Exercise Of Imagination Research Articles

Beauvoir and Sartre as Public Intellectuals in 2022

Beauvoir and Sartre as Public Intellectuals in 2022 William L. McBride I have been fortunate enough to be able to reflect in print at least twice, in recent years, on works by Simone de Beauvoir that, written around or shortly past the middle of the last century, reference what was then the future in interesting ways—and it should be recalled that an orientation toward the future is of central importance to the ambiguous ethic that Beauvoir developed in Pour une morale de l’ambiguïté, as it is in the Sartrean ontology which places so much emphasis on “the project.” A chapter of mine in an anthology dealing with philosophical aspects of Beauvoir’s novel, The Mandarins, concluded by speculating what those Mandarins would find surprising and what they would not if they were suddenly to reawaken in the early twenty-first century (McBride, “Conflict”). And in a more recent chapter of a volume co-edited by Nancy Bauer, A Companion to Simone de Beauvoir, in which I discuss and compare Beauvoir’s travelogues on America and China, I concluded with an implicit lament for those two worlds that she had explored so well when they were younger (McBride, “Postwar World”). Of course, the background reality to these works, as well as to many of the essays that Jean-Paul Sartre wrote during the same postwar period, was the Cold War. Especially in The Mandarins there is a strong streak of pessimism, which is to some extent in contradiction with Beauvoir’s assertion at the beginning of Pour une morale and Sartre’s in L’Existentialisme est un humanisme that, contrary to the claims of its critics on the Catholic Right, existentialism is a philosophy of hope. (It is not, I think, by chance that Beauvoir gave the name L’Espoir to the journal edited by her protagonist in The Mandarins, Henri, which [End Page 884] folded toward the end of the novel.) There was good reason to be depressed about the world scene during the late 1940s, ‘50s, and ‘60s, with the real threat of nuclear war looming large. Indeed, who of those who lived through an episode of the mid-Cold War period, the Cuban Missile Crisis—the postmortem analysis of which by Robert McNamara and other major actors confirmed my own feeling at the time, scoffed at by some—can forget that it was a near thing? By now, the Cold War in its old form is a thing of the past. So why are so many of us still not feeling very good about the world scene? If resurrection were a real possibility, what might Beauvoir and Sartre say if they were to be brought back to the world stage? And what is it that existentialism more generally, however difficult it is to define, can contribute to illuminating our situation? These are the questions I shall attempt to answer in the next few pages. This essay is a small part of what I wrote about the imaginary resurrected Mandarins reawakened in today’s Paris. True, they would be surprised by some obvious things, notably the elimination of the Soviet Bloc. Nevertheless, I wrote, “they would feel very much at home. They would hear everyone talking about American imperialism; they would hear references to the announced prospect of an endless war; and if they were to read newspaper articles about the United States they would see that creeping fascism in the form of increased police state tactics (suppression of rights, vast augmentation of surveillance procedures, a ‘criminal justice’ system that houses one-quarter of the world’s prisoners drawn from less than 5% of its population, etc.), effective control of major media outlets by right-wing forces, strong encouragement of ‘patriotic’ nationalism, and so on, were the order of the day in that country” (McBride, “Conflict” 44). So, presumably, they would still regard existentialism and “résistentialisme,” as Beau-voir’s character Anne puts it, to be appropriate, humanistic attitudes to adopt in face of the diverse threats to humanity posed by a sizable segment of humanity itself. Before proceeding further with this nostalgic exercise of my imagination, I should say something about what the two...

Migrant-led diversification and differential inclusion in arrival cities across Asia and the Pacific

The closely related processes of migration and diversification call for greater scrutiny of how contemporary arrival cities incorporate increasingly diverse groups of newcomers through practices and processes of differential inclusion. This special issue highlights arrival cities in the Asia-Pacific region, attending to how they are being transformed by the wide-ranging temporal and spatial dimensions of migrant-driven diversification. Rather than begin with how coexistence in the context of diversification ought to be, the collection of papers included here builds inter-references through contexts that are, ultimately, non-universal. In so doing, this special issue responds to recent calls by social scientists to extend our frames of reference beyond the dominant centres of knowledge production in Europe and North America in understanding the links between migration and urban diversity. The papers included here focus on arrival cities and urban places in Hong Kong, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, Australia and New Zealand as an exercise in open-ended imagination, advancing the conversation on urban diversification in the age of global migration. We organise these forms of urban change and migration-driven differentiation along four key themes of temporalities, spatialities, intermediaries and norms that emerged from the collection of papers. Using these four conceptual themes, modes of differential inclusion function as tools of discipline and governance at one level, and are mobilised to subvert and negotiate power relations at another. As refracted through these four axes of analysis, differential inclusion draws our attention to the multiscalar and multi-actor politics of diversification.

“Unable to Defend Him”: Conflicting Views of Female Violence in Swedish Medieval Law

“Unable to Defend Him”: Conflicting Views of Female Violence in Swedish Medieval Law

The audit society: opening up a meaningful epistemological agenda

PurposeThis paper aims to bring to the fore some conditions of possibility surrounding the audit society thesis that might have contributed to construct a sense of distinctiveness around it, thereby facilitating its spread and travel in the accounting research community (and beyond) as a meaningful epistemological agenda.Design/methodology/approachMy argument is that the aura of distinctiveness surrounding the audit society thesis as a noteworthy epistemological agenda relates to outsider influences, concept plasticity, and in-depth persuasiveness. I discuss these three features of distinctiveness through excerpts from the book and my own interpretations, the whole analytic process being circumscribed by a disciplined imagination exercise (Weick, 1989).FindingsWhile the webs of unpredictability surrounding social life necessarily influenced the travel of the audit society thesis in academia, it seems to me that the thesis’ journey may have been helped by the author’s outsider status, the malleability of the thesis’ key concepts, and the medium (as a book) through which the thesis was articulated (which provided a persuasive platform to underline and demonstrate the depth of the argument).Originality/valueIn an age where journal rankings abound, the audit society thesis constitutes a telling demonstration that one can have a meaningful impact in setting an epistemological agenda and consolidate her/his scholarly reputation through the publication of a scholarly book.

Fascination du matériel. Cioran et le travail poétique de la matière-émotion

This article aims to identify the various mechanisms used by the Romanian-born French writer Cioran (1911-1995) in his works and notebooks, with regard to the ways of conveying emotion into words. Starting from the theories of Michel Collot, Gaston Bachelard, Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, we will attempt to identify the main coordinates of Cioranian thought who tries to replicate in a poetic and fragmentary writing (hence the similarities to haikus) the different strata of the perceived reality, often engaging in a real exercise of material imagination on elements such as wood, water, fire ou stone. Keywords: material-emotion, image, haiku, Cioran, Roger Caillois.

The Confusion of the Symbol and That Which Is Symbolised: Religion, the Nation State, Politics and Society

The extent of confusion between symbols and that which is symbolised is examined across five institutional spheres. Religion is the institution most marked by confusion of this type; indeed in some respects the symbolic message of religion may be the extent of the substantive reality. On the other hand, the very existence of the nation state may be judged to depend upon the exercise of the human imagination; hence providing a source of instability which may lead to the excesses of nationalism. In regard to social status, the main problematical element is a certain circularity: it is necessary to get people to exhibit differences in behaviour which are then used to justify or constitute the status differences themselves. In politics, the symbolism of left and right threatens to strangle creative thinking, while in education the tendency on all sides to orient towards public systems of measurement and grading undermines the claim that what is really important is pupil and student learning. A social cost is being paid for the failure to recognise and, where possible, address the issues identified.

Cultivating Imagination: A Case for Teaching Information Ethics With Works of Fiction

This article argues that the MLIS curriculum should offer information ethics courses that enable future information professionals to develop their imaginative powers through close study and discussion of fiction. LIS students reading ethical theory and fiction bring the two into conversation and as a result reach a better understanding of both. Crucially, this process presupposes the exercise of empathetic imagination, a mental capacity that helps us inhabit other perspectives and modes of being in the world. The paper supports this discussion with evidence from an instructional intervention implemented during an information ethics course within an LIS program at a large public research university.

Stories for Architectural Imagination

This essay focuses on imagination as a crucial source of innovation and makes a plea for an approach to architectural education that enables imaginative thinking about new spatial and temporal realities. It starts by foregrounding the strong connections between imagination, stories, and language. It then proposes the reading, telling, writing, and making of stories as four approaches in introducing exercises of literary imagination within architectural education that touch upon such themes as meaning, empathy, temporality, and the poetics of making. The contribution unpacks these approaches in a twofold way, pairing an academic grounding of each theme with a short narrative piece describing a pedagogical example. By means of this sequence of thematic explorations and examples, we aim to tangibly illustrate the power embedded in stories for future architects’ education.

Restorative justice: a substantive, intergenerational and ecological approach in the Amazon Region of Brazil

ABSTRACT From the report of a case in which restorative justice references were used to address a conflict involving chestnuts gathers and family farmers in the Brazilian Amazon, the article reflects on the conditions of applying restorative justice concepts and procedures to treat socio-environmental conflicts. Restorative philosophy adopts a substantive vision concerned with an intergenerational and ecological ethic that can contribute to the realization of justice and the sustainability of peace in Amazonian scenarios. In order to face an alienating vision that disregarding human multidimensionality, the authors suggest a holistic understanding of reality that understands nature as part of what we are, that we inhabit, with which we are ineluctably interconnected and that is impacted by human actions, especially those of apolitical character and economical. This comprehending leads them to an ecological and intergenerational perspective of restorative justice that transcends the de-identification of humanity with nature. Understood in this way, restorative justice implies responsibility towards human beings and nature. This means looking for solutions that meet not only the needs of the actors directly and indirectly affected by a particular offense; in addition to intersubjective issues, it concerns the satisfaction of demands for social justice and environmental conservation, inviting humanity to render intergenerational accounts. The article concludes that an ecological and intergenerational view of restorative justice requires exercises of imagination and effective practice capable of facing the tangles of the humanity-nature relationship within extended perspectives that account for considering the multidimensionality of the human experience.

Al “reencuentro” de las “cuestiones”: un comentario sobre el estudio socio-histórico de las problematizaciones

Partiendo de la idea de que el estudio socio-histórico de las problematizaciones usa la imaginación histórica para reencontrar las cuestiones que están en la raíz de algunos de los debates del presente, el artículo procura: a) fundamentar tal afirmación y b) explicitar qué puede y suele esperarse como saldo de una investigación orientada por tal metodología. Para ello, en el apartado 1 se caracterizan los factores que configuran las situaciones que instigan a “problematizar” algo, así como las maniobras de “socialización/dispersión” y “comparación histórica” que conducen a postular una problematización. Sobre la base de un ejemplo, el apartado 2 apunta a visibilizar algunos de los elementos que guían los ejercicios de imaginación histórica de los que ello depende. Finalmente, el apartado 3 pone el foco tanto sobre el tipo de escritura de la historia al que conduce la metodología, como sobre los efectos ético-políticos con los que esta se asocia.

Some Practical Suggestions for Mitigation of Psychological Burden of Hospitalized Patients with COVID-19.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak has brought to people all over the world, in particular to patients, not only the risk of death, but also too much psychological pressure. Individuals who are quarantined at hospitals or homes might experience various adverse feelings. The potential lethality of the illness, some clinical symptoms of patients including shortness of breath and hypoxia, and devastating and sensational news, especially on social networks could lead to anxiety and fear in patients. Patients may also have feelings of guilt about potentially exposing their family members to infection. “Medical mistrust” which refers to lack of trust in medical treatments may also increase the patients’ overall sense of worry and despair. Inadequate information about the disease and insufficient transparency from authorities about the disease status could also make the patients feel anger as we can see in previous studies on outbreaks such as Ebola.1 Reduced contact with others, especially loved ones, leads to boredom, frustration, and a sense of loneliness and isolation, which is distressing to patients. Based on clinical observations and patients’ reports, worry about the health of self and that of significant others, loneliness, and lack of entertainment are the most concerns of patients quarantined at hospitals or homes. Therefore, mental health services should provide mental health care for individuals who are quarantined. On the other hand, fast transmission of virus restricts face-to-face psychological interventions. Moreover, due to heavy workloads and lack of standardized training in psychiatry or clinical psychology, mental health providers do not always know how to mitigate the psychological distress of patients.2 It would be worthwhile to develop online or smartphone-based psychoeducation to promote mental health among patients quarantined for COVID-19. Psychologists, psychiatrists, and psychiatric nurses could use the Internet and online social networks, including WhatsApp and Telegram, to share strategies by reducing stress, frustration, and sense of loneliness and isolation in patients. During the outbreak of COVID-19 in Iran, psychological services have been widely established by mental health professionals in universities and academic societies. An example of such psychological services provided by Shiraz University of Medical Sciences is psychoeducational services via WhatsApp (PSW). PSW includes various intervention strategies to minimize the potential mental health problems that might arise among individuals who are quarantined during the COVID-19 pandemic. It offers a package of interventions through instant messaging in order to offer self-help guidance to patients. PSW provides cognitive therapy through educational video clips, podcasts, texts, and audio files to teach patients to know their cognitive biases towards their disease and the likelihood of adverse events occurring to them. Furthermore, mindfulness techniques are recommended to help patients recognize their negative thoughts and emotions about the disease and reduce the intensity and impact of those thoughts and emotions on their level of stress. With these techniques, the patients are taught to try to allow any emotion they feel to just be without striving to change it or push it away.3 Relaxation techniques such as diaphragmatic breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, and imagination exercises are taught to patients using video clips and audio files. Patients are encouraged every day to practice these techniques and provide feedback on which techniques work best for them as well as adapt to their condition. The patients are informed that they don’t need to do all the techniques every day. Instead, they can choose the most effective technique for themselves and practice it daily. To target engagement, pleasure, and meaningful life for the management of hopelessness in such patients, positive psychotherapy exercises including “Positive Reminiscence”, “Three Good Things”, and “Hope, Optimism, and Posttraumatic Growth” exercises are provided. During the “Positive Reminiscence Exercise”, patients should take time to think about an event from their past that evokes positive emotions, visualize the event in detail, and focus on the pleasant feelings arising during the exercise.4 The objective of the “Three Good Things” exercise is to help patients be more aware and remember the good things and positive events that happened to them throughout the day.5 During the “Hope, Optimism, and Posttraumatic Growth” exercise, patients are encouraged to think about the times when important things were lost, but other opportunities opened.5 In addition to psychoeducational interventions, every day, the number of recovered patients from COVID-19 is sent to patients to increase hope in them. Moreover, music, humor, and riddle are sent through WhatsApp in order to entertain patients during their hospitalization. Finally, we should consider the fact that individuals who experience COVID-19 and face quarantine have various psychological demands. Thus, mental health professionals should provide psychological interventions according to their interests and needs.

Monuments and space: Exercises in political imagination

The monument to the Polish Romantic poet Adam Mickiewicz, erected in 1898 in Krakow’s Main Market Square, is one of the most dynamic spots within the space of the Old Town, in its physical, symbolical and social aspects. Its origins story is an example of proto-patrimonial practices associated with the emergence of the canon of national heritage, understood as specific, existing cultural assets, either material or symbolic, which a given community inherited from previous generations and feels obliged to preserve. Dedicated to a poet whose oeuvre was recognised as priceless national treasure soon after his death, the monument transformed the space around it, imbuing the very centre of Krakow with new semantic codes, associated with the idea of a nation as an autonomous cultural and political community. The statue’s annihilation during the Nazi occupation of Poland and its post-war reconstruction led to a major revaluation of its essential form. The monument changed its patrimonial status and became a kind of a secular relic. Well-integrated into the urban landscape, the Mickiewicz Monument is regarded as one of Krakow’s landmarks, continuously entering interactions with the people around it. For tourists, it is mainly used as a convenient orientation point and an attraction that – as advertised by guide books – ought to be seen and photographed. For Krakow’s residents, it is simply Adaś, a symbol of local identity, a meeting spot and the background for family photographs. Since the very moment of its unveiling, the Mickiewicz Monument has also functioned as a democratic rostrum, becoming one of the brightest spots on the political map of the city.

DESENVOLVIMENTO DE UM EXERCÍCIO DE IMAGINAÇÃO PEDAGÓGICA A PARTIR DE UMA PROPOSTA METODOLÓGICA INTERDISCIPLINAR

Estabelecer relações interdisciplinares no processo de ensino-aprendizagem é de fundamental importância na perspectiva de trabalhar conceitos de diferentes disciplinas, a partir de uma situação-problema. Assim, para o presente trabalho foi desenvolvida uma proposta metodológica de ensino, visando um trabalho interdisciplinar na abordagem de conceitos de Matemática e Física, e, a partir dessa, desencadeou-se um exercício de imaginação pedagógica. Este exercício teve como objetivo identificar possibilidades e potencialidades em relação a conteúdos e conceitos a serem explorados na resolução do problema descrito na proposta e contou com a participação de professores das duas disciplinas envolvidas e que atuam no Ensino Médio. Objetos virtuais de Aprendizagem (OVA) interativos foram desenvolvidos, usando o software GeoGebra, com o intuito de proporcionar visualização geométrica e algébrica de propriedades relacionadas à situação-problema proposta. Os dados coletados durante a pesquisa foram submetidos a uma análise do discurso em que, evidenciaram-se novas possibilidades de conteúdos e conceitos a serem trabalhados a partir da aplicação da proposta. Os resultados indicam que a utilização de situações-problema com relações interdisciplinares e de OVA são características favoráveis à obtenção de resultados satisfatórios na prática docente, sendo que o exercício de imaginação pedagógica com os professores trouxe contribuições para sua formação continuada, e para sua interação com os recursos tecnológicos disponíveis, numa perspectiva de que sejam usados em suas aulas.

Metaphors of development and the development of metaphors

Development is a core theoretical issue for psychology. Yet, the root metaphors that guide theory and research on development have rarely been questioned, and the limitations and blind spots of these metaphors have not been made explicit. In this article, we propose an exercise in theoretical imagination. We start by reviewing the metaphors commonly used in developmental psychology. We then develop four alternative metaphors that, despite being present in the general semiosphere, have not received much theoretical attention. In order to evaluate these metaphors, we introduce a case study of the development evident in a woman’s diary. On this basis, we invite psychologists to examine new metaphors and thus expand the horizon of possible theorizing.

A Humean modal epistemology

I present an exemplary Humean modal epistemology. My version takes inspiration from but incurs no commitment to both Hume’s historical position and Lewis’s Humeanism. Modal epistemology should meet two challenges: the Integration challenge of integrating metaphysics and epistemology and the Reliability challenge of giving an account of how our epistemic capacities can be reliable in detecting modal truth. According to Lewis, modal reasoning starts from certain Humean principles: there is only the vast mosaic of spatiotemporally distributed local matters of fact. The facts can be arbitarily recombined. These principles cannot be taken for granted. I suggest a bottom-up approach instead: Humean principles of recombining the mosaic of facts can be retrieved from the evolutionarily instilled and empirically informed use of imagination in exploring everyday circumstantial possibilities. This use of imagination conforms to a primitive conception of matter as freely recombinable. The modal beliefs that can be obtained from generalizing the more elementary exercise of imagination have to be corrected. Recombination is limited by sortal criteria of identity. Moreover, the overall picture of a recombinable spatiotemporal mosaic must be weighed against the results of science.

Minority Report e o governo da distopia algorítmica

Tendo como objetivo refletir sobre o ideário de vigilância e de livre-arbítrio frente às tecnologias digitais nas últimas duas décadas, analisaremos as encruzilhadas de ambivalências sintetizadas no dispositivo Pré-Crime criado em Minority Report, conto de Philip K. Dick publicado em 1956 e adaptado para o cinema por Steven Spielberg em 2002, como uma figuração literária de impasses também capturados conceitualmente em noções como “capitalismo de vigilância” (ZUBOFF, 2019) e “governamentalidade algorítmica” (ROUVROY E BERNS, 2013). Em meio ao labirinto conceitual derivado de um cenário novo e dinâmico, podemos voltar o olhar para a ficção científica à procura de exercícios de imaginação especulativa consistentes que tentem mapear, por meio da construção de universos ficcionais futurísticos alternativos à nossa realidade, alguns dos dilemas que constituem a nossa experiência presente. Assim, leremos o conto Minority Report como uma tradução formal de impasses e uma construção ficcional na qual utopia e distopia podem ser lados da mesma moeda (LARREGUE, WANNYN e DARTIGUES, 2019).

Imagination and the control of subjectivity in the field of work: creative imagination and conformist and fatalist realism

Imagination is often confused with daydreams with no impact on reality, having historically been superseded by psychology over other mental faculties. However, as a higher psychic function, it plays a fundamental role in human conscious activity. Especially at work. This article aims to dis-cuss, based on Cultural-Historical Psychology, the relationship between imagination and subjectiv-ity control in the field of work; as well as defend the thesis that the control of the imagination can alter the individual’s relationship with reality and the psychic processes of subjective image production of objective reality. From this, two predominant forms of cognitive-affective processes are proposed, which manifest themselves as tendencies in the functioning of the psyche: one whose prevalence occurs through the exercise of creative imagination; and the other through fa-talistic and conformist realism, understood as the form of imagination typical of alienated work, responsible for the exercise of imagination as production of fictitious images.

Avaliação da compreensão de leitura de pequenos textos em livros por alunos com deficiência intelectual

The domain of reading proves to be essential in the development of an individual, as it allows intellectual and imaginative exercise and allows access to information favoring social autonomy. This research aimed to evaluate the reading comprehension of small texts in history books of students with intellectual disability enrolled in the fifth year of elementary school and who performed the computerized teaching curriculum ALEPP as a supplementary and complementary resource to classroom teaching. Two students aged 10 and 11, with intellectual disability, from a public school participated. Participants were individually exposed to reading 12 computerized books with questions that demanded the identification of explicit facts, making inferences, and identifying the theme of the story. Lucia's reading was fluent and fast. The participant presented percentages between 50% and 73.3% in the interpretation of the text through the questions. Felipe presented a reading without fluency, reading the words of the text slowly between syllables. The participant presented between 80% and 100% of correct answers in the interpretation of the books. The use of books to evaluate the interpretation of texts made it possible to verify the difficulties and facilities of the participants. It also stands out that the individualized application allowed to respect the time and need of each participant in face of their specificities for reading and understanding history. Future studies should use the resource as a teaching procedure, establishing criteria for assessing learning.

No estamos todas, faltan las presas! Contemporary Feminist Practices Building Paths toward Prison Abolition

This article focuses on a small but crucial aspect of the question of gendered violence and the multiple injustices that feminist mobilizations have once again brought into mainstream discussion: how do we find ways out of women’s imprisonment and stop the abusive violence that permeates institutional and domestic spheres without relying on those same forms of violence as a solution to the problems we face? This is a question that comes from a long history of knowledge-praxis created by groups of radical Black feminist women, and women of color, trans, and queer people, working together on the problematization of gendered violence at both interpersonal and institutional levels. The experiences that I analyze share an emphasis on language and imagination, viewed as a resource for a long path toward liberation. This is something that I find inspiring and important to explore: how might small exercises in language and imagination generate new possibilities for creating different social relations and forms of collective, sustainable existence after imprisonment? Visualizing collective struggles by women who are and who were formerly imprisoned in different parts of South and North America enables us to see forms in the here and now that can lead us to a different future.

Reviving Pan-Arabism in Feminist Activism in the Middle East

This essay is a preliminary attempt to explore the potential of a feminist, Pan-Arab ideology in relieving some of the tensions in feminist movement building in the Middle East and North Africa region. In its current formulation, regional feminisms suffer from compounded inefficiencies due to fragmentations in grassroots, civil society organizing; an overreliance on the state and state actors including NGOs and discourses of neoliberal development; and a narrow focus on a human rights approach for feminist action. Nonetheless, the present also offers a number of opportunities that are often omitted in our analysis of these disabling tensions. These include women’s growing salience and their increasing presence in public, political spaces of mobilizing, organizing and resistance, which has facilitated communication and negotiation with and within state apparatuses. Opportunities also exist thanks to the enabling and connective nature of the Internet for the purpose of transnational feminist organizing. Crucially, it is the idea that a single, organized and unified movement will gather more support, and collect greater influence than would be the case if these movements remained in their divided and atomized states. Ultimately, this piece is an exercise of feminist imagination – one that envisions the ways in which a regional feminism can emerge based on an active struggle against patriarchy in all its manifestations.