...ALEX KITNICK “New Brutalism” remains a tricky term for the student of postwar art and architecture, both too specific and too general. On the one hand, it is associated with a small number of writings and projects carried out by a group of architects, artists, and critics in 1950s London. Alison and Peter Smithson first used the term to describe a residential project in Soho that was to be characterized by a “warehouse” aesthetic and unfinished surfaces, and, in a famous 1955 essay, Reyner Banham wrote that the movement’s three primary characteristics were “Memorability as an Image,” “Clear exhibition of Structure,” and “Valuation of Material ‘as found.’”1 Despite having been granted these attributes, however, or perhaps because of the way they lend themselves to both oversimplification (unfinished sur faces) and open- ended abstract ion (“Memorabilit y as an Image”), Brutalism is often employed today as nothing more than a vague epithet lobbed at vast expanses of postwar institutional building; its associations with art practice are, more frequently than not, left out entirely. The purpose of dedicating this issue to New Brutalism, then, is both to reconsider its theses and to reevaluate its work and writings, while at the same time amending and supplementing earlier histories of the moment, which have emphasized the pop aspects of the work. 2 In doing so, we hope to recapture something of New Brutalism’s latent critical potential. As Theo Crosby wrote in the January 1955...
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...Syllabus ARH 4470/5482 Contemporary Art Spring 2013 Tuesday and Thursday 2:00-3:15pm Chemistry and Physics, Room 197 Instructor: Dr. Alpesh Kantilal Patel Assistant Professor, Department of Art + Art History Director, Master of Fine Arts Program in Visual Arts Contact information for instructor: Department of Art + Art History MM Campus, VH 235 Preferred mode of contact: alpesh.patel@fiu.edu Office hours: By appointment on Tuesdays and Thursdays (preferably after class). Course description: This course examines major artists, artworks, and movements after World War II; as well as broader visual culture—everything from music videos and print advertisements to propaganda and photojournalism—especially as the difference between ‘art’ and non-art increasingly becomes blurred and the objectivity of aesthetics is called into question. Movements studied include Abstract Expressionism, Pop, and Minimalism in the 1950s and 1960s; Post-Minimalism/Process Art, and Land art in the late 1960s and 1970s; Pastiche/Appropriation and rise of interest in “identity” in the 1980s; and the emergence of Post-Identity, Relational Art and Internet/New Media art in the 1990s/post-2000 period. We will focus primarily on artistic production in the US, but we will also be looking at art from Europe, South and East Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Emphasis will be placed on examining artworks and broader visual culture through the lens of a variety of different contextual frameworks:...
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...done in 2006 for a women’s studies course at Ohio State University. Some of the facts may be a bit outdated, some have been updated, but I still stand by the interpretation of the texts. And, warning, this posting will include illustrated examples of pornographic cartoons, so it is definitely rated NSFW. Part 1 here discusses the subject matter; Part 2 compares hentai to live action pornography; Part 3 considers the ramifications of hentai.)  Created by a fan, and named “Jessica Rabbit Naughty Pin-up”. When Jessica Rabbit, the animated femme fatale of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? uttered the line “I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way,” I sincerely doubt her creators knew that a decade later she would be made into an online porn star. Now, alongside other American and Japanese cartoon women, she has entire websites devoted to her. Is Jessica being objectified, degraded, and having her rights taken away? Logically, no, because Jessica is merely ink-and-paint, a figment of someone’s imagination brought to life only by the mechanical and visual trickery of animation. As she said, it’s not her fault she was drawn to represent a stereotypical male conception of an idealized woman. Why should we care if people have changed her from a children’s animated figure into an adult porn star? The purpose of this essay is to answer just that: the reasons we should care, and why research should not ignore cartoon porn, and in particular hentai, when it studies pornography. According to anime...
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...of Psychoanalytic Feminism – Countering Freudian Theories 3.5.2 Explanation by other Theorists 3.5.3 Limitations of Psychoanalytic Feminism 3.5.4 Contribution to the Women’s Movement 3.6 Radical feminism 3.6.1 Definition 3.6.2 The influences that shaped Radical Feminism 3.6.3 What are the variations of Radical Feminism? 3.6.3.1 Radical- Libertarian Feminism 3.6.3.2 Radical-Cultural Feminism 3.6.4 Radical Feminism – Its Structure 3.6.5 The Outcomes of the Movement 3.6.6 Critiques of Radical Feminism 3.6.7 Contribution to the Women’s Movement 3.7 Postmodern Feminism 3.7.1 Postmodern Thought 3.7.2 Postmodern rethinking of psychological explanation of gender 3.7.3 Postmodern Feminist 3.7.4 Limitations of Postmodern feminism 3.7.5 Contribution to the women’s Movement 3.8 Black Feminism and Womanism 3.8.1 The Beginnings of Black Feminism 3.9 Cyber Feminism 3.9.1 Origin of Cyber Feminism 3.9.2 Definition of the 100 Anti Thesis 3.9.3 Cyber art and its relation to Cyber feminism 3.9.4 Cyber Feminism – Practical Manifestation 3.9.5 Cyber Feminism challenges and its future 3.10 Let Us Sum up 3.11 Answers to Check Your Progress 3.12 Unit End Questions 3.13 References 3.1 INTRODUCTION The second half of the twentieth century has seen a new impetus to the women‟s movement. There are many factors responsible for this. One of the main factors, however, has been the recognition of...
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...Beginning theory An introduction to literary and cultural theory Second edition Peter Barry © Peter Barry 1995, 2002 ISBN: 0719062683 Contents Acknowledgements - page x Preface to the second edition - xii Introduction - 1 About this book - 1 Approaching theory - 6 Slop and think: reviewing your study of literature to date - 8 My own 'stock-taking' - 9 1 Theory before 'theory' - liberal humanism - 11 The history of English studies - 11 Stop and think - 11 Ten tenets of liberal humanism - 16 Literary theorising from Aristotle to Leavis some key moments - 21 Liberal humanism in practice - 31 The transition to 'theory' - 32 Some recurrent ideas in critical theory - 34 Selected reading - 36 2 Structuralism - 39 Structuralist chickens and liberal humanist eggs Signs of the fathers - Saussure - 41 Stop and think - 45 The scope of structuralism - 46 What structuralist critics do - 49 Structuralist criticism: examples - 50 Stop and think - 53 Stop and think - 55 39 Stop and think - 57 Selected reading - 60 3 Post-structuralism and deconstruction - 61 Some theoretical differences between structuralism and post-structuralism - 61 Post-structuralism - life on a decentred planet - 65 Stop and think - 68 Structuralism and post-structuralism - some practical differences - 70 What post-structuralist critics do - 73 Deconstruction: an example - 73 Selected reading - 79 4 Postmodernism - 81 What is postmodernism? What was modernism? -...
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...reached cult status after the film adaptation by David Fincher was released in 1999, and widespread and divided critical reception was soon to follow. Much of the current debate about Fight Club focuses on the political implications of the text, but most often recourse to it by way of referencing the film. These arguments usually question or celebrate the transgressive potentials of the book (Giroux; Mendieta), or address issues of masculinity brought into the fore by their literary and cinematic representations emergent in the same decade (Tuss; Friday). However, few, if any, have addressed the literary aspirations of the text and its author. Although none of the approaches to the thematic concerns of Fight Club are unjustified, in the argument that follows I will suggest that conclusions drawn and critical judgments passed have been hasty, and not only failed to take into account the formal aspects of story-telling, but that the narrative features of Palahniuk’s text have largely went unexplored, and constitute a blind spot of the reception. Critics condemning or acclaiming the novel, and, indeed, many a cultic reader of Palahniuk ignored Fight Club as a literary narrative, and have inadvertently been repeating the catchphrases of the text, either reinforcing or trying to undermine what they have understood as their meaning. I see the significance of Palahniuk’s fiction and the literary event of Fight Club’s publication in somewhat different terms. Palahniuk’s emphasis and continued...
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...final mark and the course tutor and undergraduate coordinator will be notified. Marking Marking framework adheres to a High Pass with Distinction, High Pass, Pass, Low Pass, Complete-toPass system. Poor attendance can affect this final mark. Course Materials Readings for each week are provided both online on the course website at aafirstyearhts.wordpress.com and on the course library bookshelf. Students are expected to read each assigned reading every week to be discussed in seminar. The password to access the course readings is “readings”. TERM 1: CANONICAL BUILDINGS, PROJECTS, TEXTS In this first term of the lectures for this course, we will examine some of what are considered to be the most important modernist buildings, projects and texts from the 20th century. The course sets out to not only forensically scrutinise significant architects, movements, buildings/projects and texts, which by general consensus are considered to represent key moments in the history of architectural...
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...Essay RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE IN THE AGE OF DIGITAL REPRODUCTION* Frederick Mark Gedicks† Roger Hendrix†† (forthcoming in St. John’s Law Review (Fall 2004)) And the angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush; and he looked, and lo, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. God called to him out of the bush, "Moses, Moses!" And he said, "Here am I." Then he said, "Do not come near; put off your shoes from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground." And he said, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. —Exodus 3:2, 4-6 Now as Saul journeyed he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed about him. And he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" And he said, "Who are you, Lord?" And he said, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” —Acts 9:3-6 The Passion of The Christ is the best movie I have ever seen. It was graphic and faithfully stayed with the Gospel texts. The neck of my shirt was soaked with tears during the scourging, and I felt like a softball was lodged in the back of my throat as the movie concluded. The nearest feeling that I can compare it to was an * Copyright © Frederick Mark Gedicks & Roger Hendrix. All rights reserved. This essay is based on a lecture delivered by Professor Gedicks at the St. John’s University College of Law...
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...International Journal of Arts and Sciences 3(15): 238-254 (2010) CD-ROM. ISSN: 1944-6934 © InternationalJournal.org Filipino Philosophy and Post-Modernity Raymundo R. Pavo, University of the Philippines Mindanao, Philippines Abstract: Post-Modernity, with its stress on freedom and creativity, is a vantage point that can dispose Filipino thinkers to philosophically formulate, construct and develop thought systems. This liberating milieu can be reckoned as a fertile occasion where Filipinos can explore the conditions of possibilities that grant a philosophical status to thoughts, statements or constructions that either come from or pertain to the Filipino mind. Such that when we use the concept Filipino Philosophy, we are well-conscious of these two interrelated points – The Identity and Referential Nature of the concept Filipino, and the connotation/intension of the term Philosophy. Is it Filipino? Is it philosophical? These are the questions that have guided the ruminations in this philosophical treatise. And as an initial insight to such questions, we propose a kind of vantage point that can address the identity and referential nature of the term Filipino in a Filipino Philosophy and the philosophical substance of its claim. This perspective, we shall argue, may be construed by a social-scientist-philosopher. As a social scientist, this thinker is mindful of the descriptions or characteristics that may be regarded as telling of the Filipino milieu. As a philosopher, this...
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...-“Strauss versus Brains and Genes or the postmodern vengeful return of positivism.” This essay first started as an answer to what I deemed very problematic, i.e. the disputation which I found in bad faith (un-authentic to use a philosophical term or an existentialist term), of the mediatic, dashing Harvard cognitivist/linguist, Steven Pinker, in his article “Neglected novelists, embattled English professors, tenure-less historians, and other struggling denizens of the Humanities, Science is not your Enemy—a plea for an intellectual truce,” (The New Republic--August 19). Then the counter-arguments against Steven Pinker’s conception of the “human animal” developed into an essay arguing that the New Positivism, not science, or technology per say, was the enemy of humanism and its avatars as such. The point is not to become a postmodern anti-scientific Luddite. Genomics are changing the world in ways we barely imagine yet and will re-define what it means to be human (a becoming already imagined by science fiction writers, social critics and critical thinkers such as the feminist Donna Haraway with her “Cyborg”). The point is also not to turn “anti-brainiac.” Without a brain we would become vegetative, a vegetal…, i.e. a purely “natural body,” a “zombie.” If we make use of this “computer” allegory which is an analog but not a homologue, and which is used ad nauseam used by psycho-biologists, without a hard-drive there is no software. But is this a reason to say that the software...
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...The Ambiguity of Weeping. Baroque and Mannerist Discourses in Haynes’ Far from Heaven and Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows. Jack Post Abstract Although Douglas Sirk’ All That Heaven Allows (1954) and Todd Haynes’ Far from Heaven (2002) are both characterized as melodramas, they address their spectators differently. The divergent (emotional) reactions towards both films are the effect of different rhetorical strategies: the first can be seen a typical example of baroque discourse and the latter as a specimen of mannerist discourse. The reference to the terms melodrama, mannerism and baroque does not imply that these films are just formal repetitions of historical periods or that they thematically and structurally refer to historical styles, but that they are characterized by opposing discursive strategies which came to the foreground in a specific historical time and constellation. Because these discursive strategies return in other historical periods and socialpolitical circumstances in different guises and with different aims, they can be compared to what Aby Warburg calls Pathosformeln (pathos formula). The expressive forms, gestures and discursive modes of melodrama, baroque and mannerism can thus be understood as transhistorical (gestural) languages of pathos that recur in history. Résumé Bien que All that heaven allows (1954) par Douglas Sirk et Far from heaven (2002) par Todd Haynes se caractérisent nettement comme un mélodrame, les deux films adressent...
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...THE ART OF PERFORMANCE A CRITICAL ANTHOLOGY edited by GREGORY BATTCOCK AND ROBERT NICKAS /ubu editions 2010 The Art of Performance A Critical Anthology 1984 Edited By: Gregory Battcock and Robert Nickas /ubueditions ubu.com/ubu This UbuWeb Edition edited by Lucia della Paolera 2010 2 The original edition was published by E.P. DUTTON, INC. NEW YORK For G. B. Copyright @ 1984 by the Estate of Gregory Battcock and Robert Nickas All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper or broadcast. Published in the United States by E. P. Dutton, Inc., 2 Park Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 79-53323 ISBN: 0-525-48039-0 Published simultaneously in Canada by Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited, Toronto 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 First Edition Vito Acconci: "Notebook: On Activity and Performance." Reprinted from Art and Artists 6, no. 2 (May l97l), pp. 68-69, by permission of Art and Artists and the author. Russell Baker: "Observer: Seated One Day At the Cello." Reprinted from The New York Times, May 14, 1967, p. lOE, by permission of The New York Times...
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...Diasporic Cross-Currents in Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost and Anita Rau Badami’s The Hero’s Walk HEIKE HÄRTING N HIS REVIEW of Anil’s Ghost, Todd Hoffmann describes Michael Ondaatje’s novel as a “mystery of identity” (449). Similarly, Aritha van Herk identifies “fear, unpredictability, secrecy, [and] loss” (44) as the central features of the novel and its female protagonist. Anil’s Ghost, van Herk argues, presents its readers with a “motiveless world” of terror in which “no identity is reliable, no theory waterproof” (45). Ondaatje’s novel tells the story of Anil Tessera, a Sri Lankan expatriate and forensic anthropologist working for a UN-affiliated human rights organization. Haunted by a strong sense of personal and cultural dislocation, Anil takes up an assignment in Sri Lanka, where she teams up with a local archeologist, Sarath Diyasena, to uncover evidence of the Sri Lankan government’s violations of human rights during the country’s period of acute civil war. Yet, by the end of the novel, Anil has lost the evidence that could have indicted the government and is forced to leave the country, carrying with her a feeling of guilt for her unwitting complicity in Sarath’s death. On one hand, Anil certainly embodies an ethical (albeit rather schematic) critique of the failure of global justice. On the other, her character stages diaspora, in Vijay Mishra terms, as the “normative” and “ exemplary … condition of late modernity” (“Diasporic” 441) — a condition usually associated...
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... During the past 30 years, culture has emerged as a major theoretical framework in which to investigate media. Chapter I examines how media influence culture generally, as suggested by various contemporary media scholars and others. Chapter II then focuses on critical-cultural theories about the nature of media power and its potentially negative influence. This book can adopted as a supplementary text in introductory mass media courses along with a survey text such as Joseph R. Dominick's The Dynamics of Mass Communication (available from McGraw-Hill). It also can serve as a foundational text for other assigned readings in advanced courses dealing with mass media and society, communication theory, or cultural studies. Students are encouraged to focus thoughtfully on the main ideas, not attempt to merely memorize details. Important concepts and names appear in boldface and are defined in italics. The abridged Subject Index lists the page with the primary discussion of each topic. Sidebars throughout the text, set off with sans serif type, provide insights that supplement the main text. The Notes section cites quoted materials and guides students to other pertinent sources. Special thanks go to colleagues Kenton Bird, Donna Rouner, Marty Traynor and James Van Leuven, all of Colorado State, for their encouragement and assistance in this project. I also want to acknowledge Dennis Davis,...
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...Tradition And Modernity In the instinctive mode of western scholars, I had once thought of Tradition and Modernity as individual chapters, each of them thinking about its topic as an entity to be understood in its respective essence and unity. But I have come to understand in perhaps an equally perennial move by western students of Indian culture that these two terms do not in themselves exist. But they do function, dialogically. They work in relation with each other. Modernity functions as an economic and social tool to achieve some wealth, flexibility, and innovation for individuals and groups; Tradition functions, partly and at times largely, as a mythological state which produces the sensation of larger connectedness and stability in the face of shockingly massive social change over the last half-century. One might also say that Modernity is an economic force with social, cultural, and political correlatives; Tradition is a cultural force with social, economic, and political correlatives. Satisfyingly asymmetrical in their relation, they require us, in talking of one, to talk also of the other, just as they induce us to move as nimbly as possible between theoretical abstraction and experiential reality. But their separation is itself part of the mythological drama in current Indian thought, just as their mutual implication is the import of the same ironic smile that brings to an effective close any conversation one hears here about them. And so we take them in turn only...
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