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This item is part of the Political & Rights Issues & Social Movements (PRISM) digital collection, a collaborative initiative between Florida Atlantic University and University of Central Florida in the Publication of Archival, Library & Museum Materials (PALMM).

PUBLISHED ; This article advances the thinking of Lima, Ostermann and Rezende?s ?Marxism in Vygotskian approaches to cultural studies of science education? and Mark Zuss? response to their paper. Firstly, it introduces Catherine Malabou?s concept of plasticity, from which Hegel?s dialectic can be re-read as historical materialist self-determination in a way that embraces science but non-reductively, and which leads to the possibility of challenging theoretical rigidity as a form of transformative action. Secondly, this response article provides political analysis of scientific concepts as they reproduce and reinforce particular interests and are expropriated by policy makers and unaware teacher educators whose understanding lies within a technical-instrumentalism and diluted humanism framework. Both arguments feature the human brain as an object of research in science education. From Malabou, the emancipatory conceptualisation of the brain as material, historical and sociocultural; whilst `Brain Gym? exemplifies a non-science and nonsensical misappropriation of scientific concepts for commercial gain via a para-educational intervention.

Rounding out a discussion of Moving Against the System: The 1968 Congress of Black Writers and the Making of Global Consciousness, the author engages in a dialogue with his respondents about the significance of the congress. This essay assesses the legacy of the 1968 congress as a manifestation of the black radical tradition and a critical involvement with socialism. Drawing on C. L. R. James and Sylvia Wynter, it argues that black freedom struggles in the Americas and Europe, including slave revolts, have been an essential part of the history of labor and freedom struggles. It also contends that race has been overdetermined in ways that have historically understated the centrality of black labor to the emergence of modern capitalism, to anticapitalist struggle, and to the movement for universal freedom and a more broadly defined socialism. The essay concludes by asserting that black radical politics pose a challenge to the color- and colonial-blindness of the conventional Left while at the same time reimaging what freedom can mean in the present.

Why do the attempts we make to explain the world around us fall short? Arguments for or against the existence of God, the question of free will, and even Principia Mathematica are all examples of explanations that look solid from some points of view, but which have serious weaknesses from other perspectives. This book explores the built-in limits of reason itself by pointing out the fact that language can only be used to create incomplete systems. Philosophy, mathematics, and logic supply the groundwork for the introduction of a framing mechanism to help thinkers understand why thinking itself can sometimes fail. Known as the metadialectic, this new frame of reference allows us to evaluate different arguments in terms of their constituent parts. Students from any background interested in improving critical thinking will benefit from this study of the dialectical archetypes--as can the more traditional philosophically minded questioners, those of us who are motivated by a deeper desire to understand the world.

In the modern, extant world of practical history, the dominant "democratic" tradition splits sharply into three, often hostile strands. These strands are liberal democracy, social revolutionary democracy, and participatory democracy. Especially for analytical purposes, it is important to see these strands as distinct sharing only the vaguest general commitment to government by and for broad reaches of the population (thedemos). However, the three strands, for all their differences—and hostilities—should be seen historically as standing in profound and significantdialecticalrelationship with each other. In this light, liberal and social revolutionary democracy are opposites in an antithetical tension that is increasingly extreme. Participatory democracy will then appear as a third term, a still emerging synthetical response arising out of attempts to resolve the tension between the two earlier democratic variants, and clearly showing marks of its inheritance from them.