Postmodernism

Because of the absence of evidence to show for its utility, the notion of ‘development’ has been fraught with many debates over the years. This paper is concerned with re-examining the future of development studies, based on its past and present trajectories. The argument here is that development may be useful if its norms and practices become context-specific and are made to benefit its purported beneficiaries. The chronology spans the period after World War II to the present day, and thus covers theories that envision alternatives. While this chronology is overlapping, we hope to show that development studies has been marked by both continuities and discontinuities.

When Linda Hutcheon in her work on postmodern aesthetics and historiography (1988) speaks of “history as ‘a true novel’” she seems both to sum up the postmodern skepticism towards historical knowledge but also point towards what, in an unfortunate turn of phrase, could be called a poetics of history, flashing out the fact that history and fiction may not be as too far apart as it may seem. W. G. Sebald’s novel The Emigrants could be seen as a site of contention where desperate attempts by the narrator to preserve the memory of the past are constantly undermined by the unreliability of the very means by which he attempts to maintain its legitimacy. Reflecting on the nature of historical knowledge and memory in Sebald’s novel, this paper intends to consider whether history, insofar as it shares its narrative conventions with fiction, is not past but perhaps yet and always to be determined.

This paper will examine postmodern hermeneutics from the perspective of a faith-based – dare we say Adventist – environment. A critique of post- modern hermeneutical theory will be provided, through the examination of interpretations of the woman at the well narrative in John 4. Based on this examination a couple of guidelines – intertextuality and the rights of the text – will be extracted. These guidelines, if governed by the path described, will simplify the acceptance of postmodern hermeneutics within a faith-based environment, which will envisioned a hermeneutically broader Adventism.

This paper examines two novels (Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things and David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas) as monstrous Neo-Victorian texts. Both mimic the patchwork nature of many Victorian novels, but are fragmented and self-consciously deformed in a wholly postmodern way. These monstrous texts (which contain examples of monstrosity and trauma on many levels) argue against the assumption that the Victorian era formed a haven of coherence and self-assuredness. In both their form and contents, Poor Things and Cloud Atlas also question the academic process of historical reconstruction and revision. Rather than building on the foundations of the Victorian establishment, I argue that these texts are actively engaged in tearing it down—or more accurately, deconstructing it.

Ultimately, this paper shows how historiographic metafiction (specifically Neo-Victorian fiction) uses trauma to rewrite the past (and sometimes to pre-write the future) in order to validate both the individual and broader cultural present of the reader. Rather than seeking comfort in the completeness of a Victorian past, Neo-Victorian texts like Poor Things and Cloud Atlas find comfort in its illusory nature.

In this essay, I explore the political significance of depression, particularly as a prominent form of resistance to conditions of life under contemporary global capitalism. After noting the political context of the second beatitude, which suggests a form of mourning that bears witness to public suffering, I assert that under the current dominance of the disease model, depression has lost its political voice. This loss is of grave concern given evidence that the culture of late capitalism (neoliberalism) has initiated a global epidemic of depression. I reframe depression as the final cry of souls diminished under these conditions. Finally, I denote the qualities of such souls, illustrating with a pastoral psychotherapy case summary. A dream presented during the termination phase not only provides a clinical presentation of the attributes of souls under neoliberal governance, but suggests how voice may ultimately be restored even when depression has become unconscious.
Keywords: Depression, Melancholy, Neoliberalism, Capitalism, Political resistance, Soul

How to teach the Renaissance in the light of postmodern theory? Clearly there is more at stake than simply co-opting postmodern concepts, or framing 'the Renaissance' in terms of the formation of modernity and its fragmentation in the postmodern situation. The textuality of history, the historicity of reading, the anxiety of influence, the unpopularity of canonical literature, the contexture of subject positions---all inform an approach to such an endeavour. New historicism, cultural poetics, materialist feminism, women's history, provide ideologies, conceptual frameworks. What of the mode of discourse?

In The Metaphysics of Media, award-winning media critic Peter K. Fallon tackles the complicated question of how a succession of dominant forms of media have supported—and even to some extent created—different conceptions of reality. To do so, he starts with the basics: a critical discussion of the very idea of objective reality and the various postmodern responses that have tended to dominate recent philosophical approaches to the subject. From there, he embarks on a survey of the evolution of communication through four major eras: orality; literacy; print; and electricity.

Within each era, Fallon argues, the dominant form of media supported particular ways of understanding the world, from the ascendance of reason that followed the development of alphabets to the obliteration of space and time that we associate with electronic communications. Fallon concludes with a hard look at the mass ignorance that prevails today despite (or perhaps because of) the sea of information with which contemporary life is surrounded.

A stirring, philosophically rich investigation, The Metaphysics of Media offers not only a clear picture of where our society has been but also a road map to a more engaged, informed, and fully human future.

an exploration of your beliefs about non-material reality


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Reading machines are technological devices promising to support or even perfect processes of reading. Although the concept of reading machines is almost as old as the notion of writing machines, it has received far less attention in literary and cultural studies. The essay addresses this gap. The first part of the argument links the reading machine to Freud’s definition of a tool. As a prosthesis connected to the human body and mind, a tool produces ‘trouble at times’: translation difficulties between the machine and its user affecting matters of materiality, discourse, and meaning alike. The reading machine embodies such ‘trouble at times’ that results from the paradox tension between machine and meaning. While the machine requires the mechanized processes to be unambiguous, the reading process is ambiguous by definition. Most of the reading machines invented in the past decades, do not take into account the trouble that results from such a tension: first and foremost, they serve to support reading processes mechanically. Yet, some of them stand out and hold a specific potential to stage such troubles and render the underlying tensions productive. The article discusses three of them, each of them focussing on a different aspect of the reading process: the first one is a ‘pedagogical reading machine’ (1767) concerned with the alphabetization process, the second one is an ‘aesthetic reading machine’ (1930) designed for reading literary texts, and the third one is a ‘critical reading machine’ (2007) that focuses on literary criticism.

Quando esce negli Stati Uniti la raccolta curata da Hal Foster, tra i più agguerriti sostenitori di una rivoluzione critica messa in atto attraverso il gruppo della rivista di prima linea “October”, in Francia la discussione attorno al significato e all’importanza di una condizione esistenziale sfociati in un giudizio fortemente critico, in un giudizio fortemente critico sul valore della tradizione, era nella sua fase conclusiva.

Artykuł jest próbą zarysowania pola możliwego dialogu pomiędzy filozofią (szczególnie ponowoczesną) i popkulturą. Analiza dotyczyć będzie "Filozofii Andy’ego Warhola. Od A do B i z powrotem" oraz – między innymi – szeregu jej powiązań z rozpoznaniami  postmodernistów. Książkę ta poddana jest reinterpretacji m. in. poprzez umiejscowienie jej w szerszym kontekście społeczno-kulturowym. Z jednej strony celem będzie ukazanie jej jako ironicznej wypowiedzi filozoficznej, która wchodząc w specyficzną grę z odbiorcą, innymi tekstami kultury, a także wyobrażeniami, przesądami i stereotypami utrwalonymi w świadomości społecznej, redefiniuje rolę artysty, wizję filozofii i sztuki we współczesności. Z drugiej strony interesujące są język, konwencja, a także wyjątkowa – głęboko ambiwalentna – postawa Warhola wobec współczesnej mu kultury. Granice pomiędzy jej sferami – filozofią i popkulturą – podważa artysta po to, aby odsunąć przesądy, jakimi obarczone są ich definicje i sposób lektury. Nonszalancka afirmacja kultury popularnej jest tu dekonstrukcyjnym gestem – zaskakującym, ironicznym sposobem interpretacji kultury. Artykuł jest więc w dużej mierze przedstawieniem i reinterpretacją projektu Andy’ego Warhola, który przełamując bariery i granice dzielące popkulturę i filozofię, dokonuje wielokrotnych, niespodziewanych transgresji.