This article discusses the issues raised by James M. Robertson in his review of Joseph Grim Feinberg’s The Paradox of Authenticity: Folklore Performance in Post-Communist Slovakia, which appeared in Contradictions (2019, no. 2). Focusing on the nature and form of a re-politicized folklore, the article argues that to make full sense of the question of authenticity in a modern folkloric movement, authenticity must be seen against the broader backdrop of the alienation inherent to consumer capitalist society. Folklore, it concludes, can become re-politicized by emphasizing people’s participation in art as part of a broader countercultural movement that challenges the consumerist paradigm.
We address the specific, leftist dissent in socialist Yugoslavia that was centred around the Praxis intellectual school. Our aim is to show the divergent paths that strongly marked the legacy of the group’s Serbian wing. Tracing the intellectual engagement of two prominent figures that ended on completely opposite ends of the political spectrum – Mihailo Marković and Miladin Životić – we want to show that the inception of Yugoslavia’s bloody dissolution can be traced back to the very core of what could be called orthodox left dissent. We analyse the “truly leftist” politics of Mihailo Marković during the 1968 protests, which devolved into support for the police and apologia for war and nationalism in the 1990s. We compare his central intellectual role in instituting a nationalist brand of socialism in Serbia to the public engagement of Miladin Životić, whose marginalization stands as reminder of those who dared to oppose the dominant nationalist narratives and offered a vision of life together.
Nedávné vědecké poznatky týkající se lidského vnímání a lidského konání naznačují, že nejenom není konání bez vnímání (což není až zase tak překvapivé), ale že není ani vnímání bez konání (což už je mnohem překvapivější). Zcela se mění pohled na to, jak lidé vnímají (nejlépe zdokumentováno je to v případě vidění); a objevují se dokonce i extrémní názory, že vnímání a konání jsou vlastně jednou a toutéž věcí. Podobně se v důsledku zkoumání motivačních struktur stojících v základu tvorby teorií rozmývá ostrou hranici mezi teorií a praxí. Zdá se mi, že tohle všechno je poněkud překvapivá voda na mlýn filosofického pragmatismu., Recent scientific results concerning human perception and human action indicate, that not only there is no action without perception (which would not be so surprising), but also that there is no perception without action (which is much greater surprise). The view of how humans perceive has completely changed (as best documented in the case of vision); and there appear even such extreme views as that perception and action are in fact one and the same thing. Similarly, the research of the motivation structures in the foundation of theory forming erases the sharp boundary between theory and praxis. It seems to me that this is a somewhat surprising grist to the mill of philosophical pragmatism., and Jaroslav Peregrin.