In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Problem with BreathÉglantine Colon (bio)On day 1, when my comrades and I talked about it, we couldn't quite figure out how it happened. It just seemed as though we had suddenly been incited not to communicate or enact our love for each other. This time, no policy had been formulated, no law had been issued. It was harder than usual to locate where, to which parts of the (...) apparatus, we should direct our attention.On day 2, we were at a loss. We had gotten so good at reading the apparatus. We had developed wonderfully efficient techniques of resistance. Each and every one of us had become most brilliant at crafting discrete gestures of love. On day 3 onwards, we were misfiring on a regular basis, falling in and out of love with the same wrong comrades, over and over again, and always out of sync. The loving gestures we composed were barely legible and when we would intuitively find a genre in which to communicate our love, something would inevitably break down. Voices, generally. Sometimes the entire figurative system. Bodies, always. We would lose sleep and appetite over love and get useless for weeks.And then, the problem with love became a problem with breath. On day 6, the air got hot and busy with ashes and all sunsets turned red. At every breath, for all we knew, we could be inhaling particles of carbonized pine sap, debris of melted trailer parts, or burnt baby birds in bits. I quit smoking. I bought boxes of white masks at the construction store. The dominant smell during these days was a cagey mix of ghost paint, polymer fibers, and dry chemistry.On day 17, the air got cold and saturated with drops of viral poison. The city shut down. An incredibly sad number of lungs, too. The perspective to live in pods and die alone, disconnected from each other's breath, hyper-connected to life-support machines, plunged many of us, myself included, into brand new strands of historical despair. For those of us whose lungs had been weakened by bad inner-city fumes, evil chemicals, or entire centuries of racialized exposure to horrendous air quality, the problem with breath became plain lethal.Our neighborhoods were saturated with wildfire smoke and unnecessary death. Elsewhere, the streets were not empty. And when I say not empty, I mean they were just not. Or not yet. Usual metallic densities on the bridge. Geometrical glows of digital light in the underground. [End Page 237]Abnormally, no bodies of any ancestries were being captured, or hanged, or tortured, or kneeled upon. Nothing tangible, nothing blatantly repressive this time. No gas, no gag, no name, no whip, no rope. No strangulating remnant of sovereignty within no softness of biopower. A racist and classist brand of distributive pneumocracy is what it was, or at least this is how it initially appeared.On day 25, "Critical Pandemic Studies" became a thing, and "Pod Theory" a subgenre in post-social anthropology. Denounced as a "white fantasy of networked individualism," (in one of its purest forms) as "domestic fascism dressed as elective affinity," the pod appeared to us, from the get-go, as a thoroughly ratchet social formation. On day 29, the "podtag" emerged as a timely intervention in existing forms of street art. Equational in its form, efficient in its power of evocation, and satirical in its poetic economy, the podtag proliferated on the privatized walls of neighborhoods where the biggest challenges presented to breathing were unreasonably difficult Pilates classes on Zoom. Click for larger view View full resolutionOn day 35, the air got complex and full of knots, so striated that we could no longer count on our capacity to share the same air. A meal was being cooked, an instrument was being played, a child was given birth to, and suddenly the rhythm of all breaths would break. Sometimes a pair of lungs would refuse, stubbornly, to take in any oxygen until someone else's pair of lungs had released its own dose of carbon dioxide. At other times, the quantity of air available to each one of us would decrease with... (shrink)

El estudio de la conciencia es de considerable relevancia en la filosofía de la mente contemporánea. Sin embargo, el enfoque “cientificista” imperante en esta disciplina, aunque de indiscutible utilidad, ha contribuido al rechazo de perspectivas cuyo valor explicativo resulta revelador en la investigación sobre la mente, la consciencia y el cuerpo. Una de estas perspectivas la podemos encontrar en la obra filosófica de Friedrich Nietzsche. El determinismo causal de la relación mente-cuerpo que propuso el filósofo alemán ha sido defendido por (...) medio de propuestas similares de neurocientíficos y filósofos de probada pericia. No obstante, la relevancia de la aportación nietzscheana no ha sido reconocida en su importancia histórica y teórica. El propósito de este artículo es señalar las particularidades sobre la determinación causal de la relación mente/cuerpo y sus implicaciones en los debates actuales sobre la naturaleza de la consciencia. (shrink)

El estudio de la conciencia es de considerable relevancia en la filosofía de la mente contemporánea. Sin embargo, el enfoque “cientificista” imperante en esta disciplina, aunque de indiscutible utilidad, ha contribuido al rechazo de perspectivas cuyo valor explicativo resulta revelador en la investigación sobre la mente, la consciencia y el cuerpo. Una de estas perspectivas la podemos encontrar en la obra filosófica de Friedrich Nietzsche. El determinismo causal de la relación mente-cuerpo que propuso el filósofo alemán ha sido defendido por (...) medio de propuestas similares de neurocientíficos y filósofos de probada pericia. No obstante, la relevancia de la aportación nietzscheana no ha sido reconocida en su importancia histórica y teórica. El propósito de este artículo es señalar las particularidades sobre la determinación causal de la relación mente/cuerpo y sus implicaciones en los debates actuales sobre la naturaleza de la consciencia. (shrink)

Nearly twenty years after SubStance devoted a special issue to the contemporary French writer we know as Antoine Volodine, we are thoroughly pleased to be publishing in this issue the opening of Dondog, a novel that Ben Streeter has translated with inspired exactitude and brilliant tonal precision. In English or in French, entering Dondog is not unlike entering any other "post-exotic" text. One has to learn how to orient oneself to the ruination of Modernity, within the dysfunctional memories of post-traumatic (...) subjects, between dark humor and luminous despair, in the liminal space between life and death, between humanity and animality, and, in the odd beauty... (shrink)

El conjunto de ensayos que el lector tiene entre sus manos expresa un cuerpo sistemático de ideas provocadoras sobre la tensión entre el constitucionalismo y la democracia. Su autor, el profesor Joel Colón-Ríos, boricua, formado en las dos facultades de derecho canadienses de mayor renombre, e investigador de una de las mejores universidades de Oceanía, las ha fraguado a lo largo de más de un lustro y debatido con gran éxito ante la elite intelectual de Norteamérica. La propuesta central del (...) libro es una original reivindicación de la democracia frente al constitucionalismo. Su institucionalización consiste en un constitucionalismo débil. La piedra angular de este modelo es una constitución inacabada, permanentemente abierta al cambio, que permite y promueve la participación y la deliberación popular continua, en particular, mediante el potencial ejercicio del poder constituyente en cualquier momento. De esta manera, el pueblo tiene la posibilidad de hablar por sí mismo cuando lo juzgue pertinente. Puede cuestionar y reformular los principios básicos de la organización social. No está supeditado a las decisiones adoptadas por los ancestros que expidieron la Constitución, ni por sus representantes que, en el Congreso, ostentan el poder de reformarla. Precio: 49.000 pesos. (shrink)

Ian Stoner has recently argued that we ought not to colonize Mars because doing so would flout our pro tanto obligation not to violate the principle of scientific conservation, and there is no countervailing considerations that render our violation of the principle permissible. While I remain agnostic on, my primary goal in this article is to challenge : there are countervailing considerations that render our violation of the principle permissible. As such, Stoner has failed to establish that we ought (...) not to colonize Mars. I close with some thoughts on what it would take to show that we do have an obligation to colonize Mars and related issues concerning the relationship between the way we discount our preferences over time and projects with long time horizons, like space colonization. (shrink)

Abstract According to Habermas' colonization thesis, reification is a social pathology that arises when the communicative infrastructure of the lifeworld is 'colonized' by money and power. In this paper I argue that, thirty years after the publication of the Theory of Communicative Action, this thesis remains compelling. However, while Habermas offers a functionalist explanation of reification, his normative criticism of it remains largely implicit: he never explains what is wrong with reification from the perspective of the people whose social relations (...) are reified. As a result, Habermas cannot explain why only some forms of colonization lead to reification effects. In particular, he suggests that reification effects result from the juridification of communicatively structured domains of action but not from the commodification of labour power. I criticize this argument and suggest that if the normative dimension of the colonization thesis is made explicit, a more nuanced explanation of reification becomes possible. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Colonization and neo‐Europes New Zealand: a neo‐Europe The Clovis colonization Philosophical significance of anthropogenic and non‐anthropogenic extinctions Terraformation: Mars Abiotic nature: is it morally considerable? Conclusion.

Recent discussion of the alleged adverse consequences of space colonization by Phil Torres in this journal is critically assessed. While the concern for suffering risks should be part of any strategic discussion of the cosmic future of humanity, the Hobbesian picture painted by Torres is largely flawed and unpersuasive. Instead, there is a very real risk that the skeptical arguments will be taken too seriously and future human flourishing in space delayed or prevented.

In “What’s Wrong with Colonialism,” Lea Ypi argues that the distinctive wrong of colonialism should be understood as the failure of the colonial relationship to extend equal and reciprocal terms of political association to the colonized. Laura Valentini argues that Ypi’s account fails. Her argument targets an ambiguity in Ypi’s account of the relata of the colonial relationship. Either Ypi’s view is that the members of the colonized group are, as individuals, denied an equal and reciprocal political relationship to the (...) colonizer, or Ypi’s view is that the colonized individuals form a collective agent and that it is denied an equal and reciprocal relationship to the colonizer. According to Valentini, both options face insurmountable difficulties. Valentini’s argument, this paper argues, sets up a false dilemma. The third option is to think of the colonizer as relating in an unequal and non-reciprocal way to the plurality of people subjected to colonial rule. As I will argue, this view avoids Valentini’s objections. It does, however, raise some new questions about how we are to understand the distinctive wrong of colonialism. (shrink)

Love is often seen as the most intimate aspect of our lives, but it is increasingly engineered by a few programmers with Artificial Intelligence (AI). Nowadays, numerous dating platforms are deploying so-called smart algorithms to identify a greater number of potential matches for a user. These AI-enabled matchmaking systems, driven by a rich trove of data, can not only predict what a user might prefer but also deeply shape how people choose their partners. This paper draws on Jürgen Habermas’s “colonization (...) of the lifeworld” thesis to critically explore the insidious influence of delegating romantic decision-making to an algorithm. The love lifeworld is colonized inasmuch as online dating algorithms encroach into our romantic relations to the extent that communicative action within romance is replaced by the technocratic rules of an algorithm. (shrink)

Colonization occurs in many fields, from the scientific to the philosophical, and involves all forms of life including flora, fauna and micro-organisms. All these forms of life can colonize or be c...

Whereas the most visible forms of political colonialism have for the most part disappeared from the planet by the end of the millennium, several of its consequences remain with us. Criticism of colonialism, accordingly, has shifted its focus to its more subtle and lasting manifestations. Prominent among these are the varieties of what came to be known as the ‘colonization of the mind’. This is one of the forms of ‘epistemic violence’ that it is certainly the task of philosophers to (...) contribute to identify and struggle against. ‘Postcolonial’ thinkers have undertaken not only to analyze this phenomenon, but also to devise strategies for effectively combating and hopefully eradicating colonialism’s most damaging aspect – the taking possession and control of its victims’ minds. My purpose in this paper is to contribute, qua philosopher, to both of these undertakings. I begin by trying to clarify the nature of the colonization of the mind and its epistemic underpinnings and the typical reactions to it. Next, I examine examples of these reactions with their corresponding analyses and strategies. The assumptions underlying them reveal certain inherent paradoxes, which call into question the possibility of a full decolonization of mind. I conclude by suggesting an alternative strategy and a series of means to implement it. (shrink)

In this review, we provide an overview of the dynamic changes within the microbiota and its metabolites that are implicated in establishing and maintaining gastrointestinal homeostasis during various stages of microbial colonization. The gradual conversion of the gut microbiota toward a mutualistic microbial community involves replacement of pioneer gut colonizers with bacterial taxa that are characteristic for the adult gut. An important microbial signature of homeostasis in the adult gut is the prevalence and activity of a diverse spectrum of bacterial (...) species that produce beneficial metabolites through metabolic interactions between microbial groups. Deciphering these microbial signatures and their metabolites that govern short and long‐term equilibrium, as well as imbalances in host‐microbial relationships, may provide novel diagnostic tools and/or therapeutic targets for specific disorders associated with intestinal dysbiosis and loss of homeostasis. (shrink)

While the critique of neoliberalism, as the form of contemporary capitalism, has been advanced from Marxian and Foucauldian perspectives, it has had limited attention from the perspective of Critical Theory. Largely unrecognized is the suitability of the theory of reification for this critique, specifically, Habermas’s version. This article reconsiders Habermas’s colonization thesis as the basis for a critical theory of neoliberalism, refining its theoretical framework to deepen its critical diagnosis. Against the dismissal of the system–lifeworld concept, a novel critique is (...) advanced to suggest its original elaboration fell confusedly between two versions of social systems theory. Drawing from late developments, the scheme is reinterpreted as distinguishing two forms of communication in capitalist society: delinguistified and linguistic. This opens the way to reframe and communicatively transform colonization as relinguistification; that is, the translation of monetary coding into ordinary language such that communicative action is distorted from within by reifying concepts. (shrink)

In Before Colonization: Non-Western States and Systems in the Nineteenth Century, Charles Butcher and Ryan D. Griffiths tackle international relations theory's reliance on the European state system by developing a new framework of what counts as statehood across non-European regional contexts over the past two centuries, revealing surprising trends in state formation and state death. Using a unique catalogue of the number of independent states outside of Europe since 1816, Butcher and Griffiths show the extent of variation in centralization, structure, (...) and administration strategy in states across East Asia, South Asia, maritime Southeast Asia, and West Africa. They also examine the effects that war, trade, and interaction capacity have on state formation across regions, taking care to document the large number of states that were extinguished as a consequence of European colonialism and the global enclosure. Through this expanded set of cases in this wide-ranging mixed-methods study, the authors provide nuance and refinements to popular state system theories around international change, the spread of norms, and the project of power"-- Provided by publisher. (shrink)

In this article, I apply the colonization thesis from Jürgen Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action to capitalist societies’ relationships with their natural environment. Resolving the fixation of his critique of capitalism on the so-called lifeworld (Lebenswelt) to include questions of the environment (Umwelt) opens up new vistas in the ongoing ecological reorientation of Critical Theory. If we think about the exploitation of the natural environment in Habermasian terms, the paradoxical irrationality of the expansion of instrumental rationality from the market mechanism (...) becomes evident, providing us with normative leverage against the systemic devastation of external nature. The conversed colonization thesis calls for promoting the ecological preconditions for self-determined societal development through the collective containment of capitalist dynamics: since it undermines the enabling capacities of the ecosystems based on which the ‘project of modernity’ thrives, economic instrumentalization of nature can no longer proliferate. (shrink)

Urbanization and development of green spaces is continuing worldwide. Such development frequently engulfs the habitats of native animals, with a variety of effects on their existence, location and ways of living. This paper attempts to theorize about some of these effects, drawing on aspects of Foucault's discussions of power and using a metaphor of human colonization, where colonization is understood as an "ongoing process of dispossession, negotiation, transformation, and resistance." It argues that a variety of different kinds of human/animal power (...) relations can exist in urban areas, not all of which are examples of human domination. The paper concludes by raising a number of questions about the implications of these human/animal relations. (shrink)

We are, Julia Kristeva writes, strangers to ourselves; and indeed much of contemporary theory describes the human condition as one of alienation. Eloquently arguing that we cannot explain the developement of individuality or subjectivity apart from its social context, Kelly Oliver makes a powerful case for recognizing the social aspects of alienation and the psychic aspects of oppression.

Frantz Fanon’s theoretical and practical challenge is to identify how self-determination is possible for a subject whose agency and significance have, through colonization, been appropriated and shaped by others, a challenge to which he responds with the invocation of “national consciousness.” In this paper I describe this national consciousness and show how its exclusivity paradoxically establishes the ground for a kind of international or universal inclusiveness. I differentiate this inclusiveness from the universality of Western political ideals, which Fanon challenges, and (...) conclude by discussing how the tension between nation and internationalism in Fanon is illuminated by Jacques Derrida’s discussion of the idea of democracy and particular democracies in Rogues. (shrink)

Disney represents a mythology that is universal because they are rapidly acquiring every possible alternate reality that one cares to enter, except for the sexual realm and the Christian religion realm. When Disney owns all possible significant alternate universes, then only Disney can colonize one's imagination, and only Disney will give him/her the lens through which to perceive any competing claim on understanding his/her ultimate Reality. Well, visual containment helps the psyche stay in the mode and the mood for (...) the various psychic propaganda programs being run, and allows one to enjoy and prolong the fantasy, as well as empty his/her wallet of all possible contents since the only way to experience more Disney is to hand them exactly all of his/her cash. Thus, in short order, Disney has successfully colonized an awful lot of the global imagination, from young to old, male to female, from history to fantasy, and now from right to left. (shrink)

This article studies the ways in which Arab intellectuals in Egypt and the Levant wrote about modern anti-Semitism during the four decades preceding the demise of the Ottoman Empire. This period is often described as the era of the Arab Nahda (revival); it refers to an era when Arab thinkers and writers showed great interest in the Arabic language, Islamic history, and Arab culture and consumed European literary and philosophical works. Arab intellectuals in this period wrote about Jewish affairs. They (...) protested the persecution of Jews in Eastern and Western Europe and compared anti-Jewish racism to an infectious disease that spread in Europe’s cities and destroyed the fabric of its democracy, especially during the Dreyfus affair. I argue that these very pro-Jewish positions were connected to several conversations about the Arab self. Since the Arabs were categorized as Semites in European racial discourses, the meanings ascribed to the term were of utmost important to them. Arab writers also connected their discussions of anti-Semitism to their broader interest in science; as anti-Semitism seemed to have reflected a remnant from the medieval past, Arab writers wondered why this phenomenon prevailed in modern and scientific Europe. As Ottoman subjects witnessing the colonization of Egypt and North Africa, Arab intellectuals underscored the fact that Europe, whose intellectuals and politicians critiqued the persecution of Christians in the Ottoman Empire and argued that their colonization brought justice to persecuted minorities, was treating its minorities in a horrific fashion. Lastly, as Arab thinkers demanded linguistic and cultural rights within the Ottoman Empire and demanded to curb the powers of autocratic rulers, they were interested in Europe’s most glaring failed emancipation. Their reflections, moreover, could help us theorize the present moment, when Jews and Muslims struggle together against purist and racist movements in the US and in Europe. (shrink)

This article examines the impact of the reading assessment, DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills), on literacy education through the Habermasian lens. It argues that DIBELS, along with other systemic forces, has surged beyond its domain as a mere assessment and colonized the lifeworld of literacy education by distorting the meaning of the teaching and learning of literacy.This article calls for a critical reflection on the systemized practices in literacy education and for a return to a lifeworld where (...) literacy is considered more than a testable skill. (shrink)

This article focuses on land rights, land law, and land administration within a multilayered colonial setting by examining a major land dispute in British-ruled Palestine. Our research reveals that the Mandate legal system extinguished indigenous rights to much land in the Zor al-Zarqa and Barrat Qisarya regions through its use of "colonial law"--the interpretation of Ottoman law by colonial officials, the use of foreign legal concepts, and the transformation of Ottoman law through supplementary legislation. However, the colonial legal system was (...) also the site of local resistance by some Palestinian Arabs attempting to remain on their land in the face of the pressure of the Mandate authorities and Jewish colonization officials. This article sheds light on the dynamics of the Mandate legal system and colonial law in the realm of land tenure relations. It also suggests that the joint efforts of Mandate and Jewish colonization officials to appropriate land and undertake "development" operations in the area were fueled by neither the interests of colonial rule nor those of Jewish colonization alone, but, rather, by the integrated impact of both forces. (shrink)

This article examines the impact of the reading assessment, DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills), on literacy education through the Habermasian lens. It argues that DIBELS, along with other systemic forces, has surged beyond its domain as a mere assessment and colonized the lifeworld of literacy education by distorting the meaning of the teaching and learning of literacy.This article calls for a critical reflection on the systemized practices in literacy education and for a return to a lifeworld where (...) literacy is considered more than a testable skill. (shrink)

This article is an exploration of the social phenomenon of the coloniality of being and universal desires. It examines how coloniality became ingrained in a new form of global consciousness of capitalist aesthetics of consumption, and how from the convergence of globalized electronic capitalism, pervasive global advertisement and consumerism, universal desires were created for a colonized global audience. Many questions arise on agency, citizenship, territoriality and rights of these global audiences. In this global landscape, place making and the right to (...) the city have to be questioned from a new global perspective of coloniality, race and gender, not from the usual perspective of subaltern groups, but from within the centre of Euro-American Eurocentric society. (shrink)

This paper examines an issue that is becoming increasingly relevant as the pressures of a warming planet, changing climate and changing ecosystems ramp up. The broad context for the paper is the intragenerational, intergenerational, and interspecies equity implications of changing the climate and the value orientations of adapting to such change. In addition, the need to stabilize the planetary climate by urgent mitigation of change factors is a foundational ethical assumption. In order to avoid further animal and plant extinctions, or (...) at the very least, their increased vulnerability to becoming rare and endangered; the systematic assisted colonization of “at risk” species is being seriously considered by scientists and managers of biodiversity. The more practical aspects of assisted colonization have been covered in the conservation biology literature; however, the ethical implications of such actions have not been extensively examined. Our discussion of the value issues, using a novel case study approach, will rectify the limited ethical analysis of the issue of assisted colonization of species in the face of climate change pressures. Beyond sustainability ethics, both animal and environmental ethical approaches will be used and intrinsic versus instrumental value orientations in the literature shall form the basis of our discussion. After the application of all the ethical approaches to the case studies, we conclude that without mitigation and the prospect of a future stable climate, assisted colonization will be involved in an inherently unethical process and a “move and lose it” outcome. With mitigation, there is wide-ranging ethical support for assisted colonization. (shrink)

These essays provide important interpretations and analyze critical developments of the political philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. They situate his thought in the contemporary intellectual landscape by comparing him with contemporaries such as Derrida, Rorty, and Rawls and show how elements of his philosophy may be usefully applied to key contemporary issues including colonization and decolonization, the nature of liberal democracy, and the concepts and critical utopian aspirations of political philosophy. Patton discusses Deleuze's notion of philosophy as the creation of concepts (...) and shows how this may be helpful in understanding the nature of political concepts such as rights, justice, and democracy. Rather than merely commenting on or explaining Deleuze's thought, Patton offers a series of attempts to think with Deleuzian concepts in relation to other philosophers and other problems. His book represents a significant contribution to debates in contemporary political theory, continental philosophy, and Deleuzian studies. (shrink)

Although there are notable exceptions, examination of nursing's participation in colonizing processes and practices has not taken hold in nursing's consciousness or political agenda. Critical analyses, based on the examination of politics and power of the structural determinants of health, continue to be marginalized in the profession. The goals of this discussion article are to underscore the urgent need to further articulate postcolonial theory in nursing and to contribute to nursing knowledge about paths to work toward decolonizing the profession. The (...) authors begin with a description of unifying themes in postcolonial theory, with an emphasis on colonized subjectivities and imperialism; the application of a critical social science perspective, including postcolonial feminist theory; and the project of working toward decolonization. Processes involved in the colonization of nursing are described in detail, including colonization of nursing's intellectual development and the white privilege and racism that sustain colonizing thinking and action in nursing. The authors conclude with strategies to increase the counter‐narrative to continued colonization, with a focus on critical social justice, human rights and the structural determinants of health. (shrink)

A critical exposition of plans to colonize other planets , especially Mars, and their costs. The final chapter links with issues about the value and future of human life. See the extended summary uploaded to this site.

Promoting a better understanding of the phenomenon of colonization and its connection with environmental knowledge and technology, this article proposes a reframing of research agendas to take into account the municipal character of colonization in the Hispanic realm and to ask new questions. Questions should address what human–ecosystem relations, and the ways of knowing and techniques for transforming the physical realm, can tell us about colonization itself; who the historical agents involved were, and what these actors knew, learned, and did (...) in their environments. Using the Basin of Mexico’s drainage and the agency of commoners, this article proposes that colonization depends on the massive deployment and generation of tacit knowledge about how to harness matter, energy, and time for the reproduction of human societies; the quotidian appropriation and reworking of autochthonous knowledge, techniques, and technology by the colonizing groups; the collaboration of the local populations in whom these are vested; and the agency of commoners with practical skills, environmental knowledge, and technological savvy derived from and honed in the realm of material production. In the Ibero-American realm, these agents were primarily commoners with skills in agropastoral production and the building trades; race, ethnicity, language, and gender were secondary conditions. (shrink)

This paper considers the argument that we have a duty to colonise other planets because we owe it to future generations. It puts forward the view that formulations of this argument in the current literature are confused. It distinguishes (at least) four versions of the argument and shows that none of them are compelling. It draws the conclusion that, should people put forward these arguments, they ought to be more precise in their formulations and more rigorous in their defence.

This article explores the relevance of ontological assumptions for justifications of agency and ethics. It critiques Kantian ethics for being based upon an ontological imaginary that starts from the substantialism of Newtonian physics. Substantialism shapes Western political philosophy’s view about who we are as subjects and how the world works. In this ontological imaginary, validation of ethics is based upon universality and abstractions. Furthermore, Kantian ethics underscores an anthropocentric and theocratic vision of how to govern societies. I argue Kantian criteria (...) are not only insufficient to make good choices but are also conducive to wrong ones, since they elicit self-appeasement in international intervention, and contribute to the conceptual repertoire of coloniality. I propose that an ontology of entanglements opens possibilities for overcoming the shortcomings of an ethos based upon abstractions and possibly for correcting some of its moral failures. In a quantum ontological imaginary, the validation of ethical choices relies instead upon the exploration of the apparatuses we deploy, as well as upon careful situational evaluation. Specific practices, rather than an abstract humanity, are the referents for devising such ethos. This position, I argue, resonates with the critical project of decoloniality and its acknowledgment of the political salience of ontological imaginaries. (shrink)

In this photo essay, we take readers through ecologies of de/colonization that we engage with in our creative methodology of walking and talking. As academics called upon to do equity, diversity and decolonization work in colonial institutions, we reflect on our location in lək̓ʷəŋən and W̱SÁNEĆ lands (“Victoria, BC, Canada”) and the circuits that extend to the Caribbean archipelago of our origins and families (Borikén/Puerto Rico and Jamaica). We take up the tasks of collectively reflecting on how to care for (...) our communities and for each other in an interconnected world amidst socio-ecological crisis. Our method that emerged during the pandemic is specific to our embodiments “here” as settlers of Caribbean roots whose family histories “there” include both complicity with and domination by colonization, trans-Atlantic enslavement, and forced migration. We are attempting to learn, as we hold the messiness of institutions who want straightforward paths to remediate racism, colonization, and the like. Our walking and talking follow a meandering and re-visiting process prompted by our institutional contexts and circumstances, and also by serendipity, surprise and beauty offered through non-human elements on our walks. The photos evidence these moments and the connections to “here-there” in ecologies of de/colonization. We invite readers on our circuitous paths that involve deconstructing, and building or affirming, noticing, following literal paths and those in scholarly-activist circles. In the creative process of drawing relations of the here-there, and attending to serendipity, ancestral spirit, and more-than-human agency, we witness and imagine worlds otherwise (King et al., 2020). These circuitous roots and routes offer possibilities of reckoning, repairing and re-worlding. (shrink)

The field of Latin American philosophy has established itself as a relevant subfield of philosophical inquiry. However, there might be good reasons to consider that our focus on the subfield could have distracted us from considering another subfield that, although it might share some geographical proximity, does not share the same historical basic elements. In this paper, I argue for a possible and meaningful conceptual difference between Latin American Philosophy and Indigenous philosophy produced in Latin America. First, I raise what (...) I call Mariátegui’s Solidarity Challenge to show that there might be some neglectful treatment of the philosophical views of different Indigenous groups. I then depart from Mariátegui and engage in a critical exercise to show that even he would be guilty of failing in his own solidarity demands. I follow that by drawing out some implications of the argument. I first sketch how this differentiation would play out against the political project of “Mestizaje,” a project that seems to inform some of the Latin American philosophical tradition. I then speculate about the kinds of duties that the field of Latin American philosophy might have towards the field of Indigenous Philosophy produced in Latin America. (shrink)

Ronald Sandler's ‘Climate change and ecosystem management’ provides a fine summary of reasons to modify our approach to ecosystem management given ‘rapid and uncertain ecological change’. We...

This article explores some of the concerns which are being raised about algorithms with recourse to Habermas’s theory of communicative action. The intention is not to undertake an empirical examination of ‘algorithms’ or their consequences but to connect critical theory to some contemporary concerns regarding digital cultures. Habermas’s ‘colonization of life-worlds’ thesis gives theoretical expression to two different trends which underlie many current criticisms of the insidious influence of digital algorithms: the privatization of communication, and the particularization of knowledge and (...) experience. Habermas’s social theory therefore offers a useful framework for exploring some of the normative and political problems that are attributed to ‘algorithmic culture’ and ‘big data’. (shrink)

Paper presented in East-West Symposium on Science, Philosophy and Religion, Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy Meeting with Australasian Association of Philosophy Annual Conference, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, July 1999.

As scholars anticipate the structural reconfigurations arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, resistance to pandemic measures remains a site of rich discussion. While previous researchers have studied anti-mask, anti-vaccine, and anti-lockdown action, here called anti-restriction movements, as a series of actions informed by individual characteristics like psychological profiles, political leanings, or gender, this paper emphasizes how anti-restriction actions evolved into social movements articulating the antagonisms between state and subject. This paper applies Jürgen Habermas’s theory of New Social Movements (NSMs) to theorize (...) anti-restriction movements as reactions to bureaucratic and economic regulation in cultural and private life. Habermas’s original theory assigned NSMs a radical potential in reinvigorating public political discourse and democratic processes which remains to be seen today. By contrasting the discourses of anti-restriction movements in Indigenous communities in Chiapas, Mexico and suburban communities in Orange County, California, this paper describes how profit-driven market algorithms steer social movements away from their radical potential towards sensationalism and misinformation. Not only do social media platforms “colonize” communication on the national level, but western countries’ control of social media platforms “digitally colonizes” peripheral countries by redirecting subaltern social movements with the hybridized discourses of imperial nations. (shrink)

Large-scale, self-sufficient space colonization is a plausible means of efficiently reducing existential risks and ensuring our long-term survival. But humanity is by and large myopic, and as an intergenerational global public good, existential risk reduction is systematically undervalued, hampered by intergenerational discounting. This paper explores how these issues apply to space colonization, arguing that the motivational and psychological barriers to space colonization are a special—and especially strong—case of a more general problem. The upshot is not that large-scale, self-sufficient space colonization (...) will never occur, but that, absent institutional change, the conditions under which it is most likely to occur are precisely those conditions where the threat of suffering risks might be most high. (shrink)