Modern Subject Research Articles

Aesthetics as a Racial Regime of Modernity: Rizvana Bradley, Anteaesthetics: Black Aesthesis and the Critique of Form

Taking aesthetics as a racial regime of modernity, the focus of Bradley’s Anteaesthetics is experiments in Black art which are not ‘worlding but an illimitable descent made to come before the world’. With a powerful introduction reflecting upon Nina Simone at the Montreal Jazz festival, and chapters which take us through 19th-century paintings, cinema, texts, video installations, and digital art, Anteaesthetics forces us to encounter the horror, beauty, and racially gendered dimensions of a negative inhabitation substantiated through the absolutely dispossessive field of worlding aesthetic refrains. Working against the grain of debate, aesthetics is not generatively enrolled for the modern subject possessed of ontological security to productively world itself in new ways. Rather, Anteaesthetics enables us to critically interrogate how investing in aesthetics requires working with the negative, taking an uncompromising stance towards aesthetics as a constitutive force of the ongoing violent legacies of modernity.

Research on the Theory of Power in Foucaults Mid-term Thoughts

Abstract: The concept of power is deeply rooted in everyday life, making it difficult to escape the dominant status assigned by the world. The issue of power is central to Foucaults field of study, where he innovatively proposed a productive view of power and explored its internal relationship with knowledge and subjectivity from a micro-power perspective. On one hand, Foucault posits that the subject is a product of power and primarily analyzes three ways in which power produces subjects, introducing the theory of the death of the subject in modernity. On the other hand, Foucault elucidates the relationship between power and knowledge, asserting that power produces knowledge, but it must also rely on the creation of discourse for its implementation and circulation. This paper then focuses on Foucaults theory of disciplinary power, analyzing how the technologies of discipline in the operation of modern micro-power tame the bodies of modern subjects, thereby forming a disciplinary society. The model of power over the body shifts from the harsh penal practices of the classical period to modern disciplinary training. Foucaults theory of power marks an important turning point in the history of Western philosophy, and his theory of biopolitics provides an innovative understanding of the concept of power from macro to micro levels.

Dreaming the plague: Experiencing the pandemic present, experimenting with Anthropocene temporalities

Abstract Complementing readings in International Relations (IR) that understand Covid-19 as an Anthropocene effect, this article observes the pandemic as a laboratory for engagements with Anthropocene experience. It argues that the pandemic turn to dreams renegotiated the conditions of experienceability of Anthropocene temporality. Exploring the scientific, archival, and practical registers on which dreams attracted interest during the pandemic, the article traces how dreams were valued for their promise of capturing the affective exposure of subjects to the pandemic present. This conditioning of experienceability on the limits of the human subject resonates with the relational turn in IR and its affirmation of being-in-relation as a condition for becoming attuned to the Anthropocene. Drawing from Koselleck and Foucault, the article understands this resonance as indicative of a shared archive of experiments in transcending modern accounts of temporality. For this archive, rendering an Anthropocenic present experienceable requires a shift from the distanced account of a modern author-subject to a subject that gauges its own exposure to the present. Despite this ambition of the turn to dreams, the article also flags its constraints, observing how this turn regularly tipped back into reaffirming the modern subject.

Critique beyond relation: The stakes of working with the negative, the void and the abyss

AbstractThe ‘relational turn’ has been widely embraced in Human Geography and related fields over the last couple of decades as an alternative to the hubris of modern and colonial reasoning. Yet, increasingly, concerns over the extent that contemporary conceptualisations are overly ‘generative’, ‘productivist’ and ‘affirmational’ has come to the fore. There is significant interest in the possibilities for more negative understandings, highlighting failure, attrition, voiding, exhaustion, impotentiality, incompleteness and attributes of ‘non‐relation’. We draw out how, to date, most of these approaches have developed a hermeneutic approach, seeking to bring the negative and the non‐relational into the world as forces of disruption and refusal, holding open other possibilities of knowing and being in the world and enabling alternative political imaginaries. This paper seeks to outline an alternative mode of critique, one that places both relational and negative approaches under the scrutiny of an ‘abyssal’ approach. Here, after Fanon, the world violently forged into the global colour line is bifurcated via the construction of the modern subject, capable of reading itself as a subject in the world and through Human Geography as a field of study. In this always already antiblack world, the goal of ‘Abyssal Geography’ is not to continue worlding the modern subject in new ways, but to analyse and critique the mechanisms and shifts in critical thought through which Human Geography continues to salvage and to redeem the purchase of the modern subject and the world.

PRINCIPLES OF RENEWAL IN CONTEMPORARY UZBEK POETRY

The study discusses Uzbek poetry, its modern subject scope and the artist’s skill in creating images. The research deals with the issues of a new expression of philosophical views, individuality, and artistic interpretation of the creative style in today's Uzbek poetry in connection with Eastern philosophy and creative art. The aim of the study is to analyze the philosophical view and modernist interpretation in modern Uzbek poetry, the creative style, the nature of the image, the manifestation and formation of artistic and aesthetic features, and the growth of the creative way of thinking. The issue of figurative-philosophical imagery in Uzbek poetry, the composition of the poem, the scope of expression and thematic direction; Eastern philosophy in poetry, philosophical-social, symbolic-figurative, folk tones, the attitude of the creator to reality and the spiritual world were studied. The study states that in modern Uzbek poetry in the last quarter of the XX century and the first stage of the XXI century, along with the poet’s creative mood, the style of creating an image was somewhat updated, the meaning understood from the individuality inherent in the nature of the image acquired a special feature, carrying a certain meaning, conveying it to the reader’s thinking at a proper level, and at the same time requiring deep thinking. The history of the globalization phenomenon in modern poetry, its impact on the literary process, the fate of national literature and its viability, the impact of the phenomenon on Uzbek poetry, the issue of the balance of form and content in modern poetry are studied as a literary-aesthetic category.

Introducing chaos theory in the classroom: A life sciences students’ perception.

This article details a concise in-class workshop to introduce life science students to basic chaos theory concepts, which is a modern subject and has high potential for applications in life sciences and other fields, justifying its knowledge. The teaching approach is based on a pragmatic strategy that uses only the essential mathematical and computing concepts required to reach the learning outcome, which this article explains step-by-step and, therefore, at least in expectation, even students or professors with no previous software knowledge could understand them. The proposed educational approach uses a meaningful learning approach, and population growth models as an educational anchor subject, which is a common subject for life science students and may be intuitive for students from other areas. Feedback from 70 students surveyed after the workshop yielded positive results, and 72.9% of the students expressed confidence in explaining basic chaos theory concepts following the session, and 94.7% stated they would recommend it to their peers, which underscores the present proposal feasibility.

An Analysis of Indonesian Islamic Higher Education Institutions in the Era of Globalization

This study aims to explore how globalization and religious conservatism shape institutional and individual identities within Indonesian Islamic Higher Education Institutions (IHEIs). Data were collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews with 30 experienced scholars, selected using purposive sampling from various IHEIs across Indonesia. The study found that globalization is perceived as a double-edged sword, offering opportunities for knowledge expansion and intercultural dialogue while also raising concerns about the erosion of cultural and religious identity. Religious conservatism manifested in a spectrum of responses, from traditionalist interpretations of Islam to advocacy for progressive and inclusive approaches. Participants’ responses varied, demonstrating IHEI agency in adapting curricula to integrate modern subjects while safeguarding Islamic principles. The study also highlighted individual agency within IHEIs, where scholars navigate personal beliefs and institutional expectations, advocating for social change within the boundaries of cultural and religious norms. However, this agency is often constrained by institutional structures and societal pressures. These findings underscored the need for context-specific policies that acknowledge diversity within IHEIs and empower both institutions and individuals to navigate the complexities of globalization and religious conservatism while preserving their unique identities.

LAUGHTER AS A SYMPTOM OF MODERNITY: ANALYSIS OF DEMARCATIONALITY AND INTERPASSIVITY OF LAUGHTER

The author of the article aims to explore the functions and tasks of laughter in the context of modern life, as well as the difficulties that people face today, including stress and the search for identity. She proves this by refuting two common positions that exist in the academic space: 1) the understanding of laughter as a means of destroying hierarchy or as a transgressive force with the destructive potential to expose social ills; 2) the contagious nature of laughter. In the author's opinion, these positions are not able to describe and explain the phenomena taking place in the modern world. Instead of interpreting laughter as a transgression of social roles, the author proposes to understand it as a means of demarcation, that is, as an act that affirms social roles rather than destroys them. According to the author, through the act of laughter, a person demonstrates not only an understanding of the essence of a joke, but also support for the values embedded in it. Using the Lacanian notion of paroisse and the analysis of designated places for laughter, the author argues that agreement with implicit values in a joke makes it possible to identify with a certain group of people, as common values are one of the factors that unite individuals. The joke and the reaction to it with laughter become a way of communication, where the subject identifies himself in the act of laughter. The author concludes that modern people assert their identity through laughter. Using the example of contemporary comedy genres, the author demonstrates the emergence of a new interpassive function of laughter, which is opposed to its contagiousness. The interpassive nature of laughter has emerged due to the need of a modern person to replace their emotions. It can be seen as a symptom of the modern state of the subject, who is under constant stress. Due to the overloaded life, modern subject is forced to push emotions to the background. The culture of consumption and pleasure has become so widespread and accessible that the individual does not refuse certain ways of enjoyment, but transfers this function to other objects. The modern subject no longer has to take on the exhausting role of a laughing person, and thanks to the interpersonal nature of laughter, laughs and enjoys through the Other. The author concludes that such a transfer allows the modern person to feel that the action of laughter has been performed.

Fracturing the affordance space: an account of digitalized alienation.

This paper investigates the lived experience of alienation as a form of mental strife or pathology as it is connected to the digitalization of modern life. To do so, I deploy the concept of affordances from ecological psychology, phenomenology, and embodied cognition. I propose an affordance-based model for understanding digitalized alienation. First, I argue that the lived sense of alienation is best understood as a fracturing of the affordance space, where possibilities for action are lived as disconnected from one another and therefore from one's personal development and search for meaning. Using this model, I show how the process of digitalization can lead to a lived sense of alienation for modern subjects. On this model, digitalization is alienating insofar as it fractures the affordance space into disconnected fields that invite determinate, separate, and repeatable tasks-swiping, clicking, scrolling, etc.-rather than offering opportunities for the development of new cognitive and bodily skills that are mutually informing and enriching across different affordance fields.

The Impact of Negation of the Maternal Body on Embodiment and Subjectivity in Modernity

This article explores the links between subjectivity formation and the societal negation of the maternal body in the modern era. Using relational matricentric psychoanalysis and feminist philosophy, the author examines the maternal body as a site of intersubjective discovery and a paradoxical space in society. This space holds the subjectivity of the modern individual, creating a philosophical dilemma between the desire for embodied autonomy and dependence on the maternal body. A key symptom of this dilemma is seen in psychoanalysis’ historical resistance to engage fully (theoretically and clinically) with both the maternal body and the experiential body more broadly. The author argues that this negation of the maternal body in Western culture, including psychoanalysis, has led to an increasingly disembodied understanding of subjectivity that is susceptible to neo-Cartesian thinking, exacerbated by the public-private dichotomization of modernity and the technological advances of the Capitalocene. The article includes reflections on a vision of a non-matricidal conception of subjectivity.

The posthuman trauma novel: Reconfiguring subjectivity in Patricia Lockwood’s No One Is Talking about This (2021)

Trauma studies and posthuman studies are two paradigms that became popular in the late twentieth century and have been used to define the culture of our time. Both fields deal with subjectivity, agency, embodiment and the relation with ‘the other’, viewing subjectivity and the self as shattered and fragmented. However, while trauma studies focuses on the process of acting out and working through to return to a sealed, complete conception of the self, posthuman studies explores the fluidity and interconnectedness that results from the decentralization of human subjectivity in our technological, boundary-blurring reality. This article introduces the concept of the posthuman trauma novel, which delves into the shared sense of vulnerability between trauma and posthumanism and the complex identity dynamics emerging from these paradigms. Formally, these novels favour complex timelines, non-linear narratives, interconnected plotlines, emotional detachment, machine-like narrators and thematic fragmentation, among other strategies. Patricia Lockwood’s No One Is Talking about This (2021) is a representative example of the posthuman trauma novel that navigates virtual and real worlds. Through fragmentation, intrusive images and non-linearity, the novel represents the disintegration of the mind caused by the internet and social media in which the sense of self is engulfed by a collective consciousness emerging from the never-ending scrolling and the juxtapositions between the important and the shallow. It is a real-world trauma that pulls the protagonist out of the virtual world of disembodiment and detachment. While acknowledging the importance of social media and digital technologies, the novel also sees the blurring of digital and physical spaces as a wound of modern subjectivity, a suffering that needs to be worked through to achieve an embodied and embedded conceptualization of the self.

“Missing the Mark”: Objectified Fantasies of Self and Other in Commercial BDSM

Abstract: In commercial BDSM sessions, the problems of feminized labor, the myth of modern subjectivity, and the contested status of the sex worker as variably subject or object become the frameworks for erotic play. These problems, which circle around fantasies of objectification and subjectification, are never resolved. Rather, they conflict with one another, and it is the tension engendered through this conflict that invests the session with its erotic charge. Through an ethnographic discussion of three professional dominatrixes and their clients, this article asks how transgressive investments in sociohistorical fantasies of objectification as well as the ambivalence of psychosexual processes of objectification get enacted in BDSM sessions. When dominatrixes play with these fantasies, they leverage the ambivalences in both their own and their clients’ drives for becoming subjects and becoming objects in order to play with—and even derive pleasure from—objectification.

The postmodern turn in childhood studies and its pedagogical implications

This paper reflects on the postmodern shift in childhood studies and its impact on education. As scholars interrogate the modern notion of childhood, the discourse of postmodernism has entered the realm of childhood studies, yielding various new perspectives on childhood. The key characteristics of the postmodern shift in childhood studies include: 1) the rejection of essentialism regarding childhood and the recognition of the diversity inherent in it; 2) the deconstruction of binary oppositions and the advocacy for the heterogeneous nature of childhood and the concept of "becoming-child"; 3) the dissolution of the modern subject associated with childhood and the reconstruction of the postmodern subject. Postmodern childhood studies will bring some positive impacts to the field of education, such as focusing on the differences among children rather than abstracting them into a unified map, removing adultism from education, and emphasizing the construction of new forms of child subjectivity in education. However, at the same time, it will also bring many challenges to education, such as questioning the essence of childhood and good education, shaking the foundation of educational existence brought by the dissolution of childhood, and the loss of educational significance due to the fluid and changing construction of child subjectivity. This underscores the importance of acknowledging that as education embraces the discourse of postmodern childhood, both its promises and perils will permeate the educational domain.

Development and eruption of human teeth in the Chinese population: a comprehensive dental atlas

AimThe first comprehensive chart on dental development was published 75 years ago based on Caucasian children and this has been used as a standard dental chart to date. Few population specific charts have been developed recently and updated dental charts on modern subjects can provide more information on dental development patterns. This study aims to construct a comprehensive dental atlas for modern Chinese children and young adults to assist in clinical, forensic, and public health applications.MethodsThe study sample comprised of 2,306 subjects, age ranging from 2 to 24 years belonging to Chinese ethnicity. Dental formation and eruption of permanent teeth and resorption of primary teeth were analyzed separately for females and males. For each age range, the number of teeth (n), and the stage of development was calculated for first (Q1), second (Q2) and third quartiles (Q3). Similar analysis was performed for the position of permanent teeth and the resorption of primary teeth. To determine the variations between the sex, Mann-Whitney U-test was conducted by comparing the median (Q2) stages.ResultsVariations in dental formation and eruption of permanent teeth and resorption of primary teeth were observed between maxillary and mandibular dentitions and between the sex, however the difference was not statistically significant (p = 0.535 to p = 1.000). The dental atlas was presented separately for Chinese females and males.ConclusionThis atlas on modern Chinese population serves as a practical tool to assist in clinical diagnosis and treatment planning, in forensic investigations as well as indicators of developments in public health.

The Ego Conquiro as the Paradigm of Modern Imperialism and its Violence Against the Struggle for Epistemic Justice

This article begins with a discussion of the implications of Enrique Dussel’s “I conquer, therefore I am” (ego conquiro) thesis as the paradigm of modern imperialism. According to Dussel, underlying the “myth of modernity” (mito de la modernidad) is an epistemological structure of a substantive ego that naturalizes European colonial expansion. Dussel admits that the “I conquer, therefore, I am” thesis began earlier than Descartes’s account of the cogito, which was theorized after the Spanish colonization of the Americas, but the substantive “I” that constitutes the ego conquiro nonetheless represents a theory of knowledge that served and continues to serve the political domination of bodies that have been historically victimized. Couched within the epistemic structure of Descartes’s cogito is a duality between soul and matter, where the former represents an immortal substance detached from the body, taken to be the recipe for rational truth, while the latter is reduced to a quantifiable object occupying a “zero-point” geometrical space. But the cogito became the epistemological standpoint that allowed for the justification of the many hidden forms of domination around the world, because it masks the social, economic, and geopolitical contexts and their history to the modern subject. This article will investigate the ego conquiro thesis and its link to epistemic violence, namely, epistemic racism and epistemicide, and will argue as a concluding point for a method of resistance that foregrounds philosophical pluralism to disrupt the internalization of the epistemologies of the Global North as the common-sense position(s) of today.

Duality, Multiplicity – a Journey into the Unknown. W.S. Reymont’s Vampire

The article discusses W.S. Reymont’s novel Vampire as a modern esoteric text, focusing mainlyon the motif of the double (Doppelgänger). References to theosophical interpretative tropes shedlight not only on Reymont’s interest in esotericism, but also on its practical application in diagnosingthe modern subject. Reymont’s characters suffer as a result of the vagueness and elusiveness of theirown selves, which is refl ected in the fi gure of the double.

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE SUBPROCESS OF ECONOMIC MANAGEMENT OF INNOVATIONS OF ECONOMIC SYSTEMS

The article is devoted to the use of methodological tools for research and development of the sub-process of managing the economy of innovation in an organization. As the analysis of management systems shows, the effectiveness of the use of innovations is associated with the creation of conditions for their development and integration with modern subjects of the innovation infrastructure. Achieving the goals and missions of modern organizations is impossible without the development and use of management and methodological tools adapted to the realities of the global economy. The purpose of the subprocess of managing the economy of innovation is considered by briefly describing well-known economic indicators that characterize the effectiveness of innovative activity of economic systems. The parameters of the attributes of the innovation economics management subprocess were studied to form a key set of a conceptually categorical thesaurus. The problems (points of development) of the subprocess under consideration within the framework of activities in a specific organization are identified. The author's proposals have been developed to improve the state of the innovation economics management subprocess using the example of a specific organization. When implementing the proposed measures, there is an increase in all indicators (income, gross profit, net profit and cost of services). This can be explained by the fact that there will be a reduction in costs after the use of innovative resource-saving equipment and the implementation of the proposed methodological tools.

Nieszczera szczerość Karola Irzykowskiego. Pozytywna odpowiedź na nowoczesny lęk przed nieautentycznością

Karol Irzykowski’s postulate of sincerity is similar to the modern concept of authenticity and is part of the discussion on the condition of the modern subject. Sincerity is a critical category and has anthropological, aesthetic and ethical aspects. Irzykowski redefines the traditional communicative assumptions of the phenomenon by reversing the order of moral principles and the relation between art and reality. The category of appearances, i.e. fantasy, fiction, lies and falsehood, is at the basis of what is sincere and enables the aesthetic experience of authenticity. Irzykowski sees the crisis of authenticity and the fear of inauthenticity as a positive condition, as they help create an original and active subjectivity within the order of social communication.

Ripples Over the Rim: Narrating Dispossession through Asian Diasporic Formations in Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being

Abstract: This article examines the condition of dispossession as a multi-scalar phenomenon by tracing historical continuities between different forms of transpacific displacement to contemplate how Asian American critique can offer the tools to render deterritorialized identities legible as political entities. Using Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for The Time Being , the article illustrates how Asian North American exclusions serve as a heuristic to interpret environmental displacements post-Fukushima as imperial dispossessions that are related and complementary. In showing how Ozeki expends the category of dispossession by politicizing the spaces of alterity, her text reveals the radical promises of planetary interconnectedness. Reading the rōnin , the unwelcome and ostracized subject of modernity, as the emblematic figure of the outsider allows me to present their social alienation alongside Asian North American experiences of dispossessions. In narrating experiences of social and political dispossession alongside environmental displacements, Ozeki expands the category of the rōnin from one of social to ecological dispossession. As such, the figure of rōnin foregrounds the ways in which these experiences of dispossession are interrelated, interlinked, and interwoven. This inextricability in turn allows for a different articulation of dispossession, one not grounded in a singular place but distributed across a series of sites and scales. I name this methodology of tracing Asian dispossessions across planetary geographies as "trash-nationalism."

Instantiations of alterity: The goy as modern subject

This article offers an anthropological and theoretical-archeological comparative exploration of agency, responsibility, and alterity in the Late Ancient Iranian Talmud and its reading in contemporary Manhattan. The guiding question is how the classical rabbinic imagery and conceptualization of the “Goy” or “non-Jew” are implicitly recast in the modern framework of subjectivity, in a social context of quasi-traditionalist Talmud study. The specific Talmudic texts examined focus further on the role that the difference and analogy between humans and other animals plays in this reimagination of the “Goy's” persona.