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Film Review: “Njan Prakashan”
Get PDFBeloved Indian poet and playwright Rabindranath Tagore once penned the immortal words: “I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.” The 2018 Malayalam language film Njan Prakashan (lit. “I am Prakashan”), with English subtitles, brings to life Tagore’s words in a story bursting with the universal themes of humor, joy, empathy, tragedy and, ultimately, rebirth
Misogynistic Hate Speech and its Chilling Effect on Women\u27s Free Expression during the 2016 U.S. Presidential Campaign
Get PDFThis essay argues that the proliferation of misogynistic hate speech during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign had a dangerous chilling effect on women’s free expression. The gendered slurs aimed at women candidates and journalists, both online and in-person, created a hostile political environment, which made it more difficult for women to fully participate in the process of Democratic self-governance. To address this issue, I recommend allocating state and federal tax dollars to counter speech efforts, and call for social media organizations, such as Facebook and Twitter, to reevaluate their hate speech and harassment policies
Void and Idol: A Critical Theory Analysis of the Neo-fascist Alt-Right
Get PDFThis article’s critique of the neo-fascist “alt-right” employs philosophical methods located at a point of intersection between humanist Marxist and spiritual existentialist frameworks, by relying on two radical twentieth-century philosophers of Jewish descent: Erich Fromm (1900-1980) and Simone Weil (1909-1943). What could a Marxist Critical Theorist (Fromm) and a Christian mystic (Weil) share in common, that could somehow help explain what is going on with a bunch of rebranded fascists (the “alt-right”) today? This peculiar convergence is born in part of a surprising synchronicity, revolving around a single term: “the void.
Curbing Hatred: The Ethnic Diehards\u27 Agitations and 2015 Presidential Election Campaign in Nigeria
Get PDFNigeria witnessed bouts of hate speeches during the buildup to the March 28, 2015 Presidential election. Politicians and their allies made use of acerbic words, half-truths and outright lies during their electioneering campaigns. The election was regarded as a ‘do-or-die’ affair by the politicians. Their activities were alarming and apprehensions were rife about the success of the election and peaceful transition of power. Hence, the two major contestants, Goodluck Jonathan and Muhammadu Buhari along with nine party leaders signed the ‘Abuja Accord’ on January 14, 2015.Furthermore, the country experienced a season of acerbic comments, issuance of quit notices and calls for secessions by ethnic jingoists. These activities heated up the polity and caused panic among the citizens of the country. On June 6, 2017, the Arewa Youth Consultative Forum comprising of 19 Northern states of Nigeria issued a 90-day ultimatum to South-Eastern residents in the North to vacate the region before October 1, 2017.This article explores the use of hate speech in electioneering campaign drawing from secondary data i.e. newspaper excerpts; and through the lens of ethics using relevant Communication Practice Codes, Nigerian Press Council Code, Nigerian Broadcasting Code, 2012 and relevant sections of Electoral Act 2010. It also examines the issue of the ethnic diehards’ agitations and quit notice and its implications for national peace, security and justice. The argument and submission of this paper highlights ways of curbing hatred, advancing of peace, acceptance, tolerance and justice
The Hermeneutics of Capability From Essence to Functions, From Functions to Capabilities: Preparing the Ontological Ground for an Ethics Inspired by the Capabilities Approach
Get PDFThe goal of the World Report on Disability (WHO 2017) is for all people to live a life of health, comfort, and dignity. This minimal projection for human existence becomes problematic given that there are an estimated one billion people world-wide with reduced functionings or disabilities. This is further complicated by the fact that 80% of those with disabilities are living in low and middle income counties, suggesting a strong link between disability and poverty. (Banks, Kuper and Polack, 2017) Disability, therefore, is a complex intersectionality between health, poverty, and the environment. However, there are deeper considerations of philosophical anthropology and ontology that underlie these political and sociological issues. In fact, the World Health Organization, itself, argues that disability is part of the human condition. (Banks, Kuper and Polack 2017, p. 3) Almost every person will experience impairment and increased difficulties in functioning at some point throughout their lives, and every person certainly will, if they live long enough into old age. Thus, disability opens the ontological question of the meaning of being anew, not as beings-towards-death (finitude), but as beings-towards-disability (fragility)
A Tolerance for Ambiguity or the American Dream: Using Anzaldúa to Disrupt and Reclaim Latina Lives from Multicultural Feminism
No full textThe Quest for Wholeness
Get PDFThe articles in this volume of the IJSL, like the articles we’ve been honored to publish throughout the journal’s history, are bold, transgressive, and aimed at decentralizing dominant-culture narratives. As people, Shann Ray Ferch, IJSL editor-in-chief, believes that we are specific and universal, beautiful, tragic, met with fracture, met with fusion, triumphant, graceful, traumatized, deeply harmed, lovely, and graceful. The collective presence of the articles published in this volume are guided by similar beliefs, addressing the call given by Seattle writer and National Book Award winner Charles Johnson (Middle Passage) who asks, “How do we portray the racial, cultural, gender, and class Other? It’s very important that we make this attempt given our goal of truly becoming a multicultural society.
NOW 2019-09 September
No full textCorpus of News on the Web data for September 2019.
The TAR folder contains linguistic data in three formats: Database: This is the format allows for the most robust searches and allows for powerful JOINs across corpus, lexicon, and source tables but requires knowledge of SQL. See Full-text corpus data for more information on how to use the database format. Linear Text: This format provides a textID for each text, and then the entire text on the same line. In this format, words are not annotated for part of speech or lemma. In addition, contracted words like can\u27t are separated into two parts (ca n\u27t) and punctuation is separated from words (eye level . As her). Word, Lemma, Part of Speech: Texts are separated by a line with ## and the textID
Constructing Contentious and Noncontentious Facts: How Gynecology Textbooks Create Certainty around Pharma-contraceptive Safety
Get PDFUsing critical discourse analysis, we examine how seven popular gynecology textbooks use sociolinguistic devices to describe the health effects of pharma-contraception (intrauterine and hormonal methods). Though previous studies have noted that textbooks generally use neutral language, we find that gynecology textbooks differentially deployed linguistic devices, framing pharma-contraceptive benefits as certain and risks as doubtful. These discursive strategies transform pharma-contraceptive safety into fact. We expand on Latour and Woolgar\u27s concept of noncontentious facts by showing how some facts that are taken for granted by the medical community still require discursive fortification to counter potential negative accusations from outside the profession. We call these contentious facts. Our findings suggest that a pro-pharma orientation exists in gynecology textbooks, which may influence physicians\u27 understanding of pharmaceutical safety. As such, these texts may affect medical practice by normalizing pharma-contraceptives without full considerations of their risks
Carbon dioxide enrichment alters predator avoidance and sex determination but only sex is mediated by GABAA receptors
No full textWe hypothesized that near-future elevated CO2 would affect the antipredatory behavior of two freshwater organisms; a pulmonate gastropod (Physella columbiana) and a cladoceran crustacean (Daphnia magna). Studies have found that pCO2 and increased acidification due to CO2 impedes fright responses to predators by activating GABAA receptors. After administration of predator-derived kairomones and conspecific alarm cues, we also briefly exposed some of the animals to gabazine which is a GABAA receptor antagonist to restore a fright response. We found that added carbon dioxide negatively affected the antipredatory behavior of both species but gabazine did not reverse this effect. To further examine the effect of CO2 and gabazine, we also tested the effect of stressful crowding, cold, and acidic conditions on the production of male daphnid offspring. An increase in ratio of male to female offspring is a common and expected response to stress by daphnids. We found that stress increased the production of males and gabazine reversed this at a pH of 5.5 but not at pH 6.2 or 6.5. Our study suggest that while the main negative effects of anthropogenic CO2 enrichment can be robust, the myriad indirect effects of CO2 make predictions about future predator prey systems less clear