Interleukin‐1 receptor‐associated kinase‐1 (IRAK1) is linked to the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis; however, its role in macrophage foam cell formation is not known. Therefore, the present study investigated the role of IRAK1 in lipid uptake, biosynthesis, and efflux in THP‐1 derived macrophages and human monocyte‐derived macrophages (HMDMs). Ox‐LDL (40 μg/mL, 15 minutes–48 hours) treatment induced time‐dependent increase in IRAK1, IRAK4, and Stat1 activation in THP‐1 derived macrophages. IRAK1/4 inhibitor (INH) or IRAK1 siRNA significantly attenuated cholesterol accumulation, DiI‐Ox‐LDL binding, and uptake while (...) cholesterol efflux to apoAI and HDL was enhanced in THP‐1 derived macrophages and HMDMs. Ox‐LDL treatment significantly increased the mRNA expression of CD36, LOX‐1, SR‐A, ABCA1, ABCG1, Caveolin‐1, CYP27A1 while that of SR‐BI was decreased. IRAK1/4 inhibition or IRAK1 knockdown, however, attenuated Ox‐LDL‐induced CD36 expression; augmented ABCA1 and ABCG1 expression while expression of others was unaffected in THP‐1 derived macrophages and HMDMs. Moreover, IRAK1/4 inhibition had no significant effect on genes involved in lipid biosynthesis. In IRAK1/4 INH pre‐treated THP‐1 derived macrophages Ox‐LDL‐induced Stat1 phosphorylation and its binding to CD36 promoter was significantly attenuated while LXRα expression and its binding to the ABCA1/ABCG1 locus, NFATc2 activation and its binding to ABCA1 locus was enhanced. The present study thus demonstrates that IRAK regulates lipid accumulation by modulating CD36‐mediated uptake and ABCA1‐, ABCG1‐dependent cholesterol efflux. Therefore, IRAK1 can be a potential target for preventing macrophage foam cell formation. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty states in his Institution and Passivity lectures that he wants to "consider criticism itself as a symbolic form" as opposed to doing "a philosophy of symbolic form." This statement seems counterintuitive for Merleau-Ponty, who has been called "the philosopher of the sensible." In this book, Kaushik investigates this question, arguing that Merleau-Ponty has raised the stakes of his ontology such that it is no longer a matter of finding a solution to the difference between "the real and the fictive" (...) but rather, of constellating and matrixing them. This ontological matrix amounts to a psychoanalysis of the philosophy of identity. Kaushik argues that philosophies of reflection, in which reflection seeks to coincide with its origins, are in fact uncritical because they miss the form of differentiation that limits them. His analyses of the matrices between space-imagination, light-dark, awake-asleep, repression-expression, etc., subvert these philosophies and reveal the symbolic form in terms of its lack of precise origin or destination. Drawing from recently published course materials of Merleau-Ponty's, and attentive to his reliance on literary phrases for phenomenological insights, Kaushik brings out the living force of Merleau-Ponty's thought and develops his radical insight of the primacy of the symbolic form, even in an ontology that claims to be about the sensible and its elements. (shrink)

Introduction -- Matisse in slow motion -- Art and natural being -- Proust and the significant event -- Reversibility between the arts -- Concluding remarks.

ABSTRACTMany academic authors, policy makers, NGOs, and corporations have focused on top-down human rights global norm-making, such as the United Nations Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights. What is often missing are contextual and substantive analyses that interrogate rights mobilization and linkages between voluntary transnational rules and domestic governance. Deploying a socio-legal approach and using a combination of longitudinal field and archival data, this article investigates how a local, indigenous community in Northern Chile mobilized their rights over a period (...) of almost two decades. We found that rights mobilization was largely shaped by tensions between the different logics of legality and the business organization. In our case, the UNGP implementation process has been ineffective in giving rightsholders access to genuine remedy. On the contrary, it has led to weakened rights mobilization, dividing the local community. We conclude that greater attention to rights mobilization and domestic governance dynamics should be given in the business and human rights debate. (shrink)

This article analyses the ethics of how community engagement and dialogue as applied by a mining corporation in Chile led to erosion of the community’s psychological freedom despite being aligned with best practice. This article details how a mining company squeezed the psychological freedom of the community in order to obtain an agreement between the period of 2000 and 2016. The findings focus particularly on a 9-month period between 2015 and 2016 when the company undertook intense community engagement. The article (...) identifies six corporate action phases undertaken which curtailed the community’s psychological freedom as paying off local leaders; challenging via courts of law; co-opting community lawyers; prohibiting a key debate during dialogue; and remaining silent after failing to honour its own self-imposed rule. The findings label the company’s community engagement as contradictory; while it conducted transitional and transformational engagement in formal spaces, it also engaged in unethical strategies in the informal spaces of community engagement. The result was overall community consent and an even more fragmented community. This article finds that when it limits the psychological freedom of participants, who are already divided as a group, corporate–community engagement can be viewed as ethically problematic. Based on analysis of the literature and an empirical case analysis, this article contributes a test for assessing the ethics of CCE. (shrink)

We ask what type of neutralization techniques corporations apply to allegations of human rights abuses. We proceed by undertaking a Qualitative Content Analysis of 162 responses by ten extractives-sector firms over a period of 14 years. The firms were responding to accusations of human rights impacts documented by the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre. We use Garrett et al.’s :507–520, 1989) framework of neutralization techniques consisting of denial, justification, concession and excuse to examine the responses. During our QCA, we (...) observed emerging themes around self-promotion and evasive tactics. We contribute to existing literature by proposing ‘evasion’ as a novel neutralization technique, particularly in circumstances of corporate responses to accusations of wrongdoing. We argue that evasion occurs when firms refuse to engage in the debate brought forward in an accusation. In addition, we enrich our understanding of neutralization techniques by proposing subneutralization techniques in our analysis to diverge from that of other studies. We conclude by discussing the implications of the predominance of corporate narcissism and evasive neutralization techniques to the business and human rights movement and other international corporate responsibility standards. (shrink)

This book offers a critical re-appraisal of what is perhaps Merleau-Ponty’s most widely read text, the Preface to his Phenomenology of Perception. Although open and enigmatic text, the Preface is still often used to introduce phenomenology in general and Merleau-Ponty’s work specifically to students, scholars in disciplines other than philosophy, and art practitioners. Taking advantage of the fact that many of his course notes have been posthumously published in the last few decades, this book situates the Preface to the Phenomenology (...) of Perception in the context of Merleau-Ponty's later work and shows how it contains many of the threads on which Merleau-Ponty would later pull. In doing so, the book chapters elaborate key themes in the Preface: “Phenomenology and its Paradoxes,” “Phenomenology and its Method,” “Phenomenology and its Incompletion,” “Phenomenology and Non-Phenomenology." Readers will learn about the radicality of Merleau-Ponty’s early articulation of phenomenology, how much it already suggests the profound transformation of phenomenology usually associated with his more mature work. (shrink)

This article is about a spiritual response to environmental crisis, an emerging field of ethics that joins ecology and environmentalism with the awareness of sacred within the creation2. It investigates into the Vedic texts for finding out the philosophical attitude about the earth and our spiritual obligations and responsibilities to the planet in resolving environmental issues. In the vedic-tradition3, it is the course of experiencing nature as spiritual presence and the awareness to it about our conduct as the moral and (...) rational being. It is a world view that values all that in totality is called “nature” that is, generally, taken as “other” in contrast to human, as existence or spirit. The ethics of respect to “others”, against the effects of imperialistic, ideological conflicts, religious terrorism, industrial, atomic and corporate pollutions, must be worked out as a remedy. The basic argument of spiritual ecology lies in the view that we can find no God more than the spirit abiding in all units of the globe. One must have the view of spirit as ubiquitous principle in treating with and enjoying our needs with the things that the nature permeates as gifts of his care to it. Thus, spiritual ecology of the Vedic tradition has a therapeutic importance; it helps in cultivating our conduct and overcoming the fear of a risk against living on the earth. I am of the view that the rationality of a man and that of a nation is to be determined in proportion to the cultivation and progress of attitude and treatment with “other” but not the vice versa. (shrink)

A hallmark of skilled motor performance is behavioral flexibility – i.e., experts can not only produce a movement pattern to reliably achieve a given task goal, but also possess the ability to change that movement pattern to fit a new context. In this perspective article, we briefly highlight the factors that are critical to understanding behavioral flexibility, and its connection to movement variability, stability, and learning. We then address how practice strategies should be developed from a motor learning standpoint to (...) enhance behavioral flexibility. Finally, we highlight some important future avenues of work that are needed to advance our understanding of behavioral flexibility. We use examples from sport as a context to highlight these issues, especially in regard to elite performance and development. (shrink)

BackgroundStudies on different methods to supplement the traditional informed consent process have generated conflicting results. This study was designed to evaluate whether participants who received group counseling prior to administration of informed consent understood the key components of the study and the consent better than those who received individual counseling, based on the hypothesis that group counseling would foster discussion among potential participants and enhance their understanding of the informed consent.MethodsParents of children participating in a trial of nutritional supplementation were (...) randomized to receive either group counseling or individual counseling prior to administration of the informed consent. To assess the participant's comprehension, a structured questionnaire was administered approximately 48-72 hours afterwards by interviewers who were blinded to the allocation group of the respondents.ResultsA total of 128 parents were recruited and follow up was established with 118 (90.2%) for the study. All respondents were aware of their child's participation in a research study and the details of sample collection. However, their understanding of study purpose, randomization and withdrawal was poor. There was no difference in comprehension of key elements of the informed consent between the intervention and control arm.ConclusionsThe results suggest that the group counseling might not influence the overall comprehension of the informed consent process. Further research is required to devise better ways of improving participants' understanding of randomization in clinical trials.Trial RegistrationClinical Trial Registry - India (CTRI): CTRI/2009/091/000612. (shrink)

As leadership is a key component in meeting the challenges of educational institutes, this study was designed to examine the challenges faced by the female leaders of the management institutes of Pune City, India. Data was collected using qualitative methods which included in-depth interviews with ten women directors. Analysis of the recorded data proceeded by means of a line by line microanalysis of the interviews, with the following five major themes emerging: (a) choosing teaching as a career, (b) shift towards (...) leadership, (c) impact of internal and external pressures, (d) challenges from the male dominated society, and (e) balancing personal and professional life. The findings of this study point to the need for further research into the challenges with which female leaders are confronted in the educational industry, as well as for comparative studies with men in similar positions, and for the findings of such research to be utilised by educational policy makers to facilitate effective leadership by providing the necessary support structures. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , September 2008, Volume 8, Edition 2. (shrink)

Author's interviews with twenty contemporary philosophical masters of different spiritual backgrounds predominantly Indic to quest for seeking philosophical concepts and spiritual life.

This article explored the role of personality disposition and value preference as predictors of social well-being in the context of ecological setting. Ecological contexts like rural and urban are critical, particularly in a developing country like India, because they represent significant disparities and variations in the lived experiences of the people. The participants ( n = 360) from the age range of 15–65 years (M = 33.50, SD = 11.99) were drawn from two ecological settings, that is, rural (Gorakhpur Region, (...) Eastern Uttar Pradesh, India) and urban (National Capital Region of Delhi, India) and from both the genders. They completed the measures of social well-being, value preference and personality dispositions. The results showed that the different facets of social well-being were differentially related to the aspects of personality and value preference. Ecological setting had significant influence on the measures of personality disposition, value preference and social well-being. Regression analysis showed that except neuroticism, all other factors of personality had consistent positive contribution as the predictors of social well-being. It was also observed that social value and growth factors of value preference had significant contribution, whereas personal value and protection—factors of value preference—had negative contribution as the predictors of social well-being. (shrink)

Using the political corporate social responsibility lens of parentalism, this paper investigates the more subtle and less-visible interactional dynamics and strategies of power, resistance and justification that manifest between a multi-stakeholder-governed foundation and victims of a mining corporation’s dam collapse. The Renova Foundation was established to provide remedy through a deliberative approach to hundreds of thousands of victims from Brazil’s worst socio-environmental disaster—the collapse of Samarco Mining Corporation’s Fundão tailings dam. Data were collected from a combination of fieldwork and archival (...) analysis to assess the perceptions of victims, their defenders and foundation executives. The findings reveal 12 dialectical tensions from Renova’s attempts to remedy the victim’s injustices. The case analysis contributes through proposing a dialectical process model of stakeholder resistance and subversion to parentalist PCSR. The case reveals the pivotal use of time via the act of stalling as a strategic resource to exhaust victims and reach settlements. Furthermore, organizations justify their parentalism by blaming delays on the bureaucracy and shared responsibility of multi-stakeholder deliberation. Ultimately, I contend that victims must have an equal voice in the outcome of their remediation and that businesses responsible for causing harm should not decide these matters. (shrink)

Medical and public health professionals recommend wearing face masks to combat the spread of the coronavirus disease of 2019. While the majority of people in the United States support wearing face masks as an effective tool to combat COVID-19, a smaller percentage declared the recommendation by public health agencies as a government imposition and an infringement on personal liberty. Social media play a significant role in amplifying public health issues, whereby a minority against the imposition can speak loudly, perhaps using (...) tactics of verbal aggression taking the form of toxic language. We investigated the role that toxicity plays in the online discourse around wearing face masks. Overall, we found tweets including anti-mask hashtags were significantly more likely to use toxic language, while tweets with pro-mask hashtags were somewhat less toxic with the exception of #WearADamnMask. We conclude that the tensions between these two positions raise doubt and uncertainty around the issue, which make it difficult for health communicators to break through the clutter in order to combat the infodemic. Public health agencies and other governmental institutions should monitor toxicity trends on social media in order to better ascertain prevailing sentiment toward their recommendations and then apply these data-driven insights to refine and adapt their risk communication messaging toward mask wearing, vaccine uptake, and other interventions. (shrink)

Comprehension and recall of informed consent was assessed after the study closure in the parents/guardians of a birth cohort of children participating in an intensive three-year diarrhoeal surveillance. A structured questionnaire was administered by field workers who had not participated in the study's follow-up protocol. Of 368 respondents, 329 (89.4 per cent) stated that the study was adequately explained during enrolment, but only 159 (43.2 per cent) could recall that it was on diarrhoea. Nearly half (45.9 per cent) of the (...) respondents stated that they would not have participated if free medical treatment was not provided, although the free medical clinic was not offered at enrolment. Spousal approval (82.9 per cent) was the most important factor in the decision to participate. In the multivariate analysis, maternal education was associated with increased awareness about the disease under study: mothers without any formal education had the lowest awareness (OR = 3.47, 95 per cent CI = 1.60–7.51). Despite a high compliance with the study protocol, retention of understanding about the research study was low over a long period of time. Although the local government provides free healthcare in the study area, respondents cited free healthcare as an important reason for participation, highlighting the need for true health equity before meaningful informed consent can be obtained. (shrink)

In a Working Note to The Visible and the Invisible, Merleau-Ponty uses the fine phraseology of an “architectonic past” and a “mythical time” to describe Proust’s remembrances of things past. This paper first considers how this architectonic past sheds light on Merleau-Ponty’s ontology, and second how this results in a mythical time, which is an originary encounter with this past. Paying also attention to Merleau-Ponty’s final, completed reflections on “Swann’s Way,” Volume One of Remembrances of Things Past, I suggest that (...) by exposing the inner-connection between the two senses of time, Proust is highly significant for Merleau-Ponty’s thesis of “reversibility”. Proustian remembrances are used by Merleau-Ponty not to expose an inwardness, but something that is withdrawn and behind the sensible. The way in which these remembrances operate in myth time bespeaks of a memorial dimension of the past of being itself. (shrink)

This paper considers the move from passivity to a generative passivity in Merleau-Ponty’s ontology. In The Visible and the Invisible Merleau-Ponty calls this generative passivity a “secondary passivity” and in his passivity lectures he describes it as “passivity without passivism.” The paper argues that this secondary passivity must be understood in terms of an écart within the phenomena. That is, in terms of a separation and distance which is matrixed and configured within what appears. This is the basis for Merleau-Ponty’s (...) statement in his passivity lectures that “the touchstone of a theory of passivity,” is a “notion of oneiric symbolism,” and why for him passivity is intimately connected to a “primordial symbol.” If the symbolic is so associated with passivity, the symbolic also does not concern origins but is both the ontological limit and divergence in phenomena. This association forces Merleau-Ponty to consider what it means for phenomenological reflection retrace its steps back to an initial event of expression and even whether phenomenology is ultimately served by description. Finally, this paper considers Merleau-Ponty’s attitude toward the literary usages of language as a means of doing a phenomenology of the secondary passivity. (shrink)

On 24th March 2020, the first nationwide complete lockdown was announced by the Prime Minister of India for 21 days which was later extended to 31st May 2020. Consequently, thousands of migrant workers placed in big cities had no other option but to go back to their native villages. Their journeys back to villages- thousands of kilometres on bicycles or foot due to the non-availability of public transport amidst the travel ban- were driven by the compulsions of food and shelter. (...) In one of many heart-wrenching incidents, sixteen laborers were run over by a freight train while they were resting on the railway tracks. The images of the Roti on the railway track strewn across were beamed on the national news channels, as a telling commentary of the unimaginable hardships of these workers. Ironically, in the eyes of law, they were trespassers under the Indian Railways Act, 1989. The Indian Railway did not pay any compensation to the victims. Their act also violated the Indian Disaster Management Act, 2005 and Indian Penal Code, 1860- the law for the breach of lockdown guidelines and the law for disobedience of order by public servants respectively- for having decided to travel amidst a travel ban. The semiotics of law-making acts ‘criminal’ bereft of ‘moral culpability’ are seldom questioned on their supposed amoral foundations. Pandemic exhibited that social fissures not only condition the individual or community actions but also the actions of the State. Minorities especially Muslims were at the receiving end of State’s selective enforcement of lockdown laws in India. The various instances in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic expose the hollow claims of equality before the law and the equal protection of laws as a constitutional promise to every citizen. This article aims to unravel the ostensible and the actual moral exhibition of such Indian laws through the lens of several incidents during the nationwide lockdown in India. This paper would argue that this constructed positivist amorality needs to be deconstructed to unearth the power imbalance that it seeks to hide. (shrink)

This paper concerns a basic ambiguity in Merleau-Ponty’s ontology between the reversibility of flesh and its écart. Where the former suggests continuity between the sensing and the sensible, the latter suggests their separation. It is difficult to know from reading The Visible and the Invisible which is to be prioritized or how one is to be read alongside the other. I argue that such a relation comes to light by thinking through the negation that is, for Merleau-Ponty, always constellated with (...) being. This becomes more explicitly an ontology of differentiation or difference itself which does not prioritize identity. Such an ontology is, I argue, prefigured in Merleau-Ponty’s work on passivity and its symbolic formation. The idea is that the dynamic between negation and being and of symbolic formation happens at the level of, or even in, the body. The final section is thus a consideration of “the implex,” a term Merleau-Ponty borrows from Paul Valéry along with “chiasm.”. (shrink)

Pt. 1. Purva paksha (examination of my opponents' positions) -- pt. 2. Uttara paksha (my response).

Basic income and basic capital are two common ideas for redesigning distribution. Basic income provides people with a regular income from government. Basic capital provides people with a lump-sum grant. An important part of scholarly debate concentrates on the merits of basic income versus basic capital. This paper claims that these debates are too narrow. First, current debates overlook the way that a chief inspiration for both ideas, Thomas Paine, wanted basic capital and basic income to be complements not substitutes. (...) Second, it is more instructive to compare basic capital or basic income with a wider set of alternatives than with each other. Widening the debates would benefit the discussion of a basic capital or basic income. (shrink)

Rumour has been part of collective human life for centuries. Communities deal with anxiety and make sense of the unknowable by mixing apprehensions with what is already known to them. With modernity, and in line with studies on a range of social phenomena, there have been efforts to develop a science on rumour. Most of these studies deal with rumour at the propositional level, such that the rumouring or rumour-rebutting subject invariably belongs to one of the two sides of the (...) ‘true–false’ divide. Similar categories are followed in the study of rumour in social media, where the nodes in a rumour chain are, however, less hierarchical, and where images are increasingly used for persuasion. This paper, following a value-oriented approach, argues that the science on rumour has objectivized the problem, and has suggested instrumental solutions like enhancing the digital literacy of social media users. Whereas a value position should ideally attempt to efface the dilemma of the rumouring/rumour-rebutting subject, and locate rumours within the larger socio-political and historical context of a society. (shrink)

This paper examines the ways Merleau-Ponty and Nancy think about light, a central theme in Western philosophy closely tied with form and intelligibility. The first section of this paper points out that each thinker replaces the “highest moment of light,” where it is relieved of its weight and materiality, with darkness, where light instead emerges from some apophantic depth indissociable from the material. The second section of this paper gives a critique of darkness in Nancy from Merleau-Ponty’s perspective. According to (...) the latter’s view, Nancy’s claim that darkness is distinct from the structures of intentionality and instead has to do with a presentation of the inappropriable fact of things would be untenable. The difference between the thinkers relates to how each thinks about negation after their very similar critiques of light and form. Still, I argue, the same critique of presentation in Nancy ought to also be applied to Merleau-Ponty, or at least to the usual way he is thought to favour the sensible instead of intelligibility. In the third section of this paper I consider one of Merleau-Ponty’s phrases, “there is no painting before painting,” a statement I take to be about how explicit formal structures, and thus also light and line, comes from a sensible register that does not lack variation and is not totally “deformed,” to use Nancy’s word that describes the homogeneity of a sensible field. Cet essai examine les différentes façons qu’ont Merleau-Ponty et Nancy de penser la lumière, un thème central de la philosophie occidentale, et qui est étroitement lié avec les idées de forme et d’intelligibilité. La première section montre que les deux penseurs remplacent le « plus haut moment de la lumière », qui est sans poids ni matérialité, par l’obscurité, si bien que la lumière émerge d’une profondeur apophantique indissociable de la matérialité. La deuxième section propose un critique de l’obscurité chez Nancy d’une perspective merleau-pontienne. Pour Merleau-Ponty, l’affirmation de Nancy selon laquelle l’obscurité se distingue des structures de l’intentionalité et a plutôt affaire à la présentation du fait inappropriable de la chose serait tout à fait intenable. La différence entre les deux penseurs concerne la façon dont chacun pense la négation à partir d’une critique similaire de la lumière et de la forme. J’avance pourtant que la même critique de la présentation chez Nancy devrait aussi être appliquée à Merleau-Ponty, ou du moins à la façon dont il est habituellement vu comme préférant le sensible contre l’intelligible. Dans la troisième section, j’évalue la phrase de Merleau-Ponty, « la peinture n’existe pas avant la peinture », phrase qui selon moi concerne la façon dont les structures formelles explicites, et donc la forme et la ligne, proviennent d’un registre sensible qui n’est pas sans variations et donc pas totalement « déformé », pour utiliser le mot que Nancy emploie pour décrire l’homogénéité du champ sensible.Questo articolo prende in esame i modi in cui Merleau-Ponty e Nancy riflettono sulla luce, un tema centrale nella filosofia occidentale e strettamente connesso a quelli della forma e dell’intelligibilità. La prima sezione dell’articolo mostra come entrambi i pensatori sostituiscano “il più alto momento della luce”, che la libera dal suo peso e dalla sua materialità, con l’oscurità, in cui invece la luce emerge da una profondità apofantica indissociabile dalla sfera materiale. La seconda sezione offre una critica del concetto di oscurità in Nancy dal punto di vista di Merleau-Ponty. Secondo una prospettiva merleau-pontiana, la tesi di Nancy che l’oscurità sia distinta dalle strutture dell’intenzionalità e sia invece connessa a una presentazione dell’aspetto inappropriabile delle cose sarebbe insostenibile. La differenza tra i due pensatori riguarda il modo in cui ciascuno di essi elabora l’idea di negazione, a partire da due analisi della luce e della forma molto simili. Tuttavia, come cerco di mostrare, la stessa obiezione all’idea di presentazione in Nancy dovrebbe essere applicata anche a Merleau-Ponty, o quantomeno al modo in cui di norma si ritiene egli prediliga il sensibile piuttosto che l’intelligibile. Nella terza sezione, prendo in esame una frase di Merleau-Ponty, “non c’è pittura prima della pittura”, che a mio avviso si riferisce a come le strutture formali esplicite, e dunque anche la luce e la linea, provengano da un registro sensibile che non è privo di variazioni e che non è totalmente “deformato”, per impiegare un termine di Nancy che descrive l’omogeneità di un campo sensibile. (shrink)

This paper examines the relationship between Merleau-Ponty's lectures on institution and his lectures on passivity. I argue that the relationship depends on Merleau-Ponty's internal critique of institution as outlined in Husserl's ouevre. That is, institution is not only human institution, which rests on temporality and time-consciousness, but also animal, biological and even virological, which rests on a certain, non-euclidian space of the body. Merleau-Ponty's focus in the course is animal institution: animal morphology, menstruation, puberty, etc. These are what tie institution (...) and passivity together, and especially the passivity that Merleau-Ponty calls the "symbolic matrix," the touchstone of which is the "implex." While the paper discusses, Merleau-Ponty's critique of Husserl and the consequent understanding of a passivity in institution, it opens the possibility that the virological may be yet another kind of passivity that has instituted a new trajectory in human institution. This is highlighted in the very word "pandemic.". (shrink)

The struggle to “adapt” to the presence of the corpse serves as the central turning point for this investigation into the theatrical encounters with the corpse in the early modern anatomy theatre. Beginning with novelist W.G. Sebald’s claim, in The Rings of Saturn, that the art of anatomy was a way of “making the reprobate body invisible,” Alvarez queries how the corpse as the central “gure of this theatrical space challenges conventional modes of theatrical looking and how the particular viewing (...) procedures invited by the anatomy theatre, as a theatrical space, effectively make the body “unseen.” Using Restoration diarist Samuel Pepys’ documented encounter with a corpse and the early phenomenologist Aurel Kolnai’s writings On Disgust, Alvarez attempts to account for the “perceptual and interpretive black hole” that the corpse presents in this schema. The corpse’s “radical actuality” and, paradoxically, its “surplus of life” act as a cipher that cuts through the virtual space constructed by the anatomical demonstration, undermining the gravitas of the scientific gaze that has acquired its weight in contradistinction to the theatricality of the event. But the corpse’s “radical actuality” and its “surplus of life” introduces a danse macabre of theatrical looking that moves between absorption and repulsion, reversing the otherwise consumptive gaze of the onlooker. (shrink)

Covid-19 has sparked calls for a universal basic income as a way of coping with a demand shock caused by the pandemic. Temporary income payments have been part of the emergency response to the pandemic. This paper questions the effectiveness of temporary payments as a way to raise demand. Some observers claim that vouchers are better targeted at sectors hit hard by Covid-19 as people may have a tendency to save than spend from temporary payments. There may be a stronger (...) case for permanent rather than temporary payments if the aim is to boost demand in the economy. (shrink)

In This Book The Author Have Tried To Present A Historical Study Of Vedic Interpretation Confines Ourselves To The Study Of These Various Parts Of The Vedic Literature As Some Interpretation Of The Vedic Samhita. The Author Observed The Vedic Myth, Rituals And Philosophy As Interpreted By Madhvacarya The Founder Of Dvaita School Of Vedanta.