An Interplay of Learning, Creativity and Narrative Biography in a Mental Health Setting: Bertie's Story

This paper describes selected findings from a research study exploring the use of a basic literacy/creative writing course provided in a community setting for adults with long-term mental health difficulties. It explores one case in particular, where long-term mental illness coupled with limited verbal articulation and low levels of literacy presented significant barriers to learning, creativity and the construction of narrative. However, whilst little movement or development could be discerned in some participant cases where recognisable barriers were less formidable, the case study selected illustrates a resilience and agency on the part of one individual which enabled incremental but significant development. The paper suggests that seeking the creative in the writing, or the meaning in the words was to overlook the actual creative act, which was the resilient, reparative process of coming to terms with a new identity and a new self narrative

Sobre el problema de la objetividad: entre racionalidad, representación e ideología

Despite all the contemporary discussion about the relativity of the points of view, the value of "objectivity" seems still quite present mainly in the narrative of the media about itself. In this article, we will try to demonstrate how this notion of "objectivity" can be reinterpreted, in the limit, as an ideological expression. For this, we will focus on the notion of "objectivity" problematized by the Brazilian philosopher Marilena Chaui. We will make a journey based on specific writings of the extensive work of the philosopher, writings that were revised and improved in different texts in the last years. Our path will present, at first, an overfly by the definition made by Chaui about the term "ideology", going to the theme of its relationship with the idea of "objectivity", especially in regard to the role of the "objectivity" in the construction of the "ideology". Such concepts are quite opportune in the reflection on the new arrangements of public sphere after the explosion of digital communications. Because of this, we conclude with a brief discussion about the actual and complex problem of the post-truth and "fake news". We assume here the ongoing character of our analysis, beyond the option for the definition of this specific cut as a way to present one within the innumerable possibilities of discussion of the controversial issue of objectivity.A pesar de toda la discusión contemporánea sobre la relatividad de los puntos de vista, el valor de la "objetividad" parece todavía bastante presente principalmente en la narrativa de los medios sobre sí mismos. En este artículo, trataremos de demostrar cómo esta noción de "objetividad" puede ser reinterpretada, en el límite, como una expresión ideológica. Para ello, nos centraremos en la noción de "objetividad" problematizada por la filósofa brasileña Marilena Chaui. Haremos un viaje basado en escritos específicos del extenso trabajo de la filósofa, escritos que fueron revisados y mejorados en diferentes textos en los últimos años. Nuestro camino presentará, al principio, un sobrevuelo por la definición de Chaui sobre el término "ideología", yendo al tema de su relación con la idea de "objetividad", especialmente con respecto al papel de la "objetividad" en la construcción de la “ideología”. Tales conceptos son bastante oportunos en la reflexión sobre los nuevos arreglos de la esfera pública después de la explosión de las comunicaciones digitales. Debido a esto, concluimos con una breve discusión sobre el problema actual y complejo de la post-verdad y las fake news. Asumimos aquí el carácter in progress de nuestro análisis, además de la opción para la definición de este corte específico como una forma de presentar una dentro de las innumerables posibilidades de discusión de la controvertida cuestión de la objetividad.FAPESP 2018/06565-3, 2016/03588-

Declaring the Self and the Social

The epistemological problem is traditionally expressed in the question “How do we know that we know?” The emphasis is on the relationship between the claim that we know and what it is that we know. We notice, only belatedly, that the agent who knows does not really matter in the question. The knower is but an abstracted entity whose only qualification is that s/he claims to know. Virtue epistemology’s virtue lies in the centering of the knower: What is it about the knower that enables her to claim that she knows or that enables us to agree that she indeed knows? The concept of intellectual responsibility in virtue epistemology does not only brings us into the realm of the normative but also implicates, necessarily, the social and the political. Invoking the openness of alternative virtue epistemology to unconventional sources and methods, this essay turns to metaphysics and social ontology in order to explore the problems of intellectual responsibility, society, and politics in humankind’s disposition and striving to know

Ideology, constitutional culture and institutional change: the EU constitution as reflection of Europe’s emergent postmodernism

Using the example of the European Constitution, this paper argues that ideology plays a much more important role in institutional change than has been indicated hitherto in the literature. Rather than being an intellectual parlor-game, Postmodernism has emerged through European high culture to find its voice in the new Constitution. Although it was rejected by a critical mass of voters, the proposed Constitution offers a telling glimpse into the European intellectual mindset – especially since politicians are now bruiting the possibility of ratifying the constitution via compliant legislatures rather than fickle referenda. Anomalies in the document are better explained by the post-World War Two emergence of postmodern philosophy in Europe than by more traditional explanations from political economy.European constitution, postmodernism, political economy, institutional change

Symmetrical Womanhood: Poetry in the Woman\u27s Building Library

Late-nineteenth-century women poets shed midcentury sentimentality unevenly and at some cost, losing a sense of privacy, a (Christian) frame of reference, and an imagined community of women who shared their worldview. They also gained more public, secular, and professional sources of identity. The exact nature of this postsentimental self was unclear. Postsentimental poets often wrote in the genteel tradition, which trumpeted eternal truth and beauty while working from a position of subjective instability. Ultimately, their verses must be seen as powerfully fluid and transitional, registering (like the Woman\u27s Building Library) women\u27s struggle to inhabit more public forms of authority

Political returns on the twenty-first century stage: Caryl Churchill’s Far Away, Drunk Enough to Say I Love You? and Seven Jewish Children

There is some hesitation in theatre scholarship to confront and engage with the resurgence of political theatre in the 21st century, despite the vast numbers of political plays that have been performed in a variety of genres on the British stage in the last decade. This article considers the rejuvenation of political theatre in the 21st century and focuses in particular on Caryl Churchill’s Far Away (2000), Drunk Enough to Say I Love You? (2006) and Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza (2009). I argue that these plays rehabilitate explicit political comment for the stage as well as discover fresh theatrical languages to represent what are often familiar political narratives. The discussion borrows from the writings of Jacques Rancière to help identify strategies Churchill’s plays use to find innovative ways of producing new forms of political subjectivity in audiences

ANTI-NATURE IN NATURE ITSELF

Nature and civilization are often regarded in opposition to each other. However, civilization employs technologies and is based on laws of nature. Also, the historical world is a result of the development of the natural world. An “anti-nature” must thus be contained somewhere within nature. The idea of “anti-nature” is neither alien to the Eastern nor to the Western traditional concepts of nature. The philosophy of Lao Zi never embraces mere naturalism. Lao Zi has observed that things in the world are not always “so on their own” but rather in the mode of anti-nature. Anti-nature in nature itself does not become expressive until Christian theology, in which the origin of evil is reflected upon. The last part of the paper begins with one Buddhist thought expressed in the Diamond Sutra: “The world is not the world that is named the world.” Through naming of a thing, this thing is objectified or substantialized, and an objectified thing is not the thing itself. This self is “śūnya”, a non-world, which is what the world is. This non-world (as well nature) is first and foremost concealed by ego-consciousness that tends to objectify the things. Ego-consciousness as this anti-nature tends to conceal this non-nature, and begins to act in the form of technology. The radical way of solving the problems caused by this “anti-nature” must begin with gaining an insight into the nature of ourselves as well as the nature of technology

Challenging the empire

This paper considers how Paul Gilroy transformed hitherto dominant understandings of the relationship between race and class by developing an innovative account that foregrounded questions of racist oppression and collective resistance amid the organic crisis of British capitalism. The returns from this rethinking were profound in that he was able to make transparent both the structuring power of racism within the working class, and the necessity for autonomous black resistance. At the same time, significant lacunae in his account are identified, including the neglect of the episodic emergence of working-class anti-racism and the part played by socialists, particularly those of racialized minority descent in fashioning a major anti-racist social movement. The paper concludes with a lament for the disappearance of such work informed by a ‘Marxism without guarantees’ in the contemporary field of racism studies, and asks readers to consider the gains to be derived from such a re-engagement

The Aporetic Ground of Revelation’s Authority in the Divine Comedy and Dante’s Demarcation and Defense of Philosophical Authority

I discuss Dante’s understanding that human existence is “ordered by two final goals” and how, for Dante, this understanding defines philosophy’s and revelation’s respective scopes of authority in guiding human conduct. Specifically, I show that, although Dante subordinates our earthly beatitude to spiritual beatitude in a way that seems to suggest the subordination of the authority of philosophy to that of revelation, he in fact limits philosophy’s scope to an arena in which its authority is not only legitimate but also crucial to the cultivation of the higher, spiritual beatitude of human activity