New APPS

Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science. Mostly Philosophy.

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    Category: Political Affect

    • Waiting on Ferguson

      by Leigh M. Johnson We continue awaiting the decision of a grand jury on whether or not to indict Darren Wilson, a white police officer, who shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, exactly 15 weeks ago today on a suburban street in Ferguson, Missouri. News reporters from across the globe have been camped…

    • The Ferguson Lesson: Another Way to “Take Up Arms”

      As someone who has spent the better part of her career researching, analyzing and teaching not only about the structure and nature of oppressive power regimes, but also better and worse ways to resist or transform such regimes, I've nevertheless been unable to settle in my own mind, to my own satisfaction, my position with…

    • “But Quiet, Be Quiet A Minute”: On the Death of Rev. Fred Phelps

      The news has just been released that Rev. Fred Phelps, founder and lifelong shepherd of the Westboro Baptist Church (in Topeka, Kansas) has died at the age of 84.  I find it difficult, I confess, to summon the normal human compassion that usually accompanies news of another's death in this case, largely because Phelps dedicated…

    • Plus ça change, masculinity anxiety edition

      This Salon piece looks at some recent movies through the lens of masculinity anxiety:  A friend of a friend of mine has big plans: quit his prestigious editorial job in New York, grow his beard a bit further out, and start working on the docks. In 2014, the sentiments behind such a decision aren’t anything…

    • Eric Schliesser on “Lice and Biopolitics”

      Schliesser thought he could escape the Borg, but a senior philosopher elsewhere has tracked him down for us here. In this very interesting reflection, he writes about the head-lice inspection all Dutch kids undergo at school, and connnects it to Foucaultian analyses of biopolitics (or, with less fancy terms, that government rationality that licences, among…

    • My Dad went to LSU, and all I got was this lousy pee-cup

      A few days ago, while trying to open the interwebs thingy to allow me to start entering my grades, I was prevented from doing so by a pop-up menu that referenced LSU's Policy Statement 67. The text included unsubstantiated and highly dubious claims such as that most workplace problems are the result of drugs and alcohol…

    • Tolerance is not a virtue

      This is my first foray into newAPPS waters– and I thank the newAPPS coterie for the invitation!– so I thought I’d start by tossing out a fairly straightforward philosophical claim:  Tolerance is not a virtue. When I say that tolerance is not a virtue, to be clear, I don’t mean to imply that tolerance is…