Cultural Logic Research Articles

Aspects of Indigenous Participation in Brazilian Literature

The article both presents how, from the end of the 1980s onwards, native peoples have begun to occupy certain spaces of textual production and circulation that they had not previously occupied in the Brazilian cultural scene (for social, linguistic, and cultural reasons, but also political and juridical) and discusses how this process has provoked a vigorous movement of dilation of traditional textual and discursive borders in Western culture. Texts deriving from indigenous peoples in the sphere of academic discourse are, in general, bilingual, and are structured in ways that combine aspects of intellectual production with those of artistic creation. Moreover, they are also structured around a rather complex conception of the notion of authorship (considering that they are written by an author but represent the voice of their people). As examples, the article analyzes the case of Os cantos tradicionais Ye’kwana [Traditional Ye’kwana Chants], by the indigenous teacher and researcher Fernando Ye’kwana Gimenes, winner of the 2020/2021 edition of the Dirce Cortes Riedel Masters Dissertation Award by the Brazilian Association of Comparative Literature, as a typical example of the cultural phenomenon discussed. The traditional Ye’kwana chants present significant transgressions in relation to the traditional notions of narrative logic and the dominant forms of narration in the fields of literature and history. The awarding of this academic prize to an indigenous inhabitant of the forest, on the border between Brazil and Venezuela, by the largest association of comparative literature in Latin America, in addition to being an important act in political terms, demonstrates how urgent it is to rethink processes of global literary dissemination beyond the restricted frameworks configured by the logic of hegemonic cultures, which are based on closed divisions and hierarchies. With this, we intend to contribute to the process of including Amerindian texts in the repertoire of Comparative Literature and World Literature.

ON THE SEARCH OF NEW AESTHETICS IN CONTEMPORARY UKRAINIAN LITERATURE (BASED ON THE NOVELS OF MAKSYM DUPESHKO)

Modern Ukrainian literature reacts to the collapse of the postmodern project and the emergence of a new cultural logic - metamodernism. This article is an attempt to prove it on the example of an analysis of the work of a modern Ukrainian writer. Maksym Dupeshko’s novels «The Story Worth an Entire Apple Orchard» [Istoriia varta tsiloho yablunevoho sadu] (2017) and «Near the Carriage under a Dead Fox» [Bilia karety pid mertvym lysom] (2021) served as the artistic material for the study. A scrupulous analysis of the novels testifies to the writer’s sensitivity to tectonic shifts in modern aesthetics. Both novels work with the phenomenon of the influence of historical memory on the present. And the strategies used by the author fully illustrate the theses of metamodernism theorists: oscillation between pre-modern, modern, and post-modern practices; fragmented «I» and attempts to integrate it into newmeaningful configurations; finding the multiplicity of human subjectivity; transition from parataxis to metaxy; a movement from melancholy to hope. Maksym Dupeshko’s texts testify listening to a new sensuality. The writer is not afraid to search for the truth, to be simple (both at the level of language and at the level of transmitted ideas), he consciously uses banality, he is deliberately pathetic, oscillates from irony to seriousness, from naivety to sincerity, always, however, without approaching cynicism. «The Story Worth an Entire Apple Orchard» is a novel-reflex on the modern Russian-Ukrainian war. The credit of the novel is that in its area there is a very important for our literature a change of modes in the artistic interpretation of reality — a transition from the obvious to the significant, after that we will no longer be ashamed to be heroes, to be from the provinces, to seek God and places of strength, we willstop confusing naivety and sincerity. «Near the Carriage under the Dead Fox» is a novel-anamorphosis - a construction that seems absurd to us if we look at it directly, but when we change the angle of view, it acquires clear and recognizable outlines. This novel engages the reader in the quest, it demonstrates a way to look into our modern existence - an endless chaos of things, events, ideas, aesthetics, fragments of sleeps, fragments of destinies, parts of dreams, hallucinations and fantasies.

Looking into Walcott’s Homer: Omeros between epic and mock-epic

This essay’s contribution to an already voluminous body of criticism on Derek Walcott’s Omeros (1990) consists in its attention to questions of specifically poetic genre, by which it opens a space in postcolonial studies for the consideration not just of literary forms beyond the novel – the larger aim of this special issue – but also of poetic forms beyond the lyric. Previous critical accounts have discussed the poem’s allusions to Homer at length. This essay builds upon these accounts by arguing for a mock-epic interpretation of these epic signifiers, which by the analogies they establish between Homer’s and the poet’s respective milieux allegorize the postcolonial poet’s alienation from his cultural milieu. This mock-epic inversion turns on the figure of Homer, or more specifically on the ways in which Omeros negotiates the many contradictions his figure entails within a Western cultural framework. The poet’s capacity for Homeric analogies distinguishes him from his subjects, whose frame of reference apparently excludes Homer. But if Homeric epic’s cultural logic is not reproduced by Omeros itself, it is represented in that poem by images of Afro-Caribbean folk-cultural practice which resist Homeric analogy. If these images are “epic”, it is because they center the cultural practice of the St. Lucian people themselves, without reference to the poet’s external position.

Third Agers in India: Empirical Evidence From Longitudinal Aging Study in India (LASI), 2017-2018.

Given that the ontological origins of the Third Age lie in the cultural logics of social class, consumer society and "habitus," a majority of its gerontological examination is qualitative in nature. We utilize the recently released Longitudinal Aging Study in India (2017-2018) and harness the time-use module to offer an empirical portrait of Third Agers in India. Considering that the aging scholarship in India has been often articulated in the empirical language of dependency, care regimes, and (economic) insecurity, we believe this examination allows us to shift the gerontological gaze from a risk perspective to one that is positive and affirmative. Following an exploratory factor analysis and nested linear regression, we corroborate the emergence of a "silver market" where educated, urban, affluent, and professionally qualified older Indians are the ones who are more likely to engage in active leisure pursuits. Noteworthy is the combined effects of wealth and professional education in determining who is ultimately able to "purchase" leisure in a highly segmented emerging senior market. In all, we conclude by discussing how these findings upend our cultural imagination around growing old in contemporary India.

Hybridity and the Unifying Space of Painting: Larry Abramson in Conversation with Theolonius Marx

Abstract While the drive toward homogeneous and pure visual languages was at the foundation of early twentieth-century utopian modernist art systems, the Dadaist and Surrealist reaction to this utopianism took the form of extreme and often violent hybridity. Marcel Duchamp's 1913 “readymade” of a bicycle wheel placed atop a kitchen stool is a paradigmatic manifestation of the linguistic hybridity characteristic of post-utopian twentieth-century art. In the 1920s Francis Picabia made paintings constructed of separate and discrete layers of images, which, when viewed together, produced an unsettling visual “monster.” Picabia's practice of superimposition was a significant forerunner of prevailing contemporary practices in postmodern painting. In his essay “Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,” philosopher Fredric Jameson (1991) identifies pastiche as one of the main characteristics of cultural production in the age of postmodernism. Pastiche is defined as a work of art consisting of motifs borrowed from one or more sources, an incongruous hodgepodge of materials, forms, and images. In this age of pastiche, what are the options open to artists—to endlessly quote, imitate, or parody existing images and styles, or to construct a new and significant system of meaning? To discuss the centrality of the principle of hybridity in postmodern art—and in my own artistic practice of the past fifty years—I summoned Theolonius Marx, a fiction of my imagination who helped me handle the dilemmas of conceptual art in the 1970s. In this “conversation,” Theolonius and I ponder how hybridity has placed a challenge to utopian modernist concepts, and what the conditions are for it to thrive today as a relevant and sustainable medium.

Beyond trauma: provisional networks and eccentric forms in fiction of the blitz

ABSTRACT In many novels set in London during and after the Blitz, such as The Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton, Caught by Henry Green, Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark, and Human Voices by Penelope Fitzgerald, traumatic experiences are often subordinated to concerns that have received comparatively little critical attention. This article argues that a strain of Blitz fiction is primarily engaged in the mapping of ad hoc social networks that emerged during the Blitz. Mass evacuation, destroyed homes, and shifting wartime posts resulted in provisional domestic arrangements, micropolitical tensions, and networks of care that abruptly emerged and disappeared. The fictional representation of these unusual social structures demanded unconventional narrative techniques. A strain of Blitz fiction adopted the formal structures of network narratives in order to render distributed, dynamic, and dislocated social topographies. This article moves beyond the well-established association of wartime literature with representations of trauma in order to bring into focus a strain of network narratives that reflect a cultural logic of contingency under the Blitz.

X, analyst

ABSTRACT This essay situates X González’s oratory and activism for gun legislation within Jacques Lacan’s Discourse of the Analyst to argue for the affirmative role of analytic silence in a body politic riddled with gun death, gridlock, thoughts, and prayers. Psychoanalytic treatment aims at intervention into a patient’s recurring patterns of behavior and speech that uphold their status quo of suffering. My essay argues for the practical and conceptual utility of Lacan’s discourse theory for rhetorical studies by advancing X as analyst against the cultural logic of the Firearm, a logic of domination I model via the Discourse of the Master.

Is my best friend toxic? A textual analysis of online advice on difficult relationships

In this article, we analyse how mediated discourses of toxic friendships echo and reconstruct the category of the toxic friend. We ask: what kind of assumptions does the toxic friendship discourse draw on, and what forms of subjectivity and interpersonal relationships are encouraged? Employing a critical discourse analysis of digital texts, we argue that the discursive category of the toxic friend draws on a simplistic set of classificatory dichotomies distinguishing between the good and the toxic friend. We also suggest that the popular labelling of difficult friendships as ‘toxic’ reflects the contemporary diffusion of the notion of toxicity in contemporary public culture. We contend that this discourse reflects the discursive conflation between therapeutic culture and neoliberal wellness logic, with the figure of the toxic friend constructed in ways that support imperatives for self-care and self-governance. While much of the advice situates friendship as an important personal tie, there is very little encouragement to ‘work’ on these relationships. As such, these discourses offer a reductive, disposable approach to friendship ties that overlooks the complexities and lived experiences of friendship relations.

Infinite media: The contemporary infinite paradigm in media

This essay argues that the contemporary media paradigm is defined by an infinite character and scale that emerge from the confluence of infinite-prone economic, technological, and cultural logics. Thus, it discusses the emergence, consolidation, and expansion of a state in which the media landscape and experience are assumed as practically infinite in its different dimensions, from the institutional to the cultural perspective. The argument of this article is based on the analysis of two cases: the deployment of an infinite production model in the media industry, particularly Hollywood; and the implementation of an infinite experience of approaching digital media, especially social media and streaming platforms. The essay maintains that the development of this clearly observable paradigm in media has granted the current possibility of having effectively infinite media and suggests that this propensity towards infinity in media could increase through the implementation of resources such as those offered by generative AI.

Cultural Insights into Pakistan: Development and Validation of Perceived Cultural Logic Scale

Dignity, honor, and face culture is a new and different normative script for behavior in social interaction and negotiations. The main objective of the study was to develop and validate a theoretical model to measure the cultural logic of dignity, honor, and face culture. The study was configured in three phases using samples from different Universities in Pakistan with an age range of 18-25. In phase A, items were developed using a literature review and Thematic Analysis of data obtained through focused group discussions and interviews. Phase B was comprised of scale development in which the factor structure of the scale was confirmed using Principal Axis Factoring on the sample of N=348 emerging adults. In phase C, the measure was further subjected to confirmatory factor analysis, reliability, and validity procedures (N= 422). It was established through CFA that the measure had construct validity. Coefficient alpha ranged from .93 to .95. Validity of the measure was established through Average Variance Extracted (AVE= .64-.73), Maximum Variance Extracted (MSV= .02-.10) Fornell - Lacker Criterion and Hetro-trait Mono-trait criteria. Overall results indicated that the Perceived Cultural Logic Scale is a self-report, psychometrically sound, and comprehensive measure comprised of 23 items that can be used to evaluate the perception of cultural logic among emerging adults.

The cultural logics of mothering practices: agency capacity of the university-educated Chinese mothers in Singapore and Hong Kong

PurposeThis study aims to reveal and compare the cultural logics of university-educated Chinese mothers in Singapore and Hong Kong in their mothering practices to improvise their femininities in constituting their work–family interactions.Design/methodology/approachThis qualitative research, with the ethnographic elements, has included 32 Chinese mothers to share about their mothering experiences through semi-structured interviews. This methodological design with feminist lens embraces women’s own narratives as sources of knowledge and learns their voices to reinvent their role and bodily engagement in shaping their family dynamics.FindingsThis discussion basically reaffirms the argument where the mother’s involvement in their children’s schoolwork becomes one of the core elements in their actual everyday mothering practices. It has further reflected the dynamics of family quality time in the light of mothers’ cultural logics as much as their attentive agency capacity to present their respectable femininity in the form of mothering.Research limitations/implicationsThis research process has revealed the actual experiences of the participants from their own narratives. For future research development, data collection can be extended to include the husbands’ profiles and their narratives in understanding their wives’ mothering experiences.Originality/valueThis discussion enriches the work-family literature by extending it to the Asian Chinese context. While the concepts of cultural capital and habitus have been addressed in previous studies, this discussion highlights the agency capacity of the university-educated Chinese mothers in their cultural logics to deliver their respective mothering practices. This filtering process to transmit cultural capital to their children is as much as they involve in reproducing status boundaries for the family.

How conspicuousness becomes productive on social media

Increasing attention has been paid to social media influencers and their self-branding strategies; yet, a perspective that specifically focuses on such practices in terms of social status has still to be fully developed. This paper analyses how Instagram micro-influencers use self-branding practices as ways to construct and display social status and, secondly, contributes to shed light on the contemporary changes in status gaining and signalling. Moving from Veblen’s theory of conspicuous consumption, I contend that conspicuousness represents the main cultural logic underpinning micro-influencers’ practises, and it's characterised by a productive display of consumption. Departing from Veblen’s theorisation, the display is not an expression of wastefulness, but a productive element in the construction of social status. Employing a methodological approach comprising digital methods and qualitative interviews, the research shows how the logic of conspicuousness unfolds and becomes productive through consumption practices characterised by accumulation, access, and circularity. Furthermore, the results highlight how micro-influencers follow the logic of conspicuousness to construct social status by seeking exclusivity or negotiating belongingness.

Understandings of race and racism in globalizing higher education: when east Asian international student perspectives resonate with color-blindness

ABSTRACT This article examines how class, race, and neoliberal cultural logics are intertwined with the understanding of race and racism among Chinese and Korean international undergraduate students, drawing on data from an 18-month ethnography. The data suggests that the discourse of color-blind racial ideology and the positionality of the ‘strategic cosmopolitan’ interactively fabricate the perspective of East Asian international students. Specifically, their motivation for acquiring globally competitive cultural capital is connected to the pursuit of White capital. Despite aspiring to be cosmopolitan, students find themselves socially isolated on campus, which is attributed to cultural differences and individual responsibility rather than racial dynamics. Students tend to deny the existence of racial discrimination or avoid discussing racism, distancing themselves from ostensible racial subordinates while emphasizing individual responsibility and meritocracy. By investigating these dynamics, the article adds complexity to the understanding of racism and diversity in global higher education.

Cognitive-evolutionary theory of language: justification

This article is devoted to substantiating the cognitive-evolutionary theory of language within the framework of cognitive linguistics. The main principle of cognitive linguistics, “explanation,” serves as the foundation for this theory. It is argued that the need for this theory arises from negative trends in modern cognitive linguistics, such as an excessive focus on studying concepts without a common understanding of the term "concept" and the substitution of the object of cognitive linguistic research with the study of thinking facilitated by language, rather than thinking itself. The article proposes a new theory for cognitive linguistics that aims to explain the mechanism by which the quality of thinking influences the quality of language. Furthermore, it seeks to determine what factors contribute to the quality of thinking and identify the reasons for differences in the development of languages, thinking, and cultures associated with languages. To support this theory, an interdisciplinarity is suggested, which involves incorporating anthropological data from various fields such as philosophy, logic, cognitive psychology, ontopsychology, ethnopsychology, psycholinguistics, neurophysiology, neurolinguistics, ontolinguistics, ethnolinguistics, and primatology. The author argues in favor of the overwhelmingly positive impact of biological and cognitive evolution. While the commonly accepted notion of thinking influencing language lacks complete proof, the article identifies perception as the cognitive structure that ensures the quality of thinking. In line with the idea that the quality of perception affects thinking, which in turn affects language, three degrees of perception are identified: syncretic, superficial, and alternative. Each degree of perception is described alongside linguistic and mental characteristics observed in great apes, children, modern primitive and ancient civilized people, as well as modern civilized people. The article concludes that differences between languages (and cultures) stem from the quality of perception regarding their developmental possibilities. As a result, the cognitive-evolutionary algorithm “perception: syncretic, superficial, or alternative → corresponding logic of thinking → corresponding logic of language (corresponding logic of culture)” is proposed.

Unsettling academia: Academic career choices and pathways of PhD graduates in the Greater Bay Area in China

AbstractMuch of the scholarship on employment and career pathways of PhD graduates has examined the issues, including pre‐doctoral experiences, quality of doctoral education, networking and career choices across different sectors; however, contextual environmental factors have been generally overlooked. This study aims to explore the academic career choices and pathways of PhD graduates currently employed in universities in the Greater Bay Area (GBA) in China. The primary data sources include semi‐structured interviews with a group of 28 PhD graduates from 14 universities in Guangdong province and Hong Kong, government talent policy documents, and university documents regarding recruitment and tenure. The findings of this study revealed five strategic logics that the PhD graduates deployed in the dynamic decision‐making process for academic career choices and pathways in the GBA: (1) logic of academic alignment (matching degrees between academic competitiveness and academic job market, alignment in research/teaching agenda, alignment with future professional aspiration); (2) logic of financial concerns; (3) logic of academic network; (4) logic of risk mitigation; (5) logic of institutional culture. Implications for universities and policymakers on academic career support and talent management in the GBA are also provided.

In a Garden of Forking Maps

Abstract This article compares the cartographical representations of the Caspian region produced around 1560 in Goa and Venice, with references to other centers of mapmaking such as Lisbon, Seville, and Antwerp. It explores the scientific, cultural, technical, and commercial logics that led to profoundly dissimilar cartographies of the Caspian and its surroundings in different centers of map production around the same time. It asks questions about the contrasts between maritime and terrestrial cartography in the Renaissance, and the cartographical languages associated with each of these cartographical modes. The habitus of maritime cartographers in Goa, Lisbon, and Seville differed profoundly, it is argued, from that of mapmakers in Italy, and particularly Venice, who aimed for an integration of all available data as part of a tradition of commenting on Ptolemy, and produced highly desirable printed maps for a growing consumer audience. The article thus advocates a comparative approach to maps, and critiques the assumption that knowledge “flows” between regions. It proposes instead a “(dis)connected history” of knowledge production and consumption to throw new light on the origins of the cartographical printing revolution.

Lean Logics versus Cultural Logics: Case Study of a Japanese Automobile Company in India

Lean Logics versus Cultural Logics: Case Study of a Japanese Automobile Company in India

IP电影：符号消费、异化符号消费及意义构建

IP movies are the mainstream of Chinese film and television today, and they are purely commercial films from the operation mode to the measurement standards. The rapid development of IP films is mainly driven by the commercial market, but the cultural logic behind it is mainly the added value carried by the symbolization of goods. The consumption of IP films is actually symbolic consumption. Therefore, the consumption of IP movies will inevitably show a tendency to consume alienated symbols. In order to better develop IP films, it is necessary to carry out new symbolic meaning construction in the creation process of Chinese IP films.

Culture and Social Representations as Cross-cutting Factors in Social Dynamics

Through different tendencies exposed mainly by Zigmund Bauman (2002) it is necessary to determine what is the role of culture in the social order. For this purpose it is necessary in the first place to develop a definition of the concept, since culture is understood as a polysemic concept. The social dynamics that are defined through the cultural logics of social transformation are the configuring element through which the concept of culture is developed. Through a conceptual delimitation and the theoretical exposition of different authors it is possible to define the concept of culture. Subsequently, the different roles of the notion of culture according to Bauman are determined. Finally, and as a conclusion, the internalization of the culture is exposed from the social representations that are defined according to the specific case of the migrants.

Techno-nationalism as the cultural logic of global infrastructural capitalism: media spectacles and cyber-situations in Huawei Meng Wanzhou’s extradition case

This article contributes to a theoretical formulation of techno-nationalism as the cultural logic of infrastructural capitalism by revisiting Debord and Situationist International’s discussion of Spectacle and digital struggles. We deconstruct the concept of techno-nationalism into three interlocking but contradictory media events: techno-nationalism as the “integrated Spectacle,” signifying the power of the state and capital; the disintegrative forces of media spectacles that highlight the ruptures and contradictions of global infrastructural capitalism; and digital resistance through the creation of “cyber-situations.” The case of Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou exemplifies how techno-nationalism emerges as an integrated ideological Spectacle with the help of media spectacles and yet undergoes a disintegration process due to inescapable contradictions and labor conflicts. This research not only analyses China as a case to understand the tactical deployment of the cultural logic of techno-nationalism with a focus on both domestic and international dimensions as political economic and social forces but also on the inherent contradictions and digital struggles in global infrastructural capitalism.