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The Logic of the Synthetic Supplement in Algorithmic Societies Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2024-01-30 Benjamin N. Jacobsen
What happens when there is not enough data to train machine learning algorithms? In recent years, so-called ‘synthetic data’ have been increasingly used to add to or supplement the training regimes of various machine learning algorithms. Seeking to read the notion of supplementarity differently through an engagement with the work of Jacques Derrida, I propose that the nascent emergence of synthetic
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Pastorate Digitalized: Social Media and (De)Subjectification Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2024-01-18 Diana Stypinska
Taking its cue from Michel Foucault’s analyses of the pastoral ‘conduct of conduct’, this paper considers social media as a specific dispositif that derives its mode of operation from the religious techniques of individualization. It argues that today’s preoccupation with digital performances, far from exorcizing the pastoral logic, in fact manifests its secular intensification. By examining social
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Rethinking Critical Sociology, Transcending the Transcendental Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2024-01-17 Bruno Frère, Daniel Jaster
This article calls for a rethinking of critical sociology. Representing classical critical sociology, the Bourdieusian paradigm illustrated domination, but its negative foundation removed actors’ power, privileging sociological knowledge as capable of identifying (social) transcendental categories of thought. Latour’s constructivism challenged this privilege, giving actors the political power of aggregating
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Introduction: The Contemporary Relevance of Vilém Flusser Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2023-05-10 Anita Jóri, Maren Hartmann
In this article, we introduce Vilém Flusser’s theoretical trajectory from the philosophy of language and multilingualism to communication and media theory. Our focus lies on his works Kommunikologi...
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Coloniality and the State: Race, Nation and Dependency Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2023-05-09 Walter D Mignolo, Fábio Santino Bussmann
It is of concern that, until now, Western and Southern theories have not been able to provide a full conceptual understanding of the complicity of the elites and states of former colonies outside t...
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Field Theory and Assemblage Theory: Toward a Constructive Dialogue Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2023-05-06 Will Atkinson
This paper engages with Manuel DeLanda’s Deleuze-inspired ‘assemblage theory’ from a perspective sympathetic to Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory. It first outlines DeLanda’s proposed new ‘philosophy ...
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Rhetoric as Critique: Towards a Rhetorical Philosophy Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2023-04-29 Gerald Posselt, Andreas Hetzel
While philosophy has been defined as a critical endeavour since Plato, the critical potential of rhetoric has been mostly overlooked. In recent years, critique itself – as a means of enlightenment ...
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Reinventing the Diplomat: Isabelle Stengers, Bruno Latour and Baptiste Morizot Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2023-04-29 Iwona Janicka
Recent debates within broadly considered posthumanities have been populated by various conceptual personae. One such figure is the diplomat. First proposed in this context by Isabelle Stengers in h...
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Vilém Flusser’s What If? On Designing Radical Futures Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2023-04-27 Anke Finger
While Vilém Flusser’s writings on (media) philosophy and communication have found a wide readership across the globe, another ‘Flusser’ has been present all along, interwoven perhaps, namely that o...
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Projective Imagination: Vilém Flussers’s Concept of the Technical Image Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2023-04-25 Daniel Irrgang
The article discusses the technical image, a central concept in Vilém Flusser’s later main work Into the Universe of Technical Images (1985a). After identifying its various dimensions, the analysis...
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Class as Collective Representation: Lessons from Wagner and Bayreuth on the Discrete Harms of the Bourgeoisie Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2023-04-24 Philip Smith
The cultural turn has yet to fully reconfigure ‘class’ as a set of fictions, tropes, discourses and enduring culture-structures. Existing Durkheimian approaches have stalled at his middle period mo...
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From Galton’s Pride to Du Bois’s Pursuit: The Formats of Data-Driven Inequality Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2023-04-24 Colin Koopman
Data increasingly drive our lives. Often presented as a new trajectory, the deep immersion of our lives in data has a history that is well over a century old. By revisiting the work of early pionee...
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Post-punk, Industrial Culture Zines, and the Information Dark Age Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2023-04-17 Christopher Haworth
Several scholars have noted parallels between the online communicative tactics of the American alt-right and those of industrial musicians in the 1970s and 1980s. This article explores these connec...
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Narratives of Post-Truth: Lyotard and the Epistemic Fragmentation of Society Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2023-04-10 Christian Baier
In recent years, the post-truth phenomenon has dominated public and political discourse. This article offers a functional analysis of its mechanisms based on the category of narrative. After provid...
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Detour and Dao: Benjamin, with Jullien, contra the Ontology of the Event Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2023-04-10 Peter Fenves
Taking its point of departure from Jullien’s primary claim in The Silent Transformations that ancient Greek ontology propels European thought into ‘the vertigo of the event,’ the article turns towa...
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Nietzsche, Ontology, and Foucault’s Critical Project: To Perish from Absolute Knowledge Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2023-03-27 Aner Barzilay
The phrase ‘To perish from absolute knowledge’ from Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil runs like a red thread throughout Foucault’s reading of Nietzsche, spanning a period of 20 years in which Foucau...
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Foucault Before the Collège de France Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2023-03-27 Stuart Elden, Orazio Irrera, Daniele Lorenzini
This introduction to the special issue ‘Foucault Before the Collège de France’ surveys Foucault’s work in the first part of his career. While there is a familiar chronology to the books he publishe...
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Art, Affect, and Social Media in the ‘No Dakota Access Pipeline’ Movement Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2023-03-01 Robyn Lee
Indigenous-led activism against proposed oil pipelines has relied heavily on social media, as in the #NoDAPL campaign against the Dakota Access Pipeline. This paper explores affective engagement in...
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Getting Our Ontology Right: A Critique of Language and Culture in the Work of François Jullien Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2023-02-22 William Matthews
This article presents a cognitive anthropological critique of François Jullien’s approach to language and culture. Jullien approaches ‘culture’ as a coherent set of concepts across time and space, ...
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‘Enrichment’ as a Pragmatist and Structuralist Contribution to Economic Sociology: Perspectives on the Approach of Economics and Sociology of Conventions Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2023-02-19 Rainer Diaz-Bone
The article discusses main contributions and results of the monograph Enrichment: A Critique of Commodities, written by the French sociologists Luc Boltanski and Arnaud Esquerre. Boltanski and Esqu...
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An Interview with Luc Boltanski and Arnaud Esquerre on Enrichment: A Critique of Commodity Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2023-02-19 Rainer Diaz-Bone
In this interview, Luc Boltanski and Arnaud Esquerre introduce their book Enrichment and core concepts for the analysis of new developments in contemporary capitalism. The study focuses the analysi...
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Epigenomics and the Xenoformed Earth: Bioinformatic Ruminations with Gilbert Simondon Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2023-02-14 William R. Morgan
A quiet revolution in genetics is increasingly rendering our milieu strange and artificial. Epigenomics, informatic cousin of epigenetics, is a xenoforming process, giving birth to an alien milieu,...
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Race, Capitalism, and the Necessity/Contingency Debate Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2023-02-10 William Conroy
Interest in the relationship between race and the expanded reproduction of capitalism has exploded across the social sciences and humanities over the past several years. Despite this widespread app...
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Justice, Injustice and the Work of Julia Kristeva Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2023-02-09 John Lechte
Taking a largely thematic approach, this reflection aims to demonstrate the richness of Julia Kristeva’s theoretical work in relation to questions of justice and injustice. Injustice becomes primar...
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What Is a Neganthropic Institution? Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2023-02-08 Michał Krzykawski
This article discusses the relation between the institutions and the production of entropy as read by Bernard Stiegler and locates this discussion within a more specific debate on institutions in a...
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Adorno on Philosophy and Sociology Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2023-02-08 Gabriel O. Apata
Philosophy and sociology appear to belong to separate spheres of thought, which might explain why they exist as separate academic disciplines. But in what way, if any, are philosophy and sociology ...
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Interview with Renato Ortiz: Intersections between Sociology and Anthropology Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2023-02-08 Otávio Daros
A prominent figure in the social sciences in Brazil and Latin America, Renato Ortiz is invited in this interview to reflect on his intellectual and academic trajectory, whose (re) beginning goes ba...
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From Computer Science to ‘Hermeneutic Web’: Towards a Contributory Design for Digital Technologies Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2023-02-08 Anne Alombert
This paper aims to connect Stiegler’s reflections on theoretical computer science with his practical propositions for the design of digital technologies. Indeed, Stiegler’s theory of exosomatizatio...
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Analyzing Narrative: Roland Barthes’ Forgotten Interview Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2023-02-08 Jonathan Culler
This commentary reflects upon an interview with Roland Barthes from 1965 in which he discusses the structural analysis of narrative. The presentation prefigures the publication of Barthes’ well-kno...
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Mary Douglas on Purity and Danger: An Interview Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2023-02-08 Mike Featherstone, Bryan S. Turner
This interview with Mary Douglas took place at Lancaster University in the Religious Studies Department. The main focus of the interview was her recently published book, Purity and Danger, which ha...
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Notes on Structuralism: Introduction Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2023-02-08 Sunil Manghani
This commentary introduces a section of the journal titled ‘Notes on Structuralism’. It centres around two interviews. The first, from 1987, is with the structural anthropologist Mary Douglas (who ...
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Walter Lippmann, Neoliberalism, and the Gathering Storm Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2023-02-08 William E. Connolly
Adapt!: On a New Political Imperative, by Barbara Stiegler, reveals how neoliberalism in the 1930s took the shape of an entire social philosophy; it also shows how her book must be updated today. A...
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Bernard Stiegler and the Internation Project: An Introduction Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2023-02-08 Ryan Bishop
This article serves as the introduction to the Annual Review special section entitled ‘Bernard Stiegler and the Internation Project: Computational Practices and Circumscribed Futures’. As such, it ...
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On Narrative: An Interview with Roland Barthes Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2023-02-08 Paolo Fabbri, Monica Sassatelli, Sunil Manghani
This article presents a dialogue between Roland Barthes and Paolo Fabbri, which took place on 18 December 1965 in Florence, Italy. Barthes offers an engaging account of his structuralist approach t...
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Towards an Ontology of Contemporary Reality? Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2023-02-03 Simon Susen
The main purpose of this paper is to provide a critical overview of the key contributions made by Luc Boltanski and Arnaud Esquerre in Qu’est-ce que l’actualité politique? Événements et opinions au...
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Foucault and Agamben on Augustine, Paradise and the Politics of Human Nature Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2023-01-21 Sergei Prozorov
This article focuses on Foucault’s and Agamben’s readings of Augustine’s account of human nature and original sin. Foucault’s analysis of Augustine’s account of sexual acts in paradise, subordinate...
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Artistic Activism and Museum Accountability: Staging Antagonism in the Cultural Sphere Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2023-01-21 Konstantinos Pittas
This article examines the diversity of tactical interventions that transpired at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2019, culminating in the resignation of the vice-chairman of its Board of Trus...
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Michel Serres and the Philosophy of Technology Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2023-01-21 Timothy Barker
This article explores the topic of technology in Michel Serres’ work. Although a great deal has been said about Serres’ treatment of parasitic relations, noise, interdisciplinarity and communicatio...
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Life or Being: What Possible Existence between Being and Living? Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2022-12-03 François Jullien
The author argues that being-thought, in keeping with the ‘intellectualist choice’ of the Greeks, has narrowed the thinkable to the question of whether something is or is not. The discourse-reason ...
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Note on Du ‘temps’: Elements for a Philosophy of Living Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2022-12-02 Paul Ricœur
The author probes Jullien on the problem of time, which is at the heart of European philosophy, while allowing himself to embrace an intelligibility of the ‘infra-philosophical’ leading to a ‘livin...
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The Recording Cure: A Media Genealogy of Recorded Voice in Psychotherapy Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2022-11-30 Hadar Levy-Landesberg, Amit Pinchevski
This article explores the relationship between psychotherapy and sound reproduction technologies from the early 20th century to the present. Subscribing to a media genealogy approach, it traces the...
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Native American Dis/possessions: Postcolonial Trauma in Hitchcock’s Vertigo Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2022-11-14 Stefan Ecks
The Ohlone, the original settlers of the San Francisco region, were violently dispossessed by successive colonial regimes, first Spanish, then US American. The colonial trauma was written out of hi...
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The ‘Optimistic Cruelty’ of Hayek’s Market Order: Neoliberalism, Pain and Social Selection Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2022-10-21 Carla Ibled
This article argues that cruelty, as a willingness to see or orchestrate the suffering of others, is not an unfortunate side-effect of neoliberal theories put into practice but is constitutive of t...
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Neoliberalism and Post-Truth: Expertise and the Market Model Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2022-09-29 Jan Strassheim
Contrary to widespread assumptions, post-truth politicians formally adopt a rhetoric of ‘truth’ but turn it against established experts. To explain one central factor behind this destructive strate...
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Conceptualising Suspended Life: From Latency to Liminality Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2022-09-23 Thomas Lemke
The article focuses on the ability of some animals and plants to respond to changing environmental conditions by temporarily suspending metabolic processes. In contemporary biology, this state betw...
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Reflections on the Turn to Ageism in Contemporary Cultural Discourse Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2022-09-19 Margaret Morganroth Gullette
Distinguished gerontologists, ‘guardians of later life’ who had long kept age and ageism at the heart of their work, were asked by the author why the turn to ageism had not been able to raise age c...
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Neoliberalism and the Defence of the Corporation Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2022-09-07 Nicholas Gane
This article addresses a little-known event in the history of neoliberalism: a conference at Stanford University held in 1982 to reconsider Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means’ The Modern Corporation an...
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Digital Transformations and the Ideological Formation of the Public Sphere: Hegemonic, Populist, or Popular Communication? Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2022-09-05 Sebastian Sevignani
This paper elaborates on a theory of the ideological public sphere in the age of digital media. It describes the public sphere as an initially ascending and then descending communication process that includes both polarising and integrating publics, which are organised by antagonistic media and compromise-building mass media. This framework allows us to distinguish between hegemonic, populist, and
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Post-Truth, the Future of Democracy and the Public Sphere Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2022-09-05 Silke van Dyk
The rise of authoritarian and nationalist forces is currently accompanied by a change in the way public opinion is formed and in the culture of debate, a phenomenon that has been described as a cri...
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Social Media Filters and Resonances: Democracy and the Contemporary Public Sphere Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2022-09-05 Hartmut Rosa
Democratic conceptions of politics are tacitly or explicitly predicated upon a functioning arena for the formation of public opinion in an associated media-space. Policy-making thus requires a reli...
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Social Media and the Digital Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2022-09-05 Philipp Staab, Thorsten Thiel
This article explores the question of how to understand social media following the Habermasian theory of the structural transformation of the public sphere. We argue for a return to political-econo...
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Staying with the Secret: The Public Sphere in Platform Society Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2022-09-05 Timon Beyes
Investigating the structural transformation of the public sphere should reckon with the secret and its modes of organization. The expansion of secrecy effected by the infrastructures, platforms, an...
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Corporate Public Spheres between Refeudalization and Revitalization Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2022-09-05 Ulrich Brinkmann, Heiner Heiland, Martin Seeliger
The article critically analyses the gaps and the analytical potential in Jürgen Habermas’s The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere concerning corporate discourses and debates. It is show...
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A New Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere? An Introduction Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2022-09-05 Martin Seeliger, Sebastian Sevignani
The political public sphere is important for democracy, and it is changing – this is how the quintessence of Jürgen Habermas’s monumental study on The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere...
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Reflections and Hypotheses on a Further Structural Transformation of the Political Public Sphere Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2022-09-05 Jürgen Habermas
This article contains reflections on the further structural transformation of the public sphere, building on the author’s widely-discussed social-historical study, The Structural Transformation of ...
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‘No Justice, No Peace’: Black Radicalism and the Atmospheres of the Internal Colony Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2022-08-24 Illan rua Wall
Instead of thinking of ‘public order’ as the type of power that police deploy to manage disorder, this article suggests that we understand it as a set of background affects. The problem of analysin...
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Progressive Social Movements and the Creation of European Public Spheres Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2022-07-01 Donatella Della Porta
While the normative debate on European integration has addressed the importance of the construction of truly democratic institutions as well as the establishment of social rights at EU level, the role of progressive social movements has not been much debated. Building upon theorization and research in social movement studies, I argue that progressive social movements are indeed already contributing
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Linguistics and Social Sciences Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2022-06-20 Michel Foucault
Written with the suppression of the Tunisian students by their own government in view, Michel Foucault’s March 1968 ‘Linguistics and Social Sciences’ opens up a new horizon of historical inquiry and epitomises Foucault’s abiding interest in formulating new methods for studying the interaction of language and power. Translated into English for the first time by Jonathan D.S. Schroeder and Chantal Wright
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Reforesting Native America with Drones: Rooting Carbon with Arborescent Governmentality and Decolonial Geoengineering Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2022-06-14 Adam Fish
The Confederated Colville Tribes collaborated with DroneSeed, a forestry drone start-up, to use drones to replant their tribal forest after a devastating fire. Using concepts from Bernard Stiegler ...
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Did Foucault Find a ‘Way Out’ of Hegel? Theory, Culture & Society (IF 2.517) Pub Date : 2022-06-01 Pierre Macherey
A ‘way out’ expresses a movement which looks completely different depending on whether one views it prospectively or retrospectively: in the first instance, it signifies ‘to emerge from’, which suggests a relationship of continuity; in the second it signifies ‘to breach a threshold’, a distancing, that is to say, a rupture. Which of these two meanings should we ascribe to the expression ‘Foucault’s