Page 207 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 207
summary
kinds of other messages. This is happening on a level that is comprehended
as “global”. Never before has the international exchange of goods been so
“culturalized”. This includes not only material goods, but also the nomad-
ism of so-called “spiritual” ones in a very broad spectrum of cultures, spac-
es and times. There is a phantasmal universe in which icons are produced
to feed any individual imagination almost anywhere in the world. These
icons support a stream of individual identifications with celebrities, with
their patterns of behaviour and their performances of life-styles on a global
level. The Freudian unconscious has never before been turned “inside out”
to such an extent. The Babylon of the 21st century is a global stage, where
an immense plurality comes forth. What is perceived in many texts in the
field of cultural analysis as the colonial look is being increasingly dislocat-
ed, although far from being erased. However, inevitably the plurality comes
forth only to be reduced in its scope. Abstractions and common denomi-
nators are absorbing it, as different particular representations in unity with
interpretations are being selected and deselected, according to a self-gener-
ating rule of “recognisability”. Still, one may observe that the global market
lives on an exchange, which comprises of everything from food and drinks
to the educational services, and of course, the flow of capital, which with
its first looming crisis of the global economy is becoming somewhat prob-
lematic. The signifying elements within these global exchanges are precise-
ly different identities, which could be illustrated in an immense number of
culturally marked items. It looks as if the notion of identity deprived of its
elusiveness, and fixed as the supposedly most basic cultural category, is in-
creasingly used as a counter-concept for a mobilisation against the plural-
ity of the global intercultural influences. The politics of identity represents
the potential of post-modern hegemony, which may become dangerous in
some political profiles such them as simulacrum of fascist politics. Luckily,
it appears that the stressing of such fixed identities tending to exclude any-
body who refuses to be “included” brings forth the dispersing tendency of
the politics of difference. Hegemony as a tool of democracy in a Gramscian
sense, served well to open the minds of modernity.
Extremism, Perceptions, Transformations and Sexuality
The second part of the book makes a turn to some politically marked con-
cepts and phenomena and it starts with a reflection on the notion of ex-
tremism. The political extremism is only possible in a context, where mod-
erateness, normalcy, common sense, some dominant representations of
205
kinds of other messages. This is happening on a level that is comprehended
as “global”. Never before has the international exchange of goods been so
“culturalized”. This includes not only material goods, but also the nomad-
ism of so-called “spiritual” ones in a very broad spectrum of cultures, spac-
es and times. There is a phantasmal universe in which icons are produced
to feed any individual imagination almost anywhere in the world. These
icons support a stream of individual identifications with celebrities, with
their patterns of behaviour and their performances of life-styles on a global
level. The Freudian unconscious has never before been turned “inside out”
to such an extent. The Babylon of the 21st century is a global stage, where
an immense plurality comes forth. What is perceived in many texts in the
field of cultural analysis as the colonial look is being increasingly dislocat-
ed, although far from being erased. However, inevitably the plurality comes
forth only to be reduced in its scope. Abstractions and common denomi-
nators are absorbing it, as different particular representations in unity with
interpretations are being selected and deselected, according to a self-gener-
ating rule of “recognisability”. Still, one may observe that the global market
lives on an exchange, which comprises of everything from food and drinks
to the educational services, and of course, the flow of capital, which with
its first looming crisis of the global economy is becoming somewhat prob-
lematic. The signifying elements within these global exchanges are precise-
ly different identities, which could be illustrated in an immense number of
culturally marked items. It looks as if the notion of identity deprived of its
elusiveness, and fixed as the supposedly most basic cultural category, is in-
creasingly used as a counter-concept for a mobilisation against the plural-
ity of the global intercultural influences. The politics of identity represents
the potential of post-modern hegemony, which may become dangerous in
some political profiles such them as simulacrum of fascist politics. Luckily,
it appears that the stressing of such fixed identities tending to exclude any-
body who refuses to be “included” brings forth the dispersing tendency of
the politics of difference. Hegemony as a tool of democracy in a Gramscian
sense, served well to open the minds of modernity.
Extremism, Perceptions, Transformations and Sexuality
The second part of the book makes a turn to some politically marked con-
cepts and phenomena and it starts with a reflection on the notion of ex-
tremism. The political extremism is only possible in a context, where mod-
erateness, normalcy, common sense, some dominant representations of
205
