Collectivity

In this chapter, we consider what it can look like to think of graduate school as a collective co-conspiratorial endeavor and, specifically, how it can change the way we think about ethics and professionalism, how we handle time management, and our embodied relations with each other--and ourselves.

The proposal delves into the heterogeneity of households and proves the multiplicity of domestic meanings with the aim of producing useful and operative knowledge related to a wide range of issues affecting communities and urban systems. It emerges as an invitation to reflect on how we might otherwise imagine and inhabit our inherited domestic spaces, and how we come together beyond the effects of this global crisis, when new forms of solidarity and care should arise and be exercised. It might then be possible to overcome social constraints and rediscover neglected relational needs and values, envisioning other forms of urban coexistence.



Essay | expanding design practices | No Density | Politics and economics

Key words: Activism, Alternative Domesticity, City of Commons, Collective Awareness, Participation, Social Dynamics

In this paper I address a typological puzzle concerning complementary distribution of classifiers and plural markers. I discuss a possible interpretation of a particular type of the Polish word 'para' ('pair of') as a classifier. The analysis uses formal semantic plurality framework of Landman (2000).

In this paper I will discuss the problematic relationship between individual and community in Aristotle's Politics from the point of view of happiness, as a key concept in the political and already ethical thought of the Stagirian philosopher. After having gone through the argument leading, in the Nicomachean Ethics, to the statement of a definition of happiness, we will ask ourselves if man shall attain it as an individual. We will therefore investigate the notion of individual, attempting firstly to define it according to the cultural parameters of classical Greece, and secondly to test if Aristotle's doctrine leaves the individual the possibility to reach happiness. The result of both our investigations being negative, we will be forced to ascend from the individual level to that of the community, and to enquire about the conditions of common happiness. We will thus be able, at last, to describe the relationship between the latter and the happiness of a single man.

https://read.dukeupress.edu/poetics-today/article-abstract/39/2/383/134134/Edward-Hopper-s-Nighthawks-1942The-Ekphrastic-Poet  In an Internet age dominated by network structures and visuality, contemporary ekphrastic critics and writers have felt prompted to question anew the value of ekphrasis to its readers. That is, it has become important to demarcate a site for ekphrasis’s continued cultural currency for a readership well versed in relational thinking, who have come to expect the copresence of image and text in nearly every reading experience. In this paper, my questioning of ekphrasis’s continued relevance proceeds via ekphrastic responses—in particular, Ann Lauterbach’s (1995) “Edward Hopper’s Way”—to Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, 1942, one of the most iconic paintings in American art. My consideration draws on Harriet Tarlo’s recognition (2009) of the contemporary value of found poetry, here applied to advance the concerns of ekphrasis in the process of retooling its response to a changing public sphere. Significantly, Lauterbach’s “Edward Hopper’s Way”, a found poem marked by digression, simulates a space of intimacy within Hopper’s pictorial elegies of alienation and lost commonality. Granted, “Edward Hopper’s Way”, in its oblique treatment of Hopper, does not conform to a traditional definition of ekphrasis. Yet Lauterbach, in proposing Hopper, the visual artist, as a lyrical guide to negotiate the tensions between public and private, self and other, and individual and collective at play in his iconic painting, references central concerns of ekphrasis in the digital age.

https://read.dukeupress.edu/poetics-today/article-abstract/39/2/383/134134/Edward-Hopper-s-Nighthawks-1942The-Ekphrastic-Poet

What does it take to cross a border, and what does it take to belong? Sandra Noeth examines the entangled experiences of borders and of collectivity through the perspective of bodies. By dramaturgical analyses of contemporary artistic work from Lebanon and Palestine, Noeth shows how borders and collectivity are constructed and negotiated through choreographic, corporeal, movement-based, and sensory strategies and processes. This interdisciplinary study is made urgent by social and political transformations across the Middle East and beyond around 2011. It puts to the fore the residual, body-bound structural effects of borders and of collectivity and proceeds to develop notions of agency and responsibility that are immanently bound to bodies in relation.

https://www.transcript-verlag.de/en/author/noeth-sandra-320003123/

In this paper I address a puzzle concerning different semantic interpretations of Polish NPs modified by basic cardinal numerals, e.g. dwaj studenci ('two students'), and NPs headed by numerals with the suffix-k-, e.g. dwójka studentów ('(a group of) two students'), with respect to distributivity and collectivity. The analysis uses formal semantic plurality framework of Landman (2000 a.o.).

Vernacular architecture represents a great resource that has considerable potential to define principles for sustainable design and contemporary architecture. This publication is the result of an overall aim to produce a valuable tool for analysis regarding vernacular heritage through different assessments, in order to define principles to consider for sustainable development. VERSUS, HERITAGE FOR TOMORROW: Vernacular Knowledge for Sustainable Architecture is the result of a common effort undertaken by the partners ESG | Escola Superior Gallaecia, Portugal, as Project leader; CRAterre | École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Grenoble, France; DIDA | Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy; DICAAR | Università degli Studi di Cagliari, Italy; and UPV | Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain. This is the final outcome of VerSus, an European project developed from 2012 to 2014, in the framework of the Culture 2007-2013 programme.

This text is written for Ingri Midgard Fiksdal. More than a commission, I take it as an opportunity to reconsider collectivity in the light of individuation and transindividuality. Fifteen years ago, our concern was different: collectivity and collaboration stood for the political modes of being and acting that radically broke away from individualism, be it single authorship in the arts or just any talk of individuality. … Could it be that the praxis of collectivity is nowadays abandoned or repressed more than ever? Or is it more the case that its conditions and terms have changed so much that its praxis no longer fits in the ideologically narrow cast of “collective”? Are we in need of a new conception, or even a new, guiltless word?

den ganzen Beitrag gibts auf der Seite der RLS https://www.rosalux.de/publikation/id/38325/work-in-progress-work-on-progress-6/...Ich stelle die These auf, dass an der Herstellung von kollektiver Handlungsfähigkeit in queeren Räumen verschiedene Elemente
wie Raum, Körper und Affekte beteiligt sind, wobei Affekte als Bindeglied eine wichtige Rolle einnehmen. Es gilt diese Konstellationen näher
zu betrachten. Handlungsfähigkeit haftet dann Subjekten nicht an, sondern ergibt sich vielmehr relational, situativ und kontextbezogen. Diesbezüglich sollen soziale Praktiken in queeren Räumen
betrachtet werden.

This work explores the notions of becoming in Nietzsche and individuation in Deleuze through a close engagement with three main texts, The Will to Power, Nietzsche’s Philosophy and Difference and Repetition, and with reference to key thinkers who inspired Nietzsche and Deleuze. The hope it to provide a ground for understanding the process of individuation in Nietzsche and Deleuze, as a means to explaining some implications of their philosophies towards political and artistic practice. The work finds the individual to exist in the virtual as a metastable problematic, which individuates into the actual in a continuous state of affect. Then, with reference to Balibar, the aim is to offer a foothold into understanding how collectives of individuals function, and using Osborne, to examine how art practices can engage global capital by collectivising and fictionalising themselves. Furthermore, the work aims to be an ethics, underlining the consequence of understanding being as becoming and imbuing worth into every gesture of the hic et nunc.

(Coauthored with Manfred Krifka) This review article is concerned with the applications that mereology has found in natural-language semantics. After a section on essential formal properties of the parthood relations and their axiomatization, we deal with linguistic applications in the nominal domain, in the expression of measurement functions, and in the verbal domain.

This paper presents a truth value judgment study done on two types of numerals in the Serbian numerical system and corresponding verbal agreement mismatch that is characteristic for the numerals in question. Recent work on agreement and distributivity suggests that singular verbal marking promotes distributivity while plural marking can be interpreted as both distributive and collective. Serbian informants showed opposite intuitions – singular suggests collectivity and plural marking denotes distributivity. Given the highly inflectional nature of the Serbian language, we were interested in investigating to what degree verbal agreement influence interpretation preferences. Two types of numerals – paucal and mixed-gender – were used with singular and plural verbal agreement. Adults and 7-year-old children showed no correlation between verbal agreement and collective/distributive interpretations. Adults accept collective readings and disprefer distributive ones, while children accepted both distributive and collective readings for all sentence forms, even at age seven. We propose a follow up study that will take cognitive load into account and test whether increased load can cause this drastic difference between adults and children.

Vernacular architecture represents a great resource that has considerable potential to define principles for sustainable design and contemporary architecture. This publication is the result of an overall aim to produce a valuable tool for analysis regarding vernacular heritage through different assessments, in order to define principles to consider for sustainable development. This was possible through a comprehensive reflection on the principles established and the strategies to recognise in different world contexts. The present publication was the result of an in-depth approach by 46 authors from 12 countries, concerned with the analysis and critical assessment of vernacular heritage and its sustainable perspective. The book presents 8 chapters addressing operational definitions and synopses advances, regarding the main areas of vernacular heritage contribution to sustainable architecture. It also presents 15 chapters and 53 case studies of vernacular and contemporary approaches i...

Vernacular architecture represents a great resource that has considerable potential to define principles for sustainable design and contemporary architecture. This publication is the result of an overall aim to produce a valuable tool for analysis regarding vernacular heritage through different assessments, in order to define principles to consider for sustainable development. This was possible through a comprehensive reflection on the principles established and the strategies to recognise in different world contexts. The present publication was the result of an in-depth approach by 46 authors from 12 countries, concerned with the analysis and critical assessment of vernacular heritage and its sustainable perspective. The book presents 8 chapters addressing operational definitions and synopses advances, regarding the main areas of vernacular heritage contribution to sustainable architecture. It also presents 15 chapters and 53 case studies of vernacular and contemporary approaches i...

How can the Humanities and the social theoretical disciplines respond to the critique of identity politics without reducing its terrain and analytic to the problem of identity? This essay addresses the tasks facing the humanities today, when conservative defenders of these disciplines from within and without the academy hold the Humanities responsible for the social ills that identity-based movements were created to redress. The essay suggests that we must recognize the legitimate social grounds for critique without, at the same time, embracing identitarianism.

How can the Humanities and the social theoretical disciplines respond to the critique of identity politics without reducing its terrain and analytic to the problem of identity? This essay addresses the tasks facing the humanities today, when conservative defenders of these disciplines from within and without the academy hold the Humanities responsible for the social ills that identity-based movements were created to redress. The essay suggests that we must recognize the legitimate social grounds for critique without, at the same time, embracing identitarianism.

This collection sheds light on diverse forms of collective engagement among young people. Recent developments in youth studies, and the changing global shape of socio-economic conditions for young people, demand new approaches and ideas. Contributors focus on novel processes, practices and routines within youth collectivity in various contexts across the globe, including Indonesia, Spain, Italy, Norway and Poland. The chapters pay particular attention to transitional phases in the lives of young people. Conceptually, the book also explores the strengths and limitations of a focus on collectivity in youth studies. Ultimately, the book makes the case for a focus on forms of collectivity and engagement to help scholars think through contemporary experiences of shared social life among young people.

Contributors are: Duncan Adam, Massimiliano Andretta, Roberta Bracciale, David Cairns, Diego Carbajo Padilla, Enzo Colombo, Valentina Cuzzocrea, Carles Feixa, Ben Gook, Izabela Grabowska, Natalia Juchniewicz, Ewa Krzaklewska, Wolfgang Lehmann, Michelle Mansfield, María Martinez, Ann Nilsen, Rebecca Raby, Paola Rebughini, Birgit Reißig, Bjørn Schiermer, Tabea Schlimbach, Melanie Simms, Benjamín Tejerina, Kristoffer C Vogt, and Natalia Waechter.

This PhD thesis examines the emergence of urban collectivity in the face of infrastructural breakdown and the failed promises of access to the city. Between 2014 and 2019, I have carried out ethnographic fieldwork to canvass the attitudes of residents in one of Rio de Janeiro's popular inner-city districts about the loss and subsequent re-installation of their "bonde" – the Brazilian word for tramway. "Bonding" makes a conceptual proposal to reconcile the paradox of the seemingly solid and the yet transitory, of tight attachments and noncommittal relations that I believe helps approach the question what holds the city together.

Sažetak: Rad prati nekoliko linija kojima se Spinoza misli prevashodno kao anti-Hobs, u teorijsko-političkom smislu. Ključne linije kojima se to pokazuje su: ravan imanencije i transcendencije, ravan odnošenja afekta straha i slobode, ravan veze individualiteta i kolektiviteta, te, posebno, ravan odnošenja koncepta naroda i mnoštva. Dok se Hobsova misao pokazuje krucijalnom za ideje individualizma i liberalne tradicije, Spinoza se pokazuje kao mislilac kolektiviteta, mnoštva, i time kao inspiracija materijalističkim čitanjima.

Abstract: This paper traces several lines by which Spinoza emerges primarily as an anti-Hobbes, in the theoretical-political sense. Crucial lines which proves so are: level of the immanence and transcendence, level of the relationship between affect of fear and freedom, level of relation between individuality and collectivity and, in particular, level which relates concepts of the people and multitude. While Hobbes’s thought demonstrates itself as crucial for ideas of individualism and liberal traditions, Spinoza emerges as a thinker of the collectivity, of multitude, and thus as inspiration for materialistic readings.

Le cours aborde d’abord les principales perspectives des sciences humaines susceptibles d’être mises en usage en travail social tant au niveau des individus, des familles, des groupes que des communautés. Il examine la relation entre ces points de vue théoriques et les savoirs d’action du travail social. Il se penche ensuite plus spécifiquement sur la construction de ces savoirs d’action, leur condition d’émergence ainsi que leur rôle dans la production de connaissance et la transformation des représentations. Cette interrogation sur la pertinence des savoirs d’action est inséparable d’une interrogation sur la connaissance en général qui comprend entre autres des savoirs académiques, professionnels et de sens commun. Le cours se penche finalement sur ces zones de savoirs explicites et implicites et la circulation de concepts scientifiques et quotidiens dans les pratiques à l’intérieur de différents contextes organisationnels (institutionnel, communautaire, privé) et au sujet de différents problèmes sociaux (santé mentale, itinérance, problèmes scolaires, violence familiale, etc.)

The study aims to understand ethnoreligious identities arguing that it is a politically significant resource for mobilization and essential for the stability and progression stalemate in the Western Balkans. Moreover, ethnic mobilization induces and spreads a sense of homogeneity and equality and a sense of security and power in the collective "We." The gap from democracy is motivated by the fear of competitive nationalist movements, and radical rhetoric leads political parties to succeed. The greater the fear and insecurity in society, the more people are dependent on the government and less instructed in measuring its objective results. If there is a conflict, the strengthening of "our" ethnic-confessional identity simultaneously strengthens the belief in the diversity of "others." The mutual consolidation of identity has a backlash against the importance of the conflict. That is why conflicts enter again into traditional Balkans' collective myths by which identity is continually affirmed. The practice of constant mobilization, i.e., collectivist homogenization, takes the place of democratic legitimacy, providing political elites with a base of power outside democratic procedures. The risk of current policies is not just the involvement of citizens in the conflict but also the exclusion of the majority of citizens from the political arena and making decisions for the community. Public (social, national, state) interest must not be equated with officials; justice sets boundaries. Emphasizing ethnicity instead of dialogue and transformation of a "utopian discourse" produces antagonisms and thus stagnates economic, political, and cultural development; an obstacle for EU integration. Keywords: The Balkans, Stability, Progression, Etnic-confessional identity, Collectivity, Mobilization, Ethnopolitics

This Article focuses on the Anglo-American bankruptcy tradition. It adopts a doctrinal methodology to question the conclusion that “collectivity” is and should be a procedural, objective and secondary notion in light of two case studies. It suggests that in the context of cross-border, cross-disciplinary cases, equitable concepts could be employed to introduce a more nuanced understanding of the notion of “collectivity.” This should facilitate the recognition of foreign bankruptcy proceedings alongside with their inclusiveness, finality and certainty.

In recent years, a growing body of literature has started to take up the issue of collectivity
within the capability approach, by particularly examining the notion of collective capabilities, the reasons
for using this concept, its critiques and limitations. However, a proper categorization of collective capabilities aiming at defining which types of capabilities actually are, is rarely studied. The goal of this contribution is to fill such gap by categorizing collective capabilities as well as providing a specific list of collective
combined capabilities. The list includes two collective capabilities: the ‘resistant capability’ and the ‘resilient capability’. After having briefly outlined the most recent contributions of the capability theorists for
including the issue of the collectivity within the Capability Approach (CA), I then proceed as follows. First, I
examine what collective capabilities are and why they matter for the CA. Second, I provide a categorization
of collective capabilities based on the ontological difference between collective and individual capabilities.
Third, the resulting extension of Nussbaum’s version of the CA is carried out by including a specific list for
collective combined capabilities. Finally, I investigate how this extension affects Nussbaum’s CA.

Which is the future of collectivities? How can we rethink the notion of collectivity per se? And what does it mean to do critical theory nowadays? This editorial, apart from introducing the articles of this special issue of the Zeitschrift für Kultur- und Kollektivwissenschaft, argues that not only collectivities have to be collectivized in order to remain open and thus avoid unification under one dictate, but that also theory has to become collective if it wishes to remain a critical one.

Commas can splice our sentences, and shift their connotations. Our mixed modes for hyphens compound our words as well as confuse them—even dash them to pieces. In written language, how can we know we are asking a question unless we use the proper punctuation? Punctuation is vital to how we communicate. Whether in speech or prose, we punctuate our thoughts. In this sense, we may classify punctuation among what John Wesley calls “God’s many providences” in the sermon “The One Thing Needful” (1733): “designed either to wean us from what is not, or to unite us to what is worthy of our affection. Are they pleasing? Then they are designed to lift up our hearts to the Parent of all good. Are they painful?” Wesley again answers rhetorically, “Then they are means of rooting out those passions that forcibly withhold us from [God]” (§II.4). Indeed, punctuation espouses varied ‘pleasing’ and/or ‘pleasant’ responses.

By now you are either bored, hurt, or elated that I have brought up punctuation as a subject within philosophical God-talk at all (or at least my use of the serial comma in doing so). Beyond merely forcing the point that our punctuation carries meaning—either in addition to or against that which we otherwise intend—I want to suggest that the poetry, prose, and other linguistic media/mediums within our liturgies innately possess meaning(s) which we have the opportunity to punctuate (i.e., ‘sanctify’) as faith communities or else surrender to the individualisms of our so-called (post)modern preferential interpretations: our proverbial run-on sentence protracting philosophical discussions amid this (in)definite period of change we acutely sense but struggle to describe. We are not God’s grammar police. For our part, however, faith communities and their leaders can and must more dutifully approach the task of shaping the nature, meaning, and purpose of our liturgies as worship, not as mere collections of thoughts, words, and actions.

Sandra Cisneros is a contemporary American poet, short story writer, novelist and essayist of Chicano origin. Her autobiographical novel The House on Mango Street was published in 1984. Its fragmentary structure refers to the form of a diary, in which subsequent entries begin on a new page (instead of dates, each entry is entitled). Cisneros described her childhood which she spent in a poor district, surrounded by other immigrants. The novel depicts various Others who have influenced the constitution of the author's identity and sense of self – siblings, neighbours, peers, families living at Mango Street, the inhabitants of other (better) districts. Thus, in my paper I would like to discuss the relevance of the encounter with the Other for the formation of the author's feminine and feminist identity. In The House on Mango Street otherness is manifested in gender – Cisneros admits that her two brothers talk with their sisters within the home eagerly, but outside nobody should see them talking with girls. The Other is also an absent best friend, the would-be addressee of secrets and jokes or the author's younger sister Nenny referred to as ''responsibility'', which may be understood in the traditional sense as ''duty'', or, in the context of Levinas's theory, as the constant necessity to respond. The encounter with otherness is, to a great extent, portrayed as a positive experience (e.g. peers serving an initiatory role), but it may also be oppressive (e.g. incidents of sexual harassment, mother-superior who humiliates Cisneros at school) or controlling (on the part of men and the local community who constantly evaluate the girls' behaviour). Most significantly, the author's feminist consciousness is developed in opposition to Others – a neighbour who is the victim of abuse, girls whose only dream is to marry the right man, or sister who is perceived merely through her appearance.