Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality

This article aims to analyze the effect of the combination of the variables - victim characteristics, observer sex, Belief in a Just World, and ambivalent sexism - on sexual violence victim blaming. Three studies were conducted with university students, who were asked to answer some items on victim blaming, Belief in a Just World, and Ambivalent Sexism. The ANOVA and ANCOVA analyses have shown that the combination of these variables resulted in higher black and counter-normative victim blaming. The results confirmed (...) that victim skin color, victim normativity, and the observer sex influence victim blaming for sexual violence ; that bjw predicts the attribution of the victim’s accountability for sexual violence, and that only benevolent sexism, together with bjw, was responsible for predicting victim blaming for sexual violence. (shrink)

O profissional de enfermagem figura entre os primeiros que presta os primeiros cuidados as mulheres vítimas de agressões sexuais, necessitando, dessa forma, de competência e sensibilidade para cuidar no âmbito clínico, garantindo a preservação de vestígios da violência e salvaguardar os direitos das vítimas. O objetivo do presente estudo foi evidenciar estudos na literatura científica nacional que enfoquem a assistência de enfermagem em situações de violência sexual contra mulher. Estudo de revisão integrativa de literatura com abordagem quanti-qualitativa, realizada no período (...) de fevereiro a março de 2021. A coleta de dados foi realizada por meio de busca de estudos bibliográficos disponíveis nas base de dados SciELO, Google Acadêmico e BVS. Foram levantados 24 artigos e após aplicação de critérios de elegibilidade, 11 artigos foram utilizados para análise. O cuidar em enfermagem à mulher vítima de violência sexual leva à compreensão de que a assistência destes profissionais estão centradas, em sua maior parte, no cuidado técnico. Mesmo sendo um dos principais profissionais que cuidam deste tipo de violência, urge a necessidade de um cuidar mais humanizado. Torna-se imprescindível maior atenção a formação permanente e continuada destes profissionais para uma assistência mais efetiva às mulheres vítimas de violência sexual no Brasil. (shrink)

Analisa-se a constituição da sexualidade da mulher negra na obra cinematográfica Mignonnes, da feminista Maïmouna Doucouré. O contexto cultural do refugiado, a religiosidade muçulmana, o patriarcado poligâmico são analisados em conjunto com a puberdade, a inserção em grupos de pares, a delinquência juvenil, a influência da internet e a hipersexualização do corpo feminino, frequentemente objetificado e assediado. Associa-se a postura provocativa de Mignonnes com o afro-feminismo francês na denúncia da dominação racista, sexista, classista e colonialista.

This is the introduction to the special issue "Themes from Testimonial Injustice and Trust" for the International Journal of Philosophical Studies.

Confessions of the Flesh was first published in France in 2018 as Les Aveux de la Chair. It is the fourth volume of The History of Sexuality, the collection of works by Michel Foucault...

Marta Suria writes *Ella soy yo* as part of her response to the irruption of the memories of the sexual aggressions she had suffered since childhood. She is convinced that the way she narrates her experience will transform and liberate her. How is it at all possible that a certain kind of narrative may transform and li- berate us? In this paper, we will first describe the conception of the relationship between language and experience that lies behind this perplexity and, (...) secondly, we will sketch an alternative conception that will hopefully allow us to account for the transformative power of certain kinds of narratives. This alternative conception will hinge on the idea of expression and on the concept of aspect perception. For this purpose, we will firstly argue that language can be used not only to describe or evaluate our experience, but also to express it; we will, then, defend the view that linguistic or gestural expressions of our experiences not only announce or manifest them, but contribute to shaping and modulating them; finally, we will highlight the transformative, humanizing power of certain expressive uses of language. (shrink)

This book offers a comprehensive reinterpretation of J.L. Austin’s philosophy. It opens new ways of thinking about ethics and other contemporary issues in the wake of Austin’s philosophical work. -/- Austin is primarily viewed as a philosopher of language whose work focused on the pragmatic aspects of speech. His work on ordinary language philosophy and speech act theory is seen as his main contribution to philosophy. This book challenges this received view to show that Austin used his most well-known theoretical (...) notions as heuristic tools aimed at debunking the fact/value dichotomy. Additionally, it demonstrates that Austin’s continual returns to the ordinary is rooted in a desire to show that our lives in language are complicated and multifaceted. What emerges is an attempt to think with Austin about problems that are central to philosophy today—such as the question about linguistic inheritance, truth, the relationship between a language inherited and morality, and how we are to cope with linguistic elasticity and historicity. -/- Lectures on a Philosophy Less Ordinary will appeal to scholars and advanced students working on Austin’s philosophy, philosophy of language, and the history of analytic philosophy. -/- Table of Contents 1. Approaching Austin -/- 2. Approaching Language? -/- 3. Lessons from Sense and Sensibilia -/- 4. A Plea for Phenomenology: On Austin’s Method -/- 5. Testimony and Knowledge -/- 6. All the Locutions -/- 7. Our Word is Our Bond. (shrink)

A COVID-19 vaccine mandate is being introduced for health and social care workers in England, and those refusing to comply will either be redeployed from their patient-facing role or have their employment terminated. We argue that COVID-19 vaccination should not be mandatory for these workers for several reasons. First, it ignores their genuine concerns and fails to respect their moral integrity and bodily autonomy. Second, it risks causing psychological reactance, potentially worsening vaccine hesitancy. Third, Black and minority ethnic health and (...) social care workers are less likely to have been vaccinated and therefore may be disproportionately impacted by the implications of the mandate. Fourth, a mandate could have a significant negative effect on service provision. Fifth, waning immunity and new variants mean booster doses are increasingly likely to be regularly required, meaning immunity and what constitutes being ‘fully vaccinated’ will be a constantly shifting target. Finally, vaccine mandates may have an adverse effect on future health and social care recruitment. We argue that daily rapid antigen testing is a viable alternative to a vaccine mandate that is non-coercive and fair. This could also be supplemented by monetary incentives to be vaccinated. (shrink)

This paper presents the Merleau-Pontyan theory of sexuality contained in his Phénoménologie de la perception, firstly in the context of other early Phenomenological approaches to the same topic, and then within the gnoseological framework of the work. The scope of J. Butler’s early criticisms of such a theory in terms of androcentrism, naturalization of sexual difference and male dominance is then evaluated. By this means, it becomes possible to define the resources and limits of the Merleau-Pontyan description of the sexed (...) body as “expression” and “body style” for the elaboration of a non-essentialist conception of sexuality akin to performative theory. (shrink)

In his latest book, Criminalizing Sex, Stuart P. Green, professor of philosophy of law at Rutgers, develops a unified liberal theory of the criminalization of sexual offenses. The exercise he undertakes is not an easy. Nevertheless, through the use of accessible language, rigorous reasoning and sometimes amusing examples, Green succeeds in offering both a state of the art of knowledge on the subject and in elaborating a legal system that allows for the advancement of thinking in the area of sexual (...) offenses according to the liberal ethics of harms and wrongs. The author starts from the observation that in recent years, criminal legislation on sexual offenses has undergone profound transformations: it has generally become more repressive with regard to non-consensual relationships but also more flexible with regard to mutually consensual relationships. This apparent double movement invites him to explore conceptual and normative implications of these divergent tendencies, starting from the premise that an ideal liberal criminal justice system should only punish situations where a perpetrator would impose a non-consensual sexual relationship on another. Such a vision of law, which emphasizes individual autonomy while preventing harm to others, follows in the footsteps of those promoted by John Stuart Mill, Herbert L.A. Hart, and Joel Feinberg. (shrink)

Philosophical inquiry strives to be the unencumbered exploration of ideas. That is, unlike scientific research which is subject to ethical oversight, it is commonly thought that it would either be inappropriate, or that it would undermine what philosophy fundamentally is, if philosophical research were subject to similar ethical oversight. Against this, I argue that philosophy is in need of a reckoning. Philosophical inquiry is a morally hazardous practice with its own risks. There are risks present in the methods we employ, (...) risks inherent in the content of the views under consideration, and risks to the subjects of our inquiry. Likely, there are more risks still. However, by starting with the identification of these three risks we can demonstrate not only why an ethics of practice is needed but also which avenues are the most promising for developing an ethics for philosophical practice. Although we might be in the business of asking questions, we do not absolve ourselves of responsibility for the risks that inquiry incurs. (shrink)

This article is the first in a two-paper series, which offers a comprehensive and systematic review of, and response to, various anti-MeToo arguments made by MeToo skeptics. Taking the U.S. and China as examples, the first section overviews the local contexts of anti-sexual-assault/harassment movements, and the respective issues and challenges they each confront. It then summarizes the three primary objectives of the MeToo movement (accountability, empowerment and reform) and the three ideal-typical critiques advanced by MeToo skeptics (the Mobs Critique, the (...) Damsels-in-Distress Critique, and the Puritans Critique). The second through fourth sections will address various versions of the Mobs Critique and the fifth section the Damsels-in-Distress Critique, whereas the Puritans Critique will be left for the forthcoming second article in the series. -/- More specifically, the second and third sections of this article discuss how MeToo skeptics misappropriate the notions of “presumption of innocence” and “trial by public opinion” respectively. As it turns out, the caricature of the MeToo movement (as well as other movements aiming at swaying the public opinion) as the tyranny of mobs jeopardizing the rule of law reflects nothing but the skeptics’ own misconceptions of what the rule of law is and what we should learn from our historical experiences. The fourth and fifth sections respond, respectively, to the “argument from false accusations” and the “argument from self-victimization.” By reviewing conclusions of existing empirical researches and analyzing the conceptual and normative confusions underlying those arguments, I show how sex and gender biases distort implicitly yet systematically our cognitions of sexual assault and harassment. Because of the systematicity of such distortions, isolated resistances cannot effectively address the problems of sexual assault and harassment; by contrast, public opinion movements, such as MeToo, are exactly the kind of collective action crucial to the transformation of sociocultural ideas, and to the development of new institutions of effective remedy. -/- 本文是计划中一系列两篇文章的上篇，旨在对MeToo运动质疑者的各种常见观点及论述加以较为全面系统的辨析及回应。第一节以美国与中国为例，梳理反性侵扰运动的地方脉络，及在各自脉络中发展出的问题意识与面临的 挑战；在此基础上，总结MeToo运动追责、赋能与促变之三重诉求，并将质疑者的论调归纳为三大类型：“群氓批判”、“弱女子批判”与“道学家批判”。第二至四节针对“群氓批判”的不同版本做出回应，第五节着力批 驳“弱女子批判”，至于“道学家批判”则留待系列的下篇再行讨论。 -/- 具体而言，第二、三两节分别澄清质疑者对“无罪推定”与“舆论审判”概念的滥用与误用，指出为何质疑者将MeToo运动（以及其它公共舆论运动）视为践踏法治的群氓狂欢，乃是基于对法治原则的错误理解、以及对历史 经验的错位应激。第四节与第五节各自通过对质疑者“虚假指控论”与“自我受害者化论”的剖析，包括对相关经验研究的总结讨论、以及对此类论述中概念与逻辑的抽丝剥茧，揭示性别偏见如何隐蔽而深入地扭曲着我们在性侵 扰问题上的认知。恰恰是由于这种扭曲的系统性，导致我们无法以散兵游勇的方式有效反对性侵扰，而必须动员起MeToo这样的公共舆论运动，以集体行动的方式促成社会文化观念的变革，并在此基础上建设起新的救济制度 。. (shrink)

In “Confucianism and Same-Sex Marriage,” published recently in Politics and Religion, Professor Tongdong Bai argues for a “moderate Confucian position on same-sex marriage,” one that supports its legalization and yet endeavors “to use public opinion and social and political policies to encourage heterosexual marriages, and to prevent same-sex marriages from becoming the majority form of marriages” (Bai 2021:146). Against the backdrop of downright homophobia prevalent among vocal Confucians in mainland China today, Bai claims that his pro-legalization rendition “show[s] a different (...) version of Confucianism that challenges the received perception of Confucianism that it is deeply conservative, a perception that often lies at the core of the rejection of its contemporary relevance, especially by the so-called ‘liberals’ in China and elsewhere” (Bai 2021:133). Furthermore, Bai claims that his moderate Confucianism is normatively preferrable to “the typical liberal or individualist position” of a marriage equality supporter, because the specter of polygamy – the conservative trope of invoking polygamy as a reductio ad absurdum against same-sex marriage – imposes “a serious challenge” to liberals but not to moderate Confucians (Bai 2021:146, 153). -/- Both of Bai’s claims falter upon scrutiny, however. Granted, it is applaudable that Bai tries to dissuade his more conservative Confucian colleagues from opposing the legalization of same-sex marriage. But as Section 1 of this Response will show, the alternative rendition of Confucianism he presents, along with the way he presents it, is premised on a highly contested conception of what shared Confucian values are; does injustice to Confucians who embrace marriage equality more unreservedly (i.e., without caveats à la Bai); fails to produce new arguments that “enrich the theoretical basis for same-sex marriage” (Bai 2021:133); and, ironically, reinforces – rather than “challenges” – the “received perception” of Confucianism as deeply conservative. Meanwhile, Section 2 will show that Bai’s comparison between liberalism and moderate Confucianism relies both upon an apparent unfamiliarity with the extensive and nuanced liberal discussions on polygamy, and upon fallacious methods of assessing comparative normative valence. -/- Finally, Section 3 will offer some concluding thoughts from the perspective of decolonial theory, examining the dynamic of spectacularized postcoloniality that propels the production and consumption of dubious theoretical projects like Bai’s. As it turns out, this case serves not only as a cautionary tale of how not to conduct comparative normative theorizing, but also as a cautionary tale of how not to let the spectacle of postcoloniality derail the pursuit of academic decolonization. (shrink)

In the literature on transitional justice, there is disagreement about whether countries like the United States can be characterized as transitional societies. Though it is widely recognized that transitional justice mechanisms such as truth commissions and reparations can be used by Global North nations to address racial injustice, some consider societies to be transitional only when they are undergoing a formal democratic regime change. We conceptualize the political situation of low-income Black communities under the U.S. imprisonment and policing regime in (...) terms of three criteria for identifying transitional contexts: normalized collective and political wrongdoing, pervasive structural inequality, and the failure of the rule of law. That these criteria are met, however, does not necessarily mean that a transition is taking place. Drawing on the American political development and abolition democracy literatures, we discuss what it would mean for the United States to transition out of its present imprisonment and policing regime. A transitional justice perspective shows the importance of not only pushing for truth and reparation, but for an actual transition. (shrink)

This research analyses sexual prejudice in sixteen dancehall and reggae songs—two musical genres indigenous to Jamaica. The analysis provides us with insights on the lenses through which some Jamaicans view same-sex relationships and how sexual prejudice is normalised and justified. In this sample of songs, homosexuality is presented as a violation of gendered norms, sinful, unnatural, a threat to society and a foreign lifestyle. The presentation of homosexuality as a foreign lifestyle suggests that antigay prejudice could be related to fears (...) of neo-imperialism and could be a means of rejecting ideological intrusions from the West. (shrink)

The myth that sexual violence is perpetrated by strangers in dark alleyways has long since been debunked; the vast majority of sexual assaults are committed by someone known to the victim. This article examines how individuals and communities nevertheless experience epistemic and moral barriers when reacting to reports of sexual violence levelled against community members, friends, and loved ones. Love can, for example, cloud our moral and epistemic oughts when responding to sexual violence, through such avenues as mutual identity constitution (...) and epistemic partiality, which then contribute to discourse and practices that normalize sexual violence. I draw on Miriam Toews’ 2018 novel, Women Talking, to demonstrate that this social framework can be inverted through the very emotions that in part generate it, namely love and care. I argue that we can catalyze the drive to preserve our relationships with loved ones and community members who perpetrate harm by foregrounding moral accountability and transformation, atonement and amends, as preconditions of continued relationships. The upshot of this is the development of new moral norms and practices that deconstruct the widespread and casual nature of sexual violence. Importantly, this article and the course of action it explores is aimed at individuals whose wellbeing is not jeopardized through accountability projects. (shrink)

This paper develops an account of misandrogyny that is modeled on Kate Manne’s account of misogyny. On Manne’s view, misogyny is a system of mechanisms that together police and enforce the gendered hierarchy of a patriarchal order. On the account developed here, misandrogyny is a system of mechanisms that together police and enforce the gender binary of a patriarchal order. The gender binary is constituted by norms that preclude the existence of persons who aren’t consistently ‘read’ either as a man (...) (and only a man) or as a woman (and only a woman). Misandrogyny thus polices and enforces the nonexistence of people who are neither women (only) nor men (only). After some clarifying preliminaries, section 1 describes mechanisms of misandrogyny that push individuals into specific binary gender positions; section 2 describes structures and institutions that compel gender non-conforming people to assimilate to the gender binary; section 3 describes mechanisms that target gender non-conforming persons for fatal violence. (shrink)

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” has been canonized as an essential statement of the political theory of civil disobedience. This article examines the early reception of King’s essay and the development of the liberal idea of civil disobedience it has become synonymous with to argue that its canonization coincided with, and displaced, the radicalization of King’s developing thinking about disobedience. It examines published and archival writings from 1965 through 1968 to reconstruct King’s power-oriented theory of “mass” (...) civil disobedience as it developed in response to the dual challenges of white backlash and Black Power. The basic challenge of mass civil disobedience is how to mobilize liberating acts of taking power without undercutting the possibility of transformative integration through sharing power. To articulate this dilemma, this article draws on an undertheorized category from John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice to conceptualize disobedience as a practice of militant love. (shrink)

This essay begins to develop a philosophical interpretation of Elena Ferrante's L'amica geniale, a work of fiction that is known in English as The Neapolitan Novels. My ultimate aim is to explore the work's ambitious moral psychology, and particularly its subtle conceptualization of women's path to freedom. I begin by reconstructing some of the main ideas of Italian difference feminism as they are expressed in the texts of the Milan Women's Bookstore Collective—texts that are controversial milestones of Italian social theory, (...) yet are relatively unknown outside of Italy. I then show how these ideas provide a useful frame of reference for interpreters of Ferrante's novel. This discussion sets up a more extended analysis of the special status of Lila Cerullo, her strange condition of smarginatura, and the import of her puzzling earthquake speech. (shrink)

Contemplating the techniques of white nationalism used to refuse Black ontology and deny Black belonging to the humanity of Canadian nationhood, this article considers how art imaginatively visualizes rebellion against the racist logics that regulate such denials. Exploring the function of hyperbole, this article examines the ways the willfully heightened strangeness of the extraterrestrial Afro-Astronaut and Black Muslim monster depicted in performance and visual art trouble racial matrixes through the dissonance provoked by the Other's unfamiliar display of excess.

Miranda Fricker distinguishes two senses in which testimonial injustice is epistemic. In the primary sense, it is epistemic because it harms the victim as a giver of knowledge. In the secondary sense, it is epistemic, more narrowly, because it harms the victim as a possessor of knowledge. Her characterization of testimonial injustice has raised the following objection: testimonial injustice is not always an epistemic injustice, in the narrow, secondary sense, as it does not always entail that the victim is harmed (...) as a knowledge-possessor. By adopting a perspective based on Robert Brandom's normative expressivism, we respond to this objection by arguing that there is a close connection, conceptual and constitutive rather than merely causal, between the primary and the secondary epistemic harms of testimonial injustice, such that testimonial injustice always involves both kinds of epistemic harm. We do so by exploring the logic and functioning of belief and knowledge ascriptions in order to highlight three ways in which the secondary epistemic harm caused by testimonial injustice crystallizes: it undermines the epistemic agency of the victim, the epistemic friction necessary for knowledge, and the possibility of occupying particular epistemic nodes. (shrink)

In her highly influential 1984 study Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood, Kristin Luker speculates that opposition to legal abortion among women was likely to be strongest among those who were full-time homemakers without a college education. But despite a marked decline in that demographic group and a well-documented rise in public support for gender equality since then, the rate of support for legal abortion has remained stubbornly fixed at between fifty and fifty-five percent. This tepid support has coincided with (...) a steep decline in abortion services in rural states, and ever more sweeping restrictions on abortion being tested in the courts. Karissa Haugeberg's Women against Abortion and Katie Watson's Scarlet A both seek to address this state of affairs, albeit in markedly different ways. Haugeberg provides a historical chronicle of the motives and strategies of certain key women activists in the fight against legal abortion, with an eye toward how their concerns “came to serve as blueprints to legislators and judges who continue to craft policies and laws that erode women's right to abortion”. Katie Watson draws upon her experience as an attorney and bioethicist to write a guide “intended to encourage and equip you to engage in respectful, productive, private conversation about your experience with, and opinion of, abortion”. Though both authors reveal their support for legal abortion, both are concerned to understand the motives and goals of those who fight against it. (shrink)

This article introduces a concept that I refer to as racialized forgiveness. Cases that exemplify certain conditions that I take as paradigmatic of the problem of racialized forgiveness include instances in which: who is forgiven or not is determined by the race of the offender; praise and criticisms of forgiveness are determined by the race of the victim; and praise and criticisms of forgiveness are, at least implicitly, racially self-serving. I argue that this practice is morally objectionable because of its (...) psychological origins, moral failures, and negative effects. Accordingly, in order to dodge these pitfalls, we need to practice forgiveness differently. (shrink)

This essay concerns Simone de Beauvoir's analysis of blame and punishment in “Œil pour œil” and the irreconcilable tensions that haunt it. I study these tensions—between the desire to blame and punish and the inability to provide moral justification for these practices—and locate their source in Beauvoir's conception of ethics in Pour une morale de l'ambiguïté. According to my reading, her ethics implies that violence violates freedom, the grounding principle of ethical life. Retaliatory and retributive judgments and the punishment they (...) uphold, regardless of whether they are exerted by individuals or by official state powers, are forms of violence and are therefore unjustifiable. The aporias of blame and punishment in “Œil pour œil” suggest that Beauvoir's ideal of ethics necessitates an abolitionist position regarding punishment. The essay ends with a reflection on the affinity between the position constructed from Beauvoir's work and feminist abolitionist theories that seek to undermine the legal, social, and political institutions that perpetuate, rather than resolve, economic, racial, gender, sex, and class inequality. (shrink)

Feminismus – das ist nicht nur für Männer, sondern auch für einige Frauen immer noch ein bedrohliches Wort, selbst oder gerade in Zeiten von #MeToo. Liegt das daran, dass viele gar nicht wissen, was Feminismus ist und worauf er hinarbeitet? Gibt es den einen Feminismus? Was hat Feminismus eigentlich mit Sexismus zu tun? Und was mit unseren Beziehungen? Die Philosophin Hilkje Hänel klärt über diese Fragen auf und plädiert für einen Feminismus, von dem alle etwas haben. Offener Frauenhass ist in (...) unserer Gesellschaft mittlerweile weitgehend geächtet. Aber auch nach über fünfzehn Jahren mit einer Frau an der Regierungsspitze sind wir noch längst nicht in der Gleichberechtigung angekommen. Im Gegenteil: Weiterhin strukturiert Sexismus geschlechtsspezifische Alltagserfahrungen, bis hinein in unsere Intimbeziehungen, wo die Grenzen zwischen Lust und sexueller Gewalt schnell verschwimmen. Die Philosophin und Schriftstellerin Hilkje Hänel deckt die Mechanismen sexueller Objektifizierung und männlichen Anspruchsdenkens auf. Sie zeigt, wie Frauen oft in die sexistischen Alltagsstrukturen verstrickt sind, an denen auch viele Männer leiden. Ihr zugängliches Buch ist das Plädoyer für einen Feminismus, von dem alle etwas haben. (shrink)

Sex. Die meisten von uns haben ihn. Mal schlecht, mal gut, manchmal phänomenal. Die wenigsten denken lange drüber nach. Oder reden offen drüber. Dabei ist gar nicht so klar, was Sex eigentlich gut macht. Und wann ist Sex schlecht? Oder nicht nur schlecht, sondern sogar moralisch problematisch? Hilkje Hänel zeigt, dass es gar nicht so einfach ist, zwischen (moralisch) problematischem Sex und gutem Sex klar zu unterscheiden und dass es dabei häufig vor allem auf den Kontext und unsere Kommunikation ankommt. (...) Auf der Basis aktueller Wissenschaft und medialer Bewegungen wie #MeToo verteidigt Hänel ihre Ansichten gegen die wichtigsten Einwände und argumentiert für mehr Respekt im Bett. (shrink)

Band 13 der psycho-logik widmet sich aus fächerübergreifendem Blickwinkel dem Thema Identität, das in den Sozial- und Geisteswissenschaften zu einem Schlagwort des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts geworden ist. Gerade die moderne und liberale Gesellschaftsordnung, die uns ungeahnt viel Freiheit ermöglicht hat, charakterisiert ein Patchwork aus Identifikationsangeboten, das zugleich die kollektive und personale Identitätsfindung problematisch macht. Aktuell hat die narrative Theorie die erinnerte und erzählte Lebensgeschichte zum Gründungsort des Selbst erhoben. Sie spielt auch in den Beiträgen dieses Bandes eine prominente Rolle. (...) Es zeigt sich, dass die Identitätskonstruktion ein Prozess ist, in dem sich Identität als etwas Fragiles und Plurales offenbart. Identität ist ein tragisches Spiel zwischen Einheit und Mannigfaltigkeit: Identität(en). Forscher*innen aus Deutschland, Irland und den USA mit ihren Beiträgen aus Literaturwissenschaft, Theologie, Philosophie und Psychologie diskutieren u. a. das Band zwischen Identität und Erinnerung bei Marcel Proust, transsexuelle Identitätskonstruktionen in US-amerikanischen Biopics, den Film als Identitätsbildungsmedium des Publikums, Identitätspolitik(en) am Beispiel des Zugangs zu US-amerikanischen Hochschulen, die Identitätsfindung in Lebensgeschichten und den psychotherapeutischen Umgang mit gebrochenen Identitäten. Fotoarbeiten des Künstlers Hermann Recknagel runden den Band ab. Mit Beiträgen von Michaela I. Abdelhamid, Carsten Albers, Paul Clogher, Katherine Duval, Winfried Eckel, Fiona Ennis, Annette Hilt, Christopher A. Nixon, Paul Nnodim, Hermann Recknagel, Patricia Rehm-Grätzel, Martin Reker, Annika Schlitte und Hartwig Wiedebach. (shrink)

Some of Dave Chappelle’s uses of storytelling about seemingly mundane events, like his experiences with his “white friend Chip” and the police, are examples of what W.E.B. Du Bois calls “Positive Propaganda.” This is in contrast to “Demagoguery,” the sort of propaganda described by Jason Stanley that obstructs empathic recognition of others, and undermines reasonable debate among citizens regarding policies that matter: the justice system, welfare, inequality, and race, for example. Some of Chappelle’s humor, especially in his most recent Netflix (...) specials, but also in his earlier standup performances and his series The Chappelle Show, is akin to art that appeals to emotion in the ways suggested by Du Bois in “Criteria of Negro Art” (1926). Beauty is essential to art, but, “I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda. But I do care when propaganda is confined to one side while the other is stripped and silent” (p. 22). The “one side” is that which appears to extoll American ideals, but in reality undermines them, perpetuating the subordinate status of “the other”--black citizens. Replace “beauty” with “humor” or “funny”, and we see striking parallels between Chappelle’s socio-political performances and Du Bois’ call for positive propaganda, each of which constitute “civic rhetoric” broadly construed. We no longer live in Du Bois’ America of explicit denial of rights. In many ways our situation is worse, as the mechanisms of exclusion are implicit, difficult to dislodge, because they are invisible. Chappelles’ humor draws attention to subtle undermining-propaganda in our liberal democracy, transforming it through his counter-propaganda into the spectacle that it should be; ubiquitous democracy-denying propaganda should be as obvious to whites as it is to minorities. In his words, we should all see that “that shit is fucking incredible” (Killin’ Them Softly). (shrink)

In this article, I argue that victims of domestic violence characteristically suffer from two distinct kinds of moral harm: moral damage and moral injury. Moral damage occurs when the ability to develop or sustain good moral character has been compromised by an agent’s circumstances. Moral injury refers to a kind of psychological anguish that follows from when an agent causes or becomes causally implicated in actions that we ordinarily would understand to be morally grievous offenses because of their circumstances. A (...) person can experience moral damage or moral injury separately, but the experiences of moral damage and moral injury can also overlap. Because abusers often expect victims to adopt morally deficient dispositions and often implicate victims in wrongdoing, I argue that victims of domestic violence characteristically suffer from both moral damage and moral injury. By appreciating the different yet overlapping moral experiences of the victim, we become better positioned to identify strategies for responding to and repairing the different harms they suffer. (shrink)