Monstre

2019 ◽  
pp. 85-111
Author(s):  
Maaheen Ahmed
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
Good And Evil

This chapter begins by drawing out the similarities between Baudelairian Romanticism—especially the Baudelairian monster, ennui—and the protagonists and aesthetics of Enki Bilal’s Monstretetralogy. The ambiguity of the monster is likened to the relativization of good and evil discernible in Baudelaire's works. In addition to discussing the problematization of memory, the chapter also highlights connections between monstrous spaces and its monstrous inhabitants. A discussion of the amorphousness of monstrosity is followed by an examination of the roles of specularity and rebelliousness. The chapter ends with a brief reflection on how Monstreand fluid monsters reflect on modern and contemporary history. Comparisons are also made between Baudelaire's modern ennui and Bilal's postmodern monster, both of which reflect upon a broader cultural change and experience of everyday life.

What the World Is Watching

2020 ◽  
pp. 15-48
Author(s):  
Sharon Mazer
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Professional Wrestling ◽  
The World ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
Madison Square Garden

More than a vulgar parody of “real” sport, professional wrestling is a sophisticated theatricalized representation of the transgressive, violent urges generally repressed in everyday life. More than a staged fight between representatives of good and evil, at its heart is a Rabelaisian carnival, an invitation to every participant to share in expressions of excess and to celebrate the desire for, if not the acting upon, transgression against whatever cultural values are perceived as dominant and/or oppressive in everyday life. More than an elaborate con game in which spectators are seduced into accepting the illusion of “real” violence, wrestling activates and authorizes its audiences, makes them complicit in the performance. Matches can be described in conventional dramatic terms that remain consistent whether in Madison Square Garden or Gleason’s Arena. Because the fight is fixed, the contest is for heat—for the fans’ attention—rather than for victory per se.

Improvisation and new frontiers in creative practice

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Raymond A. R. MacDonald ◽  
Graeme B. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Music Industry ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Spontaneous Generation ◽  
Creative Practice ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Improvised Music ◽  
The Media

This chapter draws together recent advances across musical fields to frame improvising as an innovative and vibrant way of doing creative practice at a professional level and in everyday life. It presents examples of cross-disciplinary improvised work and festivals at the cutting edge of the performing arts. Improvised music is discussed in relation to broader social and cultural change and transformations within the media and music industry. The possibilities of new digital technologies for expanding improvising are reviewed and help set the context for the proceeding chapters. It shows how group improvisation involves the spontaneous generation of novel music, dance, or art by two or more people. It describes the groundswell of interest across the arts in improvisation with artists, festivals, and venues dedicated to pushing this creative approach beyond genre boundaries.

Rupture and Reclamation

2020 ◽  
pp. 80-112
Author(s):  
Kathryn E. Graber
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Language Shift ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of

This chapter looks into the legacies of the twentieth century's massive modernization efforts through the terms rupture and loss, in which contemporary Buryats predominantly understand the history of their culture, language, and land. It analyzes a series of temporal and spatiocultural disjunctures that informs of feelings during language shift. It also reviews the four-century shift from Buryat to Russian as an especially salient instance of cultural change. The chapter assesses the examples of Russification that affects everyday life and to which people refer to as a more thoroughgoing rupture. It covers the discussions of language that stand in for debates over the past and ideal future of Buryat belonging. It also highlights disagreement over what counts as speaking “real Buryat” over what it means to be a “real Buryat.”.

Religion, cultural studies and New Age sacralization of everyday life

2011 ◽  
Vol 14 (6) ◽  
pp. 649-663 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guy Redden
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Consumer Culture ◽  
New Age ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
Spiritual Power ◽  
Secularization Theory ◽  
New Age Spirituality

Through an interpretation of New Age spirituality, this article is concerned with how cultural studies – as a discipline that emerged in the shadow of secularization theory – can be involved in the reappraisal of religion. At once part consumer culture and part counterculture, the New Age is something of a conundrum that raises alluring questions about social and cultural change. In the name of re-enchantment and taking back control of one’s life through inner spiritual power, it appears to be aimed precisely at those forces of social rationalization that are seen to engender secularization. The piece suggests that such emergent religious movements not only challenge us to rethink the frameworks through which religion has been conceptualized, but that they provide multiple possibilities for the examination of the sacred in light of cultural studies’ disciplinary concerns with contemporary sociocultural dynamics, in particular as they are experienced within the ambit of everyday life.

Illusion managers. The role of historical narratives in populist leadership

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theofilos Gkinopoulos ◽  
Michał Bilewicz
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
Social Identity Approach ◽  
Key Questions

In this paper, we delineate the connection between history, social identity and populism, applying to populist leadership. We develop an argument of the use of history by populist leaders to politically mobilize and manage of social identities. We draw on social identity approach and its connection with populism. We introduce history as a political tool for populist leaders. We bring specific historical examples from Greece and Poland to make a case for a particular narrative that populist leaders communicate.. We present explanations offered in populist history such as belief in ‘good and evil’ and historical analogies. Finally, we present methods of spreading historical narratives by populist leaders, emphasizing on censorship, denial, museums and commemorations. We conclude by arguing for populist leadership as a reflection of contemporary history with leaders as history makers and consumers. We identify some key questions to enhance our understanding of the historical component of populist identities.

Cultural Change and Everyday Life

2003 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 336
Author(s):  
David Gartman ◽  
David Chaney
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Cultural Change

scholarly journals Custom and mentality of production societas in the realities of everyday life in the 1960s-80s (An interpretation of archive materials from the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History)

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 61-70
Author(s):  
Anna S. Stoletova
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
State Archive ◽  
Production Environment ◽  
Material Wealth ◽  
Russian State ◽  
Housing Issue ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Individual

Based on the sources of the Russian State Archive of Modern History, the article describes the establishment and operation of customs in the socio-economic life of the second half of the 20th century, which influence the everyday life, attitude and worldview of the production (industrial) part of Russian societas. The question is raised about the consolidation of new features in consciousness, individualistic tendencies as the basis of the worldview. Attention is focused on the fact that the dissonance in the levels of social differentiation, material wealth and social status formed the basis of the mental separation of the production elite, representatives of management and the working class. The author draws attention to the fact that the phenomena of nepotism, clannishness, favours and thuggery that penetrate into everyday life and the labour sphere of life were especially negatively perceived by the workers. The negative reactions of the workers were reinforced by the realities of life – the deficit, the housing issue as a problem of social arrangement, the outdated wage system. It is noted that the public niches in which customs and traditions were firmly rooted, were to a greater extent connected with topical and acute social processes, including the institutions of power, property and trade. The researcher comes to the conclusion that by the 1980s, due to the passage of the stages of further ideological, social and economic differentiation, the separation of the individual from the working collective, the isolation of the elite and a certain isolation of its ordinary members in the production environment, bourgeois aspirations and ideals of hoarding were growing stronger.

scholarly journals Shestov : Faith Against Reason

2008 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 473-493
Author(s):  
Adam Drozdek
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Moral Dimension ◽  
Faith And Reason ◽  
Good And Evil

According to Shestov, knowledge is incompatible with freedom which can be found only through faith because it establishes its truths through the principle of necessity and universality. In fact, the original sin lies in the desire to know, in which not only scientific knowledge is meant, but also knowledge of everyday life. The fall is biblically expressed as a desire to know good and evil. However, it seems that the domain of the moral dimension should not be beyond good and evil, as Shestov suggests, but beyond rationality. Contrasting faith and reason as strongly as Shestov does leads only to a schizophrenic concept of man : man has two faculties that are irreconcilable and even hostile toward one another. It seems that the image of Jerusalem and Athens should be replaced with the image of St. Paul and Minneapolis : different cities that are very close together, not in hostile relationship, but cooperating in a friendly arrangement. Also, Shestov allows for a most irrational expression of freedom. However, he hardly addresses the problem of practical consequences of such a view in social life.

Permaculture’s YouTube moment: Learning how to smash the pieces of everyday life in the wake of ecological crises

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-159
Author(s):  
Brian Morris
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Domestic Space ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Film And Television ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
A Site ◽  
Analytical Approaches

This article examines ongoing responses to natural disasters such as bushfires, climate change and COVID-19 as articulated in various videos produced for, and distributed via, YouTube. It focuses on channels and content creators that promote ecologically mindful alternative everyday practices explicitly driven by permaculture principles and accompanying notions of resilience as well as individual and community self-reliance. While many of these videos are ostensibly concerned with instructing viewers in small-scale practical food production at a household or small business level, they also mark a renewed critical interest in everyday practices and domestic space as a site of social and cultural change through alternative ways of living. The research employs analytical approaches and frameworks drawn from the disciplines of cultural and media studies, specifically the former’s interest in the notion of ‘everyday life’ and the latter’s engagement with digital platforms such as YouTube. I argue that the permaculture movement’s success on YouTube is indicative of the ways in which the environmental concerns of pre-digital social movements might be adapted to the unique affordances and modes of address of platform media like YouTube and, in particular, its signature form of the vlog. Platform media like YouTube accordingly deserve further scholarly research and a similar level of attention as given to more traditional media forms such as print, film and television in terms of how they might positively enable conceptual and practical responses to ecological crisis at both personal and community levels.

The Birth of Modern Horror

2019 ◽  
pp. 99-118
Author(s):  
Bryan Turnock
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Horror Genre ◽  
Box Office ◽  
The Face ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
Lasting Influence

This chapter focuses on the birth of modern horror. The horror genre is ultimately concerned with the battle between good and evil. At times this can be very clearly delineated, but in real life this is not always the case. At the time of its release, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) was truly ground-breaking in its approach to horror in everyday life. Shocking and controversial, it was initially denounced by critics yet became a worldwide box-office sensation and set the direction of the genre for the next fifty years. One of the most analysed and discussed films in cinema history, and arguably the single most influential film in the evolution of the horror genre, entire books have been written about every aspect of Psycho's production, reception and lasting influence. By contextualising the film in the environment of a Hollywood that found itself under mounting pressures, the chapter examines how Hitchock's low-budget film changed the face of horror forever.

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