Bridging the Knowledge Gap in Collaborative Research—in Dialogues We Trust

By building upon the prior work exploring the nature of practicing and knowing in collaborative research (CR), this article argues that focusing on how trust evolves in collaborative dialogue could enhance the learning potential in CR projects. Drawing from 42 workshops within a CR project, we analyze how dialogue and learning practices develop trust. We use the dialogical framework developed by Walton and Krabbe (1995) to identify and classify 107 dialogues. From our data, we identify three distinct dialogical patterns (educating, inquiring and practicing). These three dialogical patterns are related to four learning practices that are conceptualized as knowledge sharing, knowledge gapping, knowledge bettering and knowledge speculating. Combined, these dialogical patterns and learning practices develop collaborative trust in CR projects. We propose that these results represent an emerging conceptual language that addresses the development of trust in managing CR projects. This conceptual language can both improve managerial practice in the CR context and inspire future theory building.

Hegel on What Cannot Be Said: an Interpretation of the Ineffable in the Phenomenology's ‘Sense-Certainty’

It is often claimed that Hegel's philosophy cannot accept that something would remain beyond the grasp of conceptual language, and that his thought therefore systematically represses the possibility that something cannot be said. By analysing Hegel's account of the ineffable in the ‘Sense-Certainty’ chapter of the Phenomenology of Spirit, this article argues that Hegel does not repress, but firmly confronts the problem of what cannot be said. With the help of Giorgio Agamben's linguistic interpretation, it is shown that Hegel's conception of the ineffable must be understood from the perspective of his dialectical understanding of language. What appears to be ineffable is only the constitutive result of the dialectical negation that conceptual discourse enacts. Consequently, the ineffable in Hegel's thought cannot be said to remain external to and independent from conceptual language.

Фобия исламофобии как основа «критических мусульманских исследований». Как идеология превратилась в методологию изучения исламских сообществ на Западе

This article aims to deconstruct the research field of “critical Muslim studies” that is emerging within Western academic discourse. It seeks to expose the postcolonial injustices that Muslims are subjected to in the allocation of symbolic resources. Islamophobia is almost the dominant subject of research here, and the line between political activism related to the struggle for minority rights and academic knowledge becomes completely permeable. This article describes the epistemological foundations of critical Muslim studies and its conceptual language, developed by its proponents within the framework of postcolonial theory, related to the notions of racialization, Orientalization (and self-Orientalization), Eurocentrism and Westernization. The institutionalization of this trend is examined through selected European and American examples. Examination of the volume Islamophobia in Muslim Majority Countries demonstrates how left-liberal ideology, included in the production of academic knowledge, turns into a fully-fledged methodology that is desirable to a wide range of researchers.

The poetics of labour, birth, and bodies

This commentary responds to Bagelman and Gitome’s article, ‘Birthing Across Borders: “Contracting” Reproductive Geographies’, in the context of the growing attention paid to an increasingly diverse set of work on ‘reproductive geographies’. Their call for more South-South stories of birth, and of birth in liminal places, resonates with the growing body of literature exploring dimensions of abortion, fertility, reproductive technology, childbirth, and miscarriage by geographers. Their development of the concept of ‘contraction’ from the collection of accounts of birth in the Dadaab camp illustrates the generative potential of theorising with and from the bodily sensations of labour. The commentary concludes with a discussion of the concept of ‘dilation’ by political theorist Jane Bennett, who in seeking a new conceptual language for affective encounter also draws on the affirmative potential of poetic expression.

Educational Literature in Russia of the 17th–18th Centuries as a Source for the History of Moral Concepts

The article analyses moral concepts in the educational literature and didactic manuals, which were popular in Russia in the seventeenth – eighteenth centuries. The main sources for the research are the following texts: ‘The Citizenship of Children’s Habits’ (translation of ‘De civilitate morum puerilium’ by Erasmus of Rotterdam), ‘The Honest Mirror of Youth’, ‘Iphika and Hieropolitic’, ‘Arithmetic’ by Leontiy Magnitsky, a translation of ‘Orbis sensu­alium pictus’ by John Amos Comenius, and ‘Didactic Philosophy’ by F.X. Baumeister. The chronological frames of the research are defined as a period of and active ‘appropria­tion’ of moral codes of the European good manners, and the shaping of the ethical language allowing to build both the outer forms of the moral life of the society, and its ethical reflec­tion. Taking into account the educational literature of that period, we may not only reveal its moral concepts, but also outline the general volume of new terms and their definitions. Moral concepts captured the rules of behaviour, moral characteristics of persons, the ethical significance of their labour, education, and upbringing. Studying the educational literature allows us to understand the role of the introduction of basic grammar, arithmetic, and other disciplines in the shaping of the new moral world in its integrity and diversity, to trace the history of formation of moral terms and concepts from didactic ethical compositions to the first manuals of the late eighteenth century, where ethic was presented as a specific field of philosophy. Thus, studying such various sources in the context of the ethic analyzes allows us to do a complex research of the basics of theoretical philosophical ethic in Russia, as well as the commonplace moral language of the Russian society of the epoch of Enlightenment. Largely thanks to these manuals, the categorical and conceptual language of morality was formed in Russian culture.

Ways of transforming the metaphysical thinkingin the “conceptless language” of the late M. Heidegger

The article provides an analysis of the concept of “conceptless language” in the works of the late Martin Heidegger. The formation of a “conceptless language” is one of the most mysterious phenomena in the philosophy of the thinker. The specific structure of this lan­guage is one of the main criticisms of the later works of the philosopher and the opposition of Heidegger as the author of “Sein und Zeit” to Heidegger of the period “Beiträge zur Philosophie. Vom Ereignis”. The article explains the specific structure of the “concept-free language”, the reasons for its creation and its role in the late Heidegger philosophy. An at­tempt is made to reveal the hidden logic of a “conceptless language” and the principles by which it is guided. The search for the logic of a “conceptless language” is carried out through consideration of some of its aspects: a way of expressing thoughts, features of the style of argumentation, and a method of forming terms. An analysis of these aspects shows how Heidegger seeks to overcome the problem of the so-called “refusal” (Versagen) of the language that arose after writing “Sein und Zeit”. In search of a language correspond­ing to the transition to a different beginning, the principles of the late Heidegger hermeneutic methodology are formed: the “principle of intentional incomprehensibility” of terms, “default logic”, clarification of terms through their “internal form”, method of “thoughtful use of language” (besinnliche Sprachgebrauch). The analysis leads to the con­clusion that the profound change in thinking, which the late Heidegger sought on the way to another beginning, is impossible without the transformation of the language. Due to the fact that the existing “metaphysical” thinking is directly related to the conceptual lan­guage, a “non-conceptual language” opens the way for alternative thinking.

Intercultural Philosophy: An Experience of Thematization. (Book Review: Stepanyants, M.T. (2020) Mezhkul’turnaya Filosofiya: Istoki, Metodologiya, Problematika, Perspektivy [Intercultural Philosophy: Sources, Methodology, Problems, Prospects]. Moscow: Nauka – Vostochnaya Literatura. 183 p.)

In the reviewed book, intercultural philosophy is considered as a development of comparative studies. Marietta Stepanyants shows that, in the framework of comparative studies, stable stereotypes of perceiving the cultures of the West and the East have developed. Intercultural philosophy as an alternative to Westcentrism proceeds from the recognition of the equality of cultural and philosophical traditions and of the possibility to convert categories into another conceptual language. Intercultural philosophy embodies the protest potential of modern culture and the origins of a new civilization project.