Arquivo para a ‘Politics’ Categoria
What place does aesthetics occupy in our time
29
Jan
I imagined that it would be difficult, even
impossible, to approach the subject, since it is concerned with art critics of various types, Freudian psychoanalysts and very rarely anyone with our aesthetic, in the sense of beautiful Greek, or the contemplation of which Byung Chull speaks Han.
I found in a small text by Jacques Rancière, I am increasingly meeting this author, who came to know his work almost by chance (The emancipation of the spectator), referring to the theme as the aesthetic unconscious, but he himself explains it at the outset. psychological aspect of the theme.
I find right at the beginning of the book: “aesthetics does not deal with science or the discipline that deals with art.
Aesthetics designates a way of thinking that deals with the things of art ” (Rancière, 2009, p. 11) and this would be enough, but it complements their thinking and that they seek:“ to say what they consist of as things of thought. ” ( Rancière, 2009, p. 12).
It is a finding, but it could not be otherwise in a dialogue with the Kantian “tradition”, the following complement follows, saying that art as a thought is a recent reference and refers to the work Genealogy of art by Baumgarten of 1790 as the criticism of the Faculty of Judging of Kant.
From Baumgarten, a simple reference in his work would suffice, referring to the union of objects that “must be thought in a beautiful way with causes and effects, as this union must be sensitively known through the analogue of Reason” (Baumgarten, 1933 , p. 127) and so both he and Kant will establish “confused thinking” about the definition of aesthetics.
Rancière will say that both when calling Kant’s confused or heterogeneous sensitive thought, both will make art “no more than a minor knowledge, but a knowledge of what is not thought” (Rancière, 2009, p. 13) and the note of author will link it to enlightenment and liberalism.
There is no explicit reference to Nietzsche’s thought about art, but when discussing Oedipus, the most typical Greek tragedy and Nietzsche defends its role in art, he says about the Freudian use of this tragedy as “universal”, which at the same time encompasses three aspects: “a general tendency of the human psyche, a determined fictional material and a dramatic scheme considered exemplary.” (Rancière, 2009, p. 15).
Of course, this is only introductory, what Ranciére wants to explain is that it is not a matter of subjective or “confused knowledge”, but “a paradoxical union of disease and medicine that is, a paradoxical union of the two” (p. 26) in a reference to “The birth of tragedy” of the Nietzsche, what idealism as thought and romanticism as “aesthetics” want to deny.
Rancière, J. (2009) O inconsciente estético. trad. Monica Costa Netto. São Paulo: ed. 34.
Does tradition and innovation have any relationship?
28
Jan
In the cultural sphere, it is often imagined that it does not, or establishes innovation only in the strict scope of culture, while it is related to beliefs, values, and mainly to the forms of social relations that involve the
production of wealth, the use of techniques , for example, the transition from oral culture to writing, meant a profound change.
Innovation is linked to some significant cultural change, in general, with the influence of new techniques and production methods for consumption, but the term is broader.
The change today is from the media to the transmedia, that is, the media complement each other, you can make a video from a text or an oral exhibition of a certain culture, so you can talk about the narrative of transmidia, or “ storytelling ”, that is, telling stories.
The term was first used by Professor Marsha Kinder, from the University of Sourthern California (USA), in 1991, but in 2003 Professor Henry Jenkins created a definition that was enshrined in his book “Culture of Convergence”, where he defined it as: “[…] a new aesthetic that emerged in response to the convergence of the media”.
When referring to the term aesthetics, it goes beyond the pure production of consumer products to reach art, culture and, in a way, the belief system as a whole, even though rejection in several areas is common, the process of “innovation ”Advances.
There is also a redefinitionof storytelling, the tradition of oral culture of storytelling, where the tradition is perpetuated changes to a new form, now it becomes the use of audiovisual resources to transmit a story, which can be told in an improvised way (as in oral tradition), but can also be worked on and enriched with visual aids.
JENKINS, Henry. (2006) Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. NY: New York UniversityPress.
From darkness to light
24
Jan
The relationship between tradition and change is greater than you can think, even Marx went to study English economists, German idealism and
French politics to think about his change, it is a fact that this thought today is already part of tradition, so what will be the new ?
We started the week talking about Buzzwords, however the big change that happens nowadays is in the aspect of production and consumption the digital change, the market and the hurryers already use the word “digital transformation”, a strong buzzword, however it is not about ignore it, but understand in the context of the changes that are taking place.
All the tones of the change agree that one must think about collective forms of work, of thought, however what is called collective is in different social, economic and even religious niches, it is a “us” closed in groups and currents of thought .
Tradition seeks the center, where power and wealth are, change seeks the periphery.
However, it is from the crisis that the light is born, it is curious that the Bible prophecy, as well as the text of Matthew (Mt 4,15): “Land of Zabulon, land of Neftali, way of the sea, region on the other side of the Jordan River , Galilee of the pagans! ”Speaks of a people and a land far from religion and where Jesus went to gather his first disciples, because the“ religious ”were Pharisees.
And dialogue with tradition, yes, Jesus will dialogue with Pharisees all the time, what lesson can be taken for the contemporary world and its cultural and spiritual crisis.
The new needs “new wineskins”, so new wine in a new barrel, but the culture of wine is not disregarded but improves its appreciation and production, it is not a new process, but a planting in new soil, in fertile land and where hearts are open.
#NoWar
06
Jan
General Qassem Soleimani killed in Baghdad, Iraq,
was Iran’s second most powerful person and could break the fragile balance between international forces, and the danger of a war of world proportions becomes a fearful possibility.
Iran has countries like China and Russia as allies, in addition to the Arab and Muslim world, which today is a world-class religion, and this may have a global outline of terrorism another possibility.
The security agencies set off their alarms, social media was the most talked about subject of the week, and anyone who imagines this is not serious, does not know the horrors of war: death of innocent people, food shortages, energy breaks, travels and interchance breaks and mainly increased a climate of hatred and intolerance across the plane.
Peace must be desired, and the UN, OAS and international dialogue bodies need to act.
Activism and the human condition
18
Jul
Part of the human “weariness” of our time is that we have decided to take to the
extreme what the philosophers and mystics call “active life”, Hannah Arendt in “The Human Condition” addressed the subject, more recently Byung Chul-Han more recently in ” The society of fatigue “also addresses the issue.
It is placed next to the “contemplative life”, sometimes as opposed and at other times as complementary, the Mystic Saint Gregory Nazianus meditated and wrote on the subject, Chul-Han recovered some of these concepts.
In Arendt’s term “human condition” (2007), the term “active” refers to three essential human activities: labor, work, action, quoted in English because in portuguese no there is differentiation from the terms “labor” and “work” which corresponds to the artificialism of human existence, for example, when using machines, while Labor corresponds to the biological process of the human body as a condition for producing life.
But the action, it is for Arendt is the human condition of plurality, is mediated by things to put men in contact with each other, for this the author sees as a plurality that is tied to the fact that they are men, and not man to inhabit the Earth.
The author emphasizes that the world in which the active life takes place consists of things done by human activities; however, these things can exist only for the sake of men, and therefore they also condition them, men come into contact, and thereby make them It is immediately a condition of their existence, we live by what we do.
However the contemporary world has led people to stress, depression and now Burnout syndrome, the theme of the society of fatigue, Byung Chul-Han.
Chul-Han draws attention to the absence of contemplation, contemplative life, as part of the human need to have balance, energy and forces for action.
The biblical reading says, “Twenty to me all you who are weary” (Mt 11:28) and says the same passage “and learn from me, for I am meek and lowly in heart” (Mt 11:29).
ARENDT, Hannah. A Condição Humana. 10ª ed. Rio de Janeiro: Forense Universitária, 2007.
Anguish between inter-times
17
Jul
The passage from one historical time to another is tragic and is subject to many anguish,
upheaval and that cause throughout society a great anguish: the new one does not exist yet and the old one takes to leave.
However, it is possible to read in the literature and in the various social theories how this passage, sometimes violent and sanguine like the French revolution and sometimes an explosion of culture and of knowledge like the renaissance.
Nicolau Sevcenko, who also analyzed the Renaissance period, analyzing the current moment as a roller coaster, and a stage that is in the roller coaster series, is described as: “it is the climax of precipitous acceleration under his intensity “relaxes our impulse to react, delivering the dull points” (SEVINCENO, 2001, p.16).
This author is nice to note that the crises of the previous deity, he said about the Italian renaissance: “The history of Renaissance culture clearly illustrates the whole process of cultural construction of modern man and contemporary society. In it, the germs of individualism, of rationalism and unlimited ambition, of the most imperative and representative behaviors of our time manifest themselves, already very dynamic and predominant. ” (SEVCENKO, Nicolau, The Renaissance, São Paulo: Current, 1987.)
That is, they are already a culture of our rhythm, parallel to renaissance, elements of a new culture, an approach to the planet as a whole, such as different ethnic and religious cultures, the end of individualism with collective responses. , but there are some old things.
The social anguish provoked by these changes, when they touch on certain people and with the immunity to the various types of social manifestation that arise from the provoked crises, can become a social disease, a political psychosis and an ataraxia to respond to the impulses provoked by groups of pressure.
The Greeks called ataraxia a state of “stillness of the soul,” the pre-Socratic philosopher Democritus (460-370 BC) who introduced this term in philosophy, was adopted by Epicureans and Stoics, but also has a sick state that would be indifference or apathy. It is necessary, above all, for calm and dialogue, which must also be done between tradition and the new cultures that emerge.
SEVCENKO, N. The race for the 21st century: on the roller coaster loop, São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2001.
World and the Post 2015´s Agend
11
Jul
When the UN organized its Post 2015 Development Agenda, it appeared that civil
society organizations were moving towards a greater focus on poverty and hunger, urban planning and education, nuclear disarmament and women’s empowerment, others subjects related to the person, the struggle for greater perks and powers, the return of nationalism moved in the opposite direction.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in September 2014 “Our world needs more wind and solar energy. But I believe in an even stronger source of energy, people’s power”, the path seemed safe and was not, one can now evaluate the error.
The numbers that preceded the conservative turnaround were still “very unequal” in Latin America, Eduardo Frei affirmed that the Chile that governed from 1994-2000, with several initiatives that promoted democracy and social justice, had reduced poverty by 38.6% to 7.8% of the population, and extreme poverty from 13% to 2.5%, but by 2015 Latin America had another profile, despite GDP growth from 2015 to 2018 (photo above).
It was still a region “more unequal” than another, of its 600 million inhabitants still 167 million lived in poverty and 71 million in extreme poverty, this contrast reveals a dangerous and deep social gap, according to the own Frei in 2015.
Regarding the future, Frei affirms that the struggle against poverty and inequalities demanded another effort on an ethical basis, and at this crossroads, it would be time for governments to give greater impetus to the “moral movement” that did not happen.
Juan Somavia, former Director of the International Labor Organization, said in the post 2015 agenda that a good basis for negotiations would be: “the document reflects an extremely ambitious vision with its 17 goals and 69 indicators centered on the concept of sustainable development focused on people and eradicating poverty, “saying that UN political support was critical.
In 20th birthday of UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which was adopted in 2000, said that the problem of poverty eradication was echoed by the UN’s Economic and Social Council (Ecosoc) : productive employment and social integration have been excluded, and it is not mere coincidence. And social integration is a broader concept when we think of global citizenship.
The soul-world and self-identity
10
Jul
In general, few authors are outside the idolatry of the Modern State, even though
most of them, especially the Hegelians, consider it abstract, or as Habermas outside the “world of life”, but this concept is different from Husserl’s Lebenswelf, which is out of state.
One of the few authors who will speak of the “constitution of society” is impracticable in the concept of late modernity, but Giddens will demonstrate in “Beyond the right and the left” that the central component of societies of so-called “late modernity” is not plus some kind of interactive or collective element, to the process is the formation of self-identity.
Quoting Giddens in his view of self-identity: “The self is reflexively [understood as self-identity] by the person himself in terms of his biography. Identity, in this case, assumes continuity over time and space: but the self-identity is this continuity interpreted reflexively by the agent ” (Giddens, 1991: 53).
It may seem an overly individualistic argument, or because of the selfies think of something hasty in the new media, Giddens did not say in this context, but the expression of citizenship of various groups with specific identities, cultural, social or religious minorities.
By disembedding and without surpassing the abstract idea of State, Giddens understands that the process of lifting and shifting (lifting out) the social relations of local contexts, and thus the re-establishment in another type of citizen.
By disembedding Giddens understands the process of elevating and shifting the social relations of the local contexts and their re-articulation in another space-time dimension (Giddens, 1991:18:21), note that the space-time it is not time and space seen in absolute motion.
So despite Giddens’s advance, he cannot demonstrate that reflexive self can generate more democratic international institutions and defend multicultural forms of citizenship, there is still a hole in these concepts, which is not at all anarchism.
GIDDENS, A. Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1991
Fraternity, worldview and religion
05
Jul
I do not know the religion of the captain of Sea Watch, but the fraternal
worldview of captain Carola Rackete (picture), unjustly imprisoned and brought to trial and released only these days, is undoubtedly the only real manifestation of worldliness in the contemporary world.
The press reported little, the Italian authorities raged against the captain’s “rebellion” to rescue shipwrecks and dock in Lampedusa in Italy, against the determination of the local maritime police, but this is the true brotherhood and religion of seeing all peoples as deserving of the same fraternity and respect.
Captain Rackete has been accused of crimes of resistance or violence against the Italian warship and attempted shipwreck for having collided with a patrol of the Financial Guard (Maritime Police of the Italian borders), and the European newspapers that always boast of any attitude in Latin America or Africa has barely reported Rackete’s arrest.
Yet the old colonialist view of looking disdainfully at the rest of the world, which is not just the American, remains and little look at its crimes and atrocities, especially against other peoples and nations that have a different worldview from Europe.
They do not recognize the penumbra and the blindness that they live, not even the worldview itself is very clear, besides the political and economic interests, little or nothing remains of a respect for other peoples and cultures, and little recognizes the own decadence and crisis of thought.
The arrogance of a limited worldview, despite its origin in Christianity, holds true for much of European thought, it is a fact that there is resistance and protesting groups, to the seemingly fraternal worldview of Europe, that biblical saying about Pharisaism in the time of Jesus , Luke 10: 12: “I tell you that on that day Sodom will be treated less severely than this city,” referring to people who rejected the fraternal Christian message.
Of course, one can only speak of a Christianity with a worldview of respect and true brotherhood with all peoples and cultures, for the rest is Pharisaism and cultural pride.
The contemptuous look at the peoples suffered, exploited and colonized is still stigma of our time, is still the result of a culture of domination and exploitation of peoples and nature.
Sea-Watch captain Rackete speaks after release from house arrest:
The majority and the identitary
02
Jul
Few know this name, the opposite of transsexual is cis, also Christianity and the
fact of being white can be a difficulty of dialogue with other groups, however, democracy and rights require that these dialogues are also made.
It is not only an ideological or partisan position, but this is how one sees most, in the religious case there is still one thing unique in Brazil that could be positive and is not, the so-called religious syncretism.
I would say more in the Brazilian case, the blacks if counted browns and mulattos are majority, what would be the ideological war that a good part of the right thinks, nothing more than the refusal of the dialogue.
The dichotomy that has established itself in Brazilian society is detrimental to all Brazilians, and the so-called “cultural war” can lead the country to extremes never before thought.
The identitary that in the American case led a certain right to power, the opposition is not quite a left, in the Brazilian case it can open deep cracks in the nation, thinking of people and not just patriotic symbols, without this leading to a short-term perspective. In the long term, only a resumption of dialogue will make possible new advances and new ways of democratizing rights and also duties to its citizens, building a new identity citizenship requires that we see the whole of society as it is: a miscegenation of peoples, races and religions.
The studies done by Mario de Andrade for Macunaíma may be a good start to this dialogue, although of course there will be those who make him demonic as well. The process of “estrangement” from Brazilian society with its own identity, which is undoubtedly a miscegenation, can have two ways to deny a half of the population with catastrophic effects, or to include the two halves and lead the country to an example of tolerance.
I twist and fight for the second case, although at this point it seems almost impossible.
Among the various reviews I found on the Web, Luana Werb is a good introduction to reading Macunaíma, if you are interested, access the link below:
