The extraordinary story of Krishnamurti, hailed early in life as the messiah for the 20th century, is told here in the light of a century of changing spiritual attitudes. It is a tale of mysticism, sexual scandals, religious fervor and chicanery, out of which emerged one of the most influential thinkers of modern times. Krishnamurti was "discovered" as a young boy on a beach in India by members of the Theosophical Society, convinced that they had found the new world leader, (...) a spiritual savior as historic and as influential as Jesus himself. By the 1920s he was attracting worldwide press attention and people flocked to his talks in the thousands. In 1922, Krishnamurti broke with the society and set out on a teaching mission of his own as a secular philosopher of spirituality. He ultimately had a career that spanned six decades, founded seven schools, published 50 books and encompassed thousands of talks. This extraordinary story is told for the first time by Roland Vernon in the full light of 20th-century attitudes in a narrative that is as compelling as any novel. (shrink)

The work of the French literary review, intellectual grouping and publishing team Tel Quel had a profound impact on the formation of literary and cultural debate in the 1960s and 70s. Its legacy has had enormous influence on the parameters of such debate today. From its beginning in 1960 to its closure in 1982, it published some of the earliest work of Jacques Derrida, Julia Kristeva, Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes. It was also associated with some of the key (...) ideas of the French avant-garde, publishing key articles by Georges Bataille and Antonin Artaud. The Tel Quel Reader presents for the first time in English the key essays written by the Tel Quel group. Essays by Julia Kristeva, one of the review's editor's Michel Foucault, and a fascinating interview with Roland Barthes are here made available for the first time in English. It provides a unique insight into the post-structuralist movement and presents some of the pioneering essays on literature and culture, film, semiotics and psychoanalysis. Assembling key essays from over a twenty-year period, The Tel Quel Reader is an indispensible resource for students of literature, cultural and visual studies, philosophy and French studies. (shrink)

This article addresses the role of science and science advisory bodies in modeling practices for the support of policy-making procedures in the Netherlands in the field of health care. The authors show, based on a detailed investigation of a prestigious interdisciplinary modeling project in which an economic care model was developed for governmental use, that science advisory bodies are entangled with the policy actors they advise in what we call boundary configurations. Boundary configurations are strongly situated interconnections between science advisory (...) institutes and policy institutions that share a specific approach to problem definitions and methods and that are embedded in specific social, discursive, and material elements. Importantly, as the case study shows, such boundary configurations shape the kind of science, and related, the kind of social and political theories about the world, that is effectuated in modeling practices. In this case study, the boundary configuration in which economic experts and policy makers participated contributed to the articulation of health care in terms of a market-based policy program for the health care sector. (shrink)

Researchers are increasingly expected to deliver “socially robust knowledge” that is not only scientifically reliable but also takes into account demands from societal actors. This article focuses on an empirical example where these additional criteria are explicitly organized into research settings. We investigate how the multiple “accountabilities” are managed in such “responsive research settings.” This article provides an empirical account of such an organizational format: the Dutch Academic Collaborative Centres for Public Health. We present a cross-case analysis of four collaborative (...) research projects conducted within this context. We build on Miller’s notion of “hybrid management.” The article shows that the extended concept of hybrid management is useful to study the different accountabilities encountered in such settings. We analyze how the collaboration developed and which conflicts or dilemmas arose. We then focus on the different hybrid management strategies used in the collaboration. The empirical material shows how the different aspects of hybrid management feature in various configurations in the four projects. We highlight that hybrid management strategies may be used by different groups or at different moments, may reinforce or contradict each other, and may be more or less effective at different points in time. (shrink)

In this paper I employ the notion of the ‘thought of the outside’ as developed by Michel Foucault, in order to defend the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze against the criticisms of ‘elitism,’ ‘aristocratism,’ and ‘political indifference’—famously leveled by Alain Badiou and Peter Hallward. First, I argue that their charges of a theophanic conception of Being, which ground the broader political claims, derive from a misunderstanding of Deleuze’s notion of univocity, as well as a failure to recognize the significance of the (...) concept of multiplicity in Deleuze’s thinking. From here, I go on to discuss Deleuze’s articulation of the ‘dogmatic image of thought,’ which, insofar as it takes ‘recognition’ as its model, can only ever think what is already solidified and sedimented as true, in light of existing structures and institutions of power. Then, I examine Deleuze’s reading of Foucault and the notion of the ‘thought of the outside,’ showing the ‘outside’ as the unthought that lies at the heart of thinking itself, as both its condition and its impossibility. Insofar as it is essential to thinking itself, finally, I argue that the passage of thought to the outside is not an absolute flight out of this world, as Hallward claims, but rather, a return of the different that constitutes the Self for Deleuze. Thinking is an ongoing movement of deterritorialization and reterritorialization, or as Foucault says, death and life. Thinking, as Deleuze understands it, is essentially creative; it reconfigures the virtual, thereby literally changing the world. Thinking is therefore, according to Deleuze, thoroughly political. (shrink)

Physiologists have long proposed that correlated input activity is important in normal sensory development. Here it is postulated that the visual system is sensitive to the correlation in image intensity across the visual field, and that these correlations are used to help calibrate spatial representations. Since measurements made near to each other in the visual field are more correlated than measurements made at a distance, the degree of correlation can be used as an estimate of the distance between two measurements (...) and can therefore be used to calibrate a roughly organized spatial representation. We therefore explored the hypothesis that low level spatial representations are calibrated using a signal based on image intensity correlation. If the visual system uses input statistics to calibrate its spatial representation, then any distortions and anisotropies in these input statistics should be mirrored by distortions in the representation of space. To test the psychological implications of this hypothesis, a collection of 81 images of open and urban landscapes were used to estimate the degree of correlation between image intensity measurement pairs as a function of both distance and orientation. Doing this we show that a system that used the statistics measured to calibrate its representation would show: (1) a horizontal‐vertical illusion;(2) the magnitude of this illusion would depend on the amount of open and urban landscapes in the environment;(3) there would be a nontrivial relationship between line orientation and judged length. Analogues of all these distortions and regularities can be found in the psychophysical literature on distance estimation. This gives strength to the proposal that spatial representations are calibrated using input statistics. (shrink)

Parameters of the lambda model seem tightly linked to certain characteristics of human performance influenced by weightlessness. This commentary suggests that there is a valuable opportunity to probe the lambda model using the changed environment experienced during space flight. The likely benefits are a better model and a better understanding ofthe consequences of weightlessness for human performance.

While recent science and technology studies literature focuses on “projectification” and its felt tensions for researchers, a surprising scarcity of empirical work addresses experiences at the “other end,” such as funding bodies often held “responsible” for tensions encountered by researchers. Actors in funding bodies experience similar tensions, however. While projectification necessitates predictability and individual project objectives, research funding is also increasingly organized in networks promoting local experimentation. Moreover, funding bodies are part of a system of accountability in which investments are (...) legitimized politically in often reductionist ways. We argue for the salience of more detailed empirical investigations into the work of funding bodies as they navigate these tensions. We apply a dramaturgical perspective to investigate the “staging work” of program committees responsible for the management of funded programs, identifying three forms of staging work: setting the scene, temporal narration, and signifying success. All come with discursive, material, and symbolic dimensions. We develop the notion “adaptive coherence” to show how the program committee sought to maintain the coherence of the overall program despite continuous risks of fragmentation due to projectification, local experimentation, and divergence in interests. “Adaptive coherence” proves productive in incorporating the temporal and spatial dimensions of staging work in networked contexts. (shrink)

A preeminent philosopher of education in the United States, Jane Roland Martin challenges conventional wisdom that education consists of small, incremental changes. Using case studies of personal transformations, or metamorphoses, Martin examines Malcolm X, Shaw's Eliza Doolittle, Victor of Aveyron and others to demonstrate how education is a fundamental determinant of the human condition.

This rich and human document is a testament to the words and wisdom of Confucius--whose simplet truths continue to influence the moral and ethical codes of the Far East. A timeless guide to proper living as significant today as it was 2,000 years ago.

The "observer" approach is investigated as a device for developing ethical theory, not for its use in private moral decision-making. Earlier discussions by Firth, Brandt, Harrison and Aiken of the impartial spectator are related to eighteenth-century British and German ethics using this theme, in order to uncover the meanings of the observer theory. Advantages and disadvantages of this approach to ethics are then examined, and the conclusion is that it does not provide a complete basis for ethical discourse but is (...) of limited use in developing some general principles in a ruleethics. (shrink)

In this essay, we read Derrida’s Theory and Practice seminar against the backdrop of the theme of the “death of philosophy,” prominent in 1960s French philosophy. This theme takes two forms—one Nietzschean-Heideggerian and the other Hegelian-Marxian. We summarize both before turning to Derrida’s treatment of Althusser’s views on the Hegelian-Marxian form of this death. Althusser posits a distinction between theory in the general sense and Theory as a designation for Marxist dialectical materialism. Derrida gives two specific criticisms of Althusser that (...) we discuss: (1) Althusser commits himself to a tautology, by arguing that Theory only makes explicit what is implicit already in Marxist practice; (2) Althusser ultimately establishes the priority of practice over theory. We refute both of these charges before concluding that, prior to the distinction between theory and practice, is the world itself; and presenting itself to us as unthinkable, the world places the demands upon us that it be engaged with, in theory and in practice. (shrink)

Au Centre Pompidou-Metz, faisant écho à l'exposition inaugurale, un colloque international a étudié de manière pluridisciplinaire et transversale la question du chef-d'œuvre. Loin de se focaliser sur le débat esthétique, les diverses approches ont assigné le droit, l'histoire, la sociologie, l'économie et les sciences exactes, pour mieux soumettre cet "objet" à un véritable examen clinique. Cette question ne serait-elle plus d'actualité? Loin s'en faut! Entre cœur et raison, la sacralisation des œuvres d'art produit toujours autant de savoirs, de savoir-faire et (...) de savoirs sur le faire. Mettant en avant le patrimoine, restaurant les objets de l'art, les reconstituant, favorisant le tourisme culturel, exhumant le vrai, condamnant le faux : à sa mesure, le "chef-œuvre" dynamise encore et toujours les divers moments de l'art. (shrink)

This essay is an exploration of the relationship between Agamben's 1995 text, Homo Sacer, and Derrida's 1992 “Force of Law” essay. Agamben attempts to show that the camp, as the topological space of the state of exception, has become the biopolitical paradigm for modernity. He draws this conclusion on the basis of a distinction, which he finds in an essay by Walter Benjamin, between categories of life, with the “pro‐tagonist” of the work being what he calls homo sacer, or bare (...) life—life that is stripped of its humanity and value. Five years earlier, in 1990, Derrida had given a lecture at UCLA (later published in its entirety as “The Force of Law”) in which he had analyzed the very same essay by Benjamin and had highlighted the distinction between “base life” and “just life.” The implications of his analysis show a discomforting prox‐imity between Benjaminian messianism and the Nazi “final solution,” a conclusion that Agamben dismisses entirely. In this paper, however, I demonstrate that the structures of the two works are quite similar in many important ways. I argue that, though the broad scope of Agamben's work is original in many respects, and I would not wish to reduce Agamben's work to Derridean repetitions, he nevertheless utilizes much more of Derrida's analysis, specifically with respect to the categori‐zation of life, than he would like the reader to believe. (shrink)

Jeffrey Goldsworthy's book, Parliamentary Sovereignty: Contemporary Debates, offers a modern defence of the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty. But it fails to offer a sufficiently clear interpretation of the statement that Parliament can do anything except limit its powers, a statement open to many different interpretations. In 1972, during the passage of the European Communities Bill, law officers declared that it was logically impossible for Parliament to abridge its sovereignty. In consequence of the European Communities Act 1972, the doctrine has undergone (...) a subtle alteration of meaning. The European Union Act 2011 also poses problems for Goldsworthy's position since it imposes a referendum requirement on any significant future transfer of power to the European Union. Such legislation cannot be understood in terms of the manner and form interpretation of the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty; and the question of whether the courts can disapply legislation infringing human rights remains open. Questions of the sort, ‘Can Parliament do x?’, are better replaced by questions of the sort ‘What are the rules which regulate Parliament?’. Goldsworthy's work constitutes a brave attempt to rescue the essentially metaphysical doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty. Nevertheless, the doctrine seems to obscure rather than clarify constitutional issues. (shrink)