Back to Hegel? On Gillian Rose's critique of sociological reason

Thirty‐five years ago, Gillian Rose articulated a significant critique of classical sociological reason, emphasizing its relationship to its philosophical forebears. In a series of works, but most significantly in her Hegel contra Sociology, Rose worked to specify the implications of sociology's failure, both in its critical Marxist and its ‘scientific’ forms, to move beyond Kant and to fully come to terms with the thought of Hegel. In this article, I unpack and explain the substance of her criticisms, developing the necessary Hegelian philosophical background on which she founded them. I argue that Rose's attempted recuperation of ‘speculative reason’ for social theory remains little understood, despite its continued relevance to contemporary debates concerning the nature and scope of sociological reason. As an illustration, I employ Rose to critique Chernilo's recent call for a more philosophically sophisticated sociology. From the vantage point of Rose, this particular account of a ‘philosophical sociology’ remains abstract and rooted in the neo‐Kantian contradictions that continue to characterize sociology.     

Desire for the desert: racialising white teachers’ motives for working in remote schools in the Australian desert

Abstract

Distinct from rurality, the Australian desert has long functioned as a signifier of remoteness in the dominant imagination; a product of spatialised binary relations between ‘progressive’ (white) mainstream or idealised white countryside, and disordered/dangerous Aboriginal periphery. Remoteness constitutes a complex racial dynamic that has historically mediated white teachers’ and missionaries’ desires to travel to the social margins. This article adopts a discursive understanding of remoteness to examine contemporary white teachers’ decisions to work in Aboriginal schools in the desert – decisions that are often articulated through unwitting recourse to the ‘three Ms’ or ‘tourist’. The article explores these identity constructs and how they enable different performances of whiteness. It examines how white people’s desires are often covertly raced but does not however, position the teacher as a priori racist. Rather, desire is theorised as a social construct in which subjects invest, which may at times contribute toward processes of decolonisation. This rendering moves beyond a logic of individualism and underpins the argument that recognising how these dynamics play out is vital with respect to understanding the place of white teachers inside remote Indigenous Education. Moreover, such insights are valuable for appreciating how whiteness continues to be reproduced in White Australia under a guise of good intentions.     

The white native speaker and inequality regimes in the private English language school

Private English language schools market the language as a tool that helps one connect with others from different cultures. Despite their promotion of English aiding in intercultural communication, these institutions may believe that only the white native speaker is the ideal teacher of the language. This valuing of the white native speaker can consequently act as an organisational inequality regime that marginalises nonwhite teachers. Using qualitative interviews with 10 nonwhite instructors working in schools in Toronto, Canada, this article investigates the ways in which these teachers experience the inequality regime of the white native speaker at work. The findings indicate that the teachers experience this inequality regime as a series of microaggressions that involve space, competence and customer desire. The article concludes with suggestions to dismantle inequality regimes in private institutions.     

‘I FELT DEAD’: applying a racial microaggressions framework to Black students’ experiences of Black History Month and Black History*

This paper uses a Critical Race Theory perspective to explain the everyday racisms – racial microaggressions – directed towards students of African and Caribbean descent during a non-statutory Black History unit, at an English secondary school. Applying a racial microaggressions framework to ethnographic data, this paper finds that experiences of studying Black History by students of African and Caribbean descent are dominated by various types of racial microaggressions including: micro-invalidation, micro-insults and micro-assaults. These experiences are symptomatic of wider racist structures and processes within the National Curriculum for History, based upon the ideology of white supremacy. This paper concludes that the racial microaggressions framework allows for useful ways of thinking about the function and purpose of Black History Month and Black History in schools, and its opportunities for exposing wider institutional and ideological underpinnings that legitimate deficit understandings about black people in school classrooms.     

后现代小说《白雪公主》的互文性分析--以童话隐喻为例

美国后现代小说《白雪公主》主要嫁接于经典格林童话《白雪公主与七个小矮人》,其中也穿插了其他经典童话故事的情节。唐纳德·巴塞尔姆运用互文性将文本历史与社会现实相融合所进行的诗学构建,是对文本历史的承续与反叛,体现了后现代主义创作的锐意创新。在互文性的框架下解析《白雪公主》的童话隐喻,旨在阐述文本表面散漫的叙事风格背后隐藏的对社会现实的深切关注。     

试论关中方言与普通话语的集结运用对文本意义生成的影响——解读《白鹿原》文本语言

陈忠实的小说《白鹿原》运用大量关中方言为整个小说文本意义的生成过程提供了强有力的话语支撑。在地方方言与普通话语的书写方式及运用手法上,《白鹿原》在小说文本的语言构建方面为当代小说的创作提供了内容与形式上的双重典范,同时也使小说文本意义生成的外延尺度得到了进一步的扩展,在意义生成的深层架构上凸显了民族性与现代性的融合。小说文本中关中方言与正式普通话语的有机结合运用使小说文本意义在整个生成过程中具有了独特性、互补性与充盈性。     

巴塞尔姆《白雪公主》的互文性解读

巴塞尔姆后现代主义小说《白雪公主》嫁接于格林童话《白雪公主与七个小矮人》,但二者创作风格迥异。对作者而言,互文性是其“叛逆性创作”的重要手段;对读者而言,互文性带来了“痛并快乐”的“极乐”阅读体验,帮助读者解读后文本的白雪公主角色塑造的矛盾性和悲惨命运,揭示作者的创作深受前文本的传统和作者所处社会背景的双重影响。     

文学接受与传播中的“《白鹿原》热”探析

《白鹿原》是广受读者和评论家热捧的小说。探讨其背后的深层原因、民族历史与文化的深刻反思是该书的新突破,文学叙事理念的回归使其具有阅读吸引力,中西方文化思潮相交融的背景使其具有较高的艺术品味和审美价值;出版体制的变革、文学消费观念的变化,文学商业化突出,使具有雅俗共赏特点的《白鹿原》获得读者共鸣。茅盾文学奖等奖项的获得、文学评论家的好评、现代传媒的介入也起到了推波助澜的作用,以上综合因素是《白鹿原》20年来经久不衰的重要因素。     

Asymptotic Distributions of Unit-Root Tests When the Process Is Nearly Stationary

Several test criteria are available for testing the hypothesis that the autoregressive polynomial of an autoregressive moving average process has a single unit root. Schwert (1989), using a Monte Carlo study, investigated the performance of some of the available test criteria. He concluded that the actual levels of the test criteria considered in his study are far from the specified levels when the moving average polynomial also has a root close to 1. This article studies the asymptotic null distribution of the test statistics for testing p = 1 in the model Y_t = pY _t-1 + e _t – 0e _t-1 as 0 approaches 1. It is shown that the test statistics differ from one another in their asymptotic properties depending on the rate at which 0 converges to 1.