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The goal of the paper is to outline the notion of the fear of technology and mistrust of the scientific establishment present in 21st century American conspiracy theories. It argues that such negative connotations are invariably tied to the so-called New World Order (NWO) conspiracy theory. The text opens with a brief outline of the origins of the belief in the NWO, starting with the late 18th century theories about the Bavarian Illuminati, and culminating with the influence of the Cold War mentality. What the fear of technology stands for in conspiracy theory narratives, the text argues, is the fear of the loss of personal agency. This loss is caused by overreliance on technology which is controlled by a nefarious conspiracy. The text relies on primary sources in the form of works of an American conspiracy theorist, radio host and political activist, Alex Jones.
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It seems that the return of the living dead in Robert Zemeckis’s "Death Becomes Her" (1992) is not the return of repressed death, like in George A. Romero’s films, but rather the return of the repressed of our modern fears: fear of being ugly and fat, and fear of being old. Today, when we are surrounded by beautiful celebrities from television and newspapers, we cannot afford to let our body get out of shape. It appears that to remain human we have to retain our beauty and shape. But even more horryfing seems the threat of growing old. Michel Vovelle points out that the process of growing old appears as one of the most horrible threats for Western civilization. Hidden and repressed it returns in the figure of zombie in Romero’s classic movie series. The “living dead” truly returns to the cinema in 1968 ("Night of the Living Dead")—the year in which Jean Amèry issues his essay "On Growing Old". From its perspective it becomes obvious that slow and unproductive zombies, “the living dead” which crave only for consumption, represent the senior citizens society that endangers contemporary culture of youth, beauty and health. Simon Clark regards the blood-stained mouth of a zombie as a variation of vagina dentata while Maria Bonaparte perceives it as a symbol of castration and impotence.
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The article aims at describing and analyzing some of the contemporary dilemmas of American neopragmatist philosophy. It would appear that Richard Rorty’s conclusions concerning the conceptual framework of world-description as rooted solely in the multiplicity of contingent paradigms of vocabularies forces into the background an important aspect of the preceding pragmatist tradition: the sensory experience. Using the example of two prominent landscape artists, Nancy Holt and Ana Mendieta, as the point of departure, the article illustrates the attempts of the neopragmatist thought to revive those elements of John Dewey’s aesthetic philosophy that bear direct relevance to contemporary ecocriticism. In this context, John Shusterman’s writings may parallel the pastoral element of eco-philosophy, providing a refreshing perspective on concepts of the environment and the non-human.
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