Voices Of Many Worlds

The Global IR research programme promulgates a borderless ecology of cultures that has only an inside without an outside. This borderless ecology of cultures reinvents the human condition (including the condition of ‘the international’) as perpetually interconnected at the level of consciousness. While Western-centric IR theories depend on (neo-)Kantian philosophies to emphasize the time-space bounded identities of human beings living in visibly divided phenomenal worlds, the de-Kantian philosophies of the Global IR research programme – exemplified by the Tianxia, Advaita, and Nishida Kitaro’s Buddhism-inspired theories – recuperate the temporally-spatially indivisible phenomenal-noumenal flow of human life, thereby facilitating back-and-forth movement between the Westdominated ‘one world’ and the non-West-embodied ‘many worlds’. The central objective of the book is to demonstrate how this back-and-forth movement offers opportunities to conceive of and found a new world order that recognizes the temporally-spatially indivisible human condition on earth. The book delineates a set of guiding principles to promote an innovative practice of theory-building and policy-making that transcends the geo-centric limitations of knowledge-production and knowledge-application, thereby establishing the futuristic foundation of the Global IR research programme.

In an effort to attain a ‘global’ character, the contemporary academic discipline of International Relations (IR) increasingly seeks to surpass its Eurocentric limits, thereby opening up pathways to incorporate non-Eurocentric worldviews. Lately, many of the non-Eurocentric worldviews have emerged which either engender a ‘derivative’ discourse of the same Eurocentric IR theories, or construct an ‘exceptionalist’ discourse which is particularly applicable to the narrow experiential realities of a native time-space zone: as such, they fall short of the ambition to produce a genuinely ‘non-derivative’ and ‘non-exceptionalist’ Global IR theory. Against this backdrop, Sufism: A Theoretical Intervention in Global International Relations performs a multidisciplinary research to explore how ‘Sufism’ – as an established non-Western philosophy with a remarkable temporal-spatial spread across the globe – facilitates a creative intervention in the theoretical understanding of Global IR.

This collection covers a wide expanse of topics from metaphysical issues about the nature of existence, to suffering, right action, aesthetic experience and how we live our everyday lives. Intellectual honesty, even skepticism, are important parts of the volume. The poet acknowledges that there are ultimate questions, but denies that there are final answers that could be given by any final authority. We see (Rayn's) keen eye for the beauty of nature and change within nature, and we can watch his keen nose at work, close to nature, sniffing out the joys and suffering of everyday living. - Paul Dolinsky, PhD, from the Preface

The recent turns to affect and aesthetics in the humanities and the interpretive social sciences have been productive for reflecting on the crucial role sensibility plays in the constitution of the social. However, these scholarly developments construct their interventions by dismissing the attention to language that was central to the linguistic and cultural turns of previous eras and by claiming that language is an obstacle to experiencing the reality of difference to which they maintain only sensibility can grant access. By analyzing the figure of the voice in the work of Martin Heidegger and the continental thinkers who follow him, The Scene of the Voice shows that the dismissal of language in favor of sensibility requires overlooking their common connection in the problem of mimesis. As this book ultimately argues, artificially separating language and sensibility results in a failure to encounter affect, the relation to difference affect is said to name, and the experience of thinking affect is taken to provoke.

The resonating metallic tone of the voice is a constant nuisance to Michael Tyler. As a boy, every time he hears it, he lashes out violently. By the age of ten, he's taking regular doses of medication, and it isn't long before he's institutionalized. But now, he's all grown up, out on his own and the phantom voice has returned. This time, it won't go away. It tells Michael it's an alien entity that is able to communicate with him through a portal in his own mind. Not everyone has these portals; he's one of a select few. Michael is happy for the first time in a long while, knowing that perhaps he isn't crazy after all. And with the help of the voice, he develops psychic abilities and uses them to win back control of a private trust that gains him access to a fortune. But now, the voice wants Michael to begin communicating with others who have portals as well. By linking with them, he can share his psychic abilities and they all can become powerful. Join Michael on a fantastic journey filled with adventure, unanswered questions and false appearances in The Distant Voices.

This book presents new perspectives on the multiplicity of voices in the histories of mental ill-health. In the thirty years since Roy Porter called on historians to lower their gaze so that they might better understand patient-doctor roles in the past, historians have sought to place the voices of previously silent, marginalised and disenfranchised individuals at the heart of their analyses. Today, the development of service-user groups and patient consultations have become an important feature of the debates and planning related to current approaches to prevention, care and treatment. This edited collection of interdisciplinary chapters offers new and innovative perspectives on mental health and illness in the past and covers a breadth of opinions, views, and interpretations from patients, practitioners, policy makers, family members and wider communities. Its chronology runs from the early modern period to the twenty-first century and includes international and transnational analyses from Europe, North America, Asia and Africa, drawing on a range of sources and methodologies including oral histories, material culture, and the built environment. Chapter 4 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This book embodies the current trends towards inter- and intra-disciplinary studies specifically within the areas of Literature, Linguistics, and Translation. It is a collection of original and insightful essays by Malaysian academics, reflecting state-of-the-art research, and seen through traditional and modern lenses of conceptualising reality or “spaces” within the fields mentioned. The uniqueness of this book lies in its attempts to provide textual and theoretical readings from a variety of positions and perspectives. The multi-disciplinary approach taken will appeal to readers from diverse backgrounds, particularly with the contemporary emphasis on and celebration of heterogeneity in all its forms within a global context.