2,268 research outputs found
The Paradox of Breaking the Silence
A quick, perhaps superficial mapping of the Jewish-Israeli political map will reveal among those who call themselves âleftistâ groups, very few that could actually be referred to as belonging to the anti-colonial camp or struggle. Anti-Zionist resistance includes all those loosely defined groups and individuals who are committed anti-colonial activists with a firm and uncompromising approach in their understanding of Zionism as a settler colonial movement with all of the associated implications, including, first and foremost, the understanding that only decolonization (and here perhaps there are differences in the understanding of the meaning of which) of the Israeli state structure and society will bring an end to the injustices from which the Palestinians are suffering. Before proceeding, it is important to mention that in Israeli political discourse, âleftâ and ârightâ pertain more to the position around the extent of colonization than to internal issues of redistribution. Most of those in what is considered in the common political (and popular) discourse as the âliberal leftâ are in fact supporters of harsh neoliberal policies (for that, see recent example of Haaretzâs editorial supporting Netanyahuâs new policies to limit unionsâ ability to call on strikes). Additionally, we should be careful when thinking of the anti-Zionist resistance as some organized form of struggle or some kind of united movement. On the contrary, while it is a very small and marginalized group, internal divisions and disagreements over tactics are prevalent. However, in the political spectrum of groups/organizations that in contemporary Israel are considered by the hegemonic right-center as âleftistâ, the camp is broad and ranges all the way from fighters for the defence of the Jewish-democracy and human rights advocates to anti-colonial/anti- Zionist radicals. Interestingly, those who are actually on the right side of the âleftâ are those who attract the most fire
Palestinian Family Unification in Israel: The Limits of Litigation as Means of Resistance
In Israel and elsewhere, resÂistÂance to hegeÂmonic power can never limit itself to the law and legal chanÂnels
PEAR: PEriodic And fixed Rank separation for fast fMRI
In functional MRI (fMRI), faster acquisition via undersampling of data can
improve the spatial-temporal resolution trade-off and increase statistical
robustness through increased degrees-of-freedom. High quality reconstruction of
fMRI data from undersampled measurements requires proper modeling of the data.
We present an fMRI reconstruction approach based on modeling the fMRI signal as
a sum of periodic and fixed rank components, for improved reconstruction from
undersampled measurements. We decompose the fMRI signal into a component which
a has fixed rank and a component consisting of a sum of periodic signals which
is sparse in the temporal Fourier domain. Data reconstruction is performed by
solving a constrained problem that enforces a fixed, moderate rank on one of
the components, and a limited number of temporal frequencies on the other. Our
approach is coined PEAR - PEriodic And fixed Rank separation for fast fMRI.
Experimental results include purely synthetic simulation, a simulation with
real timecourses and retrospective undersampling of a real fMRI dataset.
Evaluation was performed both quantitatively and visually versus ground truth,
comparing PEAR to two additional recent methods for fMRI reconstruction from
undersampled measurements. Results demonstrate PEAR's improvement in estimating
the timecourses and activation maps versus the methods compared against at
acceleration ratios of R=8,16 (for simulated data) and R=6.66,10 (for real
data). PEAR results in reconstruction with higher fidelity than when using a
fixed-rank based model or a conventional Low-rank+Sparse algorithm. We have
shown that splitting the functional information between the components leads to
better modeling of fMRI, over state-of-the-art methods
Archaeology, Architecture and the Politics of Verticality
The Israeli-Palestinian is defined by where and how one builds. This chapter explores the politics of verticality. The terrain dictates the nature, intensity and focal points of confrontation. On the other hand, the conflict manifests itself most clearly in the adaptation, construction and obliteration of landscape and built environment. Planning decisions are often made not according to criteria of economical sustainability, ecology or efficiency of services, but to serve strategic and national agendas. The West Bank is a landscape of extreme topographical variation, ranging from four hundred and forty metres below sea level at the shores of the Dead Sea, to about one thousand metres in the high summits of Samaria. Settlements occupy the high ground, while Palestinian villages occupy the fertile valley in between. This topographical difference defines the relationship between Jewish and Palestinian settlements in terms of strategy, economy and ecology. The politics of verticality is exemplified across the folded surface of the terrainâin which the mountainous region has influenced the forms the territorial conflict has produced
An obscured genesis : Deleuze from the dialectic to the problematic
This thesis suggests that Deleuzeâs early philosophy, culminating in Difference and Repetition and The Logic of Sense, unfolds as a polemic between two structural positions â the problematic and the dialectic. This polemic sheds light on âpoliticalâ aspects in Deleuzeâs work as a
student of authors such as Jean Hyppolite, Jean Wahl, Martial Guéroult and Ferdinand Alquié, in a period in which he places critical weight on the attempt to escape the constraining influence of their positions. Reading Bergson, Nietzsche, Hume, Kant and Hegel through
his teachers, Deleuze seeks to expunge from his thought every trace of their mediation, so as to be able to pose new problems for philosophy. To this end Deleuze puts forward the notion of philosophy as being essentially problematic, irreducible to empiricist,
transcendentalist or dialectic dispositions and delineated by unique problems. This notion is established as a calculated move marked by an anti-Hegelian rhetoric, Hegel being the epitome of âoldâ metaphysical problems that must be overcome. The introduction of
Deleuzeâs critique of his teachers, who could be considered somewhat marginalised authors from the more recent history of French philosophy, and the establishment of the problematic-dialectic dyad as fundamental to Deleuzeâs development as a philosopher, hopes
to bring out critical aspects of his work that remain strategically buried in the text. Chapter one introduces Deleuzeâs triangulation of Hyppolite-GuĂ©roult-AlquiĂ© starting from his confrontation with Hyppoliteâs Logic and Existence and continuing to his early efforts to
put forward a satisfying âmiddle groundâ with respect to these authorsâ disparate positions, from which emerges a unique preoccupation with problems that will persist in Deleuzeâs work throughout the 1950s and 60s. Chapter two examines the extent to which Nietzsche and Philosophy is a critical response to Hyppoliteâs renowned interpretation of Hegelâs The Phenomenology of Spirit, Genesis and Structure,
a response which amounts to Deleuzeâs interpretation of eternal recurrence as an anti- Hegelian mode of problematization, and which would later be transformed into the Deleuzian project of the overturning of Platonism. Chapter three is a reading of Empiricism and Subjectivity as an anti-Hegelian polemic profoundly
inspired by Wahlâs vision of empiricism as a problematic and problematizing theory that responds to Hegelâs critique of âself-certaintyâ and of empiricism in general.
Chapter four considers Deleuzeâs Kantianism a strategic endeavour to shift the tectonics of philosophical rigor from a preoccupation with the Absolute as the ultimate ground for knowledge, to a revival of the problematic Idea as that which incites experimentation with
the âthicknessâ of sensibility demolished in the first moment of the Hegelian dialectic, a shift whose successfulness is placed in question
Seeing Israel through Palestine: knowledge production as anti-colonial praxis
Knowledge production in, for and by settler colonial states hinges on both productive and repressive practices that work together to render its history and present ânormalâ by controlling how, where, to and through whom it tells its story. This makes the production and dissemination of knowledge an important battleground for anti-colonial struggles. The State of Israel, in its ongoing search for patrons and partners, is focused on how to produce and appropriate âknowledgeâ, and the arenas in which it is developed and shared. In so doing, it works to reshape critique of its political, social and economic relations and redefine the moral parameters that inform its legitimacy and entrench its irrefutability. Inspired by existing literature on and examples of anti-colonial struggles, this paper challenges the modalities through which Israel produces and normalises the colonial narrative. By critiquing existing representations of the Israeli state â and the spaces and structures in which these take hold â our article contributes to the range of scholarship working to radically recalibrate knowledge of âIsraelâ and âPalestineâ. As part of this work, the article purposefully centres indigenous anti-colonial frameworks that reconnect intellectual analysis of settler colonial relations, with political engagements in the praxis of liberation and decolonisation
Yara Hawari, Sharri Plonski, and Elian Weizman, eds., âSettlers and Citizens: A Critical View of Israeli Societyâ (New Texts Out Now)
The work on the Special Issue started with the 2015 SOAS Palestine Society Conference, held at SOAS, University of London. The project has since evolved through the writings of its contributors, the intellectual guidance of its reviewers, and our collaborations as the editorial team. Bringing critical studies of Palestine into conversation with a critical study of Israelâs internal workings, the Special Issue offers a platform through which the two intertwine and form a united body of knowledge on the settler-colonial realities in which they are situated. Working against the analytical separation between settler-colonial studies and indigenous studies, the Special Issue challenges the epistemological boundaries that usually frame the study of Israeli state and society, namely, its placement in the âdisciplinaryâ boundaries of âIsrael studies,â and with it, the tendency to disconnect this work the political project of liberation, on which the field of settler colonial studies should thrive. By situating these studies firmly within the field of Palestine studies, the task of understanding the particular operations of the settler state and society connects to the process of unsettling the colonial order and contributing to its dismantling. Thus, more explicitly, the goal of this project overall has been to contribute to the intellectual and critical resources of the growing international solidarity movement with the Palestinian peopleâs struggle for liberation
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