Although productive imagination has played a highly significant role in (post-) Kantian philosophy, there have been very few book-length studies explicitly dedicated to its analysis.
In his new book, Saulius Geniusas develops a phenomenology of productive imagination while relying on those resources that we come across in Edmund Husserl’s, Max Scheler’s, Martin Heidegger’s, Ernst Cassirer’s, Miki Kiyoshi’s, Jean-Paul Sartre’s, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s, and Paul Ricoeur’s writings, while also engaging in present-day philosophical discussions of the imagination. Investigating the relation between imagination and embodiment, affectivity, perception, language, selfhood, and intersubjectivity, the book provides a phenomenological conception of productive imagination, which is committed to basic phenomenological principles and which is sensitive to how productive imagination has been conceptualized in the history of phenomenology.
Against such a background, Geniusas develops a new conception of productive imagination: It is a basic modality of intentionality that indirectly shapes the human experience of the world by forming the contours of action, intuition, knowledge, and understanding. It is not so much a blind and indispensable function of the soul, but an art concealed in the body, for it springs out of instincts, drives, desires, and needs.
The author discloses the unexpected ways in which phenomenology of productive imagination enriches our understanding of embodied subjectivity.
This volume focuses on political and social expressions in contemporary art of Ukraine, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia. It explores the transformations that art in Ukraine and the Baltic states has undergone since their independence in 1991, discussing how the conflicts and challenges of the last three decades have impacted the reconsideration of identity and fostered resistance of culture against economic and political crises. It analyzes connections between the past and the present as seen by the artists in these countries and looks at their visions of the future.
Contemporary Ukrainian art portrays various perspectives, addressing issues from controversial historical topics to the present military conflict in the East of the country. Baltic art speaks out against the erasure of past historical traumas and analyzes the pertinence of its cultural scene to the European community. The contributions in this collection open a discussion of whether there is a single paradigm that describes the contemporary processes of art production in Ukraine and the Baltic countries.
With contributions by Ieva Astahovska, Svitlana Biedarieva, Kateryna Botanova, Olena Martynyuk, Vytautas Michelkevičius, Lina Michelkevičė, Margaret Tali, and Jessica Zychowicz.
Built on up-to-date field material, this edited volume suggests an anthropological approach to the palimpsest-like milieus of Wrocław, Lviv, Chernivtsi, and Chişinău. In these East-Central European borderline cities, the legacies of Nazism, Marxism-Leninism, and violent ethno-nationalism have been revisited in recent decades in search of profound moral reckoning and in response to the challenges posed by the (post-)transitional period. Present shapes and contents of these urban settings derive from combinations of fragmented material environments, cultural continuities and political ruptures, present-day heritage industries and collective memories about the contentious past, expressive architectural forms and less conspicuous meaning-making activities of human actors. In other words, they evolve from perpetual tensions between choices of the past and the burden of the past.
A novel feature of this book is its multi-level approach to the analysis of engagements with the lost diversity in historical urban milieus full of post-war voids and ruptures. In particular, the collected studies test the possibility of combining the theoretical propositions of Memory Studies with broader conceptualizations of borderlands, cosmopolitan sociality, urban mythologies, and hybridity. The volume’s contributors are Eleonora Narvselius, Bo Larsson, Natalia Otrishchenko, Anastasia Felcher, Juliet D. Golden, Hana Cervinkova, Paweł Czajkowski, Alexandr Voronovici, Barbara Pabjan, Nadiia Bureiko, Teodor Lucian Moga, and Gaelle Fisher.
On 8 December 2013, Ukraine’s central Lenin monument in Kyiv was pulled down. In the following months, in what became known as the “Leninfall,” Ukraine swept away hundreds of communist monuments, expressing an explicit desire to break away from the Soviet past and, implicitly, from Russia. This book examines the evolution of post-Euromaidan de-Sovietization beyond the issues of toppling of old statues and implementation of new anti-totalitarian laws. It explores decommunization as both a political and cultural phenomenon that exposes the multivocality of the Ukrainian population and involves various forms of dialogical interaction between ordinary citizens and the state. Posters, graffiti, or street names are physical and discursive canvases where old meanings are being contested and re-articulated, and where new political symbols that combine nationalist and democratic elements are being defined.
Vanessa Freerks analyzes how Baudrillard re-actualizes Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals, investigating how themes and approaches in Baudrillard’s Consumer Society, Simulacra and Simulations and Symbolic Exchange and Death resonate with Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals. This book fills a gap in the limited literature available on the relation between Baudrillard’s thought to that of Nietzsche and Heidegger.
Baudrillard with Nietzsche and Heidegger: A Contrastive Analysis is essential reading for students and scholars of continental philosophy, sociology, and cultural theory.
Using the Russian president’s major public addresses as the main source, Bo Petersson analyzes the legitimization strategies employed during Vladimir Putin’s third and fourth terms in office. The argument is that these strategies have rested on Putin’s highly personalized blend of strongman-image projection and presentation as the embodiment of Russia’s great power myth. Putin appears as the only credible guarantor against renewed weakness, political chaos, and interference from abroad—in particular from the US.
After a first deep crisis of legitimacy manifested itself by the massive protests in 2011–2012, the annexation of Crimea led to a lengthy boost in Putin’s popularity figures. The book discusses how the Crimea effect is, by 2021, trailing off and Putin’s charismatic authority is increasingly questioned by opposition from Alexei Navalny, the effects of unpopular reforms, and poor handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Moreover, Russia is bound to head for a succession crisis as the legitimacy of the political system continues to be built on Putin’s projected personal characteristics and—now apparently waning—charisma, and since no potential heir apparent has been allowed on center stage. The constitutional reform of summer 2020 made it possible in theory for Putin to continue as president until 2036. Yet, this change did not address the Russian political system’s fundamental future leadership dilemma.