Women in the field of art and science have an unquestionable presence worldwide that exceeds their visibility in the general visual art scene. When cataloguing women’s range of practices and exploring their agency in art and science, a new model of inclusivity and access to the public sphere for all individuals working in art emerges. First, these are contributions reflecting on projects being carried out by women in the broadest interpretation of the term – individuals who identify themselves as women, (...) cisgender, non-cisgender, transgender, gender fluid and independent of their sex and gender. Second, these are contributions that reflect on research methodologies, collaboration strategies, knowledge sharing, as well as public vs. personal, embodiment and materiality. (shrink)

One of the most significant developments in the art world of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s has been the rise to prominence of art made by minority cultures. Race, Sex, and Gender examines the controversial challenges these groups present to today's artists and critics. Works by African-Americans, feminists, homosexuals, and Latino-Hispanics - once considered marginal - have come to transform contemporary art. As this so-called minority art has moved into a more dominant position, museums - once official symbols of culture (...) - have formed a more secure alliance with the avant-garde. The result is that "minority" art has become, in effect, our most major concern. In this provocative volume, art historian Edward Lucie-Smith seeks to determine how these different groups came to acclaim, and how they have revolutionized the kind of art shown in museums and galleries. Cindy Sherman, Robert Mapplethorpe, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Nancy Spero, Hannah Wilke, Larry Fuente, Cheri Samba, and Martin Puryear are among those artists whose work is pictured and discussed as Lucie-Smith probes issues of racial identity, sexual orientation, and gender politics. Statements from the artists as well as from theoreticians and critics are given, offering additional commentaries on these crucial new topics. Organized by profusely illustrated chapters devoted to specific minority groups, Race, Sex, and Gender is a timely introduction to the issues that are shaping contemporary art. (shrink)

British art historian Charles Harrison presumes the existence of a patriarchal world with power in the hands of men who dominate the representation of women and femininity. He applauds the ground-breaking work of feminist theorists who have questioned this imbalance of power since the 1970s. He stops short, however, of accepting their claims that all women have been represented by male artists as images of “utter passivity” (p. 4), routinely reduced by the male gaze to the status of exploited sexual (...) objects, or that women’s subjectivity is eroded by the visual treatment they receive at the hands of male artists such as Manet and Picasso. He wants to show that what is depicted in the picture plane by the (typically male) artist and enjoyed by the (typically male) spectator is more nuanced than just a simple privileged understanding between two men. He adds a third (and possibly fourth or more) party to the mix when he significantly redefines and expands our concept of the gaze: “A gaze may also be conceived of as a function of a painting’s represented content” (p. 9). In other words, a gaze may be “addressed outward by a represented figure,” and regardless of who and where, “the assumption conveyed by the term [‘gaze’] is that some differential and usually asymmetrical relation will be at stake in any exchange between one who directs the gaze and another at whom it is directed. In fact, it is just this difference—in age, in sex, in class, in interest, in power —that the operation of the gaze tends to mark” (p. 9). Referring to a woman depicted within the picture plane, he asks us to consider, “What does it feel like to look like this?” (p. 21) in order to entertain our many emotional responses and interpretations. When he adds, “What does it feel like to whom?” the sexual difference of the spectator also clearly comes into play. (shrink)

The term ars erotica refers to the styles and techniques of lovemaking with the honorific title of art. But in what sense are these practices artistic and how do they contribute to the aesthetics and ethics of self-cultivation in the art of living? In this book, Richard Shusterman offers a critical, comparative analysis of the erotic theories proposed by the most influential premodern cultural traditions that shaped our contemporary world. Beginning with ancient Greece, whose god of desiring love gave eroticism (...) its name, Shusterman examines the Judaeo-Christian biblical tradition and the classical erotic theories of Chinese, Indian, Islamic, and Japanese cultures, before concluding with medieval and Renaissance Europe. His exploration of their errors and insights shows how we could improve the quality of life and love today. By using the engine of eros to cultivate qualities of sensitivity, grace, skill, and self-mastery, we can reimagine a richer, more positive vision of sex education. (shrink)

Preview: /Commentary: Richard Shusterman, Ars Erotica: Sex and Somaesthetics in the Classical Arts of Love, 436 pages./ Richard Shusterman’s work is remarkable, among other things, for extending the range and power of the discipline of aesthetics, conceived by him as fundamental to many dimensions of human experience. Indeed, he has driven aesthetics into entirely new ranges of phenomena and strategies for research, and also perhaps returned to an ancient sense of the centrality of aesthetic concepts such as beauty to virtually (...) every human endeavor. In many ways, I think, Shusterman is fulfilling John Dewey’s vision as expressed in Art as Experience, as well as spelling out in detail the implications of his own early book Pragmatist Aesthetics, exploring the aesthetic dimensions of all sorts of human activities. Schusterman’s somaesthetics, however, takes what we might call the aesthetics, or ordinary experience, and centers it on the body in a way that Dewey could not have foreseen. The book might have been titled The Aesthetics of Sex, and as soon as he broaches the topic it strikes one that this subject has been remarkably neglected within philosophical aesthetics, or even in Western philosophy as a whole. Considered as dimensions or arenas of human experience, the aesthetic and the erotic, as Shusterman shows in replete multi-cultural detail, are bound up entirely and from the origins in many or even all cultures. (shrink)

This article offers an underexplored resistance strategy to gender norms, based on a feminist and queer reading of the work of French thinker Roland Barthes. Building on Barthes’s peculiar conception of what he calls “the Neutral” and revisiting his work in light of feminist and queer scholarship on sexual (in)difference, my main goal is to reshape our understanding of what it means to be gender neutral. In opposition to classical conceptions of neutrality associated with passivity, indifference, and blandness, I show (...) that Barthes’s Neutral can be conceived as an active gesture, which alters common systems of meanings and power, including the gender binary. But this conception of the Neutral, I argue, neither refers to a call for an androgynous, queer, or nonbinary gender experience. It does not target gender embodiments but gender regulations—that is, the social enforcement of gender categories (by way, for instance, of administrative forms, single-sex bathrooms, or normalizing attitudes toward others). A gender-neutral arrangement, therefore, refers to an ethical, administrative, social, or spatial relation in which subjects are not assigned based on gender categories. This practice of gender suspension, I show, has two main transformative effects. First, it opens a space of freedom and livability for gender-nonconforming subjects. Second, it contributes to lessening the significance of sexual difference in social life and therefore alleviating its symbolic and normative weight for everyone. (shrink)

Farah Nayeri addresses the difficult questions plaguing the art world, from the bad habits of Old Masters, to the current grappling with identity politics. For centuries, art censorship has been a top-down phenomenon--kings, popes, and one-party states decided what was considered obscene, blasphemous, or politically deviant in art. Today, censorship can also happen from the bottom-up, thanks to calls to action from organizers and social media campaigns. Artists and artworks are routinely taken to task for their insensitivity. In this new (...) world order, artists, critics, philanthropists, galleries and museums alike are recalibrating their efforts to increase the visibility of marginalized voices and respond to the people's demands for better ethics in art. But what should we, the people, do with this newfound power? With exclusive interviews with Nan Goldin, Sam Durant, Faith Ringgold, and others, Nayeri tackles wide-ranging issues including sex, religion, gender, ethics, animal rights, and race. By asking and answering questions such as: Who gets to make art and who owns it? How do we correct the inequities of the past? What does authenticity, exploitation, and appropriation mean in art?, Takedown provides the necessary tools to navigate the art world"--Publisher's description. (shrink)

BackgroundUnderstanding sex and gender in health research can improve the quality of scholarship and enhance health outcomes. Funding agencies and academic journals are two key gatekeepers of knowledge production and dissemination, including whether and how sex/gender is incorporated into health research. Though attention has been paid to key issues and practices in accounting for sex/gender in health funding agencies and academic journals, to date, there has been no systematic analysis documenting whether and how agencies and journals require attention to sex/gender, (...) what conceptual explanations and practical guidance are given for such inclusion, and whether existing practices reflect the reality that sex/gender cannot be separated from other axes of inequality.MethodsOur research systematically examines official statements about sex/gender inclusion from 45 national-level funding agencies that fund health research across 36 countries (covering the regions of the EU and associated countries, North America, and Australia) and from ten top-ranking general health (the top five in “science” and the top five in “social science”) and ten sex- and/or gender-related health journals. We explore the extent to which agencies and journals require inclusion of sex/gender considerations and to what extent existing strategies reflect state of the art understandings of sex/gender, including intersectional perspectives.ResultsThe research highlights the following: (a) there is no consistency in whether sex/gender are mentioned in funding and publishing guidelines; (b) there is wide variation in how sex/gender are conceptualized and how researchers are asked to address the inclusion/exclusion of sex/gender in research; (c) funding agencies tend to prioritize male/female equality in research teams and funding outcomes over considerations of sex/gender in research content and knowledge production; and (d) with very few exceptions, agency and journal criteria fail to recognize the complexity of sex/gender, including the intersection of sex/gender with other key factors that shape health.ConclusionsThe conceptualization and integration of sex/gender needs to better capture the interacting and complex factors that shape health—an imperative that can be informed by an intersectional approach. This can strengthen current efforts to advance scientific excellence in the production and reporting of research. We provide recommendations and supporting questions to strengthen consideration of sex/gender in policies and practices of health journals and funding agencies. (shrink)

SHUSTERMANRICHARDCambridge University Press. 2021. pp. xvi+420. £23.

Excerpt from Heredity, Correlation and Sex Differences in School Abilities: Studies From the Department of Educational Psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University The Relationships between the Different Abilities Involved in the Study of Arithmetic. By W. A. Fox and E. L. Thorndike. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving (...) the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Reseña Richard Shusterman (2021). Ars Erotica: Sex and Somaesthetics in the Classical Arts of Love. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sex allocation research has primarily focused on offspring sex‐ratio adjustment by mothers. Yet, fathers also benefit from producing more of the sex with greater fitness returns. Here, we review the state‐of‐the art in the study of male‐driven sex allocation and, counter to the current paradigm, we propose that males can adaptively influence offspring sex ratio through a wide variety of mechanisms. This includes differential production and motility of X‐ versus Y‐bearing sperms in mammals, variation in seminal fluid composition in haplo‐diploid (...) invertebrates, and epigenetic mechanisms in some fish and lizards exhibiting environmental sex determination. Conflicts of interest between mothers and fathers over offspring sex ratios can emerge, although many more studies are needed in this area. While many studies of sex allocation have focused on adaptive explanations with little attention to mechanisms, and vice versa, the integration of these two topics is essential for understanding male‐driven sex allocation. (shrink)

The article attempts to address the issue of nudity and eroticism in stage and screen versions of Shakespeare’s plays. Elizabethan theatrical conventions and moral and political censorship of the English Renaissance did not allow for an explicit presentation of naked bodies and sexual interactions on stage; rather, these were relegated to the verbal plane, hence the bawdy language Shakespeare employed on many occasions. Conventions play a significant role also in the present-day, post-1960s and post-sexual revolution era, whereby human sexuality in (...) Western culture is not just alluded to, but discussed and presented in an open manner. Consequently, nudity on stage and screen in versions of Shakespeare’s plays has become more marked and outspoken. Indeed, in both filmic and TV productions as well as stage performances directors and actors more and more willingly have exposed human body and sexuality to the viewer/spectator. My aim is to look at such instances from the perspective of realism and realistic conventions that the three media deploy and the effect nudity/sex can have on the recipient. The conclusion is that theatre is most conventional and stark realism and directness of the message need to be carefully dosed. Similarly to the theatre, television, more specifically television theatre, is, too, a most direct genre, as television is inherently a live medium, the broadcasts of which occur here and now, in the present tense. Film is markedly different from the two previous forms of art: it is narrated in the past tense, thus creating a distance between what is shown and the viewer, and allowing for more literalness. Naturally, particular cases discussed in the article go beyond these rather simple divisions. (shrink)

Reimagining Eroticism through Embodied Aesthetics: A Feminist Reading 1. The Epistemological and Ethical Aspects of the Arts of Love In the debate of contemporary thought and its intersections with philosophy, aesthetics, and the politics of the self, Richard Shusterman’s Ars Erotica (AE) makes a significant and inspiring contribution. The book delves into the intricate relationship between aesthetics and eroticism, offering a unique perspective on the relation between the ancient notion of d...

The feminist movement was from its start in the 19th century involved in the struggle for better health care for women. The first feminists aimed at better information on birth control and sexuality. The second feminist wave focused on the unequal division of power roles between men and women. A lot of the problems women experienced could be seen as a consequence of their subordinate role in society. At the end of the 1980s and in the 1990s, the discipline women (...) and health or women and medicine was developed. In this introduction to the theme, the developments in this discipline are described. The starting points of the new discipline followed the principles of ‘women’s health care’. These principles can be summarized as the emphasis on control and autonomy by the patient, demedicalization, the importance of the psychosocial context of complaints, empowerment of women and good information and communication. The central issue of the article is: what is the actual scientific state of the art and what important changes have been made on the subject gender and health? The article ends with ideas for future research. (shrink)

The national ethical guidelines relevant to assisted reproductive technology have recently been reviewed by the National Health and Medical Research Council. The review process paid particular attention to the issue of non-medical sex selection, although ultimately, the updated ethical guidelines maintain the pre-consultation position of a prohibition on non-medical sex selection. Whilst this recent review process provided a public forum for debate and discussion of this ethically contentious issue, the Victorian case of JS and LS v Patient Review Panel [2011] (...) VCAT 856 provides a rare instance where the prohibition on non-medical sex selection has been explored by a court or tribunal in Australia. This paper analyses the reasoning in that decision, focusing specifically on how the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal applied the statutory framework relevant to ART and its comparison to other uses of embryo selection technologies. The Tribunal relied heavily upon the welfare-of-the-child principle under the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act 2008. The Tribunal also compared non-medical sex selection with saviour sibling selection. Our analysis leads us to conclude that the Tribunal’s reasoning fails to adequately justify the denial of the applicants’ request to utilize ART services to select the sex of their prospective child. (shrink)

Metaphilosophy, Volume 53, Issue 4, Page 560-564, July 2022.

The adaptive significance of temperature‐dependent sex determination (TSD) in reptiles remains unknown decades after TSD was first identified in this group. Concurrently, there is growing concern about the effect that rising temperatures may have on species with TSD, potentially producing extremely biased sex ratios or offspring of only one sex. The current state‐of the‐art in TSD research on sea turtles is reviewed here and, against current paradigm, it is proposed that TSD provides an advantage under warming climates. By means of (...) coadaptation between early survival and sex ratios, sea turtles are able to maintain populations. When offspring survival declines at high temperatures, the sex that increases future fecundity (females) is produced, increasing resilience to climate warming. TSD could have helped reptiles to survive mass extinctions in the past via this model. Flaws in research on sex determination in sea turtles are also identified and it is suggested that the development of new techniques will revolutionize the field. (shrink)

This article analyses the recent controversy over single and lesbian women’s right to access reproductive technology. It focuses on the McBain case in relation to the Sex Discrimination Act. As well, it attempts to bring voices that have been ignored into the debate, and reflect on the values that they express.

A book in which analytic philosophers examine the portrayal of sex in art and the possible artistic value of pornography proves a disappointment. Although a transcendental objection to pornographic art is rebutted, the papers employ barren philosophical methods that divert energy away from significant problems and into scholastic quibbles.

This article addresses the extent and ways in which gender inequality in the newspaper coverage of arts and culture has changed in France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States, 1955-2005. Through a quantitative content analysis, we mapped all articles that appeared in two elite newspapers in each country in four sample years 1955, 1975, 1995, and 2005. First, despite increasing women’s employment in arts and culture and a quantitative feminization of journalism, elite newspaper coverage of women in arts and (...) culture has hardly changed, making up about 20-25 percent consistently over the last 50 years. Second, our results show surprisingly few cross-national differences in the amount of the newspaper coverage devoted to women in arts and culture. Third, although women are underrepresented in the coverage of all artistic genres, there is some evidence of horizontal sex segregation—particularly in architecture and modern dance and fashion —as well as vertical sex segregation—in that attention to women has increased in “highbrow” genres that have declined in status. Finally, as the status of an actor type increases from laymen to artistic directors, the proportion of women decreases in newspaper attention to arts and culture. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:510 Feminist Studies 46, no. 2. © 2020 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Shelley Streeby Speculative Writing, Art, and World-Making in the Wake of Octavia E. Butler as Feminist Theory The late great speculative fiction writer Octavia E. Butler often referred to herself as a feminist. In an autobiographical note she revised frequently over the course of her lifetime, now held in the massive archive of more than 8,000 individually (...) cataloged items that comprise The Octavia E. Butler Papers (OEB) at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, Butler called herself a “hermit in the middle of Los Angeles,” a pessimist when she wasn’t “careful,” and “a feminist” as well as “a Black” and “a former Baptist.”1 Throughout her published work, Butler explores intersections of gender, sexuality, race, and class in ways shaped by her life growing up “black, female, and working class” across town in Pasadena, California.2 The keywords “feminism” and “feminist” pop up often in her archive. In 1988, in one of dozens of notebooks Butler filled with writing, she proudly claimed to be writing “true cross-over science fiction ” that reached both science fiction and general audiences, “encompassing feminists and blacks as well,” a claim she often repeated.3 The thousands of clippings Butler kept and annotated on subjects of interest to her included many on feminism, which she organized to emphasize 1. OEB, Folder 95. The OEB collection organized by Curator Natalie Russell, who authored the finding aid. 2. OEB, Folder 3093. 3. OEB, Folder 3239, November 9, 1988. 511 Shelley Streeby Books Discussed in This Essay Migrant Futures: Decolonizing Speculation in Financial Times. Aimee Bahng. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018. Queer Feminist Science Studies: A Reader. Edited by Cyd Cipolla, Kristina Gupta, David A. Rubin, and Angela Willey. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017. Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Shaping Worlds. adrienne maree brown. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2017. Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements. Edited by adrienne maree brown and Walidah Imarisha. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2015. Radio Imagination: Artists and Writers in the Archive of Octavia E. Butler. Edited by Janet Duckworth and Savanah Wood. Los Angeles: Clockshop, 2018. M Archive: After the End of the World. Alexis Pauline Gumbs. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017. Angels with Dirty Faces: Three Stories of Crime, Prison, and Redemption. Walidah Imarisha. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2016. Old Futures: Speculative Fiction and Queer Possibility. Alexis Lothian. New York: New York University Press, 2018. Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction. Sami Schalk. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018. intersections among feminist and other struggles. A 1991 piece by Black syndicated columnist Clarence Page, for instance, called “The F. Word to Watch For: Feminists,” which was written in the wake of the HillThomas hearings and speculated that the Bush administration would demonize “feminists” as a “smoke screen” for “real economic problems,” 512 Shelley Streeby was filed under “Economy.”4 Much of the archival material and fiction that Butler produced relevant to the keyword “feminism” addresses intersections of gender, sexuality, race, and class in right-wing projects of the neoliberal era, from the 1970s through the early 2000s. As both a pejorative epithet used by the right to demonize women who deviated from patriarchally defined gender and sex roles as well as a term she counter-valued by claiming it for herself, intersectional “feminism” was central to Butler’s speculative collecting, research, and fiction-writing. Since her untimely death in 2006, Butler’s fame continues to grow as new generations embrace her work, since it speaks to our present in powerful ways. Butler rejected narrow genre categories and was ambivalent about the term “science fiction” as a descriptor for her writing, often expressing frustration with marketing categories and wondering if they stood in the way of reaching a wider audience. The umbrella term “speculative ” is useful both for recognizing the boundary-crossing dimensions of Butler’s writing, in its defiance of narrow definitions of genre, and for describing Butler’s contributions to feminist theories of knowledge production, political leadership, and imagining the future. Since Butler’s archive at the Huntington opened to researchers in 2013... (shrink)

In The Entanglement, philosopher Alva Noë explores the inseparability of life, art, and philosophy, and argues that we have radically underestimated the significance of this long recognized but underappreciated reality, what he refers to as the "entanglement." The core of The Entanglement is the idea that human existence is inextricably aesthetic and philosophical. In the first half of the book, Noë offers a detailed examination of pictures and seeing, writing and speech, and choreography and dancing, which serve as case studies (...) and the base in which the phenomenon of entanglement is set. In later chapters, Noë deepens this analysis by exploring the nature of the aesthetic itself, and its place in our lives, examining what the entanglement can teach us about science, and, in particular, the project of applying science in the domain of the human. In these later chapters he covers a range of topics, including sex, gender, and the body, psychology and AI, the problem of style, and the nature of 'nature.' Drawing on his work in perception, consciousness, and the philosophy of art, Noë offers a new model for thinking about the nature of the human, the limits to what a natural science of the human can do on its own, and the irreplaceable importance of art and philosophy for the larger project of studying and understanding ourselves. (shrink)

Readers of Geczy's book are in for a wild ride. The lavishly illustrated narrative moves in broad strokes from the commedia dell'arte to cyborgs, with gross-out plastic surgery disasters and live sex dolls in between. The book's premise is simple: where humans once found their humanity in separating themselves from the artificial, in our current technologically infused age, humans want more than anything to become as artificial as possible. Geczy puts it simply: "In the humanist age, Pinocchio wanted to become (...) human; in the so-called post-humanist age, humans aspire to become Pinocchio". His examples are anything but simple, however. Arguing that in and around the 1980s, the move from "dolls imitating humans... (shrink)

The discussion around artificial empathy and its ethics is not a new one. This concept can be found in classic science fiction media such as Star Trek and Blade Runner and is also pondered on in more recent interactive media such as the video game Detroit: Become Human. In most depictions, emotions and empathy are presented as the key to being human. Misselhorn's new publication shows that these futuristic stories are becoming more and more relevant today. We must ask ourselves (...) whether we are socially responsible enough to deal with the consequences of artificial empathy/awareness. If we create artificial life, we should be prepared to treat them accordingly as living beings with respect and no longer categorize them as objects. The author does not rule out the idea that machines might one day become more human than humans themselves and that we humans might even lose our own specific cognitive, emotional and social abilities. (shrink)

In this article, I advance how the work of transfeminist artistic collective Quimera Rosa formulates new understandings of gender and sexuality in the attempt of ‘becoming plant’. I will first analyse their earlier post-porn work and the use of hacked devices for the formulation of human/nonhuman erotic connections. I will then move to their most recent Trans*Plant project, which involves a human – plant transition. In relation and comparison to the notion of ‘ecosexuality’, I will finally draw an anti-capitalist, posthuman (...) sex/gender practice that radically escapes legibility and identity formulations to create open-ended planetary erotic alliances. (shrink)

The _fascinus_, or phallus, was at the heart of classical Roman art and life. No god was more represented in ancient Rome than the phallic deity Priapus, and the _fescennine_ verses, one of the earliest forms of Roman poetry, accompanied the celebrations of Priapus, the harvest, and fertility. But with this emphasis on virility also came an emphasis on power and ideas of possession and protection. In _Sex and Terror_, Pascal Quignard looks closely at this delicate interplay of celebration and (...) terror. In startling and original readings of myths, satires, memoirs, and works of ancient philosophy and visual art, Quignard locates moments of both playful, aesthetic commemoration and outward cruelty. Through these examples, he describes a colossal cultural shift within Western civilization that occurred two millennia ago, as Augustus shaped the Roman world into an empire and the joyous, precise eroticism of the Greeks turned into a terror-stricken melancholy. The details of this revolution in thinking are revealed through Quignard’s astute analysis of classical literary sources and Roman art. This powerful transformation from celebration to fear is a change whose consequences, Quignard argues, we are still dealing with today, making _Sex and Terror_ an intriguing reconsideration of ancient Rome that transcends its history. (shrink)

"A distinctive voice somewhere between Mark Twain and Michel Montaigne" is how Psychology Today described A.C. Grayling. In Life, Sex, and Ideas: The Good Life Without God, readers have the pleasure of hearing this distinctive voice address some of the most serious topics in philosophy--and in our daily lives--including reflections on guns, anger, conflict, war; monsters, madness, decay; liberty, justice, utopia; suicide, loss, and remembrance. A civilized society, says Grayling, is one which never ceases having a discussion with itself about (...) what human life should best be. In this book, Grayling adds to this discussion a series of short informal essays about ethics, ideas, and culture. A recurring theme is religion, of which he writes "there is no greater social evil." He argues, for instance, that liberal education is better than religion for inculcating moral values. "Education in literature, history, and appreciation of the arts," he says, "opens the possibility for us to live more reflectively and knowledgeably, especially about the nature and variety of human experience. That in turn increases our capacity for understanding others better, so that we can treat them with respect and sympathy, however different their outlook on life." Thought provoking rather than definitive, these essays don't tell readers what to think, but only note what has been thought about how it is best to live. A person who does not think about life, the author reminds us, is like a stranger mapless in a foreign land. These brief and suggestive essays offer us the outlines of a map, with avenues of thought that are a pleasure to wander down. (shrink)

Richard Schusterman’s book, Ars erotica: sex and somaesthetics in the classical arts of love (Schusterman, 2021) is a path-finding, innovative contribution that breaks the silence around the long-held body-shying academic deprivation to erotic ideas with its free-flowing comprehensive discussion on carnal desire and erotic thoughts. Schusterman provides a panoramic yet vibrantly profound analysis of the aesthetic inclusion into erotic love following the culture of Asian and Western thoughts from the ancient era to the Renaissance. The book’s scope shows the author’s (...) deep inclusive com-mendable research into erotic study. Schusterman is renowned for his original approach to defining popular art and philosophy as an embodied art of living. He is also famous for his trailblazing concept of somaesthetics, rooted in pragmatist aesthetics, with Ars erotica being a fruitful product of his expertise in both. (shrink)

This work discusses blood, beauty, culture, money, sex, web sites, and research on the brain's role in perceiving art.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Art of Interpreting Art PAUL BAROLSKY “The quality of the prose is just as important in nonfiction as in fiction.” —Robert Caro If as Horace famously wrote in the Ars poetica the aim of poetry is to instruct and delight, why shouldn’t the goal of all writing be the same? Why should all readers not enjoy as well as learn from what they read? In the realm of (...) academe, however, although much writing instructs, far too little delights. This is so because the goal of academic writing is primarily that of conveying information and knowledge or of developing new ideas. Delight or pleasure are not of primary academic concern. Too few scholars care sufficiently about how they write. Too many academics write in unreadable prose. Often their writing is ponderous, indeed pompous, because they are insecure in the face of theoretical, philosophical or scientific writing. The outcome can be quite hideous. Sometimes, dare I say often, their writing is dreadfully dry and dull. In the Humanities, the arts, by which I mean those that have been called the spatial arts, that is, architecture, sculpture, and painting, can be studied from a wide variety of perspectives. As some observers have noted, however, frequently in the academic study of art and its history, art as such recedes from view and drops out of the discussion. Art becomes primarily the illustration of something else, something other than itself. It comes to be the illustration of the global, colonial, sexual, political, theological, social, economic, religious, anthropological, philosophical, technological, scientific, or theoretical. It is too often not sufficiently appreciated for its own sake as art. Do I sound as if I am writing about the much-scorned notion of “art for art’s sake?” Yes, but not exactly. Since the arion 28.1 spring/summer 2020 102 the art of interpreting art nineteenth century, when Gautier wrote, l’art pour l’art meant just that, the celebration of art for its own sake. Eventually, however, that notion came to be disparaged as too limited, since it supposedly failed to address the various kinds of associations between art and the other phenomena listed above. The notion of art for its own sake unfortunately came to be seen as a manifestation of aestheticism or formalism— both often regrettably terms of opprobrium. Not long ago a graduate teaching fellow in a prestigious art history program had her students read my essay on the role of writing about art which was published in the spring/ summer 2018 issue of this journal. The first part of that essay concerned atrocious writing, which, our teaching fellow said, made her students laugh—yes, laugh! They presumably laughed because the prose of scholars was so very bad—ridiculous in the root sense of the word, laughable. One example of pompous diction that I have cited often because it is so laughably absurd, is the definition one art historical scholar has given of sex as “inter-corporeal relationality.” No wonder the students laughed! With considerable amusement, the graduate teaching fellow to whom I have just referred told me that she rather doubted her students bothered to read the second part of the essay she assigned, even though it included some exemplary writing about art. Why should they have bothered to read examples of excellent writing? After all, their teachers, who too often do not themselves write well, do not encourage students to think sufficiently about their prose. Let me add to the cluster of grotesque writing illustrated in the Arion article to which I have referred one more example of how bad academic writing about art can be in order to remind the reader of the kind of absurd nonsense or blather that one encounters throughout the Humanities. It comes from a highly esteemed author who “describes influence as a notion which provides a support—of too magical a kind to be very amenable to analysis—for the facts of transmission and com- Paul Barolsky 103 munication; which refers to an apparently causal process (but with neither rigorous delineation nor theoretical definition) the phenomena of resemblance or repetition; which links, at a distance and through time—as if through the mediation of... (shrink)

It is likely that sex robots will exist in the near future, making the effect they might have on human relationships a pressing concern. In this future world, we can imagine sex robots shaping our personal and social relationships through their unique access to, and potential for influencing, our most intimate of behaviours. We investigate whether they might be employed to influence social behaviours in a positive way. The paper begins with an account of the state of the art, acknowledges (...) powerful feminist criticisms that have been made of sex robots, and evaluates suggestions that it might be possible to design sex robots which do not raise these concerns and which might even work to influence social behaviours in a positive way. It then outlines a number of ways that sex robots might be used to educate, “nudge”, and influence people in positive ways. It defends the idea that it would be ethical to use sex robots to promote socially positive behaviours — behaviours that benefit others and improve social cohesion, such as fostering respect and empathy for persons — but not to promote commercial products for parochial interests. We argue that the former project could advance individual and social welfare, while preserving personal autonomy — a minimum requirement of which is the ability to make informed decisions — whereas the latter depends on a lack of transparency and democratic control for its success, targets the vulnerability of the user to achieve its ends, and reinforces the problematic symbolism of negatively gendered sexuality. If sex robot design and application meet public requirements of transparency — enabling informed consent and reflective decision making — and democratic oversight — promoting accountability and the sharing of power with the public — it is conceivable that sex robots might assist, rather than harm society. (shrink)

Shusterman, R. (2021) Ars Erotica: Sex and Somaesthetics in the Classical Arts of Love. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1107004764.

Shusterman, R. (2021) Ars Erotica: Sex and Somaesthetics in the Classical Arts of Love. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1107004764.

Sexuality and sexual desire remain tantalizing conundrums for the universalizing intellect, desirous of comprehending the human condition even in its most unconditional manifestations. The representation of sexuality in the history of art is of course ubiquitous. But our equivocal familiarity with this subject matter, whether through attraction or repulsion, too often goes unacknowledged as an opportunity for reflecting upon the bounds of our subjectivity with unusually rigorous candor. This speculative failure is nowhere more conspicuous then in our attempts to make (...) aesthetic judgments with respect to representations of sexuality while ignoring our intuitional complicity in the perceptual grounds adduced by such.. (shrink)

This book inquires into the swarm of ontological, epistemological, and ethical questions provoked by psychedelic experience in the context of global ecological crisis. Richard M. Doyle is professor of English and science, technology, and society at Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of On Beyond Living and Wetwares.

Since the turn of the millennium South Korea has continued to grapplewith transgressions that shook the nation to its core. Following the serial killings of Korea's raincoat killer, the events that led to the dissolution of the United Progressive Party, the criminal negligence of the owner and also the crew members of the sunken Sewol Ferry, as well as the political scandals of 2016, there has been much public debate about morality, transparency, and the law in South Korea. Yet, despite (...) its prevalence in public discourse, transgression in Korea has not received proper scholarly attention. Transgression in Korea challenges the popular conceptions of transgression as resistance to authority, the collapse of morality, and an attempt at self- empowerment. Examples of transgression from premodern, modern, and contemporary Korea are examined side by side to underscore the possibility of reading transgression in more ways than one. These examples are taken from a devotional screen from medieval Korea, trickster tales from the late Choson period, reports about flesheating humans, newspaper articles about same- sex relationships from colonial Korea, and films about extramarital affairs, wayward youths, and a vengeful vigilante. Bringing together specialists from various disciplines such as history, art history, anthropology, premodern literature, religion, and film studies, the context- sensitive readings of transgression provided in this book suggest that transgression and authority can be seen as forming something other than an antagonistic relationship. (shrink)

In this essay I explore Alexander Pruss’ conceptions of love and sexual desire. I argue that he fails to provide a convincing account of either and that one reason for this is that he ignores far too much relevant material in philosophy and the arts that needs to be taken into account in a thorough investigation of such matters. I argue further that Pruss’ understanding of love and sex is highly moralized, meaning that his discussion is not at all sensitive (...) to the actual human experience of these, but consistently falsifies them. I also argue that the teleology to which Pruss appeals in order to ground his claim that, in the sexual act, the bodies of the lovers are striving for reproduction, is implausible and, further, that, even were it not, we could not infer from such teleology the moral conclusions that Pruss wishes to extract from it. (shrink)

The aim of the present study was to further examine the impact over time of single‐sex and coeducational school environments on girls’ motivation in language arts and mathematics. Two cohorts comprising 340 girls from eight coeducational and two single‐sex schools were followed during a period of three academic years in a longitudinal research scheme. Data were collected with a self‐reported questionnaire including several scales: parental and teachers’ support, competence beliefs, utility‐value and achievement goals. In general, mixed‐design repeated measures analyses of (...) variance indicated no effect of the environment or of the interaction between environment and time of measurement. Significant time effects on several variables indicated a general decline of achievement motivation over time. Consequently, the multiplication of non‐mixed high schools, as proposed by some, would constitute an expensive and inefficient social policy, as far as girls’ motivation is concerned. (shrink)

Preview: /Commentary: Richard Shusterman, Ars Erotica: Sex and Somaesthetics in the Classical Arts of Love, 436 pages./ I think “it is official” now. Ars Erotica will become some sort of classic. There are several reasons why. Some, just cannot stop giggling when they hear the word sex. Many will grab the book out of curiosity, and maybe some, although I do not believe that many, will even do it for camp reasons. Many of these readers have a neurotic and/or complicated (...) relationship to sexuality, and hopefully at least some of them will find the book helpful, as they reflect on themselves and their sexual lives through the text. On the other hand, I cannot imagine anyone in aesthetics or with a scholarly interest in sexuality who would not find the book helpful. Nothing comparable on the relationship of aesthetics and sexuality has been done and the book embraces the topic globally – featuring Shusterman’s vast and deep knowledge – about not just Western philosophy and culture, but also Chinese and Japanese thinking among others. (shrink)

The inhuman in the humanities : Darwin and the ends of man -- Deleuze, Bergson, and the concept of life -- Bergson, Deleuze, and difference -- Feminism, materialism, and freedom -- The future of feminist theory : dreams for new knowledges -- Differences disturbing identity : Deleuze and feminism -- Irigaray and the ontology of sexual difference -- Darwin and the split between natural and sexual selection -- Sexual difference as sexual selection : Irigarayan reflections on Darwin -- Art and (...) the animal -- Living art and the art of life : women's painting from the western desert. (shrink)

Since the decade of the 1970s, and particularly since the first successful test-tube baby in 1978, the development and use of assisted reproductive technologies have grown exponentially. Would-be parents—including those in so-called traditional male-female marriages, unmarried adults, postmenopausal women, and same-sex partnerships—who just over 20 years ago had no recourse for their fertility issues can now pursue their desires to have children with at least a partial, if not, total, genetic and/or biological relationship. Ovulation-stimulating medications, artificial insemination using the sperm (...) of a husband or unrelated donor, in vitro fertilization with embryo transfer, intracytoplasmic sperm injection, and gamete and zygote intrafallopian transfers are but a few of a host of treatment options ranging in complexity, invasiveness, and expense. And on the horizon are genetic techniques such as cloning—which was once considered “pure” science fiction but in 1997 became what some call an inevitability, with the development of mammalian cloning in the form of the now-famous Dolly the sheep. (shrink)