In this paper, we introduce the Japanese philosopher Tetsurō Watsuji’s phenomenology of aidagara (“betweenness”) and use his analysis in the contemporary context of online space. We argue that Watsuji develops a prescient analysis anticipating modern technologically-mediated forms of expression and engagement. More precisely, we show that instead of adopting a traditional phenomenological focus on face-to-face interaction, Watsuji argues that communication technologies — which now include Internet-enabled technologies and spaces — are expressive vehicles enabling new forms of emotional expression, shared (...) experiences, and modes of betweenness that would be otherwise inaccessible. Using Watsuji’s phenomenological analysis, we argue that the Internet is not simply a sophisticated form of communication technology that expresses our subjective spatiality (although it is), but that it actually gives rise to new forms of subjective spatiality itself. We conclude with an exploration of how certain aspects of our online interconnections are hidden from lay users in ways that have significant political and ethical implications. (shrink)

This paper focuses on diaspora-related issues in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake (2003). Furthermore, the paper analyses the characters’ understating of identity and how it reflects through the characters’ ‘(not)belonging’ and a conflict of ‘(not)betweenness.’ This research seeks an answer to the questions: 1. What is the role of culture and memory in Indian American life? And 2. How do Indian Americans struggle for cultural, diasporic, and personal names as an identity? In The Namesake, the characters’ struggles are examined through (...) the works of Bhabha (1994), Chambers and Herbert (2015), and Gowricharn (2022). A textual analysis of this novel is significant to understand diasporic relations with the ‘culture,’ ‘memory,’ ‘dual identity’ and the idea of ‘home’ from the context of twenty-first-century. To conclude, two generations’ stories from India to America bring a sense of ‘(non)belongings’ and ‘(non)betweenness’ as being “other.”. (shrink)

We introduce and study a class ofbetweenness algebras—Boolean algebras with binary operators, closely related to ternary frames with a betweenness relation. From various axioms for betweenness, we chose those that are most common, which makes our work applicable to a wide range of betweenness structures studied in the literature. On the algebraic side, we work with two operators ofpossibilityand ofsufficiency.

A key aspect of the educator's responsibility as understood by Hannah Arendt is its dual character. Educators are responsible for both the life and development of the child and the continuance of the world, as Arendt puts it in “The Crisis in Education.” Moreover, these aspects of responsibility are in tension with each other. Arendt's own accounts of responsibility in her political writings are, in a similar way, riddled with tension. What should we conclude from this about the nature of (...) educational responsibility? To address this question, Julien Kloeg and Liesbeth Noordegraaf-Eelens first reconstruct the meaning of responsibility in Arendt's political writings. They find a broad distinction between political responsibility and personal responsibility: the former consists in contributing to a community (by extension, the world), and the latter in the “two-in-one” of silent self-dialogue. While political responsibility is close to Arendt's description of the responsibility of the educator (for the continuance of the world), personal responsibility does not find an obvious home in her educational thought. From this ambiguous situation of education and Arendt's own theme of the “in-between” arises the possibility of introducing a concept of educational responsibility that further develops Arendt's position. Kloeg and Noordegraaf-Eelens's concept of educational responsibility suggests a theory and practice of navigating tensions between conflicting commitments. In their view, this is both an appropriate extension and reform of Arendt's educational work and an insight that does justice to the practical situation of educators in the modern world. (shrink)

In appreciating paintings, what we experience is either a result of their medium or object, regardless of whether the object is an actual thing, a fictional thing, an internal emotion, an abstract idea, or something else. However, the conceptions of ‘betweenness’ in traditional Chinese aesthetics and ‘twofoldness’ in contemporary Western aesthetics tell us that our experience of paintings might not be simply from the object or the medium itself but rather from a relation between the two. This study considers (...) the intercultural value of the above concepts while examining how our aesthetic pleasure might derive from awareness of the object, the medium, and the play of our mind and body. (shrink)

I develop Tetsurō Watsuji’s relational model of the self as “betweenness”. I argue that Watsuji’s view receives support from two case studies: solitary confinement and dementia. Both clarify the constitutive interdependence between the self and the social and material contexts of “betweenness” that define its lifeworld. They do so by providing powerful examples of what happens when the support and regulative grounding of this lifeworld is restricted or taken away. I argue further that Watsuji’s view helps see the (...) other side of this deprivation, how reconstructing aspects of betweenness is, at the same time, a reconstruction of the self. I conclude by briefly indicating further consequences of this view. (shrink)

This book introduces a new category, in-between, that will have a far-reaching impact on classic ways of thinking. Husserl's description of consciousness and Whitehead's criticism of the prejudice of simple location are two starting points. Relativity theory's radical changes in the conception of space and time also motivate some of the lines of thought.

How is distributive justice possible with respect to immigration if political decisions about entry and membership cannot be grounded in the symmetry of a prior commonality, human or otherwise, that could guarantee reciprocal relations between members and nonmembers? This paper deals with both aspects of this question. Initially, it engages critically with Seyla Benhabib's plea for ‘dialogical universalism,’ showing why the strong discontinuity between political and moral reciprocity precludes understanding distributive justice as the process of mediating between political particularity and (...) moral universality. Subsequently, it suggests that a way out of this conceptual and normative impasse can be found in the fact that boundaries create a double asymmetry. This double asymmetry is constitutive for the ‘dia’ of the political dialogue that separates and joins members and nonmembers. This ‘in between,’ which eludes control by the parties to a dialogue, is the realm of distributive justice. (shrink)

Questions about phenomenology’s role in non-philosophical disciplines gained renewed attention. While we claim that phenomenology makes indispensable, unique contributions to different domains of scientific practice such as concept formation, experimental design, and data collection, we also contend that when it comes to explanation, phenomenological approaches face a dilemma. Either phenomenological attempts to explain conscious phenomena do not satisfy a central constraint on explanations, i.e. the asymmetry between explanans and explanandum, or they satisfy this explanatory asymmetry only by largely merging with (...) non-phenomenological explanation types. The consequence of this dilemma is that insofar as phenomenological approaches are explanatory, they do not provide an own type of explanation. We substantiate our two claims by offering three case studies of phenomenologically inspired experiments in cognitive science. Each case study points out a specific phenomenological contribution to experimental practice while also illustrating how phenomenological approaches face the explanatory dilemma we outline. (shrink)

We are living in an age of pluralization in which religiosity and secularity are not mutually exclusive. With subversive intent, Peter L. Berger relativizes with this thesis his criticism of secularization theory. In the light of the persistence and widespread nature of religion and religiosity, Berger still considers secularization theory’s assumption that modernization and secularization go hand in hand to be empirically untenable. At the same time, however, he acknowledges that a “secular discourse” has asserted itself globally and has achieved (...) a dominant position in society. This secular discourse also spreads throughout the mind of each individual, without driving out religiosity. The present article traces the lines of argumentation in Peter L. Berger’s works that lead to the thesis of two pluralisms: the coexistence of different religions and the coexistence of religious and secular discourse. Moreover, it establishes a connection between the question of the simultaneity of religiosity and secularity and the debate on hybridity that is currently being conducted within German-speaking sociology. The author postulates that this focus on “in-between” spaces—that is, on plurality and hybridity—rather than on dichotomies has the potential to trigger a new paradigm for religion in the modern age. (shrink)

How is distributive justice possible with respect to immigration if political decisions about entry and membership cannot be grounded in the symmetry of a prior commonality, human or otherwise, that could guarantee reciprocal relations between members and nonmembers? This paper deals with both aspects of this question. Initially, it engages critically with Seyla Benhabib's plea for ‘dialogical universalism,’ showing why the strong discontinuity between political and moral reciprocity precludes understanding distributive justice as the process of mediating between political particularity and (...) moral universality. Subsequently, it suggests that a way out of this conceptual and normative impasse can be found in the fact that boundaries create a double asymmetry. This double asymmetry is constitutive for the ‘dia’ of the political dialogue that separates and joins members and nonmembers. This ‘in between,’ which eludes control by the parties to a dialogue, is the realm of distributive justice. (shrink)

In this paper I seek to deconstruct internet-based communication. I highlight Derrida’s focus on the margins and in-betweens of communication, and relate it to the genre of e-mail. I argue (i) that the silence between the dialogic turns becomes more marked, while (ii) the separation of present and previous statements becomes less marked. The visibility of the silence between the turns (i) can be a resource for increased awareness of how communicative exchanges are shaped by self-arrangements and -presentations. The dissolution (...) of the separation between present and previous statements (ii) can be a source for unfruitful quarrels. (shrink)

Schwitzgebel (2001) — henceforth 'S' — offers three examples in order to convince us that there are situations in which individuals are neither accurately describable as believing that p or failing to so believe, but are rather in 'in-between states of belief'. He then argues that there are no 'Bayesian' or representational strategies for explicating these, and proposes a dispositional account. I do not have any fundamental objection to the idea that there might be 'in-between states of belief'. What I (...) shall argue, rather, is that: (I) S does not provide a convincing argument that there really are such states; (II) S does not show, as he claims, that 'in-between states of belief' could not be accounted for in terms of degrees of belief; (III) S’s dispositional account of 'in-between states of belief' is more problematic than the 'degree of belief' alternative. (shrink)

Introduction Paul Boshears The following excerpt from Paul Amitai's In Between States: Field notes and speculations on postwar landscapes (2012) confounds its reader. Presenting an alternate history of the State of Israel as a space station orbiting Earth, the excitement of possibilities crackles across the texts and images. Like Chris Marker's La Jeteé , the accompanying static images distort the viewer's temporality: are these archaeological items, images from a past, or a future? Why isn't this our future? In Between States (...) can also be seen as complementing Larissa Sansour's provocative science fiction works, Space Exodus (2009) which "documents" the Palestinian space program, and her Nation Estate (2012), in which Palestine is relocated into a skyscraper. Amitai's vision opens onto an intergalactic diaspora, wherein the refugees of World War II are given the stars as Western Europe continues to fight over terrestial colonies. —PFB Auditorium, Hoechst AG headquarters, Industriepark-Höchst, 2011. In 1941 an investigation by the US Justice Department exposed a marriage cartel between John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil (now ExxonMobil) and I.G. Farben. The two corporations had formed a joint operation in 1927 called Standard IG Farben. It was revealed that the two had shared patents in order to control prices and markets in their respective regions. Standard was accused of hiding patents from the US Navy and supplying fuel to German submarines, which lead to charges of criminal conspiracy. The Pentagon intervened, requesting that President Roosevelt stop the investigation in order to protect war production and oil supply. Roosevelt agreed, and the Senate committee investigating the matter, headed by Senator Harry Truman, was halted. Standard Oil paid a fine of $5000 and promised to stop supplying fuel to the enemies. Auditorium, Hoechst AG headquarters, Industriepark-Höchst, 2011. Furious at the decision to terminate the investigation of acts he considered treason, Truman initiated a new inquiry into Standard Oil’s war-time practices after succeeding Roosevelt as president in 1945. With the chief executives of I.G Farben simultaneously on trial at Nuremburg, Truman brokered a deal with the Allies that reduced or withdrew criminal charges leveled against both corporations in exchange for Standard Oil and I.G. Farben’s sponsorship of one of Truman’s most ambitious postwar projects—the relocation of the Jewish people. Detail, Sanofi-Aventis advertisement, 2011. The third critical player in this bold experiment was the nascent North Atlantic Space Agency. Formed by Allied forces using the seized assets and engineering expertise of Hitler’s hitherto classified space program (conquer Earth, then the stars), the North Atlantic Space Agency was a pre-NATO foray into interstellar nation building, with orbital occupation as the first point of order. By 1947, NASA was nearly ready to deploy the first manned space station. Standard Oil and I.G. Farben’s advanced fuel refinement capacities and deep, war-enriched financial resources allowed NASA to speed up their launch schedule significantly. Detail, Sanofi-Aventis advertisement, 2011. Diplomatic efforts to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine were failing to gain traction, while post-colonial England held its ground on immigration restrictions and bands of Jews and Arabs battled over territory on the ground. More immediate was the issue of temporarily housing Holocaust survivors and refugees across scorched Europe. Leaders of the continental nations demonstrated, at best, reluctance to accommodate the Jews, who in turn were, at the least, resistant to returning to the same bloody cocktail from which they had fled. Truman used the impasse to advance a plan for NASA’s space station to be put to use as a temporary Jewish outpost, an orbital displaced persons camp, to be operated by the US Army. Detail, Infaserv Höchst advertisement, 2011. Final preparations advanced rapidly. Viewing the orbital displaced persons (ODP) camp as a solution to their immigration problem both at home and abroad, England came on board as a willing partner. Spaceship Exodus was positioned for takeoff on German farmland 20 kilometers southwest of Frankfurt. On December 30, 1947, one month after the UN General Assembly voted down the separation plan for Palestine, Exodus rocketed into the atmosphere hauling the first module of barracks designed to house 1,500 refugees. Transport vehicles arrived shortly thereafter, loaded down with leftover wartime military rations and 3,000 Jews of Russian and Polish origin. Detail, Infaserv Höchst advertisement, 2011. "The camp is the space that is opened when the state of exception begins to become the rule."—Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer , trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), 96. Detail, Infaserv Höchst advertisement, 2011. The ODP camp proved to be a longer-term solution than originally envisioned. Additional installations were positioned to form swollen clusters of interlocking units – sleeping quarters, schools, clinics, canteens. The UN was brought in to monitor the camp following two chaotic years of US Army control in which food shortages, pandemic diseases, and rampant black market trade had brought the camp to near total collapse. No less bureaucratic or ineffectual, the UN relief agency at least had prior experience facilitating contexts of a similar magnitude and could potentially predict outcomes. Detail, Infaserv Höchst advertisement, 2011. What had been unexpected was the degree to which the camp would evolve into its own self-regulated, hive-like ecosystem where previously accepted rules of conduct were not applicable. The ODP camp was an exceptional space, a riverboat casino, an offshore research lab of social experimentation and entrepreneurial innovation. No longer Earth-bound, touching soil knotted by prescripts of Talmudic law, the camp residents were able to rationalize loopholes and detonate barriers standing in the way of absolute production. The Jewish archipelago was renamed Israel after the ancient homeland. If the temple couldn’t be rebuilt in the motherland, a post-national rhizome would sprout up in its stead. Eyes everywhere, beyond all borders. More information on the project at the author's site. (shrink)

In this article I examine views of groundlessness that appear in three very different philosophical traditions: bardo teachings in Tibetan Buddhism, Michel Foucault's heterotopia, and Gloria Anzaldúa's nepantla. While each of these concepts is formulated in response to specific psychological, philosophical, and political questions, I argue that they each describe—in intimate, first-personal terms—experiences of rupture or dissolution of one's own selfhood and/or thought. Using this formulation of groundlessness as a lens for reading these three concepts alongside one another, I offer (...) a descriptive analysis of each of them, drawing out the moral-psychological ramifications of the nonfoundationalist claim that there is no fundamental “ground” to subjectivity or thought. I argue that bardos, heterotopias, and nepantla each exemplify how the rupture of groundless experience can become a vehicle for moral-psychological transformation by serving as an opportunity to recognize the pliability and spaciousness of a dynamic and unfixed selfhood. (shrink)

Following the first significant research into Indigenous methods of learning, it was argued that Indigenous students could learn western knowledge using Indigenous ways of learning. Subsequent research contradicted this finding to take the position that Indigenous students must learn western knowledge using western methods and so this set the scene for the development of a pedagogy where Indigenous students could learn how to learn. Theorists in Indigenous education began to search for a metalanguage. Crosscultural theorists have perceived this metalanguage in (...) terms of an explicit and transparent pedagogy while critical theorists want Indigenous students to develop their own ways of speaking and writing and to be conscious of how they do this. However, I take the position in this paper that there is already a metalanguage at work in‐between the student and the teacher in the classroom although it is often obscured from consciousness in the effort to articulate valid, quantifiable outcomes. (shrink)

Betweenness as a relation between three individual points has been widely studied in geometry and axiomatized by several authors in different contexts. The article proposes a more general notion of betweenness as a relation between three sets of points. The main technical result is a sound and complete logical system describing universal properties of this relation between sets of vertices of a graph.

This paper gives a philosophical outline of the initial foundations of politics as presented in the work of Plato and argues why this traditional philosophical approach can no longer serve as the foundation of politics. The argumentation is mainly based on the work of Latour (1993, 1997, 1999a, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2008) and consists of five parts. In the first section I elaborate on the initial categorization of politics and science as represented by Plato in his Republic. In the second (...) section I discuss the gap between humans and non-humans and how they are tied together in actual real life political topics. In the third section I elaborate on the concepts of political and scientific discourse and how they are thought of as separated fields based on the ancient constitution of human society. In the fourth section I link the concepts of matter of fact and matter of concern. In a final section I present a redefinition of the nature of politics as represented in the work of Bruno Latour as an alternative foundation for the study of political systems. (shrink)

In this paper, we introduce an enactive account of loving as participatory sense-making inspired by the “I love to you” of the feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray. Emancipating from the fusionist concept of romantic love, which understands love as unity, we conceptualise loving as an existential engagement in a dialectic of encounter, in continuous processes of becoming-in-relation. In these processes, desire acquires a certain prominence as the need to know (the other, the relation, oneself) more. We build on Irigaray’s account of (...) love to present a phenomenology of loving interactions and then our enactive account. Finally, we draw some implications for ethics. These concern language, difference, vulnerability, desire, and self-transformation. (shrink)

What makes New York City different from Moscow? Are small towns looking more and more alike? What criteria should we use to distinguish one place from another? Today, geographers and other social scientists are debating not only the answers to these sorts of questions but even whether or not to ask them at all. This ongoing controversy about how (or whether) to study place and its meaning in modern life forms the focus of J. Nicholas Entrikin's pioneering work. Those who (...) point to a decline in the study of place in geography, Entrikin explains, cite three main causes: the apparent homogenization of world culture; the belief that studying particular places is somehow "parochial;" and the tendency of the scientific method to generalize. Entrikin treats each of these in turn, addressing topics that include the Marxist view of a world economy, the moral implications of place (in such notions as community and provincialism), and the empiricist versus neo-Kantian traditions in philosophy. To geographers arguing the merits of hard, scientific data versus subjective experience, Entrikin offers a compromise. "To understand place," he suggests, "requires that we have access to both an objective and a subjective reality. From the decentered vantage point of the theoretical scientist, place becomes either location or a set of generic relations and loses much of its significance for human action. From the centered viewpoint of the subjective self, place has meaning only in relation to one's own goals and concerns. Place is best viewed from points in-between.". (shrink)

: This paper examines the following two ideas and their relations: aspect-perception is a perceptual experience; veridicality is the primary standard for evaluating the success of a perceptual experience. I argue that a valuable lesson to glean from Wittgenstein’s investigations of aspect-perception is that aspect-perception is “in-between” when it comes to whether and how veridicality is at issue in it. Yet it does not follow from this in-betweenness that there is no standard by which we evaluate aspect-perception, no notion (...) of success at perceiving an aspect. Aspect-perception has normative dimensions that are not a matter of veridicality, or at least not in any straightforward way, some of which I explore here. These normative dimensions are brought to light, in part, by shifting evaluative focus to what the perceiver “brings” to aspect-perception experiences and attending the ways aspect-perception requires and involves mastery of a technique. The shift in focus also helps illuminate different ways of understanding aspect-blindness and the kinds of failure at play in different kinds of aspect-blindness. All in all, embracing aspect-perception’s in-betweenness regarding whether or not veridicality is at issue in it illumines aspect-perception’s distinctive character and richness. (shrink)

For any proposition P, it may sometimes occur that a person is not quite accurately describable as believing that P, nor quite accurately describable as failing to believe that P. Such a person, I will say, is in an "in-between state of belief." This paper argues for the prevalence of in-between states of believing and asserts the need for an account of belief that allows us intelligibly to talk about in-between believing. It is suggested that Bayesian and representationalist approaches are (...) inadequate to the task and that a Rylean dispositional account of belief might do the trick. (shrink)

Paul Ricoeur used to raise the question From where do you speak? at the beginning of his seminars as a way of inaugurating a new space of discussion while questioning immediately the theoretical foundations from which this conversation would rise. The question is not How are you doing? or Who are you? but From where do you speak? as preliminary to any discussion, as a precondition to a true encounter, as if Ricoeur wanted to have the best and most complete (...) understanding of where his interlocutor was in order to make sure that communication was even possible. The assumption behind the question is that the more precise our understanding of the place from where one speaks is, the more accurate our understanding of... (shrink)

In this paper, I focus on the concept of embeddedness as the background against which eros is a force and a power in and through interactions. To go beyond an internalist account of eros, I engage in a dialogue with some philosophical accounts of desire from an enactive perspective.This enables me to shed light on the location of the embodied tension as “in-between” lovers and “all-around” them. Crucial to this tensional account of embedded eros is the intertwining between self and (...) others’ becomings in processes of participatory sense-making. Through participatory sense-making lovers make their worlds, creating new ways of being and knowing in the ensemble. I advance some steps towards an enactive ethics of eros where, I claim, the cultivation of the space in-between and all-around lovers is the key to avoid the traps of a degenerated form of eros. (shrink)

Since Kraeplin and Kretschmer, the clarification of the limits between ordinary sadness and clinical depression has been a major concern. Much of the controversy has focused on whether and on which bases can be fixed a boundary in the continuum from the experience of sadness to major depressive episode. The new emphasis on the role of clinical judgment introduced by DSM-5 can be regarded as a way to address these issues, though leaving several questions open. After examining the implications of (...) the main topics raised by this still ongoing discussion, we will argue that in a clinical reality both mobility and intensity of emotional states may account for the discontinuity between ordinary sadness and clinical depression. (shrink)

This article examines MichËle Roberts' novel In the Red Kitchen in the light of contemporary spatial theory: in particular, the geographer Doreen Massey's critique of space and time. It argues that Roberts' text is particularly susceptible to such readings because of its multilayered portrayal of space, examining women's enclosure within the home across three different time periods, and through five different voices, which are overlaid one upon another in order to create a sense of simultaneity. In so doing, the text (...) shows that while the nature of women's oppression may change over time, their fundamental association with the domestic space does not. The article explores three different recurring spaces in the text: the kitchen, the bedroom and the crypt, the last of which acts as the receptacle for the trauma experienced by the female subject within the other two. The Gothic trope of the crypt is associated with incestuous abuse at the hands of a father-figure whom the woman both fears and desires; and thus it also signifies the precarious security to be found within the home. ‘Homelessness’, however, becomes another traumatic concept within a text which, while problematizing the relationship between home and identity, the subject and the space that contains and confines her, can envisage no other way of sustaining a secure sense of subjectivity. In the final analysis, while the boundaries that separate space from time are rendered porous and permeable in this novel, the complete collapse of all spatial boundaries is not conceptualized as desirable. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the complex relations between aesthetics and phenomenology as they show themselves within the core locus of their interplay—the realm of the visible and the invisible. To do so, the paper examines a specific case study, a Rembrandt painting—A Woman Bathing in a Stream (1654)—through which the discussion illuminates the interconnected and inseparable relationship between aesthetics and phenomenology in relation to Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of the visible and the invisible. The reading addresses both dimensions of the visible: the (...) essential intersubjective aspect of life and its complex visual representation in art. To achieve this, the paper first explores Merleau-Ponty’s late aesthetic ontology—a phenomenology that perceives the aesthetic realm, particularly the visible domain, as originating from human corporeal existence, thereby redefining the act of seeing and the concepts of the visible and the invisible; I show the manner in which invisible elements permeate our visual experience in the Rembrandt painting and in seeing as such. The paper also reveals the unique ontological role of painting and the painter in unveiling the aesthetic world, and in guiding the philosopher toward a vision that true philosophy—phenomenology—must embrace. The paper concludes by rethinking the significance of aesthetics, and especially, the arts, to phenomenological thought, and the necessity of phenomenology to aesthetic thought. (shrink)

This article refutes the apparently innocent, common sense idea that the audiovisual screen is just a window to the world that displays an extra set of sensual data alongside and independent of our personal, unmediated experience of reality. On the contrary, the screen as an in-between is both a mediator and generator of reality that eventually compromises the distinction between us and our environment. Part 1 discusses three examples of mediation: eclipsing, interpassivity and audiovisual media as a truth-procedure. Part 2 (...) discusses three examples of generation: the production of simulacra, hyperreality and the emergence of a mixed reality. (shrink)

In the scenario of growing polarization of promises and dangers that surround artificial intelligence (AI), how to introduce responsible AI and robotics in healthcare? In this paper, we develop an ethical–political approach to introduce democratic mechanisms to technological development, what we call “Caring in the In-Between”. Focusing on the multiple possibilities for action that emerge in the realm of uncertainty, we propose an ethical and responsible framework focused on care actions in between fears and hopes. Using the theoretical perspective of (...) Science and Technology Studies and empirical research, “Caring in the In-Between” is based on three movements: the first is a change of focus from the world of promises and dangers to the world of uncertainties; the second is a conceptual shift from assuming a relationship with robotics based on a Human–Robot Interaction to another focused on the network in which the robot is embedded (the “Robot Embedded in a Network”); and the last is an ethical shift from a general normative framework to a discussion on the context of use. Based on these suggestions, “Caring in the In-Between” implies institutional challenges, as well as new practices in healthcare systems. It is articulated around three simultaneous processes, each of them related to practical actions in the “in-between” dimensions considered: monitoring relations and caring processes, through public engagement and institutional changes; including concerns and priorities of stakeholders, with the organization of participatory processes and alternative forms of representation; and making fears and hopes commensurable, through the choice of progressive and reversible actions. (shrink)

The aim of the chapter is to discuss and evaluate the epistemic role of emotions in participatory sense-making, assuming 4Ecognition as background. I first ask why could emotions be beneficial for the collective processes of knowledge, especially discussing Battaly and arguing for a conceptualisation of emotions as socially extended motivations in virtue epistemology; then, I discuss participatory sense-making, both conceptually and phenomenologically, arguing for a fundamental role played by emotions in boosting epistemic cooperation and determining the quality of social bonds. (...) I advocate their specific function in epistemic cooperation. Epistemic cooperation is what brings about the generation of a shared meaning in participatory sense-making and thus, since emotions function as socially extended motivations, they boost the relationships among the agents, bonding them to the aims of their epistemic community. (shrink)

Existential space is lived space, space permeated by our raced, gendered selves. It is representative of our very existence. The purpose of this essay is to explore the intersection between this lived space and art by analyzing the work of the Cuban‐born artist Ana Mendieta and showing how her Siluetas Series discloses a space of exile. The first section discusses existential spatiality as explained by the phenomenologists Heidegger and Watsuji and as represented in Mendieta's Siluetas. The second section analyzes the (...) space of exile as a space of in‐between‐ness and borders. Lastly, the third section discusses temporality as it relates to the space of exile. Through the analysis of Mendieta's Siluetas, and in light of phenomenological accounts of space and the works of Anzaldúa and Mignolo, Ana Mendieta herself is disclosed as well as the space characteristic of those who can no longer be said to have a “home.” My exploration through my art of the relationship between myself and nature has been a clear result of my having been torn from my homeland during my adolescence. The making of my Silueta in nature keeps (makes) the transition between my homeland and my new home. It is a way of reclaiming my roots and becoming one with nature. Although the culture in which I live is part of me, my roots and cultural identity are a result of my Cuban heritage.1 As quoted in Gloria Moure, Ana Mendieta (Barcelona: Ediciones Polígrafa, S.A., 1996), 108. Ana MendietaLiving in a state of psychic unrest, in a Borderland, is what makes poets write and artists create.2 Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands La Frontera, The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987), 73. Gloria Anzaldúa. (shrink)

The world can be divided into a digital sphere and a physical sphere. Within the realm of the physical sphere, Michael Walzer’s Just War Theory stands as a prominent framework for understanding the ethics of warfare. Is his theoretical framework also applicable to the digital sphere? This article studies whether elements of Walzer’s theory can be adapted to the context of digital conflict. Walzer divides countries into zones of peace, zones of war, and in-between zones. A country could then, for (...) example, be a physical zone of peace but a digital zone of war. This article explores in which ways the defining characteristics of the different zones can be found in the digital sphere. It concludes that the digital sphere should mostly be seen as an in-between zone, with the problem of very unclear borders. Regarding Walzer’s theory, while it offers valuable insights when applied to the digital sphere, difficulties arise, underscoring the necessity for further research to refine the principles of just war within the digital sphere. (shrink)

This volume discusses the definitional problems and conceptual strategies involved in defining the human. By crossing the boundaries of disciplines and themes, it offers a transdisciplinary platform for exploring the new ideas of the human and adjusting to the dynamic in which we are plunged. The emerging cyborgs and transhumans call for an urgent reconsideration of humans as individuals and collectives. The identity of the human in the 21st century eludes definitions underpinned by simplifying and simplified dichotomies. Affecting all the (...) spheres of life, the discoveries and achievements of recent decades have challenged the bipolar categorizations of human/nonhuman and human/machine, real/virtual and thus opened the door to transdisciplinary considerations. Ours is a new world where the boundaries of normality and abnormality, a legacy of the long history of philosophy, medicine, and science need dismantling. We are now on our way to re-examine, re-understand, and re-describe what normal-abnormal, human-nonhuman, and I-we-they mean. We find ourselves facing what resembles the liminal stage of a global ritual, a stage of being in-between—between the old anthropocentric order and a new position of blurred boundaries. The volume addresses philosophical, bioethical, sociological, and cognitive approaches developed to transcend the binaries of human-nonhuman, natural-artificial, individual-collective, and real-virtual. (shrink)

The present article discusses the relation between painting and music in the work by Paul Klee, bringing it into conversation with the music by Anton Webern. It assumes, as a starting point, that the main question is not about relating painting and music but rather about the relation between moving towards painting and moving towards music, hence the relation between forming forces and not between formed forms. Since for Klee the musical structure of the pictorial is understood as “active linear (...) polyphony,” the article develops this notion in conversation with Webern’s thoughts on the polyphonic structure of twelve-tone music. The general purpose of the article is to determine what kind of thoughts emerge from the in-between of painting and music. (shrink)

Exploring long-term educational change, we investigate our re/construction of research methodology as we moved from a positivist framework to working with ideas drawn from Deleuze and Guattari. We reveal our becoming rhizomatic in data analysis in the metamodelling of the richness flowing horizontally through our practices. We tell of our struggles to escape hierarchical thinking and relations researching between the smooth and striated. A space of interactions, conversations and writings created relations between polyphonic voices, leading us to an emergent methodology. (...) Our struggle against hierarchies in data analysis yielded rich educational possibilities for becoming that Deleuzo-Guattarian thinking offers us. (shrink)