Care of the Self and Patient Participation in Genetic Discourse: A Foucauldian Reading of the Surgeon General's “My Family Health Portrait” Program

Critics of genetic discourse are concerned that deterministic and discriminatory views of genetics are increasingly becoming adopted. These views argue that current genetic discourse becomes a source of power whereby powerful institutions harm people with so-called “bad” genes. This essay argues that current analyses of the power of genetics discourse are grounded in an improper reading that disempowers patients. Deploying Michel Foucault's concept “care of the self,” this essay claims that genetics discourse is better understood as a way that patients take on power through rhetoric rather than a force that has power over patients. Through a close reading of the “My Family Health Portrait” program, this paper argues that patients experience a process of “subjection” wherein they become agents of and objects of genetics discourse both. This alternative mode of analyzing the power of genetics discourse has implications for our collective understanding of the operations of the care of the self and the uses of genetic information that we propose.     

Toward Epistemic Decolonial Turn in Missio‐Formation in African Christianity

This article is framed with the World Council of Churches' (WCC) mission statement Together towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes, which seems to be reviving academic interests in missio‐formation as an interdisciplinary field study. The mission statement, which is framed in a postcolonial missional discourse, seems to show interest in how missio‐formation as academic discipline can expose the intersectionality of questions of power, politics, and culture in Africa. The matters of agency, subjectivity, pedagogy, and rhetoric are perceived as central to the envisaged public missio‐formation discourse. Hence, this article argues that the nature of the mission statement must also be comprehended as means for decolonizing missio‐formation paradigm in Africa within a decolonial framework which gives critical attention to how missions have functioned as a colonialist mechanism for colonializing African Christian minds and subjectivity.     

The Shattered Horizon How Ideology Mattered to Soviet Politics

This article argues that ideology was of key-importance to the Soviet system. The rules which governed Soviet ideological discourse did not only hold for the producers of ideology but also aimed at filtering public communication. The respect people showed for an ideologically filtered discourse counted as a sign of loyalty. In this way ideology constituted a central pillar of power. The article presents the results of an analysis of political texts dating from the Gorbachev era. It concludes that the Gorbachev reforms eroded the communication filter because they changed the rules on which ideological discourse and thus power rested.     

The Buddha was a devoted nationalist: Buddhist nationalism,ressentiment, and defending Buddhism in Myanmar

Since 2012, Buddhist nationalist movements – especially the 969 movement and Ma Ba Tha – have emerged in Burma/Myanmar seeking to defend Buddhism against mainly the Muslim minority, with monks delivering nationalist anti-Muslim sermons to huge audiences. The aim of this article is to demonstrate how a discriminatory nationalist agenda can – by appealing to the common trope of Buddhism-in-danger – appear to be justified to Buddhists. Based mainly on nationalist sermons, as well as on fieldwork and nationalist publications, this article examines discourse on the Buddha as a nationalist. First, it argues that Burmese Buddhist nationalism, analytically, should be understood as a ressentiment ideological discourse that also informs a Buddhist-nationalist discipline claimed to bring karmic merit. Second, it traces the roots of this ideology to the colonial period. Third, the article outlines and seeks to define how ‘Buddhist nationalism’ should be understood in an emic sense.     

How much Latin should a rabbi know? State finance and rabbinical education in nineteenth-century France

In 1829, the French government authorized the establishment of anofficial national rabbinical academy charged with creating amodern French rabbinate that would facilitate the integration ofFrench Jewry. The most effective method of achieving this goal,however, remained the subject of continuous debate, both withinthe government and within the Jewish Consistory (the officialJewish administration of France) which oversaw the school operation. State involvementintensified after 1831, when the government assumed theresponsibility for the Jewish religious budget. Thereafter, therabbinical school budget depended upon the government's politicaland financial support. Under these circumstances, the Jewish administration neededto pay careful attention to government expectations for theschool and its students. The study of Latin and Greekconstituted one of the focal points for debate between theConsistory and the State, and generated discussion within bothgovernment and Jewish circles. Rabbinical students studiedclassical languages as a regular part of their education; thedegree of emphasis placed upon these subjects, however, variedover time. This article argues that the Latin issue gainedgreater importance as a result of the financial relationshipbetween Judaism and State in nineteenth-century France, and thatthis relationship gave the State considerable leverage in shapingthe curriculum at the French rabbinical school. For schooladministrators, these political and budgetary issues necessitateda course of study delicately balanced between government andJewish ideological goals and the practical realities of running arabbinical school.     

Debate,Prophecy, and Revolution: Notes on Cathleen Kaveny's Prophecy Without Contempt

In Prophecy without Contempt, Cathleen Kaveny argues that prevailing scholarly approaches to religious and public discourse misunderstand the actual complexity of moral rhetoric in America. She endeavors to provide a better account through study of the role the Puritan jeremiad has played. Kaveny then offers a normative case for deliberative public moral discourse and the limited exercise of prophetic denunciation. I argue that Kaveny's distinction between deliberation and prophetic denunciation is overdrawn. They are ideal types that elide other rhetorical forms. Moreover, both deliberative discourse and prophetic denunciation assume a social contract or shared tradition. Healthy moral discourse requires revolutionary rhetoric to interrogate and break traditions that are themselves morally compromised.     

Legitimizing the “War on Terror”: Political Myth in Official‐Level Rhetoric

This paper argues that mythical discourse affects political practice by imbuing language with power, shaping what people consider to be legitimate, and driving the determination to act. Drawing on Bottici's (2007 ) philosophical understanding of political myth as a process of work on a common narrative that answers the human need to ground events in significance, it contributes to the study of legitimization in political discourse by examining the role of political myth in official‐level U.S. war rhetoric. It explores how two ubiquitous yet largely invisible political myths, American Exceptionalism and Civilization vs. Barbarism, which have long defined America's ideal image of itself and its place in the world, have become staples in the language of the “War on Terror.” Through a qualitative analysis of the content of over 50 official texts containing lexical triggers of the two myths, this paper shows that senior officials of the Bush Administration have rhetorically accessed these mythical representations of the world in ways that legitimize and normalize the practices of the “War on Terror.”     

Rereading sophistical arguments: A political intervention

This essay argues that Aristotle's categories of oratory are not as useful in judging the methods of Sophistical rhetoric as his presentation of time. The Sophistical argumentative method of making the weaker the stronger case is re-evaluated as a political practice. After showing this argument's relation to power and ideology, Aristotle's philosophy, which privileges a procedure of argument consistent with the politics of a polis-ideal rhetoric, is offered as reason for objecting to Sophistical rhetoric. The essay concludes that Sophistical rhetoric prefers the concept of possibility over Aristotelian actuality, and offers a need for an ideological space of radical, generative possibility in rhetorical theory.     

Honouring our great grandparents: towards a rhetorical analysis of family therapy

This paper argues that family therapy is an inherently and inescapably rhetorical activity, although its connections with rhetoric have remained largely ignored and the implications for practice unexplored. An uncritical acceptance of a range of postmodern ideas has led many family therapists to ignore the power of their therapeutic rhetoric. The paper offers rhetorical analysis as a tool to help family therapists to reflect on the rhetorical power of their practice and thereby to exercise this power more responsibly.     

The Minority-Majority Conundrum in Northern Ireland: An Orange Order Perspective

Researchers have argued that, depending on the framing of the Northern Ireland conflict, each group could either be a minority or a majority relative to the other. This complicates macrosocial explanations of the conflict which make specific predictions on the basis of minority or majority positions. The present paper argues that this conundrum may have arisen from the inherent variability in microidentity processes that do not fit easily with macroexplanations. In this paper the rhetoric of relative group position is analysed in political speeches delivered by leading members of an influential Protestant institution in Northern Ireland. It is apparent that minority and majority claims are not fixed but are flexibly used to achieve local rhetorical goals. Furthermore, the speeches differ before and after the Good Friday Agreement, with a reactionary "hegemonic" Unionist position giving way to a "majority-rights power sharing" argument and a "pseudo-minority" status giving way to a "disempowered minority" argument. These results suggest a view of the Northern Ireland conflict as a struggle for "symbolic power," i.e., the ability to flexibly define the intergroup situation to the ingroup's advantage.     

French Halakhic Tradition in the Late Middle Ages

This study examines the legal writings of the two leading rabbinic figures in French Jewry in the mid-fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. It characterizes their legal and Talmudic methodology and argues that fifteenth- and sixteenth-century French scholars in Italy were generally following in the footsteps of their predecessors in France. Furthermore, it argues for the ongoing existence of a uniquely French subtradition within the larger Ashkenazic tradition in the late Middle Ages.     

Liberalism, the First Amendment and Religious Studies: a review of Stanley Fish's The Trouble With Principle

In The Trouble with Principle Stanley Fish argues that (1) there are no neutral principles; (2) that liberalism is intolerant, anti-religious and amoral; (3) that only politics, ideology and rhetoric ‘exist’ and that in politics and rhetoric, as in war, ‘anything goes’; (4) that the principles embodied in the First Amendment stand in the way of political responsibility; and (5) that religion, the primary victim of liberalism, should reassert itself in the public sphere and in academe by putting on the full armour of rhetoric and politics. Although in his book Fish distinguishes between professional experts and true believers, he recently has given up this distinction and instead advocates the creation of departments of religious studies staffed by ‘true believers’. Disagreeing with all of these positions, the reviewer argues that Fish's antifoundational attack on liberalism and advocacy of a neo-foundational fideism bespeak a singular lack of political wisdom.     

Talent for Citizenship and the American Dream: the USA as Outlier in the Global Race for Talent

The failed 2007 US Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act (CIRA) included a “points-based system,” a proposal to shift toward supply-driven, merit-based selection. In an intensely polemic environment, this largely Republican initiative was opposed strongly by Democrats who argued that skill-based selection would weaken the traditional moral foundation of the USA, enshrined in its policy of family reunification. Through critical discourse analysis of policy documents and political rhetoric on the floor of the Senate during the CIRA debate, I explore the complexity of the relationship between neoliberalism, race, and immigration policy in the USA. I argue that the points-based system, which would severely disadvantage immigrants from the global south, became a foil for talk about Latino migration. The CIRA debate demonstrates the conflict in the USA between a need for (unskilled) labor and a nation-building project that excludes Latino migrants.     

Australian consumers' attitudes toward France a decade after nuclear testing: evidence of forgiveness

• Surveys of Australian consumers before, during, and after French nuclear testing in the Pacific in 1995 show clear evidence of negative reaction of consumers to the testing with regards to their ratings of France and French products. Although beliefs about French products did not decline following the announcement of the planned testing, evaluative feelings, and behavioral orientation towards France, the French and French products did. However, by 2005 behavioral orientation to French products, as well as attitudes to France and the French had more than recovered. The components of attitudes to products and country‐people are examined in the context of theories of forgiveness to understand processes that could explain such a recovery. Implications for researchers and marketers in the increasingly frequent situations of international tensions are discussed.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Flashbulb memories in social groups: a comparative test-retest study of the memory of French President Mitterrand's death in a French and a Belgian group

Flashbulb memories are vivid and long-lasting memories for the reception context of an important public event (Brown & Kulik, 1977). They are assumed to be triggered by emotional factors (i.e., intensity of emotional feeling, appraisal of the original event) and by social factors (i.e., social sharing of the news, following media debate about the event). The present study investigated the memory for the death of the former President of France F. Mitterrand in two social groups, i.e., French and Belgian people. This study tests whether the flashbulb memory attributes, the memory for the original event, and the impact of the emotional and social determinants of flashbulb memory differed across groups. The results indicated that the flashbulb memory for Mitterrand's death is affected by group provenance, as French people showed higher levels of recall for the flashbulb memory attributes and their determinants than Belgian people. Time impaired recollections in both groups, so that flashbulb memories appear prone to decay and share the same destiny as ordinary memories. The theoretical construct of concern--as the most basic antecedent of emotional experiences and its related appraisal (Frijda, 1994)--is discussed in order to explain the differences in memory of the two social groups.     

Ideology,Discourse and Social Theory: André Du Toit's Contribution to South African Studies

Abstract

Du Toit's conception of ideology, discourse and texts as applied to South African intellectual history lies on the edges, is deeply layered and open to multiple interpretations and approaches. In this paper, I want to trace those identifiable, yet faint, pathways passing through Marxist, Post-Structuralist and Post-Colonial literature, which allow us to appreciate Du Toit's contribution to our understanding and analysis of ideology in South African history and politics. The first part identifies the problems associated with applying a narrow conception of ideology to Afrikaner and African nationalist discourses in South Africa. The second section traces the debate of ideology in the context of Marxism, particularly the relationship between ideology and power. This is followed by a discussion of ideology in relation to discourse and, finally, the paper concludes with an overview of Du Toit's reworking of Thompson's framework. We will see how Du Toit's conception of ideology—one related to a broader social theory, and also to the production of discourses, the relations of domination and the constitution of subjects—provides a far more nuanced conception to apply to South African intellectual history.     

Transversal-Universals in Discourse Ethics: Towards a Reconcilable Ethics Between Universalism and Communitarianism

This paper discusses the possibility of an ethics of difference. It begins with an introduction to current poststructural and critical theories in order to show their significance for transcultural politics and ethics. Its theme is formulated in terms of the debate between the affirmation of ethical cognitivism cast in the form of universalism and the advocacy of moral skepticism in the mode of communitarianism. Distancing itself from the idea of universal morality, this paper attempts to respond to the challenge of both communitarians and deconstructionists in contemporary French poststructuralism. In the end, it argues for transversality in place of universality.     

马克思的意识形态批判理论

马克思的意识形态批判理论是历史唯物主义的重要组成部分，也是国内外学术界争论的热点问题，本文探讨的是马克思的意识形态概念，意识形态批判理论的内容：哲学向度和政治经济学向度，以及马克思意识形态批判理论的问题领域。     

Talking about Antisemitism in France Before and After <Emphasis Type="Italic">Charlie Hebdo</Emphasis> and Hyper Cacher

This article explores tensions in French Jewish discourses about antisemitism in the post-2000 period. Drawing on commentary from French Jewish intellectuals, national Jewish organizations, and the French Jewish press from the mid-2000s until after the Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher attacks, I note a complex relationship between change and continuity in discursive characterizations of French antisemitism. While empirical manifestations of antisemitism were notably transformed by the Toulouse attacks of 2012, much French Jewish discourse insisted on continuity from the early 2000s onward. At the same time, Jewish narrative practices shifted rather dramatically. In a political context where Israel was often depicted as part of a history of violent settler colonialism, early 2000s Jewish discourse divorced French antisemitism from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and (post)colonial racism in France. After 2012, some Jewish commentators linked Israel to French antisemitism by likening terrorism in Israel with Islamic antisemitism in France. These disjunctures between narratives and empirical violence suggest that the “structures of feeling” behind Jewish reactions to contemporary antisemitism cannot be reduced to empirical questions about safety and security. Social scientists thus need to move beyond an empirical analysis of antisemitism itself and attend to the cultural and affective work Jewish discourses about antisemitism do in any particular moment.     

‘From the time he took on the form of a servant’: The Christ's Pilgrimage of Faith

Addressing the pistis christou debate in New Testament studies, this article argues that in the eternal life of the perfect God, the divine Son pleases the Father in the Spirit and, therefore, the divine Son trusts the Father by the Spirit's power during his earthly pilgrimage. It roots soteriology in Christology and shows that the christological account flows forth from the eternal relations of the Trinity. The article concludes by noting implications for dogmatics and exegesis.