Traditional Modern Research Articles

Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds by Arturo Escobar

Reviewed by: Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds by Arturo Escobar Joe Bryan and Diego Melo Arturo Escobar Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds. Durham: Duke University Press, 2018. xxi + 290 p. Illustrations, notes, references, index. $27.95 paper (ISBN: 978-0-8223-7105-2), $104.95 cloth (ISBN: 978-0-8223-7090-1) Designs for the Pluriverse restates themes familiar to anyone who has followed Arturo Escobar's work. Social movements have decentered development, provincializing capitalism as a specter of modernity/coloniality through the practice of different forms of life and ways of knowing. Taken together, their efforts generate a multiplicity of worlds: a pluriverse. And the time of the pluriverse is now, as a proposition and guide to transitioning from the civilizational failure at hand. As Escobar sings along Bob Dylan in the book's opening line, "the times, they are a-changin'." Designs devotes itself to fleshing out the potential for communities to appropriate "design's modernist tradition" to support their "life projects," fostering a series of ontological "reorientations" that can be used to transform "entrenched ways of being and doing toward philosophies of well-being that finally equip humans to live in mutually enhancing ways of with each other and with the Earth" (p. xi). The propositional nature of the book means that it never lands an argument so much as invites readers to entertain the possibilities. In the book's terms, its goal is to facilitate a process of disoñar – a Spanish neologism Escobar introduces that translates as "dreaming-designing" (p. 213). A decolonial drift on design, disoñar invites all who participate to become "mindful and effective weavers of the mesh of life" (p. 215). Readers familiar with Escobar's previous work will recognize this project, and Designs might just be the most perplexing and clearest example of his approach yet. In its pages, readers will find a collage of ideas and places that includes the Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN) to Foucault, Silicon Valley gurus, Heidegger, Pink Floyd, the Zapatistas, and Bob Marley, taking us from Afro-Colombian communities to the author's teenage bedroom (and music collection), and sites in between. The approach matches Escobar's characterization of design as an open-ended process of invention and creation, directed to solve at-hand problems such as capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy. It also makes the book difficult to summarize. Part of us wishes more texts read like this, alive to the unruly open-endedness and surprise that such engagement requires. Like so much of the writing on the pluriverse and the related ontological turn, the text focuses on potential. And yet consideration of it requires glossing over erasures of where and why the pluriverse is and what design can do for it. The latter question is addressed in the discussion of design thinking that dominates the first third of the book. Now a minor industry in the United States, this starting point is a long way from the skein of rivers, forests, and people that readers have come to know through Escobar's previous works. Instead, the book's engagement with design thinking takes readers on a detour through Silicon Valley (and its satellites), as one of [End Page 353] the key sites where design thinking has come to be. There are many sources engaged here, including Tim Brown, the now-former CEO of global design powerhouse IDEO. A luminary in the field of design thinking, Brown outlined his approach in a 2009 TED Talk, calling on designers to turn their skillset from creating smartphones and autonomous cars to addressing "big problems" like global climate change, security, and water. This approach helped establish design thinking as an ethos and a practice, a way of being in the world attuned to solving problems by balancing desirability, (economic) viability, and (technological) feasibility (Brown, 2009). Brown calls this "building to think," developing a "prototyping mentality" that starts with human need, actively engaging people to create new outcomes. Designs makes use of both phrases approvingly. At the same time, it insists on wresting design thinking from its roots in modernity and coloniality, to...

“For me, this is a particularly attractive subject…”: On the Visual Imagination of Pavel Bazhov

This article examines the role of the visual in the artistic consciousness and texts of Pavel Petrovich Bazhov, as well as in the reception of his works by illustrators and modern readers. The authors explore the phenomenon of Bazhov’s visual imagery employing the research methods of visual studies, i.e. the study focuses on the “scopic mode”, understood as a constructed and historically determined model of the gaze of the beholder. The analysis of tales (Rus. skazy ), epistolary works, and illustrations to Bazhov’s prose allows the authors to assert that the visual is one of the main semantic codes of the writer’s artistic thinking. For this reason, he was not impartial when evaluating illustrations for his works. Bazhov’s letters reflect the variant of illustrations adequate in the writer’s opinion: the frontispiece to The Malachite Box by artist K. V. Kuznetsov represents an ideal model of the author’s vision. It is characterised by a dominance of the imaginary and a tendency to the visual tradition of Russian modernism, which is especially notable in the accentuation of floral ornaments. The modernist substrate, explicated in the writer’s visual imagination, is latent in the verbal organisation of Bazhov’s texts, which is explained by the peculiarity of their narrative organisation. The genre and stylistic nature of the skaz speech of the narrator, a man of the people, does not imply an imaginary vision, and the perception of beauty by the character, who is a master and an artist, remains in the sphere of his consciousness, which creates an atmosphere of understatement and mystery in Bazhov’s tales. The authors of the article conclude that visual imagination is not only a generative model in Bazhov’s works, but it also sets a code for its reception. Modern interpretations of the writer’s works are characterised by visual representations that reinforce Bazhov’s individual mythology by means of new screen media. The analysis demonstrates that Bazhov’s imagery (especially the Mistress of the Copper Mountain) are in great demand with modern popular culture.

ПОЭТИКА «РОМАНА О РОМАНЕ» ПАТРИКА МОДИАНО «ЧТОБЫ ТЫ НЕ ЗАБЛУДИЛСЯ В КВАРТАЛЕ»

The article analyzes the novel by the modern French writer Patrick Modiano So You Don’t Get Lost in the Neighborhood (‘Pour que tu ne te perdes pas dans le quartier’, 2014) in terms of the genre poetics of the ‘novel about a novel’. The paper explains the use of the terms ‘novel about a novel’, ‘metanovel’, etc. in modern literary criticism. As part of research, there was studied the writer’s Nobel Lecture, read by him in the year of the novel’s publication, and the works of Modiano’s researchers from different countries. The conclusion is drawn about the game structure of the ‘novel about a novel’, which is architecturally connected with the French modernist tradition (M. Proust, A. Gide, and others). Throughout the novel, the herowriter Jean Daragane dreams of his own life, combining memories and imagination (the process of creative work, according to Modiano). Plunging into the past, Jean Daragane discovers in childhood a source of his loneliness (loneliness is a condition of the writer’s work and the theme of the ‘novel about a novel’). Recorded in a multitude of overlapping texts belonging to different genres (fake passport, business card, note book, phone book, article, letter, police report, dossier, brochure, novel, poems, etc.), the palimpsest novel creates a communicative space of dialogue, which is the only possible way out of loneliness for the writer. Inside the ‘self-begetting novel’ is the story of the creation of the hero’s first novel The Black Color of Summer (‘Le Noir de l'été’) as one of the intersecting storylines. Among the different intertextual references, Natural History by the French naturalist of the 18th century Buffon and the collection of poems by the eight-year-old girl Minou Drouet Tree, My Friend (‘Arbre, mon ami’) (1957) constitute the immediate context of the novel created in the process of reading and testify to its lyrical and philosophical character. Thus, Modiano’s work draws closer to the lyrical type of Proust’s ‘novel about a novel’, although the detective component and third-person narrative reveal the influence of A. Gide. The reference to the tradition of the modernist ‘novel about a novel’ emphasizes the author’s belonging to the ‘intermediate generation’ of writers who represent the difference between monumental novels of the past and fragmentary works of the present as self-reflection of the genre.

Biography as intertext in the lyrics of Volodymyr Bazylevsky: features of artistic interpretation

The article analyzes the poetic interpretation of biographical elements in the works of Volodymyr Bazylevsky. It is noted that the poet follows the modernist tradition to comprehend the biographies of the characters of world history and culture (real names) in order to turn them into precedent figures. The material for such literary transformations is not only real facts from biographies, but also legends and myths that exist in the space of culture. V. Bazylevsky shows interest in world history in general, but his focus is shifted to Ukrainian (Prince Svyatoslav, I. Nechuy-Levytsky, P. Kulish). The choice of biographical material is influenced by a special - "tragically optimistic" - the author's perception of reality, his attitude to tradition, the consistency of life and ideological position of the real-historical character with the problems of today. V. Bazylevsky tends to actualize existential situations, such as "choice", "death", "loneliness", giving biographies of a new interpretation as a synthesis of objective and subjective factors. In this way, V. Bazylevsky creates his own catalog of moral and aesthetic values ​​and positive characters, whose lives are a benchmark for contemporaries. It is generalized that biographical elements in V. Bazylevsky's lyrical texts appear as a part of the great author's myth about the Personality and outline the perspective of research of autobiographical elements as a part of the author's mythology of the Poet.

Book review: Transcending Mission: The Eclipse of a Modern Tradition

Book review: Transcending Mission: The Eclipse of a Modern Tradition

The Translator as Hero

The Translator as Hero Daniel Rosenberg Nutters (bio) A Life in a Poem: Memoir of a Rebellious Bible Translator David Rosenberg Shearsman Books www.shearsman.com 402 Pages; Print, $27.50 David Rosenberg's A Life in a Poem: Memoir of a Rebellious Bible Translator is a strange book. For readers unfamiliar with Rosenberg's work, he is a prolific poet, essayist, biographer, and editor, but mainly known for his biblical translations, A Poet's Bible (1991) in particular, as well as The Book of J (1990), which was accompanied by Harold Bloom's provocative commentary. His latest work is "a creative memoir" that might be more aptly described as a conglomeration of genres: autobiography, essay, theory, poetry, translation, and experimental writing. It is easier to state the goal of the book than describe it. Simply put, Rosenberg reflects on his passion for translating the Bible and, in this regard, presents snapshots from his life that help explain his fascination with, and devotion to, the ultimate poem. Yet Rosenberg's understanding of biblical translation is unconventional. He approaches it from the point of view of a poet schooled in the history of poetry, albeit partial to those celebrated modernists such as Ezra Pound and Wallace Stevens, and also, it would seem, a writer in dialogue with those so-called postmodern theories of literature that developed out of the modern tradition. It is these influences that inform Rosenberg's view of translation and make his approach unique and ambitious. For example, Rosenberg's translations aim to capture what he calls the "biblical scene of writing." The phrase "scene of writing" may be familiar to those versed in the French critical theory that dominated academic thought during the last three decades of the twentieth century. A central problem for someone like Jacques Derrida, who coined the phrase in his essay "Freud and the Scene of Writing," is how to deal with the problem of lost origins. Where, for example, might we locate the origin of our identity? Is it innate or something we find in the past? Do we look to our family history or a broader context, say regional identity, national, or culture writ large? Where, moreover, is the Bible's origin and how do we locate it? For postmodern theorists, origins are irretrievable and unknowable. Derrida argues that identity or selfhood emerges during the act of writing. It is a function of writing and, to borrow a famous phrase from D. H. Lawrence, the Derridean scene of writing disrupts "the old stable ego" to disclose a condition of radical alterity (i.e. otherness) or "another ego, according to whose action the individual is unrecognizable." Yet Rosenberg implies something else when he uses the phrase "scene of writing." As he sees it, the search for the scene of writing of the biblical writers is an effort to "restore ancient Hebraic culture to the life of imagination." The question of biblical translation is historical. Rosenberg imagines its writers as distinct individuals with a lived history: Just like a writer today, the ancient Hebraic author sat in a chair, drank his ancient tea or beer, and surveyed his sources in the form of papyrus scrolls spread across his table and shelves. That writer did not start from scratch or catch inspiration like lightening in a bottle. Like writers today (and long before the great rabbis) he or she felt the weight of history, worldly and literary, stretching back for two millenniums of written texts before the Bible, to the cradle of civilization in Sumer and beyond. What differentiates Rosenberg's scene of writing from theorists such as Derrida is the emphasis he places on the life of the biblical writers. He does not simply want to translate the words on the page. Instead, his project is to recover "the cultural context in which [the biblical writers] wrote." The translator wants to see through the text to the world the poet inhabits; to see "the poet sitting at her desk" in the act of creation. To retrieve the biblical writers, it is important to imagine their writing as poetry since, Rosenberg writes, "it is poetry that most gives...

Firm Competitiveness, Growth and Digitalisation—A Special Review on Network Economics

From a perspective of network economics, we look into the dynamics of competition, innovation and growth. This view relates theories, models and policy implications in a framework to approach the impacts of innovation and market dynamics on scale and scope of network industries, therefore, to foster breadth and depth of economic growth. Innovation has a major network inducing effect, so has competition. Competition always carries dynamic features and is intrinsically linked to interactive models in games of strategy. A review focuses on both the interaction of competition and innovation and sets out to outline the empirical tasks ahead through industry cases and econometric coverage within modern traditions of Schumpeterian economics.

‘Acting Out’ and ‘Working Through’ Departure in Thomas Pynchon’s <i>Bleeding Edge</i>

The present article explores the literary means by which Pynchon’ Bleeding Edge (2013) approaches post-traumatic reactions to 9/11 at the personal and public levels. The post-traumatic reactions that LaCapra has defined as “acting out” and “working through” are explored in their aesthetic and ethical dimensions, mainly through the study of Pynchon’s construction of narrative anticipation and his use of the elegiac tradition. I conclude that the novel might suggest a realignment of postmodern predicaments in reconciliation with the modernist tradition as a means to work through social and aesthetic trauma. I also contend that Pynchon problematizes his typical luddite approach to the posthuman by means of an allegorical use of communication technologies as a site for ritual mourning.

Mirar a la metafísica a la cara

La lección de metafísica que imparte Heidegger durante el invierno de 1929/30 caracteriza el pensamiento metafísico como un pensamiento comprensivo, es decir, un pensamiento que “entiende” y que “incluye”. En este contexto, Heidegger busca definir con mayor precisión el vínculo que une su propia metafísica con la tradición moderna criticada unos años antes por “incluir”, precisamente, al sujeto humano en su propia elaboración. Es la ocasión para Heidegger de presentar un retrato mucho más matizado de su vinculación con la filosofía moderna, retrato que pone de manifiesto lo que el Dasein ha heredado del sujeto moderno.

Interpretation of Another’s Theme Material in Composer Creative Work of M.-A. Hamelin

The purpose of the article is to reveal the specific features of the interpretation of another’s theme material in the creative work of M.-A. Hamelin as exemplified in his works of various genres.The research methodology is based on an integrated approach that includes such methods as structural and functional, cultural and historical, genre and style and hermeneutic analysis as well as scientific concepts that are concerned with the use and work with quotation material in the art of music.Results of the study are to identify the features of the work with the theme material of other authors in the composer’s work of M.-A. Hamelin. It is determined that in his interpretation of quotation material M.-A. Hamelin continues the late romantic and the modernist tradition. He prefers, first of all, the adaptation of the quotation material to his own composer’s aesthetics, using the artistic technique of parody. Quite often, using certain harmonious, textured, melodic turns inherent in the style of a composer he combines them with other, opposite styles. Thus, in the framework of a single work the composer can combine multiple styles. In the works of the Canadian artist there are also examples of collage, which, however, are not common and are not leading to his compositional style.Novelty of the study is to identify the principles of the interpretation of music by other authors characteristic to the composer’s style of M.-A. Hamelin. The paper is the first attempt for determining the leading artistic means of its interpretation. The practical significance of the research is based on the possibility of using its results in such training courses as «History and theory of piano performance», «History of foreign music», «Analysis of musical works» and considering the specific nature of modern piano art.Conclusions. It is determined that characteristic feature of the manner of M.-A. Hamelin’s writing is an ironic rethinking of the selected samples through the use of artistic technique of parody.

Ukrainian Song Folklore of Village Mariinka, Novosibirsk region: the Modern Condition of the Tradition

Ukrainian Song Folklore of Village Mariinka, Novosibirsk region: the Modern Condition of the Tradition

Gender and Nation Building in Qatar

Abstract This article explores the relationship between gender and modern nation building in Qatar, with attention to how Qatari women negotiate the challenges of modern development and social change. The article analyzes Qatar’s strategic use of gendered nation-building initiatives, founded on representations of women as both symbols of tradition and markers of modernity, to facilitate modern development and construct a national identity. In addition, the article uncovers the myriad ways Qatari women respond to the state’s gendered initiatives and dualistic expectations, engage with state conceptualizations of modernity and tradition, and negotiate social and religious gender norms. The article argues that Qatari women’s views reflect their strategic negotiation, rather than uncritical submission or acceptance, of social and religious norms alongside increased expectations for participation in the workforce and higher education. The study, derived from fifteen qualitative interviews with Qatari women aged twenty-six to fifty-six, unearths certain trends in participant views on gender roles, modern development, and tradition. The participants express satisfaction with and a desire to maintain established gender paradigms. They simultaneously emphasize the positive aspects of modernization and express concern about a loss of traditional values.

German Romantic Tradition in John Ashbery’s "Where Shall I Wander"

In popular critical and readerly reception, the New York School of poetry was shaped mostly by what Marjorie Perloff calls the tradition of indeterminacy. This was started by Arthur Rimbaud and, a few decades later, developed by Dadaists and Surrealists. Therefore, the tradition of French modernism seems to have been vital for John Ashbery, Frank O’Hara, James Schuler, and Barbara Guest, and the poets themselves appeared to confirm this fact. They often visited France privately and as scholars, and lived there for extended periods of time. In the case of John Ashbery, his year-long Fulbright fellowship was prolonged to a decade. Moreover, the New York School poets contributed to the propagation of French literature, being translators, critics and editors of French authors. However, as John Ashbery’s late works prove, literary genealogies are far more complex. German Romantic tradition always exerted an important influence on John Ashbery, and it inspired the New York experimenter to contribute two major poems to the twenty-first century American literature: “Where Shall I Wander” and “Hölderlin Marginalia”.

Пятьдесят лет конкурсу на плато Бобур

Ровно пятьдесят лет назад в 1969 году был проведён международный конкурс на проект культурного центра в Париже. Проект-победитель был весьма неоднозначно воспринят профессиональным сообществом, а построенное через несколько лет на плато Бобур сооружение произвело эффект эмоционального шока. Расценённый современни­ками как эпатажный эксперимент молодых архитекторов Р. Роджерса и Р. Пиано, Центр Помпиду по существу стал зданием-манифестом архитектуры хай-тек, положив начало значимому направлению в архитектуре последней трети ХХ века. В статье прослеживается история формирования кон­цепций, положенных в основу этого проекта, показывается приверженность их авторов традициям модернизма в освое­нии феномена техники в архитектуре на новом этапе её тех­нологического развития. Дистанция времени позволяет бес­пристрастно оценить значимость для развития современной архитектуры этого экстраординарного сооружения, ставшего со временем наиболее посещаемым местом столицы Франции.

Back to the future? Chinese artistic tradition and topologies of urban modernity

Abstract The radical nature of China's urban transformation has become a key subject in contemporary Chinese art. The ruthless eradication of material remnants of the past, moreover, has reinvigorated an urgency in Chinese art to look to the past for inspiration in the envisioning of a better future. This article examines three works that combine these two important strands of artistic production in China as they negotiate contemporary urban transformation via a return to China´s artistic tradition. This article will look at the imaginary and fantastical topologies of modernity in both analogue and new media, including the installation and oil painting of Shen Yuan and Wang Mingxian, respectively, and the digital ink painting of Miao Xiaochun. In examining closely the artists' choices of medium and their representations of architecture and urban space, this article probes some of the key social, environmental and aesthetic predicaments that underlie China's developmental process. It will argue that responses in Chinese art counter the officially sanctioned grand narrative that equates urbanization, urban renewal and modernization with unequivocal social betterment. Instead, these works create in-between spaces that lie between the material and the idealistic.

Intra-Confessional Polemics in the Reformation

Although religious polemic is typically understood and studied as a phenomenon of mutual antagonism across the confessions—Protestant against Catholic and Catholic against Protestant—the growth of the early modern polemic traditions was the product of heated internal controversy. In a series of theses intended to point to rhetorical aspects of conflicts within the Lutheran and Catholic confessions, this paper brings forward features of polemical writings from the disputes between Gnesio-Lutherans and Philippists in the wake of the Augsburg Interim of 1548 and those between and among Jesuits and Jansenists in the seventeenth century. Early modern religious thought, I suggest, cannot be understood without attention to the fissures within the Lutheran and Roman Catholic traditions.

Em estado bruto

Nesse texto, publicado originalmente na revista e-flux [n° 93, setembro de 2018], Denise Ferreira da Silva delineia aquilo que define como uma interpretação poética, negra e feminista do trabalho de arte Majmua, de Madiha Sikander. Recusando a tradição moderna do discurso crítico, a autora busca, em vez do paradigma da abordagem analítica e a atitude de subsumir o trabalho de arte à categoria dos conceitos, a aproximação a uma matéria, por assim dizer, em estado bruto. Com tal interpretação, a autora visa uma posição que expande a relevância da arte para além dos limites da tradição filosófica crítico-kantiana, buscando libertá-la dos pilares onto-epistemológicos que alicerçam o pensamento moderno.

The ‘Divine Names’ and the ‘Attributes of Deity’: On the (Infinite) Analogical Interval in Forty‐Six Aphorisms

AbstractFor the modern tradition of analytic philosophy of religion (that this article rejects), goodness, beauty, wisdom, and so on are divine attributes, whereas, for the classical tradition of Christian theology, they are divine names. This crucial distinction between attributes and names helps to explain why feminist philosopher Grace Jantzen’s charge of an identification of the male self with the divine self in Anglo‐American philosophy of religion leads on, directly, to a critique of the ‘doctrine’ of analogy. Jantzen’s critique of ‘classical theism’ is directed against the (largely modern) reduction of God to a (male) superbeing. Here, God’s ‘attributes’ are merely human ones, even if extended to a superlative degree. I distinguish the analogical reflections of Aquinas (following Dionysius) and his heirs from the anthropomorphic dissolutions of the divine in contemporary analytic philosophy of religion. Theology’s analogical speech, I argue, has the potential to answer – at least partially – the feminist critique of God as a ‘pure projection’ of ‘man’. For Aquinas, God’s perfections must be qualitatively different and not merely quantitative maximisations of our own. I contend that feminist philosophy of religion cannot afford to dismiss the potential of the way of analogy, especially in its negative or apophatic dimensions.

DEPURACIONES DE LO AMORFO. MODELACIONES MORFOLÓGICAS EN BASE A PROCESOS DE CRECIMIENTO Y FRAGMENTACIÓN ESCALAR

El articulo revisa ciertas posibilidades de modelación pre-arquitectural, derivadas del paradigma morfológico-espacial proveniente de la tradición moderna en la arquitectura y arte, orientada a la liberación del espacio y la depuración de la forma, basada en la regulación de operaciones y procedimientos a partir de exploraciones morfológicas usualmente colindantes con lo amorfo o formas irregulares, que nos ofrecen las llamadas teorías de la Complejidad, propio de geometrías como los fractales, las teorías del Caos, los sistemas iterados, los lenguajes de patrones, la fragmentación escalar, la deconstrucción, el crecimiento modular, entre otras, las cuales progresivamente han sido asimiladas o exploradas en diversos sentidos y ángulos, desde la arquitectura, constituyendo un fértil campo de exploración contemporánea. En este marco, se plantea una revisión de casos planteados en la Escuela de Arquitectura de la Universidad de Valparaíso, discutiendo y revisando las implicancias para la modelación morfológica como herramienta pedagógica y de exploración formal.

Book Review: Michael W. Stroope. Transcending Mission: The Eclipse of a Modern Tradition

Book Review: Michael W. Stroope. Transcending Mission: The Eclipse of a Modern Tradition