Postmodern Anxiety & the Aesthetics of Destruction
To borrow a term from the seminal postmodern scholarship of Ihab Hassan, we are living in a moment of indeterminacy. As linearity went the way of modernism, today's culture is one of interconnectivity, webs and networks. We privilege teamwork, democracy, easy and equal access to knowledge above all else. Aesthetics of art and the rhetoric of corporation (that is in turn borrowed from artistic practices) are changing as a result. Formalism has given way to more open creativity. Companies are “flat” or horizontally-integrated, workers may even be skilled beyond menial tasks. But what gets lost in this tangled utopia of webs and equality is determinable truth. Because of the new corporate rhetoric its easy to forget that we are still undeniably situated in a hegemonic, global, (late-)capitalist culture. And although because of increases in technology, the general public has access to more knowledge than ever before, with these advances also comes unparallel access to a proliferation of useless information.
What results from this fetishizing of democratization on all fronts is a tension between revelation and concealment, sense and nonsense. The cultural anxiety, which this in turn creates, has led the United States into a war against a faceless enemy for the second time in only a few decades. The indeterminate form of communism which we once fruitlessly battled has today taken on the amorphous visage of terrorism. Ultimately, this ideology of war, created by the uneasiness of a culture of indeterminacy, is just as transparent as the technological interfaces (computer and television screens) that its images are projected on. Current artistic practices mirror this war-motivati...
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What is adoption? “Adoption establishes a legally recognized, lifelong relationship between a parent and child. The adoptive parent becomes legally and morally responsible for the child's safety, education, health care, value development, development of life skills, as well as the day-to-day care of that child.(Society, 2014)” Adoption is not only maintaining a child, but it is maintaining the responsibility to love and take care of a human being.
Adoption is in place to balance, to nurture and create a structural environment of safety in which the child can thrive and develop into a productive individual contributing to society. Also, it allows older children to abandon old maladaptive behaviors and make their first steps toward the construction of new behaviors influenced by their new environment. In years past, parents who adopted a child as an infant often debated whether to tell him or her about the adoption. Many children grew up not knowing they were adopted, and the birth mother’s identity was kept secret from those who did know (Ashford, LeCroy and Lortie 249). This paper provides facts on widely acceptance option of open adoption rather than the traditional practice of closed adoption. Adoption separates real biological family members, removing the adopter heritage whether the adoption is open or closed. Open adoption can lead to problems, but there are proven facts that open adoption is the best option for all parties working together in the best interest of the children.
Many people would be surprised that the things they associate with certain countries are not native to those lands. Sugar was not originally grown in the Caribbean and cows are not indigenous to the United States. Before the Age of Exploration, a period lasting for centuries with long-extending effects, Europeans had not truly begun to explore Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Even with the fearless adventures of the Vikings, Polynesians, and Ming Chinese, no extreme, lasting difference was created. Once people began exploring outside of their own worlds, great social, political, and economic change was ushered in with the exchange and alteration of people, plants, animals, technology, diseases, religion, and political systems.
A black box is used to holds the slips of paper that will be drawn. The black box represents tradition and a coffin.
The idea of adoption has been around far longer than the formal legal system of adoption in place today. In the bible, there is a passage detailing the adoption of Ester by her cousin, Mordecai, after the death of her parents. Ancient Greeks, Egyptians, Romans, and Babylonians all had their own systems of adoption. Adoption systems differ from country to country. United States citizens who internationally adopt today allow for the blending of cultures, languages, traditions, and ideals. In contrast, the practice of adult adoption in Japan is a particularly interesting system used quite differently and reflects a lot of traditional Japanese culture itself.
Bullets flying through the air right over me, my knees are shaking, and my feet are numb. I see familiar faces all around me dodging the explosives illuminating the air like lightning. Unfortunately, numerous familiar faces seem to disappear into the trenches. I try to run from the noise, but my mind keeps causing me to re-illustrate the painful memories left behind.
Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991.
Nike’s goal is to remain unique and different from others in terms of the items offered on the market. Arguably, Nike belongs to a monopolistically competitive market as there only a few organizations with the ability to regulate the amount charged for their product which means they cannot make their prices high as this is likely to make customers move on to other available choices (Nike, Inc., 2012). However, Nike can find a balance between the prices to charge for their products and remaining competitive with other companies in the industry. Nike has formed a distinction between the appearance and performance of their footwear and that of their competitors. Although products are differentiated from other companies, they still influence each other because they are items of the same
2. Obesity dramatically increased in the 70’s due to a number of factors. After World War 2, lawmakers, big business and labor leaders, along with many ordinary Americans put mass consumption at the center of their plans for a successful post-war nation. The availability of frozen dinners and a variety and surplus of different foods skyrocketed. In 1977, the US dietary guidelines changed drastically, promoting our diets as mainly carbohydrate based. Over the years, the sizes of certain foods and our portions have blown up. Twenty years ago, an average bagel was 3 inches in diameter and only 140 calories. Today, the size of the average bagel has doubled, now 6 inches in diameter and over 350 calories. The health problems that stem from being overweight go way beyond the ones we usually hear about, like diabetes and heart disease. Being overweight can also affect a person's joints, breathing, sleep, mood, and energy levels. In the U.S. 68.5% of adults are overweight or obese, 34.9% falling under the obese category and 31.8% of children and adolescents are overweight or obese with 16.9% being obese (Overweight and Obesity in the U.S.). Figuratively and literarily, the obesity rate is a growing problem. The total economic cost of overweight and obese persons in the United States and Canada caused by medical costs, excess mortality and disability is approximately $300 billion per year. $80 billion of this portion is due to overweight, and approximately $220 billion is due to obesity. Approximately 90 percent of the total $300 billon comes from the United States. The Trust for America's Healt...
The Columbian exchange was the exchange of slaves, animals, crops, and resources. The Columbian exchange was not as serene and hygienic as explorers and Native American would have liked it. The first reason the Columbian exchange is a significant impact to the European exploration is crops. The east part of the word was growing wheat, barely, rice, and fruit (1). The west of the world was growing potatoes, tomatoes, and fruits (1). The two worlds would trade crops which each other giving the other something they didn’t have. This was not the only things they trade, livestock was also traded. The west part of the world didn’t have a lot of animals and the animals they had weren’t agriculture animals. The animals that Europe sent were horses, cattle, pigs, and sheep (1).The lifestyle of the Native American change when the horses were introduced into their life. The European didn’t send crops and livestock to the new world, they also sent disease. The Europeans sent disease that were nasty, harmful, and very contagious. The European sent disease such as smallpox, Malaria, Diphtheria, and others (1). These diseases were sent to the new world by the ships, people, and especially the pigs. These diseases killed lots of Native American in the New World and was devastating. The Columbian exchange was a great lift for the Europeans because of trade, but not so good for the Native Americans.
Postmodernism first appeared around the 1980’s, following a hectic and messy period of time. The postmodernist theory that defines a new era describing the world as society is fragmenting, while authority is de-centering, and real truth does not exist; there are only representations of it. Believers of the postmodernist theory, believe that postmodernism is a mixture of present, past, and future, more specifically, the cultural and spatial elements of these different times (Lemert, 2010). The postmodern age is considered the information age, or even, the technological age. Both of these are evident through the changes that have occurred within the typical marriage and family. One of the main emphases of postmodernism is that no real truth exists, demonstrating the grand narrative. The grand narrative states that the “truth” is invented for the sole purpose of selling things. This is clearly shown, in a different manner, in marriages and families in today’s society. No real truth being in existence creates change in the typical marriage and family.
The developmental stages of a successful campaign help to establish the product in the audience’s mind or consciousness. The stages of the Nike campaign can be described by using the Yale Five-Stage Developmental Model. Yale researchers developed this model while observing the growth of national identity. The first stage of this model is identification. Our text states that “Many products and causes develop a graphic symbol or logotype to create identification in the audience’s mind” (p. 264, Larson). The logo Nike is most famous for is “The Swoosh.” This is the term given to the symbol of winged victory that appears on Nike products. “The design of the swoosh logo was inspired by the wing from the Greek goddess Nike” (p. 3, http://shrike.depaul.edu /~mcoscino/word.html). The Nike logo’s presence can be noted in almost every aspect of the athletic world.
...emergence of consumer or multinational capitalism. In many ways, its formal features express the deeper logic of this social system. We need only think of the way our sense of history has disappeared, of how our entire contemporary social system has little by little begun to lose its capacity to retain its own past. We live in a perpetual present. We might say that the media help us forget the past (pp. 204-05). I have discussed two features of postmodernism--the transformation of reality into images and the fragmentation of time into a series of perpetual presents. In this way, then, postmodernism replicates or reproduces or reinforces the logic of consumer capitalism (p. 205).