Historicity and Society

2019 ◽  
pp. 291-320
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Theory Of Language ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences

The three texts of this chapter are taken from the posthumous volume Langage, Histoire, une même théorie (Lagrasse: Verdier, 2012). They represent the ambition of Meschonnic’s work from its very beginning, that is, to develop a theory of language that establishes a new basis for all the humanities and social sciences by overthrowing the reign of the sign in our episteme. He focuses here on the connection between language and history through his notion of historicity which is a situatedness that constantly leaves this situation and remains active in the presence. Only poetics, an awareness of what language is and does, he argues, enables to think beyond the sign and to develop a critical theory, that is, a theory aware of its situatedness. Meschonnic connects language to historicity, the political and the ethical.

The Politics of Global Health Inequalities

2019 ◽  
pp. 58-84
Author(s):  
Yusra Ribhi Shawar ◽  
Jennifer Prah Ruger
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Global Health ◽  
Health Inequalities ◽  
Health Inequality ◽  
The Political ◽  
State Of Health ◽  
Political Determinants ◽  
The Social

Careful investigations of the political determinants of health that include the role of power in health inequalities—systematic differences in health achievements among different population groups—are increasing but remain inadequate. Historically, much of the research examining health inequalities has been influenced by biomedical perspectives and focused, as such, on ‘downstream’ factors. More recently, there has been greater recognition of more ‘distal’ and ‘upstream’ drivers of health inequalities, including the impacts of power as expressed by actors, as well as embedded in societal structures, institutions, and processes. The goal of this chapter is to examine how power has been conceptualised and analysed to date in relation to health inequalities. After reviewing the state of health inequality scholarship and the emerging interest in studying power in global health, the chapter presents varied conceptualisations of power and how they are used in the literature to understand health inequalities. The chapter highlights the particular disciplinary influences in studying power across the social sciences, including anthropology, political science, and sociology, as well as cross-cutting perspectives such as critical theory and health capability. It concludes by highlighting strengths and limitations of the existing research in this area and discussing power conceptualisations and frameworks that so far have been underused in health inequalities research. This includes potential areas for future inquiry and approaches that may expand the study of as well as action on addressing health inequality.

Intimate Borders and the Sense of Never-Quite-Being: A Dystopic (Non-)Fiction

2021 ◽  
pp. 153270862110377
Author(s):  
Michael Lechuga
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Non Fiction ◽  
Intimate Terrorism ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences ◽  
Daunting Challenge

Today’s academy is a dystopia. Many scholars of color and international scholars face the daunting challenge of navigating neoliberal state institutions that are often built on legacies of racism, colonialism, and classism. This essay brings attention to the feelings of despair, anxiety, and paranoia felt by many scholars of color in the fields of humanities and social sciences, but whose narratives too often become ones of abrupt exit from the Ministry of Knowledge (and) Entrepreneurship (MKE). The essay relies on a discussion of Anzaldúa’s intimate terrorism, the composition of today’s academy, and the sense of never-quite-being. These themes emerge out of a dialogue with Anzaldúa, Deleuze, and Harney and Moten, who each have something to say about navigating institutions of power from a position of in-betweenness. Then, I assemble themes from contemporary popular dystopia films to develop a performative fiction—a narrative of never-quite-being that embodies the critical theory and dystopic themes woven through the experiences of a border-body in the academy. The essay ends with a discussion of what being intimate looks like for someone that never-quite-is, informed by Anzaldúa’s concept of mestizaje and Deleuze’s nomad thought.

Der kranke Mann im Golus

Aschkenas ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 175-195
Author(s):  
Andreas Kilcher
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences ◽  
The One

Abstract Zionism is rooted in the programme for overcoming the Diaspora. The descriptions of this programme go hand in hand with an in-depth »diagnosis« of the sufferings of the Diaspora as a symptom of the ongoing animosity towards Jews and their persecution even, and particularly, in the age of emancipation. This cultural, social and political diagnosis was described in Zionism - and it is no coincidence that this happened mostly through physicians - as the medical and psychiatric pathologization of the »Jewish people’s body«. In this process of naturalization and scientification paradigms and methods of the contemporary humanities and social sciences were applied, including concepts as controversial as that of the »Jewish race«. The present analysis examines this medical account from two complementary perspectives: the medical verbalization of the political discourse of Zionism on the one hand (Leon Pinsker, Max Nordau, etc.), and the politicization of medicine on the other (Arthur Kahn, Felix Theilhaber, etc.).

scholarly journals Will Brazil Follow the Japanese Educational Reforms and Cut the Funding for Research in Humanities? Possibilities and Psycho-political Implications

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
André Dias
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Higher Education ◽  
Graduate Programs ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
The Political ◽  
Japanese Education ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Education Personnel ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences ◽  
Brazilian Students

On May 2019 Brazilian Federal government declared it would follow the Japanese academic model, cutting funding for undergraduate and graduate-level programs and research on Humanities and Social Sciences. The cited reforms were implemented by Japanese Education Minister Shimomura in 2015, but Japan would later back down on these cuts. In Brazil, however, the cuts affect 30% of the budget for Federal educational institutions and frozen the continuity of the most important program from the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES), which distributed grants for researchers on graduate programs. This paper conducts a literature and bibliographic review in order to debate the Brazilian’s cuts on Higher Education. It is concluded that those cuts are mainly politically motivated, affecting mostly the hard sciences instead of Humanities and Social Sciences. It is also concluded the political motivations behind the slashing of funding for Education may backfire, fostering the actual and new forms of political associativism between Brazilian students and researchers.

scholarly journals Public-Private Partnership in Russia: Problems and Perspectives. The Papers of the “Round-Table” Conference of the Lecturers and Students of the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia

2015 ◽  
pp. 61-96
Author(s):  
A A Kinyakin ◽  
Aleksey Vyacheslavovich Teplov ◽  
Mariya Gennad'evna Ivanova ◽  
Ekaterina Andreevna Lutsenko ◽  
Ivan Evgen'evich Khlebnikov ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Round Table ◽  
Public Private Partnership ◽  
The Political ◽  
Private Partnership ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences

The paper dedicated to the “round-table” conference “Public-Private Partnership” which was organized by the Department of the comparative politics of the Peoples` Friendship University of Russia (PFUR) and held on December 1 2014 on the faculty of the humanities and social sciences. Among the participants of the conference were the lecturers and the students of the political department of the PFUR.

Für eine neue hermeneutische Theologie

2021 ◽  
Vol 81 (3) ◽  
pp. 166-191
Author(s):  
Jean-Marc Tétaz ◽  
Martin Leiner
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Paul Ricoeur ◽  
Paul Ricœur ◽  
Theory Of Language ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences ◽  
Hermeneutical Theology

Abstract Article and theses basically describe the program of a New Hermeneutical Theology. The article explains how the New Hermeneutical Theology relates to the classical Hermeneutical Theology of Ernst Fuchs, Gerhard Ebeling and Eberhard Jüngel, and to actual theological programs in Germany, such as Ingolf Dalferth, Christian Danz, and Folkart Wittekind. New Hermeneutical Theology‘s main systematic proposition is to work on the ground of linguistic and philosophical understandings of language and to consider language as a level where a fruitful dialogue between theology, Humanities and Social Sciences can take place. Paul Ricoeur is a main source of inspiration for the New Hermeneutical Theology. Already since the 1960ies, Ricoeur elaborated a hermeneutic grounded in a theory of language. This led to critical and constructive discussions with Hermeneutical Theologians. The theses show some of the systematical coherences of the New Hermeneutical Theology and its impact on different areas of Dogmatic and Ethics.

The Anthropocene and the Time of Historians

2017 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-197
Author(s):  
Grégory Quenet
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
The Political ◽  
Historical Time ◽  
Geological Time ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences ◽  
Human Actors ◽  
Opening Up

The notion of the Anthropocene has arrived so rapidly on the political and academic scene that it is sometimes difficult to orient oneself amid the mass of publications and events, or even to situate the different arguments presented. This article proposes to take a step back by examining the effects of this concept on historians’ notion of time. In the absence of a sociological and intellectual study providing a precise map of the actors and places involved, a genealogical approach can reveal a certain number of conceptual displacements that have occurred since the idea was first proposed. In particular, the passage from geological time to historical time has transformed the nature of the Anthropocene as event. Furthermore, the response of the humanities and social sciences has been critical, revealing the tension between the Anthropocene as a label and forum for discussion, and the Anthropocene as an analytical frame applied to empirical studies. Finally, while applying the notion of period to the Anthropocene poses a certain number of difficulties (teleology, the return to a Western-centered vision of the global, the synchronization of history, etc.), the pluralization of thresholds and temporal breaks appears to enrich the writing of history, opening up new avenues of research receptive to materiality and to non-human actors.

Politics of Affect

2021 ◽  
pp. 141-172
Author(s):  
Paul Earlie
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
The Political ◽  
Group Psychology ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter explores the importance of affect in Derrida’s understanding of the political. The recent ‘affective turn’ in the humanities and social sciences is often seen as a turn away from the earlier ‘textualist’ models of poststructuralism. This chapter shows that affect is, however, central to deconstruction and to Derrida’s account of the relationship between subjectivity and the political, a relationship it traces to Derrida’s involvement in the 1980s with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe’s and Jean-Luc Nancy’s Centre de recherches philosophiques sur le politique (Centre for Philosophical Research on the Political). Derrida’s writings on the political (le politique) and on politics (la politique) begin from the premise that the passionate bonds which tie us to ourselves and to others are always accompanied by anxiety in the face of loss or destruction. This aporia, which emerges in dialogue with Freud’s theory of affect and group psychology, is fundamental to the psychical (an)economy of the subject of deconstruction. The latter poses difficult questions to contemporary philosophical and theoretical approaches to affect, some of which are explored here. Texts such as Politiques de l’amitié (Politics of Friendship), Voyous (Rogues), and Le “concept” du 11 septembre (Philosophy in a Time of Terror) underscore how politics can exploit the fragility of the bond between self and other in promising an end to anxiety. For Derrida, however, such anxiety is interminable because it is part of the aporetic structure of subjectivity from the very beginning.

Toward a critical theory of globalization

2004 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Bohman
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Social ◽  
Practical Synthesis ◽  
Social Distribution

One of the central ideas of both Critical Theory social theory and of pragmatist theories of knowledge is that epistemic and normative claims are embedded in some practical context. This “practical turn” of epistemology is especially relevant to the social sciences, whose main practical contribution, according to pragmatism, is to supply methods for identifying and solving problems. The problem of realizing the democratic ideal under modern social conditions is not only an instance of pragmatist inspired social science, pragmatists would also argue that it is the political context for practical inquiry today, now all the more pressing with the political problems of globalization. Despite weaknesses in the pragmatist idea of social science as the reflexive practical knowledge of praxis, a pragmatic interpretation of critical social inquiry is the best way to develop such practical knowledge in a distinctly critical or democratic manner. That is, the accent shifts from the epistemic superiority of the social scientist as expert to something based on the wider social distribution of relevant practical knowledge; the missing term for such a practical synthesis is what I call “multiperspectival theory.” As an example of this sort of practical inquiry, I discuss democratic experiments involving “minipublics” and argue that they can help us think about democracy in new, transnational contexts.

scholarly journals NIGERIAN ACADEMIA AND THE POLITICS OF SECRECY

Africa ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 86 (2) ◽  
pp. 339-343 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olukoya Ogen ◽  
Insa Nolte
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
The Political ◽  
Global Knowledge ◽  
Political Sphere ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences

In this issue, Jeremiah Arowosegbe makes a number of valid and important observations about the challenges facing the humanities and social sciences in Nigeria. But while he recognizes the importance of the political sphere by discussing the unequal and asymmetric landscape of global knowledge production, he locates most problems of knowledge production in Nigeria within the academy. Focusing on individual and generational responsibility and morality, Arowosegbe also suggests that recent generations of Nigerian academics have been ‘complacent and nonchalant’ in their engagement with global theoretical and methodological debates, and thus bear responsibility for the apparent decline of Nigerian academia.

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