This article seeks to locate Louis Althusser’s late preoccupation with the status of Marxists in philosophy through a survey of archival and marginal texts written on and amid struggles within the French education system. This material evidences that Althusser held a long-term ambition to reconcile the demands of being a Marxist in his professional life with the demands of being a philosopher in his political life. On this basis, this article offers an expanded contextualisation of the stakes that weighed upon (...) Althusser’s shifting understanding and inhabitation of a Marxist position in philosophy. It aims to show that Althusser’s involvement with, and changing attitudes towards, the educational institution (and in particular the teaching of philosophy) played a significant role in forging the discontinuities in his conceptualisation of Marxist philosophy. The article additionally traces the afterlife of this practice in the work of Jacques Derrida and the Groupe de recherches sur l’enseignement de a philosophe (GREPH). (shrink)

This high-level study discusses Newtonian principles and 19th-century views on electrodynamics and the aether. Additional topics include Einstein's electrodynamics of moving bodies, Minkowski spacetime, gravitational geometry, time and causality, and other subjects. Highlights include a rich exposition of the elements of the special and general theories of relativity.

Siguiendo las ideas clásicas, la tecnología se entiende como una especie de control del movimiento. Este control específico se mostrará históricamente en el ejército y la marina, es decir, en el campo militar. Sabiendo que nuestra Era se autoexplica como un período tecnológico, este artículo intenta dar cuenta de cuáles son las particularidades de esta tecnología militar relacionadas con los tiempos modernos de los nuevos entornos tecnológicos. De cara a este propósito, y junto a un breve resumen de las tecnologías (...) militares, los conceptos principales serán los espectáculos como una nueva forma de reconocer a los ciudadanos actuales como espectadores y usuarios de las nuevas realidades tecnológicas. Como resultado, habrá una nueva y sin precedente forma de control de la realidad. (shrink)

Resumen: La vida en un mas. Tal vez pueda ser una imagen utópica, especialmente ahora que se habla de la España vaciada. Pero durante siglos fue una realidad. El aprovechamiento de los recursos naturales que un ámbito montañés podía ofrecer configuró un sistema de poblamiento con una amplia presencia de pequeños núcleos diseminados y aislados, autosuficientes. En ocasiones su tamaño permite hablar de poblas. En otras ocasiones se trata de simples masías. Recuperamos ahora la historia de un mas poco conocido: (...) Fraximeno. La novedad radica en la presentación de más de 70 documentos regestados, datados entre los siglos XIV y XV que permiten reconstruir la historia de este lugar y de sus habitantes, y sus relaciones con Cinctorres y con el monasterio de Benifassá. Palabras clave: masada, reino medieval de Valencia, Els Ports de Morella, siglos xiv-xv: Life in a farm. Perhaps it can be a utopian image, especially now that there is talk of emptied Spain. But for centuries it was a reality. The use of natural resources that a mountainous area could offer configured a population system with a large presence of small, scattered and isolated, self-sufficient villages. Sometimes its size allows to speak of Poblas. At other times they are simple farmhouses. We now recover the story of a farm little known one: Fraximeno. The novelty lies in the presentation of more than 70 regestated documents, dated between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that allow us to reconstruct the history of this place and its inhabitants, and its relations with Cinctorres and with the Benifassá monastery. Key words: farm, medieval kingdom of Valencia, Els Ports de Morella, 14-15th centuries. (shrink)

Recordando a Bachelard a medio siglo de su muerte (2011) -- Filosofia de la relatividad (2011) -- La proliferación de los conceptos de especie en la biología evolucionista (2010).

This paper is concerned with certain ontological issues in the foundations of geographic representation. It sets out what these basic issues are, describes the tools needed to deal with them, and draws some implications for a general theory of spatial representation. Our approach has ramifications in the domains of mereology, topology, and the theory of location, and the question of the interaction of these three domains within a unified spatial representation theory is addressed. In the final part we also consider (...) the idea of non-standard geographies, which may be associated with geography under a classical conception in the same sense in which non-standard logics are associated with classical logic. (shrink)

Correspondence theories are frequently either too vaguely expressed – “true statements correspond to the way things are in the world,” or implausible – “true statements mirror raw, mind-independent reality.” I address this problem by developing features and roles that ought to characterize what I call ldquo;modest” correspondence theories. Of special importance is the role of correspondence in directing our responses to cases of suspected non-factuality; lack of straightforward correspondence shows the need for, and guides us in our choice of, various (...) kinds of reconstrual projects. This, I argue, is in contrast to the approaches suggested by deflationism and coherence, and thus modest correspondence theories are appropriately distinct from rivals. (shrink)

The use of facial recognition systems in concerts provides a perfect pretext to semiotically discuss the role of the face in contemporary culture, identifying different strategies and axiologies (systems of values). In his visionary essay Bruits (“noises”) from 1977, the French thinker Jacques Attali establishes a close connection between music and power and locates it in the site of the collective unfolding of music: the concert hall. Following this hint, the article reconstructs the current debate on facial recognition systems in (...) the music business, with a particular focus on concerts and festivals. The different positions (of musicians, authorities, and professionals) are outlined (some are openly in favor, others openly against), key moments are identified (Beyoncé’s concert in Cardiff, 2017; Jacky Cheung’s in Nanchang, 2018; Taylor Swift’s at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, 2018; the “banfacialrecognition.com” campaign launched in 2019; the case of Barbara Hart at Brandi Carlile’s show at the Madison Square Garden, 2022) and, finally, the issue is framed within the broader debate about the face as an indexical marker of presence, identity, and humanity (the contrast between Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben and American sociologist and design theorist Benjamin Bratton is addressed). (shrink)

Per una sociosemiotica della comunicazione musicale -- Per una sociosemiotica dei generi musicali -- Per una sociosemiotica della novità in musica -- Per una sociosemiotica del dubstep.

Reasons-first theorists claim that facts about reasons for attitudes are normatively primitive, and that all other normative facts ultimately reduce to facts about reasons. According to their view, for example, the fact that something is good ultimately reduces to facts about reasons to favour it. I argue that these theories face a challenging dilemma due to the normativity of arational lifeforms, for instance the fact that water is good for plants. If all normative facts are, ultimately, facts about reasons for (...) attitudes, then reasons-first theorists must either (a) show that these facts do reduce to facts about reasons, or (b) concede that they do not and, instead, show that this is not a problem for their view. Both options, however, are riddled with difficulties—or so I will try to argue. (shrink)

El autor analiza algunos aspectos de los debates sobre la democracia en la llamada transición de los años ̓80, para advertir sobre la preeminencia que adquirieron las disposiciones procedimentales y representativas —elevadas a condición metanormativa— y la conceptualización de la política como producción de consensos. Esas orientaciones impidieron una recuperación de las experiencias democráticas que la dictadura intentó cancelar, y fueron incapaces de poner en foco las figuras de subjetividad que el terror estatal y el neoliberalismo produjeron en tanto intervenciones (...) sobre las tramas sociales. Finalmente, el autor se detiene brevemente en algunas experiencias políticas democratizadoras, en tanto formas de aparición de los pueblos en estos últimos 40 años. (shrink)

Husserl proceeds to show how a world-representation emerges from our world-experience, and how an idea of the world plays a role in the expansion of world-representations. He also draws our attention to the appropriation of other world-representations in a process of adjustment and compensation leading to intersubjective world-representations, and offers an analysis of the status of world-representations within transcendental phenomenology. In this article I will underline the relevance of Husserl’s concept of horizonedness to the characterization of the three levels of (...) world-experience, worldrepresentation, and the world as an idea. In getting clear on this relevance several points must be emphasized. (shrink)

No anthropologist has been as influential outside the own discipline as Lévi-Strauss. From philosophy to history, from politics to literary criticism, from linguistics to sociology, from psychoanalysis to poetry, from art to contemporary music, the œuvre of the author of Tristes Tropiques has fallen on these fields like a beneficial rain, giving them new life. Such a great influence has several reasons. The design of a wide-ranging anthropological project, its philosophical implications, an immense and precious erudition which allows to build (...) connections between the most different fields of humanistic and scientific knowledge, and lastly a great writing, rich of literary vibrations. All the great questions of the present, from the world’s overpopulation to cultural relativism, from the resurgence of the myth to the return of localisms, from the war of the veil to genetic manipulations, all subjects appear in the œuvre of Lévi-Strauss, always in a provocative and anticipatory formulation which represents the precious heritage of the last of the classics. (shrink)

No anthropologist has been as influential outside the own discipline as Lévi-Strauss. From philosophy to history, from politics to literary criticism, from linguistics to sociology, from psychoanalysis to poetry, from art to contemporary music, the œuvre of the author of Tristes Tropiques has fallen on these fields like a beneficial rain, giving them new life. Such a great influence has several reasons. The design of a wide-ranging anthropological project, its philosophical implications, an immense and precious erudition which allows to build (...) connections between the most different fields of humanistic and scientific knowledge, and lastly a great writing, rich of literary vibrations. All the great questions of the present, from the world’s overpopulation to cultural relativism, from the resurgence of the myth to the return of localisms, from the war of the veil to genetic manipulations, all subjects appear in the œuvre of Lévi-Strauss, always in a provocative and anticipatory formulation which represents the precious heritage of the last of the classics. (shrink)