What of the Cosmopolitan? Or Approaching the Absent Patriarch in Transnational Theory

In this essay I will argue that there are embodied, privileged cosmopolitans, that merely masquerade as ghosts in order to avoid border detainment and a critical inquiry into their status. I will, further, argue that it is in the best interests of these cosmopolitans to avoid detection. Transnational discourse allows these cosmopolitans to exercise this privilege by dwelling on the ideal versions of cosmopolitanism. The discourse further obscures the embodied cosmopolitan by focusing upon already excessively embodied exorbitant citizens, which has the double effect of increasing the embodiment of exorbitant citizens while obscuring the privileged cosmopolitan. In order to conduct this analysis, I will use Kristeva\u27s theory of the absent patriarch. Furthermore, I will examine the disappearance of this privileged figure by looking at the privileged cosmopolitanism of Mr. Edward Fairfax Rochester in Charlotte Bronte\u27s mid-century Victorian text Jane Eyre and the elusive cosmopolitanism of Eric Packer in Don DeLillo\u27s post-9/11 novel Cosmopolis. Further, I will show how both of these authors present embodied, male cosmopolitan patriarchs, whose appearance of absence is an illusion consciously constructed by concealing themselves behind other embodiments. That each of these authors is situated during a period of Empire and global expansion seems like no mere coincidence. In the case of DeLillo, I will also examine how he theorizes the cosmopolitan figure in the absence of a visible, contemporary cosmopolitanism, and how that theorization directly implicates the cosmopolitan as embodied, permeable, and fearful of the discovery of his fallibility. I will close by examining the concept of power through absence (or disappearance) that characterizes the exercising of power in both Kristeva\u27s work and, as Zygmunt Bauman has it, in Liquid Modernity at large

Rationalism and the disembodiment of modern childbirth: the case for an ecology of childbirth

The paper proposes a genealogy of the biomedical paradigm surroundingchildbirth, with the aim of deconstructing the principles of rationalism that led to theobjectification of the body and to the consequent commodification of birth. We intend todemonstrate how such a conception of the body and of sensibility determines the birthprocess, which leads us to consider it an event that is relational in nature. Methodologically,this deconstruction is carried out through a critical-descriptive genealogy of the theoreticalassumptions of the rationalist conception of the body. By developing the concept ofecology of childbirth, we intend to call into question this relational nature of the body andto recover the value of corporeality and embodiment as a language of proximity, withina theoretical framework of the ethics of difference. This vindication of the ecologicalrelational nature of sensibility has the potential to establish a dynamic of responsibilityand cooperation capable of subverting the rationalist logic of control and the dominion ofthe current biomedical paradigm.Fil: Viola, Federico Ignacio. Universidad Católica de Santa Fe; ArgentinaFil: Bonet de Viola, Ana María. Universidad Católica de Santa Fe; ArgentinaFil: Espinoza, Marisa. Universidad Católica de Santa Fe; Argentin

Representing (Post-)Human Enhancement Technologies in 21st Century US Fiction: Richard Powers’s Generosity: An Enhancement (2009), Dave Eggers’s The Circle (2013), and Don DeLillo’s Zero K (2016)

Esta tesis doctoral se centra en el análisis de las novelas Generosity: An Enhancement (2009) de Richard Powers, The Circle (2013) de Dave Eggers y Zero K (2016) de Don DeLillo. Estas tres novelas son representativas de una nueva corriente en la ficción norteamericana del siglo veintiuno que se caracteriza por ficcionalizar debates actuales en torno al transhumanismo y examinar el potencial y las limitaciones de diferentes tecnologías de mejora humana. En concreto, los diferentes capítulos de esta tesis ofrecen, desde la doble perspectiva de la filosofía transhumanista y del posthumanismo crítico, una visión general de las estrategias narrativas utilizadas por estos tres escritores para abordar tanto las posibilidades que la biotecnología, las redes sociales y los dispositivos de vigilancia y las tecnologías de criopreservación ofrecen a los seres humanos, como los desafíos que estas tecnologías nos plantean. Así pues, esta tesis doctoral demuestra que, a pesar de tratar el tema de la mejora tecnológica de la condición humana desde una variedad de perspectivas y utilizando diferentes estrategias narrativas, lo que une a estos escritores es un temor, compartido por los posthumanistas críticos, a que un uso desenfrenado e inconsciente de las nuevas tecnologías traiga consigo un nivel indeseado de desmaterialización y deshumanización. En este último sentido, las tres novelas nos advierten de que si los seres humanos llegaran a considerar la tecnología como un atajo hacia el futuro, o como una forma de cumplir nuestros deseos de mejora, podríamos terminar perdiendo el contacto con el aquí y ahora, distanciándonos de nuestros seres queridos, o evadiendo nuestros problemas y responsabilidades presentes. En lugar de recurrir a la tecnología como una forma de evadirnos de nuestros problemas, o como una forma de mejorar nuestras vidas o lograr una satisfacción instantánea y sin esfuerzo, los tres autores enfatizan la necesidad de centrarse y disfrutar del momento presente, establecer relaciones sólidas con quienes nos rodean y ser resilientes ante nuestros problemas. En conjunto, esta tesis también muestra que la ficción, con su capacidad para dar voz y contrastar diferentes discursos y perspectivas, así como para involucrar a los lectores emocional e intelectualmente, es una herramienta adecuada para provocar una reflexión en torno a algunas de las cuestiones éticas y filosóficas que rodean el ideal transhumanista de utilizar la tecnología para mejorar la condición humana. Lamentablemente, estos aspectos a menudo son pasados por alto no solo por los defensores del transhumanismo y las empresas que desarrollan y comercializan los nuevos desarrollos tecnológicos, sino también por una población acrítica que, en general, confía cada vez más en la capacidad de la tecnología para mejorar su calidad de vida.<br /

Dance as a complementary pedagogic tool in architectural education

Architectural education is complex as it requires the development of both objective and subjective knowledge. While explicit knowledge that meets the trends in universities to create value by preparing students for industry, are easier to include in a curriculum, implicit knowledge based on personal experience that facilitates flexibility and creativity is more challenging. An example in the training of future architects is highlighted by the tendency to rely heavily on the visual sense in relation to buildings, which tends to objectify them, thereby ignoring their experiential components. The move towards digital applications in design further alienates the designers from this experiential aspect, as the technology leads to disembodiment and hence the sensitivity to subjective aspects of design. Design of space is influenced subconsciously by habitual patterns of behaviour embedded culturally and autobiographically in body memory. Dance as a complementary pedagogic tool can develop understanding of self and the body, bringing such habitual patterns into awareness. In addition to creating awareness, dance offers the tools to explore alternatives, creating a new meaning and relationship to space thus aiding the design skills of students. A curriculum that includes the subjective and autobiographical aspects of the student reflects the educational theory of Currere proposed by William Pinar and a pedagogic approach that reflects the theories of Georgio Agamben’s “rhythm” and Alfred Whitehead’s “cycles in learning”

Therapeutic Induction of Altered States of Consciousness: Investigation of 1-20Hz Neurofeedback

Positive outcomes linked to experiences of altered states of consciousness (ASC) have been linked to various brain wave patterns, as well as both positive and negative personality traits and affective disorders. Various innovative neurofeedback (NFB) technologies are being developed in an attempt to create adjunctive therapeutic treatments. The current study investigated 1-20 Hz NFB to induce ASC and examine associations between NFB, ASC, mood changes, and trait predictors. 23 students completed trait measures of emotionality, openness and extroversion from the HEXACO test of personality and a measure of trait absorption. Participants then completed 15min of NFB. The Profile of Mood States (POMS) was administered before and after the NFB session and the Altered States of Consciousness Questionnaire (OAV) at the end of session. Elevated levels of trait emotionality and absorption were associated with the subscale of disembodiment on the OAV. POMS scores indicated significant reductions in vigor and a significant increase in fatigue and confusion from pre-to post NFB. An overall decrease in 1-20Hz was seen pre-vs post intervention globally, with an increase in 1-20Hz during the intervention as measured at the NFB training site. Positive correlations were seen between EEG and OAV scores for the subscale disembodiment, with global changes between time one and time five during the intervention. EEG readings taken at the active training site demonstrated a positive correlation with trait emotionality and with the subscale spirituality. Qualitative feedback indicated that 70% of participants reported a positive response to neurofeedback, with 17% reporting negative effects, including feeling tired; often associated with over training, 14% reported having no response. 1-20Hz evidenced potentially therapeutic effects and warrants further investigation

An Embodied Education: Questioning Hospitality to the Queer

This is an essay about hospitality and the ways we must question frameworks telling us to welcome the queer in educational contexts. I will show how educational scholarship as well as programming for schools, teachers and students have emphasized the interconnected concepts of hospitality and welcome as a way of keeping queer bodies legislatively, physically and psychically safe. While acknowledging the importance of hospitality as a starting point, I examine its limits with the hope of showing how it might foreclose curiosity. I argue that one fundamental problem with hospitality and welcome toward the queer is the way these phenomena can disembody individual and mutual existence. My goal is not primarily to critique extant efforts at queering education but rather to offer an alternate vision of the relationship between queerness and education that takes the body seriously. An aspect of my aim is indeed to provoke; while I understand that an embodied vision for education is unlikely to come to fruition with any alacrity, I wonder if urging queer educational discourse and even programming in this direction might create new possibilities for mutual coexistence and discovery

Is abduction ignorance-preserving? Conventions, models and fictions in science

Abduction is a procedure in which something that lacks classical explanatory epistemic virtue can be accepted because it has virtue of another kind: Gabbay and Woods (2005, The Reach of Abduction) contend (GW-model) that abduction presents an ignorance-preserving or (ignorance-mitigating) character. From this perspective abductive reasoning is a response to an ignorance-problem; through abduction the basic ignorance—that does not have to be considered a total ‘ignorance’—is neither solved nor left intact. Abductive reasoning is an ignorance-preserving accommodation of the problem at hand. Is abduction really ignorance-preserving? To better answer this question I will take advantage of my eco-cognitive model (EC-model) of abduction and of three examples taken from the areas of both philosophy and epistemology. It will be illustrated that through abduction, knowledge can be enhanced, even when abduction is not considered an inference to the best explanation (IBE) in the classical sense of the expression, i.e. an inference necessarily characterized by an empirical evaluation phase, or an inductive phase, as Peirce called it. (1) Peirce provides various justifications of the knowledge enhancing role of abduction, even when abduction is not considered an IBE in the classical sense of the expression, i.e. an inference necessarily characterized by an empirical evaluation phase, or inductive phase. These justifications basically resort to the conceptual exploitation of evolutionary and metaphysical ideas, which clearly show that abduction is constitutively akin to truth, even if certainly always ignorance-preserving or mitigating in the sense that the ‘absolute truth’ is never reached through abduction; (2) in empirical science abducing conventions favours and increases knowledge even if these hypotheses remain evidentially inert—at least in the sense that it is not possible to empirically falsify them. Consequently abduced conventions are evidentially inert but knowledge enhancing at the rational level of science; (3) in science we do not have to confuse the process of abducing models with the process of abducing fictions: the recent epistemological conundrum concerning fictionalism presents to us the epistemic situation in which the models abduced by scientists reveal themselves not to be ‘airy nothings’ at all, and certainly different in their gnoseological status from literary fictions. Scientific models instead play fundamental ‘rational’ knowledge enhancing roles: in a static perspective (e.g. when inserted in a textbook) scientific models can appear fictional to the epistemologist, but their fictional character disappears if a dynamic perspective is adopted. Abduction in scientific model-based reasoning is not a suspicious process of guessing fictions

Becoming more human: a phenomenological exploration of embodied emotional awareness in psychotherapy

This heuristic phenomenological research explores the lived experience of embodied emotional awareness in psychotherapy and counselling psychology. The research springs from an embodied perspective of considering all human experiences holistically. It is an embodied research designed and conducted so it gathers data in an embodied way, and attends to the relationship between knowledge and experience, to share a more embodied way of being where understanding and feeling, self and other, inner and outer, head and heart, are intrinsically intertwined. Heuristic research (Moustakas, 1990) along with the researcher’s self-inquiry are guiding the study. Additionally, the experience of seven participants is explored with in-depth semi-structured interviews and a research process of reflexive embodied empathy (Finlay, 2005). The analysis using Moustakas’s (1990) seven stages of heuristic research reveals five major themes: embodiment is a process, being is feeling, disembodied being, multidimensional being, and relational connection points. The findings show the important and multidimensional connection between the body, emotions and awareness within psychotherapy: the therapist can feel themselves and the client, connect with the client, be aware of the two, discern between the two, choose what to bracket or what to focus on, and choose attitude and action. This research identifies embodied emotional awareness as a way of being where we simultaneously allow ourselves to feel everything in the present moment while staying aware of feeling. It also reveals that embodied emotional awareness is merely one aspect of embodiment, which is a process of integrating the multidimensionality of our whole being and bringing awareness into it. Embodied emotional awareness seems to be contagious; when we become more embodied it has a rippling effect on others. The implication for psychotherapy and counselling psychology is that they need to reintegrate the body into its core practice and training, and as psychotherapists become more embodied, this gets transmitted and supports the clients to become more embodied. Heuristic research is experienced as a multidimensional interactive and synchronistic process of embodiment, intimately intertwined with the researcher’s life