Deleuze and literature: Metaphor and indirect discourse

This paper deals primarily with Deleuze's work on literature? but also looks briefly at related ideas in the books on cinema. Deleuze has often concentrated on what he calls ‘American‘ literature, particularly in Critique and clinlque. The first part of the paper seeks to outline some of the main elements of this particular literary field for Deleuze. The paper then goes on to show how the general rejection of metaphor that informs Deleuze's work on literature can be more precisely defined as a theory of free indirect discourse. The concept of free indirect discourse is? as Frangois Zourabichvili has shown, at the heart of Deleuze's work? aesthetic or otherwise. For example, the idea of the percept functions as an aesthetic application of free indirect discourse, and Cinema 1 and Cinema 2 suggest that this form of enunciation represents a new aesthetic cogito to which cinema is ideally suited.     

Chieftains Delivering: Testing Different Measures of “Pork” on an Irish Data Set of Discretionary Sports Grants

Distributive spending by a state is often thought to have an electoral connection, and the work on pork-barrel politics whereby spending is geographically targeted is extensive. However, there has been mixed empirical support for the two main hypotheses: (a) that it is targeted at marginal constituencies; or (b) that it goes to party strongholds. Using new data on discretionary sports grant spending in Ireland we offer and test a complementary hypothesis that focuses on the responsible minister as primary decision-maker. We find that the grants are targeted at the responsible minister's constituency. Moreover we test these using three measures of the dependent variable: euro value of the grants, success rate of grant applications and the number of grants allocated per constituency. Our hypothesis is supported in all three models, something we argue gives greater credence to the result.     

Aesthetic Negativity and Aisthetic Traits

Abstract

This article concerns the notion of aesthetic negativity, and related ideas regarding the autonomy of art. After giving some initial definitions and a brief historical sketch of these concepts, we will examine the definition proposed by arguably the greatest thinker of aesthetic negativity, Theodor Adorno, and its recent semiotic reconstruction in the work of Christoph Menke. This reconstruction configures aesthetic negativity and autonomy jointly as the capacity of artworks, and the experiences that they occasion; to processurally negate “automatic” modes of understanding. This account is then critiqued, and contrasted with views on aesthetic experience that stress its nonconceptual and asemiotic aspects, and the close affinity of this modality of experience with perceptual presence and affective intensity, with a clear reference to the phenomenological tradition. Some recent ideas about how semiotic and phenomenological theories regarding art can interact are then cited, and an undertheorized aspect of their connection introduced, which is the main original import of the article. This connection, which is furnished by the concept of aisthetic trait, is derived from psychoanalytic metapsychology, and is an example of how the meaning and presence effects of art can act not just in a competing synchronic fashion, but can morph into each other over time. A trait is a signifier-like perceptual remnant of a prior subjective experience of high intensity that provides a kind of ratification of the experience that endures within the life history of an individual. This is then shown to have relevance to the previous topics of aesthetic negativity and autonomy in terms of the way that the trait mechanism may bring to light important diachronic aspects of aesthetic experience that are currently absent in other accounts in the literature.     

The Modern Concept of Aesthetic Experience: from Ascetic Pleasure to Social Criticism

Abstract

This paper examines the use of "pleasure" as the distinguishing mark of aesthetic experience in post-Kantian philosophy. It shows how the distinctive features of aesthetic experience, such as pleasure, qualify this experience as a platform for social criticism. The key argument is that the autonomy of the aesthetic experience is not "false", rather it is paradoxical in the strong sense that the fact of its communicative efficacy, which follows from distinctive, "autonomous" aesthetic features, necessarily loads it with functions and expectations that are external to the aesthetic moment. Kant takes a complicated path to qualify aesthetic judgement as disinterested in order that it may eloquently testify for morality. He thereby sets up the cogency of the modern pattern of looking to aesthetic experience as a locus of meaningful communication for ideas that are experientially poor or remote.     

德里达与逻各斯中心主义

德里达对西方思想提出了一个著名的诊断,认为西方哲学史是逻各斯中心主义的历史。本文主要从以下三个方面解读德里达的这一思想:第一,逻各斯中心主义实际上是以存在论问题为核心的形而上学;第二,海德格尔在存在论差异问题上的观点给了德里达走出逻各斯中心主义的契机;第三,结构主义语言学为德里达提供了反逻各斯中心主义的工具。     

The Classical Trinity and Kant's Aesthetic Formalism

Abstract

I identify two mutually exclusive notions of formalism in Kant's Critique of Aesthetic Judgement: a thin concept of aesthetic formalism and a thick concept of aesthetic formalism. Arguably there is textual support for both concepts in Kant's third critique. I offer interpretations of three key elements in the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement which support a thick formalism. The three key elements are: Harmony of the Faculties, Aesthetic Ideas and Sensus Communis. I interpret these concepts in relation to the conditions for theoretical Reason, the conditions for moral motivation and the conditions for intersubjectivity, respectively. I conclude that there is no support for a thin concept of aesthetic formalism when the key elements of Kant's Critique of Aesthetic Judgement are understood in the context of his broader critical aims.     

The Moral Efficacy of Aesthetic Experience: Figures of Meaning in the Moral Field

Abstract

This paper proposes to analyse the process that makes paths of action meaningful. It argues that this process is one of "figuration". The term "figuration" intends to outline how the experience of moral meaning is one that already positively marks out a field and to identify and analyse the mechanisms used for such marking and selection. It is my contention that these mechanisms predate the persuasion to a moral path; they are the process through which this path is constructed as meaningful. This thesis is elucidated through an analysis of the tactics of meaning in Kant's moral theory. Kant turns to aesthetics as a means of corroboration for his moral theory, but he also attempts to limit the scope of the interactions between his aesthetic and moral theory. For instance, when he writes on the topic of form in aesthetic taste or outlines the technical specifications of aesthetic judgment, it is arguably the arcane peculiarities of his system that are met. For this reason, Kant insists on the merely analogical relations between beauty and morality. However, it is also possible to see how certain aspects of Kant's aesthetic theory execute wider, and potentially more important, functions for his practical philosophy, such as providing meaningful orientation for the ascetic moral attitude of his duty-ethics. In this respect, certain figures of Kant's aesthetic theory may well be viewed as complementing the dependence in his moral philosophy, in the important sections on moral pedagogy and methodology, on appeals to heroic models and stories as ways of shaping and inculcating the moral disposition. This paper considers these aspects of interaction between Kant's aesthetic and moral philosophies as both (1) a problem for the consistency of his philosophy given his avowed exclusion of aesthetic and religious elements of meaning in his duty-ethics; and (2) as a case study for the new, schematic analysis of "moral figuration" outlined in the paper.     

Dworkin on external skepticism and moral permissions

This article discusses Ronald Dworkin’s first objection against what he calls external moral skepticism, the view that denies truth-value to moral judgments. According to that objection, an external skeptic denies that substantive moral judgments can be true. But, at the same time, the objection goes, what follows from the skeptical view is that all actions are morally permissible, which is in itself a substantive moral judgment. We call this ‘the self-defeating argument.’ We argue that the objection’s success depends on how we interpret the idea of moral permission, an issue Dworkin does not clearly resolve. Against his objection, we advance two different arguments. First, once we learn what role the idea of moral permission plays in morality, we can see that any plausible view of some agent’s moral permission must acknowledge its complex character, and that the existence of a moral permission must have some impact on the balance of moral reasons for other agents. On this understanding, it is false that it follows solely from external skepticism that everything is permissible. Second, we argue that even if permissions have a simple character, not a complex one, they are plausible only when framed within a moral constellation of rights and obligations. So understood, it is, again, false that it follows from external skepticism that everything is permissible.     

Habermas and the Holy Grail of reason: The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity between theatre and theory

A critical discourse analysis of The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity demonstrates that Habermas's discourse on modernity is theoretische Fiktion (a term Freud used to describe a given theory for which no evidence can be found and no arguments validated). Theatrical narrative strategies from drama are identified that not only organise the logic of the text, but also position readers. The choice of mise en scene—the Oedipal cross‐roads where older and younger protagonists meet in conflict—is seen to position readers as mere spectators. The choice of the narrative trope of the romance of lost opportunity (the road open but not taken) is not merely illustrative, but necessary for the claim that Habermas has redeemed the enlightenment project.

The paper critiques Habermas's theorising on discourse ethics because it distinguishes categories of discourse into scientific/analytical, moral/interpretive and aesthetic/expressive, which operate in three different spheres of value. In particular, it challenges the notion of an “inner logics” for what, in Habermas's stable of discourses, he labels the scientific/analytical. Readers of The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, the paper demonstrates, are not so much pulled along by the force of the better argument, but seduced by that unbridled beast: the aesthetic/expressive.     

The new public management and its critics

It is possible to view the New Public Management as nothing more than the public management equivalent of a cake recipe, a set of practices that can be readily transferred from one culture and one political system to another. If such is the case, then discussions of principles and paradigms are academic; it is necessary only to identify best practices. It will then be up to politicians to realize that they have only to open the book, follow the instructions, and reap the rewards. However, even within the Oecd countries such a possibility is not plausible. Within Europe, there are substantial differences in the political and cultural traditions of Oecd countries. And diversity within the Oecd goes beyond to include Mexico, Japan and Korea but also the former communist countries of Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland. Since the applicability and effectiveness of New Public Management concepts will vary considerably from one country to another, we are left with a considerable challenge: How might we apply these concepts to new settings?     

Multi-Year Forecasting and Municipal Budgeting

The "black hole" of budget theory still is, after 50 years, budget preparation—much effort goes in but little seems to come out. This article examines municipal forecasting as a means of reforming this first stage of the budgetary process. Drawing on evidence from a cross-sectional study, we find that forecasting is likely to be within the cognitive limits of most municipal budget directors Moreover, budgetary forecasting can be structured to reflect previous and current political concerns.     

Back to Mangu Zambiri: Art,Politics and Identity in Northern Sudan

This paper is an attempt in cultural criticism from a certain aesthetic standpoint to investigate how the arts can give insight into the identity problem of Northern Sudanese. Given the archaeological and historical refutation of migration theory and the consolidation of the notion of the ethnic continuity of the central riverain inhabitants (the Ja'liyyin) as Nubians, the paper disputes the other characterization of them as a "culturally" Arabized Sudanese. To prove this, the long neglected aesthetic dimension as an essential component of culture is underlined. Challenging certain Arabocentric musical and literary discourses, the "Sudanese" nature of some aspects of Northern music and poetry is stressed. The concept "Sudanization" is adopted to define a historically ongoing key process which manifests itself in the arts. Also the term "specification" is used to describe alternative political and aesthetic discourses to define Sudanese identity such as the discourse of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement and other forces.     

The Political (and Economic) Origins of Consumer Confidence

Economic conditions, the story usually goes, influence consumer confidence, which in turn influences both political evaluations and votes. But we have little sense of the origins of consumer confidence itself. It is generally assumed that monthly reports of the nation's level of consumer confidence respond to objective economic conditions. We argue that politics is important for understanding consumer sentiment beyond what we know from economic conditions. Specifically, we demonstrate a direct effect of political evaluations of the president's management of the economy, the party of the president, extraordinary political events, and monetary policy, as well as an indirect effect of media coverage of the economy, on consumer sentiment, after controlling for economic conditions. When news coverage is positive, citizens give favorable evaluations, leading to more positive sentiment. Our findings suggest that understanding the political economy requires an emphasis on the causal effect of politics as well as economics.     

Out of the ashes of eugenics: diagnostic regimes in the United States and the making of a disability minority

Both early twentieth-century eugenics and late-century genetics authorize,anchor and certify diagnostic regimes Each discourse is positioned around a historical trajectory that moves from a 'curative ' promise of rehabilitation to an increasingly 'custodial ' proposition involving the pathologization and oversight of groups viewed as non-normative.Snyder and Mitchell interpret eugenics in the United States as an expansive testing regime that produced disabled people as a species of defective intelligence and aberrant physiology.What resulted was a frenzy of medical assessment that produced - for a time - a 'subnormal ' nation out of the classification of 'defective ' biologies..The newly professional scientific disciplines flocked to participate in the identification,care and training of those labelled 'feeble-minded '.Proliferating scientific representations of those deemed to inhabit 'subnormal ' bodies ultimately provided the justification for institutionalizing,sterilizing and destroying the liberty of those classified as inferior.The authors understand the repercussions of this methodology not as 'flawed ' science,,but as the basis for contemporary definitions of disability as degrees of deviation from profoundly subjective aesthetic and functional criteria.A study of the eugenics movement in the United States demonstrates that what we refer to today as physical and cognitive disability provides two paradoxical outcomes:first,those labelled as recipients of curative interventions tend to suffer the residual taint of their pathological identifications,while failing to benefit from the initial promises of 'cure ' so zealously espoused by diagnostic regimes; second, those who occupy medically based classifications of deviance serve as models for a more general comprehension of human biology even as the research subjects themselves are marginalized from social participation.     

Kritik und Neubewertung politischer Repräsentation: vom Hindernis zur Möglichkeitsbedingung politischer Freiheit

In participatory democratic theory we see a positive reassessment of political representation these days. Whereas until recently representation has at best been accepted as an unavoidable substitute for direct democracy, newer theories regard representation as constitutive for democratic political action. Such a turn in the assessment of representation has become possible by dismissing an autonomy-oriented concept of democracy that goes back to Rousseau, and of which a modified version is represented by Jürgen Habermas today. The new interpretations understand representation not in the sense of an as perfect as possible transmission of the will of the represented to the representative, but as a relation of difference which allows for plural acting and political judgment in the first place. Although the discussion of these theories shows that they can offer an interesting theoretical reconstruction of representative democracy, they remain very vague in specifiying concrete possibilities of political action and democratic participation for the represented.     

Chameleon voters and public choice

A model is presented of an open-voting public choice process that features pressure groups vying for society's support. Individuals choose what policy to advocate on the basis of their private preferences, which are those they would express in a secret ballot; endogenous social pressures; and the utility they gain from integrity. They falsify their preferences when the benefits of doing so outweigh the costs. An implication is that a policy advocated by few people in private might receive strong public support. The paper goes on to explore why secret voting, which eliminates this possibility, might not be adopted.     

Tolerance and economic growth revisited: a note

Berggren and Elinder (BE) in this journal write on the relationship between the degree of tolerance in a nation and its rate of economic growth. They are disturbed to find in their cross sections that faster economic growth statistically goes together with intolerance of homosexuals. In this comment, we revisit the issue and demonstrate that the concern expressed by BE is unwarranted if we properly account for ??conditional convergence?? in the regressions for economic growth. Other things being equal, a country grows faster if it starts from a poorer initial position. In the BE dataset, China since the Deng reforms is a prime example. At about the same time, another group of countries managed to accelerate their economic growth after a long period of stagnation: the ex-communist countries in central and Eastern Europe. Many of these nations also grew exceptionally fast for a number of years, once freedom had been regained and the initial chaos overcome. With simple modeling of these historical initial conditions, we find no statistical pattern that associates bias against homosexuals with weaker economic growth. Our results are robust under alternative specifications.     

Life space and social networks as political contexts

Based on data collected in the course of the September and November 1980 waves of the National Election Studies, this contextual analysis of interpersonal relations in social networks presents two major findings: First, the neighborhood as a geographical unit does not appear to be a perceptually salient environment for political behavior; and second,particular neighbors, individually linked to a voter, appear to constitute a social network that has an independent impact on partisan affect for the political parties and their candidates as well as on stability or change in vote preferences as the electoral season goes forward. Thus, although the neighborhood appears to be of minor importance as a politicalenvironment, social relations among particular neighbors result in an interpersonalcontext that has an impact on political behavior.This article is being published simultaneously as Chapter 12 in Heinz Eulau,Politics, Self and Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress). Copyright 1986 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.     

Representation beyond people: Lobbying access of umbrella associations to legislatures and the media

Lobbying access to policy discussions determines how political interests are voiced and potentially exert influence. This article addresses whether access to the national legislature and the media favors umbrella organizations, which represent interests of their member groups. It theorizes that the role of umbrellas goes beyond signaling a large individual membership or constituency of people, but that umbrellas are distinct in transmitting interests from other organizations. This function is expected to be valuable in exchanges with legislators who seek efficiency, input legitimacy, and policy implementation, but less valuable in the media arena. Using a new data set on lobbying by 286 groups on 12 issues in the United Kingdom and Germany, the article serves support for this theory: Umbrellas enjoy higher legislative access, but lower media access than groups without member organizations, irrespective of their individual membership or claimed constituency. The findings have implications for how we understand and study political representation.