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Postmodernism and the Digital Era Flores, Fernando Postmodernism and the Digital Era Flores, Fernando 2007 Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Flores, F. (2007). Postmodernism and the Digital Era. Department of Informatics, Lund University. Total number of authors: 1 General rights Unless other specific re-use rights are stated the following general rights apply: Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal Read more about Creative commons licenses: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. LUND UNIVERSITY PO Box 117 221 00 Lund +46 46-222 00 00 Postmodernism and the Digital Era Omslagsbild: Kafka Composition © Maria Crossa, 2007 POSTMODERNISM AND THE DIGITAL ERA Fernando Flores Morador Department of Informatics Lund University 2007 Department of Informatics Lunds universitet, Ole Römers väg 6, 223 63 Lund Postmodernism and the Digital Era © Fernando Flores Morador, 2007 Tryck: Media-Tryck, Lund University, 2007 ISBN 978-91-633-1105-5 Dedicated to Germán Wettstein and Raquel Morador de Wettstein CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS................................................ 14 INTRODUCTION........................................................... 15 THE IMPACT OF MODERNITY IN SOCIETY, ART AND POLITICS.......................................................... 17 § 1 THE MODERN AND THE POSTMODERN CONDITION .. 19 Two domains of ideas about Modernism and Postmodernism ....................................................... 19 The social-economic definition ............................... 19 The aesthetic- Art Critical point of view.................. 21 The Avant-gardes.................................................... 22 Decadence.............................................................. 22 Kitsch ..................................................................... 23 Postmodernism according to Calinescu .................. 23 § 2 GERMAN MODERNISM, BETWEEN REVOLUTION AND CONSERVATISM........................................................... 25 Two “modernisms”................................................. 25 Reactionary Modernism in Germany...................... 26 Oswald Spengler and the Decline of the West ......... 28 Revolutionary Modernism in Weimar 1919-33........ 29 § 3 MODERNITY IN SWEDEN 1930-1960...................... 33 Macro processes that characterize the evolution of contemporary thought in Sweden ............................ 33 Some of the most significant facts of more recent Swedish Modernity ................................................. 35 7 Axel Hägerström and the nihilism of values ............ 39 Gunnar Myrdal, Alva Myrdal and “social engineering”........................................................... 42 The “social pact” and “Corporativism the Swedish way”....................................................................... 44 The “people’s home” and the “racial hygiene”...... 45 Architectonic functionalism and the Stockholm Exhibition in 1930 .................................................. 46 SECOND WORLD WAR AND THE CAPITULATION OF MODERNISM........................ 49 § 4 AUSCHWITZ AND THE END OF MODERNISM............. 51 The most efficient system to exterminate people ...... 52 Modern bureaucracy, social engineering and the Holocaust ............................................................... 55 AFTER AUSCHWITZ................................................ 57 § 5 THE VIETNAM WAR .............................................. 59 § 6 THE REVOLTING YOUTH AND THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION OF THE 60’S ........................................... 63 A century in the History of Ideas of Sexuality.......... 63 Is sexuality a biological given or a social construction?.......................................................... 64 The first period: Striving for social hygiene ........... 66 Cultural Radicalism................................................ 67 The second period: Modern Social Engineering...... 68 Elsie Ottesen-Jensen and the founding of RFSU...... 68 The Myrdal spouses and the construction of the Modern society ....................................................... 69 The third period: The Revolting Youth and free sex. 69 8 Alfred Kinsey on the sexual behaviour of men and women .................................................................... 70 The sexual revolution of the 1960’s......................... 71 The Swedish sin ...................................................... 72 The sexual debate of the 1960’s and the Women’s Movement ............................................................... 73 The fourth and last period: the new family reforms . 74 § 7 AESTHETICS, FROM BAUMGARTEN TO YOKO ONO .. 77 The aesthetics of Kant............................................. 78 Aesthetics after Duchamp ....................................... 81 Popular art and the aesthetic of everyday life ......... 82 Postmodern aesthetics ............................................ 83 The aesthetics of Susan Sontag ............................... 84 The sublime ............................................................ 85 THE WORLD OF MEDIA......................................... 89 § 8 UNDERSTANDING MEDIA....................................... 91 The thought of Marshall McLuhan.......................... 95 POSTMODERNISM AS PHILOSOPHY .................101 § 9 DECONSTRUCTING LOGOS.....................................103 Jacques Derrida and the dissolution of the phenomenon ..........................................................103 About the concept of “différance”..........................105 Derrida’s critique of Husserl .................................106 Derrida’s technique of deconstruction ...................108 The paradox of deconstruction...............................109 To deconstruct deconstruction ...............................110 § 10 THE POSTMODERN CONDITION ...........................113 Postmodernism as positive pessimism ....................116 9 Jean- François Lyotard and Gianni Vattimo..........117 Difference-philosophy............................................119 Lyotard and the relation between text and figure ...121 Grand narratives as structures of oppression.........122 Lyotard, phenomenology and psychoanalysis.........123 § 11 PSYCHOANALYSING PHILOSOPHY ........................127 The thought of Gilles Deleuze ................................127 Julia Kristevas’ concept of “abjection” .................129 Kristeva’s critique of structuralism........................132 § 12 POST-MARXISM AND POST-COLONIALISM ...........133 Class struggle is governed by the state...................139 Laclau and Mouffe: post-Marxism during the 80’s.140 Marxism – Wittgensteinism....................................140 Laclau’s and Mouffe’s concept of discourse...........143 Louis Althusser and Postmodernism: “random” materialism............................................................144 Postcolonial theory................................................145 Postcolonial studies and Marxism..........................147 Anti-imperialism without Marxism.........................147 Frantz Fanon and the wretched of the earth...........148 Homi K. Bhabha and the concept “negation”........151 Edward Said and the concept orientalism ..............153 § 13 POSTMODERNISM TURNS TO HYPERREALITY ..........155 Jean Baudrillards’ semiotic critique of Marxism....156 Baudrillard’s break with Marxism .........................159 The myth of “objective needs”; use-value as cultural phenomenon ..........................................................160 THE DIGITAL ERA..................................................163 10 § 14 ARTIFICIAL MINDS: A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE COMPUTER.................................................................165 Self-reference, logic became postmodernist ...........165 Santiago Ramón y Cajal and Modern neuroscience ..............................................................................167 The evolution in the technical front: the office-supply machines................................................................168 The first large electronic calculators .....................170 The first computer..................................................171 Cybernetics............................................................172 The computers begin to work in real time...............173 The graphic “interactive” system: “windows”, icons, mouse and menus...................................................174 The technology of programming ............................174 The hobbyists and the “computer liberation”.........175 Computers and “regular people” ..........................176 § 15 WHAT IS HUMAN AND WHAT IS ARTIFICIAL IN ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION ...................................179 Alan Matheson Turing: Can a machine think? .......181 Turing machines or the capturing of the elemental rules of the mechanical action................................183 The Turing
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