Postmodernism

Established in the late 1960s by R. Murray Schafer at Simon Fraser University, the World Soundscape Project is considered to have birthed acoustic ecology, a discipline recently taken up by geographers looking at the relations between fauna, space, and sound, as well as those interested in the bodily aspects of the aural. What’s missing from the literature, though, is an exploration of how the framing and technological monitoring of “soundscapes” have functioned biopolitically to maintain hierarchies of power. Drawing on a GIS study that intersects sound monitoring points with different demographic areas in King County, WA, along with a discourse analysis of federal and local noise control regulations, I explore the ways in which the construction of a “soundscape” works to re-present marginalized groups as literally inaudible, while naturalizing capitalist production, silencing its “noisy” contradictions.

9th Annual Critical Geographies Mini-Conference
Simon Fraser University
22 November 2014

Lietuvos filosofijos ir kultūrologijos korfėjaus prof. A. Uždavinio mintys apie demonišką postmoderizmo esmę, kosmoso desakralizaciją ir perversijos išaukštinimą Tradicijos akimis

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Profesor Algis Uždavinys on demonic nature of Postmodernism as directed desacralization of the Cosmos and divination of perversion, in the perspective of the Tradition

This article considers The Dark Knight Rises (Christopher Nolan, 2012) in order to argue through Fredric Jameson that postmodern aspects of a text are capable of obfuscating, if not altogether obliterating, any Marxist polemics. The first portion engages with Jameson's The Political Unconscious, particularly his emphasis on class struggle and identification of ideologemes which manifest in the text. The subsequent section considers The Dark Knight Rises as a postmodern text through Jameson's concepts of pastiche and nostalgia. Moreover, The Dark Knight Rises is contextualized within the recent spate of class-oriented cinema. Collectively, the goal is to identify a trend within such films of establishing a correlation between capitalism and inequality, ideologemes and postmodernism. The final result is an increasingly impressive group of genre-spanning films which address contemporary inequality in its multifarious forms, but which treat these issues more so as narrative devices than tenable critiques of the sites of oppression.

Jung and Nietzsche each made the great discovery of a reality that “overcomes” the opposites. Nietzsche, the linguistic scholar and philosopher, referred to this reality as self-presentational language while Jung, the psychologist, names it as the objective psyche. Both agree that this reality is “alive,” with its own intentionality. For the purposes of this essay I will call it living language.  The discoveries of both pioneers inaugurated a blossoming of cultural practices, founded on incomplete interpretations of the telos of this living language, which articulate the emergence of a variety of possible worlds, among them the worlds of artificial intelligence, virtual reality, biotechnology, nanotechnology, etc.  This essay attempts to describe a cultural practice that could emerge from a more complete understanding of the telos of the psyche, or living language, a practice that can articulate and manifest the possible world of the posthuman.

‘To say more than human things with human voice,
That cannot be; to say human things with more
Than human voice, that, also, cannot be;
To speak humanly from the height or from the depth
Of human things, that is acutest speech.’
                        Wallace Stevens, ‘Chocorua to its Neighbor’

The field of organizational development, along with other prevalent perspectives on planned organizational change, is based in a unitary and instrumental perspective on organizational change in which leadership and change agents strategically articulate one primary direction for change in the organization. This approach assumes a high degree of leadership consensus on the nature and direction of change, based on a linear, planned process of gathering data to solve problems in the organization. Communication in this model of change is employed instrumentally to transmit information about the change throughout the organization with an emphasis on transmitting information clearly, unambiguously, and efficiently.

Some scholars argue that this traditional, instrumental perspective is far from universally successful empirically in the implementation of change, and that it neglects more recent pluralist, constructionist, and postmodern approaches to organizational theory and communication. Of these more recent approaches, discursive orientations to change stress how change occurs socially within organizations through communicative interaction in the form of verbal and written texts. This paper provides a brief overview of discursive perspectives on organizational change, with rationale for adoption of discursive perspectives within the field of HRD.

Exhibiting the Postmodern traces the origins and significance of the First International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale. Situating the 1980 exhibition The Presence of the Past against the larger historical backdrop in which architecture exhibitions appear, and considering their proliferation in the postmodern era, this book claims that the exhibition, beyond heralding a shift in the history of curating, marked both the beginning of the end, and the end of the beginning of the postmodern turn in architecture. Looking at the institutional changes, exhibition techniques and exhibition spaces, as well as the discourses and controversies between advocates of modern and postmodern architecture, this book narrates the development of architectural exhibitions as a ‘genre’ of cultural manifestations, while expanding on both the history of the Venice Biennale – and, more generally, of Italian architecture in the 1970s – and the history of postmodernism. It also reveals how the 1980 Venice Architecture Biennale announced a changing relationship between the worlds of art and architecture, and the consequent transformation of the architectural product as end object.

This book illuminates the rhetorical work performed by contemporary representations of a specific type of postfeminist hero who has garnered a lot of cultural capital: women who are smart, capable, physically agile and fit, and proficient with weaponry and technology. Employing critical/cultural and feminist approaches, Heather Hundley, Roberta Chevrette, and Hillary Jones engage with a range of theories including intersectionality, critical race theory, postmodernism, and posthumanism to examine a range of contemporary texts, including Kill Bill, Volumes I and II; The Hunger Games films; Wonder Woman; Atomic Blonde; Proud Mary; The Bionic Woman; Deus Ex; Dark Matter; and Caprica. Contributing to a robust existing conversation about postfeminist media as well as tracing how representation has changed in recent years, Hundley, Chevrette, and Jones contend that portrayals of dangerous dames offer limitations and opportunities for audiences. Specifically, should audiences read these characters as evidence of a postfeminist apocalypse, they may heed warnings of the limited interpretations offered. Yet as more women serve as role models and gain public attention, particularly regarding their assets and abilities, they provide important equipment for living for navigating around patriarchal constraints raised by postfeminism, neoliberalism, and humanism.

Available at:
-Peter Lang
https://www.peterlang.com/document/1057643
-Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Dames-Representing-Female-Bodied-Postfeminist/dp/1433163012

The paper discusses the major characteristics of modernity and post-modernity presented in Passion of the Western Mind by contemporary depth psychologist and philosopher Richard Tarnas. The essay, created for a course taught by Dominican theologian Fr. Edward Krasevac on the nature and history of Western thought, summarizes Tarnas's view of the larger cultural and historical contexts in which the dominant epistemologies and perspectives of modernity and post-modernity evolved and serves as a basic introduction to some of the distinctive features of modern and post-modern philosophical criticism.

This is my masters’ thesis – it examines the various intellectual forces at work in the years leading up to Schleiermacher, and the Enlightenment’s challenge to orthodox Christianity.  This provides a proper context for understanding Romanticism’s emergence as both a reaction to, and an interaction with the Enlightenment.  An overview of Schleiermacher’s work evidences his conscious attempt to re-formulate the Christian faith in a manner immune to the rationalistic criticisms of the Enlightenment and, at the same time, constructed in such a fashion as to make it acceptable to his Romanticist contemporaries. 

Subsequently, there occurs an analysis of the contextual model employed by Schleiermacher for interaction with those persuaded of Romanticism’s validity.  As foil to Schleiermacher’s model, I employ relevant biblical passages to formulate a biblical model for contextualization.  Further employed is a philosophical evaluation of contextualization to judge the logical consistency of the concept.  I next examine Schleiermacher as a nexus for the 19th century thought that led to postmodernism by demonstrating both the pervasiveness of his influence and the presence in seminal form of many elements of postmodernism in his various works.  An analysis of Schleiermacher’s thought in each of these areas will demonstrate how his views function as an antecedent paradigm for postmodernism, and further, demonstrate the import of Schleiermacher’s role in a major shift in thought which, laid the foundation for postmodernism’s emergence in the latter part of the 20th century.

This approach enables the identification of parallels between Romanticism and postmodernism and examine the present day phenomenon whereby many Christians attempt to contextualize the Gospel in a manner similar to Schleiermacher’s.  The problematic nature of his contextualization will serve as a benchmark for evaluating present efforts to contextualize Christianity within postmodernism.

Social changes in the contemporary era have directly influenced human life and existence, especially the meaning of marriage. In light of these contemporary developments, researchers have emphasized the urgent need to deconstruct marriage and re-constitute it, fundamentally altering its traditional characteristics and meaning in the process. Conversely, the Orthodox Church views the essence of marriage with an interminable consistency and continuity characterized by the mysterion of love in Christ. Is it viable to live the meaning of this mysterion in today’s postmodern era? To examine this issue, this study initiates an interdisciplinary dialogue between postmodern perspectives on marriage and family on the one hand, and the vision of Orthodox theology on the other. This new and unexplored dialogue endeavors to contribute to the positive engagement of the Orthodox Church with the postmodern world.

Jeanette Winterson's latest novel Frankissstein (2019) re-animates Shelley's Gothic classic and brings it into a contemporary world of smart-tech and artificial intelligence. The novel mainly focuses on humankind's engagement with hybridity and the troubling ramifications of technological advancements. Beginning with Shelley composing Frankenstein, the novel leaps into the present day to tell the story of Ry Shelley, a trans-gender doctor self-described as "hybrid", meeting Victor Stein, a celebrated professor working on "accelerated evolution" through "self-designing" life. The novel becomes a fragmented meditation on the responsibilities of creation, the possibilities of artificial intelligence and the implications of both transsexuality and transhumanism. The reanimation in the book is supported by historical figures such as Shelley, Byron, Ada Lovelace and Turing. The events and ideas of the past seem very much alive and lending life to the work of present and future. The first part of this paper will concentrate on the postmodernist narrative techniques of the author accompanied with philosophical questions such as "What is reality? What is time? What are the responsibilities of creation? Where are the boundaries between story and real life, between consciousness and an idea? The second part of the paper will deal with the warnings of the postmodernist novel about the inevitable human future and non-biological life forms.

In order to better cope with the pressures and stresses of the current day, modern psychology is anxiously seeking to find new therapies to address the increasing disorders within the human psyche. In the process new fields of research, such as humanistic and transpersonal psychology, curiously appear to borrow more and more from the wisdom of the ages. This volume, containing eighteen articles by noteworthy expositors of the perennial philosophy such as Huston Smith, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, and Frithjof Schuon, presents the spiritual psychology of the wisdom traditions as a much-needed antidote to the current impasse in modern psychology.

Some Endorsements for Psychology and the Perennial Philosophy:

“[Psychology and the Perennial Philosophy] is more than an anthology. It is a wisely crafted collection of classic and contemporary scholarship noting that what many are seeking is what has always been, a perennial philosophy, that remains foundational. As one of the authors, Tage Lindbom, properly notes, ‘Secularization is a fish in troubled waters.’ This book claims the waters and is essential reading for all those who may have forgotten or are simply ignorant of the rich foundation provided by the perennial philosophy.”
—Ralph W. Hood, Professor of Psychology at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, past president of the Psychology of Religion division of the American Psychological Association, co-founder of The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion and co-author of The Psychology of Religion

“A necessary and bracing critique of the assumptions and limitations of contemporary Western psychology, this generous volume is also a passionate call and learned guide towards a truer perspective that embraces man's spiritual nature.”
—Gabor Maté, M.D., and author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction

“Knowing the nature of the mind is perhaps the most difficult undertaking, especially in today’s world. To comprehend the nature of mind one needs to turn to the domain of religion and spirituality. Yet the truth of the mind and its complexity cannot explicitly be defined in words. Inner or transcendent wisdom sees the mind’s own nature without the duality of the seer. Suchness (tathatā) of mind is only experiential and not expressible. The words used to describe thought are themselves a product of thought, which is conditioned and limited. Thus, differences and contradictions are unavoidable. Therefore, a comparative study of different viewpoints and commentaries is immensely important to awaken the inner intelligence to see the mind as it is. Psychology and the Perennial Philosophy: Studies in Comparative Religion edited by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos is an outstanding effort in this direction.”
—Samdhong Rinpoche, former Prime Minister (Kalon Tripa) of the Tibetan Government-in-exile, author of Uncompromising Truth for a Compromised World: Tibetan Buddhism and Today’s World

“The rise of psychology has impacted the study and practice of spirituality, the experiences and attitudes relevant to ultimate human values that transcend ordinary behavior. Each chapter of this remarkable book demonstrates this interaction in a unique and provocative way. But rather than using psychology to reduce and ‘psychologize’ spiritual topics, its authors demonstrate how directives from the spiritual traditions can enhance and even illuminate the enduring importance of psychology in the 21st century.”
—Stanley Krippner, Saybrook University, co-author of Spiritual Dimensions of Healing

“The work at hand is a thinking and debating man’s delight. If you have any interest at all in attempting to include an educated and enlightened view of man’s higher functions in your purview of the world, you will learn from and enjoy this collection of essays. If you already have some knowledge in this area, brace yourself: you may see some of your favorites sharply criticized. A thought-provoking work.”
—Bruce W. Scotton, University of California, San Francisco, co-editor of Textbook of Transpersonal Psychiatry and Psychology

“This book, superbly edited by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos, is a masterful critique of the field of psychology and its loss of the sacred ground in which it once was rooted. It offers depth psychologists an opportunity to contemplate timeless truths echoed through the centuries by perennial philosophers who have always claimed psyche is subordinate to Spirit. Although ignored in depth psychology’s early years due to prejudice and lack of understanding, this is a message today’s psychotherapists must take seriously. Human beings need a deeper and wider transpersonal vision of who and what we are, which the saints and sages of the world’s spiritual traditions have always pointed to. In psychotherapy with a therapist committed to such a vision, patients penetrate into their unconscious depths and not infrequently awaken to the Ground of all Being. Their suffering itself occurred because they had turned away from Spirit. Above all, this volume passionately calls upon depth psychology to remember its origin in the perennial wisdom at the core of the great religions. There is something of a polemic in these pages. It deserves to be considered by depth psychologists of all persuasions.”
—Bryan Wittine, Transpersonal psychologist and Jungian psychoanalyst

“This anthology from Samuel Bendeck Sotillos is a must reference for anyone who is interested in psychology and its relationship to spirituality, and in developing an inclusive dialogue between disciplines that favor an integral outlook on the person and his or her potential. Selections in this anthology will inspire us to reexamine the metaphysical underpinnings of psychology, and remind us how important it is to rise above science’s attempt to reduce the human being to an epistemic object.”
—Sangeetha Menon, National Institute of Advanced Studies (Bangalore, India), Board Member of the International Transpersonal Association (ITA), author of The Beyond Experience: Consciousness in Bhagavad Gita

“This anthology has some of the most discerning essays and reviews on spirituality and psychology, which provide much-needed care and caution to all those engaged in bringing them together or who wish to do so in future. Therefore, it is a must-read for all those who teach, research, consult, or study in such frontier areas as transpersonal psychology, states of consciousness, mind-body relation, holistic health, Indian psychology, and so on. It will be an invaluable textbook for courses in these and other related areas. I congratulate the editor of the book.”
—Kiran Kumar K. Salagame, University of Mysore (India), Board Member of the International Transpersonal Association (ITA), author of The Psychology of Meditation: A Contextual Approach

“One of the finest collections of essays on the Perennial Philosophy—a must-read for all psychologists who are engaged with spirituality and transpersonal psychology. The essays which critique modern psychology (including transpersonal psychology, and the framework of Carl Jung), in the light of the Perennial Philosophy are a revelation and make compelling reading. The book serves as a corrective to the excesses of modern psychology, and to this end Sotillos has done a commendable job. I for one will include the book in some of the graduate courses that I teach.”
—Suneet Varma, University of Delhi, co-editor of Foundations of Indian Psychology

“To its credit modern science by-and-large is becoming more cognizant of the essential connection between spirituality and psychological health and well-being and most of all its positive implications within the field of psychology. While there is ample data to document this in a plethora of academic journals and books, this new book Psychology and the Perennial Philosophy adds a novel contribution to the dialogue between psychology and spirituality, which captures many nuances that for the most part go unnoticed within these discussions, and last but not least, it provides a keen eye of discernment to understand this intricate relationship on a deeper level that is crucially needed. This work will be a valuable asset to students and long term mental health practitioners and professors alike who seek to better understand the relationship between psychology and spirituality.”
—Harold G. Koenig, Duke University, Director of the Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health, co-author of The Handbook of Religion and Health

Przysługujący widmom wywrotowy, niemalże rewolucyjny potencjał został odsunięty oraz zagubiony poprzez pozbycie się tej kontrowersyjnej kategorii z terytorium metafizyki i zbyt pośpieszne odesłanie jej do przestrzeni badań nad literaturą, sprowadzając ją jedynie do roli użytecznego, bezpiecznego narzędzia interpretacji.

Książka Andrzeja Marca odzyskuje niepokojący charakter widmontologii i ponownie wprowadza widma do myśli metafizycznej. Czym nawiedzona i przeniknięta jest tradycyjna metafizyka, co właściwie ją dręczy, nie daje spokoju oraz nieustannie podmywa jej stabilność?

Kategoria widma Derridy posłużyła Marcowi przede wszystkim do rozważań nad charakterem współczesności i przeobrażeń, jakie dokonały się w obrębie myśli ponowoczesnej. Współczesna kultura, zdaniem Marca, stała się miejscem powstawania widm, nieustannie powracających z przeszłości. Uznając, że nie jesteśmy już w stanie tworzyć utopijnych wizji przyszłości, autor stara się zdać sprawę z widmowego charakteru współczesnej kultury, analizując m. in. strategie vintage, retro, nurt no future w kulturze lat 70. czy nurt fantastyki naukowej w literaturze.

Enclosed is the syllabus and course notes from the upper division course I teach in PostModernism and Post-Marxist Critical Theory. It occurs to me that some of these essays--ranging from Horkheimer and Adorno, Baudrillard, Foucault, and the feminist post-modern theorist Donna Haraway may offer some insight and some tools for comprehending the dark times in which we live. While these essays may not be directly aimed at understanding the rise of phenomena like the Alt-Right, toxic masculinity, and particularly violent forms of patriarchy, I think they can show us something about the ideological trends that set us on out current morally troubling path.

“Power is war, the continuation of war by other means”: Foucault’s reversal of Clausewitz’s formula has become a staple of critical theory — but it remains highly problematic on a conceptual level. Elaborated during Foucault’s 1976 lectures (“Society Must Be Defended”), this work-hypothesis theorises “basic warfare” [la guerre fondamentale] as the teleological horizon of socio-political relations. Following Boulainvilliers, Foucault champions this polemological approach, conceived as a purely descriptive discourse on “real” politics and war, against the philosophico-juridical conceptuality attached to liberal society (Hobbes’s Leviathan being here the prime example).
However, in doing so, Foucault did not interrogate the conceptual validity of notions such as power and war, therefore interlinking them without questioning their ontological status. This problematic conflation was partly rectified in 1982, as Foucault proposed a more dynamic definition of power relations: “actions over potential actions”.
I argue, somewhat polemically, that Foucault’s hermeneutics of power still involves a teleological violence, dependent on a polemological representation of human relations as essentially instrumental: this resembles what Derrida names, in “Heidegger’s Ear”, an “anthropolemology”. However, I show that all conceptualisation of power implies its self-deconstruction. This self-deconstructive (or autoimmune) structure supposes an archi-originary unpower prior to power: power presupposes an excess within power, an excessive force, another violence making it both possible and impossible. There is something within power located “beyond the power principle” (Derrida). This (self-)excess signifies a limitless resistantiality co-extensive with power-relationality. It also allows the reversal of pólemos into its opposite, as unpower opens politics and warfare to the messianic call of a pre-political, pre-ontological disruption: the archi-originary force of différance. This force, unconditional, challenges Foucault’s conceptualisations of power, suggesting an originary performativity located before or beyond hermeneutics of power-knowledge, disrupting theoreticity as well as empiricity by pointing to their ontological complicity.
The bulk of this essay is dedicated to sketching the theoretical implications of this deconstructive reading of Foucault with respect to the methodology and conceptuality of political science and social theory.

This paper traces the widespread wave of fashionable headscarf-wearers (hijabs) in Muslim societies in an attempt to illustrate how the contemporary spirit of consumer culture informs female´s self-image and behaviour in the context of post-colonial literature. I am going to do that concerning the voices of the fictional female figures in Habib Al-Selmi´s novel "The Women of al-Basatin (2010) Habib Salmi is a renowned Arab writer whose modern Arabic literature explores the relationship/ clash between Eastern and Western values. In this paper, I aim to highlight the meanings attributed to this practice of head-covering as in contemporary consumerist Tunisian society individually, culturally and contextually assigned.

Early literary instances of artificial humanoid and intelligent systems anticipate in a general way the kinds of thematic issues that cyborgs, androids, and intelligent networks like supercomputers bring up for the contemporary notion of the posthuman, understood as a condition in which the human and the machine are becoming increasingly intermingled. Humans have never really been autonomous entities, but rather have always been intimately interdependent upon their environments and tools. And their dreams of intelligent tools even extend back into the era of ancient Rome and Greece, as I will describe below. Thus the seemingly modern idea of a reciprocal dependency upon mechanical devices is just a variation of a much older theme.

We live in an age of movement. More than at any other time in history , people and things move longer distances, more frequently, and faster than ever before. All that was solid melted into air long ago and is now in full circulation around the world like dandelion seeds adrift on turbulent winds. We find ourselves, in the early twenty-first century, in a world where every major domain of human activity has become increasingly defined by motion. 1 We have entered a new historical era defined in large part by movement and mobility and are now in need of a new historical on-tology appropriate to our time. The observation that the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first was marked by an increasingly " liquid " and " mobile modernity " is now something widely recognized in the scholarly literature at the turn of the century. 2 Today, however, our orientation to this event is quite different. Almost twenty years into the twenty-first century we now find ourselves situated on the other side of this heralded transition. The question that confronts us today is thus a new one: how to fold all that has melted back up into new solids. 3

[in French]
L’étude du fragment et de l’écriture fragmentaire s’est développée depuis quelques années, sans que pour autant des réponses consensuelles ne surgissent. Si cette pratique est devenue courante après la Seconde Guerre mondiale, elle a pourtant des pionniers. Dans l’univers francophone littéraire européen non français, Charles-Albert Cingria (Genève, 1883-1954) et Paul Nougé (Bruxelles, 1895-1967) sont deux auteurs représentatifs de cette modalité d’écriture, ayant introduit de nombreuses stratégies qui seraient explorées postérieurement. Se concentrant sur l’œuvre publiée et inédite des deux auteurs, la présente étude cherche à dégager les axes d’une pensée littéraire qui s’actualise en pratiques d’écriture fragmentaire, dans des espaces génologiques et thématiques de frontière. Dans ce cadre, le lecteur, expérimentant constamment la violence métamorphique textuelle, joue un rôle primordial.

[in English]
The study of the fragment and of fragmentary writing has increased in recent years. However, consensual answers have been difficult to find. If this practice has become regular since the Second World War, it certainly had precursors. In the francophone non French literary European world, Charles-Albert Cingria (Geneva, 1883-1954) and Paul Nougé (Brussels, 1895-1967) are two outstanding authors of this writing modality, who introduced several strategies that were subsequently to be developed. The present study, based in the published and unpublished work of both authors, aims to identify the guidelines of a literary conception materialised in practices of fragmentary writing, in generic and thematic spaces of frontier. Within this context, the reader, permanently experiencing metamorphic textual violence, plays a major role.

[in Portuguese]
O estudo do fragmento e da escrita fragmentária tem vindo a desenvolver-se nos últimos anos, sem que no entanto respostas consensuais apareçam. Se esta prática se tornou muito comum depois da Segunda Guerra Mundial, ela tem pioneiros. No universo literário francófono europeu não francês, Charles-Albert Cingria (Genebra, 1883-1954) e Paul Nougé (Bruxelas, 1895-1967) são autores marcantes desta prática de escrita, tendo introduzido várias estratégias que viriam a ser desenvolvidas posteriormente. Centrando-se na obra publicada e inédita dos dois autores, este estudo procura identificar as linhas mestras de um pensamento literário que se actualiza em práticas de escrita fragmentária, em espaços genológicos e temáticos de fronteira. Neste contexto, o leitor, experimentando permanentemente a violência metamórfica textual, assume um papel determinante.

In the opening lines of the Beach Boys 1964 hit, “In My Room,” Brian Wilson portrays the bedroom and domestic space in general as a place of retreat and security, a world that one can “tell their secrets to.”  Yet, as the narrator confesses to a growing feeling of fragility in this relation, the cavernous soundtrack comes to introduce an unnerving openness that belies this sense of safe enclosure.  This testimonial to isolation and its celebration of interiority is additionally compromised by a complex overlay of harmonies which render the individual voice strangely multiple.  In these dynamics, the song dramatizes the transformation of the home that would occur under Postmodernism as a once discrete and private space would be shot through with its exterior.  While the historical forces behind this transformation are multiple, the most prominent include: the increasing ubiquity and reach of media, the explosion of postwar advertising, the birth of suburbia and the “always on call” employment model of late capitalism.  As the convergence point for these forces, the home in the second half of the 20th century came to relinquish its enduring historical function which Gaston Bachelard describes as “shelter[ing] day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.”
This transformation of the home is at the center of the work of photographers John Divola, Gregory Crewdson and Jeff Wall.  While the specific strategies vary between artists, collectively their work visualizes these tensions by presenting the home as somehow uninhabitable, both literally and figuratively speaking.  In these images, the expectation of sanctuary that Wilson and Bachelard describe clash violently with the forces of late capitalism described above, fueling a self-reflexive dialogue in which the operation of the camera is rendered complicit in the larger processes of defamiliarization and alienation in which the home is enmeshed.  For example, John Divola surreptitiously enters abandoned seaside homes in Southern California.  Chronicling his presence through flares and light anomalies, the photographer introduces a tension between the constructedness of the image, the unwanted presence of the photographer and the decay and degradation of the spaces in which these acts take place.  Similarly, Gregory Crewdson creates elaborate, excessively theatrical images of the home which question the association of the domestic with the authenticity and interiority.  Finally, Jeff Wall’s portrayal of the home reveals an intrusion of the world of images into the domestic sphere by self-consciously fashioning the drama of the home according to overwrought types and conventions.  In these works, the image of the home emerges as a space of alienation, but also as the center point for the convergence of historical and technical forces which would shape subjectivity and the politics of the image.

CITATION: Stinson, D. W. (2004). African American male students and achievement in school mathematics: A critical postmodern analysis of agency (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses: A & I. (ATT 3194548).

ABSTRACT: The purpose of this study was to shed light on the schooling experiences of African American male students who embraced school, academics, and mathematics. In particular, the study examined the influence of sociocultural discourses on the agency of 4 African American men in their early 20s who demonstrated achievement and persistence in school mathematics. Agency in this context was defined as the participants’ ability to accommodate, resist, or reconfigure the available sociocultural discourses that surround African American males in order for them to effectively negotiate these discourses in their pursuit of success.

The study used qualitative action research methodology (Kemmis & Wilkinson, 1998) located within a critical postmodern theoretical frame (Kincheloe & McLaren, 1994). More specifically, the participants of the study were asked to read, reflect on, and respond to current research literature regarding the schooling experiences of African American male students. Their responses were analyzed using an eclectic theoretical framework that included poststructural theory, critical race theory, and critical (postmodern) theory. Poststructural theory provided a frame for rethinking and redefining key concepts such as person, agency, and power, among others. Critical race theory provided a frame for understanding how the discourse of race and racism operates within U.S. social structures. And critical (postmodern) theory provided a frame for discussing the purposes of education research.

The reporting and analysis of the data revealed that the participants had acquired robust mathematics identities (Martin, 2000), identities that positively impacted their sense of agency. How the participants acquired such uncharacteristic mathematics identities for African American male students was to be found, in part, in how they understood the sociocultural structures and discourses of U.S. society and how they accommodated, resisted, or reconfigured the specific discourses that surround African American males. Although at times the responses from the participants were similar, their responses were never monolithic—not across participants, and not even within participants. Present throughout the responses from each participant, however, was recognition of himself as a discursive formation (Foucault, 1969/1972) who could actively accommodate, resist, or reconfigure sociocultural discourses as a means to subversively repeat (Butler, 1990) his constituted “raced” self.

This book examines a set of theoretical perspectives that critically engage with the notion of postmodernism, investigating whether this concept is still useful to approach contemporary cinema. This question is explored through a discussion of the films written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, largely regarded as the epitome of postmodern cinema and considered here as theoretical contributions in their own right.  Each chapter first presents key ideas proposed by a specific theorist and then puts them in conversation with Tarantino’s films. Jacques Rancière’s theory of art is used to reject postmodernism’s claims about the ‘death’ of the aesthetic image in contemporary cinema. Fredric Jameson’s and Slavoj Žižek’s dialectical thinking is mobilized to challenge simplistic, ideological readings of postmodern cinema in general, and Tarantino’s films in particular. Finally, the direct influence of Carol Clover’s psychoanalytical approach to the horror genre on Tarantino’s work is discussed to prove the director’s specific contribution to a theoretical understanding of contemporary film aesthetics.

Genel olarak, postmodernizm ve postmodernizmin diğer sosyal bilimler disiplinleriyle ilişkisi üzerine yürütülen tartışmalarda metnin yazar ve okurunu bekleyen öncelikli sorunlardan birisi postmodernizmin kabul edilebilir, tutarlı bir tanımının yapılması olarak ortaya çıkmaktadır. Tanım gereksinimi, geleneksel olarak kategorizasyonlarla, genellemelerle ve kuramlarla düşünmeye ve bilimsel faaliyette bulunmaya alışkın zihnimizin olağan bir beklentisi olarak görülebilir. Ancak, konuyla ilgili hemen hemen herkesin üzerinde uzlaşmaya vardığı ilk nokta, belirsiz doğası gereği postmodernizmin sabit bir tanımını yapmanın çok zor olduğudur. Güzel sanatlardan mimariye, sinemadan edebiyat eleştirisine, sosyolojiden iletişime, modadan teknolojiye uzanan çok geniş bir yelpazede postmodernizmin tartışılıyor olması, kendilerini ‘postmodernist’ olarak tanımlayanlar arasında dahi postmodernizmin ne olduğuna dair kesin bir görüş birliği oluşmamasına katkıda bulunmaktadır.
Her ne kadar postmodernizmin karmaşık bir kavram yahut düşünceler kümesi olmasının, bir başka söyleyişle, sürekli birbiriyle çarpışan kavramları, uyumsuz önermeleri, hatta zaman zaman tatsız tartışmaları içermesinin—ve elbette bu durumun yarattığı tanımlama güçlüğünün—çok daha esaslı ve öze değin imaları bulunsa da, bu yazının özel amacı gereği ilk olarak şu soruya odaklanmamız gerekmektedir: Tanımlama güçlüğüne rağmen postmodernizm denilince ne anlaşılmalı? Aslında, postmodernizm hakkında düşünmeye başlamanın ve onunla ilgili genel bir anlayışa varmanın ilk bakışta farklıymış gibi duran fakat aslında birbirinden çok da kopuk olmayan, içice geçmiş birkaç yolundan söz edebilmek olası gözükmektedir. Bunlardan ilki postmodernizmi modern ‘dönem’den ayrıştırarak düşünmektir. Postmodernizmi modern dönemden hareketle tanımlamaya çalışmanın önemli düşünsel kolaylıklar sağlayabileceği açık, fakat ‘dönemselleştirici yaklaşım’ olarak adlandırabileceğimiz bu tür bir çaba bile tanım güçlüğü sorununun üstesinden tam olarak gelmeye yeterli olmuyor. Aksine, modern olanı tanımlarken yapılacak tercihler arasındaki faklılıklar, postmodernizmle ilgili tanım aralığını da olabildiğince genişletmektedir. Daha da önemlisi, postmodernizmi ‘sonra’ anlamını taşıyan ‘post’ önekinden hareketle ‘modernden sonra gelen’ şeklinde dönemsel olarak tanımlamak yeterli olmuyor, çünkü, hem—Woller’in de (1997) isabetle belirttiği gibi—modern kavramı yalnızca zaman olarak bir dönemi (epoch) betimlemiyor, hem de bu tür bir çabada modernizmin ne zaman bittiğini, postmodernizmin ne zaman başladığını kesinlik içerisinde belirlemek olanaklı olmuyor (Klages, 1997). Öte taraftan, postmodernizmi, kendini daha çok bilgi ve bilgi bilim (epistemoloji) üzerine yürütülen tartışmalarda açığa vuran boyutuna vurgu yaparak, modern kimliğin reddedilmesi seklinde gören bir ‘olumsuzlayıcı yaklaşım’ da mevcuttur. Son olarak, daha doğrudan bir yol Derrida, Lyotard, Baudrillard vb. gibi, yapıtlarıyla postmodern düşüncenin oluşumuna katkıda bulunmuş postmodern yazarların düşüncelerini incelemektir. Elbette bu düşünürler bu yazı çerçevesinde düşüncelerini ozetlemekle yetineceğimiz isimlerle sınırlı değildir ve aralarında ‘dönemselleştirici’ yaklaşıma ya da ‘olumsuzlayıcı’ yaklaşıma yakın duranlar bulunduğunu gözden kaçırmamak gerekmektedir. Bu ön uyarıların ardından, gelecek bölümde modernizm-postmodernizm tartışmalarına—üçüncü yoldan başlamak üzere—biraz daha yakından bakılmaya çalışılacak, izleyen bölümdeyse kamu yönetimi bağlamında postmodernizm tartışmalarına göz atılacaktır.

The state can not prevent the existence of universal ethical claims that are included in  its regime but not represented in it. Alain Badiou's philosophy is devoted to these claims and defends them as forms of political truth striving for validity and representation.

With contributions from:
Alain Badiou, Lorenzo Chiesa, Oliver Feltham, Dominik Finkelde, Gernot Kamecke, Paul M. Livingston, Rado Riha, Frank Ruda, Arno Schubbach, Yannis Stavrakakis, Alberto Toscano and Jan Völker.
Editor:
Dominik Finkelde is professor of philosophy at the Munich School of Philosophy.

Sublim, merak uyandıran, etkileyici, şaşkınlık veren anlamlarında kullanılan bir kelime olmakla beraber, felsefe ve sanatta sublim olgusu üzerinde yapılan tartışmalar göz önüne alındığında sublim içerisinde, kelime anlamının ötesinde gösterenlerin barındığı söylenebilir. Bu makale, Edmund Burke ve Kant'ın temelini oluşturduğu sanat ve estetikte sublim olgusunu, günümüz filozoflarıyla tartışacak ve güncel sanat eserleriyle örneklendirecektir. Bugün; eğer postmodern zamanlar ise, “postmodernite içinde sublim kavramından söz edilebilir mi?”; sorusunu sorarak, günümüzde sublimin tanımları üzerinde durulacak, bu bağlamda sublim estetiği ve postmodernizm üzerine yazılarıyla ünlü; filozof Jean François Lyotard'ın günümüzde sublim ile ilgili savları incelenerek bunların ötesinde ne gibi okumalar ve tanımlamalarda bulunabilineceği tartışılacaktır.

Most critics of contemporary literature have reached a consensus that what was once called " postmodernism " is over and that its signature modes—metafiction and irony—are on the wane. This is not the case, however, with videogames. In recent years, a number of self-reflexive games have appeared, exemplified by Davey Wreden's The Stanley Parable (2013), an ironic game about games. When self-awareness migrates form print to screen, however, something happens. If metafiction can be characterized by how it draws attention to its materiality—the artificiality of language and the construction involved in acts of representation—The Stanley Parable draws attention to the digital, procedural materiality of videogames. Following the work of Alexander R. Galloway and Ian Bogost, I argue that the self-reflexivity of The Stanley Parable is best understood in terms of action and procedure, as metaproceduralism. This essay explores the legacies of United States metafiction in videogames, suggesting that though postmodernism might be over, its lessons are important to remember for confronting the complex digital realities of the twenty-first century. If irony may be ebbing in fiction, it has found a vital and necessary home in videogames and we underestimate its power to challenge the informatic, algorithmic logic of cultural production in the digital age to our detriment.

Philosophy exercises a massive influence on contemporary architectural culture, architectural debates and architectural theory. Discussions of architects, architectural theorists, and architectural historians are heavily loaded with theoretical ideas, concepts and views imported from the works of philosophers. At the same time, this architectural employment of philosophy rarely goes beyond the tendency to mine philosophical works for words, words and phrases and use them, often without much understanding, in order to promote architectural agendas and embellish theoretical claims made by architects. The book presents the history of the phenomenon for the past hundred years. It describes numerous, often funny,  entertaining as well as embarrassing, examples of false intellectual pretence and pompous but incompetent philosophical posturing by prominent architects and architectural academics of the era and their efforts to bamboozle readers, colleagues and the general public. The book is intended to present a powerful criticism of modernist views on architecture. It argues that the rise of obfuscation and philosophical posturing among architects and architectural academics is a defensive strategy intended to draw attention away from the failure of architectural Modernism. See also: https://issuu.com/oro_editions/docs/age_of_fraud_excerpt

The objective of the research was to discuss the question “Will the competitive data collecting in Knowledge Based Society assure the world peace?.” in the philosophical approach which is dialectic and discursive. The result was “Peace will not depend on the more knowledge collecting.” which might be opposed by 3 reasons: 1) There are widespread behaviors that collecting knowledge data will assure peace. 2) There are affirmations that collecting data collecting will assure peace. 3) There are actions of data collecting as peace maker. But the researcher could not accept because all the arguments of the opposite party are only fallacies with criticized as 1) The competitive data collecting behavior make us face with new social problems. 2) Socrates proposed “virtue is knowledge” should not be “Knowledge is virtue” and 3) the competitive data collecting is supported worldwide movement in the fear emotion to stop the violence but not really happen. The researcher proposed the supporting reasons to the standpoint: 1) New generation collect data as the formal new lifestyle in the technology enframed. 2) Postmodern paradigm in moderate way has promoted the sharing and responsibility of knowledge using to KBS for the development of quality of life and induce the violence treats with peaceful way. The result of this research could be the applied to KBS to promote the world peace.

Matt Haffner's cut and pasted paper wall murals and videos present film noir inspired narrative fragments, and mine art history, popular culture and contemporary life, in the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia's 2008-2009 Working Artists Project Series.