Memorializing Pulse

Since 2016, the city of Orlando, FL, has remembered the Pulse nightclub massacre through memorial projects honoring the victims and survivors. The process of remembering and memorializing trauma is contentious; debates over how, where, who, and what to remember are about emotions, economics, and politics. Knowing that meaning making and memory are ongoing processes, I use the circuit of culture model to navigate my city’s processes and places of memorializing by visiting and interpreting different sites of memory. I argue for the power of the vernacular memorial, rather than the state-sanctioned, as a more inclusive, living form of memory.

Valery Podoroga: Philosophy as a Life Form

The article is dedicated to the memory of the outstanding Russian philosopher Valery Podoroga (1946–2020). Although his rich legacy is still awaiting to be read in a careful and thoughtful manner, even now it is possible to discern those nodal points that allow us to conduct an ongoing dialogue with Podoroga. Among them is a philosophical approach that has been named “analytical anthropology”. One of its key elements is a kind of vindication of the sensible dimension in philosophy, which in Podoroga takes the form of his marked interest in the inner logic of a work defined by the play of psychomimetic forces. What is at stake is an encounter with the work on the corporeal level, when the reader is gripped by its energy, and it is the task of the analytical anthropologist to reconstruct the latter’s unique pattern in the work. However, this position seems to carry an inherent tension: although observation is defined as non-participant (a version of phenomenological reduction), the observer, in one way or another, brings to a close that which is still in a state of becoming (the work as a “living” form). This is the grounds for singling out two lines of thinking in Podoroga himself, namely, the line of Eisenstein and that of Mamardashvili. Being the philosopher’s intellectual mentors, they become the two poles defining the development of Podoroga’s own thought. If S.M. Eisenstein stands for experimentation pure and simple, M.K. Mamardashvili expresses the value of individual effort and of reflection as a philosophical procedure. On the one hand, we see Podoroga’s interest in the play of forces, energies and impulses, which points to the movement of matter itself, while on the other, he keeps searching for form and those ultimate grounds that clearly bear on metaphysics. The two mentioned poles are reflected in the following pair: (preconceptual) image vs. concept. Although Podoroga himself attempts to draw a line between the internal and the external — and the work is located precisely on this borderline — the contemporary world demands that we address the work as one of nature’s forms among so many others.

Self-Refuting Rhetoric and the Price of Butter

This chapter presents the view that any creation of living form capable of challenging those powers would be inspired by the belief that language is indeed inviolable. However, it also concedes that, to journalists, this belief must appear an even greater prejudice than the rule of law does to burglars. Sadly, the prejudice repudiated by journalists, unlike that scorned by burglars, cannot be judicially upheld, since the powers that be are infinitely less interested in intellectual property than material property. The chapter considers what recognition and protection a man of property would have if the state took the following statement to heart: “Intellect is not something metaphysical. Intellect is rooted in reality.” Furthermore, it considers Gottfried Benn in particular when demonstrating the refutation of his thought by his language.

Two Speeds: Time of Three Opera and Time of Users

The form of faith is a living form, starting from a Urform, according to an aesthetics manner. Art and architecture have the same virtual capacity of ritual to create the counterintuitive world. We have two ways of transmitting faith: repetition and emotion. Repetition is the form of the ritual and emotion is what all the three opera must have in common. Liturgy, Art and Architecture are understood as opus. There is a temporal relationship between vital becoming of this three opera and the user. Forms change over time and they should continue communicating on the basis of a positive relationship with users. In the Italian context there is a fracture between some users and the making of the form. The fracture needs to be reconciled through an appropriate education of principals and worshippers. The methodological process for Alberto Gianfreda’s liturgical adaptation of Tolentini’s church in Venice is brought to attention.

Geisha Fever: Changes in the Traditional Entertainment Districts in Kyoto in Response to Excessive Attention from Western Tourists

In the popular discourse, geiko districts are described as places where traditional culture is preserved in a living form. Although this statement may be considered as true, the geiko community is a part of Japanese society as a whole and does not exist in complete isolation. Being able to survive as guardians of the Japanese tradition, in the 21st century geiko are discovering new opportunities, such as using new media to promote themselves in order to protect their lifestyle. However, outside world has forced them to change the way they manage their business in the districts. By using their own Internet sites, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts to reach new customers, they display their daily routine, one in which traditional culture meets modern ideas. This paper shows the reception of usage of the Internet in traditional entertainment districts of Kyoto and the response of Western tourists to the geisha phenomenon. It appears that overwhelming attention on the part of tourist industry, as well as commercialisation, are becoming a threat to the values which have cemented relationships between customers, geiko and teahouses owners. For instance, while during the so-called “geisha hunting”, tourists often try to take photographs of them at all costs. Considering the aspects of geiko life and processes mentioned above it is worth analysing how the image of the geiko is perceived by Westerners.