PurposeThis paper aims to examine information and communication science, knowledge and power in relation to a TV “docu‐fiction”. In particular, it will look at the decision‐making processes of individuals and groups.Design/methodology/approachCore information behaviour such as selection and evaluation are examined.FindingsSome concepts from the fields of information or communication studies are critically examined, e.g. “gatekeeper” or “classification” and re‐analysed in a TV and multi‐channel broadcasting environment.Practical implicationsPositive conclusions show the possible impact of expanding information culture, competence and selection skills, whereby attention (...) is paid to the ethical consequences of information mise en scène.Originality/valueThe obvious, popular and close example of the RTBF “docu‐fiction” can be a model to re‐think and reflect many information programmes and narratives. (shrink)

This symposium on Monique Deveaux’s Poverty, Solidarity, and Poor-Led Social Movements includes commentaries by Sally Matthews, Renante D. Pilapil, Violetta Igneski, and Wouter Peeters, with a reply from Deveaux. The book makes the case that normative thinking about poverty should engage closely with the aims, insights, and actions of poor-led organizations and social movements. Challenging conventional framings of poverty by moral philosophers, Deveaux argues that chronic poverty is centrally about the subordination and dispossession of the poor – not mere (...) needs scarcity. To exclude people living in poverty from shaping antipoverty solutions is therefore to perpetuate their social-political domination and epistemic oppression. Deveaux’s book explains what a political reframing of poverty looks like from the vantage point of several poor-led organizations and social movements, using concrete examples from across the globe, and argues for political responsibility for solidarity with those movements. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 104, Issue 2, Page 474-488, March 2022.

L’ouvrage de B. Collette propose une reconstruction inédite de la doctrine stoïcienne de la providence. Il apporte en cela une contribution majeure et sans précédent, puisqu’aucune étude n’avait jusqu’alors été consacrée à la question. La notion de providence a généralement été délaissée par les exégètes. Ceux-ci s’intéressent plus volontiers au concept voisin et complémentaire de destin, dont on s’imagine, à tort, que lui seul constitue un véritable enjeu et problème philosophique. Or l’idée...

We often use the term “attachment” to describe our emotional connectedness to objects in the world. We become attached to our careers, to our homes, to certain ideas, and perhaps most importantly, to other people. Interestingly, despite its import and ubiquity in our everyday lives, the topic of attachment per se has been largely ignored in the philosophy literature. I address this lacuna by identifying attachment as a rich “mode of mattering” that can help to inform certain aspects of agency (...) and emotion. First, drawing on insights from Ancient stoicism and developmental and clinical psychology, I suggest that the relevant form of attachment involves a felt need for its object and a particular relationship between the object and the attached agent’s sense of security. I then argue that these features serve to distinguish the attitude from the more philosophically familiar notion of caring. Finally, I show that recognizing this form of attachment as a distinct mode of mattering has important implications for understanding grief. (shrink)

It is not uncommon for philosophers to name disinterestedness, or some like feature, as an essential characteristic of love. Such theorists claim that in genuine love, one’s concern for her beloved must be non-instrumental, non-egocentric, or even selfless. These views prompt the question, “What, if any, positive role might self-interestedness play in genuine love?” In this paper, I argue that attachment, an attitude marked primarily by self-focused emotions and emotional predispositions, helps constitute the meaning and import of at least some (...) kinds of adult reciprocal love. In this way, attachment represents a type of self-interestedness that not only contributes positively to such relationships but is also essential to them. (shrink)

The idea that we need our beloveds has a rich and longstanding history in classic literature, pop culture, social sciences, and of course, philosophical treatments of love. Yet on little reflection, the idea that one needs one’s beloved is as puzzling as it is familiar. In what, if any sense, do we really need our beloveds? And insofar as we do need them, is this feature of love something to be celebrated or lamented? In the relevant philosophical literature, there are (...) various ways of understanding the type(s) of psychological need internal to love and whether and how the necessity in question contributes to love’s value. In this chapter, I survey and critically analyze several accounts of felt necessity in love and advocate for a philosophically neglected perspective on the nature and value of needing our beloveds. (shrink)

Increasing privacy concerns are arising from expanding use of aggregated personal information in health practices. Conversely, in light of the promising benefits of data driven healthcare, privacy...

A twofold threat hangs over freedom of communication. In rich countries globalization is leading to standardization of thought via national and international bodies. In the cultural as well as the scientific field, especially the human sciences, diversity is needed for reasons of both survival and democracy. Efficiency and productivity imperatives are sacrificing human diversity for economically cost-effective goals. For instance, in the communication field the merging of publishing functions in all media is an obstacle to the free circulation of ideas (...) because it is channelled into the marketing and sales area. In the countries of the southern hemisphere the absence of media makes communication inaccessible for the majority of citizens. So the lack of ideas comes on top of other shortages of basic needs, health care, food, housing … The globalization of trade increases the illusion of a communication which is now accessible to all. But exclusion is increasing because people cannot access knowledge and culture. In fact, in the North as well as the South, the opportunity for everyone to communicate their thinking - their research, their cultural or artistic creations, to communicate a personal experience - is dwindling at the same time as technical progress appears in fact to offer us all the means to express ourselves and have a chance of being heard. The corollary of the creeping globalization of exchanges is that a growing proportion of our contemporaries are put in the position of silent receivers. Indeed the more powerful the media employed, the more those they address become voiceless and passive. Paradoxically, the explosion in communication technology is creating a greater gulf between the well-off and the underprivileged, confining the first in ‘single line of thought’ and excluding the second from any participation in the dialogue. There is no freedom of thought in a world where only one channel exists, even though it communicates that thought in infinitely varied ways. The consumerist consensus never expresses democratic aspirations, but the self-satisfied stupidity of their apathy. (shrink)

Surrealism in North Africa and Western Asia : crossings and encounters -- Multiple surrealisms -- Surrealist encounters.

The question of the origin of ‘natural’ human language has fascinated the scientific world for a very long time and seems to be generating a renewed level of interest. This paper will show that all elements converge to indicate a long and slow process of separation by which the hominids very progressively became distinguished from the other higher primates and more generally from other animal species. Biological and neurological developments created favourable structures for the future emergence of human languages. These (...) developments were further potentialized by the appearance of new forms of co-operation within human communities. Such anthropological, socio-cultural and ‘political’ elements were determinant in allowing the transition to the specifically human functions of language. If these elements are not taken into consideration, researchers are reduced to imaging the appearance of a mutation from which solely Homo sapiens would have benefited and from whichHomo neanderthalensis would have been excluded, as must equally be excluded any intermingling between the various varieties of hominids. (shrink)

La science ne se construit pas dans la solitude. La recherche s'inscrit dans les pratiques sociales d'un milieu et d'une époque. Mais, la croissance rapide de nos sociétés a créé une scission entre nos concitoyens et les "spécialistes", perçus comme perdus dans leurs savoirs et pratiquant des rites complexes et incompréhensibles. Le "peuple" et les "élites" ont cessé de se comprendre et une méfiance réciproque est née entre ces deux catégories qui fonctionnent pourtant selon les mêmes règles.

Dans cet ouvrage, Monique Lauret retrace l'histoire du mouvement psychanalytique en Chine qui ne cesse de croître depuis les années 1980, analyse l'influence de la pensée chinoise sur la théorisation de Lacan, et établit des passerelles entre pensée chinoise et psychanalyse. Il existe un passage inattendu entre pensée chinoise et psychanalyse autour de la question de l'humanisation et du rêve. Lacan s'intéressa en particulier à trois notions de la philosophie chinoise: la nature, le désir et la sagesse (discernement). Il (...) reprit les concepts clés de Mencius, fils spirituel de Confucius: le Xing (nature ou sexuel) et le Ming (décret du Ciel ou destin) à partir desquels il conçut la nature de l'être parlant soumis aux lois du Ciel, c'est-à-dire celles de son désir et de sa jouissance. Il porta aussi un regard neuf sur la langue et l'écriture idéographique chinoises: il y découvrit un système de signifiance révélant le mécanisme subtil de l'inconscient structuré comme écriture, ce qui lui permit d'approfondir les concepts de jouissance, d'identification et de Trait unaire. Enfin, il dénonça l'effondrement de la ' sagesse ' de l'humanité à l'origine de nos maux contemporains: une précipitation dans la haine et l'archaïque, la haine étant le plus puissant vecteur de la pulsion de mort. Par ce dialogue entre deux pensées civilisationnelles qui défendent l'idée que l'homme ne peut être humain que dans sa relation à l'autre, cet ouvrage propose une position de discernement face à l'essor de la révolution techno-numérique et au malaise dans la civilisation. (shrink)

In 2017 and 2018, the English courts were asked to decide whether continued life‐sustaining treatment was in the best interests of three infants: Charlie Gard, Alfie Evans and Isaiah Haastrup. Each infant had sustained catastrophic, irrecoverable brain damage. Dignity played an important role in the best interests assessments reached by the Family division of the High Court in each case. Multiple conceptions of dignity circulate, with potentially conflicting implications for infants such as Charlie, Alfie and Isaiah. The judgements do not (...) explicate the conceptions of dignity upon which they rely. This article reconstructs the conceptions of dignity invoked in these judgements, finding that a broadly Kantian, agential conception dominates, under which human dignity requires the prospect of agency. This conception is situated within the broader body of thought on dignity, and the potentially adverse implications of applying the reconstructed conception in best interests assessments for infants with severely restricted consciousness are discussed. (shrink)

Felt necessity, or the phenomenon of experiencing some person or object as a felt need, plays important roles in structuring human agency. Philosophical treatments of the relationship between agency and felt necessity have tended to focus on appetitive needs and necessities arising from a particular type of care. I argue that we have much to gain by considering a third underexplored variety of felt necessity that I call “attachment necessity.” Attachment necessity has its own distinct parts to play in structuring (...) agency, and like its more familiar relatives, it can also illuminate important aspects of addiction and love. (shrink)

This book, now open-access from OUP, develops a normative theory of political responsibility for solidarity with poor populations by engaging closely with empirical studies of poor-led social movements in the Global South. Monique Deveaux rejects familiar ethical framings of problems of poverty and inequality by arguing that normative thinking about antipoverty remedies needs to engage closely with the aims, insights, and actions of “pro-poor,” poor-led social movements. Defending the idea of a political responsibility for solidarity, nonpoor outsiders—individuals, institutions, and (...) states—can help to advance a transformative anti-poverty agenda only by supporting the efforts of these movements. (shrink)

Philosophy &Public Affairs, Volume 51, Issue 3, Page 265-293, Summer 2023.

Philosophers have urged that considerations about the psychopath’s capacity for practical rationality can help to advance metaethical debates. These debates include the role of rational faculties in moral judgment and action, the relationship between moral judgment and moral motivation, and the capacities required for morally responsible agency. I discuss how the psychopath’s capacity for practical reason features in these debates, and I identify several takeaway lessons from the relevant literature. Specifically, I show how the insights contained therein can illuminate the (...) complex structure of practical rationality, inform our standards for an adequate theory of practical reason, and frame our thinking about the significance of rational capacities in moral theory and social practice. (shrink)

Despite the recent explosion of philosophical literature on forgiveness, relatively few theorists have addressed the possibility of un-forgiving someone for a moral violation. And among those who have addressed the question, “Can we un-forgive?” we find little consensus. In this paper, I consider whether and in what sense forgiveness is rescindable, retractable, or otherwise reversible. In other words, I consider what it might mean to say that a victim who forgave her offender for a particular act of wrongdoing later un-forgave (...) that individual for the very same act. Examining the possibility of un-forgiving positions us to gain richer understandings of both forgiveness and the complexity of navigating moral relationships more broadly. (shrink)

In this dissertation I provide a novel logic of the ordinary-language conditional. First, however, I endeavor to make clearer and more precise just what the objects of the study of the conditional are, as a lack of clarity as to what counts as an instance of a given category of conditional has resulted in deep and significant confusions in subsequent analysis. I motivate for a factual/counterfactual distinction, though not at the level of particular instances of the conditional. Instead, I argue (...) that each individual instance of the conditional may be interpreted either factually or counterfactually, rather than these instances dividing into distinct types. I examine the classic Oswald–Kennedy pair of sentences, typically taken to be the quintessential example of how conditionals must be split into two different categories, to show that they in fact do not demonstrate this. I then present my account of the logic underlying the ordinary-language conditional, the system C3, and a justification of the form it takes. This logic provides distinct interpretations of the conditional as it concerns what is factual or what is counterfactual, respectively. The factual interpretation is true when both antecedent and consequent are true at the actual world, false when the antecedent is true and consequent false, and not truth-apt otherwise. The counterfactual interpretation incorporates a ceteris paribus clause, ensuring that it is not falsified by extraordinary, unforeseeable occurrences, and is true when, at all worlds at which the antecedent is ceteris paribus true, the consequent too is true. It is false when, at any of these worlds the consequent is false; and not truth-apt otherwise. I go on to examine alternative theories of the conditional—from the suppositionalist approach to evaluating the putative indicative conditional, to Stalnaker’s combined indicative and counterfactual account, and Lewis’s analysis of the counterfactual; among a number of others—and offer comparison to my own theory. Finally, I look at various challenges to my account of the conditional. Being a strict conditional (albeit variably so), that of C3 is open to the objection that it fails to match ordinary speakers’ intuitions as regards its truth-value assignments to, for instance, conditionals with necessarily true consequents. I address these so- called paradoxes of the strict conditional, and also discussion the question of truth-preservation in the C3 system in the case of such inferences as those relying on transitivity and that of modus ponens. I maintain that these inferences are indeed truth-preserving under certain, specifiable, conditions, and I close by offering possible avenues for further research. (shrink)

Xenotransplantation is defined as “any procedure that involves the transplantation, implantation, or infusion into a human recipient of either live cells, tissues, or organs from a nonhuman animal source, or human body fluids, cells, tissues or organs that have had ex vivo contact with live nonhuman animal cells, tissues, or organs.” Xenotransplantation has been viewed by desperate patients and their surgeons as a solution to the problem of the paucity of human organs available for transplantation. Foes of xenotransplantation argue that (...) the use of animal organs degrades the human race and should be avoided.In this paper, we briefly review the cultural context of xenotransplantation and explore the infectious disease risk of xenotransplantation. The United States Code of Federal Regulations requires life-long surveillance of a xenotransplantation recipient due to the largely unknown risk of novel infectious disease transmitted across species, known as xenogeneic infectious disease. We argue that despite being in the interest of protecting the public health, the imposition of lifelong surveillance requirements on xenotransplant recipients effectively abrogates the right to withdraw from a clinical trial after the transplantation has taken place. Moreover, we argue that a waiver of the right to withdraw should be made explicit in the interest of full disclosure, out of respect for the research subject’s right of self-determination. (shrink)

Historically, video games featuring content perceived as excessively violent have drawn moral criticism from an indignant (and sometimes, morally outraged) public. Defenders of violent video games have insisted that such criticisms are unwarranted, as committing acts of virtual violence against computer-controlled characters – no matter how heinous or cruel those actions would be if performed in real life – harm no actual people. In this paper, I present and critically analyze key aspects of this debate. I argue that while many (...) ethical objections to playing violent video games seem to miss their marks, there is sufficient reason to take modest steps in order to address the concerns that theorists have raised. (shrink)

The term “emotional practices” is gaining currency in the historical study of emotions. This essay discusses the theoretical and methodological implications of this concept. A definition of emotion informed by practice theory promises to bridge persistent dichotomies with which historians of emotion grapple, such as body and mind, structure and agency, as well as expression and experience. Practice theory emphasizes the importance of habituation and social context and is thus consistent with, and could enrich, psychological models of situated, distributed, and (...) embodied cognition and their approaches to the study of emotion.It is suggested here that practices not only generate emotions, but that emotions themselves can be viewed as a practical engagement with the world. Conceiving of emotions as practices means understanding them as emerging from bodily dispositions conditioned by a social context, which always has cultural and historical specificity. Emotion-as-practice is bound up with and dependent on “emotional practices,” defined here as practices involving the self , language, material artifacts, the environment, and other people. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's concept of habitus, the essay emphasizes that the body is not a static, timeless, universal foundation that produces ahistorical emotional arousal, but is itself socially situated, adaptive, trained, plastic, and thus historical. Four kinds of emotional practices that make use of the capacities of a body trained by specific social settings and power relations are sketched out—mobilizing, naming, communicating, and regulating emotion—as are consequences for method in historical research. (shrink)

In the closing episode of Diamela Eltit's 1988 novella The Fourth World, the city of Santiago de Chile—including its inhabitants—goes up for sale. Eltit's investigation of the specter of all‐out commodification illuminates the entwinements of aesthetics and race under finance capitalism. Published at the tail end of the Pinochet dictatorship, the novel makes a poignant contribution to the debate over the “lettered city” in Latin America. Briefly situating The Fourth World in this context and placing it in conversation with current (...) lines of reflection on social identity and the notion of the aesthetic, this article analyzes the novel's implications for a philosophical understanding of the aesthetics–race relation: one, the work attests to an expansive conception of racial identity; two, it comprehends aesthetic agency as a much‐needed and potentially critical site of transformed racial existence; and, three, it calls for multimodal forms of address to counter neoliberal rationality. The article brings out these points through a close reading of passages and by highlighting the novel's decolonial feminist aesthetic. In ending, the article takes note of the new notions of creativity and political participation that arise. (shrink)

Address figures prominently in contemporary feminism, yet calls for further theorizing. Modes of address are forms of signification we direct at people, objects, and places, and they at us. Address constitutes a vital dimension of our corporeal interactions with persons and the material world. Our relationships are in motion as we adopt modes of address toward one another or fail to do so. Clarifying address through examples from Gloria Anzaldúa, this essay reveals its importance in María Lugones's writings. The essay (...) thereby highlights underexplored aspects of Lugones's texts, identifies continuities between Lugones's philosophy and feminist work that comprehends address as a carrier of aesthetic and political meanings, and illuminates the resources of a remarkably fruitful concept. Address, in Lugones, is the centerpiece of a quotidian cultural politics. Principal concepts she introduces recruit address. Yet, by foregrounding address, the essay also brings into view unforeseen obstructions in the paths of address that Lugones champions, and an enlarged playing field that we can activate to realize desirable frames of address and derail objectionable structures. Avenues open up for further development of Lugones's insights and for inquiries into address. (shrink)

Community leaders in Colombia have historically suffered processes of microaggressions and intimidation that threaten the free exercise of their voice in the processes of production of knowledge and in the participation of the planning of their territories. In this article, we explore the case study of the Network of Community Researchers (NCR), also known in Spanish as Red de Investigadores Comunitarios, promoted by the University of Antioquia, Colombia. The NCR is a commitment to the co-production of knowledge about human security (...) from below between community researchers and academics. This article analyses the contribution of the NCR to the human security of Medellin and a specific collection of capabilities for epistemic liberation of community researchers: the capability to be recognised as a producer of valid knowledge, to do through communicative openness, to learn from collective knowledge and to transform through collective action. The expansion of these four capabilities evidence processes of resistance and hermeneutic insurrection of some community leaders and activists who participate in the NCR. The analysis shows the contribution of the NCR to facilitate and generate a safe space in which community researchers communicate knowledge and practices and share experiences, risks, struggles, fears and collective dreams of transformation. (shrink)

Psychologists often characterize the infant’s attachment to her primary caregiver as love. Philosophical accounts of love, however, tend to speak against this possibility. Love is typically thought to require sophisticated cognitive capacities that infants do not possess. Nevertheless, there are important similarities between the infant-primary caregiver bond and mature love, and the former is commonly thought to play an important role in one’s capacity for the latter. In this work, I examine the relationship between the infant-primary caregiver bond and love. (...) I argue that while these very early attachments do not represent genuine love, a fuller understanding of them can inform extant philosophical views of love. (shrink)

In this reply, I respond to issues raised by Matthews, Pilapil, Igneski and Peeters in their commentaries on Poverty, Solidarity, and Poor-Led Social Movements. They pose important definitional, conceptual, and normative questions and challenges. My response acknowledges that the diversity and fluidity of political activism by people in poverty complicates questions of political cooperation and solidarity – and makes the prospect of poor-led poverty abolition and social change seem dim. The normative arguments in support of centering the perspectives and aims (...) of poor-led organizations and social movements, however, do not depend on the consistency or imminent success of these movements. If political theorists are to contribute to efforts to abolish the systems that perpetuate chronic poverty, they will need to see the social-political empowerment of people living in poverty – and the dismantling of systems of structural subordination and exploitation – as the broad remedy. (shrink)

Monique Roelofs offers a pathbreaking systematic model of the field of address and puts it to work in the arts, critical theory, and social life. She shows how address props up finely hewn modalities of relationality, agency, and normativity. Address exceeds a one-on-one pairing of cultural productions with their audiences. As ardently energizing tiny slippages and snippets as fueling larger impulses in the society, it activates and reaestheticizes registers of race, gender, class, coloniality, and cosmopolitanism. In readings of writers (...) and artists ranging from Julio Cortázar to Jamaica Kincaid and from Martha Rosler to Pope.L, Roelofs demonstrates the centrality of address to freedom and a critical political aesthetics. Under the banner of a unified concept of address, Hume, Kant, and Foucault strike up conversations with Benjamin, Barthes, Althusser, Fanon, Anzaldúa, and Butler. Drawing on a wide array of artistic and theoretical sources and challenging disciplinary boundaries, the book illuminates address's significance to cultural existence and to our reflexive aesthetic engagement in it. (shrink)

Rien n'est plus précieux dans notre littérature "que la lucidité implacable de ce regard, plus que la sincérité courageuse de cette voix qui ne s'est rien caché par timidité et qui n'a rien dissimulé par prudence des tares de la société", écrivait Marcel Jouhandeau préfaçant Les Caractères ou les Moeurs de ce siècle de La Bruyère. Cette appréciation est tout à fait transposable au livre de Monique Charles qui, pour ce qui est du style, serait quelque chose ou quelqu'un (...) entre La Bruyère et Céline, donc littérairement inclassable (Freud et Lacan sont passés par là!), mais terriblement efficace. C'est vivant, buissonnier, digresseur (mais on ne regrette pas les détours imprévus qui, changeant le décor, font rebondir la réflexion). De l'expérience, de la faconde, du souffle. Des réflexions intéressantes sur le deuil, l'amour, les rapports entre les sexes, le couple, le mariage, le problème du Mal, la douleur, le désir, les passions, la psychologie du Tueur... Et pour clore ce parcours du combattant à cloche-pied sur tant de faits, d'idées, de drames, arrêtons-nous à celui-ci : Non la femme n'est pas celle qui tire l'homme vers le bas, "l'éteignoir de l'homme". Monique Charles les réveillerait plutôt! Elle a enseigné avec passion. Maintenant il faut la lire. (shrink)

Cet article examine le paysage européen sous l’angle des droits sexuels, portant l’attention sur l’unité fictive de l’Europe et les contradictions qui émergent entre les différents pays concernant les femmes en particulier. Le Lobby européen des femmes, les législations sur l’avortement, les processus de renaturalisation de la condition féminine avec des arguments écologiques, les déchirements autour de la prostitution, mettent en scène des dissonances importantes.

The concepts “dispositive” and “intermediality” emerged at the same time and are becoming increasingly prominent. In this article, I propose to consider what intermediality brings to the dispositive, based on a case study of the diptych El Otro Lado de la Cama and Los Dos Lados de la Cama, two mainstream films from contemporary Spain in the early twenty-first century. Dispositive theory has been developed in France by academics working in the fields of modern literature and theater at the University (...) of Toulouse, notably Marie-Thérèse Mathet, Stéphane Lojkine, Philippe Ortel and Arnaud Rykner. In the late 1990s, this group adapted Foucault’s concept of the dispositive 2 to the fields of literature and.. (shrink)