Survival mode: on the depoliticization of the contemporary imaginary Resumen: En este artículo analizamos el actual estatuto de la utopía y de la distopía a partir de los cambios en la experiencia y la sensibilidad acontecidos en la postmodernidad-globalización. Reflexionaremos sobre la forma en la que experimentamos el tiempo y el cambio histórico y acerca del modo en el que la realidad aparece representada en los productos culturales contemporáneos. En este sentido, nos fijaremos en lo que hemos denominado la “privatización (...) de la utopía” a propósito del descrédito de la política y de los proyectos colectivos, y atenderemos tanto a la conciencia de un final que parece haberse instalado en nosotros desde hace tiempo como a sus posibles antecedentes.: We will analyze the present role and concept of utopia and dystopia in connection with the changes in our experience and sensibility that have taken place under postmodernity-globalization. We will think about our time and historical change experience and about the way reality is represented in contemporary cultural products. We will pay attention to what we call “the privatization of utopia” regarding the discredit of the political and collective projects and we will also consider the consciousness of an ending that seems to be settled in us for quite some time. Palabras clave: utopía, distopía, Fredric Jameson, Northrop Frye, George Orwell, Ricardo Piglia, privatización de la utopía, postmodernidad, globalización, experiencia del tiempo. Keywords: utopia, dystopia, Fredric Jameson, Northrop Frye, George Orwell, Ricardo Piglia, privatization of utopia, postmodernity, globalization, time experience. (shrink)

This article critically details how the work of Slavoj Žižek theoretically elaborates on the links between nationalism and sport. Notably, it highlights how key terms, drawn from Žižek’s work on fantasy, ideology and the Real (itself grounded in the work of Jacques Lacan), can be used to explore the relationship between sport, nationalism and enjoyment (jouissance). In outlining this approach, specific attention is given to Žižek’s account of the ‘national Thing’. Accordingly, by considering the various ways in which sport organizes, (...) materializes and structures our enjoyment, the emotive significance of sport during national sporting occasions is both introduced and applied. Moreover, it is argued that such an approach offers a unique and valuable insight into the relationship between sport and nationalism, as well as an array of social and political antagonisms. (shrink)

The article discusses education as a phenomenon of European culture. The author argues that education becomes inalienable component of European culture and largely determines its development trends. Thus, education traditionally was an important component of religious culture, despite that the methodological rationalism of scholasticism came into conflict with the postulation of the fundamental non-objectivity of God. Teaching theology as an academic discipline considered as a form of the comprehension of God. Since education turns out to be one of the basic (...) elements of European culture, that form of education, which dominates in a particular period of history, plays a determinative role in the development of various cultural phenomena. This is demonstrated by the example of ethics and morality. Thus, the interpretation of education as studying leads to the formation of deductive thinking, which, when applied to the sphere of morality, presupposes the submission of specific situations under the learned universal rules of standardized moral code. In contrast, modern moral consciousness understands moral choice as creative modeling of behavior in specific situations, idiographically understood as unique. This is possible only on the basis of the reception of deep general human values, which means the connection between the modern type of morality and education. Therefore, education should include not only studying but also cultivation of personality, and the latter should be in focus. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate the origins of banality and the reasons why some phenomena appear banal to us. I discuss the issue by analysing three interrelated areas of aesthetic investigation: artworks, everyday objects, and banal things. By identifying the source of banality, my goal is to understand what makes banal things different from other kinds of things. I consider the following questions: 1) when, why, and how does an object become banal?; 2) what happens when something becomes banal?; 3) (...) are banal things aesthetically appealing? Drawing on Wolfgang Welsch’s notion of anesthetization and Walter Benjamin’s account of aura, I argue that banality consists in the absence of both an ontological and an axiological character in objects, which makes them appear trivial or insignificant to us. I conclude by showing that although art, everydayness, and banality represent different aesthetic dimensions, objects constantly move from one of these dimensions to the other. (shrink)

The article substantiates the social nature of the dichotomy of contemporary postmodern society through the analysis of the social content of possible forms of social activity. Using the terminology of S. Deetz’s theory of communication, the authors substantiate that today in Ukrainian society there are three main forms of social activity - consent; involvement; participation. The dominance of a certain form of social dialogue in society determines the nature, dynamics, direction, spatial and temporal social activity limitations. The results of an (...) empirical study on the distribution of forms of social activity in contemporary Ukrainian society are presented. Emphasis is placed on the fact that one of the conditions for reducing the social destructiveness of postmodern society is the value context of social dialogue as a manifestation of social activity that regulates relations between social groups. In postmodern society, there is a multiplicity of variations of social interaction. The social nature of the constructive social activity of contemporary Ukrainian society “lies” in the plane of “social interaction - social dialogue - social trust”. Effective social interaction between certain social groups leads to the formation of new social relations, that, in turn, form opportunities for social dialogue between them. This dialogue influences the evolution of the structural organization of society, which is a prerequisite for the stability of society, decreasing its potential social destructiveness. (shrink)

This essay is a political reading of Ursula K. Le Guin’s ‘The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas’, which examines agency and resistance in situations of political wrong. Le Guin’s short story allows us to reformulate the questions of the boundaries of popular sovereignty and the opposition to general consent. These concerns will be here regarded as elements of a critique of neoliberal capitalism, in which freedom and self-realization are founded on injustices that persist because of a prevalent conception of (...) the good life. The case of ‘Omelas’, moreover, challenges our understanding of resistance in revealing the blurred boundary between political action and mere noncompliance. The question asked will be about the nature of noncompliance: is noncompliance a form of resistance, and, if so, can it transform the political reality? (shrink)

The specific nature and dynamic of the emerging triple helix of state-industry-university relations in Japan and Singapore is analyzed in this article. The impact of globalization and the emergence of trans-disciplinary scientific fields on this institutional reconstitution are examined. Overall, the implications of these transformations for the debates over the knowledge society are discussed.

This article examines one of the main epistemological frameworks that feminist theory has used for the past 30 years: essentialism and anti-essentialism. It explores what is at stake by continuing to use such perspectives within the late days of the early 21st century, and how it is linked to a performance of critical sophistication which has specific political consequences. Instead of seeing the body as essentialist, the author draws on two examples — popular musician Kate Bush and ontological ideas about (...) the Goddess — to present the body as immanent flesh. This has implications for thinking through different forms of relational and critical perspectives circulating in the current climate, and the author argues that the recent introduction of affect and the increasing interest in haptic knowledges is part of the immanent flesh’s potential for transforming knowledge and the wider world. (shrink)

This article attempts to foreground the importance of everyday life and habit to the reproduction of national identities. Taking issue with dominant linear depictions of the time of the nation, which have over-emphasized ‘official’ histories, tradition and heroic narratives, this article foregrounds the everyday rhythms through which a sense of national belonging is sustained. The article focuses upon institutionalized schedules, habitual routines, collective synchronicities and serialized time-spaces to develop an argument that quotidian, cyclical time is integral to national identity. In (...) conclusion, accounts that discuss the increasing dominance of a postmodern global time are argued to be hyperbolic, since the nation remains a powerful, if more flexible constituent of identity. (shrink)

In recent times developments in the natural sciences and in the sphere of environmental politics have compelled social scientists, and also some natural scientists, to rethink the relations that hitherto have been held, in Western thought generally and within particular disciplines, to characterize ‘nature’ on the one side and ‘culture’ on the other. This article considers the history of this conceptual boundary and looks at new conceptualizations of nature/culture, stimulated by developments both in biotechnology and in the ongoing controversies about (...) environmental degradation. It argues that while some of the contributions to reconfiguring, or abolishing, the nature/ culture division have been productive and stimulating of new ways of conceiving the world, there has nonetheless been an unfortunate tendency for social scientists to bring to bear inherited analytic dispositions on biotechnological and environmental matters. Instead of using these issues as means of challenging social scientific disciplinary dogmas and of engaging in constructive rapprochement with natural scientists, social scientists have in their analyses of such matters often merely asserted the hegemony of ‘culture’ over ‘nature’, and thus in effect the superiority of social scientific over natural scientific conceptualizations of the world. Far from overcoming the nature/culture boundary, social scientists have too often merely asserted the primacy of the sorts of subject matters and analytic techniques they feel comfortable with, rather than subjecting their practices to fully reflexive self-scrutiny. (shrink)

This article contends that social policy faces a crisis over whether a viable collective order can be constructed out of individual choices. The neo-liberal paradigm is now challenged by neo-conservatives, who argue for policies derived from traditional moral, religious and patriotic values. This raises issues about the nature of social bonds, the institutional order and collective life itself. The article argues that it provides an opportunity for social theorists and policy analysts to co-operate in re-examining these questions. However, these debates (...) indicate a need for social theorists to confront their relationship with Enlightenment accounts of how commerce and private property enable liberty and consensual government. In the face of recent evidence of ‘stalled well-being’ within increasing prosperity, the article argues for a new analysis of choice and solidarity. (shrink)

This article argues that psychoanalytic notions of affect – including ideas of anxiety and melancholia, as well as deconstructive concepts of auto-affection – offer a feminist ethico-politics and a notion of affect as interface. Beyond the confines of the experiential and the positivist, both psychoanalysis and deconstruction provide insights into affect as a technology that understands the subject as porous. I consider works by Derek Jarman and Shirin Neshat to demonstrate the importance of the ethico-politics of affect as interface in (...) contemporary cultural production. Both artists, in the process of considering the spectacular nature of notions of feminist and queer, use images of interface as a way of delimiting the spectacular nature of being and demonstrating the singularity of the event, the desire to fix through framing, and the parergonal nature of framing. The presence of the subject is questioned even as an auto-affection is suggestive of a spectral demand of the ethico-political. In the case of Jarman’s Blue, the denial of image as face in favour of the screen as interface is interrupted by sound and voice, which gesture toward representation as impossible but necessary. In the case of Neshat, the persistence of the photographic – the highly aesthetic self-portrait as mugshot – foregrounds face as interface, as one that questions presence through the insistence of a representational apparatus. (shrink)

Significant developments in medical research and technology have meant that the process of reproduction is increasingly affected by the consumption of a variety of services and goods. Individuals intervene in their own reproductive processes as they eat particular foods, take particular drugs and avail themselves of diagnostic and reproductive services. Although such developments have been analysed by feminists in terms of their ethical consequences or their contribution to the commodification of reproduction, they have not been evaluated in terms of their (...) contribution to reproductive consumption. This article argues that we can avoid the reductiveness of critiques of commodified reproduction by developing a conceptual framework of reproductive consumption. Thinking through reproductive consumption also enables feminist analysis to expand our understanding of the gendered aspects of consumption. Most feminist work on consumption practices has focused on the domestic sphere as a site of consumption or on the role of sex and sexuality in promoting consumption. This article's analysis of reproductive consumption adds to this work by revealing ways in which biological reproduction itself is a site of consuming desires and needs, and is permeated by socio-economic forces. In developing a theoretical framework for analysing reproductive consumption, this article argues that consumption produces adaptive value as an object of exchange is acquired and adapted in order to satisfy some need or desire. In making this argument I draw on O'Brien, who argued that reproduction produces syntheticvalue by synthesizing reason and nature in bringing another human being into the world. In doing so she used Marx's method of extracting the concept of commodity value from capitalist exchange relations. Similarly, I analyse the relations of consumption in order to distil a value that is specific to consumption. Reproductive consumption identifies the reproductive consumer as someone who adapts objects of consumption to her own reproductive needs and desires as she negotiates her reproductive nature. Thinking about reproduction and consumption in terms of each other helps us to identify how reproduction is brought about through a taste for particular goods and services, and how consumption works through the reproductive, as well as the sexual, body. (shrink)

This study reassesses the concept of the Anthropocene as a new geological age as it is influencing contemporary debates in social theory. As a unit of geological time whose changes are allegedly caused, directly and indirectly, by human beings, this scientific concept challenges the existing constructions of theoretical binaries, such as nature/culture, environment/society, objectivity/subjectivity or happenstance/design, in social theory. The analysis suggests many understandings of the Anthropocene in social theory are politicized over-interpretations of natural events, and these moves appear to (...) be developing moral rhetorics of, and operational plans for, managing the Anthropocene to create specific outcomes for those who are the managers as well as the managed. The fact that human beings do not, in fact, have this measure of technical control is ignored by advocates of Anthropocenarian politics to advance their policy agendas. (shrink)

The tendency to idealise artificial intelligence as independent from human manipulators, combined with the growing ontological entanglement of humans and digital machines, has created an “anthrobotic” horizon, in which data analytics, statistics and probabilities throw our agential power into question. How can we avoid the consequences of a reified definition of intelligence as universal operation becoming imposed upon our destinies? It is here argued that the fantasised autonomy of automated intelligence presents a contradistinctive opportunity for philosophical consciousness to understand itself (...) anew as holistic and co-creative, beyond the recent “analytic” moment of the history of philosophy. Here we introduce the concept of “crealectic intelligence”, a meta-analytic and meta-dialectic aspect of consciousness. Intelligent behaviour may consist in distinguishing discrete familiar parts or reproducible functions in the midst of noise via an analytic process of segmentation; intelligence may also manifest itself in the constitution of larger wholes and dynamic unities through a dialectic process of association or assemblage. But, by contrast, crealectic intelligence co-creates realities in the image of an ideal or truth, taking into account the desiring agent imbued with a sense of possibility, in a relationship not only with the Real but also with the creative sublime or “Creal”. (shrink)

This thesis investigates the metaphysical nature of necessity. My study focuses primarily on the reduction of metaphysical necessity and the question of whether a necessary truth can be reductively defined. Theodore Sider develops a new reductive account of metaphysical necessity. Unfortunately, the multiple realizability problem posed by Jonathan Schaffer undermines the credibility of Sider’s account. This underlies my motivation to search for a revised Siderian account of necessity. On this basis, I propose a modified version of Sider’s account and argue (...) that analytic, natural-kind and micro-reduction truths are necessary truths if and only if they express the same states of affairs as logical truths. Since logical truths are necessary truths, analytic, natural-kind and micro-reduction truths are necessary truths as well. In this thesis, I will proceed as follows. Chapter 1 introduces Sider’s account of necessity. In particular, I focus on his analysis of the necessity of a micro-reduction truth. His analysis is largely constitutive of the notion of a metaphysical semantics and some associated notions. I reconstruct his analysis and articulate his metaphysical semantics and the associated notions. Chapter 2 presents and clarifies the multiple realizability problem of Schaffer. His critique shows that Sider’s metaphysical semantics cannot handle multiple realizability. Sider refutes this claim by arguing that the multiple realizability problem is a problem for his analysis of the necessity of a micro-reduction truth, not for his metaphysical semantics itself. This is a good starting point to propound a modified account of necessity. Chapter 3 proposes and articulates my modified analysis of the necessity of a micro-reduction, where I show that the necessity of a micro-reduction truth can be reductively defined without appeal to Sider’s metaphysical semantics. I argue that analytic, natural-kind and microreduction truths are necessary truths if and only if they express the same states of affairs as logical truths. Logical truths are necessary and so are they. After that, I consider a potential objection to my modified account and attempt to respond to it. (shrink)

What does Cyberpunk and AI Ethics have to do with each other? Cyberpunk is a sub-genre of science fiction that explores the post-human relationships between human experience and technology. One similarity between AI Ethics and Cyberpunk literature is that both seek a dialogue in which the reader may inquire about the future and the ethical and social problems that our technological advance may bring upon society. In recent years, an increasing number of ethical matters involving AI have been pointed and (...) debated, and several ethical principles and guides have been suggested as governance policies for the tech industry. However, would this be the role of AI Ethics? To serve as a soft and ambiguous version of the law? I would like to promote in this article a more Cyberpunk way of doing AI Ethics, whit a more anarchic way of governance. In this study, I will seek to expose some of the deficits of the underlying power structures of our society, and suggest that AI governance be subject to public opinion, so that ‘good AI’ can become ‘good AI for all’. (shrink)

Ex-Machina and Morgan, two recent science-fiction films that deal with the creation of humanoids, also explored the relationship between artificial intelligence, spatiality and the lingering question mark regarding artificial consciousness. In both narratives, the creators of the humanoids have tried to mimic human consciousness as closely as possible, which has resulted in the imprisonment of the humanoids due to proprietary concerns in Ex-Machina and due to the violent behavior of the humanoid in Morgan. This article addresses the dilemma of whether (...) or not the humanoids in both films possess high levels of artificial consciousness and its possible consequences regarding focalization, a narrative term that presupposes subjectivity, as well as offer two new categories of posthuman focalization—X-focalization and A-focalization. The issue of captivity also has far-reaching ethical implications when considering the underlying assumption of artificial consciousness—if humanoids are indeed endowed with a subjective inner life, then they are entitled to be treated as moral agents, equivalent to humans rather than animals. (shrink)

This paper addresses global bioethical challenges entailed in emerging viral diseases, focussing on their socio-cultural dimension and seeing them as symptomatic of the current era of globalisation. Emerging viral threats exemplify the extent to which humans evolved into a global species, with a pervasive and irreversible impact on the planetary ecosystem. To effectively address these disruptive threats, an attitude of preparedness seems called for, not only on the viroscientific, but also on bioethical, regulatory and governance levels. This paper analyses the (...) global bioethical challenges of emerging viral threats from a dialectical materialist (Marxist) perspective, focussing on three collisions: (1) the collision of expanding networks of globalisation with local husbandry practices; (2) the collision of global networks of mobility with disrupted ecosystems; and (3) the collision of viroscience as a globalised research field with existing regulatory frameworks. These collisions emerge in a force field defined by the simultaneity of the non-simultaneous. Evidence-based health policies invoke discontent as they reflect the normative logic of a globalised knowledge regime. The development of a global bioethics or macro-ethics requires us to envision these collisions not primarily as issues of benefits and risks, but first and foremost as normative tensions closely entangled with broader socio-economic and socio-cultural developments. (shrink)

In his book, On the Pleasure Principle in Culture (2014), Robert Pfaller argued that our relationship to sport is one grounded in “illusion”. Simply put, our interest in and enjoyment of sport occurs through a process of “knowing better”. Here, one’s knowledge of the unimportance of sport is achieved by associating the illusion of sport with a naïve observer – i.e. someone who does believe in sport’s importance. In the wake of the global pandemic, COVID-19, it would seem that Pfaller’s (...) remarks have taken on an added significance. With major sporting events and domestic competitions being indefinitely postponed or canceled, Liverpool manager, Jurgen Klopp, commented that football was “the most important of the least important things”. In light of these remarks, this paper will critically locate sport’s sudden unimportance in relation to Pfaller’s contention that sport reflects an “illusion without owner”. (shrink)

This article addresses the underestimation of Medieval philosophy in the contemporary curriculum by engaging its very origins in the ‘postmodern’ dislocation of philosophy. The leading question is what would be the prospects in the 21st century of reorienting Western philosophy from its idea-historical sources, which would include its ancient traditions and the Medieval exposition, as well as the Renaissance elucidation thereof. Critically engaging the works of numerous ‘postmodern’ philosophers as well as critics of the ‘postmodern’ departure from traditional philosophy, this (...) article argues for the re-establishment of the late Medieval notion of sensus communis, both as common sense and community sense. Against this backdrop, the article reappraises Medieval thought within the context of sensus communis to combat the contemporary dislocation of philosophy, by raising the possibility of the presentation of first-order judgments via sensus communis in a new pursuit for wijsbegeerte. (shrink)

This thesis attempts to describe and interpret the design practice of an American architect, Frank O. Gehry through concepts developed by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and his collaborator, French psychotherapist, philosopher and activist, Félix Guattari. At the same time, prototyping a website-based interactive project called PLATEAU GEHRY_CONNECTIVES, it explores an alternative form for the Doctoral thesis. In addition to connections with visual arts, such as painting and cinema, the experimental project PLATEAU GEHRY_CONNECTIVES includes references to concepts and phenomena from various (...) areas of knowledge revealing distinctive, unusual qualities of Gehry’s creative approach in the production of design artefacts. The thesis documents and discusses means of representation in architectural design fused into the specific creative culture of Frank O. Gehry. It notices that the discourse in architectural theory and practice, often neglects what occurs on a particular molecular level of the architectural design process. It shows that elements of micro-level of design procedures render Gehry’s idiosyncratic design phenomena intelligible and perceptible in a new way. It claims that it has been possible because Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts become perceptibly operational in the interpretation of such phenomena, at the level of elementary units of Gehry’s design procedures. Moreover, through this close-up perspective, the thesis’ investigations identify certain similarities in the operational modes of the architect and the painter. It demonstrates how Gehry, who has anchored his interest in painting, and specifically in what he defined as ‘immediacy in painting,’ was able to transform the practice of architectural drawing from projective to a cognitive one. It also shows, how the architect re-defines the commonly applied projective geometries from passive, arbitrary role to an active agent, and how the architect links drawing practice with the construction process on a new, almost palpable level. While stressing its the manual character, the thesis demonstrates that Gehry’s explorative culture of challenging means of representation employed in architectural design production facilitates the re-disciplining of architecture culminating in the integration of the CATIA system in the design procedures. This study of Gehry’s design actions and strategies can help the reader to understand the significance of experimental and intuitive design practices. The thesis proposes the Deleuzian interpretation of Gehry’s experiments in the aesthetics of design thinking and acting. It renders perceptions of patterns, according to which, other design practices can operate. (shrink)

“Racial capitalism” has surfaced during the past few decades in projects that highlight the production of difference in tandem with the production of capital—usually through violence. Scholars in this tradition typically draw their inspiration—and framework—from Cedric Robinson’s influential 1983 text, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. This article uses the work of Orlando Patterson to highlight some limits of “racial capitalism” as a theoretical project. First, the “racial capitalism” literature rarely clarifies what scholars mean by “race” or (...) “capitalism.” Second, some scholars using this conceptual language treat black subjectivity as a debilitated condition. An alleged byproduct of the Transatlantic slave trade, this debilitated form of black subjectivity derives from an African American exceptionalism that treats slavery as a form of abject status particular to capitalism without providing adequate theoretical justification or historical explanation. By contrast, we demonstrate how Patterson’s insights about property, status, and capital offer an analysis of slavery more attentive to race, gender, sexuality, age, and ability. We close by using the “forensics of capital” to explore the notions of causality and protocols for determining who owes what to whom implicit in Patterson’s concept of “social death.”. (shrink)

This article explores the relationship between deliberative democracy, the Internet, and systems theory’s thoughts on diversity. After introducing Habermas’s theory of deliberative democracy and how diversity fits into it, the article discusses various ideas about whether and how it could work on the Internet. Next, the article looks at research into diversity done in the field of complex adaptive systems, showing that diversity has both good and bad effects, but is clearly preferred for the purpose of survival. The article concludes (...) with an analysis of how the results of systems theory’s study of diversity can assist society in bringing democracy to the Web. (shrink)

In this article, we explore the worldview of the pilgrim and how it relates to the drama of human existence. The worldview of the pilgrim is the starting point in our explorations of the postmodern conundrum and interrelated subjects such as epistemology, ethics, religious symbolism, hospitality and practical life strategies from a narrative and confessional perspective. These elaborations will serve the ultimate goal of this article, which is to contribute to the philosophy of education (including educators and educationists) and consequently (...) to equip individuals with skills and substantial knowledge that would allow them to understand, define and pursue their own life goals as well as to participate with integrity in their community as full-fledged, responsible citizens. (shrink)

The article discusses an actual problem of the contemporary social theory – a problem of post-postmodernism that is the answer to the question: what comes to replace the supposedly outdated postmodernism. Post-postmodernism in an umbrella term that brings together various concepts like digimodernism, automodernism, metamodernism, hypermodernism, supermodernism, etc. One of the replacing postmodernism theories is the French curator and art theorist Nicolas Bourriaud’s concept that was called “altermodern” or “other modernism.” In his previous books Bourriaud proposed to rewrite modernism and, (...) as the result, developed a new theory. The concept appeared in 2009 when Bourriaud presented the exhibition in London, timed to the publication of his manifesto Altermodern, and edited and published the book of collected papers of the same title. Globalization, which opened borders for art, is a central concept of the altermodernism theory. The main terms of altermodern are heterochrony (time diversity) and viatorisation (nomadism). The main social subject of the alternodern era is a free travelling artist, who interprets the meanings of “rewritten” art for the public. They are “rewritten” because Bourriaud proposes to use phenomena and products of past ages to make them work in a new way. However Bourriaud’s concept should be considered critically, as it was formerly done by several researchers. The article proposes a critical review that answers to the question: to what extent the idea of altermodern is heuristic and therefore it could compete with other concepts that abolish postmodern. The author gives a negative answer to this question first of all because altermodern just borrows a lot of elements of the language and apparatus of postmodernism and actually does not offer anything new. (shrink)

In the past twenty years, all the key authors who wrote about the state of postmodernity either began to be engaged in other research areas (Fredric Jameson) or declared that the postmodernism is dead (Linda Hutcheon). Since 2000, when the fatigue from the postmodernism became evident to everyone, various researchers, critics and theorists began to offer their concepts of our era. However, all these theories, emphasizing the change of cultural paradigms, interpret culture traditionally not paying attention to total digitalization and (...) the introduction of new technologies into our lives. However, in two concepts of our time these processes become central. These are the concepts of the digimodern and automodern. The focus of this article is the idea of automodernism, proposed by the American social theorist Robert Samuels in 2007/2009. He believes that our world is characterized by two contradictory tendencies – automation and the desire for autonomy (personal freedom). From his point of view, the former often does not allow to reach the latter due to certain circumstances. Samuels, using the example of a car, a personal computer, the Internet, etc., shows what exactly our culture is in the broadest sense. Analyzing the concept of “digital youth,” he also pays attention to the formation of a new subjectivity of the era of automodernity. Finally, the most interesting part of the concept of automodernism, which is most relevant today, is the criticism of leftwing social and philosophical concepts (Slavoj Žižek, Jameson) and cultural theories (Henry Jenkins). At the end of the article, the author mentions Adam Greenfield’s latest book Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life. Thanks to this book, Samuels’ theory can be verified. (shrink)

This thesis offers a systematic analysis of the ideological structure in the Islamic Republic of Iran through the lens of Lacanian psychoanalytic critique of ideology. The Lacanian emphasis on the libidinal constitution of ideology changes the object of analysis from social reality in its empirical aspects to the unconscious or disavowed conditions sustaining social reality in the Islamic Republic. The overall analysis of this thesis is divided into three interrelated research domains: the first domain of political subjectivity examines how subjectivity (...) in Iran is embedded in the ideological order, as well as how that order was constructed through the 1979 Islamic revolution by tapping into the unconscious agency of political subjectivity; the second theologico-political domain inquires into the form of ideology materialised in the socio-political framework of the Islamic Republic and analyses its libidinal sustainability; the third domain explores the political economy in Iran by conflating its historical and ontological inquiry. The analysis of the three domains helps me to discern the inherent contradictions of the ideological structure in contemporary Iran and the peculiar way these contradictions are mediated. Their mediation conversely ensures the reproduction of ideology on an unconscious level. This thesis therefore explores how ideology in the Islamic Republic of Iran enables a consistent experience of social reality and how subjectivity sustains the ideological order through libidinal investments. (shrink)

In this paper the author explores certain fulfilling personal experiences that he describes as the presencing of space, i.e. the way in which an individual’s spatial involvement may put him or her in contact with reality as a whole. These experiences are investigated from a phenomenological perspective, and the differences between them and other similar experiences, such as that of the sublime or topophilia, are highlighted. A neologism is introduced: topoaletheia to name a distinctive type of spatial experience. This concept (...) may enrich the discussion about our involvement with space in our built environments. (shrink)

Although different phenomena, having dissimilar messages and horizons, between counter-enlightenment, communitarianism and postmodernism there is a consistent common ground. It's about the critical reaction towards modernity, especially concerning its major cultural ethos, the enlightenment. Counter-enlightenment, commonly interpreted in the history of the political thought as one of the main intellectual sources of conservatism, is even more than that. Its influence constantly reverberates on the entire social reflection proper to modernity, inclusively on some important contemporary orientations, as communitarianism or postmodernism. Without (...) giving to this counter-enlightenment influence careful consideration, the social philosophy of communitarianism or of postmodernism may be seen only as an integrant part of the contemporary political left. Nevertheless, beside the emancipatory discourse, aiming to give an equal respect to all cultures, or beside the critical, liberating view, which intends to carry on the progressive ideals, surpassing all dogmas specific to enlightenment universalist rationalism, there is, within communitarianism and postmodernism, a conservative line, which can be understood by knowing their common counter-enlightenment origins. (shrink)

What happens when the memoirs of Soha Bechara, a Lebanese revolutionary, become the raw materials for a late-symbolist playwright? Bechara, her fellow militants, and the interviewers and documentarians who have focused on them produce a complex realist narrative of communist resistance to Lebanese sectarianism and Israeli occupation. But by turning Soha Bechara into Nawal Marwan, Wajdi Mouawad and the culture industry turn an eloquent, militant Antigone into a catatonic, ill-fated Jocasta.

The major objective of this thesis is to provide an alternative to the predominant model of the Western urban home, arguing that it is more detrimental than beneficial to its inhabitants. In order to achieve this, it first explores the development of home through a genealogical analysis. It then considers the concepts with which it is traditionally connected, such as those of identity, safety, privacy and satisfaction, supporting that the idealised home hides numerous issues of concern. In order to form (...) a more comprehensive picture, the thesis draws on different philosophical approaches discussing the idea of home, while it explores a variety of contemporary habitation and home-making practices. The normative and overly-idealised domestic model, promoted in Western urban societies, is presented as detrimental both on a personal and on a social level. Therefore, alternatives are explored in Adorno’s ‘Hotel Room’, Jameson’s ‘Dirty Realism’ and Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘Nomadology’. The lack of viability characterising the abovementioned proposals leads to the examination of the Deleuzoguattarian concept of the Body without Organs; the home as a BwO provides the contemporary agents with the tools to reconstruct an autonomous space where they can recreate their personal discourse and influence the social ground accordingly. Through the analysis of home this thesis explores how and why it has been appropriated by systemic forces and highlights a very serious issue: the fact that our personal space is no longer personal. Simultaneously, a common concern of feminist and post-structuralist background is addressed regarding the process of self-redefinition and the ways to approach it. The response entails a reconstructed autonomous home with a respective influence on the public sphere. (shrink)

Darko Suvin’s Metamorphoses of Science Fiction, first published by Yale University Press in 1979, has been the single most influential work in the history of academic science-fiction studies. As Veronica Hollinger observed: “Metamorphoses is the significant forerunner of all the major examinations of the genre”. Mark Bould and Sherryl Vint make more or less the same point: “Disagreeing with him [Suvin] is a considerable part of SF scholarship—he... set... the terms by which SF has subsequently been studied”. Perhaps not quite (...) so significant for utopian studies, Metamorphoses was nonetheless a crucially important text here too. For the fundamental novelty of its argument lies in the... (shrink)

Purpose. The signification of the theoretical grounds for the conceptual reconstruction of the dichotomy "spirit-body" in the field of postmodern notions in philosophy and culture, the identification of the location of the given dichotomy in the processes of the transition of philosophy from being classical to the postclassical one, simultaneously, culture – to the cultural forms of postmodernity. Theoretical basis. The changing systems of post paradigm relations, radically transforming human life in the postmodern world, represent the obvious transformations of the (...) fundamental conceptual schemes. For postmodern philosophers, the dichotomy "spirit-body" does not mean better interpretation of separate substances any more, but the development of the relationship between mental and physical properties. Feminist philosophers assert that the "spirit-body" opposition occupies the special place among classical dichotomies, as it acquires the key meaning in the patriarchal concepts of masculinity and femininity. In the post modernity, the body and corporality become dominant themes not only in the philosophy and "high" culture, but also in mass culture; at the same time, the emphasis on their common narratives and intertexts testifies to the fundamental transformations that reflect the "condition" of postmodernity. Originality of this research lies in the expose of the specific transformation features of the dichotomy "spirit-body" as a philosophic opposition closely connected with postmodernism and realized in the practices of mass culture. This research is reflectedof the idea of the absoluteness and invariabilityof this duality as thebasicdichotomy of the classical philosophy in its correlation with cultural logic of the postmodernity at the end of the 20 – the beginning of the 21st centuries. Conclusions. With the reinterpretation of the "spirit-body" dichotomy, the body is theorized as a cognitive agent with desires independent of the mind. In postmodernism, the body is the source of charm, and aversion and destruction, and restoration. At the same time, with the growth of the visualization factor and the change in the status of "high" culture, the "turn" in the status of mass culture is created: today both the former and the letter have many common discourses, narratives and intertexts. (shrink)

U članku se ispituju teme i metode kritičke teorije u polju analize rada i s radom povezanih pitanja, a u kontekstu ekonomije postindustrijskog društva. Pri tome se revitalizira francuskog filozofa Jeana Baudrillarda te njegovu teoriju rada koja naglašava simboličku dimenziju rada. Članak ističe važnost Baudrillardovih interpretacija rada putem teorijskih koncepata Imaginarnog, Simboličkog i Realnog, a koje je 1960ih utemeljio francuski filozof i psihoanalitičar Jacques Lacan. Rad kontekstualizira njegove osnovne teze o karakteru rada u postindustrijskom društvu, koje on postavlja krajem sedamdesetih (...) godina, suočavajući ih sa suvremenim kritikama koje, pogotovu nakon ekonomske krize 2008. godine inzistiraju na vraćanju klasičnim pitanjima kritike političke teorije. Mapirajući razlike između definicija simboličkog karaktera rada i materijalističkih interpretacija koje nastaju u nasljeđu Marxove kritike političke ekonomije, članak upozorava na nužnost uključivanja obaju teorijskih paradigmi, spajanja političko-simboličkog i ekonomsko-materijalističkog pristupa. Inzistirajući na važnosti obaju pristupa, pokušavaju se protumačiti prisutne anomalije u doba navodne dematerijalizacije rada, kao što je to paradoksalno povećanje radnih sati nauštrb nasljeđa osmosatnoga radnog vremena. (shrink)

Working from Fredric Jameson’s quote and recognizing his suggestion of a need for ‘the invention and projection of a global cognitive mapping’ as an integral part of what comes after postmodernism,...

Taking cues from Michel Foucault’s late work on ancient cultures of self-care, this article argues that the success of neoliberalism is bound up with an epistemological critique of modernity forged by the movement’s founding theorists. This critique takes aim at three distinct intellectual currents – the socialist, the rationalist, and the pastoral – and thus marks a tripartite break from modern techniques of power and subjectivation. I contend that a Hellenistic model of self-cultivation – exemplified especially in Epicurean, Cynic, and (...) Stoic discourses and scrutinized meticulously by Foucault in his late lectures – becomes reactivated in late twentieth-century American economic and social thought. The second half of the article considers modes of digital writing as “technologies of the self.” Taking the case of “fake news” as my central reference point, I argue that common practices of social media “sharing” constitute an emerging practice of curatorial self-writing that makes one an especially favorable target for neoliberal strategies of social control. (shrink)