A process-oriented language for describing aspects of reading comprehension

Includes bibliographical references (p. 36-38)The research described herein was supported in part by the National Institute of Education under Contract No. MS-NIE-C-400-76-011

Sexual difference in/and the queer beyond of ethics

In her recent book, Are the Lips a Grave? A Queer Feminist on the Ethics of Sex, Lynne Huffer offers a daring call for a reconsideration of the rifts between feminist and queer theory in order to develop a "queer feminist ethics of eros" (Huffer 2013, 44). Arguing that sexual ethics lies at the fractured nexus between feminist and queer theory, Huffer seeks both to restore "a claim to an ethical queer feminism" and to transfigure ethics as "erotic living" (22). This project is clearly staged in the book's titular chapter, which provocatively brings together Michel Foucault's and Luce Irigaray's respective reformulations of sexual ethics with the so-called antisocial queer theory of Leo Bersani and Janet Halley. To my mind, one of the most invaluable contributions of Huffer's book is her queer reclamation of Irigaray's philosophy of sexual difference—a philosophy that many feminist and queer theorists alike have dismissed as irredeemably essentialist, conservative, heteronormative, and even homophobic, transphobic, and racist.1 For Huffer, however, "Irigaray's … absence from queer theory is evidence of a forgetting of her radical feminist practice as an always already queer method" (2013, 42). Taking off from Huffer's queer feminist rereading of Irigaray, I want to further queer ethics by exploring the relationship between ethics and sexual difference as it has been thought in European philosophy. First, I offer a critique of the conflation of queerness and "negativity" in antisocial queer theory and the abdication of ethical responsibility it ultimately entails. Following both Irigaray and Jacques Derrida, I then argue that sexual difference is wholly other (tout autre) to "the ethical" as it has been thought within phallogocentrism and, thus, I contend that justice demands a fidelity to this radical otherness of sexual difference. Queerness, I suggest, names precisely this "beyond" of the ethical—that is, sexual difference "itself"—and, thus, ironically, both queer and feminist theory must struggle for the heteros of sexual difference, beyond any distinction between she/he, hetero-/homosexual, friendship/love, or sex/eros

Irigaray between God and the Indians : sexuate difference, decoloniality, and the politics of ontology

In this essay, I situate Irigaray’s philosophy of sexuate difference between the Heideggerian response to the collapse of the project of Western modernity (‘only a god can save us’) and that of decolonial theorist Oscar Guardiola-Riviera (‘only Indians can save our modern soul’). First, I return to Heidegger’s theorisation of ‘planetary technicity’ as the ontology of modernity, arguing, with Heidegger, that in order to respond to this problem we must return to the question of Being. From here, I link Heidegger’s theory of technicity with the work of decolonial theory on the ‘coloniality of Being’, suggesting that one reason for Heidegger’s pessimism is that he did not think technicity from beyond a Eurocentric perspective. The recent ‘ontological turn’ in decolonial anthropology that seeks to study Indigenous thought as ontology, however, shows that there are resources for thinking beyond the onto-logic of technicity. Yet, here, I return to Irigaray’s critique of Heidegger for his forgetting of sexuate difference in his analysis of technology to say that a move to a decolonial ontology beyond planetary technicity can only take place if we go through an ontology of sexual difference: because, as Irigaray shows, the onto-logic of technicity that underwrites coloniality and modernity begins in an ontological annihilation of life, sexuate difference, and the maternal debt, the only way to recover this is by thinking the question of sexuate difference. Finally, I conclude by examining the case of the Kogi peoples of Colombia who have warned Westerners that the destruction of the planet can only be stopped if we learn to recompense our common Mother. This case, I suggest, shows how and why the turn to non-Western ontologies as a way out of the death project of modern technicity must reckon with the work of Irigaray

Markerless View Independent Gait Analysis with Self-camera Calibration

We present a new method for viewpoint independent markerless gait analysis. The system uses a single camera, does not require camera calibration and works with a wide range of directions of walking. These properties make the proposed method particularly suitable for identification by gait, where the advantages of completely unobtrusiveness, remoteness and covertness of the biometric system preclude the availability of camera information and use of marker based technology. Tests on more than 200 video sequences with subjects walking freely along different walking directions have been performed. The obtained results show that markerless gait analysis can be achieved without any knowledge of internal or external camera parameters and that the obtained data that can be used for gait biometrics purposes. The performance of the proposed method is particularly encouraging for its appliance in surveillance scenarios

What does it mean to be living?

Our Western culture more and more moves away from life. It is so much so that speaking about nature is generally understood as alluding to some or other concept that would be more or less adequate, but not as referring to or questioning about life. This situation is all the stranger since we are facing a real danger regarding the survival of the earth and of all the living beings that populate it. It is as if all the discourses we hear about this problem could remain abstract considerations and academic or scientific evaluations and discussions without practical concern about our own life and our living environment. This probably results from the status of our discourse in general and its current relation to the real. There is no doubt that questions are little by little arising about the present situation of the world, and also that some of the recent philosophers have begun to inquire about the truth and their way of approaching it (as is the case, for example, with Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty). But it seems that, although they speak about the necessity of overcoming our past metaphysics, they succeed in doing that with difficulty. Could it be possible that the undertaking would be easier for a woman, because she did not actively contribute to the construction of our past metaphysics, and her identity and subjectivity have remained more in harmony with nature—which she is, furthermore, presumed to represent for the patriarchal tradition? Anyway, it seems that Luce Irigaray—in particular her last two books, Through Vegetal Being (coauthored with Michael Marder, 2016) and To Be Born (2017)—offers elements that correspond to what is at stake in our epoch, both at an empirical and a theoretical level. Hence this conversation about her approach to and treatment of issues crucial today for our life, our world, and all living beings

Microclimate and activity of the lizard Angolosaurus skoogi on a dune slipface

The lizard Angolosaurus skoogi inhabits the surface and subsurface environments of sand dunes of the northern Namib Desert. We have related posture, locomotion, and other aspects of surface activity to the microclimate prevailing above and below the surface. Globe temperature was the best microclimatic correlate of surface activity. From our analysis, we concluded that surface thermoregulatory behaviour of A. skoogi is facultative, and aimed at maintaining a body temperature compatible with foraging and other obligatory surface activities