Critical Sense: A Journal of Political and Cultural Theory

SPRING 2008

Science and Politics

The relation between politics and science is often seen as one of infringement. The politicization of science is frequently condemned, most recently in the current US administration’s supposed interference with scientific research; complementarily, political theorists have long criticized social science for a purported reduction of political subjectivity to an object of scientific inquiry; both advocates and critics of science continue to ascribe to it a “view from nowhere,” separate from politics and economics. For this issue we want to look again at the mutual implication of science and politics. Science has played a continuing role in the formation of state policy through discourses of race and the study of populations. Meanwhile, the humanities have an uneasy relationship to attempts to understand the human in scientific terms (compare the importance of psychoanalysis’s initial presentation as a scientific discipline by Freud with contemporary evolutionary biology and cognitive science). Furthermore, science encounters politics outside of the sphere of the state, through the embedding of academic work in the capitalist economy, and the deployment of science and technology by industry.

What role do political and cultural theorists have in understanding this relationship between science and politics? What are the political implications of the forms of knowledge produced and disseminated by contemporary science? How are discourses of science and expertise both criticized and produced by academics working within the science and those working in science studies or critical theory? What obligation do non-scientists have to engage with science: should theorists embrace scientific investigations of political and cultural phenomena, or defend the autonomy of their fields of research from a dominant scientific and technologic discourse? How can political and cultural theorists respond to the scientific imaginary and the utopias and dystopias that inhabit scientific discourse?

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

* The scientific state of political science, or the boundaries between science and social science;
* Knowledge economies;
* The commodification of knowledge and minds;
* Brain drain and brain circulation;
* Science and industry, such as university and industry relations;
* Public schooling, including the politics of textbooks and museums
* Disciplinary hierarchies;
* Knowledge and expertise, expert versus popular knowledge;
* Universal and situated knowledge
* Science and the state: nationalism, colonialism and racism;
* Science, politics and the environment: natural resources, global warming;
* Scientific approaches to social policies: homelessness, poverty, social mobility;
* Reproductive technologies and the politics of the body;
* Historical and contemporary representations of science and scientists;
* Science in the media;
* What is missing in contemporary studies of science and politics and at what political cost?

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: APRIL 1, 2008

Email submissions (as Word or RTF attachments) to: criticalsense@lists.berkeley.edu

Articles should represent high-quality, rigorous scholarship and should not exceed 30 double-spaced pages (1-inch margins, 12-point type). Book reviews should not exceed 10 double-spaced pages (1-inch margins, 12-point type). All submissions should be prepared according to the guidelines specified in the Chicago Manual of Style, using numbered endnotes. For all submissions, please include your name, institutional affiliation, and contact information. In addition, please include a short (250-word) abstract of the article.

(h/t: Tim Fisken)

News here.

John Protevi has a new blog (John McCumber and Robin Durie are also contributors).

“Meta-Philosophy: Reflections on the Practices and Institutions of Philosophy.”

As John explains: “As the title indicates, we’d like to provide a forum for discussion of issues relative to philosophy in the world and in the university.”

TOC

On Bookchin’s Social Ecology and its Contributions to Social Movements — Brian Tokar

Post-Industrial Possibilities and Urban Social Ecologies: Bookchin’s Legacy — Damian F. White

Domesticating the Dialectic: A Critique of Bookchin’s Neo-Aristotelian Metaphysics — John Clark

Evolution: The Public’s Problem, and the Scientists’ — Stuart A. Newman

On Marxism, Socialism, and Ecofeminism: Continuing the Dialogue — Victor Wallis

On the Birthmarks of the Old Society: A Reflection on the Exchange between Maria Mies and Victor Wallis — Nicholas Faraclas

Retrieving the Thread — Victor Wallis

The Shock of the New? Disaster and Dystopia — Andy Storey

Recyclers Miss the Point — Maarten de Kadt

Celebrating the Life of Gabriela Ngirmang of Palau (Belau)– Zohl dé Ishtar

Todd May reviews Jeffrey Nealon’s Foucault Beyond Foucault: Power and Its Intensifications Since 1984

There is a witless, though common, interpretation of Michel Foucault circulating these days. It is an interpretation that seeks to declaw Foucault’s political radicalism and bring him into the liberal fold. On this interpretation, Foucault abandoned the analysis of power constructed during his genealogical period (false) because it had a totalizing character that left no room for resistance (false) in favor of a sort of individual self-construction that he found in the ancient Greeks (false). If Jeffrey Nealon had done no more than recall to us the vapidity of this interpretation, he would have performed a service. However, he has done much more than this. In his slim volume on Foucault, he has offered a fascinating interpretation of Foucault’s work, one that brings to light previous neglected elements of his thought. Although the stated motivation for Nealon’s discussion is to counter the current interpretation of Foucault’s ethical works, the result is one of the most interesting interpretations of Foucault to emerge in many years.

The rest of the review

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The role of judgment and orientation in hermeneutics — Rudolf A. Makkreel

Aesthetic reflection and its ethical significance: A critique of the Kantian solution — Christoph Menke

Does Kant share Sancho’s dream?: Judgment and sensus communis — Alessandro Ferrara

Reflective judgment as world disclosure — María Pía Lara

Imagination and judgment in Kant’s practical philosophy — Alfredo Ferrarin

Rereading `Truth and Politics’ — Ronald Beiner

Rereading Rawls in Arendtian light: Reflective judgment and historical experience — Carlos Thiebaut

Judgment and the reification of the faculties: A reconstructive reading of Arendt’s Life of the Mind — Robert Fine

Conscience, morality and judgment: An inquiry into the subjective basis of human rights — Serena Parekh

Link

Link

CALL FOR PAPERS FOR VOLUME 13

SPECIAL INTEREST EDITION: TEACHING PHILOSOPHY THROUGH FILM (AND VICE-VERSA)

Submissions are now welcome for the next volume of Film and Philosophy, a Special Interest edition which will be focused on the use of film in Philosophy classes.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

Pedagogical techniques for teaching philosophy through film
What does it mean to approach a film philosophically?
Discussions of particular films that illustrate metaphysical, epistemological or ethical issues in ways that are pedagogically useful.
Are some films just inherently philosophical (and hence good learning tools for teaching philosophy)?
What is gained (and/or lost) from showing films in philosophy classes (are we watering them down by using films)?
What unique contributions to film appreciation and evaluation can philosophy make?

Subs should be from 2,500 to 7,500 words, following the Chicago Manual of Style, using endnotes that contain the relevant bibliographic information (please no separate bibliography or reference list). Please send your article in WORD format to Managing Editor Daniel Shaw at dshaw@lhup.edu. DEADLINE JUNE 30, 2008

The recently formed Society for Interdisciplinary Feminist Phenomenology is pleased to announce the launch of our website. SIFP was formed by Professors Bonnie Mann and Beata Stawarska, both faculty members in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Oregon; Dr. Sara Heinämaa, Senior lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Helsinki, Finland, Professor of Women’s Studies at the Centre for Women’s Studies and Gender Research at the University of Oslo, Norway, and International Adviser of SIFP; and Dr. Eva Maria Simms, Professor of Psychology at Duquesne University and the National Adviser of SIFP. Please visit the new website, located at

http://whp.uoregon.edu/sifp

for more information about the society and our activities, to create a “scholars page,” join our listserve, and more!

SIFP’s activities have been made possible through funding from the University of Oregon’s Center for the Study of Women in Society, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Department of Philosophy.