Victims, Power and Intellectuals: Laruelle and Sartre

In two recent works, Intellectuals and Power and General Theory of Victims, François Laruelle offers a critique of the public intellectual, including Jean-Paul Sartre, claiming such intellectuals have a disregard for victims of crimes against humanity. Laruelle insists that the victim has been left out of philosophy and displaced by an abstract pursuit of justice. He offers a non- philosophical approach that reverses the victim/intellectual dyad and calls for compassionate insurrection. In this paper, we probe Laruelle\u27s critique of the committed intellectual\u27s obligations to victims, specifically, through an examination of Sartre\u27s A Plea for Intellectuals. We hope to show the value of Laruelle\u27s theory on victims, crime and power for imagining future-oriented intellectuals

Building a Virtual Cybersecurity Collaborative Learning Laboratory (VCCLL)

In fall 2013, the Maine Cybersecurity Cluster (MCSC), was invited to assist the United States Coast Guard with cybersecurity training. MCSC conducted training activities that created the conditions under which Coast Guard personnel could experience and respond to cyber attacks first-hand. A major result of this endeavor was the recognition of two critical needs: 1) the necessity for a flexible, learning laboratory to address the increased security requirements presented by the Internet of Things (IoT), and 2) the need for applied education and training for students going into information assurance professions. To fill these gaps, MCSC designed plans for the creation of a Virtual Cybersecurity Collaborative Learning Lab (VCCLL). The lab would operate inter-institutionally and offer innovative, hands-on, collaborative learning experiences aimed at preventing and mitigating cyber attacks in real time. This paper delineates the background, design, and benefits of the VCCLL

Experiences with Establishment of a Multi-University Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance/Cyber Defense

The National Security Agency (NSA) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in response to an unmet workforce need for cybersecurity program graduates, jointly sponsor a program by which a post-secondary education institution may achieve recognition as a Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance/Cyber Defense (CAE IA/CD). The program identifies standards, criteria, and an evaluation process. Many individual institutions have achieved recognition. The University of Maine System, composed of seven universities, is the first multi-university entity to achieve the CAE IA/CD recognition. The purpose of this paper is to share the key challenges, opportunities, and experiences that contributed to this achievement, and offer recommendations

Is Pregnancy Necessary? Feminist Concerns About Ectogenesis

To what extent are women obliged to be child‐bearers? If reproductive technology could offer some form of ectogenesis, would feminists regard it as a liberating reproductive option? Three lines of reproductive rights arguments currently used by feminists are applied to ectogenesis. Each fails to provide strong grounds for prohibiting it. Yet, there are several ways in which ectogenesis could contribute to women\u27s oppression, in particular, if it were used to undermine abortion rights, reinforce traditional views of fertility, increase fetal rights in pregnancy, and perpetuate the unequal distribution of scarce medical resources. A re‐thinking of women\u27s relationship to pregnancy is needed in order to challenge ectogenetic research

Egg-Farming and Women’s Future

https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/facbooks/1285/thumbnail.jp

The Body with AIDS: A Post-Structuralist Analysis [Book Chapter]

Chapter from The Body in Medical Thought and Practice, edited by Drew Leder. More about this chapter: The epidemic of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is one of the most significant threats to health in the United States in the latter part of the century. While medical researchers scurry to find ways to arrest AIDS-related infection in the body, scholars in the humanities have been at work analyzing a crisis of representation in academia, manifested by recent theories of interpretation (e.g., deconstruction, post-structuralism, post-modernism). In the epistemic epidemic, the vitality of our conceptual framework, the ways we know, and the means by which we interpret cultural experience are under siege. These two epidemics have much to do with each other, not only because of their synchronicity, but also because breakthroughs in ways of understanding cultural experience affect our interpretations of health and disease. One person whose life was caught up in both epidemics was Michel Foucault. Foucault was a leading French post-structuralist, perhaps the most notable French philosopher since Sartre. He was also involved in gay liberation struggles and the first intellectual of international importance to die of AIDS, a disease that is, not infrequently sexually transmitted, and in the U.S. was first diagnosed in and disproportionately affects gay men. Foucault’s death brought to an end his three-volume study of sexuality, a work which leaves no hint that it was written during an epidemic, and bears no mention of sexually transmitted disease. Yet, his writings on the whole lend themselves to analyses of the AIDS epidemic.https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/facbooks/1284/thumbnail.jp

The AIDS Epidemic: A Phenomenological Analysis of the Infectious Body [Book Chapter]

Chapter from The Meaning of AIDS: Implications for Medical Science, Clinical Practices, and Public Health Policy, edited by Eric T. Juengst and Barbara A. Koenig. More about this title: The editors of this remarkable volume have collected 18 essays by humanists about Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. AIDS seems to seek out as its victims the weakest and already victimized, writes Albert R. Jonsen, describing the inhumanity of this disease. Jonsen states that scientists have already fashioned a language for describing the disease in objective, clinical terms. What is needed now is a language to describe the human experience and instruct us on how to live humanely while AIDS is among us. To help construct this language, this collection examines AIDS from the perspective of the humanities: History can recall past experience for our instruction, Philosophy can define terms such as welfare, freedom, health, and disease, that guide our discourse, and Literature can reveal the images that shape the social reality of AIDS. Editors Eric T. Juengst and Barbara Koenig begin this study by delineating six interpretations of AIDS. Their aim is to demonstrate the many ways in which AIDS is viewed by society. The book is then divided into three parts. Part One examines how our current knowledge of AIDS was generated and how this knowledge is interpreted. Part Two explores the meaning of AIDS for health professionals and the ethical issues it can raise. Part Three examines public policy and AIDS. The contributors clarify and correct definitions, recall analogous incidents in our history and draw values and principles out of the obscurity of emotions and into the light of reason. divided into three parts. Part One examines the current knowledge of AIDS and how this knowledge is interpreted. Part Two explores the meaning and perceptions of AIDS in the medical community. Part Three examines public policy and AIDS. The contributors clarify and correct definitions, recall analogous incidents in our history and draw values and principles out of the obscurity of emotion and into the light of reason.https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/facbooks/1290/thumbnail.jp

The Constructed Body: AIDS, Reproductive Technology and Ethics

This book contributes to new directions in medical ethics by using recent philosophical theories, such as phenomenological, deconstruction, and post-structuralism, and extends philosophical analysis to allow for the influences of politics, cultural difference, and history on ethics. The author views AIDS from several different perspectives over a period of years and addresses questions often given little attention: what are the ethical issues for women with AIDS? How has AIDS phobia become a public health issue? What ought to be society\u27s responsibility toward children with AIDS? New ground is broken in reproductive technology by examining unusual issues in ways that illuminate current debates on women\u27s reproductive rights, such as should brain-dead pregnant women be sustained on life-support, and should pregnancy require women\u27s bodies or would artificial uteri be acceptable?https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/facbooks/1268/thumbnail.jp

Is Pregnancy Necessary? Feminist Concerns About Ectogenesis [Book Chapter]

Chapter from Ectogenesis : artificial womb technology and the future of human reproduction, edited by Scott Gelfand and John R. Shook. More about this title: This book raises many moral, legal, social, and political, questions related to possible development, in the near future, of an artificial womb for human use. Is ectogenesis ever morally permissible? If so, under what circumstances? Will ectogenesis enhance or diminish women\u27s reproductive rights and/or their economic opportunities? These are some of the difficult and crucial questions this anthology addresses and attempts to answer.https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/facbooks/1276/thumbnail.jp

Sartre on American Racism [Book Chapter]

Chapter from Philosophers on race : critical essays, edited by Julie K. Ward and Tommy L. Scott. More about this title: Philosophers on Race adds a new dimension to current research on race theory by examining the historical roots of the concept in the works of major Western philosophers.https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/facbooks/1277/thumbnail.jp