The philosopher as artist: Ludwig Wittgenstein seen through Edoardo Paolozzi

In this article I argue that the strong fascination that Wittgenstein has had for artists cannot be explained primarily by the content of his work, and in particular not by his sporadic observation on aesthetics, but rather by stylistic features of his work formal aspects of his writing. Edoardo Paolozzi’s testimony shows that artists often had a feeling of acquaintance or familiarity with the philosopher, which I think is due to stylistic features of his work, such as the colloquial tone in which Wittgenstein shares his observation with the reader, but also the lack of long-winded arguments or explanations. In the concluding part I suggest that we can read Wittgenstein’s artworks of a specific kind: as philosophical works of art

Ante-Autobiography and the Archive of Childhood

This essay examines the concept of children’s autobiography via several autobiographical extracts written by the author as a child. Although only a small proportion of people will compose and publish a full-length autobiography, almost everyone will, inadvertently, produce an archive of the self, made from public records and private documents. Here, such works are seen as providing access to writing both about and by children. The essay explores the ethics and poetics of children’s writing via the key debates in life writing; in particular, the dynamic relationship between adults and children, both as distinct stages of life and dual parts of one autobiographical identity. The term “ante-autobiography” is coined to refer to these texts which come before or instead of a full-length narrative. They are not read as less than or inadequate versions of autobiography, but rather as transgressive and challenging to chronological notions of the genre

Kant's philosophy of the aesthetic and the philosophy of praxis

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2012 Association for Economic and Social Analysis.This essay seeks to reconstruct the terms for a more productive engagement with Kant than is typical within contemporary academic cultural Marxism, which sees him as the cornerstone of a bourgeois model of the aesthetic. The essay argues that, in the Critique of Judgment, the aesthetic stands in as a substitute for the missing realm of human praxis. This argument is developed in relation to Kant's concept of reflective judgment that is in turn related to a methodological shift toward inductive and analogical procedures that help Kant overcome the dualisms of the first two Critiques. This reassessment of Kant's aesthetic is further clarified by comparing it with and offering a critique of Terry Eagleton's assessment of the Kantian aesthetic as synonymous with ideology

Household food insecurity status and Hispanic immigrant children’s body mass index and adiposity

Objectives: Despite the high prevalence rates of food insecurity and obesity among children of Hispanic immigrants, there has been a dearth of research on the direct relationship between food insecurity and obesity among this population. Further, prior research examining the association between food insecurity and body composition among children of Hispanic immigrants have not considered adiposity, specifically percent body fat (%BF) and waist circumference (WC), as outcome measurements. The following study contributes to the literature by examining the association between food insecurity and two adiposity measurements, %BF and WC, along with body mass index (BMI) among a sample of young Hispanic immigrant children. Methods: Cross-sectional survey and direct body composition assessments were collected among 49 low-income Hispanic immigrant children (mean age = 5.5. years) and their 44 mothers (mean age = 35.5 years) from two Houston-area community centers. Data were collected on household food security status using the 18-item USDA scale, demographic characteristics, and measured height, weight, body fat percentage, and waist circumference from children and mothers. Results: Sixty-five percent of children resided in a food insecure household, 31% of the children were obese in terms of %BF, and 24% were obese in terms of BMI. A greater percentage of food secure children were classified as obese in terms of %BF, BMI, and had an elevated waist circumference. A direct relationship was not observed between food insecurity and elevated waist circumference (OR = .08, p = .10); however, children living in food insecure households had 89% lower odds of having an elevated %BF (OR = 0.11, p \u3c .01), 93% lower odds of being obese (OR = 0.07, p \u3c .05), and 87% lower odds of being overweight/obese (OR = 0.13, p \u3c .05). Conclusions: In young children of Hispanic immigrants, food insecurity was related to healthier levels of %BF and BMI. Studies that track adiposity and weight status of children of Hispanic immigrants in relation to food insecurity over time are needed to further understand why food insecurity and obesity co-exist for some groups but not others

The Body Dances: Carnival Dance and Organization

Building on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Maurice Merleau-Ponty we seek to open up traditional categories of thought surrounding the relation `body-organization' and elicit a thought experiment: What happens if we move the body from the periphery to the centre? We pass the interlocking theoretical concepts of object-body/subject-body and habitus through the theoretically constructed empirical case of `carnival dance' in order to re-evaluate such key organizational concepts as knowledge and learning. In doing so, we connect with an emerging body of literature on `sensible knowledge'; knowledge that is produced and preserved within bodily practices. The investigation of habitual appropriation in carnival dance also allows us to make links between repetition and experimentation, and reflect on the mechanism through which the principles of social organization, whilst internalized and experienced as natural, are embodied so that humans are capable of spontaneously generating an infinite array of appropriate actions. This perspective on social and organizational life, where change and permanence are intricately interwoven, contrasts sharply with the dominant view in organization studies which juxtaposes change/ creativity and stability

Ontology: Use and abuse

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/110.1007/978-3-540-79860-6_2Revised Selected Papers of 5th International Workshop, AMR 2007, Paris, France, July 5-6, 2007This paper is a critical analysis of the use of ontology as an instrument to specify the semantics of a document. The paper argue that not only is a logic of the type used in ontology insufficient for such a purpose, but that the very idea that meaning is a property of a document that can be expressed and stored independently of the interpretation activity is misguided. The paper proposes, in very general lines, a possible alternative view of meaning as modification of context and shows that many current approaches to meaning, from ontology to emergent semantics, can be seen as spacial cases of this approach, and can be analyzed from a very general theoretical framework