Posthuman Ethics and the Becoming Animal of Emmanuel Levinas

Abstract

This essay considers Levinas' face-to-face ethical relation together with Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's concept of ‘becoming animal’ as a response to the radical dehumanisation involved in biopolitics. Framing his analysis in terms of an archaic law banning wrongdoers as wolves, Giorgio Agamben shows that biopolitics strips humans of subjectivity and exposes them to political power. Levinas' answer to radical dehumanisation is an ethical humanism of the other, but his ethical program is barred from politics. Moreover, he writes that in his own experience of dehumanisation, the only ethical being he encountered was Bobby, the camp dog. It seems biopolitics calls for an ethical politics that we might possess as bare life, outside of the autonomous, individualising conditions of the humanist subject. To this aim, I apply Deleuze and Guattari's concept of becoming animal as a devise to transport Levinas' ethics of alterity to the political realm.     

Mediating the Ethics of Technology: Hollywood and Movie Piracy

This essay invites readers to re‐examine the cultural meaning of movie piracy in the context of Hollywood's global domination of world cinema. It focuses on VCD piracy in Asia. This popular low‐end technology interrogates and deconstructs the technological fetishism that dominates contemporary Hollywood productions. This essay asks whether and how movie piracy can be theorised to yield a more productive understanding of technology as people's corporeal experience of the material world in a socially constructed political economy.     

Governing by Values. EU Ethics: Soft Tool,Hard Effects

The institutionalization of ethics and the direct influence of politics on how ethics bodies frame their opinions have been widely recognized and explored in the last few years. Less attention has been paid to what kind of normative instrument “ethics” as an institutional phenomenon has become in the State under the rule of law, and which institutional powers it has depended on. This paper analyzes the rise of ethics in the European Union context, where ethics, constructed as an isolated set of values, has been exploited for its symbolic capacity to evoke citizenship, has become quite formalized as to certain features, and has acquired the potential to redefine the traditional divisions of powers in the State under the rule of law.     

Ethics of University Research,Biotechnology and Potential Military Spin-off

The paper provides a briefintroduction to the biotechnology revolutionand its impact upon biological researchrelevant to military uses. It describes thestatus of biological weapons today, and currentefforts to strengthen the Biological WeaponsConvention with a legally binding complianceprotocol. Specific modifications ofmicro-organisms that may be of military use arediscussed. Three examples of dual-use researchactivities are then used to highlight issuesand dilemmas in ethical decision making.     

Decoupling Policy and Practice: How Life Scientists Respond to Ethics Education

Many graduate programmes in science now require courses in ethics. However, little is known about their reception or use. Using websites and interviews, this essay examines ethics requirements in the field of biosciences in three countries (the United States of America, the United Kingdom, and Italy) between 2000 and 2005. Evidence suggests that current policies may be ineffective, and that scientists who take ethical issues seriously are seen as exceptional.

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中国传统文化中的生态伦理观念

“生态伦理”是近年来新出现的一个前沿话题 ,它主要思考的是人与自然之间的道德关系 ,不同于传统的人与社会的道德概念。在以往有关生态的美学研究中 ,大都孤立地谈论生态中的美学构成或生态思想 ,虽然联系了人 ,但没有联系人的行为和动机与生态所构成的伦理关系。以崇尚自然为基本精神的中国传统文化不仅蕴涵着深刻的自然生态观 ,同时也体现出以关注自然界中的人为鲜明特征的生态伦理精神 ,这与当代环境伦理学所阐述的思想具有相通之处。中国人的审美世界事实上是以生态伦理为依据而形成的一种宏大的、整一的、体现出人文内涵的精神境界 ,它通过自然哲学和人生哲学两个层面体现出来。当代生态环境面临的危机的根源还在于美学 ,在这方面 ,中国传统文化中的生态伦理观念为我们提供了许多重要的启示。这一优秀美学资源值得我们认真梳理和深入发掘。     

宋代儒学伦理与现代东亚社会

宋代儒学伦理不仅为巩固中国封建社会中央集权制作出了重要贡献,至今仍对中国、韩国、日本、越南、新加坡乃至整个东亚社会的国家巩固、民族凝聚力的形成、社会家庭的稳定、个人道德修养的培育等方面产生着积极而深广的影响.当然其间的弊端也不容小觑.     

新世纪中国文学理论体系的建构伦理与逻辑起点

中国传统的文学理论与传统的文学在"史"的意义上是粘连在一起的,作为现代学科的分家是20世纪二三十年代的事,并与现代学科的文学理论完成了衔接.后来的学者可以从容地检阅一部中国文学理论史发展演化的脉络轨迹,努力用"五四"以后的现代文学理论概念、范畴、术语、体系来作相应的诠释与考察,引导出新的历史思维内容.这无疑是今天中国文学理论学科建设与体系设计的一项艰巨繁重的学术工程.     

整合与开新——黄老政治伦理衍进的理论向度与学术趋势

在东周以来百家交融的历史语境下,黄老学派吸纳诸子精华,对各家政治伦理系统作初步整合.这集中表现为:黄老学者以道德兼采仁义的伦理大整合;重释道家传统的无为政道,并将道家术数思想改造为君主固权用贤的价值原则;倡导重文德、抑事功的治道伦理和崇俭、贵柔的君道观.从思想递嬗角度看,黄老政治伦理的建构过程从一个侧面反映了周秦汉之际百家传统交汇融合的文化趋势;在历史实践层面,则为汉前期政治运作提供了伦理准则和施治规范,最终促成黄老政治局面问世,并且对汉政向伦理政治转型也有推助之功.     

明清徽州生存伦理下的多元文化

在徽州生存伦理的影响下 ,明清时期的徽州社会文化中有着奢侈和节俭的双重体现 ,有着多样化的婚姻形态 ,有着对赋役的抗争和主流职业价值观的重新诠释。徽州社会文化的表层呈现出了多元性的生存意识强烈的一面。     

后现代语境中的儒家本体伦理学发展

本文对“后现代”进行了探讨,指出后现代社会作为对现代性的发展,具有两重性,并包含着对人自身发展的危害,因此而提出人在后现代社会中仍需进行自我精神修养的问题,以便借此认识自我并获得真正的精神自由,而这也就是需要发展儒学尤其是儒家本体伦理学的理由。为应对一些西方学者以后现代的方式消解儒学的原始经典,文中提出以本体诠释学的方法解读文本意图,以克服偏见与盲目性。为探究儒家精神的真谛,本文勾勒了儒学发展的五个阶段,以为后现代社会的出现既是一种挑战,也是一种机遇,由此而提出了在当今后现代语境中发展新新儒学的可能。最后质问了儒学本体论和道德论能否被解构的问题,并提出在解构中建构的方法与原则。     

On the Spot: Seeking Acceptance and Expressing Resistance through the Bindi

Abstract

Originally indicative of adherence to Hindu spirituality, the bindi is gaining popularity beyond Indian shores as a trendy fashion accessory. This paper attempts a discursive analysis of the bindi as a performative indicator of acquiescence to the Indian way of life, and as a symbol of resistance to assert individuality and femininity in the pursuit of larger sociopolitical action. Research findings indicate that although it was once considered a quintessential symbol of Indian womanhood, the bindi as a performative identifier has evolved beyond religious significance to include Indo chic, political affiliation, pseudo spiritual identification, as well as feminism and social activism.     

Valuation struggles over pricing – determining the worth of wind power

Public policies such as feed-in tariffs have been widely introduced to stimulate the development of renewable energies, and sustain a decarbonisation of the electricity sector. Proponents argue that these governance instruments safeguard public goods such as the climate – yet they are accused of creating political markets, and political prices, here understood as market distortion. This paper studies the ‘politics’ of pricing by following the adoption of the first feed-in tariff in France. Pricing as a way of achieving non-economic ends, such as climate mitigation, brings the values of several public goods into play, all the while prompting a translation of these values into a single price. Following the struggles over the pricing of wind power in the early 2000s, the study illustrates that rather than a pollution of the market sphere by that of politics, a politics of pricing can be observed in four distinct struggles: namely the framing of the public interest; valuation as the articulation of the future; the possible agencies of governance; and role of valuation methods and calculations.     

Culturalisation and devices: what is culture in cultural economy?

Theorisation of culture is often absent from research on production in the creative and cultural sector. Further, cultural production has been largely untouched by the insights of the cultural economy approach. Culturalisation is a means of addressing the question of what constitutes culture and thus a cultural (economy) approach. It is the process by which culture and cultural production combine in the ‘operationalisation of the real.’ Culturalisation underpins much scholarship in this journal by posing the (economic) real as a problem of definition in order to illustrate the operations involved in its temporary resolution. The implications of this position need further addressing. There is a feedback between culture as a problem of definition and a cultural approach. Devices can interrogate the relationship between processes of cultural definition and the conceptual parameters of a cultural economy approach. Workshopping, projects and events are put forward as cultural devices emerging from a 10-month ethnography of literary performance in Bristol, England. This illustration shows firstly, how culturalisation occurs in a designated cultural sector to contingently realise culture; and secondly, the implicit logic of cultural economy as culturalisation, typified by the device as method, so as to open a debate concerning its implications.     

雨后春笋入馔鲜

昭苏万物春风里,更有笋尖出土忙。一场溟濛的春雨下过之后,山间竹林里＂飒飒＂冒出好多好多竹笋芽儿,嫩青如玉,秀削玲珑。好竹连山觉笋香,春笋便成了百姓饭桌上一道美味佳肴。以笋入馔历史悠久竹笋,山珍中的翘楚。