The Entropic condition of Modernity

According to Hegel, the central discovery of the Enlightenment is that everything exists for the subject (Hegel 1971, p. 332-33). This theoretical shift, from ideas of a fixed natural or social order toward subjective utility and freedom, occurs in conjunction with political challenges to the old regime in Europe, and the emergence of modern civil society. While the underlying social changes can be treated only allusively here, the intellectual legacy of the Enlightenment is that values and institutions must be critically authenticated as corresponding to subjects' own insights (Taylor 1991, p. 81-91), and that traditional forms of life must cede to relations sanctioned by reason, whereby subjects attain a growing ascendancy over natural and social processes which inhibit their autonomous self-determination.

Pensamiento, 2017

In this article I propose a reflection on art as an expression of the redefinition of modern culture. Art, in effect, expresses the lines that define the world, but at the same time produces a dif- ferent form of truth. That is why a discourse on art cannot ignore an analysis of the world in which it originates and that somehow it tries to express. In this direction, three readings of the question of mo- dernity are considered: the Dialectic of Enlightenment by Horkheimer and Adorno, Barbarism by Henry, and The End of Modernity by Vattimo. In the second part, the discourse focuses on the manifestation of the crisis in art, trying to offer other meanings, from different philosophical approaches, to the transition from modernity to postmodernity.

SAJ, 2019

The subject of my paper is the dynamic and transformational relations between aesthetics and art from 1919 to 2019. The first problem to be discussed will be the relationship between art and politics at the Bauhaus and art institutes of the Soviet avant-garde. Next, I will point to differences in Marxist concepts of socialist realism and critical theory on modern culture and art. I will analyse the relationship between the concept of the autonomy of art, especially painting and minimal art. A comparison will be derived between anti-art (Dada, Neo-Dada) and anti-philosophy (Friedrich Nietzsche, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Jacques Lacan). I will highlight approaches from analytical meta-aesthetics to the interpretation of Duchamp's readymade, deriving a theory of art in conceptual art. Special attention will be paid to the "theoretical conflicts" between phenomenology and structuralism, as well as poststructuralism. I will conclude my discussion by identifying the "aesthetic condition" in relation to "contemporary art" (feminist, activist, political, ecological, participatory, and appropriative art). The aim of my discussion will be to highlight the character of modern and contemporary aesthetics in relation to art theory, by way of diagrammatic reflection on the binaries, differences, and reconstructions of dialectics.

There are well documented studies of the troubling fascination with totalitarianism and/or fascism which many of the modernists maintained or, at the least, entertained following the First World War, from T.S. Eliot’s conservatism, to Wyndham Lewis’ flirtation with Nazi sympathies, to Ezra Pound’s advocation of (and propaganda regarding) fascism. An obvious effect of the fragmented social state of Europe following the war years, this desire for a new sense of order proves intriguing. Having lost any remaining residual faith in their current government structures—both democratic and socialist—having lost faith in divine providence, and loath to return to, instigate, or reinvigorate laissez-faire policies, modernists such as these representative few latched onto the control and social order which totalitarian theories promised. If God could not determine humanity’s fate, man would have to suffice. And man proved a less than worthy surrogate. Rather than questions to be explored, I propose to enlarge upon this conceit and the anxieties and fears underlying its motivation, utilizing the works of these authors (and analyses of their works), historians, and scholars of the era stretching from 1910-1930 to detail the processes by which totalitarian measures became an acceptable solution to disorder. Through such comparisons, I hope to document the ideological similarities between modernism and fascism which compelled some modernists to embrace the ethos of totalitarianism and fascism. Evaluating the structures, methodologies, and ideologies of fascism as it was practiced and heralded in Germany and Italy with the methodologies, artistic output, and attributes of the modernist movement in Anglo-American letters and in Italian Futurism, a significant correspondence can be discerned between these seemingly disparate movements of the period stretching from 1910-1930. By focusing on literary modernism as both a material and aesthetic structure, an underlying current of totalitarian approbation can be detected and which can be equated with fascist sympathy in that both were simultaneously looking forward and backward, inclined to manufacture a future history/identity predicated upon a mythic past, and seeking to rejuvenate a dilapidated cultural zeitgeist. As such, fascism and aesthetic modernism can be understood as revitalization movements that arose as a result of myriad social, artistic, and political crises, some of which will be examined herein. Understanding the factors which can lead to the rise or popularity of any extremist philosophies is an essential tool in working to ensure such inhumanities never again occur. This essay attempts just that purpose, while, at the same time, hopes to provide insight into the critical and literary work of some of modernism’s most accomplished writers and theorists. At its core, this examination intends to present a broad overview of the era, its social disorder, the socioeconomic and political factors, and the resultant responses of some of its literary figures

There are well documented studies of the troubling fascination with totalitarianism and/or fascism which many of the modernists maintained or, at the least, entertained following the First World War, from T.S. Eliot’s conservatism, to Wyndham Lewis’ flirtation with Nazi sympathies, to Ezra Pound’s advocation of (and propaganda regarding) fascism. An obvious effect of the fragmented social state of Europe following the war years, this desire for a new sense of order proves intriguing. Having lost any remaining residual faith in their current government structures—both democratic and socialist—having lost faith in divine providence, and loath to return to, instigate, or reinvigorate laissez-faire policies, modernists such as these representative few latched onto the control and social order which totalitarian theories promised. If God could not determine humanity’s fate, man would have to suffice. And man proved a less than worthy surrogate. Rather than questions to be explored, I propose to enlarge upon this conceit and the anxieties and fears underlying its motivation, utilizing the works of these authors (and analyses of their works), historians, and scholars of the era stretching from 1910-1930 to detail the processes by which totalitarian measures became an acceptable solution to disorder. Through such comparisons, I hope to document the ideological similarities between modernism and fascism which compelled some modernists to embrace the ethos of totalitarianism and fascism. Evaluating the structures, methodologies, and ideologies of fascism as it was practiced and heralded in Germany and Italy with the methodologies, artistic output, and attributes of the modernist movement in Anglo-American letters and in Italian Futurism, a significant correspondence can be discerned between these seemingly disparate movements of the period stretching from 1910-1930. By focusing on literary modernism as both a material and aesthetic structure, an underlying current of totalitarian approbation can be detected and which can be equated with fascist sympathy in that both were simultaneously looking forward and backward, inclined to manufacture a future history/identity predicated upon a mythic past, and seeking to rejuvenate a dilapidated cultural zeitgeist. As such, fascism and aesthetic modernism can be understood as revitalization movements that arose as a result of myriad social, artistic, and political crises, some of which will be examined herein. Understanding the factors which can lead to the rise or popularity of any extremist philosophies is an essential tool in working to ensure such inhumanities never again occur. This essay attempts just that purpose, while, at the same time, hopes to provide insight into the critical and literary work of some of modernism’s most accomplished writers and theorists. At its core, this examination intends to present a broad overview of the era, its social disorder, the socioeconomic and political factors, and the resultant responses of some of its literary figures

2020

The purpose of the article is to analyse the interpretations and transformational processes of the definition of “aesthetics of modernity” in the culturological thought at the end of the 20th – early 21st centuries. To this end, the study applies methods of critical analysis, contextualism, as well as a methodology relevant to the systematic culturological approach, including the method of synthesis and the system method. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the fact that the transformation of the aesthetic images of modernity in the applied culturological science has been analysed. Conclusions. It has been demonstrated that new postulates of aesthetic values are formed in the cultural and artistic environment and only later are comprehended and institutionalized by the rest of the society. The main characteristic of the “modernity” of the turn of the century is its accelerated variability. The study demonstrates the transformation of aesthetic values, which occurs between the...

Sztuka i Dokumentacja, 2018