Object Lesson Research Articles

Visualizing Race at the Perkins School for the Blind

The article considers the construction of racialized citizenship in the Perkins School for the Blind in the nineteenth century through centering two cases of Black children that appear in Perkins’s archives. There is little scholarship on the history of Black students at Perkins, and materials on their experiences are scarce. Drawing on Saidiya Hartman’s concept of “critical fabulation,” the article speculates on how Black children were admitted to the institution not for training in economic futures but to serve as object lessons for their white classmates, who were taught to apprehend race through Black children’s presence. Black children helped produce white citizenship; the school’s ostensible policy of colorblind admission segregated blind Black children from futures preserved for blind white children. Illuminating presences and absences of race in the archives shows us how race, disability, and racialized disability co-constituted one another in the service of state-sanctioned efforts to manage who could and could not participate in the social, political, and economic orders.

Sandbox: Re/playing assemblages

Part of Object Lesson special issue, this essay narrates a sandbox, the most common element of early childhood settings, as a territory of tensions and pedagogical possibilities. In three parts—sand, area, and borders—it sketches sandbox assemblages as historical and geographically contingent events of composing, with fluctuating elements linked by articulations of Euro-Western human-centeredness. In turn, the essay connects logics of purity of play sand with colonial extractivist apparatus and describes the establishment of sand play as a form of governmentality of childhoods. To disrupt the dominant developmental discourses that perpetuate a young child as a master of a sand universe, I draw on notes and documentation from a 2020–2022 research project of re/imagining play/ground(ing) potentialities and offer sandbox vignettes to trouble descriptions of playgrounds as aspatial. Finally, the article places climate crisis discourses inside the sandbox and considers the ethico-political labor of maintaining and transgressing its borders in hopes of showing the dominant sandbox regimes as eroded by the violences of the systems that propped them up in the first place. This work hopes to help educators and others to imagine otherwise futures of being, playing, and thinking with children and others in outdoor play spaces.

William Banting

This paper won the Sophie Coe Award in 2002. It is an object lesson in ‘There is nothing new under the sun’ for today’s dedicated followers of fashion. Much more about Barry Groves’ work can be discovered on his website www.second-opinions.co.uk. I am grateful for his permission to download his text.

Communicating with Plants

The Secret Life of Plants, a 1973 book that was developed into a 1979 documentary film, reports on a flurry of parapsychological research involving attempts to communicate with plants using electrodes, lie detectors, and psychic powers. The book highlights the work of Cleve Backster, an American researcher who claimed he could demonstrate that plants could read people’s minds and that measurements of his plants’ emotional responses to the randomized death of brine shrimp revealed empathetic connections “even on the lower levels of life.” Although this research appears risible in retrospect, Backster’s work expresses attempts to conceptualize plant subjectivity and plant agency against the backdrop of the emergent environmental movement. While it might be overly charitable to credit these experiments in plant communication with inspiring contemporary research into the ways plants share information with one another and with other species, Backster’s outlandish investigations suggest enduring object lessons for human beings in general and for the environmental humanities field in particular regarding the ways that plants continue to baffle us, to enchant us, and even, in their own weird way, to speak to us.

The Play of Love, 1230–1578: A Case Study and Edition

ABSTRACT This article offers the first comprehensive history of the “play of love”—a similitude that compares God’s withdrawal in temptation to a mother at play with her young child—from its origin in Ancrene Wisse through its subsequent appearances in English and Latin devotional writing. In Ancrene Wisse, the scene allows an anchorite to understand her emotion in light of God’s love while acknowledging that God’s unprompted withdrawal causes suffering. The play of love was subsequently excerpted, translated into Latin, and circulated in England and on the continent. A Latin compilation misattributed to Richard Rolle, Quandoque tribularis (edited in the appendix), and later Middle English works refashion the play of love to prescribe specific practices or emotions. This case history thus reveals surprising connections between early English vernacular religious writing, Latinate European readers, and later medieval English compilers, as well as an object lesson in these readers’ changing expectations.

Establishing veritocracy: Society, truth and science.

In the west, truth is being eroded by post-modernist ideas such as alternative facts. Once truth is no longer valued it is a short route through nationalistic populism to fascism. To combat this we need to establish the idea of 'veritocracy' as a form of government. A veritocracy is a democracy in which truth is so highly valued that promising to tell the truth will become a central feature of politicians' election manifestos feeding back the idea of veritocracy deeper into national culture. A proper understanding of the nature of science can support the idea of veritocracy. This proper understanding will not repeat the mythology of post-World War II philosophy and history of science, but will begin with the much more socially cognisant revolution in our understanding of science that began in the 1960s and 1970s. Nevertheless, a 'wave three' of science studies will justify science, not as a certainty-maker for policy, but as the way to bet in developing the best understanding of the observable world. The key is that science depends on moral truth in its attempts to develop correspondence truth. Science, like the law, should be a 'check and balance' in pluralist democracies and an object lesson in how to pursue truth in decision-making.

Object lesson: Placenta/placentae

This article delves into the multifaceted nature of the placenta, both as a physiological organ and a cultural symbol, through personal narrative, Indigenous-feminist scholarship, and scientific inquiry. Beginning with the author’s pregnancy experience and reflections on birth practices, it navigates the placenta’s role in childbirth, its cultural significance, and the lack of discourse surrounding its importance. The inquiry expands to incorporate contemporary issues such as microplastic pollution and its presence in human placenta, emphasizing the interconnectedness of environmental pollution and colonialism. Through the lens of anticolonial science and art as ritual, the article proposes artful avenues for engaging with placenta/placentae as an object lesson and environmental activism, advocating for a deeper understanding of our relationship with the land.

Seeing Again: On Erin Pineda's Seeing Like an Activist

Seeing Like an Activist is a profound—and profoundly political—book. Skillfully distilling complex historical evidence into a vivid narrative and advancing a compelling theoretical argument, Pineda unsettles conventional accounts of the civil rights movement to ask what we can learn about the nature and limits of civil disobedience “by reconsidering the example we already think we know so well” (3). One of the book's key contributions is its analysis of political practices that constituted the “short civil rights movement”—the decade of southern protest bookended by the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955–56 and the Selma March in 1965. “The civil rights movement (and its multitude of activists),” Pineda observes, “operates between the lines of theory as an object lesson—a ready-made example that proves the moral purchase of the theory, rather than a live source of novel theoretical insights and political claims” (48). As object lesson, the movement is often recruited to police or criticize forms of protest that are said to fall short of the disciplined nonviolence of the past. This view of history, Pineda contends, enables theorists of civil disobedience like John Rawls to use the example of civil rights activism to affirm the liberal constitutional order. Offering incisive critiques of Rawls, Michael Walzer, and Hugo Bedau, Pineda exposes the unearned ease with which political theories that do not take racial injustice as a central concern or focus on Black theoretical practices have conscripted the civil rights movement in service of their arguments.

Why Prevention Fails: Chronicling the Genocide in Artsakh

Azerbaijan’s September 19, 2023 attack on the Republic of Artsakh resulted in the almost total displacement of the indigenous Armenian population, making it one of the most successful genocides in history. For over a year before Azerbaijan’s attack, the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention viewed Artsakh as the “perfect storm” for genocide prevention and was using as many strategies as possible to urge Western leaders to recognize the threat and take effective action. Any leader willing to challenge Azerbaijan diplomatically would have had the work of many genocide scholars and genocide prevention organizations to back them up. We still believe that coordinated pressure from the Western powers could have had a chance of avoiding genocide and may have resulted in finding a secure, and perhaps independent, space for Artsakh Armenians in their ancestral homeland. This article aims to show how the case of genocide in Artsakh is an object lesson in how diplomatic silences, shaped by geopolitical interests, can provide the power framework in which genocide can easily take place, offer diplomatic cover for the state or organization committing the crime, and normalizing the crime within international relations. It proposes that the genocide in Artsakh ushered in a new “New Imperialism”, in which the post-1945 law-based world order is jettisoned for raw power, threatened communities and unwanted peoples are less safe than they were before September 19, 2023, and genocide will become the order of the day – unless we find new mechanisms to prevent it.

Strange, and Stranger Ways With Strangers

It is difficult to find the necessary discursive focus on English inmultilingual India. Its aspirational youth still need this language of colonialprovenance to keep its otherness from the native cultures of India theynonetheless esteem. This article acknowledges the radical ambivalenceEnglish thus creates, beside an analysis of the others English engenders inIndia’s globalizing progress. It critiques what academics often practise asa version and variant of Cultural Studies, and how they end by practicingStranger Studies. The concluding part of this article probes the reservationsmost Indians seem to have about their visitors and guests, and how Englishinflects their transactions with the ‘other’ world. A Harold Pinter tableaufrom Mountain Language is read as an object lesson for students who investin English, unmindful of its undiminished potential still as an imperialistlanguage. When Language fails the Human, it is time we rethink thehumanities. The article ends with a reformist hope that no Indian or otherstate capital will ever be a stage for such an overbearing English scenariothe way it appears so blatantly in Pinter’s play.

Human Rights at the Edges of Late Imperial Britain: The Tyrer Case and Judicial Corporal Punishment from the Isle of Man to Montserrat, 1972–1990

AbstractIn Tyrer v. United Kingdom (1978), the European Court of Human of Human Rights ruled that judicial corporal punishment contravened Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which proscribed “degrading treatment or punishment.” The case unfolded at a formative moment in British legal activism, as left-wing civil-liberties lawyers who had been wary of human rights discourse began taking cases to Strasbourg. The case also involved tactical challenges for British politicians and government lawyers. The case originated on the Isle of Man, which is close to the British mainland but constitutionally not part of the United Kingdom: it is a “crown dependency” with its own executive, legislature, and judiciary, and it persisted with judicial corporal punishment long after the practice had been abolished in Great Britain. By convention, the British government respected the island's laws and criminal-justice policies, but Britain was responsible for the island's compliance with international agreements—including the European Convention on Human Rights. How the British government dealt with the Isle of Man during and after the litigation had direct implications for a host of other small territories in what remained of the British empire—in particular, Britain's remaining Caribbean territories. The Tyrer case's protracted endgame was an object lesson in how much Britain's “unwritten” constitution depends on negotiation, manipulation, and avoiding the overt exercise of powers that might crumble upon use.

"Yes, these are the dog days, Fortunatus": W.H. Auden and the Latin Poet Venantius Fortunatus

Abstract: W.H. Auden's "Under Sirius" (1949), constructed as an engaging interrogation of the Late Latin poet Venantius Fortunatus, has long been recognized as a vehicle for Auden's own self-examination. Yet, despite the importance of "Under Sirius" to the study of Auden's self-awareness and development as a poet, this poem's relationship to Fortunatus's poetry has not previously been explored in depth. A sustained close reading of "Under Sirius" together with its informing texts reveals that Auden has appropriated significant material from Fortunatus's poems. Rather than viewing Venantius Fortunatus as a minor poet who served as an object lesson in unrealized potential, Auden expected an informed reader to know that ultimately this poet had risen above the decadence of his times to fulfill his artistic promise.

Anti-Adopterism as Resistant Knowledge: An Autoethnographic Case Study of Colorblind Distortions in Transracial and International Adoption

This autoethnography presents my adoption as an object lesson in the normalization of racism. I highlight the epistemological conflict between race consciousness and colorblindness–where in pursuit of being a “good daughter,” I rejected myself to accept my white adoptive family. Clinically, these experiences are diagnosed as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder; however, I locate them as “internalized oppression” consistent with Black feminism. I find that racism is normalized through distorting displacement as placement and through centering my white adoptive family. I also observed “racism as bonding.” I posit, therefore, that adoptees’ anger might function as anti-racist resistance to colorblindness.

Wither Pre-service Teacher Education in Zimbabwe? Object Lessons from Teacher Education Systems in the United Kingdom, United States and South Africa

After pragmatically tinkering with quantity-oriented models of teacher education since early 1980s, Zimbabwe now seems to be faced with quality challenges, necessitating change of policy direction. In recent years, disquiet has been voiced about the declining quality of school education, a trend widely attributed to the low quality of teachers. This has put teacher education provision in Zimbabwe in the spotlight of critical and in some instances derisive scrutiny. Under such circumstances, one would reasonably expect teacher education policy-makers to be diligently seized with change efforts. However, teacher education policy-makers seem to be dithering indecisively in relation to suggesting new directions for teacher education in Zimbabwe. This paper attempts to break the deafening silence in the teacher education policy community by suggesting some objects lessons for the teacher education system in Zimbabwe on the basis of insights derived from analyzing teacher education systems in the United Kingdom, United States and South Africa.

To Have and to Hoard: Xandra Ibarra's Object Lessons

Thinking with the work of Oakland-based artist Xandra Ibarra, this essay engages the object lessons accessed through analysis of the artist's oeuvre. Dwelling specifically with the objects Ibarra gathers and thinking askance to new materialist approaches when theorizing the social life of objects, Alvarado explores the racial vespers that suffuse objects, their presentation and exchange, as well as our interpretation of relations of exchange. Alongside Ibarra's theorization of “things” as published in her art lexicon guide, this essay additionally considers the elevation of proper feminist and ethnic/racialized objects and subjects in art markets and social justice spaces, their circulation as “things,” and Ibarra's exhaustion in the face of this process. Ultimately this essay takes up Ibarra's own engagement with the proper objects of Latinx art and women of color feminisms and her awareness of herself as a bad object for funding, presentation, and favored kinds of political work.

The Siege of Enniskillen Castle, 1594: An Object Lesson in Combat Across the Land-Water Interface

The U.S. Marine Corps spent the years between the world wars developing a doctrine of opposed landings from the sea in an arena where the ocean provided the only maneuver space, but the opposed amphibious operation is not the province of ocean-borne amphibious assaults alone. The land-water interface impacts warfare well inland from the coast, and much can be learned from the application of riverine and lacustrine amphibious assaults found in history. One such example is the siege of Enniskillen Castle in Ireland in 1594. English operations at Enniskillen demonstrated the value of coordinated waterborne and land-based forces at the tactical level. Considering English lacustrine operations in the Irish Nine Years’ War (1593–1603) and U.S. riverine warfare experiences in the American Civil War and Vietnam War can inform Marine planners as they develop the tactics, techniques, and procedures of the Marine Littoral Regiments.

The New Liberals and Chinese Civilization: Idealist Philosophy, Evolutionary Sociology, and the Quest for a Humanitarian Ethics in Edwardian Britain

It is well known that the leading New Liberals L. T. Hobhouse and J. A. Hobson were critics of the British Empire, and their sympathy with China has been understood as an expression of their anti-imperialism. However, this article argues that this reading is at best one-sided. By examining Hobhouse's and Hobson's ethical and sociological thought, it demonstrates that their Sinophile position drew on a broader concern about the turn-of-the-century moral crisis. Informed by Idealist philosophy, positivism, and evolutionary biology, their quest for a post-Christian ethics led to an appreciation of the harmonic order of Chinese society and its secularism. The leading New Liberals’ earnest study of China on the one hand represented a departure from the Eurocentric position of British Liberals who had seen “stationary” China as a negative object lesson, and on the other anticipated a generation of Liberal/progressive thinkers who were attracted to Chinese culture.

Life in the Grotto: Montaigne & the Meaning of Posthumanism

ABSTRACT This article delineates two principles of the grotesque in Renaissance visual art, texts, and garden grottoes, one more superficial and one more radical. In sixteenth-century Europe, the latter mode finds its most striking manifestation in the Essays (1580–95) of Michel de Montaigne. The Essays offer a paradigm for grotesque thinking, one that crucially inflects contemporary ideas on the potentialities, and aporias, of posthumanist theory, life, and ethics. Grotesque ornaments, garden grottoes, and the essay à la Montaigne are here reread as provocative object lessons for bringing into focus the difference between a superficial and a constitutive posthumanism still to come.

‘In retrospect’: Object Lessons forum

Our contribution takes shape as reflections on Object Lessons (Wiegman, 2012) from the perspective of three scholars of race, gender and sexuality who were also graduate students of Robyn Wiegman in the mid-2000s at Duke University. All three of us took Introduction to Feminist Theory with her and all three of us received graduate certificates in Feminist Studies. Our educational and career trajectories also share this similarity: we received PhDs in the disciplines (English, Comparative Literature and French), but went on to jobs that are either completely or partially housed in departments invested in studying what Wiegman calls ‘identity knowledges' (namely, African American Studies and Gender Studies). In these essays, we reflect on how Wiegman's course helped shaped our approaches to academic knowledge production and how her reflexive pedagogy animates not only Object Lessons but also our own critiques of identity’s institutionalized forms.

Object lessons and the desire of psychoanalysis

In this article, “Object Lessons and the Desire of Psychoanalysis,” I meditate on the significance of Robyn Wiegman‘s 2012 monograph Object Lessons by examining the psychoanalytic significance of the concept of “transferential idealism” that Wiegman first introduced there. In doing so, I read Wiegman‘s Object Lessons through the lens of the book‘s psychoanalytic ethics and argue that the desire of Object Lessons is the desire of psychoanalysis: an enigmatic desire, borne from lack, which aims toward the proliferation of difference. By foregrounding the psychoanalytic desire of Object Lessons, I also consider my own inheritances of the desire of Object Lessons as the desire of psychoanalysis, and argue for its urgent importance for the field of Trans Studies today.