Tout Court Research Articles

Comparing Australian Message Sticks and Sequentially Marked Objects of the Upper Palaeolithic: Problems and Opportunities.

Engraved portable objects from Upper Palaeolithic and earlier sites are argued to be cognitive tools designed to store information for the purposes of calculation, record-keeping, or communication. This paper reviews the surprisingly long intellectual history of comparisons between these ancient objects and message sticks: marked graphic devices traditionally used for long-distance communication in Indigenous Australia. I argue that, while such comparisons have often been misguided, more cautious applications of ethnographic analogy may yield useful insights. A systematic analysis of historical observations together with more recent fieldwork, indicate that Australian message sticks are primarily tools of social cognition, as opposed to cognition tout court, and rely on orality and other context to become meaningful. Further, the practice of message stick communication may help clarify ongoing problems in the interpretation of Upper Palaeolithic objects including their possible role in aggregation activities, the distinction between decoration and notation, and the interplay between graphic sequences and speech.

Why Can’t Angels See Our Future? Aquinas’s View of the Relation between Continuous and Discrete Time

Aquinas’s account of angelic cognition presents an intriguing puzzle. Aquinas denies, for both theological and philosophical reasons, that angelic natural knowledge extends to future contingents. Yet Aquinas also insists, strictly for philosophical reasons, that angelic life is measured by a “discrete time” radically distinct from our physical universe’s continuous time. How can two times share the same “now,” such that what is future for us would also be future for the angels? Aquinas does little to address this problem, but I propose two possible solutions. Both solutions argue that angelic instants, like the instants of aeviternity and eternity, can be simultaneous with physical time periods, but only if the corresponding act aims at physical things. This means the angel cannot “skip” physical time, and so determinately aligns angelic instants with physical times. The solutions diverge over whether the extensionless angelic instant is simultaneous with the physical time period all at once, like God’s eternity, or successively, thanks to a temporally extended simultaneity-relation. The first solution prevents angelic natural foreknowledge of what follows an angelic intervention, since intervention requires a new angelic instant. The second solution prevents angelic natural foreknowledge tout court by tying “all-at-once” simultaneity to causal knowledge, which is God’s unique privilege.

The embedded Wh- in situ clause: French tout court? Les spasmes musculaires incontrôlés, je sais pas c’est quoi (France Info 20/10/21)

AbstractAlthough not studied by the generative approach (Shlonsky 2017), the embedded Wh- in situ clause nevertheless belongs to the French language spoken in a large amount of areas, and, we believe, to “français tout court” (Blanche-Benveniste & Jeanjean 1987): until now, it has mainly been studied in Quebec (Lefebvre & Maisonneuve 1982; Blondeau & Ledegen 2021) and in Reunion Island (Ledegen 2007a, 2007b, 2007c, 2016; Ledegen & Martin 2020), but it has recently been massively attested in the Multicultural Paris French project in the suburbs of Paris (Gardner-Chloros & Secova 2018) and Strasbourg (Marchessou 2018). These new data could be read as a language contact, as a recent linguistic change, or as a long-established “popular” structure (Guiraud 1966), different analytical hypotheses that will be detailed in this study. These recent data also argue in favour of the methodology of ecological corpora, obtained within the framework of a strong acquaintanceship and located at the pole of communicative proximity (Koch & Oesterreicher 2001). The examination of various existing corpora will reveal the structural functioning of the structure and contrast the corpora following the modes of interaction, the oral or written medium, as well as on the chronological axis.

“Eastern Europe” and War. Introduction to the Special Issue

The present collection of papers is a joint effort aimed at making sense of the changes that Russia’s war against Ukraine ushered into the region of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). We have invited a team of authors working on the two subregions, the Visegrád Four and the Baltic Three, to share their reflections on how the full-scale invasion has impacted the transformations in the respective countries’ regional outlook. The “kidnapping” as an overarching theme of our forum is an image that refers us to the Cold War and the history of forceful subjugation of CEE countries to foreign imperial domination as a result of aggressive wars and the spheres of influence politics in Europe. As we now clearly see, that is a part of European history that, for the moment, refuses to become history tout court.

The Promise and Peril of the Popular: Interpretations of Nineteenth-Century Popular Liberalism in Mexico

AbstractThis article examines the literature on popular liberalism in nineteenth-century Mexico and the shortcomings of two interpretations: popular liberalism as an alternative to elite liberalism, and popular liberalism as a strategy to ultimately pursue non-liberal ends. It argues that both interpretations tend to overstate the distance between the liberal elite and its popular supporters because of an unexamined, dichotomous conception of liberalism and the people (generally Indigenous and non-Indigenous peasants) as opposites. It draws its examples from studies of local politics and sides with the interpretation of ‘liberalism tout court’ as the best available option to avoid reifications of liberalism and the popular.

Erectile dysfunction and cardiovascular risk

Erectile dysfunction (ED) is defined as the persistent or recurrent inability to achieve or sustain a penile erection, whose prevalence and severity increase in the older age. It is correlated with the use of several cardiovascular drugs or it can be associated with coronary heart disease. ED prevalence is estimated to be about 50% in patients with coronary heart disease whereas it can be an independent risk factor for future events in patients without cardiovascular disease. Diagnostic work-up in ED includes a cardiovascular screening, although the real benefit of that recommendation is at present unclear. Although patients affected by ED cannot be considered tout court at high cardiovascular risk, a more thorough evaluation may help identifying a high-risk subgroup needing a different therapeutic approach.

Introduction, Summary, Questions for the Future

Introduction, Summary, Questions for the Future

Approximation through suffixation: -ḍḍu/-a in Sicilian

This article investigates the use of the Sicilian suffix -ḍḍu/-a for the expression of approximation. On the basis of a survey of a corpus of ethnotexts and the outputs of a translation questionnaire, we propose that approximation is a core value in the semantic network of the suffix, expressing a certain distance from the default values conveyed by the base. In terms of prototypicality, this distance may occur from the categorial centre (internal approximation): the suffix modifies the semantics of the base but does not alter the categorial status of the referent. Alternatively, the suffix may impact on categorial membership tout court (external approximation), questioning the categorial properties of the base. Based on this classification, the semantic cores of the suffix are represented in a map showing the connections between the various meanings identified in the corpus.

A Pluralist Approach to Joint Responsibility

A Pluralist Approach to Joint Responsibility

Experimental climate governance as organized irresponsibility? A case for revamping governing (also) through government

Experiments in socio-ecological change—real-world laboratories, testbeds, niche experiments, grassroots innovations—are commonly framed as a particularly promising way to respond to pressing challenges such as climate change. In contrast to top-down, expert- and techno-scientific innovation-driven, one-size-fits-all environmental interventions, experimental governance promises to work in the concrete rather than the abstract; to resonate with citizens instead of alienating them, and to give ample space to learning by surprise at a distance from regulatory controls. Without questioning the virtues of experimental governance tout court, this article challenges boosterish accounts of it by arguing and illustrating that “going experimental” may also run a risk. The palpable risk here is fostering a (local) government’s “liberation from responsibility” for tackling the climate crisis by instead encouraging a wide array of local, experimental interventions at a distance to accounting for how particular interventions relate to larger political goals—arguably a form of “organized irresponsibility.” Three common implications of the “rise of experimentation” in governing climate change contribute to this risk: the sidelining of public authority as a specific and key agent of change; the discrediting of top-down governance as undemocratic, if not authoritarian; and the sidestepping of societal change through collectively-binding political decisions. By combining empirical and theoretical insights, this article makes the case for revamping “governing (also) through government.” It does so by offering ways of rethinking public authority, top-down governance, and change by political decision without reasserting what experimentation seeks to transcend: state- and expert-centric, undemocratic, and sovereigntist forms of governing.

From the Editor

From the Editor

Feminist takes on post-truth

This volume argues that feminist theory can provide distinctive and potent resources to confront and take on post-truth. By ‘post-truth’, we refer to a variety of discourses and practices that subvert the sense that we share a common world. Because post-truth undermines the norms and conditions that make possible shared political practices and institutions, post-truth politics is fundamentally anti-democratic. The most common response to post-truth has, however, come from those who call for reinstating truth and rationality, with special emphasis on returning to the facts and fact-checking. From a feminist perspective, this approach is worrisome as it risks idealizing the connection between democracy and truth, disowning the tensions within and between them, and suppressing contestation tout court. Diagnosing the post-truth moment we face two challenges: on the one hand, there is too much contestation (of the post-truth variety); on the other hand, there is too much depoliticization (of the technocratic or rationalist variety). This binary effectively limits the space within which critiques of post-truth can meaningfully intervene. Feminist takes on post-truth must take seriously this dual challenge at the crossroads of depoliticization and hyper-politicization, acknowledging the anti-democratic dangers of post-truth while keeping open the possibility and necessity of contestation. Our gambit is that effective rejoinders to post-truth can be found in practices that affirm rather than repudiate a plural world. Rather than simply condemning or dismissing post-truth as mad or irrational, the feminist theorists in this volume move closer to what we’re up against in order to see how encounters with reality provide opportunities to radicalize and politicize our relation to it in ways that do not undermine the conditions for others to do the same. This volume is an attempt to open new, and emphasize existing, feminist modes of response that might break the deadlock in the post-truth discourse.

Salvatore Veca: filosofo e intellettuale pubblico

The article aims at showing Salvatore Veca’s philosophical thought, from the classical figures of the beginnings of his reflection (in particular Kant and Marx), to his encounter with Rawls’ political philosophy and up to the recent developments. The author also emphasises the importance of Salvatore Veca as a philosopher tout court and public intellectual.

Socioeconomic Rights, Competition, and Systemic Neutrality: Approaching the Right(s) Contribution to Emancipatory Social Movements

Abstract: Debate over the emancipatory potential of socioeconomic rights and their relevance to broader social movements is long-standing but is now picking up steam and taking on a life well beyond its traditionally legal disciplinary confines. This article contributes to the widening debate by emphasising the need for socioeconomic rights to be re-thought simultaneously outward (through deeper engagement with extant economic and political systems) and inward (by re-assessing various doctrines ingrained in their own construction). I pursue this 'two-track' methodology by first constructing a novel theory regarding the outward engagement of socioeconomic rights with competition law and policy, focusing on the collective agency of rightsholders pressing for social change through democratic means and the specifically neoliberal conception of competition. Crucially, following William Davies (The Limits of Neoliberalism) , I argue that this specific conception of competition is not just another aspect of neoliberalism but is instead the defining characteristic of the neoliberal system. The finding of incompatibility between socioeconomic rights and this conception of competition therefore implies incompatibility also with the neoliberal system, tout court. However, this systemic rejection provokes inward analysis of the surprisingly under-examined legal doctrine of systemic neutrality, positing that socioeconomic rights can be meaningfully realised in any political or economic system. Ultimately, it is argued that to have any real emancipatory relevance to broader social movements socioeconomic rights advocates, in general, must be far more forthright and logically consistent in what these rights both entail and exclude. The emancipatory promise of these rights is inherently bound to a rejection of their neutrality, legal, systemic, or otherwise, and an active, cooperative theoretical, and political engagement with more broadly emancipatory movements in a range of non-legal fields.

“Time Meant Nothing”: A New Reading of Pietro di Donato's Three Circles of Light beyond Autobiography and Stereotypes

“Time Meant Nothing”: A New Reading of Pietro di Donato's <i>Three Circles of Light</i> beyond Autobiography and Stereotypes

Different Ways of Being Emotional about the Past

According to Dorothea Debus (2007), all emotional aspects related to an act of remembering are present and new emotional responses to the remembered past event. This is a common conception of the nature of the emotional aspect of personal memories, if not explicitly defended then at least implicitly accepted in the literature. In this article, I first criticize Debus’ arguments and demonstrate that she does not give us valid reasons to believe that all the emotional aspects related to a memory are present and new emotional responses to that past event. I then criticize Debus’ thesis tout court for being a direct consequence of assuming a particular conceptualization of the nature of emotions: emotions as physiological changes. Finally, based on a different conceptualization of emotions that focuses on their relational nature, I propose an alternative framework for analyzing the different possible emotional aspects of our personal memories. This leads me to conclude, contrary to Debus, that some emotional aspects of our memories are not occurrent emotions but are better conceived as a sort of quasi-emotions. Keywords: Personal memory, emotion, quasi-emotion, appraisal.

From Anti-Government to Anti-Science: Why Conservatives Have Turned Against Science

Abstract Empirical data do not support the conclusion of a crisis of public trust in science. They do support the conclusion of a crisis of conservative trust in science: polls show that American attitudes toward science are highly polarized along political lines. In this essay, we argue that conservative hostility toward science is rooted in conservative hostility toward government regulation of the marketplace, which has morphed in recent decades into conservative hostility to government, tout court. This distrust was cultivated by conservative business leaders for nearly a century, but took strong hold during the Reagan administration, largely in response to scientific evidence of environmental crises that invited governmental response. Thus, science-particularly environmental and public health science-became the target of conservative anti-regulatory attitudes. We argue that contemporary distrust of science is mostly collateral damage, a spillover from carefully orchestrated conservative distrust of government.

Demarcating Patriotic Science on Digital Platforms: Covid-19, Chloroquine and the Institutionalisation of Ignorance in Brazil

ABSTRACT As supporters of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, the Bolsonarism movement has promoted the drug chloroquine for treating Covid-19 in Brazil, despite it being mostly rejected by mainstream health institutions as an effective treatment. This situation can be investigated through the lens of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and ignorance studies supported by methods from digital sociology. Bolsonarist discourse does not contest scientific authority tout court, but rather constructs boundaries between what supporters of the president see as legitimate and illegitimate science. This institutionalised ignorance is produced and maintained through Telegram messenger, a backbone of the multi-platform media ecosystem of Bolsonarism. It is accomplished through boundary work: the exclusion or inclusion of knowledge via two complementary practices – pejorative accusations against mainstream science and the crafting of affective bonds with the chloroquine alternative. While the former aims to invalidate knowledge held by experts opposed to the use of chloroquine, the latter focuses on mobilising trust in an alternative model of science, which we refer to as patriotic science. This model of science is demarcated from mainstream science, framed as corrupt and ill-equipped for the needs of Brazilians. This case study advances STS resources for examining the epistemic demarcation between science/non-science, relevant to other polities and publics that use such boundary work to institutionalise ignorance.

“A Personal Point of View”: The Dissidents, Peter Lawler, and Us

During the Cold War, Peter Augustine Lawler was a close student of the great anti-Communist dissidents, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Váçlav Havel. They taught him not only about the nature of Soviet Communism, but about modernity tout court. From both, he learned a positive lesson as well, the reality of the human person. Falsified by modern thought and directly assaulted by communist ideocracy, the truth of the person was the chief positive lesson of the Cold War, and one that Peter applied to the postwar situation as well. In our day, there are comparable reasons for cultivating “a personal point of view.”

The Democratic Limits of Populist Politics

The Democratic Limits of Populist Politics