Postmodernism

Erkek egemenliğinde kurulmuş bir dünya düzeninde ve özellikle Türkiye’de erkek olmak, zor şartları yerine getirme zorunluluğunu da beraber getirir.  Alper Canıgüz’ün Oğulllar ve Rencide Ruhlar adlı romanında,  erkek olmanın getirdiği zorunlulukların farkında olan ve topluma yerleşmiş eril kalıba göre hareket eden bir erkek çocuğu Alper Kamu’nun bir cinayete tanık olması ve henüz beş yaşında olmasına rağmen bu cinayeti çözme süreci anlatılmaktadır.
Bu makalede, Alper Kamu karakterinin çevresiyle ilişkisi üzerinden yola çıkılarak güç, şiddet ve cinsellik çerçevesi içinde toplumda yer alan klişeleşmiş erkek rolleri incelenecektir.

In my article I point out that theories of “history” and subjectivity are often connected with and grasped through metaphors of nature. Although coming from different disciplines Agamben, Byung-Chul Han, and Malabou think subjectivity as pure potentiality. I synthesize the results of the individual concept of the self, and, in a second step, I reflect upon political and ethical consequences.

Contrary to the predominant view of Polish postmodernism as a revolutionary change concurrent with political transformations of 1989, we argue that it was an evolutionary process operating within late socialism. The implementation of postmodernism in architecture and urbanism was a slow absorption of selected forms and ideas often integrating contradictory notions and technologies (e.g. historicizing elements deployed in the mass-produced panel housing).

Polish postmodernism during the 1970’s and 80’s was a fragmented and dispersed set of ideas and practices that were negotiated and appropriated by diverse groups (architects, the church and communist propagandists), rather than a coherent body of theory and practice. The notion of postmodernism, vague and elusive itself, in Polish context become further complicated by political conditions. The attempts to apply Venturi, Jencks or Krier’s ideas were not always an expression of disappointment in the realities of Polish socialism or a longing for the idealized capitalist West. In some cases, postmodern concepts were interpreted as a bridge between contradicting systems. The complex nature of Polish postmodernism also must be understood by taking into account the strong architectural traditions of national Romantic Regionalism, as well as the legacies of Socialist Realism. Those autochthonous factors modeled the selective character of Polish postmodernity, contributing to the hybridity of the results.

Our aim is to explain how the social and political circumstances of late socialist Poland led to the adaptation, filtration, appropriation and a process similar to creolization of contemporary foreign ideas. This paper is based on research and interviews we conducted with architects in 2013 for a book on Polish postmodernism released in December 2013.

ENG
The aim of P1 is to delineate basic research problems related to Polish postmodernism and to show its implications for both architecture and the way of thinking about city and space. Its relations with political and social changes taking place in the Polish Third Republic are also important. Texts of architects, art historians and culture experts allow the reader to see that postmodernism cannot be reduced to an outmoded aesthetic convention – a style imported from the West, subsequently trivialized by Polish architects. The analysis of the problem is not only of historical value, however. The changes brought by postmodernism are visible in architecture and urbanism until today. Many discussions which are important nowadays are related to the title topic. They concern both fundamental issues, such as the future of panel buildings and individual projects, such as the land management of Parade Square in Warsaw. Thus studying postmodernism is an attempt to understand the space around us as it is today. A collection of interviews of the same title complements the volume.
PL
Celem książki jest zaznaczenie podstawowych problemów badawczych związanych z postmodernizmem w Polsce oraz zarysowanie jego konsekwencji zarówno dla architektury, jak i myślenia o mieście i przestrzeni. Kluczowe są także jego związki z przemianami polityczno-społecznymi, jakie przynosi szeroko rozumiana transformacja.

Kolejne teksty architektów, historyków sztuki oraz kulturoznawców pozwalają dostrzec, że postmodernizmu nie daje sprowadzić się do przebrzmiałej estetycznej konwencji – importowanego z zachodu stylu, który następnie został przez polskich architektów zbanalizowany.
Analiza tego zjawiska nie ma jednak jedynie wartości historycznej – zmiany, które przyniósł postmodernizm, widoczne są w architekturze i urbanistyce do dziś. Z tytułowym tematem wiąże się też wiele z ważnych obecnie dyskusji, zarówno dotyczących generalnych kwestii (losy wielkopłytowego budownictwa), jak i poszczególnych projektów (zagospodarowanie warszawskiego Placu Defilad).
Badanie postmodernizmu jest więc próbą zrozumienia przestrzeni otaczającej nas współcześnie.

Tom uzupełnia zbiór rozmów z sześcioma architektami, którzy w swojej praktyce projektowej na różne sposoby odnosili się do zagadnienia postmodernizmu:
P2 Postmodernizm polski

RESUMEN
La relación interna entre filosofía, literatura y arte permite examinar con propiedad qué significan la pluralidad y complejidad en los usos de la razón. Posibilita la aproximación a esos usos y figuras desde un ángulo privilegiado. El interés por lo literario y artístico no tendría por qué significar un apresurado abandono del modelo discursivo y analítico -que es característico de la filosofía-, sino más bien el acceso a un punto de vista más completo, un nuevo método reflexivo, otro límite crítico. Esta perspectiva facilita la puesta al día de las tesis modernas sobre la filosofía como emancipación, esto es, como su salida de la minoría de edad.
Espacios ficcionales, campos de proyección de la experiencia, métodos y perspectivas trasdisciplinarias constituyen los distintos niveles a través de los cuales se trata de definir un nexo complejo entre discursos. La ficción como conocimiento, subjetividad y texto, así como la relación entre mundo y lenguaje pretenden acotar algunas dimensiones de esa relación.
A través de la literatura llegamos a estar familiarizados con situaciones, sentimientos, formas de vida, obteniendo así una mirada desde dentro -epistemológicamente empática-. Cada nueva visión del mundo constituye un nuevo tipo de conocimiento, un conocimiento que puede incluir aspectos cognitivos y emotivos y que demandará, probablemente, algún tipo de lógica paraconsistente. De modo que a la par que por nuestras narrativas creamos o descubrimos mundos (dependiendo del estatuto ontológico otorgado a la ficción) también establecemos o desentrañamos la legislación lógica, según la cual tal curso de sucesos o tal tipo de entidades son o no admisibles al interior de este particular mundo posible.
Precisamente, es en la constante re-creación de sus objetos, práctica que surge en una comunidad de problemas -un espacio de representación colectiva- el espacio en que se da la ciencia. Es, precisamente, en una particular forma de hablar y de referirse a objetos, creándolos con el habla, el que funda a la medicina -por ejemplo- como cuerpo autónomo de conocimientos, vale decir como ciencia de primer orden. Las disciplinas, pues, en tanto discursos, están, literalmente, constituidas por él. Por ello es necesario estudiar el discurso científico en tanto que discurso, hay que reflexionar sobre sus orígenes y modo de constitución, hay que aceptar que no es sólo un producto sino una fuerza productiva. La realidad es una narrativa exitosa. Es aquello que se hace hablando. Las comunidades científicas son comunidades de problemas y, sobre todo, de retóricas, reconstrucciones de objetos que sólo existen en tanto se habla de ellos de una determinada manera,
Hasta los mundos narrativos más imposibles tienen como fondo lo que es posible en el mundo que concebimos como real. Las entidades y situaciones que no son explícitamente nombradas y descritas como diferentes del mundo real son entendidas a partir de las leyes que aplicamos a la comprensión del mundo real.
Así, pues, la narración de ficción construye un modelo análogo del universo real, una proyección...lo que permite conocer la estructura y los procesos internos de la realidad y manipularla cognitivamente. Se otorga así un valor cognoscitivo a la ficción, de modo tal que todas las posibles connotaciones, no expresadas directamente por el texto, sino -más bien- mostradas implícitamente o implicadas contextualmente en lo allí dicho, iluminan aspectos de la realidad que sin estas extrapolaciones ficcionales permanecerían en penumbras.
La perspectiva crítica -propia de la filosofía- puede hallarse así implícita en escritos de ficción, de la misma manera como las teorías filosóficas pueden aceptar como suyos a los argumentos procedentes del discurso literario. La reflexión filosófica se articula, pues, desde distintos ámbitos y modalidades discursivas.
Dr. Adolfo Vásquez Rocca

Essentialist notions of gender, borne out of the ideology of identity politics, play a significant role in determining what and how research materials are used in gender studies. Consider David Foster Wallace’s corpus. Much of the research that exists to date follows a hetero-normative line of enquiry, the bulk of it doing little to address Wallace’s repeated use of non-conventional gender representation in his works of fiction. Instead, critics focus on common, over-worked themes such as irony (Goerlandt; den Dulk), addiction (Freudenthal), freedom of choice (Jacobs), and philosophical arguments (Olsen). This paper considers Wallace’s use of queer and transgender, and Wallace’s ‘queering’ of language. By conducting a close textual analysis of Infinite Jest (1996) and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (1999), attention is given to those moments in Wallace’s narratives that have been overlooked. Arguably, Wallace complicates issues of gender to such an extent that it becomes difficult to affix essentialist attributes to gendered roles, allowing for progressive debates to form. Studies in gender have largely been the domain of feminists and queer theorists thus far, and in spite of the dismantling of gender that has occurred within academia, little has changed out in the ‘real’ world where gender stereotypes thrive. Wallace’s corpus serves to take the reading of gender into popular culture, thereby widening the debate.

Culture is a concept which is closely related with what is ‘social’. The concept of culture,
which is evaluated in terms of describing social matters, can only correspond with the ‘social’
in a social context. Thus, in this article different conceptons of culture will be assessed in
terms of describing different modes of analyses of culture. Secondly, the ways in which society
is differentiated, the emergence of popular culture and mass culture, and the sphere of cultural
studies will be the focus of the paper. This article evaluates the necessity to use sociology of
culture as a powerful tool to use it as an element of analysis in terms of using it as part of structural
analyses; which would lead us to configure the area as a discipline for studying the social.

Die Migrationsforschung ist aktiv an der (Re-)Produktion gesellschaftlicher Dichotomisierungen zwischen »Migration« und »Sesshaftigkeit« und den damit einhergehenden Ethnisierungen beteiligt. Eine Abschaffung dieser Forschungsrichtung würde jedoch zur weiteren Unsichtbarmachung ihres Gegenstandes führen. Im Berliner "Labor Migration" wurde daher eine »Entmigrantisierung« der Migrationsforschung diskutiert, wodurch der Fokus weg von den migrantischen Subjekten und Räumen hin zu den Techniken und Institutionen ihrer Beherrschung gelenkt wird. Zugleich müsste aber die Gesellschaftsforschung »migrantisiert« werden, indem Migration ihren Sonderstatus ablegt und – analog zu Gender – in sämtliche Forschungsfelder interveniert, das heißt ihre gesellschaftstheoretische Relevanz geltend macht.
Der vorliegende Beitrag stellt sich die Frage, ob Begriffe und Konzepte von Mobilität für diese Zwecke geeignet wären. Zum einen fragt er danach, was welches Mobilitätskonzept für eine Entmigrantisierung der Rede über Migration und eine Normalisierung migrantischer Praxen leistet. Zum anderen wird die Frage diskutiert, inwiefern das Mobilitätsparadigma migrantisiert werden kann, indem die Rede über Mobilität aus einer Perspektive der Migration kritisch angeeignet wird.

In the 21st century, the development of the information technologies, the globalization processes and the influence of new media and cyberculture on the perception of the world by both creators and consumers of a new culture pose the problem of the understanding of the general tendencies of contemporary art, to classificate and to understand the perception prepared by narrations of a ‘postmodern sensitivity’ period. This chapter draws a parallel between the nonhierarchical model of worldview (expressed in the graphical interface of the World Wide Web and described by Lev  Manovich) and the philosophy of postmodernism (in particular, the philosophy of rhizome by Gilles Deleuze), also showing the ontological connection between cyberculture and postmodernism narrations. The author attempts to classify the concepts of the modern culture by terms and notions of  the Information Society and identifies the most important criteria of contemporary art as a modern narration, such as hypertextuality, processuality, intertextuality and interactivity.

This is a short piece on the use of Foucauldian analytics of power in colonial architecture and urbanism. It is the second piece published in the new debate section of ABE Journal: European Architecture beyond Europe. It is an invited response to the first piece -- a critique of the use of Foucauldian analytics of power -- by the section editor Mark Crinson. See Mark Crinson, "The Powers that be" (http://dev.abejournal.eu/index.php?id=582)

This thesis develops a method for analysing performances in navigable texts, with the key case study being videogames. Where it has been argued that videogames demand new critical techniques due to the possibility for audiences to navigate the text and produce differing outcomes, here it is noted that texts displaying non-linear, multifinal, non-linear or contingent traits are not uncommon in the history of art and literature. Looking at the history of key works from ancient rhyparography to Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, the thesis determines that the role of the ‘framing device’ is critical to the operation of these texts.
Linking the concept of the framing device with J.L. Austin’s discussion of performativity and work by Stoichita, Agamben and Benjamin, the thesis locates two contrary readings of the framing device. One, the tautegorical reading, facilitates convergence, navigation and control (such as by acting as an index). The other, the allegorical reading, points towards the possibilities for failure and collapse of the processes of navigation which the framing device supposedly guarantees.
Several videogame texts are examined to show that both readings of the framing device remain operative, and that the linked possibilities for felicitous and infelicitous play are crucial to the ways in which games organise performances. The play of the framing device underwrites videogames’ aesthetic tendencies towards caricature-like distortion and emphasis (‘metamorphic bodies’) and towards genres in which dynamism of movement is central (science-fiction, sports, historical epic). Benjamin’s notion of ‘shock’ is also used to show how games engage tactile experience: in the course of play, players themselves become a kind of metamorphic body.
The central finding is that it is impossible to conceive of a single unit of videogame performance due to the sheer variety of forms such performances take. Instead, a method is offered which conceives of videogames as performative multiplicities. The problem then becomes one of accounting for how particular performances arise from the multiplicity that comprises the game. Supplementing Austin’s discussion with non-mechanistic cybernetic theory, the thesis proposes the categories of ‘illudic’ and ‘perludic’ acts to parse how particular performances arise in a given session of play. Finally, a ‘chronotypology’ is offered which facilitates the description of performative multiplicities as such.

In this Essay (English version under construction) I make an attempt at reading David Byrne's (The Talking Heads) song Heaven as a poetical rendering of Nietzsche's teaching of the eternal recurrence of the same and the overcoming of nihilism qua "amor fati". Moreover, inspired by Walter Benjamin's, or Slavoj Žižek's descriptions of the life on the capitalist treadmill as a particular form of an eternal recurrence of the same, and - above all - by using Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho as an interpretative frame, I try to uncover the at first glance absent dimension of the political economy, in light of which Byrne's Nietzschean song eventually appears as a neo-romantic (postmodern) and therefore necessarily futile attempt at escaping from what Benjamin calls the "hell of modernity".