Global Modernity from Coloniality to Pandemic

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hatem N. Akil ◽  
Simone Maddanu
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Global Modernity ◽  
Science Philosophy ◽  
To Come

This book poses questions about viewing modernity today from the vantage point of traditionally disparate disciplines engaging scholars from sociology to science, philosophy to robotics, medicine to visual culture, mathematics to cultural theory, etc., including a contribution by Alain Touraine. From coloniality to pandemic, modernity can now represent a global necessity in which awareness of human and environmental crises, injustices, and inequality would create the possibility of a modernity-to-come.

scholarly journals The Firm as an Engine of Imagination: Organizational prospection and the making of economic futures

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 263178772110057
Author(s):  
Jens Beckert
Keyword(s):  
Strategic Planning ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Organizational Analysis ◽  
Economic Forecasting ◽  
Business Plans ◽  
Analytical Perspective ◽  
Uncertain Future ◽  
To Come

What do organizations do, and why? An important but only selectively scrutinized aspect of the doings of organizations consists in their creation of imaginaries of economic futures. Under conditions of uncertainty, it is through ‘imagined futures’ that organizations motivate and find the rationale for their decisions, coordinate activities, manage stakeholders and compete with one another. This article suggests making the construction of imagined futures a vantage point for the study of organizations and processes of organizing. It focuses on ‘instruments of imagination’ used by firms to create ‘fictional expectations’ which are used to come to terms with an uncertain future – and to proactively shape this future. Instruments discussed here include strategic planning, technological projections, economic forecasting, and business plans among others. The article argues that a fruitful general analytical perspective can be developed by bringing the constitution, contestation and effects of imagined futures to the forefront of organizational analysis.

Neoliberalism in Mexican Cultural Theory

ARTMargins ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 86-87
Author(s):  
Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Shadow Economy ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
War On Drugs ◽  
The Social ◽  
Theoretical Frame ◽  
Mexican Politics

This essay reviews two theoretical books on neoliberalism written by Mexican cultural critics: Capitalismo gore (Gore Capitalism), by Sayak Valencia, published originally in Spanish in 2010 and translated into English in 2018, and La tiranía del sentido común ( The Tyranny of Common Sense) by Irmgard Emmelhainz, published in Spanish in 2016 and yet to be translated into English. These works are pioneering in their discussion of the correlation between neoliberalism, subjectivity, and culture in Mexico, and they have become widely influential in broader discussions of art, visual culture, literature, and cultural production. They add to the work of economic and political historians, such as Fernando Escalante Gonzalbo and María Eugenia Romero Sotelo, by connecting landmark moments in neoliberalization (from the financialization of the global economy in the 1970s to the War on Drugs in the 2000s) to changing paradigms in art. Author Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado contextualizes both books within larger discussions of Mexican cultural neoliberalism and describes the theoretical frame works through which both authors read Mexican politics, art, and popular culture. In Valencia's case, Sánchez Prado discusses her idea of “gore capitalism”: a framework for understanding how neoliberalism relies on dynamics of the shadow economy and on the subjectification of gore (what Valencia calls endriago subjectivity) to function at the social and artistic levels. In the case of Emmelhainz, Sánchez Prado engages with the author's idea of semiocapitalism, a term borrowed from theorist Franco “Bifo” Berardi, which Emmelhainz deploys to account for the interrelation between culture and capital in the era of neoliberalism. As such, Sánchez Prado argues, Emmelhainz and Valencia provide ways of reading artistic and visual production, including museum curatorship and narcocultura, in ways that show their organic relationship to neoliberal economic and political reforms. Find the complete article at artmargins.com .

scholarly journals The Catch of the Hyperreal: Yossarian and the Ideological Vicissitudes of Hyperreality

Text Matters ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 386-410
Author(s):  
Abdolali Yazdizadeh
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
Critical Assessment ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Fictional World ◽  
American Life ◽  
Ideological Discourse ◽  
Catch 22

Hyperreality is a key term in Jean Baudrillard’s cultural theory, designating a phase in the development of image where it “masks the absence of a profound reality.” The ambiance of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (1961) closely corresponds to Baudrillard’s notion of the hyperreal as images persist to precede reality in the fictional world of the novel. Since for Baudrillard each order of simulacra produces a certain mode of ideological discourse that impacts the perception of reality, it is plausible that the characters of this fictional context should be ideologically impacted by the hyperreal discourse. From this vantage point it is possible to have a new critical assessment of Yossarian’s (protagonist) antiheroic stance and study the role of the “business of illusion,” whose ideological edifice is based on the discourse of the hyperreal, on his antiheroic stance and actions. By drawing on Baudrillard’s cultural theory this paper aims to read Heller’s novel as a postmodern allegory of rebellion against the hyperreality of the twentieth-century American life and trace its relevance to modern-day U.S.

scholarly journals Locating Medieval Armenia at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 77-82
Author(s):  
Heather Badamo
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Religious Culture ◽  
The Self ◽  
Medieval Art ◽  
Global Context ◽  
Metropolitan Museum Of Art ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Trading Partners ◽  
Art And Culture ◽  
To Come

Spanning 13 centuries, the exhibition “Armenia!” brings together some 140 objects to present the medieval art and culture of the Armenian peoples in a global context. Armenia has often existed at the borders of medieval art in contemporary scholarship, due to its complex history and continuously shifting borders, which undermine basic understandings of empires and polities. This exhibition seeks to “locate” Armenia through the twin themes of religion and trade, documenting the myriad ways in which Armenians employed visual culture to construct images of the self and community. The works on display demonstrate the distinctive qualities of the Armenian artistic and religious culture, while also documenting contact with an ever-shifting and expanding group of neighbors and trading partners. At once complimenting and extending the reach of the exhibition, the catalog provides scholars with a trove of insightful essays and catalog entries that are, characteristically, deeply researched and will serve as a touchstone in the field for decades to come. Together, this exhibition and catalog calls on medievalists to rethink the way we study and teach medieval art, recognizing the inner diversities, interlocking histories, and extraordinary artistic achievements of Christian communities in the east.

World Medievalism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise D'Arcens
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Television Programs ◽  
Indigenous Australia ◽  
Global Modernity ◽  
To Come ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Textual Culture ◽  
The Middle Ages

World Medievalism: The Middle Ages in Modern Textual Culture explores the ways in which a range of modern textual cultures have continued to engage creatively with the medieval past in order to come to terms with the global present. Building its argument through four case studies—from the Middle East, France, Southeast Asia, and Indigenous Australia–it shows that to understand medievalism as a cultural idiom with global reach, we need to develop a more nuanced grasp of the different ways ‘the Middle Ages’ have come to signify beyond Europe as well as within a Europe that has been transformed by multiculturalism and the global economy. The book’s case studies are explored within a conceptual framework in which medievalism itself is formulated as ‘world-disclosing’—a transhistorical encounter that enables the modern subject to apprehend the past ‘world’ opened up in medieval and medievalist texts and objects. The book analyses the cultural and material conditions under which its texts are produced, disseminated, and received and examines literature alongside films, television programs, newspapers and journals, political tracts, as well as such material and artefactual texts as photographs, paintings, statues, buildings, rock art, and fossils. While the case studies feature distinctive localized forms of medievalism, taken together they reveal how imperial and global legacies have ensured that the medieval period continues to be perceived as a commonly held past that can be retrieved, reclaimed, or revived in response to the accelerated changes and uncertainties of global modernity.

Religious Experience in New Testament Research

2011 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 339-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Batluck
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Religious Experience ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Historical Jesus ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
New Information ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
To Come

Initiated by Gunkel in 1888, and again by Dunn in 1970, research on religious experience in the New Testament has developed into four distinct streams, all of which address the matter from a different vantage point. Mystical/revelatory experience examines early Christian texts that are ecstatic or disclose new information to the recipient. A second group equates religious experience with encounters of the Holy Spirit.Thirdly, historical Jesus studies investigates historical dimensions of the religious experience described in the Gospels. Fourthly, others address religious experience categorically, trying to account for the grand scope and effect of religious experience recorded in the writings of the New Testament. Each approach offers a great deal to scholars and will be a fruitful line of inquiry in studies to come.

Teaching and Taking: A Seminar on Cultural Theory

1988 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-5
Author(s):  
Aaron Wildavsky
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Theory ◽  
Khmer Rouge ◽  
Research Paper ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
The Core ◽  
To Come ◽  
Modes Of Thought ◽  
Amount Of Reading ◽  
What Matters

The proposal and syllabus that follow are primarily concerned with the content of a seminar on cultural theory. I would like to preface these materials by saying a bit about teaching.Because of the vast confusion surrounding the concept of culture, a seminar is an ideal place to work on clarification.The version of cultural theory being discussed departs from ordinary modes of thought and raises many questions, albeit in a more political direction: What sort of people, organized into which cultures, would act in certain ways (accept or reject blame, tax and spend high or low, participate a little or a lot, etc.) in order to do what matters most to them—support their way of life and discomfort their opponents? Hence time for questions in the seminar is essential. Hours and hours of discussion do more to straighten out thought than any amount of reading.Application of this cultural theory is also essential. Doing is different than thinking. I have found that 1,000-word essays on such subjects as the Comanche Indians (competitive individualists to the core) or the Khmer Rouge (radical egalitarians) enable seminar members to come to grips with the theories they are trying out. Immersion in this material, bolstered by continuous discussion, sharpened by several short applications, greatly facilitates writing a research paper. The idea is to take a paper already written, or about to be written, derive a problem from it, and see how one cultural theory compares to others.

scholarly journals Visual Culture, Disciplinary Engagement and Drawing: Pedagogical Possibilities for an Indian Way of Architectural Thinking

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abu Talha Farooqi ◽  
◽  
Sourav Banerjea ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Augmented Reality ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Media Culture ◽  
Living Room ◽  
Technological Advancement ◽  
Augmented Reality Technology ◽  
Thinking Process ◽  
To Come ◽  
Representation Techniques

Architectural thinking and design process have always been dependent upon the representational medium and language of architecture – conventional drawings, diagramming, models, and iconography, to name a few. As a result of technological advancement (therefore possibilities) and socio-economic change, representation techniques have evolved, from conventional processes to ‘augment-ed reality’. Representation techniques and means in the production of architecture are critical to cover the conceptual range in which architecture can be created. This paper places this issue within the larger heterogeneous culture comprising technological, social, eco-nomic aspects and aims to unravel the conceptual underpinnings of the existing architectural thinking, representational culture in India. It examines ‘drawing’ as a convincing and disciplinary medium of language and representation and steers towards a ‘representation-al maxim’ between technology and value, discipline and consumption, tradition and modernity in the context of architectural thinking process in India.The forces of capitalism, globalization, consumer culture, celebrity and media culture, visual culture, technocracy have been instrumental in creating reality-based representational systems, which are reluctant to engage with the discipline of architecture and think beyond it. Steenson1 remarks about Augmented Reality “A novel form of spatial representation, which substitutes for the actual experience”. With access to augmented reality technology, the client no longer has to interpret the traditional plans, section and elevations, nor look into printed photomontage or virtual walkthroughs. He will be able to stand in his yet to come living room, go, on foot, from there to the kitchen, visit the bedrooms and, by doing so, get an ‘augmented’ experience of those spaces. Software is the agent of consumption, and it is only in the architectural process (thinking & delving), that this consumptive culture subsides, notwithstanding the fact that, for many architects and students, software and technology are steadily and consciously becoming ‘ends’ rather than ‘means’ in the design process.

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