| Srl | Item |
| 1 |
ID:
193310
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| Summary/Abstract |
Engaging Catherine Malabou's philosophical work on biological plasticity, this article combines microbiological and geopolitical analysis of the deadliest manifestations of childhood malnutrition. At the scale of microbiology, childhood malnutrition is a devastating condition and a mystery to which it seems microbiomes – the ecosystems of microbes in the gut – hold a key. At the scale of geopolitics, childhood malnutrition is a calamity generated by racial capitalism, poverty, and underdevelopment. What should we do with the plasticity that makes us? Malabou asks. Engaging philosophically with the plastic materiality of microbiomes in childhood malnutrition, the article focuses on destructive plasticity as an ontological alternative to what science on malnutrition pursues as a problem of causality. This leads to an argument that medicine, as well as humanitarian, security, and development interventions, must reckon with the destructive plasticity of what is in essence a political disease of annihilation. The article ends by speculating on resistance via the biological act of nurturing.
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| 2 |
ID:
088747
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| Publication |
2009.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Western intelligence analysts fight an uphill battle to avoid parochial habits of thought that lump diverse Islamist identities together. The recent counterterrorism literature gives us tools for understanding a wide spectrum of Islamists, by focusing attention on what they say about themselves rather than on the intelligence labels we must ultimately assign to them. The main challenge for analysts is not the brute diversity of Islamist types, but their plasticity-the Islamist's flexible inhabitation of distinct, sometimes contradictory, identities. Contrary to generalizations about the duplicity of all Islamists, much plasticity is due to ordinary psychological- or ideological strain-the inability to resolve divided allegiances or sustain conflicted principles. Islamist preacher Yussef al-Qardawi and salafist group Hizb ut-Tahrir present prime examples of ordinary Islamist plasticity. In order to understand Islamism in all its complexity, analysts should develop methods for disaggregating and evaluating key components of the Islamist persona.
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