Dead Pledges

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annie McClanahan
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
Credit Scoring ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Microeconomic Theory ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
Popular Entertainment ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Irrational Behavior ◽  
Cultural Texts

Dead Pledges is a study of our contemporary culture of debt. Examining novels, poems, artworks, photographs, and films produced in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, this book aims to show how US cultural texts have grappled with the rise and fall of the financialized consumer credit economy. It argues that debt is such a ubiquitous yet elusive social form that we can most clearly understand it by looking at how our culture has sought to represent it. Whether popular entertainment or avant-garde art, post-crisis cultural texts allow us to map the landscape of contemporary debt: from foreclosure to credit scoring, student debt to securitized risk, microeconomic theory to anti-eviction activism. Across this range of sites, this book offers an account of the theoretical and political consequences of debt: how it affects our ideas of personhood and morality; how it deploys a language of irrational behavior and risky excess; how it transforms our relationship to property and possession. Bringing together economic history, debt theory, and cultural analysis, Dead Pledges demonstrates how our understanding of the economy can be illuminated by culture. What is at stake in our contemporary culture of debt is not just our measures of economic credibility but also the limits of our imaginative credulity; not just our account of economic character but also our literary characters; not just the money we see but also the way we see money; not just how we pay but also how we imagine getting payback.

scholarly journals The specifics of the creative representation of classical and modern texts in the direction of A. Prikhodko

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iryna Ivashchenko ◽  
Viktoriya Strelchuk
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Semiotic Analysis ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Theatrical Space ◽  
Literary Source ◽  
Factors Of Influence ◽  
Structural Methods ◽  
Stage Composition

The purpose of the article is to reveal the peculiarities of the interpretive theater direction of A. Prikhodka in the context of experiments with the representation of classical and modern texts. Methodology. Comparative and structural methods have been applied in order to reveal the versatility of the director's intention; the method of hermeneutic and the semiotic method, which contributed to the opportunity to explore the specifics of the director's representation; the hermeneutic method is dominant in the process of evaluating performances since it contributes to the perception of the production as an artistic whole, provided that the functionality of its individual components is understood; the method of semiotic analysis of postmodern stage works, etc. The scientific novelty of the article lies in the fact that the specificity of the representation of classical and modern texts in the work of theatrical director A. Prikhodka is considered in the context of the trends of this process in the modern theatrical space on the basis of comprehensive art history, theater, and cultural analysis. The theoretical views of A. Prikhodka are analyzed, the factors of influence on the production process and its specifics are revealed; an attempt is made to consider the phenomenon of the representation of literary texts from the perspective of postmodern trends in the development of modern Ukrainian theater. Conclusions. The work of A. Prikhodka is characterized by the reworking of the literary source of the production at the text level, including, among other things, a significant substantive reworking - highlighting plot lines, building plot lines, a successive reworking of prose characters into dramatic ones, the emergence of new, non-fictional characters, etc. - turning into a unique a literary script for the author's embodiment of a stage composition with the help of specific means of director's expressiveness of postmodern, realistic and avant-garde theater. The study revealed that the creative representations of classical and modern tests by A. Prikhodka reveal the hidden potential of the literary source, giving it a new philosophical and worldview understanding. The purpose of the article is to reveal the peculiarities of the interpretive theater direction of A. Prikhodka in the context of experiments with the representation of classical and modern texts. Methodology. Comparative and structural methods have been applied in order to reveal the versatility of the director's intention; the method of hermeneutic and the semiotic method, which contributed to the opportunity to explore the specifics of the director's representation; the hermeneutic method is dominant in the process of evaluating performances since it contributes to the perception of the production as an artistic whole, provided that the functionality of its individual components is understood; the method of semiotic analysis of postmodern stage works, etc. The scientific novelty of the article lies in the fact that the specificity of the representation of classical and modern texts in the work of theatrical director A. Prikhodka is considered in the context of the trends of this process in the modern theatrical space on the basis of comprehensive art history, theater, and cultural analysis. The theoretical views of A. Prikhodka are analyzed, the factors of influence on the production process and its specifics are revealed; an attempt is made to consider the phenomenon of the representation of literary texts from the perspective of postmodern trends in the development of modern Ukrainian theater. Conclusions. The work of A. Prikhodka is characterized by the reworking of the literary source of the production at the text level, including, among other things, a significant substantive reworking - highlighting plot lines, building plot lines, a successive reworking of prose characters into dramatic ones, the emergence of new, non-fictional characters, etc. - turning into a unique a literary script for the author's embodiment of a stage composition with the help of specific means of director's expressiveness of postmodern, realistic and avant-garde theater. The study revealed that the creative representations of classical and modern tests by A. Prikhodka reveal the hidden potential of the literary source, giving it a new philosophical and worldview understanding.

scholarly journals Transgression of Postindustrial Dissonance and Excess: (Re)valuation of Gothicism in Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive

Text Matters ◽  
2016 ◽  
pp. 213-226
Author(s):  
Justyna Stępień
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
Adam And Eve ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Advanced Capitalism ◽  
Cultural Texts ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Insight Into

The paper gives insight into the revaluation of popular Gothic aesthetics in Jim Jarmusch’s 2014 production Only Lovers Left Alive. Drawing on critical theory and the postmodern theoretical framework, the article suggests that the film transgresses contemporary culture immersed in a “culture of death” that has produced a vast amount of cultural texts under the rubric of “Gothicism.” By considering Jean Baudrillard’s concept of transaesthetics and Judith Halberstam’s writings on contemporary monstrosity, the paper shows that a commodified Gothic mode has lost its older deconstructive functions that operated on the margins of the mainstream. Now entirely focused on the duplication of the same aesthetic codes and signs, Gothic productions conform to the rules of postindustrial culture, enriching entertainment imagery with the neutralized concept of “otherness.” Hence, the article engages primarily with Jarmusch’s indie aesthetics that goes beyond easily recognizable patterns and generic conventions and allows the director to emphasize that the arts are rejuvenating forces, the antidote to a commoditized environment. Then, the focus is on the construction of main characters—Adam and Eve, ageless vampires and spouses—who thanks to nostalgic theatricality and performance reconfigure the mainstream monstrosity. Ultimately, the article emphasizes that Jarmusch’s film, to a large extent, becomes a warning against the inevitable results of advanced capitalism practiced on a global scale.

not quite karaoke: poetry in contemporary china

2005 ◽  
Vol 183 ◽  
pp. 644-669 ◽  
Author(s):  
maghiel van crevel
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Culturally Specific ◽  
Contemporary China ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Arts And Culture ◽  
Niche Area ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Cultural Niche

marketization is a prime feature of arts and culture in contemporary china. strikingly, while avant-garde poetry is hardly involved in this trend, and some of its commentators feel a sense of crisis as a result, it continues to flourish as a small but stable, high-cultural niche area that boasts increasing textual richness and a well-positioned constituency. an explanation of this phenomenon must take into account multiple re-inventions of traditional chinese notions of poetry and poethood, amid rapidly changing circumstances throughout the contemporary era. less culturally specific but no less essential, another factor is the very nature of the genre of avant-garde poetry in its social context and of artistic experiment per se, creating a problem for cultural analysis that makes numbers the measure of all things.

scholarly journals The Landscape of Sound in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

2004 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 493-504 ◽  
Author(s):  
LUDOVIC TOURNÈS
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
French Music ◽  
History Of

Alain Corbin, Les cloches de la terre. Paysage sonore et culture sensible dans les campagnes au XIXe siècle (Paris: Flammarion, 1994), 359 pp., €8.69 (pb), ISBN 2080814532.Glenn Watkins, Proof through the Night. Music and the Great War (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2003), 598 pp., $49.95 (hb), ISBN 0520231589.Jeffrey Jackson, Making Jazz French. Music and Modern Life in Interwar Paris (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2003), 266 pp., $21.95 (pb), ISBN 0822331373.Bernard Gendron, Between Montmartre and the Mudd Club. Popular Music and the Avant-Garde (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 388 pp., $55.00 (hb), ISBN 0226287351.David Looseley, Popular Music in Contemporary France (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2003), 254 pp., $25.00 (pb), ISBN 1859736319.Though undoubtedly thriving, the history of music is still a somewhat peripheral area of research which many historians dismiss as secondary. For many years publication in the subject remained the domain of two kinds of researchers, either musicologists – ‘insiders’ au fait with the technical vocabulary – or sociologists and practitioners of ‘cultural studies’ – ‘outsiders’ chiefly interested in the reception of musical phenomena and their role in the constitution of individual and collective identities. This division has become very blurred over the last few years, which have seen the emergence of a number of works with an interdisciplinary approach. But for most historians the history of music remains a largely unfamiliar theme which they struggle to include in any global social or cultural analysis. This struggle is apparent at two levels: first, the difficulty of developing guidelines to the historicity of musical events and, second, the difficulty of escaping the chronology of classical music, which is predicated on a succession of styles and composers. Based on these two points, this article will attempt to develop, through a transverse reading of certain recent works, some working hypotheses centring on the notion of a ‘landscape of sound’ or paysage sonore, as proposed some ten years ago by Alain Corbin, a notion which, it seems to me, may make a valuable contribution to rejuvenating the history of music.

scholarly journals Psychology in Art: The Influence of Freudian Theories on Surrealist Art

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nitansha Nema
Keyword(s):  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Optical Illusions ◽  
New Era ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Salvador Dali ◽  
Frida Kahlo ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
The Mind

“Surrealism”, which developed out of Freudian studies of the functions of the mind, was initially conceptualised in Paris with the publication of the Manifesto of Surrealism by poet and critic André Breton. Soon enough it culminated into an international intellectual and political movement. For artists, the undulating contours of the mind and human psychology as explained by Freud were nothing less than an afflatus that could be transformed into marvelous works of art. Today, we frequently encounter numerous works of Dali, Kahlo, Miro, Magritte and Oppenheim, without appreciating the man who, other than providing inspiration to these artists, was also fundamental in identifying that ‘inspiration’, which was till then considered a gift from the Holy Spirit, could actually be found embedded deep in our own unconscious. It was this ‘inspiration’ that Surrealist Artists sought to bring out in their works by applying processes like Automatism and the use of dream diaries. It marked a whole new era where art was being influenced by psychology. This paper aims at analysing Freudian influence on Surrealist Artwork and developing a multi-dimensional and more profound understanding of Freud’s seemingly bizarre ideas. This has been done by critically evaluating a total of six paintings, two each by Dali, Kahlo and Magritte that have been chosen on the sole ground that they all demonstrate different Psychoanalytic techniques devised by Freud. Further, a cross-cultural analysis has been done to provide a more intricate understanding of the latent concepts explained in the paintings. Upon examination of these works through this paper, it becomes clear how Rene Magritte employed metaphorical symbols in exploring the issues of visual perception and optical illusions, how Salvador Dali used Freudian symbols to embark upon a spectacular picturization of the world of human dreams and how Frida Kahlo found peace at last by channeling the bubbling cauldron of her traumatizing past found in her unconscious into her vibrant paintings. Through a thorough analysis of these works, this paper enables the reader to develop a more lucid understanding of Freudian ideas that inspired the avant-garde movement that marked the paintings of the early 20th century.

scholarly journals The Psychological and Socio-political Consequences of Infectious Diseases

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leor Zmigrod ◽  
Tobias Ebert ◽  
Friedrich Martin Götz ◽  
Jason Rentfrow
Keyword(s):  
Infectious Diseases ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Disease Avoidance ◽  
State Laws ◽  
Metropolitan Regions ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Psychological Mechanisms ◽  
Pathogen Prevalence ◽  
The Relationship

What are the socio-political consequences of infectious diseases? Humans have evolved to avoid disease and infection, resulting in a set of psychological mechanisms that promote disease-avoidance, referred to as the behavioural immune system (BIS). One manifestation of the BIS is the cautious avoidance of unfamiliar, foreign, or potentially contaminating stimuli. Specifically, when disease infection risk is salient or prevalent, authoritarian attitudes can emerge that seek to avoid and reject foreign outgroups while favoring homogenous, familiar ingroups. In the largest study conducted on the topic to date (N>240,000), elevated regional levels of infectious pathogens were related to more authoritarian attitudes on three geographical levels: across US metropolitan regions, US states, and cross-culturally across 47 countries. The link between pathogen prevalence and authoritarian psychological dispositions predicted conservative voting behavior in the 2016 US Presidential Election as well as more authoritarian governance and state laws, in which one group of people imposes asymmetrical laws on others in a hierarchical structure. Furthermore, cross-cultural analysis illustrated that the relationship between infectious diseases and authoritarianism was pronounced for infectious diseases that can be acquired from other humans (nonzoonotic), and does not generalize to other infectious diseases that can only be acquired from non-human species (zoonotic diseases). At a time of heightened awareness of infectious diseases, these findings are important reminders that public health and ecology can have ramifications for socio-political attitudes, and this can shape how citizens vote as well as how they govern and are governed.

scholarly journals Metodyka jako praktyka kulturowa (archetypowa). Ku źródłom zmiany w dydaktyce

2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-20
Author(s):  
Jolanta Kruk
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Teaching Methodology ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Material Environment ◽  
Education Psychology

This article is an introduction to the discussion on the essence of teaching methodology and the changes in its forms in contemporary culture. Two approaches to methodology are proposed: as a socially collective praxis, often unconsciously drawing on cultural practices, and as a so-called expert methodology – a collection of patterns of proper execution, which are a manifestation of the power/knowledge relation in the fi eld of education. Psychology and cognitive science reports confi rm that expert methodology is now losing its theoretical justifi cation. The adoption of the concept of cultural (archetypal) methodology gives a chance of a deeper change in the practice of education, whose avant-garde are the concepts of the “reversed class” and of learning as a “dispersed” study, which consists of: equipment, material environment, and network interactions.

scholarly journals The Impact of a Lack of Government Strategies for Sustainable Water Management and Land Use Planning on the Hydrology of Water Bodies: Lessons Learned from the Disappearance of the Aculeo Lagoon in Central Chile

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 413
Author(s):  
Rodrigo Valdés-Pineda ◽  
Pablo A. Garcia-Chevesich ◽  
Alberto J. Alaniz ◽  
Héctor Venegas-Quiñonez ◽  
Juan B. Valdés ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Use Planning ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Water Levels ◽  
Anthropogenic Factors ◽  
Central Chile ◽  
Aquifer System ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Impact

Several studies have focused on why the Aculeo Lagoon in central Chile disappeared, with a recent one concluding that a lack of precipitation was the main cause, bringing tremendous political consequences as it supported the argument that the government is not responsible for this environmental, economic, and social disaster. In this study, we evaluated in detail the socio-economic history of the watershed, the past climate and its effects on the lagoon’s water levels (including precipitation recycling effects), anthropogenic modifications to the lagoon’s water balance, the evolution of water rights and demands, and inaccurate estimates of sustainable groundwater extraction volumes from regional aquifers. This analysis has revealed novel and undisputable evidence that this natural body of water disappeared primarily because of anthropogenic factors (mostly river deviations and aquifer pumping) that, combined with the effects of less than a decade with below-normal precipitation, had a severe impact on this natural lagoon–aquifer system.

scholarly journals The psychological and socio-political consequences of infectious diseases: Authoritarianism, governance, and nonzoonotic (human-to-human) infection transmission

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 456-474
Author(s):  
Leor Zmigrod ◽  
Tobias Ebert ◽  
Friedrich M. Götz ◽  
Peter Jason Rentfrow
Keyword(s):  
Infectious Diseases ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Human Infection ◽  
State Laws ◽  
Metropolitan Regions ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Psychological Mechanisms ◽  
Pathogen Prevalence ◽  
The Relationship

What are the socio-political consequences of infectious diseases? Humans have evolved to avoid disease and infection, resulting in a set of psychological mechanisms that promote disease-avoidance, referred to as the behavioral immune system (BIS). One manifestation of the BIS is the cautious avoidance of unfamiliar, foreign, or potentially contaminating stimuli. Specifically, when disease infection risk is salient or prevalent, authoritarian attitudes can emerge that seek to avoid and reject foreign outgroups while favoring homogenous, familiar ingroups. In the largest study conducted on the topic to date (N > 240,000), elevated regional levels of infectious pathogens were related to more authoritarian attitudes on three geographical levels: across U.S. metropolitan regions, U.S. states, and cross-culturally across 47 countries. The link between pathogen prevalence and authoritarian psychological dispositions predicted conservative voting behavior in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election and more authoritarian governance and state laws, in which one group of people imposes asymmetrical laws on others in a hierarchical structure. Furthermore, cross-cultural analysis illustrated that the relationship between infectious diseases and authoritarianism was pronounced for infectious diseases that can be acquired from other humans (nonzoonotic), and does not generalize to other infectious diseases that can only be acquired from non-human species (zoonotic diseases). At a time of heightened awareness of infectious diseases, the current findings are important reminders that public health and ecology can have ramifications for socio-political attitudes by shaping how citizens vote and are governed.

scholarly journals The Aesthetics of Relations: The Modernist, Contemporary and Post-Contemporary General Conceptualizations of Art

2019 ◽  
pp. 119
Author(s):  
Kaja Kraner
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Social Mediation ◽  
Aesthetic Appearance ◽  
The Status ◽  
Cultural Texts ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Mutual Relations ◽  
The One

The article will juxtapose the modernist, contemporary and post-contemporary general conceptualization of art and aesthetic appearance of an artwork. Even though all three conceptualizations can be understood as intertwined because they are largely established in mutual relations, for our purpose they will be analyzed in terms of the basic epistemological terrain on which art enters the Western tradition of knowledge and power: the terrain of aesthetic education. The conceptualization of modernist art/artwork will mainly draw from its link with the autopoietic image of artwork/artistic creativity that can be traced to Romanticism as well as the tradition of the so-called aesthetics of form at the beginning of the 20th century, while conceptualization of contemporary art will be primarily reconstructed on the ground of cultural studies and its reception theory that focused on the analysis of social mediation of cultural texts where the text itself loses the status of an exclusive source of meaning. On the one hand, this article attempts to expose the difference between the two by focusing on conceptualizations of their modes of production of meaning (modernist autopoiesis as producing the artwork’s meaning by, through and of itself versus contextually determined meaning of the artwork within conceptualizations of contemporary art), while on the other, it will expose a general aesthetic appearance of the two based on the differentiation of avant-garde and dialogical aesthetics. From there on, the article will focus on conceptualizations of post-contemporary art in the last ten years that also offered a critique of how contemporary art has been (self)limited to aesthetic experience and by it the present time. In the final part, post-contemporary art will be compared with modernism, for instance in terms of the modernist aim for the transcendent standpoint and its methods of aesthetic alienation in contrast to the post-contemporary aim to eliminate aesthetic experience as such and demonstrate that there can be knowledge without aesthetic experience, or the modernist media research to the post-contemporary media archaeology. Article received: April 30, 2019; Article accepted: June 23, 2019; Published online: September 15, 2019; Review articleHow to cite this article: Kraner, Kaja. "The Aesthetics of Relations: The Modernist, Contemporary and Post-Contemporary General Conceptualizations of Art." AM Journal of Art and Media Studies 19 (2019): 119-126. doi: 10.25038/am.v0i19.312

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