Territory: Having watched the short surrealist film ‘Un Chien Andalou’ (1929) I began to consider how the explicit violence demonstrated in slicing a woman’s eye had affected its audience. How would the censors react to such a film today? With this in mind I began to watch a series of controversial violent films, which had been produced from the late 1970’s to present day that had caused the British Board of Film Classification to take swift censorship action. My territory therefore is the change in censorship of violent films between the years 1975 and 2006.
Aims and Objectives: In this project I will aim to show that the many incarnations of censorship over the years are entirely contradictory and do not achieve the aims the B.B.F.C. intends of them. In addition to this I aim to demonstrate that the notion of violence has been severely misunderstood and discredited through ignorant dogma and that it is in fact a necessary and active part of human consciousness. Having watched a short catalogue of films, such as the Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1976) the Evil Dead (1981) and Fight Club (1999), I looked at how they had been viewed by the B.B.F.C. and what actions had been taken. From here I looked at how things such as the invention of the video cassette recorder and the internet had created an impact on the censorship of films.
Philosophical Ideas. The main philosophical concepts that were drawn upon come from Georges Bataille, while thinkers Bandura conducted experiments to see how television violence affected children’s behaviour. Bataille argues that eroticism, violence and transgression will ultimately defeat the taboos of society and that they are the key to changing bourgeois attitudes. This will be held in contrast to Moralist thinkers such as Mary Whitehouse and Margaret Thatcher!
Overview. A basic study of the relationship between film censorship and violence. How censorship justifies its position through psychological, sociological and philosophical means. How film censorship cannot achieve its aims. How violence is an important part of the human consciousness. By utilising violence we can transgress bourgeois attitudes as indicated by Bataille, thus removing unwarranted taboo and dogma in society.
Category: 2006
Object, Place, Event. The Internet and the World Wide Web of Interactive Global Networking. A Mechanism of Change. A new medium is claiming to absorb almost all older forms of media and literature which is very different from previous mediums. The Internet is a super integrative medium which moves one step further and claims to leave behind the physical ground of older media, transforming these into non-corporeal electronic data that can be stored and accessed beyond the constraints of space, thus making time the decisive criterion by which we should judge the new media age and the future of language and literature. This current media change is negating not only the physical nature of prose, but the individual as we know him or her, be it the author or the political individual rooted in a local community. This claims to change the self into a non corporeal being and thus can be considered in many ways to end 2,500 years of Western Metaphysics. The interactive global is not primarily a storage device, but rather a communication tool that attempts to build a free intellectual and emotional virtual community. In order to participate in this virtual community, one is forced to necessarily negate the physical conditions of human existence and to invent a virtual personality with an easily changeable identity. The Negation of the ‘Natural’. Has the internet destroyed the singular work of literature, of art, in such a way as to engender not only a loss of its aura or its affect, but its former context as transposed by the bourgeoisie to a secular ritual of the work of literature or art?
I will be using the St. James’ Park football stadium in Newcastle as the territory for my project. What is postmodernism? – Crucial to my work on St. James’ Park will be an understanding of the postmodern condition and its relation to modernity. In my project I will look mainly at the work of David Harvey and Jean-Francois Lyotard on the subject of postmodernism. Is St. James’ Park postmodern? – St. James’ Park is a mix of old and new in design and construction. It stands towering over the city of Newcastle as a symbol of local identity. It is also home to numerous shops and corporate ventures catering for many tastes. I will examine to what extent the stadium could be considered a postmodern building, examining the idea of postmodern architecture. How has the rise in techno-science and increased capitalist penetration affected St. James’ Park? – Identified by Lyotard as key features of postmodernity, techno-science and capitalism are driven by the quest for development through efficiency. I will investigate what effect this has on St. James’ Park as a stadium and as a stage for football in a postmodern age. Key Sources: The Condition of Postmodernity by David Harvey; The Postmodern Condition by Jean-Francois Lyotard; The Inhuman by Jean-Francois Lyotard
My territory: Domestic Violence. My Methods And Sources: Women’s Aid, The Women’s Shelter, Political Bills and Laws, Interviews, Questionnaires, Books, Magazines, Pamphlets. The Ideas: Husserl and Hegel’s influence on Sartre’s construction on his theories of love and viewing the other as an attractive object. The battle to one’s freedom from being viewed as an object. Krishnamurti’s idea of the importance of becoming a free individual to transcend an essentially violent society. My Philosophers: The Existentialists, Husserl, Sartre, Krishnamurti.
Introduction. The Rhizome and the arborescent model. The powerful tree trunk, here representing a hierarchy of opinion against the horizontal, discontinuous and free flight of the rhizome. The trunk is filiation. The rhizome on the other hand represents multiplicities. It has no beginning or end, just a middle (a milieu). It is a subterranean shoot, it spreads horizontally, and at certain junctures plateaus arise. A rhizome is about connectivity. It does not run opposed to the arborescent (or state) but it is a line of escape/flight, a different way. No one language in a rhizome, multiplicity. Arborescent might seek a universal language. Nomad thought verses state space. The overall aim is to investigate the music press and the changes that have occurred due to advances in communication and technology and to look at the potential future of the music press plus industry and the implication for the consumer, artist and the record labels. Plateaus. What are the new plateaus that have arisen due to advances in technology and communication? New web sites, the advent of file sharing. The consumer ideally jumps from one to another (metacritic.com) and makes informed decisions on what to listen to or buy. The eventuality of the rhizome might be becoming ‘a self facilitating media node,’ (Nathan Barley, Channel 4). What about those who can’t reach these plateaus? Is the arborescent structure still in existence? The event. ‘The best of all worlds is not the one that reproduces the eternal, but the one in which new creations are produced, the one endowed with a capacity for innovation or creativity: a teleological conversion of philosophy,’ (p79, The Fold, Deleuze). Deleuze’s theory of the event and the growing sense that music is becoming more about the event. The live sphere is the only one that doesn’t represent an absence. Can the press ever influence us more than the first hand experience? Examples, Polyphonic Spree, Arctic Monkeys. War Machines. The war machine is a kind of movement which is separate to the state, and it causes concern to, or somehow disturbs the sedentary cultures within the state. For the purpose of this discussion the arborescent root within the music industry could be equated with the state. Independent labels and bands as war machines. They try to mix the state apparatus up. Runs away from as well as struggle against the state. Eventually become recoded by capital, example Creation records. Reterritorialization and deterritorialization, capitalism and the attempt by the state to limit desires. Do the new plateaus mean a creation of desires. Hell is For Heroes and Captains of industry case studies Interview with an independent label and band. The band have been signed to a major, and independent, and a have released an album on their own label. Captains of Industry is run as a collective, skills which can be used are used. There is no management structure and yet they have been relatively successful. How much can a small label and a rock band do? The culmination of war machines to strangle the arborescent root. Bands that have been directly affected by the changes in technology- Arctic Monkeys, Wilco etc. Are there pitfalls to file sharing? Conclusion. Is the music mainstream music press losing its influence? How much did it have in the first place? Is there a cycle going on- the arborescent, the struggle to topple it then the creation of another? If we are bored of trees, why do we keep planting them?
An investigation into the nature and extent of capitalist domination today. Capitalism is the most powerful force that exists in civilised society today. Its networks of power are dispersed everywhere and it defines most arenas of our existence yet nowhere are its processes easy to define or hold accountable and capitalism has much to be held accountable for. Chapter 1 I will use Marx’s theory of capitalism as a base from which to better understand our contemporary capitalist condition. Chapter 2 I will use the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari to try and explain the schizophrenic processes of capitalism that control everything from who we think we are and how we think about right and wrong, to which countries we go to war with and how we justify our actions. Chapter 3 I will use the distinctly Deleuzian concept of Empire that is developed by Hardt and Negri to describe the force of global capitalist expansion now that sovereignty has passed from individual bourgeois states to the machine of capitalism with America at its helm. Chapter 4 will take a look at the theory of Empire in action with the philosophy of illusion of Jean Baudrillard. He uses the Gulf war as an example of how our perception of reality is altered to the point that moral and political thought are short-circuited. Sources: Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘Capitalism and Schizophrenia’, Hardt and Negri’s ‘Empire’ and Jean Baudrillard’s ‘the gulf war did not take place’
~AN ANALYSIS AND ETHICS OF ENVIRONMENTAL ACTION~ How can I argue that my experience of Sunseed was ‘good’ beyond scientific measure? Sunseed is a environmental charity that aims to develop, demonstrate and communicate accessible low-tech methods of living sustainably in a semi-arid environment. I have identified two problems in the question of what constitutes ‘authentic living’: 1. Do I treat my environment as the Other? To act selflessly I must transcend the horizon of Being and move away from the ‘thought of being’, to treat the environment as ‘the infinite’. My experience of the world is anthropological and pre-contemplative. How has the problem of the philosophical unavoidability of thematising language shaped our attitude to environmental conservation? 2. How do I escape the ‘Dialectical Deficiency’? The truth of the existentialist concern for the fundamentalness of human subjectivity exposed in Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment, where concerns become formulas and causes are rules and probability.
Aims and Objectives ▪ To begin by establishing the Modern and Postmodern styles and characteristics of Architecture and more importantly, how and why they came about. ▪ To Show how Ouseburn Valley has been affected by the changing styles of Architecture. ▪ To illustrate how and why society’s view of the world has changed with the regeneration of Ouseburn Valley. Intentions. I will progress to evaluate the effects of this change by considering the following questions: ▪ Material change results in special change. Thus, how do our interpretations of space and time alter with the shift from modernism to postmodernism? ▪ Furthermore, how does this affect the way we act with respect to the world? ▪ How does our view of knowledge and reality change as a consequence of Postmodernism? Sources. The key source for my investigation will be David Harvey’s Condition of Postmodernity. In addition to this, I will refer to: Fredric Jameson – Postmodernism, or, the cultural logic of late capitalism. Perry Anderson – The Origins of Postmodernity. Jean-Francois Lyotard – The postmodern condition.
Territory: For my project is the life and literary works of Charles Bukowski, a German born American writer who lived from 1920-1994. Aims: In my project I intend to look at the motivation of Charles Bukowski when he wrote and to compare this with the motivation of those who have decided to adapt Bukowski’s work into film in the modern era. This is the change I intend to look at in my project, whether or not Bukowski’s work has become a commodity under the modern day culture industry that Adorno talks about. In order to do this I will look at the three adaptations into film: Tales of Ordinary Madness, Barfly, and Factotum
In this project I hope to explore our contemporary urban experience and the postmodern condition, with regards to its arguably revolutionary potential. Is ours truly a time when ‘other worlds’ and ‘other voices’ are able to find expression within society? Has postmodernity witnessed the end of meta-narratives as Lyotard would have us believe, making way for a multiplicity of truths, or is postmodernity the grandest narrative of all? I will be tackling such questions by reflecting upon the Tate Modern Art Gallery, which I believe in many respects is representative of postmodernity and by striking up some kind of dialogue between itself and those world views which have lead to its arrival. I have named it ‘A View from the Bridge’ after the Arthur Miller play, for I appreciate that what I will be attempting to argue is merely expressive of one perspective. There are various ways in which one could understand postmodernity and its consequences and mine is merely one, although I will at intervals offer other options for perception, other ‘views’ so to speak. My thesis will thus unfold as though it were literally my journey to the Tate Modern. For I begin at St. Paul’s Cathedral, which is arguably representative of the Christian world view of the Middle Ages, I then proceed to the Millennium Bridge which functions as the Enlightenment did, ‘bridging the divide’ so to speak between antiquity and Modernity, or Postmodernity even, and then I reach the gallery, which is the embodiment of our contemporary social experience.
Central Questions: ▫ How and why do we want to capture our memories in media such as photographs, film and literature? ▫ What can we learn from this need to preserve our experiences? In particular this will relate to Robert Antelme’s The Human Race. ▫ How does our need to preserve memory relate to our struggle with the other? Exploration of the Territory and Central Concepts: ▫ Look at current ways of memory capture such as web archiving, and see how these relate to a need to capture experience as comprehensively as possible. ▫ Look closely at The Human Race and more generally at the ways in which we strive to preserve the memory of the holocaust. I also intend to separate individual and collective memory. ▫ Look at Heidegger’s work on the other in Being and Time. ▫ Look at Derrida’s notion of the other in relation to identity. I want to link identity to memory and see how we assert our individual and group identities through memory capture.
Territory: Experiments with the movement and the language of attraction have been conducted in real social situations and in virtual situations. I have taken as my territory the streets, shops, bars and clubs of Newcastle as well as setting up a myspace account in which to test theories and discover laws. Objectives: This project is entitled ‘A Philosophy…’ because it is not the philosophy of attraction. I have looked at the topic from within my immediate, personal experience. My objective is to discover how attraction works for an average male, like myself, and from here to perhaps discover certain general rules or overarching systems. Sources: David DeAngelo: ‘Attraction is not a Choice’ and other works. Neil Strauss: ‘The Game’ and related ‘Mystery Method’ materials. Kierkegaard: ‘Either/Or’ especially the Seducer’s Diary. Hegel: ‘Phenomenology of Spirit’. Levinas: ‘Totality and Infinity – An Essay On Exteriority’.
It is only a recent occurrence that people have realised the importance of the environment and the damage we are doing to it. This has caused a wider response to nature conservation than ever before, with more people getting involved and more things being done to protect the environment and the natural world. Attitudes have changed. How then, do these attitudes differ to previous philosophical attitudes of Western philosophy? My project starts with an introduction as to why I chose the natural world and nature conservation, it being a great interest and love for me. It continues with a look at the history of philosophical attitudes towards the natural world such as Newton believing man was very much an observer and other common beliefs that man was separate to nature. This will show to what extent these philosophies provided an attitude towards nature which was one of almost indifference as far as conservation was concerned. Finally my project moves to the contemporary where it will explore the work of Edward O. Wilson, The Future of Life to see how far attitudes have changed. For support with this discussion my project includes the thoughts and views of other contemporary philosophers such as Holmes Rolston III and current environmental issues from sources such as the news.
Aims: I aim to find in this project the changes in our beliefs on freedom over the past 50 years. I will do this by examining a number of different areas; Politics, sociology and philosophy. I will investigate how far we are free and how far we, as individuals, are able to have an input in global decisions. I will also use Aldous Huxley’s masterpiece Brave New World. With this I will compare the negative utopia Huxley created with our world today. How far are we conditioned with the use of television and mass media and can you compare these two modern creations with Huxley’s invented Soma? In terms of politics, this is the domain where are where are freedoms are formed. Politics sets forth the rules that both protect us and inhibit us. However how far has and can our voice been heard? How far can we influence governments? With one million people protesting in London alone over the war in Iraq, the British government still sent troops to a war which was both illegal and unethical. On a sociological level I will be examining freedom in terms of racism and minority groups. Have minority groups gained equal footing a predominantly white western world? With the philosophy world I will use Derrida and most of all Michel Foucault. He aimed to show that we are in actual fact freer that we actually think. He confronts all types of political thought. He aimed to find links between global politics and the individual. Sources: As I have said the major philosopher I will use in Michel Foucault and his works Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexulaity. I will also look at philosophers such as Nietzsche and Derrida. The major piece of literature I will use is Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Which will supply both an early twentieth century view on freedom and a piece with which I can compare our world today.
Objective: My main objective in researching and writing this project is to understand as far as I can how the fluid thing which we can generalise by terming ‘self-identity’ is shaped by the idea of impending death. My objective is not to make the claim that death, or our awareness of its implications to our ‘being’ is the only factor or even the most important factor in shaping our identity; but rather to explore what parts of our identity are affected by this impending doom and in what way. Further, I mean to do this by means of an example, that being my territory which is the site where the twin towers once stood: Ground zero. I aim to use this territory as almost a platform from which to show mortality’s affects. What I mean in saying this, is that our understanding of what Ground zero represents because of its links with the concept of terrorism and thus with the concept of death, through our exposure to the events surrounding it in the media, has had an affect upon the way in which many people relate to the world around us; thus altering, or shaping to a certain extent the manner in which we form our identities. Concepts: The concepts which hold the most importance for this investigation are the concepts of a) Death, b) self-identity and c) human awareness. In looking at the concept of death we must somehow determine what death actually is. What does death really mean for a living entity, does it have boundaries as a term, and to what extent is it truly definable within the limits of language? In looking at self-identity we are looking at the essence of what makes a person who they are, how it is that they identify with themselves and with their surroundings by a method of differentiation and association. In examining this concept we must also note that identity is not as might be misconstrued, a fixed thing, but rather a fluid process of becoming or being. My third main concept is that of human awareness which is implicitly linked with the fluid concept of self-identity. I must undertake an examination of the idea of awareness in order to understand where the connection between death and identity takes place. This is the faculty, if you will, which allows the conception of impending death to affect the continuing process of forming self-identity. Sources: For this project I shall be using diverse sources which spread through a range of different Disciplines i.e. Social-anthropology, evolutionary-biology, sociology and of course Philosophy. I shall refer to older philosophical ideas of death and its effects, however the texts which are most central to my investigation are: Heidegger: Being and Time, and Blanchot: The Death Sentence
Territory: In my project I have chosen to focus on MTV as a producer of identity in contemporary society. I intend to focus mainly on the issues of identity in contemporary western culture and the possibilities of its manipulation for greater gains than mere financial profit through focusing on MTV. Objectives and questions: Can a coherent and stable sense of identity exist without a sense of history, and particularly a collective history and a feeling of belonging to a larger group, be it a nation, race, or more contemporary forms of groups (e.g. social groups defined by musical taste, class, political dispositions, etc.) Can there be such a thing as an “authentic” identity? One that isn’t shaped in any way by outside influences, even if we choose not to follow any parochial notions? Is there any possibility of such an endeavour being pursued by the majority of the population? And if not, what does this mean for an age fraught with identity crises and in which anyone with the know-how can take advantage of this fact? Key concepts: Identity, Alienation, Division of Labour, Authenticity, Myth, Identity Production, Synaesthesia. Main sources: Andrew Goodwin’s Dancing in the Factory of Distraction, Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, Burroughs, Erik Erikson’s work on identity and more.
Territory- My territory is Western Society moving from the time of Ancient Greek philosophers through to postmodernist philosophers. Objectives- I asked myself a series of questions, these were as follows 1 “What is the golden rule of ethics and why is it so important?” 2 “Where does our ideas of morality and the idea of reciprocity come from?” 3 “Does the golden rule still apply?” 4 “Is there really a moral framework of ethical conduct prevalent within our society?” 5 “With the changes that can be seen within our society, can a moral framework based upon an ancient idea of reciprocity continue to work?” My aim in answering these questions was to use the works of Aristotle, Kant and Lyotard to chart a change in the ideas of ethics through time.
CHANGE Photography as the creation of a new language and form of representation and documentation. The change in the relationship between individuals and their immediate world as a result of the globalisation of communications and the media. The rise of iconography and the celebrity and the duality of image versus reality which this entails. Photographic images start off their existence as a means of mediation between the external world and human beings. They are meant to aid our comprehension of the world in some way; however, there is a danger that instead of representing the reality of the world, they can obscure it. Like all images, they are encoded with a cultural significance which it is easy to overlook. Photographs, especially those featured in the media and in advertising, represent not the world itself, but merely an eidolon – an idealised, and therefore fictional image of the world. A division between reality and unreality is therefore created when, neglecting to decode these images, we project them back into society: it is at this point of reflection that we allow the fiction contained within the images to become a reality. In this project I will be looking at the implications of the ‘fiction versus reality’ dualism which photography brings about. I will begin by looking at the political and cultural uses of photography by four key public figures (Queen Victoria, Adolf Hitler, J F Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe) in order to track the evolution of photography and its integration into society. I will be looking at the works of Vilem Flusser, Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard and E H Gombrich to look at photography itself, and then at the works of J G Ballard, Guy Debord and Alison Jackson in order to explore the deeper, psychological implications of photography and the ‘image’ within society.
Brief Overview of The Catcher in the Rye
The novel is narrated Holden Caulfield, who reveals that he is undergoing treatment for a mental breakdown. He has been informed that he is to be expelled from school at the end of the current semester. Following a distressing evening, Holden decides to return to Manhattan a few days early but instead of going home he chooses rather to book into a hotel. The novel is comprised of the events that take place in the few days between booking into the hotel and his return home. Holden narrates his encounters with various people, both strangers and acquaintances.
Alienation as proof of the presence of the ‘other’
Holden describes himself as trapped on “the other side” of life but it soon becomes clear that his alienation is, at least in part, self-inflicted and that he deliberately employs it as a means of protection. He is continually overwhelmed by his interactions with other people. He is constantly confronted by that which is unfamiliar and ‘other’ to himself. Though his alienation acts as a guard against that which he sees as ‘other’ it is also that which is the source of his pain and anxiety.
Holden’s inautheticity
Throughout the novel Holden expresses his unwillingness to accept change. He is constantly overwhelmed by complexity and wants everything to be eternally fixed. He does not understand everything about his surroundings which is a source of anxiety for him yet he refuses to acknowledge this anxiety. For Heidegger it is through anxiety that we are able to become authentic, however, Holden refuses to acknowledge his anxiety and as such remains in a state of inauthenticity. The apparent “phoniness” of the adult world comes to represent inauthentic living in Holden’s mind, adults seem to be driven by what one ought to do in a particular situation. In Heidegger’s words, the actions of adults are determined by what the anonymous ‘they’ consider to be appropriate. Childhood on the other hand, for Holden, represents an authentic living. As a result Holden is reluctant to enter in adulthood himself. He mistakenly believes that eccentricity is authentic and as such strives to assert his socalled uniqueness, this is represented in the red hunting hat. However, it is clear that he is not entirely comfortable with wearing it. As such it becomes a symbol of his inauthenticity rather than his authenticity.
Death
Two instances of death in the novel, the first is the metaphorical death of innocence. The novel is concerned with what seems to be an ongoing dying of innocence which represents that which Holden cannot quite grasp about the adult world. It is a constant opening up of his relationship with the other. Holden’s breakdown too symbolises the struggle of the ego to remain itself over time, his illness, becomes that which separates him from himself. The second instance of death is the death of his brother, Allie, which serves as a reminder of the impossibility of possibility (Blanchot).
Territory: The Jimi Hendrix song Voodoo Chile (Slight Return). Aims and Objective: To analyse 1960’s culture and counterculture movements in terms of their aesthetical and ethical values with reference to Nietzsche’s philosophies. I intend to demonstrate that with the aid of music and the arts people at this time began to turn away from traditional pre-war values and began to experiment with more subjective, postmodern views of the world and humanity’s relation to it. Concepts: The underlying concept of my project is: ‘Ethical redemption through the means of aesthetical values’; this is closely related to Nietzsche’s conception of art as being ‘the highest dignity of mankind’. I am also investigating the concept of ‘slave and master moralities’ as theorised by Nietzsche to analyse the shift away from pre-war traditional values (for example, Christian doctrines) towards a more individual style of ethics, as can be witnessed in hippy communes and in relation to the civil rights movements and the sexual revolution. The ‘will to power’ in relation to these concepts will be the basis of my conclusion as to what extent this era can be said to be one of the defining periods of the shift of humanity towards post-modernism, especially within western culture and society. Sources: I will reference a wide variety of sources both on the structure of 1960’s culture and on Nietzsche’s philosophy as well as on post-modern philosophy. My main texts, however, will be: • Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, • Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, • David Henderson, ‘Scuse Me While I Kiss the Sky: The Life of Jimi Hendrix, • John Morton Blum, Years of Discord. American Politics and Society, 1961-1974.