Moving Beyond Us and Them? Marginality,Rhizomes, and Immanent Forgiveness

Here, I offer a candid response to bell hooks's call for a testimony to the “movement beyond a mere ‘us and them’ discussion” that purportedly informs contemporary radical and feminist thought on difference. In alignment with a tradition that includes bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Aurora Levins Morales, I offer a personal testimony to the ways in which I—a middle‐class, French, immigrant, continental‐philosophy‐bred incest survivor—envision both that movement and its limits. To establish these alliances means forming necessary (if only momentary and unlikely) communities. I call on the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari to propose an account of the production of such communities that does not depend only on shared lived experience, but also on shared marginal spatiality (rhizomes), temporality (trauma), and “medicinal history” (nomadology). I suggest that on the one hand, Deleuze's philosophy of immanence may indeed find apt expression in the politics of integrity that hooks, Lorde, and Morales call for. On the other hand, a genuine politics of integrity may benefit from drawing on the philosophy of immanence, which alone offers alternatives to the traditional, oppositional models of difference informed by transcendence. Finally, I propose the concept of “immanent forgiveness” to capture the movement at issue.     

Beyond “Beyond A- and B-time”

This Article critically discusses Clifford Williams’ claim that the A-theory and B-theory of time are indistinguishable. I examine three considerations adduced by Williams to support his claim that the concept of time essentially includes transition as well as extension, and argue that, despite its prima facie plausibility, the claim has not been adequately justified. Williams therefore begs the question against the B-theorist, who denies that transition is essential. By Williams’ own lights, he ought to deny that the B-theory is a (realist) theory of time; and thus his claim that A-time and B-time do not differ significantly should be rejected.

Beyond “Empowerment”? Sexuality in a Sexist World

The subject of girls’ sexual empowerment is a fertile area for feminist debate. While most feminists are committed to the promotion of diverse and egalitarian sexual possibilities for girls (and women), we differ in our views on how to hold an aspirational vision alongside paying attention to real world constraints on its unfolding. A specific instance of this tension is posed in considering how relevant claims to individual empowerment are within a broader context that remains broadly sexist and limiting as well as saturated with racist and other forms of discrimination and inequality. In this paper, I join the dialogue opened by Lamb and Peterson (2011) to explore some of these questions. I argue that the concept of sexual empowerment, as taken up in these debates, might be too flexible to do the work we require of it. In particular, I suggest that it is unhelpful to fix our lens on claims of individual empowerment, if and where this involves eliding the broader sociocultural conditions of possibility for “intimate justice” (McClelland 2010) for girls and women; and, where it leads us to over-ride the psychosocial complexity of all individuals in ways that distract us from attending to ambivalence and understanding the “cruel attachments” that can bind us to injustice. Rather than seeking to offer an “‘expert’ view of empowerment,” I argue for the value of reflexive, empathic, and respectful feminist critique of the cultural conditions of possibility for such a thing.     

Beyond a western bioethics?

Like theology and ethics generally, bioethics has increasingly developed a global consciousness. Controversies over AIDS research and access to affordable AIDS treatment have generated new awareness about the importance of international collaboration as well as the difficulty of achieving moral consensus across economic, political, and cultural divides. Advances in scientific and medical knowledge through initiatives such as the Human Genome Project invite new questions about the nature of health care as a common good. This budding global consciousness serves as a starting point for examining contemporary challenges to the secular, principle-based Western bioethics that has dominated national and international debate for three decades.     

Introduction: Beyond Toleration?

Although tolerance is widely regarded as a virtue of both individuals and groups that modern democratic and multiculturalist societies cannot do without, there is still much disagreement among political thinkers as to what tolerance demands, or what can be done to create and sustain a culture of tolerance. The philosophical literature on toleration contains three main strands. (1) An agreement that a tolerant society is more than a modus vivendi; (2) discussion of the proper object(s) of toleration; (3) debate about whether there is a ‘paradox’ of toleration and, if so, how it might be solved. This Introduction outlines how each of the subsequent papers addresses problems in the theory and practice of toleration, in the light of these three strands in the existing literature. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Is God Beyond Reason?

Classical thinkers such as St Anselm of Canterbury and St Thomas Aquinas insist that God is beyond reason because he is incomprehensible. More recent authors, including Søren Kierkegaard, Karl Barth and Colin Gunton have argued that God is beyond reason since natural theology is an inherently suspect notion. In this article, I first note ways in which all the authors just mentioned may be thought of as agreeing with each other. I then proceed to argue against the critique of natural theology coming from Kierkegaard, Barth and Gunton. My conclusion is that, in one sense, it may be premature to conclude that God is beyond reason.     

Beyond the Dutch “Multicultural Model”

The Netherlands has been internationally known for its multicultural approach to immigrant integration. The aim of this article is to delve into the “coproduction” by researchers and policy makers of this so-called Dutch “multicultural model”. As this article shows, researchers and policy makers have in The Netherlands been joined in several discourse coalitions. Indeed, one of these discourse coalitions supported an integration paradigm with multicultural elements, but at least two other types of discourses can be identified in The Netherlands, one of more liberal–egalitarian nature and one more assimilationist. In spite of the persistent image of The Netherlands as a representative of the multicultural model, it is in fact this multiplicity of discourses that characterizes the Dutch case. Moreover, labeling Dutch integration policies as “multiculturalist” has to be understood as a performative act by both politicians and scholars who disapprove of Dutch integration policies. In that sense, the retrospective labeling of policies as multiculturalist is a very specific kind of coproduction of a policy frame.     

Moving through virtual reality without moving?

Virtual reality (VR) technology is increasingly used in spatial cognition research, as it offers high experimental control and interactivity in naturalistic multi-modal environments, something that is difficult to achieve in real-world settings. Even in the most sophisticated and costly VR systems, people do not necessarily perceive and behave as they would in the real world. This might be related to our inability to use embodied (and thus often highly automated and effective) spatial orientation processes in VR. While real-world locomotion affords automatic and obligatory spatial updating of our self-to-surrounding relationships, such that we easily remain oriented during simple perspective changes, the same is not necessarily true in VR. This can lead to striking systematic and qualitative errors such as failures to update rotations ("Nonturner" behavior). Here, we investigated whether rich naturalistic visual stimuli in immersive VR might be sufficient to compensate for the lack of physical motion. To this end, 24 participants performed point-to-origin tasks after visually simulated excursions along streets of varying curvature in a naturalistic virtual city. Most (21/24) participants properly updated simulated self-motions and showed only moderate regression toward mean pointing responses. 3/24 participants, however, exhibited striking "Nonturner" behavior in that they pointed as if they did not update the visually simulated turns and their heading had not changed. This suggests that our immersive naturalistic VR stimuli were an improvement over prior optic flow stimuli, but still insufficient in eliciting obligatory spatial updating that supported correct point-to-origin responses in all participants.     

“Moving to the beat” improves timing perception

Here, we demonstrate that “moving to the beat” can improve the perception of timing, providing an intriguing explanation as to why we often move when listening to music. In the first experiment, participants heard a series of isochronous beats and identified whether the timing of a final tone after a short silence was consistent with the timing of the preceding sequence. On half of the trials, participants tapped along with the beat, and on half of the trials, they listened without moving. When the final tone occurred later than expected, performance in the movement condition was significantly better than performance in the no-movement condition. Two additional experiments illustrate that this improved performance is due to improved timekeeping, rather than to a shift in strategy. This work contributes to a growing literature on sensorimotor integration by demonstrating body movement’s objective improvement in timekeeping, complementing previous explorations involving subjective tasks.     

Beyond Stewardship? Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Nature

This article questions whether the model of stewardship is helpful in considering Christian responsibility towards non‐human nature and proposes a different way of treating the issue of care of the environment. In an extended engagement with the theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the article argues that human relations to non‐human nature are best understood by seeing humanity as historical, political and natural. In theological formulation, humanity must be understood asimago dei, imago civitatis andimago mundi. Therefore the place of humanity cannot properly be understood without reference to both God and nature. Humanity, nature and God thereby constitute a ‘common realm’. A new test of Christian responsibility towards non‐human nature is introduced: of primary interest is how historical, political and natural humanity acts in ways which either reveal or obscure the ‘common realm of God, nature and humanity’. At this point, theological self‐understanding moves beyond the model of stewardship.     

Beyond Recovery? a Reply to Tennant

In his paper ‘Changing the Theory of Theory Change: Reply to My Critics’, N. Tennant (1997b) reacts to the critical reception of an earlier article of his. The present note rectifies some of the most serious misrepresentations in Tennant's reply. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

„Beyond efficacy“:

In this study, treatment efficacies of 30 short and long-term treatments with adolescents were presented from the perspective of the afflicted adolescent, the parents and the therapists. Assessments were made 3 times over 1.5 years after 97 therapy sessions on average. Short-term psychotherapy did not significantly contribute to symptom reduction. In the long-term treatments, therapists reported a strong reduction in symptomatology and in communicative disturbances with parents, siblings and friends over time. However, parents perceived less change in symptomatology compared to their children. The quality of the therapists' work with parents did not impact psychotherapy outcome. Tendentially, the type of treatment and the experience of the therapist were relevant for treatment efficacy.