Posthumanism and Deconstructing Arguments

Posthumanism and Deconstructing Arguments: Corpora and Digitally-driven Critical Analysis presents a new and practical approach in Critical Discourse Studies. Providing a data-driven and ethically-based method for the examination of arguments in the public sphere, this ground-breaking book: Highlights how the reader can evaluate arguments from points of view other than their own; Demonstrates how digital tools can be used to generate ‘ethical subjectivities’ from large numbers of dissenting voices on the world-wide-web; Draws on ideas from posthumanist philosophy as well as from Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari for theorising these subjectivities; Showcases a critical deconstructive approach, using different corpus linguistic programs such as AntConc, WMatrix and Sketchengine. Posthumanism and Deconstructing Arguments is essential reading for lecturers and researchers with an interest in critical discourse studies, critical thinking, corpus linguistics and digital humanities

Posthumanism and Deconstructing Arguments

Posthumanism and Deconstructing Arguments: Corpora and Digitally-driven Critical Analysis presents a new and practical approach in Critical Discourse Studies. Providing a data-driven and ethically-based method for the examination of arguments in the public sphere, this ground-breaking book: Highlights how the reader can evaluate arguments from points of view other than their own; Demonstrates how digital tools can be used to generate ‘ethical subjectivities’ from large numbers of dissenting voices on the world-wide-web; Draws on ideas from posthumanist philosophy as well as from Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari for theorising these subjectivities; Showcases a critical deconstructive approach, using different corpus linguistic programs such as AntConc, WMatrix and Sketchengine. Posthumanism and Deconstructing Arguments is essential reading for lecturers and researchers with an interest in critical discourse studies, critical thinking, corpus linguistics and digital humanities

Neither Dead nor Dangerous: Postmodernism and the Teaching of Legal Writing

This article explores postmodernism and its relation to the teaching of legal writing. Postmodernism is an undeniably important theory in literary criticism, composition and rhetoric and has provoked much debate in areas of legal scholarship, but it has seldom been addressed directly by legal writing scholars. The teaching of legal writing has been greatly affected by postmodernism and can be characterized as a postmodern class in what is otherwise a modernist academy. Legal writing teachers generally teach in a modernist paradigm which seeks to normalize the law and create unitary meaning from the morass of texts and ideas which is considered the law. They have, however, simultaneously, a rather benignant postmodernist bent when it comes to teaching writing and have to engage a number of postmodern paradoxes as part of their profession. It is the postmodern components of their work that provide strength to the profession and help prepare law students for both the modern and postmodern world. This article directly contradicts legal scholars who claim postmodernism is dead, dangerous, or irrelevant to the law and the legal academy. The article begins by defining postmodernism and its contribution to the legal academy in general. The article continues by examining how postmodernism has affected the teaching of legal writing specifically. Postmodernism underlies the theories of process and post-process writing pedagogy, deconstruction, and story-telling, which can all be found in many legal writing classrooms. In addition, the legal writing class embodies certain postmodern attributes or characteristics not found in many of the other, more modernist, parts of the legal academy. The article concludes by arguing that the postmodern components of legal writing classes are a source of their strength, growth and relevance in and outside of law schools. Postmodernism, in this context, is neither dead nor dangerous but rather vital and relevant to legal education. The topic of this article was competitively selected to be awarded a grant from the Association of Legal Writing Directors and parts of the article were presented at the Third Annual Rocky Mountain Region and the 2005 Central States Legal Writing Conferences

Perceptual fail: Female power, mobile technologies and images of self

Like a biological species, images of self have descended and modified throughout their journey down the ages, interweaving and recharging their viability with the necessary interjections from culture, tools and technology. Part of this journey has seen images of self also become an intrinsic function within the narratives about female power; consider Helen of Troy “a face that launched a thousand ships” (Marlowe, 1604) or Kim Kardashian (KUWTK) who heralded in the mass mediated ‘selfie’ as a social practice. The interweaving process itself sees the image oscillate between naturalized ‘icon’ and idealized ‘symbol’ of what the person looked like and/or aspired to become. These public images can confirm or constitute beauty ideals as well as influence (via imitation) behaviour and mannerisms, and as such the viewers belief in the veracity of the representative image also becomes intrinsically political manipulating the associated narratives and fostering prejudice (Dobson 2015, Korsmeyer 2004, Pollock 2003). The selfie is arguably ‘a sui generis,’ whilst it is a mediated photographic image of self, it contains its own codes of communication and decorum that fostered the formation of numerous new digital communities and influenced new media aesthetics . For example the selfie is both of nature (it is still a time based piece of documentation) and known to be perceptually untrue (filtered, modified and full of artifice). The paper will seek to demonstrate how selfie culture is infused both by considerable levels of perceptual failings that are now central to contemporary celebrity culture and its’ notion of glamour which in turn is intrinsically linked (but not solely defined) by the province of feminine desire for reinvention, transformation or “self-sexualisation” (Hall, West and McIntyre, 2012). The subject, like the Kardashians or selfies, is divisive. In conclusion this paper will explore the paradox of the perceptual failings at play within selfie culture more broadly, like ‘Reality TV’ selfies are infamously fake yet seem to provide Debord’s (1967) illusory cultural opiate whilst fulfilling a cultural longing. Questions then emerge when considering the narrative impact of these trends on engendered power structures and the traditional status of illusion and narrative fiction

Using crowdsourced mathematics to understand mathematical practice

Records of online collaborative mathematical activity provide us with a novel, rich, searchable, accessible and sizeable source of data for empirical investigations into mathematical practice. In this paper we discuss how the resources of crowdsourced mathematics can be used to help formulate and answer questions about mathematical practice, and what their limitations might be. We describe quantitative approaches to studying crowdsourced mathematics, reviewing work from cognitive history (comparing individual and collaborative proofs); social psychology (on the prospects for a measure of collective intelligence); human-computer interaction (on the factors that led to the success of one such project); network analysis (on the differences between collaborations on open research problems and known-but-hard problems); and argumentation theory (on modelling the argument structures of online collaborations). We also give an overview of qualitative approaches, reviewing work from empirical philosophy (on explanation in crowdsourced mathematics); sociology of scientific knowledge (on conventions and conversations in online mathematics); and ethnography (on contrasting conceptions of collaboration). We suggest how these diverse methods can be applied to crowdsourced mathematics and when each might be appropriate

The field of Foucaultian discourse analysis : structures, developments and perspectives

The article outlines the field of FOUCAULTian discourse analysis. The FOUCAULTian concept of discourse is introduced, and methodological positions and methodological developments are sketched. Compared to other qualitative social research approaches, the different researchers and research groups that have adopted the FOUCAULTian concept of discourse are not linked by a fully integrated common research paradigm. However, they share common methodological problems and areas of methodological research resulting from various references to FOUCAULTian positions. In the last decade, different research groups have become aware of these shared commonalities, so that one can speak of an emerging field of FOUCAULTian discourse analysis rather than an emerging paradigm. The article gives insight into the discourse analytic research in selected countries, discusses the internationalisation of FOUCAULTian discourse analysis and highlights current trends and perspectivesEl texto revisa el campo del análisis del discurso FOUCAULTiano. En ese sentido, se presenta el concepto de discurso propuesto por FOUCAULT y se esbozan tanto posiciones como desarrollos metodológicos. A diferencia de lo que ocurre con otras aproximaciones de la investigación social cualitativa, los diferentes investigadores y grupos de investigación que trabajan con el mencionado concepto no aparecen integrados gracias a un paradigma de investigación común. Esto no quiere decir que no compartan problemas y áreas de investigación metodológica como resultado de su referencia a las posiciones de FOUCAULT. En las últimas décadas, diferentes grupos de investigación han ido tomando conciencia del mencionado denominador común, esto permite afirmar que en lugar de la emergencia de un paradigma estamos, más bien, ante la irrupción de un campo de trabajo relacionado con el análisis del discurso FOUCAULTiano. El texto proporciona indicaciones sobre la investigación analítica del discurso en una selección de países, discute la internalización del análisis del discurso de corte FOUCAULTiano y subraya algunas de sus características y perspectivas más reciente

WRITING UTOPIA NOW: Utopian Poetics In The Work Of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

This thesis examines Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s DICTEE (1982), Audience Distant Relative (1977) and Reveillé dans la Brume (Awakened in the Mist) (1977). The premise of the thesis is an exploration of the various ways in which these works both perform and gesture toward the possibility of a ‘utopian’ experience of nonalienation. In Cha’s vocabulary, this takes the form of ‘interfusion’ and is related to the role of the artist as alchemist. Cha employs formal and linguistic innovations in her text, mail art and performance works to invite active participation from her readers and audience in a gesture toward embodied intersubjectivity. Her grappling with the challenges relating to the articulation of subjectivity place her work at the centre of contemporary critical debates around subjectivity and innovative poetics. In particular, recent scholarship on race and the poetic avant-garde has called for cross-disciplinary approaches to reading DICTEE as a text that explores the intersections of subjectivity and its performance in contemporary innovative poetics. Developing a theory of Utopian Poetics from my reading of Ernst Bloch’s utopian philosophy, I explore the ways in which DICTEE and Cha’s other works perform a yearning for non-alienated subjectivity that remains necessarily open and incomplete. My reading of DICTEE, in particular, is primarily informed by my own practices of yoga and meditation, and these practices form the basis of both my scholarly and creative engagements with this research. This scholarly thesis comprises Part 1 of a two-part submission. Part 2 comprises my own creative experiments with UtopianPoetics

Translation as Experimentalism

This Element argues for a perspective on literary translation based around ludification, using concrete poetry as a test case. It questions assumptions about translatability and opens up the discursive space of literary writing to transgressive articulation and multimodal performance. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core