scholarly journals ’We Have Become Niggers!’: Josephine Baker as a Threat to Viennese Culture

2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 515-530
Author(s):  
Roman Horak
Keyword(s):  
Mass Culture ◽  
Perceived Threat ◽  
Cultural Expression ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Low Culture ◽  
Josephine Baker ◽  
The Waves

Early 1928 Josephine Baker, by that time a famous dancer and singer, came to Vienna to be part of a vaudeville show. Even before her arrival the waves went high – her possible presence in Vienna caused a major uproar there. Various commentators constructed an image of Baker that was based on the assumption that she was seriously attacked on the values of traditional European culture and, furthermore, true Viennese culture. In my essay, where I address the Viennese Negerskandal more directly, I explore the various discourses that produced this ‘event’ along the interface of mass culture/avant-garde and high/low culture. It is evident that these events centre on a construction of ‘blackness’ and of ‘black cultural expression’; it goes without saying that racism and sexism play a central role. I will, however, try to contextualize the ‘nigger scandal’ in a broader setting: against the background of Vienna in the late 1920s the perceived threat of ‘Americanisation’ will be discussed.

scholarly journals A. Blok and poetic strategies of postmodernism

2021 ◽  
pp. 153-160
Author(s):  
Неля Магомедовна Шишхова ◽  
Кирилл Николаевич Анкудинов
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Tradition ◽  
Actual Problem ◽  
Cultural Expression ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
Poetic Expression ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Postmodern Poetry ◽  
Creative Forces

Анализируется поэзия А. Блока, ее взаимосвязь с реалистическими, семантическими и перфомативными аспектами творчества русских постмодернистов. Тексты рассматриваются как способ мотивирования поэтических знаков в постмодернистской традиции. Они позволяют контекстуализировать модели выразительности в авангардистской поэзии и выделить основные парадигмы в ее трактовке, адаптировать художественные приемы и поиски нового языка. Отдельное вимание уделяется особенностям поэтического высказывания и ее взаимодействию с пространством стиха. Интерес акцентируется на диалектике разрушительных и созидательных сил в деконструктивизме наследия Вс. Некрасова, Д. Пригова, Т. Кибирова и др. Обсуждается актуальная проблема для теории современной поэзии: что стало с постмодерном как языком описания эпохи в XXI столетии. Особое внимание уделяется преемственности новых концепций с предыдущей культурной традицией в негативной и позитивной версиях. Тема особенно актуализируется благодаря выраженному стремлению представить тексты А.Блока и постмодернистской поэзии как культурное выражение новейшего времени. An analysis is made of the poetry of A. Blok, its relationship with the realistic, semantic and performance aspects of the work of Russian postmodernists. Texts are explored as a way to motivate poetic signs in the postmodern tradition. They make it possible to contextualize models of expressiveness in avant-garde poetry and highlight the main paradigms in its interpretation, adapt artistic techniques and searches for a new language. An attention is paid to the peculiarities of the poetic expression and its interaction with the space of the verse. The interest is focused on the dialectic of destructive and creative forces in the deconstruction of the legacy of Vs. Nekrasov, D. Prigov, T. Kibirov, etc. The paper discusses the actual problem for the theory of modern poetry: what has become with the postmodern as the language of describing the era in the 21st century. Particular attention is paid to the continuity of new concepts with the previous cultural tradition in negative and positive versions. The theme is especially actualized due to the expressed desire to present the texts of A. Blok and postmodern poetry as a cultural expression of modern times.

Jolas, Eugene (1894–1952)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian Hanna
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Writing ◽  
Major Focus ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Original Language ◽  
Berlin Alexanderplatz ◽  
European Culture ◽  
The World ◽  
English Translations ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
Literary Journal

Eugene Jolas was a journalist, editor, translator, and poet who embodied the transatlantic character of modernism between the World Wars. The task of transition, the Paris-based literary journal he edited with his wife Maria Jolas and others between 1927 and 1938, was to translate European culture for Americans, and vice versa. transition’s list of contributors reads like a Who’s Who of the international avant-garde. Jolas’ wealth of contacts in the literary world arose from his previous job writing the column ‘Rambles Through Literary Paris’ for the Chicago Tribune Paris edition. The romantic, imagination-driven strain of modernism that Jolas promoted led to a close relationship with Expressionism and Surrealism. Publishing non-anglophone experimental writing in translation or (after 1933) in the original language was a major focus of transition. Jolas also provided English translations of key European modernist texts outside the magazine, including Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz (1931).

3. Critical theory and modernism

2017 ◽  
pp. 30-38
Author(s):  
Stephen Eric Bronner
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
Cultural Resistance ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Experimental Art ◽  
Mass Society ◽  
The Individual

The end of the nineteenth century witnessed the birth of an international avant-garde that focused upon alienation, standardization, and the liberation of the individual from constrictive social norms. Impressionists, Cubists, Expressionists, Futurists, Dadaists, Surrealists, and representatives from many other styles provided a blizzard of philosophical–aesthetic manifestos that blended political with cultural resistance to mass society. The Frankfurt School’s inner circle was sympathetic from the start; modernism provided a response to the ontology of false conditions and, indeed, an avant-garde opposition to mass culture provided inspiration and cohesion. ‘Critical theory and modernism’ explains how the unflinching support of modernism and experimental art by the Frankfurt School confirmed both its cultural radicalism and contempt for totalitarianism.

Free Jazz and the French Critic

2008 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 541-581
Author(s):  
Eric Drott
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Cultural Nationalism ◽  
Free Jazz ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
European Culture ◽  
French Experience ◽  
Norms And Values ◽  
Cultural Sphere ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Political Radicalism

Abstract From the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, free jazz was the subject of considerable public interest in France. The present article examines the conditions that fueled enthusiasm for American avant-garde jazz, focusing on the politicization of discourse surrounding the ‘new thing.’ Critics hostile to the movement felt that it undermined jazz's claim to universality, a cornerstone of postwar attempts to valorize the genre in the French cultural sphere. Yet the tendency to identify free jazz with various forms of African American political radicalism presented no less of a challenge for the movement's advocates. By constructing an image of free jazz that stressed its irremediable difference from the norms and values of European culture, writers were compelled to find alternative ways of relating it to contemporary French concerns. A reading of Philippe Carles and Jean-Louis Comolli's text Free Jazz Black Power shows how the authors' attempt to reinscribe African American cultural nationalism as an expression of transnational anticolonial struggle not only helped bring free jazz closer to the French experience, but also served as a way of working through the unresolved legacies of colonialism.

scholarly journals The phenomenon of Korean wave in Metamodern European cultural environment

2021 ◽  
pp. 49-56
Author(s):  
Larysa Osadcha
Keyword(s):  
Mass Culture ◽  
Pop Culture ◽  
Cultural Environment ◽  
The West ◽  
Korean Wave ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Cultural Science ◽  
Favorable Conditions ◽  
Artistic Heritage ◽  
Export Product

Purpose of the article is to analyze reasons of rapid growth of the Korean cultural product popularity in European cultural environment, to identify coincidence of the worldview, aesthetic, gaming demands of the Western consumer audience and art patterns of the Korean mass-culture. The phenomenon of the rapid popularity growth of Korean cultural products is called the “Korean wave. According to statistics, K-pop forms 2% of GDP (for comparison, Korean aviation – 0,7 %). On March 2020 the artistic heritage of the nowadays most popular Korean pop-band BTS was recognized “the strategic export product” of South Korea. That’s why it is actually to study out reasons for the great popularity of the “Korean wave” among the Western European cultural environment. Methodology. Theoretical basis of the exploration includes authors as of the applying field of cultural science, so of the fundamental one. For example, N. Tytkova (2020) analyzes style peculiarities of the Korean wave, Y. Pak (2015) outlines the genealogy of the phenomenon according to the Korean ethnic mentality specificity. Appealing to the theoretical works of R. Popty (1996) and F. Jameson (2008), T. Vermeulen and R. van der Akker (2010) has facilitated deeper understanding as of the Metamodern features of the actual European culture so the specificity of nowadays Korean pop-culture. Scientific novelty. Popularity of the Southern Korean pop-culture in Europe and Northern America is caused not only by the marketing peculiarities of the K-pop industry but also by its reasoning with key values and demands of the metamodern Western culture, such as “new sincerity”, “sober fanaticism”, “pragmatic romanticism”, “causal esotericism”. Conclusions. The powerful request for the youth artifacts and practices is been formed in the West. But artistic and academic discourse is still been under the influence of distrustfully critical postmodern narrative. Thus, the rupture between the West’s philosophical self-reflective vocabulary and applied requests for the new sincerity, and new romanticism has created favorable conditions for the youth-oriented mass-culture import.

scholarly journals МАССОВАЯ ЛИТЕРАТУРА: К ИСТОРИИ ВОПРОСА ИССЛЕДОВАНИЙ НА ПОСТСОВЕТСКОМ ПРОСТРАНСТВЕ

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (XIX) ◽  
pp. 117-131
Author(s):  
Татьяна Хайдер
Keyword(s):  
Mass Culture ◽  
Popular Literature ◽  
Semiotic Analysis ◽  
Cultural Codes ◽  
Sign Systems ◽  
Mass Literature ◽  
Philosophical Criticism ◽  
Literary Process ◽  
Low Culture ◽  
Literary Methods

At the end of the twentieth century, the phenomenon of mass culture was the focusof scholarly attention with an ever increasing frequency: theorists of literature andcultural studies, as well as philosophers have developed a number of approaches to thestudy of popular culture: social, ideological and semiotic. Contemporary researchersare increasingly attracted to the question of the semiotic culture. In this regard, mass culture and accordingly literature are more and more frequently treated not only asa system of signs, but in fact as a sign itself.J. Lotman conducts his analysis through the prism of the literary process and hisresearch methodology is based on literary methods. Once marginal (from the standpointof the official literary and philosophical criticism), mass literature is going throughthe phase of ennoblement. It is dual-track in its “intergrowth” and is already facingup the oversignificant new system of modern cultural codes, while still being rootedin the low culture with its specific character of the text encoding. Therefore, followingthe principle of semiotic analysis, it is inevitable to take into account the interactionof several sign systems while considering the formative dynamics of the modern genrethemedversion of popular literature.

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