The article explores the place of women and migrants in Italian Neorealist and New Migrant cinema, arguing that New Migrant cinema continues and reworks key Neorealist tropes and tendencies. It intends to render explicit how an ensemble of films challenge the stereotypes concerning gender, national and cultural identities. Among the figures that are scrutinized are the borgatari, extracomunitari, popolane and terrone. Its main objective is to demonstrate how the cinematic expression of these figures in Italian Neorealist (...) and New Migrant cinema enhanced the reinvention of italianità and the generalised understanding of gender. It also aims to explain why the cross-fertilisation between migration studies, urban studies and gender studies is indispensable for comprehending this reinvention. Particular emphasis is placed on the shared interest of Roberto Rossellini’s Roma città aperta and Vittorio De Sica’s Il tetto in the plight over housing and the special character of the urban landscape of Rome. The article also sheds light on certain common concerns of Italian Neorealist and New Migrant cinema, especially as far as national and gender narratives are concerned. Pivotal for the reflections developed here are the roles of Anna Magnani in Roberto Rossellini’s Roma città aperta, Luchino Visconti’s Bellissima and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Mamma Roma. (shrink)

Thomas Elsaesser’s recent scholarship has examined the “mind-game film”, a phenomenon in Hollywood that is broadly characterised by multi-platform storytelling, paratextual narrative feedback loops, nonlinear storytelling, and unreliable character perspectives. While “mind-game” or “puzzle” films have become a contentious subject amongst post-cinema scholars concerned with Hollywood storytelling, what is to be said of contemporary European independent cinema? Elsaesser’s timely publication, European Cinema and Continental Philosophy, examines an amalgam of politically inclined European auteurs to resolve this query. Elsaesser (...) concedes that there exists a phenomenological confluence between the mind-game film and contemporary European cinema. For instance, both produce characters afflicted by productive pathologies, designating new socially useful forms of agency and identity. One only needs to consult the amnesiac protagonist M (Markku Peltola) in Aki Kaurismäki’s The Man Without a Past (Mies vailla menneisyyttä, 2002) or, as regards Lars von Trier’s cinema, Beth (Emily Watson) in Breaking the Waves (1996), Selma (Björk) in Dancer in the Dark (2000), “She” (Charlotte Gainsbourg) in Antichrist (2009) or Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) in Nymphomaniac (2013) to evince this overlap. However, this book is more concerned with performative self-contradictions, whereby cinema-as-enunciator is put under erasure, thus aggravating the inherent discrepancies troubling Europe today. Elsaesser, indeed, evaluates a growing general disaffection with politics, the rise of populist nationalism and far-right fringe parties, as well as an increasing population of economic migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. (shrink)

ArgumentIn 1895 when the Lumière brothers unveiled their cinematographic camera, many scientists were elated. Scientists hoped that the machine would fulfill a desire that had driven research for nearly half a century: that of capturing the world in its own image. But their elation was surprisingly short-lived, and many researchers quickly distanced themselves from the new medium. The cinematographic camera was soon split into two machines, one for recording and one for projecting, enabling it to further escape from the laboratory. (...) The philosopher Henri Bergson joined scientists, such as Etienne-Jules Marey, who found problems with the new cinematographic order. Those who had worked to make the dream come true found that their efforts had been subverted. This essay focuses on the desire to build a cinematographic camera, with the purpose of elucidating how dreams and reality mix in the development of science and technology. It is about desired machines and their often unexpected results. The interplay between what “is” (the technical), what “ought” (the ethical), and what “could” be (the fantastical) drives scientific research. (shrink)

In Western societies many immigrants live in difficult social and working conditions. Together with other factors, this state of affairs represents a risk for the well being of their children. This article will consider the principle risk factors for child psychopathology and/or distress, with a distinction between temporary and permanent factors and with a peculiar attention to the interplay between risk and protective factors. Risk factors can be ordered in cultural, social, familiar/parental and individual factors. Some of these are general (...) risk factors, applying to child and adolescent psychopathology and distress independently from the status of immigrants’ offspring. Other factors are specific of migration, some of them being related to: a) different ways of immigrated families to situate themselves within the host society ; b) cultural/familiar attitudes in child’s nurture and education; c) the family role of women as well as factors specific of the pregnancy period in immigrants; d) the ability of the school system to enhance and support children’s abilities to integrate within the new society; e) the political/bureaucratic facilitation/impediment to the regularization of VISA, with the consequent effect on the sense of identity/rejection within/from the host society. In conclusion, the programs for monitoring immigrants’ living and health conditions should also include: the assessment of parental skills, the dynamic indicators of risk and protection indexes, the assessment of living conditions and social school environment, with a careful attention to those early signs of discomfort that might precede possible later onset of psychopathology and/or social distress. (shrink)

This chapter examines the relation between citizenship and orientalism under the new conditions of indebtedness resulting from austerity. Taking its departure from a condition of precarity under debt economy, the crisis of Europe is described as the anxiety produced by a reversal of those paradigms that have sustained the image of Europe so far. This reversal coincides with a return in Europe of that which for a long time was ejected outside in order for Europe itself to be constituted as (...) a unified symbolic reality. The chapter illustrates how this new economy has exposed a certain ‘disorienting’ effect of austerity, contributing to rekindling the ambiguities of Europe and therefore reconfiguring the image of the European self against its others. It concludes that this reconfiguration forms the background against which a new relationship between citizenship and orientalism in contemporary Europe should be examined. (shrink)

Migrant women are often stereotyped. Some scholars associate the feminization of migration with domestic work and criticize the “care drain” as a new form of imperialism that the First World imposes on the Third World. However, migrant women employed as domestic workers in Northern America and Europe represent only 2% of migrant women worldwide and cannot be seen as characterizing the “feminization of migration”. Why are migrant domestic workers overestimated? This paper explores two possible sources of (...) bias. The first is sampling: conclusions about “care drain” are often generalized from small samples of domestic workers. The second stems from the affect heuristic: imagining children left behind by migrant mothers provokes strong feelings of injustice which trump other considerations. The paper argues that neither source of bias is unavoidable and finds evidence of gender stereotypes in the “care drain” construal. (shrink)

(This is one of the essays to be included in a book examining the causes of day-to-day strife in the populations of modern democracies vying to live and assert the freedoms promised to them by systems of governance supposed and expected to represent them.) -/- The emigrant / immigrant / migrant makes a conscious, relatively difficult decision to exchange what s/he knows for what is not known at all but in promise. The choice is often stark and carries with (...) it the imposition of restrictions on what will be possible in terms of existing customs, culture, and direct involvement with friends and family, and signifies a leap of faith into what appears to be a better, more prosperous, happier future. -/- At times, such choice is unavoidable, others it turns out to be a gamble of sorts, but, no matter what the cause, reason, or desire underlying an act of migration away from what the emigrant has known, it never turns out to be what was expected and no amount of preparation allows the emigrant to anticipate what will in fact occur. Migration is the founding of a new life in all the aspects of the emigrant’s existence. (shrink)

Over the last thirty years, once staunchly film history scholars such as Thomas Elsaesser, Jane Gaines, Siegfried Zielinski, André Gaudreault and Benoît Turquety (to name just a few) have abandoned history for historiography and film studies for media archaeology. Considering the heightened attention given to kulturtechnik (Siegert), the database as a dominant symbolic metaphor,1 and the decentered networked tenants of the postmodern global present, cinema is taking on the characteristics of new media, existing in increasingly intertextual space. Thus, the (...) term “post-cinema” has been co-opted as a viable intermediary that accounts for new media conditions, as cinema is no longer emblematic of our cultural climate. It was once presaged in 1992 that “[t]he end of the cinema truly sounds the death knell of the ultimate metaphysical adventure of Dasein. In the twilight of post-cinema, of which we are seeing the beginning, human quasi-existence, now stripped of any metaphysical hypostasis and deprived of any theological model, will have to seek its proper generic consistency elsewhere.” Accordingly, we are no longer “moviegoing animals” who seek images of ourselves among a collective in the dark but, rather, users interfacing within a network of moving images. By locating post-cinema within the semblance of social media, we are allocated a newfound series of theoretical interventions, the most marked of which is that of media archeology vis-à-vis dialectical materialism. This is a lens through which Brian Winston has recently deftly decried Virtual Reality’s “empathy machine” utopic illusionism, bolstered by Chris Milk and a slew of neurohumanities researchers, steadily maintaining that the fundamental myth of “technologies of seeing” is in disguising “their artifice, their cultural formation and their ideological import.” However, this approach, which illuminates the bifurcation between Max Horkheimer/Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin, neglects what Benjamin identified as occurring to the work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility—a shift from a technology’s “cult value,” associated with the unique work, to its “exhibition value,” associated with the social act of viewing as part of a mass. Speaking to this divarication, Benjamin Barber, in Strong Democracy, foresaw new media’s two-fold potential—as they are organized and networked, new media and communications technologies possess the possibility to both energize citizen information and political participation but, simultaneously, to supplement the deterioration of public debate. As evinced by Mark Adrejevic’s concept of Infoglut, this two-pronged possibility has only been exacerbated by the interlocking relationship between the advent of a “glut” of information, post-truth politics, the demise of symbolic efficiency, and a renewed focus on the role of affect and emotion as “alternative modalities for thinking about the role of communication in a post-referential era.” Manuel Castells qualifies Barber’s pessimism, noting that the Internet can “be an appropriate platform for informed, interactive politics, stimulating political participation.. […] beyond the closed doors of political institutions,” but that the Internet, like any technology, “is shaped by its uses and users.” Thus, if there exists a positive correlation between exposure to post-cinema media artifacts and political participation, then I seek to explore the revelatory political possibilities of “exhibition value” by way of a particular “post-cinema” case study: the Marxist-Leninist Turkish hacktivist group Redhack’s YouTube-circulated documentary RED! (2013), a project that demanded—by way of the moving-image—to galvanize cyberprotest and democratize a “hacktivist commons. (shrink)

Development plans at different levels – from local to global – aspire to eliminate poverty, famine, to make health care accessible, to create better access to education, to improve transportation, employment, and the quality of life, all within next decades. Yet, these plans collide with the reality of climate change, more precisely the Anthropocene, which already creates high-dimensional conflicts. These will only intensify within decades because climate change and other consequences of the environment global devastation lead to a real decrease (...) of resources. These resources enable not only development but also an elementary reproduction of the essential preconditions of life. The current model of development has substantially contributed to the intensification of unequal accessibility to resources and existing conflicts have thus heightened and new ones have emerged. Water as an essential resource will cause new conflicts. Growing population, expansion of deserts and a sea level rise then increase conflicts for the land. Heat waves occur more often which strengthens conflicts for land suitable for human life, meaning that inhabitable areas are spreading. Therefore there is a need to re-evaluate the character and hierarchy of resources and their accessibility, and also concepts of development. The existing development of humankind has been done at the expense of others in many cases and mainly at the expense of the environment. The current situation raises a question of climate justice from both historical and systematic viewpoints. It opens a need to reformulate the concept of human rights from the perspective of their essential environmental preconditions and to define the status of environmental migrants. (shrink)

How does precarious work entail social vulnerabilities and moral complicities? Theorists of precarity pose two challenges for analysing labour conditions in Asia. Their first challenge is to distinguish the new kinds of social vulnerability which constitute precarious work. The second is to assign moral responsibility in the social network that produces vulnerability in depoliticised and morally detached ways. In this article, the social and normative dimensions of precarious work are connected through a conceptual investigation into how Singapore allocates responsibility for (...) managing temporary migrant labour. First, it analyses how various management strategies, driven by globalisation and government deregulation, increase worker vulnerabilities. These strategies intensify relations of dependence, disempowerment and discrimination, which the workers may accommodate or resist in limited ways. Second, it assesses why the strategies leave the state, employers, agents and others complicit in producing the vulnerabilities. These actors enable, collaborate with, or condone the production of precarity. Their complicity is complicated by varying support or resistance to reforms. The result is a novel conceptual scheme for analysing the complicit network behind precarious work, which can be used in other sites of precarity where some are complicit in the vulnerability of others. (shrink)

Cinema acts as a significant mediator between urban reality and the imaginary sensory experience of the fictive world. Viewing the city through the lens of a camera enables us to build new narratives. Films have captured port cities within the flows of, goods, people, and ideas, making them ever-present in shared memories, historical narratives, and urban nostalgia. Cultural production plays a role in the on-going construction of local port cultures, whether films, festivals, music, literature, theater, advertisements, or events. Telling (...) the story of the port city – it's past, present, and future; its buildings and its people – contributes strongly to the creation of port city cultures.[i] The big screen can help viewers to perceive complex port city regions, learning from their history, understanding cultural values and developing shared urban narratives to tackle the upcoming challenges. In a broader sense, port city’s ‘Cine-scape’—to use a term coined by Richard Koeck,[ii] puts the cinematic approach to port cities into the spotlight. (shrink)

in this article, we experience the exercise of a screen ethnocartography in agency with the film Beasts of the southern wild by the director Benh Zeitlin. We tested a film experimentation that led to a renewed writing ways of life. We bet on cinema and childhood as possibilities for creating cracks and a stutter of language for the creation of new worlds and ways of living. In cinema images less as a representation, and more as art that proposes (...) incompleteness, fissure, a hole in appearances. In childhood as an exercise of differentiation and resistance to dominant narratives in a given context. In childhood as a limiting experience of/in language, tirelessly exposing the human condition in front of the world. Thus, accompanying the main character of the plot, little Hushpuppy — a six-year-old resident of the “Charles Doucet Island”, experienced as “the Bathtub” —, we are shaken by the forms of life there, considered bestial and not recognized by city humans. Hushpuppy, his father and friends resist attempts to destroy their existence by the forms of the state that try to domesticate them, imbued with the logic that primitives must come to civilization, just as children must become adults. (shrink)

Do cinematic representations of the natural world only put us in further remove from nature? A phenomenological approach shows that nature screened can produce a richer understanding of human–nature relations as these unfold in visual contact. If vision accesses the world in a unique relationship of sight, in which our contact with the world is defined by vision prior to any other interaction, the cinema offers a special setting for a phenomenology that seeks to draw-out the significance of human (...) relations with the world of nature that come before utility or action. A detailed analysis of the opening sequence of Terrence Malick’s The New World demonstrates how the act of viewing positions the viewer in relation to what she sees. This position, prior to action and with the impossibility to act is seen here as an ethical position, a position of responsibility in the Levinasian sense. Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of vision is put here to use alongside the hermeneutic phenomenology of Heidegger and the existential responsibility of Levinas, while subverting Levinas’ anthropocentrism and rejecting Heidegger’s limiting view of technology. The approach taken in this essay, of bringing phenomenology into productive and reflexive interaction with ecology and with film is dubbed an “eco-film-phenomenology.”. (shrink)

Over the last thirty years, once staunchly historical cinema scholars such as Thomas Elsaesser, Jane Gaines, Siegfried Zielinski, and André Gaudreault have abandoned history for historiography and film studies for media archaeology. With increasing attention on the “database” as a symbolic metaphor for postmodernity and the decentered, networked tenants of the global present, cinema is taking on the characteristics of new media, existing in intertextual space. Thus, the term “post-cinema” has been co-opted as a viable intermediary that (...) accounts for new media conditions, as cinema is no longer emblematic of our cultural climate. As Giorgio Agamben wrote in 1992, “[t]he end of the cinema truly sounds the death knell of the ultimate metaphysical adventure of Dasein. In the twilight of post-cinema…human quasi-existence, now stripped of any metaphysical hypostasis and deprived of any theological model, will have to seek its proper generic consistency elsewhere." Accordingly, we are no longer “moviegoing animals” who seek images of ourselves among a collective in the dark but, rather, users interfacing within a network of moving images. (shrink)

Summer with Monika (Ingmar Bergman, 1952) was a point of reference for filmmakers searching new ways of filmmaking during the 1960s and 1970s because it anticipated the characteristic reflexivity of cinematic modernity because of the protagonist’s look at the camera. By unexpectedly bursting into the narrative, this gaze becomes a self-conscious strategy aimed at disarticulating not only the cinematic fiction, but also Monika’s fiction, which has symbolically appropriated the imaginary world projected by cinema.

The set of symbols of success is a set of cultural determinants of activity and their functioning is connected with the fundamental functions of culture as a system of historically developing supra-biological programs of life. The relevance of considering the symbolization of success in modern cinema is due to several factors. First, according to the majority of art historians and film theorists, cinema remains the leading, most widespread form of art throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. If we (...) understand art as a figurative comprehension of reality, its process and result, which is expressed in works, then the symbolization of success in cinema can be considered one of the most common practices for representing the determinants of activity through a figurative comprehension of reality. An analysis of this process in modern cinematography reveals the mechanisms of functioning of one of the elements of the totality of joint life programs as a segment of modern culture, limited by the boundaries of film communication. Secondly, the development of cinematography largely determines the fundamental changes in the culture of the 20th century. and there is no reason to believe that its influence is diminishing in recent times. Consequently, modern cinema remains one of the most important areas of cultural life, the study of which allows expanding scientific understanding of the patterns of changes taking place in culture. Thirdly, the development of information and communication technologies at the end of the 20th century. led to the fact that the value complexes of traditional cultures of different peoples of the world and expansive global neoplasms of a supranational nature (mass, elite, corporate, fandom, etc.) are simultaneously transmitted into the space of personal culture. Cinema in the new conditions only strengthened its position as the leading relay of value complexes. The special socio-forming qualities of cinema were noted both by its pioneers (L. Delluk, A. Dovzhenko, Ch. Chaplin, S. Eisenstein, etc.), scientists (B. Balash, V. A. Gottwald, E. M. Samuylenko, etc.) , and the ideologists of cultural revolutions at the beginning of the 20th century. G. Turner, in particular, drew attention to the fact that “to achieve control over the everyday representation of the world for a nation means to acquire strong power over the representation of individuals about themselves and about each other”, referring to the threat to the integrity and coherence of an individual’s understanding of the world under the pressure of foreign cultural domination over film communication. In this regard, the search for ways to relevantly measure the trends in the development of modern culture by marking in cinema the cultural determinants of activity, which are the symbols of success, seems to be an urgent theoretical and scientific-practical task, the solution of which expands the predictive potential of culture and its projective possibilities. (shrink)

The importation of Lacanian psychoanalysis into film theory in the 1970s and 1980s ushered in a new era of cinema scholarship and criticism. Figures including Raymond Bellour, Laura Mulvey, and Christian Metz are often considered the pioneers of applying Lacanian psychoanalysis in the context of film theory, most notably through their writings in Screen Journal. However, where French and British scholarship on Lacan and film reached its limits, American Lacanianism flourished. When Joan Copjec’s now classic essay “The Orthopsychic Subject: (...) Film Theory and the Reception of Lacan” was published in 1989, the trajectory of Lacanian film theory would become radically altered; as Todd McGowan recently put it, the “butchered operation” on Lacan committed by Mulvey and (quoting Copjec) the “Foucaultianization” of Lacan under the auspices of Screen Journal were finally indicted in one gesture through Copjec’s critique. Copjec and McGowan’s unique American view of Lacan marks a pivotal point in the convergence of psychoanalytic theory and cinema studies; by seeking to wrest Lacan from historist/deconstructionist theories of the subject, and by revisiting Lacan beyond the mirror stage, Copjec and McGowan can be said to have instantiated a resuscitation or even a renaissance of Lacanian theory in film studies in particular and in American scholarship more generally. In this essay, this renaissance of Lacanian theory is examined, focusing on the innovations these two American thinkers brought to psychoanalytic film theory and the multiple paths carved out into other disciplines that followed. First, a detailed summation of the contentions between screen theory and Copjec’s position is introduced, as well as McGowan’s assessment thereof. Then, the trajectory of psychoanalytic film theory after Copjec’s arrival is the focus, including the major innovations in her thought from cinematic subjectivity to sexual difference (most notably from Read My Desire) and the way her position spread to philosophy and ontology. Finally, the article identifies the limitations of Copjec’s and McGowan’s thought and seeks new possibilities through which we may continue to apply psychoanalysis to the cinema in the wake of these two important thinkers. L’importation de la psychanalyse lacanienne dans la théorie du film au cours des années 1970 et 1980 a apporté une nouvelle ère de recherche et de critique cinématographiques. Des figures comme Raymond Bellour, Laura Mulvey et Christian Metz sont souvent considérées comme étant les pionniers dans l’application de la psychanalyse lacanienne au contexte de la théorie du film, surtout dans leurs écrits pour le Screen Journal. Par contre, là où les recherches françaises et britanniques sur Lacan et la cinématographie ont atteint leurs limites, le lacanisme américain a prospéré. La publication en 1989 de « The Orthopsychic Subject: Film Theory and the Reception of Lacan », l’essai classique de Joan Copjec, a complètement changé la trajectoire de la théorie lacanienne du film; comme Todd McGowan l’a récemment exprimé, « l’opération massacrée » commise sur Lacan par Mulvey et (citant Copjec) la « Foucaultisation » de Lacan sous les auspices de Screen Journal avaient finalement été accusées d’un seul coup par la critique de Copjec. Le point de vue uniquement américain de Copjec et de McGowan sur Lacan marque un tournant dans la convergence de la théorie psychanalytique et des études cinématographiques. En cherchant à arracher Lacan des théories historicistes/déconstructivistes du sujet, et en revisitant Lacan au-delà du stade du miroir, Copjec et McGowan ont instancié une ressuscitation, voire une renaissance, de la théorie lacanienne dans les études cinématographiques en particulier et dans les études américaines en général. Dans cet article, cette renaissance de la théorie lacanienne est examinée, mettant l’accent sur les innovations que ces deux penseurs américains ont apportées à la théorie psychanalytique du film et les multiples chemins tracés dans d’autres disciplines subséquentes. Premièrement, un résumé détaillé des différends entre la théorie du film et la position de Copjec est présenté, ainsi que l’évaluation de McGowan à ce sujet. Puis, la trajectoire de la théorie psychanalytique du film après l’arrivée de Copjec est mise de l’avant, notamment les innovations importantes de sa pensée de la subjectivité à la différence sexuelle (particulièrement dans Read My Desire) et la manière dont sa position s’est propagée dans la philosophie et l’ontologie. Finalement, l’article identifie les limites de la pensée de Copjec et de McGowan et cherche de nouvelles possibilités à travers lesquelles nous pourrions continuer d’appliquer la psychanalyse au cinéma après ces deux grands penseurs. (shrink)

The Ethics of Immigration, by Joseph Carens, Oxford University Press, 2013. -/- Joseph Carens is arguably the most prominent political theorist to defend open borders, a view which he did much to make intellectually respectable in a famous 1987 article, “Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders.” In The Ethics of Immigration Carens again defends the open borders view, but with a new rationale. Whereas before he argued that seemingly opposed philosophies provided converging support for open borders, now he (...) bases his case on “democratic principles,” by which he means uncontroversial moral commitments that are widely shared in liberal states. Carens argues that one such commitment is to freedom, which can be understood as “not being the subject of the will of another.” A commitment to such a value would explain why freedom of movement within a state is considered a basic human right. But, Carens asks, if we have a general right to freedom of movement within countries, why not between them? -/- Carens has long noted that despite the attractiveness of open borders at the level of pure justice, it is deeply at odds with how immigration policy is normally viewed. Given this, Carens’ many writings on immigration have long approached it from a second perspective, one that puts aside questions of ideal theory and takes for granted the conventional view that states are entitled to discretionary control over their borders. This second perspective is the dominant one in The Ethics of Immigration, as Carens spends most of the book outlining standards of fair treatment for permanent residents, temporary workers, refugees and other migrants that do not presuppose any commitment to open borders. In this mode Carens offers a revised version of one his most thought-provoking and controversial arguments, defending amnesty for immigrants who first arrive illegally. -/- Carens’ investigation of immigration issues at both the level of ideal justice and the more immediate plane of the debate over amnesty and related issues makes his book unusually rich. It has the rare virtue of being both philosophically rigorous and politically relevant. -/- . (shrink)

In the present study, I will consider the crisis of the movement image, and the emergence of a new type of image, namely, the time image. First, I will analyze certain basic concepts used by Deleuze (1925-1995) and by Bergson (1859- 1941) to understand the new type of image that emerges from an interruption of our natural perception, granting us -by separating ourselves from all our previous experiences- pure optical and sound perceptions. Secondly, I will trace the changes that, both (...) inside and outside cinema, made possible this emergence. Finally, according to the signs of the time-image developed by Deleuze, I will analyze the film Paterson (2016), by Jim Jarmusch. The film, inspired not only by the work of the poet William Carlos Williams (1883-1963), but also by other poets of the New York School, seeks to portray, through visual descriptions, the details of our daily lives. Key-words: natural perception - pure perception - movement image - time image - cinema. (shrink)

Since the advent of media archeology, a deep-seated bifurcation has found one end of the field arguing for the interventionist and appropriative weaponization of media whereas the other side has championed a “total war” with technology itself, insisting that new media’s military-industrial roots inherently color its drivability. Here, I implore a moment within the cultural history of net.art and post-internet art to examine how contemporaneous queries about control after militarism and decentralization, as prognosticated by Paul Virilio and Gilles Deleuze, are (...) part of a more deeply entrenched discourse on neural nets, predictive processing algorithms and machine learning, which the current media theory and post-cinema literature has yet to rigorously respond to. Simultaneously parsing philosophical and media sociology corollaries to ground this overview, I push for more attention towards psychopower, autosurveillance and algorithmic governmentality while distancing critique from the standard Foucauldian discourse of biopower. (shrink)

In the last seven years, close to twenty thousand people have died trying to reach Europe by crossing the Mediterranean Sea. Rescue missions by private actors and NGOs have increased because both national measures and measures by the EU’s border control agency, Frontex, are often deemed insufficient. However, such independent rescue missions face increasing persecution from national governments, Italy being one example. This raises the question of how potential migrants and dissenting citizens should act towards the EU border regime. In (...) contrast to the literature, which mainly addresses migration on the basis of justice requirements, this article focuses on the legitimate authority of the EU’s border regime. Focusing on the legitimacy criteria for states’ claims to regulate migration opens a fruitful normative perspective, given the pervasive disagreement over the content of justice in migration. What reasons for compliance and non-interference does legitimacy supply for potential immigrants and dissenting citizens? And what legitimacy standard may be appropriate for the power that individual states claim over potential immigrants? We argue that, even assuming a minimal legitimacy standard for the state-migrant relationship, the structure of the EU’s border regime exhibits unique features, which cause it to stand in tension with such a standard. By coordinating its Member States’ border regimes, especially through Frontex, the EU claims and exercises power over potential immigrants. However, the asymmetrical delegation of state powers to the EU means that the power involved in regulating European borders is, in core respects, unaccountable. This unaccountability, we argue, is significant for the legitimacy of the EU’s border regime. This article sheds new light on the morality of unauthorised rescue missions by assessing the permissibility of resistance to the EU’s border regime. (shrink)

In The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing explains how bare land is formed. Capitalism produces ‘ruins’ by stripping living beings of the capacity to form their own ecological relations, a necessary condition for the reproduction of life. Contemporary capitalism alienates living beings from ecological relations, i.e. capitalism generates “the ability to stand alone, as if the entanglements of living did not matter. Through alienation, people and things become (...) mobile assets; they can be removed from their lifeworlds in distance-defying transport to be exchanged with other assets from other life worlds, elsewhere” (Tsing 2021, 5). Cutting the threads of the web of life through capitalist alienation, however, produces bare land as a side effect, infertile waste deprived of the means to reproduce itself without capitalist support. Alienation is the deracination of living beings from their lifeworld, transforming them into passive cogs for capitalist accumulation. However, Tsing upholds matsutake mushrooms, rare fungi popular among Japa- nese foodies, as exemplars of the resilience of ecological relations. Even amidst ruins, matsutakes successfully form beneficial relations with other living beings, like pine trees, other fungi and human beings. The insistent capacity to regenerate ecological relations is the ineluctable means of reproduction for the matsutake mushroom. Even at the end of the world, the matsutake persists by perpetually co-producing new lifeworlds for itself and fellow living beings (see also Haraway 2016). I claim that Tsing’s approach to capitalist alienation is descriptively convinc- ing but lacks the affective force for ecological class consciousness. Tsing surveys the web of life from the perspective of living beings quite distant from humankind, articulating a theoretical diagnosis rather than a political exhortation. On an affective level, it is challenging to generate ecological class consciousness among the (presumably) human readers of my chapter if they are presented with only the biographies of mushrooms growing far beyond my home. As Chantal Mouffe (2018, 72) argues, the construction of an emphatically political identity requires an appeal to the affects, like hope, indignation or compassion. Latour and Schultz also stress that ecological politics currently suffers from an affective misalignment, with people failing to identify with the fate of their increasingly inhospitable environments (2022, 47). Why would European humans care about these unknown fungi? The reproduction of our CO2-intensive livelihoods largely depends on the emission of bare land elsewhere, so in the short run, we stand to benefit more from putting our heads in the sand. I employ Chakrabarty’s (2021) suggestion of grounding post-humanist politics first in strategic anthropocentrism to subsequently push for a post-humanist expansion of our human understanding. One must first feel personally interpellated by the crisis of the global means of reproduction before one can grasp the need for an ecological class politics beyond human confines. I turn to John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath as a kindred spirit with more mobilising potential. Steinbeck tells the story of a family of impoverished farmers from Oklahoma, the Joads, travelling to California in pursuit of a better life, yet only encountering more poverty, exploitation and anti-immigrant racism. Steinbeck describes in detail the environmental and social devastation, but he focuses on the commodified labour power of migrant farmers rather than commodified mushrooms. Steinbeck’s main characters are also uprooted from their entangled histories in the land and community of rural Oklahoma, but they present a more familiar face of the ecological class deprived of the means of reproduction. Steinbeck’s outcry against alienation-as-deracination is clear, but the shift in perspective facilitates the empathetic outrage required for building ecological class consciousness. Steinbeck’s strategic anthropocentrism helps human readers understand why alienation-as-deracination is a concern. (shrink)

The ongoing refugee crisis is described as the most important concern since the Second World War, which has caused a great displacement of people. Many of these immigrants have been departing towards Mediterranean countries, as first-line states, seeking for a chance to enter Europe. This situation has created a challenging condition for many refugee accepting cities as well as for the migrants to get integrated within the new society. This fact has had a great influence on the sustainability condition while (...) the rapid and uncontrolled inflows can overwhelm the host countries' capacities to integrate new arrivals. In this regard, some European countries including Germany and Italy are coming about with strategies for accommodation and integration of these refugees in their countries. This paper aims to study and analyze two of the current case studies reflecting adaptive reuse strategies in European context for providing refugees' temporary housing facilities. In the context of this research, using the existing building stock introduced as the dominant strategy which can provide refugees with a proper shelter and also while providing the chance for their urban integration can contribute to revitalization of urban areas with the newcomers' participation. By analyzing the Berlin's largest refugee shelter inside Tempelhof Airport as the first case study, the major policies in Germany for providing refugee housing in national and local levels have been investigated. However, the second case study -Ex-Moi in Turin, is characteristically different from the case of Tempelhof airport of Berlin; since the refugees occupied the abandoned facility of the Olympic Village and settled down there. Regarding the fact that there is an urgent need for long-term policies and sustainable approaches to cope with the current refugee crisis, this research tries to shed a light on the path towards providing temporary housings by analyzing the challenges and opportunities of two different current case studies in Germany and Italy. (shrink)

The article will be divided into three parts: 1. Explain the literary origins of the nesting pattern and its relationship to cinema narrative, and analyse the nesting tactics commonly used in films under Hollywood’s classical narrative. 2. Describe the variations in nested structures in films made in the 1990s, focusing on self-reflexive nesting, which emerged as a new model beyond conventional nesting during this period. 3. Distinguish the literary style of embedded narratives from the visual recognition mode and provide (...) an example of how the latter is used in films to create impossible puzzles. (shrink)

Worldwide, many impoverished parents migrate, leaving their children behind. As a result children are deprived of continuity in care and, sometimes, suffer from other forms of emotional and developmental harms. I explain why coercive responses to care drain are illegitimate and likely to be inefficient. Poor parents have a moral right to migrate without their children and restricting their migration would violate the human right to freedom of movement and create a new form of gender injustice. I propose and defend (...) an institutional solution. Taxes levied on the remittances sent by temporary migrants ought to be used to provide migrants' children with psychological counselling in order to mitigate the harm resulted from discontinuity in care. (shrink)

An analysis of some work by the Oaxaca-based Mexican experimental filmmaker and video artist Bruno Varela via the latter’s reading of the late U.S. philosopher Stanley Cavell, especially Cavell’s 1982 essay “The Fact of Television.” This essay focuses on the aesthetic possibilities of the very constitution of the electronic image, based in Cavell’s understanding of television’s dependence on notions of “switching,” as opposed to “succession,” as well as how those notions play a role in Varela’s understanding of what it is (...) to critique communications media while retaining their communal potential. Audiovisual work by Varela discussed in this essay include Línea 3 (2010-11) and Materia oscura (Dark Matter, 2016). (shrink)

...If, in some places, backward science determines the remaining period by the lack of optimism only by the number 123456789, then our progressive science expands it to 987654321, which is eight times more advanced than theirs. However, due to the inherent caution of scientists, both sides do not specify the measuring unit of reference — year, day, hour or minute are meant. Leonid Leonov. Collected Op. in ten volumes. Volume ten. M.: IHL, 1984, p.583. -/- The modern men being as (...) a rule is proceeding in three relatively autonomous, but immanently coexisting, and each penetrating dialectically through other, and each contesting even cruelly with other, and each more or less dominating on other, differently in various societies, worlds: the first one of the barbarity, the second one the culture, the third one the civilization... Barbarity is the mode of coexistence of autonomous human societies based on the unlimited will to act so as subject wants to do without any limitations of his activities... Culture is the mode of coexistence of autonomous human societies based on the most ancient testaments, customs, traditions etc of the highestly sacrified appearence... Civilisation is the mode of coexistence of autonomous human societies based on the reasoned or legitimated by social contracts, by profits, by expediency and so more constitutions, institutions etc... -/- Andrei Melnikov-Pechersky in his epic "In the Woods" says that there was a movement among the Old Believers in Russia, or a current that proclaimed Kostroma the new and, it seems, the only true Jerusalem, in an apocalyptic sense, of course, which in its spiritual scale was probably not inferior to the Bogomils, shakers, Mormons, or else and the whole Reformation in potential. In Western Europe, every more or less convex nuance of the history of a state or region (even if it is a small San Marino) is overgrown with almost a dozen institutions, not always state ones, by the way, in which almost every sneeze and step of very ambivalent historical subjects in a broad sense is studied. Especially in the young, but very pretentious America of the United States, which embodies all world justice. In our country, for example, even many leading humanitarian specialists do not realize the spiritual value of the Ipatievsky MONASTERY. The Russian writer Boris Shiryaev, who died quite a long time ago and in a very far abroad, devoted a special part of his documentary and artistic epic of wanderings "The Inextinguishable Lampada" to an entertaining and instructive, tragic fate of a kind of village monarchy in some Villages of the Kostroma province (I could not identify the area, and, frankly, I did not really try) in the early years The Soviet government. At the same time, all Russians learn about the French emperor Napoleon almost with their mother's milk how many percent of cyanide potassium was found in his hair, they reflect on Lermontov's "Airship" (probably, just not to "memorize" the imposed "Borodino" by heart). The events, of course, are incomparable, but the fact is significant. The outstanding national artist (if not to say a thinker of the Chesnyakov level) Grigory Pavlovich Kusochkin was glorified wherever, in whatever catalogues he was not included. Paris, London, New York, St. Petersburg, Moscow... To look at some smear of luminaries like Picasso or Modigliani, international tourist routes are organized in the restaurant toilet using the finest marketing technologies, and we did not even know Grigory Pavlovich by sight until, thank God, a series of TV shows on all Russian channels was dedicated to him in one gulp. Why is this happening? Is it a consequence of poverty or the result of the conscious policy of the ruling elite of the country and the world? The regions of the Kostroma Region are Austria, Switzerland, Bavaria, Armenia, Moldova, and Georgia... Georgia! I served in the army there. In this small but very great country, judging even by the appearance of its President Shevardnadze, although it is smaller than the Kostroma region, there are so many different, but Georgian-speaking peoples! Kakhetians, Meskhetians, Imereti, Iveretians, Mingrelians, Khevsurs... Adjarians (mostly Georgian-speaking Muslims) even have their own autonomy. And some peoples are not Georgian—speaking at all — South Ossetians, Abkhazians, Kurds, Armenians, Greeks, even Assyrians. In the Kostroma Region, and in any Russian "province" — not much less: there are plenty of the same Georgians or Armenians everywhere, quite moderate, loyal, and so on. Having, as a rule, their own officially registered associations within the framework of cultural autonomy. Well done! And Israel! He is the only one with all his "illegal" (and I am for the fact that every nation knows better where its ancestral lands are) territories half the size of the Kostroma region. The total number of Jews worldwide, according to the "Soviet Encyclopedic Dictionary" in 1987, is about 14 million. Meanwhile, the fate of Israel is being preoccupied (it is very instructive how he achieved this!) all the united nations of the world. In the Kostroma Region and its diaspora, it seems to everyone, and especially to its semi-migrant, Varangian leadership. I don't care if they build a public atomic bomb here in the form of a nuclear power plant or not. Because they do not know the value of this land, the greatness of its spirit. Kostroma is a holy land. I will immediately make a reservation that by Kostroma I mean not only the modern region, but the entire area that has ever historically been associated with Kostroma. The USSR is also a part of the great historical Russia. In this sense, even the entire era of the Russian Romanov Empire is the Kostroma region. Or: many toponymic objects of our native land are called mysteriously beautiful: Sharya, Shunga, Shekshema, Sholezhka, - we need to find out what kind of peoples — and where are they now? — we left such euphonious archetypal combinations, because these are our Kostromsky peoples, these are our Kostroma people. Or, say, the classic of American and world sociology Pitirim Alexandrovich Sorokin writes in his autobiographical scientific novel "The Long Way" that he studied at the Khrenovskaya (what a strong word!) teachers' seminary of Kostroma province, but in an administrative row for propaganda activities, gendarmes were taken by sledge to the prison of the city of Kineshma - is this not a fact for Kostroma, and primarily for him, local history, although Kineshma has long been attributed to the Ivanovo region, and Pitirim Alexandrovich is buried on the other side of the planet?! I have not the slightest doubt that Kostroma provided spiritual food, gave birth to and nurtured a huge intellectual diaspora with extremely valuable material on a national, global scale. And this is both in direct and indirect order, in the form of a chain reaction. Apparently, it is easy for an intelligent person to grow up in Kostroma, but it is impossible to live, and somewhere on the contrary. Therefore, it is not surprising that the geneticist academician D. K. Belyaev, who was born in the village of Protasov near Nerekhta, very close to Kostroma, glorified Moscow and Siberia with his discoveries and practical results, which immeasurably enriched the Soviet state treasury with foreign exchange income from the sale of the most valuable fur grown according to the biotechnology developed by him in a much shorter time than it usually turns out in nature. And in Kostroma, most likely, few people know who he is and what he is famous for. I will focus in more detail on one of the aspects of his great life. This happened back in the so-called pre-Perestroika times. In a series of his speeches, Dmitry Konstantinovich, based on the results of his and colleagues' research, emphasized, in his opinion, the determining role of the biological factor in shaping the content of human essence, of course, only in a philosophical, conceptual aspect. For some reason, this was opposed by a geneticist, as they say, persecuted at one time by the "senile" in selectionism (including human nature) by the Michurino-Lysenkoists, academician N. P. Dubinin, which personally remains incomprehensible to me until now. With a grateful curtsey to Academician Dubinin and his point of view, the famous French humanist, member of the Politburo of the French Communist Party Lucien Sav appeared on the pages of the Communist magazine. The material was clearly titled: "Problems are not only scientific, but also political." He very indecently attributed the views of academician Belyaev to "a reactionary ideology that tries to put genetics at its service, and more broadly, biology, in order to present all kinds of social inequalities of all kinds as inherent in nature itself"(1). I would like to see any ideology that does not try to "put this or that at its service," much less something worthwhile... A little later, the editorial of the Communist hit the "biologizers", and soon Dmitry Konstantinovich was gone. In short, it is only on the example of our fellow countrymen that you can write interesting, world-class essays on science and its history, but instead our scientists should fit their global potencies into a page and a half (good yet. if not entirely at their own expense), and then for at least three years to guess whether they will be published or not. Now it no longer surprises me how at one time, when, after reading the listener card I filled out, the sweetest girl from the IPKPON office at USU congratulated me for something. It turned out that the dean of the Faculty of Philosophy of USU, doctor, professor, Honored Scientist, and now academician Konstantin Niko-laevich Lyubutin is a countryman, Kostromsky, or rather Manturovsky by origin, as I write below in the notes — we are Kostromendors. To him, my fellow citizen in the most subtle micropatriotic dimensions, I owe a lot in my professional and social development, even in survival. Because that's how it often turns out: you can be born here, sometimes you can live here... It's very hard. Maybe the Kostroma origin of an outstanding Russian historian of philosophy, organizer of science and education, educator and friend of a galaxy of people devoted to the Motherland and the cause is not a great milestone in the history of the region, but name me at least a dozen Russian cities on the scale of Kostroma, from where such intellectual ones would come out into the world and light luminaries like ours. No matter who you take from the world significance of the pillars of national (and world, and foreign, - even the great Rabbi of Lubavitcher spent three years in exile in a Campfire, — I learned from some foreign voices) history, literature, culture in general, technology, science and so on - you will always find someone, which is very directly related to Kostroma. Pushkin, Lermontov, Gorky. Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky, Pisarev, Uspensky, Katenin, Florensky, Savrasov, Kustodiev, Dyagilev, Mikhalkov, Alexander Alexandrovich Zinoviev; writers, artists, entrepreneurs, revolutionaries, inventors, politicians... In some world-famous for its classic Russian provincialism, Kologriv has been storing, figuratively speaking, unique sketches, if not of Leo-Nardo da Vinci himself, then certainly of his school, almost since the seventeenth century. And not only that. Nevertheless, the well-known Chukhloma to the Fatherland, in addition to thinkers of the rank of Rozanov and Zinoviev (where should domestic philosophers mature and not be born, if not in Chukhloma, Manturov or Khrenknowswhere?), gave an actor of amazing, national, originality — Mikhail Pugovkin, who can not be confused with anyone, a role that no one will repeat. (shrink)

To what extent can film - or individual films - act as a vehicle of or forum for philosophy itself?. Many have responded that films can indeed do philosophy to a substantial degree. Furthermore, it has been claimed that this virtue does not belong solely to ‘art’ films, but that popular cinema too can do philosophy. A case in point is Spike Jonze’s 1999 film Being John Malkovich, the Oscar-winning screenplay of which was written by Charlie Kaufman. The outrageous (...) premise of this comic fantasy is summarised by the film’s protagonist, Craig Schwartz: "There's a tiny door in my office Maxine. It's a portal, and it takes you inside John Malkovich. You see the world through John Malkovich's eyes. And then, after about fifteen minutes, you're spit out into a ditch on the side of the New Jersey Turnpike." The philosophical issues that this scenario raises are manifold. My primary aim in this paper is to follow the film through its exploration of subjectivity, clarifying its insights with the aid of current philosophical work on the topic. Hopefully, this will enhance our understanding both of subjectivity, and of the philosophical relevance of the film. A secondary goal of this enquiry is to provide a clear example of film-as-philosophy, perhaps demonstrating how film contributes something to the philosophical forum that an academic text cannot. (shrink)

In Transamazônica Paraense places do not exist in the geographical representations that shows the road, a regional and territorial domination project. The goal is to consider the emergency between -places to the road made of migrants from different geohitories that “ whether vicinam” and the implications of this context to the world of readings of/ on transamazônica geographicity. The experienced research focus is on the Vicinal of Adam, between Pacajá and New Repartimento (PA). Settlement Rio Cururuí. Methodologically, we start from (...) action-research, audiovisual recording of interviews with residents in their places, life histories and documentary survey interpreted the existential phenomenological contribution and concluded: a) the geographical debate, the educational plan, tends to declare the absence of They are living on the edge Transamazônica or “strip”; b) the sense of place is not strictly localizable or remarkable is not stable, constituting limit-spaces-s; c) Another language emerges from the between-place with the creative potential of communicative actions to clarify anding at multiple scales. (shrink)

The article presents the innovatory understanding of the nomadic strategy of human being in the transitional condition. The aim of the article is to determine the role of the nomadic being way in the social group of internal migrants. It is substantiated, that aims and actions of a nomad are directed on creating new ways of realization and conceptualization of variants of nomadic being. It is explained, that a nomad doesn’t go by the way, offered by traditional types of activity, (...) but searches innovatory ways of realization, doesn’t stop on deciphering of traditionally existing being senses, but produces them him/herself. A subject, living in a space of “boundaries” is deprived of the settled comfort, he/she searches for a possibility of balance and harmony, social recognition and improvement of own life conditions in the movement and change. The culture of choice, formed by the logic of the modern market, gives a nomad resources for regulating the own freedom degree. Nomadic instruments correspond to the migrants’ way of life. Digital nomadism creates stimuli for the active life and adaptation to new conditions of different groups of migrants. (shrink)

The main aim of this paper is to consider how various types of social crises create contexts in which the general assumption comes to full expression that without knowledge of relevant data, correct decisions cannot be made or adequate measures taken to overcome the crisis. Such contexts, on the one hand, increase the importance of successful discovery of the truth both for individuals and for society as a whole, which affects the tightening of epistemic standards, while on the other hand (...) they enlarge some old or bring new cognitive barriers that negatively affect the reliability of various cognitive methods. The key role of epistemic responsibility is illustrated with the examples of two crises that have befallen us during the last few years: the migrant crisis and the pandemic crisis. (shrink)

Since 2019, Vietnam has witnessed a "reincarnation movement" characterized by the creation of new cultural products infused with folklore, encompassing various mediums like photography, cinema, and music.

Citation:Christodoulou, Marina. “Technopolis as the Technologised Kingdom of God. Fun as Technology, Technology as Religion in the 21st Century. God sive Fun.” Cahiers d'études germaniques N° 74, 2018. La religion au XXIe siècle - Perpectives et enjeux de la discussion autour d'une société post-séculière. Études reunites par Sébastian Hüsch et Max Marcuzzi, 119-132. -/- -------- -/- Neil Postman starts his book Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (1993)1 with a quote from Paul Goodman’s New Reformation: “Whether or not it (...) draws on new scientific research, technology is a branch of moral philosophy, not of science.” (Postman 1993: motto; Goodman 2010: 40). I would extend Postman’s Technopoly to Technopolis, to give it more of a presence in time and space. Hence, I will use the term Technopoly when I am referring to Postman; the term Technopolis is my own. -/- In his book From Faith to Fun: The Secularisation of Humour, Russel Heddendorf argues that humour is a technology (Heddendorf 2009: 32-34), as it is understood and theorized by Neil Postman in Technopoly. Russel Heddendorf also argues that “Technopoly” is a term correlated with Wittgenstein’s use of the term “worldview” (Weltanschauung) (Heddendorf 2009: 11). -/- I would like to draw on these thoughts to propose that Technopoly (or Technopolis) could be the secularized Kingdom of God, namely that Technology is the Religion of the 21st century, and that Fun is a paradigm of such a Technology / Technique. God is yet another technique or Technology of and in Technopoly. -/- The godless individual in the 21st century, I will argue, is as much a believer as the faithful in the Sacred Religion (term used in opposition to Secular or rather Technological or Technologized Religion, which is Fun). He believes in Fun (as a post-modern form of pleasure), as much as the believer believes, or more accurately, believed in God. In the 21st century, the faithful in Sacred Religion believes in a fun God, as opposed to the serious God of the past. Fun is turning into the Technologized Religion for all; for the faithful in Godly / Sacred Religion, as well for as the unfaithful. Fun (pleasure, humour) is the definitive qualia of 21st century pleasure. The mechanics of Fun make it absolutely functional for controlling people; as Aldous Huxley wrote in Brave New World, people “are controlled by inflicting pleasure” (cited in Heddendorf 2009: 158). Now, indulging in pleasure is having Fun. In the 21st century, nobody is unfaithful, nobody disputes God, because God has been manufactured into Fun. We are living in the most religious century of all. -/- The commodity of God, now inextricably blended into work and leisure ethics and culture, is as unavoidable as survival. You don’t work, you don’t survive, you don’t exist. You work, you are entitled to leisure, or free time – the time (“busy-time”) when you are busy is work. The free time of leisure (“fun-time”) is a time for fun (pleasure). The time dedicated to Fun is culturally (capitalistically) pre-defined; no moment is actually free, each moment that is sold as free is to be bought with Work Time tokens –which is money. Believe is Enjoy. Happiness, achieved through pleasure, and pleasure through Fun, and Life as Play, is the recipe for Teleology in the 21st century. -/- The Technological God (Fun), as the Sacred God before him, is sovereignty’s technique or a social “mode of release”: demonstrations, marches, petitions, freedom of speech, citizen and human rights vindications, are “modes of release”, so that the next day, feeling relieved and released that you are working for a better life and a better world, you can wake up cheerfully to walk to your workplace, feeling it will change because of your marching, or your petition, or your speech, or the mass you attended, or the prayer you said yesterday. Thus life continues unchanging, through postponing hope; the tension of the tragedy is always released (lysis) in catharsis: refreshment for the next day of work. Art, especially cinema, (namely, simulated life) follows the same cathartic principles as real life. Thus, you can keep coping, and hoping in the meantime is of much help. Religion, Art, Science, Therapy, and Technology are all technologies used to market life, sell it or lend it, and humans are buying it back. Fun is free to produce, and expensive to buy. (shrink)

About death, grief, mourning, life after death and immortality. Why should we die like humans to survive as a species. -/- "No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears (...) out the old to make way for the new." (Steve Jobs) -/- CONTENTS: -/- Death - Philosophy of death - Religions - - Animism - - Atheism - - Buddhism - - Christianity - - Hinduism - - Islam - - Jainism - - Jehovah's Witnesses - - Judaism - - Latter-day Saints - - Spiritism - Symbolism - Personification of Death - - Notable personifications - - In mythologies - - - Hindu mythology - - - In Japan - - - Slavic paganism - - - Lithuanian paganism - - In the three monotheistic religions - - - Judaism - - - Christianity - - - In Mexico - - - Islam - Axiochos - - The characters of dialogue - - Dialogue - - Prologue - - Arguments - - Citations - Paradise - - Greco-Roman mythology - - Mesopotamian mythology and influences - - According to Judaism - - According to Christianity - - - According to Catholicism - - - According to Protestantism - - - According to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - - According to Islam - - According to Hinduism - - According to modern spiritualities - - - According to the esoteric - Hell - - Mesopotamian origins - - According to Christianity - - - Names appearing in the biblical texts - - - Medieval artistic representations - - - Concepts according to Christian movements - - According to Judaism - - According to Islam - - According to Buddhism - - According to Hinduism - - According to modern esotericism - - - According to Aïvanhov - - - According to Allan Kardec - - Philosophy - - - Jewish Kabbalah - - - Sartre - - - Popular wisdom Funerals - The funeral ritual: a rite of passage - Prehistory - Ancient death customs - - The family bereavement - - Mummification - - Sarcophagi - - Funerals - - Ancient Greece - - Ancient Rome - - Celts, Germans and Scandinavians - Religious funeral rites - - Buddhism - - Judaism - Christianity - - Protestantism - - Islam - Funeral rites by continent - - In Africa - - In Europe - The contemporary era - Mourning (Grief) - - Steps - - - Death of a close - - Loss events without mourning value (white factors) - - Duration and manifestations - - Risks - - Colors - Graveyards (Cemeteries) - - First cemeteries - - Cemeteries today - Funerary art - Dolmens - - Types of dolmens - - Function - - Location - Passage graves - Cenotaphs - - Famous cenotaphs - Lanterns of the Dead Afterlife - History - Questions about death and immortality - Testimonials - - Spiritualistic experiences - - Popular literature on the afterlife - - "Memories" and reminiscences - - Early studies of the science of the 19th century and early 20th century - Types of scenarios - Some religious and philosophical concepts - - Afterlife in Buddhism - - Afterlife in Christianity - - According to Hinduism - - According to Islam - - According to Judaism - - According to Mormonism - - According to the ancient philosophies - - According to Spiritism - - According to Native American traditions - - According to Vedism - - According to Esotericism - In science - Near-death experiences - - Clinical death - - NDE frequency - - Effects of depth of NDE on survival - - Near-death experiences and shared-death experience - - - The first contemporary testimonials - - - Experience according to Moody - - - The concept of "shared death" - - - The NDE scales - - The study of Pim van Lommel - - Spiritual and patient point of view - - - Survivalists studies - - - The religious understanding of the phenomenon - - Scientific views - - - Physiological explanation - - - Psychological explanation - Reincarnation - - Religions - - - In Hinduism - - - In Jainism - - - In Buddhism - - - In Judaism - - - In Christianity - - - In Islam - - In contemporary times - - - Esotericism - - - Works of the psychiatrist Ian Stevenson - - - Radical increase in life expectancy and artificial reincarnation - - Criticism - - - Arthur Schopenhauer - - - Ramana Maharshi - - - Rene Guenon - - - Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy - Metempsychosis - - Theories - - Ideas - Maschalismos Immortality - Immortality of the soul and religious traditions - - Buddhism - - Christianity - - Islam - - Mormonism - Contemporary perception of the immortality of the body - - Observation in the animal kingdom - - Perspectives for mankind - Immortality in science - - Alexis Carrel - - Jean Rostand - - Hayflick limit - - Étienne-Émile Baulieu and DHEA - - Aubrey de Grey - - Professor Skulachev - - Regenerative medicine - - Professor Christopher Jaeger - Eternal Return - - According to the Mesopotamians - - According to Heraclitus and the Stoics - Fountain of Youth - - History of myth and relatives myths - - - In Roman mythology, Germanic, Celtic and Irish - - - In the Middle-East - - - In Spain - - - In the Bible - - The fountain in art and literature - - Painting - - - Literature and cinema - - Persistent of the myth until today - Senescence - - Why do we age? - - Gene regulation - - Cellular senescence Undead - Ghoul - Lich - Mummy - Skeleton - Vampire - Zombie - Other legendary creatures - Creatures specific to a particular universe - Spiritism - - Point out - - Origins of spiritism - - - The traditions through the ages - - - Advent of Christianity in Europe - - - The survival of necromancy - - - The precursors - - - Relations of spiritualism to science - Mediumship - - History - - Skeptical point of view - - Favorable doctor's viewpoint - Ghosts - - Appearance - - Belief in ghosts - - Origin - - - Duality and return dead - - - Ancient roots - - Typology - - - Poltergeists - - - Revenants - - - Ghosts - - - Banshees - - - Apparitions of crisis - - - Phantasms of the living - - - Vision of his own double - - - Ghost armies - - - Ghosts of animals - - - Means of transport - - Science perspective - - - Hallucinations - - - Sleep paralysis - - - Induced ghosts - - - Aches and infrasounds - - - Magnetic fields - Vampires - - Characteristics - - - Vampire transformation - - - Identification - - - Faculties - - Protection against the vampires - - - Precautions at death and burial - - - Apotropaic objects and places - - Destruction of vampires - Zombie - - The concept - - Africa and voodoo - - - West Africa - - - South Africa - - - In Haiti (and the Caribbean) - - - Scientific research - - The "revenants" in the Western imaginary Death in art - Memento mori - - History - - - Antiquity - - - Christianity - - - Mexican syncretism - - Performing arts - - - In painting - - - In literature - - - In movies - - - In video games - - - In Japanese animation - - - In music - The iconography of Weighing of souls (Particular judgment) - - Origin - - Written sources - - Weighing in Romanesque art - - Weighing in Gothic art - - Weighing in the late Middle Ages: to a new iconography - - Weighing of souls or actions? - Poems - - Charlotte Brontë, “On the Death of Anne Brontë” - - Edgar Allan Poe, “Annabel Lee” - - Edna St. Vincent Millay, “And you as well must die” - - Emily Dickinson, “Because I could not stop for Death” - - Emily Dickinson, “If I Should Die” - - Lord Byron, “Epitaph to a Dog” - - Pablo Neruda, “Only Death” - - Stephen Crane, “God Lay Dead in Heaven” - - W. B. Yeats, “He Wishes His Beloved Were Dead” - - Rainer Maria Rilke, “Death” - Paintings - - The Three Dead Kings - - The Death of Nelson - - Beata Beatrix - Sculptures - - The Kiss of Death - - Background - - Imagery - - Angel of Grief - - Fallen Astronaut - Quotes References About the author - Nicolae Sfetcu - - By the same author - - Contact Publishing House - MultiMedia Publishing -/- DOI: 10.58679/TW44411. (shrink)

Many of the following literary-critical texts (not all quite conventional “long-form” essays) originally appeared on the Landscape Agency New York website, LANY Archive-Grotto, on the web portal Geocities, between the years 1997 and 2008 – i.e., over a period of roughly ten years. Versions of some were published in various journals, academic or otherwise. In re-presenting them here, the intention is to trace a proverbial “red thread” that crosses the entirety of the work, arguably what might be denoted the works-based (...) agency of works, and, arguably, the telltale trace of what is otherwise known as the “life-work,” yet for works versus for authors. -/- The entire, retrospective apparatus of The Editioning of Gardens is also, decidedly, an homage to New York, New York, either where or from where much of the research was undertaken and “lived.” Manhattan, indeed, haunts these pages, directly and indirectly – that is to say, the unparalleled access to libraries, bookstores, universities, galleries, cafés, pubs, restaurants, cinemas, parks, and the streets is quite simply the source for the often-intense, yet suitably critical exegetical works. -/- This book is meant to both recapitulate themes crossing the “life-work” of the works collected, but to also illustrate the transitional gestalt of the 1990s and 2000s, something we collectively have not yet quite exited, and something that still haunts and gives pause to architects and landscape architects today. In naming this collection “The Editioning of Gardens,” the intention is to draw attention to the fact that it is landscape that underwrites almost all architectural interventions, whether acknowledged or denied, and that it is “landscape” – in the widest sense of the word – that we inherently and collectively inhabit. -/- NOTA BENE: -/- While many of the essays and texts presented here have been previously published as “working papers” or “reviews” on the LANY Archive-Grotto website, or in journals and P2P dossiers (i.e., in open-access collections posted to research repositories, here denoted Things Czech and Dossier LANY), their presentation in book form makes them more readily accessible and effectively new works as totality. Most have also been re-edited and re-formatted for inclusion in The Editioning of Gardens. -/- All texts are also dated so as to situate them in the timeframe in which they appeared (or were written), as snapshots or surveys of passing times. While re-edited and re-formatted for presentation here, they have not been re-written as such due to their implied “historic” and “time-based” nature. As collection, however, they function as an (un)timely reminder of critical exegesis as rite of passage – underscoring the significance of the title of the collection. This latter trait is what, ironically, makes the collection contemporary and post-contemporary – timely and untimely at once. (shrink)

Traditionally, kairos has been seen as a “timely” concept, and so invention is said to emerge fromthe timeliness of a cultural and historical situation. But what if invention was thought of as thepotential to shift historical courses through the injection of something new or alien into a situation?This essay argues that kairos has not been able to free itself from its historical constraints becauseit has been bound to a human sense of temporality. By evolving along patterns different from print,the apparatus (...) of the cinema developed in a way where it was not bound to illustrating movement ortimeas it occurs in human-centered experience. Following the work of Gilles Deleuze on cinema,this article argues that the outside of a human sense of time is an untapped source of invention,already present yet dormant within kairos. (shrink)

La finalidad del presente ensayo consiste en partir de las nociones interrelacionadas de "capitalismo mundial integrado" (Guattari) y de "sociedad de control" (Deleuze) para intentar una deriva que cruce géneros, épocas y nombres propios: de la filosofía al cine y a la poesía (caminos de ida y vuelta), de Benjamin a Serres pasando por Homero, Kavafis, Cioran o Godard, del tardío imperio romano y sus incertidumbres a la imprecisión de nuestro propio tiempo. Posiblemente, pensar hoy la identidad humana sea como (...) nunca antes un asunto de mezcla, de viaje a través de territorios viejos que demandan una nueva cartografía. -/- The purpose of this essay is to depart from the interrelated notions of "whole global capitalism" (Guattari) and the "control society" (Deleuze) to attempt a drift across genders, epochs and proper names: from philosophy to cinema and poetry (roundtrip roads), from Benjamin to Serres, passing through Homer, Kavafis, Cioran or Godard, from the late Roman empire and its uncertainties to our own time. Possibly, thinking today about human identity is as never before, a matter of mixture, of travel through old territories that demand new maps. (shrink)

Estamos cansados das utopias. Estamos cansados das utopias literárias e dos devaneios sobre a Cidade ideal: as utopias em ação que foram os totalitarismos do século XX nos nausearam. Os horrores reais de uns nos impedem de sonhar com os outros. Nossas antigas utopias De Platão a Thomas More, de Étienne Cabet a Fourier, as utopias falavam da rejeição do presente e do real: “Existe o mal na comunidade dos homens”. Mas não lhe contrapunham o futuro nem o possível; elas (...) descreviam um impossível desejável: “Seria bom viver lá!”. Não eram programas políticos planejando meios de atingir um objetivo racional. Contentavam-se em querer o melhor. E mais valia o Bem nunca obtido a um Mal menor amanhã. As utopias eram revolucionárias, mas em palavras: “Os homens vivem assim, sempre viveram assim, deveriam viver de outra forma”. Todas as utopias comunistas do século XIX foram assim. Quando se tratava de arregaçar as mangas, havia um esforço para criar à distância, e durante um certo período, uma pequena comunidade real mais ou menos em conformidade com o sonho. Os utopistas eram revolucionários quando não eram realistas, e quando eram realistas não eram revolucionários. Nunca visaram a eliminar o Mal para sempre e derrubar as comunidades políticas existentes para instaurar o Bem. Por exemplo, Étienne Cabet, com seu comunismo cristão, imaginou a cidade ideal de Icária e tentou fundar uma colônia icariana em New Orleans, em 1847. Charles Fourier, com seu falanstério, estava em busca de uma harmonia universal que se formaria livremente por afeição de seus membros. O mais realista de todos, Saint-Simon, descreveu uma sociedade fraterna, cujos membros mais competentes (industriais, cientistas, artistas, intelectuais, engenheiros) tinham a tarefa de administrar a França da forma mais econômica possível, a fim de torná-la um país próspero, onde reinariam o interesse geral e o bem comum, a liberdade, a igualdade e a paz; a sociedade seria uma grande fábrica. Mas o sonho de uma associação entre industriais e operários baseada na fraternidade, na estima e na confiança desfez-se na realidade das grandes empresas capitalistas dos saint-simonianos, no Canal de Suez e nos caminhos de ferro franceses. No fundo, aconteceu o mesmo com os teóricos do "comunismo científico" no século XIX, Karl Marx e Friedrich Engels. Eles, é claro, eram autenticamente revolucionários e profundamente realistas, pois fundamentaram seu projeto político em uma análise do funcionamento econômico e histórico do capitalismo, mas a ideia comunista e a abolição da propriedade privada permaneceram em estado de esboço nas obras dos autores do Manifesto, um ideal abstrato e, por assim dizer, vazio, ou, em todo caso, tão utópico quanto nos teóricos franceses. Nos Manuscritos de 1844, a ideia comunista é pura especulação conceitual em torno da "apropriação real da essência humana pelo homem e para o homem" ou "a verdadeira solução da luta entre existência e essência, entre objetivação e afirmação de si mesmo, entre liberdade e necessidade". Em A ideologia alemã, é uma expressão puramente verbal para designar "o movimento real que abole a ordem estabelecida". Em Engels, é "o ensinamento das condições da libertação do proletariado" (Princípios do comunismo). E uma ideia até mais vaga e abstrata nos marxistas do que nos utopistas, pois é dissociada de qualquer tentativa de fundamentação conceitual e qualquer análise concreta dos meios de sua realização. E ainda como um sonho de Cidade ideal, em que "cada um recebe conforme suas necessidades", como circulava entre os utopistas franceses do comunismo no século XIX. Ao contrário de suas predecessoras, as utopias em ação dos totalitarismos do século XX situam-se no cruzamento de um ideal revolucionário ("partir ao meio a História do mundo", segundo Nietzsche em Ecce homo, depois retomado pelos maoístas) e um programa realista de transformação política radical. Enquanto as utopias de Platão a Engels evitavam os meios de se atingir o ideal para preservar sua perfeição, as utopias em ação fazem o inverso: retardam indefinidamente a realização do ideal para empregar da melhor forma os meios capazes de realizá-lo. Não é mais uma questão de sonhar com o Bem, mas de lutar indefinidamente contra o Mal. E, desde a República de Platão,5 o Mal na comunidade política tem duas faces: ou é Impuro ou Desigual. Portanto, a Cidade deve ser: ou uma comunidade de iguais, cuja unidade perfeita é garantida pelo fato de que tudo é comum entre eles; ou uma comunidade pura, cuja unidade perfeita é garantida pelo fato de que todos têm a mesma origem. Define-se ou pelo comum das posses (nada deve pertencer a ninguém, mas a todos) ou pela identidade dos seres (ninguém deve ser estrangeiro): o comum que temos (ou deveríamos ter) ou aquilo que somos (ou deveríamos ser). Naturalmente, nessa união de idealismo revolucionário e realismo programático, o Bem absoluto, o Puro, o Comum, é uma idealidade fora de alcance: o combate mortal contra o Mal torna-se a obsessão dos regimes de terror. O Puro deve começar excluindo. Mas nunca chega a excluir por completo, porque o já purificado nunca é suficientemente puro. A ponto de a ideia se transformar em um delírio infinito de rechaçar e depois expulsar, a fim de exterminar. Os judeus e os ciganos, que encarnavam o micróbio maléfico que ameaça a pureza da raça e do sangue ariano, tinham de ser caçados até nos mais ínfimos recantos do território sob domínio nazista e eliminados como pulgas. O Comum e o comunismo também estão fora de alcance. Começa-se expropriando. Mas ainda há a propriedade e o privado. E, portanto, nunca se chega a expropriar, despossuir, comunizar por completo. As lutas contra as classes (supostamente) proprietárias ou avessas à coletivização, os pequenos proprietários de terra, geram deportações em massa (deskulakização) ou organização sistemática de grandes fomes (Holodomor). Por isso, apesar da formidável esperança de emancipação que o ideal comunista representou durante quase um século para as classes ou povos explorados do mundo inteiro, ele se despedaçou no século XX contra o muro do "socialismo real". Nos antípodas do comunismo imaginado, ao qual se supunha que conduziria infalivelmente, o ideal comunista se transformou em uma máquina tirânica, burocrática e totalitária. A sociedade sem Estado sugerida por Engels na obra Anti- Dühring6 tornou-se seu contrário, uma ditadura do Estado contra a sociedade. O terrível fracasso dessa utopia em ação destruiu os sonhos de libertação coletiva — enquanto "a exploração do homem pelo homem" continua indo muito bem. Infelizmente, não se pode dizer o mesmo das utopias revolucionárias em nome do Puro. Enquanto o ideal comunista quase desapareceu dos programas políticos, a ideologia purista do sangue e da raça, a ilusão da origem comum (seja biológica ou religiosa) e, portanto, o ódio destruidor do estrangeiro continuam a alimentar as utopias coletivas e seus massacres em série: genocídio ruandês contra os tutsis, depuração étnica dos muçulmanos na ex-lugoslávia (em particular na Bósnia), limpeza étnica de cristãos, turcomanos xiitas e no autoproclamado "Estado islâmico" etc. O fim das utopias? Felizmente, parece que somos poupados de tudo isso em nossas "democracias ocidentais", após setenta anos de paz sob as asas da Europa, algumas décadas de relativa prosperidade econômica e tranquilidade política sob a frágil proteção de nossos sistemas representativos. Não acreditamos mais na salvação comum. Nem na salvação nem no comum. Há três razões para isso, todas as três interligadas: o fim do político, a desconfiança em relação ao Bem, o reino dos direitos individuais. As utopias políticas conduziram ao desastre. Não conseguem mais nos fazer sonhar com o futuro como faziam no passado, porque estamos absorvidos por nosso hoje e por nós mesmos. A política parece ter derrotado o político. A política são estratégias coletivas ou táticas individuais, é o império dos "eles" ou o reino dos "eus". O político é a afirmação da existência de um "nós" ("nós, o povo"), além das comunidades de famílias ou amigos, das comunidades regionais ou religiosas, além das identidades de gênero ou origem, e aquém da comunidade humana em geral. As peripécias usuais dos governos representativos sufocaram o sentimento de pertencimento coletivo e a aspiração a um destino comum, que ressurgem apenas quando uma emoção violenta abala o corpo social, quando existe uma ameaça extremista ou ocorre um atentado terrorista. Em situações normais, porém, os acasos da conquista ou do exercício do poder escondem o político, isto é, as condições de unidade da comunidade. Não acreditamos mais no Bem. Não sonhamos mais com uma Cidade bondosa, finalmente livre do Mal. Aspiramos simplesmente a uma sociedade — ou um mundo — menos má. Prova dessas aspirações são as manifestações que mobilizam a juventude dos países ocidentais ou sublevam os povos do planeta de vez em quando. Movimentos altermundialistas contra o capitalismo financeiro, Fórum Social Mundial (Porto Alegre), Occupy Wall Street, Indignados, Nuit Debout etc. Movimentos a favor da democracia nos países da Europa do Sul nos anos 1970, na América Latina e, em outros continentes, lutas de emancipação na praça da Paz Celestial (Pequim), na praça Tahrir (no Cairo), na praça Taksim (Istambul), de Sidi Bouzid (Tunísia), revolução dos guarda-chuvas (Hong Kong) etc. Apesar da diversidade de contextos e objetivos, em todas essas revoltas há uma constante que as distingue das utopias revolucionárias passadas: as pessoas se revoltam contra alguma coisa, elas não se mobilizam por alguma coisa. Sabemos o que elas rejeitam (injustiça, miséria, corrupção, humilhação, arbitrariedade, segregação e repressão), mas desconhecemos a que aspiram. Ou melhor, é como se tudo que desejassem fosse justamente um "menos" — menos injustiça, menos miséria, menos arbitrariedade, menos corrupção, menos segregação, menos repressão etc. —, ou o menos possível, mas nunca o impossível de um horizonte coletivo. Os que almejam em todo o mundo derrubar um poder tirânico ainda sonham com essa nossa "democracia" que não nos encanta mais, porque acreditamos que as liberdades fundamentais em que ela consiste são para sempre e ela se resume a votarmos esporadicamente em políticas que não nos satisfarão. Pois quando não há mais nada contra o que se revoltar, restam apenas motivos para reivindicar. Contudo, ninguém mais sonha com uma Cidade perfeita: nem os que protestam contra sua miséria e servidão nem os que lutam por condições de vida decentes e pela satisfação de seus interesses. Não há mais utopia política. Foi assim que se instalou entre nós o reino dos direitos individuais. Pois não desejamos mais um Estado ideal que nos una e nos faça um nós, um nós inédito, um nós que seja um nós mesmos: esperamos somente que esse Estado nos deixe em paz, cada um por si, e nos permita realizar as aspirações individuais a que acreditamos ter direito. O sonho de emancipação coletiva se estilhaçou em uma multiplicidade dispersa de desejos. Podemos indicar a data recente em que esse "nós" considerado poderoso demais começou a se encolher em "eus" triunfantes. Quando esses "eus" ainda usavam a máscara do antigo "nós" para se legitimar. No último terço do século XX, as reivindicações individualistas ainda tinham uma coloração revolucionária; as pessoas não sonhavam mais com a libertação de uma classe ou de um povo, mas ainda sonhavam com uma libertação política: a dos desejos individuais. O ideal proletário adquiriu um matiz libertário: foram os movimentos de "Maio de 68". O conceito de revolução recuava na história social e progredia nos costumes. Nesses movimentos dos países capitalistas ocidentais, as pessoas acreditavam, apoiavam, afirmavam em textos e discursos que tudo na vida de cada um era político por natureza, para além da própria política. O amor era político: elas acreditavam que as relações entre homens e mulheres, os sentimentos, a sexualidade eram determinados pela existência social — logo eram políticos. A arte também era política: a arte falsa era a arte reacionária, a música tonal, a pintura figurativa, o romance ou o cinema narrativos etc. A "verdadeira arte" era a das vanguardas, revolucionária na forma e messiânica no conteúdo. A moral, por sua vez, era política de um extremo a outro. Ou então era oca, ridícula. (Isso foi antes de tudo virar ética.) Este era o programa: libertação coletiva das aspirações individuais, "viver sem tempo morto e gozar sem obstáculos". Desde o início do século XXI, não existe mais utopia política. Nem sonhos de libertação social; ela se despedaçou contra o muro da realidade totalitária: de suas esperanças restam apenas algumas conquistas, cada vez mais frágeis, do Estado providência. Nem sonhos de realização libertária; eles se chocaram contra o fim das ilusões e o retorno do conservadorismo. Dos primeiros e dos segundos sobrou apenas o império dos direitos. A era do indivíduo não precisa mais se abrigar sob a ideologia da libertação: o vocabulário liberal dos direitos subjetivos é suficiente. De fato, os direitos individuais, na esteira e conforme o modelo muitas vezes infiel dos "direitos humanos", tornaram-se nosso único ideal, depois que perdemos a fé no Ideal. Pois a ideia de "direitos humanos" é a dupla negação de toda utopia política: porque se trata de "direitos" e porque se trata de "humanos". Cópia de: FRANCIS WOLFF. Três Utopias Contemporâneas. São Paulo: Unesp, 2018. (shrink)

This paper uses virtue ethics to discuss the COVID-19 outbreak, Hollywood science-fiction/pandemic films, and the environmental crisis. We outline the ideas of hubris and nemesis and argue that responding to the COVID-19 pandemic requires that we develop virtues. We will explore these ethical issues through an eco-reading (Hiltner 2018) of two popular films cinematic representation of pandemics, The Andromeda Strain (1971) and Contagion (2011). Fictional narratives are particularly adept at celebrating the moral and intellectual virtues of individuals (as is standard (...) in Hollywood cinema) and dramatizing the tensions inherent in human scientific and technological civilisation. Using examples from our texts and with reference to COVID-19, we begin with a discussion of virtues and vices, both individual and collective, we then explore the concept of flourishing and apply this framework to collective action problems such as climate change and COVID-19. Thus, science fiction can provoke new forms of environmental philosophising and ethical engagement, while addressing the most important challenges facing humanity at present. (shrink)

Against the backdrop of these works (Mitchell/Snyder and others), we propose an analysis of films with and about blind or visually disabled individuals that aims at exploring different modes of world perception. In our view, such an examination should not only discuss the question of “giving voice” and visibility to those who were formerly only represented in or by the media, or the fact that films belonging to what might be considered a “new disability documentary cinema” are dedicated to (...) the experience of disability from the point of view of those who deal with it. Rather, we examine films that do not restrict their field of vision to institutional context as cultural productions. These films allow the viewer to get to know different practices of seeing in the daily life of both blind or visually disabled and sighted people. In approaching these productions, we are interested in focusing on how the audio-visual regimes produce and structure our visual experience, translate it into a filmic grammar and thus not only create filmic patterns of blind perception but, at the same time, the cinematographic aesthetic of a so-called normal sightedness. (shrink)

Palawan is a land of promise, and of paradox. On maps, it appears on the edge of the Philippines, isolated. Indeed, it is a kind of last frontier. Its population remained tiny for centuries, the government offering homestead land in the 1950s practically for free to attract migrants from outside. The Palawan State University was established by law in 1965, but did not become operational until 1972. A commercial airport did not exist until the 1980s, and for many years, flights (...) were limited. Yet Palawan is one of the oldest sites of human habitation in the Philippines with the famous Tabon Cave human fossils. The oldest bone fragment here has been dated to be about 47,000 years. We know, too, that trade with China goes back several centuries. Today, Palawan seems to be making up for lost time with new commercial investments pouring in at breakneck speed. In particular, outsiders have rediscovered its potentials around logging, mining, fisheries, and tourism. This has caused concern among individuals and civil society organizations who want sustainable development, and see the commercial developments mainly as extractive, not just of natural resources but of the human. There’s very cheap labor available. And when potential investors marvel about cheap land, they’re actually talking about displacing earlier settlers, including indigenous people, from their lands. A subtle but still insidious aspect of the exploitation of human resources is a transformation of the very concept of human development. Using the rhetoric of modernity, residents in Palawan are reorienting the way they view themselves as well as their families and friends. The value of a human being now hinges on how they look, and the desired appearance is defined from the outside, as we see in this anthology of research reports coming from the Chemical Youth project of the University of Amsterdam and the University of the Philippines Diliman. We read about the importance of fair skin as a projection of cleanliness, of high social status (meaning someone not engaged in manual labor and therefore not exposed to the sun). We read of how “femininity” is defined around body contours, and cosmetics, and how hormones are used by male-to-female transgenders. We go beyond the visual, reading about the importance of controlling or enhancing body odors among tour guides, who interestingly are especially concerned about the bad odor management of their foreign customers, using car perfumes to keep their work manageable and we learn how difficult it is for security guards to stay alert during their long shifts. Energy drinks and cigarettes help them perform their duties. All these transformations through what the French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault has called “technologies of the self” are as paradoxical as Palawan. On the surface, the products—which are technologies—seem to be mainly in the realm of the self but are, in reality, pushed, through marketing, from the outside, in contexts of inequality and exploitative labour relations. Personal aspirations are not personal but are for predefined standards of modernity, related to work-related demands and expectations. The self must be made presentable to the tourist, to the customers in malls, and to those who may threaten the properties that young people protect. It is not surprising that these transformations become problematic for the “self.” The skin whiteners, the hormones, the body deodorants, and the energy drinks are expensive and can distort budgetary priorities. The money for tonic drinks, for example, could well go into more nutritious food. The tragedy, too, many of the products used are of doubtful safety and efficacy. Even the energy drinks have much too high levels of caffeine that can cause cardiac palpitations. Cosmetics and the skin whiteners imported from China and unregistered with the Food and Drug Administration may contain toxic chemicals like mercury. But even registered skin whiteners can be problematic, their so-called “skin-whitening effect” coming about because they take away the upper layers of the skin, leaving behind a red glow (seen as “whitening”) which is actually inflammation. The whitened skin fails to protect against the sun, leading to adverse effects such as black spots. Ultimately though, the problems come with the very definition of the self. As the reports show, young people use the chemicals with some ambivalence, knowing how expensive they are and experiencing some of the undesirable side effects. There is, too, doubt about whether what they’re doing is indeed “good,” captured by how IP women will put on cosmetics only when they’re away from home and about to go to work. The cosmetics have to be removed before they return home because they are not socially acceptable. The research reports are not for Palawan alone. It must make us more critical and discerning as we revisit concepts of development and exploitation, modernity and tradition, self and community. The chemicals, in many ways, are like the products used in precolonial barter trade. For the Chinese, the beeswax and the sea cucumbers, for the inhabitants of Palawan the ceramics, represented faraway lands. To have those products gave prestige. Today, the skin whiteners and tonic drinks and other chemicals described in this anthology represent modernity with promises of not just of a more attractive self, but of better jobs, a better life. We are proud to have worked with the Palawan State University, and the people of Palawan, to gather powerful narratives that will now challenge the outside, the purveyors of modernity, to be more critical and discerning, the chemicals now to be seen not just as stuff applied to the biological body, but as powerful shapers of social bodies. (shrink)

In today’s society of humans and machines, automation, animation, and ecosystems are terms of concern. Categories of life and technology have become mixed in governmental policies and drive economic exploitation and the pathologies of everyday life. This book both curiously and critically advances the term that underlies these new developments: machine.

This essay argues that, despite the potential for an encounter between Stanley Cavell’s thought and found-footage experimental filmmaking, this has not yet taken place because the early Cavell’s picture of films as autonomous “wholes,” together with his "global-holistic" conception of modernism, prevented him from appreciating the expressive possibilities of filmic fragments. I then argue that these impediments to an encounter with found footage recede in Cavell’s later thought, as he moves away from a concern with modernism and as J. L. (...) Austin’s How to Do Things with Words comes to play a greater role in his film writing. In this late period, Cavell no longer conceives of topics of film criticism as filmic “wholes” but rather, more loosely, along the lines of what Austin called “total speech situations.” I claim that the culmination of this turn lies in Cavell’s writing on the expressive powers of collections. In closing, I demonstrate the possibilities of the late Cavell’s thinking about collections and “passionate utterances” for found-footage filmmaking by discussing Mexican experimental filmmaker Bruno Varela’s Monolito (2019), with particular attention to how Varela uses archival footage to fulfill the exigencies of finding new modes of expression at just the moment when a world is receding from view. (shrink)

Citizens are the most important economic priority for the economy of Ukraine in comparison with any territory values in the number of its territories and from this position easy needs any position. The pandemic economic crisis did not reveal anything new, but it finally and irrevocably confirmed and proved the priority of the human factor in the economy of any state over the geographical boundaries and regional structure of the state.

The film version of galdosian novel Nazarín, directed by Luis Buñuel, confronts the problem of adaptation as a translation of the work. The transfer of written text to the field of image brings with it, besides the structural complexity inherent in each medium, the creative elements of the filmmaker inserted in the story. Luis Buñuel’s contributions to the novel transform the meaning of the message and lead it to a new moral dimension that emancipates the film from the literary text.

As the war in Syria and the destruction of the Calais camp in France in 2016 bitterly demonstrate, declarations of human rights and asylum devolve into empty promises without a common sense of solidarity and an implicit understanding that we share responsibility for the world and one another. Today’s refugee crisis demonstrates that many of the problems that Hannah Arendt identified during the first half of the twentieth century are still with us. National security and the state of exception increasingly (...) place refugees and migrants at the borders of international law. This article argues that Immanuel Kant’s Perpetual Peace and Arendt’s postwar reflections on the stateless as modern pariahs continue to frame current debates on hospitality, human rights, and responsibility. Without a recognition of our common humanity and shared world, sovereign states will continue to find exceptions to the legal status of refugees and migrants, thus enabling their exclusion from political life and the very laws that should protect them. Falling outside human rights law and the rights of refugees leads to the uncertainty of the pariah. (shrink)

Much of the philosophical literature on health inequalities seeks to establish the superiority of one or another conception of luck egalitarianism. In recent years, however, an increasing number of self-avowed egalitarian philosophers have proposed replacing luck egalitarianism with alternatives that stress the moral relevance of distinct relationships, rather than the moral relevance of good or bad luck. After briefly explaining why I am not attracted to luck egalitarianism, I seek in this chapter to distinguish and clarify three views that have (...) been characterized in the philosophical literature as forms of relational egalitarianism. I call these three relational views equality of treatment, equality of concern, and social egalitarianism. I will explain why each claims to be a form of egalitarianism and why these three views should not be seen as competitors. I will argue that each brand of relational egalitarianism describes a plausible plank of distributive justice that bears on the evaluation of health inequalities and on the political institutions that create, sustain, or exacerbate them. To illustrate this pluralistic relational egalitarian approach, I will draw on a case study by Horton and Barker (this volume) to discuss how each of the three planks might be brought to bear on the evaluation of oral health disparities among the children of migrant Latino farmworkers in California. (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)