Adorno: A Critical Reader presents a collection of new essays by many of the world's top critics that examine Adorno's lasting impact on the arts, politics, history, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and sociology.

Frantz Fanon was a foundational figure in postcolonial and decolonial thought, yet his medical work has only been studied peripherally. With a focus on Fanon’s key psychiatry texts, Frantz Fanon: Psychiatry and Politics considers Fanon’s medical writings as materials anticipating as well as accompanying Fanon’s better known work.

Nearly forty years after his death, social philosopher Frantz Fanon remains a towering intellectual figure. Born in Guadeloupe and trained as a psychologist in France, Fanon rejected his French citizenship to join the Algerian liberation movement in the 1950s. A brilliant scholar who developed the theory that some neuroses are socially generated, Fanon's revolutionary works—The Wretched of the Earth, Toward the African Revolution, and Black Skin, White Masks—spurred an African intellectual awakening. The rebirth of Fanonism today in universities and the (...) English-speaking world is a testament to his relevance. Edited by distinguished African-studies professor Nigel C. Gibson, Rethinking Fanon opens with an authoritative biography which corrects fallacious assertions about Fanon's life, situating him in Marxism, Negritude, Pan-Africanism, and the historical context of postwar decolonization, specifically the Algerian revolution. Section one is highlighted by extended discussions of Marx, Fanon's theories on sophisticated forms of cultural racism, and "true liberation." The next section examines Fanon's humanist philosophy, his philosophical and geographical journeys, and his attitude toward the necessity of revolution. Also included is Homi Bhabha's well-known essay "Remembering Fanon," which contemplates the seeming rejection of Fanon in Britain in the 1970s, in contrast to his major following in America and the influence of Fanon on South African writer Steven Biko. Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Edward Said discuss the importance of the 1980s' and 1990s' cultural and literary debates on Fanon. Gates notes that Fanon has been reinstated -not as a global theorist of "third world" revolution, but instead as a critic of English writers and British romanticists. Benita Parry reexamines African nationalism and liberation, and sheds new light on Fanon's questions of identity and agency. This excellent collection reflects the continuing impact of Fanon's thought on African-American and African studies, feminism, postcolonialism, and cultural studies. (shrink)

On this 200th anniversary of Marx’s birth, what can we learn from Fanon’s turn to Marx over 60 years ago? This paper reviews Fanon’s active engagements with Marx throughout his work from Black Skin...

The impetus for this paper was the attack on the shack dweller movement in South Africa in September 2009. One question that emerged from the attack is what can committed intellectuals do to create active solidarity with movements of "the damned of the earth" in times of crisis. Thinldng of Fanon's critique of middle class anticolonial intellectual in The Wretched of the Earth and of Abahlali's insistence that their thinldng counts, the paper considers Fanon concept of political education rejecting the (...) idea that it is something that a vanguard party, an avant garde artist, a self-appointed leader, the military or even a community educator provides. Instead, the paper advocates a radical ethical move toward a constant dialogue that encourages and appreciates the reason of those so often excluded from decision making. But while an ethical shift toward lived experience is a usefiil foundation, intellectual labor applies itself to a search for new beginnings through developing an intellectual space of action where, potentially, the reflecting "consciousness full of contradictions" can help articulate itsphilosophical principles and realize its notion in fiercely democratic grassroots movements which Abahlali's president, S'bu Zikode, calls a "living communism."One may recall that China and the tables began to dance when the rest of the world appeared to be standing still—pour encourager les autres.Marx, Capital (1977: 164). (shrink)

What better way to celebrate, commemorate, critically reflect on, and think through Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth fifty years after its publication with a new North African syndrome: Revolution—or at least a series of revolts that continue to rock regimes across North Africa and the region. Fanon begins The Wretched writing of decolonization as a program of complete disorder, an overturning of order—often against the odds— willed from the bottom up. Without time or space for a transition, there is (...) instead an absolute replacement of one “species” of humanity by another. In periods of revolution, like the one we are experiencing today, such absolutes appear quite normal. Indeed, radical change becomes the “new normal” and the idea that revolutionary change is impossible is simply the rantings and ravings of the conservatives and reactionaries of the ancient regime. Too long buried under the weight of the tomes of academic discourse, Fanon has been resuscitated by the new dawn of North African revolutions. To celebrate Fanon, the revolutionary, all of a sudden seems contemporary and pertinent, while the musings of the critics who consigned him to postcolonial oblivion seem out of touch. But rather than continuing the painstaking work of exhuming Fanon from the postcolonial burial site, let us turn a commemoration of Fanon into an event. Indeed, why assume that a commemoration of Fanon after fifty years is not critical? Moreover why begin a contemporary engagement with Fanon assuming a priori the limits of his thought? Indeed, where to begin is a philosophic question. It is a question of “intention” as Edward Said puts it in one of his most radical and Vicoian works. Beginnings are revolutionary, implying return and repetition and, following Said, “a sort of historical dialectic that changes its character and meaning.” Vico, Said argues “said that the word human comes from root to bury ” suggesting that “his humanistic philosophy” contained “elements of its own negation.&rdquo. (shrink)

The essays in Fanon and the Decolonization of Philosophy all trace different aspects of the mutually supporting histories of philosophical thought and colonial politics in order to suggest ways that we might decolonize our thinking. From psychology to education, to economic and legal structures, the contributors interrogate the interrelation of colonization and philosophy in order to articulate a Fanon-inspired vision of social justice. This project is endorsed by his daughter, Mireille Fanon-Mendès France, in the book's preface.

Analysis of the degree of intraspecific morphological polymorphism during the evolutionary history of trilobites using an informatic approach1 provides striking evidence of a long‐suspected but previously unsubstantiated pattern: degrees of polymorphism are markedly higher in phylogenetically basal, stratigraphically early species. This unequivocal pattern prompts further exploration of the relationship between microevolutionary variance and macroevolutionary history. It demonstrates that the ‘traditional’ fossil record of skeletonized organisms can provide unique insight into questions of major evolutionary interest. BioEssays 29:1081–1084, 2007. © 2007 Wiley (...) Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Preservation permitting patterns of developmental evolution can be reconstructed within long extinct clades, and the rich fossil record of trilobite ontogeny and phylogeny provides an unparalleled opportunity for doing so. Furthermore, knowledge of Hox gene expression patterns among living arthropods permit inferences about possible Hox gene deployment in trilobites. The trilobite anteroposterior body plan is consistent with recent suggestions that basal euarthropods had a relatively low degree of tagmosis among cephalic limbs, possibly related to overlapping expression domains of cephalic Hox (...) genes. Trilobite trunk segments appeared sequentially at a subterminal generative zone, and were exchanged between regions of fused and freely articulating segments during growth. Homonomous trunk segment shape and gradual size transition were apparently phylogenetically basal conditions and suggest a single trunk tagma. Several derived clades independently evolved functionally distinct tagmata within the trunk, apparently exchanging flexible segment numbers for greater regionally autonomy. The trilobite trunk chronicles how different aspects of arthropod segmentation coevolved as the degree of tagmosis increased. BioEssays 25:386–395, 2003. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Frantz Fanon, Psychiatry and Politics affords a much-needed and long-awaited addition to the literature on Frantz Fanon, an exhaustive study of the least-known aspect of his short but remarkable life, his psychiatric practice and publications. The monograph is co-authored by Nigel C. Gibson and Roberto Beneduce, with a foreword by Alice Cherki and translations by Lisa Damon. Gibson is a leading Fanon scholar, jointly responsible for the appropriation of Fanon’s oeuvre by postcolonial studies in the nineteen nineties, (...) and Beneduce is the founding director of Il Frantz Fanon Centro, a counselling and psychotherapy centre for immigrants, refugees, and victims of torture in Turin. Cherki is one of Fanon’s few surviving colleagues and the publication reunites the team that worked on Decolonizing Madness: The Psychiatric Writings of Frantz Fanon, the first translation of Fanon’s collected psychiatric publications into English. Decolonizing Madness was scheduled for release by Palgrave Macmillan in 2014, but is now due in 2019 and Gibson and Beneduce make a somewhat cryptic allusion to production problems in their introduction, stating: ‘We were naïve, as Fanon would have put it, to think that there would be no other interests at play’ (p.22). (shrink)

Should psychology of religion undergo a disciplinary renaissance and, if so, what might it look like? In this paper we explore that question by discussing the benefits of a better grounding of the field within mid-level theories from general psychology that provide it with greater conceptual depth. Such discussion will focus on three already existing and variously productive lines of research as case studies: attribution processes, attachment styles, and religious coping. These case studies represent lines of research at three developmental (...) stages: 1) infancy, with little visible return but with signs of promise , 2) adolescence, with dividends already yielded but also with promise not yet fully realized , and 3) maturity, where a fruitful harvest has already been experienced but yet without decline . Regardless of developmental position, it is argued that research in psychology of religion will be enhanced to the extent that it achieves conceptual depth by being framed in terms of mid-level theories. (shrink)

Should psychology of religion undergo a disciplinary renaissance and, if so, what might it look like? In this paper we explore that question by discussing the benefits of a better grounding of the field within mid-level theories from general psychology that provide it with greater conceptual depth. Such discussion will focus on three already existing and variously productive lines of research as case studies: attribution processes, attachment styles, and religious coping. These case studies represent lines of research at three developmental (...) stages: 1) infancy, with little visible return but with signs of promise , 2) adolescence, with dividends already yielded but also with promise not yet fully realized , and 3) maturity, where a fruitful harvest has already been experienced but yet without decline . Regardless of developmental position, it is argued that research in psychology of religion will be enhanced to the extent that it achieves conceptual depth by being framed in terms of mid-level theories. (shrink)

In an earlier paper, written in reaction to those who argued that the African National Congress (ANC) had no alternative but to implement neoliberal economic policies in the context of the 'Washington Consensus', I discussed the strategic choices and ideological pitfalls of the 'political class' who took over state power in South Africa after the end of apartheid and implemented its own homegrown structural adjustment programme (Gibson 2001). Much of this transition has been scripted by political science 'transition literature' (...) and much of it is proactive, mapping out what should be done to establish a 'pacted', 'elite' democracy overseeing neoliberal economic policies (O'Donnell, Schmitter & Whitehead 1986). From another vantage point, I argued that Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth is perhaps one of the most perceptive critiques of the transition literature available. This article continues the discussion. (shrink)

In an earlier paper, written in reaction to those who argued that the African National Congress had no alternative but to implement neoliberal economic policies in the context of the 'Washington Consensus', I discussed the strategic choices and ideological pitfalls of the 'political class' who took over state power in South Africa after the end of apartheid and implemented its own homegrown structural adjustment programme. Much of this transition has been scripted by political science 'transition literature' and much of it (...) is proactive, mapping out what should be done to establish a 'pacted', 'elite' democracy overseeing neoliberal economic policies. From another vantage point, I argued that Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth is perhaps one of the most perceptive critiques of the transition literature available. This article continues the discussion. (shrink)

This study examines corporate publications of U.K. firms to investigate the nature of corporate social responsibility disclosure. Using a stakeholder approach to corporate social responsibility, our results suggest a hierarchical model of disclosure: from general rhetoric to specific endeavors to implementation and monitoring. Industry differences in attention to specific stakeholder groups are noted. These differences suggest the need to understand the effects on social responsibility disclosure of factors in a firm's immediate operating environment, such as the extent of government regulation (...) and level of competitiveness in the industry. (shrink)

Introduction: Variation across research ethics boards in conditions placed on access to medical records for research purposes raises concerns around negative impacts on research quality and on human subject protection, including privacy.Aim: To study variation in REB consent requirements for retrospective chart review and who may have access to the medical record for data abstraction.Methods: Thirty 90-min face-to-face interviews were conducted with REB chairs and administrators affiliated with faculties of medicine in Canadian universities, using structured questions around a case study (...) with open-ended responses. Interviews were recorded, transcribed and coded manually.Results: Fourteen sites required individual patient consent for the study to proceed as proposed. Three indicated that their response would depend on how potentially identifying variables would be managed. Eleven sites did not require consent. Two suggested a notification and opt-out process. Most stated that consent would be required if identifiable information was being abstracted from the record. Among those not requiring consent, there was substantial variation in recognising that the abstracted information could potentially indirectly re-identify individuals. Concern over access to medical records by an outside individual was also associated with requirement for consent. Eighteen sites required full committee review. Sixteen allowed an external research assistant to abstract information from the health record.Conclusions: Large variation was found across sites in the requirement for consent for research involving access to medical records. REBs need training in best practices for protecting privacy and confidentiality in health research. A forum for REB chairs to confidentially share concerns and decisions about specific studies could also reduce variation in decisions. (shrink)

This chapter provides a review of the hypothesis that synesthetic-like perception is present in infants and toddlers. Infants and very young children exhibit evidence of functional hyperconnectivity between the senses, much of which is reminiscent of the cross-sensory associations observed in synaesthetic adults. As most of these cross-sensory correspondances cannot be easily explained by learning, it is likely that these represent natural associations between the senses. In average adults, these 'natural associations' are felt only intuitively rather than explicitly. These observations (...) have led to the proposal of the 'neonatal synaesthesia hypothesis', which purports that all individuals are born synaesthetic, with explicit conscious perception of these natural cross-modal associations dissipating over development in typical individuals. This dissipation is likely the result of experience-dependent synaptic pruning and/or inhibition of cross-sensory neural connections. At the same time, cross-modal associations matching those common in the environment might be assumed to be learned. This hypothesis is re-evaluated in light of recent research findings, and is examined in the context of current evolutionary models of neuronal recycling and emerging evidence of longitudinal changes in children with synaesthesia. (shrink)

Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

Social activism against companies has evolved in the 50 years since Rachel Carson first put the US chemical industry under pressure to halt the indiscriminate use of the chemical DDT. Many more companies have come under the spotlight of activist attention as the agenda social activists address has expanded, provoked in part by the internationalization of business. During the past fifteen years, companies have begun to formulate corporate responsibility policies and appointed management teams dedicated to CR, resulting in a change (...) in the way companies interact with social activists. This paper presents findings from a longitudinal case study of managerial responses to social activism targeted at a company with relatively well-advanced CR practices and reputation. The case describes the unfolding of the internal processes over an 8-year period, including the role played by different managers and the tensions in the decision-making processes. The findings emphasize how values and beliefs in the company interact with economic arguments and how those are mediated through functions and relationships in the company and beyond. The paper shows how critical managers’ understanding of the motivations of activists behind the campaign is in shaping their actions. It reveals the paradoxical outcomes that can result from social activism at the level of the firm, the industry, and the field. (shrink)

Social activism against companies has evolved in the 50 years since Rachel Carson first put the US chemical industry under pressure to halt the indiscriminate use of the chemical DDT. Many more companies have come under the spotlight of activist attention as the agenda social activists address has expanded, provoked in part by the internationalization of business. During the past fifteen years, companies have begun to formulate corporate responsibility (CR) policies and appointed management teams dedicated to CR, resulting in a (...) change in the way companies interact with social activists. This paper presents findings from a longitudinal case study of managerial responses to social activism targeted at a company with relatively well-advanced CR practices and reputation. The case describes the unfolding of the internal processes over an 8-year period, including the role played by different managers and the tensions in the decision-making processes. The findings emphasize how values and beliefs in the company interact with economic arguments and how those are mediated through functions and relationships in the company and beyond. The paper shows how critical managers’ understanding of the motivations of activists behind the campaign is in shaping their actions. It reveals the paradoxical outcomes that can result from social activism at the level of the firm, the industry, and the field. (shrink)

Leonard Peikoff and David Harriman have denounced modern physics as incompatible with Objectivist metaphysics and epistemology. Physics, they say, must return to a Newtonian viewpoint; much of relativity theory must go, along with essentially all of quantum mechanics, string theory, and modern cosmology. In their insistence on justifications in terms of “physical nature,” they cling to a macroscopic worldview that doesn't work in the high-velocity arena of relativity or the subatomic level of quantum mechanics. It is suggested that the concept (...) of identity be widened to accommodate the probabilistic nature of quantum phenomena. (shrink)

Variable responses to transcranial direct current stimulation protocols across individuals are widely reported, but the reasons behind this variation are unclear. This includes tDCS protocols meant to improve attention. Attentional control is impacted by top-down and bottom-up processes, and this relationship is affected by state characteristics such as anxiety. According to Attentional Control Theory, anxiety biases attention towards bottom-up and stimulus-driven processing. The goal of this study was to explore the extent to which differences in state anxiety and related measures (...) affect visual attention and category learning, both with and without the influence of tDCS. Using discovery learning, participants were trained to classify pictures of European streets into two categories while receiving 30 min of 2.0 mA anodal, cathodal, or sham tDCS over the rVLPFC. The pictures were classifiable according to two separate rules, one stimulus and one hypothesis-driven. The Remote Associates Test, Profile of Mood States, and Attention Networks Task were used to understand the effects of individual differences at baseline on subsequent tDCS-mediated learning. Multinomial logistic regression was fit to predict rule learning based on the baseline measures, with subjects classified according to whether they used the stimulus-driven or hypothesis-driven rule to classify the pictures. The overall model showed a classification accuracy of 74.1%. The type of tDCS stimulation applied, attentional orienting score, and self-reported mood were significant predictors of different categories of rule learning. These results indicate that anxiety can influence the quality of subjects’ attention at the onset of the task and that these attentional differences can influence tDCS-mediated category learning during the rapid assessment of visual scenes. These findings have implications for understanding the complex interactions that give rise to the variability in response to tDCS. (shrink)

Drosophila imaginal discs (appendage primordia) have proved invaluable for deciphering cellular and molecular mechanisms of animal development. By combining the accessibility of the discs with the genetic tractability of the fruit fly, researchers have discovered key mechanisms of growth control, pattern formation and long‐range signaling. One of the principal experimental attractions of discs is their anatomical simplicity — they have long been considered to be cellular monolayers. During larval stages, however, the growing discs are 2‐sided sacs composed of a columnar (...) epithelium on one side and a squamous ‘peripodial’ epithelium on the other. Recent studies suggest important roles for peripodial epithelia in processes previously assumed to be confined to columnar cell monolayers. BioEssays 23:691–697, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

This article presents a new framework for unobtrusive observation analytics of knowledge and skills-in-action through continuous collection of data from individuals while they interact with digital assets either as individuals or on problem-solving teams. The framework includes measures of the skill and knowledge areas of collaboration, creativity, personal learning, problem solving, and global sustainability, which are observed during natural production and use of communications, intentional artifacts, and resources in a digital learning space designed for self-directed and team-based learning challenges. The (...) article describes the digital context for data collection and shows some example data and analyses. (shrink)

It is universally accepted that genetic control over basic aspects of cell and molecular biology is the primary organizing principle in development and homeostasis of living systems. However, instances do exist where important aspects of biological order arise without explicit genetic instruction, emerging instead from simple physical principles, stochastic processes, or the complex self‐organizing interaction between random and seemingly unrelated parts. Being mostly resistant to direct genetic dissection, the analysis of such emergent processes falls into a grey area between mathematics, (...) physics and molecular cell biology and therefore remains very poorly understood. We recently proposed a mathematical model predicting the emergence of a specific non‐Gaussian distribution of polygonal cell shapes from the stochastic cell division process in epithelial cell sheets; this cell shape distribution appears to be conserved across a diverse set of animals and plants.1 The use of such topological models to study the process of cellular morphogenesis has a long history, starting almost a century ago, and many insights from those original works influence current experimental studies. Here we review current and past literature on this topic while exploring some new ideas on the origins and implications of topological order in proliferating epithelia. BioEssays 30:260–266, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI) is an ontology that provides terms with precisely defined meanings to describe all aspects of how investigations in the biological and medical domains are conducted. OBI re-uses ontologies that provide a representation of biomedical knowledge from the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) project and adds the ability to describe how this knowledge was derived. We here describe the state of OBI and several applications that are using it, such as adding semantic expressivity to (...) existing databases, building data entry forms, and enabling interoperability between knowledge resources. OBI covers all phases of the investigation process, such as planning, execution and reporting. It represents information and material entities that participate in these processes, as well as roles and functions. Prior to OBI, it was not possible to use a single internally consistent resource that could be applied to multiple types of experiments for these applications. OBI has made this possible by creating terms for entities involved in biological and medical investigations and by importing parts of other biomedical ontologies such as GO, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) and Phenotype Attribute and Trait Ontology (PATO) without altering their meaning. OBI is being used in a wide range of projects covering genomics, multi-omics, immunology, and catalogs of services. OBI has also spawned other ontologies (Information Artifact Ontology) and methods for importing parts of ontologies (Minimum information to reference an external ontology term (MIREOT)). The OBI project is an open cross-disciplinary collaborative effort, encompassing multiple research communities from around the globe. To date, OBI has created 2366 classes and 40 relations along with textual and formal definitions. The OBI Consortium maintains a web resource providing details on the people, policies, and issues being addressed in association with OBI. (shrink)