Resistance Is Not Futile: Liberating Captain Janeway from the Masculine‐Feminine Dualism of Leadership

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Situated (un-)learning in software design: a deconstructive approach

Constructive technology assessment aims at anticipating societal impacts of technological innovations and suggests incorporating reflexivity and social learning into technology development. Social learning involves fostering the ability of diverse social actors to cultivate sociotechnical critical skills, thus allowing technological and social change to be governed with consideration for social values and diverging interests. Based on this demand, our paper presents a discourse-theoretical, interventionist approach to software design introducing deconstruction and (un-)learning as reflective practices to guide development processes. Inspired by Donna Haraway’s focus on power relations in technoscience culture, our approach—called ‘deconstructive design’—traces how structures such as in/formal hierarchies and discursive hegemonies affect the development processes and design decisions of teams or communities of practices. The underlying deconstructivist methodology refers to practice-based concepts of situated learning. Thus, it locates a potential for value-based intervention at the micro/meso-level of everyday work practices.     

Narrating Childhood in Elena Chizhova’s Vremya zhenshchin

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the representation of the Soviet past through the figure of a child in Elena Chizhova’s novel Vremja ?en??in [Vremya zhenshchin] (2009). The concept of the vulnerable subject is applied to conceptualize the narrative’s ‘access’ to the past. Vremja ?en??in [Vremya zhenshchin] tells the story of a mute girl raised by her mother and three ‘grandmothers’ in 1960s Leningrad. The women decide to keep her muteness as a secret in order to protect her from being sent to a state institution for disabled children, and to raise her at home. The child figure is situated on the verge of two value systems: the collective, secular, and modern value system, represented by the outside world of home; and the private, spiritual, and traditional value system represented by the community of three old women. The position of the vulnerable child figure on the margins of society enables the representation of a ‘lost’ past and its alternative values. The article suggests that the vulnerable child figure can be seen to stand for a feeling of loss and abandonment in more general terms in contemporary Russia, and as representing a search for a lost inheritance.     

‘The past was never simply there to begin with and the future is not simply what will unfold’: a posthumanist performative approach to qualitative longitudinal research

In this article I argue that in their current genealogical and philosophical configuration, qualitative longitudinal research (QLR) practices – and a wider regime of knowledge, ethical, moral, legal, technological, political and economic practices with which they are entangled – embed and enact representational assumptions in which the realities being investigated – time, change and continuity; the past, present and future – are taken as ontologically given and independent of these QLR (and wider) practices. My approach is to conceptualize QLR practices along nonrepresentational lines, through a philosophical framework that is able to materialize the constitutive effects of QLR (and wider) practices on the objects of study and knowledges produced. For this, I turn to Karen Barad’s posthumanist performative metaphysics – ‘agential realism’ – a framework that embodies and enacts a non-classical ontology in which entities are seen as constituted through material-discursive practices. On this account, QLR (and wider) practices are understood as an ineliminable and constitutive part of the realities they help bring into being.     

Imperial contradictions: is the Valley a watershed,region, or cyborg?

Is California's Imperial Valley a watershed? If so, at what level and by what topographic logic? Is it a region? If so, at what level and by what geographic logic? Are its boundaries natural, political, or multivalent on different scales? In short, this essay looks at the special (re)production of environmental conditions within a cyborg world. Here, the Valley is comprised of (a) Colorado River water; (2) migratory waterfowl; (3) the accidentally manufactured, but intentionally seeded food chain of the Salton Sea (3) the San Andreas Fault, (4) Mexican field labor; (5) public universities extension services; (6) global markets and supply chains; (7) international biotechnology, chemical and seed conglomerates, and (8) state and federal regulation of water rights, regulations and markets. The Valley is a cyborg, a historical entity comprised interdependently of nature, technoscience and humanity. This, characterization, however, raises problems with conceptions of the massive losses of migratory waterfowl from avian cholera at the Salton Sea, the agroecological devastation caused by the unintentional introduction of the Silver Leaf whitefly, and the “wastage” of constrained water rights as environmental crises of nature. The articulation of a cyborg perspective sees the environmental conditions of the Valley as the product of relations comprised of uneven and indeterminate ecological process, technoscientific trajectories, and human practices. Extending the cyborg's integration of nature, technology and social agency, a relational reading of James O’Connor's second contradiction of capitalism thesis is developed. O’Connor's political ecology and Haraway material semiotics, while broadly operating at different levels of analysis, prove surprisingly resonant.     

Pragmatism and the Scientific Validation of Professional Practices in American Special Education

A number of American special educators have recently stated that new professional practices should undergo a process of 'scientific validation' whereby researchers decide the effectiveness or value of the practice. This essay critiques this position by way of the philosophical framework of pragmatism, an American philosophy spanning from the works of Peirce, James and Dewey to the current writings of neo-pragmatists Richard Rorty and Cornel West. Rorty's critique of the representational use of language is explained. Emphasis is placed on the importance of an equal, democratic dialogue in decision-making processes involving professionals, served individuals and families. The essay concludes with a brief illustration of a pragmatist's approach to inclusive education.     

Dilemmas in child care practice and the role for state sponsored social workers

Since the publication of Messages from Research (Department of Health, 1995) there has been intense and extensive debate about the limitations and implications of this summary for contemporary child care practice (Duxbury, 1997; Hughes, 1996; Parton, 1996; Littlechild, 1998; White, 1998). Unsurprisingly, in such a highly contentious arena, there is little consensus as to the appropriateness of the analysis or the recommendations contained in the report, particularly the overview to the research summaries. This short article seeks to add to the debate through the use of case study material to articulate social work practice dilemmas that the author has experienced; practice dilemmas that render problematic some of the assertions contained in Messages from Research. In doing so the author does not seek to undermine the importance of research for practice, as we seek to articulate an appropriate theoretical base for professional interventions in the lives of children and families, but to question whose interests are served by what can be seen as the selective representation of findings. As Stevenson (1991) states, we need to explore and understand what personal, professional and organisational processes may impede the implementation of research in practice within the child care arena. It might also behold us to ask what political or social processes may also impact on the way/s in which research for practice are 'produced' and/or 'consumed'. Overall, the author wishes to engage with, and stimulate further debate around, a core issue for practitioners and students as they explore the contemporary statutory social work role with children and their families.     

A withdrawn vision: art,realism and the scene of incest

Via a reading of incest survivor art, this essay explores the possibility of a political aesthetic based on the unrepresentability of trauma. Key to this essay is the idea that trauma cannot be redeemed by art and it is therefore necessary to develop a reading of art that does not seek to resolve the horror of incest. Drawing inspiration from Hal Foster’s influential notion of traumatic realism, the aim of this essay is to develop a critical language that pushes the question of representing childhood trauma beyond the models of repression and realism but doing so without collapsing the argument into an anti‐realist position. Of critical importance to this analysis is a post‐repression model of trauma that puts into jeopardy the idea that history can achieve symbolic recognition. Underpinning this essay is a conceptual move from the “return of the repressed” to the “return of the real” and in so doing I aim to demonstrate the political importance of this shift in thinking about the reality and representation of trauma.     

Confessions of an Identity Junkie

How is it that sexual identity can become such a troubling preoccupation? In this paper, the author explores the problems she has experienced regarding sexual identification due to fluctuating desires and changing circumstances. Charting a course through her personal life using the pioneering theoretical work of Jeffrey Weeks, Judith Butler, and Donna Haraway, she intimately examines the contradictions, difficulties, and possible political functions of sexual identification.     

The Crisis of the Russian Avant-Garde in Iurii Olesha’s Envy

In this essay 1 will analyze lurii Olesha’s novel Envy (1927) as a reflex of the crisis within the Russian avant-garde. 1 will argue that Olesha’s work can be viewed as the author’s perception of the destruction of the avant-garde in the mid-twenties and its replacement by a radically different aesthetic system, i.e., Socialist Realism.

In Envy, the fatal clash between the pragmatic productivism and the earlier constructivism finds its representation in the struggle of the three machines (or constructions—postroeniia—to use the avant-garde term). These constructions are: the communal kitchen Chetvertak’; a mysterious machine, Ophelia; and Anechka Prokopovich’s bed. I argue that all the power struggles among the main characters of the novel are connected to these three machines. The main feature common to these three machines and their design is control over human life. However, if the first two—Chetvertak and Ophelia—are involved in the active struggle for power, the third—the bed—epitomizes passive aggression. The bed mocks their struggle and lies in waiting and finally devours the future discourse, because it is in the bed that the action of Envycomes to its end. Thus, 1 suggest that Chetvertak be seen as a later productionist creation, while Ophelia represents an earlier constructivist avant-garde conception. In relation to the first two machines, the bed represents socialist realism as a stagnating aesthetic vision and the dystopian pretense of paradise attained.     

Theory: The Plague of the Subject: Psychoanalysis and Judith Butler's Psychic Life of Power

In her book The Psychic Life of Power, Judith Butler explores the relation between power and subjectivity. The Psychic Life of Power presents a political account of the formation of the subject. For Butler, psychoanalysis is a crucial theoretical tool for providing such an account of the subject. This essay considers Butler's Foucauldian rereading of psychoanalytic theory through an analysis of her theory of the formation of the subject. In particular, the essay examines Butler's appropriation of psychoanalysis for her theory of subjectivity. The author argues that while Butler's theorising of the psychic life of power represents an important linking of Foucauldian and psychoanalytic theories, nevertheless, her use of psychoanalysis does not fully engage with the complexity of its theory of the subject nor with the implications of that theory for her political project.     

Ladies,we've been framed

If an individual is to act with proper demeanor and show proper deference, then it will be necessary for [her] to have areas of self-determination. [She] must have an expendable supply of the small indulgences which [her] society employs in its idiom of regard-such as cigarettes to give, chairs to proffer, food to provide, and so forth. [She] must have freedom of bodily movement so that it will be possible for [her] to assume a stance that conveys appropriate respect for others and appropriate demeanor on [her] own partErving Goffman, The Arrangement between the Sexes, Theory and Society 4, 3 (Fall 1977), pp. 301–331. I would like to acknowledge the helpful comments on earlier versions of this critique provided by Joan Roberts, Shepard Holdervy, Judith-Maris Hess Buechler, and Hans Buechler.     

Politics: Butler's Corporeal Politics: Matters of Politicized Abjection

This essay examines the work of Judith Butler in relation to corporeality through an analysis of Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex and Butler's notion of politicized abjection. Abjection is considered in relation to bodily materiality and proposed as the most promising path for a revamped corporeal politics. Through a reading of two novels, Katherine Dunn's Geek Love and Barbara Gowdy's Mister Sandman, the essay examines how the abject body can function as politically subversive. Throughout, the essay analyses Butler's placing of the material body in a political domain, and argues that she ultimately endorses materiality as potentially disruptive to the symbolic domain of viable bodies. This recasting of matter within her theory is shown as redefining the body as an active agent rather than a passive receptacle for regulatory norms. The essay examines this under-theorized aspect of her work, and illustrates that politicized abjection is as crucial to her philosophy as the notion of gender as performative.     

Hard and Soft Commitments to Human Rights Treaties, 1966–20001

What factors determine whether and how deeply countries will commit to the international human rights regime? Using data for up to 142 countries between 1966 and 2000, this article analyzes patterns of membership to the International Human Rights Covenants. The analysis produced two main conclusions. First, the potential costs associated with joining a treaty, rather than its substantive content, motivates the decision to join. Treaties that protect different rights but establish comparable implementation mechanisms exhibit similar patterns of membership, whereas treaties that protect identical rights but establish different implementation provisions exhibit dissimilar patterns of membership. Second, rates of treaty membership differ by level of commitment. Countries that sign human rights treaties differ from countries that ratify. Results are interpreted with respect to four theories of commitment and compliance: realism, liberalism, constructivism, and sociological institutionalism. Theories that emphasize the importance of a treaty’s costs (realism and institutionalism) fare better than theories that prioritize a treaty’s content (liberalism and constructivism).     

Producing Space in Action. The Protest Campaign against the Construction of the Dal Molin Military Base

Although the importance of space is increasingly recognized, its conceptualization with reference to social movements varies. For a long time, critical geographers have considered space as socially constructed. Following Lefebvre’s influential distinction, the relevance of three types of socially produced space for social movements have been pointed out: (a) perceived space (or spatial practices), as a material space where everyday life is produced; (b) conceived space, as the representation of space as socially constructed through (dominant and alternative) discourses, meanings and signs; (c) lived space, or representational space, where (a) and (b) interact. This essay maps the various ways through which space structures protest while at the same time being structured by it. We shall address this task by revisiting the contributions of geographers and ethnographers, with the help of empirical research we developed on a case of local opposition to a large-scale infrastructure project: the Dal Molin military base in Italy.     

Trans-racial Mothering : Double-Edged Privilege

Abstract

In this essay, the white adoptive mother of two bi-racial children reflects upon her thirty year experience of parenting to make several philosophical claims. She argues that through the unique mother-child bond, trans-racial mothering may produce knowledge of others' experience that crosses the racial divide. She claims that in this way trans-racial mothering produces epistemic and ethical privileges that may give the mother an advantaged position in public dialogue. Yet, paradoxically, in light of this epistemological transformation, highlighting the works of Black legal scholars and theoreticians, she argues against the general practice of trans-racial adoption of which she is the beneficiary.     

DOING THERAPY: A POST-STRUCTURAL RE-VISION*

The purpose of this essay is to develop a way to look at doing therapy based on (a) Wittgenstein's concept of “language game”; (b) the relationship between Wittgenstein's “private language” argument, language games, and constructivism; and (c) post-structural thinking about language, how therapy works within language, and how language works within therapy. Case material is used to illustrate the usefulness of this approach.     

A forensics of wishing: technology assessment in the age of technoscience

If one considers the Collingridge dilemma to be a dilemma awaiting a solution, one has implicitly abandoned a genuinely historical conception of the future and adopted instead a notion of the future as an object of technical design, the realisation of technical possibility or as wish-fulfilment. The definition of technology assessment (TA) as a successful response to the Collingridge dilemma renders it a technoscience that shares with all the others the conceit of being able, supposedly, to shape the future. An alternative way of pursuing TA begins with an analysis of our age of technoscience, including its impoverished conception of the future. A critical appreciation of this conception gives rise to a forensics of wishing.     

Photographical History,Everyday Life,and Memory: Wang Anyi as a Storyteller

Postmodernists view all reality as representation and visual spectacle. This essay challenges this claim through film analysis of third world cinema and by tracing the tension between photography and history to the earlier debate of modernity in Siegfried Kracauer's work. The essay goes on to show the possibility of historically grounded visual images. By looking at the Chinese novelist Wang Anyi's photo narratives, the essay argues for a photographical image capable of fostering a sense of history deeply rooted in everyday life, communal practice, and social reality. Instead of being the inauthentic mirror of consumer culture, the photographical image is integral to historical imagination, narratives of everyday practice, and cultural memory.