scholarly journals Bernard Cohen’s Snowdome: somewhere in a postmodern time

2007 ◽  
pp. 185
Author(s):  
Andrés Romero Jódar
Keyword(s):  
Space Dimension ◽  
World Order ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Time Space ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Near Future ◽  
The City

Occidental societies, according to certain visions of a postmodern future as reflected in literature and arts, are heading towards a dystopian decadent world order. It is inside this perspective that I place the following essay with the aim to analyse the representation of Postmodernism and Postmodernity in Bernard Cohen’s experimental work, Snowdome. This novel can be conceived as a complex portrayal of contemporary existence and life in the city. By means of three different narrations and two stories separated by the unstable boundary of time, Cohen depicts contemporary Sidney from a nightmarish present of noise that leads to the complete isolation of the subject in a near future. The novel emphasises the multiplicity of information in contemporary society and the way in which that information becomes a constant noise flooding the city. The individual is unable to grasp a bit of that “pure reality” outside the simulacrum offered by the media and by the terrifying museum. Sidney and Australia become, in Cohen’s work, a prolongation of contemporary North-American invasive culture, based on the power of the TV screen and the falsehood of simulacrum, whereas individuals are plunged into a new time-space dimension which is placed somewhere in a postmodern time.

scholarly journals O romance de Ricardo Lísias: janelas escancaradas para o sujeito hipermoderno

2016 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 491
Author(s):  
Ana Cláudia Munari ◽  
Taíssi Alessandra Cardoso da Silva
Keyword(s):  
Media Studies ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
The Self ◽  
Police Chief ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Media Narratives ◽  
Self Reference ◽  
Critical Production

A partir da análise dos romances de Ricardo Lísias e da sua produção autocrítica, este trabalho busca entender algumas relações entre a literatura de autoficção e a publicização do sujeito autor imerso no universo midiático. Partindo de uma revisão bibliográfica que conceitua os objetos aqui circunscritos e de uma apreciação anterior sobre a produção literária de jovens escritores brasileiros selecionados pela revista Granta em 2012, estreitamos nossa focalização no movimento do romancista em direção à escrita de si e à autorreferência. Nesse sentido, analisamos e contextualizamos a modalidade de escritura denominada autoficção, especialmente no que tange às aproximações entre as instâncias do narrador e do autor e entre biografemas e ficção (FIGUEIREDO, 2013; KLINGER, 2012), e evocamos estudos da Sociologia e da Comunicação de modo a caracterizar a sociedade da qual emerge o corpus deste estudo (LIPOVESTKY, 2004; SANTAELLA, 2012). A partir desse contexto, investigamos as obras literárias – O céu dos suicidas (2012), Divórcio (2013) e Delegado Tobias (2014) – e as narrativas midiáticas de Ricardo Lísias e identificamos nelas estratégias da publicidade.********************************************************************The novel by Ricardo Lísias: wide open windows to the subject hypermodernAbstract: Through the analysis of the novels of Ricardo Lísias and its self-critical production, this work intends to understand some relationships between the self-fiction literature and the popularization of the subject author immersed in the media universe. Starting from a literature review that conceptualizes the objects herein bounded and an earlier assessment of the literary production of young Brazilian writers selected by Granta magazine in 2012, we strengthened  ur focus on the novelist's movement toward the writing itself  nd self-reference. Pursuing this aim, we analyzed and contextualized the form of writing named autofiction, especially with regard to the similarities between instances of the narrator and the author and between biographema and fiction (FIGUEIREDO, 2013; KLINGER, 2012). We also evoked Sociology and Media Studies to characterize the society of which emerges the corpus of this study (LIPOVESTKY, 2004; SANTAELLA, 2012). From these premises, we investigated the literary works – Céu dos suicidas (Heaven suicide, 2012), Divórcio (Divorce, 2013) and Delegado Tobias (Tobias, the police chief, 2014) – and the media narratives of Ricardo Lísias and finally we identified his advertising strategies.Keywords: Self-ficction; Contemporary literature; Hypermodernity; Ricardo Lísias

Mediating Structures and Constitutional Liberty

Worldview ◽  
1978 ◽  
Vol 21 (9) ◽  
pp. 41-46
Author(s):  
William Bentley Ball
Keyword(s):  
Voluntary Association ◽  
American Enterprise Institute ◽  
American Constitution ◽  
Peter Berger ◽  
Ethnic Subgroups ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The City ◽  
Mediating Structures

There are those of us whose job seems always to be immediate problem-solving. We are like people frantically busy piling up rocks with the fleeting notion that perhaps they are building something. To Empower People: The Role of Mediating Structures in Public Policy by Peter Berger and Richard Neuhaus (American Enterprise Institute, 1977) offers a portrait in which resemblances can be seen between the haphazard rock pile and the city of good “mediating structures” there portrayed.Approaching the subject as a lawyer, the question at once comes to mind: Do we need mediating structures (family, church, voluntary association, neighborhood, racial and ethnic subgroups) in a society governed by the American Constitution? If the “mediating structures“ are thought to be necessary to protect the individual from the state, is that not precisely the function of the Constitution?

Connecting Childhood and Old Age in Popular Media

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Old Age ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Simpsons ◽  
The Family ◽  
George Lakoff ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Media Narratives

Media narratives in popular culture often ascribe interchangeable characteristics to childhood and old age. In the manner of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By, the authors in this volume envision the presumed semblance between children and the elderly as a root metaphor that finds succinct articulation in the idea that “children are like old people” and vice versa. The volume explores the recurrent use of this root metaphor in literature and media from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. The authors demonstrate how it shapes and is reinforced by a spectrum of media products from Western and East-Asian countries. Most the media products addressed were developed for children as their primary audience, and range from children’s classics such as Heidi to recent Dutch children’s books about euthanasia. Various authors also consider narratives produced either for adults (for instance, the TV series Mad Men, and the novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close) or for a dual audience (for example, the family film Paddington or The Simpsons). The diversity of these products in terms of geography, production date, and audience buttresses a broad comparative exploration of the connection between childhood and old age, allowing the authors to bring out culturally specific aspects and biases. Finally, since this book also unites scholars from a variety of disciplines (media studies, children’s literature studies, film studies, pedagogy, sociology), the individual chapters provide a range of methods for studying the connection between childhood and old age.

scholarly journals Exploring Limited Capacity in the Grid: Actors, Problems, and Solutions

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny Palm
Keyword(s):  
User Engagement ◽  
Limited Capacity ◽  
System Perspective ◽  
Electricity Grid ◽  
The People ◽  
Problems And Solutions ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Energy Grid ◽  
The City

An extensive and reliable electricity grid is essential for all the sectors of society. In parts of Sweden, the electricity grid has been suffering from a lack of capacity. This is something affecting all the sectors and all the people in these regions. The capacity problems have, however, so far, mainly been analyzed from a technical system perspective, focusing on incumbent actors, whereas other actors have been less researched. This article aims to fill this gap and include a variety of perceptions of Swedish actors’ on the lack of electricity grid capacity. It is, however, a challenge to capture the views of others than the professionals working in the area because the electricity grid is not something people, in general, reflect upon. The article takes an explorative approach to the subject by analyzing the problems and the solutions raised in four arenas: the regulative, the media, the technocratic, and the user. It also focuses on the city of Malmö in Sweden and two projects where the lack of grid capacity has been discussed. Sweden’s lack of capacity concerns that, although electricity is available, the energy grid cannot transmit the required amount of electricity to all parts of the country. The article concludes that the electricity grid has been developed within a technocratic frame, with a few professionals dominating the agenda, which has led to convergence of perspectives and narrowing options. In the regulative arena, which often decides what issues are prioritized and in the end implemented, there is a focus on investment in transformers and lines rather than demand-side solutions and user flexibility. Technological and economical values are dominating all arenas, and other values, such as user engagement and ownership, are marginalized.

scholarly journals Po Mannie i Viscontim. Śmierć w Wenecji we współczesnej literaturze polskiej, rosyjskiej i ukraińskiej

2018 ◽  
pp. 219-230
Author(s):  
Olga Siemońska
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
General Dimension ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Death In Venice ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The City ◽  
Individual Dimension

The article analyzes three pieces of Russian, Ukrainian and Polish contemporary literature on the subject of “the death in Venice”. The authors of the works, by referring to the literary tradition, consciously strengthen the myth of the "the city of death". In their interpretations this myth has two dimensions: the general and the individual. In the general dimension the vision of a dying beauty and fading power encourages reflection on the transitory nature of civilization. The individual dimension is based on the sense of identification of a dying character with a "dying" city, i.e. Venice.

scholarly journals Critical Dystopia: Local Narrative in the Threshold in Ahmed Khaled Towfik’s Utopia

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 175-194
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
System Structure ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Totalitarian Regime ◽  
Critical Orientation ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Knowledge Memory ◽  
Critical Dystopia

This study is an exploration of critical dystopia within a postmodern context. Literary and historical viewpoints associate dystopia with the failed utopia of twentieth-century totalitarianism manifested in regimes of extreme coercion, inequality, and slavery. Raffaella Baccolini and Tom Moylan, of whose perspective this study makes use, theorize that critical dystopia provides a potential for change through rejecting the traditional dystopian ending marked by the subjugation of the individual. Problematizing critical dystopia further, the study proposes that the critical orientation of this sub-genre originates mainly from the “local narrative” of a subject whose agency generates from his position in the “threshold” between those in and under control, combined with the “counter-conducts” he uses to acquire knowledge, memory, and awakened consciousness. As a full agent, the subject resists the “utopian” “metanarrative” of an oppressive system/structure and offers possibilities of meaning in a process of “différance” which entails a potential for change. This proposition is clarified through the close reading of Ahmed Khaled Towfik’s Utopia (2011; first published in Arabic in 2008). The novel is discussed as a critical dystopian text in which Gaber, the subject in the “threshold,” opposes the totalitarian regime of Utopia in his “local narrative.”

scholarly journals THE UNIQUENESS OF THE CHRONOTOPOS IN THE NOVEL BY MAX KIDRUK “WHERE GOD IS NOT PRESENT”

2019 ◽  
pp. 325-331
Author(s):  
O. A. Ogulchanska
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Organization ◽  
Time Of Day ◽  
Multidimensional Analysis ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Research ◽  
Time Space ◽  
Important Means ◽  
Character Building ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Individual

The article deals with the uniqueness of the chronotopos in the novel by Max Kidruk “Where God is not present”. The research of leading scholars in various fields of science, such as M. Bakhtin, N. Kopistyanska, A. Temirbolat, O. Chicheryn, O. Ukhtomskyi and others, was dedicated to the problems of the time-spatial organization of the artistic text. The analyzed novel of the famous and popular modern Ukrainian writer has recently been published and has not yet been the subject of literary research. The main events in the work take place on the mountain summit in the array of Gasherbrum - Gasherbrum VI, where “Boeing 777” has crushed. Various time-space planes are harmoniously interwoven in the novel, due to the introduction of retrospections of different plans to the text. This contributes not only to the expansion of time-space coordinates, but also allows to use multidimensional analysis of the psychological portrait of the characters. While investigating the time and space of the novel, we rely on N. Kopistyanska's idea that space is not only a place and a background of action; it is the vector that influences the formation of the character, moral properties of the individual. During the analysis of the chronotopos of the novel “Where God is not present”, attention is focused on the character-building function of one's or another's space, which is one of the important means of psychologization. The psychological space of characters and their relationship with the outside is analyzed. The titles of the sections of the novel “Where God is not present” point to spatial boundaries, where chronological events will take place: “Airport”, “Airplane”, “Mountain”. The chronotopos of each section is expanded by the introduction of retrospectives. The writer uses various forms of time specification, such as: the exact definition of cyclic coordinates (indication of seasons, time of day, hours, minutes) and indication of the years in which events occur. In the novel, various countries, cities (Beijing, the Netherlands, Dubai, Sweden, Zaporizhzhia, Kyiv, Moscow, etc.) are mentioned spontaneously.

scholarly journals Conceptualization of media competence as an "augmented competence"

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Viera Kačinová ◽  
María Rosario María Rosario
Keyword(s):  
Educational Needs ◽  
Digital Environment ◽  
User Behaviour ◽  
Complex Needs ◽  
Communication Environment ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Communication Practices ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Reflexive Analysis

Introduction: The ever-progressing transformation of the media as a result of digitization trends, the new characteristics of the communication environment and the associated communication practices and forms of user behaviour result in new educational needs and demands. Their reassessment in the context of current scientific discourses takes the form of revision and redefinition of the concept of media competence. Methodology: through a reflexive analysis of the concepts and models, we present the conceptualization of media competence as an extended competence to the area of personal, social, cultural and civic competencies. Results: The result of the work is a reassessment of conceptual positions in the projection of features of media competence in the context of the significant phenomena of the converged digital environment: participatory paradigm, hyperconnectivity, proliferation of disinformation. This approach requires the extension of skills and abilities in accessing, evaluating, analyzing, creating and communicating news and media; skills combining the previous forms of literacy and skills of digital environment (Livingstone, 2004; Pérez Tornero, Celot, Varis, 2007; Hobbs, 2008). Discussion: Our approach is associated with broader educational demands and needs aimed at the development of the individual´s personality in a more holistic way, connected with the more complex needs of a society where media presence is higher. Conclusions: The changes in the subject of ´Learning about the media´ are resassed at the end of the paper.

Motyw choroby i dysfunkcji w powieści Marii Matios Słodka Darusia

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 173-184
Author(s):  
Marta Zambrzycka
Keyword(s):  
Economic Condition ◽  
Historical Trauma ◽  
Traumatic Experience ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Individual Dimension ◽  
Individual Human

The text concerns the subject of the disease in Ukrainian literature based on the novel by Maria Matios Sweet Darusia. The novel was published in 2003, has received many awards and is one of the most famous Ukrainian novels of the last decades. Many Ukrainian literary scholars have written about this novel, including Sofi a Filonenko, Jaroslaw Holoborodko, Nila Zborowska and Tamara Hundorowa. Maria Matios analyzes in Sweet Darusia an illness as a metaphor for social and cultural phenomena. In the fi rst part of my paper, I analyse the metaphor of a disease and dysfunction in Ukrainian literature. The second part of the text is about a disease as a consequence of the traumatic experience of the heroine, in which Maria Matios illustrates the problems of memory of the Ukrainian nation. Diseases, dysfunctions, and pathological states are quite popular motifs in the Ukrainian prose of the independence period. They appear, among others, in the texts of Yuri Andrukhovych, Stepan Procuik, Oksana Zabuzko, Yuri Gudz, and Yuri Izdryk. All mentioned authors combine a state of disease with the mental, political and economic condition of post-Soviet society. In Ukrainian prose, the disease is a posttraumatic symptom, manifested in both the individual plan – in the hero’s body and psyche – and also with a broader, over-individual dimension, allowing to diagnose the condition of post-totalitarian space residents. In the novel Sweet Darusia, physical suff ering and illness of the main character is an image of a historical trauma experienced by totalitarian society. The illness in this novel is the starting point for self-refl ection and the stimulus to construct new identifi cation, basing on what is individual, human, intimate but often painful and difficult to accept.

Majority society and its coexistence with Arab and Muslim neighbors in the city of Teplice

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monika Nová
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Focus Groups ◽  
Local Culture ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Non Profit ◽  
Arab Immigrants ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The City ◽  
Church Organizations

Writing this paper, the author wished to define problems that stem from the process of integrating Arab immigrants into the wider contemporary society of Teplice, not least because the city has often been mentioned in Czech media as a place where the foreigners are allegedly ill-adjusted to the local culture. Relying on the methods of qualitative research and on specifically constituted focus groups, we tried to find out what makes the process of integration in the city so troubled. In so doing, we considered the views presented by the representatives of municipal authorities, the non-profit sector and charity & church organizations - all more or less professionally engaged in the subject of our interest. Our results confirmed that Teplice is an illustrative example of the suitable practice.As mentioned in the Conclusion below, the Arab and Muslim societies follow certain rules and try hard to make them understood and tolerated.

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