Postmodernism, Geography, and the Social Semiotics of Space

1993 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 255-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
A P Lagopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Urban Design ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Semiotics ◽  
Humanistic Geography ◽  
The Social ◽  
Postmodern Philosophy ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One

The nucleus of postmodern philosophy and theory is derived primarily from French neostructuralist writings. The ontological foundation of such literature is the idealist rejection of the possibility of knowing reality and, as a consequence, the enclosure of the subject within the signifying universe, which in turn results in the exaltation of the signifying processes as the only social processes. The same emphasis, but through nonverbal means, is demonstrated by postmodern architectural and urban design. In geography, however, postmodernism is interpreted differently. In two recent books (by Soja and by Harvey) the postmodern era in human geography is related to the heightened importance of space for social reality and theory. But the split of geography itself between Marxist geography on the one hand, and behavioural and humanistic geography on the other, shows the pertinence of the signifying dimension for the field of geography. In this paper, it is argued that the roles of space and meaning are equally important for geography, and it is proposed that an analysis of the signifying aspect of space may be achieved through semiotics, currently the most complete and sophisticated theory of meaning and culture. The main problem for geography, which is addressed in the final section of this paper, is the integration of a renewed version of the semiotics of space with an equally renewed Marxist geography, the most powerful explanatory approach to geography we have at our disposal.

Nihilsmo, Fin de la Metafisica y Secularizacion en el Pensamiento de Nietzsche, Heidegger y Vattimo

1998 ◽  
pp. 165-172
Author(s):  
Laura Laiseca
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Death Of God ◽  
Eternal Recurrence ◽  
History Of ◽  
Postmodern Philosophy ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One

The purpose of this article is to articulate Nietzsche's criticism of morality which is centered in his experience of the death of God and the end of the subject of Modernity. Nietzsche considers nihilism as a nihilism of morality, not of metaphysics: it is morality and its history that has given rise to nihilism in the Occident. That is why Nietzsche separates himself from metaphysics as well as from morality and science, which differs from Heidegger's reasons. According to Heidegger, Nietzsche places himself in a primal position in the history of metaphysics, by which he means the consummation (Vollendung) of metaphysics' nihilism, which Heidegger tries to transcend. On the one hand, Heidegger shows us how Nietzsche consummates the Platonic philosophy by inverting its principles. On the other, Nietzsche consummates the metaphysics of subjectivity. Consequently he conceives the thought of the will of power and of the eternal recurrence as the two last forms of the metaphysical categories of essence and existence respectively. On this ground it is possible to understand Nietzsche's and Heidegger's thought as the necessary first stage in the transition to Vattimo's postmodern philosophy and his notion of secularization.

The Reform of Peking Opera in Taiwan

1974 ◽  
Vol 57 ◽  
pp. 140-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irmgard Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
Chinese Opera ◽  
Dramatic Form ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
Peking Opera ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One

Readers of this journal who, like myself, have been interested by Colin Mackerras’ article on “Chinese Opera after the Cultural Revolution (1970–72)” in The China Quarterly, No. 55, may like to have some comments on the fate of traditional Peking opera in Taiwan. There, too, there has been “reform” although not generally in such an obvious or dramatic form as on the mainland. At first sight indeed, one might think that ways in which opera is treated on the mainland and in Taiwan are completely different, with the one concentrating on opera as a weapon in the social and political struggle and the other on the development of opera as an artistic form. Nevertheless, in studying aesthetic and theatrical aspects of the changes taking place in Taiwan, which is my main academic interest in the subject, I have been struck by the fact that these can in no way be disentangled from social and political forces.

scholarly journals The significance of educational activeness among the elderly in a social and psychological context

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-75
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Marcinkiewicz-Wilk
Keyword(s):  
Information Society ◽  
Technological Progress ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Aspect ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
Critical Literature ◽  
Changing Society

Aim. The aim of this article is to show the significance of educational activeness among the elderly in the context of its adaptation to the ageing process itself (the psychological aspect), as well as to a rapidly changing society defined by technological progress (the social aspect). Method. The article has been formulated with the aid of critical literature on the subject Conclusion. Educational activeness is crucial in late adulthood. On the one hand it is an important element in allowing the elderly to adapt to a new stage of life, and on the other hand to keep up with a rapidly changing society, defined in the literature as the information society.

scholarly journals Life stories and formation of subordinate subjectivity. Note on social research in Italy by Danilo Montaldi

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 181
Author(s):  
Silvano Calvetto
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Life Stories ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Commitment ◽  
The Social ◽  
Pedagogical Aspect ◽  
The One

The social research performed by Danilo Montaldi (1929-1975) represented an interpretation of great interest in understanding the transformations of neo-capitalism between the 1950’s and 1960’s. In the ambit of a very critical militancy towards the traditional forms of political participation, his attention to subordinates is marked, in our view, by a significant pedagogical aspect. On the one hand, in fact, he focuses on the political and social processes through which subordinate subjectivity is formed, with particular regard to the role played by the institutions, while on the other hand, he examines strategies with regard to his own emancipation from that condition of oppression, based on the idea of education intended as liberation. Where the educational commitment and political commitment merge in the same project of reconstruction of society, looking beyond the drifts of neocapitalism in view of a world capable of recognizing the rights of all respecting each other’s differences. This, as has been observed by several commentators, seems to be the most significant legacy of Danilo Montaldi’s intellectual commitment.

A lacanian reply to Marx : the necessity of topology in the formation of the social

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Lawrence Loiseau
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
University Of Missouri ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Link ◽  
True Source ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
The University ◽  
Insight Into

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] This study addresses Lacan's comments on Marx. While much has been done towards reading Marx with psychoanalysis generally, little had has been done to unpack the meaning and extent of Lacan's own statements on Marx. For example, while Lacanian Marxists like Slavoj Zizek have wielded Lacan to great effect in a critique of post-structuralism, they have neglected the full meaning and complexity of Lacan's own stance. What is argued thereby is that Zizek not only omits the discrete knowledge within Lacan's commentary, but misses what I describe as a Lacan's theory of the social. On the one hand, it is commonly known in Lacanian thought that discourse is responsible for making the subject. On the other hand, what is less known is that Lacan defined discourse as that which makes a social link which, in contrast with Marxist thought, introduces a certain affect and materialism premised on discourse itself, commonly known, but also for providing the underlying strata of topology (namely, paradox) requisite for making any social link between subjects. Although less commonly known, we can nevertheless gain new insight into Marx. On the one hand, Lacan concedes Marx's underlying structuralism. On the other hand, Marx fails to see the true source of discourse's origins, the real itself, and consequently fails to see the true efficacy of discourse. He fails to see how discourse, although negative, stands as entirely positive and material in its distinctive effects. Discourse negotiates subjects and their inimitable objects of desire in this singularity itself. This is where true production lies; it is that which precedes any social or economic theory, which are otherwise premised on reality. Lacan rejects reality.

scholarly journals Beuys� Chair and the Violence of the Other: Toward a Theory of Aesth-ethics

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 146
Author(s):  
Dror Pimentel
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
Joseph Beuys ◽  
The Social ◽  
Phenomenological Perspective ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
The Way

Most rare are those works of art that, in a simple visual gesture, succeed in formulating a dilemma that occupies culture as a whole. Such is the artwork of Joseph Beuys entitled Fat Chair. The work�viewed mainly from a phenomenological perspective�is comprised of two elements holding a tension: a chair on the one hand, and a lump of fat placed on top of it on the other. The tension between these elements, so the article argues, manifests the tension between two types of violence: following Benjamin, these are termed �the violence of the Father� and �the violence of the Other� (or in Hebrew, �the Violence of ha-Rav�). The violence of the Father refers mainly to the violence of culture: the violence of the concept and the category from the side of the object, and the violence of the law/name of the Father from the side of the subject. The violence of the Other, transgressing distinctions between good and evil and subject and object, is the violence of the pre-cultural and the primordial, before law and language. This primal violence cannot appear in its full presence, either in culture in general or in art in particular; it can only appear as a leftover and a spectre. Beuys' artwork manifests this aporetic appearance in a paradigmatic manner, and in this sense, it could serve as a paradigm for the possibility of hospitality in art. In fact, the article opens the way for an argument of a larger scale, according to which art, and not the social sphere�as Levinas maintains�should be viewed as the sphere of the� hospitality of the entirely Other. The study of such hospitality in art should therefore be termed �Aesth-ethics.�

scholarly journals Postmodernism: between the subject and absolutely external

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Elina Borisovna Minnullina
Keyword(s):  
Object Oriented ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
The Other ◽  
Philosophical Approach ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
Object Oriented Ontology ◽  
Symbolic Identity ◽  
Ethical Universalism

The subject of this research is the contours of philosophical reasoning on the authenticity of human existence from the perspective of postmodernism. Comparison is conducted on interpretations of subjectivity in different philosophical discourses. The article examines the postmodern stage as an inversion of values and traditions of modernism and postmodernism in the context of new realities of the digital virtualized society. The author reviews the postmodern inter-worldliness of a subject and externalized selfness of a human, who on the one hand seeks self-identification, and om the other – avoids it, falling under the sway of symbolic identity, determined by the social institutions, norms and standards. Research methodology is based on the historical-philosophical approach, phenomenology of social, existential analytics and object-oriented ontology. A conclusion is made that the situation of s postmodern human is reflected in transition from the idea of diluting metanarrative to ethical universalism, from the regression of the philosophy of identity to object-oriented ontology, from skepticism to sincerity, from ironic sensibility of postmodernism to aesthetic experiencing of the tragic, from the power of text to metaphoric access to reality.

scholarly journals Free and freed Afro-descendants and political equality in Portuguese America.Change of status, slavery and Atlantic perspective (1750-1840)

Almanack ◽  
2015 ◽  
pp. 571-632
Author(s):  
Luiz Geraldo Silva
Keyword(s):  
Formation Process ◽  
Social Group ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Social Representation ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Equality ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
Do So

Abstract I propose in this article that free and freed Afro-descendants of three colonial empires of the modern era, the Spanish, the Portuguese and the French, have developed differentiated demands in different procedural steps: the ones that aimed privileges during the old or oligarchic type society, and the ones which demanded political and civil equality during the formation process of the democratic and representative type society. I analyze this aspect from connection plans, structural regularities and recurrences that suggest that the social position of those individuals and their social group in the referred colonial empires is consequence, on the one hand, of diachronic aspects relating to slavery and, on the other hand, synchronous social processes, own to the specific temporality of the 18th and 19th Centuries, such as the transition from one to another kind of society. To do so, I use concepts drawn from sociology and anthropology, such as the social representation and the freedom-slavery continuum.

scholarly journals Seksualność osób niepełnosprawnych

2008 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 213-226
Author(s):  
Antonina Ostrowska
Keyword(s):  
Difficult Problem ◽  
The Other ◽  
Personal Relationships ◽  
Sexual Life ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Disabled ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One

The liberalisation of attitudes to sex on the one hand and the increased tolerance and acceptance of our society to the needs of the disabled on the other, provides an opportunity to articulate the problems faced by the disabled with respect to sex. However, little is said on the subject in Poland and the main way in which society views the disabled – or would like to view them – is as asexual objects which have no sensual needs. The unwillingness to face a difficult problem often deprives the disabled of the opportunity to experience intimate experiences and inter-personal relationships. The author attempts to discover what chances our disabled have of a satisfying sexual life and where the social sources of the difficulties experienced lie.

scholarly journals Resistance: An Arendtian Reading of Solidarity and Friendship in Foucault

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Liesbeth Schoonheim
Keyword(s):  
Social Processes ◽  
The Other ◽  
Comprehensive Account ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Transnational Solidarity ◽  
Lgbt Movement ◽  
Late Modern

Recent scholarship has firmly established the similarities between Arendt and Foucault, in particular with regard to the dangers of late-modern social processes. Yet, few have compared their accounts of resistance. This paper argues that although Foucault offers the more comprehensive account, it omits the encounter with the other as unique and unfathomable, which is central to Arendt’s. This omission is particularly striking given the authors’ shared belief that the danger of ‘the social’ and ‘governmentality’ lies in atomizing individuals and barring the development of a singular style of being, and their allusion to friendship and solidarity as sites of resistance. Drawing on Arendt, I show how Foucault restricts his thematization of solidarity and friendship to a reflexive praxis of the subject on her own limits, and argue instead for the relational dimension of resistance. I start by reconstructing their converging analysis of biological racism. I then continue with a discussion of resistance in Arendt, which she develops in response to the Shoah. More specifically, she provides a concept of solidarity and friendship that I draw on to extend Foucault’s analysis of the transnational solidarity among the governed in fighting for their rights vis-à-vis their governments; and of friendship in the context of his interrogation of the LGBT-movement.

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