Women, “False” Memory,and Personal Identity

We contest each other's memory claims all the time. I am concerned with how the contesting of memory claims and narratives may be an integral part of many abusive situations. I use the writings of Otto Weininger and the False Memory Syndrome Foundation to explore a particular strategy of discrediting women as rememberers, making them more vulnerable to sexual harm. This strategy relies on the presentation of women as unable to maintain a stable enough sense of self or identity to be trustworthy testifiers to their own harm.     

The First Sophists and Feminism: Discourses of the “Other”

In this essay, I explore the parallel between the historical exclusions of rhetoric from philosophy and of women from fields of rational discourse. After considering the usefulness and limitations of deconstruction for exposing marginalization by hierax' chical systems, 1 explore links between texts of the sophists and feminist proposals for rewriting/rereading history by Cixous, Spivak, and others. I conclude that sophistic rhetoric offers a flexible alternative to philosophy as an intellectual framework for mediating theoretical oppositions among contemporary feminisms.     

Women,Nationalism and War: “Make Love Not War”

I analyze the relationship between women and nationalism and argue that women's identity and relationship to the “Other” is different from that of men, hence even when women participate in nationalism it is in a less violent form. I argue, further, that the structures of nationalism are fundamentally homosocial, and antagonism toward women of one's own nation is one of the first forms of attack on the “Other,” and is constitutive of “extreme nationalism.”     

“For Questioning is the Piety of Thought” But,Not Without Consequences in Technocratic Culture

Using a representative anecdote, insights from Jürgen Habermas, Jacques Ellul, and Ivan Illich, and in the form of a collage, this paper advocates a pedagogy of questioning and explores some of the conflicts and consequences of adopting such a pedagogy in a technocratic culture, especially as related to conventional expectations for education framed by efficiency, practicality, and functionality.     

“SCIENCE,” “RELIGION,” AND “SCIENCE‐AND‐RELIGION” IN THE LATE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

Many intellectuals wrote texts on the relations between Islam and science in the nineteenth‐century Ottoman Empire. These texts not only addressed the massive social and cultural changes the Empire was going through, but responded to European authors’ claims about the extent to which Islam was compatible with the modern world. Focusing on several texts written in the second half of the nineteenth century by the influential Muslim Ottoman authors Namik Kemal, Ahmed Midhat, and ?emseddin Sami, this article shows the influence of these exigencies on arguments on Islam and science. In order to represent Islam as a respectable religion in harmony with science, these intellectuals defined a “pure Islam” that was a set of basic principles that could be found in the Qur'an. Rather than an embedded way of life, Islam in these texts was an objectified, delimitable entity that could be imagined as having relations with other entities, such as science.     

On Black Women, “In Defense of Transracialism,” and Imperial Harm

This essay is a response to the events surrounding Hypatia's publication of “In Defense of Transracialism.” It does not take up the question of “transracialism” itself, but rather attempts to shed light both on what some black women may have experienced following from the publication of the article and on how we might understand this experience as harm. It also suggests one way for feminist journals to reduce the likelihood of similar harms occurring in the future. I begin by describing a discussion that occurred in my classroom that bears some resemblance to the much larger debate that emerged around Hypatia. Next, I elaborate a concept of imperial harm. I then address how this concept comes to be relevant to the experience of black women within the discipline of philosophy in general, before briefly describing how academic feminism (including feminist philosophy) has served as a particular site of imperial harm for black women. Finally, touching on the idea of expressive harm, I conclude with an appeal for the adoption of more feminist publication ethics.     

Short-Term Retention of “Surprising” Events By Pigeons

Terry and Wagner (1975) have suggested that the short-term retention of information about an event is enhanced if the occurrence of the event is made unexpected or surprising. Three experiments tested this idea using delayed conditional position (Experiment I) and colour discriminations (Experiments II and III). The subjects were pigeons and the presentation of food was the target event to be remembered. Choice of one of two simultaneously presented stimuli was reinforced if the retention interval had been initiated by presentation of target food. Contrary to Terry and Wagner's claim, retention was superior on probe test trials in Experiments I and II if the presentation of the target food was preceded by a previously established signal for food (CS+) rather than by a stimulus which had not been paired with food (CS-). Experiment III systematically manipulated the signalling conditions used during initial discrimination training. Retention was better following a CS+ presentation if the target food had been signalled during initial discrimination training but worse if the food presentation had been unsignalled. These results do not favour the idea that retention of an event is directly affected by whether or not the target event is surprising.     

Terrorists,Hostages, Victims,and “The Crisis Team”: A “Who's Who” Puzzle

This essay examines the relationship between nonviolence and trustworthiness. I focus on questions of accountability for people in midlevel positions of power, where multiple loyalties and responsibilities create conflicts and where policies can push people into actions that reinstate hegemonic relations. A case study from crisis counseling is presented in which the (mis) management of the case exacerbated previous violence done to a biracial female. The importance of resistance to dominant ideology is scrutinized.     

“Higher” and “lower”: Comparative and categorical interpretations by children

Three-, four-, and five-year-old children's categorical and comparative understanding of high and low were examined in two experiments. Categorical knowledge was assessed by presenting subjects with a single object at varying heights (from 0 to five feet above the ground), and asking if the object was high or low. Comparative understanding of the terms was assessed by showing children two objects at a time and asking which was higher or lower. We observed two patterns of performance in children's categorical treatments: younger children in particular defined disjoint categories for high and low such that they only labelled the extreme heights as high or low, and maintained that middle heights were neither high nor low. Older children defined either-or categories such that all heights were labelled either high or low. We also found that children who defined either-or categories made correct comparative judgments across the entire range of variation whereas children who defined disjoint categories could only judge which of two objects was higher if the objects were not low (at 0 and 1 feet) and which of the objects was lower if the objects were not high (at 4 and 5 feet). The results were interpreted as reflecting a lack of appreciation that the terms are interdefined as negations of each other, and were discussed in terms of the similar semantic-congruity effects found in adults.