John J. Stuhr

Crossings, Hybrids, Genres II: Editor's Introduction

The articles in this (and the next) issue of the Journal of Speculative Philosophy address a cluster of related philosophical themes: crossings, hybrids, and genres. These themes have many related aspects. Some of them are metaphilosophical. They concern the nature of philosophy itself and the nature of philosophical transgression and transformation; the relation of philosophy to other disciplines, genres, and practices; the value of philosophy at both individual and societal levels; the multiple forms of different philosophies; the conditions that make possible originality and new forms of expression; and the roles within philosophy of narrative and fact, imagination and experiment, and personal modes of expression. In other aspects, the themes of crossings, hybrids, and genres raise issues that are at once psychological and ontological. These include issues concerning identity and difference; destabilizations and amalgamations; pluralism, heterogeneity, homogeneity, and community; demands for self-improvement; and health and illness. Yet other aspects of crossings, hybrids, and genres are centrally political. They focus on topics of national, political, and regional boundaries and borders; immigration, exile, diasporas, and home; cosmopolitanism; new forms of social oppression and control; laws, customs, moral codes,

The Personal, the Practical, and the Poetic

Critical discussion authors, if they are not too occupied talking about themselves and their own books (existent or projected), might reasonably be expected to answer three questions or three clusters of questions: (1) What is the topic of the book, what is it about, what is it trying to do, what is its aim, or maybe what does it assert? (2) Does the book meet its aim, does it deliver the goods, is its message correct or insightful or maybe even just valid and sound, is it a good book, should you read it? and (3) What issues, implications and consequences, criticisms and hesitations, insights and originality might direct ongoing conversation and further thinking by the author, by the speaker, by all of us? In short, a critical discussion reasonably might be expected to provide (1) a description, (2) an evaluation, and (3) some further suggestions.

Editor's Introduction: Symposium III: Words, Bodies, War

In April 2008, the American Philosophies Forum held a symposium called “Words, Bodies, War” at Vanderbilt University. Most of the twenty-four presentations, revised in light of signifi cant discussion at the symposium, now are published here and in the immediately prior and subsequent issues of this journal. For purposes of context, it is helpful to understand the more specifi c topics and questions addressed. They are as follows. Words, power, pluralism: Are words and languages, multiple and frequently contested, employed as weapons and powers to constitute (rather than merely represent) and legitimize some ways of seeing, speaking, and acting rather than others? If communication is a kind of sharing or having in common, do multiple voices point to multiple and different communities (rather than a single Great Community), and, if so, how is it possible for different voices to register, ensure, and even celebrate their differences without these differences being incommensurable, nonharmonious, or even warring? If one can “do things” with words, how and what should be done? Words, signs, experiences: What is the relation among words, signs, language, and experience? Is there no thought without signs? If words do not represent experience or the world, what do they do? Is there a dimension of experience or the world that cannot be captured by, or in, language? If so, does it follow that this dimension literally has no signifi cance? What is the importance, if any, of attending, in thought and through language, to ways in which experiences outstrip that thought and language? Is this importance political as well as ontological? Is this importance always a kind of violence, of doing violence? Bodies, meanings, identities: What is the meaning of embodiment? Is there anything like a universal or shared or even partly shared meaning? Given different words, languages, and cultures, what is the relation of the meaning or meanings of embodiment to multiple embodied meanings and different specifi c lives? Further, what is the relation of embodiment to identity—or identities? Are embodied identities results or products of political powers? In turn, does embodiment have any political implications or consequences? If so, how and what? Are any of these implications democratic or pluralistic?