Bringing me more than I contain … Discourse, Subjectivity and the Scene of Teaching in Totality and Infinity

This paper explores the relationship between language, subjectivity and teaching in Emmanuel Levinas’s 'Totality and Infinity.' It aims to elucidate Levinas’s presentation of language as always already predicated on a relationship of responsibility towards that which is beyond the self, and the idea that it is only in this condition of being responsible that we are subjects. Levinas suggests that the relation with the Other through which I am a subject as one uniquely responsible is also the scene of teaching. Through examining these ethical conditions of subjectivity, I suggest that this notion of the self as oriented towards the Other in a relation of passivity presents a challenge to many of the standard topoi of teaching and learning and invite us to consider the nature of teaching in a provocative new manner

Levinas, Durkheim, and the Everyday Ethics of Education

This article explores the influence of Émile Durkheim on the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas in order both to open up the political significance of Levinas’s thought and to develop more expansive meanings of moral and political community within education. Education was a central preoccupation for both thinkers: Durkheim saw secular education as the site for promoting the values of organic solidarity, while Levinas was throughout his professional life engaged in debates on Jewish education and conceptualized ethical subjectivity as a condition of being taught. Durkheim has been accused of dissolving the moral into the social, and his view of education as a means of imparting a sense of civic republican values is sometimes seen as conservative, while Levinas’s argument for an ‘unfounded foundation’ for morality is sometimes seen as paralyzing the impetus for concrete political action. Against these interpretations, I argue that their approaches present provocative challenges for conceptualizing the nature of the social, offering theoretical resources to deepen understanding of education as the site of an everyday ethics and a prophetic politics opening onto more compelling ideals for education than those dominant within standard educational discourses

Critical Thinking Activities and the Enhancement of Ethical Awareness: An application of a ‘Rhetoric of Disruption’ to the undergraduate general education classroom

This article explores how critical thinking activities and assignments can function to enhance students’ ethical awareness and sense of civic responsibility. Employing Levinas’s Othercentered theory of ethics, Burke’s notion of ‘the paradox of substance’, and Murray’s concept of ‘a rhetoric of disruption’, this article explores the nature of critical thinking activities designed to have students question their (often taken-for-granted) moral assumptions and interrogate their (often unexamined) moral identities. This article argues that such critical thinking activities can trigger a metacognitive destabilization of subjectivity, understood as a dialectical prerequisite (along with exposure to otherness) for increased ethical awareness. This theoretical model is illustrated through a discussion of three sample classroom activities designed to destabilize moral assumptions and identity, thereby clearing the way for a heightened acknowledgment of otherness. In so doing, this article provides an alternative (and dialectically inverted) strategy for addressing one of the central goals of many General Education curricula: the development of ethical awareness and civic responsibility. Rather than introducing students to alternative perspectives and divergent cultures with the expectation that heightened moral awareness will follow, this article suggests classroom activities and course assignments aimed at disrupting moral subjectivity and creating an opening in which otherness can be more fully acknowledged and the diversity of our world more fully appreciated

Religious Language as Poetry: Heidegger's Challenge.

This paper examines how Heidegger’s view that language is poetry provides a way of conceptualising religious language. Poetry, according to Heidegger, is language in its purest form, in that it reveals Being, whilst also showing the difference between word and thing. In poetry, Heidegger suggests, we come closest to the essence of language itself and encounter its strangeness and impermeability. What would be the implications of viewing religious language in this way? Through examining Heidegger’s view that poetry is the purest form of language, I suggest that it would also be possible to view religious language as ‘poetry’ in this way, in that it also shows the transcendence of what cannot be brought to presence in language, except as concealed. Such a view of religious language leads to the view that it is not a special, unique or distinctive category of language, but rather a mode of language that, like poetry, can draw our attention to the inarticulable relationship between word and world that Heidegger argues pervades all forms of language

Gelbstint Kitą: karas ir taika Emmanuelio Levino filosofijoje

[full article and abstract in Lithuanian; abstract in English] The present article discusses the topics of war and peace in the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. It focuses on Totality and Infinity(1961) and aims to show that war here is presented as a suspension of morality. This article argues that on the one hand, war is understood as a historical event, and as an ontological principal on the other. In turn, peace is also understood ambiguously: first, as an opposition to war, and second, as an eschatology which is the true peace. The question of war and peace also reveals the problematic relationship between politics and ethics in Levinas’s philosophy. These themes penetrate and frame the book. And, as totality is war and infinity is peace, the alternative title of Totality and Infinity might be War and Peace.[straipsnis ir santrauka lietuvių kalba; santrauka anglų kalba] Šiame straipsnyje svarstoma karo ir taikos tema Emmanuelio Levino filosofijoje. Daugiausia dėmesio skiriama jo veikalui Totalybė ir begalybė (1961) ir siekiama parodyti, kad Levinas karą supranta kaip moralės suspendavimą. Teigiama, kad Levino filosofijoje karas atsiskleidžia, viena vertus, kaip istorinis įvykis, o antra vertus – kaip ontologinis principas. Savo ruožtu taika taip pat suprantama nevienodai – ir kaip opozicija karui, ir kaip eschatologija. Karo ir taikos santykis taip pat atskleidžia politikos ir etikos santykio problemą Levino filosofijoje. Šios temos savotiškai įrėmina Totalybę ir begalybę ir, jei totalybė yra karas, o begalybė – taika, alternatyvus šios knygos pavadinimas galėtų būti Karas ir taika

Swimming is never without risk: opening up on learning through activism and research

This article examines my own becoming as Elisabeth and as a researcher. It is about working as a support worker, coaching teams that are trying to realize inclusive education for a child, and my PhD process, which relies on these practices. My intention here is to unfold several aspects, blockages, possibilities, and tensions that can make sense of my messy struggle. The never-ending learning through working with people, listening to their stories, and taking responsibility are important ingredients of my engagement. It is necessary to provide insights and justify my multiple positions to avoid falling into a narcissistic trap. In doing so, I will seek help from Levinas and in concepts of Deleuze and Guattari to (re-)construct my own understanding

Rap and Fashion

The presence of rap culture in fashion demonstrates a trend in marketing, bringing cultural niches into the mainstream. This work examines the transition of rap fashion into popular culture, using hip-hop as a muse for the high-end. Specifically, I look at how rappers are beginning to create their own fashion lines and how high-fashion and urban street style incorporate hip-hop characteristics. Rappers use fashion as a way to show off wealth and success, flaunting designer names and labels in music videos, lyrics, and styling. In turn, high-fashion and street style brands use rap figures as guest designers and samplings of hip-hop statements in looks, blurring the elite fashion industry and urbanized rap culture. In my work I looked at articles on hip-hop fashion and primary sources of rappers in the fashion industry to discover the blend of rap in fashion found in popular culture. I discovered that many rap artists highly value fashion and use their success to create rap-inspired clothing brands, both luxury and streetwear. Further in my research I found that rappers use fashion as a tool to boast their wealth and success. Using ostentatious jewelry and designer labels, rappers publicize their knowledge of elite fashion labels as a representation of their status. Rappers advertise their familiarity with designer fashions in their lyrics and music videos as well as in clothing that broadcasts labels. Fashion has begun to incorporate what is typically viewed as black culture bringing it to the forefront of trends and questioning its appropriation. This transition marks the integral marketing strategies and importance of streetwear’s influence on the high-end styles. The blur in influences shifts fashion’s stereotypically elitist industry to value street style and produce collections that are more relevant to popular culture and minority groups.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/uresposters/1110/thumbnail.jp

Dialogue as Moral Paradigm: Paths Toward Intercultural Transformation

The Council of Europe’s 2008 White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue: ‘living together as equals in dignity’ points to the need for shared values upon which intercultural dialogue might rest. In order, however, to overcome the monologic separateness that threatens community, we must educate ourselves to recognize the dialogism of our humanity and to engage in deep encounters with others with a mature skepticism of all dogmatisms, including our own. In order to aid us in reaching the necessary insight, the author calls upon Bakhtin’s ideas of the dialogism of every utterance and of the unity and heteroglossia of language, Gadamer’s hermeneutical experience that shakes us loose from what we think we know, and Levinas’s description of that transcendent ideal of a dialogue beyond reciprocity. These perspectives break open our certainty that tribalism and individualism are fundamental, placing them instead as secondary phenomena that, though powerful, pronounce neither the initial nor the final word on our life together

Cambio conceptual parcial: un instrumento para explicar la inconmensurabilidad entre teorias

En este trabajo se analizan los cambios que se han operado a lo largo de la historia en ciertos conceptos fundamentales que adoptaron un rol determinante en la caracterización y determinación de los fenómenos más importantes asociados al .estudio del movimiento. Su hlstoria muestra cómo algunos de estos conceptos han sido adoptados o abandonados, muchas veces de forma drástica, mientras que otros han sido retomados, reformados o reformulados. El cambío conceptual es un proceso asociado a la construcción y al desarrollo del conocimiento que implica una modificación en el significado de determinados nociones y que involucra la incorporación, la adaptación o la eliminación de otros conceptos también necesarios para alcanzar la descripción de los fenómenos. En tal sentido, los cambios conceptuales suelen comprender un conjunto de nociones transformadas de manera más o menos drástica. Se vinculan, directamente, con las modificaciones operadas en la interpretación de experiencias conocidas (mentales o reales) y con los objetivos perseguidos en el diseño de experimentos nuevos con vistas a corroborar o refutar determinadas hlpótesis