Notion Of Subject Research Articles

Antinatalism, Hannah Arendt's Natality and a Matahuman vita contemplativa

Adopting a hybrid, creative-critical approach, this article explores how Rosi Braidotti’s notion of posthuman subjectivity based on a negotiation between humans, zoe (nonhumans), geo (earth) and techno (technologies) can be put into practice creatively. Against the background of the low-lying South Holland coast, where sandscapes based on human-nonhuman collaborations prevent coastal erosion, I trace the various voices in the landscape complementing and interrupting each other. Shifting from a human perspective into the perspectives of zoe, geo and techno, the narration of this piece finally coalesces to form a new ‘we’ which represents this posthuman subjectivity. Imagining alternate futures based on this inclusive ‘we,’ this piece explores what a collaboration based on a collective posthuman subjectivity can mean in practice. Moreover, it demonstrates the potential of experiments in form and style to make tangible theoretical insights from posthuman scholarship, introducing an innovative approach that bridges the gap between academic and creative writing.

Pedagogy of scale: Unmastering time, teaching and living through crises

What does it mean to teach, live, and imagine one’s futures amidst a global pandemic? How to respond to the reality of unequal and overlapping crises, COVID-19 being one of them? Can alternative understandings of time help us create a more just post-pandemic university? Drawing on environmental humanities, disaster and critical time studies, in conversation with qualitative data, this article theorizes a ‘pedagogy of scale’: a practical and conceptual centering on multiple temporalities and diverse interpretative frames. The analysis argues for the need to attend to overlapping, non-linear, and changeable scales of time, reference, and meaning that students draw on in order to make sense of crises: every crisis, even as unprecedented as COVID-19, is embedded in environmental processes, long-term vulnerabilities and injustices. These overlooked and overlapping scales interweave personal, planetary, and theological notions of time—from ecological deep time to the divine time—meaning, and self. In its focus on asynchronicity, overlap and multiplicity, the analysis extends current theorizations of temporality and crisis in higher education, challenges paradigms of mastery, advocates for epistemic plurality, and embraces decolonial notions of human subjectivity, providing a much-needed critical model for the post-pandemic university.

The roles of community nutrition scholars in changing mothers' child feeding, food preparation, and hygiene practices in southern Bangladesh.

This qualitative study evaluates a nutrition and hygiene education program led by trained community nutrition scholars for 5,000 mothers of small children in the Khulna and Satkhira districts in southern Bangladesh. The objectives of this study are as follows: (1) understanding the processes and reasonings behind mothers' improvement in child feeding, food preparation, hygiene, and homestead garden production, (2) understanding men's roles in facilitating women's behavioral changes, and (3) assessing the degree of changes in subjective notions of self-confidence, decision-making, and recognition among mothers and nutrition scholars. Data were collected through 14 focus group discussions with 80 participants and in-depth interviews with 6 women community nutrition scholars. Data was then analysed qualitatively by drawing on direct quotes from focus group discussions and interviews with detailed interpretation and account for respondents' behaviors and perceptions. Overall findings confirm behavior changes by women, their spouses, and other family members. Many women were able to independently decide to change food allocation and child feeding practices after gaining self-confidence through the training. Men performed vital roles, such as purchasing nutritious food in local markets, providing labor for land preparation of homestead gardens, and defending the women from the resistance to change by their mothers-in-law. While the study supports the literature that women's bargaining power in food/resource allocation is critical in child health and nutrition, the evaluation found that this process involves negotiations among family members. Engaging men and mothers-in-law in nutrition interventions have great potential to make nutrition interventions more effective.

The Strategies of Sufi Discourse in Fostering Communal Immunity: The Sufi as a Nomadic Subject

This paper examines the strategies that Sufis adopted during covid-19 crisis which are journey and seclusion: two strategies that characterize Sufi’s behaviour. Using qualitative research, this paper argues that though the policies enacted in the time of covid-19 has led humanity into herd immunity in which bodies have been subjected to a set of improvised political decisions, Sufi bodies are immune bodies by nature, as they are characterized by an inner immunity that makes of them either in a state of journey or in a state of seclusion. Drawing from Rosi Braidotti (2011) ’s poststructuralist notion of nomadic subjectivity, this paper also states that the Sufi can be seen as a ‘nomadic subject’ able to experience not only physical journey shaping the move from one territory to another but also a kind of non-physical journey pertaining to spiritual ascension shaping the path to God. As a result, Sufi discourse is a site for fostering communal immunity where individuals are provided with strategies to transcend not only the pandemic as a temporary disaster but also the problems of life as well as the challenges menacing humankind.

Giving space to the subject’s potential present: Zemelman’s contributions to Sociology of Education

The subfield of Sociology of Education (SOE) concerned with the growth of neoliberalism through critically analysing its policies, discourses, and processes of subjectivation has made a significant contribution to education in the last 40 years. Whilst this scholarship has generated new knowledge about what happens to people, contexts and educational systems when they are regulated by neoliberal logics, it has also subsumed the sociological imagination under what this episteme considers valuable. The paper aims to challenge this excessive focus on the neoliberal episteme by broadening our research scope to recover the subjects’ magmatic expression in SOE research. To do this, we introduce Hugo Zemelman’s notion of subject to examine how SOE can overcome this neoliberal closure. The paper discusses three epistemic movements: focusing on the subject, researching the undetermined possibilities of the present in a given order, and, paying attention to the evocative and symbolic aspects of thinking and language.

Plot extraction and the visualization of narrative flow

Abstract This article discusses the development of an automated plot extraction system for narrative texts. Acknowledging the distinction between plot, as an object of study with its own rich history and literature, and features of a text that may be automatically extractable, we begin by characterizing a text’s scatter plot of entities. This visualization of a text reveals entity density patterns characterizing the particular telling of the story under investigation and leads to effective scene partitioning. We then introduce the concept of narrative flow, a graph representation of the narrative ordering of scenes (the syuzhet) that includes how entities move through scenes from the text, and investigate the degree to which narrative flow can be automatically extracted given a glossary of plot-important objects, actors, and locations. Our subsequent analysis then explores the correlation between subjective notions of plot and the information extracted through these visualizations. In particular, we discuss narrative structures commonly found within the graphs and make comparisons with ground truth narrative flow graphs, showing mixed results highlighting the difficulty of plot extraction. However, the visual artifacts and common structural relationships seen in the graphs provide insight into narrative and its underlying plot.

Writing the polyphonic African queer future: reflections on Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater

In reading Freshwater (2018), one cannot but confront the diversity of perspectives that Akwaeke Emezi deploys to usher their African queer protagonist into an African-oriented queer future. While there exists – or should exist – pluriversal notions of subjectivity and intersubjectivity, specific epistemologies produced by Eurocentric structures continue to govern these notions and drive liberational discourse. Drawing largely from Afro/Africanfuturism, Queer futurism, and cultural references drawn from African systems of thought, I argue that Emezi’s novel brings together modern technological intervention on the human body and Igbo cosmology to liberate the African queer body from Western dominant structures of knowledge and Africa’s cultural amnesia. I also argue that the futuristic perspectives deployed in Freshwater allows for the destabilizing of conventional knowledge at the level of language and imagery such that suppressed and new structures of consciousness are centered. This is shown through the emblematic figure of the deified African woman, the redemptive link between the female image and sacred python, the symbiosis between visual and non-visual components, and the polytheistic religious value of collaboration. I highlight, ultimately, that the intersection of technology and imagination for the goal of liberation, which critical futurism espouses, allows Emezi to regenerate the historiography of the Ogbanje without surrendering to the vocabulary of doom, misery and despair that frames their shortly lived human existence.

The Claim of Ethics: Language and the Other(ness) of the Subject in Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Lacan

ABSTRACT This essay performs a comparative reading of the themes of language, otherness and subjectivity in the work of Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Lacan. Their focuses on the place and role of an ethical subjectivity who is profoundly affected and displaced by the (non)presence of the absolute Other provide apt philosophical material for comparison and contrast. Through a close analysis of the important philosophical and psychoanalytic themes in Levinas’ early work Totality and Infinity and Lacan’s Seminar VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, I demonstrate how the different articulations of alterity in both influence their separate conceptions of the possibility of ethics in relation to decentered notions of subjectivity. In reading both, I argue that Lacan’s treatment of otherness and the eccentric nature of language provides a reimaging of certain gaps in Levinas. In return, I position Levinas as being able to provide a notion of ethical community that Lacan leaves out.

Migrating Young Unaccompanied Children and the Mobile Commons: Law, Vulnerability, and the Practice of Family Reunification in Sweden

In this article I call for an awareness of the mobile commons– the informal support that exists among migrating people, NGOs, and activists – in relation to the realization of family reunification. Taking its point of departure in a concrete case of family reunification for young unaccompanied children, the article seeks to expose how the traditional legal notion of the liberal subject fails to provide protection in the context of legal practice. I argue for using the vulnerable subject as a starting point, in order to make more visible the context in which law operates and ensure protection even for the youngest children.

Choreographic Cartographies with-in Learning: Towards response-ability in Higher Education Pedagogy

In this article, I seek to engage the liberatory impetus of critical pedagogies through an attentiveness to body-space-time so as to enrich the former with the notion of response-ability. Several learning activities are engaged within the context of a foundation year classroom of an Art School, to open up conceptions of the experiential nature of learning events and the ethico-onto-epistemological questions that emerge when foregrounding response-ability as a condition for learning-becoming. I have particular interest in notions of subjectivity, agency and affect, questioning how a new materialist reading of these concepts might serve to challenge representationalist conceptions of higher learning. I commence with a proposition: engage learning as an experience — through the processual potentialities of its in-act and prompt myself by drawing attention to the performativity of body-space-time cartographies and choreographies.

The Rebirth of the Subject. Arendt and Badiou on the Human Being as Source of Change

In the second half of the 20th century, the traditional notion of the human subject as source of thought and action came under critique by Foucault, Althusser, and others. Foucault called this critique “the death of the subject”. In this paper, I seek to show that we can find, occurring at the same time, the development of a conception of the human being as source of thought and action that withstands this “death”, namely Arendt’s theory of action and Badiou’s notion of subject. What unites these two thinkers is that they conceive the subject as plural (that is, composed of several individuals) and as constituted by a principle (that is, unified by a guiding idea).

Violent Inheritance: Sexuality, Land, and Energy in Making the North American West. By E Cram

“What might we do with violent inheritance?” (30) E Cram’s timely study centers on this question. Cram traces material, affective, and ideological “land lines” to engage places where sexual modernity intersects with other extractive structures including settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and petromodernity (6–7). Their analysis focuses on a loosely defined western region including Wyoming (where they grew up) but also encompassing Colorado, Idaho, Iowa (where they live), and Manitoba (where I live). Bringing together queer ecologies, the energy humanities, settler-colonial studies, communication studies, and geography, Violent Inheritance models innovative research methods for “embodied queer ecological criticism” (9)—including looking for “gasps” in the archive (79), resisting extractive research practices, and pushing queer studies beyond the individual or the subject and toward the (infra)structural. Cram’s introduction lays out an important, yet dizzying, array of terms: “sexual modernities, land lines, and [queer and anticolonial] regeneration” are identified as the main ones (emphasis in original; 9), alongside others (especially “innervation” and “enervation” [emphasis in original; 14–15], and “infrastructures of feeling” [22; 202]). The first chapter, which centers on the writings of Owen Wister, engages late-nineteenth-century theories of neurasthenia alongside a modern, energetic, colonial notion of subjectivity forged through friction with and dominance of western climates and environments. The second chapter considers the archival remains of Wyoming political economist and settler feminist Grace Raymond Hebard as both a eugenic violent inheritance and a queer archive that can be regenerated without being recuperated.

The Inexhaustible

Adopting a hybrid, creative-critical approach, this article explores how Rosi Braidotti’s notion of posthuman subjectivity based on a negotiation between humans, zoe (nonhumans), geo (earth) and techno (technologies) can be put into practice creatively. Against the background of the low-lying South Holland coast, where sandscapes based on human-nonhuman collaborations prevent coastal erosion, I trace the various voices in the landscape complementing and interrupting each other. Shifting from a human perspective into the perspectives of zoe, geo and techno, the narration of this piece finally coalesces to form a new ‘we’ which represents this posthuman subjectivity. Imagining alternate futures based on this inclusive ‘we,’ this piece explores what a collaboration based on a collective posthuman subjectivity can mean in practice.

The Batak-Christian Theology of Land: Towards a Postcolonial Comparative Theology

Comparative theology has focused much on exploring and comparing the theological contents of world religions. In contrast, some of the works have yet to address the social matrix and lived experience of practitioners. This paper aims to offer a postcolonial comparative theology that considers the notion of subjectivity rather than neutrality, the appreciation of theology as a "living tradition" rather than mere "text," and the emphasis on the historical matrix of power rather than a framework of conceptual construction. The purpose is to provide a comparative theology of land in the indigenous religion and Christianity of the Batak people of Indonesia. In discussion with Bungaran Simanjuntak, Kim Knott, and Najeeba Syeed, among others, this paper will elaborate on the theological idea of land, particularly the Batak notion of huta (village) by tracing its historical transformation from the precolonial to the postcolonial. I argue that in the postcolonial context of the Global South, a comparative theology of land cannot be pursued without considering the colonial matrix of power formative to people's lived experience of the land and the theology that is presently practiced.

Short Notes on the International Status of Sovereign Order of Malta under International Law. Functional Limits and Dependence upon the Holy See in the light of the New Constitution of 3 September 2022

SUMMARY: 1. Introduction - 2. The SMOM self-qualification as full member of the international community: critical notes - 3. The nature and scope of the international legal subjectivity of SMOM - 4. The non-relevance of the canonical status and the relationship with the Holy See for the international subjectivity of SMOM - 5. Conclusions.
 ABSTRACT: The presence of the Order of Malta (acronym SMOM) on the international scene, because of its singularity, has been the subject of debate and discussion among scholars of international law as well as canon law. In fact, the SMOM’s juridical subjection to the Holy See because of its nature as a Catholic Religious Institute is a critical point under the traditional international legal theory that seems to be inconsistent with the Order’s international subjectivity. The aim of this study is to point out that, using a broad and modern notion of international subjectivity, there is no incompatibility between the canonical nature of the Order of Malta and its membership in the international community.

Hermeneutical postphenomenology: Computational tools and the lure of objectivity

Abstract This paper examines some of the issues surrounding this ‘computational turn’ and proposes a ‘human focused’ approach. It begins by addressing questions concerning whether there is a need empirical evidence in literary studies, and the roles played by human and technical agents in interpretative practices. It adopts Don Ihde Postphenomenological ideas (especially ‘embodiment’ and ‘hermeneutics’ human-technology relations) to expatiate on the nature of relationship that exists between a literary scholar and a computational tool during interpretative practices. On one hand, it uses postphenomenomelogy as a theoretical framework to provides rich conceptual terminologies by which we could interrogate humanists-computer relationship within the practice of computational textual analysis. And on the other hand, uses postphenomenology method to highlight the notion of subjectivity in contrast to the promise of observer-independent objectivity. The research appraise the impact of quantification and visualizations in literary studies using the research output of Franco Moretti and his colleagues at the Stanford Lit Lab, as well as performs textual experimentation on some corpora using Stefan Sinclair and Geoffrey Rockwell’s Voyant tools and Python NLP packages. But refutes the idea that quantification and visualization of textual data with the use of computational tools and methods could guarantee objectivity of textual interpretation in literary studies. The argument in this paper is divided across its three sections: The first section discusses the goal of reading; it concerns ‘Close reading’ and ‘Distant reading’. The second section questions the possibility of objectivity in textual interpretation using quantifiable and visual evidence provided as the output of the computational analysis of humanistic texts. Then, in the third section defends the following claims: a) the human person is the principal actor in the interpretation process, and all other forms of representation or visualisation of the text are meant to aid humans; b. data in the humanities are not limited to printed texts, but include digitised, born-digital and electronic text in various digital forms (images, sounds, videos, etc.); c. the humanities aim more at interpretive practices than a quest for verifiable knowledge; d. interpretative practices in the humanities focus on humans and their experiences; e. attention must be drawn to human developers' subjectivity whenever we are using computational interpretative tools – on the ground that this will help in bracketing of our biases, prejudices, preconceptions, and theoretical frameworks. The paper concludes with the argument that computational tools used for textual analysis in the humanities need interpretation as they are not neutral in hermeneutic practices. It argues that the humans involved in the creation of those tools are prone to errors, have preferences, and incorporate their subjective ideas into developmental processes. Then proposes ‘Hermeneutical Postphenomenology’ as an ideal lens through which the claim to objectivity could be debunked. Then recommends that our productivity in textual scholarship can be enriched when we understand the true nature of the relationship between the human inquirer and technical agents within the cognitive assemblage.

Politika kritike - o društveno-politički angažovanoj dimenziji Fukoove metodologije

It seems that the work of Michel Foucault has, in the last decade, attracted some attention. This attention is a result of media engaging in a sensationalist way with his work and his private life. He is usually being portrayed as a radical postmodern nihilist, while his work is being blamed for inspiring contemporary identity politics and the practice of political correctness. These developments seem to us as a good reason to go back to Foucault's work. Since the relation between scientific work and social engagement is an important problem in contemporary social sciences and humanities, we decided to research the way Foucault conceptualized the relation between his intellectual work and his political activism. We begin our paper by elaborating some of the most important theoretical concepts in Foucault's work. We start from his notion of practice, as a form of social action, and then move on to the two types of practices Foucault distinguishes: discursive and non-discursive practices. In the end of this chapter, we present the notion of the "dispositive", which Foucault defines as an interconnected system of discursive and non-discursive practices, and his notion of subjectivity, which is defined as a relation an individual has with himself. In the next chapter we engage with methodologies Foucault uses in his research. We start with archeology, a methodology he used in the beginning of his work, while researching discursive practices. We then move on to genealogy, which is a methodology Foucault used to study systems that combine discursive and non-discursive practices. Since genealogy is the methodology, he envisions as being connected to political practice, we will especially focus on it. Precisely in the next chapter of our paper we will investigate the ways in which Foucault conceptualizes the relationship between genealogical research and political activism. We will show that he sees political activism as a primary criterion for choosing a research subject. Genealogical research then, for Foucault, provides a reflection on the history of an institution, around which the political struggle in question is waged. The results of the genealogical research are, for him, suppose to show how the institution in question is a product of contingent historical processes and, therefore, can be changed through political action, since it is not grounded in any metaphysical necessity. In the last chapter of our analysis, we will deal with Foucault's attempt to connect his genealogical research and political activism through an ethical framework. In this chapter we will present his concept of enlightenment, as an ethical tradition in which both his intellectual and political work can be situated. He conceptualizes the enlightenment as an "attitude", which consist of various kinds of practices, through which an individual constantly tests and transgresses existing boundaries, which are imposed on our actions and forms of subjectivity. Therefore, through these practices the individual, by his very existence, shows that those boundaries are contingent, and can be changed. In the conclusion our paper we, again, turn to contemporary characterizations of Foucault's work. We show that our elaboration of his ideas proves those characterization as inadequate and wrong.

A poesia especular de Orides Fontela: por um lirismo objetivo

Orides Fontela’s poetry, when establishing intertwined relationships between the subject and the real, asks for a conception of lyricism that brings together, in an exemplary manner, an apparent opposition between emotion (usually linked to lyrical poetry) and matter (commonly related to objectivity). A kind of “tacit conflict”, found in a system of differences, objective lyricism would allow for such axes to engage in a constant game of forces, in which the notion of lyrical subjectivity is reformulated by a movement that throws it out, to an out-of-itself position, thus displacing it from its inwardness, leading it to discover the world as alterity and to becoming an Other to itself.

Аналитические материалы архива Н. И. Евдокимова как источник изучения военно-политической истории Кавказа XVIII-XIX вв.

The article analyses documents making up the collection of General Nikolai Ivanovich Evdokimov, a well-known figure of the military and political history of the North Caucasus of the 19th century. The collection is now stored in the fonds of the Russian State Military Historical Archive. The file consists of 17 parts, its volume exceeding 500 sheets. Despite the collection value, we have no general notion of the materials subjects, since the drafted documents inventory was compiled prior to the revolution of 1917 by the staff of the Military Scientific Archive of the General Headquarters. The study is to assess the topics and to analyse the content of the documents in the collection, clarifying the nature of Evdokimov’s military-administrative activities and tracing the wide range of his scientific interests. The materials mostly contain N.I. Evdokimov’s correspondence with his subordinates and administrators involved in the Caucasus governance. The collection contains documents of management and record keeping of military and administrative nature; materials on the general's biography; and the so-called "random papers": draft documents compiled by Evdokimov and extracts on current events in the Caucasus, which interested him. The most informative is part 11, collection of materials compiled both by Evdokimov himself and for him. The research has classified analytical materials of the collection into the following groups: documents describing the history of the Caucasus; documents on the relationship building with the highlanders; military-statistical descriptions of the regions, the Cossacks administration, and the Kuban region development. Of particular value are reviews compiled for Evdokimov on the basis of the 18th century records once stored in the now perished regional Geogrievsky Archive. Clerks’ copies of several known archival documents contain Evdokimov’s notes and comments, giving an opportunity to assess his attitude to the issues concerning the Caucasus policies raised by his contemporaries. The archive gives a clear insight on the nature of problems that worried the General, as well as intellectual military elite of the region, forming a “mental map” of the Caucasus, which was to determine the tone of regional studies for a long time.

Autonomy

In Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873), Walter Pater asks if “modern art” can “represent men and women in these bewildering toils so as to give the spirit at least an equivalent for the sense of freedom?” I discuss how the notions of both subjective and aesthetic autonomy that Pater refers to here have gotten a bad rap for the past century or so for helping facilitate the liberal, capitalist, and imperialist projects of the nineteenth century. I then argue, however, that the version of autonomy described in the writings of Pater and other Victorian aesthetes and decadents is actually quite different from the bourgeois, Enlightenment notion of sovereign subjectivity that has been rightfully critiqued by postmodernists and poststructuralists. I end by suggesting that aestheticist and decadent versions of autonomy, which affirm humanity's capacity to unmake and remake ourselves and our society via the aesthetic, might serve as a resource for countering the racist Western myth Sylvia Wynter refers to as “biocentricity”: the notion that humankind,and thus the hierarchies that justify the uneven distributions of power, is wholly and intractably in thrall to natural laws beyond our control.