scholarly journals Elaboration of a theory of resistance

2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 641-661
Author(s):  
Klaus Wiegerling

The theory of resistance here elaborated is based on considerations current since the 18th century and concern the proof of reality of the external world. However, what is ignored in the course of these proofs are the social, psychological, and in particular the logical aspects of resistance. The idea of a theory of resistance is inspired by tendencies in the philosophy of technology, as well as other current philosophical and scientific lines of thought that obscure their metaphysical underpinnings, advocating a position of complete achievability of human and natural relations. The theory of resistance seeks to show that resistance is a reflexive term that concerns relations, not objects or those relations that can be expressed in qualities and quantities. Furthermore, this concept has a positioning role, important in epistemological, as well as ethical and anthropological sense. Resistance is a central, although not the sole characteristic of reality. As an ethical category, it is articulated, for example, in the idea of dignity if understood as hostility to mere typologization and subjection to calcu?lation. The theory of resistance does not advocate some existing reality, but limits the domain of validity of constructivist and narrativist theories.

2019 ◽  
Vol 78 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 69-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikaël De Clercq ◽  
Charlotte Michel ◽  
Sophie Remy ◽  
Benoît Galand

Abstract. Grounded in social-psychological literature, this experimental study assessed the effects of two so-called “wise” interventions implemented in a student study program. The interventions took place during the very first week at university, a presumed pivotal phase of transition. A group of 375 freshmen in psychology were randomly assigned to three conditions: control, social belonging, and self-affirmation. Following the intervention, students in the social-belonging condition expressed less social apprehension, a higher social integration, and a stronger intention to persist one month later than the other participants. They also relied more on peers as a source of support when confronted with a study task. Students in the self-affirmation condition felt more self-affirmed at the end of the intervention but didn’t benefit from other lasting effects. The results suggest that some well-timed and well-targeted “wise” interventions could provide lasting positive consequences for student adjustment. The respective merits of social-belonging and self-affirmation interventions are also discussed.


2004 ◽  
pp. 90-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Surkov

Benefits of using social-psychological approach in the analysis of labor motivations are considered in the article. Classification of employees as objects of economic analysis is offered: "the economic man", "the man of the organization", "the social man" and "the asocial man". Related models give the opportunity to predict behavior of the firm in different situations, such as shocks of various nature.


2014 ◽  
pp. 803-822
Author(s):  
Marta Witkowska ◽  
Piotr Forecki

The introduction of the programs on Holocaust education in Poland and a broader debate on the transgressions of Poles against the Jews have not led to desired improvement in public knowledge on these historical events. A comparison of survey results from the last two decades (Bilewicz, Winiewski, Radzik, 2012) illustrates mounting ignorance: the number of Poles who acknowledge that the highest number of victims of the Nazi occupation period was Jewish systematically decreases, while the number of those who think that the highest number of victims of the wartime period was ethnically Polish, increases. Insights from the social psychological research allow to explain the psychological foundations of this resistance to acknowledge the facts about the Holocaust, and indicate the need for positive group identity as a crucial factor preventing people from recognizing such a threatening historical information. In this paper we will provide knowledge about the ways to overcome this resistance-through-denial. Implementation of such measures could allow people to accept responsibility for the misdeeds committed by their ancestors.


Author(s):  
Ushashi Dasgupta

This book explores the significance of rental culture in Charles Dickens’s fiction and journalism. It reveals tenancy, or the leasing of real estate in exchange for money, to be a governing force in everyday life in the nineteenth century. It casts a light into back attics and landladies’ parlours, and follows a host of characters—from slum landlords exploiting their tenants, to pairs of friends deciding to live together and share the rent. In this period, tenancy shaped individuals, structured communities, and fascinated writers. The vast majority of London’s population had an immediate economic relationship with the houses and rooms they inhabited, and Dickens was highly attuned to the social, psychological, and imaginative corollaries of this phenomenon. He may have been read as an overwhelming proponent of middle-class domestic ideology, but if we look closely, we see that his fictional universe is a dense network of rented spaces. He is comfortable in what he calls the ‘lodger world’, and he locates versions of home in a multitude of unlikely places. These are not mere settings, waiting to be recreated faithfully; rented space does not simply provide a backdrop for incident in the nineteenth-century novel. Instead, it plays an important part in influencing what takes place. For Dickens, to write about tenancy can often mean to write about writing—character, authorship, and literary collaboration. More than anything, he celebrates the fact that unassuming houses brim with narrative potential: comedies, romances, mysteries, and comings-of-age take place behind their doors.


Author(s):  
Pieter Lemmens

AbstractIn this reply I further defend my claim that the transcendental should always remain a primary concern for philosophy of technology as a philosophical enterprise, contra the empirical turn’s rejection of it. Yet, instead of emphasizing the non-technological conditions of technology, as ‘classic’ thinkers of technology such as Heidegger did, it should recognize technology itself as the transcendental operator par excellence. Starting from Heidegger’s ontological understanding of transcendence I show that while technical artifacts may indeed always conform to a certain horizon of understanding, they also constitute this horizon in specific ways. Following Stiegler I show that concrete technologies (technology with a small ‘t’) are not just empirical effects of an overarching movement of transcendence (Technology with a capital ‘T’) but are originally constitutive of it. In response to Romele’s critique that the social, language, images, imaginaries, symbols, etc. are also transcendentals, I argue that all these phenomena are always already conditioned by technical milieus. As for Besmer’s contention that I offer a reductive interpretation of postphenomenology’s notion of multistability, I argue that there are decisive systemic and organological limits to multistability offered by technical artefacts and that all variation in use and implementation is always constrained by inherent technical tendencies and processes of concretization. Agreeing with Besmer that the transcendental and the empirical should be understood not oppositional but compositional I argue that technology may be that which constantly ‘mediates’ between the two.


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