/ 1968
pdf

THE CYBORG CONTINUUM: FROM MYTH TO TECHNOCAPITALISM IN LARISSA LAI’S SALT FISH GIRL

/in , /by

The paper makes use of Judith Butler’s poststructuralist approach to gender and Donna Haraway’s theorization of the posthuman figure of cyborg to explore the subversion of the heteronormative apparatus in Larissa Lai’s novel Salt Fish Girl. This work of the early 21st century Canadian speculative fiction weaves a narrative continuity between a mythical serpent goddess, her reincarnation as a natural woman and her final embodiment as a cyborg in a late-capitalist technocracy. The queer poetics of the novel intersects with the exploration of the boundaries between the human, animal and the machine in a multilayered narrative that imagines a technologically-mediated reproduction of the two lesbian protagonists, thus transcending the heteronormative institution by means of a posthuman subjectivity. Ultimately, Salt Fish Girl may be said to take issue with coextensive ideologies of sexism, racism, scientism and speciesism by imagining a radical agency of a self-reproducing female subject that combines different natural species and a machine, challenging the humanist assumptions about the privileged position of man (or, the male, to be more precise) in a chain of beings in which the exploitation of women, nature and animals has been rooted.

/ 1968
pdf

IS THERE A POSTHUMAN PERFORMER

/in , /by

In this paper, the issues of transgression and subversion of human body in the situation of technologically generated performance are analyzed. Firstly, a theoretical-historical contextualization of the digital environment is made and then examples are analyzed of cyber performance, digital and techno-performance that problematize the relation between the digital system and the body of the performer. This relation has become very important for the understanding of the discontinuity problems between the human and the machine. Therefore I have considered the changing position and the function of a live performer as a performing subject and a performing object in the context of digital performance and performance in cyberspace, from the following aspects: the relation between live body and avatar performer; cyborg performance; independent performance of computers. The central argument focuses on the problem of the post- or non-human performer through the concept I have named “digital anthropomorphism”. According to Bruno Latour, anthropomorphism can mean ‘either that which has human shape or that which gives shape to humans’. Argument is made that a digital environment responds to both parts of this definition. It is both created by humans and at the same time it is shaping the humanity. The invention of cyberspace has redefined our ontology and has become a continuation, extension and even a new dimension of the time-space that we inhabit.

/ 1968
pdf

FILM DYSTOPIAS AND TRANSHUMANISM: THE CYBORG – FROM THE FILM MYTH TO REALITY

/in , /by

Film art anticipated many humanistic ideas which have only recently become the actual subject of consideration. The seventh art has pointed to many ethical dilemmas and controversies that the humanity encounters when facing different challenges of transhumanism. The Hollywood films exemplify this issue most adequately in the example of the cyborg. By creating dystopian works related to cyborgs (films, TV series, graphic novels) and profiting from them, the media industry uses a mixture of curiosity and fear evident in modern people faced with an increasing development of technologies, which alters their social surroundings. Within the social reality, due to the development of technologies, the cyborg has, as a media phenomenon, over a period of time, become a part of the present and of the immediate future. We live in the times in which we question and examine the former definitions and identity of humans in the light of a new hybrid identity of the cyborg as a direct mixture of man and machine.

/ 1968
pdf

ONTOPOLITICS OF THE AHUMAN: FROM (THE EXPANDED FIELD) OF THE HUMAN TO AFTER THE HUMAN

/in , /by

Writing about the archeology of human sciences, Foucault has shown that the modern concept of the human is a discursive effect, and that it can easily disappear once the configuration of power/knowledge has changed. Contemporary age is also called the Anthropocene – the age in which the Earth is irrevocably marked by human activities, and for exactly that reason it is necessary to theoretically and critically re-think the discursive effect called “the human“. In this paper, I will show that it is necessary to theorize that which is “after the human“ – the ahuman – in order to develop an image of the world without the human, which can serve as an ontological and political framework for thinking and doing in the age of contemporaneity. The theory of the ahuman would serve in that regard as a corrective to the multiplicity of conceptions which developed as critiques of the subject – antihumanism, posthumanism, transhumanism and other – which were still based on a certain, although expanded image, of the human.

/ 1968
pdf

CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL CONTENTS AS AN ELEMENT OF TOURIST OFFER IN OUTER BELGRADE MUNICIPALITIES

/in /by

Material and non-material cultural heritage is recognized by various tourist destinations worldwide, also partly by Serbia, as some of the most important elements of any tourist offer. Cultural contents provide to a tourist destination certain uniqueness, differentiation and authenticity that helps with increasing and harsher competition. The area of outer Belgrade municipalities is characterized by various, valuable and versatile cultural resources. The following should be singled out: Belo brdo archeological site (more famous as Vinča), Serbian churches and monasteries from different epochs (Kosmaj, Surčin, Obrenovac ), log-cabin churches (Lazarevac), etno site in Vranić which dates back to the XVIII century (Barajevo municipality), examples of industrial heritage and technical culture (Surčin, Lazarevac, Obrenovac), old city areas as spatial wholes (Grocka, Barajevo, Obrenovac), well-preserved old city and country houses (in all the municipalities) and museums (Surčin, Lazarevac). The polls carried out in May 2013 confirmed that tourists recognize and positively value cultural and historical contexts in the mentioned area. Despite that, majority of resources are not validated in a tourist sense and are not adequately promoted in line with modern tourist trends.

/ 1968
pdf

GOD, NATURE AND LANGUAGE: AN ESSAY ON BERKELEY’S PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

/in /by

This paper gives a critical account of the precise character of Berkeley’s fictionalism and instrumentalism in his philosophy of science. Two replies are given to the objections typically raised against his vision of science and its incompatibility with the scientific practice. The first objection claims that his immaterialism is incompatible with the natural causation, and the second that it is not able to give an explanation for the complex structure of issues raised by natural sciences. The replies rely on Berkeley’s thesis concerning the language of God, claiming that there are no causal but only semantic relations between the signs and the signified in the world. The system of nature constitutes a language which God uses to communicate with the finite creatures.

/ 1968
pdf

AVANT-GARDE, KITSCH AND LEFTIST IDEAS

/in /by

The subject of this text is the relation between art and politics as it was practiced at the time of the rise of the European political Left, above all in the regions of the pre-war and post-war USSR. The thesis defended in the text is that all the totalitarian social-political systems form, in principle, a uniform attitude to arts as a powerful potential media for the promotion and transmission of their ideological and political messages, which mostly brings artistic creations to the verge of kitsch if not to its very centre. The other part of the thesis deals with events on the ex-Yugoslav post-war political and art scene, highlighting its specific features, especially those contained in the fact that kitsch was present on that scene rather as an (anti)-style of political life – above all of the language of the ruling politics of the time – than as a non-art.

/ 1968
pdf

INTERPRETATION METAMORPHOSES OF THE PUBLIC AND THE PRIVATE

/in /by

Richard Sennett has analyzed the period from 1750 up to the contemporary time, when the dominance of the culture of intimacy has transformed the political categories into psychological ones. The rise of the culture of intimacy had brought about the downfall of social theatrics, which has in turn caused the disappearance of public life. The family has transcended from a “particular, not-public” area into a haven, a world of its own, with a more stern moral code than the public sphere. Politicians have started to present their character to the public, as well as their feelings and the power of personal convictions. Here the theory of Hannah Arendt is analyzed from the horizon of so-called theatrical dimension of the public sphere and agonistic politics, through which the nature of worldliness is discussed. Some authors have criticized the mixing of internal and external areas (Hannah Arendt and Richard Sennett) while others (such as Peter Sloterdijk) have shown that there are consensuses which precede the separation of the internal and the external.

/ 1968
pdf

ON THE VALUE AND THE LACK OF VALUE OF THE HUMANITIES

/in /by

One of the most contentious questions in today’s discussions on the educational policies concerns the role and values of the humanities in contemporary society and education. Many see the humanities as empty, unnecessary, inefficient, phony and worthless. This paper offers a rundown of arguments adduced to support this view, followed by an overview of Helen Small’s The Value of the Humanities, which offers an exceptionally critical and insightful analysis into the current debate over the value of the humanities. The paper ends by emphasizing further the need to recognize the contribution of the humanities to the production of knowledge and enhancement of the quality of life, as well as to the much needed sense of purpose and meaning.

/ 1968
pdf

ETHICS IN THE THEATRE

/in /by

This paper aims to define and explore the importance of ethics in the theatre. The theoretical starting point of the work is based on Aristotle’s and Plato’s definitions of ethics and their observations of arts. For both Aristotle and Plato, art is an activity that inspires creation of virtues in the man. The second part brings the study of ethics in the works of Shakespeare and Sara Bernard, while the central part focuses on the theory of ethics in the theatre “poetics” of Konstantin Sergeievich Stanislavsky. In his works, The System, My Life in Art and Ethics he laid the foundations of modern, naturalistic and professional theatre. Stanislavski wanted rules in theatre and beautiful relationships, goodness. He felt that the actors should be fully committed to their role and work in rehearsals. The concept of ethics in the theatre was examined from the perspective of a multi-disciplinary theatre and syncretic art. Arts should encourage positive emotions and traits in humans.