‘The Beast within’: Race, Humanity, and Animality

10.1068/d229 ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kay Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Ontological Status ◽  
Western Thought ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
Western Model ◽  
Specific Material ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Nature And Society ◽  
Sydney Australia

Recent years have seen efforts to critique the dichotomy of ‘nature’ and ‘society’ in Western thought, and to demonstrate their coconstruction under specific material conditions. As yet, however, little work has uncovered the discourses of animality that lie buried within a social field whose ontological status until recently has been securely ‘human’. In this paper, I show how Western concepts of animality have circulated across the nature border and into a politics of social relations. Concepts of savagery and vulgarity can, in particular, be found within racialised representational systems with whose historicity, I will be suggesting, we can make fresh critical engagements. In much recent work on colonial power formations, ‘othering’ practices have been implicitly conceived within a psychoanalytic frame—one in which the white self's ‘interior beasts’ are anxiously displaced onto an externalised other. Whilst not refuting the efficacy of repression I wish to historicise the workings of a peculiar western model of the Human self, ‘split’ into physical ‘animal’ and cultural ‘human’. This is done both through an extended theoretical account, followed by a microstudy of geographies of savagery and civility in Sydney, Australia.

THE POLITICS OF DANCE: EUNOMIA AND THE EXCEPTION OF DIONYSUS IN PLATO'S LAWS

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Kenneth W. Yu
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
The Body ◽  
Entire Class ◽  
A Site

How to inculcate virtue in the citizens of Magnesia by means of the dance component of choreia constitutes one of the principal concerns in the Laws (= Leg.), revealing Plato's evolving ideas about the expediency of music and paideia for the construction of his ideal city since the Republic. Indeed, a steady stream of monographs and articles on the Laws has enriched our understanding of how Plato theorizes the body as a site of intervention and choral dance as instrumental in solidifying social relations and in conditioning the ethical and political self. As one scholar has aptly put it: ‘a city and its sociopolitical character [are] effectively danced into existence.’ Drawing on this recent work, I focus on an enigmatic passage in Laws Book 7 that merits more attention than it has received, in which Plato curiously singles out Bacchic dances from those that are ‘without controversy’ (815b7–d4): τὴν τοίνυν ἀμφισβητουμένην ὄρχησιν δεῖ πρῶτον χωρὶς τῆς ἀναμφισβητήτου διατεμεῖν. τίς οὖν αὕτη, καὶ πῇ δεῖ χωρὶς τέμνειν ἑκατέραν; ὅση μὲν βακχεία τ᾽ ἐστὶν καὶ τῶν ταύταις ἑπομένων, ἃς Νύμφας τε καὶ Πᾶνας καὶ Σειληνοὺς καὶ Σατύρους ἐπονομάζοντες, ὥς φασιν, μιμοῦνται κατῳνωμένους, περὶ καθαρμούς τε καὶ τελετάς τινας ἀποτελούντων, σύμπαν τοῦτο τῆς ὀρχήσεως τὸ γένος οὔθ᾽ ὡς εἰρηνικὸν οὔθ᾽ ὡς πολεμικὸν οὔθ᾽ ὅτι ποτὲ βούλεται ῥᾴδιον ἀφορίσασθαι: διορίσασθαι μήν μοι ταύτῃ δοκεῖ σχεδὸν ὀρθότατον αὐτὸ εἶναι, χωρὶς μὲν πολεμικοῦ, χωρὶς δὲ εἰρηνικοῦ θέντας, εἰπεῖν ὡς οὐκ ἔστι πολιτικὸν τοῦτο τῆς ὀρχήσεως τὸ γένος, ἐνταῦθα δὲ κείμενον ἐάσαντας κεῖσθαι, νῦν ἐπὶ τὸ πολεμικὸν ἅμα καὶ εἰρηνικὸν ὡς ἀναμφισβητήτως ἡμέτερον ὂν ἐπανιέναι. So, first of all, we should separate questionable dancing far from dancing that is without controversy. Which is the controversial kind, and how are the two to be distinguished? All the dancing that is of a Bacchic kind and cultivated by those who indulge in intoxicated imitations of Nymphs, Pans, Sileni and Satyrs (as they name them), when performing certain rites of expiation and initiation—this entire class of dancing cannot easily be marked off either as pacific or as warlike, nor as of any one particular kind. The most correct way of defining it appears to me to be this—to place it away from both pacific and warlike dancing, and to pronounce that this type of dancing is οὐ πολιτικόν; having thus set aside and dismissed it, we will now return to the warlike and pacific types, which without controversy belong to us.

The Head, the Hand, and Matter: New Materialism and the Politics of Knowledge

2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 49-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Rekret
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Constructivism ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Counter Narrative ◽  
Karen Barad ◽  
Material Turn ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Do So

This article seeks to examine the political connotations of a recent ‘material turn’ in social and political theory and its implications for theorizations of political agency. ‘New materialist’ theories are premised upon transcending the limits which social constructivism places upon thought, viewed as a reification of the division of subject and object and so a hubristic anthropocentrism which places human beings at the centre of social existence. Yet new materialist theories have tended to locate the conditions of the separation of mind and world they seek to overcome upon the terrain of epistemic or ethical error. By taking the work of Quentin Meillassoux, Jane Bennett and Karen Barad as exemplary, this article contends that new materialist theories not only fall short of their own materialist pretensions insofar as they do not interrogate the material conditions of the separation of the mental and material, but that the failure to do so has profound repercussions for the success of their accounts of political agency. This essay seeks to offer a counter-narrative to new materialist theories by situating the hierarchy between thought and world as a structural feature of capitalist social relations.

The Nature and Ontological Status of Appearances

2021 ◽  
pp. 27-109
Author(s):  
Anja Jauernig
Keyword(s):  
Ontological Status ◽  
Detailed Consideration ◽  
Intentional Objects ◽  
Empirical Level ◽  
The World ◽  
Primary Difference ◽  
Levels Of Reality ◽  
Material Conditions

It is shown that things in themselves and appearances are numerically distinct existents whose primary difference consists in that the former are mind-independent while the latter are mind-dependent, in a sense that is explicated in detail. On the proposed reading, the world, understood as the sum total of everything that has reality, comprises several levels of reality, most importantly, a mind-independent, transcendental level, at which things in themselves exits, and a mind-dependent, empirical level, at which appearances exist. Appearances are identified to be intentional objects of experience. The nature and ontological status of appearances is further investigated by way of an examination of Kant’s account of perception and his theory of experience, including a detailed consideration of the formal and material conditions of experience and of the implications of the mathematical antinomies for the specific flavor of Kant’s idealism about appearances.

scholarly journals From exoticism to diversity: the production of difference in a globalized and fragmented world

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-36
Author(s):  
Michel Nicolau Netto
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
External Space ◽  
Dominant Discourse ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
The 19Th Century

Difference is a social construction, and as such it needs a discourse to produce meaning and be socially effective. As a discourse is always socially and historically grounded, so it is the meaning of difference. This article proposes that the difference in the contemporary world is dominantly articulated in the discourse of diversity, as the discourse of exoticism was the dominant discourse of difference in the 19th Century. This proposal will be proved as I show that, as diversity becomes the appreciated discourse in the present, the exoticism loses its value. Stating that, I will try to understand the conditions of existence of each discourse. I will argue that the exoticism was founded in the 19th century upon three fundaments: imperialism, the idea of progress and nation. They provided the condition for a discourse that based the production of difference on the stable separation of an internal and an external space. After examining the fundaments and their relations with the discourse of exoticism, I will show that the production of difference is no longer based on stable notions of internal and external spaces. Currently, difference is produced on the basis of fragmented and globalized social relations, which requires a discourse flexible enough to cope with these material conditions. The discourse of diversity is this discourse.

scholarly journals Dall’ecologia politica attraverso il Capitalocene per una società ecologica

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gioacchino Piras
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Real Solution ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Reorganization ◽  
Nature And Society ◽  
The Relationship

In the context of Political Ecology, this paper traces the main interpretations that have emphasized the need to rethink the relationship between nature and society in order to find new solutions to the ecological crisis. We will first consider the concept of Capitalocene as an alternative to that of Anthropocene; we will then analyze the reorganization of social relations proposed by Bookchin as well as the concretization of these principles in the democratic confederation of Rojava. The aim of this reflection is to study the social reorganization of democratic confederalism, in its anti-hierarchical, feminist, ecological and selfgoverning dimension, as a perspective in harmony with the theory of the oikeios and, therefore, as a real solution to the ecological crisis.

Cyberculture and Globalization

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
André Lemos
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Political Attitudes ◽  
Information And Communications Technologies ◽  
Communications Media ◽  
Global Space ◽  
Communications Technologies ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Global Nature ◽  
Specific Material ◽  
Cultural Dynamic

Globalization should be understood as a new economic, political, and cultural dynamic in what is now a global space. It is diagnosed based on a description of the different phases in its development, as an abstract, modern narrative reinforced by cyberculture, the information and communications technologies (ICTs) culture that emerged in the 1970s. Communications media have enabled the constraints and limits of space and time to be overcome, expanding human agency and connecting people and objects. Globalization is linked to the development of cyberculture precisely because this increases the number of different types of connections between people, products, and information all around the planet. It is constructed abstractly, as it does not pay the price of the connections and connectors that locate social relations. At the same time as it helps to create the fiction of “global globalization,” cyberculture reveals mediators that always connect objects, processes, people, and places, making a “localized globalization” visible. Rather than being merely deterritorializing, globalization produces connections and situations with the aid of connectors. Like every sociotechnical network, it is involved in the creation of new spatialities. The narrative of globalization ignores the connectors and overlooks the notion of territory, asserting the global nature of globalization when in fact it is the result of concrete mediations performed locally, produced by a specific and material network. It is important to politicize globalization. This requires “relocalization” of the global, that is, identifying specific, material situations. Having an appreciation of this dependence leads us to very concrete political attitudes. Attention is drawn to the need to give visibility to the mediators that anchor experiences, gainsaying the generic nature of globalization and allowing it to be politicized.

scholarly journals A Postcolonial Feminist Critique of Harem Analogies in Psychological Science

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 257-275 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natasha Bharj ◽  
Peter Hegarty
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Psychological Science ◽  
Analogical Mapping ◽  
Muslim People ◽  
History Of ◽  
Value Neutrality ◽  
Nature And Society ◽  
Postcolonial Feminist ◽  
Animal Societies

Since the 1930s, psychologists have used the termharemas an analogy for social relations among animals. In doing so they draw upon gendered and racial stereotypes located in the history of colonialism. We present an experimental study on theharem analogyas a means of confronting and challenging colonial undercurrents in psychological science. We investigated whether the use of this colonialist image in studies of animal societies could subtly affect thinking about Middle Eastern Muslim people. Two-hundred and forty-nine participants read about animal societies; in the experimental condition these were described as “harems” and accompanied by the analogy of harems in Middle Eastern Muslim societies. In the two control conditions, animal societies were either described as “groups” or “harems”, with no mention of the analogy. In the experimental condition, participants falsely remembered descriptions of Muslim people of the Middle East as applying to animals. This finding replicates the “resistance is futile” effect (Blanchette & Dunbar, 2002; Perrott, Gentner, & Bodenhausen, 2005) by which false remembering of analogical statements as previously seen literal descriptions is taken as suggestive of analogical mapping between two disparate concepts. As such, the study contributes to debate between feminist and evolutionary psychology about the value-neutrality of psychology, and to postcolonial critique of the partiality of mainstream psychological accounts of the universality of nature and society.

Socialist Geography

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Salmon ◽  
Andrew Herod
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
Social Progress ◽  
Production Of Knowledge ◽  
Intellectual Engagement ◽  
Political Act ◽  
Just Society ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
The 1960S

The production of knowledge is a political act. As such, geographical knowledge reflects and embodies the material conditions and social relations existing at the time of its production. This recognition serves as our point of intellectual engagement with Geography in America at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century and provides the framework within which we interpret a number of changes within “socialist” geography during the 1990s. Thus, in this chapter we do not subscribe to a progressivist account of intellectual practice, one that proposes a model of social progress towards an ultimate “truth” through the teleology of reason, technology, production, and so on. Rather, our review of socialist geography in this chapter is a problematizing and contextualizing one, a treatment that seeks to remain open to both historical transformation and geographical particularity, and to the recognition that knowledge production is a discursive act that is inherently reflective of power relations. Believing that the production of knowledge and the creation of a more just society are inextricably linked processes, leftist geographers have historically sought to challenge those bodies of knowledge that maintain (implicitly or explicitly) the current economic and political structures of society that favor the haves over the have-nots, encourage environmental destruction in the pursuit of profit, foster racism and patriarchal systems of living, and generally reinforce social inequality and hinder the pursuit of social justice. Drawing precisely upon this notion that the production of knowledge is a political act, socialist geographers in the late 1960s came together to “promote critical analysis of geographic phenomena, cognizant of geographic research on the well-being of social classes; to investigate the issue of radical change toward a more collective society; and to discover the impact of economic growth upon environmental quality and upon social equity” (Socialist Geography Specialty Group 1999). Although the broad political goals of the Socialist Geography Specialty Group (SGSG) have not changed since the 1960s, the fact that the world has been transformed dramatically in the interceding years means that the focus and approaches adopted by leftist geographers within the AAG (and elsewhere) have, of necessity, evolved to meet these challenges and new realities.

They Made a Desert and Called it Peace

1999 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 93-101
Author(s):  
Mike Drake
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Gulf War ◽  
Ethnic Cleansing ◽  
Global Order ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Organized Violence ◽  
Multiple Dimensions ◽  
The Social

This paper addresses the social theorisation of war to the current conflict in the Balkans. It takes its terms of analysis from attempts to develop a sociology of war on the basis of the classic theories of Clausewitz and Jomini, from theories of postmodern war, from Baudrillard's commentary on the Gulf War, and from an extended critical application of recent work by Mary Kaldor on the new mode of warfare. I seek to avoid the blackmail of for-or-against and its loaded ideological positions by undertaking analysis through an exposition of the techniques, rationalities, economies, and social relations of organized violence constituting the current condition of warfare. By working through the complexity of these factors, rather than constructing simple oppositions, the method of critical analysis employed here enables us to explain how and why it is that NATO has failed to engage its primary objectives. The paper is thus able to confront the question not of whether NATO should have intervened in Kosovo, but of whether its campaign did or even could intervene in any real sense. The events in Kosovo are the contestation of war itself, and NATO's failure to recognise this has also been its failure to instrumentalise its violence in direct engagement with its military objectives, leading to circular self-justification in terms of achieving its own operational preconditions. The essay explores multiple dimensions of this misengagement, showing how the failure of NATO's air campaign to engage with the realities of ethnic cleansing illustrates the virtuality of its strategy and policy. The paper concludes by drawing some implications for contemporary projects of global order.

New Divisions of Digital Labour in Architecture

2019 ◽  
Vol 123 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole Gardner
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Technology Knowledge ◽  
Large Scale Data ◽  
Computationally Intensive ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Scale Data ◽  
Sydney Australia

As architecture intersects with computer science to engage with large-scale data sets and informational systems, this demands new skills, competencies and commitments. Informed by the findings of an online survey, this article explores how, who and to what extent those in the profession of architecture are investing in technology knowledge and skills, and under what material conditions this occurs. Survey data collected from five large-scale architecture practices in Sydney, Australia finds that while technology-related skills are highly valued in the profession, more men than women are engaging with computationally intensive software and technology skills building remains a largely unstructured and often self-directed enterprise. Drawing on feminist technology studies and digital labour perspectives, it is argued that the drive to computationalise the profession of architecture rests heavily on discretionary, aspirational and invisible labour practices that disadvantage employees with lesser reserves of economic and social capital, and particularly women. This further contributes to revealing neo-liberalism’s influence on the concrete practices of the architecture workplace and highlights how the diminished structural role of employers breeds uneven opportunities and inequitable working conditions.

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