scholarly journals Notes on not knowing: male ignorance after #MeToo

2021 ◽  
pp. 146470012110147
Author(s):  
Rachel O’Neill
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Harassment ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Heterosexual Men ◽  
Male Privilege ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Subject ◽  
White Ignorance

The essential premise of #MeToo is that, while large numbers of women are subject to sexual harassment and assault, this reality is not known to or understood by unnamed others. This article interrogates the subject of non-knowing that #MeToo points to but does not name, asking: who exactly does not know, and why? These questions provide the starting point to elaborate the concept of male ignorance. While this lexicon has been fleetingly deployed in canonical feminist works – where it denotes something so obvious that it does not require explanation, functioning instead as a kind of feminist common sense – I develop it here so it might be put to greater use as a dedicated analytic. The work of Charles Mills, particularly his writings on white ignorance, provides a critical precedent in this regard. Following Mills in foregrounding the ideological operations of not knowing, I conceive male ignorance as a structure of concerted if unconscious epistemic occlusion which both stems from and serves to protect male privilege. As such, it plays a crucial role in securing the overall relation of domination and oppression within which gendered lives are lived. While male ignorance is itself multiple and has a variety of stakeholders, I argue that the non-knowing that surrounds sexual harassment and assault – which #MeToo draws attention to and seeks to undo – constitutes a paradigmatic manifestation, one in which cisgender heterosexual men have a particular stake.

THE G77@50 AND THE STRUGGLE FOR A DECOLONIAL FUTURE

2016 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Siphamandla Zondi
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Introductory Article ◽  
Colonial Legacies ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Good For

 This introductory article outlines the importance of the subject discussed in this edition of UNISA’s Latin American Report, the Group of 77+ China. It seeks to locate this discussion at the centre of the search for an alternative world to one that remains haunted by colonial legacies and new imperial designs. It makes the point that the G77 is born into an evolving pursuit of a dream for a world in which former colonies realise fully their aspirations for a future that is good for all. It shows that the G77 has played a crucial role in this, while it also poses questions about the Group’s ability to implement what it works so hard to reach consensus on.

أسلوب التعليل القرآني وبعض آثاره التعليمية (The Principles of Qur’anic Argumentation and Its Educational Effects)

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-33
Author(s):  
رضوان جمال الأطرش ◽  
نجوى نايف شكوكاني
Keyword(s):  
Analytical Method ◽  
New Age ◽  
Traditional Education ◽  
Inductive Method ◽  
Education Effect ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Innovative Thinking ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Practical Impact ◽  
Education Process

        الملخّص      هدف هذا البحث إبراز إمكانية التأثر العملي بأسلوب التعليل في القرآن الكريم، ومحاولة البحث في تطبيقاته في واقع العملية التعليمية من العالم والمتعلم، بحيث لم يقتصر على الدراسة اللغوية أو الأصولية النظرية؛ وخصوصاً بعد التعريف بهذا الأسلوب وأدواته وأهميته وبيان اللوازم الخاصة للعالم والمتعلم للتأثر به، وقد تم ذلك من خلال استخدام المنهج الاستقرائي بتتبع أعمال العلماء في ذلك وتم رصد أقوال المفسرين فيما يتعلق بالأساليب البيانية وآيات التعليل ووجوه الإعجاز القرآني، ومن ثم استُخدم المنهج التحليلي لإثبات ذلك الأثر وإثبات وجود إشارات وأدلة على مظاهر التأثر؛ واستنتاج حقيقة إمكانية استمرارية البحث في كل أدوات وآيات ومواضيع ذلك الأسلوب بنفس الطريقة التي تمّ طرحُها، مما يثري هذا المجال، ويفتح العقول ويدفعها للنظر والتدبر والبحث في آي القرآن، وفي كل المناحي، منطلقةً من فكر التجديد، والإفادة من مستجدات العصر وعلومه ضمن ضوابط العقيدة الغراء والشرع الحنيف. الكلمات المفتاحية: أسلوب التعليل، أدوات أسلوب التعليل، التدبر، التعليم التقليدي، أثر.  Abstract This study intends to highlight the possible practical impact of the principles of argumentation found in the Qur’an. The study attempts to apply the principles on the actual education process of the scholars and students without limiting it to linguistic studies or theoretical principles. This was done after introducing the principles of reasoning, its tools, its importance, and disclosing the special requirements for the scholars and students in order to be influenced by the latter principles.  The work used inductive method to track the works of the scholars on the subject and observe the opinions of the Qur’an-commentators in relation to principles of explanation, verses of argument, and aspects of Qur’anic Inimitability. Analytical method was used to establish the impacts of the Qur’anic arguments; to prove the presence of signs and evidences for the manifestation of the impacts; and to make the continuity of this research possible in all the tools, verses and topics related to the principles of Qur’anic argument. Among those things that enrich this work is that it opens the minds, and pushes it to ponder and study the verses of the Qur’an. For every direction it becomes the starting point for the innovative thinking, and benefit for the new age and its sciences while maintaining the harmony with the principles of creed and the true SharÊ‘ah. Keywords: Principles of Argumentation, Tools of Argumentation Principles, Thinking, Traditional Education, Effect.

Public Policy Administration

1985 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Richard A. Brumback
Keyword(s):  
Rhode Island ◽  
General Level ◽  
American Government ◽  
Introductory Course ◽  
The Past ◽  
Business Colleges ◽  
Business College ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The Subject ◽  
One Year

The teaching of an introductory course in American Government can be a difficult and frustrating endeavor under even the best of circumstances. Given the general level of cynicism and/or lack of interest by large numbers of Americans regarding politics and politicians, the task of generating student enthusiasm, or even mild interest, toward the subject matter can indeed be an arduous one. When the teaching of such a course takes place in a business college, and when the student audience is “captive” to a college requirement that all students must take the course, the task can be rendered considerably more formidable.For the past six years I have been teaching such courses at business colleges — one year at Bryant College in Rhode Island, and the following five years at Bentley College in Massachusetts.

The first century of English protestantism and the growth of national identity

1982 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 309-317 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Fletcher
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
First Century ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
John Foxe ◽  
Religious Attitudes ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Religious Zeal

Their sense of national identity is not something that men have been in the habit of directly recording. Its strength or weakness, in relation to commitment to international causes or to localist sentiment, can often only be inferred by examining political and religious attitudes and personal behaviour. So far as the early modern period is concerned, the subject is hazardous because groups and individuals must have varied enormously in the extent to which national identity meant something to them or influenced their lives. The temptation to generalise must be resisted. It is all too easy to suppose that national identity became well established in England in the Tudor century, when a national culture, based on widespread literacy among gentry, yeomen and townsmen, flowered as it had never done before, when the bible was first generally available in English, when John Foxe produced his celebrated Acts and Monuments, better known as the Book of Martyrs. Recent work reassessing the significance of Foxe’s account of the English reformation and other Elizabethan polemical writings provdes a convenient starting point for this brief investigation of some of the connections between religious zeal and national consciousness between 1558 and 1642.

Ontology and Perception

2004 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-58
Author(s):  
Jeffrey S. Galko ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cognitive Capacity ◽  
Complex Environment ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Ontological Question ◽  
The One ◽  
Bodies Of Water ◽  
The Relationship

The ontological question of what there is, from the perspective of common sense, is intricately bound to what can be perceived. The above observation, when combined with the fact that nouns within language can be divided between nouns that admit counting, such as ‘pen’ or ‘human’, and those that do not, such as ‘water’ or ‘gold’, provides the starting point for the following investigation into the foundations of our linguistic and conceptual phenomena. The purpose of this paper is to claim that such phenomena are facilitated by, on the one hand, an intricate cognitive capacity, and on the other by the complex environment within which we live. We are, in a sense, cognitively equipped to perceive discrete instances of matter such as bodies of water. This equipment is related to, but also differs from, that devoted to the perception of objects such as this computer. Behind this difference in cognitive equipment underlies a rich ontology, the beginnings of which lies in the distinction between matter and objects. The following paper is an attempt to make explicit the relationship between matter and objects and also provide a window to our cognition of such entities.

Beyond the heuristic approach to Kolmogorov-Smirnov theorems

1982 ◽  
Vol 19 (A) ◽  
pp. 359-365 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Pollard
Keyword(s):  
Weak Convergence ◽  
Goodness Of Fit ◽  
Empirical Distribution ◽  
Distribution Functions ◽  
Heuristic Approach ◽  
Convergence Theory ◽  
Simple Method ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Kolmogorov Smirnov ◽  
The Subject

The theory of weak convergence has developed into an extensive and useful, but technical, subject. One of its most important applications is in the study of empirical distribution functions: the explication of the asymptotic behavior of the Kolmogorov goodness-of-fit statistic is one of its greatest successes. In this article a simple method for understanding this aspect of the subject is sketched. The starting point is Doob's heuristic approach to the Kolmogorov-Smirnov theorems, and the rigorous justification of that approach offered by Donsker. The ideas can be carried over to other applications of weak convergence theory.

A Grammar of Religious “Truth”: Pragmatic Considerations on the Nature of Religious Truth

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 338-356
Author(s):  
Lars Albinus
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Religious Discourse ◽  
Religious Expression ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Religious Truth ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Concept Of Truth

Abstract This article explores various ways in which the concept of truth is actually used across discursive boundaries separating common sense, science, mathematics, and religion. Although my overall approach is pragmatic, I argue that we also need to take some semantic restrictions into consideration. The main objective of the article is the issue of translating concepts of truth in various linguistic and cultural contexts without losing sight of the particular network of connotations. I come to the conclusion that with regard to a religious discourse, a translatable concept of truth typically enters the grammatical place of the subject rather than the predicate. From this position the discursive constraints of authority, authenticity and expressivity are held in check by an internal predetermination of the implied possibility of falsehood. Most of all, however, the article focuses on non-propositional aspects of a religious expression of truth, in which case the very distinction between true and false becomes patently irrelevant.

On Selective Consumerism: Egyptian Women and Ethnographic Representations

2001 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-123
Author(s):  
Nadia Wassef
Keyword(s):  
Arab World ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Research Subjects ◽  
Islamic Feminism ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Egyptian Women ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Impact

In the light of postmodern debates in anthropology, ethnography offers anthropologists new ways of representing their objects of study. The politics involved in the production and consumption by feminist scholars and activists of women's representations in the Arab world, and Egypt specifically, provides the starting point of this article. Using an ethnographic text examining manifestations of ‘Islamic Feminism’ in Egypt, I explore problems in addressing the subject of veiling – a continuous favourite among researchers. Grappling with stereotypes, assumptions and pre-interpretations based on what we read before going to the field and the questions we formulate in our minds, I look towards strategies of engagement with research subjects where anthropologists can express their commitments to them. Research ethics and reflexivity offer no formulaic guarantees of better representations, but pave the way towards understanding one's motivations and urges ethnographers to examine the impact of their work, both on the immediate community, and with regard to larger power politics. Given the fluid nature of identities and the relative fixedness of representations, solutions do not appear in abundance. Working outside of unnecessary dichotomies and searching for incongruities presents interesting possibilities for future ethnographic research.

Of sex and war: carceral feminism and its anti-carceral critique

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 351-364
Author(s):  
Mattia Pinto
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Violence ◽  
International Law ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Carceral Feminism

Abstract In the last three decades, wartime sexual violence has become one of the main concerns for feminists engaged with international law. This essay reviews Karen Engle’s monograph on the causes and implications of today’s common-sense narrative about sexual violence in conflict. It shows how Engle’s powerful critique of ‘carceral feminism’ may represent a starting point for a new discussion of sex and war in international law.

Radical Tense-Indexical Historicality and the De Se

KronoScope ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-27
Author(s):  
Carl Humphries
Keyword(s):  
Alternative View ◽  
The Past ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
De Se ◽  
Temporal Expressions ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
Self Reference ◽  
A Current ◽  
Shed Light

Abstract “Being is said in many ways,” claimed Aristotle, initiating a discussion about existential commitment that continues today. Might there not be reasons to say something similar about “having been,” or “having happened,” where these expressions denote something’s being located in the past? Moreover, if history – construed not only as an object of inquiry (actual events, etc.) but also as a way of casting light on certain matters – is primarily concerned with “things past,” then the question just posed also seems relevant to the question of what historical understanding amounts to. While the idea that ‘being’ may mean different things in different contexts has indisputable importance, the implications of other, past-temporal expressions are elusive. In what might any differences of substantive meaning encountered there consist? One starting point for responding – the one that provides the subject matter explored here – is furnished by the question of whether or not a certain way of addressing matters relating to the past permits or precludes forms of intelligibility that could be said to be ‘radically historical.’ After arguing that the existing options for addressing this issue remain unsatisfactory, I set out an alternative view of what it could mean to endorse or reject such an idea. This involves drawing distinctions and analogies connected with notions of temporal situatedness, human practicality and historicality, which are then linked to a further contrast between two ways of understanding the referential significance of what is involved when we self-ascribe a relation to a current situation in a manner construable as implying that we take ourselves to occupy a unique, yet circumstantially defined, perspective on that situation. As regards the latter, on one reading, the specific kind of indexically referring language we use – commonly labelled “de se” – is something whose rationale is exhausted by its practical utility as a communicative tool. On the other, it is viewed as capturing something of substantive importance about how we can be thought of as standing in relation to reality. I claim that this second reading, together with the line of thinking about self-identification and self-reference it helps foreground, can shed light on what it would mean to affirm or deny the possibility of radically historical forms of intelligibility – and thus also on what it could mean to ascribe a plurality of meanings to talk concerning things being ‘in the past.’

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