In the spring of 2003, Jacques Derrida sat down for a public debate in Paris with Algerian intellectual Mustapha Chérif. The eminent philosopher arrived at the event directly from the hospital where he had just been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, the illness that would take his life just over a year later. That he still participated in the exchange testifies to the magnitude of the subject at hand: the increasingly distressed relationship between Islam and the West, and the questions (...) of freedom, justice, and democracy that surround it. As Chérif relates in this account of their dialogue, the topic of Islam held special resonance for Derrida—perhaps it is to be expected that near the end of his life his thoughts would return to Algeria, the country where he was born in 1930. Indeed, these roots served as the impetus for their conversation, which first centers on the ways in which Derrida’s Algerian-Jewish identity has shaped his thinking. From there, the two men move to broader questions of secularism and democracy; to politics and religion and how the former manipulates the latter; and to the parallels between xenophobia in the West and fanaticism among Islamists. Ultimately, the discussion is an attempt to tear down the notion that Islam and the West are two civilizations locked in a bitter struggle for supremacy and to reconsider them as the two shores of the Mediterranean—two halves of the same geographical, religious, and cultural sphere. Islam and the West is a crucial opportunity to further our understanding of Derrida’s views on the key political and religious divisions of our time and an often moving testament to the power of friendship and solidarity to surmount them. (shrink)

Unlike previous studies which generally seem to focus more on Hausa metaphorical expressions, this study investigates a wide range of uses ofίdὸ‘eye’ in its constructional metonymy patterns in the language by exploring corpus data that contain over 300 eye-related expressions. We observe that some constructional metonymies maintain a set of fixed words and syntax in activating conceptual shifts and producing eye metonymies while others have semi-fixed patterns and produce the same metonymies. Lexical items liketsόkάlế,kὰn,ὰ,dὰ, andbὰsίrὰamong others are constant constituents in (...) the constructional metonymies in which they appear. In the metonymic chaining, the basic mapping of eye metonymies occurs via thepart for partrelation under E-metonymies and thesub- for supercategoryrelation under C-metonymies. We also observe that E→E→C coding has the highest chained metonymic structure in the creation of the eye metonymies. Both attributive and predicative colligates motivate metonymic senses in the language. Finally, our analysis reveals that the eye is metonymically conceptualized and semantically extended to various target domains and produces metonymic conceptualizations that make the eye stand for vision, desire, envy, control, attention, perception, person, meeting, brain, intelligence, and so on. (shrink)

The manuscript preserved in the Bibliothèque National de France, arabe 4235 is a fragmentary copy of Abū ‘Alī l-Qālī’s al-Bāri‘ and belonged to a certain Ibrāhīm b. Ḥumām Ibn Aḥmad. Although we know nothing about him, we have information about his father, Ḥumām Ibn Aḥmad al-Uṭrūš, who lived in Cordoba between 357/968 and 421/1030. He was a professor of Language and Poetry and, at the same time, he copied books for living during the crisis of the cordovan Caliphate. A marginal (...) note in f.22b, in a personal codex of Abū ‘Alī l-Qālī allows the author to believe that the manuscript comes from a privileged Cordovan environment. The orthographic and philological care with which the copy was made, as well as the graphic style makes also evident that the manuscript was the work of a language professor and not of an expert copyist. The context of its production and the data provided by a codicological and paleographical analysis, make also clear that the dating of this manuscript should be the end of the IV/X century or the beginning of next century. (shrink)

Working memory has been shown to be strongly related to fluid intelligence; however, our goal is to shed further light on the process of information compression in working memory as a determining factor of fluid intelligence. Our main hypothesis was that compression in working memory is an excellent indicator for studying the relationship between working-memory capacity and fluid intelligence because both depend on the optimization of storage capacity. Compressibility of memoranda was estimated using an algorithmic complexity metric. The results showed (...) that compressibility can be used to predict working-memory performance and that fluid intelligence is well predicted by the ability to compress information. We conclude that the ability to compress information in working memory is the reason why both manipulation and retention of information are linked to intelligence. This result offers a new concept of intelligence based on the idea that compression and intelligence are equivalent problems. (shrink)

The Rabat manuscript, BNRM, 87-Q, is a unique copy of Kitāb al-burṣān wa-l-‘urjān wa-l-‘umyān wa-l-ḥūlān written by the Basrian al-Jāḥiẓ. It was used for the two known critical editions of this text. Their confrontation with the manuscript reveals their merits and their limits. The codicological and paleographical examination of the manuscript allows us to consider it as an Andalusian book production and to suggest an approximate dating of the end of the 4th/10th or even of the beginning of the 5th/11th (...) century. The identification of one of its first possessors is an additional argument for this dating and localization. These elements make this document a rare witness to the dissemination of some writings of al-Jāḥiẓ in al-Andalus. (shrink)

In this paper we critically review recent developments in policies, practices and philosophies pertaining to the mediation between science and the public within the EU and the UK, focusing in particular on the current paradigm of Public Understanding of Science and Technology (PEST) which seeks to depart from the science information-transmission associated with previous paradigms, and enact a deliberative democracy model. We first outline the features of the current crisis in democracy and discuss deliberative democracy as a response to this (...) crisis. We then map out and critically review the broad outlines of recent policy developments in public-science mediation in the EU and UK contexts, focusing on the shift towards the deliberative-democratic model. We conclude with some critical thoughts on the complex interrelationships between democracy, equality, science and informal pedagogies in public-science mediations. We argue that science and democracy operate within distinct value-spheres that are not necessarily consonant with each other. We also problematize the now common dismissal of information-transmission of science as inimical to democratic engagement, and argue for a reassessment of the role and importance of informal science learning for the lay public, provided within the framework of a deliberative democracy that is not reducible to consensus building or the mere expression of opinions rooted in social and cultural givens. This, we argue, can be delivered by a model of PEST that is creative and experimental, with both educational and democratic functions. (shrink)

Cette contribution entre dans le cadre d’une série d’études qui porte, essentiellement, sur un lieu d’histoire et de mémoire du corps de la femme. Il s’agit du hammam, dans sa langue d’origine et le bain maure chez les francophones, dans la conception de la population de l’ancienne capitale du Maghreb central et son hawz. Par son passé, il remonte à une date lointaine. Le hammam reprend ses fonctions principales pour prendre une place dans la société arabo musulmane. Très fréquenté par (...) la gent féminine, il est le lieu des pratiques sociales et culturelles pour y rester dans la célébration des événements familiaux. D’ailleurs, l’étude touche directement l’ unité sociale de l’expression du travail du personnel féminin, l’unité sociale de la purification et de l’hygiène corporelles, la culture locale de la purification corporelle, le dernier bain du célibat de la jeune fille, le premier bain de la nouvelle mariée, le premier bain post-couche de la jeune mère, le bain pré pèlerinage. Mots clefs : hammam, bain maure, fonctions sociales, Tlemcen, Ain El Hûts, hawz, événements familiaux, rituels festifs, purification, hygiène corporelle, femmes Esta contribución forma parte de una serie de estudios que tienen como objeto la concepción del hammamo baño turco como un espacio de historia y memoria del cuerpo femenino entre la población de la antigua capital del Magreb central y su hawz. La historia del hammam es larga pero este espacio ha recuperado su funcionalidad hasta hacerse hueco de nuevo en la sociedad árabe musulmana. Muy popular entre las mujeres, es lugar de prácticas sociales y culturales en torno a la celebración de eventos familiares. Por otra parte, nuestro estudio aborda directamente la unidad social de la expresión del trabajo del personal femenino, la unidad social de purificación e higiene corporales, la cultura local de la purificación del cuerpo, el último baño de la joven célibe, el primer baño de la recién casada, el primer baño de la nueva madre y el baño previo a la peregrinación. Palabras clave: hammam, baño musulmán, funciones sociales, Tlemcen, Ain el Hûts, hawz, festejos familiares, purificación, higiene personal, mujeres. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to trace some lines of thinking towards a conceptualization of the uniqueness of the creative work of museums, the mode of creativeness that belongs exclusively to museums, or at least that museums are capable of by virtue of the types of materials and forms as well as activities unique to what will be referred to as museography. This is linked to the question of what it is that constitutes the uniqueness of museum work as (...) a professional field. The article characterizes the uniqueness of museum professional knowledge primarily in terms of a mode of creativeness, or bricolage in Levi-Strauss’s sense, mediated through the museographic form, and applied to the chance assemblies of materials to generate museum-specific modes of engaging questions—across science, culture, and society—particularly through creating unique temporal arrangements, or durations, that provoke thought, learning, and engagement on museographic terms. Museography’s originality, it is argued, consists in a bricolage that works through the museum’s unique material and form to create learning resources and encounters, museographic assemblages that depart from a conception of linear time as the space of evolutionary narrative to facilitate the experience of Bergsonian durations. (shrink)

Can one divide human reality as indeed human reality seems to be genuinely divided, into clearly different cultures, histories, traditions, societies, even races, and survive the consequences humanly? By surviving the consequences humanly, I mean to ask whether there is any way of avoiding the hystility exoressed by the division, say, of men into "us" (Westerners) and "they" (Orientals) . . . designating in one's mind a familiar soace which is "ours" and an unfamiliar soace beyond "ours" which is "theirs. (...) . . ." It is enough for "us" to set these boundaries in our minds; "they" become "they" accordingly, and both their territory and their mentality are designated as "they" accordingly, and both their territory and their mentality are designated as different from "ours." To a certain extent modern and primitive societies see thus to derive a sense of their identities negatively. (shrink)

The old idiot wanted, by himself, to account for what was lost or saved; but the new idiot wants the lost, the incomprehensible, and the absurd to be restored to him. This is most certainly not the same persona; a mutation has taken place. And yet a slender thread links the two idiots, as if the first had to lose reason so that the second rediscovers what the other, in winning it, had lost in advance.

The design, implementation, and outcome of game-based learning for learners with disabilities have not been sufficiently examined systematically. Particularly, learner-based and contextual factors, as well as the essential roles played by various stakeholders, have not been addressed when game-based learning applications are used in special education. Therefore, a systematic literature review using the Activity Theory was conducted to analyse studies about game-based learning for learners with disabilities. Content analysis of 96 studies reported relevant information with respect to each activity component— (...) subject, technology, object, rules, community, division of labour and outcome. Furthermore, this study identified existing gaps from the reviewed studies, including occasional lack of parental engagement, difficulty of standardising performance measures due to the heterogeneity of learner profiles and contradictions. Finally, recommendations were made under each activity component. The study concluded that both general and domain-specific guidelines should be created for each disability category proposed in this review to assist practitioners who wish to use game-based learning with learners with disabilities. (shrink)

Museum professionalism remains an unexplored area in museum studies, particularly with regard to what is arguably the core generic question of a sui generis professional knowledge base, and its necessary and sufficient conditions. The need to examine this question becomes all the more important with the increasing expansion of the museum’s roles and functions. This paper starts by mapping out the policy and organizational context within which the roles of museums have expanded in the UK. It then situates the discussion (...) of museum professional knowledge within a cross-disciplinary matrix bearing on the question of what is professional about occupations classified—or classifiable—as professions. Against the backdrop of the current organizational context of the museum as well as theories of professional knowledge, it highlights the ways in which museum work, more specifically museography, poses a distinctive set of questions compared to other ‘professional’ fields; the paper thus homes in on the question of what it is that constitutes the uniqueness of museum professional knowledge in relation to museographic practice and the type of professional knowledge and expertise that can sustain it and enact its creative and educational potentials and affordances. (shrink)

The neo‐Gramscian framework offers one of the more innovative contributions to a discipline long embedded in the self‐same verities of behaviouralism, positivism and neo‐Realism. As with conventional wisdom, however, neo‐Gramscians reproduce either assumptions of liberal neutrality or cultural thickness in relation to the ‘peripheral zones’ of the global political economy. These tendencies produce a variant that can be likened to ‘soft Orientalism’. In the first instance, cultural difference is not much of an impediment to the establishment of (West‐centred) global hegemony. (...) In the second instance, otherness becomes the principal source of counter‐hegemonic movements or resistance. This article provides a Gramscian rereading of these antinomies in relation to the apparent consolidation of a natural attitude towards Islam in the wake of recent dramatic events. (shrink)

Designing a data-responsive system requires accurate input to ensure efficient results. The growth of technology in sensing methods and the needs of various kinds of data greatly impact data fusion (DF)-related study. A coordinative DF framework entails the participation of many subsystems or modules to produce coordinative features. These features are utilized to facilitate and improve solving certain domain problems. Consequently, this paper proposes a general Multiple Coordinative Data Fusion Modules (MCDFM) framework for real-time and heterogeneous data sources. We develop (...) the MCDFM framework to adapt various DF application domains requiring macro and micro perspectives of the observed problems. This framework consists of preprocessing, filtering, and decision as key DF processing phases. These three phases integrate specific purpose algorithms or methods such as data cleaning and windowing methods for preprocessing, extended Kalman filter (EKF) for filtering, fuzzy logic for local decision, and software agents for coordinative decision. These methods perform tasks that assist in achieving local and coordinative decisions for each node in the network of the framework application domain. We illustrate and discuss the proposed framework in detail by taking a stretch of road intersections controlled by a traffic light controller (TLC) as a case study. The case study provides a clearer view of the way the proposed framework solves traffic congestion as a domain problem. We identify the traffic features that include the average vehicle count, average vehicle speed (km/h), average density (%), interval (s), and timestamp. The framework uses these features to identify three congestion periods, which are the nonpeak period with a congestion degree of 0.178 and a variance of 0.061, a medium peak period with a congestion degree of 0.588 and a variance of 0.0593, and a peak period with a congestion degree of 0.796 and a variance of 0.0296. The results of the TLC case study show that the framework provides various capabilities and flexibility features of both micro and macro views of the scenarios being observed and clearly presents viable solutions. (shrink)

The paper argues that metaphorical expressions do more than just instantiate conceptual metaphors. The main aim is to emphasize the role source and target words’ meanings play in construing generic-level metaphors. The latter are taken to act as superordinate categories for other metaphors, occurring at various levels of schematicity. Identification of lower-level metaphors takes into account source words’ metaphorical senses, not the central meanings of the categories they represent. This method brings the issue of source words’ polysemy into play, and (...) hence helps explain why metaphorical expressions relating to the same generic-level metaphor may activate different lower-level metaphors, which carry different metaphorical meanings. (shrink)

This study examines the accountability of assessments in news interview settings on two Arabic networks. It employs a conversation analytic approach, in addition to quantitative analysis to identify the most adopted practices that show participants’ orientation to the accountability of assessments. The data consists of 28 hours of recorded interviews on the Arab television news networks, Aljazeera Al-Arabiya channels. The findings show that interviewers and interviewees adopt different strategies to avoid the accountability of their displayed assessments. Interviewers attribute their assessments (...) either to third parties or to the upshot of interviewees’ answers. Similarly, interviewees introduce accounts before and following their proffered assessments to provide epistemic support to these assessments. Furthermore, interviewers introduce follow-up questions to scrutinize interviewees’ assessments and accounts or seek interviewees’ reaffirmation of these assessments to highlight their accountability. (shrink)

Based on the view that “The meanings that we take most for granted are those where the complexity is best hidden”, the paper attempts to describe the complex cognitive operations at work in the pro...

This collection of specially commissioned essays is the first of its kind in English on the work of Antonio Negri, the Italian philosopher and political theorist. The spectacular success of Empire , Negri's collaboration with Michael Hardt, has brought Negri's writing to a new, wider audience. A substantial body of his writing is now available to an English-speaking readership. Outstanding contributors—including Michael Hardt, Sergio Bologna, Kathi Weeks and Nick Dyer-Witheford—reveal the variety and complexity of Negri's thought and explores its unique (...) relevance to modern politics. Negri is one of the most sophisticated analyists of modern political philosophy. Philosophers and critics alike find his work both difficult and exhilarating, engaging as it does with Marx, Spinoza, Deleuze, Guattari, Tronti and others. This book is ideal for readers who want to get to grips with Negri's key themes, in particular his theories on labour, capital, power, the state and revolution. It makes a great introduction to his work for students of political philosophy, as well as providing a comprehensive critical approach for Negri enthusiasts. (shrink)

The spectacular success of Empire and Multitude has brought Antonio Negri's writing to a new and wider audience. Negri'as work is singular in its depth and expression. It can be difficult to grasp the complexity of his ideas as they are rooted in the history of philosophy. This book offers an introduction to his thinking and is ideal for readers who want to come to grips with his key themes. Contributors include Pierre Macherey, Daniel Bensai;d, Charles Wolfe, Alex Callinicos, Miguel (...) Vatter, Jason Read, Alberto Toscano, Mamut Mutman, Ted Stolze, and Judith Revel. Written with dynamism and originality, the book will appeal to anyone interested in the evolution of Negri's thought, and especially to students of political philosophy, international studies, and literary theory. This book is the sequel to The Philosophy of Antonio Negri, Volume One: Resistance in Practice , but can be read entirely independently. (shrink)

Open Education opens up learning opportunities to, potentially, every person in the world. Additionally, it allows teachers, researchers, and practitioners to find, share, reuse, and improve existing resources under a dependable legal framework. Aiming to spread and foster the introduction of open policies in Higher Education institutions, the gamified interactive learning experience Catch the Open! was developed. Catch the Open! targets HE educators who wish to learn, or who wish to deepen their existing knowledge, about OE and Open Educational Practices. (...) Within the gamified learning experience, the user becomes an educator, Alex, the game character, who receives a task from the Rector: to investigate how to best include OE and OEP in teaching and learning practice within the institution. Alex proceeds to explore and gather information in a web-based 2D virtual HE institution where students, colleagues, and guest researchers will help her to develop a comprehensive understanding of OE and the practical application of OEP. The educational content within Catch the Open! is underpinned by an OE competences framework for HE educators, developed in a previous phase of the Erasmus+ OpenGame project. In this paper, the design process to link pedagogical and technological approaches, which results in the Catch the Open! gamified web-based interactive application, is presented as well as the application itself. Moreover, two phases of piloting with 153 HE educators from six different HE institutions are presented. The obtained findings showed that the gamified environment helped in learning about OE. On the other hand, learners also suggested several improvement aspects of the gamified environment, such as the length of finishing a learning mission while playing. (shrink)

Purpose In considering the ubiquity of information systems and the increasingly important role served in modern business and service delivery, social media if properly leveraged gives potential competitive advantage to a company in its respective industry. With Paramount Web Nigeria Ltd. as a case study, this paper aims to focus on the important aspects of adopting social media as an IS such as data privacy principles and the role of social media in the context of a small internet service company. (...) Design/methodology/approach Relevant research information was relied upon to highlight the various factors involved with adopting social media as an IS. Findings Data handling and privacy policies must also be considered and properly devised if the concerned company is to effectively adopt social media as an IS. Decision-making tools such as SWOT analysis and the quality triangle are vital during the planning stages of deploying an IS. Research limitations/implications Research papers on aspects of social media as an IS especially in West African academia has been lacking. The challenge is in contextual information related to similar topics. Practical implications Findings detailed in this paper will serve to provide a better understanding of the important factors to be considered when adapting a new IS to an existing business. Originality/value This paper serves to highlight the potential factors to be considered when dealing with business ISs with a strong focus on social media and internet related services. (shrink)

Ottoman Puritanism and its Discontents: Aḥmad al-Rūmī al-Āqḥiṣārī and the Qāḍīzādelīs By SheikhMustapha, ix + 191 pp. Price HB £65.00. EAN 978–0198790761.

Originally published as L'Islam et l'occident, 2006. Translated by Teresa Lavender Fagan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. xxii + 114 pp. Hardback, $19.99.

This article presents an overview of significant issues facing contemporary information professionals. As the world of information continues to grow at unprecedented speed and in unprecedented volume, questions must be faced by information professionals. Will we participate in the worldwide mythology of equal access for all, or will we truly work towards this debatable goal? Will we accept the narrowing of choice for our corresponding increasing diverse clientele? Such questions must be considered in a holistic context and an understanding of (...) the many levels of information inequities is requisite.Beginning with an historical perspective, Buchanan presents Mustapha Masmoudi''s seminal review of forms of information inequities. She then describes qualitative forms of inequities, such as information imperialism and cultural bias embedded in such practices as cataloging and classification. Following, a review of quantitative inequities is presented. Such issues as the growing commoditization of information and information services demand attention from the ethical perspective. And, finally, the Internet and implications surrounding the world-wide dissemination of information is discussed. (shrink)

In the spring of 2003, Jacques Derrida sat down for a public debate in Paris with Algerian intellectual Mustapha Chérif. The eminent philosopher arrived at the event directly from the hospital where he had just been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, the illness that would take his life just over a year later. That he still participated in the exchange testifies to the magnitude of the subject at hand: the increasingly distressed relationship between Islam and the West, and the questions (...) of freedom, justice, and democracy that surround it. As Chérif relates in this account of their dialogue, the topic of Islam held special resonance for Derrida—perhaps it is to be expected that near the end of his life his thoughts would return to Algeria, the country where he was born in 1930. Indeed, these roots served as the impetus for their conversation, which first centers on the ways in which Derrida’s Algerian-Jewish identity has shaped his thinking. From there, the two men move to broader questions of secularism and democracy; to politics and religion and how the former manipulates the latter; and to the parallels between xenophobia in the West and fanaticism among Islamists. Ultimately, the discussion is an attempt to tear down the notion that Islam and the West are two civilizations locked in a bitter struggle for supremacy and to reconsider them as the two shores of the Mediterranean—two halves of the same geographical, religious, and cultural sphere. _Islam and the West_ is a crucial opportunity to further our understanding of Derrida’s views on the key political and religious divisions of our time and an often moving testament to the power of friendship and solidarity to surmount them. (shrink)

Droit et morale Sous la direction de Dominique Bureau, France Drummond et Dominique Fenouillet Véritable « pont aux ânes de la pédagogie juridique », la question des relations qu'entretiennent Droit et Morale appelle une réponse doctrinale presque invariable: la séparation de principe n'exclurait pas l'influence réciproque. Le droit contemporain semble pourtant traversé par deux courants a priori antinomiques: ici, la référence morale est invoquée comme une sorte de « tabou » qui justifierait le retrait du droit, alors que, là, elle (...) est appelée en renfort pour justifier telle solution ou fonder telle réforme. C'est de cette étrange coexistence du « retour offensif » et du « tabou » qu'est née l'idée d'organiser un colloque sur le thème « Droit et Morale. Aspects contemporains » en privilégiant une approche interdisciplinaire. Le 4 juin 2010, dans le cadre des journées d'étude qu'il consacre au pluralisme, le Laboratoire de sociologie juridique de l'Université Paris II accueillait donc les réflexions croisées d'Olivier Descamps, Dominique Fenouillet, Michel Germain, Valérie Malabat, Horatia Muir Watt, Cécile Pérès, Marc Pichard, Jean-Emmanuel Ray et Jean-Louis Sourioux. L'ouvrage ici présenté s'est enrichi des contributions supplémentaires d'Éric Martin-Hocquenghem et de Mustapha Mekki. Puisse cette publication contribuer à éclairer les relations singulières qu'entretiennent le Droit et la Morale. Contributeurs Olivier Descamps Dominique Fenouillet Michel Germain Valérie Malabat Éric Martin-Hocquenghem Mustapha Mekki Horatia Muir Watt Cécile Pérès Marc Pichard Jean-Emmanuel Ray Jean-Louis Sourioux. (shrink)

Forthcoming in Cognitive Architecture: from bio-politics to noo-politics, eds. Deborah Hauptmann, Warren Neidich and Abdul-Karim Mustapha INTRODUCTION The cognitive and affective sciences have benefitted in the last twenty years from a rethinking of the long-dominant computer model of the mind espoused by the standard approaches of computationalism and connectionism. The development of this alternative, often named the “embodied mind” approach or the “4EA” approach (embodied, embedded, enactive, extended, affective), has relied on a trio of classical 20th century phenomenologists for (...) its philosophical framework: Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty.[1] In this essay I propose that the French thinker Gilles Deleuze can provide the conceptual framework that will enable us to thematize some unstated presuppositions of the 4EA School, as well as to sharpen, extend and / or radicalize some of their explicit presuppositions. I highlight three areas here: 1) an ontology of distributed and differential systems, using Deleuze’s notion of the virtual; 2) a thought of multiple subjectification practices rather than a thought of “the” subject, even if it be seen as embodied and embedded; and 3) a rethinking of the notion of affect in order to thematize a notion of “political affect.”[2] I will develop this proposal with reference to Bruce Wexler’s Brain and Culture,[3] a work which resonates superbly with the Deleuzean approach. (shrink)