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'Landmark Firsts of the London Stage'
Get PDFThis interactive drama event arises from my research into the history of Restoration theatre and brings landmarks of the Restoration stage to life. The event focused on the first women to perform on and write for the London stage, including Nell Gwyn and Aphra Behn. Actors Natasha Dawn and Tom Hunter brought insights from the 'Origins of West End Theatre' project to life and performed a selection of scenes from Restoration plays, giving insights into their performance contexts, including through audience interaction. The actors reflected on their experience of acting in and directing Restoration plays today
The Stupid Nineteenth Century: Philosophy of History in Critical Posthumanist and Post-anthropocentric Thought
Get PDFThis article addresses the charge of “stupidity” leveled at nineteenth-century thought by recent critical posthumanist and post-anthropocentric theorists. Section one traces a particularistic reading of nineteenth-century philosophy of history in the writings of Rosi Braidotti and Bruno Latour, both of whom employ the nineteenth century as an intellectual shorthand for human exceptionalism and its implicit collusion with the present ecological crisis. Their respective posthumanist and post-anthropocentric provocations (1) question the composition, agency, and exceptionalism of the human, and (2) posit multiple temporalities as an alternative to the linear time of universal history. While intellectual historians have begun to complicate the first provocation in relation to the nineteenth century, we lack an equivalent intervention for the second. In response, section two draws on John Stuart Mill’s (1806–1873) reception of Auguste Comte (1798–1857) to demonstrate that speculative philosophy of history in fact grappled with its own problems of scale, multiplicity, and direction. We show that Mill, partly in response to Comte, employed incommensurable historical registers, such as the universal and the relative, to interpret the past at different scales of analysis. These scales were undeniably human, not to mention Eurocentric, but they nevertheless invite a more nuanced reading of the nineteenth century, as well as a less linear and troubled logic of overcoming that afflicts Braidotti, Latour, and others. In this spirit, the final section suggests that nineteenth-century philosophy of history may actually facilitate the re-composition of the human in time, a task that is central to the multifaceted crisis of the present posthumanist, post-anthropocentric, and Anthropocenic conjuncture
The role of transport systems in housing insecurity: a mobility-based analysis
Get PDFWith trends of urbanisation on the rise, providing adequate housing to individuals remains a complex issue to be addressed. Often, the slow output of relevant housing policies, coupled with quickly increasing housing costs, leaves individuals with the burden of finding housing that is affordable and in a safe location. In this paper, we unveil how transit service to employment hubs, not just housing policies, can prevent individuals from improving their housing conditions. We approach this question in three steps, applying the workflow to 20 cities in the United States of America. First, we propose a comprehensive framework to quantify housing insecurity and assign a housing demographic to each neighbourhood. Second, we use transit-pedestrian networks and public transit timetables (GTFS feeds) to estimate the time it takes to travel between two neighbourhoods using public transportation. Third, we apply geospatial autocorrelation to identify employment hotspots for each housing demographic. Finally, we use stochastic modelling to highlight how commuting to areas associated with better housing conditions results in transit commute times of over an hour in 15 cities. Ultimately, we consider the compounded burdens that come with housing insecurity, by having poor transit access to employment areas. In doing so, we highlight the importance of understanding how negative outcomes of housing insecurity coincide with various urban mechanisms, particularly emphasising the role that public transportation plays in locking vulnerable demographics into a cycle of poverty
Betancourt, Roland, Byzantine Intersectionality: Sexuality, Gender, and Race in the Middle Ages.
No full textPopulismo e questioni di genere in Le Pen e Meloni [Populism and gender-related issues in Le Pen and Meloni]
No full textA chapter in an innovative textbook on populism in Italia
Review of Weibo feminism : expression, activism, and social media in China by Xue, A. and Rose, K.
Get PDFHannah Arendt and Michel Foucault on History, Tradition, and Modernity
Get PDFThis article interrogates the different ways in which Arendt and Foucault seek to conceptualize tradition in their work. First, it analyses Arendt’s approach, arguing that she put forward three overlapping accounts of the Western tradition – one that criticized the alienating affects of post-seventeenth century science, one that criticized the Western philosophical tradition as a whole for favouring ‘making’ and ‘contemplation’ over ‘action’, and one that sought to explain the advent of totalitarianism through the stresses that imperialism and racism put upon Western political thought. These approaches are then contrasted with Foucault’s. It is argued that he differed significantly in not believing there was one Western tradition, laid less stress on totalitarianism, was more of a historicist, and distinguished less between the ‘political’ and the ‘social’. Nevertheless there were important overlaps between Arendt and Foucault’s approaches. Both were critical of the instrumentalizing and technocratic effects of modern science, both stressed the importance of unpredictable events in history, and both believed that examining the Western tradition critically offered important alternatives for modern politics – though neither thought that these would lead to any simple gaining of liberal ‘autonomy’
Creativity, Agency, and AI
No full textAbstract: We can formulate an argument against AI creativity from agency. By some accounts, creativity requires agency, and agency is, many think, not possible for AI. This is due to the typical conception of agency as a capacity for intentional action. Intentional action is thought to require mental states, a severe challenge for machine intelligence. On the face of things, the agency argument seems to provide a straightforward route to argue for the impossibility of AI creativity. However, this path, I argue, is not so clear. In this paper, I outline the agency argument against AI creativity, before calling into question the apparent simplicity of this argument. I argue, ultimately, that the reasoning behind the inclusion of agency in accounts of creativity does not necessitate the use of intentional action, but can instead be satisfied by a minimal teleological account of agency
Bridging the Green Gap: Barriers to Sustainable Residential Construction in Nigeria
Get PDFThis chapter investigates the pivotal role of sustainable residential construction in reducing environmental impacts, promoting economic viability, and contributing to societal well-being. The authors extensively explore the importance of sustainable residential construction in Nigeria, considering its rapid urbanisation, housing deficits, and the necessity for sustainable building techniques. Additionally, the chapter identifies barriers to sustainable residential construction in Nigeria, employing theoretical frameworks like Institutional Theory, Diffusion of Innovation Theory, Stakeholder Theory, and Resource Dependence Theory. Strategies to overcome the identified barriers are also highlighted in this study. Ultimately, the chapter concludes by advocating for a paradigm shift towards long-term sustainability, emphasising collaboration, innovation, and education to ensure Nigeria's role as a prominent advocate for sustainable construction practices