Autism = Death: The social and medical impact of a catastrophic medical model of autistic spectrum disorders

This discussion interrogates the continuing impact of the pervasive and persistent usage of debilitating metaphors perpetuating ‘historical’ superstitions, myths and beliefs surrounding disability. This article examines the real-life consequences of the power exercised through the deployment of derogatory metaphors and their very real effects on care and treatment decisions. The article illuminates how diagnostic categories and their associative metaphors work to situate boundaries of normality with pathologising difference. It concludes by demonstrating the catastrophic effect of the metaphoric dehumanisation of autistics that has recently culminated in murder being euphemistically referred to and condoned as ‘mercy killing’

Face-to-face: Social work and evil

The concept of evil continues to feature in public discourses and has been reinvigorated in some academic disciplines and caring professions. This article navigates social workers through the controversy surrounding evil so that they are better equipped to acknowledge, reframe or repudiate attributions of evil in respect of themselves, their service users or the societal contexts impinging upon both. A tour of the landscape of evil brings us face-to-face with moral, administrative, societal and metaphysical evils, although it terminates in an exhortation to cultivate a more metaphorical language. The implications for social work ethics, practice and education are also discussed

Poetical potentials: the value of poems in social impact education

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.For the technologist it is easy to remain in safe technological enclaves with a bespoke language, a community of like minds and a familiar knowledge base. However, progress requires pushing the boundaries, thinking beyond the traditional and the ordinary, and questioning accepted norms. It requires opening of minds. It may surprise the reader that poetry can offer the key to unlock the closed mind. This potential is explored through a variety of poems dealing, in a novel manner, with the social impact of technology

On life, death and radical critique: A non-survival guide to the Brave New Higher Education for the intellectually pregnant

This paper joins the call to arms against the domestication of critique in organisation studies. It argues that we have become too pre-occupied with our professional survival to stand firm against the normalising pressure of the new higher education and its publish-or-perish machinery. We trade away too much radicalism in exchange for legitimacy, which results in widely accepted but toothless forms of critique. The paper draws on two contrasting metaphors of Huxley's Brave New World and intellectual pregnancy to illustrate some of the challenges faced by early-career academics entering the world of the Brave New Higher Education as academic ‘savages’. It discusses the almost imperceptible socialisation of the savage into the ‘rationalised myths’ of the brave new world to the point that alternatives become literally unthinkable. The paper suggests that we can fight this slippage and the associated domestication of critique by giving up our obsession with survival and by remembering/envisioning alternative realities, such as that of intellectual pregnancy deriving from the fragile idealism of the savage's doctoral world

CANNIBAL CITIES: MONSTROUS URBAN BODIES IN CONTEMPORARY FANTASY

This paper discusses the literalization of the metaphor of the body politic in contemporary urban fantasy. The body politic is one of the master tropes through which urban experience has been traditionally represented in literature, political discourse, and social studies. Urban fantasy transforms this metaphor into part of the fictional world of the text, thereby laying bare its cultural connotations, which are predominantly negative and dystopian. Thus a monstrous body is created, which is not that of an individual but rather of the city as a whole. The paper discusses three main registers of representing the monstrous urban body in fantasy: the dark city; the city-as-machine; and the city-as-organism. Each register is illustrated with a range of literary and cinematic examples

Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to rule by sense of smell! Superhuman Kingship in the Prophetic Books

An exploration of the Hebrew Bible's prophetic literature vis-à-vis Science Fiction and Science Fiction theor

An Examination of Halloween Literature And its Effect on the Horror Genre

This thesis will explore the effect of Halloween narratives in the wider horror genre. This will be accomplished by means of a close textual analysis with novels such as The Halloween Tree (1972) and films such as Trick ‘r Treat (2008) and Boys in the Trees (2016). This thesis will seek to provide answers, firstly, as to how Halloween narratives serve as a subversion of the typical horror formulas and, secondly, why this particular field of study has been ignored for so long. Horror literature and cinema, typically, has the effect of frightening their audience, by creating a sense of fear, unease and morbid dread. But it is my belief that Halloween narratives serve, entirely, the opposite purpose, that by utilizing the morbid and the monstrous it instead works to facilitate comfort and the diffusion of fear. Halloween is a carnivalesque celebration of death in many cultures and by celebrating it the human race derives catharsis in the thought of facing death without fear. Close readings of the novel and films have yielded intriguing results, and seem to confirm my initial suggestion. Despite this, there are few examples of the sub-genre available and no discourse on the subject. As a result, I have been forced to rely on other fields of theory, most notably in horror cinema and gothic and children’s literature

Beyond Speculative Robot Ethics

In this article we develop a dialogue model for robot technology experts and designated users to discuss visions on the future of robotics in long-term care. Our vision assessment study aims for more distinguished and more informed visions on future robots. Surprisingly, our experiment also lead to some promising co-designed robot concepts in which jointly articulated moral guidelines are embedded. With our model we think to have designed an interesting response on a recent call for a less speculative ethics of technology by encouraging discussions about the quality of positive and negative visions on the future of robotics.