Postmodern Way Research Articles

Postmodernism in Lord Of The Lost’s Judas: The apocryphal The Gospel of Judas, William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and the role of the stars

Lord Of The Lost’s Judas (2021) is a thematic concept album exploring different aspects of the Judas reception without a straightforward narrative or interpretation, but covering varying viewpoints on betrayal and salvation. It hereby pushes the boundaries of heavy metal as a genre by combining different texts. The band explicitly points out their first source of inspiration, the apocryphal The Gospel of Judas (~100–80 ad), and adds that the album also features the literary theme of impossible (here: brotherly) love. I argue that the album references a specific text implementing this theme, namely William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (1597), most prominently implied by ‘star-crossed’. These two texts are as different as they could be, contrasting, e.g. religious enlightenment and entertainment. Still, they have one thing in common: they both rely heavily on Christian astrology. By investigating how the album makes use of this shared motif to create its own version of star-induced fate, I show how both texts overlap and intermingle on the album. The result is a kaleidoscope that is a prime example of postmodernism. By refusing a fixed depiction of Christian imagery and even adding another text, Judas demonstrates that art does not have to be linear or limiting, and opens heavy metal to new, postmodern ways.

The Shots at Sarajevo: Fresco of the Tragic History of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Novel June 28, 1914, by Zlatko Topcic

Zlatko Topčić has built the identity of a novelist who openly tackles new techniques and literary procedures in the wake of postmodern ways of writing. This is supported by the novels created during and after the last war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the shadows and traumas of the war are deep in the elements of the text, and the characters are caught in its whirlwind in different ways, prisoners of traumatic conditions even in the time when the storm of events subsides, but remains a long sediment of painful experiences. This text aims to show how a great historical event - the Sarajevo assassination - is artistically transposed in the novel 6/28/1914 (novel, revision), and how the fate of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the war in the period 1992-1995 can be traced through its outlines. With a collection of characters, historical and fictional, narrative organization of space and time, intertextuality, and an ironic relationship with metanarratives, Topčić creates a text as a product of personal stories from which a novelistic mosaic of historical events is created.

Postmodernism in Visual Arts Lesson and Its Reflections on Students

Postmodernism emerged as a movement that opposed the dominant views of modernism in the field of art. Postmodernism, which originated in architecture and gradually influenced many areas of art, is discussed in this study with a focus on painting and visual arts education. In high school programs in Turkey, it is important for students to be able to examine the past, embrace the present, the era, and the postmodern way of thinking. When the relevant literature was reviewed, it was determined that there is no research on how postmodernism is used in art education in terms of student learning outcomes. The aim of this research is to determine how high school visual arts teachers incorporate the postmodernism movement into their teaching and to identify any changes in students’ interest levels in the course. In this study, a qualitative research method was used, specifically the case study design. The sample of the study consisted of four visual arts teachers who work in one central and three district schools in Yalova province. Two semi-structured interview forms and document analysis were used as data collection tools. The findings were analyzed using thematic analysis. According to the research findings, it was determined that the participating teachers conveyed the artistic and intellectual structure of postmodernism to students through various teaching methods during the lesson process. However, they were unable to achieve all the learning outcomes related to postmodernism. The study also revealed that students demonstrated changes in the methods they preferred to employ in their artwork after learning about postmodernism and being exposed to examples of postmodern art. Moreover, students provided both positive and negative critiques, reflecting their aesthetic perspectives on postmodern artworks. This research is considered important in terms of serving as an example for teachers and contributing to the literature.

МЕТАМОДЕРНИЗМ В РОМАНЕ И. МАКЬЮЭНА «НЕВЫНОСИМАЯ ЛЮБОВЬ» (“ENDURING LOVE”, 1997)

The concept of “metamodernism” arose in science to determine the current state of literature, the specifics of perception and representation of reality by writers of the new century. The term is not fully established yet and is being revised, and the methodology of studying metamodernist texts in Russian literary studies is at its starting point. The article analyzes one of Ian McEwan's early novels, which can be recognized as metamodern, from the point of view of oscillation (in terms of Akker and Vermeulen) between modernist and postmodern ways of depicting reality and forming a metamodern worldview. A thorough display of every detail of the daily existence of the characters refers to the works of M. Proust and J. Joyce. The desire to analyze the very course of the narrative and discuss it with the reader is characteristic of both modernist and postmodernist texts, including McEwan himself at an early stage of his work. The acute sense of reality, the emphasis on physicality as evidence of the vulnerability and fragility of each individual person indicates the “structure of feeling” of metamodernism. The novel “Enduring Love” can be attributed to such a kind of modern novel as “neuronovel”, since the specificity of human mental activity, as well as mobility and instability of the subjective worldview become the main subject of the author's artistic research. A detailed analysis of the human psyche activity, the medicalization of discourse, the use of techniques from the “stockpile” of modernism and postmodernism, with a completely different artistic “ideology” of the novel compared to previous trends – all this demonstrates new ways of reproducing reality in the literature of metamodernism.

The Price of the Forbidden and the Value of Life

Biblical stories serve as a foundation for European literature and artwork because of the mystical dimensions that address mankind and human qualities in general. Both the narrative of Adam and Eve and the fruit of knowledge have become well-known literary devices that have served as sources of inspiration for writers and poets throughout history. Both Christina Rossetti and Thomas Mann use the theme of forbidden fruit and its consequences as the subject matter that they handle in their literary works. They do this in order to demonstrate the consequences of giving in to the temptations of things that one should not want. In a postmodern way, both Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti and Death in Venice by Thomas Mann deal with the theme of surrendering to the temptation of an unlawful desire and the destructive effects of it through the depiction of the physical and psychological deterioration of the protagonists in each work.

Postmodern Ethics, Premodern Farce

Postmodern Ethics, Premodern Farce

On the Transformation of Thinking on Personal Responsibility Towards Requirements of Environmental Ethics in Slovakia

The main purpose of this paper is to confirm a remarkable transformation in contemporary thinking on responsibility for the environment in Slovakia, since the Velvet Revolution (1989). Terminology is derived from Guardini’s educational, environmental ethics of responsibility, and actualised via Bauman-Lipovetsky’s critics of the post-modern way of thinking. Comparisons of the situation in thinking on responsibility for the environment, before and after the Velvet revolution, are based on an analysis of findings of various inter-disciplinary research-projects, argued via enviro-criminal cases mentioned in the Slovak media, existentially verified by the author herself, as a living witness, and fostered by appropriate Slovak legislation. The main findings of the paper are as follows: liquidity of thinking on responsibility for the environment was confirmed; transformation of the Slovak mentality is remarkable – there are still enough people, who transfer responsibility, to be taken by “competent ones” (Homo Sovieticus mentality); however, many influencers and volunteers, also politicians, are pro-environment engaged in various public projects (‘The Man of the Velvet Revolution mentality’); people are more aware of their environmental rights and duties, and feel more invited to take personal responsibility for the environment. Conclusion: Slovaks are interested in pro-environmental projects, if it pays off, and if they do not feel alone in pro-environmental efforts.

Beatle Boots and Lennon Glasses - 1960s fashion in Pop Music

Fashion is a phenomenon strongly connected with music. Artists are aware of what they wear on stage and in public spaces and how they present themselves via social media channels. In this way, they do not only create a certain image of themselves through this self-staging strategy, but they also show their affiliation to a certain scene. In the 1960s a specific kind of music was developed which was, therefore, also characterised by a particular way of dressing and style to the current music scene which owes its strong impact to the current music scene. The Beatles as the maybe most influential band of the 1960s with a very interesting development regarding their own fashion serve as a model for the style of the Spanish-Chilean, Germany-based band The Recalls. Their specific kind of appropriation actualises, transforms and recontextualises as a translational act the fashion of The Beatles in a postmodern way. This approach underlines the chance of establishing a transcultural dialogue and tries to develop a new perspective on other border-crossing phenomena.

Postmodernism: Methodological Strategies

The article discusses the methodological strategies of the famous postmodern philosophers; determines their dominant directions and the possibilities for their application in artistic practice. The deep transformations of the aesthetic paradigm in the postmodern era provide an integrated approach to certain problems, given the comprehensive pluralism, the rejection of hierarchy in modern cultural discourse. Scientific novelty lies in the wide extrapolation of the methodological foundations of the postmodern way of thinking to analytical approaches towards the contemporary film process. Attention is drawn to the phenomenon of visual citation as an element of intertext. The problem of the Other in the aspect of the mosaic of modern culture is considered. The paradigm shift in the philosophy of postmodernism has an undeniable impact on artistic processes, in particular in cinema, which is manifested in the fundamental transformations of the figurative system of screen arts, their further enrichment and diversity.

Из цикла «Прогулки и диалоги с Владимиром Глуховцевым»

Статья посвящена реконструкции особенностей творческого мировоззрения художника и книжного графика Владимира Глуховцева. Публикуемые материалы созданы ученым и поэтом Аркадием Слуцким, который был близким другом художника на протяжении тридцати лет. Автором использован историко-биографический метод, при этом материалами, помимо авторских воспоминаний, послужили произведения классиков русской литературы. Представленные микросюжеты в постмодернистском ключе раскрывают различные события и особенности творческой биографии художника. Эстетические поиски Глуховцева как книжного графика были обращены кструктуре книги. Своей главной задачей он видел не интерпретацию литературных образов, а организацию книжного пространства и читательского восприятия текста. Начав свой творческий путь как продолжатель традиций русской графики, В.А.Глуховцев со временем выработал собственный подход к художественному творчеству, при этом сумев сохранить постоянную и живую связь с академической традицией.The article is devoted to the reconstruction of the biography and features of the creative worldview of Vladimir Glukhovtsev, an artist and book illustrator. The published materials were created by the scholar and poet Arkady Slutsky, who had been a close friend of the artist for thirty years. The methodological basis of the publication was the historical-biographical method, which allows revealing the features of the historical process through the analysis of various situations and micro-plots that arise in human life. Slutskys memoirs that he wrote over the last years of his life constituted the main factual outline of this article. The materials of the article were works of Russian and foreign philosophers and theorists of fine art, works of the classics of Russian literature. Consistently presented micro-plots (about the Glukhovtsev dynasty and the archive of Alexander Glukhovtsev (the artists father), about working on illustrations for Alice in Wonderland, Traveling with Pushkin, Traveling to Prague) reveal various features and events of the artists creative biography in a postmodern way. The research focuses on Glukhovtsevs experiments in the field of book design, on his pedagogical activity and inner imaginative world. Slutsky describes and analyzes Glukhovtsevs cultural environment in the context of the intellectual demands of Russian society at the turn of the 21st century, rich in turbulent sociopolitical events. The concept of factual presentation of the material is supplemented by oral history, the artists live speech, reproduced textologically from the phonograms of conversations with Glukhovtsev that Slutsky transcribed. A valuable part of the content of the article is the so-called philosophical and lyrical digressions, an attempt to comprehend everything that happened to the author and the character in space and time. The author concludes that the aesthetic searches of Glukhovtsev as a book graphic artist were focused on the structure of a book. The main task of the artist was the organization of the book space and the reading perception of the text rather than the interpretation of literary images. The artist sought to focus the readers attention in a special way, and for this he masterfully used a set of techniques for designing printing elements in his own authorial style. Having begun his career as a successor of the traditions laid down by the luminaries of the Russian graphics of the 20th century (Vladimir Favorsky, Andrey Goncharov, Mikhail Kupriyanov), Glukhovtsev eventually developed his own approach to artistic creativity, while being able to maintain a constant and lively connection with the academic tradition.

Torremolinos 73 de Pablo Berger: una mirada posmoderna a la España tardofranquista

En 2003 Pablo Berger estrena su primer largometraje, Torremolinos 73, comedia ambientada en la España del franquismo tardío. Este filme es la transposición cinematográfica del auténtico itinerario de un aspirante cineasta español de los años 70, autor de una película pornográfica que acabó siendo comercializada en Dinamarca. El contexto temporal en el que se desarrolla la historia del protagonista es pretexto a la recreación de una época pre-democrática de la que Berger conserva ante todo la cultura consumista, haciendo de la cinta un lugar de memoria popular. Este trabajo pretende examinar cómo el director de cine se apropia de los fragmentos de una memoria esencialmente mediática, excluyendo voluntariamente todo discurso histórico o político abierto, para ofrecer una representación estilizada, atomizada y distorsionada del periodo re-imaginado en clave posmoderna. El reciclaje de los referentes musicales y cinematográficos está regido por estrategias de deformación y reescritura paródica que inscriben de lleno la película de Berger en el cine posmoderno español, a la par que la construcción abismal del filme produce un discurso autorreflexivo.

Имя литературного журнала как коммуникативный маркер

The article considers the problem of a name as a symbolic attachment (marker) assigned to the cultural object in the communication process. The features of signalization of poetry magazines in tradition and in cyberspace are revealed. To clarify the differences between the signifier and the signified, a comparison of two discourses is used: structuralism and post-structuralism as manifestations of the modern and postmodern ways of thought. If in modernity the name embodies the event of meaning, in postmodernity the name generates it, then with a radical break with this opposition, the name of the journal should keep meaning as a post-event subject of communication.

Facts Shifting to the Left: From Postmodernism to the Postfactual Age

How postmodern is populism? Is there a hidden legacy of the 1968 manifestos in today's right-wing protest culture? In recent years, questions like these have often been posed in a more or less polemical manner. They should be reconsidered in a more sober, nuanced way. In academia, they are of far more than merely historical interest since unlike the hairstyles, clothing fashions, body culture, and living spaces from the late 1960s, many of the theories from that period are still regarded as contemporary. Above all, this applies to poststructuralism as a collective name for the impulses of what is often called French theory, which have set the tone in the humanities for two generations. However, the problem with the continuing topicality of poststructuralist and postmodern ways of thinking is that many of their elements are becoming virulent under completely changed political circumstances.

Educational leadership: Producing docile bodies? A Foucauldian perspective on Higher Education

AbstractThe aim of this paper is to contribute to a long‐standing critical tradition in the educational leadership literature through an analytical examination of the idiosyncrasies of leadership in Higher Education institutions (based on the UK example). It applies a postmodern way of thinking to the educational leadership phenomenon to problematise and challenge the traditional views on the trajectories of power in Higher Education institutions, utilising Foucault’s key theoretical units of discipline, governmentality and biopolitics as a toolbox for dissecting the implications of neoliberal ideology on the leadership praxes. Significantly, the paper demonstrates how the engagement with Foucault’s three modes of objectification—dividing practices, scientific classification and self‐subjection—can expose the ways, in which the roles of educational leaders become re‐configured into economic‐rational individuals or subjects, who are compliant with the imposed requisites of the government’s neoliberal agendas. The paper concludes that Foucault’s theoretical perspectives could be used as a methodological template for a deeper critical analysis of leadership practices, equipping academics with additional tools for critiquing the existing boundaries of neoliberalism and intervening in the transformation of the social order by undertaking an investigation into the practices of governmentality, as suggested by Foucault.

Postmodern discrediting the figures of the Author and the Reader in the novel “Kys” by T. Tolstaya

The article deals with the way the figures of Author and Reader are represented in the plot of the novel “Kys” by T. Tolstaya. The discreditation of the figures is proved to have the features of postmodernist literature. In the novel events which are narrated about, occurred after atomic Explosion, which thrown off humanity in cultural and social evolution to late Stone Age. In this future exists race named “golubchiki” – mutants who were born after Explosion and who are spiritual degraded. The main character is Benedict. He rewrites texts allegedly written by the chief of represented society – Fedor Kuzmich Kablukov. Benedict is trying to interpret the written in his own way, which brings to birth of Reader, turning according to post-modernism into new “Dieu cache”. However Benedict’s intellection as the most “golubchiks” is primitive. The character invariably compares what is read to his own experience, his associations are concretely ignorant and remain within the framework of native environment. But Benedict himself fully believes in post-modern way that he is Reader, standing above Author. Demonstrative is also Benedict’s perception of Pushkin : he does not see in Pushkin anything sacral or mythological. In his opinion the poet is nothing but a common wooden statuette, engraved therewith by himself. So, Benedict is not the admirer but ingenuous maker, the creator of Pushkin, in other words, a God for his creation. There is also another “author” in the novel – Fedor Kuzmich, who takes the advantage of the situation when Author dies (all true authors have died before or after an Explosion). Kablukov recopies somebody else’s text zealously. Thereby usurping Author’s role, being only the typical scripter indeed, who have replaced the author in post-modern study. Accordingly, in the novel “Kys” already on the plotline level is designed post-modern situation of author’s death: all literary texts are written very long ago, in the modernity of “golubchiks” is nothing new created; the only “author” – Fedor Kuzmich appears to be just a scripter, who recopies another’s compositions. Author’s figure in that way turns into figment and is almost completely leveled. In “Kys” is also disconsidered the meaning of born Reader, who imagined himself Dieu cache, though he is not capable making any adequate interpretation of a text.

Why Do We Need Writers’ Stories About History to Do Research Into the Past?

Basing himself on samples from Lithuanian and world literature the author of the article discusses seven aspects by which literary texts are important for historians in the twenty-first century.Aspect I. Society can create an emotional relationship with the past with the help of a writer’s text. The past becomes history when we experience it as reality that is dramatically different from the known and understandable present.Aspect II. A writer’s text can quite often becomes a historical source for representatives of various historiographical schools who study man’s activities, thinking, behaviour and everyday life in very different ways.Aspect III. Thanks to the writers in the totalitarian, authoritarian and democratic societies subjects and issues, which historians themselves cannot discuss for some reason or other, are introduced into the public space.Aspect IV. Writers’ contribution can be significant for appeasing traumatised individual memory and reconciling conflicting memories of different communities depicting conflicts through the prism of individual lives.Aspect V. In the twenty-first century, writers and historians become equal partners discussing the ways of history making, workings of individual and collective memory as well as the principles of creating narratives about the past.Aspect VI. Some texts of fiction that are concerned with the issues of historical knowledge, historical identity and the workings of memory, in the opinion of part of history theoreticians can be considered a specific postmodern or post postmodern way of writing history, which in certain cases may be equated with historiography.Aspect VII. Writers with lively historical imagination can be particularly important discourse partners when the historians’ community sets out on discussing the “What would happen if …” issue and on alternative history research.

Editor’s Note

Editor’s Note

Editor’s Note

Editor’s Note

ДУХОВНІСТЬ ЯК ОСНОВА СУЧАСНОЇ УКРАЇНСЬКОЇ ІДЕНТИЧНОСТІ

The transformation of spiritual and educational practices in contemporary culture is analyzed. Spirituality is considered as the basis of modern Ukrainian identity. It is proved that Ukrainian post-colonial discourse is not possible without the interaction of the modern and postmodern identity type. This is a critique of the modern and postmodern way of seeing the problem. Cultural and social consequences of the first stage of the information society, the first stage of globalization are: internal fragmentation of the workforce of information producers and the rest; social exclusion of many individuals and entire segments of society. A new stage in the development of identities should consolidate society. It turns out that the dialogic nature of communication forms identity as knowledge of the nature of its own Self, ready to respond to the challenges of the Other, thus not only my identity is formed, but my place in the world, my spirituality, the limits of my values. The modern type of identity is associated with a nation-state, which tries to maximize its influence, the modern type of identity produces a colonial world, where there is a clear division into metropolis and colony, a special type of colonies are internal colonies. In the case of Ukraine, we can see the complex combination of external and internal colonialism, and the particular danger of internal colonialism lies in the fact that it remains unclear to the end who conqueror, but who is subdued. The postmodern identity type in the Slobozhanschyna culture is connected with the rethinking of modernity, it is not so critical, but unifying. Human beings in a globalized world must rely on the renewal of humanistic ideals, a sense of home and security. A new ethics is proposed based on the principles of freedom, democracy and respect for every individuality that extends a new understanding of spirituality in connection with national culture and national outlook.

Sudden Awakening in Buddhism and the Effect of Gothic Literature: Developing Literary Criticism with an East-West Comparative Philosophy

This paper, in light of the sudden enlightenment in Mahayana Buddhism, explores how the sublime that Gothic fiction produces affects the reader giving him a glimpse of ultimate reality. All postmodern ways of reading literature disprove of traditional thematic approaches that depend on subjective interpretation. Therefore, I first argue, in detail, how literature is, like Buddhist meditation that goes with kongan, hwadu, and the experience of sudden awakening, a privileged ground for the realization of the ultimate reality or Emptiness (Sunyata). Especially the Gothic sublime awakens us to the fundamental affect or impersonal sensibility all of a sudden with a great impact as we are shocked, thrilled, and lose the sense of security that our ego has. Finally, the last part of the paper turns to Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray to demonstrate how the Gothic sublime experience of the novel offers us a deconstruction of binary opposition.