Book•
The Politics of Postmodernism
01 Jan 1989-
TL;DR: In this article, the postmodernist representation is de-naturalized the natural, Photographic discourse, Telling Stories: fiction and history, Re-presenting the past: 'total history' de-totalized, Knowing the past in the present, The archive as text.
Abstract: General editor's preface. Acknowledgements. 1. Representing the postmodern: What is postmodernism? Representation and its politics, Whose postmodernism? Postmodernity, postmodernism, and modernism. 2. Postmodernist representation: De-naturalizing the natural, Photographic discourse, Telling Stories: fiction and history. 3. Re-presenting the past: 'Total history' de-totalized, Knowing the past in the present, The archive as text. 4. The politics of parody: Parodic postmodern representation, Double-coded politics, Postmodern film? 5. Text/image border tensions: The paradoxes of photography, The ideological arena of photo-graphy, The politics of address 6. Postmodernism and feminisms: Politicizing desire, Feminist postmodernist parody, The private and the public. Concluding note: some directed reading. Bibliography. Index.
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01 Jan 2010
TL;DR: In Tron, a user is trapped inside a computer system and forced to play video games until he dies, and in Hackers, the system is represented as an all-encompassing virtual world, most of which is itself computer-generated.
Abstract: ion of invisible processes Interestingly, these representations are provide visual representations of humans interacting with computers In Hackers, when the hackers break into the file system of The Plague, the system is represented as an all-encompassing virtual world In Tron, a user is trapped inside a computer system and forced to play video games until he dies The focus here is on the prevalence of video games and the beginning of networked computers in the 1980s, both of which feature prominently in the plans that the Master Control Program has for taking over the world The narrative is a typical computer-becomes-smarter-than-people-and-wants-to-take-over-world, but within the MCP's world, trapped programs wonder about the existence of users, whom they see as having a master plan, being all-powerful and benevolent The programs that do not believe in users are recruited to join the MCP; others are labeled superstitious and made to play gladiatorial games until death The metaphysical question of the existence of users is an interesting twist on the view of computer programs as strictly obedient and mindless, positing a religion that is essentially true but greatly distorted The confusion of inside and outside is treated by representing a world within the computer as a vast electronic landscape, most of which is itself computer-generated In this film it is clear when the characters are inside or outside due to the glowing suits and helmets they wear inside, and the fantastic backgrounds, but one of the closing shots reveals a bit of conflation, as the world of the MCP dissolves neatly into a time-lapse simulation of downtown LA, with traffic below and planes flying overhead, the city grid resembling the electronic impulses on the geography of the MCP's territory The loss of indexicality creates a new cultural paradigm where one no longer assumes that images faithfully replicate an ontologically distinct object It’s not that there is no relationship between, say, a sunset and the digitally produced photograph of it, or that this
3 citations
TL;DR: This issue of Theatre Survey explores the condition of post-modern Shakespeare production, and by implication the situation of classic drama on the horizon of the contemporary stage as discussed by the authors, with a series of articles on radical, revisionist, and alternative ways of putting the "classics" into play.
Abstract: This issue of Theatre Survey explores the condition of postmodern Shakespeare production, and by implication the situation of classic drama on the horizon of the contemporary stage. Working on this issue has been, for both of its coeditors, a surprising experience. Theatre Survey is a distinguished journal in the field of theatre history and historiography, and with this issue we intended to press the journal's agenda toward the history and theory of contemporary culture, generating a series of articles on radical, revisionist, and alternative ways of putting “the ‘classics’ into play.” Because we understand this enterprise—from the Kathakali King Lear to Robert Wilson's When We Dead Awaken to Heiner Muller's Medeamaterial to Baz Luhrmann's William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet—to stand in a strategic relation to modernity, we were calling the issue “Performance: Modern and Postmodern.”
3 citations
TL;DR: The notion of complementary, sympathetic co-participation, and its accompanying re-enchantment, merits attention as discussed by the authors in view of radical new theories, methods and techniques that have emerged during the past century and a half.
Abstract: Mind has played the starring role in the West's arts, humanities, and sciences, while an embodied notion of oneself, others, and the physical world has been customarily pushed under the rug. In view of radical new theories, methods and techniques that have emerged during the past century and a half, the notion of complementary, sympathetic co-participation, and its accompanying re-enchantment, merits attention. C. S. Peirce is at the crossroads between modernism, enchantment, and misplaced concreteness, on the one hand, and postmodernism and its attendant poststructuralism, on the other. His categories of feeling, sensation, and thought, and his triadic, all-encompassing concept of the sign, can help bring all facets of human creativity, concrete living, and understanding into a proper balance. Three coined terms — homogeny, hierogeny, and heterogeny — serve to elucidate how Peirce's triadic vision can offer a middle path, a way of mediating between antagonistic modes of sensing, living, and thinking. This middle path follows traditional tenets of logic and reason — identity, non-contradiction, and excluded-middle — while at its fringes, it allows deviation — by way of process, inconsistency, and incompleteness (in concert with complementary, sympathetic co-participation) — from the rigidity that lies therein. Studies of feminist postures and various cultural processes in Latin America bear out the premise that a dose of conformity accompanying a tendency toward resistance can synethnically help keep broad cultural processes on an even keel, balancing mind and body, conflicting theories and methods and modes of living, and styles of reason and unreason in equilibrium.
3 citations