scholarly journals An Unoccupied Place: Theoretical Emulations of the Subject

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 39-48

More than thirty years ago, Jean-Luc Nancy was urged by his American and Italian colleagues to invite several French philosophers to address “post-subjectivity” in a special issue of the journal Topoi entitled “Who comes after the subject? ” What Nancy’s colleagues provided was not in the end so much a deconstruction of the subject, but more a critique and, of course, a reflection on the conditions that make the question itself possible. The question as stated was ambiguous: it could be read in the spirit of deconstruction, and the answers made to it would then be various options for a non-subjective reconfiguration; or it could be interpreted as a forecast or even a hidden threat. In any case, “Who comes after the subject? ” is to be read as relevant to the future, an invitation to prognosticate and an opening up of perspective. What conceptual movement are we making when we think about “conditions of possibility,” that is, when we produce a critique in accordance with the precepts of the Kantian transcendental method? The “condition of possibility” is a principle of seriality, a movement in search of the conditions of conditions; hence, the critical maneuver can be performed indefinitely. But there is a logically possible alternative to a “condition of possibility” if we change the terms of the search from conditions of conditions to the possibility of possibility. To think of the “unoccupied place” of a subject means that the attempt is not working with the category itself, but instead with its conceptual context because the category itself can be interpreted as a presence. The thinking in the issue of Logos introduced by this article represents a slice of modern speculative, theoretical, hermeneutic work neither in the tradition of transcendentalism nor explicitly outside it, but alongside it. At the same time, some of the efforts being proposed are devoted to classical topics and problems of the conceptual field in question (the historical subject, capabilities, action), and some others demonstrate how the problems of the transcendental tradition are projected onto political theory, sociology and cybernetics.

2017 ◽  
Vol 76 (s1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rossano Bolpagni ◽  
Mariano Bresciani ◽  
Stefano Fenoglio

This special issue stems from an increasing awareness on the key contribution made by biometrics and biological indices in the quality classification of aquatic ecosystems. This theme has been the subject of passionate debate during the 13th European Ecological Federation (EEF) and 25th Italian Society of Ecology’s (S.It.E.) joined congresses held in Rome in September 2015. In this frame, on the margins of the special symposium named “Biomonitoring: Lessons from the past, challenges for the future”, it was launched the idea of a special issue of the Journal of Limnology on the “aquatic” contributions presented at the conference. The present volume mainly reports these studies, enriched by few invited papers. Among the other things, the main message is the need of a better integration between sector knowledges and legislative instruments. This is even truer given the on-going climate change, and the necessity to record rapid changes in ecosystems and to elaborate effective/adaptive responses to them. 


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-104
Author(s):  
Michael R. Grigoni

Abstract The use of ethnography for theological inquiry is no longer novel. Yet, as the introduction to this special issue indicates, the ethnographic turn in Christian theology is animated by distinct postliberal and liberationist trajectories, each with their own theological presumptions and methodological aims. Should the future development of this turn favour one trajectory over another? This paper explores this question in conversation with Todd Whitmore’s Imitating Christ in Magwi: An Anthropological Theology. Through a sustained engagement with Imitating Christ in Magwi, I unearth both postliberal and liberationist inheritances to show that Whitmore’s text exceeds a postliberal-liberationist binary. I then ask what the dual inheritance of his work signifies for the future of the ethnographic turn. Drawing from cultural anthropology’s mode of ‘studying up,’ I suggest that the turn should orient itself more broadly to the care of our common life by expanding attention to subjects with power.


Assembling research from an international cohort of scholars dedicated to inquiry in the field, this volume investigates relationships between dance and politics, adding detail and dimension to existing research, illuminating epistemological and theoretical topographies, and forging new pathways for related inquiry. Opening up its critical terms in two directions, the project illuminates how dance achieves its politics and how notions of the political are themselves expanded when viewed from the perspective of dance. Conceiving the subject matter in mutually informing ways, through problematics that come from philosophy, social science, humanities, and history, the authors seek to participate in an ongoing conversation that is both interdisciplinary and international in scope. This Oxford Handbook of Dance and Politics comes through a turn to dance from within a range of fields such as political philosophy, interests in social movements, and approaches to bodily difference such as disability, postcolonial, critical race, and queer studies. The editors have brought together writers with intimate engagement in these dialogues and close encounter with various dance practices. The result is a book that is at once essential reading for advanced teaching and research within various dance studies curricula and that intervenes in key discussions of political theory in the current climate.


2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (01) ◽  
pp. 35-42
Author(s):  
M. Hermans

SummaryThe author presents his personal opinion inviting to discussion on the possible future role of psychiatrists. His view is based upon the many contacts with psychiatrists all over Europe, academicians and everyday professionals, as well as the familiarity with the literature. The list of papers referred to is based upon (1) the general interest concerning the subject when representing ideas also worded elsewhere, (2) the accessibility to psychiatrists and mental health professionals in Germany, (3) being costless downloadable for non-subscribers and (4) for some geographic aspects (e.g. Belgium, Spain, Sweden) and the latest scientific issues, addressing some authors directly.


2009 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-92
Author(s):  
Susan Jones

This article explores the diversity of British literary responses to Diaghilev's project, emphasising the way in which the subject matter and methodologies of Diaghilev's modernism were sometimes unexpectedly echoed in expressions of contemporary British writing. These discussions emerge both in writing about Diaghilev's work, and, more discretely, when references to the Russian Ballet find their way into the creative writing of the period, serving to anchor the texts in a particular cultural milieu or to suggest contemporary aesthetic problems in the domain of literary aesthetics developing in the period. Figures from disparate fields, including literature, music and the visual arts, brought to their criticism of the Ballets Russes their individual perspectives on its aesthetics, helping to consolidate the sense of its importance in contributing to the inter-disciplinary flavour of modernism across the arts. In the field of literature, not only did British writers evaluate the Ballets Russes in terms of their own poetics, their relationship to experimentation in the novel and in drama, they developed an increasing sense of the company's place in dance history, its choreographic innovations offering material for wider discussions, opening up the potential for literary modernism's interest in impersonality and in the ‘unsayable’, discussions of the body, primitivism and gender.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-13
Author(s):  
G. Stankevych ◽  
L. Dmytrenko ◽  
A. Kats ◽  
V. Shpak

In the future, in Ukraine it is planned to increase the sown area for cereals, legumes and oilseeds, to increase the gross grain harvest to 80 million tons, and its export abroad was increased twice. Intensive construction in the southern ports of Ukraine of grain transshipment terminals with large metal silos will solve the problem of increasing grain export in the future. At these powerful terminals, the bulk of the grain comes mainly by rail, and is shipped to water. The aim of the work was to study the characteristics of the grain receiving from railway transport to the grain transshipment terminal of LLC “Ukrelevatorprom” in order to improve its works efficiency. The object of the study was the development of technology of grain receiving at the grain transshipment terminal; the subject of research is cereals, legume sand oil crops, as well as data from daily volumes of receiving and dispensing operations at the grain transshipment terminal of LLC “Ukrelevatorprom” for 2015-2016. The studies were carried out on the basis of processing data from the consignment notes for 2015-2016, according to which there was a summed amount of grain (net) daily transported by the railway. Further processing of the obtained data was carried out by a combined graphoanalytical method, for which, on the basis of tabular values for each studied year, the corresponding histograms and graphs were built and the necessary indicators were determined. Analysis of the structure of grain crops supplied by railway to LLC “Ukrelevatorprom” in 2015 and 2016 and their ratio showed that the main share was occupied by cereal crops (78.0 % and 73.1 % respectively), which were mainly represented by corn, share which was significantly dominated by other crops (wheat of various classes and barley) and amounted to 45.8 % and 44.5 %, respectively, which can be explained by its high demand in the international grain market, in which Ukraine occupies a leading position. Oilseeds (rapeseed) were taken in accordance with 19.1 % and 14.9 %, and legumes (soybeans) — 2.9 % and 12.0 %. An analysis of the timing of the unloading of grain wagons (hopper cars) showed that the total duration of this process, depending on the crops, averages 37...59 minutes. The longest steps for unloading wagons are to determine the grain quality indicators, especially rapeseed, and to spill grain from the wagons, therefore, to reduce their duration, it is necessary to form feeds of wagons with grain batches of the same quality and use more modern express analyzers to determine grain quality indicators, which will increase the productivity of the grain receiving line from the railway. According to the research results, the enterprise has the potential to increase by about 30 % the volume of grain intake. It was established that the periods of the grain receipt at the enterprise in 2015-2016 amounted to 349 and 353 days, respectively, the actual coefficients of the daily irregularity Kdaily for the grain receipt from the railway in these years are equal to 1.47 and 1.52, and the monthly irregularity Kmonth, respectively 1.33 and 1.21, does not exceed the standard values Kdaily = 2.5 and Kmonth= 2.0. This made it possible to clarify the database from the actual characteristics of the process of grain receiving by railway and can be used in design and verification calculations of equipment in technological lines for receiving grain from railway transport, and will contribute to increasing the efficiency of grain transshipment terminals. 


2020 ◽  
pp. 301-323
Author(s):  
Natalya I. Kikilo ◽  

In the Macedonian literary language the analytic da-construction used in an independent clause has a wide range of possible modal meanings, the most common of which are imperative and optative. The present article offers a detailed analysis of the semantics and functions of the Macedonian optative da-construction based on fiction and journalistic texts. The first part of the article deals with the specificities of the optative as a category which primarily considers the subject of a wish. In accordance with the semantic characteristics of this category, optative constructions are used in those discourse text types where the speakers are explicitly designated (the most natural context for the optative is the dialogue). The analysis of the Macedonian material includes instances of atypical usage of the optative da-construction, in which the wish of the subject is not apparent and thereby produces new emotional tonalities perceptible to the reader of a fiction/journalistic text. The study describes Macedonian constructions involving two different verb forms: 1) present tense form (da + praes) and 2) imperfective form (da + impf). These constructions formally designate the hypothetical and counterfactual status of the optative situation, respectively. Thus, the examples in the analysis are ordered according to two types of constructions, which reflect the speaker’s view on the probability of the realisation of his/her wish. Unrealistic wishes can be communicated through the present da-construction, while the imperfective construction denotes situations in which the wish can be realised in the future. The second part of the article is devoted to performative optative da-constructions, which express formulas of speech etiquette, wishes and curses. The analysis demonstrates that these constructions lose their magical functions, when used outside of the ritual context, and begin to function as interjections.


Journal ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Ford

The Anthropology A-level has achieved a great deal despite its failure to be redeveloped as a qualification. In this article I discuss what this means and why this matters for anthropology education. I show how the Anthropology A level was just one component of a much wider movement to engage new audiences with anthropology. I demonstrate how the A-level brought biological and social anthropology into schools and colleges that had never offered the subject before. The A-level diversified the community of anthropology educators and increased links between local schools, colleges and university anthropology departments. The campaign to widen access to anthropology for students, teachers and the public continues to grow, regardless of the AQA decision.


2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (4) ◽  
pp. 879-880
Author(s):  
David Goldfischer

As Michael O'Hanlon concludes in his excellent contribution to Rockets' Red Glare: “We should…get used to the debate over ballistic missile defenses. It has been around a long time, and no final resolution is imminent” (p. 132). In one sense, a review of these three recent books makes clear that many analysts had grown a bit too used to positioning themselves in terms of the 1972 ABM Treaty. Preoccupied with arguments over whether the treaty should be preserved, modified, or rewritten in light of a changing strategic and technological context, no one seemed to have anticipated that President George W. Bush would simply withdraw from it, invoking Article XV's provision that either party could withdraw if “extraordinary events related to the subject matter of this Treaty have jeopardized its supreme interests.” Even many strategic defense supporters who deemed the treaty obsolete (as Robert Joseph persuasively maintains in his contribution to Rockets' Red Glare) generally believed that it should only—and would only—be scrapped if negotiations over U.S.-proposed changes broke down. (“The Bush Administration,” surmises O'Hanlon, “will surely try very hard to amend it before going to such an extreme”) (p. 112). In the event, the president's team disavowed even the word “negotiation,” saying they were willing only to “consult” the Russians regarding the treaty's impending demise.


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