A Love Letter to the Future (from the Surgical Team of the Trans Sciences Collective)

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 663-669
Author(s):  
Harlan Weaver
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Space And Place ◽  
Surgical Team ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Love Letter ◽  
Social Orders ◽  
Ways Of Being

Abstract “A Love Letter to the Future” speculatively fabulates a future that has undergone a (the?) surgery at the hands of a team of trans scientists. Explicating the how and why of decisions to remove organs of oppression, systems that engender violence, and individual nodules of violence, the letter details the scientists' work in remaking the future into a space and place where trans thrives. The letter also delineates how the trans sciences that unite the collective—experiments in building and reworking the self/body through (re-)mappings of community, ways of being in the world, and networks of care that challenge larger social orders—involve unique temporal and geographical expertise. The letter details how this unique expertise, which emerges through ongoing labors challenging the construction of trans - “modern,” identifying the work of quick and slow systemic violences, and mapping community and connectivity well outside understandings that join family with blood with the domestic, led to the collective's nomination for the surgery in the first place. Finally, the letter details processes necessary to the future's recovery and also extends love to this future, the multitudes it contains, and its emergent connectivities between trans and justice.

scholarly journals Przestrogi dla utopistów. Wizje optimum dóbr w historii idei w książce Andrzeja Waśkiewicza

2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-167
Author(s):  
Grzegorz Sokół
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Social Thought ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Social Orders

The subject of this essay is Andrzej Waśkiewicz’s book Ludzie – rzeczy – ludzie. O porządkach społecznych, gdzie rzeczy łączą, nie dzielą (People–Things–People: On Social Orders Where Things Connect Rather Than Divide People). The book is the work of a historian of ideas and concerns contemporary searches for alternatives to capitalism: the review presents the book’s overview of visions of society in which the market, property, inequality, or profit do not play significant roles. Such visions reach back to Western utopian social and political thought, from Plato to the nineteenth century. In comparing these ideas with contemporary visions of the world of post-capitalism, the author of the book proposes a general typology of such images. Ultimately, in reference to Simmel, he takes a critical stance toward the proposals, recognizing the exchange of goods to be a fundamental and indispensable element of social life. The author of the review raises two issues that came to mind while reading the book. First, the juxtaposition of texts of a very different nature within the uniform category of “utopia” causes us to question the role and status of reflections regarding the future and of speculative theory in contemporary social thought; second, such a juxtaposition suggests that reflecting on the social “optimal good” requires a much more precise and complex conception of a “thing,” for instance, as is proposed by new materialism or anthropological studies of objects and value as such.

The Restoring of a Prophetic Community

Pneuma ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 460-476
Author(s):  
Jacqueline N. Grey
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Early Church ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Self Reliance ◽  
The World ◽  
Personal Empowerment ◽  
The Future ◽  
Prophetic Community

Abstract The article discusses the future of global pentecostalism, focusing on the context of Australia. It first explores the self-identification of pentecostalism as a prophetic community in continuity with the narrative of Luke-Acts. In particular, the implications of the Isaianic mission of Jesus and the early church are discussed. The socially transformative nature of this mission includes not only miracles and healing, but also concern for the poor and marginalized. From this foundation, the article secondly addresses issues within contemporary Australian pentecostalism of individualism and self-reliance that are incompatible with the Isaianic vision. It presents, thirdly, a vision for the Australian pentecostal community that moves beyond a preoccupation with personal empowerment of the Spirit to participate with God in bringing healing and justice to the world.

Being Yourself

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse Wall
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Major Depression ◽  
Personal Identity ◽  
The Self ◽  
Cognitive Triad ◽  
Clinical Observations ◽  
Autonomous Decision ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Legal Test

This chapter discusses authentic decision-making as it relates to depression based on three parallel concepts found in philosophy, psychology, and the law. Since major depression is characterized (amongst other things) by ‘symptoms of sadness and diminished interest or pleasure’, ‘feelings of worthlessness/excessive/inappropriate guilt’ and a ‘cognitive triad of pessimism regarding the self, the world and the future’, the chapter explores whether an individual who has these symptoms can act on a judgment, thought, or belief in a way that lacks authenticity. It first explains, in philosophical terms, why autonomous decision-making presupposes a ‘personal identity’, before outlining a series of clinical observations suggesting that competence to make a decision requires an ‘appreciative ability’. It also considers whether the legal test for the capacity to make a decision has a component that is equivalent to ‘personal identity’ or an ‘appreciative ability’.

Reo and mātauranga Māori revitalisation: Learning visions for the future

2014 ◽  
pp. 7-15
Author(s):  
Alex Hotere-Barnes ◽  
Nicola Bright ◽  
Jessica Hutchings
Keyword(s):  
School System ◽  
Culturally Responsive ◽  
Community Life ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Kaupapa Māori ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Future Vision ◽  
Ways Of Being

Te reo and mātauranga Māori are linked to a distinctive Māori identity and ways of being in the world. With the majority of Māori students enrolled in English-medium schools, we face the national challenge of how to affirm and promote reo and mātauranga Māori as part of the “everyday” in educational and community life, now and in the future. This article illustrates how educators in English-medium settings can deliberately affirm, support, and promote reo and mātauranga Māori in their learning processes and programmes. This is illustrated through an imaginative 2040 scenario for reo and mātauranga Māori learning in an English-medium school. While fictitious, the scenario is underpinned by our kaupapa Māori research findings, and the future-building ideas of educationalist Keri Facer. The 2040 scenario presents an ideal picture of what a holistic and “culturally responsive” English-medium school system can be. We encourage you to seriously consider the implications of this scenario, and how your school and community can be proactive supporters of reo and mātauranga revitalisation efforts by affirming ngā moemoeā (whānau aspirations), rangatiratanga (whānau authority and autonomy), and te reo rangatira (learning and maintenance of reo Māori). Our future vision is that intergenerational use of reo and mātauranga Māori positively contribute to Māori educational wellbeing. In this vision, the education system’s role will not be alone in the centre; rather, it will be linked to a host of community of players that are committed to seeing reo and mātauranga Māori survive and thrive evermore.

‘Dying to Live’: Remembering and Forgetting May Sinclair

May Sinclair ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzanne Raitt
Keyword(s):  
Mystical Experience ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
May Sinclair

For Sinclair, the past was a wound. She feared being unable to escape it, and she feared in turn her own persistence in a form that she could not control. Mystic ecstasy – what she called the “new mysticism” – was a way of entering a timeless realm in which there was no longer any past to damage her. But she was also fascinated by what could never be left behind – hence her interest in heredity, the unconscious, and the supernatural. However, the immanence of the future can also emancipate us from the past, in Sinclair’s view, and this is the key to why mystical experience was so immensely appealing to her. Mystical experience could take the self out of the body and thus out of past traumas and into the future. False dying – like that which creates ghosts – traps the psyche in its own pain and forces it to re-experience the suffering of its life; real dying – mystical dying – involves forgetting the self and the world.

Oneness

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip J. Ivanhoe
Keyword(s):  
Health Benefit ◽  
The Self ◽  
Relational View ◽  
Proper Understanding ◽  
The Core ◽  
Human Happiness ◽  
The World ◽  
Social Orders ◽  
Central Claim ◽  
New View

At the core of this work lie the oneness hypothesis, which is not a single theory but a family of views found in different forms in a wide variety of disciplines, and its implications for theories of virtue and human happiness. The oneness hypothesis concerns the nature of the world, but it entails a view about the nature of the self and its relationship to other people, creatures, and things. Its core assertion is that we are inextricably intertwined with other people, creatures, and things. The connections the oneness hypothesis advocates are specifically those that conduce to the health, benefit, and improvement of both individuals and the larger wholes of which they are parts. The relational view of the self at the heart of the oneness hypothesis offers an alternative to more individualistic accounts. This new view of the self is a more expansive conception of the self, a self that is less self-centered and instead is seen as intimately connected with other people, creatures, and things. A central claim of this work is that a proper understanding of the underlying oneness of the world will lead one to a greater awareness and appreciation of innate inclinations and resources that when fully developed generate a distinctive set of virtues. A life guided by such virtues enables one to locate oneself within grand natural and social orders that facilitate greater spontaneity, security, and metaphysical comfort, resulting in a special, resilient, and enduring form of happiness.

scholarly journals The times and spaces of transplantation: queercrip histories as futurities

2021 ◽  
pp. medhum-2021-012199
Author(s):  
Donna McCormack
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Multiple Selves ◽  
Environmental Disasters ◽  
The Past ◽  
Loss Of Self ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Ways Of Thinking ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
The Times

With a focus on Larissa Lai’s The Tiger Flu, this article explores how transplantation is part of the ongoing transformation of being in a body that is of the world. That is, it examines how we may require other ways of thinking bodies as constituted by histories, spaces and times that may be ignored in the biomedical arena. The Tiger Flu, I argue, calls for an intra- and inter-connected way of thinking how we treat bodies, and thereby ways of working with bodies affected by environmental disasters (both acute and ongoing capitalist and colonial projects), multiple selves and time as more than linear. I turn to queercrip as a way of defying a curative imaginary that dominates transplantation and in so doing examine the colonial, capitalist violence of present day living. I move through Eve Hayward’s and Karen Barad’s work to examine how the cut of transplantation is a transformation, as integral to the ongoing experience of having a body in the world and yet potentially unique in its force of bringing inter- and intra-relatedness to the fore of one’s existence. Rather than sick or cured, I argue that transplantation is a transformation that captures our bodily changes, how the environment constitutes the self, how parts may feel integral to the self or easily disposed of, how viscera may tie us to others, and how the future may only be forged through a re-turn to the past (of the donor and a pre-transplant self). Transplantation is not about loss of self or gaining of an other, but rather about rendering apparent our multispecies, multiworld ties, and thus how we are bound by the histories we forge and the futures we re-member.

scholarly journals Exploring the Craft of Exilic Thinking/Becoming

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-135
Author(s):  
Nicole des Bouvrie
Keyword(s):  
Fundamental Problem ◽  
Ethical Problem ◽  
The Self ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
At Home

Abstract Being-at-home in a particular, determined, world is dangerous for thinking. For thinking to be thinking/becoming, one should not get too comfortable. For thinking is to not arrive back home, in the same place one begins. But how to escape the world that has created who you are, gave you purpose and a past? How to make sure the future is not a repetition of the Same? How to break away from something that you need? In this article, my aim is not to give one more solution to this fundamental problem that is in essence an ethical problem. For providing a refuge, a new theory, a new methodology, would be providing a new island for those who realise that a flood is endangering their own island. My aim is to exercise the craft of exilic thinking as a way to deal with the contradiction already pointed out by Heraclitus and Parmenides – “We both step and do not step in the same rivers. We are and are not.” Exilic thinking as a craft of fragilising the self establishes a matrixial borderspace through which the impossible becomes possible.

scholarly journals Developing a spatial social policy: taking stock and looking to the future

2019 ◽  
pp. 195-210
Author(s):  
John Clarke
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Space And Place ◽  
Limited Attention ◽  
Place Making ◽  
Policy Studies ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Spatial Analyst

This closing chapter reflects on some of the different ways in which the book has brought geography into conversation with social policy. In particular, it draws attention to the different sorts of geographical understandings that are mobilised in this project, from Philo’s view of Foucault as a critical spatial analyst to Pykett’s engagement with ‘neurogeographies’. Each of the chapters contributes something important to the challenge of making space and place visible as dynamic elements in the world of social policy. Too often, social policy studies view place as a passive context for policy rather than a formative or constitutive force. The chapter aims to deepen the critique of social policy’s limited attention to space and place. It ends by considering ways in which policy might be seen as an active ‘place making’ process, and how topological approaches to geography and the concept of assemblage might contribute to such possibilities.

scholarly journals Well-Being, the Self, and Radical Change

2019 ◽  
pp. 251-270
Author(s):  
Jennifer Hawkins
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Personal Change ◽  
Future Time ◽  
Prudential Value ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Subject

Chapter 12 explores radical personal change and its relationship to well-being, welfare, or prudential value. Many theorists of welfare are committed to what is here called the future-based reasons view (FBR), which holds (1) that the best prudential choice in a situation is determined by which possible future has the greatest net welfare value for the subject and (2) what determines facts about future welfare are facts about the subject and the world at that future time. Although some cases of radical change are intuitively prudentially good, many cases of really radical change are not. Yet FBR has trouble explaining this. Many people instinctively reach for the notion of identity to solve this problem—arguing that really radical change cannot be good because it alters who someone is. Yet, as the chapter argues, there are reasons to doubt that appeals to identity are appropriate. The chapter ends with the suggestion that prudential facts may explain why and when retaining identity matters, rather than the other way around, and points to a possible way forward for a theorist of welfare committed to FBR.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document