Epistemological Rupture Research Articles

À la confluence du théâtre et de la performance : un entre-deux à réexplorer en temps de crise

The research workshop on new performative forms led by Patrice Pavis in November 2019 and organized by the Institute of Theatrical and Multimedia Research of the University of Arts in Târgu-Mureș gave rise to a number of theoretical questionings. The objective was to offer the participants/actors an opportunity for systematized reflections taking as object this type of artistic forms and practices. The sponsorship of this eminent researcher in the performing arts, a specialist in the question of staging and its analysis, brought rigor and methodology to the whole thanks to the use of his reading grids and other conceptual tools. If certain epistemological ruptures and proposed illuminations could be seized on the moment in all clarity, it is afterwards that influences on my own field of research appeared and unquestionably an enrichment in the apprehension of the complexity of the phenomenon could emerge.

Introduction to the Special Issue

Introduction to the Special Issue Bennett Yu-Hsiang Fu (bio) 2020 saw the devastating Covid-19 pandemic that has been disrupting human lives and global societies. This crisis has, on the one hand, redefined the ontological significance of material things (e.g., medical devices) and immaterial things (e.g., online infrastructure)—the categorical boundaries between national borders and securities—and on the other, challenged our epistemology of viruses and their impacts on humanity in the new millennium—what we know and do not know about viruses to humans or vice versa. Right after the first outbreaks in 2020, catastrophic natural disasters such as the exacerbated downstream flooding in China, large wildfires in North America, and frequent mega hurricanes and typhoons on the globe have resulted in more environmental migrants and drastic capital redistribution. These anthropogenic explanations of climatic and geological changes require us to put global histories of humanity in conversation with the species history. The rethinking about shifting paradigms responds in a time quite directly to this special issue on epistemology as border(land)s in the age of globalization. The philosophical reflections usher us to a fundamental connectedness of epistemology and borders, the former concerning the study of knowledge and its relevance to questions of truth and belief, and the latter concerning new forms of knowledge reframed and relocated in symbolic borderlands. Thus, this special issue is highly relevant to the ongoing pandemic as all the collected essays attempt to recast epistemic borders and feature the intimate relationship between Western and Eastern epistemologies and borders among discursive and disruptive categories and taxonomies. From Anzaldúa's Borderlands/La Frontera poetics (1987)1 of [End Page vii] articulating reformulations and provisional syntheses, to new technological pathways for infinite distribution across different borders (e.g., social media, online gaming), to the recent epistemological rupture in the Anthropocene, epistemology as border(land)s in the age of globalization thus provides powerful discursive and aesthetic strategies for cultural relationality and transcultural subjectivity. The five essays collected in this edition of Intertexts respond to the central inquiry of how literature and other art forms render legible these transformative processes of epistemic reproduction and pedagogic adaptation. While writing "globally" about Europe (Acadia), Ireland (Hennessey), Sri Lanka (Gavin), India (Dwivedi), Nigeria (Gavin), and US (Herrera), the writers in this collection primarily elucidate the concept of borderlands as epistemology (or vice versa) in various manifestations ranging from post-Enlightenment Europe, to post-colonial Africa and Asia, and to post-racial USA. They bring up a host of such quotidian yet pivotal issues as religion (Acadia), race/ethnicity (Herrera), global market (Dwivedi), and technology (Herrera). Each writer addresses the conundrum of how the borders/borderlands of (un)translatability and (un)inscription reiterate Spivak's untranslatability as "one mode of discourse in dispute to another."2 Their interventions attempt to challenge how knowledge as truth and belief is construed and proliferated: what we know (or not), how we know (or not), who makes us know (or not). In these writers' views, epistemology as border(land)s in the age of globalization opens up ground-breaking interpretive approaches and directions. Lilith Acadia's essay "'Only your labels split me': Epistemic Privilege, Boundaries, and Pretexts of 'Religion'" centralizes religion as an epistemology that substantiates powerful borders between people. Acadia argues that religion has often served as an almost unassailable justification for violence on the basis of its epistemic privilege in political discourse from the proto-Globalization of European imperialism to contemporary neo-imperialism. In her view, the framing of religion as an epistemology strengthens the borders it creates due to a conception of epistemology as more universal, implicit, and constitutive. Drawing on historical and contemporary sources from Frederick Douglass to Barack Obama on religion as a justificatory knife creating boundaries around people, [End Page viii] places, and rights, this essay raises the taxonomical problematic of the persistent colonial mentality that still echoes European Enlightenment imperial ideology conceptualizing "religion" as a universal institution upon which to define the "civilized" one in contradistinction to a barbarian other, a division that then justifies the noblesse oblige extension of imperial borders. Michael Gavin's comparative article "Literature among the Social Sciences: Representations of Ethnic...

Conjuring Caliban's Woman: Moving beyond Cinema's Memory of Man in Praise House (1991)

AbstractJulie Dash's experimental short film, Praise House (1991), situates conjuring as both a narrative and formal device to invent new memories around Black womanhood that exceed our representation within the epistemes of Man. I view Praise House as an example of conjure-cinema with which we can evaluate how Black feminist filmmakers, primarily working in experimental film, manipulate the poetic structure and aesthetics of film to affect audiences rather than rely on representational narrative alone. Following the scholarship of Sylvia Wynter, I use Man to refer to the representational body of the Western episteme that defines value through mass accumulation. It is through Wynter's scholarship that we find the ontological emancipation from Man that is Caliban's woman, who represents discourse beyond our normative, colonial mode of feeling/knowing/being. Through an analysis of Praise House that foregrounds film's ability to generate affect via its aesthetics, this article argues that aesthetics can similarly enact the same power of conjure as found in Praise House's narrative, and as such conjures an epistemological rupture to our normative order that is Caliban's woman.

(Hi)Story in the Margins: Jose Rizal’s Footnotes to Antonio Morga's Chronicle

A milestone in the Philippines has been the facsimile of Morga’s chronicle Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas annotated by Jose Rizal in 1890. Scholars have analyzed how Rizal’s use of footnotes told a counterhistory of the Spanish conquest. His project is semantic in nature and sought to destabilize, at least momentarily, the key concepts of the Hispanic theological-political monarchy. However, I argue that his criticism not only focused on the lexicon but went further, Rizal’s use of footnotes sought to disrupt Western academic structures by appropriating them. His innovation was to do so with a colonial text in the 19th century Philippines. The footnotes of Rizal add the Filipino version, that is, two different versions engaged in visual rivalry on the same page. This paper analyzes the Rizal edition based on the materiality of the text, namely the how it operates in the format and its medium. The body of text is marginalized, whereas the story at the margins becomes visually relevant. This effort represents an epistemological rupture of the unit of the metropolitan narrative with the conversion of the Filipino from an object of study to a subject that gain agency.

Technition: When Tools Come Out of the Closet

People are ambivalently enthusiastic and anxious about how far technology can go. Therefore, understanding the neurocognitive bases of the human technical mind should be a major topic of the cognitive sciences. Surprisingly, however, scientists are not interested in this topic or address it only marginally in other mainstream domains (e.g., motor control, action observation, social cognition). In fact, this lack of interest may hinder our understanding of the necessary neurocognitive skills underlying our appetence for transforming our physical environment. Here, we develop the thesis that our technical mind originates in perhaps uniquely human neurocognitive skills, namely, technical-reasoning skills involving the area PF within the left inferior parietal lobe. This thesis creates an epistemological rupture with the state of the art that justifies the emergence of a new field in the cognitive sciences (i.e., technition) dedicated to the intelligence hidden behind tools and other forms of technologies, including constructions.

The Farabian Philosophy and Epistemological Rupture from the Hellenistic Tradition: Revisiting Ghasem Pourhassan's Narrative of the Farabian Philosophy

The Farabian Philosophy and Epistemological Rupture from the Hellenistic Tradition: Revisiting Ghasem Pourhassan's Narrative of the Farabian Philosophy

World-class as a provincial construct: Historicizing planning in Colombo and Delhi

South Asia’s bourgeoning agglomerations are argued to derive their imageries from the abstracted northern notions of the urban, partially captured by the umbrella phrase – world-class. This article unpacks the notion of world-class using planning exercises in Colombo and Delhi. I argue that world-class cannot be seen in isolation to read the violence of urbanization, but when planning is historicized, visions like world-class present themselves as a subsequent logical step. Therefore, for any radical opposition to exclusionary planning, we need to look at the possibility of an epistemological rupture in the planning discourse rather than to critique the notion of world-class.

Iconoclasm and Imagination: Gaston Bachelard\u2019s Philosophy of Technoscience

Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962) occupies a unique position in the history of European thinking. As a philosopher of science, he developed a profound interest in genres of the imagination, notably poetry and novels. While emphatically acknowledging the strength, precision and reliability of scientific knowledge compared to every-day experience, he saw literary phantasies as important supplementary sources of insight. Although he significantly influenced authors such as Lacan, Althusser, Foucault and others, while some of his key concepts (“epistemological rupture,” “epistemological obstacle,” “technoscience”) are still widely used, his oeuvre tends to be overlooked. And yet, as I will argue, Bachelard’s extended series of books opens up an intriguing perspective on contemporary science. First, I will point to a remarkable duality that runs through Bachelard’s oeuvre. His philosophy of science consists of two sub-oeuvres: a psychoanalysis of technoscience, complemented by a poetics of elementary imagination. I will point out how these two branches deal with complementary themes: technoscientific artefacts and literary fictions, two realms of human experience separated by an epistemological rupture. Whereas Bachelard’s work initially entails a panegyric in praise of scientific practice, he becomes increasingly intrigued by the imaginary and its basic images (“archetypes”), such as the Mother Earth archetype.

The Historicity of Sexuality: Knowledge of the Past in the Emergence of Modern Sexual Science

From the very moment the concept of sexuality emerged in nineteenth-century European medical and psychiatric thought, it became a topic of historicization. This historicization formed a consistent habit of thought in many of the medical and psychiatric texts that first enunciated sexuality as a distinct field of meaning. Dialogue between doctors and the first historians of sexuality informed the emergence of both sexology and of the historiography of sexuality. This dialogue suggests a need to rethink the origins of sexual historiography, situating current historians within a continuous genealogy, rather than as transcendental observers marked by epistemological rupture from earlier biological theories of sexual evolution.

Los relatos eróticos de Marosa Di Giorgio: extrañeza poética y crítica epistemológica

Propongo una lectura de los relatos eróticos de Di Giorgio, según este, el hibridismo genérico textual y sexual ampliamente reconocido por la crítica, así como la recurrencia de transformaciones y metamorfosis a impulsos de un deseo que cancela las fronteras entre lo humano, lo animal, lo vegetal y lo material, realiza una profunda crítica epistemológica a la racionalidad moderna, andro y antropocéntrica, y su forma de concebir identidad y diferencia. El eje de esta ruptura epistemológica es la desarticulación de las estructuras binarias sexo/género y Naturaleza/Cultura, que disloca la alineación de cuerpo-género-deseo y la oposición clásica bios/zoé, bases fundamentales de los órdenes políticos y simbólicos de Occidente.

From the colonialist to the “autobotanical” approach: the evolution of the subject-object relationship in ethnobotanical research

ABSTRACT This article explores the evolution of the subject-object relationship in ethnobotanical research. Discussion of the main tendencies of each time period revealed a great distance between subject and object during the beginning of ethnobotany, which decreased in subsequent phases, and only became absent in some contemporary works. Furthermore, paradigmatic transitions in ethnobotany were found to be incomplete and multiple paradigms were found to coexist simultaneously in present time, despite important epistemological ruptures. Analysis of presentations at the last Congress of the International Society of Ethnobiology revealed not only an expressive participation of traditional communities, but also a considerable amount of work based on the autobotanical approach; a recent trend that expresses a greater symmetry in the consideration of different ways of thinking, knowing and performing research in ethnobotany. Finally, this article discusses the profile of the new ethnobotanists, who often occupy spaces of mediation among different knowledge systems and social groups due to their capacity for intercultural communication, as well as their preference for action in contexts related to social and environmental justice.

The NLP4NLP Corpus (II): 50 Years of Research in Speech and Language Processing

The NLP4NLP corpus contains articles published in 34 major conferences and journals in the field of speech and natural language processing over a period of 50 years (1965-2015), comprising 65,000 documents, gathering 50,000 authors, including 325,000 references and representing approximately 270 million words. This paper presents an analysis of this corpus regarding the evolution of the research topics, with the identification of the authors who introduced them and of the publication where they were first presented, and the detection of epistemological ruptures. Linking the metadata, the paper content and the references allowed us to propose a measure of innovation for the research topics, the authors and the publications. In addition, it allowed us to study the use of language resources, in the framework of the paradigm shift between knowledge-based approaches and content-based approaches, and the reuse of articles and plagiarism between sources over time. Numerous manual corrections were necessary, which demonstrated the importance of establishing standards for uniquely identifying authors, articles, resources or publications.

Institutional Voids and Organization Studies: Towards an epistemological rupture

In this essay, we critique the usage of the term ‘institutional void’ to characterize non-Western contexts in organizational studies. We explore how ‘conceptual stretching’ of institutional voids – specifically, the theoretical and geographic expansion of the concept – has led not only to poor construct clarity, but also pejorative labelling of non-Western countries. We argue that research using this term perpetuates an ethnocentric bias by deifying market development and overlooking the richness and power of informal and non-market institutions in shaping local economic activity. We call for an ‘epistemological rupture’ to decolonize organizational scholarship in non-Western settings and facilitate contextually grounded research approaches that allow for more indigenous theorization.

La investigación responsable en los estudios de audiencia y recepción

La investigación responsable incluye, más allá de la ética en el contenido y el proceso, la implicación de múltiples actores y público, un acceso más fácil a los resultados científicos, la perspectiva de género, y la educación científica. El movimiento RRI (Responsible Research and Innovation) pretende que la investigación e innovación estén orientadas a conseguir resultados sostenibles, éticamente aceptables y socialmente deseables y que todo el proceso y las prácticas que comportan la investigación e innovación estén alineados con los valores, las necesidades y las expectativas de la sociedad. La investigación en comunicación, y específicamente, en audiencias y recepción, no se escapa de esta tendencia. En esta nueva concepción, se da un paso adelante respecto a la ética y se atribuye la responsabilidad no sólo al investigador sino que se avanza hacia el concepto de corresponsabilidad. En definitiva, con el impulso inicial de la Comisión Europea, se aboga por una investigación inclusiva y sostenible. Este artículo pretende, por un lado, plantear un breve repaso a la evolución y actualidad de los estudios de audiencia y recepción desde la perspectiva de las rupturas epistemológicas vividas y de los distintos retos a los que se enfrenta (conceptuales, metodológicos y éticos) y, por otro, entender el origen, evolución y tendencias del concepto de RRI para, finalmente, ver cómo puede aplicarse al estudio de la audiencia y recepción. El artículo tiene la vocación de convertirse en un texto que pueda ayudar a los investigadores del campo de la comunicación, y específicamente de las audiencias, a reflexionar sobre cómo poder incorporar la RRI a su trabajo.Responsible research includes, beyond ethics in the content and process, engagement of multiple actors and the public, access to scientific results, gender perspective, and scientific education. The RRI (Responsible Research and Innovation) movement aims to create a society where research and innovation practices are oriented towards achieving sustainable, ethically acceptable and socially desirable results related to the values, needs and expectations of society. Research in communication, and specifically in audiences and reception, does not escape this trend. In this new conception, a step forward with respect to ethics is taken and the responsibility is attributed not only to the researcher but also to the concept of co-responsibility. In short, with the initial impulse of the European Commission, an inclusive and sustainable research is advocated. This article intends, on the one hand, to present a brief review of the evolution and actuality of audience and reception studies from the perspective of the epistemological ruptures experienced and the different challenges it faces (conceptual, methodological and ethical) and, on the other hand, to understand the origin, evolution and trends of the concept of RRI and, finally, to see how it can be applied to the study of the audience and reception. The article has the vocation to become a text that can help researchers in this field to reflect on how to incorporate the RRI into their work.

SEXUALITY IN A CONTEXT OF SPECULATIVE POSTHUMANISM: HUMAN-POSTHUMAN RUPTURES AND DISCONNECTIONS

In this article human-posthuman ruptures and disconnections both in comprehension and in practices, as well as the possibility of epistemological contingency contemporaneously are investigated. This means that an epistemological ruptures and an ontological disconnections of sexuality both differ from one another, and also join together. Since ancient times both sensitive and sensible practices of sexuality were considered the best mode to concern to sexual care of self. It has shown that, in relation to sexuality, a correlation of epistemological discontinuity and continuity is possible. Sexuality, which is actualized with the help of both natural, vital and death, annihilative drives, fits into the context of onticology as a posthuman ontology. Being connected with the thermodynamics of infinitesimal vital parts, anonymous strange strangers, singularities, it turns out to be especially awesome. Such a mode of sexuality is not necessarily reproductive; rather, it unfolds in the fluid space of non-presence and at the same time determines this space. It emphasizes that that the cos mo‑illogical becoming of posthuman leads to negentropy or extropy as vitality. Following this position, the foucaultian conception of the care of self mirrors lacanian graphs of sexuation in a context of object-oriented ontologies in comparison with philosophies of presence. It is recognized that this is the sexuality of the productive disconnection and the pleasure cosmic dissolution. This article concludes by illustrating that the mode of sexuality of Speculative Posthumanism is contingent with the Libidinal Materialism or Vital Posthumanism in a context in which the sexuality of Wide Human Descendants (WHDs) is thought to be oriented to that which is pleasure and is differentiated.

Apie bandymą atverti juodąsias mokslo dėžes (2)

This article further develops the ideas expressed in our previous publication – On the Attempt to Unlock the Black Boxes of Science (1) – and presents a sociological experiment that aims to break the conventional routine of the research activities of both sociology and life sciences. The article consists of two parts. The first part discusses the concept of “the new scientific spirit,” elaborated by French scientist and philosopher G. Bachelard, and introduces H. White’s theory of tropes, which provides a novel interpretative framework for “the new scientific spirit.” The second part of this article describes a didactic experiment comprised of two discussion groups with PhD students working in the field of life sciences. The first discussion group attempted to realize the principles of the sociology of the social, whereas the second one attempted to break the limits of the sociology of the social and to induce an epistemological rupture in order to realize the principles of the sociology of translation in the second discussion. This article also includes the authors’ reflections regarding the formation of their own sociological habitus.

On the Attempt to Unlock the Black Boxes of Science (1)


 [only abstract in English; full article and abstract in Lithuanian]
 This study is an analysis of a sociological research about the scientific activities performed by natural scientists. It is composed of three parts: a critical overview of Bruno Latour’s theoretical writings on the Actor-Network Theory, the description of the research and reflections on the findings. The research discussed in this study was a didactical experiment consisting of focus group discussions. The aim of the experiment was to facilitate an epistemological rupture, which, in the science studies, might be interpreted as a shift from the sociology of the social to the sociology of translation or the Actor-Network Theory treating non-social objects of nature, nonhumans or things as social entities within associations and networks. The sociology students who participated in the didactical experiment were very positive about their experience regarding the epistemological rupture and its role in shaping their knowledge about sociology itself. In this issue, we publish the first part of the study and discuss the ideas of B. Latour on the sociology of transduction and science studies.

GASTON BACHELARD AND PIERRE DUHEM: EPISTEMOLOGICAL DISCONTINUITY AND CONTINUITY

This article aims to clarify the theme of continuity and epistemological discontinuity from Pierre Duhem (1861-1916) and Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962), both French thinkers. The first author has a continuum view on the development of sciences, in which the progress of scientific knowledge would occur from continuous repairs on a theoretical system that evolves gradually. Gaston Bachelard, on the other hand, defends the thesis of the epistemological rupture, according to which he thinks the evolution of the sciences through his interregnums and reorganizations. Knowledge moves through rectifications of knowledge that are updated in the light of new experiences, without a cumulative process of ideas occurring. It is intended in this work to clarify the Bachelardian view on epistemological discontinuity as opposed to Duhemian thought.
 
 Keywords: Continuity. Discontinuity. Epistemology. Duhem. Bachelard.

Venezuela en la frontera de la desobediencia inconclusa

El objetivo de este artículo, es analizar la construcción epistémica, ontológica y axiológica del proceso político de la Revolución Bolivariana en Venezuela, como proceso de transformación social declarado en transición al socialismo, permeado por constructos del orden hegemónico global, que se debate entre la ruptura radical y el reformismo de supervivencia. Se utilizan como principales autores a Boaventura de Sousa yWalter Mignolo, en el marco conceptual de la Epistemología del Sur, la desobediencia epistémica y la descolonización del saber. Se utilizó una metodología analítica, documental, basada en el análisis comparativo de documentos bibliográficos,legales y electrónicos, el recurso de la hermeneusis permitió concluir que, en Venezuela la ruptura epistemológica en el hacer queda disminuida por la incorporación a la lógica discursiva del proceso sociopolítico, de conceptos propios de la hegemonía cultural de la modernidad occidental. La viabilidad de la Revolución Bolivariana enfrenta amenazas permanentes a su sostenibilidad, no se ha logrado identidad entre la enunciación discursiva y la realidad que se transforma.El debate entre la ruptura radical y el reformismo de supervivencia, sitúa a la Revolución Bolivariana en la frontera del reformismo, sin encontrar una definición sustantiva postcapitalista.

Life-world Knowledge and Scientific Knowledge: An Epistemological Rupture

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the epistemological rupture between the life-world knowledge and the scientific knowledge. Their confrontations are essential in the teaching context.