Is there a transcendental taxonomy of sexuality? Are we being exposed to a sexual ideology? Will heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality satisfy the variety of sexual orientations which exist? These are the questions which I wish to answer in my study of erotic attraction and sexuality. Throughout time differing sexualities and sexual traditions have surfaced. I want to discover why these paradigms exist, and whether sexuality is a wholly social construct. Included in the differing epochs of sexuality are the Mesopotamian obsession with fertility; the Ancient Indian tradition of linking sexuality with spiritual fulfilment; the Greco-Roman belief in sexual status and the activity and passivity of agents; the great repression of the Middle Ages, leading on to a great enlightenment erotic liberation; and finally, the problems of sexually transmitted infections, specifically HIV and AIDS. The philosophical concepts which I will be using are the Neo-Marxist concept of reification, as explained by Adorno, and the Foucauldian notion of disciplinary power. When reading both Adorno and Foucault, it becomes apparent that both are distrustful of apparent truths, particularly those which have descended from capitalist society. Both see the progress of science as something which presumes particular values, and which can be used as a form of knowledge domination. Is sexuality included in this discourse, or is sexuality a metaphysical truth?
Category: Abstracts
In this project I hope to discuss the problem of evil – namely how God can exist as evil does. By examining the Holocaust in regards to this I hope to be able to shed some new light on this infamous example of evil and suffering beyond comprehension. Did the German people knowingly allow the Holocaust to happen and if so what were the reasons behind this? By reading Rudolf Hoess’ autobiography I hope to be able to discover whether following orders removes all moral responsibility. Ultimately, could it happen again?
My territory is addiction; I chose addiction as it is a contemporary issue of concern today! I have examined most areas of addiction, such as; Drug/ alcohol abuse, gambling, sex and eating disorders. Essentially it is not about what addiction one has; rather why one is addicted in the first place. Thus, I have explored contemporary answers. The two concepts of Philosophy I have chosen are that of Mill and Bataille.
Bataille is related to my topic of addiction because he blames Society!!! Due to the Rise of Capitalism All time is spent on useful means leaving no time for useless expenditure…addiction is a way of escaping this monotonous regimented lifestyle!!!
The methodology: The method I have used throughout my project is the hermeneutic interpretive, as I attained all my information from books and the internet.
Mill is associated with my territory because his philosophy is based on Hedonism: Addiction is based on pleasure and addicts do it to release pain. This is also following Mill’s principle of Utilitarianism. Also, I have explored Mill’s work on education; his basic doctrine related to addiction would be that a good education from a young age would prevent behaviours like addiction occurring. He distinguishes higher and lower pleasures, higher pleasures being things such as; theatre and literature. Thus an alternative for addiction, for Mill, could be through art.
My Stage three project is a Foucauldian investigation into tattooing in England in the present day. I have based my research around Foucault’s theories of power, history and governmentality.
I have also investigated psychological and social theories that relate to the Foucauldian ideas of power and governmentality.
From working through my investigation, I decided that I should make history the greatest aspect of my analysis, and that allowed me an insight into collective notions in what I termed the “general society” and this has made up the main body of my work.
I have also investigated how the view of the tattooed community has changed, as well as investigating where negative opinions held by the societies at each point in history originated from.
I have discovered through my investigation that negative attitudes towards tattooing stem from the orthodox Judeo-Christian belief that the Body is the property of God, and that to scar or tattoo it is a sin against God. Tattooed Jews are still not allowed the same burial rites as non‐tattooed Jews.
This project represents a new understanding of tattooing as a genealogical entity, as much has been written about the social, psychological and anthropological impact of allowing tattooing in civilised society.
Whether or not the realm of freedom apparent in the plurality of styles used by contemporary artists is actually a way of concealing its true function, as a slave to business? In contemporary art’s exploration of the human psyche, it appears to hold out no consolation; conventional styles are broken and indiscretions of morals all define the basic contemporary art world orthodoxy. However although contemporary art has reinvented itself this also means that art’s existence now comes in relation to world politics, commerce, consumerism and the worlds of business and finance. In this project I will discuss how art has changed and been shaped by the demands that these external pressure points have put upon it, and what that means for the way we ‘read’ art and treat artists in contemporary culture. I will centre my argument on how the mass consumer culture of our society has lead to the commodification of art. I will focus on the artists Tracy Emin and Damien Hirst, and how both artists have embraced commercial success and celebrity status, buying into the values that art originally transcends, suggesting that they themselves have become a brand name out of which their art is made. The key philosopher that I will be using is Karl Marx and his theory of capitalism. He believed that the continual modernization in industry means that old structures, traditions and attachments begin to dissolve, so that in his famous phrase “all that is solid melts into air.” This can be applied to art’s status which is conventionally and ideally aligned with truth, beauty and ethics but with capitalisms involvement there is a shift from ethics to aesthetics. Contemporary art has become about creating pieces that are morally ambiguous, that promote corporations and entertain the mass culture. I will also be using Guy Debord and his Society of the Spectacle to elaborate on Marx’s theory and explain how he felt art had become commodified and the consequences of this, such as alienation and the loss of art’s function.
Territory: I chose to consider the BBC and the recent scandals in which it had been involved, focusing particularly on the Ross and Brand voicemail scandal and rigged phone-ins involving Blue Peter and Comic Relief. Concepts: My territory led me to consider morality and identity for the individual within modern society, focusing on the relationship between these concepts and institutions such as the BBC. Aims: Following the BBC scandal involving Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand and the public outrage this caused I decided to evaluate the role of the BBC today. My objective was therefore to determine the ways in which the BBC had changed over the years in order to debate whether it was still morally and culturally important today. In order to evaluate these changes I chose to look at Beck and his notion of Individualization to understand our changing society and the problems faced by the BBC today. To further consider the effects of cultural institutions such as the BBC for the individual I chose to look at Adorno’s “The Culture Industry” and Taylor’s “Sources of the Self”, which both highlighted the significance of cultural institutions within the formation of morality and identity. This led me to argue that the BBC still has an important role to play within society today both morally and culturally. However it must attempt to balance its traditional values with the developing attitudes of our society if it is to retain this significance.
Who can possibly be responsible for the two extreme eating disorders? The state, family, media and culture all have their parts to play. How do we know what is best for us?… If the state, family and individual all disagree? Parentalism – should an individual with an eating disorder be considered not fully rational and is this justification for some of that person’s right to freedom to be taken away, on the grounds that they would be ‘better off’. Hegel asserts that the individual’s highest freedom consists in membership in the state. BUT: Does society protect us?
Territory: Terror and the Suicide Bomber.
Terrorism is not a new weapon but in the 21st Century we have seen it used to devastating effect. A 21st Century phenomenon is the suicide bomber, the human bomb willing to sacrifice their own life for terrors cause. The suicide bomber is an utterly baffling weapon 9 times out of 10 it is unable to be defused and its explosive force can cause widespread damage to infrastructure, troops and civilians. For counter terror organisations around the world the suicide bomber presents the ultimate nightmare and risk to the civilian population. It is a bomb combined with human thought and human emotion, a bomb that shouldn’t exist.
Concept: Freudian Psychosis.
The aim of my project is to engage with the terrorist’s mind-set, in particular the suicide bombers with respect to Freudian psychology. The simple answer is to declare terrorism and its follower’s psychotic thought, but could this assumption merely be just a Western attitude?
Secondary Concept: Levinas’s Autrui.
For further discussion I will also engage the terrorist with Autrui [the Other] to discuss if the suicide bomber truly understands the people it destroys as Autrui.
My time volunteering in development projects in Tanzania inspired me to delve further into the logic and processes of international aid and development. The barriers which development initiatives come up against struck me to be as a result of the postmodern world we live in: globalization, technological advances, a disposable, fast changing society, a multiplicity of sources from which to develop an identity, and of which we need to have a knowledge. So do the changes in our world mean aid and development is pointless? Are developing countries ever going to catch up with the superpowers? Can a poverty stricken individual get on in this fast-paced world? Will they ever have all the tools they need to survive? Giles Bolton’s inside account of why globalization and good intentions have failed the world’s poor has been a useful insight. I wanted to explore Zygmunt Bauman’s account of the consequences of globalization and a postmodern world for the individual and David Harvey’s ideas about the loss of the particular in the universal in the world we live in. Can international development be fruitful then? Are we simply going about things the wrong way? Do we need a new approach to development accounting for the shift from our Kantian disinterested subject to the complex nature of the subject in today’s society? These are the key themes for exploration in my project. KEY SOURCES: Giles Bolton: ‘Poor Story’, David Harvey: ‘Spaces of Hope’, Zygmunt Bauman: ‘Globalization,’ ‘Liquid Life,’ ‘Wasted Lives.’
Territory: Through the developments especially within recent years, the identity card has become a prominent part of modern life. The territory under examination is the identity card. The debate of protection over control and the amount of information that is held about each individual has become evermore important. The identity card suggests the ability to allow people to be recognised as the individual they are through the information contained on and within the card. The identity card therefore appears to present implications to the idea of identity presenting it as a fixed material idea which seems to do against the modern understanding of the self and the individual identity.
Aims: The primary aim of this project was to explore the extent to which identity cards impact the creation and development of the individual identity. Through the development in technology, particularly those within the area of the identity card it is possible to recognise a decline within the understanding of the individual and unique identity. The secondary aim of this project was to examine the effect that the restriction on the ability of the individual in the creation of the identity would have on the idea of existence that the self would have within the world. It is possible to suggest that existence is affirmed within the world through authentic experience and the projection of the identity in its individual being. Therefore if we are unable to create the self as we wish and perpetuate the individual identity this would seem to have a detrimental effect on projecting our existence.
Philosophers: Through the work of Sartre I have explored the way in which we strive to live an authentic life and the importance that Sartre places on this. I have explored the manner in which the identity card restricts the possibility for the individual to live this authentic life and create the self as they wish. The writings of Sartre were also used in the exploration of the idea of affirming our existence within the world, in that we are only an identity within our action, and through our action we are able to have existence within the world. The work of Heidegger was also important to this idea and his understanding of being. If we identify ourselves as a certain idea we are conforming and reducing the self to something that is less than the existence that we have. The idea that we are much more than we understand ourselves as being was important for Heidegger. We must not reduce our identities and our ability to exist by taking the identity card to be all that we are.
It is estimated that there are 150 million active Facebook users worldwide. • Once a website aimed solely at students at Harvard University as a means of keeping in contact with classmates, Facebook has grown exponentially since its inception in February 2004. • Recently it has excelled in the 35‐54 year age demographic with a reported 279% increase in users in this age bracket. The worry is that, in domino effect of sorts through the generations, it will soon be a reality that everyone who has regular access to a computer will be communicating through a website and human contact and interaction will be a seldom practiced pastime. With the arrival of the mobile telephone came a whirlwind of irreversible change. Advancements in Telecommunications opened the gateway to a so‐called ‘Thumb culture’ in which communication and media interaction are all dictated by some form of digital interface. It seems as though, with each technological step forward, we take an interpersonal step back. For example, first there were phone conversations to close friends and family, then came text messaging, a far less personal way of communicating but, nonetheless it was a progression, or perhaps digression, that was mutually embraced by contacts that once knew each other well enough to interact verbally. From this stemmed the birth of instant messaging as a cheaper but very similar alternative. The concept of social networking through sites such as Myspace and Facebook is a commendable one. They aim to maintain correspondence with people that would have otherwise slipped off one’s communication radar. But the reality is that our strong relationships become diluted by becoming ‘Facebook friends’ with people we would call mere acquaintances. With the addition of Facebook chat in April 2008, Facebook became a ‘one‐stop shop’ for all our communication needs. Engaging in duologues on Facebook meant that their monopolisation have become so conglomerate that face‐to‐face conversations end up actively referring to Facebook. With a limitless online friend capacity, people with thousands of friends either have to spread themselves very thinly across all these people, or spend hours and hours chained to a computer to maintain a valid friendship. In order to explore this territory, I will be looking at the work of J.G. Ballard and Guy Debord as well as looking into Communication Theory. My aim for this project is to investigate where we go from here. Will face to face, or even verbal communication exist in the future? Or will technology sever our personal relationships to such an extent that meeting with people will be simply a distant memory; something the future generations will dismiss as ’something their grandparents did’?
One of my main sources links Fight Club with an article by Omar Lizardo named ‘Fight Club, or the Cultural Contradictions of Late Capitalism’, which I found in the Journal for Cultural Research. I chose this because it places quite an original perspective in that it is a reaction to arguments that tend to emphasize Fight Clubs relevance for the study of contemporary representations of gender and masculinity. Lizardo argues ‘that Fight Club can be seen as an attempt to deal with the evacuation and exhaustion of the original form of value-rationality from the realm of production in service work. Basically it contemplates whether class-consciousness in the modern capitalist state has left man with a sense of lost virility, and whether or not Fight Club is a reaction to this. I have chosen to link this with Thomas Hobbes’ ‘Leviathan’ which talks of the state of nature and how man gave up his freedom and violent, barbaric ways to conform to civil society under social contract. Sigmund Freud served more as a psychoanalyst and sociologist than a philosopher in this project as I used his work ‘Civilization and its Discontents’ to analyse the possible reasons for the narrator’s breakdown. Many of Freud’s ideas already appear quite blatant and self explanatory in the film, however Freud covers much more material that is not evident at all. I chose to use the film ‘Zeitgeist’ by Peter Joseph as I felt this would be both very interesting material and also would place a very original comparative to Fight Club. I was in complete awe, shock and amazement when I first watched this extremely powerful and scary film and am very passionate about spreading the word about it. It will prove highly relevant to some of the material in Fight Club, and is something that I feel everyone should know about.
Territory: Escapism, our obsession, need for it. What I will use to do this: My mind, Psychology, Fromm, Sociology. We are the only species on this planet that routinely, and necessarily require some form of detachment from our existence. I want to explore this need of ours to escape from the perspective of the protagonist Craig Schwartz in the film ‘Being John Malkovich’. As well as using an individual’s perspective I hope to look at society as a whole, the way it is driven by a mainstream commercialist economy and how this affects our need to subvert our reality from time to time.
From the birth of modernity mans values have been forced into change with the diminishing role of religion in society and the subsequent rising of science and rationality. The object that seems to have become of most importance since the decline of religious beliefs is money. Is there a case then that money has become all that modern society values? Cases of modern day philanthropy, such as those pledges made by famous entrepreneurs Bill Gates and Richard Branson offer an alternative to this view. After the oppressive feudal system governed by the Church, the move onto a capitalist approach was thought of as bringing an otherwise unheard of amount of freedom to the common man. That the individual could now accumulate wealth and use this commodity to raise one’s social standing offered much hope for a liberal future. The modern day philanthropists seems the ideal modern man, whose success in accumulating wealth is then transferred into helping other important social ‘goods’. There is of course criticisms aimed at these capitalist ideals, in this project the works of Marx and Marcuse are of significant interest. Marx is perhaps the most famous opponent of capitalism and his work is used here to describe his idea of money ‘alienating’ man from his fellow man. Marcuse’s ‘1-Dimensional Man’ is a work very critical of those institutions in our advanced industrial society that keep the common man under control. In particular, the mass media and the use of advertising as tools used by modern society to plant ‘false needs’ into the consumer in order to support our ever-increasing rationality. The discussion thus follows whether in modern society there is more to the successful man than wealth. Surely the accumulation of wealth on its own is not something to be admired within a man, instead perhaps it should be that the sharing of wealth is that which we value.
Territory: Graffiti. Object: Graffiti Art. Graffiti as an art movement and global phenomenon, originates in the early 1970’s in New York City. The unique dynamics of the city gave rises to an artistic battleground of expression in a cultural climate of alienation and class divide. As the youth at the heart of American capitalism struggled to gain recognition, the graffiti subculture was born. Using unconventional mediums and the alternative canvas of the urban landscape, graffiti, enveloped the city, the nation and eventually the entire world. Philosophical Concept: Heidegger- The Origin of the work of art. Heidegger’s intent is always to bring us closer to the understanding of Being. Art in its origin, is art; the happening of truth of a people’s historical existence. Great artworks in the current tradition of aesthetics are ripped away from their essential truth when classed as objects to be judged and experienced in pleasure, losing their authenticity and ability to ‘set-up’ a world and ‘set-forth’ the earth. Graffiti’s philosophical relevance: The Truth of Being. Graffiti writing rose out of a particular ‘world’, a horizon of disclosure dominated by capitalist alienation. The struggle of the youths in New York City was a battle of resistance to authority and conformity that led to an artistic battle of expression. In graffiti’s expression, the ‘world’ of the American culture is opened up, the ‘earth’ rips through this ‘world’ in the form of undefined and sublime images of the New York subway trains, taking us out of our everyday world and reminding us of other existing realities. We forget the mysteriousness of truth in its dual essence of aletheia, and the works of the original underground graffiti movement disclose this struggle of world and earth; the truth of Being. It is this struggle that graffiti writers sought to sustain in their works, therefore, graffiti did not originate from art but rather from the truth of a people’s historical existence; the historical truth of being.
The dilemma of whether there is still a place in today’s society is one that still poses a lot of questions, and so I decided to look in more detail at the issue for the basis of my project. I used ‘The Da Vinci Code’ by Dan Brown in order to look at how literature has changed to reflect the decline of religion and faith in society. I realised that due to technological advances, such as developments in medicine, religion and faith have begun to take a backseat in terms of how much influence they still have in people’s lives. Alongside this was the discovery of the fact that religion itself could have changed in that Dan Brown claims that the church itself has been hiding a huge secret: that the Holy Grail is in fact not a chalice as Christians for millions of years have believed, rather it is a woman- Mary Magdalene – and there still exists today the bloodline of Jesus Christ, living descendants. Is it possible that after all this time the Christian faith has been based on a lie? And if that is the case, can it be said that the Christian faith is worth any less? After looking at how religion has changed I moved on to begin to introduce philosophical concepts into my project. I drew on ideas and notions put forward by philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Friedrich Nietzsche: o He did not believe in the divinity of religion, the idea that religion allowed us access to another dimension of reality. o He claimed that science cast doubt on the comfort of religion. o He believed it was fear, not faith that drove people to religion. o He argued that the Christian conception of God was one of the most corrupt images of God to exist. o God is dead. Fyodor Dostoyevsky: He suggested that people were in search of miracles as opposed to looking for a place for God in their lives. He thought that people believed in God because they desired to, not because they truly believed. He advocated a Christianity in which human redemption and resurrection could occur on earth. Every individual has the ability to choose whether or not to believe in God. Throughout my entire project I have attempted to link religion with society, or alternatively assess how society has changed so much that there now is no place in society for religion. The philosophical concepts I used seemed to suggest a change in faith and religion and this is something that I explored in my project. It is evident that religion has less significance in society, and by religion I am referring to the ‘motions’ of religion, such as going to church. However I discovered that many people still call themselves Christians, and so even though religion has declined there is still faith and belief in God, so this led me to conclude that religion might be declining within society, but there is still evidence of God today.
In his online book, Gamer Theory, McKenzie Wark posits the idea that games reflect a more perfect world. He argues that real life has become a gamespace and that it proclaims itself to be fair, promising an ideology that it can’t deliver. This ideology masks the underlying status quos and oppression present in our society. Games, he argues, because they follow exactly those rules that they promise, are a means by which to uncover this schism. Adorno too thought there was a conflict between ideology and actuality. He proposed a theory of negative dialectics and art in order to expose this. Adorno believed that the consumerism that motivates current capitalism was part and parcel of this trend. I will explore both of these thinker’s theory through my territory of games and gaming. The change I will chart is that of the progression of games themselves from the most basic text-based games, such as Zork, to fully-rendered graphic 3D worlds. The pictures above are examples of this. This will become important in my discussion of gaming and how its progression relates to mass culture and the problems Adorno foresaw within mass culture. Gaming ostensibly seems to feed into Adorno’s notion of the culture industry. New consoles, such as the Wii and DS sell 100,000 units every month in Europe and the international games market is expected to reach a gross of £23bn by 2010. I will examine McKenzie Wark’s theory thoroughly to discover if this has any bearing on his claims. I will also look at open source software, such as the Lassie and AGS engines, as a possible solution to this.
For my project, I decided to investigate the role of fashion trends within music. I wanted to discover how the two are connected, and the influence they have upon each other. I wanted to understand how they both change, and the reasons why they change. I focused upon the Punk movement from the 1970s to the present day, which allowed for an easy transition from my stage one project, and still remains an area of importance within my life. Philosophically, I based my investigation on the works of Guy Debord and the Situationists, Surrealism and the works of Deleuze and Guattari. I also included sociological and psychological theories. I studied the role of the mass‐media in great detail, and found that theories presented by neo‐Marxist thinkers allowed me a greater understanding of my subject. I found that the mass media is responsible for the creation of Marxist “Ideology” and Debord’s “Spectacle”. These two create a false world view which allows people to be manipulated by others. I discovered that the media and business plays an important role within alternative rock music and the trends it creates. The media will offer positive or negative press regardless of stylistic content, and big companies will control what music, and its derivatives, are allowed into the public domain. This of course is a display of Debord’s Spectacle, and how alternative rock music has become its victim.
Object: Blues music in the pre and post-war period. The reason I chose to study blues music is because its roots are firmly entrenched in the folk tradition. Subsequently the music is expressive in form and often reflects the current social climate. I studied music recorded by folklorist Alan Lomax and recording artists such as Son House, Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson and considered a series of documentary films directed by Martin Scorsese. Change: Blues music progressed from a form of musical expression contained within rural African-American communities to an international phenomenon which saw the likes of the Rolling Stones, Cream, John Mayall and The Kinks re-recording earlier blues songs with greater commercial success. I believe that this change can be attributed to the structural constructs put in place by the dominant modes of production that recognised a potential market and exploited it for capital gains. Concepts: Primarily the Situationist Internationale’s critique of contemporary capitalist society, analysing the idea that modern life has receded into a spectacular representation which is dominated by the commodity form. Accompanying this idea is the notion that spectacular society is capable of co-opting popular movements which question the status-quo into its own reinforcement. In order to provide a link between the Situationist Internationale and the change which blues music underwent during the pre and post-war period I drew upon commentaries by Richard Middleton and Richard Peterson both of whom analyse the role of the recording industry in fabricating authenticity and exploiting a musical market for capital gain.
The title of my project came from watching the film ‘The Pianist’ which graphically depicts the ghettoisation of Warsaw between 1939 and 1942. The film highlighted the complex issues that cultural segregation presents to society and it soon became apparent that the subject held enough significance to use it as a base for my stage two project. I began my investigation of cultural segregation with a look at the history of the ghetto paying particular attention to three examples; firstly I looked at the Warsaw ghetto and segregation of the Jewish population of the city in the Second World War. Secondly I examined the development of the projects of Chicago and their gradual decline. Finally I looked at the Muslim population of cities within the UK and the problems that have arisen from large scale immigration. Within my territory of ghettoisation I identified three main philosophical concepts; 1. Racial Discrimination 2. The Struggle for Identity 3. Strength in Numbers. By studying the theories of Hobbes and Hegel I managed to apply philosophical thought to my concepts. Paying particular attention to Hobbes theory of ‘The State of Nature’ and Hegel’s argument for social unity, succeeded in finding significant arguments within the theorists’ work which applied to the issues raised by the cultural segregation. In conclusion I make a brief summary of what I have managed to achieve during my investigation and offer a personal perspective on the overall reality of ghettoisation and what it suggests about human nature.