#OUP Philosophy
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wardensantoineandevka · 2 years ago
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noooo, I wanna see the OUP be bureaucratic assholes! go back!
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missemymorales · 2 years ago
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AI vs. humans, when creation and creator share communication skills.
I have to say that I wasn’t dying to attend a talk on AI. I’m a late adopter, I don’t like the idea of not knowing anyone more experienced than me. But it was suggested from my boss so I attended. Here’s my takeaway. Apparently, one of the features that aroused awareness on the topic is the ability AI has to “master” language. Our creation is now creating content. Our creation learns faster than…
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bitbybitwrites · 2 months ago
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How Fascism Works
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Jason Stanley is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. Before coming to Yale in 2013, he was Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Rutgers University. Professor Stanley spoke about his latest book, How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them (Penguin Random House, 2018: http://bit.ly/2OxuRoy). Professor Stanley has four previously published books, his first being Knowledge and Practical Interests published in 2005 by Oxford University Press and winner of the 2007 American Philosophical Association book prize. Professor Stanley’s second book, Language in Context, also OUP, was published in 2007. This is a collection of his papers in semantics published between 2000 and 2007 on the topic of linguistic communication and context. His third book, Know How, was published in 2011, also with OUP. Professor Stanley’s fourth book, How Propaganda Works, was published by Princeton University Press in May, 2015. It was the winner of the 2016 PROSE award for the subject area of philosophy. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/bo...
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nikator · 1 year ago
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Readings, 2023
I didn’t read as much or as widely in 2023 as I had hoped, but what I did read mostly followed a through-line of free-spiritedness, pessimism, and absurdism as part of researching for a theory on the critique of everyday life I’ve been working on. This has involved reading more fiction than in the last few years, which I’ve definitely enjoyed, and finally getting around to several authors I’d been meaning to read for years. A fun reading year I’ve already begun furthering in 2024.
1. Camus, Albert. “Exile and the Kingdom.” Translated by Justin O’Brien. The Plague, The Fall, Exile and the Kingdom, and Selected Essays, by Albert Camus, Everyman’s Library, 2004 [1957], pp. 357–488
A strong collection of short stories, each full of a sense of unease, ennui, melancholy, estrangement/alienation, and even madness. I enjoyed them, though they never fully clicked with me. Above all, they felt substantial, considered, and carefully constructed; perhaps too carefully, as they all had a sense of detachment that seemed a little at odds with their subjects.
2. Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Prince. Edited by Peter Bondanella, translated by Peter Bondanella, OUP, 2008 [ca. 1513] (re-read)
Re-reading The Prince for a second time in less than six months (this time for a seminar rather than myself) was very enjoyable, which is a testament to Machiavelli’s literary skills. Some of the things which stood out to me on this reading more than on previous ones: Machiavelli’s artistic talent, the work being full of tight little sentences both beautiful and cutting; the metaphor of applied sciences (arts), above all medicine; the sheer ubiquity of his implicit republicanism; the degree to which he offers ethical maxims—in the tradition of Nietzsche or La Rochefoucauld—for life that can be more or less applied by anyone. My conviction of the centrality of this little book for all political reasoning, science, and practice only grows. An endlessly fertile work. Bondanella’s translation is tight, evocative, stylish, and still by far the best I’ve come across.
3. Anderson, Perry. Considerations on Western Marxism. Verso, 1979
An accessible and easy introductory essay for the tradition, striking a balance—mostly but not entirely successfully—between productive criticism and productive encouragement. However, Anderson fails and never properly even attempts, despite claiming he would, to establish the coherency and meaningfulness of the concept of Western Marxism itself, without which the work is a little disjointed.
4. La Rochefoucauld, François de. “Moral Reflections or Sententiae and Maxims: fifth edition, 1678”, “Maxims Finally Withdrawn by La Rochefoucauld”, “Maxims Never Published by La Rochefoucauld”. Collected Maxims and Other Reflections, by François de La Rochefoucauld, OUP, 2008 [1664–78], pp. 1–191
Technically sharp, tight, incisive; a wonderful representative of the aphoristic ethical tradition and a refreshing kind of urbane cynicism concerned with living well, i.e., with happiness. Very much begs for re-reading, especially because so much of it will inevitably go over your head on first reading, an inevitable risk of short (or even longer) aphorisms.
5. Cioran, E. M. A Short History of Decay. Translated by Richard Howard, Penguin, 2018 [1949]
Cioran is meant to be lyrically very talented, and certainly there are many aphorisms in this short work that are indeed artistically excellent, but there are also a lot (I’d say slightly more) which I found clumsy. I got the impression he was trying too hard and that where he succeeded it was as much from brute strength as learnt skill. Linked to this, philosophically speaking there were plenty of interesting ideas and themes, but they were insufficiently built upon; the aphoristic form was, I feel, misused here, and worked to undermine rather than reinforce the philosophy. The book felt underwhelming compared to his high reputation. Overall, a good book, definitely worth reading and both a notable product of its time and place and a work for the present, a more than worthwhile study of life’s groundlessness and aporias, but not the masterpiece I’d been hoping for.
6. Cioran, E. M. All Gall Is Divided. Translated by Richard Howard, Arcade, 2019 [1952]
A much stronger work than A Short History of Decay: artistically far superior, masterful in its hyper-short aphoristic form. Even through the prism of a translation, it’s clear that Cioran became much more comfortable writing in French in the three years between the two: the sentences run better, are more careful, more economical, more impactful. In terms of the philosophical content, having finished the book I feel unsure about what it was actually saying, as if it wasn’t saying much at all. I think this is a limitation of such short aphorisms when they're taken in isolation and not used as part of (perhaps prompts for) discussion, philosophy being an inherently dialogic art; I prefer the longer form used by the likes of Nietzsche and Adorno and, indeed, the Cioran of A Short History. Nevertheless, All Gall Is Divided picks up where A Short History of Decay left off, continuing the call for a moderate and moderating scepticism and rejecting fanaticism and faith. As ever, the pessimists are the more respectful and kind thinkers...
7. Althusser, Louis. Machiavelli and Us. Edited by Francois Matheron, translated by Gregory Elliott, Verso, 2011 [1962–86]
A fantastic study of Machiavelli and his materialism; an immensely strong justification of his absolute centrality for materialist analysis and politics. The reading of Machiavelli as the first theorist of political practice as such is especially strong and important, as is the closely related interpretation of his approach and practice as being one of locating specific, concrete conjunctural situations—exactly as a Leninist does—and, sub specie historiae, identifying programmatic tasks immanent in that conjuncture and establishing (and judging) means and aims only with reference to that task, not with reference to whichever subjectively-determined goals the political agent might have as he’s often thought to do (a “vulgar pragmatism”, Althusser calls it). A brilliant, short, essayistic book, strong both as an analysis of Machiavelli per se and (mostly implicitly) as a guide to how he can and must be used by communists.
8. Tartt, Donna. The Little Friend. Bloomsbury, 2002
I read this at random to try and get back into long novels after years of avoiding them, and hopefully it's succeeded because The Little Friend is a great book. Its central characters—especially the protagonist, Harriet, the best child character I’ve read in a very long time—are rich and convincing, its atmosphere and sense of place are perfect, and the sadness and misery which pervades it are excellently handled. The ending is delightfully brutal, a gorgeous flurry of violence. The social criticism that is present throughout just beneath the surface is also well used to set the mood and context, though I would say is a little underdeveloped and maybe somewhat crude, though the perspective of a child is responsible for a lot of that crudeness and so isn’t necessarily a weakness.
9. West, M. L., editor. Greek Lyric Poetry: The Poems and Fragments of the Greek Iambic, Elegiac, and Melic Poets (excluding Pindar and Bacchylides) Down to 450 BC. Translated by M. L. West, OUP, 2008
West's translation is often fairly loose in order to make the poems more comprehensible to a modern audience, and while that's usually something I don't like I have to say he's done a good job here. Arranging the poets chronologically (as much as is possible, anyway) really lets you see the cultural change that occurred over the centuries covered, as old, barbaric, Dionysian Greece gave way to a younger, more sterile, more civilised, more Apollonian regime. Throughout, however, the poets have a profound sense of intimacy and place, a true glimpse at a different way of life and the ephemeral pleasures of a long-gone world. The universal embracing of all the poets—from the oldest to the most recent—of sexual desire in general, without qualification of the sex of the target of that desire, is very stark, and a wonderful demonstration that our modern conception of sexuality is historically relative and must one day fall— we can only hope to be replaced by something much closer to the profound wisdom of the ancient erotic principle. Despite the translation's best attempts and the palpable skill of the poets, a lot of the work here does come across as quite dry, sadly, bereft as it is of its native metre and the accompanying music it was meant for, to say nothing of the social context it was written to be enjoyed in or the extremely fragmentary status of so much of it. But even so, there are throughout stunning fragments of beautiful verse, from little clusters of word combinations that seem to come out of nowhere to whole sustained works that, by some miracle, have come down to us through the millennia. I read this above all to get a better feeling for ancient Greek culture, and in this Greek Lyric Poetry succeeds: it is the collected beauty of a different way of life that can decisively inform our struggle for a new one.
10. Lucretius Carus, Titus. On the Nature of the Universe. Translated by Ronald Melville, OUP, 2008 [ca. 50BC]
Lucretius’ achievement in writing De rerum natura is difficult to comprehend. Simultaneously a powerful cosmology that is barely out of date and a guide to living which remains nearly peerless, it combines, as all good philosophy should, wonderful content with wonderful form, but the degree of his artistic skill is so total that it easily puts him at the summit of philosophical writing, alongside such giants as Nietzsche and Plato. This edition is very strong, with an excellent translation, a very competent introduction, and a large number of explanatory notes that are formatted in a way that doesn’t impact reading the main text at all. Why Melville has translated the title as On the Nature of the Universe, rather than the ubiquitous On the Nature of Things, I don’t know; it’s a strange choice. Maybe he wanted to emphasise the scope of the work, and the universe comes across as more magisterial than “things”? But his translation is excellent, very readable, beautiful.
The subtle, stunningly intelligent atomic physics that Lucretius communicates in such beautiful and evocative ways is amazingly prescient and perceptive. The degree to which it presaged central discoveries of modern science is exhilarating and leaves me a little speechless. To name only a few standout points from the first book: entropy (1.215); the conservation of matter/energy (1.215–25); relativism about time (1.458); molecules (1.483); subatomic particles (1.610). These are things which Lucretius hypothesises on the basis of a masterful combination of observation, experimentation, and reasoning, i.e., upon genuinely scientific grounds. The maturity and sophistication of the entire enterprise is staggering. Among the many, many things that Lucretius is, he is irrefutable evidence that the people who lived even in the distant past were not stupid, and knew how to discover fundamental truths about their world. In so doing he’s also a fantastic standard-bearer for philosophy: this is what our subject can do! See what we can achieve! See what we can know! See our triumph!
His more overtly “philosophical” principles are even more impressive, his atomism, no matter how stunning, being now (after millennia!) outdated. Among such vital and still cutting-edge principles as the causal closure of the physical (1.304) and determination in the last instance (1.546), Lucretius puts forward the genius of Epicureanism in full force: the harmlessness of death, the ubiquitous misery of fearing death, the ease and goodness of viewing death with ambivalence and contempt and carelessness; hedonism; opposition to romance as a social regime (something even Marxists haven’t fully recognised!); opposition to religion (the criticisms of religion in De rerum natura are extremely powerful and gorgeous, heartfelt and motivated by an intoxicating humanism and love and so disgust at the wound that religion is for men), and on and on.
I simply cannot lavish enough praise on De rerum natura. It comes within a hair’s breadth of perfection, being pulled down only by a brief lapse into misogyny and lazy, patriarchal thinking and the affirmation of marriage, something even more disgraceful as, paradoxically and contradictingly, it follows directly on from an unparalleled rejection of romance and the slavery it subjects us to. But even this is confined to a single page. De rerum natura is an entire philosophy for life contained in a relatively short book of poetry: it is a shining jewel of world literature and a defiant, proud demonstration of antiquity’s brilliance and bequeathment to mankind. It remains a live work, begging to be taken up and used in the critical study and critique of the world— communists could learn a great deal from it; Marx’s debt to Lucretius was a good starting point, but it has been criminally underdeveloped. Just beyond brilliant. “Masterpiece” doesn’t even begin to do it justice. Ovid gave some indication, made some attempt, when he wrote that ‘The verses of sublime Lucretius will perish only when a single day brings about destruction of the world’ (Amores 1.15).
11. Cioran, E. M. The Temptation to Exist. Translated by Richard Howard, Arcade Publishing, 2013 [1956]
A strong work of philosophical essay writing, a worthy addition to the French tradition in which Cioran is here attempting to place himself. Lots of interesting ideas skillfully expressed in easy and engaging prose. Cioran’s writing is tight, terse, and considered, and this book has confirmed my judgement from the previous two books of his I read this year that he’s a master of phrases—of little combinations or words—and that this is where his style really excels. In terms of content, The Temptation to Exist definitely has stronger and weaker parts, but rarely falls very far from “good”.
12. Amable, Bruno, and Stefano Palombarini. The Last Neoliberal: Macron and the Origins of France’s Political Crisis. Translated by David Broder and David Fernbach, Verso, 2021 [2018]
Read this in a couple of sittings over a single day, so a relatively easy read. Amable and Palombarini argue that the defining characteristic of the contemporary French social formation is the absence of a dominant social bloc (i.e. voting bloc, support for a party or coalition of parties), and that Macron and LREM are the first to have been able to capitalise on what they call the “bourgeois bloc” of the upper and middle classes who are united by “culturally left/liberal” views and support for European integration.
13. Thacker, Eugene. Infinite Resignation. Repeater, 2018
Infinite Resignation is very easy to read. I read over a hundred pages in a day multiple times, and that’s very unusual for me. I would describe Thacker’s writing style as distinctly “American”: plain, simple, best when it is saying something bluntly, and unsightly when it tries to be artistic and ape the European writers that dominate the book; he’s just not good enough an artist to sound profound when he’s writing a hyper-short aphorism full of pseudo-profound words. But for all this the book is not trivial, and Thacker’s encyclopaedic and constant reference to the long tradition of pessimism adds a huge amount to it. Overall a perhaps surprisingly effective work, one which I’m already in the process of mining for ideas and even some quotations for my main ongoing draft.
14. Lahiri, Jhumpa, editor. The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories. Penguin, 2020
This is a wonderful anthology, full of magic, the fantastical, the strange, the sombre, the melancholy, the poor and the intelligentsia, the city and the countryside, the new and the old, the male and the female, the human and the nonhuman. The selected stories are all excellent, and together convey a really strong sense of Italy and her regionalism, and of it changing over time, with selections from across her modern history as a unified state. There are stories here which are works of unpolished social realism; there are also a large number which come across as something like a fable. All of them make you want to be in love with such an ancient, rich, cultured, and conflicted country, even and especially when you are being shown her ugly underbelly.
15. Kafka, Franz. “The Trial.” The Complete Novels, by Franz Kafka, translated by Edwin Muir and Willa Muir, Vintage Books, 1999 [1915], pp. 11–128
What can one say of Kafka, other than that he is gorgeous? The Trial is a powerful critique of liberalism and capitalist modernity, with the entire system and its well-meaning participants (we might say its bearers— Träger) undercut and subjected to a scathing demystification through the mystifying story. Some interesting things that stood out to me: Joseph K. is unusual for a protagonist in being a very unlikeable person, nothing remarkable but distinctly distasteful and offputting, as well as being the quintessential modern bourgeois; throughout the novel, its recurrent subjects/themes cover, like bullet-points, the central foci of capitalist modernity, most prominently the judiciary and legalism, general bureaucracy, landlordism, the marriage form and monogamy, misogyny/patriarchy, and the interplay between poverty and wealth and their common subjection before the social order itself. The way that Kafka combines form and content is masterful, as the two are always fully in agreement and mutually reinforcing. Even when the gruelling monotony and byzantinism of most of the novel give way without warning to the stochastic, fragmentary, disjointed ending, a product of the book’s incompleteness, it seems almost designed and deliberate, and has a strong emphatic effect.
16. Shawn, Wallace. The Fever. Revised ed., Faber & Faber, 2009 [1990] (re-read; new edition)
The Fever is a brutal work, an emotional powerhouse. It has an amazing power to make you viscerally bleed for the poor and the oppressed, for the downtrodden, for the forgotten and the exploited, and to want to give everything you are to the people and the struggle for freedom. It’s especially cutting for a middle-class reader like the protagonist, for the well-off, for those who think of themselves as good people, because it rips the edifice of money and morality and the liberal order out from under their eyes and shows how the whole regime of wealth and comfort rests upon the backbreaking humiliation and misery of the poor. It’s a cold-hearted, ideologically suffocated person who could read The Fever and not be deeply moved by it and made, even if only for a brief period, to see the world a little differently. Short, sweet like vomit, oppressive like the monsoon heat, it’s a brilliant little play.
I don’t like or agree with several of the revisions made in this edition compared to the original (which I read many years ago); maybe that’s because some of the lines of the original which have been burned into my mind have been erased or altered, but some of the central moments of the play—most of all the little church in the poor country, and the guerilla in the café—seem to me less powerful and direct.
17. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale, CUP, 1996 [1878–80]
A fantastic work that is a brilliant life companion for the titular free spirits. It’s wonderful to see Nietzsche as a critical but sincere advocate and follower of the natural sciences and the Enlightenment. This is a somewhat short review compared to some of the others on this list, but don’t mistake that for a lacklustre attitude towards the work on my part: it’s more than anything because there is so much—and so much that is good—in these “travel books” as Nietzsche called them that I struggle to think of where to begin with describing them. They are immensely valuable, as is everything by Nietzsche, but spending half a year slowly chewing through these couple of thousand aphorisms has given me a lot, and a huge pool of ideas and references for my writing. They do exhibit marks of underdevelopment, both in content and style, compared to his later, “mature” works, but nonetheless they amount to a very valuable salvo against the world we oppose and of considerable worth irrespective of their place within Nietzsche’s oeuvre.
18. Camus, Albert. “The Myth of Sisyphus.” Translated by Justin O’Brien. The Plague, The Fall, Exile and the Kingdom, and Selected Essays, by Albert Camus, Everyman’s Library, 2004 [1942], pp. 489–605
For a work as famous as this is, I wasn’t very impressed by The Myth of Sisyphus. It seemed to me more like an extremely bloated plan for an essay rather than a finished one, complete with critical, central failures, including a failure to ever properly define or characterise vital concepts (including the absurd!) and to even attempt to justify enormous leaps of “argument” (without justification they’re not arguments, only stipulations at best) that are essential to the essay as a whole, most notably the rejection of suicide which is made with a handwaving nonentity of a segway into the rest of the work. The huge amount of space given over to the analysis of works of literature also seemed wildly misplaced and detracted from the essay; the substance of what Camus is arguing with them could be stated in two pages. I agree with a huge amount of what Camus is saying here, just not with really any of the ways in which he is stitching those things together. Reading this has sadly reinforced my preconception that Camus was a good philosophical novelist but a poor philosopher (a distinction he actually conveys well in this essay, ironically enough, including the weakness of the former group’s attempts to fulfil those of the latter— I can’t tell if he thought he was subject to those weaknesses or not, but he was). Nevertheless, the philosophy being put forward here is a strong one, a distinctly Mediterranean foil to the Germanic Nietzsche. The discussion of absurd archetypes, namely the seducer, the actor, and the conquerer, was a particular stand-out that I think offers good strategies for different free spirits. I have been utilising The Myth of Sisyphus a lot in scraps of writing towards my main ongoing piece, I want to emphasise the significance and maturity of its ideas, but as a piece of writing it’s surprisingly poor and lets down its actual position considerably.
19. Camus, Albert. “The Plague.” Translated by Justin O’Brien. The Plague, The Fall, Exile and the Kingdom, and Selected Essays, by Albert Camus, Everyman’s Library, 2004 [1947], pp. 1–272
The first chapter of this book has one of the best atmospheres I’ve ever read, a near-perfect building of tension and dread that masterfully begins a masterful story. The teaching of philosophy—and of a philosophy—through fiction is difficult, and in my experience fails more often than it succeeds, but Camus has succeeded to such a degree in The Plague that I’m left feeling like a novel was the best way to present the ideas, stronger than a nonfiction work, stronger than The Myth of Sisyphus. Beautiful and brilliant, the sort of work someone can easily pick up, be awe-struck by, and decide to adopt as their guiding document in life— and be well-chosen in doing so. Everything is as it should be, and the cumulative effect is something like perfect. A sublime book to end the year with.
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woodohwanedandproud · 1 year ago
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@seechi #the most unbelievaable thing about mctna is not the kind of injuries hwi and seon ho shrug off like it's nothing#it's that hwi believed seon ho's bad poker face for even one hot minute @lilsjames #''everyone is a monster to someone#since you are so convinced that i am yours#i will be it'' @blackswan-wildgeese #he's complicated#and this set shows it off so well @pondsphuwin #i love him and all his personalities#and this is such a wonderful set! showing all his different facets#my boy has layers!!!!!#is he a gemini sun......#much to think about @convenientalias #explain yourself dude#what is your philosophy i know you have one @petekaos #YALL YALL this gifset gets right under the skin of seon ho's character i'm in awe... god the meshing of those two scenes#parallels narrative structure something something pain!!#the way the true nam seon ho is so hidden and yet so plain on the surface.#the true nam seon ho is like his mother. compassionate & righteous & defending.#and YET the way he sheds all of this and adopts his father's attitude like a second skin#the way that he above all is hwi's childhood friend even in the end#the GRIP this show has me in is unbelievable. @navramanan #almost gasped at the parallel in gif 5#the real nam seonho is the one who is compassionate loyal loving defensive. the real nam seonho is like his mom and nothing like his dad#but growing up with his dad feeling pressure getting ridiculed all his life. he had to act tough and hurt people to survive#and it killed him to be like that. he said he learned to intimidate people by using his father's name#he used that power only to protect the ones he loves. he wouldn't have looked down on chido in ihwaru if hwi wasnt in that situation#and i know it broke him apart to treat hwi that way after he had returned from war. being the son of a harsh father#he had to act and behave in ways against his own nature. repress his emotions. just to survive#axxx seonho the way you break my heart @rain-hat #love seamayweed's gifsets#really get under the skin of mctna#such a beautiful way of composing thoughtful meta#that's also a love letter#to characters
and oups my tags if that's allowed for that one time but this gifset does mean A LOT to me: #i love him okay #he's a mess #he's a delight #he's just layers of pain guilt regret broken dreams shattered hopes bad choices and worse choices and EVERYTHING #i just want him to smile #a real smile #and not die right after #is that truly that much to ask #forever sobbing
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Cold and distant noble who tramples on the weak, passionate defender of lowborns, capricious snake, enemy, childhood friend and stranger both —
                                                      m o n s t e r
Who is the real Nam Seon-ho?
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oupacademic · 6 years ago
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To celebrate #PrideMonth, the OUP Philosophy team honours Michel Foucault (1926-84) as its Philosopher of the Month. Foucault was one of the most influential French philosophers and historians of ideas, best known for his theories on discourses and the relation of power and knowledge. His seminal works, such as History of Madness (1961), Discipline and Punish (1975), and History of Sexuality (1976–84), examine the emergence of the powerful, state institutions (penal, scientific, and medical), and their mechanisms of control. They chart western attitudes towards the insane, criminals, and sexual deviants and consider the ways in which societies have penalized those who are outside the norms.
In History of Sexuality, Foucault famously put forward the view that the homosexual category did not exist until the 19th century. Although same sex relations have been practiced throughout history, people who practised homosexuality were not classified as homosexuals and did not think of themselves in terms of sexuality. He argued that, in fact, there was a proliferation of new medical, juridical, and psychological discourses concerning sex and obsessive discussions about sex, and these led to the construction of sexual identities, designed to regulate rather than suppress sexuality.
An early victim of AIDS, Foucault died in Paris on June 25, 1984 at the age of 57. His theories have had an enormous impact across a range of disciplines from philosophy, literary criticism, anthropology, sociology, gender studies, and queer theory.
Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography by David M. Halperin
Foucault: A Very Short Introduction by Gary Cutting
Thinking the Impossible: French Philosophy Since 1960 by Gary Gutting
The Will to Punish by Didier Fassin and Edited by Christopher Kutz
Poststructuralism: A Very Short Introduction by Catherine Belsey
Sexual Dissidence by Jonathan Dollimore
Self-Transformations: Foucault, Ethics, and Normalized Bodies by Cressida J. Heyes
The Biopolitics of Gender by Jemima Repo
The Oxford Handbook of Process Philosophy and Organization Studies edited by Jenny Helin, Tor Hernes, Daniel Hjorth, and Robin Holt
Classical Culture and Modern Masculinity by Daniel Orrells
Sexuality: A Very Short Introduction by Veronique Mottier
‘The Turn to Ethics: Derrida, Levinas, and Foucault’ by Gary Cutting in Thinking the Impossible: French Philosophy Since 1960 from The Oxford Scholarship Online
“Michel Foucault (1926–1984)” by Richard Weiskopf and Hugh Willmott in The Oxford Handbook of Process Philosophy and Organization Studies from Oxford Handbooks Online
“Modern Sex” in Foucault: A Very Short Introduction from Very Short Introductions
“Difference and Desire” in Postructuralism: A Very Short Introduction from Very Short Introductions
For more on this philosopher,explore our collection for blog posts, articles and reading suggestions. Follow us @OUPPhilosophy on Twitter.
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elizabethanism · 3 years ago
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“Alone together, scholar and cat.”
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found in Peter Adamson’s OUP volume on medieval philosophy
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traumacatholic · 3 years ago
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BA (Hons) Philosophy and the Catholic Tradition at Maryvale Institute Reading List
This list is very long, so I am putting it under a read more.  There was a pdf, but a lot of that contains information like exam dates, module guides, assessment details etc that aren’t relevant. I’ve put all the module titles, and the information they gave for their reading list.
Hopefully this is of use to anyone that’s interested in looking into Catholicism, Philosophy, Theology, or is looking to do a degree in philosophy and/or religion. Please do excuse any typos, I did have to type up a lot of this myself. 
Introduction to Philosophy:
Pope John Paul II 1998 Fides et Ratio CTS London
John-Terry, Chris 1994 For the Love of Wisdom Alba House New York
Beards, Andrew 2003 ‘Philosophy and Evangelization: The Vision of Fides et Ratio’, in the John Redford (editor), Hear O Islands. Veritas Dublin
Peter M Collins Logos Summer 2013 Vol 16:3 Philosophy in Blessed John PaulII’s Catholic University. An Antidote to Relativistic Secularism
Heather Erb Logos Summer 2012 Vol 15:3 The Varieties of Wisdom and the Consolation of Philosophy
Richard A Spinello Logos Summer 2013 Vol 17:3 The Enduring Relevance of Karol Wojtyla’s Philosophy
Mary Midgley 2018 What is Philosophy For? Bloomsbury Michael Dummett 2010 The Nature and Future of Philosophy Columbia University Press
History of Philosophy:
Johansen, Karsten, f 1999 A History of Ancient Philosophy: From the Beginnings to St. Augustine Routledge
Marenbon, John 1983 Early Medieval Philosophy, 480-1150: An Introduction Routledge
French, P., and Wettstein, H., (Editors) 2003 Renaissance and Early - Modern Philosophy
Wiley-Blackwell Kearnery, Richard (editor) 2003 Continental Philosophy in the 20th Century Routledge
Bell, D. and Cooper, N. (editors) 1990 The Analytic Traditioini: Meaning, Thought and Knowledge
Strathern, Paul 2002 The Essential Wittgenstein Virgin Books Paperback
Anthony Kenny 2012 A New History of Western Philosophy OUP Oxford
Peter Adamson 2014- 2019 A History of Philosophy without Gaps Vol 1 Classical Philosophy; Vol 2 Philosophy in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds, Vol 3 Philosophy in the Islamic World, Vol 4 Medieval Philosophy OUP Oxford
Anthony Gottlieb 2016 The Dream of Reason. A History of Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance Penguin Books
Anthony Gottlieb 2016 The Dream of Enlightenment. The Rise of Modern Philosophy Penguin Books
Philosophy of the Human Person and Ethics:
Second Vatican Council 1965 Guadium et Spes
Crosby, John F 1993 The Selfhood of the Human Person Catholic University of America Press Washington
Vitz, Paul 1998 Psychology as Religion Erdmans Gomez-Lobo, Alfonso 2001 Morality and the Human Goods Georgetown University Press
MacIntyre, Alasdair 1967 Short History of Ethics Routledge
May, William E 2003 Introduction to Moral Theology Huntingdon
Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro 2011 A Brief History of the Soul Wiley-Blackwell
Epistemology:
Tekippe, Terry 1994 What is Lonergan up to in Insight Liturgical Press Collegeville
Dancy, Jonathan 1985 An Induction to Contemporary Epistemology Blackwell Oxford
Flanagan, Joseph 1996 Towards Self-Knowledge University of Toronto Press Toronto
Metaphysics:
Sullivan, Daniel 1992 An Introduction to Philosophy Tan Books and Publishers Illinois
Connell, Desmond 1996 Essays in Metaphysics Four Courts Press Dublin
Jonathan Tallant 2018 Metaphysics An Introduction Bloomsbury London
William Charlton 2016 Metaphysics and Grammar Bloomsbury London
Logic:
Hacck, Susan 1978 Philosophy of Logics Cambridge University Press Cambridge
Walton, Douglas N 1989 Informal Logic; A handbook for Critical Argumentation Cambridge University Press Cambridge
Geach, P.T 1972 Logic Matters Blackwell Oxford
Philosophy of Science:
Alan Chalmers 1999 What is this thing called Science? 3rd Edition Open University Press Buckingham
Peter Godfrey-Smith 2003 Theory and Reality University of Chicago Press Chicago
Alex Rosenbery 2005 Philosophy of Science: a contemporary introduction 2nd Edition Routledge London
Barnes, Barry and David Bloor 1982 Relativism, rationalism, and the sociology of knowledge Hollis and Lukes
Grene, Marjoris and David Depew 2004 The Philosophy of Biology Cambridge, University Press Cambridge
Hollis, Martin and Steven Lukes, eds. 1982 Rationality and Relativism MIT Cambridge
Issues in Current Philosophy:
2007 ‘Dummett’: Philosophy and Religion in Randall Auxier (ed), The Library of Living Philosophers Michael Dummett, Vol XXXI Open Court Publishing Company Chicago/La Salle Illinois
Kerr, Fergus 2002 After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism Blackwell Oxford
MaCarthy, Michael 1990 The Crisis in Philosophy SUNY New York
Benso, Silvia Spring ‘Of Things Face-to-Face 1996 with Levinas Face-to-Face with Heidegger,’ Philosophy Today, 40, 1.
Moran, Dermot 2000 An Introduction to Phenomenology Routledge
Fillingham, Lydia 1994 Foucault for Beginners Writers and Readers Books 62
Social and Political Philosophy:
2004 Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction Oxford University Press Oxford
White, Michael 2003 Political Philosophy: An Historical Introduction Oneworld Publications London
Maritain, Jacques 1998 Man and the State Catholic University of America Press Washington DC
Philosophy of Culture and Evangelization:
Redemptor Hominis, Redemptoris Mission, Fides er Ratio Pontifical Council for inter-religious dialogue, Dialogue and Proclamation
Gallaher, SJ, Michael Paul 1997 Clashing Symbols: An Introduction to Faith & Culture
Hemming, Laurence Paul and Frank Parsons, Susan 1998 Restoring Faith in Reason: A new Translation of Faith and Reason with Commentary and Discussion SCM 2002
https://www.secondspring.co.uk/2017/09/22/evangelizing-anti-intellectual-culture/
Philosophy of God and Cosmology:
Varghese, Roy (ed) 2000 Theos, Anthropos, Christos: A Compendium of Modern Philosophical Theology Peter Lang New York
Swinburne, Richard 1997 The Coherence of Theism Oxford
Davies, Brian 1985 Thinking about God Chapman London
Polkinghorne, John 2007 Quantum Physics and Theology: An Unexpected Kinship Yale University Press Yale
Hodgson, Peter 2005 Theology and Modern Physics Ashgate Publishing Co Aldershot
Wallace William A 2002 The Modelling of Nature: Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Nature in Synthesis. Scholarly Book Services Inc
http://www.iapweb.org/
http://www.morec.com/nature/
Philosophy of History and of the Arts:
Bann, Stephen 1981 ‘Towards a Critical Historiography: Recent Work in Philosophy of History,’ Philosophy 56
Dray, William 1989 On History and Philosophers of History Leiden and New York
Danto, Arthur C 1965 The Analytical Philosophy of History Cambridge Philosophy of Art: A Contemporary Introduction
Hans Urs von Balthasar The Glory of the Lord, Vols, 1 & 4N.
P. Lanarque & S. Olsen Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art: The Analytic Tradition
Matthew Muller Logos Fall 2017 Vol 20:4 pp54-65 The False Idol of Beauty. Bl John Henry Newman’s Critique of Aesthetics and the Challenge of Evangelisation
Dante, The Divine Comedy
The Thoughts of St. Thomas Aquinas:
Davies, Brian (editor) 2002 Thomas Aquinas: Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives Oxford University Press Inc, USA
Torrell, Jean-Pierre 2005 Aquinas’s ‘Summa’: Background, Structure and Reception CUP Press Washington, D.C.
Kerr, Fergus 2003 After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism Blackwell Oxford
Denys Turner 2013 Thomas Aquinas. A Portrait Yale University Press Yale
Philosophy of Religion:
Haldane, John 2005 An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Religion Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd
Cottingham, John 2005 The Spiritual Dimension: Religion, Philosophy and Human Value Cambridge University Press Cambridge
Plantinga, Alvin 2000 Warranted Christian Belief Oxford University Press Oxford
Cottingham, John 2014 Philosophy of Religion. Towards a More Humane Approach Cambridge University Press Cambridge
Philosophy and Contemporary Catholic Theology:
2003 Reinterpreting Rahner: A Critical Study of His Major Themes Fordham University Press
Dulles, Avery Models of Revelation Orbis Marynoll, NY
Meynell, Hugo 1986 Introduction to the Theology of Bernard Lonergan Scholars Press Atlanta
Reading Texts: Augustine’s Confessions:
Augustine (trans. R.S. PineCoffin) 1961 Confessions Penguin Books London
Brown, Peter 2000 Augustine of Hippo: A Biography UCP Berkeley, Los Angeles
Burton, Phillip 2007 Language in the Confessions of Augustine Oxford University Press Oxford
Cameron, Michael 2012 God Meets Me Everywhere: Augustine’s Early Figurative Exegesis Oxford University Press Oxford
Caputo, John, D. and Scanlon, Michael, J. (eds.) 2005 Augustine and Postmodernism: Confessions and Circumfession Indiana University Press Bloomington and Indianapolis
Carey, Phillip 2000 Augustine’s Invention of the Inner Self: The Legacy of a Christian Platonist Oxford University Press Oxford
Chadwick, Henry 2009 Augustine of Hippo: A Life Oxford University Press Oxford
Dobell, Brian 2009 Augustine’s Intellectual Conversion: The Journey from Platonism to Christianity Cambridge University Press Cambridge
Dodaro, Robert 1999 ‘Loose Cannons: Augustine and Derrida on their Selves’ in Caputo, John, D., and Scanlon, Michael, J., (eds.) God, the Gift, and Postmodernism
Foley, Michael 2013 ‘Augustine (354-430 - The Confessions’ in (eds.) Robert Campbell Roberts; Scott H Moore; Donald D Schmeltekopf Finding a Common Thread: Understanding Great Texts from Homer to O’Connor St. Augustine’s Press South Bend, Indiana
Mann, William 2014 Augustine’s Confessions: Philosophy in Autobiography Oxford University Press Oxford
Stock, Brian 1996 Augustine the Reader: Meditation, SelfKnowledge and the Ethics of Interpretation The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Thomas More and Renaissance Philosophy:
Wegemer, Gerard 2004 Thomas More Source Book Catholic University of America Washington, D.C.
Copehaver, Brian 1992 Renaissance Philosophy Oxford Paperbacks Oxford
Hankins, James (editor) 2007 The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy Cambridge University Press Cambridge
Husserl and Phenomenology:
Hadn, E., (editor) 1997 The Philosophy of Hans Georg Gadamer Open Court Library of Living Philosophers
Sokolowski, Robert 1999 Introduction to Phenomenology Cambridge University Press Cambridge
Russell, Mathewson 2006 Husserl: A Guide for the Perplexed Continuum
The Philosophy of Meister Eckhart:
Eckhart, Meister (trans. McGinn, Bernard) 1981 The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises and Defense Paulist Books New York, NY (242 ECK)
Eckhart, Meister (trans. McGinn, Bernard) 1986 Meister Eckhart: Teacher and Preacher Paulist Books New York, NY
Eckhart, Meister (trans. Maurer, Armand) 1974 Parisian Questions and Prologues Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies Toronto
McGinn, Bernard 2001 The Mystical Thought of Meister Eckhart Crossroad New York, NY
Turner, Denys 2004 Faith, Reason, and the Existence of God Cambridge University Press New York, NY
Wojtulewicz, Christopher M. 2017 Meister Eckhart on the Principle Peeters Leuven
Aquinas and Newman in Modernity:
Newman, John Henry 1906 An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent Longmans London (230.2 NEW)
Crosby, John F. 2014 The Personalism of John Henry Newman Catholic University of America Washington DC (230.2 NEW)
McAleer, Graham J. 2005 Ecstatic Morality and Sexual Politics Fordham University Press New York, NY
Wippel, John F. 2000 The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas Catholic University of America Washington DC (230.2 AQU)
McCool, Gerald A. 1996 The Neo-Thomists Marquette University Press Milwaukee
Przywara, Erich 2014 Analogia Entis Wm. B. Eerdmans Grand Rapids, MI (110 PRZ)
Turner, Denys 2004 Faith, Reason, and the Existence of God Cambridge University Press Cambridge, UK (200.1 TUR)
Hudson, Deal W. and Moran, Dennis (eds.) 1992 The Future of Thomism University of Notre Dame Press South Bend, IN
Knasas, John F. X. 2003 Being and Some Twentieth-Century Thomists Fordham University Press New York, NY
Sillem, Edward 1969-70 The Philosophical Notebook of John Henry Newman, vols. 1&2 Nauwelaerts Leuven (230.2 NEW)
Richardson, Lawrence 2004 Newman's Approach to Knowledge Gracewing London
Collins, James 1961 Philosophical Readings in Cardinal Newman Henry Regnery Chicago, IL
Merrigan, Terence 1991 Clear Heads and Holy Hearts: The Religious and Theological Ideal of John Henry Newman NEW)
Aquin, Frederick D. and King, Benjamin J. 2018 The Oxford Handbook of John Henry Newman Oxford University Press Oxford
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mariacallous · 3 years ago
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"With the eurozone crisis going back to 2010, the refugee crisis that culminated in 2015, the crisis of the EU-Russia relationship going back to the Ukrainian Maidan revolution of 2013-14, to the Covid-19 crisis in 2020, the EU has struggled to live up to the expectations it raised both in relation to its own people and neighbouring countries. This is not an accident".
Could this really be by design? In European Disunion: Democracy, Sovereignty and the Politics of Emergency (Hurst in the UK, OUP in the US, 2022), Stefan Auer argues that the EU's hybrid form – falling somewhere between a multinational state and a multilateral organisation – comes closest to the ideals of Germany, its most powerful member. This attempt to bypass politics has weakened the EU in the many emergencies it has faced over the last 15 years. Today, he says, "Europeans do not have the luxury of living in a politics-less world".
Stefan Auer is an Associate Professor at the University of Hong Kong, having previously taught in Melbourne and Dublin and twice held Jean Monnet chairs. A prolific contributor to political science journals, he won the 2005 UACES Best Book in European Studies prize for his Liberal Nationalism in Central Europe (Routledge, 2004).
*The authors' own book recommendations are: After Europe by Ivan Krastev (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017) and Time of the Magicians: The Great Decade of Philosophy, 1919-1929 by Wolfram Eilenberger (2022).
Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors (a division of Energy Aspects).
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dvrthncx · 4 years ago
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oups i think i just attempted to create a self insert and then gave her a backstory (that i think is one of my best if i do say so myself) so that she has a good excuse to share my personal philosophies re: sith vs jedi and now i’m writing her a fic cause she deserves it this wasn’t supposed to happen
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gwendolynlerman · 6 years ago
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French vocabulary
Des mots françaises utilisés en anglais - French words in English
à la - "to the/in the manner of"
à la carte - restaurant menu items sold separately or individually, usually in smaller portions
à la mode - to serve a desert with ice cream
à propos - "regarding/concerning"
adieu - "goodbye/farewell"
amuse-bouche - a small bite-size appetizer
apéritif - a drink taken before a meal, usually alcoholic
au jus - to serve a dish with sauce
blasé - not to be impressed with something due to over-familiarity
Bon appétit ! - "Enjoy your meal!"
bon vivant - somebody who enjoys their life
Bon voyage ! - "Enjoy your trip!"
bourgeois - a person preoccupied with material values and class rank or status
brunette - a female with brown hair
café - coffee house
café au lait - coffee with milk
chic - stylish, in fashion
cliché - a saying that is used too often
clique - a tight or exclusive group
crèche - Nativity scene for Christmas
crème brûlée - a desert with custard and caramelized sugar
crème de la crème - "best of the best"
critique - an analysis of one's work
cul-de-sac - dead-end street
décor - referred to home decorating
déjà vu - "already seen"; used for situations that seem like they've happened before.
dossier - a file containing information about a person
eau de toilette - aromatic-splashing water used after bathing/mild perfume
eau de vie - whiskey, brandy, or other strong alcoholic beverages
En garde ! - "Take your guard!"; said in fencing
entre nous - "between us"
entrée - the main dish of a meal
façade - a fake person or a false impression
faux - fake
faux pas - something one must not do in order to remain polite
femme fatale - seductrice harboring bad intentions.
fiancé(e) - a man/woman who will be married
gaffe - a stupid mistake or blunder
genre - type or kind
haute cuisine - high-end or gourmet cooking
hors d'œuvre - an appetizer
joie de vivre - joy of living
laissez-faire - political philosophy referring to non-interference
malaise - sickness or not feeling comfortable
Mardi Gras - Fat Tuesday, annual festival celebrated in New Orleans
milieu - social environment
né(e) - "born"; used in writing when referring to a woman's maiden name
nouveau riche - people who have recently become wealthy
panache - flamboyance
par avion - air mail
prêt-à-porter - ready to wear
raison d'être - eeason or purpose for existing
rapprochement - diplomatic term for two states or bodies moving towards each other
renaissance - "rebirth", 14-17th-century Europe
savant - knowing or brilliant, often used in relation to those with autism
soirée - evening party
soupe du jour - oup of the day
tête-à-tête - "head-to-head", two people facing each other in close debate
vinaigrette - oil and vinegar salad dressing
vis-à-vis - to compare one thing in relation to another
This is not a comprehensive list, but it includes the most commonly used terms. Some of them are also used in other languages.
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fabrice-1-ayissi · 5 years ago
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Découvrez dans les boutiques de vente Amazon, le livre intitulé : << l'être humain et le mensonge du système mondial >> de Fabrice AYISSI. Ce livre est un écrit oups mettant à découvert les parodies du système qui réduisent l'être humain à tout égard. Il ne vous laissera donc pas indifférent car, renfermant à son sein : le développement personnel, l'histoire, la santé, la spiritualité, la philosophie des modernes, la démocratie illusoire, l'empathie, les manipulations confondues et le racisme. Bonne lecture. https://www.instagram.com/p/B8yHKfhhuSe/?igshid=10fw5amkydotg
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oupacademic · 5 years ago
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5 Facts about Friedrich Schiller
German poet and playwright, Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) was a profound philosopher who wrote highly influential works on aesthetics and played a role in the development of German idealism and Romanticism. Schiller insisted upon the importance of arts in human’s life and saw an aesthetic education as the key to the realisation of morality and a free and just society whereby a human can realise his full potential. His achievement in literature also covers an astonishing range of forms
Here are 5 interesting facts about Schiller, you might not know:
1. Born in Marback in Germany, Schiller attended the military academy of Karl Eugen, Duke of Württemberg and emerged as an army doctor in 1780. He however rebelled against his training by writing and reading “Sturm and Drang”. His first play The Robbers (1781), the story about a nobleman turned robber, caused a sensation on its first performance. Forbidden by Karl Eugen to pursue his literary ambitions, Schiller had to flee in 1782 to Manheim in Palatinate and became a resident playwright at the Manheim National Theatre from 1783-1784.
2. He is sometimes referred to as the German Shakespeare for his immense influence on German literature and theater. His other famous works include the trilogy Wallenstein, and four major dramas, Maria Stuart, The Maid of Orleans, The Bride of Messina and Wilhelm Tell.
3. Immanuel Kant was a major influence on Schiller who developed Kant’s ethics and aesthetics towards post-Kantian idealism. On the basis of Kant's Critique of Judgement (1790), Schiller argued that beauty is ‘freedom in phenomenal appearance’. On the Aesthetic Education of Humanity in a Series of Letters(Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen, 1795) is his most influential and best-known work.
4. He became Professor of History at Jena in 17889, and wrote several historical works during his lifetime.
5. He was a close friend with Goethe (1749-1832) and collaborated with him on a literary journal Die Horen (1795-7) to raise the standard of art and literature. Both are considered seminal and notable figures of the Weimar Classicism, a movement in literature and theatre associated with the culture of the Weimarcourt at the turn of the eighteenth century.  
For more on our Philosopher of the Month, follow @OUPPhilosophy and the hashtag #philosopherotm on Twitter.
Image provided by Wikimedia Commons
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ubiqbooks · 8 years ago
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29.3.17
This morning someone bought German Philosophy : A Very Short Introduction  by Andrew Bowie, making it the #firstbookoftheday
“German Philosophy : A Very Short Introduction discusses the idea that German philosophy forms one of the most revealing responses to the problems of ‘modernity.”
Follow the link to grab a copy: http://bit.ly/2o8BRMk
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romainjobert · 6 years ago
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20 jours, soit un peu plus de deux semaines, c'est le temps que m'aura laissé l'Aventure pour prendre de l'avance. Comme un guépard défiant une gazelle au sprint et lui laissant, sûr de sa supériorité, 150 mètres avant de s'élancer. J'ai d'abord repris mes marques : les nuits en tentes, la logistique bouffe, la gestion de l'eau etc.. Et j'ai cru me faire rattraper en attaquant la Vallée de la mort. Quand je dit "en attaquant" c'est à dire que j'étais sur le pas de la porte du parc, sur le seuil du désert "officiel". Je met du guillemet parce qu'à ce moment là j'en avais déjà croqué un morceau de désert, ou plutôt c'est lui qui m'avait laissé des marques de crocs à base de coups de soleil. Mais je lui en veut pas parce qu'en échange des journées à 40° je lui donnait mes réserves faites durant l'hiver. Raclette/fondue à la revoyure ! Et un pas de plus dans la course aux grammes, normalement on vise l'équipement en premier mais j'aurais le temps d'y revenir (ou pas). Je disais donc, le premier moment ou je me suis dit que j'allais y avoir droit c'est quand j'ai croisé ce mec avec son caddie et une aussi grande portion de route infinie devant que derrière lui et qui me demande de l'eau. Ça va j'avais de la marge je lui enfile un fond de bouteille. Je me demande quand même qui c'est le fou dans l'histoire, si c'est lui ou moi. Bon la réponse n’a pas tardé, clairement c'était lui. Quand après m'avoir parlé de son chapeau, de sa mère et de sa ceinture je lui ai dit que j'allais y aller et qu'il m'a répondu, en ayant un geste de la main vers son caddie, que lui et Steve allait continuer aussi. Je me suis dit que oui le soleil tapait fort et qu'il fallait pas trop trainer. J'ai pas fait les présentations entre mon vélo et Steve et je suis parti... après une bénédiction vaudoue en espagnol. Enfin j'espère que c'était une bénédiction parce que j'ai quand même été sympa de m'arrêter. Et là on arrivait sur la fin de la journée mais je peux vous dire que fatigue ou pas j'ai encore envoyé du kilomètre pour faire de la distance. Je me suis demandé avant de m'endormir si il m'aurait violé et tué ou bien l'inverse ? Mais en tout cas les pépins c'était pas pour ce jour là, ni le lendemain même si j'avais l'haleine chaude du félin qui se rapprochait dangereusement des talons. Petit col qui fait le passage sur la Vallée...fin de matinée je suis au départ de la montée avec une demi bouteille de flotte (oups) et va falloir passer ça avant midi, avant les 40°... ça faisait une semaine que je faisais du vélo et y a encore 2 semaines je passais des nuits en refuges pour faire du ski de rando donc je me suis prit une petite claque quand même et je pensais qu'à sortir de la Vallée avant d'y être vraiment entré (du coup le lendemain je remontait de l'autre coté pour m'échapper, mission éclair) ça c'est donc fait dans la douleur et la crainte de l'insolation (je pense avoir tellement cramé mon capital de résistance au soleil je dois même avoir des agios) mais non au final ça ce fait. À partir de là ça fait une semaine et même si je sent que la distance entre elle et moi s'amenuise je tiens bon. (Vous sentez le suspens, la pression qui monte ?) Je passe rapidement la journée vent de face : 5 km/h pendant deux heures et il m'en fallait 150 pour la prochaine ville, là j'ai réétudié la carte et changé d'itinéraire parce qu'à ce rythme je tomberai à cours de bouffe avant de voir le bout de la route, et 150 km de ligne droite ça déprime. Je passe aussi sur mon idée de génie de "ha mais si je passe par là j'évite la route principale et le trafic" pour se retrouver sur une route en travaux avec un premier panneau "interdit de faire du stop", un deuxième "vélos et piétons interdits" et enfin "toutes les amendes sont doublés en zone de travaux". Voilà voilà, on va refaire les 90 bornes où on était content d'avoir le vent dans le dos, mais dans l'autre sens. Tête dans le guidon en mode bélier, à entrer dans le vent, dans le vide, à coup de tête. Pas le choix. Passage à Las Vegas, pas un pied dans la ville. Tout contourner parce que rien à foutre. Première sueur froide et envie de dégueuler... non c'est bon. Je me dégotte un arrêt warmshower à Mesquite pour deux jours plus tard. Temps de faire une pause. Sur d'avoir une douche je coupe dans la pampa. Un raccourci pour ne pas longer une nationale. Niveau évasion excellent choix, pas vu un chat. Niveau vélo, pas vu la route. J'exagère y’avait bien une ligne dans le sable laissée par les 4×4. Il a juste fallu pousser le vélo qui s'enlisait dans les bancs de sable, c'est ça de traverser des lits de rivières asséchés. Pas fâché d'arriver dans le confort pour un soir mais comme d'hab pas bien dormi, une fois lancé seule la tente est ma maison et le cosmos mon campement (pour ceux qu'on pas lu "La horde du contrevent" il n’est jamais trop tard pour commencer maintenant). Là je pourrais faire la pleureuse par facilité, geindre sur la loi de Murphy et maudir la fatalité comme si je croyais que l'univers me devait quelque chose car 2h après mon départ il se met à pleuvoir pour le reste de la journée et de la nuit à venir. Mais comme en philosophie c'est seulement quand ça devient difficile que ça nous en dit plus sur nous même. Le reste c'est de l'entrainement. Schopenhauer nous dirait que le monde est ce qu'on en fait, la pluie n'est ni bonne ni mauvaise. Elle est. Le paysan et le cycliste auront des avis bien différent sur la question. Le fait est qu'il pleut et que j'aurais beau y penser, la maudire ou la bénir, il pleuvra. Alors autant s'inspirer des philosophes antique et se préoccuper des choses sur lesquelles j'aurais un effet (chercher un abri ou continuer). Décidément l'invention de la liseuse numérique équivaut à la mise à disposition d'un arsenal de pokéball dans laquelle on irait puiser avec tactique suivant la nature des épreuves à affronter. Pour le moment ça sera le dernier bouquin d'Onfray (Sagesse) en m'espérant Romain plus que par le nom. Une seul journée de pluie à vélo n'étant pas une journée de tempête en haute mer sur un radeau, coupon cet épilogue. S'en suivent quelques journées sans événements avec la possibilité de bien avancer sur la carte et nous voilà rendu aux deux semaines de voyage. Moment ou l'Aventure qui jusque là me talonnait seulement, me rattrape franchement. Plus que ça même, elle s'est retroussé les manches et est venu toquer chez moi à coup de merlin. Insolation. J'allais pas y échapper éternellement. Et me voilà donc dans le sud de l'Utah, pays des pierres rouges, à bien 100 bornes de la première ville, couché sous un arbre (y en avait pas des masses) à sentir poindre une douleur à l'estomac. S'en suivra une nuit poétique, à ramper hors de la tente sous une pleine lune éclatante et me joignant aux hurlements des coyotes au loin je vomirai mes tripes bruyamment. Le ventre vide mais gonflé et douloureux je passerai la journée qui suit alité, ou en tout cas allongé faute de lit, avec la force d'un nourrisson prématuré. Régurgitant de temps en temps les deux trois gorgées d'eau que j'aurais pu faire passer et attendant, attendant le milieu de l'après midi à suivre la course du soleil sous mon arbre, que cela passe. Une nuit de sommeil et me voilà reparti, un peu faiblard mais de toute façon j'ai plus ni flotte ni bouffe donc faut bouger. Tout va bien, j'arrive à la prochaine ville, refait le plein et continue pour camper un peu plus loin. Hors de danger, retour à la norma...bah !! Qu'est ce qui ce passe, j'ai une branche du pédalier qui se lance dans une aventure en solo. C'est une vie conjugale qui se termine sans crier gare, sans crier rien du tout d'ailleurs. Que faire? Et bien demi tour, je ne suis qu'à 10 km de la dernière ville. Je prends les deux branches nouvellement divorcées et les attache sur le sac à dos. J'aurais pensé qu'au pays du pick-up pachydermique il y en aurait bien un pour se dire "Tiens ! Pourquoi est ce qu'il pousse son vélo ? Je vais m'arrêter pour lui demander, peut être qu'il a besoin d'un coup de main." Mais la tendance semble être "Ha il à l'air de beaucoup s'amuser à pousser son vélo. Surement qu'il veut prendre son temps pour admirer tout ce rien qui nous entoure". Qu'à cela ne tienne, de toute façon le seul magasin de vélo de la ville était déjà fermé. À ce moment là on est samedi après midi, il réouvrira lundi. Soit. S'en suit une errance dans la ville de Page en Arizona. Et deux nuit de camping citadin. À 4h du mat un flic en patrouille viendra bien me demander ce que je fait là, à dormir à la belle dans un parc. Je m'explique, pas de souci, le mec est sympa et me laisse tranquille. Je passe mon dimanche dans ce parc (avec prise électrique à dispo) à rédiger ce texte entre deux lectures. Aujourd'hui, lundi, j'ai pu aller au shop. Le choix ? Attendre une semaine pour avoir la pièce ou changer avec une pièce approchante aujourd'hui mais ça veut dire changer les plateaux et passer de mes 3 plateaux neuf que je viens de changer à 2. Je choisi de changer aujourd'hui et ça veut dire que je vais me trimballer mes 3 plateaux dans le backpack, putain ! Je finirais par les donner à un warmshower en chemin mais je vais pas les balancer c'est mort. Question de principe. Évidemment tout ça coute des ronds mais j'entends la voix d'une pote qui me dit "plaie d'argent n'est pas mortelle". C'est sur, et je m'en sort bien au final. J'aurais pu me retrouver au milieux de nul part sans voiture qui passe, la police aurait pu me casser les couilles et il y aurait pu ne avoir de bike shop dans cette ville et il y aurait pu ne pas avoir la possibilité de faire autrement que de commander (et perdre une semaine). Alors voilà. À partir d'aujourd'hui c'est l'aventure. Plus question qu'elle se contente de suivre au loin. On sera un de plus sur le vélo, faut l'accepter. Elle prend pas de place, elle cause pas mais elle rajoute juste son grain de sel de temps en temps et heureusement parce que sinon est ce que la vie ne serait pas un peu fade ?
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wolfliving · 6 years ago
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Thinking Through Interfaces, a syllabus
*That looks enlightening.
THINKING THROUGH INTERFACES
Co-taught by Zed Adams (Philosophy) and Shannon Mattern (Media Studies)
Tuesdays 4:00 - 5:50pm | 6 East 16th St #1003
Interfaces are everywhere and nowhere. They pervade our lives, mediating our interactions with one another, technology, and the world. But their very pervasiveness also makes them invisible. In this seminar, we expose the hidden lives of interfaces, illuminating not just what they are and how they work, but also how they shape our lives, for better and worse. We also discuss a number of pressing social and political issues, such as why we are quick to adopt some interfaces (e.g., smartphones and social media platforms), but reluctant to embrace others (e.g., new voting machines and Google Glass). 
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RESOURCES
With a few exceptions, all readings will be made available on our class website, at http://www.wordsinspace.net/interfaces/2019/. We’ll provide everyone with a copy of Tom Mullaney’s The Chinese Typewriter and David Parisi’s Archaeologies of Touch.
SCHEDULE OF MEETINGS
WEEK 1: JANUARY 22: INTRODUCTIONS
What is an interface?
How are interfaces differentiated?
Can an interface become a part of our mind?
Do interfaces shape what we use them to do?
What are the limits of interfaces: what problems do they not help us solve?
WEEKS 2 AND 3: CONCEPTUALIZATION 
WEEK 2: JANUARY 29: CONCEPTUALIZATION I 
Nelson Goodman, “The Theory of Notation” (Chapter Four), Languages of Art (Hackett, 1976): 127-173.
Florian Cramer and Matthew Fuller, “Interface” in Software Studies, ed., Matthew Fuller (MIT Press, 2008): 149-53.
Johanna Drucker, “Interface and Interpretation” and “Designing Graphic Interpretation” in Graphesis: Visual Forms of Knowledge Production (Harvard University Press, 2014): 138-97.
WEEK 3: FEBRUARY 5: CONCEPTUALIZATION II
Shannon Mattern, “Mission Control: A History of the Urban Dashboard,” Places Journal (March 2015).
Shannon Mattern, “Things that Beep: A Brief History of Product Sound Design,” Avant (August 2018).
We encourage you to think, too, about how interfaces might embody different cultures and ideologies. Consider, for example, feminist interfaces or indigenous interfaces -- or interfaces that embody universal, accessible design. You'll find some relevant resources in the modules at the end of this syllabus, and we'll explore many of these themes as part of our case studies throughout the semester.
In-Class Workshop (second half of class): small-group interface critiques 
Supplemental: 
Christian Ulrich Andersen and Soren Bro Pold, eds., Interface Criticism: Aesthetics Beyond the Buttons (Aarhus University Press, 2011).
Martijn de Waal, The City as Interface: How New Media Are Changing the City (nai010, 2014).
Johanna Drucker, “Humanities Approach to Interface Theory,” Culture Machine 12 (2011).
Johanna Drucker, “Performative Materiality and Theoretical Approaches to Interface,” Digital Humanities Quarterly 7:1 (2013).
Florian Hadler and Joachim Haupt, “Towards a Critique of Interfaces” in Interface Critique, eds., Florian Hadler and Joachim Haupt (Berlin: Kulturverlag Kadmos, 2016): 7-16.
John Haugeland, “Representational Genera” in Having Thought: Essays in the Metaphysics of Mind, ed. Haugeland (Harvard Univ Press, 1992): 171-206.
Branden Hookway, Interface (MIT Press, 2014)
Interface Critique (journal).
Steven Johnson, Interface Culture (Basic Books, 1999)
Matthew Katz, “Analog Representations and Their Users,” Synthese 193: 3 (June 2015): 851-871.
Kimon Keramidas, The Interface Experience - A User’s Guide (Bard Graduate Center, 2015).
Shannon Mattern, “Interfacing Urban Intelligence,” Places Journal (April 2014).
Don Norman, The Design of Everyday Things (Basic Books, 2013).
Mitchell Whitelaw, “Generous Interfaces for Digital Cultural Collections,” Digital Humanities Quarterly 9:1 (2015).
Jeff Johnson, Designing with the Mind in Mind (Morgan Kauffmann, 2014).
WEEKS 4 AND 5: TYPEWRITER KEYBOARDS 
Our first case study is the QWERTY keyboard. This case raises fundamental questions about why interfaces are adopted in the first place, the extent to which their original designs constrain how they are subsequently used, and how particular linguistic politics and epistemologies are embodied in our interfaces. 
WEEK 4: FEBRUARY 12: KEYBOARDS & QWERTY
Andy Clark, Chapters One through Three, and Ten, Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again (MIT Press, 1998): 11-69 and 193-218.
S. J. Liebowitz and Stephen E. Margolis, “The Fable of the Keys,” The Journal of Law & Economics 33:1 (1990): 1-25.
WEEK 5: FEBRUARY 19: OTHER KEYBOARDS
Thomas S. Mullaney, The Chinese Typewriter: A History (MIT Press, 2017): Chapter 1, 35-74; Chapter 4, 161-93; Chapter 6, 237-53 (up through “How Ancient China Missed…”; and Chapter 7, 283-8 (through “China’s First ‘Model Typist’”).
Kim Sterelny, “Minds: Extended or Scaffolded?” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 9:4 (2010): 465-481.
See Marcin Wichary’s forthcoming book about the global history of keyboards, as well as his research newsletters.
4-5pm: Skype TBD 
Supplemental: 
Louise Barrett, Beyond the Brain (Princeton University Press, 2015).
Andy Clark and David Chalmers, “The Extended Mind,” Analysis 58:1 (1998): 7-19.
Friedrich A. Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, trans. Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Michael Wutz (Stanford University Press, 1986).
Lisa Gitelman, Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines: Representing Technology in the Edison Era (Stanford University Press, 1999).
John Haugeland, “Mind Embodied and Embedded,” Having Thought (Harvard University Press, 1998): 207-237.
Richard Heersmink, "A taxonomy of cognitive artifacts: function, information, and categories." Review of philosophy and psychology 4.3 (2013): 465-481.
Richard Heersmink, "The Metaphysics of Cognitive Artefacts," Philosophical Explorations 19.1 (2016): 78-93.
Neil M. Kay, “Rerun the Tape of History and QWERTY Always Wins,” Research Policy 42:6-7 (2013): 1175-85.
Prince McLean, “Inside the Multitouch FingerWorks Tech in Apple’s Tablet,” Apple Insider (January 23, 2010).
Jan Noyes, “QWERTY - The Immoral Keyboard,” Computing & Control Engineering Journal 9:3 (1998): 117-22.
Kim Sterelny, The Evolved Apprentice: How Evolution Made Humans Unique (MIT Press, 2012).
Cassie Werber, “The Future of Typing Doesn’t Involve a Keyboard,” Quartz (November 23, 2018).
Darren Wershler-Henry, The Iron Whim: A Fragmented History of Typewriting (Cornell University Press, 2007).
WEEKS 6 AND 7: HAPTICS 
WEEK 6: FEBRUARY 26: PUSHING BUTTONS 
H. P. Grice, “Some Remarks About the Senses,” in Analytical Philosophy, First Series, ed. R. J. Butler (OUP Press, 1962): 248-268. Reprinted in F. MacPherson (ed), The Senses (OUP Press, 2011): 83-101.
Matthew Fulkerson, “Rethinking the Senses and Their Interactions: The Case for Sensory Pluralism,” Frontiers in Psychology (December 10, 2014).
Rachel Plotnick, “Setting the Stage,” in Power Button: A History of Pleasure, Panic, and the Politics of Pushing (MIT Press, 2018): 3-16.
Rachel Plotnick, “Force, Flatness, and Touch Without Feeling: Thinking Historically About Haptics and Buttons,” New Media and Society 19:10 (2017): 1632-52.
WEEK 7: MARCH 5: HAPTICS II 
David Parisi, Archaeologies of Touch: Interfacing with Haptics from Electricity to Computing (University of Minnesota Press, 2017): Introduction, 1-40; Chapter 3, 151-212; and Chapter 4, 213-264.
4-5pm: Skype with Dave Parisi 
Supplemental: 
Sandy Isenstadt, “At the Flip of a Switch,” Places Journal (September 2018).
Mathias Fuchs, Moisés Mañas, and Georg Russegger, “Ludic Interfaces,” in Exploring Videogames: Culture, Design and Identity, eds., Nick Webber and Daniel Riha (Interdisciplinary-Net Press): 31-40.  
Matthew Fulkerson, The First Sense: A Philosophical Study of Human Touch (MIT Press, 2013).
Gerard Goggin, “Disability and Haptic Mobile Media,” New Media & Society 19:10 (2017): 1563-80.
Kim Knight, “Wearable Interfaces, Networked Bodies, and Feminist Interfaces,” MLA Commons (2018).
Brian Merchant, The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone (Little, Brown, 2017).
Stephen Monteiro, The Fabric of Interface: Mobile Media, Design, and Gender (MIT Press, 2017).
David Parisi, “Games Interfaces as Bodily Techniques,” Handbook of Research on Effective Electronic Gaming in Education, ed. Richard Ferdig (IGI Global): 111-126.
David Parisi, Mark Paterson, and Jason Edward Arches, eds., “Haptic Media” Special Issue, New Media & Society 19:10 (October 2017).
Rachel Plotnick, “At the Interface: The Case of the Electric Push Button, 1880-1923,” Technology and Culture 53:4 (October 2012): 815-45.
MARCH 11 @ NOON 
Share your final project and presentation proposal with Zed and Shannon. See “Assignments” for more detail. 
WEEK 8: MARCH 12 
Individual meetings to discuss presentations and final projects
MARCH 19: NO CLASS: SPRING BREAK
WEEKS 9-10: VOICE 
WEEK 9: MARCH 26: History of Vocal Interfaces (Zed away)
Mara Mills, “Media and Prosthesis: The Vocoder, the Artificial Larynx, and the History of Signal Processing,” Qui Parle 21:1 (Fall/Winter 2012): 107-49.
Danielle Van Jaarsveld and Winifred Poster, “Call Centers: Emotional Labor Over the Phone,” in Emotional Labor in the 21st Century: Diverse Perspectives on Emotion Regulation at Work, ed. Alicia Grandey, Jim Diefendorff, and Deborah Rupp (LEA Press, 2012): 153-73.
Confirm the assigned text for your presentation: send to Shannon and Zed a complete Chicago-style citation and either a high-quality pdf or a link to the online resource before class today, so we can update our class website with everyone’s material.
WEEK 10: APRIL 2: Contemporary Vocal Interfaces 
Adelheid Voshkul, “Humans, Machines, and Conversations: An Ethnographic Study of the Making of Automatic Speech Recognition Technologies,” Social Studies of Science 34:3 (2004).
Andrea L. Guzman, “Voices in and of the Machine: Source Orientation Toward Mobile Virtual Assistants,” Computers in Human Behavior (2018).
Halcyon M. Lawrence and Lauren Neefe, “When I Talk to Siri,” Flash Readings 4 (September 6, 2017) {podcast: 10:14}.
Halcyon M. Lawrence, “Inauthentically Speaking: Speech Technology, Accent Bias and Digital Imperialism,” SIGCIS, Computer History Museum, March 2017 {video: 1:26 > 17:16}
Lauren McCarthy, LAUREN. A human smart home intelligence (review press, too).
4-5pm: Skype with Halcyon M. Lawrence
Supplemental: 
Meryl Alper, Giving Voice: Mobile Communication, Disability, and Inequality (MIT Press, 2017).
Michel Chion, Sound: An Acoulogical Treatise (Duke, 2016).
Karin Bijsterveld, “Dissecting Sound: Speaker Identification at the Stasi and Sonic Ways of Knowing,” Hearing Modernity (2018).
Trevor Cox, Now You’re Talking: The Story of Human Communication from the Neanderthals to Artificial Intelligence (Counterpoint, 2018).
Brian Dumaine, “It Might Get Loud: Inside Silicon Valley’s Battle to Own Voice Tech,” Fortune (October 24, 2018).
Larry Greenemeier, “Alexa, How Do We Take Our Relationship to the Next Level?” Scientific American (April 26, 2018).
Jason Kincaid, “A Brief History of ASR,” descript (July 12, 2018).
Halcyon M. Lawrence, “Siri Disciplines,” in Your Computer is on Fire, eds., Marie Hicks, Ben Peters, Kavita Philips and Tom Mullaney (MIT Press, forthcoming 2019).
Halcyon Lawrence and Lauren Neefe, “Siri’s Progeny: Voice and the Future of Interaction Design,” Georgia Tech, Fall 2016.
Xiaochang Li and Mara Mills, “Vocal Features: From Voice Identification to Speech Recognition by Machine,” Technology and Culture (forthcoming 2019).
Luke Munn, “Alexa and the Intersectional Interface,” _Angles (June 2018).
Quynh N. Nguyen, Ahn Ta, and Victor Prybutok, “An Integrated Model of Voice-User Interface Continuance Intention: The Gender Effect,” International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction (2018).
Winifred Poster, “Sound Bites, Sentiments, and Accents: Digitizing Communicative Labor in the Era of Global Outsourcing,” in digitalSTS: A Field Guide for Science & Technology Studies, eds., David Ribes and Janet Vertesi (Princeton University Press, forthcoming April 2019).
Winifred Poster, “The Virtual Receptionist with a Human Touch: Opposing Pressures of Digital Automation and Outsourcing in Interactive Services” in Invisible Labor: Hidden Work in the Contemporary World, eds. Marion G. Crain, Winifred R. Poster, and Miriam A. Cherry (University of California Press, 2016): 87-111.
Thom Scott-Phillips, Speaking our Minds: Why Human Communication is Different, and How Language Evolved to Make it Special (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
Craig S. Smith, “Alexa and Siri Can Hear This Hidden Command. You Can’t,” New York Times (May 10, 2018).
Dave Tompkins, How to Wreck a Nice Beach: The Vocoder from World War II to Hip-Hop, The Machine Speaks (Stop Smiling Books, 2011).
Mickey Vallee, “Biometrics, Affect, Autoaffection and the Phenomenological Voice,” Subjectivity 11:2 (2018): 161-76.
Bruce N. Walker and Michael A. Nees, “Theory of Sonification” in The Sonification Handbook, eds. Thomas Hermann, Andy Hunt, and John G. Neuhoff (Logos Publishing, 2011).
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