Comprised of thirteen articles by well-known authors, this book makes the case to philosophers that popular culture is worthy of their attention. Issues of concern include the distinction between high culture and popular culture, the aesthetic and moral value of popular culture, allusion and identification in popular culture, and special problems posed by the interpretation of popular culture. Popular art forms considered include: movies, television shows, comic books, children's stories, photographs, and rock songs.

This essay examines the breast cancer accounts of four Arab female celebrities who have spoken out in public about their illness experience: the Egyptian TV presenter Basma Wahba and the actress Yasmine Ghaith, the Iraqi actress Namaa al-Ward, and the Lebanese pop singer Elissa. By reading their testimonies against the backdrop of critical literature on illness narratives and memoirs, as well as on cancer narratives and activism, the essay asks: how are the accounts of these women’s cancer diagnosis and treatment (...) disclosed and described? In what medium do they communicate and circulate their breast cancer experiences? What significance do these public disclosures have on challenging and breaking the Arab taboo of cancer? In conclusion, the essay argues that these women’s willingness to share their stories in public constitutes an important form of multimedia activist intervention—visual, sonic, and performative—that is playing a key role in the development of a breast cancer movement. (shrink)

Marvin is a contract hog farmer in Iowa. He owns his land, his barn, his tractor, and his animal crates. He has seen profits drop steadily for the last twenty years and feels trapped. Josh is a dairy farmer on a cooperative in Massachusetts. He doesn’t own his cows, his land, his seed, or even all of his equipment. Josh has a healthy income and feels like he’s made it. In The Food Sharing Revolution, Michael Carolan tells the stories of (...) traditional producers like Marvin, who are being squeezed by big agribusiness, and entrepreneurs like Josh, who are bucking the corporate food system. The difference is Josh has eschewed the burdens of individual ownership and is tapping into the sharing economy. Josh and many others are sharing tractors, seeds, kitchen space, their homes, and their cultures. They are business owners like Dorothy, who opened her bakery with the help of a no-interest, crowd-sourced loan. They are chefs like Camilla, who introduces diners to her native Colombian cuisine through peer-to-peer meal sharing. Their success is not only good for aspiring producers, but for everyone who wants an alternative to monocrops and processed foods. The key to successful sharing, Carolan shows, is actually sharing. He warns that food, just like taxis or hotels, can be co-opted by moneyed interests. But when collaboration is genuine, the sharing economy can offer both producers and eaters freedom, even sovereignty. The result is a healthier, more sustainable, and more ethical way to eat. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 123.1 (2002) 111-118 [Access article in PDF] Brief MentionSupplices, The Satyr Play: Charles Mee's Big Love Rush Rehm Berkeley Repertory Theater, long the most adventurous theater company in the San Francisco Bay area, opened its new Roda theater in style this spring with Aeschylus' Oresteia (trans. Fagles), followed (on the more intimate thrust stage) by Charles L. Mee's adaptation of Aeschylus' Danaid trilogy, entitled Big (...) Love. Seeing these productions in tandem reminds one of the similarities between the two trilogies, as if Aeschylus in his Oresteia developed and expanded ideas introduced five years earlier in Danaides. These include the horrific consequences of male violence, not the least of which involves the tragic female response of killing husbands and turning households into bloodbaths. The primal compulsions that affect human beings--particularly eros and vengeance, immortally hypostasized as Aphrodite and the Furies--drive through both trilogies, countered somewhat by the religious and moral imperatives to grant beleaguered foreigners asylum. Reflecting Athens's radical democracy, Aeschylus emphasizes the perils and responsibilities of a polity that must face the consequences of its own decisions. In dramatic terms, both trilogies tap the power of choral lyric to wash over plot and action, almost like a force of nature, moving the human drama into a wider spatial and temporal context. Aeschylus also exploits the apparent finality of a trial in both works to bring matters to a dramatic close. However, ultimate resolution depends on the fundamentally comedic faith in the curative powers of marriage, family, and time to restore the human community. Addressing these themes in Big Love, Mee uses them to construct an entertaining romp. One could say he converts Aeschylus' Danaides into a contemporary satyr play, the paratragic genre for which Aeschylus was famous in antiquity (none of his survive, but one called Amymone ended the Danaid tetralogy).Although only Supplices is extant, most scholars agree on the [End Page 111] trilogy's dramatic arc. 1 Led by their father Danaos, the fifty Danaids flee from detested marriage with their Egyptian cousins. They receive asylum in Argos, until the Argive leader Pelasgos is defeated in battle and the victorious Egyptians have their connubial way. Commanded by their father, the Danaids murder their husbands on their wedding night--all save Hypermestra, who spares Lynkeus. A trial absolves Hypermestra of disobedience, and Aphrodite celebrates the power of eros, manifest in the marriage of earth and sky. Due to its incomplete story line and the absence of all but a few short fragments from the latter two plays, Supplices has not proved popular on the modern stage.Enter Charles Mee, whose updated version Big Love follows (mutatis mutandis) the reconstruction outlined above. Missing is Danaos, and (as one might expect) Aeschylus' lyrically and poetically charged language. According to Mee, "getting into a Greek plot is like stepping into a Rolls Royce," and he clearly enjoys the ride. 2 In earlier plays, Mee has stepped into the plots of Euripides' Bacchae, Orestes, and Trojan Women (in the first half of his Trojan Women a Love Story). 3 His updated treatments have attracted the interest of classicists, drawn to new translations, contemporary productions, and modern adaptations of ancient material. 4 Regarding Mee's creative use of Greek tragedy, key questions remain: where is he heading in his smooth-riding import? does some destination guide the journey? whom does Mee pick up along the way?Answering the last first, Big Love--as directed by Les Waters at Berkeley, with a strong cast--sweeps up the audience with its energy and sense of play. It offers an evening of kitsch, froth, stage blood (over-the-top and inoffensive), and body-slamming physical humor. Although set in Italy--the Pelasgian Piero is a suave villa-owner who "makes arrangements" and "has connections"--this is very much an American play, full of commercial pop culture. For example, the first "chorus" has three representative Danaids singing Leslie Gore's schlock rock "You Don't [End Page 112] Own Me," using champagne flutes and empty bottles as microphones, like... (shrink)

Better Call Saul and Philosophy is an anthology, a collection of essays exploring the philosophical themes present in the hit television show Better Call Saul. Premiering in the Spring of 2015, Better Call Saul serves as a prequel to the much beloved and critically acclaimed television show Breaking Bad in a which mild-mannered high school chemistry teacher, Walter White - through a series of poor, albeit strained decisions - slowly but steadily becomes a monstrous drug kingpin. In Better Call Saul, (...) a struggling but cocksure attorney, Jimmy McGill goes through a similar transformation to become a cunning, devious criminal lawyer for the underworld. Beyond this, Better Call Saul is populated with a number of additional characters going through their own evolution - from a brother burdened with a psychosomatic(?) ailment, to a former police officer delving deeper into the wrong side of the law to provide for his family. -/- Much like the beloved show, Better Call Saul and Philosophy is an anthology-- a collection of snippets and essays that slowly reveal a much more complex story. Premiering in the Spring of 2015, Better Call Saul serves as a prequel to the much beloved and critically acclaimed television show Breaking Bad. Critics of the series have noted that its storytelling is emblematic, or "The New Golden Age of Television": programming that not only rewards multiple watches, but also calls for a careful, reasoned analysis of characters, plots, and themes. Better Call Saul is the type of program that is so rich with these elements that it not only calls for a book like Better Call Saul and Philosophy, but might even feel incomplete without it! -/- Now, readers can join alongside struggling-but-cocksure attorney Jimmy McGill as he goes through a series of transformative experiences and scenarios. Featuring the work of contemporary philosophers, Better Call Saul and Philosophy offers its readers a chance to delve deeply into a wide range of philosophical issues the show presents, including the nature of good and evil, personal identity, free will and determinism, the law as it relates to morality, the ethical implications of the war on drugs, death and dying, and many, many more. Fans of the show will love a chance to appreciate the show on much deeper level--and, for those hoping to learn a bit about philosophy as well as the show, the book perfectly marries the two together in a unique and engaging way. -/- This book is the latest edition (#8) in the series Pop Culture and Philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Utopia on Earth?: Sustainability, White Tourism, and Neocolonial DesireRoslyn Fraser (bio)IntroductionSeveral scholars, and even a few journalists, 1have written about the figure of the international tourist who uses South Asia as a canvas upon which one can create and recreate the self. Perhaps the most discernable example in the pop culture imagination is Elizabeth Gilbert's trip to an ashram in India, documented in Eat Pray Love(2006), which inspired a (...) problematic succession of travelers who followed her footsteps to communities that simply could not accommodate the traffic. International travel and tourism from the Global North to places like India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka frequently represent a form of neocolonialism wherein destinations and the people who live there are imagined not as places with a complex history inhabited by humans with their own subjectivity, but as mirrors the traveler can hold up as part of their search for a personal identity. 2This imagining is perpetuated through imagery from film and literature (like Eat Pray Love), in tourism advertisements, on social media, and in spaces like yoga studios. These texts often objectify South Asian people as they beckon the middle-class Western traveler to the [End Page 226]subcontinent to embark on their own process of self-actualization and self-discovery. Specific to India, Rumya Putcha and Sangeeta Ballabhan explain the phenomenon in detail:In these stories, India is consistently described as a place where those from North America or Europe can "find themselves," "surrender," "find grace in poverty," "learn tolerance," "experience culture," or "withstand an assault on the senses." 3Whether the focus is a yoga retreat in India or a backpacking trip in Nepal, one need only look at a handful of online travel blogs to encounter these themes.One peculiar version of Western imaginings of South Asia is found in places like Auroville, a settler colonial utopia or intentional community near Pondichery in south India. In his 2021 book, Better to Have Gone: Love, Death, and the Quest for Utopia, Akash Kapur estimated that thousands of these utopian experiments were set up in the 1960s and 1970s. 4Focusing on the relationships and power dynamics inside Auroville, which still exists today, Kapur presents us with many reasons to question its idealism. But as a utopian experiment, Auroville continues to be praised as a model for sustainable living. 5Its site is protected by UNESCO and it receives funding from the Indian government. Auroville also receives aid from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and cash donations from individual donors, and supports itself through product sales and tourism. Photographs on their website highlight the 372 acres of farmland 6established at Auroville over the last fifty years as well as the community's commitment to "green practices." 7One cannot help but wonder how much of their success in reforesting land and sustainable living is a direct result of their economic resources alone.Colonial ResiduesThe enduring idea that South Asia is a space where utopia can be realized, experienced, or built has its roots in the era of European colonization of the subcontinent. In her analysis, Jessica Namakkal reminds us that Auroville was founded in the direct shadow of colonialism, twenty years after British Imperial rule ended and a mere six years after the end of French colonial rule [End Page 227]over Pondichery. 8Its opening ceremony was attended by an international cast of interested people, mostly from the Global North and West. A sizeable area for viewing the ceremony was reserved for people from the surrounding villages of Tamil Nadu, but with a barrier separating them from the rest of the crowd. 9Not exactly a great beginning for a place that was designated a cradle for a better humanity, or, as Aurovillians put it, "the city the Earth needs." 10For its part, Auroville addresses the issue of neocolonialism directly and succinctly in a section of its website for frequently asked questions, 11 question: Is Auroville sometimes accused of being neo-colonialist? answer:Very rarely; mostly by Westerners who know little about Auroville and how it functions, and equally little about the colonial era.How might we unpack the above statement? First, the... (shrink)

Detroit Become Human (DBH) offers a stunningly visual gameplay experience that both tells a philosophical story and stimulates the moral reasoning process in players. The game features a futuristic world where highly intelligent androids are bought and sold as workers who take on menial labor tasks for humans. In this chapter, we explore three dimensions of moral reasoning: accounts of moral agency, ethical theories or frameworks, and accounts of moral patiency. We then explore how DBH addresses all of these (...) philosophical issues in its narrative and gameplay scenarios. Issues of moral agency are explored through some of the androids gaining consciousness and autonomy. Ethical theory is explored through various ethical dilemmas that emerge in the gameplay. Moral patiency is explored by questioning if the androids, conscious and unconscious, are worthy of moral concern and why. We then show how the gameplay structure offers a unique interactive opportunity for players to engage in the moral reasoning process. Additionally, through the questions it raises and scenarios it poses, DBH makes an implicit anti-speciesist argument regarding moral patiency. Additionally, it makes a secondary argument that suffering and struggle are necessary to develop the possibility of second-order desires and true freedom and agency. The interactive structure of the game, in which players’ choices have more weight than in many gameplay experiences, makes DBH a unique work of contemporary philosophical pop culture. (shrink)

Ever since it was first unleashed in 1818 the story of Victor Frankenstein and his reanimated, stitched-together corpse has inspired intense debate. Can organic life be reanimated using electricity or genetic manipulation? If so, could Frankenstein’s monster really teach itself to read and speak as Mary Shelley imagined? Do monsters have rights, or responsibilities to those who would as soon kill them? What is it about music that so affects Frankenstein’s monster, or any of us? What does Mel Brook’s (...) Frau Blucher say to contemporary eco-feminism? Why are some Frankenstein’s flops and others historic successes? Is there a true Frankenstein? Why are children, but not adults, drawn to Shelley’s monster? And what is a “monster,” anyway? Frankenstein and Philosophy calls 25 philosophers to stitch together these and other questions as they apply to history’s greatest horror franchise. Some chapters treat the Frankenstein films, others the original novel, and yet others the many comic books, novels, and modern adaptations. Together they pay tribute to perhaps the most enduring pop culture icon and the fundamental fears, hopes, and puzzles it raises. (shrink)

What is it about evil that we find so compelling? From our obsession with serial killers to violence in pop culture, we seem inescapably drawn to the stories of monstrous acts and the aberrant people who commit them. But evil, Dr. Julia Shaw argues, is largely subjective. What one may consider normal, like sex before marriage, eating meat, or working on Wall Street, others find abhorrent. And if evil is only in the eye of the beholder, can it be said (...) to exist at all? In [this book], Shaw uses an engrossing mix of science, popular culture, and real-life examples to break down timely and provocative issues. How similar is your brain to a psychopath's? How many people have murder fantasies? Can artificial intelligence be evil? Do your sexual proclivities make you a bad person? Who becomes a terrorist? If you could travel back in time, would you kill baby Hitler? In asking these questions, Shaw urges readers to discover empathy and to rethink and reshape what it means to be bad. [This book] is a wide-ranging exploration into a fascinating, darkly compelling subject from a wickedly smart and talented writer."--Dust jacket. (shrink)

For over twenty years, Mark McNulty has been documenting the Liverpool music scene, both in the city and as it has proliferated worldwide. Accompanied by over 100 photographs, Pop Cultured celebrates the city, its music, and its culture through the lens of this highly acclaimed and influential photographer. McNulty has covered a wide array of iconic British bands such as the Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, Echo and the Bunnymen, and the Arctic Monkeys, as well as visiting international acts like the (...) White Stripes. Witty, enthralling, and visually stunning, Pop Cultured combines McNulty’s images with his own laconic and humorous commentary and that of his iconic musical subjects, providing a rollercoaster account of the last twenty years of British culture. (shrink)

If it were followed by “I’m a president,” Richard Nixon’s televised denial (“I am not a crook”) would be tantamount to Jimmy McGill’s self-portrayal in Better Call Saul. Out of the crooked timber of humanity, an honest president or an ethical lawyer rarely emerges. They’re like needles in a haystack. Nevertheless, it’s worthwhile to search for these rare artifacts and, in the process, ask, “Why do so many lawyers (and presidents) fall from grace, transforming into morally bad or corrupt actors?” (...) The ability to be a good or ethical person can deteriorate over time. In their personal and professional lives, people can make consistently poor choices in their capacity as moral agents. In turn, they cultivate flawed habits or what are often referred to as vices. Jimmy McGill’s trajectory is, without a doubt, a harrowing story of moral decline. In some ways, his transformation into Saul Goodman resembles a trite story about how a profession, lawyering, corrupts its practitioners. On a deeper level, McGill’s journey involves a fundamental change in how he habitually interacts with his environment, a change of motivation and disposition that is, almost entirely, a change for the worse. To know the content of Jimmy’s character is to be familiar with his story, a story of moral decline and ethical failure. (shrink)

This book offers insight into the many identity work processes in play in the construction of yoga categories, inviting readers to consider pop culture yoga, a distinct way of understanding this complex phenomenon.

Anarchism is a theory of the good society, in which justice and social order are maintained without the State (or government). Many anarchists in the libertarian movement (including myself) were heavily influenced by the epistemological and moral theories of Ayn Rand. According to these anarchists, Rand's principles, if consistently applied, lead necessarily to a repudiation of government on moral grounds.

Looks at the philosophy behind some of the biggest names in pop culture, including movies, video games, music groups, and more.

Building on the work of worldview thinkers like James Sire, this book helps those committed to the gospel story recognize those rival cultural stories that ...

René Girard, Theology, and Pop Culture provides a fresh and engaging introduction to and the application of René Girard’s mimetic theory. From movies to social media, television to graphic novels, the contributors explore popular culture’s theological depths and challenge readers to consider what culture reveals about them.

René Girard, Theology, and Pop Culture provides a fresh and engaging introduction to and the application of René Girard's mimetic theory. From movies to social media, television to graphic novels, the contributors explore popular culture's theological depths and challenge readers to consider what culture reveals about them.

Feminist Theory and Pop Culture (Second Edition) synthesizes feminist theory with modern portrayals of gender in media culture. This updated text provides comprehensive and interdisciplinary scholarship focused on topics related to: - Historical examination of feminist theory - Application of feminist research methods - Feminist theoretical perspectives such as the male gaze, feminist standpoint theory, Black feminist thought, queer theory, masculinity theory, theories of feminist activism, and postfeminism. - Contributor chapters cover a range of topics from Western perspectives on belly (...) dance to television shows such as Girls, Scandal, and Orange is the New Black. - Feminist theory and the wave of feminism, including a discussion of the fourth wave - Pedagogical features - Suggestions for further reading and discussion questions for classroom use Feminist Theory and Pop Culture was designed for classroom use and has been written with an eye toward engaging students in discussion. The book's polished perspective on feminist theory juxtaposes popular culture with theoretical perspectives which have served as a foundation for the study of gender. This interdisciplinary text can serve as a primary or supplemental reading. (shrink)

Comment et pourquoi affirmer que l'humanisme d'un penseur catholique du XVIIe siècle peut nous guider dans la compréhension de phénomènes culturels contemporains, c'est in fine la question qui commande cette étude rigoureuse et audacieuse. Faire dialoguer de façon féconde le projet de Blaise Pascal et la pop culture, appréhendée à partir des tribus musicales punk, rock, skinhead, gothique, hip-hop et électro, c'est l'objectif du travail de Jean-Louis Bischoff.

What can _South Park_ tell us about Socrates and the nature of evil? How does _The Office_ help us to understand Sartre and existentialist ethics? Can _Battlestar Galactica_ shed light on the existence of God? _Introducing Philosophy Through Pop Culture_ uses popular culture to illustrate important philosophical concepts and the work of the major philosophers With examples from film, television, and music including _South Park_, _The Matrix_, _X-Men_, _Batman_, _Harry Potter, Metallica_ and _Lost,_ even the most abstract and complex philosophical (...) ideas become easier to grasp Features key essays from across the Blackwell _Philosophy and Pop Culture_ series, as well as helpful editorial material and a glossary of philosophical terms From metaphysics to epistemology; from ethics to the meaning of life, this unique introduction makes philosophy as engaging as popular culture itself Supplementary website available with teaching guides, sample materials and links to further resources at _www.pop-philosophy.org_. (shrink)

Drawing on newspaper articles, ad campaigns, declassified government archives, and old movies, Ken Hollings shows the culture of postwar America and its dream of limitless technological and human development.

Reflecting on the many challenges facing Christianity as a religion, and particularly Christian philosophy as a way of thinking in modern, strange and unfamiliar times, one encounters time and again the grim realization that many of such challenges are simplyprovided by the current culture, the cultural sphere. Without idealizing Europe’s Christocentric culture and remembering that it was not homogeneous, we must recognize that it once existed, it was the ruling cultural norm. Today, such norms are indeed very different (...) and vary greatly depending on the geographic region we have in mind and change from decade to decade. After the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, modernity and the postmodern era, we observe that what governs our cultural world today is pluralism more than anything else. But there are still some traces of Christocentrism in our culture and in what it has become during this period, namely popular culture. Among other aspects, research has focused on the analysis of one idea – that of the Christ-figure, which has come a long way from theology to culture to pop culture over the centuries. In this article, I will try to show why this complicated legacy can be seen, at least in part, as a challenge to Christianity in light of contemporary Christian philosophy. -------------------------- Received: 14/03/2023. Reviewed: 16/04/2023. Accepted: 30/04/2023. (shrink)

The essay is designed to present the phenomena of popular culture, its difference from pop culture, both products of modern West, and their impact on film and advertisement media in India. First, the discussion focuses on the Critical School which proposed the initial thesis of commodification of culture with a resultant “lowering” of standards to appeal to “the masses”, and an appeal to the “average” tastes. In the essay an argument is presented that pop culture is a “critique” of popular (...) culture and is an elitist position attempting to shock popular mores and media content. Given this setting, it is argued that while India has followed both the globalizing popular and pop cultures, neither are adequate to encompass Indian media, specifically their film content. (shrink)

For the past several decades, popular culture, especially feature films and television, has been utilized with increasing frequency in bioethics teaching and reflection. This seems quite fitting, for, in the words of cultural historian and film critic Leo Braudy, even more than standard newspaper articles and other analytical texts, popular culture constitutes a “sounding board or lightning rod for deep-rooted audience concerns” Refiguring American film genres. University of California Press, Berkeley, pp 278–309, 1998). Further, many audience concerns in advanced-capitalist (...) societies relate to the promises and perils of science and technology in general and biomedicine in particular. In this essay, I offer an overview of the advantages and disadvantages of utilizing popular culture for bioethical reflection and pedagogy, and provide a framework for thinking through the promises and pitfalls of popular culture for researchers, teachers and practitioners of bioethics and biomedicine. (shrink)

Though Trey Parker and Matt Stone haven't been killed for it (they did receive death threats after their 200th episode) the creators of South Park have faced accusations much like those that led to Socrates' execution: the corruption of youth and the teaching of vulgar, irreligious behavior. A closer examination, however, reveals that South Park is very much within the Platonic tradition, as Kyle and Stan engage in questioning and dialogue in order to "learn something today." Moreover, the mob mentality (...) of the parents, along with the malicious yet mimetic evil of Cartman, demonstrates how evil emerges from thoughtlessness: a failure to ask if one can live with oneself, and a failure to out oneself in the place of others. Through its different characters, and even its apparently mindless vulgarity, South Park shows the need for engaging in dialogue, and thinking from others' perspectives, in order to pursue wisdom, examine life, and make it worth living. (shrink)

_Minerva’s Night Out_ presents series of essays by noted philosopher and motion picture and media theorist Noël Carroll that explore issues at the intersection of philosophy, motion pictures, and popular culture. Presents a wide-ranging series of essays that reflect on philosophical issues relating to modern film and popular culture Authored by one of the best known philosophers dealing with film and popular culture Written in an accessible manner to appeal to students and scholars Coverage ranges from the philosophy of Halloween (...) to _Vertigo_ and the pathologies of romantic love. (shrink)

This paper represents a case study interpretation of the political and media discourses in Romania referring to Islam and the threat of Muslim refugees. Using a selection of media narratives from the public debates that took shape immediately after the Brussels attacks on March 22, 2016, this study uses a critical discourse analysis approach as an interpretative tool to understanding how in Romania the opinion leaders, the political elites and the media are building an anti-Islam propaganda. By applying a textual (...) and ideological analysis of a selection of media discourses that refer to the terrorist attacks and the implicit threat of Islam, the author describes the dominant rhetorics of conflict between the West and the Muslim world. By elaborating a list of Islamophobic stereotypes used in the Romanian mainstream media and by discussing the negative narratives propagated in the public sphere, a case is made against the artificial growth of intolerant attitudes. The central argument of the author is that we are witnessing a generalized anti-Islam propaganda, where a specific religion and its followers are demonized by politicians, cultural figures and opinion leaders. This paper's conclusion is that in the Romanian media and the political discourses a form of unjustified Islamophobia is cultivated for ideological purposes. (shrink)

At the beginning of the 16 th century, Transylvania had been an officially Catholic land belonging to the Kingdom of Hungary and led by an elite consisting of three nations, the Hungarian nobles (increasingly referred to as the Hungarian nation), the Saxons and the Szeklers. However, the general population, deprived of any political power, consisted of Orthodox Romanians. In other words, in Transylvania the Latin West met the Byzantine Orient. The old Hungary fell apart between 1526 and 1541, its central (...) regions taken by the Ottoman Empire, the west and the north by the Habsburgs, while the eastern part, Transylvania, became an autonomous principality under Ottoman suzerainty. At the same time, various Protestant trends made their presence felt among the leading nations, eventually crystallizing in the form of Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Unitarianism. In the space of three decades (1540–1570) these rival denominations gained legal status and joined Catholicism as the official religions of the country. Catholicism became a marginal denomination, deprived of assets and of its hierarchy. Under Protestant pressure, the Orthodox Romanians were still kept away from power. The last three decades of the century saw some attempts at Counterreformation and at a Catholic Reformation, at a time when the principality was once again led by a Catholic dynasty. In this context, new Catholic cultural (educational) models, supported by the Jesuits, were implemented in the existing Protestant and Orthodox context, in an often desperate attempt to reverse or at least balance the situation. In this respect, the Jesuit College of Cluj (today Cluj-Napoca, Romania), established in 1581, remains a most memorable episode, whose consequences can still be seen today. By resorting to education and learning, the college was meant to influence and alter the surrounding Protestant and Orthodox world. In fact, it became an interesting facet of the multicultural, multiethnic and multiconfessional character of Transylvania, a miniature Europe inhabited by Latin, Germanic, Finno-Ugrian, Slavic peoples etc., by Byzantines, Catholics and Protestants, by rightful citizens and “tolerated” inhabitants, by masters and servants, by privileged categories and by groups merely “allowed to exist”. The troubled events of those years have left us with a model of cohabitation based on both cooperation and rivalry that truly deserves consideration. (shrink)

This study presents the manifestations of irrational practices in recent Romanian politics. Providing a short history of the mystical and the occult in Romanian politics, this research uses as a case study the alleged use of the occult “violet flame” in the presidential campaign of 2009. By showing how public religiousness and the daily mystical practices are changing, the author is describing the transformations of the national political communication under the pressure of the news media, which are becoming more and (...) more pervasive to the occult discourses and the magical thinking. The author describes these transformations as part of the general transformations of the political imaginary inRomania. The Romanian public psyche belongs more and more to the culture of infotainment, a culture based on cultivating superficiality, where mystical and simplistic thinking have replaced the traditional processes of public exchange of reasonable ideas. Thus a main trait of this video-pathology in which the Romanian media is engulfed, is the substitution of the rational discourses with the superficial understanding of the world and supernatural explanations about the universe. One of the conclusions is that the manifestations and functions of the irrational in the Romanian political sphere have become more innocuously connected with a deep mysticism already in place, and are profoundly changing the society as a whole. (shrink)

This work applies the meaning of empsychia (animation) to the domain of graphe empsychos (animated word or image) using some funerary orations written by Gregory of Naziansus (IV-th century) and Michael Psellos (XI-th century). In our opinion, a certain continuity of this Byzantine tradition could be traced in the Romanian culture of the XVI-th century.

This essay intends to reveal the contribution of some Aristotelian concepts – such as “just measure” (metron, meson) and “lack of measure” (alloiosis) as well as some other connected pathological affections (pathe) of the human volitive part of the soul (thymos), caused by certain changes of the humoral mixtures, especially the ones of the black bile, a humoral substance that was considered largely responsible for the severe alterations of the normal rational activity of the human soul (logismos). – to the (...) definition of melancholy as a natural/pathological condition. This type of analysis could be useful for wider cultural studies in which certain medical traditions would have a significant contribution and would help us understand better the holistic thought of the ancient and medievalEuropean culture. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Philosophy and the Interpretation of Pop CultureStefán SnaevarrPhilosophy and the Interpretation of Pop Culture, edited by William Irwin and Jorge J. E. Gracia. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007, 297 pp., $29.85 paper.There has been quite a boom lately in the market for philosophical books on popular culture. The young American philosopher William Irwin has led the way by starting the fad of "... and philosophy" books; the (...) first one that Irwin edited was Seinfeld and Philosophy. So it is only fitting that he is one of the editors of this volume on philosophical interpretation of popular culture. In contrast to most of the earlier books of this kind, a sizable number of the contributors to this volume belong to the top brass of America's aestheticians: Noël Carrol, Ted Cohen, Carolyn Korsmeyer, and Richard Shusterman, to name but a few. The book is divided into two parts, "Philosophy and Popular Culture" and "Interpretation and Popular Art Forms." These titles are self-explanatory; it might be added that the aforementioned top brass dominates the first part.Irwin provides the book with a witty and well-written introduction, but he operates with a very wide definition of popular culture, classifying movies as such as items of pop culture. However, the medium surely is not the message. The fact that novels can be part of popular culture does not make Joyce's Ulysses a pop cultural object. Irwin's chapter, "Philosophy as/and/of popular culture," is rather two papers in one. One half addresses the concept of popular culture, containing an insightful critical evaluation of, among others, Noël Carroll's concept of mass art. The other half proposes that we can use popular culture to disseminate philosophical ideas to the general public. More so than in the introduction, Irwin is actually rather critical of popular culture in this chapter. He worries about its negative effect on culture in general—no cult of pop culture here. In addition, he rejects the notion of popular culture having the potential of becoming philosophy or its surrogate. He reminds us that Socrates used examples from everyday life and the popular culture of his day to make his philosophical points. In a similar fashion, the popular culture of today can be a stepping stone for philosophers to reach wider audiences. If you cannot beat them, join them! Popular culture could, for instance, be used to warn the public against its own evil aspects. This is an excellent idea, and I could not agree more; I myself often use examples from popular culture in my own lectures with good results. Irwin should expand on this idea and present it in a separate article.Richard Shusterman's chapter does not add much to his earlier writings. It is also somewhat like two articles in one; the first is a criticism of the denigration of pleasure and entertainment as aesthetic values, and the second half is an attempt to bridge the divide between intrinsic value and instrumental value. Both halves [End Page 111] contain some excellent arguments, but popular culture tends to be on the fringe in Shusterman's argument. The focus is on other more traditional, philosophical issues. Perhaps another venue would have been more suitable for this article.In contrast to Shusterman, Caroline Korsmeyer addresses the issues of popular culture in a fairly straightforward manner. Popular culture can be educational, even philosophically so. This claim does not mean that works of popular culture are works of philosophy in the ordinary sense of the word. However, we can "treat philosophy as a success term to refer to works demanding imaginative engagement that results in the recognition... of a philosophical position, such that what is done in philosophy proper that induces a possible conclusion is done in another genre by means appropriate to its appreciation" (31). Given this understanding of philosophy, we can understand works of popular culture as vehicles of philosophy. Korsmeyer maintains that the TV series Angel conveys some of Simone de Beauvoir's ideas from one of her books. Korsmeyer's chapter also contains a delightful discussion of "the probable impossible" and "the possible improbable" in fiction. But... (shrink)

This paper aims to study the role of the social robot Probo in providing assistance to a therapist for robot assisted therapy (RAT) with autistic children. Children with autism have difficulties with social interaction and several studies indicate that they show preference toward interaction with objects, such as computers and robots, rather than with humans. In 1991, Carol Gray developed Social Stories, an intervention tool aimed to increase children's social skills. Social stories are short scenarios written or tailored for autistic (...) individuals to help them understand and behave appropriately in social situations. This study shows that, in specific situations, the social performance of autistic children improves when using the robot Probo, as a medium for social story telling, than when a human reader tells the stories. The robot tells Social Stories to teach ASD children how to react in situations like saying “hello“, saying “thank you“ and “sharing toys“. The robot has the capability of expressing emotions and attention via its facial expressions and its gaze. The paper discusses the use of Probo as an added-value therapeutic tool for social story telling and presents the first experimental results. Keywords: social robot; ASD children; social story; robot assisted therapy. (shrink)

The dialogic relationship between individuals and the cultural space of Europe embodies cultural definitions, political definitions and individual definitions. As individuals draw from Europe as a cultural space and strive to identify and define themselves, definitions are created against an “other,” leading to Europe being defined against the “other.” Identity is established through difference, and in this, the relationship between the EU—a force of integration—and Europe as a cultural space is strained. As boundaries change through the (...) European Union, transforming the cultural space of Europe, the “other” against whom individuals have traditionally defined themselves is also transforming. This article asks if the integration of Europe through the European Union is resulting in the political mobilization of xenophobia and thereby transforming the cultural space of Europe into a xenophobic space. As many academics and professionals have argued that xenophobia in Europe has been on the rise since the 1990s, this paper will question how the relationship between the European Union—as a force of European integration—and Europe—as a cultural space—is contributing to the construction of xenophobia. (shrink)

This paper aims to study the role of the social robot Probo in providing assistance to a therapist for robot assisted therapy with autistic children. Children with autism have difficulties with social interaction and several studies indicate that they show preference toward interaction with objects, such as computers and robots, rather than with humans. In 1991, Carol Gray developed Social Stories, an intervention tool aimed to increase children’s social skills. Social stories are short scenarios written or tailored for autistic individuals (...) to help them understand and behave appropriately in social situations. This study shows that, in specific situations, the social performance of autistic children improves when using the robot Probo, as a medium for social story telling, than when a human reader tells the stories. The robot tells Social Stories to teach ASD children how to react in situations like saying “hello”, saying “thank you” and “sharing toys”. The robot has the capability of expressing emotions and attention via its facial expressions and its gaze. The paper discusses the use of Probo as an added-value therapeutic tool for social story telling and presents the first experimental results. Keywords: social robot; ASD children; social story; robot assisted therapy. (shrink)

continent. 1.2 (2011): 136-140. In early 2011, Cow Heavy Books published The Official Catalog of the Library of Potential Literature , a compendium of catalog 'blurbs' for non-existent desired or ideal texts. Along with Erinrose Mager, I edited the project, in a process that was more like curation as it mainly entailed asking a range of contemporary writers, theorists, and text-makers to send us an entry. What resulted was a creative/critical hybrid anthology, a small book in which each page opens (...) to a new iteration of textual desire. These texts explore the material possibilities of the book. Somewhat parallel to the call of N. Katherine Hayles who, in her book Writing Machines , urges literary theorists to take up the practice of Medium Specific Analysis (to account for the way the medium in which it is presented conditions or at least bears on a literary text). I see in the imagined works of The Official Catalog a call for the innovative writers of today to become Medium-Responsive. This would mean thinking through the specific (materially constrained) possibilities offered by the media in which texts are presented, and in thinking of the literary text as a kind of art in the greater context of other arts and the book as a medium situated within the context of many other media. In doing so, the contemporary writer refutes the chorus of critics who lament the death of the book by consistently reinvigorating literary innovation. The following are selections from The Official Catalog of the Library of Potential Literature that show possible paths for (thinking about) new writing that engages with its medium. —Ben Segal, Editor THE CUBE Even the most radical non-linear texts have tended to exploit or subvert only the sequential possibilities of print—from the continuous loop of Joyce's Finnegans Wake to the shuffled cards of Marc Saporta's Composition No. 1 —but The Cube takes such multiplicities to an entirely new level. Set in a grid, the book's words can be read conventionally, across the page, as well as down each column—with either route making complete grammatical sense. But they can also be read as stacked strata and mined like lexical core samples through the layered pages of the book. Each path tells the same story from a different perspective (the narrative, naturally, hinges on the potential outcomes of a throw of cubed dice). By opening up the z-axis to reading in this way, The Cube recognizes the book as a three-dimensional sculptural space. Taking its lead from Armand Schwerner's (If Personal) and Raymond Queneau's Cent mille milliards de poèmes , The Cube reads like a experiment by Christian Bök precision printed by Emily McVarish. Craig Dworkin is the editor, most recently, of The Consequence of Innovation: 21st Century Poetics (Roof Books, 2008), The Sound of Poetry/The Poetry of Sound , with Marjorie Perloff (U. Chicago Press, 2009), and Against Expression: An Anthology of Conceptual Writing , with Kenneth Goldsmith (Northwestern UP, 2010). He teaches at the University of Utah. HE GOES In He Goes , we read notes, letters and e-mails from a scholar father to his novelist daughter. We read of the father's musings on Beckett, on Pinter, on Anne Frank; his description of a woman hanging laundry from a line. We read about his journey toward dying, followed by a brief, third person account of his death, and his obituary. Then a long series of blank pages that demand to be read in real time, non-sentence by non-sentence, blank page by blank page. Finally—and it is here that this peculiar little book begins to soar—the dead father writes to his as-of-yet-still-living daughter. He does not write from death. He does not write from life. The words unprint, unstamp, unkindle. Still, they require no translation. The father "writes" (for lack of a better word) about the serendipitous, the commonplace; he recommends another book. He jokes. He asks his daughter how her stomach is. He says forget about presence in absence, darling; screw words as memorial and the guys in garbage cans and loss as redemption and I can't go on I must go on. He goes, "Love, Fodder." He goes, "incidentally." He goes, "I thought you might like to know." Elizabeth Graver is the author of a story collection, Have You Seen Me? , and three novels: Unravelling ; The Honey Thief ; and Awake . Her work has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories , Best American Essays , and Prize Stories: the O. Henry Awards . She teaches at Boston College. THE PAPER ARCHIVIST A stunning package and a triumph of imagination, The Paper Archivist at times looks to be less a book than an abstract expressionist painting. Softly bound, its contents unfold to a single sheet of uneven thickness and texture—a canvas splattered with colored lines, stickers, broken sentences, and nonsense pictographs. But by following the directions to fold, dip, smell, rub, scratch, and tear the sheet according to the contingencies of the weather and using only the objects at hand, the reader slowly brings the forces hidden in the noise into a glorious sculptural convergence, processing a different story and shape each time. This is the rare book that continues to stir, whirl, and pop on every new reading. Sean Higgins blogs at BOMBlog where he is responsible for the column Volumes and Territories, as well as Ghost Island , a fledgling collaborative intellectual collective. THE SLOW BOOK The Slow Book , written by an anonymous author at the dawn of literacy, on a minor planet (otherwise notable only as the source of that exceptionally hardy, not very tasty grain called “shef” sowed on hostile planets as an early step to colonization), and encoded into a series of punctures on a strip of copper coiled inside a clever device, something between a player piano and an old-fashioned film projector, is being released into print, as was the author’s intention, at a rate of one word per century (local time). Each word is, across the Forty Galaxies, agreed to be uncannily apt for the century in which it appears—even “of,” in a century during which the highest value was attached to fidelity, whether to ideals, worlds, or romantic love; even “the,” which governed two centuries, one extraordinarily materialistic, during which advances in propulsion and navigation accelerated the exchange of exceptional objects between the remotest planets of the Forty, and one in which the central concern, both of philosophers and the common man, was whether, in an age of rapidly proliferating hypothetical worlds, anyone or anything concretely existed at all. Even those words published long before interstellar contact can be seen in retrospect to have transgalactic pertinence. As a result, attempts to abstract the machine from its publishers, Hobson & Hui, in order to “predict the future” for insight or gain by “fast- forwarding” the copper strip have been many and ingenious. While, in centuries of skepticism (“maybe”), or of unrest (“go”) the book has been nearly forgotten, in others it seems to haunt every thought, every deed, despite the fact that the subject of The Slow Book is still unclear. So far only a few sentences exist in print; everyone knows them, can quote them, offer the standard exegeses and assorted heresies; yet certainties are the stuff of adolescence; mature readers are forced to acknowledge that these sentences are probably only a preamble to the main argument. They contain no proper nouns, nor can we identify any definite theme. There is even disagreement about their tone, whether coolly ironic, as some insist, or ardent. The appearance of an unusual grammatical case, sometimes called the future pluperfect continuous, used to describe events that at some future point will have always been true (but are not yet)—hitherto known to appear only in the synthetic dogmas of the Thanatographical Society, and in certain highly circumscribed religious contexts—has suggested to some scholars that the Slow Book was originally intended for ritual use, but the proximity of the usage to a term designating a small hand plow that, as Pott and Mielcke have convincingly shown, would have borne a distinctly obscene double meaning in its culture of origin in the author’s time, argues otherwise. It is likewise unclear whether the situation that seems to be—with teasing incompleteness—sketched out in these few lines is intended as an illustration of general principles, a case study, a dramatic scene, or an extended metaphor. In short, we have no idea what The Slow Book is about. In our own time, we believe that it is almost certainly a work of fiction, but that may be because we live in the century of “if”. In each age, perhaps, we see the book we most need to read. Some have dared to suggest that the metal strip is blank until, with millennial fanfare, it advances into its new position, that no ur-text exists, that the book itself is brought into being—written—by our need. But that is exactly the sort of thing we would believe, in 7645. Shelley Jackson is the author of the story collection The Melancholy of Anatomy , the novel Half Life , and hypertexts including Patchwork Girl . The recipient of a Howard Foundation grant, a Pushcart Prize, and the 2006 James Tiptree Jr Award, she has also written and illustrated several children's books, including The Old Woman and the Wave ; Sophia, the Alchemist's Dog ; and Mimi's Dada Catifesto . Her stories and essays have appeared in Conjunctions , McSweeney's , The Paris Review , and Cabinet Magazine . In 2004 she launched her project SKIN , a story published in tattoos on 2095 volunteers. THE BOOK OF SOUNDS The Book of Sounds is just that: a book of sounds made when letters are construed in new ways to bring forth out of the alphabet new forms of speech. A book meant to be read out loud, The Book of Sounds is not unlike Laurie Anderson's O Superman or Brian Eno's Music for Airports in its attempt to make music out of the most primary and simplest of methods. It breaks language down to its barest bones and makes out of the page a drum that has never before been beaten upon. Peter Markus is the author of a novel, Bob, or Man on Boat (Dzanc Books) as well as two books of short fiction, Good, Brother and The Singing Fish , both of which were published by Calamari Press. A new collection of stories, We Make Mud , is now available from Dzanc Books. PARADISE OF THE BLIND by Celan Solen Although the reclusive Celan Solen published his first and only book in 1963—paying out-of-pocket for a limited edition of the slim collection No One May Have the Same Knowledge Again —he remained in American obscurity for almost three decades. In 1992 a micro-press in Istanbul brought out No One in Turkish. A German translation followed in 1995. Soon it became clear in literary circles Solen was a world-class (if highly unclassifiable) artist—lyrical, dense, enigmatic—who could undo the conventional short story in 397 words by inventing impossible worlds housed in impossible whirls (in “Small Sadnesses,” a single chartreuse tree frog in Borneo unknowingly holds time together by its very presence in the universe, while each letter of its tale refers, not to itself, but to the one preceding it in the alphabet). By his disappearance last year, Solen was considered master by a generation of writers and critics (except, alas, for those gentlemen in the Swedish Academy). Imagine, then, that generation’s delight at the discovery, locked away in the author’s safe-deposit box, of his second and final composition. Had Lynch’s Lost Highway been book instead of film, and had it been penned by Beckett at his least certain, revised by Barthelme at his most formally deranged, and typeset by Derrida at his most semiotically catastrophic, the result might have been something like Paradise of the Blind : interlacing narratives of a man composed of borrowed organs (whose most cheerless and difficult to locate, god, could only have been invented by an empty heart), a nonexistent medieval painting blamed for the ruin of future hope, and the spread of a philosophy that holds earth a mistake constantly recurring in the dream of a fish lying on the floor of the Atlantic (if the fish wakes, our world winks off)—all contained in a text packed with typed-over passages, torn postcards, poems that can be deciphered only when held up to a mirror, pages ornamented with trompe-l'œil paperclips and coffee stains and buzzing houseflies, some busy with illegible runes that dissolve when exposed to light, three that smell like roses or lemons (depending on whether a man or woman is reading), two that stain with the bloody fingerprints of the those who handle them, one that ignites when brushed with breath, thirteen sewn from baby skin, one that moans when touched, and one that screams—yet all without mass, unimaginable, and invisible. Lance Olsen is author of more than 20 books of and about innovative fiction, including, most recently, the novels Calendar of Regrets (2010) and Head in Flames (2009). He teaches experimental narrative theory and practice at the University of Utah. SUPERSTRUCTURE! by Barbara D'Albi As soon as I opened the third drawer of Barbara D'Albi's wooden novel, everything became hopeless. Now in Ithaca, there was no going back. And it wasn't just the intricate series of shelves, hinged doors and locked drawers which D'Albi layered into the book, no, lo, I was constructed anew by the story. Who else but D'Albi to imagine a God who becomes a carpenter and gets killed?! And makes it good! You want stories? D'Albi is a skyscraper, built with planes and levers. Momentarily I wondered where I could shelve this book, and then I thought: no matter; I couldn't put it down. Adam Robinson lives in Baltimore, where he runs Publishing Genius. He is the author of Adam Robison and Other Poems and Say, Poem. 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In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Future of Environmental PhilosophyBen A. Minteer (bio)I think we should be deeply concerned about the future of environmental philosophy. It is the most marginalized of the applied ethics fields (which are often marginalized as a whole within traditional philosophy departments) and with few exceptions, it still has not made significant inroads into neighboring territories—including schools of public policy, natural resources/environment, planning, life sciences, and so on. In my (...) opinion, this is partly due to the general ideological pitch of the field and its narrow methodological orientation, at least historically. The neglect of alternative methods of inquiry, especially qualitative and quantitative work in the social sciences, is particularly troubling.Environmental ethics also has an image problem. In my experience, most natural resource professionals, policy scholars, engineers, and life scientists view our field with considerable skepticism, shaking their heads at what they see as arcane debates that do not touch upon the issues and challenges that motivate their own work. Many of our colleagues in the natural and environmental social sciences, for example, have little patience for the kind of metaethical discussions about intrinsic value, moral pluralism, etc., that have captured much of our attention in the past. They do not see what these kinds of arguments contribute to the scientific, policy, and management curricula, or what they add to their graduate students' training, or to their own research proposals. Typically, if a role for an environmental ethicist is recognized in such settings, it is often just to plug a personnel hole in an National Science Foundation proposal or to serve as a third or fourth reader on a graduate studies committee. Environmental ethics is at best an elective pursuit, it is not seen as essential.I'll be the first to admit that I have blood on my hands here (as do all of us, at least to the extent we have spent time and energy on debates over metaphilosophical issues in the field). And, of course, just because our environmental science and policy colleagues often do not see the true value of the field does not mean that it has no value. Still, I worry that the field seems to be falling into the chasm between traditional philosophy departments and environmental science, policy, and management programs. It is frequently deemed too applied and practical by many [End Page 132] philosophy departments, and too esoteric for schools of public policy, life sciences, and so on. This is not a good situation.How can we fix the image problem? Perhaps one approach would be to develop more solid links with our bioethics cousins (both philosophically and institutionally). There is a revealing story here about the different fortunes of bio- and environmental ethics, and I think we might learn from the success of the former. There will be barriers to such an alliance, however, some of which are intellectual (e.g., the rejection of conventional ethical categories and theories by many environmental ethicists is not shared by most bioethicists) while others are institutional (e.g., What practical shape would a "clinical" model of environmental ethics take? What is the market for this service? and so on).Another route would be to provide more organized and systematic attention to emerging, large-scale environmental science and policy issues—climate change, sustainability, poverty alleviation, and biodiversity loss, to name a few—that are (unfortunately, given their seriousness) viewed as "growth areas" in environmental science and policy studies. At my own institution (Arizona State University) we are moving away from an older departmental and disciplinary model to a more integrative institutional form and a transdisciplinary research culture. So, for example, we have a new school of global studies, a new school of sustainability, and so on. These are composed of a range of disciplines cutting across the natural, technical, and social sciences. There is certainly room in these initiatives and programs for a practical and progressive environmental ethics, but it must be conversant in subjects such as intergenerational equity, conservation science, economic valuation, environmental justice, and the normative dimensions of environmental science policy. I think there is an important role for us to play in these sorts of endeavors (which are popping... (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Der Aufsatz untersucht am Beispiel der Skateboard-Praktik den Einfluss audiovisueller Medien auf die Produktion von Bewegungen und die Konstitution von Stil-Kulturen in neuen sportiven Prakti­ken. Der Zusammenhang von Bewegungen und Bildtechnologien wird als „intermediale Konstella­tion“ analysiert. Zeigen lässt sich, wie seit den 1970er Jahren der Gebrauch sich wan­delnder Medientechnologien nicht nur das Aneignen von Manövern beeinflusst und beschleunigt. Auch auf die Vergemeinschaftung der Teilnehmer zu stilistischen ‚Kulturen‘ hat diese Entwicklung erheblichen Einfluss, indem sie immer wieder neue AutorenInnen und Bildgenres (...) zulässt. Eine Zä­sur markiert der in den frühen 1980er Jahren durchgesetzte Videorekorder, auf dessen Basis sich das ‚klassische‘ Skateboard-Video etabliert: Die Praktik verbreitet sich in körperlicher Aneignung von „Rockvideos über Sport“, die zugleich Imagefilme von Jugendmarken sind. Dieser Prozess, so die These, platziert ihre Träger exakt im Schnittpunkt von Sport- und Popkultur - und macht die Skateboard-Praktik zu einer exemplarischen Selbsttechnik, in denen sich ab 1980 das „konsumatorische Kreativsubjekt“ der postmodernen Ordnung heranbildet. (shrink)