Feminist New Materialisms

This chapter offers an account of central issues and themes in feminist new materialism, including examples of important contributions to this discussion, as well as current and future directions. The chapter discusses three different sources for the conception of materialism engaged in the feminist new materialisms: (1) attention to materiality in the philosophical traditions of phenomenology and postmodern thought, (2) a turn to the sciences to better understand materiality, and (3) Marxist-inspired conceptions of materiality. The chapter also reflects on the meaning of “new” in feminist new materialism.

Sobre lo sublime como categoría moral: notas para una lectura del Perì hýpsous de Pseudo-Longino

La recepción del tratado Perì hýpsous en el pensamiento moderno y postmoderno ha enfatizado su condición de tratado de crítica literaria, hecho que ha contribuido decisivamente a encuadrar lo sublime en el ámbito de la estética. Sin embargo, una lectura contextualizada de la obra permite apreciar el valor pedagógico del concepto y su finalidad como elemento que contribuye a la fijación, a través de los textos literarios, de unos valores morales y políticos necesarios para la reproducción de la cultura. The reception of the treatise Perì hýpsous in modern and postmodern thought has emphasized its status as a treatise on literary criticism, a fact that has decisively contributed to frame the sublime in the field of aesthetics. However, a contextualized reading of the work makes possible to appreciate the pedagogical value of the concept and its purpose as an element that contributes to establish, through literary texts, moral and political values necessary for the reproduction of culture.

Cultural De/Colonization in Anwar Masood's Bunain

This article addresses cultural hegemony of colonial discursive praxis and cultural decolonization in the wake of postmodern thought. Cultural hegemony entails the predominance of ruling states (colonizers) over the subordinate states (colonized). Western European states dominated colonial nations socioculturally and intellectually for a considerable time. Cultural decolonization is a process by which colonized people challenge the superiority of the colonizer's culture and attempt to redefine and reclaim their indigenous culture in order to reassert its distinct identity. The analysis of this study is based on Anwar Masood's poetry. Anwar Masood, amusingly, tries to challenge the colonial legacy prevalent in postcolonial Pakistan in different forms. He refuses to accept the hegemony of colonial discourse, particularly in terms of western civilization as superior to the civilizations of the colonized world.

The Evolution of Post-Postmodernism: Aesthetics of Reality and Trust in Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections and Freedom

This study aims to find out how literature moves from the postmodern thought, flourished until the 1990s, to the post-postmodern phenomenon. The study traces the evolution of this new phase as depicted in Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections (2001) and Freedom (2010). It proposes these two works as examples of how over the past two decades, literature shifted from postmodernist fiction’s irony and skepticism that presents novels as “literature of emergency” to ethical objectivism and neo-realism (Franzen, 2002, p. 258). The purpose of the study is twofold. Firstly, it examines Franzen’s deployment of elements such as the subjective perception of truth, self-restraint, control, and knowledge, which he utilizes to understand reality. Secondly, it explores his employment of narrative tools (e.g., omniscient narrator, metafiction, intertextual dialogue) against postmodern fragmentation and deconstruction. By doing so, Franzen, this study demonstrates, reflects post-postmodernism’s core realist ideas that stress pragmatic interactions with the characters and readers’ cognizance of reality and encourage engagement with the narrative’s language to rework the novel’s social and cultural authority. These post-postmodern narratives reference fictional texts, real-life people, and authentic historical events that exemplify various models, simulations, and patterns of reality within and beyond the text, creating a mediated experience that enables communication with and understanding reality

The Evolution of Post-Postmodernism: Aesthetics of Reality and Trust in Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections and Freedom

This study aims to find out how literature moves from the postmodern thought, flourished until the 1990s, to the post-postmodern phenomenon. The study traces the evolution of this new phase as depicted in Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections (2001) and Freedom (2010). It proposes these two works as examples of how over the past two decades, literature shifted from postmodernist fiction’s irony and skepticism that presents novels as “literature of emergency” to ethical objectivism and neo-realism (Franzen, 2002, p. 258). The purpose of the study is twofold. Firstly, it examines Franzen’s deployment of elements such as the subjective perception of truth, self-restraint, control, and knowledge, which he utilizes to understand reality. Secondly, it explores his employment of narrative tools (e.g., omniscient narrator, metafiction, intertextual dialogue) against postmodern fragmentation and deconstruction. By doing so, Franzen, this study demonstrates, reflects post-postmodernism’s core realist ideas that stress pragmatic interactions with the characters and readers’ cognizance of reality and encourage engagement with the narrative’s language to rework the novel’s social and cultural authority. These post-postmodern narratives reference fictional texts, real-life people, and authentic historical events that exemplify various models, simulations, and patterns of reality within and beyond the text, creating a mediated experience that enables communication with and understanding reality.

Orthodox Thought in Postmodern Conditions: Philosophical Context and Three Ways of Development

В статье проводится анализ философского контекста развития православной постмодернистской мысли. Автор дается краткое описание онтологии, антропологии и гносеологии постмодерна и таких идей как «смерть Бога», «смерть субъекта», «смерть истины», «конец метафизики» и др. Далее автор описывает основные черты концепций православных мыслителей-постмодернистов - Д. Харта, митр. Иоанна (Зизиуласа) и Дж. Мануссакиса и выявляет их связь с идеями философии постмодерна. Автор приходит к выводу, что Д. Харт в своей теоэстетике находит возможность выразить христианское учение о Боге в условиях «смерти Бога» и в противовес постмодернистской онтологии, в которой бытие понимается как хаос и насилие, формулирует «мирную онтологию», где бытие есть красота и дар. Митрополит Иоанна (Зизиулас) формулирует христианское учение о человеке с помощью концепта «Другой» и с учетом идеи «смерти субъекта». Дж. Мануссакис создает теорию мистического сенсуализма, с помощью которого он находит возможность говорить о Боге и богопознании в условиях «смерти истины» и «конца метафизики». Автор подчеркивает, что ни одна из описанных концепций не претендует на то, чтобы заменить собой святоотеческое богословие. Перед ними стоят иные задачи: актуализировать христианство в современной философии, выразить христианские истины на языке и с учетом мировоззренческих установок современного западного общества. The article analyzes the philosophical context of the development of Orthodox postmodern thought. The author gives a brief description of the ontology, anthropology and epistemology of postmodernism and such ideas as «the death of God», «the death of the subject», «the death of truth», «the end of metaphysics», etc. Further, the author describes the main features of the concepts of Orthodox postmodern thinkers - D. Hart, metropolitan John (Zizioulas) and J. Manoussakis and reveals their connection with the ideas of postmodern philosophy. The author comes to the conclusion that D. Hart in his theoesthetics finds an opportunity to express the Christian teaching about God in the conditions of «God’s death and in contrast to the postmodern ontology, in which being is understood as chaos and violence, he formulates a «peaceful ontology», where being is beauty and gift. Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) formulates the Christian doctrine of man using the concept of «the Other» and taking into account the idea of «the death of the subject». J. Manoussakis creates a theory of mystical sensualism, through which he finds the opportunity to talk about God and knowledge of God in the conditions of «the death of truth» and «the end of metaphysics». The author emphasizes that none of the theories described is not intended to be a substitute for patristic theology. They have other tasks: to actualize Christianity in modern philosophy, to Express Christian truths in language and taking into account the worldview of modern Western society.

SELF, GOD AND WORLD : A POSTMODERN PERSPECTIVE

This paper tries to evaluates the Postmodern thought with special focus on the key concepts like self, God and World and values by the key postmodernist thinkers of this novel Philosophy. It tries to reflect on the system of philosophies in West that aspired to foreground the existence of man in some fixed universal and objective truths. The truth has always been founded upon some metaphysical rational ideal and the quest of human struggle has been to attain such a truth. Such human aspiration has seriously been questioned by postmodernist thinkers to bring forth a paradigm shift. This paper gives a glimpse into the remarkable shift of thought.

Pavel Florensky: At the Boundary of Immanence and Transcendence

This chapter discusses four themes in the religious philosophy of Pavel Florensky (1882–1937): Georg Cantor’s mathematics, truth, philosophy of language, and the visual arts. Apart from Church doctrines, the key ideas that emerge in his work are ‘antinomy’, ‘discontinuity’, ‘actual infinity’ and ‘realism’. Deeply rooted in the Christian-Platonic tradition, Florensky is critical of rationalism, empiricism, Kantianism, and positivism. He anticipates postmodern insights in the sense that his worldview allows for synchronic difference as well as time and diachronic change. But unlike postmodern thought, which tends to interpret synchronic difference and the flux of time in terms of relativistic perspectivism and historicism, Florensky provides difference and change with a realist underpinning. And despite his emphasis on antinomicity and discontinuity in his conception of truth, he affirms the grandeur of reason and rejects irrationalism and fideism.

Immunity’s Racial Empire: Virality, Melancholy, Whiteness

Writing in 1991 and 1994, respectively, Donna J. Haraway and Emily Martin argued that in the postwar decades the immune system became a material pedagogy for neoliberal and postmodern thought. In its depiction as a decentralized network of response, the immune system modeled life in late liberalism’s dematerialized time-space compressions. Moreover, if the immune system reified life in this radical expansion, its preternatural competency for discrimination between self and other simultaneously availed a means of retaining racial hygiene in this brave new world of empire. Yet curiously neither Haraway nor Martin acknowledged the extent to which the arrival of HIV in the early 1980s constituted a radical desublimation of what Roberto Esposito identified as the immune system’s salvational image. This essay posits that the arrival of HIV did not simply constitute a neutralization of the immunological fetishism of the postwar period. Rather, the loss of immunity precipitated a biopolitical melancholia. Having lost access to its privileged topos—the immune system itself—immunological governance in turn proximately cathected the object responsible for its trauma, namely, HIV itself. I understand Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash (1992) and Chuck Hogan’s The Blood Artists (1998) to think, in submerged literary form, an incremental embrace of virality as, ironically, the most viable vehicle for conserving the fantasies of both neoliberal competency and racial containment reified initially by immunity itself.