Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology

Rasa, Dhvani and Rasa-Dhvani are the major critical terms in Sanskrit poetics that developed during the post-Vedic classical period. Rasa (lit. juice) is used by a sage named Bharata (c. 4th C. B.C. – 1st C. A.D.) to denote the aesthetic experience of a theatrical audience. But Anandavardhana (9th C. A.D.) and Abhinavagupta (10th C. A.D.) intermedialize this experience by extending it to a reader of poetry. They argue that rasa is also generated by a linguistic potency called dhvani. Some critics like Bhoja (11th C. A.D.) also proposed generation of rasa by pictorial art, and further, some modern critics propose to trace dhvani property in non-verbal arts such as dance and music pleading thereby that these non-verbal arts also generate rasa. The present essay examines these arguments and concludes that generation of rasa is confined to only the audio-visual and verbal arts such as the theatre and poetry, and, dhvani as a specific linguistic potency, is strictly confined to the verbal arts. Its intermedialization is a contradiction in terms.

The term Kathakali has by far become a word that is known widely among theatre lovers all over the world. It is no longer an art intended to perform within the four walls of a temple in Kerala, with only a limited educated upper class to appreciate. In its evolution, it has become a symbol that represents a society, culture and tradition.This paper explores Kathakali art form, tracing its origin and evolution and analyzing how it hasbecome a socio-cultural icon. The paper also intends a comparative analysis of Kathakali with its counterparts – Krishnanaattam, Koodiyattam and Yakshagana – in order to substantiate its pre-eminence.

In the 20th century, the adaptation of William Shakespeare's classic dramas onto the Chinese stage have attracted great interest. The study of such cross-cultural adaptations has positive significance not only for development of literary theory, literary criticism and literary history, but also in that it promotes unusual forms of innovation with regards to the study of performance in general. Chinese adaptations to performance and opera have allowed Chinese people to understand the essence of Shakespeare's plays, presented in a more forms, and as a consequence, such adaptations function as a bridge for Sino-foreign cross-cultural exchanges and interpretations. These paper traces a panorama of Shakespeare's adaptations onto the Chinese stage in the year that celebrates the 500 anniversary of his death.

Gelede is a typical Yoruba concept which has evolved into a traditional form of musical performance with its influence has transcend its traditional abode in the Yoruba communities of Nigeria and West Africa to Latin Americas, parts of Europe, Australia and the Black world at large. It also evolves beyond mere localized performance in which members of a community gathered in the town squares, market squares or the typical under the tree arrangements to a wider scale in all aspects of the social, and even religiouslives of the people. This paper combines an expository and comparative analysis with its main objective to sensitise scholarly attention to the phenomenon and to provide supplementary concise and critical source for further studies, philosophic analyses and scholarly interpretations.

The Flowers of War (2012), based on the homonymous novel by Geling Yan, and City of Life and Death (2009) are recent Chinese films that deal with the so-called 'Nanking Massacre‘ or 'the Rape of Nanking‘. The events which inspired these stories in the context of the second Sino-Japanese War will be analysed through the study and comparison of both films, together with the reasons which led the directors to fictionalise a series of events so many years after they occurred in 1937. This analysis will be carried out based on the testimonies of the foreigners who eyewitnessed the events at the time, and who left written testimony of the facts, and a comparison shall be made between the fictional and factual events.

During the past ten years, China’s micro film industry has made a rapid development aided by technological changes. Focusing on three types of micro films, this paper reveals some characteristics of China’s micro films within socialist cultural production with Chinese characteristics. This model departs from a past when the government managed everything during the Planned Economy, but is also different from the models of cultural policy in the West. The micro films examined are A Murder Case Triggered by a Steamed Bun, a parody of film Wuji (The Promise 2005), market-conspiracy micro films such asImminent and The Only Choice, and social-welfare micro films likeI will give you happiness when I grow up. All of them bring forth the issue of coordination and harmonization of conflict between social-welfare and market efficiency.

Discussing the intercultural reception of Pier Paolo Pasolini, this article looks into the intercultural and medial crossovers of his person and his work. It shows the historical particularities of Pasolini's work, and it traces layers of intermedial references in his movie production, describing the many-layered intercultural interplay. Lastly, it focuses on the discussions of media relations, and the remedialisation inherent in much of Pasolini's work.

Fontane Effi Briest by the German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder is arguably one of the greatest adaptations from literature to screen, and the best Effi Briest adaptation. Although the first reception of the movie, when it appeared in 1974, was not without unmixed reviews, most scholars nowadays share the conviction that it is a masterpiece. Elke Siegel defines the film as a success both at the Berlinale and at the box office (Siege, 2012: 378). Kreft Wetzel, however, in an interview with Fassbinder in 1974, refers to the ambivalent attitude of the critics abroad at the time of the movie‘s release, to which Fassbinder replies that Fontane‘s language is the foundation of the movie and, hence, the film works to its full extent only in German (Wetzel, 1992: 157). Forty years after this interview and judging from the scholarly work carried out on Fassbinder in general and Fontane Effi Briest in particular, it is plausible to claim that Fassbinder‘s art has moved beyond the language barriers and appeals to an audience beyond the German culture and language.

As a response to the problems of language in Chinese modern and avant-garde art from 1988 to 1998, early video art reclaimed the independence of language from social reality and political influence and established it on the basis of the time phenomenon. By comparing the category of time in the Western philosophical tradition and in Chinese traditional thought, we find that the “immediacy” of Zen provides a hermeneutical approach to the nature of language as a reflective medium, closely related to the silent experience. In line with the three basic principles of transcendental Zen, video media purifies body language into the immaterial language in three ways – through disembodied video movement, the de-objectified video image, and discontinuous video narrative.

Early 20th century Futurist attempts in visual poetry can be related to technology-based poetic creation and current digital experiences. This essay seeks to enhance the understanding of Media Poetry by identifying the existing connections between the “words in freedom” and Eduardo Kac's Holopoetry. This example of interactive and immaterial creation represents a crucial contribution to redefine poetry‟s relevance to contemporary global networks and also a milestone to understand the future of virtual and immersive writing spaces.

Contemporary art based on new media is situated at the intersection of art-as-we-know-it, smart technologies, digital and algorithmic culture, networked economy, (post)politics, as well as bio and techno sciences. Contemporary art enters into intense relations with these fields, including interactions, adoption of methodological devices and approaches, changes of the areas of activity, hybridization and amalgamation. This text explores those features of contemporary life and culture which are affected by digital art and the recombination, appropriation, remediation, reusing, repurposing, and transfer of artistic procedures/tools from one context or field to another.

This article adopts a transmedial perspective in order to investigate narrative similarities and differences between print and online travel writing. Texts, which are contemporary and Western-authored, are written either in English, French and Italian and they all focus on China as the travel destination. Drawing upon Gérard Genette and Mieke Bal's studies on the narrative discourse, it is contended that travel books and travel blogs, despite sharing basic generic features (i.e. first-person travel accounts), present substantial differences. In the former, readers are presented with a coherent and self-exhaustive narrative. This means that the representation of both China and the traveller results as a progressive (self)discovery. On the other hand, travel blogs provide fragmented and objectified accounts rich in touristic tips. As a consequence, the narrative loses its internal development and takes on an informative value in which the portrayal of China and the traveller recede to the background.

Can we speak about a specific real-virtual spatiality in the contexts offered by the post-desktop technological philosophy and practice? Does Augmented Reality have the potential to produce a different type of space (essentially hybrid) in which private and public converge up to the point of their cross identification? More exactly, to create, what media theoretician Jenny Edbauer Rice names a “zone of public intimacy”? The goal of this essay is to explore the possible answers to these questions. At the core of my analysis is the idea that the hybrid character of Augmented Reality is effected by two conditions. On the one hand, by the process of converging real and virtual spaces into a single – although discontinuous – “multimedia” space-image and, on the other, by the tensions existent between private perception and public engagement (with the setting, with the information and with other users). My conclusion is that by creating a hybrid convergent space of inclusions and exchanges, AR raises not only the prospect of a new sensorium (an expanded corporeality), but, what is more, it confirms the possibility of a distinct aesthetic paradigm as well as of a different way to articulate social relations.

The aim in this article is to widen the understanding of the significance of morality in the Norwegian social formation by comparing it with the French and the American case. After the introductory discussion of the new sociology of morality, previous findings from a study of the Norwegian middle class are reported. A short presentation of republicanism in France and Americanism in USA is followed by an analysis of the cultural and structural peculiarities of the Norwegian case, arguing that the content of the Norwegian middle class morality should be seen in light of the egalitarian tradition. Finally, by way of comparison the article points to possible ways the different configuration of values might be transferred institutionally.

Elaborated in this discourse is the idea that identifying with a punk persona is a necessary step in the ethical development of an individual. Offered are various ethical corollaries of standing on the punk philosophic grounds, including: (I) abomination of the art of following, (II) appreciation of creative aspirations more than the technique, (III) the necessity for the constant shift of the epistemic grounds on which one stands, (IV) revival of the aesthetics of Speer’s theory of ruin values, (V) revitalization of language via its destruction, and (VI) embracement of anarchic revulsion of the concept of authority as a pathway to excellent educational efforts. It is also mentioned that science is inherently a systematic rebellion against stale, prejudiced thinking, and that, as such, it is intrinsically the endeavor of intellectual punks. The final summersault in the course of the philosophical gymnastics class of the hour pertains to realization that the anarchistic ideals underlying the punk culture foster ultimate freedoms that make even the abolition of these very same freedoms and obedience to any rules or principles legitimate. The failure of all the ideologies of the 20th century has been in favor of the anti-ideology of authentic anarchism, and yet this ideology not only insists on ruining the relevance of any ideologies out there, but also calls for the deconstruction of itself, wherefrom the freedom to follow any ideologies under its umbrella naturally emanates.

This article is about a spiritual response to environmental crisis, an emerging field of ethics that joins ecology and environmentalism with the awareness of sacred within the creation2. It investigates into the Vedic texts for finding out the philosophical attitude about the earth and our spiritual obligations and responsibilities to the planet in resolving environmental issues. In the vedic-tradition3, it is the course of experiencing nature as spiritual presence and the awareness to it about our conduct as the moral and rational being. It is a world view that values all that in totality is called “nature” that is, generally, taken as “other” in contrast to human, as existence or spirit. The ethics of respect to “others”, against the effects of imperialistic, ideological conflicts, religious terrorism, industrial, atomic and corporate pollutions, must be worked out as a remedy. The basic argument of spiritual ecology lies in the view that we can find no God more than the spirit abiding in all units of the globe. One must have the view of spirit as ubiquitous principle in treating with and enjoying our needs with the things that the nature permeates as gifts of his care to it. Thus, spiritual ecology of the Vedic tradition has a therapeutic importance; it helps in cultivating our conduct and overcoming the fear of a risk against living on the earth. I am of the view that the rationality of a man and that of a nation is to be determined in proportion to the cultivation and progress of attitude and treatment with “other” but not the vice versa.

Herder, the German humanist from the end of the 18th century, a representative of Weimar classicism and of the Sturm und Drang movement, man of letters, philosopher of history, defender of popular cultures, advocate of the uniqueness and importance of every civilization. The ways in which one may summarize his legacy extend even further. The present paper will focus on the philosophy of history. We will prove that his writings reveal a complex and solid theory of barbarianism, topical for 21st century Europe. First of all, we aim to clarify the multiple meanings of this concept, identifying both the historical data and the theoretical principles behind it. In this way, the grounds on which Herder executed a radical overthrow of the Enlightenment conception (closest to that held nowadays) upon the barbarian will be revealed. Subsequently should derive the relativity of the “civilization–barbarism” opposition, as well as the anticipation of Hegel’s idea that history necessarily continues through the barbarian. Finally, we aim to provide reasonably founded answers to the questions generated by this thesis: 1. What are the qualities that confer on the barbarian the possibility of creating history? – in other words, what turns him from supporting actor into a collective agent able to change the course of history? 2. Is there a law of history that decides whether some barbarians are doomed to perish, while others build empires?

Karl Marx’s socio-economic analysis of capitalism and the conditions of industrial production are meant to imply the competitive alienation of workers in at least two important senses: (1) Workers are alienated from their tools and materials because under capitalism they generally do not own, develop or cultivate the means of production or market for products themselves; and (2) Workers are alienated from one another in competitive isolation prior to the evolution of assembly-line production in the classical progression of capitalist manufacturing. The present essay develops two main aspects of the art of alienation in this characteristically Marxist aesthetic – directly influenced by Marx, as opposed to existential or atheistic among other kinds of alienation. Focus is placed on Marx’s PhD dissertation and Philosophical and Economic Manuscripts of 1844, as a reflection of the state of social life, philosophical perspectives on the human condition, in a time of mechanization, consumerism and godless materialism. The history of artistic developments offers independent confirmation of Marx’s thematization of alienation objectifying itself as a sign of the times in artistic production and aesthetic theory.

Playing an irreplaceable role for the whole speedy development in East Asia, Hong Kong is an example of a multicultural cosmopolitan urban centre in the Pacific Rim with strong ties with the Atlantic. However, with regards to mainland China, Hong Kong has always held a marginal position, carrying multiple marginal labels. In recent years, Hong Kong has been struggling to move beyond its Chinese/Western identities, simultaneously searching its own native insular self. This is shown in the way contemporary intellectuals approach Hong Kong’s memory. As an example, this paper looks at Dung Kai-cheung’s novel Atlas: The Archaeology of an Imaginary City. Although Rey Chow describes the Hong Kong situation as namely, “the struggle between the dominant and the subdominant within the native culture itself” (Chow, 1992:153), I would like to argue that Dung Kai-Cheung does not engage in the sort of radical anti-colonial, nationalist discourse that could be read through the lens of The Empire Writes Back. Rather, he seeks a new form of anti-colonial discourse which advances a reconciliatory cosmopolitan vision of multicultural coexistence in a marginocentric city.