Wish You Were Queer: Exploring the Potential of Queer Play Parties to Arouse Social Change

Abstract

This article explores how the practice of BDSM sex parties within the queer community can inspire social structure alternatives conducive to sustainability. Drawing from the notion that the dominant social order of neoliberal hetero-patriarchy undermines our ability to address sustainability challenges as a collective, I demonstrate how the same culture disproportionately alienates the queer community. Taking from the theory of subaltern counterpublics, I highlight how social structures created at BDSM queer sex parties challenge dominant cultures and create spaces of inclusivity and radical participation, specifically through communication. These are key criteria called for in commons management, relevant for sustainable futures.     

The missing link between faces and names: Evidence from Alzheimer's disease patients

Retrieval of proper names is a cause of concern and complaint among elderly adults and it is an early symptom of patients suffering from neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease (AD). While it is well established that AD patients have deficits of proper name retrieval, the nature of such impairment is not yet fully understood. Specifically, it is unknown whether this deficit is due to a degradation of the links between faces and proper names, or due to deficits in intentionally accessing and retrieving proper names from faces. Here, we aim to investigate the integrity of the links between famous faces and proper names in AD while minimizing the impact of the explicit retrieval. We compare the performances of AD patients and elderly controls in a face-name priming task. We assess the integrity of the link between faces and names at two different levels: identity level - the name and face belong to the same person; and semantic level - the name and face belong to the same category (e.g., politicians). Our results reveal that AD patients compared with controls show intact semantic priming but reduced priming for person identity. This suggests that the deficits in intentionally retrieving proper names in AD are the result of a partial disruption of the network at the identity level, i.e., the links between known faces and proper names.     

Monotone Quantifiers Emerge via Iterated Learning

Natural languages exhibit many semantic universals, that is, properties of meaning shared across all languages. In this paper, we develop an explanation of one very prominent semantic universal, the monotonicity universal. While the existing work has shown that quantifiers satisfying the monotonicity universal are easier to learn, we provide a more complete explanation by considering the emergence of quantifiers from the perspective of cultural evolution. In particular, we show that quantifiers satisfy the monotonicity universal evolve reliably in an iterated learning paradigm with neural networks as agents.     

义符启动范式下义符的语义和语法激活的时间进程

采用义符启动范式,探讨义符的语义、语法信息的激活进程。结果表明,就义符总体而言,义符的语义激活从启动早期一直持续到启动晚期,义符的语法信息未见有激活。然而,对不成字义符和成字义符分析发现,不成字义符和成字义符的语义、语法激活存在着差异。不成字义符的语义激活只在启动中期出现,语法信息则未见有激活;成字义符的语义信息一直处于激活状态,并且在启动晚期,语法信息也得到了激活。义符的语义、语法信息的激活进程和顺序是由义符的功能决定的。     

BODY POLITICS AND THE POLITICS OF BODIES: Racism and Hauerwasian Theopolitics

Today dominative power operates apart from, and exterior to, those state governmentalities that the "body politics" of Stanley Hauerwas disavows as "constantinian" entanglements such as military service, governmental office, and conspicuous expressions of civil religion. This is especially true with respect to those biopolitical modalities David Theo Goldberg names as "racelessness," by which material inequalities are racially correlated, thereby allowing whiteness to mediate life and ration death. If, as Hauerwas contends, radical ecclesiology is indeed a theopolitical alternative to the nation–state's politics of violence, then it must prove itself resistant to such racialized violence. However, inasmuch as the (largely) uncontested fact of ecclesial segregation recapitulates these broader stratifications and exclusions, the church functions as a passive civil religion and itself participates in the politics of "nonviolent violence." Thus, Hauerwas must do something that he has been reluctant to do. He must talk about race and racism more directly, specifying how his ecclesiological theopolitics resists such forms of violence; more importantly, he must demonstrate how actual ecclesial congregations instantiate such resistance. In short, to be truly nonviolent, Hauerwas's body politics must become a politics of bodies.     

Graced Life After All? Terrorism and Theology on July 22, 2011

On the afternoon of July 22, 2011, a white Norwegian killed seventy‐seven people in and around Oslo. A majority of those killed where Social Democratic youth, camping on the island of Utøya. Dressed as a Norwegian policeman, Anders Behring Breivik took the ferry over to the island and shot sixty‐nine children with a pistol and a semi‐automatic gun. The weapons were carved with Rune names and dedicated to Thor and Odin, the war gods in Norse mythology. About ninety minutes before the attacks, Breivik had published a 1,500‐page manifesto on the Internet, urging radical nationalists in Europe to defend Christianity by fighting back Islamic migration, multiculturalism, and feminism. I propose to analyze how a new project linking “Christian and pagan” was launched through the Oslo massacres. I also make a distinction between the sacrificial aspects of a bloody massacre, and the non‐bloody acts of love that manifested among surviving youth at Utøya, and ask if these contrary acts express, or at least involve, two radically different ways of doing religion.