Was Swift correct that “reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired” (Letter to a Young Gentleman)? If so, what recourse is there to change attitudes especially among those who continue to fervently believe unjustified claims and act upon them in a way that affects other people? I will answer the…[Read more]

The discovery of mirror neurons in both primates and humans has led to an enormous amount of research and speculation as to how conscious beings are able to interact so effortlessly among one another. Mirror neurons might provide an embodied basis for passive synthesis and the eventual process of further communalization through empathy, as…[Read more]

I argue that the overt subjugation in the system of American slavery and its subsequent effects offer a case study for an existentialist analysis of freedom, oppression and humor. Concentrating on the writings and experiences of Frederick Douglass and the existentialists Simone De Beauvoir and Lewis Gordon, I investigate how the concepts of…[Read more]

In the first part of this paper, I will briefly introduce the concept of incongruity and its relation to humor and seriousness, connecting the ideas of Arthur Schopenhauer and the contemporary work of John Morreall. I will reveal some of the relations between Schopenhauer’s notion of “seriousness” and the existentialists such as Jean Paul Sartr…[Read more]

In this paper I borrow from Maria Lugones’ work on playful ” world-traveling ” and W.E.B. Du Bois’ notion of ” double consciousness ” to make the case that humor can facilitate an openness and cooperative attitude among an otherwise closed, even adversarial audience. I focus on what I call ” subversive ” humor, that which is employed by or on…[Read more]

The majority of philosophers of religion, at least since Plantinga’s reply to Mackie’s logical problem of evil, agree that it is logically possible for an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God to exist who permits some of the evils we see in the actual world. This is conceivable essentially because of the possible world known as heaven.…[Read more]

This paper investigates the relationships between forms of humor that conjure up possible worlds and real-world social critiques. The first part of the paper will argue that subversive humor, which is from or on behalf of historically and continually marginalized communities, constitutes a kind of aesthetic experience that can elicit enjoyment…[Read more]

Academic freedom is under attack, both in authoritarian democracies, such as Hungary and Turkey, and in liberal Western democracies, such as the United States, the UK, France and Germany. For example, Gender Studies are being targeted by right-wing governments in Eastern Europe, and in France President Emmanuel Macron has attacked post-colonial…[Read more]

The challenge of developing humane migration and refugee politics in Western states is far from resolved. This ongoing failure is typically attributed to the increased influence of right-wing populism and neo-fascism in Western migration politics. In this article I discuss a more radical explanation: Christoph Menke argues that political…[Read more]

South Africa was one of the most unequal countries in the world in 1994 and inequality has featured prominently as a key socio-economic and policy challenge over the post-apartheid period. Yet, despite policy interventions with the aim of reducing inequality, these high levels of inequality remain in place. Such resilience in inequality demands…[Read more]

Mobility is a multifaceted concept with social, economic and political implications. This article reflects on the role of mobility and its relation to precarity in the emergence of protests in both Quito (Ecuador) and Santiago (Chile) in 2019 by examining the interplay between mobility and inequality. It argues that the announced increases in…[Read more]

In ‘Postdigital Politics’ I examine our contemporary postdigital political conjuncture. This conjuncture, I argue, springs from the crisis of representative democracy we are currently experiencing and involves a shift to more direct forms of democracy via postdigital communications. The latter is evident in the decentralised manner in which mov…[Read more]

Spain’s Local Government model has suffered from problems of its own that have been left out of the political debate and also from the scientific and academic ones. The Cities of Madrid and Barcelona have a special status through special laws, and due to their size and importance they have specific problems. Hence the importance of comparing the 2…[Read more]

Política, Gobierno y Administración en la Comunidad de Madrid, España

Finally published 34 years after his death, Foucault’s book Confessions of the Flesh sheds new light on the debate about freedom and power that shaped the reception of his works. Many contributors to this debate argue that Foucault’s theory of power did not allow for freedom in the ‘genealogical phase,’ but that he corrected himself and presented…[Read more]

„Political Correctness“, „Identitätspolitik“ und „Cancel Culture“ werden heutzutage überwiegend als Waffen von Konservativen eingesetzt, um ihre Privilegien gegen emanzipative Neuregelungen zu verteidigen. Solche Neuregelungen als Einschränkung der Kunst- und Meinungsfreiheit zu kritisieren ist deshalb meist falsch. Tatsächlich tragen „Politic…[Read more]

Two fifths of Britain’s leading people were educated privately: that’s five times the amount as in the population as a whole, with almost a quarter graduating from Oxford or Cambridge. Eight private schools send more pupils to Oxbridge than the remaining 2894 state schools combined, making modern Britain one of the most unequal places in Eur…[Read more]

Vor wenigen Tagen hat das Hamburger Kabarett-Theater Schmidts Tivoli die Zusammenarbeit mit dem Komiker Kay Ray beendet, offenbar weil rassistische Witze in der Show einen zentralen Platz einnehmen. Kurz nach der Cancel-Affäre zwischen Lisa Eckhart und dem Hamburger Nochtspeicher sieht sich nun auch Ray als Opfer von „Cancel Culture“, die die Kuns…[Read more]

What about insāniyat (humanity)? Or put differently, how are morality and ethics compelled and shaped in the pahars (mountainscapes) of Kashmir? Insāniyat is an emotion and ethics that expresses interdependencies between people. Insāniyat is moral and ethical proclivity. It is not enforced by an external authority but inheres in human en…[Read more]

It becomes hard for me to think of morality as inherently an oppressive tool of the ruling class. After all, we would be hard pressed to find a communist who isn’t drawn to Marxism—or any left tendency for that matter—who doesn’t possess a strong, disciplined moral conviction that guides their actions and assists them in determining what is the…[Read more]