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Many Critics (many + critic)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences100%

Selected Abstracts

REVISITING CHILD-BASED OBJECTIONS TO COMMERCIAL SURROGACY

BIOETHICS, Issue 7 2010
JASON K.M. HANNA
ABSTRACT Many critics of commercial surrogate motherhood argue that it violates the rights of children. In this paper, I respond to several versions of this objection. The most common version claims that surrogacy involves child-selling. I argue that while proponents of surrogacy have generally failed to provide an adequate response to this objection, it can be overcome. After showing that the two most prominent arguments for the child-selling objection fail, I explain how the commissioning couple can acquire parental rights by paying the surrogate only for her reproductive labor. My explanation appeals to the idea that parental rights are acquired by those who have claims over the reproductive labor that produces the child, not necessarily by those who actually perform the labor. This account clarifies how commercial surrogacy differs from commercial adoption. In the final section of the paper, I consider and reject three further child-based objections to commercial surrogacy: that it establishes a market in children's attributes, that it requires courts to stray from the best interests standard in determining custodial rights, and that it requires the surrogate to neglect her parental responsibilities. Since each of these objections fails, children's rights probably do not pose an obstacle to the acceptability of commercial surrogacy arrangements. [source]

Conflict Management and Communicative Action: Second-Track Diplomacy from a Habermasian Perspective

COMMUNICATION THEORY, Issue 3 2008
Daniel Wehrenfennig
Many critics have called Jürgen Habermas's concepts of communicative action theoretically interesting but not practically viable. Traditional conflict management in the form of negotiation and state diplomacy leaves little room for Habermasian communication theory and could count as another example of the inapplicability of his ideas. However, with the advent of new conflict resolution practices in the form of second-track diplomacy, Habermasian communication theories seem to be applied in new ways, which this article will analyze. Résumé La gestion des conflits et l,agir communicationnel : La diplomatie de la deuxième voie d'une perspective habermassienne Plusieurs critiques ont dit du concept de l,agir communicationnel de Jürgen Habermas qu'il était intéressant en théorie mais non viable en pratique. La gestion traditionnelle des conflits sous forme de négociation et de diplomatie étatique laisse peu de place à la théorie communicationnelle habermassienne et elle pourrait être considérée comme un autre exemple de l,impossibilité d'application de ses idées. Toutefois, avec l,apparition de nouvelles pratiques de résolution des conflits sous la forme de la diplomatie de la deuxième voie, les théories communicationnelles de Habermas semblent être appliquées de nouvelles manières, que cet article analyse. Abstract Konfliktmanagement und kommunikatives Handeln: Alternativ-Diplomatie aus einer Habermas'schen Sichtweise Viele Kritiker betrachten die Habermas,schen Konzepte des kommunikativen Handelns als theoretisch interessant aber praktisch nicht anwendbar. Traditionelles Konfliktmanagement in Form von Verhandlung und Diplomatie lassen wenig Raum für Habermas'sche Kommunikationstheorie und können als ein Beispiel für die Nichtanwendbarkeit seiner Ideen dienen. Allerdings scheinen die Habermas,sche Kommunikationstheorien mit dem Aufkommen neuer Konfliktlösungspraktiken in Form von Alternativ-Diplomatie auf neue Art anwendbar. Dies soll in diesem Artikel untersucht werden soll. Resumen El Manejo del Conflicto y la Acción Comunicativa: La Diplomacia de Segundo Grado desde la Perspectiva de Habermas Muchos críticos han alegado que los conceptos de acción comunicativa de Jürgen Habermas aunque teóricamente interesantes no son viables en la práctica. El manejo tradicional del conflicto en la forma de negociación y diplomacia estatal deja poco espacio para una teoría de la comunicación de Habermas y puede servir como otro ejemplo de la inaplicabilidad de sus ideas. No obstante, con el advenimiento de las nuevas prácticas de resolución de conflicto en la forma de diplomacia de segundo grado, las teorías de la comunicación de Habermas parecen tener formas de aplicación nuevas, las cuales son analizadas en este ensayo. ZhaiYao Yo yak [source]

Hope and Purification in the Writings of Ayi Kwei Armah and Ama Ata Aidoo

ORBIS LITERARUM, Issue 2 2010
Clayton G. MacKenzie
Taban Lo Liyong sees the task of the African writer as one of "reconstructing Africa from the imperial wreck of the last two thousand seasons" (Liyong 1990, 171). The erosion of the African culture by modernization and colonialism has deprived indigenous peoples of their religions, their traditions, their mores, and in some cases their languages. It is not clear, though, what form Liyong's "reconstruction" is to take. Other commentators, like the Nigerian poet Tanure Ojaide, seem more specific in demanding that the African artist should take a moral, political line in asserting that his/her active role is to "remedy a bad situation" (Ojaide 1994, 17). The object would be to purify an African way of life that has been tainted by invasive, self-gratifying, materialistic attitudes. But, again, what is that "remedy" to be? While recognition of Africa's postcolonial malaise is widespread, and its cause axiomatically and correctly assigned to the experience of colonialism, African writers have been somewhat tentative in suggesting what exactly it is that should be done. It is one thing to identify a problem, and to express it in the most forthright or damning terms, but quite another to locate and postulate the possible means for its resolution. The two Ghanaian artists whose work this paper addresses, Ayi Kwei Armah and Ama Ata Aidoo, have been all too frequently accused of the pessimistic recitation of African ills. Molly Mahood has spoken of the "almost total disillusionment" (Fraser 1980, 15) of Armah's The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born; and Liyong has described the work as one of those "tearing down exercises" (Liyong 1990, 176). Adeola James has identified a "certain somberness" (James 1990, 17) and Arlene Elder a "pessimism" (Elder 1987, 117) in Aidoo's short stories; and Femi Ojo-Ade has styled the Ghana of No Sweetness Here as "hell" (Oje-Ade 1987, 174). The optimistic dimensions of their work have often gone unnoticed. Even contemporary readings that have attempted to soften the gloom of the two texts have sought in some way to qualify their observations. Tsegaye Wodajo's excellent study of five Armah novels, Hope in the Midst of Despair: A Novelist's Cures for Africa (2005), perceives The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born as a literature of protest that finds a hopeful riposte in the later novels. And while Nanna Jane Opoku-Agyemang's fine 1999 essay brings a valuable comparative dimension to No Sweetness Here, her insights fail to lift the pall of despair that is customarily judged to hang over this collection of eleven stories. This paper will argue that Aidoo's No Sweetness Here and Armah's The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born offer greater scope for optimism than many critics have hitherto suggested; and that both articulate a process of purification that actively opposes the dystopian settings of their respective narratives. [source]

Infinite Recess: perspective and play in Magritte's La Condition Humaine

ART HISTORY, Issue 1 2002
Eric Wargo
The paintings of Rene Magritte, with their unsettling of common-sense relationships among objects, images and words, have been compared by many critics to the writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein. The 1933 painting La Condition Humaine, for instance, depicts a painting that exactly covers a ,real' landscape outside a window , thus raising questions about the ,location' of perception and thought. But Magritte's uncanny use of perspective, and his depictions of spaces that have ambiguous depth, suggest that an equally helpful interpretive framework to that of Wittgenstein may be that of psychoanalysis, particularly the object-relations theory of D.W. Winnicot and the latter's concept of ,transitional phenomena'. La Condition Humaine, for example, exemplifies how, by both negating and affirming the opacity of the picture plane, perspective transforms the painting into a transitional object that is both ,there' and ,not there' simultaneously. Many of the painter's works, his ,window' series in particular, suggest approaching Albertian perspective itself as a question of object-relating, the simultaneous search for autonomy and ontological security through play. An understanding of how Magritte's ambiguous spaces suggest both security as well as open-ended possibility can help to link his work not only with the traditions of Renaissance perspective and its modernist critics, but also with the aesthetic of the sublime and its iconography of colossal, indifferent nature. Sublimity may be interpreted psychoanalytically as nostalgia for the scale of childhood experience , for the world viewed as an enormous room in which small objects assume monumental physical and symbolic proportions. [source]

OVID'S VARIATIONS ON ACHILLES IN THE METAMORPHOSES,

BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE OF CLASSICAL STUDIES, Issue 1 2004
LUIGI GALASSO
He embodies in the most emblematic way the protagonist of epic poetry, a character that is a symbol for the heroic epos. The episodes which concern him are discussed, in order to demonstrate that the hasty and simplistic portrayal of him that has been given by many critics is inappropriate, and we should avoid defining, him as a merely negative figure. Actually, the structure of the narration should be perceived as a series of independent scenes. Unity is given by the constantly recurring theme of fame, of glory, which ultimately moulds life. Hence the absolutely decisive role of the poet who creates this reality. [source]