Dialectics Of Self Research Articles

“Imagine, maths is used anywhere, and we don’t get to know this”—upper secondary students and the relevance of advanced mathematics

People are more motivated to put effort into learning when they know they will be able to put the learnt content to use. These relevance perceptions play a motivating role in the learning of mathematics, a subject renowned for its abstraction, hard examinations, and usefulness in many fields in society (research, industries, etc.). In this article, we describe a study on upper secondary students in an advanced mathematics course and their perception of the relevance of mathematics in future professions, in particular regarding two concepts in their curriculum (logarithms, trigonometry). We defined relevance as a connection between an object (relevance of what?), a subject (relevant for whom?), an asserter (relevant according to whom?), and a purpose (relevant to what end?). The aim of the study was to know (1) what relevance perceptions students held regarding the advanced abstract mathematical concepts, and (2) how students can develop these considering that students do not yet know exactly what future is ahead of them. We interviewed pairs of students (n = 14, 17–19 years old) in two parts. The first part of the interview revealed that students learned mathematics within a traditional school culture that emphasized practice-and-drill of pure mathematics and that did not in any way inform students about the use of mathematics in research and workplaces. After exposing students to authentic applications of logarithms and trigonometry, the second part of the interview showed the power of imagination when it connected students to future professions for which mathematics was relevant. Instrumental in effectively prompting students’ imagination were visualizations showing applications of the mathematical concepts within workplace contexts. Drawing on Leont’ev’s version of Activity Theory, we theorize students’ assertions of the relevance of mathematics through the dialectics of self and collective (relating one’s own goals and more general motives), the dialectics of use-value and exchange-value (needing mathematics for later life or for examinations), and the dialectics of mathematization and de-mathematization (while mathematics is used in many workplaces, it is hidden in instruments).

Blackout Autotheory

This Offering uses Walter Benjamin’s “Theses on the Philosophy of History” to reflect on the author’s history of blackout drinking. Situating the author’s approach as an experiment in autotheory, the author explains how his sense of selfhood and time lost to addiction shift when thought alongside Benjamin’s idea that history reopens in times of revolution. The author’s unconventional reading of Benjamin raises the question of whether time lost to alcoholic blackouts may be redeemed in the moment of quitting. The article contributes to the literature on addiction narratives by integrating personal storytelling and theoretical analysis of identity, ethics, crisis, and time. More broadly, the article makes a methodological contribution to experimental writing in critical cultural studies that strives to embody the dialectic of self and social.

The <i>Otherness</i> and Structural Racism

The political philosophy of “otherness” implies the dialectic of self and intersubjectivity, which refers to marginalization of the opposite of self, us, and the “same”. A failed society is a dysfunctional organization of broken institutions that breed extremist ideologies of racism, discrimination, carnage, and terror. This presentation unravels the structure of evil that thwarts freedom and justice. Structural barriers are embedded in conventional constitutionalism and “Poverty of Culture”, inclusive of archaic beliefs and practices.

Review: Digital Black Feminism, by Catherine Knight Steele

Review: <i>Digital Black Feminism</i>, by Catherine Knight Steele

‘Turning One Sort of Poetry into Another’: Medbh McGuckian’s Captain Lavender and the Surface Reader

This essay assesses the cultural importance of Medbh McGuckian’s fifth collection of poems, Captain Lavender from 1994, and argues that it is a pivotal collection in McGuckian’s overall achievement marked by a decisive shift in her themes and technique. The essay places the work in the context of the cultural politics of Northern Ireland at the time, focuses closely on the varied contemporary critical response her work received, and explores the degree to which (what has been termed) the ‘surface reading’ model of literary analysis enables some of McGuckian’s poetic preoccupations to be viewed in sharper focus. As a result the essay argues that ultimately the significance of the collection lies not in its turn to an idea of ‘the political’ as an overt subject for poetry (as has been previously argued), but the manner in which this shift enabled a deeper apprehension of the dialectic of self and other and the creative ways in which this could be visualised.&#x0D; &#x0D; Keywords: Medbh McGuckian, Captain Lavender, surface reading, symptomatic reading, Northern Irish poetry, Northern Irish cultural politics

When the Black lives that matter are not our own: digital Black feminism and a dialectic of self and community

ABSTRACT Black women and Black feminist scholars have always pointed out the hypocrisy of advocating for civil rights and freedoms that do not extend to them. However, with the rise of digital culture and tools as the primary space and mechanism whereby Black feminists crafted arguments, a new urgency has emerged within Black feminist writing online, advocating for a dialectic of self and community interests. Black feminist writers have created a new rhetorical principle central to the #BlackLiveMatter movement, which began in the blogosphere with longform writing and enclaved communities. Before the hashtag or activism on Twitter or Instagram, the blogosphere provided a space for Black women to craft new arguments that centralized Black cis and trans women in the fight for justice. Black feminist writers insist that caring for themselves is integral to Black feminist praxis and social justice. Retracing this work from the blogosphere to social media reminds us of the importance of centralizing Black women in our discussion of digital culture and activism and the lessons this may provide in crafting a more just future.

RobinWilsonMeeting the Challenge of Diversity in EuropeCheltenham, UK and Northampton, Massachusetts: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018. 240 p. $120.00 (hardcover)

This book is a wide-ranging effort to engage national, ethnic, and religious diversity in Europe. The author is polyvalent: academic, journalist, experienced player in the Northern Ireland reconciliation process, and senior consultant to the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe (CoE). The book commences with a call for a post-normal, non-positivist approach to diversity. The author is to be complimented on the rich fabric he weaves from economics, psychology, political and moral philosophy, neuroscience, etc.; all brought to bear on the dialectic of Self and Other. Where a modernist would pay more attention to objective interests than subjective perceptions, Wilson privileges the latter, to which he credibly attributes the rise of right-wing nationalist populism. Althusser's concept of interpellation brought in to good effect; a rare tribute from the mainstream to that unhappy philosopher. Chapter 1 sets the stage by describing the 2015 refugee crisis. This is at some risk of diverting the reader, since that was a one-off catastrophe. Additionally, Europe's long-term struggle is to deal with the Sisyphean rock of immigration, not refugee crises. The fundamental underlying demographic and economic forces driving European diversity deserved more attention, but that is not the author's strong suit. Chapter 2 perceptively analyzes the failure of the two traditional European approaches to diversity, assimilationism and multiculturalism. The first is static and rigid, inclining to cultural arrogance. The second leads to a cacophony of legitimacy claims and ultimately a sort of Hobbesian intolerance of all against all. In the place of these failed models, Wilson calls for “interculturalism” across the diversity board; cosmopolitanism minus rootlessness plus loyalty / solidarity. That, this critic comments, is nice work if you can get it; to which the author replies, with evidence-based argument, that you can get it if you try. Chapters 3 and 4 examine the “morbid symptoms” (Gramsci there) of the two failed models; symptoms that present so clearly that they need not detain the reader of this short review. In Chapter 5, the author goes off on a bit of a frolic of his own; grounding these failures in rotten European governance: Brussels’ kowtowing, against all advice since Bagehot, to the German compulsion to inject morality into the management of financial crises. The chapter, which could well stand alone, is the strongest in the volume, even if there is much in it with which this reader disagreed. It is easy, from Strasbourg, to pummel German ordo-liberal orthodoxy; it is more difficult to tackle Greece, Spain, and Italy for having borrowed at German rates to keep unsustainable social protection systems and petrified labor markets alive on the European Union (EU) respirator. The latter parts turn to the role of the CoE. Keeper of the flame of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and host to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) that adjudicates it, the 47-member state CoE—which has nothing to do with the EU—implements a triangle of standard setting, member compliance monitoring, and cooperation; that is, provision of donor-financed advice and projects to help its members address mutually identified shortcomings. From its origins in promoting core Enlightenment values, such as the right to life, right to a fair trial, freedom from torture, freedom of expression, etc., the CoE has broadened its sphere, in part out of conviction and in part out of financial incentive—intolerance, gender equality, football hooliganism, prescription drug counterfeiting, organ trafficking, etc. Promoting intercultural paths to social harmony was in line with this move to extensive margin, and Wilson played a major role in bringing this theme to Strasbourg, leading along the way a cooperation project on intercultural cities. Having trod the corridors of the CoE a bit himself, this reader was interested in this part of the story, but many readers of this review likely will not be. What goes before, though, is well worth reading by all interested in European [mis-] management of diversity. Bibliography; index.

Surveillance, Bureaucracy, and the Politics of Anonymity in Democratic Kampuchea

Between 1975 and 1979 upwards of two million men, women, and children died from exposure, exhaustion, disease, starvation, and murder under the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK). Pervasive to the widespread forms of structural and physical violence was a complex security apparatus. In this paper, my direct concern lies not in the legalities of surveillance and control but instead with the violence that emanates from the material practices of bureaucratic surveillance and the politics of anonymity. Drawing on the organizational structure and activities of the CPK I critically interrogate the dialectics of anonymity that preconfigured the Cambodian genocide. More precisely, I call attention to the dialectics of self- and state-anonymity, of the violent contradictions of men, women, and children who wanted to remain unknown yet became known and a governmental structure that drew power from its being simultaneously known but unknown. In so doing, I draw on several fields of study, including insights from the literature on surveillance and space; the scholarly study of bureaucracies; and studies on the geopolitics of anonymity. In so doing I demonstrate the salience of a political economic perspective for the study of bureaucratic state surveillance.

Donna Przybylowicz, Desire and Repression: The Dialectic of Self and Other in he Late Works of Henry James, University of Alabama Press, 1986, 358pp

Donna Przybylowicz, Desire and Repression: The Dialectic of Self and Other in he Late Works of Henry James, University of Alabama Press, 1986, 358pp

Femininities in teaching: dialectic of self and others

Purpose Purpose – The present study based on grounded theory explores the gender identity development of 40 Iranian female EFL teachers teaching at Iranian universities to examine how these women’s gender identity as part of their broader personal identity is developing through actions and inter-actions resulting from their job. Design/methodology/approach Design/methodology/approach–A grounded theory study including theoretical sampling and constant comparison was conducted to address our main research questions. Data were gathered through online focus group interviews, online, asynchronous, in-depth interviews, and reflective memos. Collected data were analyzed through open, axial, and selective coding techniques. Findings Findings – The results of the analysis of data led to the emergence of the final core theme of dialectic of self and others. Participants were in constant conflict of being a true woman, a woman behind the mask of a man, and a human wearing no gender. Originality/value Originality/value –The paper provides a new portrait of gender identity development in line with Wenger’s (1998) communities of practice demonstrating multidimensionality and complexity of femininities. Such a study can shed light on challenges, experiences, and expectations of women working outside the home.

The ontology of the “in-between” and the genetic legacy in psychology

A true psychology of language and self requires a radically dialogical ontology that goes beyond the dialectics of self and other and the logic of me–other exchange. Bertau’s notion of the in-between and Lipari’s notion of interlistening are highly suggestive of such a dialogical ontology. This article attempts to connect those notions to a history of genetic thought going back to Goethe’s Lebensphilosophie. Following the implications of this tradition leads to a different interpretation of Vygotsky’s work on thinking and concept formation than the one offered by Larraín and Haye. The article concludes by evoking Merleau-Ponty in further support of an ontology of the in-between that reveals expression both in its generativity and in its depth. With an allusion to Karsten, genuine depth can be seen as expressed precisely through a refraction of the self as expression and the self as expressed.

Narrative Id/entity in Arun Joshi’s The Strange Case of Billy Biswas

Abstract Poststructuralist theory interrogates systems of thought and discursive regimes of knowledge in order to locate the underlying historical assumptions that shape and inform human subjectivity. Nowhere is this epistemological excavation more complex than in representations of the postcolonial self. Arun Joshi’s The Strange Case of Billy Biswas can be read as a representation of the hybrid self, one produced by transcultural processes of colonisation. Yet, if we read the novel through Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutic phenomenology, we find that Joshi’s narrative representation of self is not confined to the postcolonial dialectic of self and other. For Ricoeur, self and other than self reside in a circle of sameness-identity; it is constitutive of selfhood. While critical work on Joshi’s novel has distinguished between the narrator, Romi, and the protagonist as two mutually exclusive entities, the primary focus being the existential experience of Billy, this paper suggests that the narrator himself is intimately implicated in this experience. Indeed, they can be read as two parts of a whole being, a ‘double consciousness’ that inhabits the dialectic self and its other. Ultimately, this reading will attempt to access an understanding of the hierarchy of significations that inform our hermeneutic experience of narrative self-identity.

The Wandering Signifier: Rhetoric of Jewishness in the Latin American Imaginary (review)

The Wandering Signifier: Rhetoric of Jewishness in the Latin American Imaginary, by Erin Graff Zivin. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008. 222 pp. $21.95. Erin Graff Zivin's Tfce Wandering Signifier: Rhetoric of Jewishness in the Latin American Imaginary explores representations of Jewish presence in the region in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Latin American literature. The book does not present itself as a study of Jewish experience and identity, but is instead an investigation of how literary representations of "Jewishness" bear witness to conflicts that accompany the historical transformation of Latin American societies during the previous two centuries. The key distinction between representations authored by Jewish writers on the one hand, and literary portraits of "Jewishness" by authors who do not necessarily meet any definition of Jewishness (and who in some cases apparently had very limited first-hand experience of "real Jews"), establishes a productive tension. Graff Zivin acknowledges that cultural representations of "Jewishness" have frequently coincided with - at times helping to conceal - real experiences of violence and discrimination against Jewish communities. At the same rime, she insists on the distinction between "Jewish" and "Jewishness" in order to underscore the crucial role played by representation (and thus fabrication, distortion, and figuration) in the unfolding of "real experience." "Jewishness" describes a rhetorical function of naming "differences" that have not been fully assimilated into dominant national and regional narratives of belonging in Latin America. Graff Zivin argues that these literary representations have the potential to secure prevailing hegemonic configurations (by providing negative examples of what the nation must overcome or repress) or to destabilize these operations (by preserving or reintroducing the thought of a remainder that has yet to be assimilated into dialectics of self and other, familiar and stranger, and so on). The Wandering Signifier contains an introduction, three central chapters and a conclusion. Following the initial chapter, which clarifies the concept of "Jewishness," the central chapters are organized around three concepts associated with popular views of Judaism. The first concept is diagnosis, or "Jewishness" as constructed by nineteenth-century medico -scientific (positivist and social Darwinist) discourse. In its most extreme manifestation, "Jewishness" is equated with a biopolitical "pathology" that infects the nation while threatening to undermine key philosophical, political, and cultural distinctions between inside and outside, friend and enemy, citizen and foreigner. Graff Zivin examines the association of Jewish life with social decadence and biological disease in canonical and lesser known nineteenth-century Latin American novels by Jorge Isaacs (Maria, 1867), Julian Martel (La boba, 1891), Ruben Dario (Los raros, 1896), Jose Ingenieros (Al margen de la ciencia, 1908) and Jose Asuncion Silva (De sobremesa, 1925). The chapter concludes with two contemporary Hispanic Jewish women writers, Luisa Futoranksy (De pe apa, 1986) and Margo Glantz ("Zapatos," 1991), who submit this tradition to an active re-reading by proposing new, less derisive juxtapositions of Jewishness with disease and deformity, while also deviating from traditional ways of affirmingjewish belonging. The second concept, transaction, exploits popular associations of Jewishness with money and prostitution. Graff Zivin reminds us that in medieval Europe it was Jews who were relegated to the profession of money-lending while also being inflicted with the social stigmas associated with this vocation (the Jew as greedy, as hoarder, as conspiratorial manipulator of national and international finance). As literary topoi, however, both money lending and prostitution open up new spaces in nienteenth- and twentieth-century novels for reflecting on social interaction as perhaps the two forms of modern sociality par excellence: sex and commodity exchange. …

Deconstructing Identity in Postcolonial Fiction

With the destabilization of political and cultural boundaries between peoples and nations, the concept of identity, with its implications in the dialectics of self and other, becomes a philosophical challenge in a globalised cosmopolitan world. The challenge resides in the fact that in such a postmodern situation where identity is viewed as shapeless, shifting and moving beyond the fixity of Manichean thought, a process of questioning is enacted to interrogate identity in its past, present and future implications. This paper will attempt to look at the ways in which some postcolonial novels set out to deconstruct the concept of identity by constructing ambivalent texts, blurring the borders between self and other, laying the foundations for hybridity where otherness reigns as a process of signification which rests on interpretation.

“Informationen für das tägliche überleben”: the Influence of Charles Bukowski on the poetry of Jörg Fauser

In this article, I seek to give an impression of Charles Bukowski’s immense popularity in West Germany and of how his writing and the myths surrounding his life appealed to a wave of West German poets in the 1970s. I show that he had a particularly strong influence on the work of Jorg Fauser. While many left-wing poets were attracted by Bukowski’s demythologisation of the figure of the poet; his relaxed, conversational style; the dialectic of self and society found in his poems; and the potentially political quality of a naive narrator, virtually none of them mimicked Bukowski’s male chauvinistic posturing. By contrast, Fauser, in Die Harry Gelb Story (1973), drew on precisely this male chauvinism, obscenity and coarseness in order to offer an alternative to what he saw as the well-meaning, overly optimistic literature predominating in West Germany. However, it was not until Trotzki, Goethe und das Gluck (1979) that Fauser found a voice truly akin to Bukowski’s which allowed him to express a new sobriety after years of heroin addiction.

Other‐Centered Behavior and The Dialectics of Self and Other

The social sciences in general and consumer research in particular have been detrimentally hampered by the presumption of self‐interest as an exclusive foundation of human behavior. As a result, conduct that fails to conform to the self‐interest paradigm has often been ignored, or worse, grossly twisted to fit the dominant categorizations. This article attempts to revisit the self‐interest assumption and renegotiate the subsequent interpretations of other‐centered behavior. An open dialogue concerning these pressing issues involves investigating the fundamental conceptions of self, other, and identity. Such a discussion enables a critical review of existing consumer research of other‐centered behavior and invites new lines of consumer research. More important, it compels one to openly consider the place of self/other relationship in contemporary consumer culture(s).

Sameness and Selfhood in Agota Kristof's The Notebook

Sameness and Selfhood in Agota Kristof's The Notebook Amit Marcus The term "narrative identity" or, in its more conservative version, "narrative unity,"1 suggests that the structure of a narrative or a story is homologous to that of human identity. The connections between narrative and identity, emphasized by scholars such as Alasdair Maclntyre (1984) and Paul Ricoeur (1992), are based on elements that constitute both phenomena, such as temporality, events, characters, and perhaps even authorship.2 Yet these connections are also based on a more specific affinity, which Ricoeur has called "discordant concordance,"3 a unity created by the combination of heterogeneous elements. Both narrative and self-identity are formed and developed as a result of a constant vacillation between sameness (idem) and selfhood (ipse). Sameness implies stasis, namely permanence in time, whereas selfhood implies dynamics and variability in the course of time, Ipie-identity (or selfhood), Ricoeur contends, "involves a dialectic complementary to that of selfhood and sameness, namely the dialectic of self and the other than self' (1992: 3). Some degree of sameness is indispensable to any kind of identity, whether narrative or other, such as the identity of an object. On the [End Page 79] one hand, a mathematical or idealized conception of identity implies complete stasis. This conception of identity is the foundation of Parmenides' belief that being is one, unified, and identical to itself, and that therefore neither movement nor change exist. Thus changes in the course of time are not a necessary condition for every kind of identity. On the other hand, selfhood implies more than "the spatio-temporal continuity of the object" (Parfit 203). According to Derek Parfit, personal identity is based on psychological connectedness, the holding of particular direct psychological connections between subject X today and the same-but-other subject Y yesterday (206). Two examples of psychological connectedness given by Parfit are "direct memory connections" and "the connections which hold between an intention and the later act in which this intention is carried out" (205). It follows that the annihilation of selfhood jeopardizes not identity in general but merely personal identity, further specified by Ricoeur and MacIntyre as narrative identity. Both MacIntyre and Ricoeur believe that it is not order but, on the contrary, fragmentation that is imposed on human action, and that human intelligibility depends on an analysis which shows how separate actions are connected to each other.4 Both point out the susceptibility of narrative identity to diffusion and dissolution if selfhood takes over sameness or, in other words, if the discordant features of narrative and self-identity overpower the concordant features. And both argue that this dissolution, if uncritically accepted, is hazardous to human culture and morality. In what follows, I shall argue that the theoretical discussions of narrative identity ignore the threat posed by a radical shift to the pole of sameness, stasis, and stagnation. Similarly, most contemporary fictional works "lend themselves to postmodern aesthetics and politics" concerning the undermining of the autonomous subject, "the fostering of multiplicity, [and] the interrogation and dissolution of certainty" (Schofield 2003). In opposition to these tendencies, though without underestimating their value, I shall explore the possibility of sameness taking over selfhood in the constitution of self-identity and narrative. I shall briefly examine some techniques by which such narrative identity is formed, and deal with some of its implications for both self and [End Page 80] narrative. The novel chosen for this purpose is Agota Kristof's The Notebook(Le Grand Cahier, 1986). Before discussing the novel, however, I wish to clarify the general cultural-historical factor and the specific literary factor which cause the asymmetry between the two facets of identity. The general cultural factor is reflected in MacIntyre's and Ricoeur's reliance on the concepts of "narrative unity" and "narrative identity" as a reaction to extreme doubts about human agency and the foundations of ethics. MacIntyre, and to some extent Ricoeur, believe that modern culture has lost its way because it has unwisely succumbed to theoretical trends that valorize relativism, transience, and fragmentation, or, in other words, because it has radicalized selfhood at the expense of sameness. Referring to Robert Musil's The Man without Qualities as...

A Critique of Neo-Left Ontology

A Critique of Neo-Left Ontology Carsten Strathausen Abstract This essay investigates why “ontology” has become an increasingly important topic for a number of contemporary political philosophers. It is divided into two parts, the first of which contrasts what it calls “neo-left” thinkers with more traditionally minded Marxists (such as Theodor Adorno and Fredric Jameson), focusing in particular on their different understanding of the meaning of “ontology.” The second part provides a comparative commentary on Ernesto Laclau, Slavoj Zizek, Alain Badiou, Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, as well on Giorgio Agamben, in order to analyze their use of and reference to “ontology” as a crucial concept for much leftist political discourse today. Here the focus lies on three interrelated categories: “space,” “political acts,” and “subject(ivity).” The ontological neo-left faces two basic options: either to adopt a discursive ontology structured around the void (Derrida, Laclau, Mouffe, Badiou, Zizek) or a biopolitical ontology that embraces the productivity of life (Foucault, Deleuze, Agamben, Hardt and Negri). The term “ontology” occupies an increasingly prominent place in current politico-philosophical discourse. “Political philosophy forces us to enter the terrain of ontology,” declare Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (Empire (354). Ernesto Laclau recently said that he has “concentrated on the ontological dimension of social theory.” According to Laclau, his work should be judged at “the theoretical and philosophical level” (“A Reply” 321) because it “requires a new ontology” (304). Such investment in ontology is important in much recent self-avowedly leftist political theory. Giorgio Agamben’s critique of the state of exception and of today’s concentration camps is intimately tied to his ontological reflections regarding our potential existence beyond sovereign power: “Until a new and coherent ontology of potentiality” has been found, he argues, “a political theory freed from the aporias of sovereignty remains unthinkable” (Homo Sacer 44). Likewise, Alain Badiou’s political writings are intertwined with his mathematical ontology of set-theory, and Slavoj Zizek’s exhortation to return to the legacy of Lenin in order to combat global capitalism remains inseparable from his ontological determination of capital as the real. An early call to re-invent a “first philosophy” was Jean-Luc Nancy’s seminal essay “Being Singular Plural,” first published in 1996. Here, Nancy says that we must think “an ontology of being-with-one-another” (53) as the basis for a new communal politics beyond sovereignty and domination: “there is no difference between the ethical and the ontological” (99), he declares, because “only ontology, in fact, may be ethical in a consistent manner” (21). In his view, only a radical recommencement of philosophical thought can move political theory beyond its current impasse caused by the liberal defense of the status quo. In particular, Nancy distinguishes his new ontology of “being-in-common” both from Heideggerianism and from Marxism. Heidegger, so Nancy, did not take his own analysis of “Mitsein” far enough, but instead remains committed to a thinking in hierarchies: “The analytic of Mitsein that appears within the existential analytic remains nothing more than a sketch; that is, even though Mitsein is coessential with Dasein, it remains in a subordinate position” (93). Against Marxism, Nancy’s ontology insists on dissolving the the various oppositions (between essence and appearance, base and superstructure) that sustain a dialectical (i.e. Hegelian) mode of critique: “Both the theory and the practice of critique demonstrate that, from now on, critique absolutely needs to rest on some principle other than that of the ontology of the Other and the Same: it needs an ontology of being-with-one-another” (53). In this essay, I use Nancy’s reflections as a starting point for examining the reasons for and the significance of the renewed interest in a “new ontology,” particularly among certain leftist political thinkers. I argue that ontology had become a shunned concept in traditional leftist discourse because it was tainted by Heidegger and his involvement in German fascism. Moreover, I demonstrate that Jameson’s recent attempt to revive ontology as a crucial concept for Marxist theory inevitably leads him back to embrace the same old (Hegelian) dialectics of self and other, form and content—that is, precisely the kind of dualist thinking that...

This Text Which Is Not One: Dialectics of Self and Culture in Experimental Autoethnography

This Text Which Is Not One is an experiment in textual fragmentation. It proposes a method for writing culture and identity in ways that might encourage individuals to embrace theoretical contestation and interpretive difference at the same time that it helps them to recuperate identity as fundamental to critical discourses and modes of analysis aligned with cultural studies. The A. aims to disrupt the presentation and consumption of the grand narrative that scholarly articles and ethnographies aspire to be, while also enacting her article's theoretical underpinnings through text play and multivocality. Her piece relates specifically to textual fragmentation within the context of experimental autoethnography and postmodern theories of multiple subjectivities, but the applicability of such textual fragmentation to more traditional ethnographic projects should be readily apparent.

The Dialectics of Self and Community in Toni Morrison and Thomas Pynchon

The Dialectics of Self and Community in Toni Morrison and Thomas Pynchon