Sodomites, witches, and Indians: Another look at Foucault’s history of sexuality, volume one

Does Foucault’s work on sexuality open toward the possibility of a genealogy of sex understood as binary anatomical and genetic sexual difference? I believe that it does. I argue that, if we take seriously work by Mark Jordan, Ann Laura Stoler, and Sylvia Federici, coupled with Foucault’s own statement at the end of HS1 that sex is not an anchor for sexuality but, rather, “a complex idea that was formed inside the deployment of sexuality” (152), the possibility of a time before sex or an elsewhere apart from sex becomes quite thinkable. Constructing such a genealogy would likely require careful research into ways in which Europeans imposed binary sex upon those they terrorized and colonized around the globe. Examples gestured toward here include the Yorùbá in Africa as well as a number of peoples of the Americas.

Efficient Interactive Tactile Maps: A Semi-Automated Workflow Using the TouchIt3D Technology and OpenStreetMap Data

Despite the growing efficiency of the map-design process in general, tactile mapping has remained peripheral to mainstream cartography. For a specific group of people with visual impairment, however, tactile maps are the only effective way to obtain a complex idea about the geospatial distribution of the surrounding world. As there are numerous specifics in creating these 3D maps and only a limited group of users, tactile products have usually been either very simple creations or, on the other hand, difficult and expensive to produce. Modern trends and progress in the availability of new technologies (e.g., 3D printing) bring new possibilities for keeping tactile map production both effective and up to date. Therefore, this paper aims to present a methodology to apply the TouchIt3D technology to link 3D-printed multi-material tactile maps with a mobile device. Utilizing this solution resulted in a set of interactive tactile maps following current trends of inclusive education. Using OpenStreetMap data together with a semi-automated workflow significantly lowered expenses compared to antecedent maps with similar functionality. A semi-automated workflow was designed, focusing on three use cases of independent movement: walking, using public transport, and tourism.

Psychoanalysis and Interdisciplinarity With Non-analytic Psychotherapeutic Approaches Through the Lens of Dialectics

Psychoanalysis, in its purist mainstream sense, tends to be considered as an isolationist discipline that steers clear of interdisciplinary connections with other psychotherapies. Its drive for purity does not open up to influences that cast as alien and a threat to its core principles. We refer to Hegelian dialectics in an attempt to offer an alternative approach to interdisciplinarity in clinical psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis entertains a complex dialectical relationship with the major theories it opposes. In this dynamic, psychoanalysis begins by negating the non-psychoanalytic theory as a part of self-negation (Hegel calls this phase self-alienation). But in its own process of growth, it negates this negation and reabsorbs the alienated self part. Reabsorbing the negated component, psychoanalysis does not revert to its original identity but becomes sublated into a different, more complex idea. In this epistemological process, psychoanalysis deals with its own practical and theoretical anomalies and lacunas. The paper illustrates this process using three central developments in the history of psychoanalysis: empathy in self psychology (connection with Rogers' humanist psychology), short-term dynamic psychotherapy (connection with short, intensive therapies), and mentalization-based psychotherapy (connection with cognitive-behavioral therapies). In all of these cases, psychoanalysis integrates components it previously opposed and changes these components to their own, specific characteristics. We address the epistemological shifts in the scientific status of psychoanalysis and show their connection to dialectics. Finally, we conclude that dialectical development is what allows psychoanalysis to remain relevant and up to date, to be open to interdisciplinary influences without its identity and tradition coming under threat.

Locke on Fixing Ideas

I argue that Locke’s distinction between ‘determined’ and ‘undetermined’ ideas incorporates an account of semantic indeterminacy: if the complex idea to which a general term is annexed is ‘undetermined’, the term lacks a determinate extension. I propose that a closer look at this account of semantic indeterminacy illuminates various charges of confusion, misuse and abuse of language Locke levels against his philosophical contemporaries.

Gay Rights vs. Religious Liberty?

Should religious people who conscientiously object to facilitating same-sex weddings, and who therefore decline to provide cakes, photography, or other services, be exempted from antidiscrimination laws? This issue has taken on an importance far beyond the tiny number who have made such claims. Gay rights advocates fear that exempting even a few religious dissenters would unleash a devastating wave of discrimination. Conservative Christians fear that the law will treat them like racists and drive them to the margins of American society. Both sides are mistaken. This is not a matter of abstract principle, and none of the constitutional claims work. This is an appropriate occasion for legislative negotiation. This book is the only systematic accounting of the interests that must be balanced in any decent compromise, in terms that both sides can recognize and appreciate. Koppelman explains the basis of antidiscrimination law, including the complex idea of dignitary harm. He shows why even those who do not regard religion as important or valid nonetheless have good reasons to support religious liberty, and why those who regard religion as a value of overriding importance should nonetheless reject the extravagant power over nonbelievers that the Supreme Court has recently embraced. Koppelman also proposes a specific solution to the problem: that religious exemptions be granted only to the few businesses that are willing to announce their compunctions and bear the costs of doing so. His approach makes room for America’s enormous variety of deeply held beliefs and ways of life. It can help reduce the toxic polarization of American politics.

Introduction

Should religious people who conscientiously object to facilitating same-sex weddings, and who therefore decline to provide cakes, photography, or other services, be exempted from antidiscrimination laws? This issue has taken on an importance far beyond the tiny number who have made such claims. Gay rights advocates fear that exempting even a few religious dissenters would unleash a devastating wave of discrimination. Conservative Christians fear that the law will treat them like racists and drive them to the margins of American society. Both sides are mistaken. This is not a matter of abstract principle, and none of the constitutional claims work. This is an appropriate occasion for legislative negotiation. This book is the only systematic accounting of the interests that must be balanced in any decent compromise, in terms that both sides can recognize and appreciate. This book explains the basis of antidiscrimination law, including the complex idea of dignitary harm. It shows why even those who do not regard religion as important or valid nonetheless have good reasons to support religious liberty, and why those who regard religion as a value of overriding importance should nonetheless reject the extravagant power over nonbelievers that the Supreme Court has recently embraced. The book also proposes a specific solution to the problem: that religious exemptions be granted only to the few businesses that are willing to announce their compunctions and bear the costs of doing so—an approach makes room for America’s enormous variety of deeply held beliefs and ways of life.

Word Image as a Cultural Sign in Language, art and Intellectual Journalism (on «Ontology of the Poetic Word Art and Ostrannenye» by M.L. Novikova)

With the development of information technology, the influence of mass-media on the active processes in the language and society is steadily increasing. In this context, the problem of forming high professional culture of journalistic community, which involves working knowledge of information culture, linguistic culture and creative potential of the native language, is essential. Unlike an artist who does not invent images, but thinks in them, a journalist uses language imagery rationally, but not only a means of persuasion aimed mainly at manipulation. Intelligent journalism uses the image as an economical tool of expressing a complex idea, especially when logical thinking is ineffective. The monograph «Ontology of the Poetic Word Art and Ostrannenye» by M.L. Novikova explores imagery as a universal creative principle that enables one to see essential things, previously unnoticed, while conceptualizing the reality. This principle of creation, which features one mechanism, but different functions, works in the language, in the Arts - in oral lore, plastic and synthetic arts, and in intellectual journalism. The book will be of great interest for journalists. It allows readers to see the mechanism of forming the imagery and evaluate and master the creative word as both a tool for constructing new meanings that de-automatize perception, and a conductor of public attitudes, the latter being a special form of peoples interaction, a conceptual space that reflects the world view of a person and society in a particular period of time.

Introduction to Part II

It is our capacity to act truly freely that makes it possible for us to be morally responsible for our actions. It is what sets us apart from all other living creatures we have encountered so far in the universe and enables us to be autonomous, self-governing through practical reason. In turn, understanding Kant’s conception of freedom requires us to pay close attention to his distinction between internal freedom (virtue or first-personal ethics) and external freedom (right or justice). It is this complex idea of human freedom that informs all Kant’s practical works, regardless of whether the work in question focuses on ethics (virtue), religion, politics, right (justice), history, education, or anthropology—just as it centrally informs the structure of and theory presented in this book. ...

Potential

This chapter proposes a new paradigm for understanding children, combining ancient and modern ideas about potential. Aristotle developed a complex idea of action and potential which can be aligned with his other comments about children. Extending this argument, we can see that modern theory linked to quantum mechanics suggests a mechanism by which the silent, passive child figures of tragedy have a paradoxically significant role in drama. Children are framed in temporal and socio-historical settings. Then the theatrical and philosophical issues are considered. The chapter concludes by examining imagery used in tragedy, and suggests that analogies from quantum physics may be useful to explain the peculiar strength of child roles. A parallel is drawn with ancient theatrical ghosts.

The Organizing Power of Harmony in the Chinese Tradition of Thought

Early and later Confucians, known in Chinese as the “ruists” school of ancient origins, perceived the idea of “harmony” as a fundamental concept that lies at the basis of self-cultivation, society and governance. In modern times this idea still plays in one or another form a dominant note in Chinese politics and social life. The article attempts to search for causes of the significance of “harmony” by focusing on analyzing two pivotal Confucian texts compiled in the Han dynasty, namely, Records of Music [Yue ji 樂記] and Divination of Music [Yue wei 樂緯]. The analysis shows that ruists belonging to Zhou dynasty’s imperial class of music officials, gradually developed the aesthetics of music into a complex idea of "harmony" that contains the highest aesthetical way—“Dao”—which guides both the whole universe as well as the evolution of human society.