Postmodern Project Research Articles

Charting a Research Agenda for Relational Dialectics Theory: Forwarding Critical Theorizing in Interpersonal and Family Communication Research

ABSTRACT In 2011, Leslie Baxter published Voicing Relationships: A Dialogic Perspective, updating the 1996 articulation of relational dialectics theory (RDT). Baxter provided clarity on concepts introduced 15 years prior. Organized around RDT’s central premise – that the meaning of phenomena transpires in the moment through struggles of competing discourses – Baxter positioned RDT within the critical postmodern project. Since then, RDT research has proliferated, but no systematic assessment of its theoretical characteristics has transpired. We conducted a prescriptive review of the first decade of research following the 2011 volume. We first identified sources citing Baxter’s (2011) volume (n = 505), ultimately narrowing to studies using RDT with its companion method, contrapuntal analysis (n = 55). We then coded for six constructs (genre, utterance, utterance chain location, speaker, addressee, and semantic object). This article presents our selection criteria and processes of review, findings, and research agenda based on our review.

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.

The trends of the cultural studies development in the modern conditions: the case of Ukraine

The trends of cultural studies development in current conditions are analyzed in the article, with the case of Ukraine serving as an example. Cultural studies are gradually being transformed from an abstract sphere of philosophizing into a scientifically significant field. This transformation is supported by the review of candidate and doctoral dissertations, which demonstrate a shift towards applied science. The research in cultural studies adequately reflects the particularity of the current state of scientific practice, characterized by interdisciplinarity that significantly expands its potential for a flexible understanding of cultural practices. This transformation is driven by objective reasons, as the network of educational institutions, creative teams, concert venues, and other organizations in the field of music is the most extensive. It is asserted that cultural mentality, like any other type of mentality, is based on archetypes and embodied in myths. Cultural myths appeal to larger social mythological systems, leading to the transformation of cultural studies into the meaning of culture, which carries the imprint of corresponding chronotopes and worldviews. The current project is rooted in the idea of a total synthesis of cultures based on universals. In contrast, the postmodern project is motivated by the idea of deconstruction and the rhetoric of differences. Consequently, universalistic cultural studies tend to integrate various disciplines at the methodological level and aim to model the totality of world culture. On the other hand, particularistic cultural studies tend to reduce cultural studies to one of the components of cultural studies (typically aesthetics and art studies) at the methodological and subject levels, focusing on the investigation of individual components (genres, styles, ethnicities) of the phenomenon under study. The roots of cultural axiology can be traced back to the archetypal matrix of Greek-Orthodox thinking. It has provided strong traditions of cultural philosophy and its axiological reflection in Ukrainian humanistic thought. The traditional understanding of culture in Ukraine is deeply symbolic, axiological, and sacred.

Between the Soviet Past and National History: to the Issue of a New Kazakh Identity

The article deals with the impact of the politics of memory on the process of national identity formation, which is topical for the domestic political science. It is shown that the politics of memory always deals with different types of collective memory (age, gender, national, religious and other differences), which are built in the form of projection of the past into indefinite and open future, or in the form of questioning of the past from the present. These differences appear as a mediating link in the process of identity constitution. The various ideas, values, symbols and meanings of a cultural or religious kind existing in society allow groups to challenge the identity of the entire community and at the same time maintain the existence of a common identity of the community as a whole. However, it is important, that these relative variations do not become frozen in their existence and do not develop into absolute ruptures and divisions. It is these principles underlie formation of the politics of memory. The process of influence of the politics of memory on the formation of national identity is considered in the article on the example of Kazakhstan identity formation in the post-Soviet period. The authors analyze various state programs the politics of memory; analyze statistical data obtained in the course of sociological research on the peculiarities of the formation of collective memory in the Republic of Kazakhstan. The study concludes that Soviet values in Kazakhstan still play a role for the outgoing generation, born and raised in the USSR, while the younger generation replaces them with modern Western values, which also does not contribute to the preservation of national specificity and recognition of the state as an independent, separate sovereign entity. And if traditions used to fit into the dominant all-Soviet context, nowadays they should fit into the postmodern project.

Conceptualization of smart-philosophy as a post-modern project of non-linear pattern development of the XXI century

The aim of the study is to analyze smart-philosophy, which refers to the priority research based on the new interaction between man and society. The methodological basis of the study is the synergetic approach, in the context of which new realities are “smart” with innovative potential. The informational approach to the analysis of society is based on the synergetic, nonlinear methodology, the analysis of which is applicable to the global transformation’s characteristic of autoreflexive societies of high complexity. It also uses methods for measuring the “smart society” - anthropological and socio-axiological, based on people, education, the movement towards the “society of innovation” and knowledge. It is concluded that the breakthrough in the system of information and communication technologies has determined profound meaningful changes in all spheres of social activity, which is the theoretical autoreflexion of modernity and its dominant direction. The result of the study is the conceptualization of the smart-philosophy of the XXI century as the highest stage of civilizational development of mankind.

Narratives of Media Education of Modern Liberal Information Culture

The scientific understanding of the narratives of media enlightenment of the modern theory of liberal culture and the factor of functioning of its carriers in the conditions of historical and contemporary aspects of the communication transformation of society is a relevant and undeniable fact of the modern science of social communications. The description of the theory of liberal information culture from the point of view of typology and the principles of identifying the primary and fundamental nature of the fact and the possibility of its free interpretation in the realization of the interpretive resources of the carriers of information culture, which forms a specific feature of liberalism in their totality — free personal social evaluation. Despite several centuries of actual spread within the global information environment, liberalism (both as a philosophical trend, theoretical current, and informational practice) stands in a certain way aside from serious research in social communications. Modern mass communication, increasingly clearly and unequivocally drawing the border between the demonstration characteristics of a communication product based on the principle of online or offline, leaves both severe topics and problems, as well as the seriousness of approaches to their coverage, out of the context of the audience’s attention. The study aims to reveal the key factors of the modern and historical aspects of the carriers of Ukrainian liberal information culture. Following the purpose of the research, we defined the following tasks: to find out the content and audience characteristics of social communications as the basic concepts of the functioning of liberal information culture. The methodological basis of the research is a combination of general scientific methods and particular methods and approaches to the study of regularities and features of information processes and phenomena. As for the comprehensive system of scientists in the theoretical component of the research on Ukrainian information culture of the second half of the 19th — beginning of the 20th century, this approach leaves out of the research field two popular opposite paradigms of information culture: the so-called Modern project and the Postmodern project. Accordingly, the research results are specific general ontological grounds for the universal unity of things, people, events, and reports about them, hence — universal criteria for evaluation and interpretation of everything. In this understanding, the informational and cultural world is a universe of all possible meanings, contents, and guidelines of human existence, transmitted to a person at any time and space.

“НІЧОГО НОВОГО”: ЩЕ РАЗ ПРО НЕМОЖЛИВІСТЬ ГЛОБАЛЬНОЇ ІСТОРІЇ МИСТЕЦТВА (коментарі до “Короткої книжки про мистецтво” Дани Арнольд)

I started this text as a review of another ‘short history of art’ that I came across. ‘A Short Book About Art’, written by the British art historian Dana Arnold, is a great example of the popularization and practical application of new approaches to art history. Among them are sociology, psychology of art, political iconology, gender art history and more. The researcher set an ambitious goal. The work is dedicated to finding common threads that connect the art of different geographical areas and demonstrate that the art of any period works in a similar way. We are talking, as we see, about the global history of the arts. This story should cover all regions and give a balanced representation of the cultures/arts of the different regions. However, the noble goal, as a careful reading of the work showed, not only did not solve the problem but also exacerbated it. Non-European art is almost ignored. In addition, the researcher builds a typical pro-Western narrative, where, however, the progressive approach is replaced by values. If progressivism was the ‘dark side of modernity’, the ‘value approach’ involves the consideration of non-European art exclusively from the perspective of Occidental values. Non-European art enters the narrative of global art history through hybridization due to glocalization. At the same time, the glocalization of art occurs in two ways. The first of them is passive. The projective vision of the researcher formed by Western values ​​simply does not notice and does not anticipate any difference between the ‘other’. Because of this, neither the ‘other nor its differences fall into the field of study. The second way of glocalization is active. It involves the relocation and recontextualization of culture. It is about moving culture in a familiar, acceptable to the researcher context (most often it is the morphology of art, topic or phenomenology). Both options for glocalization involve the implementation of an exclusion strategy, which makes it impossible to talk about global art history. Global art history is possible only as a result of non-trivial decolonial optics. However, decolonization as a postmodern project contradicts the modern idea of ​‘short history’ and centrifugal narrative.

Hijacking the Postmodern Project: Post-Truth and the Need to De-politicize Epistemological Dispute

ABSTRACT More than four decades ago postmodern thinkers began to challenge scientific authority and the alleged cementing of existing power structures by scientific knowledge. Today a new type of ‘science warriors’ use similar tactics to undermine scientific research that threatens the status quo. This contribution argues that in order to understand the historical trajectories and rhetorical mechanisms of science denial it is indispensable to depoliticize philosophical debate and focus on the careful distinction between the persistency and the consistency of scientific beliefs.

Local Culture Preservation Through Design in Global City

Global cities are becoming the centers of innovations in the XXI century. The image of urban society is a multicultural one, stipulating cross-cultural communications, but the trends show something different. The symbols of national culture dissolve in the information flow, and the differences are neutralized. This article reflects upon the preservation of the local culture that was formed throughout history under the new conditions of existence. Local culture, in this article, stands for a system of cultural values formulated by a group of people in a certain territory. This research covers the visual identification of local culture expressed through design. Within the modern communications model, design can reflect the most significant and prominent features of local culture in a visual form.The current visual culture of big cities features a hodgepodge of styles that demonstrates the dissociation of the visual environment as a result of modernist and post-modern project technologies and, to a lesser extent, specific local cultures. This article deals with the positive examples of competition works by young designers where the local culture of regions is seamlessly entailed in the modern visual environment. Such initiatives are the signs of shifting towards the reassessment of the cultural values of regions.Launching an open dialog about values serves as a boost to preserve the cultural heritage for future generations. The authors see any initiatives from professional communities, civil society organizations, and researchers as an important part of public introspection about the identification and preservation of regional culture in a global city.

Revealing Catastrophes

Revealing Catastrophes Marc Jampole (bio) Walking Away from Explosions in Slow Motion Gregory Crosby The Operating System Community Print www.theoperatingsystem.org 144 pages; Print, $18.00 There is something provocative or interesting about most of the poems in the first section of Gregory Crosby's Walking Away from Explosions in Slow Motion. The poems sparkle with clever images that jolt the reader into taking a new look at both the quotidian and the eternal. There are gems throughout the book, but the further into the eighty-eight poems one reads, the fewer of them have the edginess or verve that characterize the thirty odd poems of the first section. In an interview with Crosby printed at the end of the volume we learn that the poet wrote all the poems in Walking Away in the year leading up to the presidential election of 2016 and the months afterwards as part of group project that Crosby describes as a contemporary form of coterie writing, which begs a question. Are the poems presented in the order in which they were written, as part of a rules-based post-modern project? Documenting how an educated and free mind reacts in real time to the growing horror of Trumpism certainly makes for an interesting way to structure a book. In the case of Walking Away, though, it would suggest that Crosby's creative powers flagged in the face of the reality of the Trump candidacy and election by the Electoral College. The book becomes a witness to walking away from an explosion of the body politic that happened in slow motion. The other possibility is that, like many poets, Crosby decided to put his stronger work first. The central and really only weakness in the book is that there seems to be no rhyme or reason for the order of the poems into three sections or within the three sections and thus no reason for the weaker material. But Crosby remains coy about the structure of the book in the interview, as he does about many things, such as the role of poetry and the poet in contemporary society. There are few overt references to politics in the poems, but many nods to pop culture and literature. In fact, without the interview at the back, most readers would not even perceive the connections to the election, only to the malaise of the current zeitgeist. Crosby's best poems favor conceits, which are extended metaphors that dominate or shape the flow of a poem. For example, in "Lonely Starbuck Lovers," Crosby creates an extended metaphor for the confusion of reality and illusion based on a popular social media misquote of a Taylor Swift song. The conceit in "Mid-Life" imagines a new translation of Dante's Inferno as a metaphor for middle age, which the poet underscores by using the first line of Dante's original Italian, "Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita…" ("In the middle of the road of our life…") as the epigraph. In "Netflix and Chill," Crosby compares the end of a Netflix series to the seasons of the year. The course of a human life becomes an airplane in flight in "Wing, Prayer." Another notable feature of Crosby's poetics is the clever rendering of idiomatic expressions and homilies which jolt the reader into taking another, closer look at what the phrase means in the context of the poem. He breathes new life into old expressions in a number of ways. "Better get out of sundown before town" reverses two words. "You say that love is a battlefield and have the choreography to prove it" and "I kept it together by falling apart" twist the original metaphor into a new direction. "We aren't all in the same boat…" negates a common phrase of politicians and humanitarians. "The wagons are circling the drain" combines two idiomatic expressions. "There's a sucker worn every minute" is a straight pun. "The heart attacks what the heart hearts" adds a surrealistic element by equating desire with aggression. In his best work, Crosby holds together his extended metaphors and clever subversions of idiomatic language with a conversational rhythm...

Voices, faces, places: Life in Frogner

This examination of Anne Haugsgjerd’s first short film, Livet på Frogner (Life in Frogner) (1986) views it as a postmodern project. In many ways it pioneered an aesthetic mode that became more prominent in Norwegian film decades later – the genre-expanding hybrid film – while also using the female voice-over in new and experimental ways.

Агендерная эстетика: тело не образ, а поток

Статья посвящена анализу агендерной эстетики как постмодернистского проекта по отказу от гендерной идентичности. В статье рассмотрены идейные предпосылки развернувшегося проекта денатурализации человеческого тела, гендера и пола в рамках постструктуралистких исследований. Выявлены аксиологические основания критики традиционного понимания идентичности. Лакан, Кристева, Бодрийяр раскрыли механизм формирования идентичности как искусственной конструкции, закрепленной за телесность. Батлер предложила стратегию ускользания от идентификации, сформулированную в концепции перформативности. Эти идеи нашли свое отражение в институте моды в творчестве дизайнеров, разделяющих постмодернистские ценности. В статье раскрыты механизмы конструирования агендерной телесности модным домом Gucci. В фундаменте агендерной эстетики лежит идея отказа от идентификации и провозглашение тела как уникального единичного бытия, проявляющего себя перформативно. Было выявлено, что художественной задачей агендерной эстетика является развитие визуальной пластичности человеческой телесности. Эксплицированы основные приемы для решения этой задачи: сочетание вещей с идейно противоположными вестиментарными кодами, изъятие элементов одежды с жесткими гендерными коннотациями из привычного контекста и вписывание их в новый визуальный ряд для придания им гендерной нейтральности. Осуществлена проблематизация эстетических оснований агендерного стиля. Исследование позволяет сделать вывод, что постмодернистское переосмысление человеческой телесности не как образа, а как потока, выходят за пределы элитарных практик искусства и становятся актуальными для массового сознания западного человека.

Ratio As A Worldview Benchmark: From Mystifikation To Objectivity

A necessity of studying of historical worldview kinds with an aim of a formation an optimal, worldviewable orientation of public processes to supply social progress has being justified in this study. In the introduction the author depicts a public crisis situation, which appeared while crossing from postmodern to postpostmodern ideology. The aim of the study is a comparison of considerations regarding the fate of rationalism and irrationalism, substantiation of methodological, conceptual guidelines on the prospects of postmodern humanism and the limits of their effectiveness. The task is to carry out a philosophical analysis of the content of rationality in the sociocultural sphere of postmodernism, the potentials of irrational forms of cognition, ways of typologizing rationality and its perspective. Research method is rational philosophy, because it provides the maximum depth of human cognitive capacity. Operating a system of categories (freedom-necessity, essence-phenomenon, content-form, system-structure-element, etc.), which are based on the principles of objectivity, rationality, determinism, reflection, laws of formal and dialectical logic, rational philosophy as a methodology requires their consistent, constant adherence to all stages of cognition and practical implementation. Research results: in a postmodern period positive changes in society have occurred: the boundaries of freedom and mutual understanding have expanded; but ignoring objective truth, reason, the absolutization of subjectivity has great negative consequences. Philosophical postmodern project, in fact, tried to realize an illusory picture of the world and that has become a big problem for today. It is proved that irrationalism cannot be at the center of worldview and methodology. And if its objective-substantial aspects will be abstracted from the mind, then, in fact, there will be nothing to control mental activity; there will be a thinking process that is changing arbitrarily in accordance with our whims. We have come to the following in discussion: the objective global thinking exclusively as an extremely abstract spiritual “framework” can carry out the spiritual “guidance” of human activity; that must be transformed into a philosophical methodology of interpretation, understanding, explanation, prediction and forecast of reality. Conclusions: the global thinking as overall, unique brain could become the centre of dominant worldview. Herewith it gives an opportunity of developing for a different, irrational, subjective appearing in human matter-but only for bright frameworks of mind.

LAUGHTER WORD AS A MEANS Of DEMYTHOLOGIZATION IN THE NOVELS BY THOMAS BRUSSIG

The historical events of the last decades of the twentieth century in Germany, the collapse of the Communist ideology and the great narratives and the new postmodern artistic practice radically change the nature of the laughter word (M. Bachtin) and its existence. In postmodern literature the laughter word loses its drama and bitterness, it now lives in the bright element of language games.The purpose of this study is to consider the potential of the laughter word in the new historical and aesthetic circumstances, its functions and active participation in the procedures of deconstruction of ideological constructions of socialism in the GDR on the base of the postmodern projects by German writer Thomas Brussig.In T. Brussigs novels the laughter word is used as a universal means of destruction of the ideological content of the myths of socialism (demythologization).In the anecdotal stories of the novel Am kьrzeren Ende der Sonnenallee the laughter word is considered in funny language games: caricature, the laughter gesture, black humor, playing with contexts, deliberately misuse of words, excessive use of Communist rhetoric.In the novel Helden wie wir the connective of the laughter word and laughter gesture is included in the postmodern language game on the decline: parody, grotesque, occasionalism, euphemisms, game element names, sexual perversion. It also points to the visual using of the laughter word: a game with graphic writing, the use of italics and breakdown in words.The ambivalence of the laughter word is emphasized to destroy old myths and create new ones.A linguistic method of interpretation and the method of intertextual analysis is used.In this the study the conclusions about the importance of the laughter word in the procedures of demythologization and in the language games on the decline are made.

RICARDO BOFILL: A ARQUITETURA DO CONTRASTE

The following article, result of a qualitative research, of the bibliographic vision species, focus on presenting the life and work of Ricardo Bofill. Born in Barcelona in 1939, 1963 creates the Taller Architecture, studio that counts with many professionals from another areas, contributing to the formation of your post-modern project style. Futhermore, takes as cutting analyze the building Walden 7 (1974), located in Barcelona, which has vivid colors, srtong formalist character, use of industrialized materials that realizes reads of mediterranean, classic and catalan architecture, through a post-modern construction. Therefore, this search has as objective to present a study about the time's context, and show Boffil's architetural characteristics, highlighting in the study's object and exposing your history as a post-modern architect.

The Scope of Repertoire: A Study in John Ashbery's Selected Poems

The current critical appreciations of the American poet John Ashbery (1927- ) have proved to be ambivalent to consider him as a later Romantic poet or a postmodern avant-garde, whose essential role is to achieve the postmodern project. Many of his major poems include a kind of repertoire that demonstrates a clear treatment of Romantic themes and implications tackled carefully by the poet. His later poems, however, are concerned with postmodern themes like the bewilderment of the American individual due to the unprecedented changes and watersheds the society witnessed. The main aim of this research is to critically examine selected poems of Ashbery to judge whether he is Romantic or postmodern, consulting cues from critics like Bloom, Miller and Longenbach . It is one of the fruitful conclusions that Ashbery adheres to the Romantic spirit but for unromantic intentions. Thus, he conveys confessional themes on one hand and tackles postmodern realistic themes related to the core of the American society in which he lives and writes on the other.

The rise of the video-recorder teacher: the sociomaterial construction of an educational actor

This paper draws on actor-network theory and on the sociology of cultural consumption to examine the phenomenon of corporate Massive Open Online Courses. Through an analysis of texts available in the public domain, the paper argues that over a short period (between 2012 and 2013) digitisation technology became associated with the emergence of a hybrid ‘actor’: the digital video-recorder teacher. A parallel is drawn between the ‘interactive affordances’ of digital instruction and the playback and cataloguing options that have contributed to shifts in television viewing habits. The digital video-recorder teacher is described as an artefact in the service of a postmodern project of self-improvement through cultural consumption, which recruits digitisation to meet a growing demand for ‘upgrades to the self’. In the conclusion, the paper explores how the study of digital education could benefit from an interface between sociomaterial studies and the sociology of culture.

The beginning of Oulipo? An attempt to rediscover a movement

This article addresses recent criticism of the French literary movement Oulipo, demonstrating that such criticism is partly grounded in the tendency for scholars and even Oulipo members themselves to interpret early poetic forms of the group, for example, Raymond Queneau's A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems, through the theory of textual generation through strict constraint developed significantly later in the group's history. The article posits that, when duly analysed, these early forms run counter to the later notion of textual generation, align in a certain way with contemporary ‘Uncreative Writing’, and open new possibilities for rethinking the contemporary significance of the Oulipo and questioning the postmodern poetic project generally.

Ideologizm nowożytnej idei „powrotu do natury” i „czystej” natury a ponowożytne projekty nowych społeczeństw

Ideologizm nowożytnej idei „powrotu do natury” i „czystej” natury a ponowożytne projekty nowych społeczeństw

Searching for life in death: celebratory mortuary ritual in the context of US interfaith families

Contemporary societies offer an increasing range of options for mortuary ritual and for dealing with the deceased person’s body. This study explores how a sample of couples coming from differing religious upbringings navigates these choices to reach compatible understandings of death ritual that is appropriate for them. Although some respondents found meaning in established practices of their or their spouse’s religious backgrounds, more commonly they found compatible understandings in the ‘celebration of life’ approach to death. This response can be understood in the relationship between increased interfaith marriage and societal pluralism and in the symbolic ambiguity of ‘celebrating’, which can accomplish Hertz’s goals of mortuary ritual in the context of postmodern project of self-construction.