Search Results (12)

The article engages in the undisciplining of the study of religion and proposes two central concepts/approaches for how to do so: the pluriverse and materiality. But what is undisciplining? And is it needed? To frame the undisciplining of the study of religion and render visible how I conceive of it as a needed practice, the article discusses the relationship between knowledge, materiality, power, and transformation. This relationship is concretized by prioritizing critical decolonial perspectives from the South African context. Here, I center materiality and the material effects of colonial discourse and epistemology as critical entry points. I also highlight the importance of embodied approaches to knowledge, illustrated through decolonial feminist engagements with post-qualitative methodologies. Informed by these critical insights, I unpack the concept of the pluriverse and highlight its epistemic and methodological relevance for the undisciplining of the study of religion. (Re-)turning to materiality, I foreground materiality as a creative and critical knowledge framework and argue for the varying ways it may function for rethinking and undisciplining the study of religion. Full article

This article reflects on the translation of gallery space into a virtually immersive experience in an era of remote access. Curators and scholars such as Mary Nooter Roberts, Susan Vogel, Carol Duncan, Tony Bennet, Stephen Greenblatt, Judith Mastai, and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett have discussed the myriad of ways in which the experience of culturally significant objects and sites in person has been critical to the study of art and its history. Focusing on theories of curation and display, I utilize practice-based examples from six virtual reality (VR) exhibitions produced in three different institutional contexts: the International Journal of Digital Art History’s online gallery, the European Cultural Center’s Performance Art program, and the Digital Humanities program at the University of California, Los Angeles. By documenting and analyzing the extended reality (XR) methods employed and the methodological approaches to the digital curatorial work, I address some of the challenges and opportunities of presenting objects in virtual space, offering comparisons to those faced when building physical exhibitions. I also consider how digital modalities provide a distinctly different paradigm for epistemologies of art and culture that offer greater contextualized understandings and can reshape exhibition documentation and the teaching of curatorial practice and museum studies. Full article

The authors argue that embracing life necessitates a shift in how we conceptualize wellness in education. They delve into the exploration of humanizing wellness and living well by drawing on Black onto-epistemologies, specifically referencing Bambara’s The Salt Eaters. This exploration involves examining how notions of wholeness manifest in the text and the subsequent implications for educators and scholars actively involved in anti-equity efforts. The authors elucidate both the possibilities and challenges related to care, touch, and celebration. In particular, they employ the concept of Black refusal to investigate how these elements can propel a critical departure from conventional ideas of wellness in the United States, paving the way for alternative modes of existence which prioritize wholeness. To achieve this, the authors present an exploration of the literature on whiteness, epistemology, and the destructive impact of anti-Blackness. The authors then introduce Black refusal as a theoretical framework, which functions as the frame guiding their methods. Examining personal reflective instances of engagement with the present political landscape, analyzing Bambara’s The Salt Eaters, and maintaining refusal as a central theoretical framework, the authors detail an epistemology of wholeness centered on care, touch, and celebration. Full article

When approached through the theoretical lenses of canonical literature and the reductionist Western science of settler colonialism, climate crisis discourse grapples with a conception of apocalypse wherein catastrophe and hopelessness engender eco-anxiety and a sense of environmental nihilism. Drawing from the works of Jessica Hernandez, Sherri Mitchell, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and others, “What Would the Mushrooms Say?”, both as a class and concept, envisions a healing-centered, interdisciplinary approach to climate discourse in learning spaces, one that centers the theoretical and practical applications of an Indigenous science and mythology to flip the dominant narratives we tell about the dystopic dead ends of climate change, extinctions, anthropocentric hierarchies, and other events predictive of end times. Instead of only reckoning with white settler colonialism’s false promises of technocratic off-planet societies, students interact with a multiplicity of apocalypses and possibilities found in Indigenous cosmologies, mythologies, epistemologies, and speculative fiction of Indigenous, Indigequeer, queer writers of color, and the natural world. Posited as an exemplar text, Amanda Strong’s animated short film Biidaaban is discussed in terms of its instructional potential and depiction of Indigenous ways of relating, as kin, to human and nonhuman alike when speculating about futurity. “What Would the Mushrooms Say?” calls for slowing down and embracing the natural world as a teacher from whom we learn and speculate alongside. It suggests as a lifelong practice ways of relating to our planet and engaging with the climate discourse that interrupt a legacy of white settler colonialist eco-theorizing and action determined to dominate and subdue the natural world. In conclusion, this project documents the emergence of students’ shifting perspectives and their explorations of newfound possibilities within learning spaces where constructive hope rather than despair dominates climate discourse. Full article

Is the ubiquity of contemporary popular music akin to a deliberate aggression to the hearing, making the listening experience devoid of any sense? If so, is there any strategy to morph this supposed confusion into meaningful stimuli? Relying on epistemology, we attempt at promoting the act of listening as a proper way of world-making and refer to Mark Reybrouck, Bruno Nettl, Steven Brown and Joseph Jordania—among others—to gather appropriate heuristic tools. In the last part of the essay, we advance the concept of timbral quotation as an additional means to grasp meaningful cues in the timbrical richness of contemporary popular compositions. We shall sustain the particular fitness of this tool especially with regard to nowadays’ Western popular music, more and more timbre-centered rather than harmony-centered. Full article

Substance-abusing women are vulnerable to specific kinds of epistemic injustice, including stigmatization and discrimination. This article examines the development of the epistemic agency of female substance abusers by asking: How does the use of a formal discussion protocol in community rehabilitation interaction alleviate epistemic injustice and strengthen the epistemic agency of substance abusers? The data were collected in a Finnish rehabilitation center by videotaping six group discussions between social workers, peer support workers, and rehabilitation clients with substance abuse problems. Of these data, one recorded group discussion between four female participants—two rehabilitation clients, a peer support worker, and a social adviser—was used in this paper. Using conversational analysis, the findings indicate that, through the collaborative activities of sharing experiential knowledge about substance abuse and discussing the experiences of abuse in the rehabilitation interaction, substance abusers can develop novel ways to strengthen their epistemic agency by enhanced self-awareness. The discussion protocol is an epistemic tool that professionals and clients can learn to use in ethically and epistemologically successful ways in interaction. The use of a discussion protocol is an example of social professionals’ clinical knowledge of intensifying collaboration and sharing experiential knowledge in community rehabilitation and other substance abuse services. Full article

This Special Issue on water governance features a series of articles that highlight recent and emerging concepts, approaches, and case studies to re-center and re-theorize “the political” in relation to decision-making, use, and management—collectively, the governance of water. Key themes that emerged from the contributions include the politics of water infrastructure and insecurity; participatory politics and multi-scalar governance dynamics; politics related to emergent technologies of water (bottled or packaged water, and water desalination); and Indigenous water governance. Further reflected is a focus on diverse ontologies, epistemologies, meanings and values of water, related contestations concerning its use, and water’s importance for livelihoods, identity, and place-making. Taken together, the articles in this Special Issue challenge the ways that water governance remains too often depoliticized and evacuated of political content or meaning. By re-centering the political, and by developing analytics that enable and support this endeavor, the contributions throughout highlight the varied, contested, and important ways that water governance needs to be recalibrated and enlivened with keen attention to politics—broadly understood. Full article

Metaphysical modelling is a method in (epistemologically enlightened) metaphysics. It uses models for the philosophical analysis of metaphysico-epistemological situations. In this paper, the method is applied to a set of metaphysical questions that concern the relationship between God and the world, and the relationship between human beings and the world. The questions revolve around a center: What is it that ultimately determines reality? This complex metaphysical subject is treated in a simplified and downsized manner: on the scale of board games. As will be seen, the unusual perspective provided by the model leads to new insights and has a salutary corrective effect in the metaphysico-epistemological respect. The paper also provides an analysis and defense of analogical thinking in metaphysics (of which way of thinking metaphysical modelling is a special form). Full article

On February 8, 1971, Michel Foucault announced the formation of Le Groupe d’information sur les prisons (the Prisons Information Group [GIP]), a group of activist intellectuals who worked to amplify the voices of those with firsthand knowledge of the prison—reflected in their motto, “Speech to the detainees!” In highlighting and circulating subjugated knowledges from within prisons, the GIP not only pursued political and material interventions, but also called for epistemological and methodological shift within intellectual labor about prisons. This essay turns to the work of the GIP, and philosophical reflection on that work, as a resource for contemporary theological methodology. Counter to the optimistic and positive trend in theological turn to practices, this essay draws on Foucault’s work with and reflection on the GIP to argue for a negative theology of practice, which centers on practice (those concrete narratives found in any lived theological context) while, at the same time, sustaining its place in the critical moment of self-reflection; this means theology exposes itself to the risk of reimagining, in the double-movement of self-critique and other-reponse, what theology is. In order to harness and tap into its own moral, abolitionist imagination, this essay argues that theology must risk (paradoxically) and pursue (ideally) its own abolition—it must consider practices outside of its own theological and ecclesial frameworks as potential sources, and it must attend closely, critically, and continually to the ways that Christian practices, and accounts of them, perpetuate and produce harm. Full article

1. Nature has its own logic, which does not follow the human will. Nature is itself; it exists, moves, changes, and evolves according to its own intrinsic ways. Human and human society, as a product of a specific stage of natural development, can only be a concrete manifestation of the logic of nature. 2. In the broad sense, nature refers to all, both phenomena and processes, in the universe. It includes human society spiritual phenomena. In a narrow sense, nature refers to the world outside the society and opposed to society as well, or refers to the research objects of natural sciences 3. The narrow natural philosophy is in the intermediary position between the natural sciences and the overall philosophy (the supreme philosophy, an advocation of Kun Wu’s philosophy of information. For further detail, please refer to the subscript in the following.). Furthermore, it is an independent sub-level philosophical discipline; the broad natural philosophy is a meta-philosophy or supreme philosophy, stipulating the entire world from the dimensions of nature itself. 4. Natural philosophy reveals the laws of nature’s own existence, movement, change, and evolution. This determines that the way of expressing natural philosophy is necessarily natural ontology. The construction of the theoretical system of natural philosophy is inevitably a process of abandoning cognitive mediums of human beings through reflection. It is necessary for us to conclude that natural philosophy is the stipulation of nature itself, which comes out of the nature itself. So, we must explain the nature from the standpoint of the nature itself. 5. The true philosophy should move from the human world to the nature, finding back Husserl’s suspended things, and establish a brand-new philosophy in which man and nature, substance, information, and spirit are united. This kind of philosophy is able to provide contemporary ecological civilization with a reasonable philosophical foundation, rebuilding natural philosophy in a new era, which is a very urgent task for contemporary philosophers. 6. The unity of philosophy and science cannot be seen merely as an external convergence, but also as an intrinsic fusion; a true philosophy should have a scientific character, and science itself must have a philosophical basis. The unity of such an intrinsic fusion of science and philosophy can be fully demonstrated by the practical relationship of development between human philosophy and science. 7. In addition to the narrow path along epistemology, linguistics, and phenomenology, the development of human philosophy has another path. This is the development of philosophy itself that has been nurtured and demonstrated during the development of general science: On the one hand, the construction of scientific rationality requires philosophical thinking and exploration; On the other hand, the progress of science opens the way for the development of philosophy. 8. In the real process of the development of human knowledge, science and philosophy are regulated, contained, and merged with each other in the process of interaction. The two are inlaid together internally to form an interactive dynamic feedback loop. The unified relationship of mutual influence, regulation, promotion and transformation presented in the intrinsic interplay of interaction between science and philosophy profoundly breeds and demonstrates the general way of human knowledge development: the philosophicalization (a term used in Kun Wu’s philosophy of information. For more details please see in Kun Wu, 2016, The Interaction and Convergence of the Philosophy and Science of Information, https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies1030228) of science and scientification (a term used in Kun Wu’s philosophy of information. For more detail, please see in Kun Wu, 2016, The Interaction and Convergence of the Philosophy and Science of Information, https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies1030228) of philosophy. 9. We face two types of dogmatism: one is the dogmatism of naturalism, and the other is the dogmatism of the philosophy of consciousness. One of the best ways to overcome these tendencies of dogmatism is to unite natural ontology, and epistemic constructivism. The crisis of contemporary philosophy induced by the western consciousness philosophy seems like belonging to the field of epistemology, but the root of this crisis is deeply buried in the ontology. The key to solving the crisis of contemporary philosophy lies precisely in the reconstruction of the doctrine of natural philosophy centering to the nature itself and excluding God. The task to be accomplished by this new natural philosophy is how to regain the natural foundation of human consciousness after the God has left the field. 10. Since the 1980s, the philosophy of information established and developed in China has proposed a theory of objective information, as well as the dual existence and dual evolution of matter and information (a key advocation in the ontological theory of Kun Wu’s philosophy of information). It is this theory that has made up for the vacancy existing between matter and mind, which apparently exists in Cartesian dualism, after the withdrawal of the God’s from the field. Philosophy of information in China is first and foremost a natural philosophy that adheres to naturalistic attitudes. Second, this natural philosophy explains the human, human mind and human society in the interpretation of the process and mechanism of natural evolution. In this connection, philosophy of information (a key advocation of Kun Wu’s philosophy of information) in China is a system of meta-philosophy or supreme philosophy. This system undoubtedly has the nature of a new natural philosophy. At the same time, this philosophy can better reflect the philosophical spirit of the information age. Full article

In recent years, a criticism of “indigenous knowledge” has been that this idea makes sense only in terms of acquaintance (or familiarity) type and practical (or skills-type) knowledge (knowledge-how). Understood in terms of theoretical knowledge (or knowledge-that), however, it faces the arguably insurmountable problems of relativism and superstition. The educational implications of this would be that mere beliefs or opinions unanchored by reason(s), such as bald assertions, superstitions, prejudice and bias, should not be included in the curriculum, at least not under the guise of “knowledge”. Worthy of inclusion are skills and practical knowledge, as are traditional music, art, dance and folklore (qua folklore). Moreover, anything that meets the essential requirements for knowledge-that could in principle be included. Against this understanding of knowledge, and its educational implications, it has been contended that indigenous knowledge places no special emphasis on “belief”, “evidence” or “truth”, but that, according to indigenous practitioners, it is rather “the way” that constitutes knowledge, harmonious interaction and appropriate models of conduct. It has been argued, further, that cognitive states are (to be) seen as “maps”, as useful and practical action-guides. This is why (so the argument for “polycentric epistemologies” or “polycentric global epistemology” goes) divination, rain-making, rain-discarding, shamanism, sorcery, ceremony, ritual, mysticism, etc., must be acknowledged as ways of knowing (and as educationally valuable) alongside animal husbandry, botany, medicine, mathematics, tool-making, and the like. The present paper investigates whether the “way-based” epistemological response is a plausible reply to the “truth-based” critique of indigenous knowledge (systems). Full article

In this paper, I argue that animal domestication, speciesism, and other modern human-animal interactions in North America are possible because of and through the erasure of Indigenous bodies and the emptying of Indigenous lands for settler-colonial expansion. That is, we cannot address animal oppression or talk about animal liberation without naming and subsequently dismantling settler colonialism and white supremacy as political machinations that require the simultaneous exploitation and/or erasure of animal and Indigenous bodies. I begin by re-framing animality as a politics of space to suggest that animal bodies are made intelligible in the settler imagination on stolen, colonized, and re-settled Indigenous lands. Thinking through Andrea Smith’s logics of white supremacy, I then re-center anthropocentrism as a racialized and speciesist site of settler coloniality to re-orient decolonial thought toward animality. To critique the ways in which Indigenous bodies and epistemologies are at stake in neoliberal re-figurings of animals as settler citizens, I reject the colonial politics of recognition developed in Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka’s recent monograph, Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights (Oxford University Press 2011) because it militarizes settler-colonial infrastructures of subjecthood and governmentality. I then propose a decolonized animal ethic that finds legitimacy in Indigenous cosmologies to argue that decolonization can only be reified through a totalizing disruption of those power apparatuses (i.e., settler colonialism, anthropocentrism, white supremacy, and neoliberal pluralism) that lend the settler state sovereignty, normalcy, and futurity insofar as animality is a settler-colonial particularity. Full article