Postmodern Principles Research Articles

The Brink of Freedom: Improvising Life in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World by David Kazanjian

Reviewed by: The Brink of Freedom: Improvising Life in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World by David Kazanjian Ann C. Hall The Brink of Freedom: Improvising Life in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World. By David Kazanjian. Duke University Press, 2016. 336 pp. David Kazanjian's The Brink of Freedom: Improvising Life in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World is a smart, readable, and fascinating book that examines the perception of freedom in the Atlantic world by focusing on the year 1847, when Liberia declared itself as an independent nation-state and when the Caste War, the war between the Creoles and the Mayan rebels, began in the Yucatán. The study is distinct and noteworthy for many reasons, but the most obvious is the fact that no one has compared or simultaneously analyzed these two unrelated incidents, what Kazanjian calls historical and global "flashpoints," before. Further, Kazanjian is careful to point out and explain that his method is not a comparative one. Rather, he examines the incidents "appositionally" (9), resisting the privileging of one event over the other. This method, he argues, presents keener perceptions of the separate cultures but also offers insights into what he calls "quotidian globalities" (16), the experience of the global through everyday activities, events, and artifacts. Rather than examining official documents, procedures, and records, he examines materials such as personal letters, popular journals, and even serialized stories in order to capture the sense of freedom at this time. The appositional methodology is a challenging one that invokes postmodern principles—in general and postmodern literary theory in particular—to analyze the artifacts of these historical moments. And what Kazanjian concludes is that the concept of freedom at this time was not stagnant and fully formed. Instead, it was dynamic, often chaotic and contradictory, and improvisational. In other words, freedom is a performance without rehearsal. For those familiar with Derrida and other postmodern theorists, the method is classic. Kazanjian chooses neglected artifacts to examine the two cultural moments that are not discrete cultural moments. He then highlights the ways both investigate or mimic freedom in often [End Page 122] contradictory and improvisational ways, ways that finally disrupt our understanding not only of each cultural moment but also of our own current concept of freedom. That is, if we acknowledge that these groups of people were struggling to define and experience freedom, then we find ourselves doing so as well. The stereotypical depiction of the establishment of Liberia by recently freed African-American slaves is one of exuberance. At the very least, a sense of relief. These African-Americans are free, unburdened, and either ready to start afresh by establishing their country or finally home again in Africa. Kazanjian's research, however, complicates this view in several ways. First, there are the West Africans, the indigenous population that is being displaced and overrun by the new settlers. As other scholars have also pointed out, the Liberian state "disenfranchised its native inhabitants," which created conflicts that remain in the region today (54). Second, and unique to Kazanjian's scholarship, are the letters from the recently freed African-American Liberian settlers to their former masters in the United States. And what the letters show is not an exuberant embrace of Liberian freedom but instead a nostalgia, a deep longing for their "home" in the United States and their relationships with their former masters. Kazanjian shows that the Liberian experiment created "unsettled" lives and conflicting interpretations of what it meant to be free. In the Yucatán, Kazanjian examines the way in which Creole journals depicted the war against the Mayan rebels by casting the Creoles as the guardians of culture and civility and the Mayans as barbarians. Further, the Creole strategy to overcome their enemies was novel—"the assimilation of Indians into liberal capitalist civility" (158). Basically, they sought to "tame" the Mayans. Creole periodicals situated themselves as pro-white and anti-Indian, but Kazanjian illustrates that they were "more unruly than this" (166) and used everything, even contradictory claims and formerly antagonistic and diverse ethnic groups, to persuade their readers that they were protecting the Yucatán, that they were the civilized Saviors. The result was a deconstruction of their mission...

The Unspoken Consequences of Obergefell: Calling Convictional Christian Scholars

This short essay offers a critical view of the decision in Obergefell v. Hodges and the marriage debate more generally, considering philosophical, academic, and spiritual positions of the legal scholar of faith in light of the jurisprudence of Obergefell. The unspoken consequences of this ruling compels state and individual submission to a doctrine that, according to Justice Anthony Kennedy, overthrows millennia of law and culture. Yet, what should be the response of a man or woman of faith who has published as an advocate of conjugal marriage, and who must now teach law students these postmodern principles as legal reality? Using messages from C.S. Lewis's lectures to war torn Europe, this essay challenges both the scholar of faith and the postmodern academy.

TV SHoW dramaturgy through postmodern principles

Changes in the media environment entail keen interest in TV dramaturgy. Traditional approaches to television as the kind of journalism, social, institutional or mass media phenomenon prevent from deeper research into the creative side of TV content. The existing domestic classifications of TV programs are generally based on their genre and thematic divisions, which does not help to disclose general laws of programmes composition and construction. However, applying postmodern key principles, such as collaging, mosaicism, fragmenting, contextuality and others, allows holistic approach to analyzing TV programmes and their perception by the audience. Postmodern categories used in creating TV programs uncover general principles, tools of audiovisual language and drama techniques in modern television.

Postmodern Aspects of Mirko Kovač`s Novels

This paper deals with postmodern techniquesin of the novels of Mirko Kovac, a prominent figure in the postmodern literature. In particular, the study examinesnarrative strategies which deviate from traditional paradigms and yet create a distinct reality of the text. Postmodern principles such as “the poetic narrator” (and the “poetic reading” associated with it), temporal distortion, the questioning of historical facts, hybridization of narrative texts, metatextuality and citationality, documentation, fragmentation and text segmentation will be addressed using concrete examples. Mirko Kovac stands out with his distinctive poetics which contains elements of postmodernism, intertwined with traces of other poetics. In this paper we will dwell precisely on the postmodern aspects of his texts. In weaving the fabric of his texts, the author employs narrative strategies that threaten and break the traditional conventional narrative with its prominent elements such as narrative instance, time, space, composition, characters. All canonised forms and values are reviewed and dissolved in a specific way. In his writings, Kovac makes use of specific forms of citation and documentarity. Special attention in our work shall be devoted to Kovac’s novelistic structures, in which he as an author spans a full creative range. We will try to shed light on all phenomena of the narrative text which are developed in terms of the postmodern. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n16p670

Антологія як репрезентативний жанр нової української літератури

In this article is analyzed a history and functions of an anthology in a modern Ukrainian literature from the last quarter of the 19th c. to the beginning of the 21st. An anthology is treated as a literary and anthropological project which is characterized by recasting of original materials and specific politics of its re-arangement. It proposes a new cultural value hierarchy, defines a literary field and the rules of its organization. As a form of literary self-representation an anthology participates in a process of forming a literary tradition and canon, its diversification up to the emergence of anti-canon; it intensifies a work of cultural memory, represents new literary genres and styles and also indicates an appearance of diaspora as a model of cultural citizenship. Numerous anthological projects also stress spacial, performative, subjective, gender, erotical, somatic, and oneirological aspects of creative writing; they rethink a very nature of literature as a creative experiment and as a social action in a context of mass culture and new media development. This allows us to consider the literary anthology as a way of a literary self-reflection and as a separate meta-genre in modern Ukrainian literature. The main genre-defining anthological qualities are such as selectivity, double methonimity, integrity and an ability to create new cultural values. The history of anthology as a specific meta-genre helps us to understand the general pecularities of modenr and postmodern literature, its structure and principles of development, its key problems and challanges and also its the most important achievements.

La hipótesis de la pedagogía postmoderna. Educación, verdad y relativismo

Este estudio retoma el debate sobre la pedagogía postmoderna con una doble finalidad: Por un lado, para contribuir a un orden conceptual más claro y coherente sobre lo pedagógico en relación a la Postmodernidad. Por otro, para, sobre este orden teórico, despejar el camino de lo que podrían ser o están siendo teorías y prácticas educativas constituyentes de una pedagogía, de suyo, postmoderna. La investigación se ha llevado a cabo a través de la hermenéutica de textos filosóficos y pedagógicos. En primer lugar, se presenta el binomio moderno/postmoderno en su nivel epistemológico y se clarifica su relación con el relativismo. Segundamente, se discute y defiende la posibilidad y la existencia de una pedagogía de signo postmoderno, teniendo especialmente en cuenta su vertiente normativa. En tercer lugar, se exponen los argumentos que, desde un punto de vista hermenéutico y pragmatista, el relativismo y sus matices ofrecen como línea pedagógica. Se ensaya en esta parte una integración del postfundacionalismo y otros postulados postmodernos en el pensamiento educativo, y se apuntan algunas líneas a desarrollar en el futuro. Finalmente, se concluye con una síntesis de los resultados y sus implicaciones para la pedagogía y la teoría de la educación.

Something Old, Something New and Something Puzzling: A Commentary on the Schneider–Geiger and Schreyögg Debate

In this commentary, I suggest that the discussion between Schneider, Geiger, and Schreyögg revives some of the themes of the debate between Habermas and Luhmann, two of the main figures of post-war German social philosophy. Both Habermas and Luhmann put meaning making and knowledge at the centre of their theorization and therefore speak directly to the issue of knowledge and organizing. One of the effects of the discussion between Schneider, Geiger, and Schreyögg is that of enriching the current conversation on these themes and opening new opportunities for future research. In the commentary, however, I also note a tendency to provide a revisionist and edulcorated version of both Habermas’ ideas and some of the principles of post-modernism. I therefore ask whether we should resist readings that expunge all the emancipatory potential from radical authors so that they can become usable for managerial purposes. I conclude by purporting the idea that the mission o f organizational scholars is to generate knowledge about business but not necessarily for business.

Francophonie et globalisation La question de l'interlecte

This article attempts to define postmodern fiction and aims to show that, since the eighties, the francophone novel has been experimenting with textual devices typical of this type of writing. Indeed, the themes and devices of mtissage and hybridisation that are characteristic of francophone literature today have strong echoes of the postmodern principles of heterogeneity, rhizome-reality and chaos-world. While it is true that, in the first instance, the mtissage of the francophone text is generic through the production of hybrid narratives, it is nonetheless also linguistic in nature. This is the aspect that this study hopes to emphasise here, with the aim of demonstrating how, within the French language, the friction between languages in the francophone space provides a fine illustration of the globalisation process.

Postmodern principles for responsive reading assessment

This paper reviews the concept of high‐stakes assessment against a background of postmodernism, and argues that the inaccessibility of cognitive processes is only one part of the problem of reading assessment: even greater challenges are posed by a postmodern analysis, in which an ‘incredulity toward metanarratives’ leads to a series of six theoretical positions, from each of which is derived a practical imperative that might guide us in establishing postmodern principles of assessment. These six imperatives are then explored in relation to two practical contexts, one in the area of portfolio or evidence‐based assessment, the other in the area of computer‐based assessment of reading. In both cases, it is argued that, working from first principles, the case for using such approaches can be established. Second, it is argued that while both these approaches to assessment offer empirical and methodological challenges that have yet to be met, they also offer opportunities for valuing the individual subject and diminishing the authority of the author and the text in ways that are in harmony with a postmodern position.

Postmodern Principles: In Search of a 21st Century Art Education

(2004). Postmodern Principles: In Search of a 21st Century Art Education. Art Education: Vol. 57, No. 1, pp. 6-14.

The Genogram: From Diagnostics to Mutual Collaboration

In this article, the authors present the need for the integration of mutual client-therapist collaboration into the process of genogram construction and demonstrate through case examples from their own practice how such integration enhances the therapeutic power of the genogram. The authors also suggest possible changes in the training of marriage and family therapists in order for such integration to become more easily incorporated, especially by beginning-level therapists. The collaborative genogram is consistent with postmodern principles and recaptures Bowen’s idea of mutual discovery in therapy.

Be Not Deceived: Looking at Historians' and Compositionists' Views of Multiculturalism in Freshman Composition Courses

Situated between disciplines, multiculturalism is a topic spoken about by historians, compositionists, literary critics, social scientists, anthropologists, and those in other fields. While consistent with postmodern principles that break down disciplinary boundaries, multiculturalism as a curricular phenomenon 1 depends on but also suffers from its interdisciplinary nature. In fact, a number of debates on both the right and left point to problems resulting from the pedagogical pursuit of multiculturalism. Louise Phelps, for example, argues that the teaching of multiculturalism too often serves as an agenda for instigating social and cultural change. This type of pedagogy elevates the political agenda of the faculty over their students’ own agendas. Others point out that multiculturalism as a topic elicits student writing that is oversimplified, stereotypical, or superficial (see, for example, Stockton). While many have cited reasons to help promote or discourage the use of this theme for pedagogical pursuits, little, if any, work has documented the ways students’ writing about multiculturalism is filtered through their different disciplinary backgrounds. Since multiculturalism as the theme for compositions is used, quite often, in freshman core courses and/or in freshman compostition courses taught by faculty from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, it is important to understand how faculty make their expectations explicit within their various disciplinary viewpoints. We know that different disciplines express arguments differently, raise different questions, and utilize different rhetorical styles. Thus, if we knew more about how faculty of different disciplines teach a core course’s common texts, we would be better able to help students address in their writing complex sets of stylistic and rhetorical expectations from different disciplines.

Cil d'aval et cil d'amont:Borderlands and the womanjogleorinAucassin et Nicolette

A modern performance of Aucassin et Nicolette which takes into consideration reasonable options for performance in thirteenth‐century France reveals certain propensities which are invisible when the text is treated strictly as a literary work. Aucassin et Nicolette is fraught with reversal, yet each reversal, empowered in a border realm through the agency of performance, leads to union. Thus this work which has survived only as a literary text, when embodied in modem performance by a woman jogleor, conveys reversals not evident in the text alone and reflects postmodern ethnographic principles of cultural flexibility in performance.