Philosophy - Book Chapters
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Item A critical cartography of the mattering(s) of identity politics(Routledge, 2025-02-20) Geerts, Evelien; Kontturi , Katve-Kaisa; Leppänen, Taru; Mehrabi , Tara; Tiainen, MillaCurrently the subject of polarising debates and political instrumentalisation, identity politics – together with how it is entangled with identity as a lived but also theorisable experience consisting of discursive, material, and affective dimensions – is rightfully regarded as a complex phenomenon. This chapter unpacks some of this complexity by mapping out the matters – and matterings of – identity (politics) by means of a critical cartographical methodology (see Deleuze and Guattari [1980] 2005; Braidotti [1994] 2011). After sketching out several critical materialist philosophical conceptualisations of identity (politics), such as those rooted in feminist standpoint theory, situated knowledges, intersectional activism and scholarship, queer theory, and queer of colour critique, a critical new materialist framework that continues along these matter(ings)-emphasising lines is presented. This critical new materialist framework, or put differently, an interferential framework (cf. Haraway 1997; Barad 2007; Geerts and van der Tuin 2013, 2021), conceptualises identity as an always-shifting myriad of the discursive-material-affective (cf. Puar 2012; Lykke 2020; Tiainen et al. 2020). This interference-based framework not only allows for a more conceptually clear and multifocal theorisation of all things identity, consequently highlighting a coalitional identities-based politics, but it also demonstrates that contemporary critical new materialist thought builds on preceding feminist materialist paradigms.Item Neoliberal and (post-)pandemic irruptions: Reconceptualising critical pedagogies for more-than-human crisis times(Routledge, 2024-05-14) Geerts, Evelien; Carstens, Delphi; Bustillos Morales, Jessie A.; Zarabadi, ShivaThis strong collaboration-rooted essay experiments with a so-called irruptive methodology to weave together the authors’ (post-)pandemic critical pedagogical experiences and praxes from within the contemporary neoliberal higher educational landscape. These experiences and praxes are mixed with irruptive philosophical snippets, conceptual passages, and narratives, each informing one another while addressing the many challenges attached to theorising and teaching in these more-than-human crisis times. Building on the work of critical pedagogical, posthumanist, and new materialist thinkers, the necessity of analysing these neoliberal (post-)pandemic times of crisis in their more-than-human complexity is then explained. This is done by sketching out a philosophical genealogy of ‘irruption’, presented here as a methodology and in the form of ‘neoliberal (post-)pandemic irruptions’. By reconceptualising these irruptions as events that challenge our teaching praxes but also simultaneously have the potential to reorientate us, this essay provides the reader with a situated critical pedagogy fit for more-than-human crisis times.Item Keeping human rights out of poverty(Edward Elgar, 2021-04-20) Bufacchi, Vittorio; Egan , Suzanne; Chadwick, AnnaIn Keeping Human Rights Out of Poverty Bufacchi defends the controversial view that human rights discourse may not be the best instrument for addressing global poverty. There are four main parts to this paper. Part 1 will give a general overview of some of the main arguments in favour of addressing the question of poverty in terms of a human rights discourse, while Parts 2 and 3 will argue that the link between poverty and human rights is at best superfluous and at worse counterproductive to the advancement of human rights or to the fight against poverty. Part 4 will consider, but ultimately reject, the view that it is necessary to describe poverty in terms of a human rights violation since doing so switches the debate from ethics to international law. In Poverty and the Rhetoric of Human Rights: A Reply to Bufacchi, Jesse Tomalty argues that Bufacchi does not succeed in undermining the rhetorical value of characterizing poverty as a human rights violation. This is because his arguments rest on an unduly narrow conception of human rights, according to which their normative role is limited to providing grounds for international intervention. According to Tomalty, the characterization of poverty as a human rights violation can be supported by a broader conception of human rights that better captures the wide array of normative roles they play in discourse and practice.Item Liberalism and structural injustice: when the solution becomes the problem(Edward Elgar, 2024-05-09) Bufacchi, Vittorio; Ivison, DuncanIf structural injustice is the problem, could liberalism be the solution? This paper argues that over the last few centuries liberalism tackled three manifestations of historical injustice (slavery; natural hierarchies; colonialism) by promoting the mantra of individual rights, but the unintended consequence of this philosophy has been to engender and legitimize even more enduring forms of structural injustice (exploitation; inequality; domination). Historical injustice has not gone away, it has simply learned to accommodate liberal orthodoxy. To tackle structural injustice, it may be necessary to look beyond liberalism.Item Deluded mindfulness(Taylor & Francis, 2023-12-22) Dockstader, Jason; Ferrarello, Susi; Hadjioannou, ChristosThis chapter looks at two Chinese traditions that can be described as offering a similar kind of unorthodox practice of mindfulness. Both the classical Daoism of the Zhuangzi and the medieval Buddhism of the Tiantai school develop an approach to mindfulness that presupposes unique metaphysical and epistemic views. In contemporary philosophical terms, by combining a strong many-one identity view in mereology, a novel form of existence monism in fundamental metaphysics, and an explosive trivialism in epistemology, both classical Daoism and Tiantai Buddhism develop an approach to mindfulness wherein each and every moment of experience or thought is accessed and regarded as creating, inherently including, and ultimately being identical to each and every other moment of experience. Every partially and locally coherent, yet wholly and globally incoherent, phenomenon is created by the discerning, deluded mind of everyday sentient beings, and it is by contemplating this deluded mind that one reaches similar soteriological goals of liberation and independence. In the Zhuangzi, this is found in the discussions of the ‘fasting of the mind’ and ‘sitting in forgetfulness,’ of matching Nature's endless production of momentary indexical distinctions, each of which contains the entirety of the Dao's infinite multiplicity. In Tiantai, this is found in discussions of the ‘contemplation of the mind’ and ‘contemplation of inherent inclusion,’ of the attempt to access ‘one moment of experience as three thousand worlds,’ with such ‘three thousand worlds’ being all phenomena created by the deluded mind, which is, namely, everything. The chapter, then, develops this novel form of mindfulness and calls it ‘deluded mindfulness.’ In the process, it aims to ascribe to deluded mindfulness the capacity to offer therapeutic benefits that follow from affirming the many contradictory understandings of mindfulness today.