Suchergebnisse

info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/FCT/5876/147374/PT ; Technological and scientific breakthroughs and contemporary transhumanist and posthumanist discourses have brought to the public sphere themes and preoccupations that have been addressed for decades by science fiction, namely the consequences of both the enhancement of the human body through fusion with non-organic components, and the creation of Artificial Intelligence entities (AI) with apparent capacity to simulate, if not integrate, qualities of sentience and self-awareness. Of these tropes, none has been more imaginatively fertile than the intelligent android, a concept that implicates a wide variety of epistemologies, from ethics to economics, politics, psychology, sociology and religion, constituting a privileged place for the examination of the boundaries of the human. This article examines the broad mappings of this enquiry, focusing on literary, televisual and filmic texts – He, She and It (1991), Battlestar Galactica (2004-9), and Ex¬_Machina (2015) – that work the hypothesis of the personhood of androids through alternative angles, and make very different claims about desire for sameness with humans, agency and autonomy ; publishersversion ; published

This paper discusses two recent speeches by President Obama and the two different types of changes they introduce, identifying the decision processes they reflect. The first speech implies a move away from the continuity of the security policy adopted by the previous administration, embodied by the Authorization to Use Military Force, announcing changes of the global strategy in the fight against terrorism, a greater judicial and political control on the use of drones and asking Congress to review the legal obstacles it created to the closure of Guantanamo. The second speech appears to invert the promises of the non-interventionist stance adopted by this administration, announcing the intention to use military force to punish the government of Syria for its repeated use of chemical weapons, without a United Nations mandate. Adapted from the source document.

The Obama administration has been significantly engaged in changing its relationship with the United Nations, recovering much of the diplomatic prestige lost by the previous administration. Nevertheless, in the current debate about the enlargement of the Security Council and reform of the UN, its requirements do not differ substantially from those adopted by the Bush administration in 2005. The present article analyses the history of the Security Council reform process until the present round of negotiations, and discusses the evolution of the official position of the US diplomacy, its criteria for an enlargement that does not put into question the efficiency of the UN, and the internal constraints that shape the current stance. Adapted from the source document.

This article analyses the evolution of the American foreign policy priorities to the Middle East and Maghreb, the US role towards the uprisings in North Africa in order to democratization, as well as, the strategy presented by President Obama to support the reformist trends in that region. For that purpose we debate three hypotheses, the existence of a deficit in the US, of an analytical prejudice as a consequence of a reductive vision of the region and, finally, a global Political retraction. Adapted from the source document.

The political scene of the coming American elections is marked by an unexpected, related with the influence of a new actor -- the coalition of opinions & organizations self-denominated Tea Party Movement. Since its emergence in February 2009 that political analysts are making contradictory evaluations about movement's meaning & influence. This article tries to explore the movement's genesis, its political strategy & relation with other political actors. Adapted from the source document.

More than 200 years ago, a French ex-soldier, who after the French-English war found himself in New York, reflected on the nature & identity of the new country & asked "Who is the American, then, this new man?" This article considers what Samuel Huntington had to say on this question in his last book. Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity (2004). Adapted from the source document.

Ten years after Madeleine Albright summarized the role of the United States in the international scene as that of "the indispensable nation," this paper discusses whether the eight years of the Bush presidency have significantly diminished this diplomatic capability. Concentrating especially on the second mandate, & examining the corrections introduced to the management of the Iraqi agenda, as well as the multilateral negotiating processes in which the United States has been involved, namely concerning nuclear proliferation in North Korea & Iran, it concludes that the diplomatic legacy of the current administration is less negative than what it is generally considered to be. Adapted from the source document.

Performing Identities and Utopias of Belonging consists of sixteen essays, reflecting the current conflicted debate on the ontology, constructiveness and affect of categories of ascribed social identity such as gender, ethnicity, race and nation, in the context of British, Irish and North American cultural landscapes. They address the many ways in which these communities of belonging are imagined, iterated, performed, questioned, and deconstructed in literature, cinema and visual culture; the