• Title/Summary/Keyword: Cultural Critique

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A Study on Sustainable Earth Architecture Characteristic from Ecological Aesthetic Point of View - Focus on the thoughts of Lao-tzu - (생태미학적 관점에서의 지속가능한 흙건축 특성에 관한 연구 - 노자사상을 중심으로 -)

  • Kim, Seol-Hyi;Hur, Bum-Pall
    • Korean Institute of Interior Design Journal
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    • v.20 no.4
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    • pp.54-62
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    • 2011
  • Fast industrialization caused from Descartes' dichotomy has enormously developed our world, but endangered the ecosystem. In this study, the ecosystem aesthetics is not only a critique against existing growth-ideology and technical civilization, but also the art pursuing the life as an artistic state and achieving the dream for qualitatively different new future. Lao-tzu's Natural Beauty assumes that the adaptation to natural laws can lead every purpose's achievement. Based on such theoretical alternative, the earth construction as a medium for coexisting mankind, nature and construction interacts with the other objects through the natural affinity, the energy efficiency, the material generation. The earth construction provides the images of naivety, naturalness, folk as well as emotional stability in cultural terms. This study's direction and method are as follows. First, it researches the ecosystem aesthetics from the Taoism viewpoint, the alternative for environmental healing based on theoretical reviews about the ecosystem aesthetics. Second, it researches the earth construction's ecosystem aesthetic features and construction features from the low-tech aspect in continual construction genealogy. Third, it analyzes some cases targeting domestic buildings by drawing out expression methods and features through the connectivity of earth construction and ecosystem aesthetics. The earth construction lies between the heaven and the earth, but coexists in natural cycle. The earth construction caused from ecosystem aesthetics will be a future alterative, and various studies about its features and methods should be continued.

Emerging Currents in Health and Medicine - A Socio-Cultural Critique of Their Discourses and Practices - (건강과 의학의 새로운 흐름 - 담론과 실천 방식에 관한 사회문화적 비평 -)

  • 이종찬
    • Health Policy and Management
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    • v.10 no.4
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    • pp.1-19
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    • 2000
  • We have witnessed several kinds of new discourses and practices in health and medicine since the 1970s, such as popular concerns with alternative or complementary medicine, inordinate attention to the promotion of 'healthy' living, rapid resurrection of traditional medicine and ecological management of health. Four structural and situational factors are discussed to underlie these new trends:(i) as 'crisis' in health care of the 1970s was translated into health care reform of the 1980s backed up by neo-liberal political philosophy, the state responsibility for nation's health is being transferred to the individual ;(ii) it resulted from the limits of biomedical paradigm in dealing with chronic diseases;(iii) medico-scientific knowledge of disease is transformed into the subjective discourses and technologies of health in postmodern society ; and (iv) it is deeply associated with the considerable increase in environmental risk perception of health and disease. There are some inherent countervailing forces in these new discourses and practices. First, while they derive from lifestyle-oriented behavioral change, medicalization of life and death is still consolidated in the new trends. Second, inasmuch as new tides are reliant upon science, they. are likely to be remote from techne that means not the practical application of theoretical knowing but a special form of practical knowing. Third, as new discourses and activities accomplished'in the name of health'increasingly occupy important strategies in forming the self-identity, they serve as moral apparatus which involves prescriptions about how we should live our lives and conduct our bodies, both individually and collectively. Therefore, two points are suggested to consider seriously whether these streams will succeed in improving the‘healthy’living of all the people. Instead of limiting tile perspective to medicine, healing and health care, a new matrix that interweave welfare, ecology and labor along with them is timely needed for enhancing the health for all. In addition, as the World Health Report fm strongly shows, inequality in health heavily depends upon socio-economic development of a society, and it is not the richest countries that have the best health status, but those that have the smallest income differences between rich and poor.

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An Analysis of Social Discursive Space: Critique of New Liberal and New Conservative Discourses (사회적 담론공간 분석: 신자유주의, 신보수주의 담론을 중심으로)

  • Kim, Ye-Ran
    • Korean journal of communication and information
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    • v.18
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    • pp.7-36
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    • 2002
  • This study is concerned with analysing complexity, flexibility and dynamism of social discoursive space. The developmental process of social discourse is analogous to that of a spatial structure of social discourse. Post-capitalist society has seen New-Liberalism and New-Conservatism have become dominant, resulting in the deterioration of the cultural politics of citizenship. It is argued that the position of otherness, in which those binary structures (inside/outside or centre/margin) collide and collapse, is where subversive discourse can emerge to dominant discursive power. Furthermore, it is necessary to democratize social discursive space, through which the Other becomes able to. participate in the social production, distribution and consumption of social discourse.

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Korean Society of 1980s and Minjoong Misool - Visual images of Mass Consumer Society and Re-thinking of the Critical Realism (1980년대 한국사회와 민중미술 - 대중소비사회의 시각이미지와 비판적 리얼리즘의 재고)

  • Choi, Tae-Man
    • The Journal of Art Theory & Practice
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    • no.7
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    • pp.7-36
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    • 2009
  • This paper intends to examine the significance of the "Minjoong Misool(People's art)" of the 1980s emerged in Korea in its social, cultural, and art historical context. This paper also aims to provide an analysis of the meaning and form of the individual artist's works, which have been overlooked under the dominant discourse that has emphasized their political role as a collective group. In particular, this paper scrutinizes the work of "Critical Realists" by examining the way in which they perceived Korean society in the early 1980s and visualized their experiences of the period. The figurative art newly emerged in the early 1980s challenged the formalist Modernism, which was adopted into Korea and translated into monochrome paintings and the work of the conversative academicism of the 1970s. The figurative art encouraged a social communication and moreover it intended to criticize the conflicts in the political, economical, and social domains in Korea. The targets of its critique include the unavoidable results of the unprecedented development of economy, various social phenomena of the post-industrial society, and the growth of the commercialized kitsch culture. Along with Shin, Hak-chul's work that incorporates collage technique since the 1980s, the work of some members of "Reality and Utterance" and "Im- sul-nyun" exemplify their critical interests in disclosing the false dream of wealth and happiness by both referring to and drawing on the utopian fantasy manipulated and distributed by mass media and commercial advertisements. This paper pays particular attention to Nouvelle Figuration emerged in France and Europe during the 1960s, which is comparable to the new figurative art emerged in Korea during the 1980s. Nouvelle Figuration criticized the autonomy in art isolated itself from political and social reality after WWII, in particular the indifference of Informel and abstract art as well as American abstract art. Moreover it became rather politicized around May of 1968. Given that French Nouvelle Figuration was introduced in Korea in 1982 and made a significant contribution to the formation of figurative art in Korea, it should be noted that the new figurative art emerged in the 1980s in Korea cannot be categorized merely in relation to People's Art. This paper intends to critically redress the notion that People's art was formed in the particular political, economical, and cultural context of Korea independent of the contemporary artistic practices outside Korea. It will provide a critical examination and analysis of the content and form of the new figurative art, from which People's Art was germinated, in the global context.

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On Franco Moretti's World Literature: Seen from the Perspective of Periodical Studies (프랑코 모레티의 세계문학론 비판 - 매체론의 관점에서 -)

  • Lee, Jae-Yon
    • Cross-Cultural Studies
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    • v.48
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    • pp.325-359
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    • 2017
  • The works of a literary and cultural historian Franco Moretti are conspicuous in many ways. Trained in Marxism and Russian formalism, he participated in the construction of the New Left in England. Also, he interestingly interpreted the socialization of the individual through the genre of bildungsroman. Then, he shifted his research interest to the notion of world literature, and to explore its global scale, he developed his own quantitative approach combined with advanced computer technology in digital humanities. His recent publication reveals that Moretti conducted a social critique of the European bourgeois culture with his new quantitative method. His macroscopic view of literature and use of cutting-edge technology in his research inspire historians of Korean literature located in the so-called periphery of world literature. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine the idea of world literature outlined by Franco Moretti by reviewing his method called "distant reading" and examples of such an approach. His distant reading is to construct a macroscopic archive through inclusion of forgotten works from literary history and to analyze morphological patterns that frequently appear in the archive. His book entitled Graphs, Maps, Trees is a collection of examples of which he applied distant reading. By delving into such cases, I will raise questions about Moretti's macroscopic perspective of world literature in conjunction with Korean literature. As located at the periphery of global circulation of literary knowledge, Korea appropriated Western genres, established its literary institutions, and developed book markets through modern newspapers and magazines. This experience of furthering modern literature through periodicals would provide another view to revisit Moretti's world literature.

Destitution as an Expenditure: Beckett's Literature of Poverty (소모로서의 궁핍: 베케트의 빈궁문학)

  • Park, Ilhyung
    • English & American cultural studies
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    • v.10 no.2
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    • pp.73-97
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    • 2010
  • Representation of destitution may be considered as an expression of a social desire toward forging a bond or solidarity with the impoverished. However, political and ethical demands of the solidarity force the formulaic framework structuring the form of representation to its limits. The thesis aims to examine the responses to such demands within the tradition of modernist literature that can be traced from Charles Baudelaire, Knut Hamsun to Franz Kafka and that somehow culminates with Samuel Beckett, and to analyze how the issue of destitution that weaves through Beckett's works criticizes and inherits such a heritage. Whereas destitution in 19th century Realism is structurally fixed and its potential for change is inherently excluded, for these writers, destitution is no longer the state of rigid reality in which any possibility is limited. It is destitution as an imperative that calls for exploitation of possibilities that can be recuperated from the impoverished condition of destitution. What these writers consistently resist against is destitution that leads to compensation and reward. Since occupying a superior position toward the other as the subject of description or sympathy can be seen as one form of profit or reward, they have persistently pursued absolute solitariness and austere conditions rather than prematurely simulating a sense of solidarity and community. The ultimate goal of destitution as an imperative is to pursue destitution in order to worsen it by identifying and then excluding and expending possessions and assets to a state of penury. This is a paradoxical process that opens up the realm of possibilities of destitution and redefines it as abundance and wealth. Destitution for Beckett as seen in the writers above is the objective of literature. But, what he focuses on is to amplify the shreds of economic world that still remain in a state of poverty and to reveal extreme poverty as a state of odd affluence and to transform it into a pursuit of accumulation and profit. One of his famous axioms, "less is more", contains the essence of such a paradoxical strategy. In a sense, such approach is a twist on the strategy that identifies and uses any remaining potential hidden in destitution as was pursued by other writers. It also expands on the imagination of the destitute described by Hamsun. But Hamsun and Beckett are diametrical opposites. Unlike Hamsun, Beckett does not link imagination with a sense of guilt. Imagination is not intended to overcome the destitute reality nor to culminate in artistic martyrdom as in the case of Kafka's hunger artist. The imagination of the impoverished in Beckett is simply a hilarious game and not an escape that ends in a sense of guilt. This game formulates a "rhetorical question" or derision at the ironical situation where the pursuit of hunger and art as the disinterestedness has been turned into symbolic capital. It is inherently a fundamental critique at the aestheticization of destitution that has been pursued by Modernism. Beckett's efforts at divulging falsehood inherent in non-profit acts such as charity, donation and hospitality are dissections of social fictions in which aestheticization of destitution remains a part of the whole.

The Method of the Cultivation of Taste and the Possibility of the Edification of Personality & the Cultural Development Through It: The Approach to Analyzing the Examples of the Judgment of Negative Taste in Kant's Critique of Judgment(§§32-33) (취미 도야의 방식과 이를 통한 인성의 교화 및 문화발전의 가능성: 칸트의 『판단력비판』 §§32-33 부정적 취미판단의사례 분석을 중심으로)

  • Yang, Hee-Jin
    • Journal of Korean Philosophical Society
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    • no.117
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    • pp.139-167
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    • 2017
  • This essay attempts to reveal how taste spontaneously cultivates and why it is necessary for cultivating taste to edify our personality and to develop culture. It is a key of the solution of the problems that taste always reflects its judgment through pleasure. Because the grounds of the universal validity of the judgment of taste are found, whenever taste tests the validity of its own judgment, the so-called 'delight of discovery' makes taste cultivate itself. For having the moral personality, we need to practice spontaneously the morality of our own behaviour and for judging whether an artwork to represent the period is succeeded or not, we need to have a high insight to select the cultural heritage. But the autonomous thinking can delightfully be made a habit, judging the beauty of artworks. In the main body of this essay, it is determined from the three examples of the negative judgment of taste which Kant suggested in deduction. According to Kant, the negative judgment of taste means that the beautiful work is displeased, but what it asserts is that taste is cultivated. I formalize the methods of reflection of taste revealed in three negative judgments of taste into'resisting', 'indicating of error', 'self-retracting'.(Chapter 2) And from this, I emphasize the necessity to cultivate taste in the way that these methods of the cultivation of taste can affect building our personality by stimulating our reason to have interest in moral(Chapter 3) and in the way that taste directly judges the product of cultural succession.(Chapter 4) In the end of last chapter, I examine further essentially the method of the reflection of taste, to inquire into how to enable it.(Chapter 5) Especially, I try to illuminate its grounds through Schiller's concept of the "impulse of amusement(Spieltrib)", because his explanation helps us to understand the dynamics of taste's delight of discovery. Although the abilities of mind conflict with each other, taste has the characters that it reflects to encourage them for each other and that it is vitalized by its own activity. We, as it were, can pleasantly handle two tasks, because taste makes the impulse of amusement from conflictive impulses in mind. In conclusion, I state that we have to experience directly the impulse of amusement like creative artist, because it is maximized from creation.

L'usage du clip publicitaire dans l'apprentissage de la langue française (광고 영상을 활용한 프랑스어 교육 방안)

  • KIM, Eunne Kyung
    • Cross-Cultural Studies
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    • v.37
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    • pp.211-231
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    • 2014
  • Comment faciliter l'apprentissage du français pour rendre notre enseignement plus efficace? Beaucoup de recherches ont ${\acute{e}}t{\acute{e}}$ $men{\acute{e}}es$ sur cette question; en $r{\grave{e}}gle$ $g{\acute{e}}n{\acute{e}}rale$ l'enseignement de la langue d'une part et l'expression ${\acute{e}}crite$ et la $r{\acute{e}}flexion$ d'autre part ${\acute{e}}taient$ $men{\acute{e}}es$ $ind{\acute{e}}pendamment$. Notre intention dans ce $pr{\acute{e}}sent$ travail a ${\acute{e}}t{\acute{e}}$ d'introduire et $d^{\prime}e xp{\acute{e}}rimenter$ pendant $l^{\prime}ann{\acute{e}}e$ scolaire des cours associant le $d{\acute{e}}bat$ $d^{\prime}id{\acute{e}}e$ et la $r{\acute{e}}flexion$ $th{\acute{e}}matique$ avec l'apprentissage linguistique(grammaire, vocabulaire${\dots}$), afin de susciter $l^{\prime}i nt{\acute{e}}r{\hat{e}}t$ des apprenants, leur $curiosit{\acute{e}}$ et leur $vivacit{\acute{e}}$, au $del{\grave{a}}$ des $d{\acute{e}}fis$ $pos{\acute{e}}s$ par la langue française. Nous avons en particulier $utilis{\acute{e}}$ une $publicit{\acute{e}}$ comme support d'apprentissage des bases linguistiques et comme moteur $d^{\prime}{\acute{e}}veil$ ${\grave{a}}$ la civilisation française pour mobiliser leur attention et stimuler leur $activit{\acute{e}}$ cognitive par $l^{\prime}interdisciplinarit{\acute{e}}$. Nous avons donc $expos{\acute{e}}$ ici les exemples d'argumentation autour les deux $s{\acute{e}}quences$ publicitaires conduites avec les ${\acute{e}}tudiants$ et les arborescences $d{\acute{e}}gag{\acute{e}}es$ de ces analyses. Presque concomittamment ${\grave{a}}$ "voir" et "${\acute{e}}couter$", l'information est $trait{\acute{e}}e$ par $l^{\prime}activit{\acute{e}}$ "$d{\acute{e}}coder$". Nous approfondissons ensemble cette $interpr{\acute{e}}tation$ $s{\acute{e}}miotique$, et l'analyse de la façon dont la $publicit{\acute{e}}$ capte l'attention du spectateur nous $am{\grave{e}}ne$ ${\grave{a}}$ $d{\acute{e}}gager$ des faits de $soci{\acute{e}}t{\acute{e}}$ et ${\grave{a}}$ y $r{\acute{e}}fl{\acute{e}}chir$; comment, avec l'exemple de la $publicit{\acute{e}}$ jouant la musique $d{\acute{e}}licieuse$ de la gourmandise, nous entrevoyons la $r{\acute{e}}alit{\acute{e}}$ obscure de $l^{\prime}ob{\acute{e}}sit{\acute{e}}$ infantile. Ces approches interdisciplinaires ${\grave{a}}$ partir du multi-$m{\acute{e}}dia$ $r{\acute{e}}pondent$ ${\grave{a}}$ la $n{\acute{e}}cessit{\acute{e}}$ de distance critique que requiert la $soci{\acute{e}}t{\acute{e}}$ contemporaine. $L^{\prime}{\acute{e}}tude$ d'une $s{\acute{e}}quence$ publicitaire ne permet certes pas $d^{\prime}appr{\acute{e}}hender$ la $soci{\acute{e}}t{\acute{e}}$ française dans sa $globalit{\acute{e}}$, mais en $consid{\acute{e}}rant$ que notre travail consiste tout autant ${\grave{a}}$ stimuler la $facult{\acute{e}}$ critique $qu^{\prime}{\grave{a}}$ favoriser l'apprentissage linguistitique, notre $strat{\acute{e}}gie$ nous permet de $r{\acute{e}}aliser$ plusieurs objectifs autour d'un $m{\hat{e}}me$ axe d'enseignement.

District 9 : Science Fiction as Social Critique (<디스트릭트 9> 사회비평으로서의 공상과학)

  • Cho, Peggy C.
    • Cross-Cultural Studies
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    • v.42
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    • pp.505-524
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    • 2016
  • This study examines the ways District 9, a film released in 2009, reworks the sci-fi genre to explore the human encounter with "other" alien populations. Like Avatar, released in the same year, District 9 addresses the tropes of conflict over land and human-alien hybridity and introduces non-humans and aliens, not as invaders, but as objects of human oppression and cruelty. Unlike many other science fiction films where the encounter between humans and non-humans occurs in an unidentifiable future time and location, District 9 crosses genre barriers to engage with urban realism, producing a social critique of contemporary urban population problems. The arrival of aliens in District 9 occurs as part of the recorded human past and the film's action is carried out in the present time in the specifically identified city of Johannesburg. A distinctly anti-Hollywood film that locates the action at the street level, District 9 plays out human anxieties about contact with others by referencing the divisions and conflicts historically attached to South Africa's sprawling metropolis and its current problems of urban poverty and illegal immigrants. Focusing on how this particular urban setting frames the film, the study investigates the ways Blomkamp's sci-fi film about extra-terrestrials presents a curious postcolonial mix of aliens and immigrants surviving in abject conditions in an urban slum and forces a realistic examination of the contemporary social problems faced by South Africa's largest city and by extension other major global cities. The paper also examines the film's representation of the human-alien hybrid and its potential as a force to resist human exploitation of the other. It also claims that though the setting is highly local, District 9 speaks to a wider global audience by making obvious the exploitative practices of profit-seeking multinationals. A sci-fi film that is keen on making a social commentary on urban population conflicts, District 9 resonates with the wider sense of insecurity and fear of others that form the horizon of the uncertain and potentially violent contemporary human world.

Art and Collectivity (미술과 집단성)

  • Kwok, Kian-Chow
    • The Journal of Art Theory & Practice
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    • no.4
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    • pp.181-202
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    • 2006
  • "When it comes to art, nationalism is a goodticket to ride with", says the title of a report in the Indian Express (Mumbai, 29 Oct 2000). The newspaper report goes on to say that since Indian art was kept "ethnic" by colonialism, national liberation meant opening up to the world on India's own terms. Advocacy, at the tail end of the 20th century, would contrast dramatically with the call by Rabindranath Tagore, the founder of the academy at Santiniketan in 1901, to guard against the fetish of nationalism. "The colourless vagueness of cosmopolitanism," Tagore pronounced, "nor thefierce self-idolatry of nation-worship, is the goal of human history" (Nationalism, 1917). This contrast is significant on two counts. First is the positive aspect of "nation" as a frame in art production or circulation, at the current point of globalization when massive expansion of cultural consumers may be realized through prevailing communication networks and technology. The organization of the information market, most vividly demonstrated through the recent FIFA World Cup when one out of every five living human beings on earth watched the finals, is predicated on nations as categories. An extension of the Indian Express argument would be that tagging of artworks along the category of nation would help ensure greatest reception, and would in turn open up the reified category of "art," so as to consider new impetus from aesthetic traditions from all parts of the world many of which hereto fore regarded as "ethnic," so as to liberate art from any hegemony of "international standards." Secondly, the critique of nationalism points to a transnational civic sphere, be it Tagore's notion of people-not-nation, or the much mo re recent "transnational constellation" of Jurgen Habermas (2001), a vision for the European Union w here civil sphere beyond confines of nation opens up new possibilities, and may serve as a model for a liberated sphere on global scale. There are other levels of collectivity which art may address, for instance the Indonesian example of local communities headed by Ketua Rukun Tetangga, the neighbourhood headmen, in which community matters of culture and the arts are organically woven into the communal fabric. Art and collectivity at the national-transnational level yield a contrasting situation of, on the idealized end, the dual inputs of local culture and tradition through "nation" as necessary frame, and the concurrent development of a transnational, culturally and aesthetically vibrant civic sphere that will ensure a cosmopolitanism that is not a "colourless vagueness." In art historical studies, this is seen, for instance, in the recent discussion on "cosmopolitan modernisms." Conversely, we may see a dual tyranny of a nationalism that is a closure (sometimes stated as "ethno-nationalism" which is disputable), and an internationalism that is evolved through restrictive understanding of historical development within privileged expressions. In art historical terms, where there is a lack of investigation into the reality of multiple modernisms, the possibility of a democratic cosmopolitanism in art is severely curtailed. The advocacy of a liberal cosmopolitanism without a democratic foundation returns art to dominance of historical privileged category. A local community with lack of transnational inputs may sometimes place emphasis on neo-traditionalism which is also a double edged sword, as re kindling with traditions is both liberating and restrictive, which in turn interplays with the push and pull of the collective matrix.

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