Landscape and Its Double: The Technological Sublime

ARTMargins ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-76
Author(s):  
Angela Harutyunyan
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Atomic Bomb ◽  
Oil Fields ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Historical Condition ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Technological Sublime ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Modern Experience ◽  
New Social Order

Abstract The essay inquires about the historical condition of representation in our present while invoking the modern experience of the sublime and landscape as the medium of that experience. Can the sublime as the experience of the subject confronted with the very limits of representation be extended to our late capitalist conditions of mediatized representations? What constitutes “a landscape” as the site of the experience of the sublime in late capitalism? The essay addresses these questions through a renewed discussion of Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Technological Reproducibility” (1936) by focusing on the discussion of the aura and the decay of the aura in relation to landscape. In the wake of the failure of a transformative praxis to bring about a new social order, the technologically hyper-mediated engagement of man with nature under the conditions of extreme alienation and reification results in the production of the aesthetics of destruction experienced as “supreme pleasure”. In the age of the atomic bomb and technological hyper-mediation, the singularity of the moment of the experience of the sublime is multiply reproduced. The essay ends with an analysis of Werner Herzog’s 1992 film Lessons of Darkness as an example of rendering cinematically the aura’s survival under the conditions of its decay in the burning oil fields of Kuwait. Capitalism’s “desert of the real”, as the vast desert in Kuwait in Herzog’s film, is precisely the landscape in relation to which the subject attempts to represent that which evades representation (the event, nature, capitalism, and so on).

Amplifications of Subjectivity: Aleksandr Zel’dovich’s The Target (2010)

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vlad Strukov
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Subject Formation ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Self Recognition ◽  
Key Points ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Fallen World

In the final chapter, I am concerned with the confirmation of the subject as a transcendent category in the moment of self-recognition whereby the finite identity is rejected in favour of the infinite Self. Zel’dovich’s The Target employs the sublime as a drama of subject-formation—both as a story of emergence and obliteration—whereby the limits of the self are conceived as a movement away from the self into the topography of solitary subjectivity confronted with open-ended being. The subject becomes an excess of discourse itself, that is, it centres on self-preservation which ensures infinity in stasis. The subject enters the divine state of amnesia after cataclysmic disruptions: the subject is no longer a tyrannous architect of the fallen world but a pre-eminent observer of the unfolding universe. I am particularly interested in the cinematic materiality of the sublime and the immateriality of subjectivity existing outside the temporal framework of history. I centre on issues of scale and amplification as matters of cultural vibration in a post-apocalyptic world. I conclude by demonstrating how Zel’dovich’s The Target with focuses on transient spaces and the epiphany of the universal monad. Thus, this chapter summates the key points presented in the book.

scholarly journals The Fearlessness of Vitality: Transforming the Sublime in Painting of the 2000s

2021 ◽  
pp. 48-61
Author(s):  
A.K. Florkovskaya ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Baroque Era ◽  
Natural Forms ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Technological Sublime ◽  
Tate Modern ◽  
Other World ◽  
Contemporary Painting

The article is devoted to vitality in the art of the twentieth century, interpreted as the Sublime. Vitality manifests itself in art in a very diverse way. The dramatic attitude of the world, suffering, and pain are often synonymous with “vitality” today. But the art of oblivion is also permeated with vitality, “intoxicating”, helping to overcome the horror of existence; as well as art, attaching to the metaphysical source of being. It can be defined as sacred optimism and the ancient art and the art of the avant-garde are especially vividly evidence of it. In this case vitality is in direct contact with the Sublime. Seeking out the “other world”, overcoming the limitations of the mortal and suffering world is carried out through the transformation of the Sublime. Today the subject of the Sublime in art is at the peak of research interest. This is evidenced by the project The Art of the Sublime, launched in 2008 by the Tate Modern gallery (London, UK), dedicated to the study of this phenomenon from the Baroque era to the present day. It touches upon all types of visual art from painting to installation. Research shows how evolution goes from the natural Sublime, realized in the depiction of rare and impressive natural phenomena, to the technological Sublime, which declared itself in the second half of the twentieth century, to the distinction between the Sublime and the beautiful. In modern Moscow painting, we meet the implementation of the principle of the Sublime in the work of the artist Vladimir Matveev. Relying on the sacred art of Russian icons, and the avant-garde, the color discoveries of post-impressionism and the energetic abstraction of neo-expressionism, he creates his version of the Sublime in contemporary painting. In his large-format canvases, the artist expresses the essence of the vital as the Sublime, metaphysical and mental principles with the help of rich color and sharp juxtaposi- tion of abstract and natural forms.

Frogs, Mules, and Life after Maytag

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chad Broughton
Keyword(s):  
John Rawls ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Social Roles ◽  
Working Life ◽  
Veil Of Ignorance ◽  
Fall Semester ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Working Lives ◽  
The Moment ◽  
New Social Order

It Was a cold evening in early December 2006, and Tracy Warner had just returned home from Willits Primary School. Ryan had just sung in the “Winter Wonderland” musical there. Christmas lights dotted F Street, adding some warmth to her modest block in the heart of Monmouth, Illinois. She looked like a new woman, and, judging by her smile, she knew it. The jeans and T-shirt—the uniform of the anxious, soon-to-be-unemployed line worker and picketer of a couple years earlier—had been replaced by a red V-neck sweater, silk blouse, and an aura of confidence. She was wrapping up four fall semester classes and a journalism internship at the school’s news­paper, the Western Courier. She had done this while raising Ryan and frantically looking for a job. She was set to graduate on the following Saturday from Western Illinois University. The dream Warner had dreamt a thousand times while piecing together refrigerator doors on the Maytag line for over fifteen years was coming true. “Look at this,” she said, handing me an essay. “It’s a paper on Rawls’ theory of justice. He said that we have to stand behind a veil of ignorance to make fair decisions.” Her reference fit the moment. John Rawls’ 1971 Theory of Justice poses a hypothetical world in which all societal roles are shuffled behind a metaphorical “veil of ignorance.” Behind this veil, one does not know to what role he or she will be assigned in the new social order. It is only from there, Rawls argues, can one truly judge the fairness of various social roles and relations. The CEO, for instance, would have to experience the lives of workers he put out of work. Warner still saw Ralph Hake as a great villain—and it was not just because of the factory closing and the gutting of her working life as well as the working lives of her friends and co-workers. Warner had embraced the changes as best she could, and she and Ryan would find a way to survive.

Blackism and Pan-Africanism in Post-Colonial African Literature: A Reading of Femi Osofisan’s Plays

Imbizo ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Clement Olujide Ajidahun
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Black People ◽  
African Literature ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
African Renaissance ◽  
Pan Africanism ◽  
New Social Order

This article is a thematic study of Femi Osofisan’s plays that explicitly capture the essence of blackism, nationalism and pan-Africanism as a depiction of the playwright’s ideology and his total commitment to the evolution of a new social order for black people. The article critically discusses the concepts of blackism and pan-Africanism as impelling revolutionary tools that seek to re-establish and reaffirm the primacy, identity, and personality of black people in Africa and in the diaspora. It also discusses blackism as an African renaissance ideology that campaigns for the total emancipation of black people and a convulsive rejection of all forms of colonialism, neo-colonialism, Eurocentrism, nepotism and ethnic chauvinism, while advocating an acceptance of Afrocentrism, unity and oneness of blacks as indispensable tools needed for the dethronement of all forms of racism, discrimination, oppression and dehumanisation of black people. The article hinges the underdevelopment of the black continent on the deliberate attempt of the imperialists and their black cronies who rule with iron hands to keep blacks in perpetual slavery. It countenances Femi Osofisan’s call for unity and solidarity among all blacks as central to the upliftment of Africans. The article recognises Femi Osofisan as a strong, committed and formidable African playwright who utilises theatre as a veritable and radical platform to fight and advocate for the liberation of black people by arousing their revolutionary consciousness and by calling on them to hold their destinies in their hands if they are to be emancipated from the shackles of oppression.

Crimes against marriage and family before Criminal Code 1968

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 44-59
Author(s):  
Lidia Peneva
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Code ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Marriage And Family ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
Legal Method ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Criminal Groups ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Structural Point

Crimes against marriage and family are a particular group of social relation­ships that the law has defended properly in view of the high public significance and value they enjoy. At the moment they are regulated in Chapter VI, Section I, of the specific part of the Penal Code the Repub­lic of Bulgaria. The subject matter of this Statement will, however, be the legisla­tive provisions concerning these criminal­ized acts in retrospect. The purpose of the study is to show by historical method and through the comparatively legal method the development of these criminal groups during the periods of various criminal laws in Bulgaria. This will also provide a basis for reflection on possible de lege ferenda proposals. This report from a structural point of view will be divided into three distinct points, marking each of the penal laws in the Republic of Bulgaria, which were in force before 1968.

Scriptural Battlefields: The Old Testament, Legal Culture, and the Polemics of the Spanish New World Empire, 1492–1821

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra ◽  
Adrian Masters
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Social Order ◽  
New World ◽  
Legal Culture ◽  
Spanish Empire ◽  
Correct Interpretation ◽  
Group Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Social Order

Scholars have barely begun to explore the role of the Old Testament in the history of the Spanish New World. And yet this text was central for the Empire’s legal thought, playing a role in its legislation, adjudication, and understandings of group status. Institutions like the Council of the Indies, the Inquisition, and the monarchy itself invited countless parallels to ancient Hebrew justice. Scripture influenced how subjects understood and valued imperial space as well as theories about Paradise or King Solomon’s mines of Ophir. Scripture shaped debates about the nature of the New World past, the legitimacy of the conquest, and the questions of mining, taxation, and other major issues. In the world of privilege and status, conquerors and pessimists could depict the New World and its peoples as the antithesis of Israel and the Israelites, while activists, patriots, and women flipped the script with aplomb. In the readings of Indians, American-born Spaniards, nuns, and others, the correct interpretation of the Old Testament justified a new social order where these groups’ supposed demerits were in reality their virtues. Indeed, vassals and royal officials’ interpretations of the Old Testament are as diverse as the Spanish Empire itself. Scripture even outlasted the Empire. As republicans defeated royalists in the nineteenth century, divergent readings of the book, variously supporting the Israelite monarchy or the Hebrew republic, had their day on the battlefield itself.

scholarly journals Cartilage Injuries and Posttraumatic Osteoarthritis in the Wrist: A Review

Cartilage ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 194760352110219
Author(s):  
Jonny K. Andersson ◽  
Elisabet Hagert ◽  
Mats Brittberg
Keyword(s):  
Literature Review ◽  
Radius Fractures ◽  
Osteochondral Autograft ◽  
Posttraumatic Osteoarthritis ◽  
Osteochondral Repair ◽  
Chondrocyte Implantation ◽  
Cartilage Injuries ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Moment ◽  
And Cartilage

Objective: Focal cartilage injuries, and posttraumatic osteoarthritis (OA) in the wrist are likely common and a cause of wrist pain. To estimate the incidence of cartilage lesions and to understand the pathomechanisms leading to wrist cartilage injuries and OA, a literature review on the subject was performed combined with a presentation of one of the authors’ own experience. Design: This study includes a literature review of the topic. As a comparison to the review findings, the observations of one of the authors’ consecutive 48 wrist arthroscopies, were assessed. PubMed, Scholar, and Cochrane databases were searched using the keywords “cartilage injury AND wrist AND treatment” and “wrist AND cartilage AND chondral AND osteochondral AND degenerative OA.” :Result A total of 11 articles, including 9 concerning chondral and osteochondral repair and treatment and 2 regarding posttraumatic OA, were retrieved. The cartilage repair treatments used in these articles were drilling, osteochondral autograft, juvenile articular cartilage allograft, and chondrocyte implantation. One article displayed concomitant cartilage injuries in displaced distal radius fractures in 32% of the patients. The review of our findings from a 1-year cohort of wrist arthroscopies showed 17% cartilage injuries. Conclusion: There is a lack of knowledge in current literature on cartilage injuries and treatment, as well as posttraumatic OA in the wrist. Cartilage injuries appear to be common, being found in 17% to 32% of all wrist arthroscopies after trauma, but no guidelines regarding conservative or surgical treatment can be recommended at the moment. Larger prospective comparative studies are needed.

Delegitimizing al-Qaida: Defeating an “Army Whose Men Love Death”

2014 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 126-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerry Mark Long ◽  
Alex S. Wilner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Theoretical Investigation ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Arab Spring ◽  
The United States ◽  
Recruitment Tool ◽  
The Arab Spring ◽  
New Social Order

Deterring terrorism is no longer a provocative idea, but missing from the contemporary theoretical investigation is a discussion of how delegitimization might be used to manipulate and shape militant behavior. Delegitimization suggests that states and substate actors can use the religious or ideological rationale that informs terrorist behavior to influence it. In the case of al-Qaida, the organization has carefully elaborated a robust metanarrative that has proved to be remarkably successful as a recruitment tool, in identity formation for adherents, as public apologia and hermeneutic, and as a weapon of war—the so-called media jihad. In the wake of the upheaval of the Arab Spring, al-Qaida and its adherents have redeployed the narrative, promising a new social order to replace the region's anciens régimes. Delegitimization would have the United States and its friends and allies use al-Qaida's own narrative against it by targeting and degrading the ideological motivation that guides support for and participation in terrorism.

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