Baudrillard was deeply influenced by this new ‘science’ of Semiology, which sought to study the system of language and the ‘life of signs within society’. In semiotics, a sign can be interpreted subjectively, the meaning being something beyond or other than itself. This sign is therefore able to communicate information to the person reading or decoding the sign. Baudrillard builds on the Saussurian dyadic, two-part model of the sign, where the sign is seen as being composed of a (...) signifier (signifiant)- the form that the sign takes, and the signified (signifié)- the concept it represents. Baudrillard’s work on the political economy of the sign attempts to marry semiological and neo-Marxist perspectives, providing an important insight into the power of production and the behavior of consumers. (shrink)

Baudrillard insists in this book that the true aim of globalization is actually the complete liquidation of values, either by consensus or force. The West, furthermore, demands that everyone else play the same game and liquidate their own values, as well. We create a desire in these other cultures to enter history through giving them access to the global market, implementing international institutions, causing national conflicts, and so on, but the problem is that other cultures have not yet even (...) realized the stage of “history” and “reality” that the West has left behind with its descent into ultra-reality. (shrink)

Baudrillard was deeply influenced by this new ‘science’ of Semiology, which sought to study the system of language and the ‘life of signs within society’. In semiotics, a sign can be interpreted subjectively, the meaning being something beyond or other than itself. This sign is therefore able to communicate information to the person reading or decoding the sign. Baudrillard builds on the Saussurian dyadic, two-part model of the sign, where the sign is seen as being composed of a (...) signifier (signifiant)- the form that the sign takes, and the signified (signifié)- the concept it represents. Baudrillard’s work on the political economy of the sign attempts to marry semiological and neo-Marxist perspectives, providing an important insight into the power of production and the behavior of consumers. (shrink)

Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation - Irfan Ajvazi.

Jean Baudrillards Kulturphilosophie läßt sich durch die Behauptung charakterisieren, daß die Medien in der modernen Kultur vorherrschend geworden sind. Seine These, die Medien hätten jeden Bezug zu einer von ihnen unabhängigen Realität verloren, haben zahlreiche Autorinnen und Autoren nihilistisch genannt. Das Zutreffende dieser Kennzeichnung verdankt sich im Wesentlichen einem eingeschränkten, auf das 19. Jahrhundert zurückweisenden Begriff des Nihilismus. Allerdings nimmt Baudrillard auf Phänomene Bezug, die er historisch später verortet und die sich ihrer Struktur nach kategorial von den Funktionen der (...) Medien im 19. Jahrhundert unterscheiden. Es gelingt ihm hierbei nicht, den allgemeinen Realitätsverlust, den er vor allem auf den wachsenden Einfluß von Wissenschaft und Technik im 20. Jahrhundert zurückführt, überzeugend nachzuweisen. -/- Als wolle er diesen Mangel beheben, führt Baudrillard in späteren Schriften weitere Struktureigenschaften der kulturellen Mediendominanz ein. Zu diesen Fortentwicklungen gehört die durch Medienmacht erzeugte „Transparenz“, die nicht zuletzt die restlose Durchsichtigkeit aller Zustände und Prozesse meint. Es ist dieses Merkmal, das Baudrillard 1981 selbst mit einem Nihilismusbegriff in Verbindung bringt. Der Nihilismus der Transparenz beansprucht, das spezifisch Neue der Sinnlosigkeit in zunehmend wissenschafts- und technikbestimmten Gesellschaften zu erfassen. Obwohl sich die Schwächen der Medientheorie in seiner Auffassung des Nihilismus reflektieren, gelingt es ihm, Phänomene der Nichtigkeit zu beschreiben, für die man gute Gründe hat anzunehmen, daß sie sich durch keinen Werte- oder Einstellungswandel mehr aufheben lassen. Um diese Einsicht zu begründen, muß man Baudrillards Medientheorie allerdings gleichsam vom Kopf auf die Füße stellen. Nicht auf einen evidenten, alles umfassenden Realitätsverlust, sondern umgekehrt auf einen Teil der vermutlichen Realitätsgehalte der Medien läßt sich die drohende Ausdehnung der Transparenz zurückführen. (shrink)

Consumer society, by Jean Baudrillard, is a major contribution to contemporary sociology and philosophy, at the height of the Division of Labor Durkheim or The Protestant Ethic and the Ethics of Capitalism Weber.

The reemergence of the question of suicide in the medical context of physician-assisted suicide seems to me one of the most interesting and fertile facets of late modernity. Aside from the disruption which this issue may cause in the traditional juridical relationship between individuals and the state, it may also help to transform the dominant conception of subjectivity that has been erected upon modernity's medicalized order of death. To enhance this disruptive potential, I am going to examine the perspectives on (...) death offered by two contemporary writers: Zygmunt Bauman and Jean Baudrillard. Each of these writers recognizes the centrality of death to modern culture, as Heidegger did, but they also go beyond him in specifying the ways in which death maintains a presence in late modernity, despite efforts to conceal it. In particular, both of these writers recognize the important role that medicine has played in ordering the modern conception of death. After situating these two perspectives in relation to each other, and in relation to Heidegger, who will serve here as a sort of benchmark, I will return to the issue of suicide. Given the differences in their readings of the role that death and medicine play in modern culture, these post-Heideggerians take strikingly different positions on this issue. By engaging these perspectives, I intend not only to point out the tremendous potential which this issue holds for a fundamental rethinking of modern subjectivity, but also reveal some of the dangers that may beset any naive optimism about the right to die. (shrink)

In this thesis I try to evaluate the risks and potentials of modern and archaic myths for human existence in a holistical approach. After Adorno's and Horkheimer's critique that enlightment would still be mythical the positive aspects of myth and ancient religion were - with a few exceptions (i.g. Blumenberg, Eliade) - mostly neglected: In the analysis of Critical Theory myth only serves power, its misuse in fashist and capitalistic societies is inevitable; therefore any hint of mythological structures needs to (...) be destroyed. Even so, myth as one of the first tools of sensemaking had made sure that humanity clings to life through entire history. In the words of Baudrillard and Blumenberg, mythical (and, further on, religious and rationalistic) icons preserves their followers to get in touch with an overwhelming reality. The mythical tills the world as an factual entity and, in the cultural aspect, as an entity shapeable by "our" collective power. With the evidence given of increasing difficulties for finding "Bedeutsamkeit" (Blumenberg) in individual life, the bivalency of myth illustrates a promising oppurtunity for individual and existential sensemaking. (shrink)

Analysis on thoughts of Jean Baudrillard on postmodernism from Indonesian view.

Citation: Christodoulou, Marina. “‘To be dead is an unthinkable anomaly’ Reversed Necropolitics and the Death Imaginary.” Lo Sguardo - rivista di filosofia N. 23, 2017 (I) - Reinventare il reale. Jean Baudrillard (2007-2017) a cura di Eleonora de Conciliis, Enrico Schirò, Daniela Angelucci, pp. 127-137. Articolo sottoposto a peer review. Ricevuto il 14/10/2016. Accettato il 12/01/2017. ISSN: 2036-6558 -/- --------- -/- The concept or the theory of Death in the thought of Jean Baudrillard is not given the particular (...) attention it needs. When one speaks of the thought of Baudrillard, one rarely will mention ‘death’ as one of the keywords of his corpus. I think, though, that it deserves such a key place, for three reasons. Firstly, because the theme of Death is a gargantuan concept in the history of Philosophy and it even emerges with the definition of Philosophy itself, since, at least, Plato. Every philosopher, more or less is preoccupied with it, as an archetypical necessity of both human culture and of philosophy in particular. It is always interesting to see how each philosopher or each person thinks on it, as their thoughts on Death are a departure point and an indication of their whole philosophical system or, for non-philosophers, of their whole way of life. Secondly, it is important to examine this theme in Baudrillard because it inseparably interconnects, explains, and is explained by all the other, key, and the less prominent themes in his philosophy. Baudrillard’s thinking might take new dimensions when viewed through his thoughts on Death. Finally, Baudrillard is considered a difficult thinker, because, unlike other philosophers, he grasps themes which people are used to seeing as the pre-occupation or within the realm of fiction, even science-fiction. I would like to show, using simple language, that his philosophy, especially surrounding the subject of Death, is completely naked of any metaphysical, romanticised, fantastic, or fiction-like properties; it is realistic and political. (shrink)

By slowly dissolving the contrast between necessity and chance we arrive at Leibniz’ Principle of Sufficient Reason, which we trace back to his ideas on sufficient grace. Doing so, the world of things falling and befalling starts to become the engine of appearances and images, something we initially find in Lucretius, then in Virilio and Baudrillard. Why is it that the media crave accident? Because in phenotechnology only the transfer to images counts, not the breaking with the final cause (...) of technical objects. From the perspective of media, nothing goes wrong. The media constitute a realm of technical grace, the gentle force that makes brutal events happen. (shrink)

This paper explores the ontology of the beautiful from the standpoint of competing logics, i.e., ways of speaking the Logos. The first is a theo-logic centered on the analogy of being, which uniquely regards reality as Logos—a structured hierarchy of the real, a ‘Who’ rather than a ‘What’—which provides an ontology of beauty as desirable being, and ultimately, the desirable Being. The correct response to reality is thus holiness, the sacral separateness of God imparted to, and thus borrowed by and (...) reflected through, creatures. The competing logic is what Baudrillard calls the simulacral, in which the real is suspended by its own model; the image exposes the poverty of the real and causes it to disappear altogether, revealing a transaesthetics of banality and indifference, a totalizing counterfeit of the real that is beyond real difference, beyond Logos—and therefore beyond structured hierarchy, beyond beauty and ugliness. The simulated real is thus the world of the spectacle, the world as product of consumer gaze. A way to repudiate the simulation, the murderous image, to uncover the real always and already grounding the image is to return to Logos: to emplace the image in a hierarchically relational context within Logos. The upshot is that, when so emplaced, the gaze of the image tells a different story: the world is not one of consumerist spectacle but of mutual self-gifting. Amidst the barbarism of the dislocated consumer ego, we can conscientiously commune with neighbor and turn away from what Augustine termed "fellowship with the demons.". (shrink)

The cultural practice of flirtation has been multifariously scrutinized in various disciplines including sociology, psychology, psychoanalysis and literary studies. This paper frames the field of flirtation in Bourdieuian terms, while focusing narrowly on the semiotic economy that is defining of this cultural field. Moreover, seduction, as a uniquely varied form of discourse that is responsible for producing the cultural field of flirtation, is posited as the missing link for understanding why flirtation may be a peculiar case of non-habitus, contrary to (...) the received notion of cultural field as set of goaloriented practices and actionable habituses. This argument is pursued by highlighting the endemic traits of ambivalence and constant reversibility of signs or multimodal semiotic constellations in the discourse of seduction, while seeking to demonstrate that seduction, and by implication the cultural field of flirtation, does not necessarily partake of a teleological framework that is geared towards the consummation of sexual desire. This thesis is illustrated by recourse to a scene from the blockbuster ‘Hitch’. (shrink)

Günther Anders offers one of the first phenomenological analyses of broadcast radio and its transformation of the contemporary experience of music. Anders also develops a reflection on its political consequences as he continues his reflection in a discussion of radio and newsreel, film and television in his 1956 ‘The World as Phantom and Matrix’. A reflection on the consequences of this transformation brings in Friedrich Kittler’s reflection on radio and precision bombing. A further reflection on Jean Baudrillard’s notion of (...) ‘speech without response’ permits a review of digital culture and the self-creation of the digital consumer absorbed in what Anders named a schizo-topia, that is, today, an autistic culture of distraction, displacement, and self-driven surveillance. (shrink)

Can new technology enhance purpose-driven, democratic dialogue in groups, governments, and societies? Online Deliberation: Design, Research, and Practice is the first book that attempts to sample the full range of work on online deliberation, forging new connections between academic research, technology designers, and practitioners. Since some of the most exciting innovations have occurred outside of traditional institutions, and those involved have often worked in relative isolation from each other, work in this growing field has often failed to reflect the full (...) set of perspectives on online deliberation. This volume is aimed at those working at the crossroads of information/communication technology and social science, and documents early findings in, and perspectives on, this new field by many of its pioneers. -/- CONTENTS: -/- Introduction: The Blossoming Field of Online Deliberation (Todd Davies, pp. 1-19) -/- Part I - Prospects for Online Civic Engagement -/- Chapter 1: Virtual Public Consultation: Prospects for Internet Deliberative Democracy (James S. Fishkin, pp. 23-35) -/- Chapter 2: Citizens Deliberating Online: Theory and Some Evidence (Vincent Price, pp. 37-58) -/- Chapter 3: Can Online Deliberation Improve Politics? Scientific Foundations for Success (Arthur Lupia, pp. 59-69) -/- Chapter 4: Deliberative Democracy, Online Discussion, and Project PICOLA (Public Informed Citizen Online Assembly) (Robert Cavalier with Miso Kim and Zachary Sam Zaiss, pp. 71-79) -/- Part II - Online Dialogue in the Wild -/- Chapter 5: Friends, Foes, and Fringe: Norms and Structure in Political Discussion Networks (John Kelly, Danyel Fisher, and Marc Smith, pp. 83-93) -/- Chapter 6: Searching the Net for Differences of Opinion (Warren Sack, John Kelly, and Michael Dale, pp. 95-104) -/- Chapter 7: Happy Accidents: Deliberation and Online Exposure to Opposing Views (Azi Lev-On and Bernard Manin, pp. 105-122) -/- Chapter 8: Rethinking Local Conversations on the Web (Sameer Ahuja, Manuel Pérez-Quiñones, and Andrea Kavanaugh, pp. 123-129) -/- Part III - Online Public Consultation -/- Chapter 9: Deliberation in E-Rulemaking? The Problem of Mass Participation (David Schlosberg, Steve Zavestoski, and Stuart Shulman, pp. 133-148) -/- Chapter 10: Turning GOLD into EPG: Lessons from Low-Tech Democratic Experimentalism for Electronic Rulemaking and Other Ventures in Cyberdemocracy (Peter M. Shane, pp. 149-162) -/- Chapter 11: Baudrillard and the Virtual Cow: Simulation Games and Citizen Participation (Hélène Michel and Dominique Kreziak, pp. 163-166) -/- Chapter 12: Using Web-Based Group Support Systems to Enhance Procedural Fairness in Administrative Decision Making in South Africa (Hossana Twinomurinzi and Jackie Phahlamohlaka, pp. 167-169) -/- Chapter 13: Citizen Participation Is Critical: An Example from Sweden (Tomas Ohlin, pp. 171-173) -/- Part IV - Online Deliberation in Organizations -/- Chapter 14: Online Deliberation in the Government of Canada: Organizing the Back Office (Elisabeth Richard, pp. 177-191) -/- Chapter 15: Political Action and Organization Building: An Internet-Based Engagement Model (Mark Cooper, pp. 193-202) -/- Chapter 16: Wiki Collaboration Within Political Parties: Benefits and Challenges (Kate Raynes-Goldie and David Fono, pp. 203-205) -/- Chapter 17: Debian’s Democracy (Gunnar Ristroph, pp. 207-211) -/- Chapter 18: Software Support for Face-to-Face Parliamentary Procedure (Dana Dahlstrom and Bayle Shanks, pp. 213-220) -/- Part V - Online Facilitation -/- Chapter 19: Deliberation on the Net: Lessons from a Field Experiment (June Woong Rhee and Eun-mee Kim, pp. 223-232) -/- Chapter 20: The Role of the Moderator: Problems and Possibilities for Government-Run Online Discussion Forums (Scott Wright, pp. 233-242) -/- Chapter 21: Silencing the Clatter: Removing Anonymity from a Corporate Online Community (Gilly Leshed, pp. 243-251) -/- Chapter 22: Facilitation and Inclusive Deliberation (Matthias Trénel, pp. 253-257) -/- Chapter 23: Rethinking the ‘Informed’ Participant: Precautions and Recommendations for the Design of Online Deliberation (Kevin S. Ramsey and Matthew W. Wilson, pp. 259-267) -/- Chapter 24: PerlNomic: Rule Making and Enforcement in Digital Shared Spaces (Mark E. Phair and Adam Bliss, pp. 269-271) -/- Part VI - Design of Deliberation Tools -/- Chapter 25: An Online Environment for Democratic Deliberation: Motivations, Principles, and Design (Todd Davies, Brendan O’Connor, Alex Cochran, Jonathan J. Effrat, Andrew Parker, Benjamin Newman, and Aaron Tam, pp. 275-292) -/- Chapter 26: Online Civic Deliberation with E-Liberate (Douglas Schuler, pp. 293-302) -/- Chapter 27: Parliament: A Module for Parliamentary Procedure Software (Bayle Shanks and Dana Dahlstrom, pp. 303-307) -/- Chapter 28: Decision Structure: A New Approach to Three Problems in Deliberation (Raymond J. Pingree, pp. 309-316) -/- Chapter 29: Design Requirements of Argument Mapping Software for Teaching Deliberation (Matthew W. Easterday, Jordan S. Kanarek, and Maralee Harrell, pp. 317-323) -/- Chapter 30: Email-Embedded Voting with eVote/Clerk (Marilyn Davis, pp. 325-327) -/- Epilogue: Understanding Diversity in the Field of Online Deliberation (Seeta Peña Gangadharan, pp. 329-358). -/- For individual chapter downloads, go to odbook.stanford.edu. (shrink)

Globalization allegedly constitutes one of the most used and abused concepts in the contemporary academic and lay lexicons alike. This paper pursues a deconstructive avenue for canvassing the semiotic economy of cultural globalization. The variegated ways whereby ideology has been framed in different semiotic perspectives (Peircean, structuralist, post-structuralist, neo-Marxist) are laid out. By engaging with the post-structuralist semiotic terrain, cultural globalization is identified with a transition from Baudrillard’s Political Economy of Signs towards a spectral ideology where signs give way (...) to traces of différance. Subsequently, the process whereby globalization materializes is conceived as a social hauntology. In this context, global citizens engage in a constant retracing of the meaning of signs of globalization that crystallize as translocally flowing ideoscapes and mediascapes. The propounded thesis is exemplified by recourse to cultural consumption phenomena from the domains of cinematic discourse, computer-gaming, food and social gaming. (shrink)

In the present interview, Jacob Rogozinski elucidates the main concepts and theses he developed in his latest book dedicated to the issue of modern jihadism. On this occasion, he explains his disagreements with other philosophical (Badiou, Baudrillard, Žižek) and anthropological (Girard) accounts of Islamic terrorism. Rogozinski also explains that although jihadism betrays Islam, it nonetheless has everything to do with Islam. Eventually, he describes his own philosophical journey which led him from a phenomenological study of the ego and the (...) flesh to the study of past (witch-hunts, French Reign of Terror) and contemporary (jihadism) terror apparatuses. (shrink)

This paper explores the events surrounding a string of robberies from the homes of young celebrities living in Los Angeles County by a group of teenagers referred to by the media as “The Bling Ring.” It argues that the group demonstrates the intersections of desire and materiality under the conditions of a culture driven by idolization of the celebrity, referring to the works of Jean Baudrillard, Pierre Bourdieu, and French collective Tiqqun. It further examines the events as a moment (...) where subjects were able to escape the life-narratives imposed upon them by the State. Rather than adhering to the norms of regular adolescent life, reproduced and enforced through what Michael Shapiro identifies as “national-time,” members of the Bling Ring endeavored to create their own lives according to what I refer to as “celebrity-time,” revealing processes of becoming in the work of Gilles Deleuze, and plasticity in that of Catherine Malabou. (shrink)

This paper presents a close analysis of Steve Pyke’s famous series of portraits of philosophers. By comparing his photographs to other well-known series of portraits and to other portraits of philosophers we will seek a better understanding of the distinctiveness and fittingness of Pyke’s project. With brief nods to Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, G.W.F. Hegel, and Arthur Schopenhauer and an extensive critical investigation of Cynthia Freeland’s ideas on portraiture in general and her reading of Steve Pyke’s portraits in particular, (...) this paper will also aim to make a contribution to the philosophical debate on portraiture. (shrink)

Max Weber examined Chinese society and European Puritanism at the beginning of the Twentieth Century in order to find out why capitalism did not develop in China. He found that Confucianism and Puritanism are mutually exclusive, which enabled him to oppose both in the form of two different kinds of rationalism. I attempt neither to refute nor to confirm the Weberian thought model. Instead I show that a similar model applies to Jean Baudrillard’s vision of American culture, a culture (...) that he determined in terms of hyperreality. Instead of rejecting Weber’s thoughts right away, I give Weber’s model a further push and show that through a further twist that “Western culture” has received within particular American constellations, Weber’s understanding of Confucianism and Baudrillard’s understanding of American civilization manifest amazing similarities. (shrink)

In his 2004 article “Hannah Arendt and Jean Baudrillard: Pedagogy in the Consumer Society,” Trevor Norris bemoans the degree to which contemporary education’s focus can increasingly be described as primarily nurturing “consumers in training.” He goes on to add that the consequences of such “mindless” consumerism is that it “erodes democratic life, reduces education to the reproduction of private accumulation, prevents social resistance from expressing itself as anything other than political apathy, and transforms all human relations into commercial transactions (...) of calculated exchange.” This, then, is the challenge of the age: to articulate the sort of education that might prompt our youngsters to imagine a genuine alternative to this consumer madness—a challenge that the authors of this paper attempt to tackle. (shrink)

In this essay, I present an alternative philosophical approach to meta-curating. While the debate surrounding the meta-curating of content often centers around technology like post-digital art, I prefer to take a broader perspective and examine its ontological implications. I consider the realist or anti-realist assumptions of meta-curating through Jean Baudrillard’s concept of seduction and Giorgio Agamben’s idea of spectrality. Both simulacrum and spectrality tend to support an anti-realist approach to meta-curating where the value of the object is made fragile (...) when constantly predetermined by a superficially seductive or spectrally floating context. Against meta-curating as anti-realist, I argue that meta-curation is realist. As a case, the seductive and the spectral in Zaha Hadid’s Morpheus in Macao demonstrate that meta-curating does not completely disregard, but rather raises the question of how to establish an antifragile realism prompted by an architectural object. (shrink)

In this article, the author examines different theories and approaches to mass movements in the historical process and their impact on the condition of Western culture. In the short introduction, the main historical, cultural and philosophical origins of the mass movements from antiquity to present time are described. This paper examines the question why the social and cultural influence of the man of mass is difficult to predict. To answer this question, the author demonstrates the continuing transition from the psychology (...) of the crowd to the structure of mass instinct and collective interaction. The first part exposes general psychological characteristics of the mob according to the ideas of Gustave Le Bon (1841–1931). Le Bon describes masses as emotional, irresponsible, uncritical and conservative, although marks heroism and sacrifice as their positive manifestations. In the second part, the author reflects upon the perspective of Gabriel Tard (1843–1904) on this problem. Tard’s term “public opinion” deals with the representatives who – while living in separation – participate in the mass communication. In the third part, attestations of the mass such as humility, conformism and obsession are investigated based on the ideas of Sigmund Freud (1856–1939). The next point of the article is devoted to Jose Ortega y Gasset’s (1883–1955) concept of the revolt of masses. Ortega captures the ambivalence of masses who express the power ambition and indifference to culture. From the point of view of Hannah Arendt (1906–1975), masses become terrible, self-satisfied, atomized, unstructured and anonymous. However, Elias Canetti (1905–1994) defines masses as compressed and scattered, closed and open, fast and slow. Yet different parameters of the masses one can find in Siegfried Kracauer’s (1889–1966) writing – namely aesthetics, technicism, ritual. Finally, in the last part, the author appeals to Jean Baudrillard’s (1929–2007) approach to the problem who declares that masses became silent and indistinct. (shrink)

In this paper I point to the degraded value of hope in the contemporary digital world and discuss the dangers of this transformation. Hope constitutes one of the basic drives that sustains vitality in the human species. Especially contemporary philosophers such as Hume, Kant, and Bloch, among others, consider hope from a philosophical perspective and despite their differences, they agree on the overall importance of hope as one of the fundamental motivations of humans towards a future life that makes striving (...) possible. However, in the contemporary world, starting with the film industry as Adorno and Horkheimer stated, and later advanced by social media practices, hope becomes solely a hope of fame. This desire for fame is such that, as Baudrillard anticipated before the widespread use of the internet and the emergence of social media, a panoptical system is no longer required as people share their private life publicly, 'hoping' that they gain more followers, likes and attention. People exhibit 'glamorous', 'beautiful', and 'delicious' moments that constrain hope to one dimension and disconnect it from reality. From these points, I argue that what the contemporary world presents is a passive, negative hope that marks the loss of hope which should be productive and transformative. (shrink)

HISTÓRIA DA SOCIOLOGIA: O DESENVOLVIMENTO DA SOCIOLOGIA I -/- A SOCIOLOGIA CONTEMPORÂNEA -/- HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY: THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIOLOGY I THE SOCIOLOGY CONTEMPORANY -/- Emanuel Isaque Cordeiro da Silva – IFPE-BJ, CAP-UFPE e UFRPE. E-mails: [email protected] e [email protected] WhatsApp: (82)98143-8399. -/- PREMISSA -/- Se até a década de 1960 podia-se falar em uma Sociologia dividida por países, após essa época, tendo em vista um processo significativo de circulação de informações pelos mais variados meios de comunicação, pode-se dizer que os (...) principais cientistas sociais se tornaram globalizados, assim como a literatura sociológica. As questões sociais, que até então podiam estar localizadas em países ou em blocos de países, também se tornaram mundializadas, e vários pensadores passaram a refletir sobre temas chamados de pós-modernos, hipermodernos ou simplesmente contemporâneos, e que afetam um país, uma região ou todo o mundo. A Sociologia contemporânea, porém, mantém uma relação significativa com as grandes vertentes da Sociologia anterior: • a marxista ou histórico-estrutural, com suas variações; • a durkheimiana ou funcionalista, com o desenvolvimento de um neofuncionalismo; • a weberiana ou compreensiva, com o desenvolvimento da fenomenologia e da hermenêutica; • a teórica e pragmática estadunidense, com variadas linhas. Além dessas vertentes, pensadores como Jean-Gabriel de Tarde e Georg Simmel, que estavam um tanto esquecidos, pelo menos no Brasil, em razão da ênfase em Émile Durkheim, num caso, e em Max Weber, em outro, retomaram seus lugares de destaque. Essas vertentes inspiraram outros tantos pensadores, que – refletindo sobre a realidade em que vivem, mesclando ou não contribuições de diferentes linhas teóricas e formulando uma série de conceitos – demonstram as possibilidades e a diversidade do pensamento sociológico e fazem a Sociologia avançar muito no processo de compreensão da realidade contemporânea. A combinação de diversas vertentes teóricas torna difícil fazer qualquer enquadramento ou mesmo tentar classificar determinados autores. Muitos analistas veem nisso uma crise de paradigmas na Sociologia contemporânea. Essa “crise” poderia ser entendida do ponto de vista epistemológico; entretanto, sempre houve diversidade de epistemologias na Sociologia. Acreditamos que essa diversidade epistemológica, de teorias, de objetos e de métodos, concorrentes ou não, na explicação de fenômenos sociais deve ser vista como indicativo de vigor, e não de decadência. Por fim, indico a seguir, em ordem alfabética, alguns dos pensadores e sociólogos contemporâneos cujo trabalho tem dado especial contribuição à Sociologia desenvolvida no Brasil: Alain Touraine (1925-), Anthony Giddens (1938-), Axel Honneth (1949-), Boaventura de Sousa Santos (1940-), David Harvey (1935-), Edgard Morin (1921-), François Dubet (1946), Gilles Lipovetsky (1944-), Howard S. Becker (1928-), Immanuel Wallerstein (1930-), István Mészáros (1930-2017), Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007), Jürgen Habermas (1929-), Manuel Castells (1942-), Marshall Bermann (1940-2013), Michael Löwy (1938-), Michel Maffesoli (1944-), Néstor García Canclini (1939-), Niklas Luhmann (1927-1998), Norbert Elias (1897-1990), Peter Ludwig Berger (1929-2017), Ralph Dahrendorf (1929-2009), Raymond Boudon (1934-2013), Richard Sennett (1943-), Serge Moscovici (1928 -2014), Thomas Luckmann (1927-2016), Ulrich Beck (1944-2015) e Zygmunt Bauman (1925-2017). -/- REFERENCIAL TEÓRICO -/- CUIN, C. H.; GRESLE, F. História da Sociologia. Trad. Roberto Leal Ferreira. São Paulo: Ensaio, 1994. -/- NERY, M. C. R. Sociologia contemporânea. 1ª ed. Curitiba: IESDE, 2007. -/- NOVA, S. V. Introdução a Sociologia. 6ª ed. São Paulo: Atlas, 2004. -/- SILVA, A. et al. Sociologia em movimento. 2ª ed. São Paulo: Moderna, 2016. -/- SBS - Sociedade Brasileira de Sociologia PUCRS - PPG em Ciências Sociais Avenida Ipiranga, 6681 - Partenon CEP: 90619-900 - Porto Alegre, RS [email protected] Emanuel Isaque Cordeiro da Silva © 2019 -/- Estimule a criatividade, respeite o direito autoral. (shrink)

Tateando as raí­zes do arcabouço da perspectivação marxista, o artigo em questão, detendo-se inicialmente nas fronteiras da circunscrição do trabalho, empreende uma leitura que pretende pôr em relevo a inter-relação que envolve o movimento do pensamento materialista dialético e o contexto sócio-histórico-cultural, do qual emerge os eixos paradigmáticos de "modos de produção" e "luta de classes", em suma, que, sustentando a interpretação de uma realidade dita concreta, tanto quanto conseqüencialmente a proposta da sua (re)construção, embora em nome da violência, reclamam (...) um –metabolismo- que suscite a essência que escapa aos liames epidérmicos da ideologia, tendo em vista o risco que representa a perda de densidade da constitutividade social (como o diagnostica Baudrillard) que, refém do hiper-realismo que caracteriza a vivencialidade pós-moderna, –vomita- qualquer silhueta de consciência, não se inclinando senão para o horizonte da indiferença, como sintomatiza o texto da epí­grafe, que justifica, enfim, a recuperação do significado do marxismo, que Althusser defende e que converge, pois, para o acontecimento que se impõe na fala bourdieusiana: "O que o mundo social fez, o mundo social pode, armado deste saber, desfazer". O tí­tulo do artigo supõe o caráter emergencial que o referido processo demanda. (shrink)

Cadillac, sacs Louis Vuitton, montres Rolex, jacuzzis, caviar et champagne Dom Perignon : ces biens sont indéniablement luxueux. Au contraire, l’oxygène, le travail rémunéré ou l’eau ne sont pas considérés comme des luxes. L’histoire de l’économie regorge de biens qui ont perdu ou acquis un caractère luxueux (par exemple, le café, le thé ou le cacao). Qu’est-ce que le luxe ? La question de l’essence du luxe a été négligée par les philosophes qui se sont plutôt intéressés à la question (...) de la valeur morale du luxe. Nous débuterons par formuler la conception classique du luxe qui prévaut en économie : les objets luxueux sont des biens non nécessaires, c’est-à-dire superflus. La superfluité du luxe est analysée en termes d’accès aux biens: un bien est superflu lorsqu’il n’est accessible qu’à une minorité privilégiée. Cette définition camoufle deux conceptions distinctes du luxe : le luxe comme superfluité et le luxe comme privilège. Notre analyse révèlera que chacune de ces conceptions s’avère problématique. Nous explorerons ensuite une approche sémiotique du luxe en termes de symbole de la classe privilégiée. Nous conclurons en esquissant une nouvelle théorie : le luxe est l’extraordinaire dans l’ordinaire. (shrink)

This dissertation aims to show the philosophical content of the ‘society of spectacle’ concept, which was elaborated by a French thinker from the second part of the 20th century, Guy Debord. The study achieves this aim by means of the history of philosophy, analyzing this concept in the context of previous and contemporary philosophical ideas. Analysis, the structural method, the hermeneutic method of interpretation, and the comparative method are prime research methods. The philosophical part of Guy Debord’s legacy is underexplored, (...) so the dissertation helps to make significant progress in its exploration, because it sheds light on the key concepts of this theoretician. -/- The topic is divided into three themes discussed in the corresponding chapters. In the first chapter the research discusses the literature on the ‘society of spectacle’ and the proper methodology for exploring the philosophical content of this concept. In the next chapter the research covers the ontological basis of this concept in the framework of the history of philosophy, and in the third chapter the study focuses on the historical and philosophical research of the portion of the content of the concept which expresses Debord’s social and political philosophy. -/- The dissertation argues that the ‘society of spectacle’ concept is rooted in Guy Debord’s ideas about discrete space and the specific ontological status of ‘image’ as a substitute for reality. Thoughts in the area of ontology distinguish Guy Debord’s concept from similar ideas of other authors; for instance, from Roland Barthes’ theories. On the contrary, the ontological basis of the ‘society of spectacle’ places this concept in close quarters with Jean Baudrillard and Jacques Derrida’s ideas about space and reality. The dissertation particularly argues for the conceptual proximity of G. Debord’s notion of ‘image’ with Jean Baudrillard’s notion of ‘simulacrum’, and also of G. Debord’s notion of ‘creating of images’ with Jacques Derrida’s notion of ‘deconstruction.’ The study then argues that G. Debord’s ‘society of spectacle’ concept is a more radical interpretation of the irrationality of social behavior than similar concepts of thinkers such as Karl Marx, Herbert Marcuse, and Paul-Michel Foucault. Moreover, the analysis shows that G. Debord’s ‘society of spectacle’ concept is a result of a long development of philosophical ideas which compare world, society or cognitive processes with spectacle throughout all main periods of the history of Western philosophy, primarily its modern period. -/- In contemporary research literature on G. Debord’s theoretical legacy, the dissertation primarily contributes the new idea that Debord’s thoughts have an ontological basis that opens new vistas for further researching their content and explaining their influence on contemporary culture. (shrink)

This is my (Subhasis Chattopadhyay's) draft of PhD pre-submission. Dr. Scriver has (had) put it up online in her blog and I found it today, that is 1:06 pm, 28th May, 2017. I am grateful to her since intellectual ideas can otherwise be hijacked. She has done a wonderful editorial job.

O presente artigo busca analisar como o conceito de massas é analisado na filosofia dita pós-moderna. Usando a intersecção entre Filosofia da Linguagem e Filosofia Política, o conceito se metamorfoseia em diversos autores (Jean-François Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze) para desembocar naqueles que trabalham o conceito atualmente em filosofia: Michael Hardt e Antonio Negri.

for a better literature, to understand literary tradition in Portugal.

One after Other, Legionella and Covid have marked everyday life on Portugal and on the world in the last two-there years, creating a kind of vão (bay), rebaixamento, in the moeur of society and individuals.

mixed bodies and mixed desires and pertinences.

from phenomenic studies to an aspect of a grain in a Win Wenders film or a butterfly on a wheal.

An interview exploring the complexity of contemporary French philosophical atheism, in the light of Difficult Atheism: Post-Theological Thinking in Badiou, Nancy and Meillassoux (Edinburgh UP, 2011).