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Added by: Simon Fokt
Content: The first three sections of this paper offer a very useful overview of modern definitions of art. Most major types of definitions are introduced and explained in a succinct way, followed by a discussion of selected objections they face. First, Abell introduces functionalism and discusses its problems with extensional adequacy. Second, procedural theories including Dickie’s institutional and Levinson’s historical definitions are discussed, and criticized for their circularity and inability to account for art’s value. Next, Abell considers two mixed theories, formulated by Robert Stecker and David Davies. She shows how they can overcome the difficulties discussed above, but run into their own problems. Finally, Berys Gaut’s cluster account is introduced and criticized for its circularity and difficulties in determining all sufficiency conditions for being an artwork. In the remainder of the paper Abell focuses on developing her own version of the institutional theory.Abímbọ́lá, Kọ́lá. Culture and the Principles of Biomedical Ethics2013, Journal of Commercial Biotechnology, 19 (3): 31-39.-
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Added by: Rochelle DuFord
Abstract: This paper examines the roles of culture in the principles of biomedical ethics. Drawing on examples from African, Navajo and Western cultures, the paper maintains that various elements of culture are indispensable to the application of the principles of biomedical ethics.Comment: This text presents a clear introduction to questions about the application of biomedical ethical principles outside of Western medical contexts. It contains a good overview of the Western interpretation and application of autonomy, as well as other, culturally specific, interpretations of autonomy in medical contexts. This makes it useful as a text to introduce students to the way in which conflicts occur over the application of medical ethical principles in context prior to looking at specific cases (such as Jehovah's Witnesses refusal to accept blood transfusions or the well known case of the Hmong medical culture).
Abíódún, Rowland. Àkó-graphy: Òwò Portraits2013, in: John Peffer and Elisabeth L. Cameron (eds.), Portraiture & Photography in Africa, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, pp. 287-312.-
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Added by: Hans Maes
Summary: Argues that the introduction of photography did not significantly interfere with, or terminate, the àkó legacy of portraiture. Shows instead that the stylistic elements of the àkó life-size burial effigy – a sculpted portrait that attempts to capture the physical likeness, identity, character, social status of a deceased parent – informed the photographic traditional formal portrait in Òwò, Nigeria.Comment: Useful in discussing portraiture, as well as depiction and representation in general.
Artworks to use with this text:
Mamah, Carved, life-size, fully dressed second-burial effigy for Madam Aládé, EÌpelè- Òwò, Nigeria (1972)
Striking example of the practice. Demonstrates how the àkó tradition appears to have influenced the way elderly people posed for photographs. Useful in discussing portraiture, as well as depiction and representation in general.
Artworks to use with this text:
Mamah, Carved, life-size, fully dressed second-burial effigy for Madam Aládé, EÌpelè- Òwò, Nigeria (1972)
Striking example of the practice. Demonstrates how the àkó tradition appears to have influenced the way elderly people posed for photographs.
Abudu, Kenneth U. , Imafidon, Elvis. Epistemic Injustice, Disability, and Queerness in African Cultures2020, In: Imafidon, E. (ed.) Handbook of African Philosophy of Difference. Cham: Springer, 393-409-
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Added by: Björn Freter
Abstract: Perception, representations, and knowledge claims about disability and queerness vary across societies and cultures. In African cultures negative knowledge claims and representations of disability and queerness create a perception of the disabled and queer that are not only detrimental to such persons in African societies but arguably undermine the work of understanding difference and tolerance in general. These negative claims raise some epistemological questions, such as: how do Africans come to know about disability and how are such knowledge claims validated within African communities? Against this backdrop, this chapter critically examines the epistemology of disability and queerness in African traditions. It shows that the epistemic authoritarianism found in African epistemology leads to an epistemic injustice that contributes immensely to the discrimination against disabled and queer beings as reflected in many cultural practices across the continent of Africa. The chapter argues that knowledge claims about disability and queerness in Africa emerge mainly from neglect, superstition, myth, and, above all, ignorance.Comment:
Abudu, Kenneth U.. Language and Othering in African Contexts2020, In: Imafidon, E. (ed.) Handbook of African Philosophy of Difference. Cham: Springer, 317-329-
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Added by: Björn Freter
Abstract: Postmodern and post-analytic understanding of African thought was primarily a shift from attempts to understand African thought using Western conceptual lenses to attempt to understand African framework of thought from the conceptual scheme of the people whose thought was being studied. This paradigm shift in the study of a people’s culture championed by such scholars as Ludwig Wittgenstein – notable in his shift from the pictorial theory of language to the game theory – had and continues to have very successful results in the attempts by sociologists, anthropologists, and philosophers to understand African (philosophical) thought. We recall, for instance, the insightful studies of Edward E. Evans-Pritchard, Peter Winch, and Robin Horton and the continuous records by ethnophilosophy. What stands out from this shift to conceptual scheme of a people as a means for unraveling their thought and ideas is the importance of language as a factor that cannot be ignored in understanding various aspects of the being, knowing, and acting of a people. This essay follows in this line of reasoning. It focuses on an underexplored area of the role of language in African thought: how language promotes or impedes positive and negative experiences of othering or alterity in African spaces. It argues that language is imperative to understanding the different levels of othering in African societies. It explores four areas where this is obvious: (1) the lack of competence to speak and communicate in the particular language spoken in the African community in which one dwells naturally in others such as person from the community in a manner that may be inimical to her well-being; (2) the ability to speak in a language of an African people to which one was not naturally born to promote positive relation with the self (the speaker) by the other (the community of selves) to the extent of blurring the gap between the self and the other; (3) the power of language to turn a complete stranger to a close friend when two African strangers meet in a foreign land such as in the Diaspora, a friendship formed solely on the basis of the sameness of language; and (4) the manner in which the other in an African place is conceptually represented to express the people’s understanding of and their responsibility toward the other in such a place. The essay concludes that language remains the richest source to explore and the fastest route to follow in the search for a people’s ideas about othering and difference.Comment:
Adams, Carol. The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory2000, New York City: Continuum.-
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Added by: Rochelle DuFord
Back Matter: The Sexual Politics of Meat argues that what, or more precisely who, we eat is determined by the patriarchal politics of our culture, and that the meanings attached to meat eating are often clustered around virility. We live in a world in which men still have considerable power over women, both in public and in private. Carol Adams argues that gender politics is inextricably related to how we view animals, especially animals who are consumed. Further, she argues that vegetarianism and fighting for animal rights fit perfectly alongside working to improve the lives of disenfranchised and suffering people, under the wide umbrella of compassionate activism.Comment: This is a clear and easily accessible introductory text on the relationship of feminism to vegetarianism. The text is compelling and interesting, making a chapter or two excellent for an introductory course that concerns feminism, gender politics, other animals, or vegetarianism. The text in its entirety would be excellent in an upper division course concerning ecofeminism.
Adams, Laurie. Art on Trial: From Whistler to Rothko1976, New York: Walker & Co-
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Christy Mag Uidhir
Publisher's Note: This book examines six modern art trials covering a wide range of legal and artistic considerations ... the first in-depth examination of the art trial from every intriguing point of view.Comment: Of particular interest is chapter 4: Traitor or forger? - Van Meegeren vs. Vermeer, dealing with issues of authenticity, forgery, and art ontology
Ahmed, Sara. A phenomenology of whiteness2007, Feminist Theory, 8(2), pp.149-168-
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Abstract:
The paper suggests that we can usefully approach whiteness through the lens of phenomenology. Whiteness could be described as an ongoing and unfinished history, which orientates bodies in specific directions, affecting how they 'take up' space, and what they 'can do'. The paper considers how whiteness functions as a habit, even a bad habit, which becomes a background to social action. The paper draws on experiences of inhabiting a white world as a non-white body, and explores how whiteness becomes worldly through the noticeability of the arrival of some bodies more than others. A phenomenology of whiteness helps us to notice institutional habits; it brings what is behind to the surface in a certain way.Comment (from this Blueprint): Ahmed provides a phenomenological account of White experience as comfort and being at home, which compliments Jones's analysis of the failure of White empathy. While Ahmed's focus is on race in this paper, her analysis of the structure of Whiteness equally applies to multiple domains, such as gender, class, sexuality and disability, so while it is marked as 'further' reading here, this text could easily provide the foundation to multiple themes for this blueprint, and would also make a good starting point for those that wish to read Ahmed's excellent "Queer Phenomenology".
Aigbodioh, Jack A., Abudu, Kenneth U.. Pragmatics and Difference in the Social Othering of African Colonial Experience2020, In: Imafidon, E. (ed.) Handbook of African Philosophy of Difference. Cham: Springer, 301-315-
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Added by: Björn Freter
Abstract: Pragmatics, beyond language, is construed here as the deliberate and surreptitious use of language, not just to communicate but “to do things” or recreate some desired order. Difference is, as it were, its philosophical correlation whose syntax, with the idea of the One and the Other, has been used to “make up” or to other the peoples and cultures of colonial Africa South of the Sahara. The purpose of this chapter is to examine how the philosophical affirmations or, simply, the language of difference and the inflectional use of pragmatics on certain terms such as “native,” “primitive,” and “savage” have served as a major plank for the establishment of the social Otherness of the African colonial experience. Put differently, what role, if any, does language play in the social othering of African colonial experience? To this end, we shall seek, first, to determine briefly the sense of critical narrative of how the social othering of African colonial experience was attained via the combined themes of pragmatics and Difference. The chapter concludes that although difference and othering are necessary conditions of human existence, the denigrating othering via language of the African colonial experience by the European colonialists was a case of calling the dog a bad name in order to hang it; and its consequences remain embedded in the physical, metaphysical, and transcendental architectonics of Africa till date.
Comment:
Akkitiq, Atuat, Akpaliapak Karetak, Rhoda. Inunnguiniq (Making a Human Being)2017, In: Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit: What Inuit Have Always Known to be True. Joe Karetak, Frank Tester, Shirley Tagalik (eds.), Fernwood Publishing.-
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Added by: Sonja Dobroski and Quentin PharrAbstract:
The Inuit have experienced colonization and the resulting disregard for the societal systems, beliefs and support structures foundational to Inuit culture for generations. While much research has articulated the impacts of colonization and recognized that Indigenous cultures and worldviews are central to the well-being of Indigenous peoples and communities, little work has been done to preserve Inuit culture. Unfortunately, most people have a very limited understanding of Inuit culture, and often apply only a few trappings of culture -- past practices, artifacts and catchwords --to projects to justify cultural relevance. Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit -- meaning all the extensive knowledge and experience passed from generation to generation -- is a collection of contributions by well- known and respected Inuit Elders. The book functions as a way of preserving important knowledge and tradition, contextualizing that knowledge within Canada's colonial legacy and providing an Inuit perspective on how we relate to each other, to other living beings and the environment.Comment:
available in this Blueprint
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Abell, Catharine. Art: What It Is and Why It Matters
2012, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 85: 671–91.
Comment: This text can provide the students with an overview of modern definitions of art. Theories are presented in a clear, succinct way, with their main features, strengths and weaknesses identified. The selection of objections discussed, however, is not representative – rather it serves the aim of developing Abell’s own definition. The later sections of the text are excellent, but address much more complex issues and are significantly less accessible for undergraduate students. They might be used in Masters level teaching or as advanced further reading on the institutional definition.