This paper characterises Deleuze and Guattari's conception of the majoritarian subject in A Thousand Plateaus as a particular – and inevitably transitory – manifestation of sexed and gendered subjectivity emerging with late capitalism from the always mutating flows of creative life and suggests that their notion of the schizo or nomadic subject can inspire feminist solutions to the impasses posed by contemporary forms of sexed, gendered, and sexual identity. Feminism can thus be conceived as a schizoanalytic practice that fosters the (...) kind of alternative subjects for which Deleuze and Guattari call: subjects that move beyond oppressive self–other relations towards a form of subjectivity that can welcome differences as well as the differentiating force of life itself. (shrink)
Between the Psyche and the Social is the first collection that specifically features the field of psychoanalytic social theory emerging in and between psychoanalysis, feminism, postcolonial studies, and queer theory, and across the disciplines of philosophy, literary, film, and cultural studies. This collection of essays takes the psychoanalytic study of social oppression in some new directions by engaging—indeed, stirring up—unconscious fantasies and ethical tensions at the heart of social subjectivity.
Besser-Jones holds that well-being consists in having the experience of satisfying three innate psychological needs at the core of human nature: "relatedness," "autonomy," and "competence." Of these three, the first is the most central one, and we satisfy it by interacting with our fellows in caring and respectful ways: by "acting well." To act well, we need, Besser-Jones argues, a virtuous character: we need certain moral beliefs, and we need those to interact with our intentions in ways that reliably lead (...) us to act in ways that satisfy our psychological needs. Besser-Jones’s theory has many virtues, but appears overly narrow. The theory ignores the importance of bodily, or physical, well-being. It is also overly restrictive to base an account of virtue wholly upon the agent’s own psychological well-being. If we possess qualities of mind or character that do or would make us into good friends or associates, this appears to be a sufficient reason for counting these qualities as virtues of ours. And giving others due care and respect is surely worthwhile in itself, not only as a means to our own psychological well-being. (shrink)
A detailed chronology is offered for the writing of Frege's central philosophical essays from the early 1890s. Particular attention is given to (the distinction between) Sinn and Bedeutung. Suggestions are made as to the origin of the examples concerning the Morning Star/Evening Star and August Bebel's views on the return of Alsace-Lorraine. Likely sources are offered for Frege's use of the terms Bestimmungsweise, Art des Gegebenseins and Sinn und Bedeutung.
The main focus of this essay is to closely engage with the role of scientist-subjectivity in the making of objectivity in Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison’s book Objectivity, and Daston’s later and earlier works On Scientific Observation and The Moral Economy of Science. I have posited four challenges to the neo-Kantian and Foucauldian constructions of the co-implication of psychology and epistemology presented in these texts. Firstly, following Jacques Lacan’s work, I have argued that the subject of science constituted by (...) the mode of modern science suffers from paranoia. It is not the fear of subjectivity interfering with objectivity but the impossibility of knowing the truth of the real that causes paranoia. Here, I have argued that it is not the ethos of objectivity that drives epistemology as Daston and Galison suggest, but the pathos of paranoia. The second challenge builds upon Kant’s own denial that the perfect correspondence between the human will and the moral law is possible. Kant himself thought that an ethical human act is impossible without the component of “pathology.” This questions Daston and Galison’s argument that there is always ethical imperative at the core of epistemic virtue. The third challenge contests the way Daston and Galison take appearance for being in their application of the Foucauldian concept of technologies of the self in modeling the master scientist-self. The fourth challenge questions the notion of the psychological and unconscious in the making of epistemology in Daston’s later and earlier work. Against this background, I aim to make a claim that understanding and disclosing “entities” in the scientific domain presupposes an understanding of “being” in general. My goal is to open up the discussion for an alternative conception of the scientist-subject and thereby an affective and existential formulation of science. (shrink)
El libro de Lorraine Daston Breve Historia de la Atención Científica, publicado en español por editorial La Cifra en el 2012, consta de seis apartados a través de los cuales Daston formula una interesante pregunta desde las perspectivas de la psicología de la investigación científica y la epistemología de la historia natural: por qué, cuándo y cómo ocurre que los científicos dirigen su atención sobre determinados objetos de estudio y no sobre otros. O visto desde otro punto de vista, (...) cómo emergen los objetos científicos y cómo, en determinado momento, se desvanecen. (shrink)
Curious about the nature of light, Robert Boyle spent a series of late nights taking detailed observations of shining veal shanks, stinking fish, pieces of rotten wood which glowed in the dark, and a ‘noctiluca’ distilled from human urine. Once, report Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, with "only a foot-boy" to assist him, Boyle put a luminous diamond to the nocturnal test, "plunging it into oil and acid, spitting on it, and ‘taking it into bed with me, and holding (...) it a good while upon a warm part of my naked body’". (shrink)
The Routledge Companion to Virtue Ethics, edited by Lorraine Besser-Jones and Michael Slote, is unusual among the recent crop of handbooks, encyclopedias, and compendiums in philosophy in a couple of respects. First, as well as presenting up-to-date surveys of the field, the Companion includes a number of entries that also engage in argument and negotiate tensions between different positions—some even questioning the nature of virtue ethics itself. These chapters are particularly interesting as they demonstrate the use of philosophical methodology (...) in debates about VE. Second, the volume engages with non-Western perspectives on virtue theory and VE, with several chapters showing the... (shrink)
This paper introduces The Challenge of Epistemic Responsibility: Essays in Honour of Lorraine Code. In this symposium of papers, invited by Feminist Philosophy Quarterly, the authors return to Code’s first book, Epistemic Responsibility, to re-read it, respond to it, and rethink Code’s articulation of epistemic responsibility anew, considering it in light of her other work and drawing it into contact with their own. This symposium is the outcome of a conference panel that Anna Mudde co-organized with Susan Dieleman, held (...) October 25, 2015, at the annual meeting of the Canadian Society for Women in Philosophy at Mudde’s institution, Campion College at the University of Regina, in Saskatchewan. (shrink)
This paper is based on a research conducted between 2004 and 2006 and dealing with the memories of women in a steel valley struck by depression since the seventies, in the North-Eastern part of France. The imagery of steel-producing Lorraine coalesced in a rather standardized way around the figure of the steelworker working at the blast furnace. This research and the exhibition which followed from it, highlighted the activities of women, in the working place as well as in the (...) domestic realm and in community or political movements. It thus contributes to a more complex imagining and less androcentric perspective on the ironworks past of the Lorraine region. (shrink)
"Response to 'Ecological Thinking' by Lorraine Code," an invited response to an invited paper on the program of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association, December 2002.
This is the first paper in the invited collection. Koggel starts with Code’s first book to record the key objections she raises against traditional and mainstream epistemological accounts. They are the sort of objections that will thread their way through all her work and be important to the development of feminist epistemology. I will then introduce, summarize, and discuss the work Code does on virtue ethics in Epistemic Responsibility and speculate on why she abandons this path in the rest of (...) her work. Code uses virtue ethics and, specifically, virtues of the intellect, to frame an account of moral responsibility that I find interesting, promising, and still relevant to the contemporary revival of virtue ethics and to feminist epistemology more generally. (shrink)
: I briefly reprise a few themes of my bookMoral Understandingsin order to address some questions about responsibility and justification. I argue for a thoroughly situated and naturalized view of moral justification that warns us not to take moral universalism too easily at face value. I also argue for the significance of reports of experience, among other kinds of empirical evidence, in testing the habitability of moral forms of life.
I briefly reprise a few themes of my book Moral Understandings in order to address some questions about responsibility and justification. I argue for a thoroughly situated and naturalized view of moral justification that warns us not to take moral universalism too easily at face value. I also argue for the significance of reports of experience, among other kinds of empirical evidence, in testing the habitability of moral forms of life.
