A Dove Grey Renaissance

LOGOS ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-49
Author(s):  
Sarah Bennett
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Publishing Industry ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
Economic Capital ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Middle Ground ◽  
Differential Distribution ◽  
Female Authors ◽  
Cultural Legitimacy

Abstract Launched in 1999, at a time of radical change for the publishing industry, Persephone Books has become a successful independent publisher of neglected female authors mainly from the 20th-century inter-war period. Publishing being an industry primarily shaped by the differential distribution of symbolic and economic capital (Bourdieu, ‘The Market for Symbolic Goods’, in The Rules of Art, Polity Press, 1996, p. 9), competing principles of cultural legitimacy within an increasingly commercial climate clarify the position of modern publishing at the intersection of culture and commerce (Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production, Columbia University Press, 1993, p. 27). This article explores how Persephone Books’ understated assertion of publishing’s ‘middle ground’ and commitment to the historically reviled ‘middlebrow’ genre have reconciled the perennial tension between culture and commerce to create a thriving yet unintentional publishing brand.

scholarly journals “Running the Numbers”: Modes of Microcelebrity Labor in Queer Women’s Self-Representation on Instagram and Vine

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 205630511989400
Author(s):  
Stefanie Duguay
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Economic Capital ◽  
Multiple Forms ◽  
Queer Women ◽  
Affective Labor ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Prominent Component ◽  
Aesthetic Labor ◽  
Social Media Platforms

Microcelebrity, as a set of practices contributing to personalized self-branding, has become an increasingly prominent component of self-representation on social media platforms. While “influencers” who have built lucrative followings through microcelebrity give the appearance of having fun without much exertion, recent studies have uncovered multiple forms of labor involved in their practices of cultural production. In addition, scholars analyzing lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) influencers highlight a tension between labor in service of self-commodification and the representation of sexual minorities. This article examines the microcelebrity labor of everyday queer women who aim to increase their social and economic capital by interweaving personal self-representations with entrepreneurial endeavors on Instagram and Vine. Through a close analysis of these platforms’ markets, governance, and infrastructures alongside interviews with queer female users of each platform, attention is given to both platform influences and participants’ experiences of promoting their jobs, side-gigs, hobbies, or passions alongside the rest of their lives. Findings identify three modes of labor specific to participants’ efforts to build a following: (1) intimate affective labor expended in sharing and managing personal disclosures; (2) developmental aesthetic labor as the acquisition and practice of technical skills and bodily displays to achieve a desired appearance or performance; (3) aspiring relational labor in attempts to forge relationships with established influencers or celebrities. Sexual identity was pivotal across these modes of labor, as it enhanced intimacy with followers, provided a niche audience for self-branding, conveyed authenticity through self-revelation, and established a common ground for forging relationships.

Continental Philosophy and Theology

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-105
Author(s):  
Colby Dickinson
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Continental Philosophy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Middle Ground ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Theological Turn ◽  
The Face ◽  
Secular Society ◽  
Comparative Nature

AbstractContinental philosophy underwent a ‘return to religion’ or a ‘theological turn’ in the late 20th Century. And yet any conversation between continental philosophy and theology must begin by addressing the perceived distance between them: that one is concerned with destroying all normative, metaphysical order (continental philosophy’s task) and the other with preserving religious identity and community in the face of an increasingly secular society (theology’s task). Colby Dickinson argues inContinental Philosophy and Theologyrather that perhaps such a tension is constitutive of the nature of order, thinking and representation which typically take dualistic forms and which might be rethought, though not necessarily abolished. Such a shift in perspective even allows one to contemplate this distance as not opting for one side over the other or by striking a middle ground, but as calling for a nondualistic theology that measures the complexity and inherently comparative nature of theological inquiry in order to realign theology’s relationship to continental philosophy entirely.

Latina and Chicana Butch/Femme in Literature and Culture

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stacy I. Macías
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Female Gender ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Cultural Productions ◽  
Essential Components ◽  
Feminist Theories ◽  
Sexual Cultures ◽  
Literary Archive

Latina butch/femme literatures and cultural productions are essential components of the lesbian, gender, queer, and ethnic literary canons of the late 20th century. While butch/femme—a term that references particular lesbian sexual cultures and queer female gender practices—emerged within working-class and lesbian-of-color communities roughly in the 1940s, Latina lesbians in the 1980s and 1990s began to use the anthology form to pronounce boldly how their lesbian sexualities, erotic desires, and alternative gender expressions mutually informed their racial, ethnic, and class-based identities. While anthologies created the space to engage butch/femme and its racialized class meanings of butch/femme, the growth in women of color feminist theories further catalyzed writers to contextualize their earlier provisional embrace of Latina butch/femme, which feminist, lesbian, and ethnic nationalist ideologues variously derided. Still, while Latina lesbian cultural production and literary output increased, engagements with butch/femme were veiled, with some accounts paralleling the larger social unease with what many believed enforced the reproduction of oppressive heterosexual dynamics. While photographic images indelibly document the ubiquity of butch/femme lived practice, the literary archive of explicitly imagined and referenced Latina butch/femme is limited, and its overall force lies in its suggestive discursive qualities and a late 20th century iconic set of authors with which it is associated. Key writers of the period tended to meditate extensively on Latina butch gender and sexuality concerns, while it was not until the turn of the 21st century that the Latina femme garnered the same in-depth critical treatment. The decoupling of butch/femme also enables an expansion of discrete critical and creative femme and butch offerings, while writers settle into unequivocally evoking the erotic grammars of butch/femme gender and sexuality in forms of poetry, novel, and film.

scholarly journals Transformations and Mutations of the Chinese Language Publishing Field in the Digital Age

MANUSYA ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 92-112
Author(s):  
Yu-Ching Lee
Keyword(s):  
Business Model ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Value Chain ◽  
Publishing Industry ◽  
Transition Period ◽  
Chinese Language ◽  
Digital Age ◽  
Digital Publishing ◽  
Reading Habits ◽  
The West

In the traditional publishing arena, the publishing fields around the world all operate according to a fixed value chain system, which has been in operation ever since the existence of the publishing industry over 500 years. Now the publishing industry is going through a transition period toward digitization, which has overwhelmed not only the entire system but the entire publishing field. In this digital age, publishing houses in the West have carried on with their conventional model of value chains and have established a comprehensive digital publishing system. But in Chinesespeaking regions, due to factors such as market traits, consumer reading habits, publishing policies and consumption habits which are vastly different from those in the West, the Western system of digital publishing is not applicable. This study analyzes the Chinese language publishing field by interviewing Cross- Straits publishing experts. The aim is to examine the differences between the publishing structure of Chinese-speaking regions (specifically mainland China and Taiwan), the typical publishing field in the West, and the traditional paper-based publishing field which has existed for hundreds of years. The result shows that Taiwan follows the Western e-publishing model. However, because of the differences in market size and reading habits, the e-publishing model is not applicable in Taiwan. China, on the other hand, has developed its own system called “Internet Literature” in accordance with readers’ reading preferences and habits. Moreover, this model uses the intellectual property to extend the value of publications by transforming literature texts into other forms of cultural production. This publishing business model is carried out by big Internet companies such as Tencent, Baidu, rather than by publishers. These mutations of Internet literature content have really challenged the Chinese state-regulated publishing system, and have become the foundations of a successful business model. This development in China has challenged the conventional definition of publishing, as literature has been a symbol of highbrow civilization whereas Internet Literature is more a symbol of uncultured entertainment.

‘Hipster Capitalism’ in the Age of Austerity? Polanyi Meets Bourdieu’s New Petite Bourgeoisie

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Scott
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Creative Industries ◽  
Economic Capital ◽  
Economic Returns ◽  
Material Resources ◽  
The World ◽  
Career Strategies ◽  
Petite Bourgeoisie ◽  
New Research ◽  
Iconic Figure

This article dialogues Polanyi and Bourdieu to propose a new research agenda within the sociology of cultural production. Extending recent literature on hipsters, this iconic figure is shifted from the world of consumption to the world of production via Bourdieu’s conceptualisation of the new petite bourgeoisie. Using secondary empirical material of cultural micro-enterprises, two ideal-typical career strategies are sketched: cultural-capital oriented seeking to secure positions within established creative industries, and economic-capital orientated stylising ‘old’ petite bourgeoisie occupations to access economic returns. However, within the context of ongoing austerity policies, Bourdieu’s economic capital does not fully account for the variegated forms of material resources these nascent enterprises draw on. Bringing Polanyi’s modes of economic integration – reciprocity, redistribution and exchange – to Bourdieu opens new questions on how hipster capitalism is the practice of intermediating between these ‘backstage’ material modes and the ‘frontstage’ selling of style.

scholarly journals Mediateka Babel. YouTube jako temat, rama formalna i platforma sztuki

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 171-189
Author(s):  
Ewa Wójtowicz
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Global Network ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Moving Images ◽  
Meta Level ◽  
Formal Framework ◽  
Dziga Vertov ◽  
The One

The text focuses on the specific features of the so-called 'cinematic turn' within the scope of visual culture emergent within the YouTube platform, particularly during its first, formative years. This turn takes place on the meta-level of the existing circulation of content enabled by YouTube, often being an autothematic reflection on this tool of cultural production. The vernacular aesthetics, a specific formal framework and a particular modus operandi of YouTube became the subject of artistic statements, sometimes in a form of subversive remix. Therefore I think of YouTube as a realm of art because of its meta-media practice that made the cinematic turn visible. It does not rely on straightforwardly understood production of (moving) images, but  postproduction, as understood by Nicolas Bourriaud. Moreover, the cinematic turn taking place within YouTube is different from the one practised by the avant-garde of 20th century, due its being not “seeing” or “writing” (as Dziga Vertov understood montage) but rather “overwriting”, to use language more adequate to the described sphere of digital culture. Artists use YouTube as an open library, working with its resources, applying techniques such as postproduction, remix, re-contextualisation and appropriation. Therefore it becomes a multimedia library, a “Mediateca Babel” of a kind, to recall J. L. Borges' idea. The examples mentioned in the text are of a postproductional nature, such as to-camera-performance and subversive “overwriting” of contents enabled with the circulationism typical for social media. Equally important are the strategies of recognising the cultural framework of YouTube, in the context of 20th-century media art history, as well as the platform’s interface. Also, there is the issue of relations between vernacular creativity and the art system because of “capturing” the amateur-generated content and transferring it to mainstream artworld. These examples let me argue that the cinematic turn is a form of postproduction, which enables the hidden mechanisms behind the circulation of moving images in the overloaded global network. The cinematic turn in the context of YouTube does not mean that cinema and its language are at home within this platform. Also, the meta-artistic way of “making” platform art does not turn YouTube into “art platform” (as understood by Olga Goriunova). Nevertheless, platform art may happen in this context as a result of working with the cinematic turn in its vernacular aspect, which makes it possible to reveal its key features and move them to the meta-level.

Heritage and the Use of the Past in East Africa

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Giblin
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Heritage Management ◽  
Eastern Africa ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Heritage Studies ◽  
Critical Heritage

This article outlines historical and ongoing uses of the past and academic heritage research into those activities within eastern Africa. The use of the past will be discussed as a deep historical practice in the area that is the EAC in the 21st century, demonstrating how political elites have constructed versions of the past to suit contemporary and future aims for hundreds of years. Then there is an outline of the colonial introduction of formalized Western heritage institutions and legislation in the early 20th century, the subsequent nationalization of these in the mid-20th century, and the late-20th- and early-21st-century internationalization of heritage. These overviews are followed by a discussion of different approaches to heritage research including early studies of museums, traditions, heritage management, archaeological introspections, and more recent “critical heritage studies,” which interrogate the use of the past as a form of cultural production.

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