#Foodporn: fetishized sharing of food and its images

Author(s): Francesco Piluso / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2021

Once translated into images, food acquires a broader meaning. Food is no longer merely something to eat, but to show, share and look at. The increasing amount of images and pictures of dishes on our social networks, associated with hashtags such as #foodporn, expresses this renewed social, communicative and provocative function of food. However, the exhibition of these images is quite ambivalent when it comes to establishing determined patterns of visual and social relationships with and between users. The aim of this article is to analyze and attempt to provide mediation to this ambivalence. The pornographic exposition of food images no longer presupposes a transitive form of consumption by the user, but becomes pure and self-reflexing spectacle. The images are obscene (Baudrillard [1981] 1994) and characterized by an excess of transparency on their object which abolishes any form of seduction (Baudrillard [1979] 1990). Barthes ([1980] 1981) defines this kind of image as unary. Pornographic images are an emblematic example. In terms of their self-evident objectivity, these pictures lack any punctum, any piercing sign of a relationship with or openness to the observer (see Eco 1962; 1979). Nevertheless, behind their apparent transparency, the images are always products of specific perspective cuts, and still able to convey mystery, meaning and involvement. The unary image of food is a further fragment in a series of multiple perspectives on the same object. Such potentiality is actualized in our (social) media culture in which sharing and continuous remediation of images and pictures of food constitute a complex storytelling of the object. This, in turn, fosters further participation by the users. The ambivalence between the indifference of the pornographic image and the involvement in the serialization of the detail is synthetized by the notion of fetishism (Baudrillard [1972] 2019). The social (and) media scenery seems to exemplify and radicalize a sort of commodity fetishism, in which social relationships between users are shaped and mediated by (social) media relationships between images of food.

#stayhomefree

Author(s): Jelisaveta Blagojević / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

(Counter)Monuments and (Anti)Memory in the City. An Aesthetic and Socio-Theoretical Approach

Author(s): Natalia Krzyżanowska / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2017

This article reflects upon the possibility of the visualisation of different forms of collective memory in the city. It focuses on the evolution of the ways of commemorating in public spaces. It juxtaposes traditional monuments erected in commemoration of an event or an “important” person for a community with (counter)monuments as a modern, critical reaction geared towards what is either ignored in historical narratives or what remains on the fringe of collective memory. While following a theoretical exploration of the concepts of memory and their fruition in monuments as well as (counter)monuments, the eventual multimodal analysis central to the paper looks in-depth at Ruth Beckermann’s work The Missing Image (Vienna, 2015). The latter is treated as an example of the possible and manifold interpretations of the function and multiplicity of meanings that (counter)- monuments bring to contemporary urban spaces.

(D)očekujući nemoguće – Nansijanska kardiognoza: pristati na rizik (uvijek i iznova)

Author(s): Bjanka Alajbegović / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 91/2022

The geological era in which we live is called Anthropocene – it is the age in which the driving force is exactly the anthropos, man. Thanks to, yet again, man that could be the final chapter of Earth’s life (considering the announcements and predictions of the experts). Or is it, in fact, possible to think otherwise? Through the deconstruction of Christianity and through the overall corpus of his philosophical thought, Jean-Luc Nancy has given us indications and different movements. This text will try to indicate how ‘we’ – the flesh of the world – could ‘change direction’, actualise metanoia, modify tautology and heterology. Besides that, it is necessary to realise that we are always exposed, as a source to other fellow-sources. What we perceive as the world is the spacing of those fellow-sources. The essence of that world is separation. If certain mystics are to be believed, and Nancy who gladly refers to them, the place of salvation is not far away – it could as well be that personal and the ever-so foreign heart.

(Im)Possible Tolerance. A Paradox from within Multicultural Societies. An Essay on the Mind-Brain Problem and Legal Proof

Author(s): Francesco Trupia / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2019

This paper deals with the principle of tolerance in our contemporary society in the attempt to highlight limits and paradoxes in the various aspects of minority issues. From this point of view, the first part of the paper discusses Kymlicka’s contribution to multiculturalism with regard to national minorities and immigrant communities, while the second part confronts his Theory of Minority Rights with Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony and circle of humanity. Therefore, this paper aims at shifting the discourse over tolerance-related minority issues from a top-down approach toward an analysis of how tolerance is allowed to be performed. Thus, Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis is employed to disentangle moral and cultural set of values and norms within which both principle of tolerance and performativity of toleration are established and, in parallel, to reflect on reasons why others are not allowed to be performed.

(Nie)odczytane znaki (Marcel Proust, Gilles Deleuze, Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz)

Author(s): Tomasz Wójcik / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4/2020

The article is an attempt to read the story The Maidens of Wilko by JarosławIwaszkiewicz in the light of Gilles Deleuze’s book Proust and Signs. Theinterpretation key is the concept of “sign” proposed and developed by the Frenchphilosopher.

(Nie)przewidywalność dynamiki. Refleksje o kryzysie i mieście (na marginesie myśli Jurija Łotmana i René Thoma)

Author(s): Mikołaj Madurowicz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4/2020

The article deals with three issues: (1) how to understand the crisis in the context of the city, (2) what components in the urban crisis equation can be distinguished (constant, variable, unknown), and (3) according to which criteria the predictability of the dynamics of processes taking place in an urbanized environment should be understood. In the analysis, categories of text, code, narrative (discourse), structure and conditions were used as levels of crisis interpretation – in the light of findings of culture semiotician Y. Lotman and mathematician R. Thom. The main result of this study is that the crisis is a stable standard (rule) for all unstable morphologies, including cities.

(Nie)skażony obraz widowiska sportowego – między władzą spektaklu a spektaklem władzy

Author(s): Agnieszka Zalewska-Meler / Language(s): Polish Issue: 9/2020

This article concerns the issue of recognition and de nition of a sports spectacle in terms of a cultural spectacle. The genesis of sports performances and their social background was pre- sented, and the conditions that must be met for something to be regarded as a sports spectacle were speci ed. Examples of the use of the sport events (including the Olympic Games) for political manipulation and propaganda were analyzed, as well as references to the categories of racial prejudice, discrimination and xenophobia. The analysis of photography was used to characterize the relationship between politics and sport, which is presented synthetically.

(Post)phenomenological Approach to Homo Sapiens Technicus

Author(s): Vassil Vidinsky / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

In this paper I use a (post)phenomenological approach to clarify the objective cultural expansion of our technology. Thus, I establish a conceptual analogy between two different philosophical analyses of human– machine relations – one historical and one phenomenological. I develop the analogy between them and their corresponding concepts in several steps. (1) First, I present the Homo sapiens technicus tendency and then the phenomenological differentiation between body schema and body image. All of these elucidate our involvement with machines. (2) Then, I conceptualize the term ‘context’, coupling its structural stability with the idea of distextaulity in order to achieve a better empirical understanding of our technological contradictions. (3) I continue to develop and enrich the analogy by illuminating the functional similarities – fluid boundary, automation, complexity – between contextual structures on the one hand and body schemata on the other. (4) Finally, I explore a deeper causal and narrative connection between those strands, shedding light on an interesting twofold circularity: a circular causation and a double narrative within Homo sapiens technicus.

(R)evolution – the concept of political transformations in ancient Greece

Author(s): Anna Ceglarska / Language(s): English Issue: 12/2019

This paper presents the evolution and revolution as important factors of the constitutional changes in Greek philosophy. It contains an analysis of the terminology, selected political theories, as well as the necessity and diversity of changes. It is meant to establish the systemic sources of revolution and answer the question whether the revolution and evolution factors were essential for constitutional changes according to the ancients and can those theories still be considered as valid.

(Re)interpretarea simbolisticii lui Hermes Mercurius: o paralelă între zeul Antichității și mercurul alchimic

Author(s): Andrei Victor Cojocaru / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 26/2020

In this article, we propose a comparative analysis of the symbolism of the god Hermes, focusing in particular on two of his representations: that of messenger of the gods and that of phallic god. The first of these representations sums up two essential attributes of the god: on the one hand, bearer of the message/ word of the gods (Hermes the Arcadian) and, on the other, guide of souls (Hermes Psyhopompos) to and from the World Beyond. The second representation, that of phallic god, may not seem to have a direct connection with the two attributes mentioned above. At the level of literal interpretation, the two representations are indeed parallel to each other – appearing that they cannot (or should not) ever intersect. However, a closer analysis of the symbolic meanings will lead us to the hypothesis that the god’s aspects are rather complementary than parallel. In other words, the attributes of messenger of the gods and guide of the souls are not “contradicted” in the second representation, but, on the contrary, they are found in another symbolic form or they are, at least, supplemented by another symbolic form.

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Author(s): Agnieszka Lekka-Kowalik / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2016

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Author(s): Jacek Grzybowski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2016

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Author(s): Anna Kozanecka-Dymek / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2016

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Author(s): Marek Porwolik / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2015

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Author(s): Andrzej Waleszczyński / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2016

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Author(s): Grzegorz Kurp / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2016

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Author(s): Julia Rejewska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4/2017

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Author(s): Ewa Podrez / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4/2017

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