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A foundational assumption of social theory is that things change: structures, institutions, organisations, groups, cultures, and selves all are contingent and subject to transformation. Herein, this malleable foundation is termed transformativity, drawing attention to a specific conceptualisation of change, which predominates and displaces other accounts of change, elaborated via a typology of change that positions transformation between reconfiguration and metamorphosis. Transformativity posits society as contingent, open to reconstruction, but assuming that change acts upon a substrate, which is continuous; altered, yet retaining identity through time. Transformativity is situated culturally by tracing historical conceptions of change from ancient to modern. Next, Turner's liminality, Foucault's power relations, and Butler's performativity are analysed in depth as influential contemporary models of transformativity. Furthermore, transformativist thinking animates governmentality, neo-liberal capitalism, technological thinking, and cultures of self-work. In particular, transformativity intersects with contemporary ideas of 'experience', incorporating notions of contingency and change into modern experimentalism. While transformativity facilitates critique and social change, this implies a gradualist model of slow purification and refinement, which may be inadequate to deal with contemporary challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, it is argued that Sellars’ view of normativity is the key for a proper resolution of the debate between normativism and anti-normativism, as the latter is described in Turner’s recent book Explaining the Normative. Drawing on an early Sellarsian article (“A Semantical Solution to the Mind-Body Problem”), I suggest that both normativism and anti-normativism (including Turner’s brand of the latter) are ultimately unsatisfactory positions and for the same reason: due to their failure to draw a distinction between causal or explanatory reducibility and logical or conceptual reducibility of the normative to the non-normative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines a progressive moment under apartheid referred to retrospectively as ‘the Durban moment’ by activists. By exploring the friendship of assassinated activists Stephen Bantu Biko and Richard Turner, the paper calls for a nuanced assessment of the rich context of the emergence of Black Consciousness under apartheid, and shows how the rigid racial and ethnic categories imposed by the state could be challenged by creative and resourceful intellectuals. The paper draws on interviews, writings produced at the time, court transcripts and the secondary literature to argue that Black Consciousness was intimately linked on many levels to this progressive ‘moment’ in South Africa under apartheid, which has resonances for activists still today. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Critique can be located anthropologically in liminality, particularly the experience of communitas wherein everything is open to question and structures appear as external and meaningless. Rather than an intellectual preserve or an individual achievement, I argue that critique emerges from crises; that it diffuses proliferates and extends these liminal events and can be observed in contemporary politics, economics, media and everyday life. This anthropology of critique is situated alongside the emergent sociology of critique of Boltanski and others, and is historically grounded within chronic crises in modernity characterized by Szakolczai as ‘permanent liminality’. Thus, modernity is constituted by critique and has become, amongst other things, a critical society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines critical responses to J. M. W. Turner's Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying --Typhon Coming On (1840) and John Ruskin's 1843 critique of the painting, in the years following the publication of David Dabydeen's Turner (1994). The representation of drowning slaves in Turner's painting and in Ruskin's art criticism, has resulted in the emergence of something of a critical consensus in which both figures are seen either to neglect or take pleasure in the subject of slavery. The purpose of this article is to explore available evidence and to argue that insufficient attention has been paid to Turner's painting, to his politics and to his purpose in Slavers; to Ruskin's objectives in critiquing Turner; to distinctions between Ruskin's imperialism and his position on slavery; and to his examination of Turner's painting. In a corrective to recent critical assumptions, I suggest that in these instances claims made on these issues often rest on shaky foundations and that it is possible for more sustainable readings of Turner's painting and Ruskin's criticism to emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the painting titled "Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhon Coming On," by J. M. W Turner relative to the poem "Turner" by David Dabydeen. The author explored some of the contexts surrounding the painting before critically assessing Dabydeen's poetic reaction and representation of Turner and his painting.