Modern Malaise Research Articles

Studying alienation: toward a better society?

PurposeTo show that, although it is not intuitively evident, it is clear that, for the researchers, studying alienation is one way of doing social science that contributes to making society better.Design/methodology/approachReference is made to early sociologists who developed theories that describe and explain the revolutionary effects of modernity, as evidenced in industrialization and in the enlightenment. The references include Durkheim who developed the concept of anomie to suggest disorders of the consciousness; Weber who described the effects of bureaucratization as an iron cage; and Marx who discussed alienation as a comprehensive structural concept.FindingsIn light of what they saw as the key concept for the frustrations, each of the fathers of sociology had a view of how the malaise of modernity could be overcome. Today, some sociologists can point to concrete paths to improvement. Critical sociologists show that, although alienation is still prevalent, the very structures that cause its persistence also indicate how it can be undermined so as to lead to a reconstruction of society. Systems analysts are also able to delve into the systemic potential for releasing energies of liberation through the dynamic interplay of macro‐arrangements, micro‐procedures, and emotions.Originality/valueGiven that it is important to researchers who study alienation to find ways for reconstructing social relations, it is gratifying to know that, in his work as the President of the Research Committee for the study of alienation, Felix Geyer applied the systems approach to a construction of de‐alienating modes of collaboration, even as he continued to develop his own research productively.

Critical Nostalgia and Material Culture in Northern Ireland

Although many scholars have characterized nostalgia as a counterproductive modern malaise, members of one Northern Irish community demonstrate that nostalgia can be essential for evaluating the present through contrast with the past and for reasserting the ideal of community in the midst of sectarian division. By preserving and displaying local material culture of the past, Catholics and Protestants alike grant seemingly obsolete objects new life as symbols necessary for inspiring critical thought that may lead to positive social change.

Christian Oster: From Courtly Love to Modern Malaise

Even a cursory glance at Christian Oster's work shows an author hard at work drafting a new lover's map. From Volley-ball (1989) to Mon grand appartement (1999), Oster aimed to redefine the landscape of desire for a postmodern and post-romantic environment. If anything, his most recent production has not deviated from this goal. Indeed, Une femme de menage (A Maid) (2001), Dans le train (In the Train) (2002), Les rendez-vous (2003), and L'imprevu (The Unforeseen) (2005), set the stage for an even more rigorous investigation of love, its vagaries, and modus operandi. 1 Of course, the type of love that Oster investigates is a far cry from the fatuous sentimentality of Hallmark cards and contemporary telenovellas. Rather, it is a love anchored in the domestic and the trivial. It is a minimal love, more concerned with the mundane inner workings of the human heart (ludus), and remarkably unconcerned with pathos (mania). It is a love tempered by stoicism; this love does not amount to indifference, but seeks freedom from passion, which, etymologically, incorporates anguish and suffering. In his most recent works, Oster has gone to great pains to expound an Ars Amatoria that, unsurprisingly, draws from a familiar historical model: courtly love. Eros has always played a crucial part in Oster's fiction, but even more so in his current output. In his last novels, we encounter the same amiable losers, always looking for love, drifting between the loss of a former lover and the desire for a new one. Mihaela Voicu has argued that in Chretien de Troyes' Lancelot —and by extension, in all courtly love narratives—the hero is driven by a single thought, and that… all his acts are subordinated to his amorous contemplation. 2 Love, then, becomes the hero's idee fixe; it is all he thinks and seemingly cares about. And yet, that love cannot be consummated, lest the noble lover dishonor the object of his amorous longing, and himself in the process; one could argue that courtly love narratives cease to embody fine amor once love passes from desire to attainment. Thus it is incompleteness and lack that remain the mainstays of courtly love romances. In Lancelot, the eponymous hero conceives a passion for Queen Guenevere, though she is married to King Arthur and, in other

The "Saturated Self": Don DeLillo on the Problem of Rogue Capitalism

The "Saturated Self":Don DeLillo on the Problem of Rogue Capitalism Jerry A. Varsava (bio) In the past decade . . . [t]he dramatic climb of the Dow and the speed of the Internet summoned us all to live permanently in the future, in the utopian glow of cyber-capital, because there is no memory there and this is where markets are uncontrolled and investment potential has no limit. Don DeLillo, "In the Ruins of the Future" [T]he dark side of individualism is a centring on the self, which both flattens and narrows our lives, makes them poorer in meaning and less concerned with others or society. Charles Taylor, The Malaise of Modernity Even laissez-faire capitalism has its rules. Its fundamental enabling premise is of course the humble contract between the "parties," each of whom has access in advance to pertinent information, each of whom freely consents to the binding terms of the agreement. In jurisprudential terms, tort law provides civil guarantees that the contract will be honored by the consenting parties and sets out formal rules by which disagreements can be adjudicated and resolved. Aside from legalisms, a contract is also built on simple trust between the signatories, and their confident expectation that this and all agreements will be honored in good faith, notwithstanding the specter of lawsuits should nonperformance of [End Page 78] one or another of the parties come into play. Laissez-faire capitalism is then founded not only on good laws but also on good will. "Law, contract, and economic rationality," suggests Francis Fukuyama, "provide a necessary but not sufficient basis for both the stability and prosperity of postindustrial societies; they must as well be leavened with reciprocity, moral obligation, duty toward community, and trust, which are based in habit rather than rational calculation" (11). It is obvious that rogue capitalism violates both the juridical-economic and the ethical-social conditions necessary for the orderly and just society that Fukuyama identifies. Rogue capitalism is that subspecies of capitalism that seeks special advantage and unfair profit—"rents to favor and position," in the language of economic historian David Landes—through the covert undermining of contracts and, implicitly, of the norms upon which they are based (218). Rogue capitalism amounts, then, to a double assault, one on the immediate agreement at hand, the other on the very system of guarantees and expectations that makes all contracts possible and indeed appealing. Greed, social prestige, and often obscure forms of psycho-emotional gratification serve as catalysts for the misconduct of the rogue capitalist. While we might agree with free-market economist Joseph Schumpeter that capitalism perse is a process of "creative destruction" in that, in stark neo-Darwinian fashion, weak economic forms and practices are decisively eliminated—no more buggy whips, no more iceboxes—rogue capitalism yields, quite simply, chaos and, allowing the tautology, "destructive destruction." It brings with it the violation of trust and the wanton expenditure of a society's most precious commodity, what Fukuyama calls, after sociologist James S. Coleman, social capital, "the ability of people to work together for common purposes in groups and organizations" (10).1 Rogue capitalism is coterminous with capitalism itself, and even a casual survey of American economic history over the last century or more brings to light all sorts of infamous examples of it: railroad speculation in the 1870s, the robber barons of the late nineteenth century, the great trusts, the unscrupulous businessmen and fraudsters [End Page 79] of early century, the collusive military-industrialist capitalists of the post–World War II period, and, in various incarnations, the financial con artists of the seventies and beyond through to the architects of the great stock-market bubble of the late twentieth century. This rogues' gallery includes such examples of larcenous greed as Robert Vesco and Bernie Cornfeld (mutual-fund fraud in the 1970s), Michael Milken (junk-bond king), Charles Keating (savings-and-loan scandal), Ivan Boesky (insider trading), and, most recently, Sam Waksal (insider trading of ImClone stocks), Henry Blodget (conflict of interest at Merrill Lynch), Scott Sullivan (embezzlement at WorldCom), Andrew Fastow (accounting irregularities at Enron), and Martha Stewart (obstruction of justice). Rogue capitalism has had such catastrophic consequences for American...

Roxanne Euben. Enemy in the Mirror: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Limits of Modern Rationalism. A Work of Comparative Political Theory. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999. xv + 239 pp., notes, bibliography, index.

Intellectual practice is marked by a central asymmetry: we explain the beliefs of others with social scientific theories of causation, but do not seek similar causes for our own (self-evidently more reasonable) ideas. So the “fundamentalist” writings of martyred Egyptian intellectual Sayyid Qutb are normally analyzed as outgrowths of anti-colonial struggle, eroding economic opportunity, official corruption, and changing patterns of education and migration. But the thoughts of Daniel Bell, Hannah Arendt, and Alasdair MacIntyre are examined for their keen insights into the malaise of late modernity. The ideas of Western cultural critics, in other words, have meaning, while those of Muslim cultural critics have only function.

The Unbearable Literariness of Literature: Spectral Marxism and Metaphysical Realism in Charles Taylor's Sources of the Self

Following his now classic studies of Hegel (Hegel and Hegel and Modern Society) the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor has steadily increased his international fame as a sharp and sound observer of modern society. This has resulted in a richly varied body of work in which model philosophical essays on Herder, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein alternate with reflections on culture, politics, multi culturalism, and economics (see the two volumes of Philosophical Papers, The Malaise of Modernity, Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition). Taylor may best be described as a philosopher of culture who is fascinated by the inner discord of European modernity, a subject that clearly comes to the fore in his magnum opus Sources of the Self In this impressive reconstruction of modernity, which centers on the genesis of identity and subjectivity, art and more specifically literature take up a very prominent place. As will be shown in the following essay, they somehow seem to function as a house of refuge for the philosopher, from which he analyses and exposes moments of loss of sense and loss of values. Taylor does not hesitate to critically question other approaches to culture and literature. Poststructuralism, postmodernism, and formal ism are his preferred targets: the court bench finds Breton, Marinetti, Jakobson, Foucault, Lyotard, and Derrida sitting brotherly in the dock. Such a highly normative intervention in the (meta-)literary domain cannot and should not leave literary scholars indifferent. Taylor's philosophical reading of literature (or of literary scholarship itself) should be closely examined, in order to understand how it affects literature and which preconceptions it takes as its basis. This essay, therefore, will not present any new literary-theoretical insights. At stake in the debate is a contemporary variant of Kant's Streit der Fakult?ten ( The Conflict of the Faculties), but now with philosophy and literary scholarship as the protagonists. The present debate deals with positions and with a thor ough reflection on the implications of taking up this position or that.

To Be or Not to Be: The Paradox of Value-Neutrality and Responsible Authority

Roberts, Keith A. 1993. Toward a Sociology ofWriting. Teaching Sociology 21:317-24. Schwehn, Mark R. 1993. Exilesfrom Eden. NewYork: Oxford University Press. Smith, David Horton and Michael A. Malec. 1995. Learning Students' Names in Sociology Classes: Interactive Tactics, Who Uses Them. Teaching Sociology 23:280-86. Taylor, Charles, 1989. Sources ofthe Self Cambridge: Harvard University Press. . 1991. The Malaise ofModernity. Concord, Ontario: The House of Anansi Press. Reprinted 1992 as The Ethics of Authenticity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Thompson, John. 1992. Querying Stage Fright: At Risk in the Classroom. The Teaching Professor 6/4:1-2.

The darkling plain: a theoretical discussion of an antidote for depression.

The modern age is one in which the sense of individual alienation mirrors society's escalating turmoil. Recent evidence suggests that the origins of this modern malaise may lie buried in the individual's infancy experiences. Nevertheless, there are individuals who progress from infancy to adulthood with an apparent immunity to depression. Such individuals appear able to predict the future course of events, operate with confidence in the world, overcome obstacles through mastery-oriented behaviors, and possess optimism concerning the future. These individuals generally come from caregiving backgrounds in which specific kinds of adaptive behaviors, such as previewing, were prevalent. Previewing refers to a self-perpetuating process during which the caregiver envisions imminent developmental trends and transforms these perceptions into behaviors designed to introduce the infant to future maturational skills. This paper attempts to explain the interpersonal factors that are involved in the genesis of the previewing process and to propose a technique based on these developmental observations that may be used in treating individuals suffering from depression.

Therapy for an imaginary invalid: Charles Taylor and the malaise of modernity

Therapy for an imaginary invalid: Charles Taylor and the malaise of modernity

Discussion on the crustal evolutionary model for the Variscides of Ireland and Wales from SWAT seismic data

M. Brooks writes: the investigation of crustal deformation must be one of the primary scientific aims of deep reflection profiling. If structural geologists showed no interest in crustal seismic sections, what would be the point of obtaining them in the first place? There is, however, a great need for discipline in interpreting the current generation of crustal reflection profiles to ensure that any structural models advanced represents a reasonable interpretation of the seismic data. Over-interpretation is here defined as the extraction of information from a seismic section over and above what is reasonable, given the technical problems of the sections and the prevailing geological uncertainties. Unfortunately, the over-interpretation of deep seismic reflection data is a modern malaise reaching epidemic proportions. Numerous papers now present structural interpretations of crustal reflection sections, that cannot be sustained on any objective criteria. The problemm of over-interpretation results from the fact that a first generation of crustal reflection sections, with all their technical inadequacies, are being interpreted by structural geologists armed with a rich supply of viable structural models of crustal deformation. There is a very natural desire on their part to trace surface structures to depth and, hence, define the overall style of crustal deformation, especially in geologically classic areas. The fact that some crustal reflection sections do contain unambiguous evidence of individual major structures strongly encourages this search for definitive structural information in deep reflection data. The crustal reflection sections themselves, however, typically present a very confusing image of deep geology with little

A model for the Modern Malaise

A model for the Modern Malaise

The search for a metaphysical entity in modern drama

This is a thirst which all the fountains of the earth cannot quench. Each of these mysterious needs is one side of aperimeter whose complete figure, when we finally perceive it, has one name: GOD (Bogardt, 1965). In the twentieth cen­ tury man finally murdered God and found himself ‘ left to live in a world hopeless, forlorn, desperate, frustrated, full of agony .... without an answer to the basic human questions”. When did this modern malaise start? In how far is this devastating new truth of nothingness reflected in the arts?