USB Journals (Univ. Köln)
Not a member yet
2162 research outputs found
Sort by
Beyond Artificial Intelligence: How Algorithms Communicate without Understanding
Get PDFThe remarkable performance of recent algorithms grounded in machine learning and Big Data is often portrayed as a milestone in Artificial Intelligence (AI), suggesting a replication of human cognitive processes by machines. This article challenges such interpretations, arguing that systems like ChatGPT excel not by achieving intelligence akin to humans, but by generating outputs that can be used by human users to create their own relevant information. Without understanding content, algorithms have learned to participate in communication. The evolving interaction between humans and such technologies is likely to significantly influence the future of intelligence. However, understanding these effects requires shifting focus away from direct comparisons and competitions between human and machine cognitive abilities, toward exploring their complementary roles in communication
Review: Peter Lehman (ed.). Masculinity: Bodies, Movies, Culture.
No full textIn lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the article:
Masculinity: Bodies, Movies, Culture is among the most recent contributions to the burgeoning field of masculinity studies. The point of departure for this collection edited by Peter Lehman, a pioneer in this area, is a sceptical view of this "masculine turn": although not entirely unexpected in our era of identity politics, the academic debate around masculinity has so far failed to sufficiently conceptualise, let alone "explain" it
Interview: “People confuse personal relations with legal structures.” An Interview with Margaret Atwood
No full textIn lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the interview:
Margaret Atwood was born in Ottawa, Ontario in 1939, and grew up in northern Quebec, Ontario, and Toronto. After living and working in many different cities and travelling extensively she now lives in Toronto with writer Graeme Gibson. Her posts include Lecturer in English at the University of British Columbia, Assistant Professor of English at York University, Toronto, M.F.A. Honorary Chair at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Berg Chair at New York University, and Writer-In-Residence at Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas. Atwood is the critically acclaimed author of more than 30 books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays and the editor of various anthologies. Her work has been translated into more than fifteen different languages. Prizes for her fiction include the Booker Prize for The Blind Assassin, the Commonwealth Writers\u27 Prize and the Canadian Authors\u27 Association Novel of the Year (both for The Robber Bride), the Giller Award for Alias Grace, and many more. Other books by Margaret Atwood shortlisted for the Booker Prize include The Handmaid\u27s Tale, Cat\u27s Eye, Alias Grace and Oryx and Crake. She has been inducted into Canada\u27s Walk of Fame and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. She has been awarded the Norwegian Order of Literary Merit, the French Chevalier dans l\u27Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and is a Foreign Honorary Member for Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Review: Roger N. Lancaster: The Trouble with Nature: Sex in Science and Popular Culture.
No full textIn lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the review:
U.S. anthropologist and "unreconstructed socialist" Roger N. Lancaster has produced a wide-ranging and entertaining book which seeks "to critique the naturalization of heterosexuality in recent science and [seeks] an understanding of how bioreductivist ideas relate to ongoing changes in sexual culture" (308). Over some 350 pages of text, Lancaster shows how, in the wake of movements such as gay liberation and feminism, which have problematized "the quest for an authentic self" (7), US-American culture is "awash with highly-publicized (and publicity-sensitive) studies asserting a genetic source, a hormonal cause, and/or a hardwired, gendered brain as the basis for all manner of human traits and practices" (8)
Review: Diane Richardson and Steven Seidman (eds.): Handbook of Lesbian and Gay Studies.
No full textIn lieu of an abstract, here is the first pargraph of the review:
What is normal? This question, or rather, the challenge to traditional notions of what qualifies as normal, healthy, and natural in regard to sexuality is at the core of a thriving area of study known as gay, lesbian and queer studies (GLQ). With the Handbook of Gay and Lesbian Studies, edited by Diane Richardson and Steven Seidman, at long last a much needed and welcome introduction to GLQ Studies has been published. Twenty-six review essays provide a guideline through this complex and intriguing area. In the best sense of a handbook, this collection both introduces the student to the theory and research done over the last thirty years and serves as a reference book for the general reader already acquainted with the basics and interested in exploring the diverse aspects of GLQ studies
Foreboding Forefathers: Cross(br)ed Desire, A Child and Dubious Parenthood. Goethe\u27s Elective Affinities (Translated by Kate Brooks)
Get PDFJohann Wolfgang von Goethe\u27s Elective Affinities [Die Wahlverwandtschaften] was published in 1809. With the character of the child, Otto, Goethe takes up the debate surrounding female/maternal imagination and its supposed influence on the development of the embryo; however, he takes it out of the context of the discourse on monstrosity, in which it was traditionally discussed. When I study Otto as the result of parental imagination and relate this to the debate surrounding maternal imagination, I notice the "artificiality" of procreation and the apparent break with the genealogy in this so-called monstrous imagination. In other words, I am interested in the artificial and artistic status of the child whose birth appears to be the consequence of an artificial insemination
Review: Judith Butler: \u27Undoing Gender.\u27 Routledge: New York. 2004
No full textIn lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the review:
Undoing Gender assembles eleven of Butler\u27s most recent contributions to debates on gender and sexuality, in her own words, "on the question of what it might mean to undo restrictively normative conceptions of sexual and gendered life" (1). The title henceforth already marks Butler\u27s slight shift in perspective. If her landmark study Gender Trouble (1990) for the most part investigates how gender is performatively reiterated, Undoing Gender focuses on how gender rather is continuously undone. The issues she takes up to illustrate possible disruptions of binary gender concepts concern the socio political implications of transgender identity and transsexuality, gay marriage, questions arising from new arrays of kinship, as well as feminist/queer psychoanalysis and their status within philosophical frameworks. In most of these essays she expounds the problems of the continuous and often ambivalent negotiation between individual autonomy and governing social norms. As she expounds, her reflections are always "guided by the question of what maximizes the possibilities for a livable life, what minimizes the possibilities of unbearable life, or, indeed, social or literal death" (8). What Butler highlights in Undoing Gender is how "human rights" often entail the risk of exclusion, or worse, of degrading those who fail to comply
Priscilla, (White) Queen of the Desert: Queer Politics and Representation in a "Postcolonising" Nation
Get PDFThe brief analysis presented here of both The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and the work of Padva has highlighted some of the problems facing white queer politics in Australia. My intention has not been to provide a definitive reading of either text, but rather to draw attention to some of the problems that they present for representations of white queers in Australia. Not only does the analysis demonstrate the troublesome ways in which white queerness engages with race in Australia, but it also highlights some of the assumptions around racialised and gendered privilege that inform queer politics. As three white queer characters, and myself as a white gay man, we experience considered privilege as a result of our social location. This is something that I believe requires accountability, and something that is not easily theorised away or discounted through recourse to "good intentions." Being a white queer in Australia does not place us outside of racism, nor does it mean that our self-representations are not seen as oppressive by those who identify as non-white