Heidegger's hippies : a dissenting voice on "the problem of the subject"

This is a deliberately contentious paper about the future of the socio-political sphere in the West based on what we know about its past. I argue that the predominant public discourse in Western countries is best characterised as one of selective forgetfulness; a semi-blissful, amnesiacal state of collective dementia that manifests itself in symbolic idealism: informationalism. Informationalism is merely the latest form of idealism. It is a lot like religion insofar as it causally relates abstract concepts with reality and, consequently, becomes confused between the two. Historically, this has proven to be a dangerous state of affairs, especially when elites becomes confused between ideas about how a society should work, and the way it actually does work. Central to the idealism of the information age, at least in intellectual spheres, is the so called "problem of the subject". I argue that the "problem of the subject" is a largely synthetic, destabilising, and ultimately fruitless theoretical abstraction which turns on a synthetically derived, generalised intradiscursive space; existentialist nihilism; and the theoretical baubles of ontological metaphysics. These philosophical aberrations are, in turn, historically concomitant with especially destructive political and social configurations. This paper sketches a theoretical framework for identity formation which rejects the problem of the subject, and proposes potential resources, sources, and strategies with which to engage the idealism that underpins this obfuscating problematic in an age of turbulent social uncertainty. Quite simply, I turn to history as the source of human identity. While informationalism, like religion, is mostly focused on utopian futures, I assert that history, not the future, holds the solutions for substantive problematics concerning individual and social identities. I argue here that history, language, thought, and identity are indissolubly entangled and so should be understood as such: they are the fundamental parts of 'identities in action'. From this perspective, the ‘problem of the subject’ becomes less a substantive intellectual problematic and more a theoretical red herring.

Contested and contesting identities: minority languages vs. the teaching of 'world' languages within the global cultural economy

This paper juxtaposes postmodernist discourses on language, identity and cultural power with historical forms of language inequalities grounded in the nation-state. The discussion is presented in three sections. The first section focuses on the mixed legacies of language-state relations within the pluralist nation-state, colonial and postcolonial language policies. The second section examines the concept of linguistic minority rights beyond the nation-state. This incorporates discussion of transmigration, the breaking up of previous power blocs in Eastern Europe and the role of language in the articulation of emergent 'ethnic' nationalisms. The third section examines the concept of multilingualism within the interactive cultural landscape defined by 'informationalism'. Discussing the collective impact of these variables on the shaping of new cultural, economic and political inequalities, the paper highlights the tensions in which the concept of linguistic minority rights exists in the world today.

Vida privada e mídias sociais: impressões da pós-modernidade

This thesis starts from the proposition that postmodernity is the very cultural manifestation of Late Capitalism. The research was concerned with the publication of privacy that gives us news feeds of Facebook online social network. We used netnography, which is considered a construction method in action that combines study skills to immersion of the researcher in the investigated field. Netnography is an alternative methodology for the study of communication threads in cyber environments. We note that there is an exhibition of themselves in a related environment that reproduces the properties of the spectacle society, with an emphasis on the fact that this exhibition be made and want to be made by the individual himself, allegorically, window dresser and with spectacle. The subject is revealed by itself, shown and is induced to show and display at the same time. It is a large-scale exhibition of the private life events; it is more than spectacle, surpassing debordian sense, approaching the exhibitionism in the Freudian sense. It is a subject in a new way of existence. At the time of posting in public, the person violates their privacy. It is the desecration of stardom intimacy. We found that these new behavioral forms sharing of human experiences, under the mediation of typical technologies informationalism era, appear as a major brand of sociability, meshing the ongoing technological revolution.