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Displaying: 1-20 of 295 documents


1. The Acorn: Volume > 23 > Issue: 1/2
Greg Moses Editor's Introduction: Butler, Barnes, Pomeroy, Dobos, and the Love of Wisdom
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2. The Acorn: Volume > 23 > Issue: 1/2
Will Barnes Celebrating and Augmenting Judith Butler’s Vital Contribution: A Foreword from the Guest Editor
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article
3. The Acorn: Volume > 23 > Issue: 1/2
Will Barnes A More Skillful Illusion: Critiquing The Force of Nonviolence by Judith Butler
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In The Force of Nonviolence, Judith Butler argues that nonviolent movements must replace a dominant neurotic identitarianism with a commitment to preserving relational life. However, Butler also argues that because relationality is volatile, freedom and equality cannot be accomplished through a simple negation of separation. Instead, nonviolence must be directed at moments of relational volatility precisely when violence is compelled. Drawing on Klein’s theory of subjectivity—in which imagining ourselves as other is a precondition for imagining ourselves independent—and on Benjamin’s vision of conflict resolution in encountering the other without instrumentality, Butler asks that we meet such moments by honoring interdependence. While affirming much in Butler’s analysis, this article locates (1) a tension between Butler’s poststructuralist and psychoanalytic commitments, (2) the reification of a non-relational liberal subject as hegemonic, and (3) a tendency towards theoretical exclusivity. Through addressing these weaknesses, we can retain more of a positive role than Butler affords to traditional elements of the nonviolent toolkit such as love, morality, and upholding human rights prefaced on the integrity and dignity of the individual, to augment their theory as one among many resources for a diverse and multicultural nonviolent pursuit of social and political progress.
4. The Acorn: Volume > 23 > Issue: 1/2
Barry L. Gan The Truth of Nonviolence: A Critique of The Force of Nonviolence by Judith Butler
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In The Force of Nonviolence, Judith Butler presents five key interventions to the field of nonviolence philosophy: (1) a critique of social contract theory for the way it imagines human beings as independent, (2) an approach to nonviolence based in the preservation of life within a context of social action, (3) the advancement of Butler’s alternative framework of equal grievability, (4) the claim that violence is difficult to define independently of social context, and (5) a Freudian analysis of the death drive that offers a strategy for disrupting violence. In response to each of these interventions, this article argues that: (1) social contract theory is a heuristic for justifying the existence of a state, (2) Gandhi’s concept of truth provides a more comprehensive approach to nonviolence that concerns the whole self and all beings, (3) a concept of function would make a better guide to human responsibility, (4) violence can be defined independently of social framework, and (5) without reliance on the concept of a death drive, there are nonviolent remedies for social attitudes of aggression as found in the work of Jane Addams and William James.
5. The Acorn: Volume > 23 > Issue: 1/2
Capucine Mercier Nonviolence as a Critique of Individualism in Butler and Gandhi
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In this article, I put Judith Butler’s thought of nonviolence in dialogue with that of M. K. Gandhi to show how, for both thinkers, a defense of nonviolence must be grounded in interdependency and equality, which consequently entails a displacement of the individual self and its interests as the focus of ethics. Although Butler’s and Gandhi’s accounts of nonviolence differ in some important respects, both base their defense of nonviolence on a recognition of interdependency in opposition to Western individualism. This critique of individualism as an adequate ethical framework leads each author to question the concept of self-defense and to reject the preservation of individual life as the goal of ethical and political action.
6. The Acorn: Volume > 23 > Issue: 1/2
Mariah Partida Is Judith Butler’s Rejection of Liberal Individualism Compatible with a Relational Understanding of Autonomy?
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This essay develops a renewed conception of autonomy through an explication of Judith Butler’s critique of liberal individualism in The Force of Nonviolence. I argue that while rejecting liberal individualism requires abandoning the fantasies of mastery and self-sufficiency, such a rejection need not imply a renunciation of autonomy. Instead, an ethics of nonviolence that is committed to equality demands a relational understanding of autonomy that affirms our radical interdependency. I contend, moreover, that for an account of the self to acknowledge this interdependency, the body must be conceived as a threshold rather than an end. Put differently, to be a relational self means to be give over to others from the start. My argument proceeds in three steps. First, I explore Butler’s critical analysis of liberal political thought, while emphasizing the key role that the state-of-nature fantasy plays in the Western social and political imaginary. Next, I show how dependency, interdependency, and vulnerability are closely related but also distinct. Specifically, I argue that a relational understanding of autonomy is consistent with Butler’s emphasis on our interdependency and the social obligations that bind us to one another. Finally, I show how the social model of disability lends further support to a relational understanding of autonomy. Drawing on Butler’s brief discussion of instruments for support in The Force of Nonviolence, I propose that we think more closely about the everyday ways in which we are sustained by various modes of support. The fact that we never stop relying on this support, even when we disavow it, suggests that autonomy is not a given but rather an achievement.
symposium
7. The Acorn: Volume > 23 > Issue: 1/2
Ned Dobos, Graham Parsons, Kevin Cutright, Lee-Ann Chae The Moral Price of Preparedness: Ned Dobos, author of Ethics, Security, and the War-Machine, Meets Critics
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8. The Acorn: Volume > 23 > Issue: 1/2
Contributors
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9. The Acorn: Volume > 23 > Issue: 1/2
Acknowledgements
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introduction
10. The Acorn: Volume > 22 > Issue: 2
Greg Moses Editor's Introduction: Gravitas, Beauty, and Humanity Unrelinquished
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11. The Acorn: Volume > 22 > Issue: 2
Court D. Lewis Guest Editor's Introduction: Memorial Tribute to Bat-Ami Bar On
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In this introduction to a special section on the philosophy of Bat-Ami Bar On, guest editor Court Lewis introduces Jennifer Kling’s article on equitable resettlement of refugees, Wim Laven’s article on meaningful political citizenship, and his own work on the analysis of the violent threat of citizen culture-warriors.
article
12. The Acorn: Volume > 22 > Issue: 2
Jennifer Kling Resettling Refugees: State Obligations, Egalitarian Concerns
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This article—a tribute to philosopher Bat-Ami Bar On—argues that states have obligations to not only resettle refugees, but also to put into place laws, policies, and procedures that are likely to ameliorate exclusionary attitudes and socio-political stances of existing members toward refugees and other forcibly displaced persons. The article begins with a recollection of Bar On, who encouraged the author to pursue the well-being of refugees as a worthy philosophical topic. The article then argues that refugee camps do not serve the purpose of justice; therefore, resettlement must be sought. Resettlement, in turn, raises several questions that egalitarians must take more seriously. In the end, equitable resettlement of refugees requires a broad based ethics of inclusivity and equality that bolsters community willingness to share spaces and “live and let live” in the face of cultural differences.
13. The Acorn: Volume > 22 > Issue: 2
Wim Laven Daring to be Good: The Moral Demands of “Meaningful Political Citizenship” in the Life and Teachings of Bat-Ami Bar On
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In this tribute to the life and work of philosopher Bat-Ami Bar On, I start by describing what daring to be good looks like. I present engagement with good and evil as a dilemma, one that I believe Bar On’s work overcomes. In the experience of evil in the world, people can make good decisions with incomplete information and uncertainty, or people can experience atrocity in bold relief and remain apathetic. We should understand the causes and motivations for both. I make suggestions about how we can bring these visions into the classroom with the critical, engaged pedagogies of Paolo Freire and David A. Kolb, concluding with a return to the idea of philosophy as political action. We are daring—courageous—when we endeavor to do good, especially when the outcome is uncertain and/or requires sacrifice. In the end, I summarize Bar On’s five-step method for confronting evil with meaningful political citizenship.
14. The Acorn: Volume > 22 > Issue: 2
Court D. Lewis Citizen-Soldiers in the American Cultural Revolution: A Tribute to the Philosophy of Bat-Ami Bar On
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In tribute to the philosophy of Bat-Ami Bar On, this article draws upon her Arendtian analysis of fascism to explore recent dynamics of ethnic nationalism in the US. Whereas Bar On analyzed the problem of citizen-soldiers, this study extends analysis toward the citizen culture-soldier, suggesting that recent dynamics in the US are suggestive of a Cultural Revolution that threatens the inclusive practice of citizenship required of democracy. Bar On’s work motivates philosophers to not be lulled into acceptance of anti-democratic practices of citizenship. The values of respect, equality, and equity suggest that another form of citizenship should be practically pursued.
15. The Acorn: Volume > 22 > Issue: 2
Jyotsna Kapur When Children Die, What Can Theater Do?: Tagore's Dak Ghar in the Warsaw Ghetto
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At the height of the Nazi Holocaust in 1942, children in an orphanage in the Warsaw Ghetto performed Rabindranath Tagore’s 1912 play Dak Ghar (The Post Office). They were in the care of Janusz Korczak, a socialist, pedia­trician, and one of the world’s first child rights advocates. The play centers on a young boy, Amal, who is confined in quarantine and on his death bed. This article attempts to understand why Korczak may have chosen Dak Ghar and how this play may have resonated in the Warsaw Ghetto, where he confronts two painful questions: is there anything worse than death? And, how to prepare children for death? This essay draws on Walter Benjamin’s concept of play, Han Jonas’s concept of eternity, Tagore’s expansive sense of humanity, and Korczak’s philosophy of child rights to argue the following: that in choosing a play from another time and place, Korczak empowers the children of the Warsaw orphanage to experience the radical unity of all humanity as inhabitants of this earth—and our arts as a way to transcend the boundaries of space and time. In consequence, the children may have tasted eternity through a play and memorialized in community that which would be denied by the Nazis—their deaths and, thus, their existence.
contributors
16. The Acorn: Volume > 22 > Issue: 2
Contributors
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acknowledgments
17. The Acorn: Volume > 22 > Issue: 2
Acknowledgments
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introduction
18. The Acorn: Volume > 22 > Issue: 1
Greg Moses The Literature, Poetry, Science Fiction, and Fantasy of Nonviolence
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article
19. The Acorn: Volume > 22 > Issue: 1
Amir Jaima The Untold Story of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., The Cyborg: On the Post/Super/In-Human Conditions of Black (Anti)Heroism
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Heroism presumes “humanity.” Black candidates for heroism in the United States, however, must often overcompensate for the presumed sub-humanity imposed upon them by the American popular imaginary. By way of an illustration, consider the instructive case of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who, arguably, attains the status of (Black) American Hero in spite of his Blackness. Through a unique account of the life of Dr. King, I will argue that King attains the requisite overcompensation necessary for (Black) American heroism by becoming what João Costa Vargas and Joy James call a Baldwinian Cyborg, a “super human with unnatural capacities to suffer and love.” I will present, here, a literary narrative that weaves speculative fiction into the interstices of the historical record in order to contend that the Black Cyborg is necessary in a world where white Americans are “human” but Black citizens remain aspirations.
feature
20. The Acorn: Volume > 22 > Issue: 1
Andrew Fiala, Jennifer Kling, José-Antonio Orosco A Critical Utopia for Our Time: Discussing Star Trek’s Philosophy of Peace and Justice
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