Letter-Writing as a Decolonial Feminist Praxis for Philosophical Writing

Hypatia ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 410-423
Author(s):  
Diana María Acevedo-Zapata
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
Letter Writing ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Philosophical Writing ◽  
Spaces Of Resistance ◽  
Writing Practice

AbstractAccording to Chandra Mohanty, there is no apolitical academy; academic and scholarly practices are in themselves political, insofar as they are inscribed in power and validation relations, which answer to and have effects upon the patriarchal, colonial, and capitalist structures to which they belong. In the case of philosophical writing, this means that the forms that regulate writing, that is, what determines how one must write in different contexts, are expressive of the power structures within philosophical academia. These power structures are upheld through time because of, among many other factors, the rendering invisible of the diversity of places of enunciation belonging to those who write and think in philosophy, and of the universalization of the privileges associated with said places of enunciation. In this article, I propose a way of writing letters that appeals to grammatical persons and their relation to the authors of the texts. Through this writing practice it is possible to make explicit the places of enunciation from which we write philosophy. This enables, first, making visible the privileges and oppressions of those writing philosophy; and second, generating small spaces of resistance and transformation of the oppressive power relations within the philosophical academy.

Design, power and colonisation: decolonial and anti-oppressive explorations on three approaches for Design for Sustainability

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas B. TORRETTA ◽  
Lizette REITSMA
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Design For Sustainability ◽  
The People ◽  
Reflexive Practice ◽  
Cross Country ◽  
Design Power ◽  
Relational Issue

Our contemporary world is organized in a modern/colonial structure. As people, professions and practices engage in cross-country Design for Sustainability (DfS), projects have the potential of sustaining or changing modern/colonial power structures. In such project relations, good intentions in working for sustainability do not directly result in liberation from modern/colonial power structures. In this paper we introduce three approaches in DfS that deal with power relations. Using a Freirean (1970) decolonial perspective, we analyse these approaches to see how they can inform DfS towards being decolonial and anti-oppressive. We conclude that steering DfS to become decolonial or colonizing is a relational issue based on the interplay between the designers’ position in the modern/colonial structure, the design approach chosen, the place and the people involved in DfS. Hence, a continuous critical reflexive practice is needed in order to prevent DfS from becoming yet another colonial tool.

Identity propaganda: Racial narratives and disinformation

2021 ◽  
pp. 146144482110292
Author(s):  
Madhavi Reddi ◽  
Rachel Kuo ◽  
Daniel Kreiss
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Election ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Vice President ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
Identity Based ◽  
Us Presidential Election ◽  
Social Orders ◽  
Racial Narratives

This article develops the concept of “identity propaganda,” or narratives that strategically target and exploit identity-based differences in accord with pre-existing power structures to maintain hegemonic social orders. In proposing and developing the concept of identity propaganda, we especially aim to help researchers find new insights into their data on misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda by outlining a framework for unpacking layers of historical power relations embedded in the content they analyze. We focus on three forms of identity propaganda: othering narratives that alienate and marginalize non-white or non-dominant groups; essentializing narratives that create generalizing tropes of marginalized groups; and authenticating narratives that call upon people to prove or undermine their claims to be part of certain groups. We demonstrate the utility of this framework through our analysis of identity propaganda around Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2020 US presidential election.

Modeling and Implementation of Formal Power Structures in Enterprise Information Systems

2010 ◽  
pp. 174-188
Keyword(s):  
Information Systems ◽  
Organization Theory ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Enterprise Information ◽  
Enterprise Information Systems ◽  
Organizational Power ◽  
Authority Relations ◽  
Formal Power

The concepts of power and authority are inherent in human organizations of any type. In some organizations power relations on individuals are defined explicitly and formalized in organizational documentation. In other organizations power relations are implicit, less strict and may change depending on contextual conditions. As power relations have important consequences for organizational viability and productivity, they should be considered explicitly in enterprise information systems (EISs). Although organization theory provides a rich and very diverse theoretical basis on organizational power, still most of the definitions for power-related concepts are too abstract, often vague and ambiguous to be directly implemented in EISs. To create a bridge between informal organization theories and automated EISs, this chapter proposes a formal logic-based specification language for representing power- (in particular authority) relations and their dynamics. The use of the language is illustrated by considering authority structures of organizations of different types. Moreover, the chapter demonstrates how the formalized authority relations can be integrated into an EIS.

Werewolf Wollstonecraft

2020 ◽  
pp. 253-274
Author(s):  
Chris Washington
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Feminist Critique ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Gender Identities ◽  
Dynamic Power ◽  
Karen Barad

The judicial bestiary at the heart of eighteenth-century politics has long been evident in Enlightenment social contract debates, as Michel Foucault’s and Giorgio Agamben’s theories of biopolitics show. In this essay, I argue that Wollstonecraft is nonetheless the first thinker of ‘true’ werewolf out-lawry in her final novel, Maria, Or the Wrongs of Woman and in her letters to Godwin. In the novel, Wollstonecraft leverages what we now call new materialism as a feminist critique of heteropatriarchal society. Wollstonecraft’s new materialist thinking also scrambles gender across even human and nonhuman distinctions. To counter microcosmic familial and macrocosmic state heteropatriarchy, Wollstonecraft theorizes what I am calling, following the example of wolves and werewolves, not a family but a ‘pack’. The pack manifests as new spacetimes through what Karen Barad terms “quantum entanglements” that produce love between subjects and subjects but that never strives to reproduce binaristic pairings that reproduce the sovereign family. A pack, as Wollstonecraft’s texts demonstrate, emerges from processes of co-creation that iterate new subjects and objects without dynamic power structures structured around stable gender identities or human and nonhuman power relations.

Resiliensens åbenbaringer:

2018 ◽  
pp. 21-43
Author(s):  
Alf Hornborg ◽  
Nathalie Keighley Kristensen, oversætter
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
General Purpose ◽  
Global Market ◽  
Ecological Resilience ◽  
Resilience Theory ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Basic Assumptions ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Neoliberal Ideology

The currently burgeoning discussions on ‘socio-ecological resilience’ tend to mask the power relations, contradictions of interest, and inequalities that to a large extent determine how humans utilize the surface of the Earth. Resilience theory has the potential to radically confront such power structures by identifying some of the basic assumptions of economics as the very source of vulnerability, mismanagement, and crises. It has every reason to critically scrutinise the operation of general-purpose money, the global market, and neoliberal ideology. The ultimate implications of resilience theory, in other words, are vastly more radical and subversive than its current proponents imagine. A strategy to enhance socio-ecological resilience would be to distinguish local from global economic scales by employing separate currencies for the two levels. Proponents of resilience theory are advised to engage more respectfully with social science, particularly its understandings of culture and power. Upon doing so, they would find the idea of a bi-centric economy, as sketched in this article, entirely consistent with the fundamental insights of resilience theory.

Amities: Letter-Writing Practice

1991 ◽  
Vol 75 (2) ◽  
pp. 250
Author(s):  
Jo Ann M. Recker ◽  
Ena Fowler
Keyword(s):  
Letter Writing ◽  
Writing Practice

scholarly journals Medical records: Doctors' and patients' experiences of copying letters to patients

2004 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 40-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harpal Nandhra ◽  
Graham Murray ◽  
Nigel Hymas ◽  
Neil Hunt
Keyword(s):  
General Practitioner ◽  
Pilot Study ◽  
General Practitioners ◽  
Medical Records ◽  
Letter Writing ◽  
Initial Assessment ◽  
Clinical Implications ◽  
Usual Practice ◽  
To Receive ◽  
Writing Practice

Aims and MethodWe conducted a pilot study to determine patients' views on receiving a copy of the assessment letter sent to their general practitioner and to determine how psychiatrists' letter writing practice would be altered in the knowledge that patients would receive copies of such letters. Seventy-six consecutive new outpatients received copies of the initial assessment letter sent to general practitioners. Patients were asked to complete a short questionnaire on how the practice affected them. For each letter, psychiatrists were asked to provide details of anything of importance that had been omitted from the letter that in their normal practice they would have included.ResultsThere was a broad range of responses on how patients felt about the letters. Only two patients found the letters unhelpful, and 83% expressed a positive desire to continue receiving letters, even though initially 18% found the letter distressing. For 56 out of 76 patients, psychiatrists stated that they composed and sent out the letter to the GP in accordance with their usual practice and copied the letter to the patient in an unaltered form. For 17 patients, the psychiatrist stated that some information he/she would usually have included in the GP letter was omitted in the copy the patient received. In a further 3 cases, the psychiatrist sent no letter to the patient.Clinical ImplicationsPatients found it helpful to receive copies of their assessment letters. Psychiatrists might require training and reassurance about this policy before implementation.

Facetten der Macht

1991 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Koller
Keyword(s):  
Complex Networks ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Elementary Concept

AbstractSocial power has many facets. This paper aims to illuminate some of these. First of all, it considers the general conceptual framework in which the concept of power is embedded. The author then elaborates on an analysis of the elementary concept of social power resulting in a proposal how to define power. Furthermore, the article deals with complex networks of power relations, namely constellations and structures of power. Another section focuses on some special aspects of the dynamics of power structures. Finally, the author discusses the problem of legitimation of power.

Measuring the Concentration of Power in Political Systems

1968 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 461-475 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven J. Brams
Keyword(s):  
Political System ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Unequal Distribution ◽  
Distribution Of Power

The unequal distribution of power among the members of a political system is one of the most pervasive facts of political life. Yet, while many studies have confirmed the fact that a few members exercise disproportionate control over many others in most systems, the configurations of power relations that occur among the few have generally not been subjected to systematic comparative analysis. In a few notable empirical studies, attempts have been made to compare the exercise of power in different issue-areas and across different decisions. Comparative analyses have suffered, however, from the lack of any means to make tractable and compare, except in a qualitative way, schematic representations of power relations either in different political systems or over different issue-areas in the same system. When diagrams of power structures become complex and unwieldy, it is easiest to forget about making precise comparisons about the way power is distributed among decision-makers somehow identified as being influential in the political process.

scholarly journals Postcolonialism and translation: the dialectic between theory and practice

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul F. Bandia
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Translation Theory ◽  
Translation Process ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Cultural Systems ◽  
Cultural Status ◽  
Postcolonial Discourse ◽  
Writing Practice

Postcolonial intercultural writing has been likened to translation both in terms of the writing practice and the nature of the postcolonial text, which often involves multiple linguistic and cultural systems. To highlight the significance of this view of translation as a metaphor for postcolonial writing and its impact on current translation theory, this paper attempts to lay the groundwork for defining the linguistic and cultural status of postcolonial discourse and to establish parallels between the translation process and some strategies for crafting the postcolonial text. The ontological relation between translation theory and practice is discussed in the light of post- colonial translation practices which have broadened the scope of research in translation studies to include issues of ideology, identity, power relations, and other ethnographic and sociologically based modes of investigation.

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