As the price of oil climbs toward $100 a barrel, our impending post-fossil fuel future appears to offer two alternatives: a bleak existence defined by scarcity and sacrifice or one in which humanity places its faith in technological solutions with unforeseen consequences. Are there other ways to imagine life in an era that will be characterized by resource depletion? The French intellectual Georges Bataille saw energy as the basis of all human activity--the essence of the human--and he envisioned a society (...) that, instead of renouncing profligate spending, would embrace a more radical type of energy expenditure: la depense , or "spending without return." In Bataille's Peak , Allan Stoekl demonstrates how a close reading of Bataille--in the wake of Giordano Bruno and the Marquis de Sade-- can help us rethink not only energy and consumption, but also such related topics as the city, the body, eroticism, and religion. Through these cases, Stoekl identifies the differences between waste, which Bataille condemned, and expenditure, which he celebrated. The challenge of living in the twenty-first century, Stoekl argues, will be to comprehend--without recourse to austerity and self-denial--the inevitable and necessary shift from a civilization founded on waste to one based on Bataillean expenditure. Allan Stoekl is professor of French and comparative literature at Penn State University. He is the author of Agonies of the Intellectual: Commitment, Subjectivity, and the Performative in the Twentieth-Century French Tradition and translator of Bataille's Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939 (Minnesota, 1985). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 30.3 (2000) 40-52 [Access article in PDF] Hugo's le Dernier Jour d'un Condamné The End as Contamination Allan Stoekl How does one end a story? What does it mean to end a story? What is the relationship between the end of a story and that which precedes it? These, in many ways, are among the central concerns of nineteenth-century fiction, for this period saw extensive experimentation (...) not only in the areas of narration, point of view, and style, but in the realm of what is often called narrative "closure."This term, one we are all familiar with from television news accounts—everyone wants closure nowadays, whatever that is—is already contested in much of nineteenth-century fiction. The happy certainties of, say, a Sherlock Holmes story are hardly corroborated by the dismal fates of Emma Bovary or Thérèse Raquin. Indeed, one of the goals of much "realism" of the period can be seen as a desire to formulate another type of ending, one that provides not happy consolation—closure in the contemporary sense of the term—but simply an ending as cessation, a hanging-fire that offers only the silence, and emptiness, of the tomb. And even the emptiness of the character: after all, when Charles Bovary is opened up in order to determine the cause of his death, the doctors "find nothing": he was as empty as the ending of his wife's story. Indeed the discovery of that emptiness is the end (such as it is). Charles's emptiness has opened the story, it closes it, and in between there are only episodes that make obvious the end to come: disillusionment in the power of stories, the death-in-life of a life that tries to ape adventures. The end, the end of stories in general, comes to occupy and reconfigure (in its own nonimage) the entire story.As Montaigne put it, there is only a bout rather than a but: an end as mere cessation rather than as goal or conclusion.1 This endlessness of the end—as simple extinction—suffuses all that comes before it: it is not so much that events lead up to an end, but rather that the end casts back on the events that precede it its own void, its fundamental unknowability.Sartre, of course, was eager to continue this Flaubertian critique (as he continued so much else started by Flaubert); in La nausée (Nausea) his hero, Roquentin, refuses any belief in the reality of "adventures"—his own or anyone else's—because they are essentially false: they are stories, with beginnings and endings selected to provide an illuminating or pleasurable experience. They are no more "real" than are the objects [End Page 40] around us, which are fabricated and chosen with a subjective, and selfish, end in view. In lived adventures, as in stories in novels or films, it is the end that gives sense to what comes before it: the economy of narrative, so to speak, requires that everything that figures in a story be of use in contributing to a satisfying and totalizing end (a but). In his diary, Roquentin writes:And in reality you have started at the end. It was there, invisible and present, it is the one which gives to words the pomp and value of a beginning. "I was out walking, I had left the town without realizing it, I was thinking about my money troubles." This sentence, taken simply for what it is, means that the man was absorbed, morose, a hundred leagues from an adventure, exactly in the mood to let things happen without noticing them. But the end is there, transforming everything. For us, the man is already the hero of the story. [...] And the story goes on in reverse: instants have stopped piling themselves up in a lighthearted way one on top of the other, they are snapped up by the end of the story which draws them and each one of them in turn, draws out the preceding instant: "It was night, the street... (shrink)

Rich with historical and cultural value, these works are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

Reviled and fetishized, the work of Georges Bataille has been most often reduced to his outrageous, erotic, and libertine fiction and essays. But increasingly, readers are finding his insights into politics, economics, sexuality, and performance revealing and timely. Focusing on Bataille’s most extensive work, The Accursed Share, Shannon Winnubst and the contributors to this volume present contemporary interpretations that read Bataille in a new light. These essays situate Bataille in French and European intellectual traditions, bring forward key concepts for understanding (...) the challenges posed by his important work, and draw out his philosophy. Established voices and younger scholars cover a range of topics and themes, including ethics, politics, economy, psychology, and performance so readers can think with and through Bataille. While focusing attention on Bataille and his provocative work, this book offers a sympathetic, yet critical, reappraisal and rehabilitation. Contributors are Alison Leigh Brown, Andrew Cutrofello, Zeynep Direk, Jesse Goldhammer, Dorothy Holland, Pierre Lamarche, Richard A. Lee, Jr., Alphonso Lingis, Ladelle McWhorter, Lucio A. Privitello, Allan Stoekl, Amy Wendling, and Shannon Winnubst. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophy, to be useful to Orthodox Christian theology, must capture the “essence” of the divine and human activity in the world in the scientific sense of Edmund Husserl. Scholastic philosophy is no longer an academically privileged supporter of theology in the interpretation of the universe. In its place, this paper suggests that phenomenological philosophy becomes the unique and transcendent partner, as it were, in the interpretive dialogue. The methodological thinking of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger offers a way of (...) philosophical understanding that is more satisfactory than the traditional scholastic metaphysics in giving meaning to contemporary human experience. A phenomenological eco-theological approach captures the essences of a subject’s immediate and holistic perception of the environment. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , September 2008, Volume 8, Edition 2. (shrink)

I conclude that Gibbard fails to solve several of the traditional problems for expressivism. He solves some of these problems, but his solutions to them in effect give up expressivism. Of course, one might respond that it does not really matter whether his theory is expressivist. In some ways, I agree. Gibbard says many fascinating things about morality which have at most indirect connections to his expressivist analysis. I am thinking especially of his later discussions of hyperscepticism, parochialism, and indirect (...) pragmatism. These views could still be developed even if he gave up expressivism. All I have tried to show here is that he does need to give up expressivism unless he can solve the problems that I have raised. (shrink)

The precarious rights of senior citizens, especially those who are highly educated and who are expected to counsel and guide the younger generations, has stimulated the creation internationally of advocacy associations and opinion leader groups. The strength of these groups, however, varies from country to country. In some countries, they are supported and are the focus of intense interest; in others, they are practically ignored. For this is reason we believe that the creation of a network of all these associations (...) is essential. The proposed network would act as a support for the already-existing policies of the United Nations’ High Commission for Human Rights, of independent experts, and of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Older People. All three have long ago recommended the creation of a recognized instrument for uniting presently scattered efforts. The proposed network, therefore, will seek to promote the international exchange of relevant expertise, and it will reinforce the commitments and actions that single countries are currently taking to meet these objectives. For example, informative public events can be organised to promote particular support initiatives and to provide an opportunity for new members of the network to be presented. The network will promote health for senior citizens, disease prevention, senior mobility, safe free time for seniors, alimentary education, protection against new risks and dangers, as well as equity in the services necessary for seniors to adopt new information and communication technologies. In the case of retired academic members, the network will promote equality with respect to continuing use of digital technologies (particularly email), continuing access to research libraries, and the guaranteed ability for seniors to fund their own research programs and to deliver free seminars. (shrink)

It is often said that, according to common sense, there is a fundamental asymmetry between the past and future; namely, that the past is closed and the future is open. Eternalism in the ontology of time is often seen as conflicting with common sense on this point. Here I argue against the claim that common sense is committed to this fundamental asymmetry between the past and the future, on the grounds that facts about the past often depend on facts about (...) the future.1. (shrink)

D. J. Allan; XV—Aristotle's Criticism of Platonic Doctrine Concerning Goodness and The Good, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 64, Issue 1, 1 June.

Taking Parenting Public makes a compelling case that parenting has become dangerously undervalued in America today. It calls for a new investment—both personal and public—into the work of raising children and argues that we are all "stockholders" in the next generation. With a foreword by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Cornel West, Taking Parenting Public crosses boundaries to bring together thinkers from diverse fields spanning the political spectrum. It features contributions from distinguished experts in economics, political science, public policy, child development, (...) public health, history, and the media. While recent books have focused on working mothers or absent fathers, Taking Parenting Public is the first volume to take a comprehensive look at the common struggles of parents. These essays go beyond the usual chest-beating about busy parents torn between work and family demands to suggest bold solutions. Instead of the typical call for "parent replacement"—more child care, more after school programs and more mentors—the contributors offer fresh strategies for "parent replenishment," ways to put mothers and fathers back into the lives of their children not only as economic providers, but also as emotional and moral providers. (shrink)

The codes of ethics and conduct of a number of psychology bodies explicitly refer to human rights, and the American Psychological Association recently expanded the use of the construct when it amended standard 1.02 of the Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct. What is unclear is how these references to human rights should be interpreted. In this article I examine the historical development of human rights and associated constructs and the contemporary meaning of human rights. As human rights (...) are generally associated with law, morality, or religion, I consider to which of forms of these references most likely refer. I conclude that these references in ethical codes are redundant and that it would be preferable not to refer to human rights in codes. Instead, the profession should acknowledge human rights as a separate and complimentary norm system that governs the behavior of psychologists and should ensure that they have adequate knowledge of human rights and encourage them to promote human rights. (shrink)

The Sovereignty of Law presents Trevor Allan's most recent and fully elaborated defence of common law constitutionalism - an account of the unwritten or non-codified constitution as a complex articulation of legal and moral principles, defining what in the British context are the requirements of the rule of law. The British constitution is conceived as a coherent set of fundamental principles of the rule of law, legislative supremacy, and separation of powers. These principles.

_Becoming Human_ argues that human identity was articulated and extended across a wide range of textual, visual, and artifactual assemblages from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. J. Allan Mitchell shows how the formation of the child expresses a manifold and mutable style of being. To be human is to learn to dwell among a welter of things. A searching and provocative historical inquiry into human becoming, the book presents a set of idiosyncratic essays on embryology and infancy, play (...) and games, and manners, meals, and other messes. While it makes significant contributions to medieval scholarship on the body, family, and material culture, _Becoming Human_ theorizes anew what might be called a medieval ecological imaginary. Mitchell examines a broad array of phenomenal objects—including medical diagrams, toy knights, tableware, conduct texts, dream visions, and scientific instruments—and in the process reanimates distinctly medieval ontologies. In addressing the emergence of the human in the later Middle Ages, Mitchell identifies areas where humanity remains at risk. In illuminating the past, he shines fresh light on our present. (shrink)

Cooper has claimed to have found evidence for faster-than-light particles by reanalyzing the data of Chamberlain et al. in their paper reporting the discovery of the antiproton. A careful reanalysis of this same data gives no evidence to support Cooper's claim.

Summary Although the changing role of high-level educational leaders has received increasing attention in recent years, few studies have targeted concerted culture change attempts by such important players. The data discussed in this article were drawn from the perceptions of one Australia state-level chief executive officer (CEO) and a group of administrators within his department during the first 18 months of his appointment. The study sought to describe briefly the leader, identify the shape of the culture he set out consciously (...) to develop, the reasons behind the change attempt, the methods utilised to lead to change and the initial impressions of change success and blockages to acceptance. The rationale driving the attempt at change stemmed from the perceived failure of devolution, negative work attitudes, the CEO's own style and a system driven by micropolitical agendas. The culture change attempts utilised cultural and bureaucratic strategies. The blockages to culture change were related to the strengths of the previous culture, personal political networks and perceived contradictions between the values, actions and politics. A number of issues relating to the findings are discussed, including an examination of the culture change process, its success to date and the confusing role of the leader in the process. (shrink)

In view of the time-symmetric nature of the laws of physics, time asymmetry in the universe must arise from “initial” conditions. A fully time-symmetric oscillating model is presented which exists in a highly compressed, highly ordered state att=0 and evolves forward, in the thermodynamic sense, as ∣t ∣ increases. This model offers the possibility of accounting for several fundamental and puzzling aspects of our universe, including matter-antimatter asymmetry, the large entropy per baryon, primordial density enhancements sufficient to form galaxies, and (...) large-scale homogeneity. (shrink)

In this concluding chapter, Allan and Keller posit that Just Peace should be defined as a process resting on four necessary and sufficient conditions: thin recognition whereby the other is accepted as autonomous; thick recognition whereby identities need to be accounted for; renouncement, requiring significant sacrifices from all parties; and rule, the objectification of a Just Peace by a ‘text’ requiring a common language respecting the identities of each, and defining their rights and duties. This approach, based on a (...) language-oriented process amongst directly concerned parties, goes beyond liberal and culturalist perspectives. By moving beyond the idea of a peace founded on norms claiming universal scope, each side of a conflict has a place at the negotiating table to present their own perspective on what justice might entail. This inclusion into the decision-making process helps create the feeling of personal investment in the final negotiated product. In addition, negotiators need to work towards building a novel shared reality as well as a new common language to help foster an enduring harmony between previously clashing peoples. (shrink)