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Are the contemporary artistic communities still the providers of revolutionary narratives that may shape and support the senses of (national) identity for historical disadvantaged groups, communities, or even nations? To what extent minorities choose to use their depictions through different representations, metaphors and visual constructs, in order to create a sense of European belonging for their multicultural identities, as well as to support their process of social inclusion? What differences are between the revolutionary narratives that depicted the multiple senses of national identity specific to 19th and 20th century, and the contemporary ones, highly influenced by the social and political discourse devoted to various types of immigrants (e.g. refugees, members of transnational minorities), within the context of our European need for morecomprehensive borders? Is the art of today facing a quite different perspective on its autonomy and role in supporting political changes, inthe context of recent debates on “posthumanism”?
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The focus of the paper is to review an early episode from the modern history of the politics and the arts: the XVIIIth century French reception of the debate on the role of luxury and the arts and sciences in “free” states, as it unfolds in two of David Hume’s essays: Of the Rise and the Progress of the Arts and Sciences (1742) and Of Refinement in the Arts (1752). The paper will try to address the reception of Hume’s ideas about arts and luxury in France by focusing particularly on Jean-François de Saint-Lambert’s (1716-1803) essay on “Luxury”, published in the volume IX of the Encyclopedia of Diderot & D’Alembert. The main thesis is that Saint-Lambert was a continuator of Hume in France. Throughout the discussion, the paper will try to survey the development of the luxury-civilization-arts complex, which is now part of the traditional XVIIIth century view on the role of arts and sciences in free, “civilized”, societies. Moreover, the discussions of Hume and Saint-Lambert on luxury and the arts will unfurl another significant debate in the XVIIIth century, the debate about “civilization”.
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This paper examines the Greek concept of khôra, as presented in Plato’ Timaeus, in its function as a prerequisite and spatial image of contemporary democracy, with regard to the interrelation between the notions of space and freedom. The topography of liberty is considered in the light of Jean-Luc Nancy’s The Experience of Freedom, Jacques Derrida’s essays Khôra and Rogue, Richard Rorty’s Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Paul Gilroy’s Postcolonial Melancholia, Michel Foucault’s Fearless Speech, Julia Kriesteva’s Polylogue, as well as the images of contemporary democracy depicted by Geoffrey Bennington, Jonathan Culler, Samuel Weber, Stanisław Kijaczko, and Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński. The artistic context of Ann Hamilton’s The Event of a Thread and Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mirror Chamber give additional evidence to the argument. Khôra resists description and understanding, relying on a peculiarly uncommon combination of qualities and characteristics exhibiting both flexibility and resistance. One may claim that the flexibility and universality of khôra give rise to law and order in general; therefore it might be viewed as a prefiguration of democracy. Its structure – the machinery based on chance and on a free play of multiple elements – is never complete and her final architecture resembles the workings of a democratic system based on various parts acting and interacting freely in the flexible, undefined receptacle of a society.
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At 50 years from May ’68 and 150 years from the moment when Marx’s Capital was published, revisiting the Situationist International appears to be one of the most urgent tasks that any attentive observer of the effects of the French “intellectual revolution” must fulfil in order to explain the cultural synchronicities and mutual interdependencies between the European (Leftist) cultural revolutions of the 20th century. On the one hand, the S.I. explicitly aimed to overcome the collapse of May ’68, considered an aborted and failed revolution, by engaging a radical agenda for the reformation of the so-called “society of the spectacle”, ideologically framed by Debord. On the other hand, in the light of the Thesis and the multiple manifestos that the S.I. movement developed as a cultural program, the ex-partisans of Lettrism conceived their social and political measures, supported by artistic productions, as an intended and necessary radicalization of capitalist detours, at the end of which society emerges from “constructed lived situations” through which individuals can resist to alienation and to the consequences of commodity fetishism that expresses the mediation of social relations through consumption objects. There through, in the first part of my article I will explain the manner in which the S.I. ideologically puzzled a set of objectives, concepts and methods inspired by the Marxist thought and the May ’68 program, as main coordinates that prepare the axiological radicalization developed by Situationism as a two folded-process of political and artistic radicalism. The second part of this research endeavours to reframe the cultural and artistic coordinates of Situationism in order to explain it as one of the last and, arguably, most politicized, avant-gardes of the 20th century.
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There is a peculiar figure of thought (and speech) that Kracauer, Adorno and Benjamin seemed to like and share. Working on related topics concerning the status of the arts, they all toyed with the idea of a “go-for-broke” game, a “va-banque Spiel”. The first occurrence of the expression can arguably be found in Kracauer’s photography essay from 1927, and, given the fact that the three men were in constant exchange of ideas, one would not be surprised to see it crop up in Adorno’s work and correspondence and then taken up, even if not literally, by Benjamin. What is the meaning of this rather unusual expression in the highly intellectual debates on the new social function of the arts that came, as Benjamin put it, with the development of new technological means of (re)production?In what follows we intend to reconstruct the body of thought that the three thinkers have in common on this topic and thus clarify the meaning of the strange va-banque game. As we shall see, with it they are brothers in a “confrérie du risque” as it were, that banks all their hopes for a new society on the new human experience that will be brought about by the “new arts”, as photography and film. What is in play is a new, “higher” concept of experience that emerges from the dialectics of man and nature at work in the creation and reception of the new works of art that has a distinct (and specific) political meaning. We intend to reconstruct this risky intellectual game, and to follow it with a few “post-game” Adornian considerations on the viability of such an approach.
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Censorship is one of the most important defense mechanisms of an ideology and the political system within a state. By controlling information sources the censors must ensure the optimal operation of the system they defend. Censorship as a social reality appeared along with the apparition of books, although institutionalized censorship occurred after the invention of printing, which gave rise to the need for such control. Depending on the type of society that created it, censorship can take various forms, from a minimal role in the case of some societies to a leading role in others. Some forms of censorship existed and still exist regardless of the ideological nature of the state we are referring to. In addition to the State’s need to restrict a society’s access to information, similar measures can come from other institutions such as social, religious or economic establishments. After the imposition of the Soviet political model in the countries of Eastern Europe, State imposed censorship marked tight control especially in the first decade of communist power. In the People’s Republic of Romania, as in the other soviet satellite-states, censorship was performed with the intention of blocking certain ideas from the reader, ideas supposed undesirable by a government which feared that its venture to create the new man in a new type of society could be disturbed by disparate forms of dissidence. Censorship in Communist Romania wasn’t only a mean to suppress ideas and retaining its hegemony, but also a way of modeling people into approved templates by the political authority.
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In his article the author presents ways in which in the last two centuries mountain photography was employed by Slovenians in establishing their national identity or sentiment. He points out the similar, yet also different development of realism in painting, on the one hand, and, on the other, the historical development of photography. He furthermore explores history of photography and of mountain photography in particular, and argues that in the case of Slovenia for a variety of reasons the mountains acquired a very special value. He notes that other countries too, possessed similar loci that played a similar role in similar ways but that they have never attained a similar decisive role as the mountains in Slovenia. The author points out that the photographic representation of mountains is but one of the instances of an imaginary employment of photography, for in the last few decades the representations of mountains could be found on a series of symbolic national objects, such as provisional Slovenian currency, the national flag, and the passport.
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In his article the author presents ways in which in the last two centuries mountain photography was employed by Slovenians in establishing their national identity or sentiment. He points out the similar, yet also different development of realism in painting, on the one hand, and, on the other, the historical development of photography. He furthermore explores history of photography and of mountain photography in particular, and argues that in the case of Slovenia for a variety of reasons the mountains acquired a very special value. He notes that other countries too, possessed similar loci that played a similar role in similar ways but that they have never attained a similar decisive role as the mountains in Slovenia. The author points out that the photographic representation of mountains is but one of the instances of an imaginary employment of photography, for in the last few decades the representations of mountains could be found on a series of symbolic national objects, such as provisional Slovenian currency, the national flag, and the passport.While the proliferation of art biennials appeared to offer a platform for critical resistance and representation formulated in local terms in an increasingly networked world, their conjunction with (and inseparability from) the global flows of capital and the contemporary experiential culture led to an intensified critical scrutiny in the last decade. This article questions the assumption of the critical agency of low-budget biennials set up in formerly peripheral regions of the world as opposed to the historical ones based on the principles of national representation. Taking into account the micro-histories of cultural exchanges taking place between countries in the former East across the Iron Curtain, it claims that, far from formulating a convincing critique of dominant capitalism or truly challenging the dominant art historical canon, most biennials in the formerly peripheral regions tend to contribute to the replication of global capital, enhancing its trans-national fluidity. The most successful ones in this respect, I would argue, tend to invent new localities and contribute to the critical process through innovative aesthetic formats which become politically sharp discourses.
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This article raises the question of authenticity in the arts with regard to artistic strategies, playing with simulacrum and the interaction between authenticity and fake. Examples are taken from art projects, ritual events and theatrical productions.
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In the age of the Anthropocene we have to face problems such as the precarious quality of life or the impact of pollution and global warming on Earth’s climate and all life forms, asking ourselves how artistic practice or Social & Human Sciences are able to deal with them. Is art still capable to produce alternate visions of the future in the face of the disruption of globalization? Can theory face the age of advanced capitalism? Do the views of artists and theorists still have an impact on society? Is man the “savior” of Nature or just a careless consumer? Is technology a functional instrument or an intruder in our everyday life? What meaning does the concept of Nature still have? In this context, a new post-human view is desired together with a thorough reconsideration of nature as nature in itself, and with a firm acknowledgement of an independent animal phenomenology and animal Umvelt (typical environmental world). Thus, one should notice the inevitable turn to a posthuman aesthetics that no longer follows the modern decree that everything is to be understood in relation with the human. A redefinition of Social & Human Sciences (ecology, anthropology, human geography, urban planning, and environmental studies) as an interdisciplinary field together with a reconsideration of such concepts as “human”, “subject” and “life” is also to be noticed. In conclusion this paper aims to present an analysis of recent concepts and themes of the posthuman paradigm, together with the application of these concepts in the artistic field (both international and Romanian art scene will be in focus) and their influence on contemporary life and politics.
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Starting from a description of art activism, one of the relevant art movements in the XXIst century, as a working model for the possibility of a ‘things activism’, the article is approaching a series of posthumanist reasons to elaborate a ‘political aesthetics of things’ based on concepts derived from the sociology of objects, the object-oriented philosophy, the new materialism, the speculative realism, such as the ‘parliament of things’, the ‘internet of things’, the ‘democracy of objects’, and the ‘political ecology of things’, with the derived fiction of the possibility of a ‘nation of things’. To the extent that ‘humans’ are involved in political protests to respond, for example, to the consequences of the supercilious exploitation or noxious transformation of nature, there are also reactions and participations of natural or artistic ‘things’ or ‘hybrids’ that can be seen as being part of a ‘collective action’ of a ‘congregation of bodies’.
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The corporeal experience of the divine in the corporeal vision of the deifying light (theourgon phos) is a main subject in the philosophical system of Palamas. He states that the experience of the divine culminates in the vision of light, following several ascetic practices like the psycho-physic method and the exercitation of intellect. This divine light is neither material nor natural; however it can be perceived with corporeal eyes. What is the ontological character of this light? About this problem there are some approaches by contemporary scholars. For instances, Clucas (1975) states that the theory of light of Palamas is a manipulation of patristic sources and an arrangement of incongruences to escape from the accusation of messalianism. Beck (1961) holds that whenever Palamas is compelled to defend his notion of light he hides himself in the antinomies. I argue that theosis by the theourgon phos can be understood as a new metaphysics of light that combines concepts like energeia, ousia, phos, photismos, metechein. In this metaphysics God is not understood as lux and the creatures as lumen, as in a scheme of Neoplatonist inspiration, as is the case of Grossesteste. In the metaphysics of light of Palamas the divine is understood as deifying light not in its essence, but in its energy, and the creatures will be that light because they will participate (the body too) in that light without losing their individuality.
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There are three views on the relation between moral status and consciousness: the sentientist, the existentialist, and the fundamentalist views. The sentientist view focuses on the fact that an entity becomes sentient by virtue of being conscious. The existentialist view emphasizes the sense in which an entity becomes irreplaceable by having consciousness. The fundamentalist view focuses on the role of consciousness in grounding morally relevant cognitive abilities. This paper aims to make the detailed lines of thought underlying these three views explicit, and to point out the ethical contexts in which each view matters. Since the existentialist view has been discussed much less than the other two views, this paper also aims to clearly explicate the existentialist view.
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The stake of the critical effort found in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals is establishing and justifying what Kant labels the supreme principle of morality. In this aspect, it is surprising to notice that Kant continues to describe the supreme principle by no less than five formulas, without fixing the system of relations they are enlisted in or the rapport they have with the categorical imperative. This is the catalyst for Emilian Mihailov’s book Arhitectonica Moralității (The Architectonic of Morality) published by Paralela 45 in 2017. Localizing these formulas and enlisting them into a system of relations presents itself as Mihailov’s main effort. The central promise of this effort is, foremost, justifying the possibility that reason can be constitutive in the field of morality, or, more precise, the very legitimacy of an architectonic of morality, and secondly, reinterpreting the formulas of the categorical imperative in light on this theoretical framework.
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The Fourteen Points have become part of a whole political narrative dealing with the birth of a new world order or more exactly with the apparent failure to deliver a functional new world order after the cataclysm of 1914-1918. At the same time any discussion about Wilsonianism leads to questions debates about unilateralism or internationalism or about the acceptance or refusal of interdependence by the United States in world politics. As US policies have fluctuated so much during the recent past it is perhaps natural to return to the founding father of the US global role. This dominant version has also obscured another aspect: while Wilson may have won the battle with posterity and identified himself with the new international order, phrases such as „national rights”, „the principle of nationalities” were already in common use in April 1917. In the short term the Fourteen Points were clearly perceived by Romanian officials as a challenge to their peace program. US refusal to endorse Romanian objective was troubling and the Peace Conference in Paris would prove that Wilson was indeed a reluctant supporter of Romania’s territorial agenda.
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Humanitarian assistance is currently a topic frequently addressed at the European level, in the context of the conflict in Ukraine, although the European Union is the main donor at the international level. The emergence of open conflict on the European continent, considered to be the largest military deployment since the Second World War, brought on the public agenda of European countries the provision of humanitarian assistance for the population that left Ukraine on February 24, 2022, located especially at the level of European countries. The involvement of citizens in humanitarian activities represented the defining emblem of European solidarity and a unanimous orientation towards supporting the Ukrainian population was highlighted. In this context, already having the specific frameworks for the provision of humanitarian aid by governments, international institutions, and non-governmental organizations, a vibrant network of humanity has manifested itself at the level of citizens. In this context, having the integrative dimensions of humanitarian aid applied synergistically to international institutions - governments - citizens, this article highlights the principles of humanitarian aid as highlighted at the level of the main operational levels active in the field.
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This paper is an analysis of the language used by Russian journalists to describe the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, specifically the ongoing full-scale invasion started in February of 2022. In this article we rely on the 1928 study Propaganda, written by the American theorist Edward Bernays, which allows us to reveal a great number of similarities between current uses of propaganda and the way it was instrumentalized in the 20th century. Using the techniques, methods and principles of military propaganda as a basis, we analyzed several articles from a well-known Russian newspaper. The aim of this paper is to help develop an effective methodology to analyze and filter media information.
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