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In this interview, Indian multi-genre author and documentary film-maker Siddhartha Gigoo describes the alienation and trauma experienced by Kashmiri Pandits following their exodus from Kashmir in the 1990s. The interview explores the insurgency in Kashmir, which led to the exile of the Kashmiri Pandits, referring to his 2010 novel, The Garden of Solitude. Gigoo elaborates on the challenges faced by Kashmiri Pandits post-migration in an alien land, where they struggled for food and shelter in the camps and as one-room tenants while also bearing the traumatic past as a heavy load. He discusses the growing sense of insecurity which the Kashmiri Pandits endured as a disconcerting consequence of forced migration and genocide. Underscoring their silent trauma, which had a deep impact on their physical and mental health, he concludes that after 33 years of exile, Kashmiri Pandits still cling to the hope of returning to their homeland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article sets out to initiate and foster a posthumous, critical, and constructive dialogue between two celebrated French-speaking (African) philosophers of the 20th century, namely Marcien Towa (1931–2014) and Fabien Eboussi Boulaga (1934–2018). It seeks to compensate for the historical absence of such a conversation, particularly on Eboussi Boulaga’s part, by carefully scrutinizing and challenging the common belief that the latter criticizes Marcien Towa in his book Muntu in Crisis. Drawing on the preface to this book, the article turns its back on unproductive assumptions and hasty generalizations, thus revealing its quintessence, namely to follow a rigorous method that avoids assuming immediate agreement, unintelligence, or disbelief from either party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to evaluate Marx's conception of alienated labour from the point of view of Alasdair MacIntyre's conception of practice. I will argue that Marx's conception of alienation in The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (and elsewhere) is too abstract, and therefore needs to be revised to reflect the reality of the 21st century. It presupposes that, in capitalism, all salaried and waged labour is alienated (a claim recently reiterated by Amy Wendling in her otherwise outstanding Karl Marx on Technology and Alienation). Clearly, this is not the case. The key characteristics of alienation as spelled out by Marx may not be present in a great variety of contemporary jobs dominated by services, especially if they are (or can be seen as) MacIntyrean practices (for example, practicing medicine in a public hospital or working as an engineer in a private company). Drawing on some of the most notable literature on the forms of alienation and reification, I will aim to theorise the conception of meaningful non-alienated labour. Given that practices, as meaningful non-alienated activities, are small islands of human excellence and resistance against the economic pressures of institutional profit maximisation and the self-valorisation of capital, I will conclude the paper by considering the political importance of this conception of labour for anti-capitalist struggles in the 21st century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the feeling of alienation experienced by lawyers that may have started in law school. It explores the concept of alienation, defined as a feeling of dissonance that arises when an individual makes a series of choices over time that fail to pursue one's deeply felt priorities, which law students can use to describe their experiences and how it may function in their lives. It discusses three lessons of law school that may contribute to alienation.

A central feature of being a celebrity is experiencing a divide between one's public image and private life. By appealing to the phenomenology of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, we analyze this experience as paradoxically involving both a disconnection and alienation from one's public persona and a sense of close connection with it. This 'uncanny' experience presents a psychological conflict for celebrities: they may have a public persona they feel alienated from and that is at the same time closely connected to them and shapes many of their personal interactions. We offer three ways in which a celebrity might approach this conflict: (i) eradicating the divide between their public and private selves, (ii) splitting or separating their private and public selves, or (iii) embracing the arising tension. We argue that it is only this third approach that successfully mitigates the negative effects of the alienation felt by many celebrities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

As Australian higher education grapples with its colonial history, there has been significant attention to recruiting Indigenous students. However, while we have seen increases in Indigenous participation, males lag significantly behind. Very few Indigenous males enter university and even fewer enter the upper echelons of the stratified higher education sector. In this paper, we investigate the experiences of four Indigenous young men who attended an elite Australian higher education institution. Central to our analysis is how their identities are realised in relation to their sense of Indigeneity and Western ways of knowing, being and doing. In capturing the complex identity work of young Indigenous men, we report on three themes present in the data: feelings of alienation and isolation; identification with their Indigenous identity; and how they view higher education in shaping their futures. How these young men navigate selective institutions speaks to debates regarding non-traditional and historically excluded student populations in elite spaces as well as the decolonisation of higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of International Social Research is the property of Journal of International Social Research and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Each person has a special relation to his or her own well-being. This rough thought, which can be sharpened in different ways, is supposed to substantially count against objectivist theories on which one can intrinsically benefit from, or be harmed by, factors that are independent of one's desires, beliefs, and other attitudes. It is often claimed, contra objectivism, that one cannot be alienated from one's own interests, or that improvements in a person's well-being must resonate with that person. However, I argue that every theory of well-being must allow that we can be alienated from our own well-being, and that sophisticated objectivists can accept and make use of a resonance constraint against their opponents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Act for the Commutation of Tithes, long-awaited and finally passed in 1836, receives almost no critical attention today. Thanks to the relative success with which commutation handled a taxing system that was as embedded as it was cruel, tithe maps – considered the most complete description of the agrarian landscape at any period – have been glossed over by literary studies. This article responds to calls in map studies to shift focus onto the materiality of maps and their historical conditions of circulation by considering the church door as a noticeboard for the Act. It does so through an analysis of George Eliot's Silas Marner, a novella that was set pre-commutation but written in the same year as the Tithe Amendment Act and that bears a striking, but hitherto unexamined, resemblance to the century's most infamous tithe story. Reassessing Silas's crises of the threshold and the novella's "at once occult and familiar" world means we not only complicate the novella's fairytale status but also introduce Tithe Commutation to more critical conversations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most normative accounts of meaningful work have focused on the value of autonomy and capability for self-development. Here, I will propose that contribution–having a positive impact on others through one's work–is another central dimension of meaningful work. Being able to contribute through one's work should be recognized as one of the key axiological values that work can serve, providing one independent justification for why work is valuable and worth doing. Conversely, I argue that having to do work that has no positive impact, or where one is separated from such impact, is an underrecognized type of alienation. Such alienation as pointlessness can be as harmful as the more recognized types of alienation such as powerlessness. Recognizing contribution as a core dimension of meaningful work is compatible with both subjectivist and objectivist accounts of meaningfulness, but I come to support a mixed view where the subjective sense of contributing must be sufficiently warranted by the facts of the situation. Recognizing the inescapable interest humans have for being able to contribute and engage in work that is not pointless has implications for the duties societies, organizations, and individuals have as regards ensuring that work conducted includes a recognizable positive impact. Along with autonomy and self-development, contribution should thus be seen as an independent axiological value that work can serve, its frustration being associated with a specific type of alienation, and it itself playing a key role in what makes work valuable and meaningful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the experiences of the author, Vanessa Lim, who pursued an academic career, facing the challenges of loneliness and visa constraints while trying to remain in the U.K. She grapples with personal and professional decisions, the desire to stay in London, and the impact of global events, ultimately leading to a difficult choice about where to call home.

Copyright of Revista Estudios de Filosofía is the property of Universidad de Antioquia, Instituto de Filosofia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Existing literary studies on migration and diaspora have mostly concentrated on issues affecting the homeland, questions of identity, memory, belonging and longing, and the politics of location across borders. Cross-sub continental comparison between south Asians and West African migrants' lived experiences seem to be less under the radar. However, since diaspora space represents an intersection of cultures, peoples, religions and psychic processes, this paper attempts to comparatively explore the processes that plunge migrants into an unsettling liminal space of unwelcome using Nadeem Aslam's Maps for Lost Lovers from South Asia and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah from West Africa. The engagement of these works from both divides is to explore the contours inherent when people are dislocated from their homeland attempting to navigate their ways in the new world. The impetus is to examine the geographical peculiarities that heighten the tension of migrants on one hand and the contest of cultural beliefs especially, religious practices that portend a distortion of identity, alienation and create tension between characters in the novels. The study divulges that the perception of the migrants about the flora and fauna from both subcontinents are similar and it heightens the feeling of alienation in diaspora on one hand and on the other, the differences in cultural systems create a tension especially among the characters of Islamic background. It is concluded that for Muslims living in the west, religio-cultural conflict is major signifier in the contests that are inherent in diaspora space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Karl Marx took technological development to be the heart of capitalism's drive and, ultimately, its undoing. Machines are initially engineered to perform functions that otherwise would be performed by human workers. The economic logic pushed to its limits leads to the prospect of full automation: a world in which all labor required to meet human needs is superseded and performed by machines. To explore the future of automation, the paper considers a specific point of resemblance between human beings and machines: intelligence. Examining the development of machine intelligence through the Marxist concepts of alienation and reification reveals a tension between certain technophilic post-labor visions and the reality of capitalistic development oriented towards intelligent technology. If the prospect of a post-labor world depends on technologies that closely resemble humans, the world can no longer be described as post-labor. The tension has implications for the potential moral status of machines and the possibility of full automation. The paper considers these implications by outlining four possible futures of automation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For Jean Herbison, learning in her early 20th century childhood world was relatively uncomplicated and predictable. Life was shaped by unambiguous family, faith and settler colonial prescriptions about how children should behave and what they should become. Approaching the centenary of her birth, children today must navigate a very different society of 'unlimited can'; an achievement society that generates a debilitating compulsion to self-improve (Byung Chul-Han). In this Herbison lecture, I offer a personal reflection on the contemporary 'triangle' of education research, policy and practice in Aotearoa New Zealand. Viewed as a culturally and historically specific 'form of life' (Rahel Jaeggi), I ask whether, over the last thirty five years, this triangle may have unwittingly contributed to a collective failure to give adequate recognition to children's learning. Despite our best intentions, have we simply reified students and in doing so alienated them from learning in all its complexities and dimensions (Knud Illeris)? More than mere acknowledgement of 'the other', recognition theory highlights the importance of socially developed qualities such as confidence, respect and esteem (Axel Honneth) to each child's capacity to develop meaningful relationships to or 'resonance' with an ever accelerating and uncontrollable world (Hartmut Rosa) and the people and communities in it. In practical terms, then, what can we draw on that is already immanent in our research, policy and practice triangle to transform children's institutionalised learning? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his 1843 novella A Christmas Carol Dickens takes the sensations usually associated with alienation and disenchantment in the nineteenth century and reappropriates their language and energy to reenchantment. We can therefore read A Christmas Carol not only as the conversion narrative of Scrooge from bad capitalist to good capitalist, as has been done many times, but also Dickens’ reckoning with the possibilities afforded by modern life and modernity as a narrative device in his turn to the biographical form. In essence, Dickens charts a move forward which allows the strangeness and uncanny sensations of modernity to explode out into webs of possibility made possible but not limited by the conventions of the realist novel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the concept of lost gestures in bourgeois society, highlighting Giorgio Agamben, an Italian philosopher focusing on politics and aesthetics, and Theodor Adorno, a German philosopher known for his critical theory of culture. Topics discussed include Agamben's assertion of the bourgeois class's estrangement from its gestures, Adorno's historical materialist analysis, and the potential for new, comical gestures.

The phenomenon of resonance is central in the contemporary literature on well-being. Many philosophers accept the Resonance Constraint: if something is good for a person, it must resonate with her. Failing to meet this constraint is often thought to be a forceful blow to a theory of well-being. It is widely assumed that resonance must be motivational. I call attention to and argue for an underexplored aspect of resonance, namely cognitive resonance. I provide arguments for Belief-Resonance, the claim that if a person believes that something is good for her, it resonates with her. The Resonance Constraint allegedly favors subjectivism. I argue that there are facts about people's well-being and that someone who is fully informed and reasons well would come to have true beliefs about her well-being. Based on these arguments, I formulate and defend a novel strategy for objectivists to respond to alienation objections. I conclude that objectivism is as well equipped to deal with alienation problems as prominent subjectivist views that appeal to idealization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maurice Blanchot's "The Strange and the Stranger" (1958) is an essential text for understanding Blanchot's thought, its development, and its enduring importance. He presents an early account of the impersonal "neuter" in subject-less experiences like "alienation," "alteration," "dispersion," "disappearance," and "absence." These experiences of strangeness threaten thought, which is only "itself and for-itself its own experience." Relatedly, they also reveal "the neutrality of being or neutrality as being." With reference to both Emmanuel Levinas and Martin Heidegger, Blanchot clarifies the meaning and exigency of a neuter that can take "upon itself the reality of alienation." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the concepts of alienation and identification in the context of the Anthropocene. It is a common claim in environmental thinking that alienation from nature drives ecological destruction and that a part of the cure for such an unhealthy relationship to nature is to recover a sense of identification with nature. The article challenges this view, by arguing that in the Anthropocene identification with nature may not be solely good, alienation from nature may not be solely bad, and identification and alienation may not be mutually exclusive phenomena. This thesis is defended through a critique of Arne Næss’s view on identification and alienation, and by drawing and elaborating on Simon Hailwood’s study of alienation in environmental philosophy and Adorno’s critique of “identity-thinking.” It also considers a specific case, the so-called “Plastic Whale” that was stranded outside the coast of Norway in 2017. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We know from experience that a stable feature of the human predicament is internal alienation: our various psychic states (knowledge, choices, desires, emotions) are often in conflict with one another. We are divided selves. In this paper, I delineate the nature and argue for the importance of a spiritual discipline of reading literature as a way of addressing this division. My argument comes in two stages. First, I offer a diagnosis of why we fail to be wholehearted that develops Aristotle's idea that a fundamental source of internal division within the soul is between what we know and how we see or construe our present situation. Second, I show how a spiritual discipline of reading literature is the right prescription for retraining our habits of construal so as to bring them into harmony with our knowledge. I conclude with a few remarks about how to put this discipline into practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The gradual collapse of the work unit system and high population mobility have exacerbated Chinese urban dwellers' life uncertainties, and many have been forced to invest less in their surroundings and become alienated from local life. This study posits that people's passive alienation from local life is mainly due to certain cultural differences at the interpersonal level and a lack of cultural ties at the person-place level. Self-location, self-extension, and self-storage are the three main dimensions of reorganization that Chinese urban dwellers must consider in their local lives. Currently, Chinese urban dwellers' local lives remain in a state of constant flux. Cultural memories of Chinese cities and beliefs regarding future culture continuity could play a role in the reorganization of Chinese urban dwellers' local lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hito Steyerl’s theory of poor images describes images that travel through networks and lose resolution and information.1 This article introduces the concept of purposefully-poor images, or images that are produced within the intention of looking degraded. These are low resolution, overly edited, unruly images who revel in their own mediocrity. Such images showcase the ability of certain meme producers to individually reproduce the look of circulation through specialised artistic practices. This intervention builds on contemporary theories of ugly digital aesthetics, but also situates purposefully-poor images in a longer tradition of aesthetics that emphasise amateur, DIY aesthetics. Such rebellious aesthetics utilises decay and ugliness as a strategy. However, I push further beyond this reading arguing that these images possess an alienated aesthetic. Purposefully-poor images draw attention to their own process of objectification by satirising their degradation. In showcasing the material markers of objectification, purposefully poor images narrativise the feeling of alienation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A familiar puzzle about self-deception concerns how self-deception is possible in light of the paradoxes generated by a plausible way of defining it. A less familiar puzzle concerns how a certain type of self-deception—being self-deceived about one's own intentional mental state—is possible in light of a plausible way of understanding the nature of self-knowledge. According to this understanding, we ordinarily do not infer our mental states from evidence, but then it's puzzling how this sort of self-deception could occur given that self-deception arises from the mistreatment of evidence. This article argues that to accommodate this kind of self-deception we should accept that sometimes ordinary self-knowledge is inferential, but that this idea needn't be so unappealing. In particular, by showing that such inferential self-knowledge can be both 'transparent' and 'direct', the article argues that it need not imply having an abnormal, 'alienated' relation to the mental state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Historia: Questoes & Debates is the property of Universidade Federal do Parana and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

One way of understanding calls for 'multispecies justice' is to interpret them as utopian demands for a desirable future in which the structural anthropocentrism of conventional forms of morality, including environmental ethics, has been thoroughly abolished. I hope to clarify what kind of utopia multispecies justice might specifically entail. Mobilizing a conceptual framework developed by the science fiction author Octavia Butler, three potential plotlines for the utopia of multispecies justice are identified: the What-If, the If-Only and the If-This-Goes-On. Each of these engages the various tasks of utopianism in interestingly different ways. The key argument is that multispecies justice primarily raises a challenging What-If question: as a critical interrogation of how we should process and experience the world (and our place within it), its power derives from the 'educated hope' to disrupt and reassemble outdated frameworks for making sense of the nature/culture divide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK government's efforts to facilitate shale gas exploration have been matched by a surge of public opposition. The latter has manifested in a broad spectrum of activities in which local communities have "watched fracking"—meaning they have observed, protested, and filmed outside the drilling site, often taking note of when the pumps start and stop. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in northwest England, I analyze residents' various "watching" activities as one dynamic through which they sought to mediate situated modes of sociopolitical erasure. Watching fracking was a form of directly participating in public matters, compensating the watchers for the state's perceived failures and those of corporate models of community engagement. It also helped members of the anti‐fracking community distance themselves from the state and their own feelings of alienation. By thus highlighting how disappointment with state formations interacts with an activist subjectivity, anthropologists can deepen our understanding of the changing relationship between state and society. [fracking, public engagement, state, citizen science, protest, extractive industry, Lancashire, United Kingdom] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]