Daedalus articles from September 2006

Daedalus archives from September 2006

Notes toward the definition of 'identity'.
September 22, 2006... The extremity of 'identity' politics in many parts of the globe during the last few decades has given rise to widespread use of the term 'identity' as well as to a glamorous theoretical interest in the concept. However, there has been little...

The politics of identity.(Viewpoint essay)
September 22, 2006... I am never quite sure what people mean when they talk about 'identity politics.' Usually, though, they bring it up to complain about someone else. One's own political preoccupations are just, well, politics. Identity politics is what other...

From identity to solidarity.
September 22, 2006... Just who belongs together with whom, and for what purposes, and on what authority? Where and why do the claims of descent, religion, nationality, economic position, ideology, gender, and 'civilization' trump one another in the competition for...

Why liberals should value 'identity politics'.
September 22, 2006... Interviewed on the fortieth anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington, civil-rights activist Eleanor Holmes Norton was asked why the only woman to take the podium on the day of the protest was Mahalia Jackson, who sang "The Star Spangled...

Identity & identities.
September 22, 2006... In its primary meaning, the noun 'identity' refers to the relation each thing has to itself and to no other thing. In the language of the logicians, this relation is transitive (if A is identical to B and B is identical to C, then A is...

Why do individuals matter?(interpersonal relations)
September 22, 2006... There is an unresolved and generally unnoticed contradiction in a conception of the person often associated with the Enlightenment. The conception incorporates two commitments that, while they seem to support each other, can serve only to...

Many masks, many selves.(masquerades)
September 22, 2006... In both real life and mythology, people set out to become other people but, through a kind of triple cross (1) or double-back, end up as themselves, masquerading as other people who turn out to be masquerading as them. Sometimes entire...

Our brains, our selves.(brain damage)
September 22, 2006... There are cases in which parts of a person's own body, even portions of his mental life--his perceptions, thoughts and feelings--appear alien to him and as not belonging to his ego; there are other cases in which he ascribes to the...

Genetics, biosocial groups & the future of identity.
September 22, 2006... 'Biosocial' is a new word, but its pedigree, although brief, is the best. Paul Rabinow, the anthropologist of the genome industry, wrote about 'biosociality' in 1992. (1) He invented the word partly as a joke, to counter the sociobiology that...

The convictions of Peter Debye.(Biography)
September 22, 2006... At the time of his death in 1966, Peter Debye was internationally renowned for his work on molecular structure, especially dipole moments (the interaction of a collection of charged particles with an electrical field) and the diffraction of...

Were All There for Geoffrey Hill.(Poem)
September 22, 2006... The seller of used-cars, his cigar Noisome, quasi-Cuban; the nuncio In his scrim of pallium: didn't cough. The neverseen neighbour (gay?) Who stopped to say he was "sorry". Monsignor-the-trencherman & his Romanic subdeacons with...

Stew.(Short story)
September 22, 2006... "Your husband is still alive." It was not familiar, the rasping voice of that man, not familiar at all, no matter how much I searched for something, anything, that would let me trust him, believe what the stranger on the other side of the...

On Islam & comparative intellectual history.
September 22, 2006... Last June I participated in a very unusual assignment at the International Institute for Asian Studies in Leiden. Our task was to compare the intellectual histories of the three major non-Western literate traditions in the early modern...

On the future of global energy.
September 22, 2006... Energy is the greatest concern of our future. The rising living standards of a growing world population will increase global energy consumption dramatically over the next half century. The challenge for science, and particularly for the...