Existential Necessity Research Articles

Wasting Time as a Cultural Practice in Contemporary Serbia

The expression "wasting time" is a colloquial label for periods of time spent waiting to receive services in various social situations in which people find themselves in state or private institutions, such as the Ministry of Internal Affairs or health institutions, banks and technical inspections of vehicles, etc. In this way, the superiority of social or cultural time over individual time is manifested. Cultural use of time represents the tendency to manage linear time by repeating events anchored in certain time segments, such as rituals, music festivals, sports events, or national holidays. Individuals perceive time based on cultural learning, understanding sociocultural time as a framework for organizing their personal time. This means that when they are not engaged in activities arising from collective time, individuals tend to organize their time according to their personal needs and intentions - as much as possible.Wasting time is therefore perceived as time not spent on activities related to work or free time that are the consequence of personal choice or existential necessity. The term most often refers to the waiting periods, which are apparently not regarded as integral to completing a task, such as a medical examination or obtaining personal documents. The concept of wasting time emerges as an uncreative, imposed, wasted time spent on completing tasks that could be organized differently. It is an empty time, devoid of important events and which is contrasted with periods of activity. The idea of ​​wasting time corresponds to the personal experience of time. The given expression is a consequence of evaluating whether or not a certain period of time was spent usefully, viewed from a personal perspective. Everyone's experience suggests that time seems to pass more slowly when we can do nothing but wait. The networking of such experiences, arising from a multitude of social situations that impose prolonged waiting as a procedural part to obtain what is considered useful or necessary for individuals, can be characterised as a cultural practice. The contributors to this practice include all social institutions that provide services to users through direct contact and hold a societal monopoly of performing their activities.

Under pressure: moods, affects and the violence of everyday life in a Spanish migrant detention centre

ABSTRACT What does it mean when the future of one’s life is exposed to the inscrutable will of an intangible other? And what are the possibilities of still asserting oneself when pushed to the limit? Nuancing the feelings of different actors in a detention centre and analysing how everyday moods, affects and violence intertwine, I explore how the randomly cruel and often-inexplicable logic of the contemporary deportation regime pushes migrants to their limits. Taking as my starting point the argument that deportation practices are effective because they operate on an affective level, I show how affective experiences manifest themselves bodily and how violent practices and discourses reverberate in bodies. I argue that ‘bodies under pressure’ are testimonies of racialised histories of exclusion, and I show how they become calls for social recognition. Exploring small, often-unintended acts of rebellion against exhausting deportation practices, I stress the existential necessity and social importance of including oneself in the realm of meaning.

Weak Procedural Constitutionalism. The Judicial Process as Legitimacy of Judicial Review

Abstract This paper proposes a synthesis that renders democratic principles compatible with the preservation of judicial control of constitutionality. This has been mediated by what I have called ‘weak procedural constitutionalism’, a methodology through which constitutional conflicts are debated in the legislature and among the citizenry as the real holders of the final say in society, with judicial activity focused on an intermediate say and the promotion of subsequent social deliberation. The judicial process thus becomes a public dialogical procedure susceptible to intervention by citizens and capable of generating public information processes facilitating accountability. The constant quest for instrumentalities that increase the democratic legitimacy of constitutional courts is an existential necessity. Only through real opportunities for dialogue and citizen participation in the decision-making process can judicial review be made democratically palatable. This requires that both judges and legislators play an intermediate rather than primary role, one in which democratically elected legislatures enjoy a high degree of legitimacy in adopting decisions, in juxtaposition with the derivative legitimacy appurtenant to constitutional courts. The premise for the exercise of what I denominate as weak constitutionality control, or the hypothesis for a weak procedural constitutionalism, is a possible synthesis of the tension between constitutionalism and democracy, with emphasis on the Colombian case.

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD): Geopolitical Implications

This study examined the geopolitical implications of the GERD project in light of the ‗framework of benefit-sharing‘. The study adopted a qualitative research approach in which data were gathered from multiple sources, such as key informant interviews, books, journal articles, policy briefs, commentary, and opinions; and documents such as declarations, agreements, letters, and statements, water policies, government communications, reports, and media sources. In light of this, the paper argues that GERD foreshadows a new emergent order based on principles of benefit-sharing capable of replacing the existing inequitable water-sharing regime. The GERD has the potential to create cooperation between the riparian countries because of its proven benefits to the region. The potential cost of non-cooperation may also push Egypt towards opting for cooperation. Furthermore, the GERD could shift the power dynamics by positioning Ethiopia as a regional anchor state, which could further enhance prospects for cooperation. The study also highlights that the conflict over the GERD extends beyond the physicality of the dam and is deeply rooted in the geopolitical rivalry between Ethiopia and Egypt. Egypt perceives the GERD as an existential threat to its existing water-sharing regime while Ethiopia regards it as a benefit-sharing project and an existential necessity. However, the study highlights the possibility that the GERD may transform the geopolitical rivalry between Ethiopia and Egypt from a water-based conflict into a power trade competition, implying that cooperation and conflict, competition and cooperation, may coexist in this complex geopolitical landscape. The study implies that understanding the geopolitical implications of the GERD is crucial for navigating the complexities of the issue and finding sustainable solutions. Keywords: Geopolitics, GERD, Benefit-sharing, Water-sharing, Ethiopia, Egypt, Nile

The Dormant Commerce Clause's Unfulfilled Constitutional Promise to Rule Out Protectionism: Proposal for a New Doctrine

The federal market is a cornerstone of every federal polity. It would be difficult to imagine American federalism without the internal free trade constitutionalized by the Dormant Commerce Clause (DCC). This Article provides a criticism of the Supreme Court’s DCC case law and proposes a new approach that takes economic reality into account. The Article demonstrates that the Supreme Court’s DCC case law, owing to its countenancing unnecessary restrictions of trade, fails to fulfill the constitutional function one may attribute to a federal market. First, it seems the Supreme Court replaced the inquiry that fits the Constitution with one that it felt comfortable with. Although the case law promises to suppress state protectionism, in fact, it deals merely with naked protectionism and, thus, gives states a very wide playing field to shelter local economic interests. Second, the Supreme Court’s case law is inconsistent in the sense that it does not do what it promises to do. The Court promises to suppress state protectionism but, instead, it invalidates only those measures that are outrageously protectionist; it examines existential necessity but ignores the question of extensional necessity. Furthermore, it promises a two-step analysis that distinguishes between the restriction of trade and its justification, but the analysis usually does not get to the second step, since only those measures are pronounced restrictive in the first place that could not be sufficiently justified in the second place. The paper proposes a substantive sliding-scale approach that takes economic reality into account. This implies that the current two-limb test should be replaced with a three-limb test providing for an increasingly closer scrutiny of symmetric, asymmetric, and discriminatory impact. It demonstrates that theidea of suppressing state protectionism implies two requirements of necessity. The first one, labeled by this Article as “existential necessity,” requires that completely unnecessary restriction of trade be ruled out. The second one, baptized as “extensional necessity,” filters out restrictions that go beyond what is necessary and turns on the existence of less restrictive regulatory alternatives. This calls for the comparison of policy options in terms of trade restrictiveness and effectiveness but involves no genuine value choice. The proposed doctrine’s novelty lies in the introduction of extensional necessity, which is patently overlooked in the Supreme Court’s current case law.

Vesna Parun’s Journey to Bulgaria as Existential Necessity and Challenge to Creativity

Vesna Parun’s Journey to Bulgaria as Existential Necessity and Challenge to Creativity

What I cannot do without you. Towards a truly embedded and embodied account of the socially extended mind

Through a discussion of the socially extended mind, this paper advances the “not possible without principle” as an alternative to the social parity principle. By charging the social parity principle with reductionism about the social dimension of socially extended processes, the paper offers a new argumentative strategy for the socially extended mind that stresses its existential significance. The “not possible without principle” shows that not only is something more achieved through socially located processes of knowledge building, but also that, and more importantly, what is achieved is something that would not have been possible without social interaction. The social parity principle states that the result of an activity achieved via social interaction should be assumed functionally equivalent to a solitary investigation and is characterized by multiple realisability. Contrary to the social parity principle, the “not possible without principle” holds that the result would not have been achieved without the social interaction between (at least) two agents with specific existential needs. The socially extended mind never happens in a void. This means that the "not possible without" principle should be located in real-life, affectively charged, embodied experiences of skilful interactions between agents. This fundamental conceptual change via reference to the “existential necessity” that regulates socially extended processes is necessary in order to effectively lead the socially extended mind to a truly embedded and embodied account.

Energy: life, power, and livelihood

We and our habitat are forms of energy, endowed with life, and irrevocably earthlings. A cosmological-to-locality appreciation of energy in food and nutrition science, practice and policy is overdue. Our livelihood, and any function we have, are energy dependent, as is planetary habitability. Energy cognisance has become an existential necessity in an increasingly self-destructive ‘anthropocene’ era when our own energy equilibrium is compromised. This is manifest in destruction and loss of our ecology, our livelihood expectations, and practices, and, in turn, our wellbeing and health. Most problematic has been the domination, skewing and loss of biomass caused by humans, both their over-population of the earth, and their exploitation of its natural resources. These resources provide fuel for warmth, cooking and transport, textiles, and clothing; are subject to land and aquatic harvest, are replaced by dwellings and infrastructural buildings, and yet are recreational assets. Wastage has been of scant regard. Energy misuse besets the entire food system. This has followed the development of the wood and coal-fired steam engine, the advent of gasoline powered internal combustion engines, use and transmission of electricity, and an insatiable arms industry. Now, we are at the brink of extinction. Profiteering and conflict over energy control has fostered unfettered industrial materialism, a major extinction risk factor. Not only is energy the power we need, but it has also underwritten the powerful. Can we be sufficiently insightful and collaborative to change this energy trajectory and survive healthfully on a habitable planet? Individuals, households, and communities, as opposed to unaccountable monopolies, could achieve control of the energy systems on which our livelihoods depend and render them sustainable, accessible, and affordable. Interconnected food and energy system ownership could be devolved to ‘The Commons’ as a cooperative, sustainability strategy. The social momentum and appropriate technology for energy conservation, renewability and personalisation is now available for mobilisation to address our food, nutrition, and health insecurity.

Enhancing epitope of PEDV spike protein.

Porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) is the causative agent of a highly contagious enteric disease of pigs characterized by diarrhea, vomiting, and severe dehydration. PEDV infects pigs of all ages, but neonatal pigs during the first week of life are highly susceptible; the mortality rates among newborn piglets may reach 80–100%. Thus, PEDV is regarded as one of the most devastating pig viruses that cause huge economic damage to pig industries worldwide. Vaccination of sows and gilts at the pre-fertilization or pre-farrowing stage is a good strategy for the protection of suckling piglets against PEDV through the acquisition of the lactating immunity. However, vaccination of the mother pigs for inducing a high level of virus-neutralizing antibodies is complicated with unstandardized immunization protocol and unreliable outcomes. Besides, the vaccine may also induce enhancing antibodies that promote virus entry and replication, so-called antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE), which aggravates the disease upon new virus exposure. Recognition of the virus epitope that induces the production of the enhancing antibodies is an existential necessity for safe and effective PEDV vaccine design. In this study, the enhancing epitope of the PEDV spike (S) protein was revealed for the first time, by using phage display technology and mouse monoclonal antibody (mAbG3) that bound to the PEDV S1 subunit of the S protein and enhanced PEDV entry into permissive Vero cells that lack Fc receptor. The phages displaying mAbG3-bound peptides derived from the phage library by panning with the mAbG3 matched with several regions in the S1-0 sub-domain of the PEDV S1 subunit, indicating that the epitope is discontinuous (conformational). The mAbG3-bound phage sequence also matched with a linear sequence of the S1-BCD sub-domains. Immunological assays verified the phage mimotope results. Although the molecular mechanism of ADE caused by the mAbG3 via binding to the newly identified S1 enhancing epitope awaits investigation, the data obtained from this study are helpful and useful in designing a safe and effective PEDV protein subunit/DNA vaccine devoid of the enhancing epitope.

On pause, an essay on the inverse logics of quarantine and Black asphyxia

ABSTRACT Trump had COVID-19. The world held its breath. We, in very real terms, were on pause. Trump's reality, the reality of millions of Americans and people around the world, was one of quarantine, an existence put on pause. Here, I would like to consider the polyphony of meanings and performances foregrounding our varied understandings of the pause. Trump's pause and our own excavate a stacking of dual existences: one where we are either waiting to die or get sick and another where we are waiting to get better or return to normal. COVID-19 represents an original moment where the reality of incessant dying is remarkable, and the questions asked within critical Black studies regarding the ontological conditions of humanity and the existential necessity of Black death for the flourishing of white life are laid bare. Through its interrogation of the pause, this work treats pausing as a technical, corporeal, material, and racialized assemblage of realities. Though pausing is a technopolitical formation that is immediately apprehended through gaming and game culture, we must push beyond the computational fact of pressing pause to further an imaginary centering the ordinariness of Black death as being in suspension with the extraordinariness of COVID death.

Songs of school abolition

In this article, I theorize school abolition as a shift needed to unsettle education within current times of ecological precarity. As a practice and horizon, abolition reorganizes schooling’s ruling episteme by articulating humanity as a collective performance beyond the pedagogical paradigms of western man. Because racial capitalist schooling produced the political and economic subjects enacting socioecological destruction, even a progressive reformation of the school into a socially just institution will not save the planet. Disruptive pedagogy and insurgent curriculum are now an existential necessity, and school abolition offers a foundation for building liberatory alternatives. In this article, I consider school abolition by way of Gumbs’s experimental M Archive, which grounds three interrelated lines of speculation. First, I theorize schooling and extraction as two interrelated forms of violence, utilizing the work of Hartman, Ferreira da Silva, and Wynter to argue that both constitute material transformations essential to western humanism. Second, I suggest that school abolition is a natural consequence of climate catastrophe, drawing on Butler’s Parable of the Sower to illustrate the importance of learning and teaching forms of knowledge while surviving ecological precarity. Third, I speculate on the role of music, working with Jordan’s “The Talking Back of Miss Valentine Jones” to think more about collective and everyday forms of school abolition. These unique threads are connected by their account of how school and its abolition (dis)organizes collective definitions of humanity and its relationship with the environment.

The Journey of Engaging and Organising Workers Through Digital Means

This practitioner note examines the motivations that the Singapore Supply Chain Employees’ Union (SCEU) had in embarking on their journey of engaging and organising workers through digital means. The advent of new, digital tools and the evolution of communication methods amid changing work and workforce landscapes meant that new and effective ways to reach out to more workers needed to be devised. SCEU’s foray into digital platforms as a means of communication, engagement and organising of workers was thus borne out of a desire for progressivity as much as it was an existential necessity. There remain challenges that must be addressed to ensure that the use of digital platforms translates into successful organising. This practitioner note draws from SCEU’s experiences and outlines its digital organising strategy in response to these challenges, as it works towards its aim of establishing a strong foundation and community of supply chain and logistics workers for the next generation of SCEU leaders to continue building upon.

Sustainability and Interdisciplinarity as an Existential Necessity within a Planetary Perspective

Sustainability and Interdisciplinarity as an Existential Necessity within a Planetary Perspective

The Commitment to the Delicate World: Maya Sacrificial Giving and Existential Animism

ABSTRACT Many Akatek Maya traditionalists in highland Guatemala regard sacrifices to living mountains as an essential world-creating act and an existential necessity. Drawing on my ethnography and description of a particular blood sacrificial ritual, preceding the advent of the New Year, I develop the concept of ‘existential animism’ to capture this dynamics of a continuous formation and constitution of the world and an existential, often precarious, difficult and painful, negotiation of a subject's position in it. Rethinking reciprocity as intersubjectivity, I explore sacrificial giving in terms of mutual relatedness and joint participation, characterised by the commitment to a fundamentally indeterminate, uncertain and delicate world of which we are a part and on which we depend. Finally, I argue that such phenomenologically inspired ‘dwelling perspective’ may be of relevance for further research on animist societies that strive to move within ambivalent landscapes and hierarchical relationships with other human as well as nonhuman beings.

The modern individual and the hasidic praxis of storytelling

ABSTRACT This paper examines the ways in which hasidic hagiography (ספרות השבחים) responded interpretively to modern notions of the individual, situating those interpretations alongside other trends in modern philosophy rooted in Kantian thinking and espoused by Kierkegaard, Buber and Nietzsche. Though generally treated as backward folklore representative of a primal Jewish past, or of the theological morality of hasidic homily, this paper shows how mass-produced hasidic hagiography in 1860s Galicia reflects key cultural changes in collective and individual consciousness and practice regarding the self in Eastern European Jewish society. After first establishing the historical and philosophical contexts within which hasidic hagiography emerged, this paper examines what these stories add to modern philosophical literary discourses. Considering Geörg Lukács’ critique of the historical novel after the 1848 revolutions, this paper illuminates the social and personal qualities of hasidic storytelling. In these stories, I argue, the essence of individuality relies on the communal practice of storytelling and the intersubjective relationships it entails. Thus, the story, according to Hasidism, is neither a bourgeois abstract privilege, nor a literary means for establishing the imagined national community. Rather, it is an existential necessity; a product of individuated craftsmanship in an ever-developing community.

Agitative pauses, intentional moorings:Stasisas resistance

Stasis has reemerged in recent accounts of resistance. In this paper that draws from ethnographic research with a youth antiauthoritarian community in Cyprus and their long-term occupation of a city square, I provide a broader theorization of this multi-semantic concept that has hitherto been missing from accounts on stasis commonly found in literature on the squares movement(s). I argue that stasis constitutes a key form of resistance to modern forms of power by pausing the circulation of capitalism and scheduled time and subverting the production of subjectivities that support such circulation. By drawing on Nicole Loraux’s interpretation of stasis as “movement at rest,” I overturn the negative connotations often associated with stasis as (unwanted) immobility by showing how stasis can be a desired political action that includes forms of mobility and circulation within it. Developing this theorization further, I analyze stasis as a threshold to critical political subjectivization, as productive of ipostasis (existence) that enables the subjects under stasis to appear in political terms and exercise their right to politics. I thus contribute to recent literature on the political potential and existential necessity of occupying practices that allow for a politicizing of the urban everyday.

Chinweizu, Asia’s Rise and Disentangling Africa’s Strategic Incoherence for Africa’s Future

Abstract Chinweizu’s wide-ranging and copious intellectual output persistently brings into sharp focus penetrating analysis of Asia’s contemporary rise (read in Chinweizuan terms as autonomous modernization and industrialization) in juxtaposition to Africa’s de-industrialization and with it her firm rootedness at the periphery of global power. “Africa’s Staticity-Asia’s Rise” is a binary that bothers Chinweizu to no end. In two key works presented in Accra and Abuja respectively (Chinweizu, 2010a; 2010b) he tries to find answers. The two papers throw up in my view, a few strategic questions : i. how should Africa relate to a rising Asia in contemporary times? ii. What will it take in real terms for Chinweizu’s Black Superpower to emerge if the Asian example is a compelling one? iii. Is industrialization an existential necessity for Africa? iv. What kind of political, economic and social structures are required for a Black Superpower to emerge to command the respect of the world like Japan, Korea or China? This article will critically engage with these two works in order to attempt to respond to these strategic questions in the hope that it will aid in sharpening the theoretical underpinnings and practical processes for building the Chinweizuan Black Superpower.

The range of developmental potential of the game as a subject program

The range of developmental potential of the game as a subject program

Defence innovation and the 4th industrial revolution in Russia

ABSTRACT Russia is pursuing select 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) technologies in a drive to rapidly close the capability gaps with rivals. The transformation of warfare these technologies portend could also make Russia more vulnerable. Joining the ‘technological race’ seems therefore less of a choice than an existential necessity. Constrained by structural problems and lacking the resources of the US and China, however, Russia has so far struggled to leverage its ambitions within the 4IR. Yet it has also shown the ability to experiment with 4IR technologies, including hypersonics and AI, to amplify existing symmetric and asymmetric capabilities, and create interconnected systems that may provide critical advantages.

Antibacterial Activities of the Extracts of Allium sativum (Garlic) and Allium cepa (Onion) Against Selected Pathogenic Bacteria

Although many antibiotics have been developed against bacterial diseases, the problems of antibiotic resistance and toxicity have made the continuous search for newer drugs an existential necessity. This study determined the phytochemical components and antibacterial activities of Allium sativum and Allium cepa against Salmonella typhi, Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pneumoniae, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Escherichia coli. The phytochemical analysis was carried out using standard methods. The antibacterial activities of the aqueous, ethanol and acetone extracts of both plants at different concentrations were determined against all the test organisms using agar well diffusion method. All the extracts were found to contain important phytochemicals such as saponins, flavonoids, alkaloids, phlabotannins and anthraquinones. Ethanol, acetone and aqueous extracts of Allium sativum showed maximum activities against S. aureus (21.2 ± 0.2-28.1 ± 0.2 mm), S. pneumoniae (16.8 ± 0.4-20.8 ± 0.4 mm) and S. aureus (15.5 ± 0.5–22.8 ± 1.1 mm) respectively. Ethanol, aqueous, and acetone extract of Allium cepa showed maximum activity against E. coli (19.1 ± 0.1–28.7 ± 0.3 mm), K. pneumoniae (16.4 ± 0.2–21.2 ± 0.5 mm) and E. coli (19.7 ± 0.7–26.0 ± 0.0 mm), respectively. All extracts of both plants showed varying minimum inhibitory concentrations which ranged between 10 and 20 mg/mL against the test bacteria. This study has established that the extracts of Allium species have antibacterial activities against both Gram positive and Gram negative bacteria.
 Keywords: Antibacterial activity; Allium sativum; Allium cepa; Extract; Phytochemicals