Open PhilosophyPub Date : 2021-12-17DOI: 10.1515/opphil-2020-0174
Fernando David Márquez Duarte
{"title":"Black Earth Rising and Queen Sono: A Critical Decolonial Analysis","authors":"Fernando David Márquez Duarte","doi":"10.1515/opphil-2020-0174","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2020-0174","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this article two series are analyzed: Black Earth Rising (a BBC/Netflix production) and Queen Sono (the first African Netflix original series), shows that are about African realities from an African perspective (Rwanda in Black Earth Rising and South Africa in Queen Sono). The findings in this article show that both series address social and political issues such as neocolonialism, neoextractivism, internal colonialism, racism, inequality, justice, self-determination, corruption, violence, peace, memory, necropolitics, mental health, and decoloniality. I also argue that the shows could be used as pedagogical tools to raise critical consciousness in a wide public regarding the social and political issues addressed. The research in this article has been conducted with a qualitative methodology, using both shows as case studies and using content analysis and bibliographical research. The analysis of the series is based in the discussion of critical theory and decoloniality approaches and authors, especially from Latin America and Africa. Furthermore, the analysis of popular media (such as series) is a relevant effort to decolonize knowledge, using alternative and non-academic sources to produce and socialize knowledge.","PeriodicalId":36288,"journal":{"name":"Open Philosophy","volume":"5 1","pages":"118 - 135"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45391031","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Open PhilosophyPub Date : 2021-12-16DOI: 10.1515/opphil-2020-0153
R. Valentine
{"title":"The Feelings We Feel: Care and Community in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood","authors":"R. Valentine","doi":"10.1515/opphil-2020-0153","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2020-0153","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was a show that focused on teaching children an ethics of caring for oneself and care for others. This article examines those ethics through the songs “I Like You As You Are” and “Won’t You Be My Neighbor.” It contends that these songs focus on a celebration of the self and others, welcoming individuals as they are into the community, and embracing authenticity. This article looks to understand these ethics in a contemporary setting and argues that Mister Rogers and the communal ethics of care that he taught are needed.","PeriodicalId":36288,"journal":{"name":"Open Philosophy","volume":"5 1","pages":"75 - 89"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67240564","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Open PhilosophyPub Date : 2021-12-14DOI: 10.1515/opphil-2020-0154
Selda Salman
{"title":"Violence, Wars, and the Possibility of Ethical Life in an Apocalypse: A Kantian Reading of The Walking Dead","authors":"Selda Salman","doi":"10.1515/opphil-2020-0154","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2020-0154","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The Walking Dead is a popular TV series depicting a catastrophic and violent world. After a pandemic that turns humans into zombies, we witness the collapse of civilization with all its institutions, the depletion of the resources, and the struggle to build a new world in the middle of the wars between surviving groups. It illustrates a world of literal and metaphorical homo homini lupus. Some people choose sheer survival, and others try to build a moral, civil world. In this article, I propose a reading of this series from a Kantian perspective by employing his interrelated ideas on history, ethics, and politics. I claim that The Walking Dead represents the state of nature and the violence it contains, and illustrates the course of history toward a civil society as defined by Kant.","PeriodicalId":36288,"journal":{"name":"Open Philosophy","volume":"5 1","pages":"57 - 66"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48861056","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Open PhilosophyPub Date : 2021-12-14DOI: 10.1515/opphil-2020-0162
B. Benjamin
{"title":"New Screen Economies and Viewing Paradigms: The Ethics of Representation in Delhi Crime","authors":"B. Benjamin","doi":"10.1515/opphil-2020-0162","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2020-0162","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The new technologies of television viewership following the digital turn have introduced new anxieties and possibilities. While new screen cultures facilitate a transnational viewership, the importance of ethically and morally grounded representations cannot be overstated. In this context, Delhi Crime, the Emmy award-winning Indian series based on the Delhi gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old woman in Delhi, will be instrumental in informing the ethico-political concerns that ought to be prioritized while representing the subaltern subject and the novel socialites fashioned through the new viewership patterns. This article attempts to understand the way in which the emerging screen economies provide new terrains for ethical representation and engendering digital publics. Thus, this article is interested in understanding the intersection of media ecologies and ethico-political concerns to introduce new dialectical possibilities.","PeriodicalId":36288,"journal":{"name":"Open Philosophy","volume":"176 1","pages":"67 - 74"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67240660","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Open PhilosophyPub Date : 2021-12-14DOI: 10.1515/opphil-2020-0163
Martin Shuster
{"title":"Rewatching, Film, and New Television","authors":"Martin Shuster","doi":"10.1515/opphil-2020-0163","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2020-0163","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Those of us who are captivated by new television (the sort of serialized television that began largely in the early 1990s), often find ourselves rewatching episodes or whole series. Why? What is the philosophical significance of the phenomenon of rewatching? In what follows, I engage with the ontology of television series in order to think about these questions around rewatching. I conclude by reflecting on what the entire discussion might suggest about the medium of new television, about ourselves, and also about our world and the possibilities of art in it.","PeriodicalId":36288,"journal":{"name":"Open Philosophy","volume":"5 1","pages":"17 - 30"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46958346","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Open PhilosophyPub Date : 2021-12-14DOI: 10.1515/opphil-2020-0158
Janelle Pötzsch
{"title":"The Handmaid’s Tale: Reproductive Labour and the Social Embeddedness of Markets","authors":"Janelle Pötzsch","doi":"10.1515/opphil-2020-0158","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2020-0158","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In episode 6 of the first season of The Handmaid’s Tale (2017–, MGM Television), the Republic of Gilead welcomes a trade delegation of the United Mexican States. Offred’s hope that the ensuing trade agreement between Gilead and Mexico would eventually bring the sexual exploitation she and the other handmaids suffer to public are quickly dashed. During a chance encounter at the house of Offred’s master, the Mexican ambassador Mrs Castillo confides in Offred that Mexico is suffering a fertility crisis just like Gilead. Her country is seriously considering trading with Gilead in handmaids (season 1, episode 6, “A Woman’s Place”). My article will use this episode as a starting point to reflect on the correlation between women’s social and economic status. I will illustrate how The Handmaid’s Tale demonstrates that markets are socially embedded and thereby reproduce and amplify social and political inequalities. This series thereby also functions as a powerful validation of the asymmetry thesis concerning markets in reproductive labour.","PeriodicalId":36288,"journal":{"name":"Open Philosophy","volume":"5 1","pages":"31 - 43"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46926864","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Open PhilosophyPub Date : 2021-12-13DOI: 10.1515/opphil-2020-0155
Umut Eldem, Beşir Özgür Nayır
{"title":"Ethics and Technology: An Analysis of Rick and Morty","authors":"Umut Eldem, Beşir Özgür Nayır","doi":"10.1515/opphil-2020-0155","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2020-0155","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this article, we argue that the animated TV-show Rick and Morty depicts several important and relevant themes about the impact of technology in contemporary societies. By using certain concepts and ideas from the philosophy of technology, especially from thinkers like Jacques Ellul, Jacques Derrida, Neil Postman, and George Ritzer, we investigate how this show brings to the fore certain ontological and ethical assumptions and problems that stem from the advance of technology. We shall use the term technopolitical thinking to refer to these core assumptions and principles which are inherent in contemporary technological societies. By providing various examples from certain episodes and scenes of the show, we shall illustrate how this animated series can provide a basis for a more extensive discussion.","PeriodicalId":36288,"journal":{"name":"Open Philosophy","volume":"5 1","pages":"1 - 16"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48859748","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Open PhilosophyPub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.1515/opphil-2020-0183
Rita Niineste
{"title":"The Sexual Body as a Meaningful Home: Making Sense of Sexual Concordance","authors":"Rita Niineste","doi":"10.1515/opphil-2020-0183","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2020-0183","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The past 20–30 years have provided plenty of new empirical data on women’s sexuality, a topic often theorised as puzzling and unexplainable. In recent discussions, a controversial issue has been the phenomenon of sexual concordance, i.e. the correlation between the self-reported, subjective assessment of one’s sexual arousal and the simultaneous bodily response measured directly on the genitals. In laboratory-based assessments, sexual concordance has been observed to be on average substantially lower in women than in men, although the reasons for the considerable gender difference are still open to debate. Drawing on a phenomenological approach to culture-dependent meaning-formation and on feminist social theory of everyday sexuality, I argue that the reasons behind women’s low sexual concordance can be found neither in their minds nor their bodies but in the way meaning-making processes function in human sexual experiences. Women’s first-person perspectives on their own sexuality have historically played only a marginal role in the creation of socially endorsed sexual meanings, yet these shared meanings have a profound influence on how individuals make sense of their bodily experiences in sexual situations.","PeriodicalId":36288,"journal":{"name":"Open Philosophy","volume":"4 1","pages":"269 - 283"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42649844","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Open PhilosophyPub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.1515/opphil-2020-0170
Lona Gaikis
{"title":"Thinking with Susanne Langer: Sonar Entanglements with the Non-human","authors":"Lona Gaikis","doi":"10.1515/opphil-2020-0170","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2020-0170","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract An aesthetic and epistemological departure from ocular centrism has occurred in the wake of current technological evolutions and the posthuman turn. The sonic exploration of the more-than-human takes artists and philosophers beyond anthropomorphism to reveal the hidden patterning of life forms and yet-unfathomed universes. The conflation of nature(s) with culture(s) is one shift that takes place when thinking with sounds and rhythm and studying our environments. On an ontological level, a reordering of subject and object occurs when encountering the reciprocal relationship of sounding. What if culture is actually nature? How does technology connect with botany, and what does it mean to engage the environment with the expanded tactility of the ear? This essay observes current inter-species practices in sound art by revisiting philosopher Susanne Langer’s theory of an embodied and embedded mind. Her “new key” in philosophy emphasizes music as a dynamic sound-pattern to conceptualize a semiology of artistic forms that renders human feeling in regard to non-human antecedents. This serves as a tool to trace the preconceptual substrata of mind, leading us through process-oriented studies of nature and psychophysical affect. Thinking with Langer involves the interconnection of natural systems, behavioural patterns, and human expression, which emerges in art.","PeriodicalId":36288,"journal":{"name":"Open Philosophy","volume":"4 1","pages":"149 - 161"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46239054","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Open PhilosophyPub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.1515/opphil-2020-0190
M. Lewin
{"title":"Kant’s Metaphilosophy","authors":"M. Lewin","doi":"10.1515/opphil-2020-0190","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2020-0190","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract While the term “metaphilosophy” enjoys increasing popularity in Kant scholarship, it is neither clear what distinguishes a metaphilosophical theory from a philosophical one nor to what extent Kant’s philosophy contains metaphilosophical views. In the first part of the article, I will introduce a demarcation criterion and show how scholars fall prey to the fallacy of extension confusing Kant’s philosophical theories with his theories about philosophy. In the second part, I will analyze eight elements for an “imperfect definition” (KrV A731/B759) of philosophy outlining the scope of Kant’s explicit metaphilosophy against the backdrop of recent metaphilosophical research: (i) scientific concept of philosophy, (ii) philosophy as an activity, (iii) worldly concept, (iv) philosophy as a (proper and improper) science, (v) philosophy as an architectonic idea (archetype and ectypes), (vi) philosophy as a social practice and the appropriate holding-to-be-true (one or many true philosophies?), (vii) reason as the absolute condition and subject of philosophy, and (viii) methodology of philosophy. I will put these elements together for an attempt to give an imperfect definition of philosophy – something that Kant promised but never did – in the conclusion.","PeriodicalId":36288,"journal":{"name":"Open Philosophy","volume":"4 1","pages":"292 - 310"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41325801","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}