Resumen El postmodernismo no es una ideología, más bien, nace como un movimiento enantiodrómico que busca anular todo aquello venerado en la modernidad. La unidad, homogeneidad y singularidad, valores de la Modernidad, han sido sustituidos reactivamente, por la postmodernidad, por la fragmentación, heterogeneidad y multiplicidad. Careciendo de alguna ideología sustentadora, el postmodernismo precariamente sólo es capaz de proporcionarle al hombre canales de escape para actuar su evasión ante el horror vacui. Este ensayo busca arrojar una luz sobre la presente “Civilization (...) and its Discontents”. Palabras clave: postmodernismo; modernidad; ideología; civilización; descontento. Post-modern SymptomsPostmodernism is not an ideology; it is born rather as an enantiodromic movement seeking to annul all of that which has been worshipped in Modernity. Unity, homogeneity and singularity, values of Modernity, have been reactively replaced, by postmodernism, by fragmentation, heterogeneity and multiplicity. Lacking any grounding ideology, postmodernism is precariously capable only of providing man escape routes to act out his evasion in the face of the horror vacui. This paper seeks to cast light on the present “Civilization and its Discontents”. Keywords: Postmodernism; Modernity; Ideology; Civilization; Discontent. (shrink)

Since the internet's breakthrough as a mass medium, it has become a topic of discussion because of its implications for society. At one extreme, one finds those who only see great benefits and consider the Internet a tool for freedom, commerce, connectivity, and other societal benefits. At the other extreme, one finds those who lament the harms and disadvantages of the Internet, and who consider it a grave danger to existing social structures and institutions, to culture, morality and human relations. (...) In between one finds the majority, those who recognize both benefits and harms in the Internet as it currently exists and who recognize its usefulness while worrying about some of its negative impacts. (shrink)

Purpose: To argue for the need to generate a third - order cybernetics to deal with the problematics of second- order cybernetics. Problem: The recent exponential increase in the use of the internet and other "media" to influence and shape dominant cultural experiences via "virtual reality" exploits a core facility of human psychology - that of being able to accept " substitutions " for the " Real Thing." In this paper, I want to raise some basic questions and dilemmas for (...) our living in the space of a third - order contextualisation that uses "virtuality" in an ever-increasing manner for the configuring and homogenisation of human experiences. In doing so, I also raise the question of the need for us to develop an adequate model of a " third - order cybernetics" for dealing with the ways in which human experience is contextualised and configured by phenomena that constitute the third - order system. Solution : Ernst von Glasersfeld's work makes it clear that psychologists and others enter into a great deal of confusion when they use terms like "self," "consciousness," "emotions," "memory," "the environment," and even "experience," because, as he points out, there is no convincing model for any of these commonly taken-for-granted phenomena of human living. His writings are taken as a unique source for the generation of an effective third - order cybernetics where the need for constant self-critical monitoring in regard to psychological praxis and third - order phenomena may take place. "Self-critical monitoring" means, in the first place, monitoring in a critical manner our tendencies to take for granted the notion of "self." One of the main problematics to deal with in second- order cybernetics is the way that "subjectivity" is taken for granted. Benefits: The temptation to collapse back down from a second- order cybernetics to first- order cybernetics will be resolved by creating an effective platform for third - order cybernetics that problematises the issue of "subjectivity" of the observer in the second- order cybernetics framework. This involves putting into question many of the common assumptions held about "who" it is that makes the observations at the second- order cybernetics. In other words, I attempt to highlight what is problematic regarding the observer 's subjectivity and how this analysis of what is taken for granted by the second- order cybernetics framework creates the basis of a framework for a third - order cybernetics. (shrink)

This essay discusses ways of thinking about botanic gardens that pay close attention to their particularity as designed spaces, dependent on technique, that nonetheless purport to present (and preserve) natural entities (plants). I introduce an account of what gardens are, how botanic gardens differ from other gardens, and how this particular form of garden arose in history. After this I contrast three ways of understanding the function of botanic gardens in the present time: as sites of recreation, of conservation or (...) of encounter with nature. Finally I develop the idea that these gardens may serve as archetypes of collaboration with nature. I conclude that, in principle, botanic gardens can model alternative, creative new ways for human beings to relate to the natural environment. (shrink)

Jean Baudrillard's 3rd simulation stage reinterpreted through the theory of architecture, Marxism and Jaques Lacan.

In sociology, there has been a controversy about whether there is any essential difference between a human being and a tool, or if the tool–user relationship can be defined by co-actor symmetry. This issue becomes more complex when we consider examples of AI and robots, and even more so following progress in the development of various bio-machine hybrid technologies, such as robots that include organic parts, human brain implants, and adaptive prosthetics. It is argued that a concept of autonomous agency (...) based on organismic embodiment helps to clarify the situation. On this view, agency consists of an asymmetrical relationship between an organism and its environment, because the continuous metabolic and regulatory activity of the organism gives rise to its own existence, and hence its specific behavioral domain. Accordingly, most of current technologies are excluded from the class of autonomous agents. Instead, they are better conceptualized as interfaces that mediate our interactions with the world. This has important implications for design: Rather than trying to help humans to achieve their goals by duplicating their agency in artificial systems, it would be better to empower humans directly by enhancing their existing agency and lived experience with technological interfaces that can be incorporated into their embodiment. This incorporation might be especially facilitated by bio-machine hybrid technology that is designed according the principles of biological autonomy and multi-agent coordination dynamics. (shrink)

Computer graphic modeling forms an increasing part of archaeological practice, implicated in modes of recording objects and spaces, interpretation of types, management of three-dimensional information, creation of artificial experiences of place for interpretation, and representation of archaeological ideas to a broader public. In all spheres of life computer graphics are increasingly influential—by some estimates computed visions constitute the "dominant medium of thought" (Gooding 2008, p. 1). Archaeological computer graphics build on a long tradition of physical model building for the development (...) of understanding, and representation of conclusions. Such physical models are now finding a renewed significance as .. (shrink)

This paper aims to increase the reader’s understanding of how the notion of the ‘bobby on the beat’ has been elevated to iconic, if not mythical, status within British policing. In doing so, the article utilises the semiotic idea of myth, as conceptualized by Roland Barthes, to explore how through representations of the ‘bobby on the beat’ police officers have been projected in a more avuncular re-assuring role to a public fearful of crime, which fails to do service to the (...) signifying practices that accompany and embody the visible police patrol. Indeed, police patrol work secures social space for the State and although it does re-assure anxious members of society that their social world is safe and secure, for others, it further illustrates how their social space is fragile and troubled. On another level, the ‘bobby’ narrative has also been harnessed as part of a broader mythologizing of ‘Englishness’ and quintessential British characteristics. (shrink)

Illusions of control and fantasies of power are important themes in human history and culture. The first objective of this paper is to explore Zarathustran fantasies in the information society, and our dreams of God-like control and mastery over ourselves and the Universe. This paper does not try to be faithful to Nietzschean philosophical concepts of Zarathustra, but instead explore cultural themes, which can be related to a mythology of God-like control and omniscient perception. It draws together strands from science (...) fiction, anthropology, philosophy, technology development, systems engineering, socio-technical systems, finance and e-business to set out how we have fallen for the technocultural illusions we have created. The paper then shifts gear, and in an attempt to address these technocultural problems, identifies an intellectual trajectory centred on an anthropological perspective. Using examples from e-business and Schwartz’s universal model of human values, applied into a technocultural context, the paper shows how it is possible to create meaningful systems of organisation that utilise advanced technologies to help provide a deeply value-laden cultural system. Our world is changing fundamentally and dramatically, and we desperately need new approaches to help us understand these transitions. The paper’s primary contribution is to critique both human-centred thinking, and mechanistic, Taylorist views of organisation and technology. It stimulates debate concerning the relationship between technology and culture as it is worked out in the information society. Shifting the perspective from humans as social, functioning creatures, this paper offers a new human-centred approach based upon humans as cultural, valuing beings. (shrink)

Reconfigures classic aesthetic concepts in relation to the novelty introduced by virtual bodies.

Aspects of phronetic social science and phronetic organization research have been much debated over the recent years. So far, the visual aspects of communicating phronesis have gained little attention. Still organizations try to convey a desirable image of respectability and success, both internally and externally to the public. A channel for such information is corporate reporting, and particularly CSR reporting embrace values like fairness, goodness, and sustainability. This study explores how visual portrayals of supposedly wise and discerning values (phronesis) are (...) used to reinforce the verbal features of CSR reporting. The two propositions underlying this study is (1) that visual images form some of the major parts of the structures of contemporary corporate reporting (particularly CSR reporting) and (2) that phronetic action in organizations is subjected not only to textual documentation, but also to visual expressions. This study also discusses how the Aristotelian concept of phronesis can be linked to contemporary concerns about responsibility, and how this is visually represented in CSR reporting. Finally, this study addresses the symbolic and contextual signification of images in corporate accounts of wisdom and responsibility. (shrink)

Popular film has become a significant venue for meaning‐making in modern society. Like religion, film provides models for understanding and behaving within the social world. Like religion, film reinforces this content through emotional resonance. Myths slip under a viewer's intellectual defenses in the non‐threatening guise of entertainment. In a mainstream culture skeptical of religion, film presents an alternative mechanism for the transmission and processing of “religious” ideas and ideals.

Illness and trauma challenge self-narratives. Traumatized individuals, unable to speak about their experiences, suffer in isolation. In this paper, I explore Kristeva’s theories of the speaking subject and signification, with its symbolic and semiotic modalities, to understand how a person comes to speak the unspeakable. In discussing the origin of the speaking subject, Kristeva employs Plato’s chora (related to choreo , “to make room for”). The chora reflects the mother’s preparation of the child’s entry into language and forms an interior (...) darkroom, the reservoir of lived experience, from which self-narratives issue. Unable to speak of their suffering, traumatized individuals need someone to help them make room for a time of remembrance, someone who is a willing and capable listener. I call such a person a healing witness . Through the mediating presence of the healing witness, fragmented memories of trauma are recreated and incorporated into self-narratives that are sharable with others. Unfortunately, opportunities for witnessing are vanishing. In the last section, I examine the failure of modern media and communication technologies to bear (“hold,” “carry,” “transport”) acts of witnessing. I argue that they perturb the semiotic. According to Kristeva, meaning arises from the dialectical tension between the semiotic (drives and affects) and the symbolic (logic and rules) and is threatened by arid discourse, psychosomatic illnesses, and outbreaks of violence when the semiotic is not represented . Unless we open technology to the imaginary, we risk losing the capacity to bear witness to one another and to create narratives and connections that are meaningful. (shrink)

The relation between “presence” and “representation” is an age-old topic in the arts, but it is further complicated in our time of advanced media conditions. Pierre Huyghe is one artist who has consistently addressed questions of presence and representation throughout his artistic oeuvre, including the role of the witness within it. Considering the sophistication of Huyghe’s work with regard to the riddle of presence in the realm of contemporary means of representation, the artist’s work is taken as a case study (...) for a broad range of artists exploring related topics within the arts and the media. This paper argues that art that interrogates the question of presence within the context of contemporary media culture—from Marina Abramović to Stelarc, Jeffrey Shaw to Julia Scher—asks for being interpreted through presence theories developed within the field of media studies in addition to methods of art theory and criticism. Accordingly, Huyghe’s work is productively related to one such theory, namely the YUTPA model by Caroline Nevejan, which theorizes the interrelated concepts of natural, mediated, and witnessed presence. (shrink)

One way to study ontology is to assess how people differentiate real activities from others, and a good case is how groups organize simulation. However, social scientists have tended to discuss simulation in more limited ways, either as a symptom of postmodernism or as an instrumental artifact. Missing is how groups organize simulations to prepare for the future. First, I formulate a definition of simulation as a group-level technique, which includes the qualities of everyday ontology, playfulness, risk and consequence reduction, (...) constrained innovation, and transportability. Next, I use ethnographic data collected at an amateur boxing gym to argue that simulations simplify the most risky, unpredictable, and interpersonal aspects of a consequential performance. The problem is that a simulation can rarely proceed exactly like the reality it is derived from. For example, boxers hold back in sparring but should not in competition. The effectiveness of a simulation therefore depends on how robust the model is and how well members translate the imperfect fit between the contextual norms of the simulation and its reality. (shrink)

Reporting on a study of activists living with HIV/AIDS who give testimonials of their experiences with the disease in various educational settings, this article employs the notion of 'haunting' as a means of analyzing the effect of social justice activism in the "aftermath" of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Because of a shift in both the discursive construction of AIDS and the material symptoms of the disease (due to widespread availability of anti-retroviral medication), the signified of AIDS is "out of joint" with (...) the signification of the disease in the public sphere. AIDS, as a social phenomena and a personal, traumatic experience has been rendered spectral through processes of social othering, structural disenfranchisement, and cultural denialism. Most of the presenters included in this study utilize a strategy of "survivorhood" in order to promote prevention and combat stigma. In doing so, they inadvertently buttress dominant discourses that claim that the disease is now "manageable," normalized, and under control. By contrast, one presenter utilizes a completely different performative approach. In order to confront and subvert the "aftermath" discourse and thereby presence the living trauma of AIDS, this presenter embodies the specter of AIDS. As such, his presentation forces the audience to reckon with processes of social exclusion and cultural otherness. (shrink)

This paper seeks to examine the significance of Derrida's work for an understanding of the basic tenets of phenomenology. Specifically, via an analysis of his understanding of the subject's relation to the future, we will see that Derrida enhances the phenomenological understanding of temporality and intentionality, thereby moving the project of phenomenology forward in a unique way. This, in turn, suggests that future phenomenological research will have to account for an essential (rather than merely a secondary) role for both linguistic (...) mediation and cultural and political factors within the phenomenological subject itself. (shrink)

This article follows Deleuze in investigating the ways in which the symptom as a form of representation can be collapsed into immanence. Exploring the symptoms of schizophrenia and autism, it examines what implications such a collapse may have for the production of the symptom in its double articulation as representation and immanent production. The argument follows Deleuze and Guattari in asserting that symptoms hold an implicit limit for the social forms that deploy them. Arguing that schizophrenia, as one such limit, (...) has been successfully appropriated and deferred by postmodern capitalism, it is proposed that the proliferating symptom cluster of autism may indicate a new form of limit and that ‘‘becoming autistic’’ thus may have potential as revolutionary practice. (shrink)

The mobile phone has become part of our everyday lives with astonishing speed. Over four billion people now have access to mobile phones, and this number keeps increasing. Mobile media technologies shape how we communicate with each other, and relate to the world. This raises questions about their influence on identity. Medium-specific properties and user-practices challenge the idea that we understand ourselves through stories. It is proposed that the notion of play sheds new light on how technologies shape identities. The (...) mobile phone mediates identities on four play levels: we play on the mobile, with the mobile, through the mobile, and at the same time we are played by the mobile. Mobile media bring new freedom of movement. Yet at the same time they constrict us. In this dialectic we become moving circles. (shrink)

This article refutes the apparently innocent, common sense idea that the audiovisual screen is just a window to the world that displays an extra set of sensual data alongside and independent of our personal, unmediated experience of reality. On the contrary, the screen as an in-between is both a mediator and generator of reality that eventually compromises the distinction between us and our environment. Part 1 discusses three examples of mediation: eclipsing, interpassivity and audiovisual media as a truth-procedure. Part 2 (...) discusses three examples of generation: the production of simulacra, hyperreality and the emergence of a mixed reality. (shrink)

Modern education has invested in exiling or normalizing violences.Its discourse seeks to implement economies, which may exerciseonly the necessary kinds of violence and avoid as much violence as possible. Postmodern education implies a new constellation in thediscourse of violence and responsibility. An ethics of violencemight have to be retraced. Education would have to implementa new array of sensitivities and violences.

The TGarden is a genre of responsive environment in which actor–spectators shape dense media sensitive to their movements. These dense fields of light, sound, and material also evolve according to their own composed dynamics, so the agency is distributed throughout the multiple media. These TGardens explore open-ended questions like the following: what makes some time-based, responsive environments compelling, and others flat? How can people improvise gestures without words, that are individually or collectively meaningful? When and how is a movement intentional, (...) or collectively intentional? This paper introduces what has been at stake behind the experimental work: subjectivation, moving from technologies of representation to technologies of performance, and the potential for ethico-aesthetic novelty. (shrink)

Through the critical examination of Baudrillard's concept of hyperreality, this article seeks to make a wider contribution to contempor ary debates about postmodernism. It draws on a post-Cartesian, Heideg gerian philosophy to demonstrate the weakness of the concept of hyperreality and reveal its foundation in a Cartesian epistemology. The article goes on to claim that this same Heideggerian tradition suggests a way in which the concept of hyperreality and nihilistic postmodern sociologies more generally might be dialectically superseded. Instead of these (...) theories being seen as saying anything insightful about recent social transformations, the epistemological void in which they position themselves should be inter preted as the intellectual expression of the wider cultural and postmodern trend of transgression. Key Words: Baudrillard • Cartesianism • Heidegger • hyperreality • postmodernism. (shrink)

The proponents of critical pedagogy criticize the earlier Neo‐Marxist theories of education, arguing that they provide only a ‘language of critique’. By introducing the possibility of human agency and resistance, critical pedagogists attempt to develop not only a pedagogy of critique, but also to build a pedagogy of hope. Fundamentally, the aim of critical pedagogy is twofold: 1) to correct the pessimistic conclusions of Neo‐Marxist theories, and 2) to transform a ‘language of critique’ into a ‘language of possibility’ . Then, (...) what political projects do critical pedagogies present to us? What alternative visions of schooling do critical pedagogies offer against the mainstream pedagogy? The purpose of this paper is to identify main projects of critical pedagogy, and to explore overarching politics that underlie the field of critical pedagogy. Although there are diverse theories and approaches in critical pedagogy, three overarching projects can be identified, which I call: 1) the project of experience, 2) the project of anti‐system, and 3) the project of inclusion. Based on an examination of the general trends and characteristics of these three projects of critical pedagogy, I argue that three prominent politics that underlie the field of critical pedagogy are culturalist politics, self/identity politics, and grassroots politics. In trying to better understand why and how critical pedagogy has developed the political stances as it has, the last part of the paper links these three politics to the historical developments of the New Left and the New Social Movements. (shrink)

This article introduces a series of measures of the geographical manifestation of a subset of unsolicited commercial email, i.e. spam, used to perpetrate 'advanced fee fraud'. Known as '419 spam', this activity has strong historic ties to Nigeria, where similar frauds were operated via physical letters and faxes during the 1970s and 1980s. This article's analysis reveals that 419 spam operates via a globally dispersed network that nevertheless contains a clear agglomeration of activity in West Africa. Building upon theories of (...) the intersection of cyberspace, states, and individuals, this article argues that 419 spam exemplifies the challenge offered by the Internet to the dominance of states by allowing individuals and movements to create social space that transcends borders. This process is an intriguing and ironic parallel to the description of the rise of the European nation-state as an 'imagined community' that challenged medieval systems of authority and existing social epistemologies. The emerging 'networks of imagination' developed by transnational social movements and criminal networks to define their sphere of operations present a similar challenge to the primacy of existing authority embedded in the state, particularly for states in crisis such as Nigeria. The article concludes with an examination of the off-line and online implications of 419 spam and its network of imagination for the Nigerian state and its inhabitants. Ranging from strengthening public conceptions of West Africa as a sea of corruption to a decreased ability to interact with the outside world, 419 spammers are playing an important, if illicit, role in the construction and use of Nigeria's and the world's Internet. (shrink)

The ideas in this account emerged during a walk along the foreshore of the Parramatta River. As such the ideas represent a version of the turbulent flow of sense making that is stimulated by the chaotic interaction of physical, intellectual, and spiritual topographies. The article illustrates the power of naturally occurring metaphors to provoke solutions to intellectual problems, in this case the challenges of managing at and across intellectual, physical, and spiritual realms.

The debate between instrumentalist and technological determinist positions on the nature of technology characterised the early history of the philosophy of technology. In recent years however technological determinism has ceased to be viewed as a credible philosophical position within the field. This paper uses Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology to reconsider the technological determinist outlook in phenomenological terms as an experiential response to the encounter with the phenomenon of modern technology. Recasting the instrumentalist-determinist debate in a phenomenological manner enables one to reconcile the (...) apparent dualism of the instrumentalist and determinist positions through Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of the flesh. This ontology has recently been used to ground accounts of virtual embodiment. We argue that in addition to explaining away the classical form of technological determinism, it can also phenomenologically ground a novel understanding of technological determinism. Namely, a technological determinism of virtual embodiment. (shrink)

In this essay we show how certain tendencies of theself are enhanced and hindered by technologicallyorganized places. We coordinate a cognitive andbehavioral technology for the control of personalidentity with the technologically totalizedenvironments that we call synthetic sites. Weproceed by describing Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi''sstrategy for intensifying experience and organizingthe self. Walt Disney World is then considered as theexample, par excellence, of a synthetic sitethat promotes ordered experience via self-shrinkage. Finally, we reflect briefly on problems andpossibilities of human life lived in a world (...) that canbe described with increasing accuracy as anarchipelago of synthetic sites. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that popular entertainment can be understood in terms of Husserl’s concepts of epochē, reduction and constitution, and, conversely, that epochē, reduction and constitution can be explicated in terms of popular entertainment. To this end I use Husserl’s concepts to explicate and reflect upon the psychological and ethical effects of an exemplary instance of entertainment, the renowned Star Trek episode entitled “The Measure of a Man.” The importance of such an exercise is twofold: to demonstrate, once (...) again, the fecundity of the methodological procedures Husserl bequeathed to us; more than any other philosopher, he tapped into the fundamental manners in which we lose, make and remake the meanings of our lives; and to demonstrate how popular entertainment, similarly, plays a central role in the making and remaking of the meanings of our lives. If my zig-zag procedure between Husserl’s philosophy and popular entertainment is productive and cogent, in addition to elucidating Husserl’s philosophy, it will demonstrate the reality-generating potency and the constitutive power of entertainment in the contemporary world. Entertainment, via ourselves, has become the primary producer of the meanings via which consciousness constitutes the world. (shrink)

In this paper I make the arguments that I seesupporting a view of how we can come to knowthe world we live in.I start from a position in second ordercybernetics which turns out to be a RadicalConstructivist position. This position isessentially epistemological, and much of thispaper is concerned with the act of knowing,crucial when we try to develop an understandingof what we mean when we discuss a field ofknowing (knowledge), which is at the root ofscience. The argument follows a path (...) in which I discussthe essential role of the observer inobserving, the creation of constancies betweendifferent observings and their exteriorisationas objects which are then represented and usedin communication with and between otherobservers, each unique (and therefore eachobserving in its own way). This leads to theassertion that the qualities we associate withthe objects of our universes are attributes,rather than properties inherent in the objectsthemselves. At each step in the argument I exploreconsequences for how we understand the world,in particular through science. I showlimitations, new insights and understandings,and re-evaluate what we can expect to gain fromscience. One change is the shift from noun toverb in the consideration of processses – forinstance, the study of living rather than life.In this way, I intend to show not only thatRadical Constructivism is sensible, but that itdoes not preclude us having a science. Incontrast, it can enrich science by taking onboard the sensible.In the process, which science is seen to be themore basic is challenged. (shrink)

This essay has been by necessity a gloss of a complex look at the relations of power, control, and personal identity construction in a workplace. Features of the nature of the work process combine with social strategies to construct a reproductive self-referential system. Corporate organizations are central institutions in contemporary life; they make developmental decisions for individuals and for society as a whole. While they are in this sense political to the core, we have not done enough to understand how (...) this politics works or to explore its relation to people in a democratic society. Using a phenomenologically-based communication analysis enables a sensitive analysis of the multiple forms of power and domination as they exist in corporate sites. Although I have given only an outline of one case study here, this example suggests that phenomenologically-based projects can show harmful and unwarranted control, and can be a first step to fostering corporate practices that lead to decisions which are less wasteful of resources and more fully accomplish the goals of democratic society. (shrink)

: This paper is a cultural studies analysis of the Microsoft computer video game, ZooTycoon™. Through a critical reading using the "circuit of culture," questions of the gamer's subject position, the role of wildlife and implicit and explicit messages about contemporary attitudes toward the environment are explored. Drawing on Susan Davis' book, Spectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience (1997), this paper unpacks the virtual theme parks created in Zoo Tycoon™ for their (dis)continuities with Davis's findings. The virtual (...) animals are found to serve as both labor and products in this game that teaches capitalist business strategy and managerial skills. This popular culture text is an example of a product that harnesses the environmental impulse and redirects that impulse back into commodity capitalism. (shrink)

Political sociologists have paid closer attention of late to the territoriality of political communities, and have even begun theorizing the theme of territoriality’s legitimation. To date, however, the field has mostly overlooked the topic of maps, the quintessential territorial tool. Thus, we know little regarding maps’ crucial role in shaping modern subjects’ relationship to territory. This article argues that “map-mindedness”—i.e., the effects of map imagery on how subjects experience territory—can be productively theorized by working through the social-scientific concept of “place.” (...) Using a range of modern and contemporary examples, I illustrate how maps can draw on and manipulate political subjects’ experience of place. Maps, I submit, allow political communities to render themselves more place-like, thus bridging the phenomenological distance between these abstract, territorially vast units and their “emplaced” subjects. More specifically, maps solve this “problem of distance” through three ideal-typical processes: 1) they render the political community as a proximate “object in the world”; 2) they present the political community as a body-like target for cathexis and identification; and 3) they mediate the traffic of meaning between the local and the national to produce a multi-scalar sense of place that can be harnessed in the service of the political community. Maps are a potent means of “re-personalizing” politics; their study suggests that territoriality is not only a form of “impersonal rule,” as recent works have observed, but always also implicated in the production of political subjects. (shrink)

This paper offers a close reading of PAW Media animation My Name is Danny. Drawing across a growing body of recent Central and Western Desert experimental cinema, this paper asks what is at stake in the turn to animation. Rather than escapism or otherworldly fabrications which have little to do with lived experience of the “real,” animation in this context has potent everyday exigencies and politics. The capacity for bringing to life literally – animate – is here linked to the (...) primacy of a sentient landscape; an object world already alive and enlivened with motion, movement, sensation. The question for contemporary filmmaking is how to engage country and its viscera today. How to keep country/ancestor/story alive literally through sentient forms of affective exchange; a project which animation, as this paper will explore, uniquely provides. Drawing on the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze, as well as the animation theory of Cholodenko, Lemarre and others, this paper argues for a radical reconsideration of animation not as incompatible with tradition but in fact as facilitating traditional ontologies of affect and sensation in a national context of remote Aboriginal Australia “under occupation.”. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to demonstrate the phenomenologically grounded dynamics of hearing and listening as a possible approach to our sonic experience. Its starting point is the studies of contemporary urban spaces devoted to their sonic experience. The results of these studies and their interpretation will serve as a starting point for the introduction of dynamics of hearing and listening. In the next part of this article, I will focus on the elaboration of this relationship with regard to (...) the critique of Husserl’s concept of activity and passivity in his late work Experience and Judgment and Merleau-Ponty’s concept of being-in-the-world. Based on this, in the end, certain common features will be shown, connecting the thematization of activity and passivity with the relationship of hearing and listening. (shrink)

Biologist Richard Dawkins coined the term “meme” by which he meant a unit of culture. Dan Dennett continued by defining a meme as a bunch of bits of information. This paper explores the “meme” and how it is semiotic, both in its technical sense and in its popular sense and explores how memes signify both in terms of classical semiotics and also in terms of post-structuralist thought.

This article discusses the intensification of research performance demands in UK universities in relation to the complex terrain of academic identity formation. It considers whether a demand for academic researchers to produce and evidence economic and societal impact – in the rewards game of the UK’s performance-based research funding system, the Research Excellence Framework – influences their self-concept as ‘engaged researchers’. While a designation of being REF impactful may be considered constitutive to a researcher’s sense of self-worth and advantageous to (...) their professional and institutional profile, a consultation of researchers included within REF2014 impact case studies challenges these assumptions. Instead, respondents are found to complain of identity dispossession and exploitation by their universities where their public contributions are appropriated for positional gain. Their testimony confirms the prevalence of a culture of ‘competitive accountability’ across UK universities which is with a systemic insatiability for ‘scholarly distinction’, causing the privileging of appearance in rationalisations of publicly funded research. Using the theoretical insights of Guy Debord and Erving Goffman it is argued that REF impact elucidates the UK higher education sector as a ‘society of the Spectacle’ that subjugates ‘authentic’ versions of the academic Self. However, REF-impact is also seen to provide an opportunity for cultural detournément and a means to elicit and concurrently invert ‘simulations’ of research praxis’, thus enabling the assertion or ‘front-staging’ of perceived and idealised academic identities. (shrink)

Social media platforms have been vested with hope for their potential to enable ‘ordinary citizens’ to make their judgments public and contribute to pluralized discussions about organizations and their perceived legitimacy :60–97, 2018). This raises questions about how ordinary citizens make judgements and voice them in online spaces. This paper addresses these questions by examining how Western citizens ascribe responsibility and action in relation to corporate misconduct. Empirically, it focuses on modern slavery and analyses online debates in Denmark on child (...) slavery in the cocoa industry. Conceptually, it introduces the notion of cosmopolitanism as a general disposition of care and responsibility towards distant others, conceived as a prerequisite for the critical evaluation of corporate responsibility in the Global South. The analysis of online debates shows that citizens debate child slavery in terms of individual consumer responsibility rather than corporate responsibility. Corporations are not considered potential agents of change. As a consequence, online citizen debates did not reflect a legitimacy crisis for the cocoa industry, as debates over responsibility were overwhelmingly concerned with the agency of the Western individual, the individual agency of the speakers themselves. Participants in debates understood their agency strictly as consumer agency. (shrink)

While the term ‘nihilism’ has become increasingly widespread throughout the past two centuries, not only in academic discourses but in popular culture more widely, there is a surprising lack of con...

This paper reviews the contemporary discussion on the epistemological and ontological effects of Big Data within social science, observing an increased focus on relationality and complexity, and a tendency to naturalize social phenomena. The epistemic limits of this emerging computational paradigm are outlined through a comparison with the discussions in the early days of digitalization, when digital technology was primarily seen through the lens of dematerialization, and as part of the larger processes of “postmodernity”. Since then, the online landscape has (...) become increasingly centralized, and the “liquidity” of dematerialized technology has come to empower online platforms in shaping the conditions for human behavior. This contrast between the contemporary epistemological currents and the previous philosophical discussions brings to the fore contradictions within the study of digital social life: While qualitative change has become increasingly dominant, the focus has gone towards quantitative methods; while the platforms have become empowered to shape social behavior, the focus has gone from social context to naturalizing social patterns; while meaning is increasingly contested and fragmented, the role of hermeneutics has diminished; while platforms have become power hubs pursuing their interests through sophisticated data manipulation, the data they provide is increasingly trusted to hold the keys to understanding social life. These contradictions, we argue, are partially the result of a lack of philosophical discussion on the nature of social reality in the digital era; only from a firm metatheoretical perspective can we avoid forgetting the reality of the system under study as we are affected by the powerful social life of Big Data. (shrink)

This paper will use the concept of hyperreality to compare the so-called ideal state described by ancient Chinese philosopher Laozi with the world of The Truman Show. The concept of hyperreality is defined by Jean Baudrillard as the generation by models of a real without origin or reality. A hyperreal world is a simulation, or kind of a copy without its original. It is generally accepted, and confirmed by Baudrillard himself, that the world of The Truman Show is hyperreal. In (...) order to compare Laozi’s ideal state with the world of the film, this paper will give a hyperrealist interpretation of the former, which will be only hypothetical, without intending to substitute any other existing interpretations. Laozi imagines that people live simple lives, with few desires and without traveling to other places. If we accept that the ideal state is a hyperreal world, we can make comparison between the two worlds; find out their similarities, as well as differences. (shrink)

Old age and visions of the future are inherently bound with one another, and the realms of dystopian fiction provide scope for a gerontological focus within contemporary literature. A theme that is now being revisited in speculative fiction, this paper aims to assess the role of the elderly within Margaret Atwood's dystopian tales, specifically looking at the role of gerontology in her collection of short stories Stone Mattress: Nine Wicked Tales (2014). I argue that Atwood utilises the dystopian narrative in (...) order to address broader social issues that stem from immobility and declining virility. Focussing on Atwood's feminist politics and representations of the elderly woman in the dystopian narrative, this paper proposes that older women in Atwood's fiction seek to move beyond the asexual, immobile and matronly gerontological stereotype that is often portrayed in literature. Instead, the elderly, and in particular elder women, adapt to their environment, often becoming figures of their community. They are aware of sexual desires and look to move within and beyond societal constraints, utilising the realms of cyberspace in order to forge their own identity. The role of the elderly in a distinctly dystopian narrative allows for a new Utopian strategy to be constructed. (shrink)

This essay takes as its chief point of departure Jacques Ellul’s contention that imaginative treatments of malevolent technology in antitechnological science fiction, by way of inviting rejection, refusal, dismissal, or condemnation, conspire in facilitating human acceptance of and adjustment to technology as it otherwise presently is. The author extends Ellul’s argument to accounts of cryonic suspension, or “cryonics,” the practice of freezing human corpses, by way of gradually subjecting them, at the moment of legal death, to extremely low temperatures in (...) hopes that medicine will at some future point achieve the necessary kinds and levels of technology to facilitate “reanimation.” The author maintains that, analogous to Ellul’s treatment of science fiction, most extant accounts of cryonic suspension, by focusing almost exclusively on issues pertaining to the scientific legitimacy and technological feasibility of the practice, fall prey to the performative conventions of a discursive- cum-epistemic trap, one that ultimately works to facilitate the acceptance of and adjustment to technology as it otherwise presently is. (shrink)

This paper explores the variety of ways that emerging sources of data are being used to re-conceptualize the city, and how these understandings of what the urban is shapes the design of interventions into it. Drawing on work on the performativity of economics, this paper uses two vignettes of the ‘new urban science’ and municipal vacant property mapping in order to argue that the mobilization of Big Data in the urban context doesn’t necessarily produce a single, greater understanding of the (...) city as it actually is, but rather a highly variegated series of essentialized understandings of the city that render it knowable, governable and intervene-able. Through the construction of new, data-driven urban geographical imaginaries, these projects have opened up the space for urban interventions that work to depoliticize urban injustices and valorize new kinds of technical expertise as the means of going about solving these problems, opening up new possibilities for a remaking of urban space in the image of these sociotechnical paradigms. Ultimately, this paper argues that despite the importance of Big Data, as both a discourse and practice, to emerging forms of urban research and management, there is no singular or universal understanding of the urban that is promoted or developed through the application of these new sources of data, which in turn opens up meaningful possibilities for developing alternative uses of Big Data for understanding and intervening in the city in more emancipatory ways. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 9, Page 1247-1276, November 2022. Classical leadership models have insistently reinforced the notion of leader-centric rule. Business models focus on strong leadership, definitive decision-making and charismatic figures. Authoritarian leadership is the foundation upon which other models are based. However, the adoption of Charismatic Leadership and Great Man theory puts into relief the tendency within democratic rule towards fascist and populist ideology. Many leading philosophers and political scientists lend support to authoritarian rule. This tendency (...) is not always apparent in democratic theory, indeed it is counter-intuitive, but from a critical perspective, we are forced to ask whether there is not something within democracy which invites authoritarianism and harbours the seed of fascism. (shrink)