D. Carroll: “Remains” of Algeria: Justice, Hospitality, Politics

David Carroll’s essay ““Remains” of Algeria: Justice, Hospitality, Politics” examines the intersection between Derrida’s Algerian-Jewish upbringing and his conceptions of ethics, justice, and hospitality. Carroll posits that the uniqueness of Derrida’s experience as a French Jew in Algeria located him uncomfortably between two identities: Derrida was neither fully Arab Algerian nor French colonialist; he was a Jew and subject to “othering” from both communities.

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E. Popke: ‘Postructuralist Ethics: Subjectivity, Responsibility, Community’

E. Jeffrey Popke advocates that poststructuralist ethics needs to be taken more seriously in human geography. He believes that poststructuralist theory “offers the potential to break down existing categories of power and knowledge, and thereby to foster alternative narratives, which have the potential to widen the scope and scale of our geographical imaginations.” (298) In the recent explosion of moral considerations among human geographical writings, he believes that there has been a lack of engagement with poststructuralism, at least in part because it is associated with “relativism, or nihilism, which would render ethical accounts impossible.” (299) His essay, then, has the theses. First, and most explicitly, to articulate a theory of poststructuralist ethics that “suggests alternative understandings of spatiality with implications for the practice and performance of human geography.” (ibid.) Second and third, more implicitly, to adequately demonstrate why poststructuralist ethics is not relativistic or nihilistic and to prove why poststructuralist ethics successfully critique traditionalist conceptions of ethics. (The latter two points deserve to be stated formally, because Popke really intends to do more than simply show an alternative vision of spatiality. Instead, he means to use that alternative to ethically criticize the traditional notion of spatiality.)

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tangents on foucault, history, identity politics, etc…

When reading Spectres of Marx and coming across the phrase “the time is out of joint” again and again, I recalled the explorations of Foucault in Society Must Be Defended.

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Spectres of Race at Hampshire

Posted on Cyree’s behalf (sorry for the mix-up):

Granted, I have only been at Hampshire College for 1 month, but in that time I have witnessed countless examples of racial bigotry and ignorance. Just as insidious as the instances themselves is the general unwillingness for the average Hampster to talk about these incidents, and race itself outside of an academic context.

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