Alienation in Modern Culture: A Psychoanalytic Analysis of Five Societal Transitions

The article examines the processes of individualization in relation to the emergence and existence of various forms of collectivity. It analyzes the complexities of this process, which, while a necessary characteristic of modern society, can lead to atomization, frustration, and loss of meaning in life. Particular attention is paid to the nature of individualization: on one hand, it presupposes the uniqueness of each individual; on the other, it is inextricably linked to an individual’s association with certain collectives and the internalization of supra-individual values. The article asserts that new forms of collectivity are emerging in the modern era that, rather than suppressing individuality, foster creative self-realization. The research explores issues of depersonalization and pseudo-collectivity, as well as the interplay between freedom and responsibility in the context of global digitalization. The author elucidates the dangers associated with the virtualization of personality, the erosion of boundaries between private and public spheres, and the potential for total control over individuals. Contemporary forms of virtual individualization, while creating an illusion of freedom, may in fact lead to a loss of personal individuality. The article further explores the impact of digital technologies on the transformation and evolution of both individual and collective memory, as well as their role in shaping identity. It underscores that digitalization not only offers new opportunities but also poses significant anthropological challenges. Dialogue is examined as a means of resolving conflicts and facilitating both individual and collective self-realization. The author contrasts M.M. Bakhtin’s dialogical approach with J.-P. Sartre’s existentialist interpretation of the relationship between the Self and the Other. It is emphasized that genuine dialogue requires mutual recognition and respect among participants, a shared space for communication, and a willingness to reconsider one’s own position. In conclusion, the study posits that addressing many of the problems generated by modern processes of individualization and collectivization in the age of global digitalization necessitates the creation of conditions conducive to interpersonal, intergroup, and intercultural dialogue.

My paper argues that Jurgen Habermas's transformation of critical social theory seriously weakens the potential of the concept of instrumental reason as a tool of social critique. I defend the central role of the concept of instrumental reason in both i) the critique of social injustice, and ii) the diagnosis of pathologies of meaning stemming from cultural modernization. However, I argue that the root of these problems cannot come into view from within the Habermasian paradigm. Contra Habermas, I argue that the problem of a 'loss of freedom' is better characterized as a process of integration through power; the problem of a 'loss of meaning' must also be reconceived as a problem of moral disintegration. My claim is that a proper understanding of these processes requires an engagement with the understanding of instrumental reason in earlier critical theory as primarily a distortion of the relation of language and experience. This necessitates rethinking the task of critical social theory along the lines of the concept of selbstbesinnung (self-awareness) rather than according to Habermas's Kantianized version of self-reflection.

Analyses the postmodern concepts of “transgression” and “bricolage” in relation to contemporary art. Addressing the street art and the social art the author shows how the model of bricolage with the elements of transgression­profanity works in the modern culture. The mass audio­visual culture dictates a new way of perceiving art works, and all of them are the reflections of the media culture, or its bricolage “bounce.” The media culture and the society of globalisation in general produce a syncretic or bricolage environment with a “soft ban” system anticipating transgression; it is the erosion of boundaries which creates the illusion of transgression steps that can turn an artistic activity into a political action or make it balance on the verge of breaking the law. However, in such a type of culture, a transgression step is not opposed by a ban but by another transgression state which is a part of the system of market relations already

Reviewed by: Folk Art and Modern Culture in Republican China by Felicity Lufkin Yurou Zhong Felicity Lufkin. Folk Art and Modern Culture in Republican China. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016. 217 pp. $95.00 (cloth). Folk Art and Modern Culture in Republican China is a valuable addition to the studies of folk art, folklorics, and modern Chinese cultural history. Felicity Lufkin, employing the keen sensibility of an art historian, gives shape to the fraught intertwinement of folk art and modern culture in Republican China. Through rich illustrations and strong formal analysis, Lufkin visualizes how Chinese folk art, on the one hand, came to be understood to be primitive, backward, and in need of intellectual intervention and, on the other, held considerable power over the development of modern Chinese culture and politics. In conversation with earlier works by Chang-tai Hung and David Holm and, more recently, Xiaobing Tang and James Flath,1 Lufkin zooms in on folk art—woodcut prints and Chinese New Year pictures (年畫 nianhua) in particular—to ponder the relationship between art and politics in twentieth-century China. In chronological order, Lufkin delineates how the study of folk art in Republican China took its cue from the earlier movement of folklore studies, converged with and diverged from the New Print movement, and eventually was appropriated by both the Guomindang (GMD) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Part 1 depicts how the artistic, intellectual, and public discourses shaped, negotiated, and assimilated folk art in the years leading up to the full outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Lufkin gives [End Page E-7] full volume to both the attraction to and ambivalence over the concept of folk art: from the abounding joy of Xu Beihong (徐悲鴻 1895-1953) at seeing Niren Zhang (泥人張) clay figures—which he compared to masterpieces of the best European sculptors—to his reluctance to meet folk artists in person (chapter 1); from Lu Xun's endorsement of and the Modern Print Association's embrace of "folkloric prints" to the criticisms that the association received for fixating on images of localized everyday life in Guangzhou without contributing to the buildup of revolutionary ethos (chapters 2 and 3); from the success of the first major Chinese exhibition of folk prints held in Hangzhou in 1937 to the curators' realization that recontextualizing folk art in a modern exhibition hall and in accordance with enlightenment discourse could not guarantee the full exorcizing of feudal remnants (chapter 4). Insofar as folk art was a source for both pride and shame for modern Chinese artists, intellectuals, and educators, "two contradictory views regarding folk and popular prints simply coexisted" (105). On the one hand, the perceived backwardness and primitivism embodied in folk art seemed to beckon elite intervention and top-down reform. On the other, despite efforts to reify the negative connotations of folk art and to fossilize it as an unchanging specimen from the past, the "diversity and cultural richness" of folk art persevered and even "intensified" at a moment of national crisis (106). Part 2 showcases how both the GMD (chapter 5) and the CCP (chapters 6 and 7) utilized folk prints during the Second Sino-Japanese War for wartime mobilization, national salvation, and the promotion of party politics. While, in Nationalist-controlled areas, the GMD narrowed their use of folk-based propaganda mostly to the resistance Door God (chapter 5), the CCP in Yan'an and other Communist base areas explored more extensively the use of folk art such as the new-style New Year pictures and papercuts (chapters 6 and 7). Lufkin is careful to note, however, that while both parties found that the "new wine" of wartime propaganda "fit comfortably and appealingly into the 'old bottles'" (136), such successful appropriation of folk art at a time of national crisis did not dispel anxieties surrounding the old forms, for fear that it would promote "feudal superstition" (164). Such suspicion of and dissatisfaction with the folk prints left room for further reform. Without making explicit the causality between the lingering suspicion of folk art and renewed reform measures in the People's Republic of China, Lufkin ends the book with a compact conclusion highlighting the key events...

The proposed scientific work represents the main research results concerning the development of a person’s environmental consciousness at adolescence in the context of the studied system of adolescents’ attitudes to the World. Ecological consciousness is considered as a subjective reflection of the personal, social and natural environment, as a single indivisible human World, which manifests itself in ecologically directed (eco-centric) human behaviour. An individual’s attitudes are understood as active, conscious, integral, selective and based on experience relations of the individual with different aspects of reality, which exist in the form of a single system.The World basic elements are revealed through the development of environmental consciousness at the level of the personal, social and natural spheres of a personality and reflect the system of relations, respectively, to oneself, to others and to the nature. Moreover, the World itself is indivisible and united.Environmental consciousness is described as a complex system, having two subsystems: the structural components of ecological consciousness and an individual’s attitudes to the World. The main structural components of environmental consciousness are cognitive, emotive, value-semantic, consumer-motivational and conative. The elements of an adolescent’s single indivisible World are its personal, social and natural spheres. Within the framework of the personal world, environmental consciousness is determined as attitudes towards oneself, social consciousness means attitudes towards others, and natural consciousness means attitudes towards the nature.Adolescents’ personal sphere is determined by their attitudes to Self, to thoughts, emotions, values ​​and needs, formed in their families and internalized into their inner picture of the World. The development of the environmental consciousness components at the level of the personal sphere is based on the development of reflection, critical thinking, as well as a reassessment of values.Adolescents’ social sphere is expressed through a system of relations and interpersonal interactions. The development of the environmental consciousness components at the social level is based on the formation of their sense of maturity and self-affirmation in a group of peers. Adolescents’ natural sphere of the World is determined by the pragmatism of relations to the animate and inanimate nature, and the development of the environmental consciousness components is based on socially significant activities in relation to the nature.The empirical study of adolescents’ attitudes to people, the nature and themselves has revealed the declining hierarchical sequence of adolescents’ attitudes to the World. In particular, the social world — the world of others and interactions with them — is the most significant for adolescents. The least significant for adolescents is the nature. Adolescents’ attitudes to themselves – their personal world – create intermediate link of the significance hierarchy.

Introduction. The article raises the problem of categorical expression of forming and preserving in active reproduction of the ecological worldview of the modern era man, oriented on building optimal human relations with the constantly technologicalizing and digitalizing world. The elaboration of the content of the main terms of the problem under consideration is reflected not only in the analysis of modern scientific and public discourse on the subject, but also in the materials of the All-Russian scientific-practical conference “Modern materials and methods of solving environmental problems of post-industrial agglomeration”, in particular, the section “Humanitarian bases of nature-saving activity”. The purpose of the study is to clarify the semantic content of the concepts “ecological worldview”, “ecological consciousness”, “ecological thinking”, “environmentalism” in the modern scientific and public discourse not only in its published representation, but also in the praxis of the main ideas and key theses of the reports of the participants of the humanitarian section of the environmental conference, reflecting in a discussion format the scientific demand, the degree of clarity, dynamics and problematization of the interdisciplinary development of the categories of ecothematics. Methods. The methodological foundations of the research are related to clarifying the above concepts, their semantic emphases in scientific discourse, as well as eco-rhetoric in the Internet space. In addition, in order to reflect the key theses and main ideas of the papers, the methods of gen- eral scientific order (analysis, synthesis, abstraction, etc.) are used. Scientific novelty of the research. The content of the terms “ecological worldview”, “ecological consciousness”, “ecological thinking”, “environmentalism” in theoretical scientific and modern public discourse in their correlation with scientific interdisciplinary practices of the conference discussion platforms has been clarified. Results. A discursive field has been formed in the public Internet space, which can be thematically designated as “ecologization of digitalization”, according to which the latest digital technologies are capable of preventing and solving some environmental problems. In addition, it can be argued that the terms “ecological consciousness” and “ecology of consciousness” mean not only a careful attitude to natural resources, but also responsibility for one’s actions and a positive attitude to the world in the form of proactive thinking (instead of reactive) based on the worldview of ecohumanism and holism. Conclusions. Since the middle of the last century, domestic and foreign philosophical and scientific literature has noted the need for active formation of an ecological worldview, expressed in the preserving and reproducing the values of human concern for nature, society, culture and self. Today, in the conditions of aggravation of environmental risks, their scientific and public discussions, and the search for ways to mitigate them, the issue of changing the paradigm of thinking and activity of modern man in favor of a caring, careful and responsible attitude to himself and the surrounding world is actualized. In this regard, in the discourses discussed above, there is a demand for mental attitudes and everyday practices in which pro-ecological activity would be manifested as an attribute of an environmentally friendly person (homo ecologicus). The semantic field of the Internet space on ecothematics correlates with the scientific interdisciplinary discourses of conference discussion platforms, thus also reflecting the semantic demand for new categories in various discourses and scientific practices.

Based on researches of video emissions broadcasted in the period of 2002/2004, beyond different formats of permanence of the religion in the public sphere in Brazil the strategies of the Evangelical and the Catholic church in the sense of a new configuration of the religious market, midiatic devices are described to face the different symptoms that come in them, through demands and searches from processes of cures to the different forms of discomfort that attack the health of the body and one’s mind that is exposed to the programs. The sermon is not treated anymore as na abstract religion, but being founded in the “economy of the contact”, transforms the midiatic locus in a comfortable atmosphere, service and therapy.

Design (thinking) is increasingly considered a promising approach for addressing societal challenges. However, designing for societal transitions, such as the energy transition, requires new approaches to involve non-designers in the design process. Involving the full range of stakeholders affected by a societal transition means inviting perspectives from both the lifeworld, representing private and public spheres, and the system, representing the state and economy, which is not straightforward. The current work elaborates on genuine participation when co-designing for transitions and proposes eight co-design approaches for genuine lifeworld and system participation. These approaches were developed and tested during a six-month study on youth participation in the energy transition, using Frame Creation practices as a substructure. Building on the empirical insights, we reflect on our methodology, challenges encountered, and opportunities for further developing genuine participatory approaches to designing for societal transitions.

The article conceptualizes the ontological separation in the situation of "contagious resonance", which is set in particular by the pandemic. There is a shift in the mass consciousness of the terrifying images that form a kind of "dark matter" of the materialist view of the modern capitalist world and embody in a certain cultural and historical perspective of the paradigm of life, power. Reveals four macro-images characteristic of the coordinate system of the modern world: demon, zombie, vampire and werewolf. They reveal as a kind of substance of this world the separation-partition that allows the following processes: alienation, appropriation, consumption, absorption, exploitation, rotation, assimilation, satisfaction, exchange, information, knowledge, transformation, desolation, infection, vaccination. This is a paradoxical state of mass consciousness caused by a pandemic, when the penetration of "infinitesimally" leads to extraordinary social processes of separation, distancing, alienation, which is represented by horrible macro images, diagrams of which are presented in the article. The main principle of the study is the principle of complementarity, which allows you to build such diagrams, exposing the complementarity, intertwining and compatibility of images of zombies, demons, vampires and werewolves in nonlinear perspective. The diagrammatic approach, therefore, allows you to highlight the eerie, incredible as everyday. Zombies and vampires are presented as paradigmatic for (post)modern culture, characterized by a special boundary state between death and immortality. The demon and the werewolf return the fears inherent in the pre-capitalist, archaic image of the world, when man was placed between the divine and animal dimensions. It is noted that the zombie figure embodies the grassroots phenomena of today: dead labor, industrial exploitation, consumerism, mass infection, advertising, information. A vampire marks a class gap and is the epitome of choice and the privilege it confers. The demon and the werewolf represent the fears present in the conservative and ecological consciousness. The article identifies four transversals that dissect the multiplicity of processes characteristic of modern society: zombies / infection, which characterizes the processes of transmission of everything from information to virus, vampire / vaccination as access to a set of privileges, demon / desolation, as separation of mental and physical , werewolves / transformations as interpenetration of different types of life.

ABSTRACTThis paper calls for a “fifth moment” in the field of intercultural communication that re-examines modern culture’s values, beliefs, and assumptions about human being in the world and the role of such in fomenting today’s ongoing planetary-wide ecological crises. To conduct this re-examination, we turn to ethnoautobiography, a framework rooted in story and in the indigenous paradigm. We raise deep questions regarding the default assumptions of a discipline ensconced almost exclusively within the monocultural logic of modern culture and civilization. We end by posing key problematics that we deem crucial for renewing the discipline toward contemporary relevance, ecological awareness, and responsibility.

The management of stray cats is often contentious because public perceptions about these animals are different. Using user-generated content from Weibo, this study investigated Chinese citizens' opinions on stray cats on a large scale. Through the techniques of natural language processing, we obtained each Weibo post's topics and sentiment propensity. The results showed that: (1) there were some irresponsible feeding behaviors among citizens; (2) public perceptions of the ecological impacts caused by stray cats were unlike; (3) the trap-neuter-return (TNR) method served high support in public discussion; (4) knowledge about stray cats' ecological impacts was positively correlated with support for the lethal control methods in management. Based on these findings, we suggested that management policies should be dedicated to (1) communicating to the (potential) cat feeders about the negative aspects of irresponsible feeding behaviors; (2) raising "ecological awareness" campaigns for the public as well as highlighting the environmental impacts caused by stray cats; (3) understanding citizens' perceptions toward different management scenarios and making decisions accordingly. In addition, this study also suggested that social media data can provide useful information about people's opinions on wild animals and their management. Policies would benefit by taking this source of information into the decision-making process.

O objetivo deste artigo é analisar o neotomismo no Círculo de Estudos Bandeirantes entre 1930 e 1950. O CEB era um centro de estudos e de encontro da intelectualidade católica curitibana. Inconformados com a modernidade daqueles anos e seus efeitos no campo da cultura, do pensamento e da religião, os cebistas expressam sua crítica embasados na filosofia tomista. Eles estavam percebendo que a dinâmica liberal moderna não se coadunava com o ethos cristão católico. O liberalismo, apoiado na secularização e no laicismo, implantou uma nova ordem e um novo ethos, produziu uma modernidade medíocre, anárquica e sem sentido. É contra essa modernidade que solapou a religião e a tradição católica como referenciais e guias da sociedade que os cebistas levantam sua voz nas reuniões no CEB. É no tomismo que eles vão buscar elementos para dialogar com a modernidade e restaurar os valores cristãos. O texto está estruturado em quatro seções: 1. O Círculo de Estudos Bandeirantes e o Neotomismo; 2. Modernidade medíocre e anárquica; 3. Secularização, laicismo e laicidade; 4. Ordem, ethos, cultura moderna e perda de sentido.

How did we get from the religious core of the sixteenth-century Reformation to the notions of freedom popularised by Hegel and Ranke? Enlightenment's Reformation explores how two key cultural and intellectual achievements – the sixteenth-century Reformation and the late eighteenth-century birth of 'German' philosophy – became fused in public discussion over the course of the 'long' eighteenth century. Michael Printy argues that Protestant theologians and intellectuals recast the meaning of Protestantism as part of a wide-ranging cultural apology aimed at the twin threats of unbelief and deism on the one hand, and against Pietism and a nascent evangelical awakening on the other. The reimagining of the Reformation into a narrative of progress was powerful, becoming part of mainstream German intellectual culture in the early decades of the nineteenth century. Utilising Reformation history, Enlightenment history, and German philosophy, this book explores how the rich if unstable idea linking Protestantism and modern freedom came to dominate German intellectual culture until the First World War.

Writing to Secretary of State John Thurloe from Copenhagen in April 1658, England's diplomatic representative Philip Meadowe noted thatmost of the intelligence from these parts which Mr Nedham puts into his Politicus is made by Mons. Van Bunning's secretary, purposely to cloud his highness in his ministers; Mr Nedham presently swallows the gudgeon and what he finds in the publick corranto transplants immediately into his Politicus, not considering that in so doing he serves the design and interest of another.1Such evidence regarding a leading journalist such as Marchamont Nedham raises profound issues for those concerned with analysing one of the most important pamphlet genres of the early modern period. The 'news revolution' has become a prominent strand in recent scholarship relating to early modern print culture, as historians have identified growing contemporary interest in political affairs, and stressed the importance of the emerging news culture for transforming the political life of the period, and even for helping to create a 'public sphere'.2 Recent historiography has drawn particular attention to the literary qualities and scandalous content of seventeenth century journals, and leading journalists are now well known. This is particularly true of those who proved innovative (Sir John Berkenhead), those who were particularly radical (Gilbert Mabbott), and those whose racy and humorous prose was matched by sophisticated political understanding and conceptual importance (Nedham).3 Where scholarship arguably remains underdeveloped, however, is in relation to 'authorship'. Although there is a growing appreciation of the need to contextualise early modern authors in terms of their personal, financial, and political motivation, the circumstances under which they operated, their relationship with the print industry, and the pressures to which they were subjected, such analysis is rarely undertaken with respect to journalism, despite the fact that scrutiny of early modern newspapers places issues relating to the status and role of authors into far sharper focus.4The aim of this paper is to establish a conceptual framework for scrutinising the nature of early modern news culture, and an outline of areas which require greater research. Perhaps the most obvious is the relationship between journalism and 'truth', in terms of editorial attitudes towards, and achievement of, factual accuracy. This is clearly an area which has received little scholarly attention, but it is obviously beset by serious historiographical pitfalls, and a more general assessment of journalistic authorship might have greater benefit.5 This piece, therefore, stresses the need to acknowledge the unsure foundations upon which accepted attributions rest, and upon which assumptions that papers reflected the ideas and attitudes of a single editor depend. It also demonstrates the need to devote greater attention to the processes by which newspapers were produced, and to contextualise them in relation to political circumstances, censorship, and governmental manipulation. Stripping away accepted wisdom, and applying detailed knowledge of both contemporary politics and the early modern publishing industry, permits a more sophisticated understanding of the identity of civil war newspapers, the role of their editors, journalists, and authors, and the power of managerial control, and an enhanced appreciation of the extent to which such texts represented the minds of those whom we regard as their authors. It also highlights the degree to which authorial integrity and independence could be undermined, and the extent to which a journalist could combine the characteristics of a 'publisher's hack', a 'politician's pawn', and a 'noble family's retainer', not to mention a principled political commentator.6 It is only by recognising that journalists could be all four things, at different times and to different degrees, that it is possible to achieve an accurate appreciation of authorship, entrepreneurship, and editorial control in the realm of early modern newspapers. …

This article examines the peculiarities of protests against the offensive content of artworks in the context of one of the most significant discoveries of modern society, the public sphere and its historical transformations. Art is one of the most sensitive indicators of the state of values and symbols, which makes it vulnerable, forming a space for various protests. A distinction is made between conflicts around art that have an etiology within the enlightenment paradigm and modern types of conflicts, in which the accusation that art offends the public and social groups dominates. The initiative for protests in modern culture comes from a public that perceives art in contrast to the previous dominant powers. The discourse of offence lies at the centre of art-related conflict, since the content of protest is heavily loaded with symbolic connotations (ethical, religious, political, ethnic, etc.). The authors analyse offense and its genesis in the modern. It is argued that the source of ressentiment is not within art, but outside it, in the public sphere, while the work is perceived as a medium or symbol of this source. In order to provide a systematic description of protests against art, the authors propose the concept of ressentiment as a mental and value attitude (M. Scheler), in which emphasis is placed on the significance of the long-term attitude that results from the repression of affects. Due to the inhibition of the response impulse, the reaction is transferred to another object. This explains the displacement of the negative reaction from the real cause of suffering to objects of a symbolic nature, in this case to the world of art. Based on the phases of development of ressentiment and its structural elements (themes, social environment, actors) identified by Ch. Pak and using discourse analysis of materials from the public sphere (media, social networks), a case study was examined: an exhibition by the photographer Jock Sturges, Absence of Shame (Moscow) in 2016–2017. It is proved that the motivator of the protest was not the exhibition itself, but the content of the blogger’s posts, the discourse around it, and other ways of representing the biography and oeuvre of the photographer in the public sphere. It is shown that ressentiment as an attitude is formed from the outside and seeks material for its establishment in the outside world. For the formation of a conflict, a preliminary formulation of the discourse of offence is necessary: further dissemination by public groups can consolidate affects and turn them into actions. Provocative art, which violates the boundaries of aesthetic conventions of the art field, risks becoming an object of substituted protest when entering the public sphere.