Transcendental Priority and Deleuzian Normativity. A reply to James Williams

I am grateful that someone whose work I greatly admire could be the philosopher to so eloquently and succinctly cut to the heart of the problem that I posed in the previous issue of Deleuze Studies. James Williams' critical reply leaves me, prima facie, confronted by a stark alternative: either I have misunderstood Deleuze, or I have illustrated problems and lacunae in Deleuze. I will suggest, however, that this is a false alternative, and that Williams' and my divergent accounts of The Logic of Sense – and even Deleuze's oeuvre as a whole – is better understood as a situation of ‘both/and’ rather than ‘either/or’, and hence that my interpretation of Deleuze isn't wrong, but necessarily iconoclastic.

Re-thinking home economics : from modern to postmodern accounts of pedagogical bodies

Two perceptions of the marginality of home economics are widespread across educational and other contexts. One is that home economics and those who engage in its pedagogy are inevitably marginalised within patriarchal relations in education and culture. This is because home economics is characterised as women's knowledge, for the private domain of the home. The other perception is that only orthodox epistemological frameworks of inquiry should be used to interrogate this state of affairs. These perceptions have prompted leading theorists in the field to call for non-essentialist approaches to research in order to re-think the thinking that has produced this cul-de-sac positioning of home economics as a body of knowledge and a site of teacher practice. This thesis takes up the challenge of working to locate a space outside the frame of modernist research theory and methods, recognising that this shift in epistemology is necessary to unsettle the idea that home economics is inevitably marginalised. The purpose of the study is to reconfigure how we have come to think about home economics teachers and the profession of home economics as a site of cultural practice, in order to think it otherwise (Lather, 1991). This is done by exploring how the culture of home economics is being contested from within. To do so, the thesis uses a 'posthumanist' approach, which rejects the conception of the individual as a unitary and fixed entity, but instead as a subject in process, shaped by desires and language which are not necessarily consciously determined. This posthumanist project focuses attention on pedagogical body subjects as the 'unsaid' of home economics research. It works to transcend the modernist dualism of mind/body, and other binaries central to modernist work, including private/public, male/female,paid/unpaid, and valued/unvalued. In so doing, it refuses the simple margin/centre geometry so characteristic of current perceptions of home economics itself. Three studies make up this work. Studies one and two serve to document the disciplined body of home economics knowledge, the governance of which works towards normalisation of the 'proper' home economics teacher. The analysis of these accounts of home economics teachers by home economics teachers, reveals that home economics teachers are 'skilled' yet they 'suffer' for their profession. Further,home economics knowledge is seen to be complicit in reinforcing the traditional roles of masculinity and femininity, thereby reinforcing heterosexual normativity which is central to patriarchal society. The third study looks to four 'atypical'subjects who defy the category of 'proper' and 'normal' home economics teacher. These 'atypical' bodies are 'skilled' but fiercely reject the label of 'suffering'. The discussion of the studies is a feminist poststructural account, using Russo's (1994) notion of the grotesque body, which is emergent from Bakhtin's (1968) theory of the carnivalesque. It draws on the 'shreds' of home economics pedagogy,scrutinising them for their subversive, transformative potential. In this analysis, the giving and taking of pleasure and fun in the home economics classroom presents moments of surprise and of carnival. Foucault's notion of the construction of the ethical individual shows these 'atypical' bodies to be 'immoderate' yet striving hard to be 'continent' body subjects. This research captures moments of transgression which suggest that transformative moments are already embodied in the pedagogical practices of home economics teachers, and these can be 'seen' when re-looking through postmodemist lenses. Hence, the cultural practices ofhome economics as inevitably marginalised are being contested from within. Until now, home economics as a lived culture has failed to recognise possibilities for reconstructing its own field beyond the confines of modernity. This research is an example of how to think about home economics teachers and the profession as a reconfigured cultural practice. Future research about home economics as a body of knowledge and a site of teacher practice need not retell a simple story of oppression. Using postmodemist epistemologies is one way to provide opportunities for new ways of looking.

Incarnate Subjectivity : The Constitutive Significance of Embodiment in Husserlian Phenomenology

This work offers a systematic phenomenological investigation of the constitutive significance of embodiment. It provides detailed analyses of subjectivity in relation to itself, to others, and to objective reality, and it argues that these basic structures cannot be made intelligible unless one takes into account how they are correlated with an embodied subject. The methodological and conceptual starting point of the treatise is the philosophy of Edmund Husserl. The investigation employs the phenomenological method and uses the descriptions and analyses provided by Husserl and his successors. The treatise is motivated and outlined systematically, and textual exegesis serves as a means for the systematic phenomenological investigation. The structure of the work conforms to the basic relations of subjectivity. The first part of the thesis explores the intimate relation between lived-body and selfhood, analyzes the phenomena of localization, and argues that self-awareness is necessarily and fundamentally embodied self-awareness. The second part examines the intersubjective dimensions of embodiment, investigates the corporal foundations of empathy, and unravels the bodily aspects of transcendental intersubjectivity. The third part scrutinizes the role of embodiment in the constitution of the surrounding objective reality: it focuses on the complex relationship between transcendental subjectivity and transcendental intersubjectivity, carefully examines the normative aspects of genetic and generative self-constitution, and argues eventually that what Husserl calls the paradox of subjectivity originates in a tension between primordial and intersubjective normativity. The work thus reinterprets the paradox of subjectivity in terms of a normative tension, and claims that the paradox is ultimately rooted in the structures of embodiment. In this manner, as a whole, the work discloses the constitutive significance of embodiment, and argues that transcendental subjectivity must be fundamentally embodied.

Dressing up Tinderella: Interrogating authenticity claims on the mobile dating app Tinder

Mobile dating applications (‘apps’) have increased in popularity over recent years, with Tinder among the first to break into the mainstream heterosexual market. Since mobile dating intensifies the need to confirm that potential dates are not misrepresenting themselves and are safe to meet in person, Tinder’s success indicates that it has allayed these concerns regarding the authenticity of its users. This article combines Giddens’ conceptualization of authenticity, as the ability to reference a coherent biographical narrative, with Callon’s sociology of translation to investigate Tinder’s framing of authenticity within mobile dating. Applying a walkthrough method that interrogates Tinder’s technological architecture, promotional materials, and related media, this hybrid theoretical framework is used to identify how Tinder configures an actor-network that establishes its app as the solution to users’ concerns, enrols individuals in using its features in authenticity claims, and popularizes Tinder’s framing across public discourse. This network of human and non-human actors frames authenticity as being established through one’s Facebook profile and adherence to normative standards relating to age, gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. However, user discourses on other social media identify and challenge negative outcomes of this framing, with normativity fostering discrimination and Facebook verification failing to prevent abusive behavior. This case study of Tinder paves the way for future investigation into user responses to its framing. Further, it demonstrates the efficacy and broader applicability of this theoretical approach for identifying both human and technological influences on the construction of authenticity with digital media.

Despairing Justice and the Ethics of Legal Interpretation

This study discusses legal interpretation. The question is how legal texts, for instance laws, statutes and regulations, can and do have meaning. Language makes interpretation difficult as it holds no definite meanings. When the theoretical connection between semantics and legal meaning is loosened and we realise that language cannot be a means of justifying legal decisions, the responsibility inherent in legal interpretation can be seen in full. We are thus compelled to search for ways to analyse this responsibility. The main argument of the book is that the responsibility of legal interpretation contains a responsibility towards the text that is interpreted (and through the mediation of the text also towards the legal system), but not only this. It is not simply a responsibility to read and read well, but it transcends on a broader scale. It includes responsibility for the effects of the interpretation in a particular situation and with regard to the people whose case is decided. Ultimately, it is a responsibility to do justice. These two aspects of responsibility are conceptualised here as the two dimensions of the ethics of legal interpretation: the textual and the situational. The basic conception of language presented here is provided by Ludwig Wittgenstein s later philosophy, but the argument is not committed to only one philosophical tradition. Wittgenstein can be counterpointed in interesting ways by Jacques Derrida s ideas on language and meaning. Derrida s work also functions as a contrast to hermeneutic theories. It is argued that the seed to an answer to the question of meaning lies in the inter-personal and situated activity of interpretation and communication, an idea that can be discerned in different ways in the works of Wittgenstein, Derrida and Hans-Georg Gadamer. This way the question of meaning naturally leads us to think about ethics, which is approached here through the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. His thinking, focusing on topics such as otherness, friendship and hospitality, provides possibilities for answering some of the questions posed in this book. However, at the same time we move inside a normativity where ethics and politics come together in many ways. The responsibility of legal interpretation is connected to the political and this has to be acknowledged lest we forget that law always implies force. But it is argued here that the political can be explored in positive terms as it does not have to mean only power or violence.

A norma gramatical como objeto de análise e de ensino: reflexões contemporâneas

Normas linguísticas são os usos instituídos pelos falantes da língua. Há normas consagradas pela tradição literária, por exemplo, e há normas consagradas pela tradição das comunidades. Quando estas não são aceitas, pode se dar o conflito, motivado pela não aceitação da nova norma, ou da norma diferente, geralmente acompanhada de avaliações negativas. Tomando os pronomes pessoais ele/lhe acusativos, me inicial e se sujeito (usando outras categorias quando a situação for favorável) como referência, procura-se investigar os motivos que levam a tais conflitos. Usa-se um conjunto de pensamentos provenientes da sociolinguística, do funcionalismo, da linguística histórica, da tradição gramatical, que, juntos, dão sustentação à problemática, sem levantar corpus exaustivo para descrição e explicação de regras da língua, motivo por que essas teorias são aproveitadas, enfaticamente, apenas em suas bases teóricas gerais. Os exemplos são esparsamente colhidos em fontes diversas: livros, canções, textos literários, ensaios, mas principalmente em notícias veiculadas na internet. É o que basta para um exame crítico da questão abordada. Para tanto, foram cotejados os posicionamentos da normatividade (a língua ideal, homogênea) com os da normalidade (a língua em uso, heterogênea). No entrementes é que estão as causas dos conflitos: a ideia de que a escrita representa o modelo certo, a resistência às mudanças e variações, o imaginário social que decide o certo e o errado, a ideologia avessa à evolução da língua e os conselhos do tipo não use e evite vão desgastando a concepção de língua. Para posturas como essas, não são aceitos os usos estigmatizados, embora abundantemente usados nos veículos de comunicação sociais

Questões de gênero e sexualidade no currículo escolar

Os estudos para a realização desta dissertação estão contextualizados no campo epistemológico do currículo e pretenderam problematizar questões relativas a gênero e sexualidade no contexto da prática curricular, considerando a perspectiva de Elizabeth Macedo, que entende o currículo como espaço-tempo de fronteira e enunciação de sentidos. A pesquisa buscou problematizar os significados sobre sexualidade, gênero e identidades atribuídos às performances das/os alunas/os considerados rompentes da heteronormatividade, que revelam indícios de homofobia no cotidiano do segundo segmento do Ensino Fundamental de uma escola do município do Rio de Janeiro. As análises revelam que as produções discursivas de professoras/es, gestoras/es e alunas/os sobre as/os alunas/os que rompem com aquilo que se instituiu como a normatividade de gênero estão carregadas de significações culturais em disputa, sendo, portanto, instáveis e ambíguas. O silenciamento é considerado também neste texto como um elemento auxiliar de produções homofóbicas. Auxiliaram nestas análises os estudos culturais e a teoria do discurso de Ernesto Laclau e Chantal Mouffe. É importante, entretanto, frisar que práticas curriculares que atuam no campo do combate à homofobia na escola também foram observadas. O texto é também influenciado pelos estudos queer, e se propôs a questionar as concepções que tentam fixar identidades sexuais e de gênero. Esse questionamento leva em consideração que as identidades estão em constante processo de fluidez. Essa reflexão foi aprofundada a partir dos estudos de Judith Butler e Guacira Lopes Louro, além de outros representantes da Teoria Queer, em interlocução com o campo do currículo. Este estudo pretendeu demonstrar que as diferenças de gênero e sexualidade não devem ficar limitadas a esquemas binários operados a partir de oposições dicotômicas fixas. Os sentidos produzidos a partir das diferenças devem ser entendidos enquanto movimentos provisórios de identificação. São processos contingentes produzindo identificações provisórias. Entendendo que há uma necessidade ampliar estudos no que concerne às questões de gênero e sexualidade, esta pesquisa aponta para a perspectiva pós-identitária como ação efetiva no combate à homofobia.

A obrigatoriedade da educação infantil: governamentalidade e refinamento das técnicas de governo

O presente trabalho coloca em análise a obrigatoriedade da educação infantil no Brasil com foco na institucionalização da criança desde a tenra idade, buscando correlacionar infância, educação, governamentalidade e o refinamento das técnicas de governo. Entendemos a infância não como fato natural, mas como acontecimento sócio e culturalmente produzido, organizado por regulações potentes que instituem maneiras de cuidar e educar a criança seja na família ou nos demais espaços, como a escola. De certo, as ações da educação infantil permanecem promovendo processos de subjetivação, seja ao determinar, enquadrar e controlar os comportamentos das crianças por meio de técnicas de dominação seja ao estimulá-las para que operem de acordo com os padrões estabelecidos, formando condutas resilientes, imobilizando-as em papéis, silenciando-as. Deste modo, imergirmos nas práticas que caminham pela vertente da institucionalização de crianças, a partir dos estudos de Michel Foucault, estabelecendo relações entre os campos de saber, tipos de normatividade e formas de subjetividade na educação infantil. Elegemos a análise genealógica proposta por Foucault e a análise institucional de acordo com Lourau, como metodologias para a compreensão dos processos em curso, tensionando as práticas diárias, dando visibilidade a diferentes formas do fazer cotidiano e percebendo as resistências como potência. Entendemos como desafio a criação de espaços de discussão, que não sejam construídos pelo sujeito da falta, mas que possam perceber como potência o que é visto como ausência no outro. Necessitamos desta forma, estabelecer regiões limítrofes de existência única, de experiência vivida, existência anárquica de qualquer criança e não só de espaços de capturas, ordenações e silenciamentos. Assim, linhas de fuga como proposto por Deleuze e Guattari insurgirão como possibilidade, tendo como horizonte uma vida não fascista, como convida Foucault, para os fazeres e saberes de e na educação infantil.

Informatic Opacity: Biometric Facial Recognition and the Aesthetics and Politics of Defacement

Confronting the rapidly increasing, worldwide reliance on biometric technologies to surveil, manage, and police human beings, my dissertation Informatic Opacity: Biometric Facial Recognition and the Aesthetics and Politics of Defacement charts a series of queer, feminist, and anti-racist concepts and artworks that favor opacity as a means of political struggle against surveillance and capture technologies in the 21st century. Utilizing biometric facial recognition as a paradigmatic example, I argue that today's surveillance requires persons to be informatically visible in order to control them, and such visibility relies upon the production of technical standardizations of identification to operate globally, which most vehemently impact non- normative, minoritarian populations. Thus, as biometric technologies turn exposures of the face into sites of governance, activists and artists strive to make the face biometrically illegible and refuse the political recognition biometrics promises through acts of masking, escape, and imperceptibility. Although I specifically describe tactics of making the face unrecognizable as "defacement," I broadly theorize refusals to visually cohere to digital surveillance and capture technologies' gaze as "informatic opacity," an aesthetic-political theory and practice of anti- normativity at a global, technical scale whose goal is maintaining the autonomous determination of alterity and difference by evading the quantification, standardization, and regulation of identity imposed by biometrics and the state. My dissertation also features two artworks: Facial Weaponization Suite, a series of masks and public actions, and Face Cages, a critical, dystopic installation that investigates the abstract violence of biometric facial diagramming and analysis. I develop an interdisciplinary, practice-based method that pulls from contemporary art and aesthetic theory, media theory and surveillance studies, political and continental philosophy, queer and feminist theory, transgender studies, postcolonial theory, and critical race studies.

From Bogeyman to Bison: a herd-like amnesia of HIV?

Queer theorists from across a broad range of disciplines argue that we are in a ‘normalizing’ or ‘homonormative’ period, in which marginalized subjectivities strive to align themselves with hegemonic norms. In terms of LGBTQ rights and representation, it can be argued that this has resulted in an increased visibility of ‘desirable’ gays (monogamous – ideally civil-partnered, white, financially-independent, able-bodied) and the decreased visibility of ‘undesirable’ gays (the sick, the poor, the non-white, the non gender-conforming). Focusing specifically on the effects of this hierarchy on the contemporary theatrical representation of gay HIV/AIDS subjectivities, this article looks at two performances, Reza Abdoh’s Bogeyman (1991) and Lachlan Philpott’s Bison (2009/10). The essay argues that HIV/AIDS performance is as urgently necessary today as in the early 1990s, and that a queer dramaturgy, unafraid to resist the lure of normativity or the ‘gaystreaming’ of LGBT representation, is a vital intervention strategy in contemporary (LGBT) theatre.