Postmodern Discourse Research Articles

SEXUAL REPRESENTATION IN THE POSTMODERN PHILSOPHICAL DISCOURSE

The purpose of the article is to discover the peculiarities of the interpretation of sexual representation in the postmodern philosophical discourse; to analyze the way of becoming the category of sexuality an integral part of feminine subjectivity; to compare the ways of interpretation of the category of sexuality in the works of the Western and Ukrainian researchers. Methods and approaches. To investigate the theoretical framework in the postmodern philosophy the cross-disciplinary approach is used. The comparative approach is methodologically important to clarify the problems concerning feminine subjectivity. The very approach provides the researcher with the opportunity to review the cultural peculiarities of the given historical period. Scientific novelty. Following the peculiarities of the gender approach it was discovered that the modern interpretation of the category of feminine subjectivity includes not only racial, class and ethnical differences, but the peculiarities of a sexual character. Unfortunately, the category of sexuality is still the way of women’s oppression. Nevertheless, this category is now an important tool when representing the versatile nature of feminine subjectivity. The problems of sexual marginality are considered to be the way of destroying gender stereotypes. Conclusion. It is proved that the postmodern philosophical discourse has contributed serious transformations when interpreting the feminine nature and changed the attitude to the very category of sexuality. The interpretation of the category of sexuality is a certain touchstone clarifying the attitude towards a human being in general and towards a woman in particular. It is determined that nowadays the problems of sexuality raise some concerns and anxiety posing more questions than giving the answers. One point is absolutely clear: it is impossible to investigate the nature of a modern human being out of the postmodern philosophical discourse. What is more, it is impossible to investigate the postmodern philosophical discourse out of the categories of human sexual representation.

Politics and Compositional Aesthetics

The conception of projective music that I have attempted to realize over the last quarter-century attempts to rescue the visionary component of Modernism from the exhaustion into which the discourses of both Formalism and Postmodernism have sunk. Drawn from Kandinsky's century-old model, projective music stakes claims on the future, but unlike Kandinsky's conception, it avoids the utopian model of a single, inevitable future for all of society. Instead, from the standpoint of presently-existing conditions, it projects a possible future, either hoped for or dreaded. It resembles Critical Composition in requiring ceaseless critique of presuppositions, strategies, and materials, but differs from it in its refusal to reduce the artwork to an instrumental level. Projective music speaks of and for its own time, but it also aims to create artworks enduring enough and of sufficient thematic interest to hold the interest of future times.

Highlighting the Humanistic Spirit in the Age of Globalization: Humanities Education in China

The essay first describes the Chinese intellectual condition in the age of globalization and the necessity of liberal arts or humanities education, and then deals with the function of humanities education in China’s institutions of higher learning with Tsinghua University as the particular case. Since current Chinese universities are divided into three types: (1) research universities; (2) teaching-research universities; and (3) teaching-oriented universities, liberal arts education always plays an important part in students’ comprehensive schooling although in most of the research universities priority is given to science and technology. As China has a long tradition of humanities education, even long before the establishment of those Western type universities, offering humanities education to all the university students as a major educational task has never changed. Even during the Cultural Revolution when all the universities stopped teaching and research work, students and faculty members were still educated with Mao’s instructions. Along with the rapid development of Chinese economy, traditional humanities are suffering more or less. But the author argues that no matter how rapidly the Chinese economy has been developing and how well Chinese people are pursuing the so-called Chinese Dream, it is necessary to pay attention to the humanities and to offer humanities education to young students. The author also offers his reconstruction of Neo-Confucianism as an alternative discourse to various postmodern discourses in the new framework of global culture.

Review of Dell'Antonio, Andrew, ed. 2004. Beyond Structural Listening? Postmodern Modes of Hearing. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Diagnosing the present, writes Rose Subotnik in her afterword to Beyond Structural Listening? Postmodern Modes of Hearing, a lot like predicting the future, only riskier (280). Subotnik's cautionary remarks notwithstanding, it seems that few periods in the history of musicology have inclined so thoroughly towards disciplinary self-scrutiny as the past twenty years. Despite widespread protestations of pluralism, the sources of influence propelling this introspection are relatively homogeneous, and as such are readily identifiable. If the recent course taken by Anglo-American musicology is characterized by anyone single development, it is surely a belated engagement with the various discourses of postmodernity that have gathered force in other areas of the humanities since the 1960s. In the wake, so to speak, of this postmodernization, concerted efforts have been made towards institutional consolidation, evinced in the various corporate and single-author volumes seeking to define the scope and terms of the new paradigm, to use Subotnik's term. Beyond Structural Listening adds fresh momentum to this tendency. Its point of orientation is the concept of structural listening as defined and critiqued by Subotnik: the reason- centered mode of engagement with autonomous musical structure, particularly as propagated by Schoenberg and Adorno, that had, until recently, come to dominate Anglo-American music-analytical practice. The collection assembles essays by Fred Everett Maus, Tamara Levitz, Robert Fink, Paul Attinello, Joseph Dubiel, Andrew Dell' Antonio, Elisabeth Le Guin, and Martin Scherzinger on a wide range of topics, from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony to MTV, with the broad intent of establishing what it might mean to listen or think beyond these parameters. In so doing, it delineates very clearly a gamut of modernist musicological and analytical tendencies and their putative postmodern alternatives.

Sysemics and Semiotic Informatics

“Sysemics and Semiotic Informatics” offers a close reading of Derrida's use of Norbert Weiner's thought. Cybernetics is seen as a particular moment of resistance for deconstruction, as it is the encounter between a discourse of general systems, which includes even sign systems, versus a semiotic philosophy that would potentially circumscribe all discourses including discourse on systems. The cybernetic categories of matter/energy, information, and organization in forms of relative openness and closure are used to offer a counter-reading of Derrida's concepts of writing (gramme, arche-writing, the trace). At stake is the notion of “whole organization” that informs all systems thinking from Ludwig von Bertalanffy forward, a schema of contemporary techno-scientific thinking typically evaded by postmodern discourses, which offer instead tropes of “schizo-fracture” or “liquid fluidity” as a consequence of the anti-structuralist animus towards heuristics of meaning.

SOCIO-CULTURAL STATUS OF DESIGN IN THE POSTMODERN DISCOURSE

Purpose: to attempt to define the socio-cultural status of the design and to consider design as a philosophical category. Methodology. Philosophical content of the category «design» is disclosed in the article by using the Platonic notion of «idea» (eidos). This approach is justified by the historical conditions of origin of the phenomenon of design and understanding of the design features in the discourse of postmodernism. Results. Design, as a semiotic system that covers all three types of activities related to the signs (sintactica, semantics and semiurgy). First of all, the design has been semiurgy (the creation of new signs), and in this sense refers to the projective area of knowledge. Practical implications. In postmodern episteme design is revealed as a symbolic form of phenomena, not to refer the phenomenon itself, and to his eidos.

The Sound of Silence: Eschatology and the Limits of the Word in David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas

It should come as no surprise that the Wachowskis elected to adapt David Mitchell’s 2004 tour de force Cloud Atlas into a film. Like Mitchell’s works, the Wachowskis’ 1999 film The Matrix is a part of a contemporary trend in which artists and writers such as Angela Carter, Paul Auster, and Salman Rushdie engaged in postmodern discourse, themes, and techniques without necessarily subordinating itself their visions to a postmodern worldview. 1 Mitchell received an M.A. in 1987 from the University of Kent in comparative literature focusing on the postmodern novel, and his first three novels employ the themes and problematic tensions raised by the theory dominant during the rise of continental philosophy in Anglo-American graduate programs during the 1980s and 90s. 2 Cloud Atlas engages theory ranging from overt metafictional winks, such as Timothy Cavendish’s disapproving mockery of “flashbacks, foreshadowings, and tricksy devices,” which “belong in the 1980s with M.A.s in postmodernism and chaos theory” (150), to more subtle uses of popular postmodern metaphors apparently drawn from the theory, as when Henry Goose poisons Adam Ewing with a fake medicine, thereby literalizing Derrida’s riff in “Plato’s Pharmacy” on Socrates’s claim that writing is a pharmakon, a word that means both “cure” and “poison” (759). Like the theory it interrogates, such engagements necessarily front language, speech, and writing as central thematic concerns. Mitchell’s work is systematic in its logic, self-consciously employing a kind of neostructuralist aesthetic, wherein the novels enact a series of tensions that provide a formal structure, distinct from Levi-Straussian structuralism, insofar as the author is aware of the binaries as useful heuristics rather than as necessary universals. As Mitchell told Adam Begley concerning a later work, “Black Swan Green is carefully structured—like all halfway decent books” (“David Mitchell”) and this structure is essential to his project. In this essay, I will use Cloud Atlas as a case study to demonstrate how David Mitchell’s novels explore the problematics of language using a systematic binary logic, resisting the Derridean deconstruction made

Sinematski aspekt arhitekture - uloga vremena u diskusiji o alternativnim arhitektonskim strategijama

In the search for ways to overcome the negative connotations of applying characteristically traditional practice methods in the current regulation of spatio-visual parameters of the urban environment, we are moving towards discussing alternative 'architecture of relations'. The paper elucidates how film may offer an alternative position in architecture, where urban spaces are thought and designed in closer relation to the potentials of film to manipulate reality, change the mode of perception, provide vision and reconstruct unconscious impulses of the metropolis. The experimental designs show how resonating records of space, time and movement through space may simulate the mapping impulse that inspires an alternative approach to designing spaces. My approach relies upon various knowledge production platforms to detect temporal filiation between cinematic and real space. They are indicated here in the context of postmodern discussions to uncover a new interaction point between cinema and architecture, in order to support time-based modes of reception of architectural and urban ideas.

Rethinking the ‘Western Tradition’

In recent years, the ‘Western tradition’ has increasingly come under attack in anti-colonialist and postmodernist discourses. It is not difficult to sympathise with the concerns that underlie advocacy of historically marginalised traditions, and the West undoubtedly has a lot to answer for. Nonetheless, while arguing a qualified yes to the central question posed for this special issue, we question the assumption that the West can be neatly distinguished from alternative traditions of thought. We argue that there is fundamental implicit and explicit agreement across traditions about the most difficult of issues and on standards about how to reason about them and that the ‘West’ has demonstrably learned from within and without itself. But, we question the very viability under conditions of heightened globalisation and neo-colonialism of distinguishing between thought of the ‘West’ and thought outside the West. It is time to move beyond the reified assumptions that underlie the idea of ‘Western thought’, cast as an agent with a collective purpose.

Otaku tourism and the anime pilgrimage phenomenon in Japan

This article analyses one aspect of the emerging phenomenon of otaku tourism: travel by mainly male fans of otaku subculture to anime ‘sacred sites’ (the locations that feature in favourite anime). It starts by placing discussion of otaku culture in the discourse of postmodernity and elaborating on how otaku subculture is generating new forms of communication. Then, the origins and characteristics of anime pilgrimage are traced. The article concludes by explaining how otaku tourism and anime pilgrimage generate distinctive forms of communication both among fans and between fans and the communities that experience influxes of anime tourists.

Postmodern peace discourse during the postwar peace movement for constitution protection

Postmodern peace discourse during the postwar peace movement for constitution protection

The Presence of Postmodernism in Contemporary American Literature

The year 2014 marks the thirtieth anniversary of Fredric Jameson’s seminal essays “Periodizing the 60s” and “Postmodernism; or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism” and the twenty-fifth anniversary of David Harvey’s The Condition of Postmodernity. More generally, the works that form the cornerstones of our understanding of postmodernism and its periodization, including seminal works by Linda Hutcheon, Ihab Hassan, Andreas Huyssen, John Barth, and Jean-Francois Lyotard, are by now on average 30–40 years old. Most of these macrotheoretical models of postmodernism that continue to influence analyses of contemporary literature mainly base their insights on cultural artifacts dating back to the 1960s and 1970s. Given the changes American literature has undergone over the course of the past five decades or so, this begs the question: can the term postmodernism and its associated concepts and debates offer us a relevant set of tools for the analysis of recent literary production? What might we stand to gain from talking about postmodernism now? Or, to put this question more awkwardly (though fittingly, as will become clear, for this essay will deal with a range of awkward terms and temporal and logical propositions): what is the time of postmodernism’s presence? Already in 1993 Raymond Federman proclaimed the end of postmodernism in his book Critifiction, and since the 1990s discussions of postmodernism’s possible exhaustion and its aftermath have become increasingly frequent. Still, as Andrew Hoberek argues, citing Jeremy Green, in his introduction to the 2007 special issue of

The Challenge of Postmodernist and Postcolonialist Discourses of Eurocentrism in History Education

The Challenge of Postmodernist and Postcolonialist Discourses of Eurocentrism in History Education

The Creation of Consensus through Spatial Appropriation: Normalization of Western Hegemony in the Built Environment

The Creation of Consensus through Spatial Appropriation:Normalization of Western Hegemony in the Built Environment Mary Dellenbaugh (bio) Urban space and symbolically-imbued cultural landscapes are prime backdrops for the establishment of symbolic power structures, including nationalism, hegemony, and consensus. The incorporation of an ideology and its symbols into the built space, be it architecture, urban planning, street names, or monuments, normalizes political strategies, power structures, and dominant worldviews. As I will seek to show in this article, the reforming of the cultural landscape of East Berlin after the fall of the Berlin Wall represented not the much-heralded depoliticization and removal of ideology from space, but rather a deeper embedding of the new dominant power and its attendant physical structures using strategies similar to its predecessor, the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Built landscapes constructed under state socialist rule share inherent physical characteristics—monumental architecture, large plazas, wide thoroughfares, and, in the case of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), slab building construction. These landscapes were additionally imbued with the symbolism of the state socialist regime in the form of statues, monuments, public art, and street and place names. These physical and symbolic characteristics form the backdrop of residents’ daily life and tourists’ [End Page 395] visits, as well as the foundation upon which the changes attendant to the political shift of 1990 must be built. The combination of these physical and symbolic characteristics create landscapes that not only differentiate themselves strongly from their Western counterparts, whose postmodern influences became deeply entrenched over the course of division (Dellenbaugh, “Stigmatisierung” 230), but also, through the permanence of their constant use and built characteristics, are not easily “remediated” or assimilated into Western spatial discourses. The high ideological position of cities and built space in general for the fostering of socialist forms of life, including collectivity, marches, and demonstrations (Häußermann and Kapphan 59–67), provides additional fodder for the creation of an “Other” in new pro-Western discourses. Indeed, the binary nature of othering practices in the Eastern and Western blocs during the Cold War division persists today, and contributes to the complex nature of post-socialist identity construction, historiography, symbolism, and national narratives (Young and Light 946). Landscapes and the physical environment contribute significantly to the construction and reconstruction of identity. The identification of architectural forms such as the slab building style typical of CEE socialist-era urban development with their socialist heritage creates an “Other” characterized by backwardness and inferiority, reinforced both by a West-dominated architectural discourse and a unilateral West-dominated media representation. I have examined these topics in depth in my recent research on Berlin, which scrutinized changes to the symbolic landscape of post-reunification East Berlin through semiotic and discourse analysis. As I was able to establish, in Germany, the identification of East German architecture, similar to the creation of the East German as a “symbolic foreigner” (Pates and Schochow 7–20), removes the spatial anchoring of the phenomenon, instead embodying it in the case of architecture in the building or building form, and in the case of the symbolic foreigner, in the person. This upholds othering practices initiated in Germany in the Wall-era, or, according to Brian Ladd, “the East-West division provided by the Wall permitted Germany themselves to project ‘otherness’ onto their fellows. … Germans could interpret official propaganda as implying that the people on the other side of the Wall monopolized the prejudiced, predatory, or authoritarian traits of the bad old days” (31). The visual representation and framing of the built space of the cities of [End Page 396] the CEE1 concentrates on the postmodernism-influenced revival of vernacular architecture and city centers “left to rot” by socialist regimes, whose inherent value in postmodern discourses, and attendant highlighting of the inferiority of the socialist regime’s planning, can now be brought to the forefront. This discursive realignment also extends to reframings of prominent buildings such as the House of the People in Bucharest (Light, “‘Facing the Future’”) or the Palace of Science and Culture in Warsaw (Omilanowska).2 These changes to the physical and symbolic landscape support other mechanisms of nationalism in post-socialist space, which, as Craig Young and Duncan...

Linhas de Pensamento que Influenciam o Ensino da Educação Ambiental

Este trabalho verificou que o ensino da educação ambiental não escapa das grandes narrativas: Parmenídica, que influenciou o positivismo, Heraclitiana, que influenciou a dialética, bem como do discurso Sofista, que está influenciando o discurso pós-moderno. Pelo viés positivista, a educação ambiental seria considerada naturalística, que visaria apenas a intervenções no meio ambiente natural. Para o viés pós-moderno, a educação ambiental seria uma forma de religar o homem à natureza. Essas correntes não tecem críticas internas ao sistema capitalista. Já a dialética marxista se configura como um dos únicos meios sanos de se propor uma nova educação ambiental que seja crítica ao sistema capitalista, contribuindo pra a edificação de uma nova sociedade.

Feminists and Formalists

‘Abstracts come in from the cold’, announced an Auckland Star headline on 9 April 1974. The article was about the Petar/James Gallery, a dealer gallery established two years previously by an ambiti...

Revisiting History in Hayden White’s Philosophy

In his “Historical Fiction, Fictional History, and Historical Reality,” Hayden White writes “What we postmodernists are against is a professional historiography.” This statement inspired me to reexamine a number of White’s oeuvre from the perspective of postmodernism so as to find out in what ways and to what extent White is a postmodernist. In addition, I highlight a number of preoccupations of professional historiography and argue how White deploys the discourse of postmodernism to dismantle them.

Otherness: The Prevalence of the Real

The paper considers three uses of the real in literature that bear witness to what I would call “prevalence” of the real as the ultimate otherness. The first concerns the way in which the real bursts into fiction; the latter does indeed draw from the former details and surprises little accessible to imagination. The second is the way in which sometimes the pretext of fiction is used to mitigate the consequences of its claims; this mode is the strongest evidence of the extent to which fiction is steeped in reality. The third refers to the postmodern world, in which theory itself purported to be literaturised; certain statements (otherwise false or morally serious) are possible in such a theoretical context since the postmodern discourse theorizes the loss of the distinction between reality and fiction, and between philosophy and literature. The thread that unites these three ways to represent the relationship between fiction and reality is that all three of them are represented in the contemporary cultural landscape. The minimalist moral that can be drawn from this is therefore that realism – as well as anti-realism – is said in many ways that are not always transparent.

HUMANISM OR ANTI-HUMANISM? DISCOURSE POSTMODERN

The articledescribes thespecific features of Postmodern humanistic discourse on the basis of analysis of Western European Philosophy concepts.

Bogotá, urbanismo posmoderno y la transformación de la ciudad contemporánea

Pierre Carriere notes that human geographers acknowledge that ideology is a very important variable that, to same extent as culture, history or nature, defi nes the physical and social organization of society. This paper explores the relationship between ideology, urbanism and urban change in Bogota after 1990. The central thesis is that during the nineties a postmodern discourse on the communicational planning arose in Bogota; this discourse then dominated urban politics over the last 2 decades. This paper analyzes the modern rational planning crisis, the arrival of the Barcelona Model and its implementation on the urban politics of Bogota. The conclusions are aimed toward examining the relationship between the postmodern and communicational planning, the globalization process and the new urban morphology of Bogota.