Disrupting Colonial Narratives: (Re)claiming Autonomy and (Re)affirming Traditional Family Structures through Story in the Teme-augaming

Land displacement, theft, and erasure have been key drivers in undermining the political, economic, cultural, linguistic, ancestral, and family formations of First Nations people in Canada. Nation rebuilding is the cornerstone of all sovereignty efforts and is a necessary component of improving the social and political conditions that impact health and wellness. Exercising sovereignty is tightly linked to the autonomous assertion of land and resource rights. Discrimination through the Crown’s self-imposed position as the natural owner of all land and resources across the country is evidenced by a continued failure to recognize the many ways that First Nations self-identify. This inadequacy overlooks First Nations’ inherent rights to self-determination while advancing colonial ideologies. This paper presents a thread of qualitative research findings from a project that included an Indigenous storywork method with one First Nations’ Elder and grandmother, kookum. Within the context of her-story and traditional knowledge mobilization, this work challenges the colonially defined territorial boundaries of the hereditary family clan structures across the Temagami region in Northeastern Ontario, Canada. Kookum’s story demonstrates how colonial policies and practices undermine hereditary conceptions of traditional family identity and led to the misguided and unauthorized theft of the Friday family territories. The reconstruction of identity damages hereditary forms of governance and impairs traditional and familial connection to land, culture, language, and traditions, and is 1) incompatible with self-determination; 2) maintains and perpetuates colonialism; 3) hinders genuine reconciliation; and 4) furthers health and socio-economic inequities for First Nations people. Le déplacement, le vol et l’effacement des terres ont été les principaux facteurs qui ont miné les formations politiques, économiques, culturelles, linguistiques, ancestrales et familiales des peuples des Premières nations du Canada. La reconstruction de la nation est la pierre angulaire de tous les efforts de souveraineté et constitue un élément nécessaire à l’amélioration des conditions sociales et politiques qui ont un impact sur la santé et le bien-être. L’exercice de la souveraineté est étroitement lié à l’affirmation autonome des droits à la terre et aux ressources. La discrimination qui découle de la position que la Couronne s’est imposée en tant que propriétaire naturel de toutes les terres et ressources du pays est attestée par l’incapacité persistante de reconnaître les nombreuses façons dont les Premières nations s’identifient. Cette inadéquation néglige les droits inhérents des Premières nations à l’autodétermination tout en faisant progresser les idéologies coloniales. Cet article présente les résultats d’une recherche qualitative menée dans le cadre d’un projet incluant une méthode de travail narrative indigène avec une aînée et grand-mère des Premières Nations, kookum. Dans le contexte de la mobilisation de son histoire et de son savoir traditionnel, ce travail remet en question les frontières territoriales définies par la colonisation des structures claniques familiales héréditaires dans la région de Temagami, dans le nord-est de l’Ontario, au Canada. L’histoire de kookum montre comment les politiques et les pratiques coloniales ont sapé les conceptions héréditaires de l’identité familiale traditionnelle et conduit au vol malavisé et non autorisé des territoires de la famille Friday. La reconstruction de l’identité porte atteinte aux formes héréditaires de gouvernance et compromet les liens traditionnels et familiaux avec la terre, la culture, la langue et les traditions, ce qui est 1) incompatible avec l’autodétermination ; 2) maintient et perpétue le colonialisme ; 3) fait obstacle à une véritable réconciliation ; et 4) aggrave les inégalités sanitaires et socio-économiques pour les peuples des Premières nations

Frank Ramsey's Anti-Intellectualism

Frank Ramsey’s philosophy, developed in the 1920s in Cambridge, was in conversation with the debates surrounding intellectualism in the early twentieth century. Ramsey made his mark on the anti-intellectualist tradition via his notion of habit. He posited that human judgments take shape through habitual processes, and he rejected the separation between the domain of reason, on one hand, and the domain of habit, on the other. Ramsey also provided the ground to explore the nature of knowledge employed in acting from habit. That ground was passed onto Margaret MacDonald who came up with the distinction between knowing that something is the case and knowing how to apply a rule (or habit), the distinction that set the stage for Gilbert Ryle’s philosophical project against intellectualism from the 1940s onward. Ramsey thus influenced Ryle’s account of knowledge through the channel of MacDonald

On 'Ontology': Analyzing the Carnap-Quine Debate as a Case of Metalinguistic Negotiation

This paper uses the concept of metalinguistic negotiation, drawn from contemporary philosophy of language, to develop a novel interpretation of Carnap and Quine’s debate about ontology. Like recent revisionary accounts of the debate, it argues that the widespread perception of first-order disagreement between the two is misleading, ascribing this misperception to Carnap and Quine’s divergent usage of “ontology” and its cognates. Once this difference is accounted for, their seemingly contradictory claims about the subject can be reconciled, as the two “talk past” each other on the semantic level. Crucially, however, this does not render their dispute merely verbal. Rather, it emerges as a remarkably consequential metalinguistic negotiation over whether the term “ontology” ought to be reinterpreted or replaced for the purposes of positive philosophical theorizing. This reading provides an account of the genuine disagreement that drove Carnap and Quine to engage in their debate and illuminates the broader metaphilosophical convictions that support each of their positions. As such, it addresses an important explanatory challenge facing members of the revisionary camp

Confrontations in the New World: Grete Weil's Happy, sagte der Onkel (1968)

In her essay “Travel Writing and Gender,” the British scholar Susan Bassnett makes two  points that are relevant in analyzing Grete Weil’s travel tales, Happy, sagte der Onkel (Happy, Said My Uncle). Bassnett remarks that “increasingly in the twentieth century, male and female travelers have written self-reflexive texts that defy easy categorization as autobiography, memoir, or travel account.” This observation certainly holds true for Grete Weil’s slim volume, and so does Bassnett’s gender-specific assertion that there is a “strand of women’s travel writing that has grown in importance in the twentieth century: the journey that leads to greater self-awareness and takes the reader simultaneously on that journey.”

An Interpretation of the Gray's Elegy Argument

In this essay, I first argue that the Gray’s Elegy Argument—the dense passage in Bertrand Russell’s ‘On Denoting’—can be interpreted as a single, coherent argument against the notion that a definite description corresponds to what I call a multifaceted object—an object having multiple facets or sides. I then look into some manuscripts Russell wrote in 1904 and in 1905. I show that he had envisaged the notion of a multifaceted object and used it for two different purposes before he discovered various objections to it, which he turned into the Gray’s Elegy Argument

Strengthening Policy for First Nations Self-Determination in Health : An Analysis of Problems, Politics, and Policy Related to Medical Travel in Northwest Territories

Medical travel, where a patient travels to a larger centre for services not available in their home community, is a critical element of the Northwest Territories (NT) health care system. For residents with a valid NT health care card who do not have other coverage for medical travel, the territorial government administers some travel benefits through the NT Medical Travel Program as well as the federally funded non-insured health benefits program. The Gwich'in Tribal Council (GTC) recognizes that medical travel constitutes a major burden and presents extraordinary challenges for Gwich'in living in small remote communities in NT. In 2020, the GTC conducted research that suggests current policy and programs provide only partial access to care. Informed by Gwich'in medical travel stories and drawing from literature on the concepts of health care access, knowledge, power, and Indigenous rights, this article reframes prevailing understandings of the problems, politics, and policy associated with medical travel in NT. The authors contend that relevant and equitable medical travel in NT depends on policy-making that engages First Nations as equal partners with different levels of government and describe key considerations relevant to policymakers in NT and throughout Canada. Les déplacements pour motifs sanitaires, dans lesquels un patient se déplace vers un centre urbain plus grand pour recevoir des services non disponibles dans sa communauté, sont un élément critique du système de soins des Territoires du Nord Ouest (TNO). Le gouvernement territorial offre des aides aux déplacements pour les résidents munis d’une carte de santé valide des TNO dépourvus d’autre forme de couverture pour déplacements sanitaires, à travers le programme de déplacement sanitaire des TNO ainsi qu’à travers le programme fédéral de services de santé non assurés. Le Conseil Tribal Gwich’in (CTG) a reconnu que les déplacements sanitaires représentaient un fardeau écrasant et des défis extrêmes pour les Gwich’in vivant dans des petites communautés isolées des TNO. En 2020, le CTG a conduit une recherche montrant que les programmes et politiques actuelles ne procure qu’un accès partiel aux soins. Cet article, en se fondant sur des récits de déplacements sanitaires de Gwich’in et en utilisant la littérature sur les concepts d’accès aux soins, la connaissance, le pouvoir et les droits autochtones, propose une autre lecture des problèmes et politiques liées aux déplacements sanitaires dans les TNO. Les auteurs affirment que des déplacements sanitaires de qualité et équitables dans les TNO seront le fait d’un processus de décision engageant les Premières Nations comme partenaires à part entière avec les différents niveaux de gouvernement et ils listent les considérations clés pour les décideurs politiques aux TNO et à travers le pays

Fear and Trembling: Performing the Protestant Conscience in Thomas Middleton’s The Lady’s Tragedy

With its glorified ghost, godly avenger, and idolatrous Tyrant, Thomas Middleton’s The Lady’s Tragedy appears to offer a thinly veiled allegory of Protestant triumphalism. Little attention has been paid, however, to how its characters do — or do not — respond to the play’s many crises of conscience. This essay sets Middleton’s tragedy against English Protestant understandings of the trembling body and vexed conscience. It demonstrates that while the play’s multiple instances of trembling seem to unsettle its Protestant triumphalism, its special effects, intended to provoke audience trembling, might nevertheless deepen playgoers’ attachment to the Protestant cause

Amateur Theatre at the Early Modern Inns of Court? The Implications of a Performance Copy of Jonson’s 1640 Folio

This article discusses a recently rediscovered copy of Ben Jonson's 1640 Workes that contains seventeenth-century annotations to Epicene that suggest preparations for performance. We trace the folio copy’s provenance with the Powell family in Nanteos, Wales, and consider the possibility that it may have been annotated when in the possession of Sir Thomas Powell, a lawyer and judge who spent much of his life in London. We argue that the annotated play-text can be connected to four other playbooks by William Shakespeare and James Shirley that have been previously associated with seventeenth-century amateur theatricals, and that the new evidence provided by the Jonson text points plausibly to a practice of amateur performance at and around Gray's Inn in the middle of the century

The York Vintners’ ‘The Marriage at Cana’ and the Puzzle of Pageants Withheld from the Register

Opening with the character of Architriclinus, the York Vintners’ pageant ‘The Marriage at Cana’ likely bolstered their claims over the right to search and sell sweet and other wines in conflicts with the Spicers and Mercers. The Vintners’ failure to submit their pageant for transcription into the York Register possibly signals resentments felt and privileges enjoyed by these specialist merchants – resentments and privileges perhaps shared by the only other guild to withhold their original from the city clerk despite repeated calls for its submission: the Ironmongers

Domenico Lovascio. John Fletcher’s Rome: Questioning the Classics. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022.

Review of John Fletcher’s Rome: Questioning the Classics by Domenico Lovasci