A labial art-politics

In this article we focus on the potential for an alignment of certain feminist artistic practices and poststructuralist conceptions of critique that may enable ways of theorising practices of resistance and engender ways of practicing resistance in theory, without the lurch back into masculinist forms of dogmatism. It will be claimed that an ontological conception of art, considered as that which makes a difference in the world, can not only challenge the primacy of the dogmatic and masculine ‘subject who judges’, but also instil ways of thinking about, and ways of enacting, feminist artistic encounters with the capacity to resist dogmatism. The theoretical stakes of this claim are elaborated through complimentary readings of Deleuze and Guattari’s constructivist account of philosophy and Irigaray’s feminist explorations of what it means to think from within the 'labial', rather than from the position of the dominant phallic symbolic order. We argue that this creative conjunction between Irigaray, Deleuze and Guattari provides the resources for a conceptualisation of both feminist artistic practice and the critical practice of poststructuralist philosophy as forms of resistance to the dominant patriarchal order, in ways that can avoid the collapse back into masculinist forms of dogmatism. Revel’s discussion of the role of constituent rather than constituted forms of resistance is employed to draw out the implications of this position for contentious politics. It is concluded that constituent practices of resistance can be understood as a challenge to the phallogocentric symbolic order to the extent that they are practices of a labial art-politic

An Sp1 Modulated Regulatory Region Unique to Higher Primates Regulates Human Androgen Receptor Promoter Activity in Prostate Cancer Cells

Funding: This work was supported by the Chief Scientist’s Office (CSO) of the Scottish Government (http://www.cso.scot.nhs.uk/): CWH (CZB-4-477) and IH (ETM/382).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

After Possession

Tristan Garcia’s Form and Object has been framed primarily as a contribution to object oriented metaphysics. In this article, I shall explicate and defend four claims that bring it closer to the modern critical tradition: 1) that Garcia’s Form and Object can be read, profitably, within the tradition of reflection upon the nature of possessions, self-possession and possessiveness; 2) that to read the book in this way is to see Garcia as the French heir to C. B. McPherson although it will be argued that what this amounts to is that while McPherson was the anti-Locke, so to speak, Garcia is the anti-Rousseau; 3) that this framing has significant consequences for our reception of Form and Object in that it can be understood as a book that not only marks a moment in debates surrounding speculative realism and object oriented ontology but that it also, and primarily, marks an important moment in debates about the encroachment of things and the culture of possession that, in part, defines modernity; 4) that there is a novel ontological position within Form and Object, one that is neither relational nor individualist, that presents a challenging account of ‘the chance and the price’ of living after possession and how to overcome the deleterious effects of contemporary consumer societies

Critique in the Age of Indifference

In After Finitude, Meillassoux asks an epoch defining question: how can we criticise both ideological dogmatism and sceptical fanaticism if the rise of sceptical fanaticism is an effect of the Kantian critical philosophy one must employ against ideological dogmatism? Meillassoux’s answer is to argue in favour of thought’s ability to access the absolute necessity of contingency. Agamben and Laruelle give an alternative answer. Although very different in style and argument, both aim to disqualify fanatical positions by showing how ‘the belief that belief is all there is’ is not all there is because of the contingent nature of thought about the real. It will be argued that while pursuing logics of disqualification all three thinkers nonetheless employ arguments that render positive claims that sit uncomfortably within their respective systems. The upshot is that the transcendental gesture of critical philosophy – what are the conditions of our positive claims about thought and the world – is halted by an uncritical appeal to the condition of all conditions; intellectual intuition in Meillassoux and an indifferent thought/real in Agamben and Laruelle. But what options remain given that the problem of critique in an age of indifference is a problem that critical philosophy itself has created? The task, it will be argued, is to express the transcendental conditions of what we know about the world and how we know what we know about the world in a manner that retains the contingency of both. But are there variants of contemporary thought that can express the contingency of the real and of thought while remaining within the transcendental apparatus that provides the necessary criteria for the challenge of both ideological dogmatism and sceptical fanaticism? I shall bring the argument to a close by suggesting that two such variants are available – transcendental naturalism and transcendental aestheticism – and that the latter provides a secure but non-dogmatic ground for critique in an age of indifference

Familiarity for Associations? A Test of the Domain Dichotomy Theory

Episodic recognition memory is mediated by functionally separable retrieval processes, notably familiarity (a general sense of prior exposure) and recollection (the retrieval of contextual details), whose relative engagement depends partly on the nature of the information being retrieved. Currently, the specific contribution of familiarity to associative recognition memory (where retrieval of the relationships between pairs of stimuli is required) is not clearly understood. Here we test domain dichotomy theory, which predicts that familiarity should contribute more to associative memory when stimuli are similar (within-domain) than when they are distinct (between-domain). Participants studied stimulus pairs, and at test, discriminated intact from rearranged pairs. Stimuli were either within-domain (name-name or image-image pairs) or between-domain (name-image pairs). Across experiments we employed two different behavioural measures of familiarity, based on ROC curves and a Modified Remember-Know procedure. Both experiments provided evidence that familiarity can contribute to associative recognition; however familiarity was stronger for between-domain pairs - in direct contrast to the domain dichotomy prediction

Negative regulation of the androgen receptor gene through a primate specific androgen response element present in the 5' UTR

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are credited. Acknowledgements This work was supported by funding from the Chief Scientist Office, Government of Scotland (Grant Nos CZB/4/477 and ETM/258). DNL was supported by the Association for International Cancer Research (Grant No. 03–127)Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Limits, liminality and the present: towards a Foucauldian ontology of social criticism

Through a series of critical interventions in contemporary political thought, utilising the concept of liminality, this thesis points towards a Foucauldian ontology of the conditions necessary for social criticism. Beginning with a critical investigation of Foucault's archaeological and genealogical works (chapter one) the idea that Foucault's "analytic of the limit" provides sufficient grounding for a critical theory of society is challenged. While Foucault's approach contains many insights into the character of social relations it ultimately embodies a problematic transcendental conception of the present. It is argued that Foucault's early works require an "analytic of liminality" if this problem is to be avoided. Chapters two, three and four serve the following functions: firstly, they explore the concept of liminality as a feature of (respectively) the present, the self and everyday speech acts; secondly, they are critical interrogations of non-Foucauldian accounts of social criticism - from neo-Marxism and postmodernism, through communitarianism to critical theory; thirdly, they introduce a series of concepts that are sensitive to the "paradoxical" condition of liminality thereby suggesting the themes that a Foucauldian ontology of social criticism must endeavour to incorporate. In chapter five it is argued that Foucault's later works implicitly contain an analytic of liminality that entails a non-transcendental account of the present. Integrating the later work into his earlier work, therefore, provides a greater theoretical understanding of Foucault's ontology of social criticism. It is concluded that Foucault (and poststructuralism in general) represents a distinctive and convincing voice in the debates concerning the character of social criticism

Drama Out of a Crisis? Poststructuralism and the Politics of Everyday Life

Time and again we have been told that poststructuralism is in crisis. Poststructuralism, we hear, is ontologically exhausted, epistemologically and normatively confused, and politically irrelevant to the contemporary economic and institutional conditions that have already domesticated, assimilated and recuperated it. While there is clearly merit and provocation in such critiques, for us, they underestimate the extent to which poststructuralist concepts can be transformed and made relevant to concerns we may have in our current political conjuncture. In order to counter those who would simply dismiss and depoliticise poststructuralist thought as crisis-ridden or politically outmoded, we will suggest that poststructuralism is a drama that we can productively participate in, here and now. Furthermore, we think this poststructuralist drama should be played out in the rough and tumble of everyday political life. There is what we will call a ‘politics of everyday life’ to be found in the poststructuralist archive, and the poststructuralist archive can be recast, revitalised and even transformed when placed into the light and life of the everyday