Genevieve Lloyd illuminates and challenges some perplexing aspects of contemporary attitudes to wonder. She draws especially on Flaubert, who influenced the thought of Jean-Paul Sartre, Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida. She also reaches into contemporary debates on refugees, secularisation and climate change.

Journal Name: Semiotica - Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies / Revue de l'Association Internationale de Sémiotique Volume: 2013 Issue: 196 Pages: 57-77.

This new edition of Genevieve Lloyd's classic study of the maleness of reason in philosophy contains a new introduction and bibliographical essay assessing the book's place in the explosion of writing and gender since 1984.

La célébration du cinquantième anniversaire de la fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale et de l’ouverture des camps donne depuis quelques années l’occasion de revisiter une histoire juive douloureuse et loin d’être dépassionnée. De nombreux déportés, l’âge venu, écrivent leurs témoignages, toujours poignants, et qui éclairent les faits avec la brutalité que donne l’expérience personnelle. Quelques-uns de ces témoignages retiennent particulièrement l’attention par ce qu’ils nous font comprendre de...

“Modern slavery,” a term used to describe severe forms of labor exploitation, is beginning to spark growing interest within business and society research. As a novel phenomenon, it offers potential for innovative theoretical and empirical pathways to a range of business and management research questions. And yet, development into what we might call a “field” of modern slavery research in business and management remains significantly, and disappointingly, underdeveloped. To explore this, we elaborate on the developments to date, the potential drawbacks, (...) and the possible future deviations that might evolve within six subdisciplinary areas of business and management. We also examine the value that nonmanagement disciplines can bring to research on modern slavery and business, examining the connections, critiques, and catalysts evident in research from political science, law, and history. These, we suggest, offer significant potential for building toward a more substantial subfield of research. (shrink)

Amateurs are neither regular consumers nor professionals. What makes them distinctive? To answer that question, this ethnographic study focuses on wine amateurs who show a distinctive feature compared to regular consumers: for them, wine is not a straightforward reality but a world to explore. Wine exploration drives an evolution that transforms both wine and amateurs’ disposition towards it. Amateurs usually start with the discovery of the wines and their tastes, which may turn into an ability to attune to and finally (...) produce taste and good quality. Amateurs’ passion, initially fuelled by the discovery of unknown tastes, is then informed by the renewal of the taste experience itself. Following amateurs in their exploratory activity allows us to extend the analysis beyond scholars’ usual focus on one of its particularly normative stages, and to propose a renewed account of the amateur that is quite remote from the standard image of the ‘cultural prescriber’. (shrink)

As a constructive alternative to the exclusionary binaries of Cartesian philosophy, Genevieve Lloyd and Moira Gatens turn to Spinoza. Spinoza's understanding of the body as "in relation" takes the focus of philosophical thought from the homogeneous subject to the heterogeneity of the social, and the focus of politics from individual rights to collective responsibility. The implications for feminism are radical; Spinoza enables a reconceptualization of the imaginary and the possibility of a sociability of inclusion.

Devenue mixte de façon très empirique depuis les années 1960, l’école est souvent mise en question pour son enseignement inégalitaire. L’auteure pose donc dans ce livre la question de la notion de l’égalité entre les sexes à l’école, une égalité qui se heurte à de fortes réticences provenant des traditions sociales et disciplinaires, des préjugés, des comportements hérités et même plus vraiment réfléchis. L’enjeu pédagogique, social et citoyen est majeur puisque, au-delà des savoirs, les manu...

Fifteen years after the first translations of Anglo-American feminist film theories, this gender approach is finding it hard to gain acceptance in France. The main reason is the elitist view of cinema d’auteur that is still prevalent in academic circles, where the art is seen as a genius’s creation outside social determinations in general and gender relations in particular. However, under the influence of historians and sociologists, who dominate gender research in France, French work on film privileges a historical and (...) sociocultural approach, whereas American research is dominated by psychoanalytical approaches. French gender analyses privilege the expression of dominant relations but also of contradictions at work in the films, whether popular or by an auteur-e, as well as in the stars’ image or in tv fiction. Finally some research explores the changes brought about by the emergence of female film-makers on the French scene. (shrink)

This essay reads the thirteenth-century Old Occitan epic Canso de la crozada through Jean-Luc Nancy’s theories of community and communal mythologies. Through its analysis of the Canso ’s unfinished manuscript decorations and the presence of two politically opposed poets, the essay shows that the creation of myth in the chansons de geste is the result of historical desires. In so doing, this essay also expands the theoretical world of Nancy’s readings of the “communal,” and provides a frame for theorizing his (...) engagements with time as ideological by revealing how the past and the possible speak to one another in his work. (shrink)

A renewed approach to democratic ethics is needed, one that takes into consideration the management of complexity and memory in a global world. The expansion of democratic ethics for the stewardship of a postnational, postmetaphysical, and postsecular world is the object of this book. It takes as its point of departure current proposals for global democratic justice, but extends these by incorporating contemporary European ideas on border and existential ethics. The privilege of democratic citizenship includes our conscious involvement with our (...) historical destinies, and with others whom we inevitably encounter on our journey of contemporary politics. A post-heroic approach to democratic ethics, one which takes violence and injustice seriously, yet understands the constraints posed on us as historical beings, is necessary. The practices of civility, such as they arise from a normative democratic universe and the ever-increasing role of civil society, can be harnessed for a transborder ethics. The examination of a contemporary democratic anthropology that includes a phenomenology of violence further clarifies the importance of intersubjective processes of encounter, dialogue, and recognition. (shrink)

This pragmatic study addresses the question of the plural realities that emerge from perception, based on an empirical analysis of the tasting activity of wine amateurs and olfactory experts. Though they share the same requirement of rooting taste in the product under scrutiny, they also significantly differ regarding the constraints with which their tasting results have to comply: repeatability for experts’ tasting results, and activity contiunuation for amateurs. Both therefore foster the emergence of two contrasting realities: a stabilized one for (...) experts; an ‘un-stabilized’ one for amateurs. Both happen to fit with the ‘fiction’ and the ‘reference’ modes of existence of Latour’s inventory, which extends and relaunches the analysis of the coexistence of activities initiated by the works on ‘boundary objects’ some decades ago. Finally, the notion of taste is reinterpreted as a translation operator between tasting realities. (shrink)

Spinoza's doctrine of the uniqueness of substance has been interpreted as absorbing individual self-consciousness into an all-embracing whole.

The burden of difference: pluralist justice and the public sphere -- Moral conversations and democratic hermeneutics -- Particularism versus universalism: a false debate? -- Secularism, culture, and critique -- Laïcité and the memory of public culture -- The ties that bind: public culture and the debt to the past -- Normative solidarity and public hermeneutics -- From intersubjectivity to encounter -- Exit of religion, debt of meaning.

The sociology of science has shown that the scientific quest for truth, framed by the search for objectivity was granting objects of knowledge the form of independent and autonomous things, “data” already given and preexisting their observation. But do “real” objects only fit the form of data or things? If not, to which other form and objectivity do they fit? The author considers the question by examining the dispute between scientists and vintners on the issue of terroir, a complex combination (...) of viticulture and wine-making practices and agro-climactic factors, which gives wines a particular taste, or terroir typicity. For scientists who are unable to reduce it to a stable list of determining factors, terroir is an unfounded notion, an imaginary social construction, and an economic barrier. Producers, on the other hand, along with the wider distribution network of terroir wines, consider terroir as a real object, although one whose manifestations cannot be evaluated using the same procedures as those of scientists. By analyzing how proof of terroir is implemented, the author uncovers a regime of existence of objects different from the scientific regime: a pluralist one governed by critical discussion from which objects emerge as distributed results of a production process. (shrink)

One of Plato’s goal in the Phaedo is not only to define what philosophy is, but also to describe what ‘real’ or ‘authentic’ philosophy consists of. This description of ‘authentic’ philosophy reveals a tension. Indeed, if Socrates feels the need to speak of a genuine philosophy, is it not a sign that there is another type of philosophy, which is inauthentic and fake? If Plato emphasizes the legitimacy of some philosophers, is it not because he believes that there are others, (...) who resemble the former but are a mere imitation of them? In fact, there is in the Phaedo an implicit description of ‘false’ philosophers, which culminates with the presentation of a precise case: the antilogician. Sometimes called a sophist, often described as an eristic, the antilogician is a perfect example of philosophy gone wrong. Criticised more than once in his dialogues, Plato condemns vivaciously the antilogician as he diverts real philosophical inquiry and immerses people in absolute relativism. (shrink)

At first sight, Isocrates’ use of the term “sophist” may appear contradictory as it is associated with both a positive and a pejorative meaning. The article contends that Isocrates was not being unintentionally vague or imprecise as he deliberately used the term to refer to two disparaging groups of professional teachers or writers who, in his opinion, had nothing in common. Isocrates tended to privilege the positive meaning of the term over the negative one, considering the latter as a contemporary (...) deviation of the former. (shrink)

The article examines the passages in Isocrates’ Corpus containing a description and a critique of a new type of sophistic called “eristic”. Based on the chronology of Isocrates’ discourses and the description he gave, the author shows that the majority of these passages could not have aimed at Plato as its sole or principal target. However, it should not be excluded that Isocrates’ criticism of eristics was directed against various members of the Socratic circle, a heterogeneous group in which Plato (...) was comprised. The article shows that although a feud between Plato and Isocrates is not an acceptable premise, a possible rivalry between both men may have been possible. Nonetheless, such a rivalry does not allow one to assimilate Plato with an eristic. (shrink)

Spinoza is a key figure in modern philosophy. _Ethics_ is his most studied and well known work. Being both up-to-date and clear, this Guidebook is designed to lead the reader through this complex seminal text. _Spinoza's Ethics_ introduces and assess: * Spinoza'a life, and its connection with his thought * The text of the _Ethics_ * Spinoza's continuing relevence to contemporary philosophy.

Based on archival and ethnographic data, this article analyzes the iconic-making, iconoclastic unmaking, and iconographic remaking of national identifications. The window into these processes is the career of Saint John the Baptist, patron saint of French Canadians and national icon from the mid-nineteenth century until 1969, when his statue was destroyed by protesters during the annual parade in his honor in Montréal. Relying on literatures on visuality and materiality, I analyze how the saint and his attending symbols were deployed in (...) processions, parades, and protests. From this analysis, I develop the sociological concept of aesthetic revolt, a process whereby social actors rework iconic symbols, redefining national identity in the process. The article offers a theoretical articulation and an empirical demonstration of how the context, content, and the form of specific cultural objects and symbols—national icons—are intertwined in public performance to produce eventful change, and shows why and how the internal material logic and the social life of these icons shape the articulation of new national identities. (shrink)

Drawing on the work of Michèle Le Dœuff, this paper uses the idea of “philosophical imagination” to make visible the historical intersection between philosophical ideas, social practice, and institutional structures. It explores the role of ideas of “terra nullius” and of the “doomed race” in the formation of some crucial ways in which non-indigenous Australians have imagined their relations with indigenous peoples. The author shows how feminist reading strategies that attend to the imaginary open up ways of rethinking processes of (...) inclusion and exclusion. (shrink)

We should seek to justify, from a moral perspective, policies associated with serious and irreversible risks to the health of human beings, their societies, and the environment for these risks may have great impacts on the autonomy of both existing and future persons. The ideal of discursive democracy provides a way of morally justifying such policies to both existing and future persons. It calls for the inclusive, informed, and uncoerced deliberation toward an agreement of both existing and future persons, which (...) can serve as a justificatory basis for such public policies. This agreement best protects their fundamental interests and basic needs, and garners their general acceptance. It does so by upholding their agency in decision-making processes and, more specifically, by counseling a maxim of precaution in their public reasoning. The aim of this maxim is to protect the social and environmental conditions that will enable members of existing and future generations to review and, if necessary, revise decisions made in the past but that impact upon them in the present. Precautionary public reasoning thus serves to uphold the decisional agency of existing and future persons, which is a necessary condition of their democratic involvement in the policies that affect them and thus of their autonomous existence defined by their conceptions of the good. (shrink)

The Covid-19 pandemic represented an unprecedented crisis. In the world of health care, it highlighted the limits of a logic that favours decisions based on management and accounting. It also highlighted the difficulties faced by caregivers in applying the logic of care. Viewing the crisis as an opportunity to open up new possibilities, this ethical analysis brings together the voices of a physician and a philosopher to propose some forward-looking avenues for reflection. The aim of these reflections is to consider (...) how, in the day-to-day life of the caregiver, the ethics of decision-making and the ethics of relationship fit together. Far from being antagonistic, these two ethical perspectives are complementary and enriching for both caregiver and patient. These reflections invite us to consider the act of care as a relationship to oneself, to others and to the collective. (shrink)

The idea that liberal democratic legitimacy presupposes the final authority of the state in solving the juridictional boundary question depends upon the argument according to which Westphalian sovereignty has evolved in a liberal democratic direction. From this point of view, sovereignty is internally limited by liberal democratic principles. However, I argue that it is rather public politics, more than Westphalian sovereignty, that has been transformed, in liberal states, and that hence, there is an enduring tension between democratic legitimacy and state (...) sovereignty. (shrink)

Parler d’« exception culturelle » française est parfois pleinement justifié. Ainsi, dès lors que sont étudiés de près les rapports pour le moins conflictuels entre genre et cinéma en France, certaines tendances spécifiques se dessinent. Il n’est pas nouveau de dire que l’équivalent français du terme anglais gender a quelques difficultés à s’intégrer dans le monde universitaire hexagonal et les réticences à envisager la société au sens large en fonction des sexes biologiques et des rapports en...