics must be supplemented either by “storied residence” or a similar environmentally, scientifically, culturally, (...) and historically rich concept of narrative. Rolston himself has criticized environmental virtue ethics for being too agent-centered. Fortunately, an adequate sense of storied-residence is precisely what is needed to avoid triggering the vicious anthropocentrism that concerns Rolston. More concretely, storied-residence makes place(s) central to environmental virtue ethics by giving expression to features of the more-than-human world that often become secondary considerations to agency in accounts of environmental virtue. (shrink)

We examine three business-related initiatives designed to achieve peace positive impacts in the Cape Town township of Langa. Each was seemingly straightforward in its purpose, logic, and implementation. However, their positive intent was frustrated and their impacts ultimately harmful to their articulated goals. Understanding why this is so can be difficult in violent, turbulent, and information-poor environments such as Langa, confounding progress even by actors with ethical intentions. To aid in sense making and to provide insight for more positive future (...) action, we develop from 125 interviews conducted for this study causal loop models for these initiatives within their conflict subsystems. These explain the perverse impacts of these initiatives by illuminating their (lack of) salience to key conflict factors, their (in)sufficiency to effect positive change in light of competing systems dynamics, and their (in)attentiveness to interdependencies with the intentions and actions of others. We thus contribute to understanding of the factors required to achieve positive social outcomes in more extreme contexts. More generally, we demonstrate the value of systems analysis both for scholarship related to business and peace and for reducing blind spots that can inhibit sound planning for ethical business action amidst complexity. (shrink)

Is your mind the same thing as your brain, or are there aspects of mind beyond the brain's biology? This is the mind-body problem, and it has captivated curious minds since the dawn of human contemplation. Today many insist that the mind is completely reducible to the brain. But is that claim justified? In this stimulating anthology, twenty-five philosophers and scientists offer fresh insights into the mind-brain debate, drawing on psychology, neurology, philosophy, computer science, and neurosurgery. Their provocative conclusion? The (...) mind is indeed more than the brain. (shrink)

Almaatouq et al. view the purpose of research is to map variable-to-variable relationships (e.g., the effect of X on Y). They also view theory as this mapping of variable-to-variable relationships rather than an explanation of why the relationships occur. However, it is theory as explanation that allows us to reconcile disparate findings and that should guide application.

At every level, the study of organic life underlies the relational nature of its subject. Whether one looks at an organism as a whole and its relationship to its environment or other members of its species, or at the component parts of the organism at an organ system, cellular or even molecular level, there is an externally referential and thus relational nature to lived beings. There is perhaps no place as fruitful to illustrate this relationality than the field of immunology. (...) This paper argues that close attention to the phenomenon of relationality that is evidenced by natural scientific research provides an important occasion to demonstrate the wide-ranging validity of the sort of relational ontology defended by the tradition of phenomenological personalism. Such intersections as one discerns in interdisciplinary engagement between personalist phenomenology and immunology, moreover, can provide a basis for further clarification of the relation of person to the world of nature and vice versa in ways that call into question the dominance of reductive philosophies of nature. (shrink)