A game, just like social interaction, implies a specific set of rules that all participants must obey. However, the setting of strict rules and their implementation can destroy the fun of playing, because a game is also frivolous and relaxed fun. Similarly, when it comes to social interaction. It also needs a particular space where every move is not predetermined. I want to argue that the contemporary crisis of social interaction comes among other things from the fact that as 'postmodern machines' we have lost in our everyday social communication what characterizes a 'good game' - frivolity and freedom.
The study focuses on the issues of the end of postmodernism in relation to changes and trends in contemporary art and theory. The author tries to approach what comes after postmodernism using several various contemporary theoretical concepts by Alan Kirby, Jeffrey T. Nealon and Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker. The author then relates these concepts to novels of contemporary French writer Michel Houellebecq. Finding the connections to the concepts of intensification and comodification, as well as New Romanticism, author confirms that Houellebecq is a writer, who cannot be reliably classified as postmodern author, but rather the author of era of transition.
The aim of the paper was to examine how the art historian topic of mannerism has been constructed in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the former Soviet bloc. In the case of Czech art history a discourse on the subject was almost entirely conditioned by the local specifics of art history and cultural traditions. The study follows chronologically major authors and their interpretation of mannerism (Max Dvořák, Jaromír Neumann, Eliška Fučíková, Pavel Preiss).
Contemporary culture is characterized by a variety of definitions of man. This indicates, on the one hand, the multidimensional and multifaceted character of the truth about man, and on the other, leads to quite considerable confusion in the answer to the question: who is man? It seems that the basic perspective for presenting the situation, in which contemporary man has found himself is determined by postmodernism and the life style it offers. Although the question of postmodernism does not exhaust all the complex range of important problems of the modern world, one has to realize that its ideas – especially now, in the era of electronic communications – have spread and are present in all the world, assuming a more and more global character. In the postmodernist world the integral vision of man is often substituted by partial definitions that reduce man to “something” inside man. The occurring changes assume such dramatic forms that they are defined as “anthropological catastrophe”. The so-called new cultural model of man who takes a radically new attitude towards himself, toward another man, and ultimately also towards God appears from them. Postmodernism questions subjectivity and transcendence of the human person, whereby it contributes to destruction of morality. This current, destroying proper relations between freedom and truth in man, is situated in the area of modern forms of the basic anthropological error.
In this article the author attempts to describe the postmodernist’s motifs used by Thomas Pynchon in his novels. Typical/characteristic postmodernist’s motifs are discussed in this paper: the focus on a plot, the reference to the pop culture/pop literature, the emphasis on the fictionality/artificiality, the “black humour”, the postmodernist’s play (pastiche, parody, imitation), the insertion of the elements of surrealism. The author of this article embarks on interpretation of this motifs consideration for intentions of Thomas Pynchon, this means, this interpretation is focused on entropy category.
The article deals with relations between modernism and postmodernism in large cultural and historical framework. Postmodernism here is not understand as continuation or as negation of modernism, but as a 'jin jang' energy, fertilizes each other, rises and fades out together. Author does not work with notions postmodernism and modernism as with cultural-sociable phenomenon typical for Euro-American society, but as an opposition of understanding of those phenomenon in strictly territorial determination. It is not territorial phenomenon but historical phenomenon determined by interactions between East and West. Author uses to describe postmodern situation in European literatures with term 'change of the rules of the game' as deviation of European literature from genre-typological agreements. Today this change manifests in certain syncretism and fictional autobiography of the huge amount of the European literatures, influenced by Eastern poetic and semantic structures, and also by the Nonwestern philosophical tradition.
The study analyses the metamorphoses of the phenomenon of religion at the secular age. It analyses more precisely the intensifying process of the individualization of religion. It is based on the concept of the non-existent secularization as metanarrative. Post-modern society has been undergoing extensive secularization on the one hand but on the other hand religion has been experiencing resurgence within the public arena (de-privatization of religion). New cults engaging in de-traditionalization and deinstitutionalization are being formed; faith is experiencing deregulation, and religious symbols and various levels of transcendence are invoked applying liberal logic. Deregulated and liberally chosen religious approaches epitomize the particular dialectics of individualization and de-individualization, i. e. they represent an attempt at a parallel individual and societal spiritual metamorphosis.
The article concerns the problem of the crisis of Utopia. Many philosophers and social scientists speak about 'the death of Utopia'. This opinion is closely related to the theory of 'the end of ideology', which was very popular after World War II. Researchers often show that great projects envisaging a radical transformation of society have revealed their destructive power. Moreover, contemporary culture, and especially post-modernist philosophy place emphasis on the temporariness, instability and 'liquidity' of the scheme of social life. So they leave no room for the constitutive elements of Utopian thinking: the overall and enduring projects of the construction of a perfect social order. The article poses the basic question: are Utopian ideas completely absent from the post-modernist vision of society, or do those ideas assume a different character? The author shows some elements of Utopian thinking existing at the level of individual culture. Utopia in its traditional sense has completely disappeared. This does not mean, however, that there is no form of Utopian reflection in contemporary post-modernist society. It appears in a completely new form: the search for a perfect social order has been replaced by a multitude of various ways of looking for a perfect life in the individual dimension.
The author diagnoses the condition of the humanities today, referring to the conclusions of its avantgarde movements, mainly postmodernism. The loss within these movements of the basic epistemological categories — such as objectivity, reality, truth, experience or symbol — causes a referential break between language and being. This state of affairs gives rise to research controversies and thought aberrations that undermine the authority of the humanities and the sense of their practice. These controversies are by no means an innovation of our times. They appeared on numerous occasions in the history of thought and — speaking more broadly — culture, with the “monastic” (experimental) style and the “qualitative” (speculative) style marking their ascendancy or descent to the scholarly underworld with greater or lesser force. What undoubtedly characterises the humanities today is the extent to which obvious cognitive absurdities masquerading as science throw theirweight around, absurdities stemming from seemingly innocent premises, such as the use of inventiveness, paralogy, narrativeness, etc. in research. Their worldview-related consequences leading through tolerance to relativism lead to a ban on the application of axiological procedures and on the reference of a worked-out conceptuality to extra-linguistic reality. This turns out to be dangerous not only to cognition as such but also to the sense of human existence. That is why a return to the monastic style and, as part of it, essential cognition and practices of presence (e.g. directness of experience, the so-called “ontological call” not being ignored by the scholar) based on symbolic-spiritual exercises bringing to mind the ancient idea of humanitas and the horizon of universal values, can lend support to the crisis-ridden humanities and humanists.
'Slucaj Harms', a short story written by Dubravka Ugresic is an example of postmodern realization of an old and having its own traditional rules epistolary novel. There are two versions of the story. One appeared as the afterword to Ugresic's translation of short stories by Daniil Charms, the second version was published thirteen years later in a collection 'Ziivot je bajka'. Both versions have a common main character, and sender of the letters, crazy translator Vodka U, who under the influence of Charms' short stories begins to imitate his style and adopts his personality. In this pervasive way, Ugresic realizes Barthes' 'death of the author' idea and plays with (un)originality. She raises questions about copying and plagiarism. Intertextual reading of the story leads to Russian avant-garde, especially to the fathers of Oberia school, of which Charms was a member.
Role-Playing Game (RPG) has existed for 40 years and yet they are hardly recognized in Polish popular culture. The author points out the dual character of playing such games: an inherent tension between “playing a game” and “role-playing”, or between following the game system rules laid down in a book and trying to succeed in randomized situations on the one hand and assuming a role and entering into the character being played on the other. Next, attention is drawn to a certain similarity between entering into a role in an RPG and playing a role in a creative drama, especially an educational one. With reference to storytelling games, exemplified by the Vampire: The Masquerade system, an attempt is made to show that RPGs create great opportunities for generating strong emotions connected with moral choices and ethical assessment of the player’s own actions. In this, the author perceives potential for opening towards the Other, to a cultural (and other) variety of cognitive perspectives and hierarchies of values, which is consistent with postmodern philosophy.
The article provides a short overview of the 400-year-long reception of the seminal work by the French renaissance writer. It discusses the question of Montaigne's fathering the genre of essay and the possibility of acknowledging his oeuvre as the most typical, prototype-like example of the kind emerging in the Early Modern literature. The main interest is focused on the possible reading tactics used to interpret Essais, suggested or enacted by its followers, editors, critics, researchers and by Michel de Montaigne himself. Two mainstream practices are emphasized: the more traditional, unifying and classifying, leading to an image of the Essais as a coherent, humanist manifesto; and the new one, undertaken by postmodern critics who stress the inexhaustivity, illimitability, undecidability of the essayistic text turning into a perilous territory of the combat between the deceptive self controlling the essay and the one who attempts to read it.
The term 'gender' plays a role of import in feminist(ic) discussions in Poland. However, it may trigger doubts. Approaching the pair of notions 'sex'/'gender' as mutually opposing ones misses a perspective that is most frequently assumed in gay studies where a naturalness of homoerotism is an important point of argumentation. The postmodernist thought's cultural standpoint does not provide for a possibility of coming to terms with ecology, the latter being an important challenge of the future.
The article's starting point is semantic analysis of 'atopy', the word rarely in use today, which, as combined with the notion of 'herd-ity' and 'individuality', is tasked with describing the subject's situation in a post-modern age, and in the first place, the experience of post-modernity. In our contemporary world, 'atopy' is combined with alienation; it is a non-place, close to the Derridian 'différance', as it is situated between the poles of unambiguous trenchant positions. It barely stands definite uncontested opinions leading to commonplace opinions (doxa). In the ethical sense, the experience of 'atopy' implies an ostentatious protest against the restricting influences of omnipresent mass culture (interpersonal relations, university, politics, etc.).
The author reviews the study by A. Ziebinska-Witek 'Holocaust. Problemy przedstawiania' (The Holocaust: the Problems with Presentation), which he uses as a springboard for the critique of the post-modernist reflexion over the historiography of the Holocaust. The critical arguments refer to questions of inner cohesion of the narrative constructivist approach to historical activities by the author of the study, the direct relationship between modernity as a cultural formation and the Holocaust assumed by her and the arguments advanced by her in favour of developing new ways of presenting the Holocaust, in which the question of formulating and using metaphors would play a crucial role. The author points out that the intellectual instruments of social sciences have little to do with the naive 'mimetic' or 'positivistic' approach attributed to them by the author of this study, whereas the post-modernist abandoning of the approach to the socio-historic reality as an objective structure is conducive to cognitive irrationalism, which is particularly dangerous in relation to Holocaust problems. The author juxtaposes the tradition of post-enlightenment, left-wing social critique to post-modernist 'radical' criticism of modernity (including modern science).
The thesis of the paper is that the viewed and dominant analyses of the contemporary financial crisis focus on the nature of reasons while not indicating the causes. What is proposed is the analysis of the activity of banks while using the notions and settlements of the classical political economy. This analysis shows that the crisis in question masks more fundamental feature of postmodernity. It can be expressed as a resign from the classical model of functioning the scientific knowledge and technology linked with the practical activity in favour of the model described by I. Hacking, which is known as “new experimentalism”. The nature of postmodernity then is the expansion of all kinds of the operational knowledge which is connected with a lack of continuation of the theoretical (explanatory and understanding) reflection on a piece of world in which one tries to intervene. There are various consequences of this diagnosis, including the description of postmodernity and postmodernism.
Addressing opinions of some Polish opponents of postcolonial theory and postcolonial studies regarding the alleged 'primitivism' of such theory and such studies, the article first discusses some of the most vital problems within postcolonial theory, such as: the condition of post(-)coloniality, postcolonialism as the de-centring of discourse(s) in the context of the project of 'provincialization' of Europe, and the relation between postcolonialism and postmodernism. Secondarily, the article sets postcolonialism in the Polish context by posing questions as to the prospects of the application of postcolonial theory to the re-reading of Polish literature. It concludes with the suggestion of three major fields where this application may be advantageous to Polish studies and Polish public discourse at the present time.
The paper is focused on contact points of different paradigms in the works of Samuel Beckett (1906-989). Using the example of his early experimental prose (Murphy, 1938; Watt, 1944), the paper explores Beckett's problematic position in the context of the modernist project and the transition to postmodernism: the overlapping/fading of modernist optimism (the effort to erase the gap between the language and the objects denominates) and the rise of postmodern scepticism (the fundamental inadequacy of the language.
One of the important cultural events of the second half of the 50's was the foundation and activities of the Mikulás Galanda Group and the same can be said about the non-public exhibitions of the loose circle of Bratislava's Confrontations, taking place in the beginning of the 60's. Even if their activities remained unaccompanied by the avant-garde gesture of the programmatic manifesto in the strict sense of the word, they did produce some introductory statements and, above all, significant exhibitions. H. Belting in his book, entitled 'The End of Art History', claimed that the European tradition created a historical cycle, reaching from the times of ancient Greece and Rome till modernity, using the so-called 'cultural archive'. All innovations arise outside of this archive or as its competition. The acceptance of the innovations then means acceptance into the archive of cultural memory. To understand the intent of the above mentioned cultural events we have to deal with the following questions: 1. What was the nature of the respective cultural contexts of the Mikulás Galanda Group and its foundation and the exhibitions of the Bratislava Confrontations group? 2. Can their activities be described as innovation within late modernity? 3. In what sense, intensity and extent were works of art, representing innovation, also an act of artistic experiment? Members of both groups have found themselves inside the cultural archive for a short period of time during the second half of the 60's. That means that in the years od the ideological 'thaw' they relinquished a part of their gesture of revolt in favor of the strategy of reinforcing the closeness of artistic programs of a rather wide and disparate 'cultural front'. Of course, at the end of the sixties they abruptly found themselves outside the cultural archive, which was then being painted in the protective red colour. The 'return' to the archive of cultural memory at the beginning of the 90‘s seemed to be triumphant. Yet it was impossible to engage the young generation from within the cultural archive. The young generation did not believe in the autonomy of the modern art, had no faith in tradition, seeing it only as a deposit to be cited, appropriated, for anything goes... Thus Y. Lotman's axiom: if we look forward, we see incidents, if we look backwards, we see regularities... we serve as an optical device revealing that both events of Slovak figurative art in the 50's and 60's conclude the period of late modernism, naturally in the Slovak way.
This article investigates how the hypothesis of a plural reality is manifest in the fictional world of Urmedved (Ur-bear-novel, 1999), a work by Jiri Kratochvil (b. 1940). He employs for this purpose the theoretical concept of Postmodern fiction as an expression of a style that foregrounds the ontological structure, which was developed by Brian McHale, and the model of the narrative universe, as constructed by Marie-Laure Ryan. The analysis of these premisses of Postmodern fiction is aimed chiefly at the recursive narrative structure of the novel, which enables the disruption of the ontological boundaries or the bridging of narrative levels of different ontological status. McHale's theoretical concept of the ontological dominant is explained by employing Lyotard's hypothesis about mistrust of metanarratives. Because metanarratives are based on the premiss of a single accessible reality, a single real world, this loss does not merely mean the loss of trust in ideology, but also disrupts the need for a single real world. Moreover, this need is important for us as human beings - it reveals itself to be the organization of discontinuous entities into coherent wholes (as in the case of myth). Kratochvil's Urmedved reveals the ideological abuse of the need for a single reality, while undermining this human need. Postmodern fiction may destabilize the metanarrative by laying bare the contrivedness that distances from reality an individual member of the society veiled in the metanarrative. By the very nature of the need for one real world, however, the metanarrative remains dear to us.
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