Marxismo, a alienação e o tempo histórico da barbárie social do capital

O objetivo do ensaio é expor a alienação/estranhamento como o problema crucial do nosso tempo histórico, buscando salientar os significados do conceito de autotranscendência positiva da alienação, considerada por István Meszáros, como sendo o eixo da reflexão marxiana nos Manuscritos econômico-filosóficos. Para tanto, discorre sobre o novo registro histórico da Aufhebung nas condições da crise estrutural do capital e a vigência do capitalismo global como capitalismo manipulatório. Aborda a centralidade ontológica da problemática da vida cotidiana e o estranhamento na perspectiva da crítica radical do trabalho. Finalmente, coloca elementos para refletir, na perspectiva do marxismo radical, sobre a transição como sendo o problema de produção dos sujeitos humanos, capazes da autotranscendência positiva da alienação.

A pedagogia histórico-crítica e o marxismo: equívocos de (mais) uma crítica à obra de Dermeval Saviani

This paper analyses a PhD dissertation which was written by Ademir Lazarini with the purpose to present a radical criticism to the Dermeval Saviani´s interpretation of the relation between the capital and the school education. The dissertation argues that the Historical-Critical Pedagogy based on Saviani’s works is very distant from the Marxian theory of capitalist society. The paper detects fundamental mistakes inside the criticism formulated by the author of the dissertation and the examination of those mistakes revealed a lack of comprehension of the materialistic historical dialectical method.

Elementary units of cortical activity? The rise and fall of the cortical column

The roots of the concept of cortical columns stretch far back into the history of neuroscience. The impulse to compartmentalise the cortex into functional units can be seen at work in the phrenology of the beginning of the nineteenth century. At the beginning of the next century Korbinian Brodmann and several others published treatises on cortical architectonics. Later, in the middle of that century, Lorente de No writes of chains of ‘reverberatory’ neurons orthogonal to the pial surface of the cortex and called them ‘elementary units of cortical activity’. This is the first hint that a columnar organisation might exist. With the advent of microelectrode recording first Vernon Mountcastle (1957) and then David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel provided evidence consistent with the idea that columns might constitute units of physiological activity. This idea was backed up in the 1970s by clever histochemical techniques and culminated in Hubel and Wiesel’s well-known ‘ice-cube’ model of the cortex and Szentogathai’s brilliant iconography. The cortical column can thus be seen as the terminus ad quem of several great lines of neuroscientific research: currents originating in phrenology and passing through cytoarchitectonics; currents originating in neurocytology and passing through Lorente de No. Famously, Huxley noted the tragedy of a beautiful hypothesis destroyed by an ugly fact. Famously, too, human visual perception is orientated toward seeing edges and demarcations when, perhaps, they are not there. Recently the concept of cortical columns has come in for the same radical criticism that undermined the architectonics of the early part of the twentieth century. Does history repeat itself? This paper reviews this history and asks the question.

The ethical paradigm of Jose Marti's writings beyond Modernity

This dissertation explores the nature of Jose Marti's ethical ideas in relation to the rise of late Nineteenth Century Modernity and in tandem with the deconstruction and subversion of the principal constituencies of colonial and aesthetic discourses. Marti proposes a new paradigm that question the insatiable pursuit of novelty, the hostility towards tradition, the historical perspectivism and a critical stance with regard to social aesthetic Modernity. He also questions the cult of reason, the linear historicism, and the teleological progress framed in philosophical utilitarian pragmatism of bourgeois Modernity. His radical criticism of the structures and institutions of the hegemonic power of the modern state override the ontological and epistemological foundations of Modernity. Marti's deconstruction of the fundamental discourses of euro-centristic Occidental culture leads him, through his ethical writings, to an arqueology of Native American civilizations, thus reinserting, within the false premises of European universalism, his counter-discourse of tradition and the voice of the Other.

La objeción de la ignorancia pública

Las teorías deliberativas de la democracia han pasado de cuestionar en su totalidad los sistemas democráticos representativos y sus procedimientos de toma de decisiones a buscar su posibilidad de realización acomodándose a las instituciones liberales. Sin embargo, la deliberación democrática sigue suscitando oposición entre varios autores por varias razones, una de las cuales, especialmente conspicua, es la llamada objeción de la ignorancia pública, que afirma que el público por su ignorancia de los asuntos políticos está incapacitado para cumplir las exigentes requisitos que toda deliberación política presupone y por la que esta, a gran escala, deviene indeseable, cuando no imposible.

Investigação de conhecimento teórico: aceitação/rejeição ao behaviorismo radical entre professores

Pós-graduação em Educação - FFC

Redimensionamento do behaviorismo radical pós-skinneriano a partir da análise do percurso histórico da crítica ao pensamento behaviorista: implicações preliminares na área educacional

Pós-graduação em Educação - FFC

Framing Culture : Criticism and Policy in Australia

How is contemporary culture 'framed' - understood, promoted, dissected and defended - in the new approaches being employed in university education today? How do these approaches compare with those seen in the public policy process? What are the implications of these differences for future directions in theory, education, activism and policy? Framing Culture looks at cultural and media studies, which are rapidly growing fields through which students are introduced to contemporary cultural industries such as television, film and video. It compares these approaches with those used to frame public policy and finds a striking lack of correspondence between them. Issues such as Australian content on commercial television and in advertising, new technologies and new media, and violence in the media all highlight the gap between contemporary cultural theories and the way culture and communications are debated in public policy. The reasons for this gap must be investigated before closer relations can be established. Framing Culture brings together cultural studies and policy studies in a lively and innovative way. It suggests avenues for cultural activism that have been neglected in cultural theory and practice, and it will provoke debates which are long overdue.