Tag: Steven Brence

Understanding the Violence of Colonial Relations: Depictions of the Algerian War in Contemporary French Cinema

Presenter: Sarah Carey

Faculty Mentor: Steven Brence

Presentation Type: Oral

Primary Research Area: Humanities

Major: Philosophy

Funding Source: Humanities Undergraduate Research Fellowship, UROP and Oregon Humanities Center, $2,500

In the past fifteen years, the Algerian War, long a taboo topic in France, has begun to receive attention in public discourse and mainstream media, including a number of recent films. In my work, I analyze five contemporary
French films’ portrayals of the war, asking what these films say about the ways in which violence and oppressive colonial relations harm both the colonizers and the colonized. I engage critically with the theories of Albert Memmi, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Albert Camus, and argue that these films simultaneously illustrate and complicate these philosophers’ theories of the colonizer as a perpetrator of violence. I argue that these films’ graphic portrayals of the degrading effects of extreme violence on colonizers and colonized alike challenge Franz Fanon’s theory of the essential, cathartic, and redeeming role of violence in revolutions. My research contributes to the slowly growing body of scholarly work on the Algerian War in a unique way, as I address these films philosophically and reveal how the war continues to inform French identity. Additionally, my research comes at a pivotal moment as France becomes increasingly involved in the growing conflicts in the Middle East and Northern Africa and is reminded of its colonial history. And finally, my research helps shed light on the effects of systematic oppression and violence on people in the world at large.

Examining Personhood And Environmental Policy: Determing the Benefits and Risks of Granting Legal Rights to Non-Human Entities

Presenter(s): Matthew Stephens − Environmental Studies

Faculty Mentor(s): Steven Brence

Panel Session 1SW

Research Area: Humanities / Social Science

Funding: Humanities Undergraduate Research Award

This paper aims to determine the overall effectiveness of the Whanganui River Settlement Claims legislation, the ethical veracity of its central tenant that aims to grant legal personhood to the Whanganui River, and whether this recognition and protection afforded to the Whanganui River should be utilized as a model for other nations in the effort to protect and preserve our natural landscapes, resources, and cultural heritage while challenging the central tenants of a human nature division that environmentalism posits as a key contributor factor in issues of environmental degradation.

Overwhelmed and Undermined: The Use of Psychoactive Substances and the Problem of Meaninglessness

Presenter(s): Shane Cooney

Faculty Mentor(s): Steven Brence & Caroline Lundquist

Oral Session 2 SW

Today, the opioid epidemic pervades every corner of society. Accordingly, drug use and addiction have been dealt with extensively as social phenomena, with the latter also being studied by psychologists and other medical professionals. Neither, however, has been thoroughly examined as an existential phenomenon. The scale of this crisis is symptomatic of a much deeper problem, viz., the problem of meaninglessness. What consequences follow from the realization that life has no inherent or absolute meaning; that life is, as Albert Camus describes in The Myth of Sisyphus, absurd? In this essay, I argue that drug use and abuse can be seen as problematic responses to the meaninglessness consequent of the absurd. Exploring Camus’ notion of absurdity and drawing on my experiences with addiction, I situate drug use within the context of the absurd, highlighting how the use of psychoactive substances is, either consciously or unconsciously, an attempt to escape the absurdity of existence. I then discuss the limitations of Camus’ account of the human need for meaning and propose potential alternatives, which can be found in Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning and in Camus’ novel The Plague. The aim of my project is to analyze drug use vis-à-vis meaning, so that we may gain insight into why some people begin and continue to use drugs, which, as I suggest, is the starting point for understanding addiction. Without answering this principal question, our attempts to mitigate the problem of addiction will always remain somewhat tangential.

A Critical Examination of Abstraction in John Dewey’s Reflective Thought

Presenter(s): William O’Brien—Philosophy

Faculty Mentor(s): Steven Brence

Session 3: Beyond a Melody

In this paper, I critically examine our human capacity for abstraction . I examine this tool in the pragmatic terms of John Dewey, wherein abstraction is understood as our human capacity used to successfully engage in our environment and achieve our interests and purposes . Specifically in the context of John Dewey’s reflective thought, I critically examine abstraction’s process and purpose . From this examination, the essential role that the tool of abstraction plays comes to light . It is seen that abstraction is necessary for reflective thought to function, and without it, this personally familiar process would cease to be . After showing abstraction’s essential role in this familiar context, I get into explaining problematic aspects of reflective thought’s logical understanding of abstraction . This understanding of abstraction has been the basis upon which reflective thought may produce logical results that are problematically ‘out of touch’ and biased . I take up the ‘reasonable woman standard’ in law to illustrate a concrete example of this . Ultimately, I conclude that for reflective thought we still need the same logical understanding of abstraction, but only insofar as it serves as a basis for a new logical understanding, wherein we must always ask and consider the question of who, in order to avoid logical results that are problematically exclusive and biased .