Frederic Jameson

This article considers The Dark Knight Rises (Christopher Nolan, 2012) in order to argue through Fredric Jameson that postmodern aspects of a text are capable of obfuscating, if not altogether obliterating, any Marxist polemics. The first portion engages with Jameson's The Political Unconscious, particularly his emphasis on class struggle and identification of ideologemes which manifest in the text. The subsequent section considers The Dark Knight Rises as a postmodern text through Jameson's concepts of pastiche and nostalgia. Moreover, The Dark Knight Rises is contextualized within the recent spate of class-oriented cinema. Collectively, the goal is to identify a trend within such films of establishing a correlation between capitalism and inequality, ideologemes and postmodernism. The final result is an increasingly impressive group of genre-spanning films which address contemporary inequality in its multifarious forms, but which treat these issues more so as narrative devices than tenable critiques of the sites of oppression.

Ok Computer and Kid A are the two most significant albums in the discography of Radiohead. These two albums represent a distinct boundary point in Radiohead’s career; between the derivative, alternative rock style of their formative years and the intellectually complex, experimental and eclectic artistic identity of their latter. However, these albums also mark the beginning of Radiohead’s embrace of the intellectual aesthetic that defines contemporary culture; postmodernism. In this investigation, I define the manifestation of postmodernism in these two albums, analysing their highly contrasting interpretations of the style and critically analysing the negative and positive effects of Radiohead’s embrace of the postmodernist aesthetic.

I begin by attempting to define the intricate intellectual character of postmodernism, defining its historical origin and initial artistic emergence in the late 20th Century. Using this definition as an initial framework for my investigation, I then begin my analysis of Radiohead’s third album, Ok Computer.  Having defined the distinct differences between ‘postmodernism’ and ‘postmodernity’, I first explore the album’s narrative and consider whether Yorke portrays a postmodernist ideological standpoint on its themes. I proceed by exploring the album’s aesthetic presentation, identifying the utilisation of a bricolage approach to aesthetics and the use of intertextuality in the construction of narrative and composition. I then begin an exploration of Ok Computer’s successor, Kid A. Investigating its embrace of poststructuralist thinking, bricolage aesthetics and anti-aesthetics, I explain that while Postmodernist, Kid A is an extremely contrasting interpretation of the style to its predecessor. In the face of its obscure intellectual, artistic and musical character, I attempt to identify the existence of a decipherable underlying narrative and to classify it stylistically with more precision. In the final phase of the investigation, I construct a critical analysis of the successes and failures of Radiohead’s embrace of postmodernism. Applying an array of critiques of the style, I consider whether and the extent to which Ok Computer and Kid A embody or defy these critiques, and whether postmodernism had a positive impact upon the artistic development of Radiohead.

The following paper is a comparative study of the French Nouvelle Vague and its subsequent influences on the cinema of New Hollywood during the 1970's based around the artistic and cultural ideologies of Postmodernism as expressed in the works of Frederic Jameson's Postermodernism in Consumer Society and Postmodernism, Or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. I will be exploring the cultural and socio-political parallels between the evolution of the two movements and their reflections of new cinematic conventions and ideologies such as auteur theory and visual experimentation looking in particular at the films and culture of French Cinema from 1954 to 1968 and American cinema from 1967 to 1983. In this respect I will be drawing on comparative textual examples from Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde (1967) Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets (1973) and Jean Luc Godard's A Bout de Souffle (1960) and exploring the common reciprocations in each piece of work comparing them in a broader ideological framework as productions and representations of an artistic culture and post modernist trend. I will also place an emphasis on the philosophies and ideologies expressed by key French film writers Alexandre Astruc in 1948 with his essay on the birth of the new Avante Garde: La Camera Stylo , and later in Cahiers du Cinema by the philosophies of Francois Truffaut and Andre Bazin and how these ideas were reflected in the films of the French New Wave and subsequently later in the films of New Hollywood. The main argument of the dissertation as such will  examine this cultural exchange and enduring cinematic legacy of both film cultures by exploring the recurring narrative and character motifs in both to deem whether they can be defined as deriving from Post modernist ideologies.

By delving into the complex, cross-generational exchanges that characterize any political project as rampant as empire, this thought-provoking study focuses on children and their ambivalent, intimate relationships with maps and practices of mapping at the dawn of the “American Century.” Considering children as students, map and puzzle makers, letter writers, and playmates, Mahshid Mayar interrogates the ways turn-of-the-century American children encountered, made sense of, and produced spatial narratives and cognitive maps of the United States and the world. Mayar further probes how children’s diverse patterns of consuming, relating to, and appropriating the “truths” that maps represent turned cartography into a site of personal and political contention.
To investigate where in the world the United States imagined itself at the end of the nineteenth century, this book calls for new modes of mapping the United States as it studies the nation on regional, hemispheric, and global scales. By examining the multilayered liaison between imperial pedagogy and geopolitical literacy across a wide range of archival evidence, Mayar delivers a careful microhistorical study of U.S. empire.

Much post-modern cinematic narrative has been preoccupied with apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic, and dystopian fantasies that closely reflect aspects of our lived reality.  This paper seeks to distinguish the boundaries between films categorized as apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic, and dystopian and to examine some of the most iconic cinematic artifacts in each of the categories to differentiate their parameters and to explore in detail dystopian film through the prism of cultural theory, to better understand the cultural work that specifically dystopia cinema does.  Dystopia film is primarily concerned with the social conditions inherent to patriarchal capitalism in which the narratives simultaneously expose and reproduce social and economic contradictions in an ideological process of repressive tolerance.  Contemporary dystopia films such as In Time (Andrew Nicoll, 2011) and The Purge (James DeMonaco, 2013) criticize the aspects of capitalism that contradict social mythologies in an effort to reconcile these contradictions with a valorizing fantasy of romance and revolution.

A partir de la producción teórica de W. Benjamin, Th. W. Adorno y F. Jameson, esta obra explicita un modo de interpretación del mundo cultural circundante que supera el deficiente carácter crítico del modelo hermenéutico de Heidegger y Gadamer. Se trata de una hermenéutica que toma como objeto los fragmentos de la vida social y cultural, descifrando en ellos elementos relevantes para la comprensión crítica de las transformaciones que definen el presente.

Fredric Jameson’s Allegory and Ideology (2019) not only constitutes the most recent installment of his ongoing series, The Poetics of Social Forms, but constitutes an elaboration of his account of allegory first formulated in The Political Unconscious (1981) and offers his most recent contribution to a Marxist conception of literary and social criticism. This brief review-essay consists of some jotting to attempt to take some measure of the critical and political import of Jameson’s reworking of allegory. It argues that in this recent work Jameson mostly casts allegory in terms of ideology-critique. Moreover, what emerges most crucially is the notion that allegory enables a dialectical grasp of an increasingly fragmented reality, thus contributing to the vital task of historicizing the present and conceiving it as one more episode in an ongoing plot in which the future of a terraforming of the world, beyond capital, is at stake.

El presente trabajo trata de adentrarse en uno de los problemas más intensamente debatidos en las últimas décadas: el problema de la posmodernidad. Las preguntas que pretendemos someter a examen son del tipo de las que siguen. ¿Nos hallamos realmente en un nuevo período histórico? ¿Ha entrado la cultura occidental en unas coordenadas distintas de las que predominaron en la Modernidad? Desde que Lyotard diagnosticara en su famoso ensayo La condición postmoderna que los grandes metarrelatos emancipatorios de la Modernidad (la ilustración y el idealismo, el relato liberal-positivista del progreso indefinido, el marxismo) habían quedado definitivamente deslegitimados y en franca decadencia, la filosofía no ha dejado de pensar qué tipo de mutación se ha producido y qué espacio queda en ella para el mantenimiento de la continuidad de su tradición. Se habla, desde luego, de posmodernidad en arquitectura, cine, literatura, etc. ¿Pero existe realmente un #pensamiento posmoderno#? ¿Es cierto que se ha producido una ruptura con la tradición filosófica o se trata más bien de reinterpretarla en orden a comprender de otra manera su continuidad? Para responder a estas preguntas, en esta obra se va a tomar muy en cuenta la tesis de Jameson que considera la posmodernidad como la lógica cultural del capitalismo tardío. En efecto, habremos de ver cómo el tránsito a una nueva fase del capitalismo, una fase denominada por algunos 'capitalismo postfordista' o 'capitalismo post-industrial', tiene mucho que ver con las derivas culturales de eso que se ha dado en llamar posmodernidad. Siguiendo la estela de pensadores como David Harvey se habrá de comprobar cómo la estética posmoderna tiene una relación genética con el tránsito hacia un régimen de acumulación capitalista más flexible, y cómo toda la constelación de atributos adscritos a un supuesto 'pensamiento posmoderno' está estrechamente vinculada al devenir de una sociedad reducida cada vez más a un proceso económico de hiper-consumo.

During the last decades, zombies and the horror tropes that surround them have become a staple of American popular culture, making them a familiar presence in movies, TV series, graphic novels, and video games. From their Caribbean folklore origins, the undead have evolved into potent metaphors for social issues and cultural anxieties. On the surface, much of these creatures’ appeal can be understood as the modern-day embodiment of age-old apocalyptic belief systems, alongside which morally meaningful identities can be identified within a value order that is increasingly perceived as disorienting and nihilistic. The resurgence of apocalyptic narratives and desires becomes visible in phenomena such as millennialism and catastrophe culture that embrace zombies as instruments to purge a seemingly unhinged social order. Perplexingly, zombies at the same time point towards the opposite of this longing for narrative stability and new beginnings. In academic discourses, they have long-since turned into avatars of the postmodern inclination to dissolve dichotomous ideologies and semantic superstructures. Here, the undead have been metaphorically conjured to lay bare a plethora of issue ranging from intertextuality and irony to revisions of race and otherness or the subversion of traditional narrative strategies. This article emphasizes the rarely recognized tension between apocalyptic desires to construct meaning and resurrect narrative stability through monstrous bodies on the one hand, and so-called postmodern interpretations that utilize the same figure to deconstruct existing convictions. Shining a spotlight on this supposed opposition, the article proposes that zombies amalgamate apocalyptic and postmodern mindsets by assuming the role as pop-cultural mediators that bridge the gap between increasingly polarized epistemologies in American society.

Article based on paper presented as part of Panel 24: ‘Looting, Refusing, Negating, Embodying’ ‘Critical Refusals’ Fourth Biennal Conference of the International Herbert Marcuse Society, University of Pennsylvania, 27-29th October 2011

http://www.pdcnet.org/radphilrev/content/radphilrev_2013_0016_0001_0375_0385

http://web.asc.upenn.edu/news/Critical_Refusals_Conference.pdf

Il saggio rilegge alcuni elementi stilistici e strutturali di Petrolio, il grande romanzo postumo di Pier Paolo Pasolini. Riallacciandosi ai più accreditati sforzi ermeneutici sul testo, il lavoro enfatizza il ruolo della contaminazione intermediale all'interno dell'o-pera, in quanto elemento chiave per comprenderne la singolare forma, traendo spunto dai saggi teorici dello stesso Pasolini in Empirismo eretico. È proprio il campo dei media e dell'intermedialità, infatti, a essere storicamente ciò da cui emergono i problemi complessi che Petrolio cerca di interpretare, in netta opposizione ad altri esiti della letteratura postmoderna coeva.

The essay rereads some stylistic and structural elements of Petrolio, the great posthumous novel by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Referring to the most successful hermeneutic efforts on the text, the work emphasizes the role of contamination between media within the novel, as a key element to understand its singular form, drawing inspiration from Pasolini's theoretical essays in Empirismo Eretico. In fact, it is precisely the field of the media and of intermediality where historically all the complex problems that Petrolio tried to address were emerging, in clear opposition with other outcomes of the contemporary postmodern literature. Parole chiave |

Mark Fisher’s assertion that Kurt Cobain’s death in 1994 “confirmed the defeat and incorporation of rock’s utopian and promethean ambitions” is a remarkable claim, that if true, acts as a pessimistic conclusion of arguably one of the 20th century’s most iconic cultural movements, that in many ways defined the subversive counter cultural spirit of post war popular culture. Rock music’s historical placement, from its embryonic phase in the 1960s, to Fisher’s argued final conclusion in the 1990s, coincides near perfectly with a profound transitional period between two ages of capitalism: Fordism and late capitalism. In this investigation, I will attempt to confirm the tenability of Mark Fisher’s claim, by attempting to chart the evolution of rock music through this period of dramatic transition in capitalist society. However, I will not merely define rock music as a musical style; in terms of its stylistic characteristics, methodologies and milestone events; but in the terms that rock music was a manifestation of and an agent of change within the ideological transformations occurring in capitalist society in this period. In adopting this methodology of analysis, alongside merely attempting to confirm the tenability of Fisher’s claims, this investigation will create an intriguing new perspective, in which rock music can act as a prism via which the ideological transformations that have occurred in capitalist society over the last 50 years can be observed and understood, as well as more specifically providing a clearer insight into the relationship between popular culture, counter culture and cultural production to these ideological transformations.

Discussion of Jameson's "Postmodernism and Consumer Society" and its relationship to Post-postmodernism. Includes a disucssion of my own artwork in relationship to ideas of pastiche and Information Age thinking (this is a modular component of my thesis).

"Fredric Jameson's compelling essay “Postmodernism and Consumer Society” navigates uncertain conceptual waters, outlining the primary components of Postmodernism as a periodizing concept and related consumer behavioral response. General recognition of “Postmodernism” itself, as both term and movement, is heavily debatable, even among Jameson's contemporaries—which complicates his model of it as cultural phenomenon and rewrite of Modernism.  For Jameson, Postmodernism functions across multiple fields, reacting against the canon by effacing boundaries between the elite and populous as it parallels an emerging social environment rooted in consumerism, media and spectacle. He identifies the use of pastiche and historicity, which (almost negatively) reflect a growing cultural dismissal of time, an escapist lack of engagement in the present moment and a humorless absorption of older styles. The great dilemma of the postmodern artist, then, is the question of what to do if everything has been done before. For Jameson, the answer is producing art about art (and the failings of art)—but he indirectly reveals a farther-reaching answer: pastiche actually functions as an interdisciplinary tool—a mode of remix culture that emphasizes context and arrangement over concern for style and stylistic “originality.” Pastiche is not a failure of Postmodernism, but a grapple with historicity itself—a way of acknowledging the death of styles  in favor of fresh contextual arrangement. As such, Jameson's argument is still relevant to contemporary Post-Postmodern artists as we position ourselves in the 21st century. By investigating Jameson's assertion of pastiche and schizophrenic time in Postmodernism, limitations in his argument  segue into newer modes of thinking and production..."

El presente trabajo analiza la creación de un nuevo tipo de paradigma en la crítica cinematográfica argentina en manos de la revista El Amante. Cine entre los años 1991 y 1995. Se pregunta cuáles son las características principales de dicha crítica y si tiene alguna relación con el contexto social, político y económico del país. Para ello se realiza un repaso del concepto de posmodernidad y de sus principales características; un análisis de los principales aspectos materiales de la revista; una comparación con otras publicaciones precedentes; y un análisis de la lectura que la revista hace sobre su propia época. A través de estos pasos se llega a la conclusión de que la crítica cinematográfica que realiza El Amante se trata de una posmoderna y que dicho discurso se encuentra fuertemente entrelazado con la realidad política y social del país durante la década.

Mapolar, özgün bir seçki, özel bir estetik ardında değildir… Bitmez tükenmez hikâyeler anlatan bir meddah gibidir… Dinlediği hikâyelerden yola çıkarak gazetelerde tefrika edilecek uzun anlatılar kurar. Yapıtları roman olarak adlandırılıyor olsa da, Batılı anlamda romanlara özgü bir yazar kurgusu, özgün birer metin olma iddiasını taşımaz; toprağında yaşadığı, suyunu içtiği, havasını soluduğu bir kültürün sözlü anlatı geleneğini yazıya dökme ve bir yandan da kendince yeni boyutlar kazandırma uğraşı içindedir…
Gazete tefrikalarına dönüşen, sonradan da roman olarak basılan uzun hikâyelere, Mapolar’ın yazma iştahı, okuru serüven burgaçlarına çekme arzusu damgasını vurur. Yazılanlar çoğu kez dönülüp okunmadan yayınlanmıştır belki de… Kendini denetleme, yazdıklarını kontrol edip düzeltme yerine, yeni anlatılar bulma, yeni olay patlamalarıyla heyecan içeriğini çoğaltma çabası içindedir. Böylesi bir yol seçmiş olmasında sürekli yazım gücü isteyen gazete tefrikacılığının, dergi köşe yazarlıklarının da itkisi vardır elbette…

Anderson (1992) ve Jameson' da (1991) izleri sürülebilecek bir kapitalist mo-dernleşme ve postmodernizm teorisine göre, yirminci yüzyıl başlarında rastla-nan Avrupalı estetik modernizmin olanaklılık koşulu özgün bir zaman deneyi-mi olarak "eşzamanlı olmayanın eşzamanlılığı"dır. Bu yazı, bu fikrin sonuçlarını Türkiye' deki bazı yakın dönem modernist metinler üzerinden takip ediyor. Türkiyeli örneklerin de bu teorisyenlerin tanımladığına benzer bir zamansallık koşuluna sahip oldukları iddia edilebilir ama postmodernliğe estetik cevaplar üretmek zorunda kalmış olmaları da onları farklı kılar. Ayhan Geçgin'in mo-dernizminin bu süreçte büründüğü biçimin, Laura Quinney'nin (1999) "kayıp poetikası" olarak adlandırdığı estetik rejimin bir örneği olduğunu göstermek mümkündür.

Una delle tendenze sotterranee più interessanti che sembrano emergere nel pensiero filosofico del nostro tempo è il fatto che, lentamente ma progressivamente, le idee tendano a imporsi da sole, proprio perché, è ormai chiaro a tutti, il nostro pensiero è messo alle strette dopo troppi anni di un'autoreferenzialità sofisticata, raffinata, talvolta addirittura sublimata, ma forse poco utile allo scopo. Se viviamo in un tempo che, disperatamente, ha bisogno di nuove categorie per essere compreso uno autore che, credo, non andrebbe lasciato fuori dal nostro retaggio collettivo è Antonio Gramsci. Ma le valutazioni soggettive, su questo, contano relativamente: proprio perché il pensiero, come dicevo, si impone sempre più da sè, grazie alla capacità che ha di essere interprete del nostro mondo. E così scopriamo che Gramsci è, nell'ambito della critica letteraria e della cultura, uno degli autori italiani più letti e interrogati in Occidente. Ci sono gli studi culturali, certamente, che hanno fatto loro il pensiero di quest'autore da tempo, ma anche una nuova concezione critica e sovranazionale che, lentamente ma con decisione, si sta facendo strada nella sensibilità di sinistra: penso ai vari movimenti legati a Varoufakis, Jeremy Corbin e Bernie Sanders. Ma il richiamo quanto più possibile urgente all'attualità di Antonio Gramsci del resto è la rivolta in corso in queste ore sugli Champs Elysées. Le violenze di strada che avvengono in questi istanti sono il segno di una Francia divisa che riemerge sotto l'esilissima superfice di una ricostruzione socialdemocratica che, sotto la "guida" di Macron, non è altro che l'ennesimo esempio, nell'Occidente degli ultimi anni, di conflitti sociali deprivati di una narrazione ideologica autentica, che sia espressione degli interessi concreti delle persone che la abbracciano. Quando il pensiero e la storia si muovono, il lavoro intellettuale non può far altro che seguirli; e tuttavia non può farlo passivamente, nel senso gramsciano del termine: deve cercare di capire perché Gramsci è così presente nel nostro Zeitgeist, ritessere le complesse fila di una domanda di pensiero che viene da più parti e cercare di darvi risposta. Ma, nel far ciò, sono due gli errori che dobbiamo assolutamente evitare. Il primo: dobbiamo evitare di abdicare alle istanze di cambiamento più profonde nella nostra coscienza, perché esse sono il nucleo ideologico che fa da propulsione alla nostra attività intellettuale, tiene insieme in un modo irrequieto e vivo il passato della nostra formazione intellettuale e il futuro che da essa riusciamo ad immaginare. Il secondo errore che, fatalmente, bisogna evitare di commettere, è quello di assimilare l'oggetto della nostra indagine alle nostre categorie intellettuali, trasformando il nostro desiderio di cambiamento in una strana forma di cecità. In un tempo in cui si marginalizza radicalmente l'ideologia dal dibattito politico, chiunque voglia fare una critica militante deve avere, insomma, l'intelligenza di pensare alla propria ideologia come a qualcosa di simile al super-io di Freud, una formazione di compromesso sempre e costantemente in bilico fra la più nobile tensione ideale-necessaria, con la propria capacità di vedere oltre, per trasformare il presente-e la schiavitù di un imperativo irrazionale. È con questo spirito che consiglio vivamente la lettura de Il presente di Gramsci (Galaad), una bella raccolta curata da Mimmo Cangiano, Paolo Desogus, Marco Gatto e Lorenzo Mari che, mi sembra, hanno fatto esattamente quel che bisognava: più che dimostrare l'attualità del pensiero gramsciano, hanno provato a farla emergere dalle cose stesse, senza feticismi. Si comincia con un lungo saggio di Marco Gatto, che distende sull'intera raccolta un senso di prospettiva e affonda le sue radici fra l'altro nelle intuizioni critiche di Frederic Jameson e Gilles Lispensky, con le quali Gatto si preoccupa di separare la posizione critica e militante dei due autori dalle molte riletture della modernità elaborate dal postmodernismo: pagina 1 / 4

This essay is the introduction to the special issue "Control Societies I: Media, Culture, Technology," ed. by Simon Schleusener (Freie Universität Berlin) and Florian Cord (TU Dresden). The special issue is dedicated to Gilles Deleuze's influential "Postscript on Control Societies," thirty years after its initial publication.
https://coilsoftheserpent.org/category/issue-5-2020/
https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bsz:15-qucosa2-715962

Ondokuzuncu yüzyılın belki en büyük düşünürü olan Hegel de geride bıraktığı “ölümü” ve yapıtlarıyla yeniden anlamlandırılmak üzere bizi aynı büyüklükte karartan bir gölge düşürüyor üzerimize. Olgulara, dile, varlığa ve düşünmeye dönüş çağrılarıyla dolu yirminci yüzyıl felsefi bakımdan bir “dönüş”ler çağı olarak kapandı. Şimdi yirmibirinci yüzyılın başında, felsefi açıdan bakıldığında, daha en başta tarihsel bakımdan geçmiş çağların günümüze mirasının dökümü yapılmaya başlandığında bu işin nasıl yapılabileceğine dair ilk ve en büyük işareti “düşünce”nin de bir tarihi olduğunu bildiren Hegel vermektedir.

The essay rereads some stylistic and structural elements of Petrolio, the great posthumous novel by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Referring to the most successful hermeneutic efforts on the text, the work emphasizes the role of contamination between media within the novel, as a key element to understand its singular form, drawing inspiration from Pasolini’s theoretical essays in Empirismo Eretico. In fact, it is precisely the field of the media and of intermediality where historically all the complex problems that Petrolio tried to address were emerging, in clear opposition with other outcomes of the contemporary postmodern literature.

During the summer of 2019, I was a Fulbright research scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago, analyzing the relationship between literary labor and the market in American modernist poetry. My research was framed to a large extent by the insights developed by UIC professor Nicholas Brown, in particularly in his essay “The Work of Art in the Age of its Real Subsumption under Capital” (nonsite.org) which was to be included in his latest book Autonomy: The Social Ontology of Art Under Capitalism (Duke 2019). As soon as I settled in Chicago we met up and started our conversation on the topics of autonomy of art, commodification, totality, artistic labor, and the relevance of Marxism in literary studies today, which was developed in the following months through an email correspondence into this interview.

En el presente trabajo pretendemos abordar una problemática que tiene que ver con aquella hipótesis, erigida en corazón de la posmodernidad, que sostenía la radical imposibilidad de construir metarrelatos capaces de hallar un sentido último del devenir histórico. Como corolario de lo anterior, habríamos asistido a una radical deslegitimación del marxismo como teoría capaz de proveer verdadero conocimiento histórico y, por ende, también habría quedado desacreditado como programa político de emancipación. Ubicado como uno de los grandes relatos de la modernidad europea que ya no tendrían nada que ofrecer, y defenestrado como ideología salvífica, el marxismo debe sin embargo dialogar con esa misma crítica para mostrar que todavía tiene legítima potencia a la hora de narrar con sentido (pero también con validez epistémica) algunas de las más determinantes subyugaciones que atenazan a buena parte de la humanidad.

At the conceptual core of any capitalist enterprise, whether what we’re talking about is a Thailand clinic devoted to sex-reassignment surgery, an agency in India that caters to American couples seeking in the market for bargain baby-making, or an arms dealer engaged in the politics of profit, is its opportunism.

In order to be competitive, such an enterprise must not only seek out opportunities to create demand but must be in a position to produce the products or services that satisfy it at the lowest possible cost.

As we’ve seen, however, an enterprise that may be a boon for some may also be a source of the most debilitating of oppression for others. Even in its most ostensibly humane instantiations, such as the microcredit programs of the Grameen Bank, the pressure to maximize profits at the expense of other values (moral, aesthetic, environmental, familial) finds itself in conflict with the welfare of the people it may aim to serve, but of whom it cannot fail to take advantage. Because competition is necessary to the growth of any capitalist enterprise, it’s unsurprising that a system of exchange evolved from local trade to national corporations to global enterprises recognized by the United Nations as virtual nation states exploits whatever divisions of labor are made available to it through existent institutions. What, then, determines these divisions? Of what exactly does the capitalist take advantage?

In short, I think the answer to this question is “difference. Difference functions both as the conceptual instrument for determining the exploitable and as that which must be promoted as the “cool” of a now purchasable individuality, and it must be able to be vanquished as the nemesis of mass marketing—at least insofar as it might tempt some to (try to) opt out. The consequences of this transformation of individual differences into “difference” are, however, arguably devastating.

From a socialist feminist point of view, the conversion of praxis-labor into wage-labor not only dehumanizes but depersonifies producers/consumers; it effectively replaces human beings with “human beings” in the sense that it replaces praxis with the consumption of products.

Perhaps, then, the best strategy for challenging such a system is to raise to consciousness the conflict between the production of sameness and the desire for individuality, to lay bare the contradiction between being a worker/consumer and being a unique individual.

This, however, is a task far easier said than done. After all, it would hardly be in the interest of the capitalist to encourage critical consciousness of such a contradiction. Her/his task is to make of culture an industry, to replace the desire for individual expression with one that requires the consumption of products to demonstrate “uniqueness”—a uniqueness defined not by, say, an approach to life or a variety of artistic creation, but by the capacity to display and dispose of wealth.

The article examines the genre of conspiracy crime as one of the most popular types of popular fiction and serial production. Conspiracy discourse engenders a plethora of series and novels that endeavor to represent the age of globalization. The balance between facts and fiction is significant for the conspiracy theory since there occurs an illusion of eliminating boundaries between the fictional world and everyday reality. It is through creating the so-called “reality effect” that conspiracy theory is successfully placed within the general process of forging a historical past and delegitimizing the status of scientific knowledge. Each new reconstruction of History starts from a point where there is a crack in the chain of knowledge and where memory is erased. The genre of conspiracy embeds certain “seriality” and possible continuity similar to a paranoiac’s narrative that can be endless and contenting conspiracy continually
Амирян Т. Конспирологическая серия / Логос №1 (101) - М., 2014. - Сс. 231-250.

Er(r)go,
wycieczka do ,,jądra naszego bytu”. Psychoanaliza – zarazem konfesjonałi mównica, ,,spowiedź z grzechów nieznanych". Kanapa, sofa z masażem dlanieświadomości.

Podmiot, który nie wie raczej niż wie. Ciało i grzeszność – podmiot nie na sumienie ale na ciało skazany; intymność i ekstymność, ,,wiedza-niewiedziana" – fantazmatyczna prawda podmiotu, która nie jest wiedzą, ułomność świadomości, nieprzejrzyste wnętrze człowieka. Realne – porządek symboliczny potyka się o samego siebie. Ja i Nad-ja, intymna obcość, Unbewusstsein, czyliInny w nas, nasz własny, inny od Innego innego. Dwa oblicza podmiotu: podmiot znaczącego oraz podmiot jouissance (jalouissance?) a może wiedza jakoniedostatek jouissance? Język a libido czyli znaczące a jouissance.

Jouissance. Jouissance, ale która: mierna, Inna czy falliczna? Bóg jako Inna jouissance? Wibracje Obietnicy.

Przedział między ludzkim i zwierzęcym, rozumnością a przedrozumnością; język, racjonalność i popęd czy popędy w splocie z językiem? Czy związki genitalne są altruistyczne, a związki analne i oralne egoistyczne? W końcu fallus. Jedyne Znaczące pozbawione znaczonego. Fallus, czyli penis jako wydarzenie (symbolicznej) erekcji. ,,Dla świętego Augustyna fakt, iż erekcji nie kontroluje wolna wola, to znamię grzechu pierworodnego". Groźba kastracji wymierzona w penisa, w ten przygodny organ, przekształca go w fallusa. FALLUS.

Dalsze pytania. Cogito czy brak i łaknienie, objet petit a? Etyka pragnienia? Gdzie odwieczna fantazja jedności? Świat jako całość czy ślizgawka powstędze Moebiusa? A może $, a, i(a), A, ($◊a), ($◊D), S(Ⱥ), Φ?

FREUD, LACAN, ale i szersze konteksty. Kapłani i mesjasze, Bóg Prawa i Bóg Ekscesu. Jung, Klein, Nietzsche, Marks, Deleuze i Guattari, Derrida, Foucault, Agamben; ŽIŽEK, Badiou; konserwatyzm, neoliberalizm, lewica, Hollywood.

„Śmie(r)ci psychoanalizy” to numer „Er(r)go” gościnnie przygotowany przez Sławomira Masłonia. W numerze także, w antycypacjach, zapowiedź labiryntów problematyki kanadyjskiej („Er(r)go” 17 – „Klonowanie Kanady”).

Wojciech Kalaga


Er(r)go,
a trip to the “heart of our being". Psychoanalysis–both a confessional and a rostrum, a "confession of the sins unknown." A couch, a sofa, offering massage of the unconscious.

The subject who knows (not). Corporeality and sinfulness―the subject sentenced to carnality rather than conscience, intimacy and extimacy, "unknowable knowledge" – the subject's phantasmatic truth or an tin-knowledge; consciousness' disability, man's impenetrable interior. The Real―symbolic order stumbling upon itself. Ego and Superego, intimate estrangement, Unbewusstsein, the Other in me, my own other though different from the Other's other. Two faces of the subject: the subject of the signifier and the subject of jouissance (jalouissance?) Or perhaps knowledge as the lack of jouissance? Language and libido, the signifier and jouissance.

Jouissance. Jouissance, but which one: mediocre, Other of phallic? God as Other jouissance? Vibrations of a promise.

The distinction between the human and the animalistic, between reasonability and pre-reasonability; language, rationality and desire, or desires tied to language? Are genital relationships altruistic and the anal and oral ones egoistic? Finally, the phallus. The only Signifier deprived of its signified. Phallus, or simply penis as an event of (symbolic) erection. "For St. Augustine, the fact that erection is beyond the control of free will is a mark of the original sin.” The threat of castration directed at the penis, that contingent organ, transforms it into the phallus. PHALLUS.

Further questions. Cogito, or lack and craving, objet petit a? The ethics of desire? And what about the eternal phantasy of unity? The world as wholeness or a skating rink along the Mobius strip? A może $, a, i(a), A, ($◊a), ($◊D), S(Ⱥ), Φ?

FREUD, LACAN, but other contexts, too. Priests and messiahs, the God of Law and the God of Excess. Jung, Klein, Nietzsche, Marx, Deleuze and Guattari, Derrida, Foucault, Agamben; ŽIŽEK, Badiou; conservatism, neoliberalism, the left and Hollywood.

The current issue, De(ath)clines of psychoanalysis, has been prepared by guest editor Slawomir Masłoń. The issue also features anticipation of the Canadian problematics to be presented in the following volume, Er(r)go 17, Map(l)ing Canada.

Wojciech Kalaga

‘Contemporaneity ... is situated in postmodernity, when postmodernity is understood as a field of forces that are not only new and orbiting the global circuit, but are also innovative and antagonistic. To be contemporary one has to confront the end of the 1900s, the historical upheavals that characterised it, and the counterreformation happening today...’
Antonio Negri

Panel 30: Great Refusals: Refusing One Dimensionality Today

The Dialectics of Liberation in an Age of Neoliberal Capitalism

International Herbert Marcuse Society

Seventh Biennial Conference

26-28 October 2017

York University

https://marcuseconference.wordpress.com/

Taking Marx and Engels’s argument on material activity and intercourse in 'The German Ideology' as a discursive substructure, this essay focuses on the physical manifestations of ideology – namely, the image – and the ways in which these manifestations fashion ‘truth’ in the age of spectacle. In world-system theoretical works such as Fredric Jameson’s 2012 lecture 'The Aesthetics of Singularity' and David Harvey’s 1989 essay 'Time-Space Compression and the Postmodern Condition', each author accords a singular importance to the role of images in the cultural logic of what they call the postmodern condition. The production and consumption of images in the age of globalization results in a reality that is built on and around simulacra, and a society that is submerged in uncertainty, ephemerality and deception. The image is a reification of commercial and socio-economic ideologies within the capitalist world market, subsuming ontological meaning and the subject’s ability to interpret his world. By means of a comparative reading of Jameson and Harvey, it becomes clear that images of today are little more than manufactured simulacra designed to mask the ephemerality of the postmodern condition. They are abstractions that merely provide some semblance of authenticity and permanence. This argument will be explored in three parts: firstly, through an investigation into how images of mass cultural production define the parameters of social reality, ontological understanding and identity construction; secondly, through an analysis of the artificial nature of these images and how they function as simulacra; and finally, through a concluding exploration of the issue at stake in this essay: that imaging of this nature results in the authentication of deception and a culture that is sunk in its own ephemeral condition.

The more intimately involved we become with our computers, the more intense this posthuman experience must become for us, the more the ideology of "computer renewal" will overwrite the ideology of "human aging," and the more this conflict should become the subject of networked computer-human compositions.

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‘What Keeps Mankind Alive?’, the title of the 11th International Istanbul Biennial curated by the femi- nist collective What How and For Whom based in Zagreb, takes its inspiration from Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s Threepenny Opera (1928). As a number of reviewers have already pointed out, the overtly political intentions of the curators to work within the conservative framework of the biennale is ambitious and problematic but has to be applauded.1 My concern is less with the political status of art, and the didacticism some reviewers have argued is present in the biennial,2 than with the impetus behind the return to Brecht. To deploy Bertolt Brecht’s stark opposition between socialism and barbarism as the choice facing contemporary artists is also problematic in its evocation of the art and politics of the historic avant-garde as a means of addressing present conditions. The ghost of Brecht and the contemporary relevance of his ideas have been periodically raised in debates on aesthetics on the left. The implications of this history for contemporary art in the Middle East and former Socialist states of Eastern Europe is the focus of this essay.

Paper presented at 'Practicing Theory - ASCA International Workshop and Conference 2011', Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam, 2nd-4th March 2011 https://asca.uva.nl/programme/archive-conferences/asca-international-workshop-2011-practicing-theory/asca-international-workshop-2011-practicing-theory.html?1583659550967