BaNtU aKu UnTuK BeLaJaR yAaaa

fiiuuuhhh sibuknya euy

2011-03-01T19:40:00.006+07:00

wah wah belum mulai nulis yang baru lagi nih .... ternyata kesibukan mengurus choir giitadivya yang sedang dibentuk serta menjalankan fungsi pembina di putra-putri altar St. Barnabas serta selalu mencari lowongan kerja serta rajin meng-apply pekerjaan ternyata menyita banyak waktu,,, tapi walaupun sibukk kita harus tetap happy :)
seperti gambar yang ada di atas,, kita harus menyisakan waktu untuk hal2 yang penting serta tidak larut dalam kesibukan yang ada,,, yang pasti kita harus terus 'hidup' di dalam kesibukan itu,, dan bagi penulis sendiri,, menulis adalah salah satu bentuk kehidupan yang harus hidupi :)

Filsafat??? apalah itu?

2011-02-07T13:54:00.007+07:00

Tidak bisa dipungkiri bahwa Filsafat bergerak dalam dunia ide-ide,,, ide mengenai manusia, ide mengenai dunia, bahkan juga ide mengenai Tuhan. Seringkali juga seorang filsuf dibanyangkan sebagai seseorang yang hidup secara terpencil, memakai kacamata yang tebal dan dengan tumpukan buku yang menggunung, dan hidup sebagai orang yang hidup terpencil jauh dari kehidupan sehari-hari. Padahal, sesungguhnya Filsafat mengenai permasalahan sehari-hari.

Lalu apakah arti Filsafat itu sendiri? bila kita melihat dari etimologi kata, filsafat berasal dari dua bentukan kata, philos dan sophos atau philein dan sophia. Philos bermakna "sahabat" atau "teman", sophos berarti "kearifan". Sedangkan philein bermakna "mencintai" dan sophia adalah "kebijaksanaan". Bila melihat dari penggabungan kedua kata ini filsafat dapat kita artikan sebagai berteman dengan kebijaksanaan atau juga mencintai kebijaksanaan. Tapi apakah itu kebijaksanaan?

Harus diakui bahwa menafsirkan filsafat tidaklah begitu mudah karena banyak sekali penafsiran, coba kita lihat berbagai kamus-kamus definisi, browsing di google apa itu filsafat,, akan begitu banyak kita lihat definisi dari filsafat itu sendiri. Sebagai pribadi, saya lebih suka mendefinisikan filsafat sebagai cara berfikir, kelihaian berfikir atau lebih lebih tertarik dengan istilah seni berfikir dan juga seni bertanya.. mengapa seni berfikir atau bertanya? mungkin itu yang terlontar dari pikiran kita semua bukan? menurut saya, filsafat bertujuan untuk mencari pertanyaan yang tepat, benar dan bukan mencari jawaban yang benar, karena jawaban yang benar akan selalu berada dalam proses perwujudannya...

Pembuka - Langkah Awal

2011-01-30T00:51:00.007+07:00

Apa yang ada dibenak kita mengenai filsafat?? Pada sebuah hari, seorang teman bercerita tentang kisahnya. Seorang sahabat ini mempunyai ketertarikan serta menikmati filsafat dalam kesehariannya serta dalam pola berfikirnya. Sahabat ini menceritakan betapa 'menderita'nya dia mendapat stigma 'berat' dari teman-temannya. Karena sering kali dalam setiap perbincangan yang sederhana dapat menjadi begitu terasa berat. Bahkan stigma ini menjadi semakin menjadi disaat para temannya mengetahui bahwa seorang teman ini tertarik dan menikmati filsafat. Ya,, secara kebetulan juga kisah ini tidak hanya terjadi pada satu orang teman saja tetapi banyak dari teman-teman yang lain yang mendapat stigma berat karena mereka begitu menikmati filsafat,,, dan kembali kebutulan juga stigma ini 'pernah' melekat pada saya sang penulis :)

Seringkali disaat penulis memperkenal diri kepada orang-orang yang baru dan mengatakan bahwa penulis kuliah di STF Driyarkara ada dua tanggapan pertama,, STF apa itu mas?sekolah farmasi ya?? dan disaat mengatakan Driyarkara langsung mereka berfikir sebuah tempat yang dikenal dengan Bidakara,,, memang kedua nama tersebut tidak begitu berbeda di telinga bila diucapkan dengan cepat dan gremeng-gremeng,, hehehe. Tapi begitulah nasib bersekolah di sebuah kampus kecil -yang sedang merangkak untuk menguatkan filsafat di negeri ini dengan membuka program doktoral filsafat (kalau tidak salah pertama kali di Indonesia)- yang tidak begitu terkenal, tidak begitu menjual, bahkan cenderung sepi karena sangat jelas pasarnya (untuk S1nya saja paling banter tiap angkatan hanya 50-80 siswa, dan itu terbagi dalam filsafat serta teologi hal yang sama juga terjadi dengan S2 nya, untuk S3 karena masih merangkak ya siswanya baru sekedarnya tapi bagaimanapun juga telah mengahasilkan lulusan),, kampus ini hanya dikenal oleh segelintir orang saja,,, tapi apalah arti kecil disaat berhadapan dengan dunia serta semesta yang begitu luas,,, tapi kisah ini tidak berhenti sampai disana,, disaat penulis memperkenalkan sebagai mahasiswa filsafat keheningan terkuak dari sarangnya :) timbullah pertanyaan klise yang harus dijawab dengan satire (setidaknya oleh penulis) yaitu kalau lulus ingin jadi apa? kerjanya apa? intinya pertanyaan yang merujuk kepada UANG...

Tapi haruslah kita sadari bahwa kejadian ini tidak mengagetkan, mengapa? karena filsafat begitu terlupakan di negeri ini. filsafat seringkali di cap sebagai kelas buangan disaat tidak diterima dari universitas lain ataupun dari jurusan lain (padahal kalau di STF semua siswa secara sadar serta sukarela untuk terjun dalam filsafat sehingga disadari atau tidak di kampus saya tersebut hanya ada dua model manusia, yang pertama adalah manusia yang memutuskan diri untuk lulus dari STF dan yang kedua adalah manusia yang memutuskan diri untuk tidak lulus dari STF - harap dikoreksi bila salah hehehe) selain itu selalu timbul ketakutan bahwa dengan filsafat kita akan jatuh dalam ateisme, siap jatuh dalam kemiskinan, bahkan siap jatuh dalam stigma 'kamu itu orang aneh,, permasalahan kecil kok dibuat ribet,, nikmatilah selagi bisa dinikmati'.

Padahal bila kita mau sadari bahwa negeri tercinta kita ini dibangun dengan filsafat yang begitu hebat yaitu Pancasila dengan bhineka tunggal ika nya, para founding father kita adalah seorang filsuf-filsuf nusantara yang handal siapa yang tidak mengenal Bung Hatta yang juga di kenal sebagai penulis filsafat, Soekarno yang begitu khas berfikirnya dan masih banyak lagi dan yang sering kali terlupaka yaitu Tan Malaka dengan MADILOG nya yang tidak kalah dengan buku-buku babon filsafat Eropa. Pilar bangsa ini, pendidikan, ekonomi, politik dibangun juga dengan filsafat loch :)

Dengan segenap kisah ini, penulis berusaha kembali menghidupkan blog ini, belajar untuk menulis dan untuk berdialog, berdiskusi, berdialektika mengenai Filsafat agar filsafat semakin menyenangkan. woro-woro jangan harap anda akan mendapatkan tulisan-tulisan yang berat dalam pembahasan filsafat di blog ini,, karena selain penulis bukanlah seorang ahli filsafat,tetapi penulis berusaha dan setuju dengan A.Whitehead yang berikhtiar untuk membumikan filsafat yang seringkali dianggap begitu berat (padahal filsafat bisa dinikmati dengan bahasa yang mudah, sehari-hari loch) Yang pasti kita akan bersama-sama belajar untuk mengenal serta mengetahui filsafat yang begitu mengasikkan serta membakar otak kita...

Dalam kekurangan, pada artikel berikutnya penulis akan membahas tentang apa itu filsafat ... jadi mari kita bersama-sama belajar dalam suasana filsafat. Jangan segan berbagi, mengoreksi, mengkritik, berdiskusi tapi jangan berdebat ya lebih enak berdiskusi,,,

Mencoba Untuk Kembali merumuskan pemikiran

2011-01-11T00:24:00.003+07:00

hampir dua tahun blog ini tak tersentuh,,, pekerjaan yang akhirnya ditinggalkan ,,, skripsi yang akhirnya selesai, ujian komprehensif yang uda selesai,,, dan akhir lulus juga dari perkuliahan yang seharusnya ditempuh oleh orang normal sudah menempuh gelar Master... tapi paling tidak,, kelulusan ini harus disyukuri dan juga harus dinikmati walau sesaat karena sekarang harus memulai kembali mencari kerja hehehe...
Dua tahun vacum, banyak gejolak pemikiran yang berputar2 didalam ingatan,,, menemukan bentuknya,,, termurnikan oleh waktu sehingga sebuah proses menjadi manusia semakin terasah, semakin dikuatkan, dimurnikan, dan juga semakin sempurnalah kemanusiaan ini karena waktu...
mencoba kembali berjanji untuk berbagi dalam blog ini,,, semoga janji tidak hanya menjadi janji,,, dan aku akan selalu tak cukup hanya menjadi Dasain tetapi belajar menjadi existenz

Pendidikan Multikultural sebuah jawab atau ??

2008-11-14T18:11:00.003+07:00

“Dari Sabang sampai Merauke berjajar pulau-pulau sambung menyambung menjadi satu itulah Indonesia” kutipan lagu tersebut tidaklah asing lagi bagi kita. Dari lagu tersebut dapat kita lihat dan juga harus kita sadari bahwa Negara kita merupakan sebuah negara yang terdiri dari banyak pulau. Sekitar 17.500 pulau membentang dari Timur hingga ke Barat, dan juga lebih dari 222 juta jumlah penduduk yang berada di negara ini. Seperti yang kita ketahui bahwa Indonesia juga merupakan negara yang mempunyai banyak kebudayaan, suku, agama. Melihat keadaan ini harus kita akui bahwa negara ini merupakan sebuah negara yang rawan akan terjadinya konflik horinsontal.

Berbicara tentang konflik, selama 63 tahun merdeka, bangsa ini belum berhenti dalam kecemasan akan perpecahan. Setelah kemerdekaannya sering kali terjadi ancaman akan perpecahan contohnya lahirnya gerakan DI/TII, lahirnya gerakan Papua Merdeka ataupun lahirnya RMS. Ancaman perpecahan tidak hanya terjadi karena lahirnya gerakan pemberontakan akan tetapi juga pertikaian antar suku, ras, agama bahkan lebel partai politik. Seperti yang dapat kita ingat yang terjadi di Kalimantan dimana suku Dayak berkonflik dengan suku Madura atau di Poso yang ditenggarai melibatkan dua kelompok agama yaitu Islam dan Kristen.

Melihat realita ini anehkah bila kita bertanya “Apakah negara ini pernah belajar dari sejarah?” sejarah telah mengisahkan bahwa pada tahun 1928 telah terjadi kesadaran bahwa negara ini merupakan negara yang bhineka dimana terlihat dalam semangat Sumpah Pemuda. Dalam sumpah tersebut tergagas ide bahwa perjuangan untuk mencapai kemerdekaan tidak hanya berasal ataupun bersemangat kelompok atau golongan semata tetapi harus lebih dari itu yaitu berdasarkan semangat keIndonesiaan. Kemerdekaan untuk dan harus diperjuangkan oleh seluruh warga negara bangsa ini. Sejarah juga mencatat bahwa negara ini pernah berada pada kesadaran yang tinggi akan keberagaman ada di negeri ini dalam pengesahan Pancasila (bukannya piagam jakarta) sebagai landasan negara ini dan juga tercantumnya ‘bhineka tunggal ika’ dalam lambang negara ini.

Melihat kondisi ini, penulis bertanya adakah yang salah dari kebijakan politik negara kita ini? ataukah ada yang salah dari sistem pendidikan yang kita punyai selama ini? ataukah pendidikan kita semakin menutup mata akan realitas yang terjadi pada negara ini dimana sering kali kekerasan muncul karena tidak atau kurangnya kesadaran akan kebhinekaan yang ada didalam negeri ini.

Bhineka Tunggal Ika tidak hanya menawarkan sebuah konsep kesatuan tetapi juga menawarkan konsep untuk merayakan, menyadari perbedaan yang ada. Bukan hanya kesadaran bahwa Indonesia ini harus bersatu tetapi juga melihat bahwa negeri ini akan semakin rapuh disaat hanya memfokuskan diri pada persatuan tanpa menyadari bahwa perbedaan tetaplah perbedaan yang harus terus mendapatkan ruang untuk merayakannya. Karena harus disadari bahwa sejak dari negeri ini merupakan sebuah hasil dari kemajemukan itu sendiri.

Lalu apakah hanya ini tantangan negeri ini dalam menghadapi keragaman setiap wilayahnya? Ternyata tidak, gerakan globalisasi akan semakin merangsek kedalam jantung negeri ini. Dimana Indonesia tidak hanya berhadapan secara langsung dengan kebhinekaan yang dimilikinya tetapi juga harus berhadapan langsung pula dengan kebudayaan baru yang ‘asing’, berbeda berasal dari negeri seberang.

Lalu apa jawaban dari problema yang kita hadapi ini? Pendidikan Multikultural adalah salah satu pelepas dahaga kita dari rasa haus dari kebingungan ini. Pendidikan multikultural merupakan sebuah tuntutan yang tidak dapat kita tawar-tawar lagi dalam membangun Indonesia baru dalam menjawab semua permasalahan yang telah dan akan dihadapi Indonesia di masa depan. Tetapi mengapa Pendidikan Multikultural jawabannya?? Harus disadari gerak peradaban manusia selalu beriringan dengan pendidikan, dimana gerak budaya dan gerak pendidikan sering kali berjalan bersamaan. Oleh karena itu persiapan untuk menyambut dunia yang semakin mengglobal dan mempersiapkan generasi Indonesia Baru harus dimulai melalui pendidikan, akan tetapi bukan sekedar pendidikan yang ‘biasa’ saja sebagai jawaban akan tantangan Indonesia dewasa ini dan akan datang melainkan pendidikan yang berbasis multikultaralisme yang menjadi alat untuk menjawab tantangan manusia Indonesia masa depan dalam menjalani hidupnya sebagai warga Indonesia yang berbhineka tetapi juga dalam menjawab tantangan sebagai masyarakat global.

Gila udah lama ini blog gue ga sentuh

2008-03-21T23:38:00.003+07:00

ternyata hampir ada 4 bulan blog gue ga sentuh sama sekali. kesibukan ternyata membuat aktifitas menulis diblog ini agak tersendat, padahal banyak unek2 banyak wacana yang dapat ditulis, taapi karena upaya untuk memenuhi kebutuhan hidup jadi semua ini tersendat ehehehe. tapi gue akan bangkit dan menulis lagi, sekali mencari masukan dan penambahan wacana untuk skripsi.....

POSSESSIVENESS

2008-01-06T20:21:00.000+07:00

Possessiveness
LearningLove.com
Copyright (c) 1999 by Benjamin Devey. All rights reserved.

Possession is 9/10ths of the law ... or is it? How many popular songs and movies have been about possession, rather than love? The airwaves are constantly filled with themes like "My Girl," and "You belong to me."

In marriage we share a common bond, a togetherness, but it isn't a quit-claim deed or a property title. It's more like a joint-stewardship to take care of and nurture the relationship with our fondest hopes and attentions.

"Let there be spaces in your togetherness," writes Kahlil Gibran, "And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls .... Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping" (from The Prophet).

The idea of ownership of another human spirit goes contrary to principles of truth. Even in marriage, possessiveness imbues relationships with dysfunction and abuse, rather than the life-giving nurturing needed for love.

Possession is a form of domination and control, stemming from selfishness. The possessor manipulates objects and others for his own purposes. Many issues of abuse come from co-dependent relationships, where one person feels the need to control the other. It's a lot like closed a fist, trying to keep a butterfly from flying away.

Love is on the opposite end of the spectrum, like an open hand, letting the miracle of nature rest undisturbed. When you truly love someone, you would never consider confining him or her to a cage. You would wish the universe for their room for expansion. One who loves respects the uniqueness of the other and does not abridge their lover's individual will.

Trust is vital to love. When two individuals build mutual faith in each other, they become emotionally free to give and receive love. In mature relationships, individuals don't own each other. They each give to the other an offering of all their love.

We are not even our own. Paul said, "Your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost ... ye are not your own, for we are all bought with a price." He elaborates further, that wives and husbands have no power over their own bodies, but share the responsibility to take care of each other.

Love that is genuine seeks to ennoble, uplift, support, strengthen, edify, honor and to cherish. True love is never taken--it can only be given. You never own another. You can only give your own heart. Love, in its purest form, is the complete sharing of hearts.

http://www.geocities.com/brianhart.geo/possess.html

SMILE

2007-11-28T20:43:00.000+07:00

Smile though your heart is aching
Smile even though is breaking
When there are clouds in the sky you’ll get by

If you smile through your fears and sorrow
Smile and there’ll be tomorrow
You’ll see the sun come shining through
For you just smile....

When you light up your face with gladeness
Hide every trace of sadness
Although a tear will be ever so near
That’s the time you must keep on trying
Smile... what’s the use of crying...
You’ll find that life is still worth while
If you just smile...

Ayo HadaPI Dengan SenyuM

2007-11-22T19:33:00.000+07:00

You'll Never Walk Alone

When you walk through a storm

hold your head up high

And don't be afraid of the dark.

At the end of a storm is a golden sky

And the sweet silver song of a lark.

Walk on through the wind,

Walk on through the rain,

Tho' your dreams be tossed and blown.

Walk on, walk on with hope in your heart

And you'll never walk alone,

You'll never, ever walk alone.

Walk on, walk on with hope in your heart

And you'll never walk alone,

You'll never, ever walk alone.

Gila nih lagu gue suka banget, walaupun baru tahu ini lagu baru2 ini karena koor yang gue ikutin nyanyiin lagu ini. hehehe karena gue ga terlalu aktif di dunia persepak bolaan, gue juga baru ini lagu dipake liverpool n glasgo ranger buat lagu mereka. tapi berbicara soal lagu, kebiasaan yang terjadi di diri gue adalah disaat gue suka banget ma tu lagu pasti apa yang di bilang tu lagu (maksudnya liriknya) tiba2 termanifestasi (gaya banget bahasanya) atau terejawantah pada gue. singkat cerita pokoknya kalo gue suka ma tu lagu pasti setelah suka tu lagu, makna yang ada di tu lagu pasti langsung jadi 'skenario' dalam keseharian gue. hal itu terjadi lagi di diri gue, baru tadi siang disaat gue selese kuliah dan teman gue bercerita tentang permasalahan yang paling eksistesialis dari seorang manusia, dan ternyata gue ga sendiri, dan sekarang yang penting adalah pembuktian kalo gue tetap bisa berjalan didalam badai-badai itu tanpa takut.
paling ngga lagu ini bisa nguatin diri gue untuk menembus semua rintangan yang ada dan ga usa kuatir karena banyak yang sama kayak gue dan juga banyak yang akan ngedukung gue..............

tapi di luar itu gue suka ma semua versi ketika lagu ini dinyanyiin, entah itu the three tenors, josh stone, ato juga versi choirnya (baru 3 versi doang sih, hehehehe)

Btw Pas ga ma judul diatas, postingan gue kali ini ya??? adu sosiologi agama, beri aku pencerahan..... hahahhahaha

MeNgiNGat MaSA lalU

2007-11-20T00:52:00.001+07:00

ditengah kesibuk mencari inspirasi untuk penulisan paper sosiologi agama, ternyata gue teringat masa sma gue yang lalu, sebuah dunia yang gue tinggalin hampir 6 tahun lalu (keliatan kalo gue masih muda kan). Dalam kenangan akan nostalgia itu gue berusaha mencari-mencari info tentang tempat yang mempunyai relasi kesejarahan di diri gue ini. Masa Sma gue abisin selama 4 tahun dengan perincian : gue hidup diseminari dengan kewajiban hidup selama 4 tahun. didalam waktu 4 tahun itu 2 tahun gue abisin didempo (malang) dan 1 tahun di Mater DEi (Probolinggo) coba semninari gue ga pindah, paling ngga sekarang gue bisa bangga kalo gue lulusan Dempo hahahhahaha. tiba2 aja gue teringat akan masa sma gue itu. pertama kali yang teringat adalah dempo. teringat dengan semua ruangan yang gue pernah alami dan ternyata sekarang (ngeliat di dunia maya ini) ternyata banyk yang berubah. terakhir gue liat disana uda banyak perubahan, dan ternyata sekarang lebih banyak lagi perubahannya. di taman tengah ada kolam, perpustakaan (tempat gue mengisi istirahat dan mendapat snack gratis) juga uda pindah tempatnya. sekolah gue ini dan (dulu tetanggaan ma seminari gue) merupakan sekolah yang uda cukup umur dan juga banyak orang telah terlahir dari sana, mangun wijaya-rudini-banyak deh- paling ngga sekolah ini merupakan salah satu sekolah favorit yang ga cuma di malang tapi juga sejawa timur. dan usut punya usut ternyata nama dempo juga lumayan punya nama di jerman (menurut testi alm. mangun wijaya)
setelah mengingat akan dempo ternyata kenangan ini terus berjalan ke seminari tepatnya seminarium marianum di malang (dan akhirnya pindah ke probolinggo). waktu mencari memori akan seminari gue, ternyata gue menemukan sesuatu yang mengejutkan ternyata dosen yang sedang mengajar sosiologi agama (paulus wirantomo) ternyata lulusan dari seminari gue ini (tapi dia angkatan tua-setua umurnya hehehe. waktu jamannya seminari ini masih di lawang (gerbang untuk kemalang). wah ternyata dunia memang sempit. gue berusaha mencari teman2 seperjuangan mulai dari awal hingga akhir darah penghabisan.
kemaren tiba2 temen seminari gue sms (padahal ini orang ga tahu gimana kabarnya. eh tiba2 sms) trus gue bilang 'kenapa kita ga buat reuni angkatan'? dia bilang 'duitnya gimana'?? wah gue juga binggung kalo harus jawab itu heheheh. akhirnya gue bilang ke dia 'mbok ya loe usul ke seminari untuk reuni akbar aja' dia bilang' ntar gue usulin'
setelah melihat dosen gue itu tiba2 gue berfikir akan bertatap muka dengan dia dan berbincang2 tentang seminari gue itu. dan meleparkan wacana untuk reuni akbar.
masak uda berdiri dari tahun 50an ga pernah buat reuni...
memori masa lalu memang indah juga ya, seburuk-buruknya memori itu buat gue merupakan memori yang indah....
sma memang buat suatu masa yang sangat istimewa dalam hidup gue tapi sma merupakan masa dimana gue menjadi orang yang sangat idealis dengan segala pemikiran gue. sma adalah perkenalan gue dengan filsafat tepatnya marx, nietzche, da jaspers. ya paling ngga masa sma, gue lewatin dengan cara gue, dengan idealisme gue, dengan banyak hal deh. hahahaha jadi inget sekolah, ujian, ebtanas ga pernah belajar tapi baca filsafat hahahahhaha sampe2 semua orang pada bingung gue kok bisa naek kelas, bisa lulus sma (ya walaupun cuma pas-pasan juga nilainya, ya mau gimana lagi ga pernah belajar hahahhaha)
wah2 pengenangan ini kayaknya masih terus berkeliling2 di otak nih.
lalu kapan inspirasi gue akan paper sosiologi agama akan gue dapatkan????

sibuk-sibuk

2007-10-24T23:58:00.000+07:00

Berhubung diriku masih disibukkan tugas kuliah yang dikejar deadline, jadi ga bisa posting nih.....doakan biar cepat selesai ya HAHAHAHHAHAHA

Partiture Panis Angelicus

2007-10-20T01:36:00.001+07:00

Ini dulu ya partiturenya, masih cari-cari yang laen. ini sih pasti uda banyak yang punya. buat partiture yang laen sedang diusahakan, karena harus berfikir beberapa kali untuk diposting, takut diamuk masa oleh paduan suara(PS) yang gue ikutin. karena partiture katanya ga bole keluar hikshikshiks (padahal kalo bisa saling berbagi partiture tanpa embel2 apapun (sukarela) betapa indah paduan suara Indonesia di masa depan). btw kalo ada yang punya partiture anak-anak ato partiture SA bole minta ga?? karena paduan suara gue yang laen lagi sedang jalan ke lubang kubur karena nyari cowok untuk PS gue yang lagi belajar ini sangat susah (hikhikhikhik, hahahahaha), jadi gue memberikan wacana untuk dijadikan Female Choir aja ato paling ngga Choir 2 suara. tolong bantu gue ya...... kalo ada yang punya info untuk vocal building ato warming up gue akan sangat berterima kasih sebesar-besarnya.

AyO KiTa HaRus SAdaR "AiR BErsIh Itu MAhal"

2007-10-18T14:43:00.002+07:00

Water: One of Earth’s Most Precious Commodities
Posted by: emily on 02/28/2006 02:09 PM

Water is quickly becoming one of Earth's most precious resources.

The scarcity of water can be abated by various water harvesting methods. Below is a list of techniques that can be used to recycle and reuse water:

1. Water harvesting- This is the process of capturing storm-water runoff and rain water. Rainwater is usually harvested from rooftops, concrete patios, driveways and other impervious surfaces. Roof systems can be as simple as directing gutters to a lidded garbage can or as complex as a concrete cistern, roof washer and filtration system. But whatever your application, the water you retrieve will be some of the purest--and cheapest--water around.
Rainwater can be used for potable water (drinking, cooking, bathing) or non-potable uses such as landscape irrigation, livestock watering and washing. Collecting and using rainwater has numerous benefits, ranging from improved water quality to reduced stress on underground aquifers (Mother Earth News).
Buildings and landscapes can be designed to maximize the amount of catchment area, thereby increasing rainwater harvesting possibilities. Intercepted water then can be collected, detained, retained and routed for use in evaporative coolers, toilet flushing, pet and car washing, indoor plant watering, pet and livestock watering, and for lawn and garden irrigation.
Water catchment storage can sometimes satisfy Fire marshal permit requirements for tank storage.

2. Grey water- Grey water is any water that has been used in the home, except water from toilets. Fifty-eighty percent of residential “waste” water is comprised of dish, shower, sink and laundry water. This “waste” water can be reused for other purposes such as landscape irrigation. Some of the benefits of grey water recycling include: lower fresh water use, less strain on a failing septic tank or treatment plant, effectiveness of grey water treatment in topsoil, your ability to build in areas unsuitable for conventional treatment, less energy and chemical use, groundwater recharge, plant growth, and reclamation of otherwise wasted nutrients. All of these benefits provide us with great reasons to incorporate grey water recycling systems into our own homes (information taken from Oasis Design http://www.oasisdesign.net/. For further information visit our Green Directory on Grey Water

3. Black Water- Black water is any water that may contain sewage. Some states include any water that has compost particles such as from a garbage disposal as black water. Black water can be reused just like grey water, it just requires more filtration. Home filtration systems are easy to find and purchase, and it is even possible to have an all natural filtration system based on plants and charcoal. Examples of this can be found with the Earth ship houses in Taos, New Mexico. Visit www.earthship.org / biotecture@earthship.org

4. Desalinization- This process removes dissolved minerals (like salt) from ocean water, brackish water, or treated waste water. There are various different kinds of technologies that have been developed for the purposes of desalinization, including reverse osmosis (RO), distillation, electro dialysis, and vacuum freezing. Both RO and distillation are two technologies being considered by municipalities, water districts, and private companies for development of ocean water desalination in California. For more information visit http://www.coastal.ca.gov/desalrpt/dchap1.html.

5. Fog harvesting- This is an innovative technology that can collect water from fog. Full-scale fog collectors are simple, flat, rectangular nets of nylon supported by a post at either end and arranged perpendicular to the direction of the prevailing wind. For further information visit http://www.oas.org/dsd/publications/Unit/oea59e/ch12.htm.

6. Bioremediation- This is the technique that adds naturally occurring microbial organisms as well as accelerates the chemical environment of a body of water, such as a pond, in order to purify the water. Often times people use bioremediation when they are using greywater for irrigation. The level of purification depends on the amount of such organisms. Some use this technique so extensively that the water that comes out of their treatment area is cleaner than their tap water. For further information visit http://www.biocritters.com/, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioremediation, http://www.nal.usda.gov/bic/Biorem/biorem.htm.

Both the United Nations and the United States government estimate that by 2015, at least 40 percent of the world's population will lack an adequate water supply. Water shortages will affect the livelihood of one-third of the world’s population by 2025, experts predict (Mairesse, 2005). Clean water is increasingly becoming scarcer as demand and contamination continue to plague our water supplies. In recent years, groups, associations and government agencies have begun to focus on the issues surrounding our earth’s water. The following is a list of some of the top groups trying to combat our water issues:
· International Water Resources Association- IWRA strives to improve water management worldwide through dialogue, education and research. The organization actively promotes the sustainable management of water resources worldwide. For more information visit http://www.iwra.siu.edu/.
· International Water Association- IWA aims to connect the broad community of water professionals around the globe in hopes of creating sustainable solutions. For more information visit http://www.iwahq.org.uk/template.cfm?name=home.
· International Water and Sanitation Center- aims to facilitate the sharing, promotion and use of knowledge so that governments and professionals can better support those most in need. For more information visit http://www.irc.nl/page/103.
· For information on water conferences worldwide visit http://www.conferencealerts.com/water.htm.

Jadi... Kita harus ingat bro/sist kalo aer bersih aja mahal. terkadang kita harus menghemat air yang kita pakai, ya ga usah yang susah2 misalnya irit-irit kalo mandi, irit air kalo sikat gigi, irit aer kalo cuci motor atau air. secara riil, daerah resapan air di Jakarta itu makin kecil karena pembangunan di Indonesia (mungkin juga di Indonesia) kurang sadar akan lingkungan. bangun sana bangun sini tapi ga dipikir daerah resapan air, atau juga malah nebangin pohon seenaknya (coba tanya temen2mu yang tinggal dijakarta dan harus bergantung ma PDAM, seberapa mahal air disana. Gue inget waktu masi tinggal dicengkareng emak gue harus beli air bersih buat makan, minum, mandi, nyuci, karena aernya uda asin kemasukan aer laut). sebenarnya penggunaan efisien air itu mudah, ya mungkin ga usah seribet artikel diatas kudu gini kudu gitu, tapi kalo air bersih pada akhirnya susah didapet langkah2 diatas harus dilakukan. berfikir lagi sebelum semua terlambat hehehe

Apa Itu GReeN ARcHitecTure??

2007-10-18T14:11:00.007+07:00

Green building is the practice of increasing the efficiency of buildings and their use of energy, water, and materials, and reducing building impacts on human health and the environment, through better siting, design, construction, operation, maintenance, and removal — the complete building life cycle.

A similar concept is natural building, which is usually on a smaller scale and tends to focus on the use of natural materials that are available locally.^[1] Other commonly used terms include sustainable design and green architecture; however, while good design is essential to green building, the actual operation, maintenance, and ultimate disposal or deconstruction of the building also have very significant effects on buildings' overall environmental impact.

The related concepts of sustainable development and sustainability are integral to green building. Effective green building can lead to 1) reduced operating costs by increasing productivity and using less energy and water, 2) improved public and occupant health due to improved indoor air quality, and 3) reduced environmental impacts by, for example, lessening storm water runoff and the heat island effect. Practitioners of green building often seek to achieve not only ecological but aesthetic harmony between a structure and its surrounding natural and built environment. The sustainable buildings are also environmentaly friendly in the fact that they are built out of materials that are good for the environment.The appearance and style of sustainable homes and buildings can be nearly indistinguishable from their less sustainable counterparts.

Green buildings are scored by rating systems, such as the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system developed by the U.S. Green Building Council, Green Globes from GBI and other locally developed rating systems.

The environmental impact of buildings

Buildings have a profound effect on the environment, which is why green building practices are so important to reduce and perhaps one day eliminate those impacts.

In the United States alone, buildings account for:

39% of total energy use
12% of total water consumption
68% of total electricity consumption
38% of total carbon dioxide emissions^[2]

However, the environmental impact of buildings is often underestimated, while the perceived costs of building green are overestimated. A recent survey by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development finds that green costs are overestimated by 300%, as key players in real estate and construction estimate the additional cost at 17% above conventional construction, more than triple the true average cost difference of about 5%. ^[3]

Green building practices

Green building brings together a vast array of practices and techniques to reduce and ultimately eliminate the impacts of buildings on the environment. On the aesthetic side of green architecture or sustainable design is the philosophy of designing a building that is in harmony with the natural features and resources surrounding the site. There are several key steps in designing sustainable buildings: specify 'green' building materials from local sources, reduce loads, optimize systems, and generate on-site renewable energy.

Building materials typically considered to be 'green' include rapidly renewable plant materials like bamboo and straw, lumber from forests certified to be sustainably managed, stone, recycled metal, and other products that are non-toxic, reusable, renewable, and/or recyclable. Building materials should be extracted and manufactured locally to the building site to minimize the energy embedded in their transportation.

Low-impact building materials are used wherever feasible: for example, insulation may be made from low VOC (volatile organic compound)-emitting materials such as recycled denim, rather than the insulation materials that may contain carcinogenic or toxic materials such as formaldehyde. To discourage insect damage, these alternate insulation materials may be treated with boric acid. Organic or milk-based paints may be used.

Architectural salvage and reclaimed materials are used when appropriate as well. When older buildings are demolished, frequently any good wood is reclaimed, renewed, and sold as flooring. Many other parts are reused as well, such as doors, windows, mantels, and hardware, thus reducing the consumption of new goods. When new materials are employed, green designers look for materials that are rapidly replenished, such as bamboo, which can be harvested for commercial use after only 6 years of growth, or cork oak, in which only the outer bark is removed for use, thus preserving the tree. When possible, building materials may be gleaned from the site itself; for example, if a new structure is being constructed in a wooded area, wood from the trees which were cut to make room for the building would be re-used as part of the building itself.

To minimize the energy loads within and on the structure, it is critical to orient the building to take advantage of cooling breezes and sunlight. Daylighting with ample windows will eliminate the need to turn on electric lights during the day (and provide great views outside too). Passive Solar can warm a building in the winter - but care needs to be taken to provide shade in the summer time to prevent overheating. Prevailing breezes and convection currents can passively cool the building in the summer. Thermal mass stores heat gained during the day and releases it at night minimizing the swings in temperature. Thermal mass can both heat the building in winter and cool it during the summer. Insulation is the final step to optimizing the structure. Well-insulated windows, doors, and walls help reduce energy loss, thereby reducing energy usage. These design features don't cost much money to construct and significantly reduce the energy needed to make the building comfortable.

Optimizing the heating and cooling systems through installing energy efficient machinery, commissioning, and heat recovery is the next step. Compared to optimizing the passive heating and cooling features through design, the gains made by engineering are relatively expensive and can add significantly to the projects cost. However, thoughtful integrated design can reduce costs -- for example, once a building has been designed to be more energy-efficient, it may be possible to downsize heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) equipment, leading to substantial savings. To further address energy loss hot water heat recycling is used to reduce energy usage for domestic water heating. Ground source heat pumps are more energy efficient then other forms of heating and cooling until you factor in the energy lost during generation and transmission if the project is on the grid.

Finally, onsite generation of renewable energy through solar power, wind power, hydro power, or biomass can significantly reduce the environmental impact of the building. Power generation is the most expensive feature to add to a building.

Good green architecture also reduces waste, of energy, water and materials. During the construction phase, one goal should be to reduce the amount of material going to landfills. Well-designed buildings also help reduce the amount of waste generated by the occupants as well, by providing onsite solutions such as compost bins to reduce matter going to landfills.

To reduce the impact on wells or water treatment plants, several options exist. "Greywater", wastewater from sources such as dishwashing or washing machines, can be used for subsurface irrigation, or if treated, for non-potable purposes, e.g., to flush toilets and wash cars. Rainwater collectors are used for similar purposes.

Green building often emphasizes taking advantage of renewable resources, e.g., using sunlight through passive solar, active solar, and photovoltaic techniques and using plants and trees through green roofs, rain gardens, and for reduction of rainwater run-off.^[4] Many other techniques, such as using packed gravel for parking lots instead of concrete or asphalt to enhance replenishment of ground water, are used as well.

Jadi Pada Intinya Green Architecture adalah arsitektur yang ramah dan memperhatikan lingkungan. Hal ini bisa terlihat antara lain dengan meminimalisasikan penggunaan lampu disaat siang hari karena penataan bangun dimungkinkan untuk menerima cahaya dari luar secara maksimal. Penggunaan AC juga dapat ditekan karena udara akan dimaksimalkan masuk sehingga tidak dibutuhkan AC untuk mendinginkan ruangan. Tapi yang harus dipahami juga adalah penyediaan taman yang berguna untuk penyerapan air hujan, karena disadari ruang serap di jakarta sudah sangat sedikit, hal ini disadari atau tidak air bersih adalah barang yang akan menjadi sangat mahal, kalau tidak percaya tanya aja yang pake air dari PDAM..... jadi mulai sekarang sadarlah untuk menjadi orang yang ramah dan peduli lingkungan mulai dari hal-hal yang kecil aja.........

Contoh Green Architecture

SoLuSI Untuk LaHaN SeMPit part 2

2007-10-18T13:38:00.001+07:00

SoLuSI Untuk LaHaN SeMPit part 1

2007-10-18T00:57:00.000+07:00

Bro/Sist ini adalah salah satu jawaban bagi kita-kita yang punya masalah dalam membangun rumah dengan keterbatasan area. dalam artian tanahnya kecil. Sapa tahu ini bisa jadi inspirasi. ini karya dari Ign Susiadi W. Rumah ini pernah masuk majalah ASRI. Untuk info yang lebih lanjut tentang sang empunya karya ini bisa hubungin gue dulu. Gue ga mau ngasih nomer hp sang empunya karya ini di blog ini karena terkadang dunia maya bisa berbahaya. hahahaha. Jadi yang berminat akan gue kasih tahu lebih lengkap. Kasih E-mail loe, ntar gue kabarin tentang infonya. ingat untuk yang berminat ya.

KoNseP PeKeRJaAN MeNUruT MArX

2007-10-09T00:02:00.001+07:00

Pekerjaan, Sebuah Kegiatan Keterasingan Manusia

Pengantar

Dalam pandangannya mengenai manusia Marx melihat bahwa manusia adalah makhluk sosial, dimana ia tidak dapat dipisahkan begitu saja dari lingkungan sosialnya. Bahkan Marx melihat bahwa bekerja adalah usaha manusia ‘membuktikan’ dirinya bahwa ia adalah makhluk sosial. Yang menjadi pertanyaan adalah bagaimana dengan bekerja manusia malah menjadi terasing entah dari orang lain atau bahkan terasing dari dirinya sendiri? Dan bagaimanakah sebenarnya konsep Marx mengenai manusia itu sendiri?

Pandangan Marx

Sebelum melihat jawab dari pertanyaan diatas ada baiknya kita melihat dulu bagaimana pandangan Marx mengenai pekerjaan. Marx melihat pekerjaan sebagai usaha manusia dalam usahanya mengenal, mengembangkan dirinya secara penuh. Marx sendiri melihat tiga hal penting mengenai pekerjaan. Pertama, tindakan pekerjaan merupakan sesuatu yang hanya ada pada manusia. Karena manusia melakukan sebuah tindakan dalam kerangka sebagai objek kehendak dan juga kesadarannya, hal inilah yang menjadi pembeda manusia dari binatang dimana binatang melakukan sebuah tindakan dikarena naluri belaka. Kedua, tindakan pekerjaan menjadi sarana manusia untuk merealisasikan apa yang ada dalam pikirannya. Sama seperti penulis yang mengerjakan tugas ini, yang merupakan sebuah bentuk prealisasian konsep-konsep tentang Marx yang ada dipikiran penulis menjadi sebuah paper yang merupakan kenyataan obyektif hal tersebut. Dan ketiga karena hasil pekerjaan yang telah dilakukan dapat dipergunakan oleh orang banyak maka pekerjaan menjadi jembatan sosial antar manusia dan dengan demikian semakin tampak bahwa manusia adalah makhluk sosial.

Dari ulasan singkat diatas dapat kita lihat bahwa Marx, menempatkan pekerjan ditempat yang tertinggi, dimana manusia bisa merealisasikan kedirinya secara utuh. Akan tetapi pertanyaan akan muncul, bila pekerjaan merupakan usaha manusia merealisasikan kediriannya, lalu bagaimana manusia bisa terasing? Marx melihat bahwa dalam sistem kapitalisme, pekerjaan tidak menjadi sebuah perealisasian diri para pekerjaanya, pekerjaan tidak menjadi sebuah kegiatan yang menghasilkan kepuasan, akan tetapi menghasilkan yang sebaliknya. Hal ini disebabkan karena dalam sistem kapitalisme orang tidak bekerja secara bebas, tidak bekerja dalam minat dan bakatnya akan tetapi bekerja menjadi prasyarat manusia untuk bisa hidup di dunia ini, sehingga manusia tidak lagi mengembangkan dirinya. Atau dengan kata lain ciri khas pekerjaan yang membedakan manusia dengan hewan menjadi hilang karena pada akhirnya manusia sama seperti hewan yang melakukan tindakan berdasarkan naluri saja, naluri untuk bertahan hidup dimana pekerjaan bukan lagi sebuah tindakan yang dilakukan dengan rasionalitas dan kesadarannya.

Marx melihat bahwa keterasingan yang dialami oleh manusia akibat pekerjaannya adalah keterasingan terhadap dirinya sendiri dan juga terasing dari orang lain. Keterasingan dari dirinya sendiri menurut Marx mempunyai tiga segi yaitu keterasingan dari produknya, dimana sebuah produk yang seharusnya menjadi sebuah obyektifikasi pekerjaan ternyata ia sendiri tidak ‘memiliki’ hasil pekerjaan itu sendiri apalagi bila ia pekerjaannya hanya merupakan bagian kecil dari produk itu sendiri, sehingga yang dikerjakan tidak menjadi perwakilan dari dirinya, sehingga arti bekerja menjadi hilang artinya. Yang kedua karena tindakan bekerja itu sudah hilang artinya, pekerjaan hanya menjadi paksaan, dimana dorongan dari luar yang membuat ia mau tidak mau harus bekerja. bekerja bukan sebagai kebutuhan, melainkan menjadi pemenuhan kebutuhan. Inilah yang disebut oleh Marx sebagai keterasingan dalam pekerjaan. Yang ketiga, pada akhirnya pekerjaan bukan menjadi sesuatu yang memperkaya esensi dirinya sebagai manusia tetapi malah mempermiskin diri. Dengan demikian manusia telah menyangkal dirinya sebagai yang bebas dan yang universal (karena bekerja hanya menjadi dorongan naluri).

Sedangkan keterasingan dari orang lain, Marx melihatnya sebagai konsekuesi logis disaat manusia terasing dari hakekatnya sebagai manusia maka disaat itulah ia terasing dengan manusia yang lainnya. Secara empiris keterasingan ini berasal dari kepentingan yang saling berseberangan. Ada dua arah, yang pertama adalah sistem hak milik memnyebabkan membagi manusia menjadi dua yaitu kelas pekerja dan kelas tuan. Kedua elemen ini tidak ‘berkelahi’ karena emosional akan tetapi karena perbedaan kepentingan, dimana kelas tuan ingin untung dengan mengurangi upah sedangkan pekerja menginginkan upah tinggi dan kondisi kerja yang menyenangkan. Inilah yang menyebabkan keterasingan terhadap sesama itu. Selain itu keterasingan ini juga terjadi dalam kelas yang sama antara pekerja dengan pekerja dan tuan dengan tuan. Dimana terburuh bersaing untuk tempat bekerja sedang para tuan berebut pasar.

Dari penjelasan yang sudah tertulis diatas dapat kita kita jawab pertanyaan bagaimanakah manusia bisa terasing dari pekerjaannya. Secara singkat dapat dijawab bahwa keterasingan tersebut terjadi karena kerja sudah tidak lagi mendapat pemaknaan yang sebenarnya sehingga manusia bukannya bekerja demi kepenuhan dirinya tetapi bekerja hanya sebagai pemenuhan kebutuhan belaka.

Lalu bagaimana konsep Marx sendiri tentang manusia itu sendiri? Marx melihat bahwa pada hakekatnya manusia adalah makhluk yang sosial, hal ini terlihat dari pemaknaan Marx terhadap kerja, dimana kerja juga dilihat sebagai jembatan sosial antar manusia, karena kerja juga mempunyai dimensi universal dimana hasil dari kerja bisa digunakan oleh semua manusia. Selain itu Marx menegaskan bahwa tidak ada manusia yang berada di luar lingkungan sosial masyarakat. Akan tetapi yang terjadi sebaliknya, Marx melihat bahwa hakekat manusia semakin tersamarkan, sehingga hakekat manusia yang muncul bukan lagi manusia sebagai makhluk sosial tetapi yang terlihat sebaliknya misalnya sebagai homo homini lupus. Hal ini disebabkan oleh kondisi lingkungan sekitar manusia yang semakin terkontaminasi sistem kapitalisme, dimana hukum alam (siapa yang kuat itulah yang menang) menjadi gerak masyarakat. Dari sisi ini Marx melihat bahwa hakekat manusia yang terlihat dalam keadaan sehari-hari bukanlah sebuah hakekat alami manusia, hakekat itu adalah hakekat kedua manusia yang terbentuk karena pengaruh dari lingkungan sekitar.

Penutup

Penulis menyetujui pemaknaan pekerjaan yang dibuat oleh Marx, dimana pekerjaan memang seharusnya menjadi wadah manusia untuk mengembangkan dirinya untuk mencapai kepenuhan diri. Sehingga pekerjaan seharusnya bukan menjadi sebuah beban, tetapi menjadi sebuah kesempatan. Menurut penulis, konsep Marx tentang pekerjaan pun masih sangat relevan, karena disadari atau tidak banyak dari kita bekerja hanya sebagai usaha pemenuhan kebutuhan saja sehingga orang bersedia bekerja apa saja, sesuai atau tidak dengan minatnya dan kemampuannya, atau bahkan bekerja dengan rasa keterpaksaan agar mereka bisa selalu hidup.

Selain itu mau disadari atau tidak pendapat Marx mengenai bahwa lingkungan sosial dapat mempengaruhi manusia, penulis merasa pandangan itu juga relevan hingga saat ini. Karena mau disadari atau tidak terkadang kita jatuh terhadap konformitas, dimana kita pada akhirnya jatuh dalam hidup selalu mengikuti tren yang sedang sedang ada di lingkungan sekitar kita. Disaat kita bekerja di sebuah lembaga yang penuh dengan kegiatan korupsi, bekerja disistu dapat membuat kita jatuh dalam kegiatan korupsi itu karena bila kita juga tidak korupsi kita tidak akan diterima dalam masyarakat tesebut karena kita selalu akan dicurigai dalam komunitas masyarakat tersebut dan tidak dianggap sebagai bagian dari kelompok masyarakat tersebut. Sehingga pandangan Marx mengenai bahwa lingkungan sosial dapat merubah hakekat manusia, dari contoh inilah hal tersebut mendapat kepenuhannya.

Lalu bagaimana hal ini harus diatasi menurut Marx? Marx memberikan jawaban yang singkat, hancurkan sistem kelas, karena sistem kelas menjadi sumber keterasingan bagi manusia entah dari pekerjaannya, dirinya, dan sesamanya.

Bahan Bacaan

From Alienation to Surplus Value, karya Paul Walton dan Andrew Gamble
Karl Marx’s Philosophy of Man
Pemikiran Karl Marx, dari Sosialisme Utopis ke Perselisihan Revisioner Karya Franz Magnis-Suseno

MAu SekoLAh Pa Mau BeRanTem

2007-10-08T10:56:00.001+07:00

Berantem Lagi

Gila bro, hari gini masih ada pelajar dan mahasiswa yang berantem???? Diajarin apa ya di kampus n disekolahnya. Yang lebih memalukan adalah yang berantem itu sekolah-sekolah, dan universitas ternama, sebut saja namanya SMA 6 dan 70 dan Universitas Kristen Indonesia dan YAI ( bro, ini bukan sebut saja, ini udah jadi tersangka) Dari berita yang gue denger sich, katanya ga ada alasan yang berarti buat berantem bahkan ga ada yang tahu apa alasannya. Tiba-tiba DHHHHUUUUUEEERRR berantem deh. Antara SMA 6 dan SMA 70 perkelahian ga ngerti kenapa tahu-tahu berantem. Sedang kedua universitas yang disebut diatas berantem karena (katanya sich) uda tradisi setiap penerimaan mahasiswa baru. Acara inisiasi kepada mahasiswa baru. Kenapa ini masih bisa kejadian ya?? Hehehe aneh juga….

Mungkin yang bisa kita tanyakan adalah, dimana peranan sekolah?? Apa sich yang diajarin disekolah, pertanyaan kemudian yang berkembang adalah dimana perenan guru, dosen, apa mereka menutup mata dengan keadaan ini? Lalu dimana peranan sekolah?? Kok ga bersuara ya?? Apa ga ada aturan dilarang berantem ya?? Emmm kalo menurut gue sich, berantem itu uda bentuk kriminalitas dan harus ditindak, sekolah, polisi atau aparatur Negara harus bertindak nih ga bisa tutup mata gitu aja. Harus buat aturan tegas, kalo perlu yang ikut tawuran dikeluarin. Ga bisa ditolerir. Banyak dari kita geram melihat kekerasan di IPDN bahkan banyak dari kedua sekolah itu dan kedua universitas itu juga geram kan, tapi kok mereka mengikuti jejak IPDN ya???

Polisi, emm bisa disalahin ga ya?? Untuk kali ini gue ngebela polisi. Yah, walaupun mereka juga ada salahnya kenapa Cuma nerjunin sedikit orang ya ?? tapi gue kasihan ma mereka, gue yakin mereka bingung mau nindaknya gimana. Kalo mukul ntar diaduin ke komnas HAM, kalo Cuma ngomong doang ya ga didenger, lah wong dikasih tembakan peringatan juga ga digubris hehehehe. Padahal menurut gue kalo polisi mukul (dalam kasus ini) bisa dibenarkan, kenapa ? ya karena mereka juga butuh melindungi diri, sebabnya mereka juga dipukul ma yang berantem.

Wah apa lagi ya yang harus gue tulis…. Sedih iya, gue menerawang kedepan sich, gue ga ngebanyangin gimana masa depan Indonesia kalo di isi sama orang yang berantem terus padahal mereka itu pilar-pilar masa depan Negara. Ga kebanyang sich gimana kalo pilar-pilar negaranya malah mau ambruk ya ga usah ditanya dan diragukan lagi bagaimana masa depan Negara ini

SeKiLAs TeNTaNg InTeRnEt

2007-10-02T18:56:00.000+07:00

Internet

The Internet is a worldwide, publicly accessible series of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using the standard Internet Protocol (IP). It is a "network of networks" that consists of millions of smaller domestic, academic, business, and government networks, which together carry various information and services, such as electronic mail, online chat, file transfer, and the interlinked Web pages and other documents of the World Wide Web.

Terminology: Internet vs. World Wide Web

The Internet and the World Wide Web are not synonymous. The Internet is a collection of interconnected computer networks, linked by copper wires, fiber-optic cables, wireless connections, etc. In contrast, the Web is a collection of interconnected documents and other resources, linked by hyperlinks and URLs. The World Wide Web is one of the services accessible via the Internet, along with many others including e-mail, file sharing and others described below.

The Internet protocol suite is a collection of standards and protocols organized into layers so that each layer provides the foundation and the services required by the layer above. In this scheme, the Internet consists of the computers and networks that handle Internet Protocol (IP) data packets. Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) depends on IP and solves problems like data packets arriving out of order or not at all. Next comes Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which is an application layer protocol. It runs on top of TCP/IP and provides user agents, such as web browsers, with access to the files, documents and other resources of the World Wide Web.

History

Main article: History of the Internet

Creation

Main article: ARPANET

The USSR's launch of Sputnik spurred the United States to create the Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as ARPA, in February 1958 to regain a technological lead.^[1][2] ARPA created the Information Processing Technology Office (IPTO) to further the research of the Semi Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) program, which had networked country-wide radar systems together for the first time. J. C. R. Licklider was selected to head the IPTO, and saw universal networking as a potential unifying human revolution.

Licklider moved from the Psycho-Acoustic Laboratory at Harvard University to MIT in 1950, after becoming interested in information technology. At MIT, he served on a committee that established Lincoln Laboratory and worked on the SAGE project. In 1957 he became a Vice President at BBN, where he bought the first production PDP-1 computer and conducted the first public demonstration of time-sharing.

At the IPTO, Licklider recruited Lawrence Roberts to head a project to implement a network, and Roberts based the technology on the work of Paul Baran^{[citation needed]} who had written an exhaustive study for the U.S. Air Force that recommended packet switching (as opposed to circuit switching) to make a network highly robust and survivable. After much work, the first two nodes of what would become the ARPANET were interconnected between UCLA and SRI International in Menlo Park, California, on October 29, 1969. The ARPANET was one of the "eve" networks of today's Internet. Following on from the demonstration that packet switching worked on the ARPANET, the British Post Office, Telenet, DATAPAC and TRANSPAC collaborated to create the first international packet switched network service. In the UK, this was referred to as the International Packet Stream Service (IPSS), in 1978. The collection of X.25-based networks grew from Europe and the US to cover Canada, Hong Kong and Australia by 1981. The X.25 packet switching standard was developed in the CCITT (now called ITU-T) around 1976. There were independent of the TCP/IP protocols that arose from the experimental work of DARPA on the ARPANET, Packet Radio Net and Packet Satellite Net during the same time period. Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn developed the first description of the TCP protocols during 1973 and published a paper on the subject in May 1974. Use of the term "Internet" to describe a single global TCP/IP network originated in December 1974 with the publication of RFC 674, the first full specification of TCP that was written by Vinton Cerf, Yogen Dalal and Carl Sunshine then at Stanford University. During the next nine years, work proceeded to refine the protocols and to implement them on a wide range of operating systems.

The first TCP/IP-wide area network was made operational by January 1, 1983 when all hosts on the ARPANET were switched over from the older NCP protocols to TCP/IP. In 1985, the United States' National Science Foundation (NSF) commissioned the construction of a university 56 kilobit/second network backbone using computers called "fuzzballs" by their inventor, David Mills. The following year, NSF sponsored the development of a higher speed 1.5 megabit/second backbone that become the NSFNet. A key decision to use the DARPA TCP/IP protocols was made by Dennis Jennings, then in charge of the Supercomputer program at NSF.

The opening of the network to commercial interests began in 1988. The US Federal Networking Council approved the interconnection of the NSFNET to the commercial MCI Mail system in that year and the link was made in the summer of 1989. Other commercial electronic email services were soon connected, including OnTyme, Telemail and Compuserve. In that same year, three commercial Internet Service Providers were created: UUNET, PSINET and CERFNET. Important, separate networks that offered gateways into, then later merged with the Internet include Usenet and BITNET. Various other commercial and educational networks, such as Telenet, Tymnet, Compuserve and JANET were interconnected with the growing Internet. Telenet (later called Sprintnet) was a large privately-funded national computer network with free dial-up access in cities throughout the U.S. that had been in operation since the 1970s. This network was eventually interconnected with the others in the 1980s as the TCP/IP protocol became increasingly popular. The ability of TCP/IP to work over virtually any pre-existing communication networks allowed for a great ease of growth although the rapid growth of the Internet was due primarily to the availability of commercial routers from companies such as Cisco Systems, Proteon and Juniper, the availability of commercial Ethernet equipment for local area networking and the widespread implementation of TCP/IP on the UNIX operating system.

Growth

The network gained a public face in the 1990s. On August 6, 1991, CERN, which straddles the border between France and Switzerland, publicized the new World Wide Web project, two years after British scientist Tim Berners-Lee had begun creating HTML, HTTP and the first few Web pages at CERN.

An early popular web browser was ViolaWWW based upon HyperCard. It was eventually replaced in popularity by the Mosaic web browser. In 1993 the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois released version 1.0 of Mosaic, and by late 1994 there was growing public interest in the previously academic/technical Internet. By 1996 usage of the word "Internet" had become commonplace, and consequently, so had its misusage as a reference to the World Wide Web.

Meanwhile, over the course of the decade, the Internet successfully accommodated the majority of previously existing public computer networks (although some networks, such as FidoNet, have remained separate) During the 1990s, it was estimated that the Internet grew by 100% per year, with a brief period of explosive growth in 1996 and 1997.^[3] This growth is often attributed to the lack of central administration, which allows organic growth of the network, as well as the non-proprietary open nature of the Internet protocols, which encourages vendor interoperability and prevents any one company from exerting too much control over the network. ^{[citation needed]}

Today's Internet

Aside from the complex physical connections that make up its infrastructure, the Internet is facilitated by bi- or multi-lateral commercial contracts (e.g., peering agreements), and by technical specifications or protocols that describe how to exchange data over the network. Indeed, the Internet is essentially defined by its interconnections and routing policies.

As of June 10, 2007, 1.133 billion people use the Internet according to Internet World Stats. Writing in the Harvard International Review, philosopher N.J.Slabbert, a writer on policy issues for the Washington DC-based Urban Land Institute, has asserted that the Internet is fast becoming a basic feature of global civilization, so that what has traditionally been called "civil society" is now becoming identical with information technology society as defined by Internet use. ^[4]

Internet protocols

For more details on this topic, see Internet Protocols.

In this context, there are three layers of protocols:

At the lower level (OSI layer 3) is IP (Internet Protocol), which defines the datagrams or packets that carry blocks of data from one node to another. The vast majority of today's Internet uses version four of the IP protocol (i.e. IPv4), and although IPv6 is standardized, it exists only as "islands" of connectivity, and there are many ISPs without any IPv6 connectivity. [1]. ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) also exists at this level. ICMP is connectionless; it is used for control, signaling, and error reporting purposes.

TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) and UDP (User Datagram Protocol) exist at the next layer up (OSI layer 4); these are the protocols by which data is transmitted. TCP makes a virtual 'connection', which gives some level of guarantee of reliability. UDP is a best-effort, connectionless transport, in which data packets that are lost in transit will not be re-sent.

The application protocols sit on top of TCP and UDP and occupy layers 5, 6, and 7 of the OSI model. These define the specific messages and data formats sent and understood by the applications running at each end of the communication. Examples of these protocols are HTTP, FTP, and SMTP.

Internet structure

There have been many analyses of the Internet and its structure. For example, it has been determined that the Internet IP routing structure and hypertext links of the World Wide Web are examples of scale-free networks.

Similar to the way the commercial Internet providers connect via Internet exchange points, research networks tend to interconnect into large subnetworks such as:

GEANT
GLORIAD
The Internet2 Network (formally known as the Abilene Network)
JANET (the UK's national research and education network)

These in turn are built around relatively smaller networks. See also the list of academic computer network organizations

In network diagrams, the Internet is often represented by a cloud symbol, into and out of which network communications can pass.

ICANN

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is the authority that coordinates the assignment of unique identifiers on the Internet, including domain names, Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, and protocol port and parameter numbers. A globally unified namespace (i.e., a system of names in which there is one and only one holder of each name) is essential for the Internet to function. ICANN is headquartered in Marina del Rey, California, but is overseen by an international board of directors drawn from across the Internet technical, business, academic, and non-commercial communities. The US government continues to have the primary role in approving changes to the root zone file that lies at the heart of the domain name system. Because the Internet is a distributed network comprising many voluntarily interconnected networks, the Internet, as such, has no governing body. ICANN's role in coordinating the assignment of unique identifiers distinguishes it as perhaps the only central coordinating body on the global Internet, but the scope of its authority extends only to the Internet's systems of domain names, IP addresses, and protocol port and parameter numbers.

On November 16, 2005, the World Summit on the Information Society, held in Tunis, established the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) to discuss Internet-related issues.

Language

For more details on this topic, see English on the Internet.

Further information: Unicode

The prevalent language for communication on the Internet is English. This may be a result of the Internet's origins, as well as English's role as the lingua franca. It may also be related to the poor capability of early computers, largely originating in the United States, to handle characters other than those in the English variant of the Latin alphabet.

After English (30% of Web visitors) the most-requested languages on the World Wide Web are Chinese 14%, Spanish 8%, Japanese 8%, German 5%, French 5%, Portuguese 3.5%, Korean 3%, Italian 3% and Arabic 2.5% (from Internet World Stats, updated January 11, 2007).

By continent, 36% of the world's Internet users are based in Asia, 29% in Europe, and 21% in North America ([2] updated January 11, 2007).

The Internet's technologies have developed enough in recent years, especially in the use of Unicode, that good facilities are available for development and communication in most widely used languages. However, some glitches such as mojibake (incorrect display of foreign language characters, also known as kryakozyabry) still remain.

Internet and the workplace

The Internet is allowing greater flexibility in working hours and location, especially with the spread of unmetered high-speed connections and Web applications.

The Internet Viewed on Mobile Devices

The Internet can now be accessed virtually anywhere by numerous means. Mobile phones, datacards, handheld game consoles and cellular routers allow users to connect to the Internet from anywhere there is a cellular network supporting that device's technology.

Common uses of the Internet

E-mail

For more details on this topic, see E-mail.

The concept of sending electronic text messages between parties in a way analogous to mailing letters or memos predates the creation of the Internet. Even today it can be important to distinguish between Internet and internal e-mail systems. Internet e-mail may travel and be stored unencrypted on many other networks and machines out of both the sender's and the recipient's control. During this time it is quite possible for the content to be read and even tampered with by third parties, if anyone considers it important enough. Purely internal or intranet mail systems, where the information never leaves the corporate or organization's network, are much more secure, although in any organization there will be IT and other personnel whose job may involve monitoring, and occasionally accessing, the email of other employees not addressed to them.

The World Wide Web

For more details on this topic, see World Wide Web.

Many people use the terms Internet and World Wide Web (or just the Web) interchangeably, but, as discussed above, the two terms are not synonymous.

The World Wide Web is a huge set of interlinked documents, images and other resources, linked by hyperlinks and URLs. These hyperlinks and URLs allow the web-servers and other machines that store originals, and cached copies, of these resources to deliver them as required using HTTP. HTTP is only one of the communication protocols used on the Internet.

Web services also use HTTP to allow software systems to communicate in order to share and exchange business logic and data.

Software products that can access the resources of the Web are correctly termed user agents. In normal use, Web browsers, such as Internet Explorer and Firefox access Web pages and allow users to navigate from one to another via hyperlinks. Web documents may contain almost any combination of computer data including photographs, graphics, sounds, text, video, multimedia and interactive content including games, office applications and scientific demonstrations.

Through keyword-driven Internet research using search engines, like Yahoo!, and Google, millions of people worldwide have easy, instant access to a vast and diverse amount of online information. Compared to encyclopedias and traditional libraries, the World Wide Web has enabled a sudden and extreme decentralization of information and data.

It is also easier using the Web than ever before for individuals and organisations to publish ideas and information to an extremely large audience. Anyone can find ways to publish a web page or build a website for very little initial cost. Publishing and maintaining large, professional websites full of attractive, diverse and up-to-date information is still a difficult and expensive proposition, however.

Many individuals and some companies and groups use "Web logs" or blogs, which are largely used as easily-updatable online diaries. Some commercial organizations encourage staff to fill them with advice on their areas of specialization in the hope that visitors will be impressed by the expert knowledge and free information, and be attracted to the corporation as a result. One example of this practice is Microsoft, whose product developers publish their personal blogs in order to pique the public's interest in their work.

Collections of personal Web pages published by large service providers remain popular, and have become increasingly sophisticated. Whereas operations such as Angelfire and GeoCities have existed since the early days of the Web, newer offerings from, for example, Facebook and MySpace currently have large followings. These operations often brand themselves as social network services rather than simply as Web page hosts.

Advertising on popular Web pages can be lucrative, and e-commerce or the sale of products and services directly via the Web continues to grow.

In the early days, Web pages were usually created as sets of complete and isolated HTML text files stored on a Web server. More recently, Web sites are more often created using content management system (CMS) software with, initially, very little content. Users of the CMS, who may be paid staff, members of a club or other organisation, or even members of the public, fill the CMS database with content using editing pages designed for that purpose, while casual visitors view and read this content in its final HTML form. There may or may not be editorial, approval and security systems built into the process of taking newly entered content and making it available to the target visitors.

Remote access

Further information: Remote access

The Internet allows computer users to connect to other computers and information stores easily, wherever they may be across the world. They may do this with or without the use of security, authentication and encryption technologies, depending on the requirements.

This is encouraging new ways of working from home, collaboration and information sharing in many industries. An accountant sitting at home can audit the books of a company based in another country, on a server situated in a third country that is remotely maintained by IT specialists in a fourth. These accounts could have been created by home-working book-keepers, in other remote locations, based on information e-mailed to them from offices all over the world. Some of these things were possible before the widespread use of the Internet, but the cost of private, leased lines would have made many of them infeasible in practice.

An office worker away from his desk, perhaps the other side of the world on a business trip or a holiday, can open a remote desktop session into their normal office PC using a secure Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection via the Internet. This gives the worker complete access to all of their normal files and data, including e-mail and other applications, while away from the office.

This concept is also referred to by some network security people as the Virtual Private Nightmare, because it extends the secure perimeter of a corporate network into its employees' homes; this has been the source of some notable security breaches, but also provides security for the workers.

Collaboration

See also: Collaborative software

The low cost and nearly instantaneous sharing of ideas, knowledge, and skills has made collaborative work dramatically easier. Not only can a group cheaply communicate and test, but the wide reach of the Internet allows such groups to easily form in the first place, even among niche interests. An example of this is the free software movement in software development which produced GNU and Linux from scratch and has taken over development of Mozilla and OpenOffice.org (formerly known as Netscape Communicator and StarOffice).

Internet 'chat', whether in the form of IRC 'chat rooms' or channels, or via instant messaging systems allow colleagues to stay in touch in a very convenient way when working at their computers during the day. Messages can be sent and viewed even more quickly and conveniently than via e-mail. Extension to these systems may allow files to be exchanged, 'whiteboard' drawings to be shared as well as voice and video contact between team members.

Version control systems allow collaborating teams to work on shared sets of documents without either accidentally overwriting each other's work or having members wait until they get 'sent' documents to be able to add their thoughts and changes.

File sharing

For more details on this topic, see File sharing.

A computer file can be e-mailed to customers, colleagues and friends as an attachment. It can be uploaded to a Web site or FTP server for easy download by others. It can be put into a "shared location" or onto a file server for instant use by colleagues. The load of bulk downloads to many users can be eased by the use of "mirror" servers or peer-to-peer networks.

In any of these cases, access to the file may be controlled by user authentication; the transit of the file over the Internet may be obscured by encryption and money may change hands before or after access to the file is given. The price can be paid by the remote charging of funds from, for example a credit card whose details are also passed—hopefully fully encrypted—across the Internet. The origin and authenticity of the file received may be checked by digital signatures or by MD5 or other message digests.

These simple features of the Internet, over a world-wide basis, are changing the basis for the production, sale, and distribution of anything that can be reduced to a computer file for transmission. This includes all manner of print publications, software products, news, music, film, video, photography, graphics and the other arts. This in turn has caused seismic shifts in each of the existing industries that previously controlled the production and distribution of these products in that country.

Internet collaboration technology enables business and project teams to share documents, calendars and other information. Such collaboration occurs in a wide variety of areas including scientific research, software development, conference planning, political activism and creative writing.

Streaming media

Many existing radio and television broadcasters provide Internet 'feeds' of their live audio and video streams (for example, the BBC and Rush Limbaugh). They may also allow time-shift viewing or listening such as Preview, Classic Clips and Listen Again features. These providers have been joined by a range of pure Internet 'broadcasters' who never had on-air licenses. This means that an Internet-connected device, such as a computer or something more specific, can be used to access on-line media in much the same way as was previously possible only with a television or radio receiver. The range of material is much wider, from pornography to highly specialized technical Web-casts. Podcasting is a variation on this theme, where—usually audio—material is first downloaded in full and then may be played back on a computer or shifted to a digital audio player to be listened to on the move. These techniques using simple equipment allow anybody, with little censorship or licensing control, to broadcast audio-visual material on a worldwide basis.

Webcams can be seen as an even lower-budget extension of this phenomenon. While some webcams can give full frame rate video, the picture is usually either small or updates slowly. Internet users can watch animals around an African waterhole, ships in the Panama Canal, the traffic at a local roundabout or their own premises, live and in real time. Video chat rooms, video conferencing, and remote controllable webcams are also popular. Many uses can be found for personal webcams in and around the home, with and without two-way sound.

Voice telephony (VoIP)

For more details on this topic, see VoIP.

VoIP stands for Voice over IP, where IP refers to the Internet Protocol that underlies all Internet communication. This phenomenon began as an optional two-way voice extension to some of the Instant Messaging systems that took off around the year 2000. In recent years many VoIP systems have become as easy to use and as convenient as a normal telephone. The benefit is that, as the Internet carries the actual voice traffic, VoIP can be free or cost much less than a normal telephone call, especially over long distances and especially for those with always-on Internet connections such as cable or ADSL.

Thus VoIP is maturing into a viable alternative to traditional telephones. Interoperability between different providers has improved and the ability to call or receive a call from a traditional telephone is available. Simple inexpensive VoIP modems are now available that eliminate the need for a PC.

Voice quality can still vary from call to call but is often equal to and can even exceed that of traditional calls.

Remaining problems for VoIP include emergency telephone number dialling and reliability. Currently a few VoIP providers provide an emergency service but it is not universally available. Traditional phones are line powered and operate during a power failure, VoIP does not do so without a backup power source for the electronics.

Most VoIP providers offer unlimited national calling but the direction in VoIP is clearly toward global coverage with unlimited minutes for a low monthly fee.

VoIP has also become increasingly popular within the gaming world, as a form of communication between players. Popular gaming VoIP clients include Ventrilo and Teamspeak, and there are others available also.

Censorship

For more details on this topic, see Internet censorship.

Some governments, such as those of Cuba, Iran, North Korea, the People's Republic of China and Saudi Arabia, restrict what people in their countries can access on the Internet, especially political and religious content. This is accomplished through software that filters domains and content so that they may not be easily accessed or obtained without elaborate circumvention.

In Norway, Finland and Sweden, major Internet service providers have voluntarily (possibly to avoid such an arrangement being turned into law) agreed to restrict access to sites listed by police. While this list of forbidden URLs is only supposed to contain addresses of known child pornography sites, the content of the list is secret.^{[citation needed]}

Many countries have enacted laws making the possession or distribution of certain material, such as child pornography, illegal, but do not use filtering software.

There are many free and commercially available software programs with which a user can choose to block offensive Web sites on individual computers or networks, such as to limit a child's access to pornography or violence. See Content-control software.

Internet access

For more details on this topic, see Internet access.

:

Online linux connect

Common methods of home access include dial-up, landline broadband (over coaxial cable, fiber optic or copper wires), Wi-Fi, satellite and technology 3G cell phones.

Public places to use the Internet include libraries and Internet cafes, where computers with Internet connections are available. There are also Internet access points in many public places such as airport halls and coffee shops, in some cases just for brief use while standing. Various terms are used, such as "public Internet kiosk", "public access terminal", and "Web payphone". Many hotels now also have public terminals, though these are usually fee-based.

Wi-Fi provides wireless access to computer networks, and therefore can do so to the Internet itself. Hotspots providing such access include Wi-Fi-cafes, where a would-be user needs to bring their own wireless-enabled devices such as a laptop or PDA. These services may be free to all, free to customers only, or fee-based. A hotspot need not be limited to a confined location. The whole campus or park, or even the entire city can be enabled. Grassroots efforts have led to wireless community networks. Commercial WiFi services covering large city areas are in place in London, Vienna, Toronto, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago and Pittsburgh. The Internet can then be accessed from such places as a park bench.^[5]

Apart from Wi-Fi, there have been experiments with proprietary mobile wireless networks like Ricochet, various high-speed data services over cellular phone networks, and fixed wireless services.

High-end mobile phones such as smartphones generally come with Internet access through the phone network. Web browsers such as Opera are available on these advanced handsets, which can also run a wide variety of other Internet software. More mobile phones have Internet access than PCs, though this is not as widely used. An Internet access provider and protocol matrix differentiates the methods used to get online.

Leisure

The Internet has been a major source of leisure since before the World Wide Web, with entertaining social experiments such as MUDs and MOOs being conducted on university servers, and humor-related Usenet groups receiving much of the main traffic. Today, many Internet forums have sections devoted to games and funny videos; short cartoons in the form of Flash movies are also popular. Over 6 million people use blogs or message boards as a means of communication and for the sharing of ideas.

The pornography and gambling industries have both taken full advantage of the World Wide Web, and often provide a significant source of advertising revenue for other Web sites. Although many governments have attempted to put restrictions on both industries' use of the Internet, this has generally failed to stop their widespread popularity. A song in the Broadway musical show Avenue Q is titled "The Internet is for Porn" and refers to the popularity of this aspect of the Internet.

One main area of leisure on the Internet is multiplayer gaming. This form of leisure creates communities, bringing people of all ages and origins to enjoy the fast-paced world of multiplayer games. These range from MMORPG to first-person shooters, from role-playing games to online gambling. This has revolutionized the way many people interact and spend their free time on the Internet.

While online gaming has been around since the 1970s, modern modes of online gaming began with services such as GameSpy and MPlayer, which players of games would typically subscribe to. Non-subscribers were limited to certain types of gameplay or certain games.

Many use the Internet to access and download music, movies and other works for their enjoyment and relaxation. As discussed above, there are paid and unpaid sources for all of these, using centralized servers and distributed peer-to-peer technologies. Discretion is needed as some of these sources take more care over the original artists' rights and over copyright laws than others.

Many use the World Wide Web to access news, weather and sports reports, to plan and book holidays and to find out more about their random ideas and casual interests.

People use chat, messaging and email to make and stay in touch with friends worldwide, sometimes in the same way as some previously had pen pals. Social networking Web sites like Friends Reunited and many others like them also put and keep people in contact for their enjoyment.

The Internet has seen a growing amount of Internet operating systems, where users can access their files, folders, and settings via the Internet. An example of an opensource webOS is Eyeos.

Cyberslacking has become a serious drain on corporate resources; the average UK employee spends 57 minutes a day surfing the Web at work, according to a study by Peninsula Business Services [3].

Complex architecture

Many computer scientists see the Internet as a "prime example of a large-scale, highly engineered, yet highly complex system".^[6] The Internet is extremely heterogeneous. (For instance, data transfer rates and physical characteristics of connections vary widely.) The Internet exhibits "emergent phenomena" that depend on its large-scale organization. For example, data transfer rates exhibit temporal self-similarity. Further adding to the complexity of the Internet is the ability of more than one computer to use the Internet through only one node, thus creating the possibility for a very deep and hierarchal based sub-network that can theoretically be extended infinitely (disregarding the programmatic limitations of the IPv4 protocol). However, since principles of this architecture date back to the 1960s, it might not be a solution best suited to modern needs, and thus the possibility of developing alternative structures is currently being looked into. Thanks to studies done in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, it has been shown that the internet is in the shape of a sphere or medusa jellyfish. There are 3 sections of this sphere. The core of the internet is made up of around a 100 of the most tightly connected subnetworks, such as Google. ^[7]

Marketing

The Internet has also become a large market for companies; some of the biggest companies today have grown by taking advantage of the efficient nature of low-cost advertising and commerce through the Internet; also known as e-commerce. It is the fastest way to spread information to a vast amount of people simultaneously. The Internet has also subsequently revolutionized shopping—for example; a person can order a CD online and receive it in the mail within a couple of days, or download it directly in some cases. The Internet has also greatly facilitated personalized marketing which allows a company to market a product to a specific person or a specific group of people more so than any other advertising medium.

Examples of personalized marketing include online communities such as MySpace, Friendster, Orkut, Facebook and others which thousands of Internet users join to advertise themselves and make friends online. Many of these users are young teens and adolescents ranging from 13 to 25 years old. In turn, when they advertise themselves they advertise interests and hobbies, which online marketing companies can use as information as to what those users will purchase online, and advertise their own companies' products to those users.

Further information: Disintermediation#Impact of Internet-related disintermediation upon various industries and Travel agency#The Internet threat

The name Internet

For more details on this topic, see Internet capitalization conventions.

Look up Internet, internet in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Internet is traditionally written with a capital first letter, as it is a proper noun. The Internet Society, the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the World Wide Web Consortium, and several other Internet-related organizations use this convention in their publications.

Many newspapers, newswires, periodicals, and technical journals capitalize the term (Internet). Examples include The New York Times, the Associated Press, Time, The Times of India, Hindustan Times, and Communications of the ACM.

Others assert that the first letter should be in lower case (internet), and that the specific article “the” is sufficient to distinguish “the internet” from other internets. A significant number of publications use this form, including The Economist, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, and The Sydney Morning Herald. As of 2005, many publications using internet appear to be located outside of North America—although one U.S. news source, Wired News, has adopted the lower-case spelling.

Historically, Internet and internet have had different meanings, with internet meaning “an interconnected set of distinct networks,” and Internet referring to the world-wide, publicly-available IP internet. Under this distinction, "the Internet" is the familiar network via which websites exist, however "an internet" can exist between any two remote locations.^[8] Any group of distinct networks connected together is an internet; each of these networks may or may not be part of the Internet. The distinction was evident in many RFCs, books, and articles from the 1980s and early 1990s (some of which, such as RFC 1918, refer to "internets" in the plural), but has recently fallen into disuse.^{[citation needed]} Instead, the term intranet is generally used for private networks. See also: extranet.

Some people use the lower-case term as a medium (like radio or newspaper, e.g. I've found it on the internet), and first letter capitalized as the global network.

Selayang Pandang Tentang Konfusiua

2007-09-27T13:06:00.000+07:00

Confucius
K'ung-fu-tzu or Kongfuzi

Confucius, (551-479 BC -- Wade-Giles K'ung-fu-tzu or Pinyin Kongfuzi), or Master K'ung, whose life defines the end of the Spring and Autumn Period in Chinese history, becomes long after his death the dominant Chinese philosopher both morally and politically. In the Warring States Period Mencius (Meng Tzu) (c.390-305 BC) extended and systematized Confucius's ideas; but with Confucius's adoption in the Hàn Dynasty as the official moral and political doctrine of the State, the Confucian tradition became so broad that "Scholar" or "Literatus" became all but synonymous with "Confucian," and so Confucianism could simply be called the Ju Chia [], or School of the Literati -- one of the Six Schools of Chinese philosophy. As one of the "Three Ways," or (the three "doctrines" or religions), together with Taoism [] and Buddhism [], Confucianism [] also grew into one of the traditional religions of the Hàn Chinese [1].
The following table gives the basic moral terminology of Confucius, with the Chinese characters. This goes a long way to explaining the nature of Confucius's moral doctrine, since each term embodies the values or disvalues considered morally important. The table is divided into categories that are familiar from the structure of ethics in Western philosophy. Indeed, while many people may think of Indian or Chinese philosophy as intuitionistic or mystical, which is rather like what we do find in Taoism, Confucianism has been said to be a hundred times more rationalistic than Western philosophy. Confucian ethics are certainly clear and uncompromising, with points of similarity to Immanuel Kant and Christianity.

BEING DOING/MEANS ENDS
Rén, "benevolence, charity, humanity, love," kindness. The fundamental virtue of Confucianism. Confucius defines it as "Aì rén," "love others."
[Analects XII:22] Yì, "right conduct, morality, duty to one's neighbor," righteousness. Lì, "profit, gain, advantage": NOT a proper motive for actions affecting others. The idea that profit is the source of temptation to do wrong is the Confucian ground of the later official disparagment of commerce and industry.

The Master said, "The gentleman (chün tzu or ) understands yì. The small man understands lì." [Analects IV:16]

Li³, "propriety, good manners, politeness, ceremony, worship." Xiào, "to honor one's parents," filial piety. Yì may be broken down [Analects IV:15] into: zhong¹, doing one's best, conscientiousness, "loyalty" [2]; and shù, "reciprocity," altruism, consideration for others, "what you don't want yourself, don't do to others" [Analects XV:24 or 23].

quoted definitions, Mathews' Chinese-English Dictionary, Harvard, 1972; quotations from Analects translated by D.C. Lau, Penguin Books, 1979

Confucius himself had a simple moral and political teaching: to love others; to honor one's parents; to do what is right instead of what is of advantage; to practice "reciprocity," i.e. "don't do to others what you would not want yourself"; to rule by moral example () instead of by force and violence; and so forth. Confucius thought that a ruler who had to resort to force had already failed as a ruler -- "Your job is to govern, not to kill" (Analects XII:19). This was not a principle that Chinese rulers always obeyed, but it was the ideal of benevolent rule. It should be noted, however, that even such humane principles are paternalistic and statist, without a hint of the ideals of individual liberty that are the basis of modern liberal society. Nevertheless, the Confucian ideal avoids the worst of modern paternalism with the principle of government by example and by "Not Doing" (), putting Confucianism closer to Taoism than to modern practices of authoritarian control. Confucius thought that government by laws and punishments could keep people in line, but government by example of virtue () and good manners () would enable them to control themselves (Analects II:3). "The way the wind blows, that's the way the grass bends" (Analects XII:19). Self-control, indeed, is the basis of all the industrious virtues that have made the Chinese people economically successful whenever they have been allowed to prosper, whether in California, Malaya, or China proper. Unfortunately, although Confucius himself says, "Wealth and high station are what men desire" (Analects, IV:5), later Confucians (beginning no later than Mencius) turned warnings against the temptation of profit () into a condemnation of profit, which meant that their influence was often turned against the development of Chinese industry and commerce. Thus, Confucians themselves were perfectly happy to seek "high station," while stiffling the ability of ordinary Chinese to produce "wealth." Over time, this was an evil influence in Chinese history.

While the essence of morality is the limitation of self-interest, Confucius is clear that this does not mean complete denial of self. We have already seen a hint of this with Analects XV:23, which begins with the character for "self" and ends with the characters for "others" (or "persons"). If what you don't want for yourself, you shouldn't to do others, then you would like others to do for you what you would indeed like for yourself. We see a similar word structure, and stronger implication, at Analects VI:28, "If you desire to establish yourself, also establish others." This sounds more like what Mohism called "mutual profitableness," but it is clearly essential to Confucius. The idea is distilled in a modern Japanese saying, jiri rita, "self profit, profit other," or "self-interest[ed] altruism." This can, of course, also be read in Chinese, as shown. It contains different characters for "self" and "other" than Confucius uses, but these could easily be substituted, as can be seen by clicking on the image for a popup with the corresponding characters. Helping oneself and others at the same time is characteristic of what we might even call the "worldliness" of Confucianism and Chinese civilization. The Chinese have never been very big on the world-denying renunication so characteristic of India; and even though monasticism was brought to China by Buddhism and adopted by religious Taoism, Confucianism, which usually also meant the government, always remained suspicious of it: Monks and nuns were often suspected of being licentious freeloaders, an attitude we see expressed in the Judge Dee novels. The hostility to profit that can occur in Confucianism thus has to compete against this contrary sense that self-interest can be promoted by cooperating with and pleasing others -- the essence of a market exchange.
During the T'ang Dynasty, the canon of Confucian Classics became the basis for the great civil service examinations that henceforth provided the magistrates and bureaucrats (the "Mandarins") for the Chinese government. This system is still impressive, but, because of the attitude of the Confucian scholars, it was not entirely to good effect. The founder of the Míng Dynasty (1368-1644) Chu Yüan-chang, an illiterate peasant who rose to expel the Mongols and win the throne, was suspicious of the influence of the scholars. He tried to balance the scholarly with the military establishment so that neither would dominate the government. Later, when the Chinese sent Admiral Cheng Ho [Zheng He], a Moslem eunuch who started out as a war prisoner and slave, on seven great naval expeditions into the Indian Ocean between 1405 and 1433, it was the scholars who powerfully opposed engaging in anything so lowly as trade and dealing with such uncivilized barbarians. The expeditions, indeed, visited not only Indonesia and India, but penetrated into the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, and far down the east coast of Africa. The fleets were large, heavily manned, well armed, and contained ships of nine masts (the baochuan, "treasure ships") that, reportedly, were more than 400 feet long.
But when the court faction of the scholars triumphed and ended the expeditions, they also destroyed their records and made it a capital offense to build anything larger than a two-masted ship. This crippled Chinese trade and foreign involvement; and one is left to wonder just how world history would have been different had Vasco da Gama arrived in the Indian Ocean in 1498, just 65 years later, to discover an overwhelming and technologically equal or superior Chinese naval presence.
In China itself, the scholars indeed went on to dominate the government and tip the balance against the military, which left the country so unprepared that in 1644 the last Ming emperor was forced to call in Manchuria to deal with a rebellion. The Manchus took advantage of this to take over the country; and so the final Chinese Dynasty, the Ch'ing [Qing] (1644-1912), wasn't Chinese at all. This was probably not what the scholars would have wanted, but they had certainly brought it about. Curiously, the Ch'ing Emperors adopted scholarly sensibilities and retained Ming naval and maritime policy xenophobia. This left China once again helpless when forces technologically superior to the Portuguese, especially the British, eventually arrived, irresistibly pressing for commercial access to the country. The scholars never did adapt, and the examination system was eventually abolished rather than modernized.
A curious and noteworthy aspect of the teaching of Confucius is his arm's length attitude towards religion. There is considerably irony in this, not only because Confucianism later became one of the major religions of China, but in comparison to the life of Socrates, who was born just nine years after Confucius died. Socrates, although he talked about the gods all the time, and saw his own philosophical project as a divine mission, was condemned and put to death for presumably not believing in them. Confucius, although he later became a god, to whom temples were dedicated in every Chinese city, as the patron of students and scholars, nevertheless didn't talk about the gods at all:
The topics the Master did not speak of were prodigies, force, disorder, and gods. [Analects translated by D.C. Lau, Penguin Books, 1979, VII:21, p. 88]

The term for "god" here, (shin or kami in Japanese), is often translated "spirit" or even "spiritual beings." We see another term in this quote:
Chi-lu asked how the spirits of the dead and gods should be served. The Master said, "You are not able to serve to serve man. How can you serve the spirits?" [XI:12, p. 107]

"Spirits" or "spirits of the dead" here are kuei, , "spirits, demons, ghosts." This is a remarkable passage considering the attention given by Confucianism as a religion for one's ancestors and for the care of one's family grave plot. This seems comparable to an instruction from Jesus:
[Matthew 8:21] And another of his disciples said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. [8:22] But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead.

Few Christians are so unconcerned about burial of relatives, or Confucians about the service of spirits. What Confucius honored rather than pious ritual is implied here:
The Master was seriously ill. Tzu-lu asked permission to offer a prayer. The Master said, "Was such a thing ever done?" Tzu-lu said, "Yes it was. The prayer offered was as follows: pray thus to the gods above and below." The Master said, "In that case, I have long been offering my prayers." [VII:35, p. 91]

This is interpreted to mean that Confucius has been praying all that was necessary just by being good and polite. Further prayers are unnecessary.
While the practice of Confucianism was not entirely consistent with these principles of Confucius just expressed, his attitude did have a significant effect on the conduct of Chinese religion, where popular gods possessed less status in terms of politics and high culture than we see in most other civilizations. Thus, while most people have a least heard of major Indian gods, like Shiva and Krishna, I have frequently found entire classes of students who were unable to name even a single traditional Chinese god [3]. The government of Imperial China treated the gods rather like other subjects of the Empire, assigning them rank and promoting or demoting them depending on their popularity or moral wholesomeness. Confucian authorities thus never doubted their standing to judge the status and worth of the gods. The Imperial cult, like Confucius himself, was concerned with much more abstract and impersonal entities, like Heaven. Sometimes "Heaven" is therefore translated "God," but it is a principle, not a personal deity. Its reality, however, does refute attempts to characterize Confucius as the sort of sceptical and positivistic "secular humanist" who has become familiar in modern society.

Jesu, meine freude

2007-09-24T19:53:00.000+07:00

Maksud hati mau masukin partiturenya, tapi sekarang teksnya dulu ya...........

Jesu, meine Freude,

Jesu, meine Freude,
meines Herzens Weide,
Jesu, meine Zier,
ach wie lang, ach lange
ist dem Herzen bange,
und verlangt nach dir !
Gottes Lamm, mein Bräutigam,
außer dir soll mir auf Erden
nichts sonst Liebers werden.

Es ist nun nichts Verdammliches
an denen, die in Christo Jesu sind,
die nicht nach dem Fleische wandeln,
sondern nach dem Geist.

Unter deinem Schirmen
bin ich vor den Stürmen
aller Feinde frei.
Laß den Satan wittern,
laß den Feind erbittern,
mir steht Jesus bei.
Ob es itzt gleich kracht und blitzt,
ob gleich Sünd und Hölle schrecken:
Jesus will mich decken.

Denn das Gesetz des Geistes,
der da lebendig machet in Christo Jesu,
hat mich frei gemacht
von dem Gesetz der Sünde und des Todes.

Trotz dem alten Drachen,
trotz des Todes Rachen,
trotz der Furcht dazu !
Tobe, Welt, und springe;
ich steh hier und singe
in gar sichrer Ruh.
Gottes Macht hält mich in Acht;
Erd und Abgrund muß verstummen,
ob sie noch so brummen.

Ihr aber seid nicht fleischlich,
sondern geistlich,
so anders Gottes Geist in euch wohnet.
Wer aber Christi Geist nicht hat,
der ist nicht sein.

Weg mit allen Schätzen !
Du bist mein Ergötzen,
Jesu, meine Lust !
Weg ihr eitlen Ehren,
ich mag euch nicht hören,
bleibt mir unbewußt !
Elend, Not, Kreuz, Schmach und Tod
soll mich, ob ich viel muß leiden,
nicht von Jesu scheiden.

So aber Christus in euch ist,
so ist der Leib zwar tot
um der Sünde willen;
der Geist aber ist das Leben
um der Gerechtigkeit willen.

Gute Nacht, o Wesen,
das die Welt erlesen,
mir gefällst du nicht !
Gute Nacht, ihr Sünden,
bleibet weit dahinten,
kommt nicht mehr ans Licht !
Gute Nacht, du Stolz und Pracht !
Dir sei ganz, du Lasterleben,
gute Nacht gegeben.

So nun der Geist des,
der Jesum von den Toten
auferwecket hat,
in euch wohnet,
so wird auch derselbige,
der Christum von den Toten
auferwecket hat,
eure sterbliche Leiber lebendig machen,
um des Willen,
daß sein Geist in euch wohnet.

Weicht, ihr Trauergeister,
denn mein Freudenmeister,
Jesus, tritt herein.
Denen, die Gott lieben,
muß auch ihr Betrüben
lauter Zucker sein.
Duld ich schon hier Spott und Hohn,
dennoch bleibst du auch im Leide,
Jesu, meine Freude.

Feminist Kesukaan Gue

2007-09-13T17:43:00.001+07:00

Luce Irigaray (1932-present)

Luce Irigaray is a prominent author in contemporary French feminism and Continental philosophy. She is an interdisciplinary thinker who works between philosophy, psychoanalysis, and linguistics. Originally a student of the famous analyst Jacques Lacan, Irigaray's departure from Lacan in Speculum of the Other Woman, where she critiques the exclusion of women from both philosophy and psychoanalytic theory, earned her recognition as a leading feminist theorist and continental philosopher. Her subsequent texts provide a comprehensive analysis and critique of the exclusion of women from the history of philosophy, psychoanalytic theory and structural linguistics. Irigaray alleges that women have been traditionally associated with matter and nature to the expense of a female subject position. While women can become subjects if they assimilate to male subjectivity, a separate subject position for women does not exist. Irigaray's goal is to uncover the absence of a female subject position, the relegation of all things feminine to nature/matter, and, ultimately, the absence of true sexual difference in Western culture. In addition to establishing this critique, Irigaray offers suggestions for altering the situation of women in Western culture. Mimesis, strategic essentialism, utopian ideals, and employing novel language, are but some of the methods central to changing contemporary culture. Irigaray's analysis of women's exclusion from culture and her use of strategic essentialism have been enormously influential in contemporary feminist theory. Her work has generated productive discussions about how to define femininity and sexual difference, whether strategic essentialism should be employed, and assessing the risk involved in engaging categories historically used to oppress women. Irigaray's work extends beyond theory into practice. Irigaray has been actively engaged in the feminist movement in Italy. She has participated in several initiatives in Italy to implement a respect for sexual difference on a cultural and, in her most recent work, governmental level. Her contributions to feminist theory and continental philosophy are many and her complete works present her readers with a rewarding challenge to traditional conceptions of gender, self, and body.

1. BIOGRAPHY

In a 1993 interview with Margaret Whitford, Luce Irigaray specifically says that she does not like to be asked personal questions. She does not want opinions about her everyday life to interfere with interpretations of her ideas. Irigaray believes that entrance into intellectual discussions is a hard won battle for women and that reference to biographical material is one way in which women's credibility is challenged. It is no surprise that detailed biographical information about Irigaray is limited and that different accounts conflict.

What remains constant between accounts is that Luce Irigaray was born in Belgium in 1932. She holds two doctoral degrees-one in Philosophy and the other in Linguistics. She is also a trained and practicing psychoanalyst. She has held a research post at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique de Paris since 1964. She is currently the Director of Research in Philosophy at the center, and also continues her private practice.

Perhaps the most well known fact of Irigaray's life-which Irigaray herself refers to in the opening of je, tu, nous-is her education at, and later expulsion from, the Ecole Freudienne de Paris (Freudian School of Paris). The Ecole Freudienne was founded by the famous psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. Irigaray trained at the school in the sixties. In 1974, she published the thesis she wrote while studying at the school, Speculum, de l'autre femme, translated into English as Speculum of the Other Woman. This thesis criticized-among philosophical topics-the phallocentrism of Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis. The publication of this thesis gained her recognition, but also negatively affected Irigaray's career. She was relieved of her teaching post at the University of Vincennes and was ostracized by the Lacanian community. In spite of these early hardships, Irigaray went on to become an influential and prolific author in contemporary feminist theory and continental philosophy.

In addition to her intellectual accomplishments, Irigaray is committed to active participation in the women's movement in both France and internationally-especially in Italy. Several of her later texts are dedicated to her work in the women's movement of Italy. She is still actively researching and publishing.

2. IRIGARAY'S PROJECT

Irigaray argues that, since ancient times, mothers have been associated with nature and unthinking matter. Further, Irigaray believes that all women have historically been associated with the role of "mother" such that, whether or not a woman is a mother, her identity is always defined according to that role. This is in contrast to men who are associated with culture and subjectivity. While excluded from culture and subjectivity, women serve as their unacknowledged support. In other words, while women are not considered full subjects, society itself could not function without their contributions. Irigaray ultimately states that Western culture itself is founded upon a primary sacrifice of the mother, and all women through her.

Based on this analysis, Irigaray says that sexual difference does not exist. True sexual difference would require that men and women are equally able to achieve subjectivity. As is, Irigaray believes that men are subjects (e.g. self-conscious, self-same entities) and women are "the other" of these subjects (e.g. the non-subjective, supporting matter). Only one form of subjectivity exists in Western culture and it is male.

While Irigaray is influenced by both psychoanalytic theory and philosophy, she identifies them both as influential discourses that exclude women from a social existence as mature subjects. In many of her texts, Irigaray seeks to unveil how both psychoanalytic theory and philosophy exclude women from a genuine social existence as autonomous subjects, and relegate women to the realm of inert, lifeless, inessential matter. With this critique in place, Irigaray suggests how women can begin to reconfigure their identity such that one sex does not exist at the expense of the other. However, she is unwilling to definitively state what that new identity should be like. Irigaray refrains from prescribing a new identity because she wants women to determine for themselves how they want to be defined.

While both philosophy and psychoanalytic theory are her targets, Irigaray identifies philosophy as the master discourse. Irigaray's reasons for this designation are revealed in Speculum of the Other Woman where she demonstrates how philosophy-since Ancient times-has articulated fundamental epistemological, ontological, and metaphysical truths from a male perspective that excludes women. While she is not suggesting that philosophy is single-handedly responsible for the history of women's oppression, she wants to emphasize that the similar type of exclusion manifest in both philosophy and psychoanalysis predates the birth of psychoanalysis.

As the companion discourse to philosophy, psychoanalysis plays a unique role. While Irigaray praises psychoanalysis for utilizing the method of analysis to reveal the plight of female subjectivity, she also thinks that it reinforces it. Freud attempts to explain female subjectivity and sexuality according to a male model. From this perspective, female subjectivity looks like a deformed or insufficiently developed form of male subjectivity. Irigaray argues that if Freud had turned the tools of analysis onto his own discourse, then he would have seen that female subjectivity cannot be understood through the lenses of a one-sex model. In other words, negative views of women exist because of theoretical bias-not because of nature.

Through her critiques of both philosophy and psychoanalytic theory, Irigaray argues that women need to attain a social existence separate from the role of mother. However, this alone will not change the current state of affairs. For Irigaray is not suggesting that the social role of women will change if they merely step over the line of nature into culture. Irigaray believes that true social change will occur only if society challenges its perception of nature as unthinking matter to be dominated and controlled. Thus, while women must attain subjectivity, men must become more embodied. Irigaray argues that both men and women have to reconfigure their subjectivity so that they both understand themselves as belonging equally to nature and culture. Irigaray's discussions of mimesis, novel language and utopian ideals, reconfiguring the mother/daughter relationship, altering language itself, ethics, and politics are all central to achieving this end.

3. INFLUENCES

Irigaray's interdisciplinary interests in philosophy, psychoanalysis, and linguistics underscore that her work has more than one influence. Two main discourses that maintain a strong presence throughout her work are psychoanalysis, with Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan as its representatives, and philosophy. Insofar as Lacanian psychoanalysis works out of a background in structural linguistics, both Lacan and Irigaray also focus on language. Irigaray engages with philosophy, psychoanalysis and linguistics in order to uncover the lack of true sexual difference in Western culture.

a. Psychoanalysis

Irigaray states on the opening page of An Ethics of Sexual Difference that each age is defined by a philosophical issue that calls to be thoroughly examined-ours is sexual difference. Sexual difference is often associated with the anatomical differences between the sexes. However, Irigaray follows the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan in understanding sexual difference as a difference that is assigned in language. While Irigaray is critical of Lacan, she is influenced by Lacan's interpretation of Freud's theory of subject formation.

Freud's work has served as a starting point for diverse psychoanalytic theories such as drive theory, object relations theory, and ego psychology. Lacan interprets Freud's work from a background in structural linguistics, philosophy, and, of course, psychoanalysis. Of particular importance to Irigaray's work is Lacan's claim that there are two key moments in the formation of a child's identity: the formation of an imaginary body and the assignation of sexual difference in language.

Freud introduces the idea of an imaginary body in The Ego and the Id, in the section of the same name, when he describes the ego (self-consciousness) as neither strictly a psychic phenomenon nor a bodily phenomenon. Freud believes that an ego is formed in reference to a body, such that the manner in which an infant understands his or her selfhood is inseparable from his or her bodily existence. However, the body that an infant attributes to him or herself is not objectively understood-it is the mind's understanding of the body. This means that a person's understanding of his or her own body is imbued with a degree of fantasy and imagination.

In his famous essay "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I," Lacan expands Freud's comments on the bodily ego into a theory about imaginary anatomy. Lacan states that the first of two key moments in subject formation is the projection of an imaginary body. This occurs in the mirror stage at roughly six months. As a being who still lacks mobility and motor control, an infant who is placed in front of a mirror (another person can serve here as well, typically the mother) will identify with the unified, idealized image that is reflected back in the mirror. While the image in the mirror does not match the infant's experience, it is a key moment in the development of his or her ego. Rather than identify with him or herself as a helpless being, the child choose to identify with the idealized image of him or herself. Lacan believes that the element of fantasy and imagination involved in the identification with the mirror image marks the image as simultaneously representative and misrepresentative of the infant. While the body of the mirror stage is key to the infant's identity, it is also only an interpretation of his or her biological existence. In other words, according to Lacan, one's understanding of one's body occurs only in conjunction with an organization in language and image that begins in the mirror stage, and is further complicated by the next stage of ego formation-entrance into the Symbolic order.

Irigaray agrees with Lacan that how we understand our biology is largely culturally influenced-thus does she accept the idea of an imaginary body. Irigaray employs the Lacanian imaginary body in her discussions about Western culture's bias against women. Irigaray argues that, like people, cultures project dominant imaginary schemes which then affect how that culture understands and defines itself. According to Irigaray, in Western culture, the imaginary body which dominates on a cultural level is a male body. Irigaray thus argues that Western culture privileges identity, unity, and sight-all of which she believes are associated with male anatomy. She believes that fields such as philosophy, psychoanalysis, science and medicine are controlled by this imaginary. Three examples from her work illustrate her view. In Speculum of the Other Woman, Irigaray addresses Freud's claim in his essay "Femininity" that little girls are only little men. She argues that Freud could not understand women because he was influenced by the one-sex theory of his time (men exist and women are a variation of men), and expanded his own, male experience of the world into a general theory applicable to all humans. According to Irigaray, since Freud was unable to imagine another perspective, his reduction of women to male experience resulted in viewing women as defective men. Another example is found in "Cosi Fan Tutti," (in This Sex Which Is Not One) where Irigaray argues that Lacan's ahistorical master signifier of the Symbolic order-the Phallus-is a projection of the male body. Irigaray argues that Lacan failed to diagnose the error of his predecessor, Freud, and similarly understood the world-and especially language-in terms of a one-sex model of sexuality and subjectivity. Although Lacan claims that the Phallus is not connected to male biology, his appropriation of Freud renders this claim false. A final example is found in "The Mechanics of 'Fluids'" (also in This Sex Which Is Not One) where Irigaray argues that science itself is biased towards categories typically personified as masculine (e.g. solids as opposed to fluids). Irigaray believes that if women are not understood in Western culture, it is because Western culture has yet to accept alternate paradigms for understanding them.

While selfhood begins in the mirror stage with the imaginary body, it is not solidified until one enters the Symbolic order. According to Lacan, the Symbolic order is an ahistorical system of language that must be entered for a person to have a coherent social identity. The Phallus is the privileged master signifier of the Symbolic order. One must have a relationship to the Phallus if one is to attain social existence. According to Lacan, infants in the mirror stage do not differentiate between themselves and the world. For example, an infant views him or herself as continuous with his or her mother, and this understanding of the mother-child relationship organizes the infant's world. However, as the infant matures, he or she becomes aware that his or her mothers' attention is not wholly directed toward the infant in a reciprocal manner. The mother participates in a larger social context dominated by the Symbolic order. The infant fantasizes that if he or she could occupy the role of the Phallus-the master signifer of that Symbolic order-he or she could regain the full attention of the mother. However, this is impossible. In exchange for giving up this fantasy-which the Father demands of the child in the Oedipus complex-the infant gains his or her own relationship to the Phallus. The infant must break with the mother (nature, pre-symbolic) in order to become a subject (culture, symbolic order).

One among many unique claims of Lacan's is that the infant acquires sexual difference in his or her relationship to the Phallus. According to Lacan, sexual difference is not about biological imperative (e.g. if you have a penis you are male, if you have a vagina you are female), it is about having one of two types of relationship to the Phallus-having or being the Phallus. Hence, in the Lacanian view, the body as humans understand it is something that is constructed in the mirror stage, and sexually differentiated in the entrance to the Symbolic order.

Irigaray critically appropriates this radical description of sexual difference. She discusses the linguistic character of sexual difference in a manner similar to Lacan in This Sex Which Is Not One. Irigaray is more concerned with how culture-and language as a product of culture-understands sexual difference and subjectivity than with arguing that truths about sexual difference or subjectivity emerge out of biology itself. However she distances herself from Lacan in two key manners. First, Irigaray disagrees with Lacan's depiction of the Symbolic order as ahistorical and unchanging. Irigaray believes that language systems are malleable, and largely determined by power relationships that are in flux. Second, Irigaray remains unconvinced by Lacan's claims that the Phallus is an ahistorical master signifier of the Symbolic order that has no connection to male anatomy. In "Cosi Fan Tutti," she argues that the Phallus is not a purely symbolic category, but is ultimately an extension of-and reinforcement of-Freud's description of the world according to a one-sex model. According to Irigaray, the Phallus as the master signifier (that can be traced back to male anatomy) is evidence that the Symbolic order is constructed and not ahistorical.

b. Philosophy

Irigaray is also influenced by her extensive study of the history of philosophy. Texts such as Speculum of the Other Woman and An Ethics of Sexual Difference demonstrate her command of the philosophical canon. Speculum of the Other Woman discusses the elision of all things feminine in traditional thinkers such as Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, and Hegel. An Ethics of Sexual Difference also discusses the elision of the feminine, but specifically from the perspective of ethical relationships between men and women. An Ethics of Sexual Difference addresses thinkers as diverse as Plato, Merleau-Ponty, Spinoza, and Levinas. Irigaray is also writing a series of texts devoted to the four elements. The elemental works Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche and The Forgetting of Air in Martin Heidegger are sustained discussions of the exclusions implemented by key male philosophers.

No one philosopher can be identified as influencing Irigaray. She appropriates from various thinkers while maintaining a critical distance. For example, her method of mimesis resembles Derridian deconstruction. However, she also criticizes Derrida's deconstruction of the category "woman" (see Derrida's Spurs) in Marine Lover. As another example, she agrees with Heidegger that every age has a concept that underlies and informs its beliefs, but is radically unknown to it. For Heidegger it was "Being," for Irigaray it is "sexual difference." Like Heidegger, she wants to investigate the concept that Western culture takes to be self-evident in order to show that it is unknown to us. However she is critical in The Forgetting of Air in Martin Heidegger of Heidegger's exclusion of women. One can also find Levinasian (An Ethics of Sexual Difference), Hegelian (I love to you) or Marxist (This Sex Which Is Not One, "Women on the Market") undertones in Irigaray's discussions of ethics and dialectical thinking. While she is clearly influenced by the history of philosophy, her own project of creating a new space for redefining women does not permit her to privilege any one philosophical approach.

4. Major Themes

a. Mimesis

Irigaray describes herself as analyzing both the analysts and the philosophers. Perhaps the most famous critical tool employed by Irigaray is mimesis. Mimesis is a process of resubmitting women to stereotypical views of women in order to call the views themselves into question. Key to mimesis is that the stereotypical views are not repeated faithfully. One example is that if women are viewed as illogical, women should speak logically about this view. According to Irigaray, the juxtaposition of illogical and logical undermines the claim that women are illogical. Or if women's bodies are viewed as multiple and dispersed, women should speak from that position in a playful way that suggests that this view stems from a masculine economy that values identity and unity (e.g. the penis or the Phallus) and excludes women as the other (e.g. lack, dispersed, or "nothing to see"). This type of mimesis is also known as strategic essentialism. Irigaray's essay "This Sex Which Is Not One," in the text of the same name, provides several clear examples of this method.

According to Irigaray, the very possibility of repeating a negative view unfaithfully suggests that women are something other than the view expressed. Irigaray repeats the views because she believes that overcoming harmful views of women cannot occur through simply ignoring the views. True to the methodology of psychoanalysis, she believes that negative views can only be overcome when they are exposed and demystified. When successfully employed, mimesis repeats a negative view-without reducing women to that view-and makes fun of it such that the view itself must be discarded.

Irigaray's wager in utilizing mimesis with regard to female subjectivity is as follows. Male dominance has defined Western culture for centuries. If a new form of subjectivity comes into being out of the death of the modern, transcendental subject, and we have never really investigated or mimetically engaged with the deformed, female form of subjectivity that accompanied and sustained the male form, then what would prevent the logic of master/subject/male and slave/other/female from repeating itself? According to Irigaray, the logic will not be altered until we call attention to the fact that subjectivity has changed before when male dominance has not. We must ask after the feminine other. Irigaray believes that only by asking after the other through mimesis will it be possible to affect a paradigm shift.

Irigaray therefore speaks from the silenced position of women in order to (a) challenge the authority of either the negative view or the repression by revealing that position to be nothing more than a fabrication (b) show how the woman/body has been excluded by either revealing the stereotypical view to be false or by inciting the excluded woman/body to speak and (c) thereby force a shift in the conception of female subjectivity and the body. Irigaray employs mimesis because she believes that a 'second sex' cannot exist in its own right (or with a positive form of identity as opposed to being viewed as a deformed version of male identity) until we have not only challenged, but also passed back through the oppressive formulation of sexual difference in contemporary Western culture.

b. Novel Language and Utopian Ideals

While the goal of mimesis is to problematize the male definition of femininity to such a degree that a new definition of and, ultimately, an embodied subject position for women can emerge, Irigaray says in her earlier work that she will not prescribe in advance either the definition or the subject position. In This Sex Which Is Not One, Irigaray clearly indicates that she will not redefine femininity because it would interfere with women redefining themselves for themselves. Further, she believes that she cannot describe the feminine (e.g. female subjectivity, the female imaginary body) outside of the current, male definitions without further disrupting the male definitions of women. A new definition for women has to emerge out of a mimetic engagement with the old definitions, and it is a collective process.

Irigaray is, however, willing to provide material to help ignite the process of redefinition. The material she offers varies from new concepts about religion and bodies-expressed through both the novel use of existing words and the creation of new words-to utopian ideals. One example of a new concept that she puts into play through novel language is her discussion of the sensible/transcendental and female divinity. Irigaray introduces these concepts in order to disrupt male dominance in religion.

Irigaray follows Feuerbach in interpreting the divine as an organizing principle for both identity and culture. Religion is thus viewed as caught up in power and culture. Irigaray specifically targets male dominated religions that posit a transcendental God. She believes that these religions reinforce male dominance and the division of the world into male/subject and female/body. She suggests that in place of a religion that focuses on a transcendent God, we construct a divinity that is both sensible and transcendental. In other words, given the connection between religion and culture, and the manner in which the mind/body split has fallen out along gender lines, why not propose a vision of divinity that will help Western culture overcome its dualisms and prejudices about those dualisms. Irigaray is not prescribing the sensible/transcendental as a new religion to be implemented and followed, but merely placing it in circulation as a creative impetus for change.

An example of utopian ideals can be found in Sexes and Genealogies, thinking the difference, and je, tu, nous. In these texts, Irigaray describes civil laws that she believes would help women achieve social existence (mature subjectivity) in Western culture. In one law she suggests that virginity needs to be protected under the law so that women have control over their own sexuality. She also describes new ways in which the mother/daughter relationship should be legally protected, and outlines how mothers and daughters can communicate with each other so that female subjectivity can be further developed. When these texts were first published, these views were widely interpreted as suggestions intended to initiate discussions between women (utopian ideals) and not as prescriptions for social change. While Irigaray's later work has complicated this interpretation, it is still widely accepted.

c. Mother/Daughter Relationships

According to Irigaray, while it is necessary to alter cultural norms, it is equally as important to address the problematic nature of individual relationships between women-especially the mother/daughter relationship. To emphasize how mother/daughter relationships are sundered in contemporary Western culture, Irigaray turns to Greek mythology. For example, she discusses the myth of Demeter, the goddess of the earth (agriculture), and her daughter Persephone. In the myth, Zeus, Persephone's father, aids his brother Hades, king of the underworld, to abduct the young Perspephone. Hades has fallen in love with Persephone and wants her to be queen of the underworld. When Demeter learns that her daughter is missing, she is devastated and abandons her role as goddess of the earth. The earth becomes barren. To reestablish harmony in the world, Zeus needs Demeter to return to her divine responsibilities. Zeus orders Hades to return Persephone. However, Persephone is tricked into eating a pomegranate seed that binds her to Hades forever. Under the persuasion of Zeus, Hades agrees to release Persephone from the underworld for half of each year. Irigaray reads this myth as an example of both a positive mother/daughter relationship, and the success of men at breaking it apart. Demeter and Persephone love each other and Demeter strives to protect her daughter. However, in this myth they are ultimately at the mercy of the more powerful males. The myth is also an example of men exchanging women as if they were commodities. Zeus conspires with his brother and, in effect, gives his daughter away without consulting either Persephone or Demeter. Irigaray believes that myths tell us something about the deterioration of the mother/daughter relationship and the manner in which men have traditionally controlled the fate of women-whether they are wives, daughters, sisters, or mothers. Irigaray utilizes myth to suggest that mothers and daughters need to protect their relationships and strengthen their bonds to one another.

The need to alter the mother/daughter relationship is a constant theme in Irigaray's work. While she believes that women's social and political situation has to be addressed on a global level, she also thinks that change begins in individual relationships between women. Thus she stresses the need for mothers to represent themselves differently to their daughters, and to emphasize their daughter's subjectivity. For example, in je, tu, nous, Irigaray offers suggestions for developing mother-daughter relationships such as displaying images of the mother-daughter couple, or consciously emphasizing that the daughter and the mother are both subjects in their own right. Changing relationships between mothers and daughters also requires language work.

d. Language

Since Irigaray agrees with Lacan that one must enter language (culture) in order to be a subject, she believes that language itself must change if women are to have their own subjectivity that is recognized at a cultural level. She believes that language typically excludes women from an active subject position. Further, inclusion of women in the current form of subjectivity is not the solution. Irigaray's goal is for there to be more than one subject position in language.

In order to prove that language excludes women from subjectivity, Irigaray conducted research that links the exclusion of women from subjectivity in Western culture to the speech patterns of men and women. She concluded that general speech patterns specific to each sex do exist and that women often do not occupy the subject position in language. She argues that in language experiments, women were less willing to occupy the subject position. Referring to the French language as a clear example-even though she believes that the structure of the English language does not exempt it from sexism-she discusses the dominance of the masculine in both the plural and the neuter, which takes the same form as the masculine. Irigaray argues that objects of value, such as the sun or God, are typically marked with the masculine gender while less important objects are feminine. Since language and society mutually affect each other, Irigaray believes that language must change along with society. Failure to see the importance of changing language is an impediment to real change.

According to Irigaray, it is crucial that women learn to occupy the position of "I" and "you" in language. Irigaray views the "I" and the "you" as markers of subjectivity. In her text I love to you, Irigaray describes how she determined that women do not occupy the subject position. She conducted an experiment where she gave her subjects a noun (e.g. enfant) and asked her test subjects to use the noun in a sentence as a pronoun (il or elle). The majority of both men and women consistently chose "il". She noted in another experiment, where she gave a sequence that implied the use of "elle" (e.g. robe-se-voir), that both sexes avoided using "elle" (she) and "elle se" (she herself) as an active subject. In contrast, when she gave a sequence that implied the use of il as a subject, it was almost always used. Further, Irigaray discovered that young girls seek an intersubjective dialogue with their mothers, but that their mothers did not reciprocate. Irigaray concludes from her research that women are not subjects in language in the same way as men. She believes that men and women do not produce the same sentences with similar cues, they use prepositions differently, and they represent temporality in language differently.

Irigaray seeks for men and women to recognize each other in language as irreducible others. She argues that this cannot happen until women occupy the subject position, and men learn to communicate with other subjects. Irigaray believes that a language of 'indirection' could help bring this to fruition. She describes this in her book I love to you. The title itself is an example of this language of indirection. Saying "I love to you" rather than "I love you" is a way of symbolizing a respect for the other. The "to" is a verbal barrier against appropriating or subjugating the other. Speaking differently in this manner is an integral part of Irigaray's general project to cultivate true intersubjectivity between the genders. However, she does not put forth a definitive plan for implementing this change in language.

e. Ethics

While ethics is a constant theme throughout her work, Irigaray's text An Ethics of Sexual Difference is devoted to this theme. In this text, Irigaray intertwines essays of her own on the ethics of sexual difference with dialogues that she has created between herself and six male philosophers: Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Merleau-Ponty and Levinas. Irigaray groups the dialogues into four sections that each begin with an essay of her own about sexual difference and love. Her own essay signals what themes she will address with regard to each of the philosophers she discusses. Irigaray utilizes her analyses of the male philosophers to discuss the following themes which are essential to her ethics: creative relationships between men and women that are not based in reproduction, separate 'places' for men and women (emotional and embodied), wonder at the difference of the other, acknowledgement of finiteness and intersubjectivity, and an embodied divinity.

In the first section, which engages Plato and Aristotle, Irigaray emphasizes that an ethical love relationship must be creative independent of procreation, and that both men and women need to have a place for themselves (be embodied individuals) that is open to, but not subsumable by, the other. In the second section, using Descartes and Spinoza, she argues that ethical love cannot occur between men and women until there is respect and wonder for the irreducible difference of the other, and an admittance and acceptance of one's finiteness. In the third section, in which there is no engagement with a male philosopher, Irigaray describes how the infinite is essential to love between men and women. She believes that it is unethical that women have not had access to subjectivity, and that the universals of our culture have been dominated by a male imaginary. She says that ethics requires that men and women understand themselves as embodied subjects. In the fourth and final section, Irigaray discusses Merleau-Ponty and Levinas. She argues that if ethical relationships are to occur between men and women, men must overcome nostalgia for the womb. Thus will they develop their identity, and open up a space for women to create their own. Further, Irigaray believes that we must think both otherness and divinity in conjunction with embodiment. She believes that separating mind and body is unethical insofar as it perpetuates the division in culture between man/mind and woman/body. Ethics involves thinking of otherness and divinity in terms of the sensible/transcendental.

At the end of her An Ethics of Sexual Difference, it is clear that Irigaray does not believe that Western culture is ethical, and that the primary reason is its treatment of women and nature. She believes that nothing short of altering our views of subjectivity, science, and religion can change this situation. Men and women must work together to learn to respect the irreducible difference between them. Women must become full subjects, and men must recognize that they are embodied. Further, ethical love relationships are based in respect for alterity and creativity outside of reproduction. Her text I love to you, which focuses on both language and ethics, is a clear example of how her discussion of ethics can also be developed from a Hegelian perspective.

f. Politics

Irigaray refuses to belong to any one group in the feminist movement because she believes that there is a tendency for groups to set themselves up against each other. When groups within the women's movement fight each other, this detracts from the overall goal of trying to positively alter the social, political, and symbolic position of women. Irigaray models solidarity among women in her unwillingness to belong exclusively to one group.

Irigaray is particularly active in the feminist movement in Italy. Texts such as I love to you, Democracy Begins Between Two, and Two Be Two were all inspired by and, at various moments, give accounts of Irigaray's experience with the Italian women's movement. An example of Irigaray's most recent collaborations with Italy, and a testimony to her commitment to her ideas, is her collaboration with the Commission for Equal Opportunities for the region of Emilia-Romagna. She was invited by this region to educate its citizens about her political ideals. Her text, Democracy Begins Between Two, was a part of that collaboration insofar as it was the theoretical work behind her role as adviser. In that text she also describes how she and Renzo Imbeni co-authored a "Report on Citizenship of the Union." This report argued for rights based on sexual difference and was submitted to the European Parliament for ratification.

5. Criticisms

a. Strategic Essentialism

Irigaray's use of strategic essentialism has been criticized as essentialism itself-or of endorsing the belief that social behavior follows from biology. The appearance of her translated work in the United States was met with great opposition. She was read as further naturalizing women at a time when women were benefiting both politically and socially from arguing that biology did not matter. Irigaray and her supporters defended her engagement with essentialist views as a strategy. They argued that when Irigaray seeks to alter the exclusion of the feminine by repeating or reiterating naturalizing discourses about female bodies, she is not suggesting a return to a lost female body that pre-exists patriarchy. Rather, she is employing her strategy of mimesis. While many contemporary interpreters now accept this view, strategic essentialism remains a controversial aspect of Irigaray's work.

b. Privileges Psychological Oppression

Irigaray has been criticized-especially by materialist feminists-on the grounds that she privileges questions of psychological oppression over social/material oppression. The concern is that the psychoanalytic discourse that Irigaray relies upon-even though she is critical of it-universalizes and abstracts away from material conditions that are of central concern to feminism. Materialist feminists do not believe that definitive changes in the structure of politics can result from the changes Irigaray proposes in psychoanalytic theories of subject formation. However, Irigaray's goal to challenge psychoanalytic theory and to change the definition of femininity evinces an agreement with the materialist position. Both agree that the ahistorical, overly universalized character of traditional psychoanalytic theory must be rejected. Further, Irigaray argues that focusing on language work and on altering allegedly intractable structures does not mean that women have to ignore material conditions. In This Sex Which Is Not One, Irigaray says that simultaneous with her challenges to the symbolic order, women must fight for equal wages, and against discrimination in employment and education. Irigaray recognizes that it is important to find ways to challenge the social and economic position in which women find themselves. But focusing exclusively on women's material or economic situation as the key to change will only-at best-grant women access to a male social role insofar as it will not change the definition of women. Irigaray's response to first changing material conditions would be that it would leave the question of a non-patriarchal view of female identity untouched. Due to the force of the oppression of women, it is the definitions that have to be changed before women, as distinct from men, will attain a social existence.

c. Elides Differences

Related to the materialist critique is the question of whether or not Irigaray's psychoanalytic approach can account for real differences between women. Irigaray often discusses a subject position for women and a new definition of women. A common question asked of Irigaray is whether or not a universal definition for women is desirable considering the real differences between women. More specifically, if Irigaray insists on a universal subject position for women, will it be exclusively determined by first world, white, middle class women? Can her universal successfully include the experiences of minority women, second and third world women, and economically disadvantaged women? Or does it create further exclusion among the excluded themselves? Irigaray's interpreters remain divided on this question.

d. Opaque Writing Style

Irigaray is often criticized along with other French feminists, such as Julia Kristeva, for the opacity of her writing style. Based on her writing style, she has been dismissed as elitist. Irigaray's writing is undeniably challenging and complex. But, the difficulty of her work can be equally productive as it is labor intensive. Irigaray's opacity can be viewed as fruitful when understood in conjunction with one mode of writing that she assumes-that of an analyst. In this style of writing, Irigaray not only will not assume the position of a master-knower who imparts knowledge in a linear manner, she also considers her readers' reactions to her work to be an integral part of that work. Her alleged failure to be clear, or to give a concrete, linear feminist theory, are invitations for readers to imagine their own vision for the future. Like the psychoanalytic session, her texts are a collaboration between writer (analyst) and reader (analysand). Irigaray believes that, through writing in this style, she can take culture as a whole
as her analysand.

e. Exclusive Ethics

Irigaray's view of ethics is criticized because she describes the quintessential ethical relationship using a man and a woman. The question arises of whether or not Irigaray is suggesting that the heterosexual couple is the model for ethical relationships. Since it is unclear whether or not Irigaray's view can be applied to other types of relationships (e.g. same sex friendships or same sex love relationships), this point of criticism remains unresolved. Related to this critique is a concern that Irigaray's emphasis on sexual difference and male/female relationships also prevent her from accounting for non-traditional family arrangements.

f. Later Work

Irigaray's most recent work raises the final point of controversy. In her earlier work, Irigaray refuses to give a new definition of women because she thinks that women must give it to themselves. However, in her most recent work she has developed laws that she submitted to the European Parliament for ratification. Irigaray's interpreters debate about the relationship between her early work and her most recent texts. Is there continuity between the early and the later position? Or has Irigaray abandoned her earlier project? A spectrum of interpretations are available with no final answer.

6. Annotated Selected Bibliography

a. English Translations

Irigaray, Luce. An Ethics of Sexual Difference. Trans. Carolyn Burke and Gillian C. Gill. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1993. (Mimetic engagement with Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas on the question of ethics. Irigaray elaborates here her own vision for ethical relationships.)

Between East and West: From Singularity to Community. Trans. Stephen Pluhácek. New York: Columbia UP, 2002. (Draws on Eastern philosophy and meditative techniques such as yoga to suggest new approaches to the question of sexual difference.)

Democracy Begins Between Two. Trans. Kirsteen Anderson. New York: Routledge, 2000. (Inspired by a partnership with the Commission for Equal Opportunities for the region of Emilia-Romagna in Italy, this text describes civil rights for women that would grant them an equal social position to men. This text also includes the Report on Citizenship of the Union by Renzo Imbeni. This report was written in collaboration with Irigaray and submitted to the European Parliament for ratification.)

Elemental Passions. Trans. Joanne Collie and Judith Still. New York: Routledge, 1992. (One text in Irigaray's series of elemental works. Addresses the relationship between men and women within the context of the elements and the senses.)

je, tu, nous: towards a culture of difference. Trans. Alison Martin. New York: Routledge, 1993. (A series of essays that address diverse issues such as civil rights for women and prejudices in biology about the mother-fetus relationship.)

I love to you: sketch of a possible felicity in history. Trans. Alison Martin. New York: Routledge, 1996. (Strategic engagement with Hegel in which Irigaray appropriates his use of dialectic in order to describe how men and women are both individuals and members of their gender. Also includes an extensive discussion of the language of indirection that Irigaray believes facilitates ethical relationships between men and women.)

The Irigaray Reader. Ed. Margaret Whitford. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1991. (Useful compilation of essays, some of which are found in the texts listed here.)

Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche. Trans. Gillian C. Gill. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991. (One text in Irigaray's elemental series, this text is a strategic engagement with Nietzsche and Derrida on the elision of femininity.)

Sexes and Genealogies. Trans. Gillian C. Gill. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. (Compilation of essays that address themes as diverse as how to alter the psychoanalytic session to descriptions of the sensible/transcendental.)
Speculum of the Other Woman. Trans. Gillian C. Gill. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985. (Irigaray's doctoral dissertation. This text is a complex engagement with the history of philosophy and psychoanalytic theory.)

The Forgetting of Air in Martin Heidegger. Trans. Mary Beth Mader. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999. (One text in Irigaray's elemental series. This text is a strategic engagement with the philosopher Martin Heidegger.)

Thinking the Difference: For a Peaceful Revolution. Trans. Karin Montin. New York: Routledge, 1994. (Compilation of essays on diverse themes. Similar in structure to je, tu, nous.)

This Sex Which Is Not One. Trans. Catherine Porter. New York: Cornell University Press, 1985. (Compilation of essays that discuss themes as diverse as where Lacanian theory went wrong, what mimesis is, and how to give a Marxist critique of the exchange of women in Western culture.)

To Be Two. Trans. Monique M. Rhodes and Marco F. Cocito-Monoc. New York: Routledge, 2001. (Later work. Further exploration of the question of difference and alterity.)

To Speak Is Never Neutral. New York: Routledge, 2000. (Sustained discussion of language. Studying the language of both mentally ill and normal subjects, Irigaray argues that language is never deployed in a completely neutral manner.)

Why Different?. Trans. Camille Collins. Ed. Luce Irigaray and Sylvere Lotinger. New York: Semiotext(e) Foreign Agent Series, 2000. (A compilation of interviews with Irigaray about select work written in the 80's and 90's such as Sexes and Genealogies and Language is Never Neutral.)

b. Suggested Further Reading

Chanter, Tina. Ethics of Eros: Irigaray's Re-Writing of the Philosophers. New York: Routledge, 1995. (Thoroughly discusses philosophical influences on Irigaray's work. Argues that comprehending the philosophical influences on Irigaray highlights her innovative ideas about the now passe sex/gender distinction.)

Cheah, Pheng and Elizabeth Grosz. "The Future of Sexual Difference: An Interview with Judith Butler and Drucilla Cornell." Diacritics, no. 28.1 (1998): 19-41. (Highlights central disagreements between prominent feminist thinkers about Irigaray's work.)

Freud, Sigmund. Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Trans. James Strachey in collaboration with Anna Freud. 24 vols. London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis, 1953-1974.

Freud, Sigmund. The Freud Reader. Ed. Peter Gay. NewYork: W.W. Norton & Co., 1989. (Accessible compilation of Freud's work. Of particular interest are "The Ego and the Id," "Femininity," "Mourning and Melancholia," and "Three Essays On The Theory of Sexuality." For unabridged versions of texts, consult the standard edition listed above.)

Fuss, Diana. Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature and Difference. New York: Routledge, 1989. (Interesting discussion of strategic essentialism. Includes a discussion of Irigaray, pp. 55-72.)

Gatens, Moira. Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power, and Corporeality. New York: Routledge, 1996. (Useful discussion of how the imaginary body plays out at a cultural level.)

Grosz, Elizabeth. Volatile Bodies: Towards a Corporeal Feminism. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994. (A central text in philosophy of the body and the overcoming of dualisms.)

Lacan, Jacques. Ecrits. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: W.W. Nortion & Co., 1977. (An accessible compilation of key essays in Lacanian thought.)

Feminine Sexuality. Ed. Mitchell, Juliet and Jacqueline Rose. Trans. Jaqueline Rose. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1985. (An accessible compilation of key essays by Lacan on feminine sexuality.)

Lorraine, Tamsin. Irigaray and Deleuze: Experiments in Visceral Philosophy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999. (Very clear description of difficult aspects of Irigaray's thought. Interesting thesis about connections with Deleuze and Guatarri.)

Schor, Naomi. "This Essentialism Which is Not One." Ed. Burke, Carolyn, Naomi Schor, and Margaret Whitford. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. (Very famous and useful discussion of the different kinds of essentialism.)

Whitford, Margaret. Luce Irigaray: Philosophy in the Feminine. New York: Routledge, 1991. (Whitford writes about the psychoanalytic influence on Irigaray's work. Whitford fleshes out Irigaray's appropriation of key psychoanalytic themes and clearly explains complex aspects of Irigaray's work.)
by
Sarah K. Donovan Email: mailto:Sarah.Donovan@villanova.edu?subject=Your Villanova University

CaRi InFo TenTaNg FilsUf IdOlAmU....

2007-09-08T05:14:00.000+07:00

A Timeline of Western Philosophers

600 B.C.E.

Thales
Anaximander
Anaximenes

Pythagoras

Xenophanes

500 B.C.E.
Heraclitus

Parmenides

Protagoras Zeno of Elea
Hippias Empedocles
Leucippus
Anaxagoras
Democritus Socrates

400 B.C.E.
Aristippus Antisthenes

Xenophon

Plato

Diogenes
Euclid Aristotle Xenocrates
Pyrrho

300 B.C.E.
Epicurus

Zeno of Citium
Timon

Archimedes Chrysippus
Eratosthenes

200 B.C.E.

Carneades

100 B.C.E.

Lucretius

Cicero

C.E.

Philo

Seneca

100

Epictetus

Marcus Aurelius

200
Sextus Empiricus

Plotinus

Porphyry

300

400

Hypatia Augustine

500

Boethius

600

700

800

al-Kindi

Erigena

900
al-Faràbi

Saadiah

1000

Ibn Sina
Ibn Gabirol

Anselm
al-Ghazàlì

1100

Abelard
Ibn Daud Peter Lombard
Ibn Rushd
Maimonides

1200
Fibonacci
Grosseteste

Albert the Great
Roger Bacon

Aquinas Bonaventure
Siger Boetius of Dacia

1300

Scotus

Eckhart Marsilius of Padua
Ockham
Gersonides
Buridan

Crescas

1400

Cusa

Valla

Pico della Mirandola Ficino

1500

Erasmus

Machiavelli Thomas More
Paracelsus
Copernicus
Ramus

1550

Teresa of Avila

Montaigne
Bruno

Suarez

1600
Kepler Charron

Mersenne
Francis Bacon Grotius
Galileo
Herbert of Cherbury
Gassendi Princess Elizabeth
Fermat Queen Kristina Descartes
Hobbes Filmer

1650
Glanvill Geulincx Pascal
Henry More Cordemoy Nicole
Cudworth Cavendish Arnauld
Cumberland Rohault Foucher
Boyle
Malebranche

Pufendorf Spinoza
Newton Conway Régis
Locke Masham
Toland Bayle Souvré

1700
Clarke Shaftesbury Norris

Leibniz
Berkeley

Cockburn Vico
Mandeville
Hutcheson Butler Wolff

Gay
Hume

La Mettrie
Hartley Montesquieu

1750
Euler Condillac
Price d'Alembert Voltaire

Diderot Rousseau
Bayes d'Holbach Helvétius
Smith Jefferson
Reid Paine Lessing
Burke
Kant
Wollstonecraft Bentham Mendelssohn
Stewart Godwin Schiller
Malthus Paley Fichte

1800
Gauss de Staël Schelling

Schleiermacher
Laplace
Hegel
Lamarck Saint-Simon
Fourier
Schopenhauer

Whately
Babbage
Lobachevsky John Austin Comte
Whewell James Mill Proudhon
Bolzano Emerson Feuerbach
De Morgan Fuller Kierkegaard
Boole Thoreau

1850
Riemann Sojourner Truth Marx

Darwin Taylor Engels

Hamilton
Mendel J. S. Mill Lotze

Spencer
Venn Anthony Bakunin
Cantor Brentano

1875

Sidgwick
Dedekind Clifford

Peirce Caird
Mach
Green
Frege Dilthey Nietzsche
Carroll
Bosanquet
Peano Stanton Ritchie
Durkheim James Royce

Gilman Bradley
Pareto Veblen

1900
Planck Freud Weber Bergson
Poincare Meinong Dubois Cook Wilson
Duhem Husserl Addams Seth
Zermelo Moore
Croce
Einstein Jung Goldman Vaihinger
Bohr Watson Luxemburg Otto
Hilbert

Unamuno

Adler Lenin Saussure
Lukasciewicz Dewey Trotsky Buber
Russell

Whitehead

Mead Alexander McTaggart
Keynes Broad Lukács Santayana

1925
Reichenbach Lovejoy Ross Berdyaev
Heisenberg Schlick Kelsen Heidegger
Neurath Ramsey Hartmann Cassirer
Gödel Perry Gramsci Collingwood
Schrödinger C. I. Lewis Ingarden
Ayer Bachelard Mao Zedong Maritain
Waismann
Day Ortega y Gasset
Tarski Carnap
Blanshard
E. Nagel Popper Gandhi

Horney
Sartre
Ryle H.H. Price Langer Camus

Stevenson Hayek Jaspers
Wittgenstein

Adorno
Turing Prichard Marcel Beauvoir

1950
von Neumann Lorenz Wisdom Tillich
Hopper Arrow Hare Merleau-Ponty
Polya Skinner Berlin Weil
Church Anscombe Rand Horkheimer
Feigl Austin Hampshire Arendt
Hempel Strawson Kurt Baier Gadamer
Quine Grice Hart Lacan
Goodman Sellars
Habermas
Kuhn Smart Marcuse
Feynman Bergmann
Ricoeur
Gettier Armstrong King Althusser
Chomsky Chisholm
Derrida
Searle Lakatos Rawls Foucault
Kripke E.O. Wilson
Deleuze

1975
Feyerabend Thomson Singer Eco
Dummett Putnam Dworkin Lyotard
Davidson T. Nagel Midgley Daly
Hofstadter Rorty Nozick Cixous
Mandelbrot Kim Regan Le Dœuff

Haraway Gilligan Kristeva
Minsky Appiah Noddings Irigaray
Lehrer Annette Baier Held
Harding
Ruddick Hoagland

Kemerling MacKinnon
Dennett Nussbaum
Bordo

West hooks

2000

POSTMODERNISM, PEDAGOGY, AND PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION

2007-09-02T02:17:00.000+07:00

Clive Beck
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

INTRODUCTION

In recent years, philosophers of education have been paying a great deal of attention to trends within philosophy which may be loosely referred to as “postmodernist.” In this paper, I wish to examine some of these trends and note some implications they have both for pedagogy in schools and for teaching and research in philosophy of education.

It may be presumptuous of me to talk on this vast topic. But I wish to assure you that I am not doing so just because, as PES President for the year, I have a captive audience. I would have been this presumptuous even if my paper had been refereed! But then, of course, it probably would not have been accepted. Today, then, you are seeing academic freedom at work. I hope the results are better than they often are when academics are given freedom.

I should say at the outset that I am not an “expert” on postmodernism. However, postmodernist doctrines and practices kept intruding into my life — especially as an attender of PES conferences and a reader of graduate student theses and course papers — to the point where I could no longer ignore them. Also, from my little “site” in the academic world — some might call it a hind-site but I prefer to see it as a fore-sight — I see enough problems with postmodernism, and enough misplaced criticisms of it, that I am inclined to say “to heck with the experts” and just wade in, a response which postmodernists officially at least must accept, given their avowed rejection of the concept of an expert.

In discussing postmodernism I will, as a non-expert, focus especially on secondary sources, the literature which for me is the most accessible and with which I have been able to become most familiar. I will also give a large amount of attention to one writer, namely Richard Rorty, mainly because among self-proclaimed postmodernists he is one of the more theoretical, which suits my purposes in this paper. Some might say that Rorty’s theoretical approach means that he is less of a postmodernist; but to me it means that he is a more open postmodernist, willing to talk about his methodological and substantive assumptions.

Philosophical postmodernism is a development of which one might say that, like many other things, it has done more good than harm and it has done an awful lot of harm! As with most philosophical movements, it is perhaps best viewed as a rich quarry in which we can go searching for gems of insight while not feeling obliged to take home all the rubble. In this paper I will be concentrating mainly on the gems, looking at the positive side of postmodernism. This should not be interpreted as indicating that I am a postmodernist; however, given the trenchant criticisms of modernism developed by postmodernism, I would equally not wish to be seen as a modernist.

WHAT IS POSTMODERNISM?

Postmodernism is not just a philosophical movement: it is found also, for example, in architecture, the graphic arts, dance, music, literature, and literary theory.¹ As a general cultural phenomenon, it has such features as the challenging of convention, the mixing of styles, tolerance of ambiguity, emphasis on diversity, acceptance (indeed celebration) of innovation and change, and stress on the constructedness of reality.

Philosophical postmodernism, in turn, does not represent a single point of view. There are progressive postmodernists and conservative ones,² postmodernists of “resistance” and postmodernists of “reaction,”³ strongly reform-minded postmodernists and others who concentrate on pricking bubbles. There are bleeding hearts and loose cannons. There is constant debate among so-called postmodernists about how a true postmodernist should approach life and inquiry and hence what qualifies as postmodernism.

The names most often associated with postmodernism are those of Jean-Francois Lyotard, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Richard Rorty. Theoretical approaches most commonly seen as postmodernist are deconstruction(ism), poststructuralism, and neopragmatism.⁴ However, a case could be made for adding other names, e.g., Nietzsche, the later Wittgenstein, Winch, Heidegger, Gadamer, and Kuhn; and other theoretical approaches, e.g., perspectivalism, postanalytic philosophy, and hermeneutics. Even the critical theory of Jurgen Habermas, with its affinity with hermeneutics and its communicative ethics, has clear postmodern elements, despite Habermas’s insistence that he is furthering the project of modernity rather than rejecting it. I mention all these names and movements not to impress or confuse, but to show the great overlap between different schools of thought and the pervasiveness of the postmodernist outlook. I feel that in discussing postmodernism we have often spent too much time searching for a neat central core. What is needed rather is to expose ourselves to and respond to a whole family of related outlooks and approaches.

Overlap can be found not only between contemporary theoretical approaches but also between these and ones of earlier historical periods. This is the view of Lyotard who, according to John McGowan, holds that “postmodern and modern cannot be distinguished from each other temporally…they exist simultaneously, referring to two different responses to modernity.”⁵ Rorty takes a similar position, questioning whether the shifts associated with postmodernism “are more than the latest moments of a historicization of philosophy which has been going on continuously since Hegel.”⁶ Further, Rorty thinks that these changes were “pretty well complete in Dewey.”⁷ He does not see Foucault, for example, as any more radical in the postmodern manner than Dewey. He says: “I do not see any difference between Dewey and Foucault on narrowly philosophical grounds. The only difference I see between them is the presence or lack of social hope which they display.”⁸

There is of course something odd about seeing Hegel, Nietzsche, or even Dewey as postmodernists, given that they wrote within the modern era and in many ways expressed its spirit. Some writers prefer a more chronologically correct definition of postmodernism. John McGowan, for example, sides with Frederic Jameson in expressing the view that “postmodernism as a temporal term designates a (very recent) historical period that is to be identified by a set of characteristics that operate across the whole historical terrain.”⁹ However, despite the awkwardness, I prefer to interpret postmodernism as embracing many approaches and insights which were around before the last few decades and even before the present century. Personally, I feel I have been something of a postmodernist most of my life, even before my exposure to postmodernist writings (I can show you chapter and verse if you wish). And in terms of the history of philosophy, I think the notion that these are entirely new developments exaggerates the extent to which human thought and behavior change, and leaves us wondering how people in earlier centuries could have been so dense as to be completely taken in by the ideas of Plato, Descartes, and Kant. Indeed, it is a good question whether these gentlemen were completely taken in by them themselves: as we know, philosophers often get carried away, and then feel compelled to defend what they have said.

For these various reasons, then, the view of postmodernism I am employing in this paper is a rather broad one. In opting for breadth, however, I am not alone. Some general philosophers, such as Rorty (as we have seen) and Richard Bernstein, take a similar tack, as do many educational theorists — for example, Stanley Aronowitz, Henry Giroux, and William Doll.¹⁰

AN OUTLOOK INFLUENCED BY POSTMODERNISM

Accounts of postmodernism abound today in the literature of both general philosophy and educational theory.¹¹ Accordingly, I will not here provide a general exposition of postmodernism but rather, after the brief statement of a particular theme, will go straight to an integration of it (usually in a modified form) into my own proposed approach. I hope, however, that such a treatment will, incidentally, help clarify the nature of postmodernism.

The understanding of postmodernism I will assume here is a rough composite of ideas from Rorty (especially) and Lyotard, Derrida, and Foucault. It should be stressed, however, that many of these ideas have appeared in other schools of thought, both historical and contemporary, e.g., Marxism, feminism, critical pedagogy. I have chosen to focus on these particular writers because they provide a convenient point of departure; and also because discussing them helps us come to terms with the dominant philosophical tradition, which we have some responsibility to try to influence.

I have called what I am presenting here an “outlook,” but that term is rather too cognitive in its connotations. The word “attitude” is sometimes seen as more appropriate for what postmodernists are talking about. The issues in question also have a strong methodological component: they have to do with an “approach” to inquiry and life in general. One might almost say that what we are concerned with here is a way of life, which includes cognitive, affective, and methodological components.

Reality

Postmodernists have helped us see that reality is more complex than we had imagined. It does not exist objectively, “out there,” simply to be mirrored by our thoughts. Rather, it is in part a human creation. We mold reality in accordance with our needs, interests, prejudices, and cultural traditions.

But reality is not entirely a human construction, “made by us, not given to us,”¹² as postmodernists have claimed. Knowledge is the product of an interaction between our ideas about the world and our experience of the world. As E.T. Gendlin says, “the assumption is overstated, that concepts and social forms entirely determine…experience…. [W]hat the forms work-in, talks back.”¹³ Of course, all experience is influenced by our concepts: we “see” things — even physical things — through cultural lenses. But this influence is not all-controlling; again and again reality surprises us (as modern science has shown) in ways that compel us to modify our ideas.¹⁴ We thought the world was flat, for example, but were obliged eventually to change our minds.

This view may appear dangerously close to Kant’s notion that knowledge is a product of interaction between mental structures and sense data. However, whereas Kant’s mental structures were innate and universal and his sense data natural and pure, I see culture and experience as already deeply infected by each other. They are interdependent, and differ only in degree of determination by human agency.

A corollary of this interactive view of reality is that there is no sharp fact-value distinction. All factual statements reflect the values they serve, and all value beliefs are conditioned by factual assumptions. There is again a difference of degree which enables us to talk of “facts” and “values.” But what we call facts are only somewhat less value-determined: they are not independent of values. This ties in with Foucault’s postmodernist notion that knowledge and power cannot be separated, since knowledge embodies the values of those who are powerful enough to create and disseminate it.¹⁵ Foucault has perhaps an overly conspiratorial view of knowledge, but the link with people’s interests which he identifies cannot be denied.

Change and Difference

Because reality is in part culture dependent, it changes over time, as cultures do, and varies from community to community. Knowledge is neither eternal nor universal. Once again, however, we should not exaggerate this point, as postmodernists have done. There are “enduring interests” (Dewey) and “tentative frameworks” (Charles Taylor) which point to a degree of continuity; and there are some commonalities (again qualified) from culture to culture and probably across the whole human race.

To deny continuity and commonality where it in fact exists, as postmodernists tend to do, is just as irrational and unpragmatic as to see knowledge as eternal and universal. It betrays an absolutist attachment to such values as innovation, originality, and diversity. Furthermore, it can have unfortunate practical consequences, since it leaves people without an adequate basis for daily living. It is one thing to reject the idea of a fixed, universal foundation to reality, quite another to claim that no useful guidelines can ever be identified.

Taking note of the postmodernists’ cautions, however, we should be careful with generalizations: they can be deceptive. Behind a general formulation such as “all humans are rational” or “people pursue pleasure” there is usually a great diversity of realities and interpretations. We should try to become more aware of this, and also more often explicitly qualify claims with words such as “some,” “many,” “most,” “sometimes,” “often.” But even qualified generalizations are of great value in everyday life.

Metaphysics

Postmodernism is often seen by its proponents as bringing an end to metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, and so forth, on the ground that these types of discourse assume a fixed, universal reality and method of inquiry. However, in my view it is better to shift to a modified conception of these fields rather than do away with them completely. Precisely because we live in a changing, fragmented, “postmodern” world, we need whatever stability we can find. And inquiry into general intellectual, moral, and other patterns — limited and tentative though they may be — is a legitimate form of “metaphysics.”

An irony of the postmodernist movement is that, despite itself, it is centrally concerned with what we can say of a general nature about reality. I would even say that it has led to a massive (and salutary) revival of metaphysics. Postmodernists believe they have put an end to metaphysics and have thrown the ladder away after reaching their foundationless perch. But in fact their writings are full of general assumptions about culture, human nature, values, inquiry. As Landon Beyer and Daniel Liston observe, postmodernist analyses are paradoxical, containing “standpoints without footings” and “talking about nothing.”¹⁶ Not that postmodernists always deny that this is what they do — Derrida happily admits that he “crosses out” his own claims; but to admit a fault is different from overcoming it.

The Self

Postmodernism has rightly questioned the idea of a universal, unchanging, unified self or “subject” which has full knowledge of and control over what it thinks, says, and does. It has shown that the self is strongly influenced by its surrounding culture, changes with that culture, and is fragmented like that culture. To a degree, it is not we who think, speak, and act but the culture which thinks, speaks, and acts through us. In many ways Rorty is correct when he describes “the moral self” as “a network of beliefs, desires, and emotions with nothing behind it…constantly reweaving itself…not by reference to general criteria…but in the hit-or-miss way in which cells readjust themselves to meet the pressures of the environment.”¹⁷

It is an exaggeration, however, to maintain that because the self is limited, conditioned, and contingent in this way it has no significance, identity, or capacities. Individuals may be no more important than cultures, but neither are they less so. Individuals are just as unified and characterizable as communities, and they have considerable (though not unlimited) capacity for self-knowledge, self-expression, and self-regulation. There is no basis for emphasizing culture or community to the neglect of individuals.

And the same may be said for specific groups within a larger culture: ethnic groups, gender categories, socio-economic classes, and so on. There is a tendency among postmodernists to emphasize these categories to the neglect of individuals. But in fact two individuals of the same national background, ethnicity, gender, religion, or the like may differ greatly. And two individuals who differ in all these respects may turn out to be “kindred spirits” who can have a close friendship, even a good marriage, and agree on most major matters. Individuals are only in part identifiable in terms of the various categories to which they belong.

Inquiry

Postmodernist insights require a major shift in our conception of inquiry. No longer should we see ourselves as seeking to uncover a pre-existing reality; rather, we are involved in an interactive process of knowledge creation. We are developing a “working understanding” of reality and life, one which suits our purposes. And because purposes and context vary from individual to individual and from group to group, what we arrive at is in part autobiographical; it reflects our “personal narrative,” our particular “site” in the world.

To some extent, then, we must question the notion of expertise. In particular fields, some people do know more than others; but the difference, insofar as it exists, is usually one of degree. So-called “experts” are often heavily dependent on “non-experts” for input if they are to arrive at sound insights; and since each individual or group’s needs and circumstances are different, “expert knowledge” cannot be simply applied; it must be greatly modified for a particular case. The interaction between expert and non-expert, teacher and taught, is often best seen as a dialogue or “conversation” (to use Rorty’s term), in which there is mutual influence rather than simple transmission from one to the other.

The knowledge arrived at, too, is more ambiguous and unstable than we had previously thought. It refers to probabilities rather than certainties, average effects, better rather than the best; and it is constantly changing as each individual or group gives a particular interpretation to it, reflecting distinctive needs and experiences. And as postmodernists have pointed out, language is well adapted to this constant “play” of interpretation. Words are not tied to fixed concepts or referents; they depend for their meaning on a whole system of words within which they are embedded, a system which changes over time and varies from one speech community or language user to another.

Inquiry must also be approached “pragmatically.”¹⁸ We should not insist that reality, including human nature, take a certain form but rather accept what emerges. If altruism, for example, has to be based in part on feelings of group solidarity, then we must acknowledge that: there is no point clinging to a rationalistic view of moral motivation that cannot work.

Once again, however, we should be careful not to exaggerate these points. Postmodernists have often attacked notions of reason, means-end thinking, theory, teaching. But in fact there is a place for them, in a modified form. We must employ reason as well as feelings, intuitions, direct social influence, and so forth. We must think in means-end terms to some extent if we are to know what we want in life and how to achieve it. Theory, understood as a loose interconnection of qualified generalizations, is crucial for daily living. Teaching, so long as it is largely dialogical, is both possible and necessary. And so on. All of these can cause problems if they are understood too strictly and taken too seriously; but without them we would quite literally be lost.

We must also qualify the notion of a “pragmatic” approach to inquiry. While there is no external foundation to reality, no “traditional Kantian backup,” as Rorty says, there are internal continuities which serve as important reference points. It is possible and necessary, then, to develop “theory” which explains particular phenomena in terms of these continuities. Postmodernists often display an “easy pragmatism” which, while claiming to be open and tolerant, is merely superficial, since it fails to develop and use theory of this kind; its doctrines thus become dogmatic assertions, without explanation or justification.

Forms of Scholarship

One of the slogans of postmodernism is that “there is no center,” and in particular there is no central tradition of scholarship (namely Eurocentric, middle- class, predominantly male) of which other traditions — Native American, Afro-American, Islamic, feminist, working class, for example — are mere colonies. Insofar as we study traditional Western scholarship, we should be wary of its white, middle-class, male bias; and we should (if we belong to one or more other categories) approach it as equals, expecting to contribute as much as we learn. This is in line with the view of knowledge and inquiry noted earlier.

With this approach I am in agreement, but as you might expect I have some provisos. To begin with, we should not exaggerate the extent of the bias (great though it undoubtedly is) in traditional Western scholarship. There is much we can learn from such scholarship (although also much we must reject). This is because the writers in question, though white, middle- or upper-class, and male, were also human beings, struggling with basic issues of how humans are to survive, flourish, and find meaning in life. The bias in favor of particular ethnic, class, and gender interests is only part of the picture. Terms such as “Eurocentric” and “patriarchal” are bandied about too much, as though they described everything that an individual or group does, and as if every error that is made is due to the bias in question. As noted earlier, people of different races, genders, religions, or whatever may have a great deal in common. There is enormous scope for people of different categories to learn from each other’s scholarship.

None of this means, however, that we should regard the Western scholarly tradition as the central one to which others merely contribute or add footnotes. Rather, white, middle-class males should just contribute along with everyone else, and any new, common tradition should be pluralistic scholarship, not simply a modification of the “mainstream.”

A key point, in line with my earlier remarks about “the self,” is that in addition to anti-racist, feminist, anti-agist, etc. scholarship we need individual scholarship: Jane Doe scholarship, José Sanchez scholarship, Shiu Chun Leung scholarship, etc. We have not taken the personal quest of individuals seriously enough: every human being is constantly questioning, observing, theorizing, trying to understand life and make the most of it in his or her own very distinctive situation. The radical democracy of postmodernism leads in this direction, but it gets waylaid because of its excessive preoccupation with cultures and speech communities. Every individual should be seen as the center of a scholarship — her or his own — comparing notes on equal terms with other individuals, groups, and traditions.

SOME IMPLICATIONS FOR PEDAGOGY

There are many implications of the foregoing for educational practice, but space permits me only to outline a few of the main ones. To begin with, students in schools from an early age should be helped to see how ideas and institutions are tailored to suit people’s values and interests: how, for example, a picture book or novel expresses the distinctive needs and background of the author; or how TV programming promotes life-styles which benefit commercial enterprises; or how the health professions tend to favor males over females; or how the school curriculum reflects the values of certain sectors of society. This need not involve use of technical language, or be particularly confrontational: such study can be a rather straightforward and enjoyable aspect of the school day. But unless we foster this kind of cultural-political understanding, we are supporting our students’ continued perception of the world as value-neutral, unproblematic, and unchangeable.

Surprisingly, Rorty questions engaging in this kind of problem posing in schools. He maintains that “lower education” (primary and secondary) “is mostly a matter of socialization, of trying to inculcate a sense of citizenship.” It “should aim primarily at communicating enough of what is held to be true by the society to which the children belong so that they can function as citizens of that society. Whether it is true or not is none of the educator’s business, in his or her professional capacity.”¹⁹ However, to me this is an extraordinary and inexplicable betrayal of the main thrust of postmodernism. How can a society succeed in constantly “breaking the crust of convention,” as Rorty advocates,²⁰ when all its school teachers and all its young people up to the age of eighteen are involved in single-minded reinforcement of convention? And how will this affect the self-image and well-being of young people who, as every parent knows, begin systematically to question our conventions from about the age of two? I agree that schools should teach students about social conventions and institutions, probably more than they do at present; but integral to that teaching should be fundamental evaluation and critique.

At the same time as we encourage the questioning of accepted “realities,” however, we must help students find “foundations” for their lives, if of a less permanent kind. Lack of a sense of stability and direction is one of the major problems of contemporary culture and is a factor in today’s reactionary trends in religion, politics, education, and other spheres. If we do not acknowledge this need, our anti-foundationalist teaching may backfire and at any rate may cause students (and parents) considerable distress. We should work with students (and parents, as far as possible) in a dialogical manner, identifying outlooks which are an appropriate combination of old and new elements. Students need to find enduring values (e.g., relational, aesthetic, occupational) and ideals (e.g., pluralistic, global, ecological) which do not contradict their experience of reality but at the same time provide an adequate basis for everyday living.

One way of putting this point is to say, as I did in Part III, that “metaphysics” is important. Schools must encourage and assist students to engage in general theorizing about reality and life. The postmodernist emphasis on concrete, local concerns is important and should be applied in education: school studies are often too abstract and of little apparent relevance. But learning should combine both the concrete and the general. The learning of isolated facts and skills can be equally boring and meaningless. It is often through the drawing of broader connections between phenomena and the exploration of their value implications that learning comes alive. And study of this more “theoretical” kind is necessary if students are to build up a comprehensive worldview and way of life that will give them the security, direction, and meaning they need.

Another set of implications for schooling has to do with the democratic and dialogical emphasis of postmodernism, its questioning of the motives of authorities and its downplaying of the role of experts. We must think increasingly in terms of “teachers and students learning together,” rather than the one telling the other how to live in a “top-down” manner. This is necessary both so that the values and interests of students are taken into account, and so that the wealth of their everyday experience is made available to fellow students and to the teacher.

Of course, the extent to which the teacher may be regarded as an expert varies from subject to subject. In science and mathematics, for example, a teacher may well know considerably more than most of the students in the class, while in values and family life this is less obviously the case; and with respect to a particular values topic, e.g., bullying in the school yard, a student may well know more than the teacher. But even where the teacher does have greater knowledge, we should question excessive use of a teacher dominated method. Lyotard has pointed out the extent to which students today at the postsecondary level can learn from computerized data banks, which he calls “the Encyclopedia of tomorrow;”²¹ and the same point could be made with respect to the elementary and secondary levels. Increasingly, teachers must help students “learn how to learn,” using such technology. One great advantage of self-directed inquiry is that through it students are more actively involved in determining what they learn and why, and thus are able to give expression to their distinctive interests and needs.

However, while I support a democratic, dialogical approach in schools, I believe that Lyotard (like another education critic, Ivan Illich, before him) underestimates the importance of the teacher in motivating and facilitating learning. The activity of teachers in structuring school studies and making learning materials available at appropriate points results in students learning a great many things they would not otherwise learn. It is not enough simply to give students learning skills and set them loose: most young people need ongoing encouragement and help in order to learn what they need for life in today’s world. Perhaps this is simply due to a shortcoming of contemporary culture: it has made young people too dependent on adult help. Or perhaps it is the result of more basic features of human nature. But whatever the reason, so long as students need external help in order to learn, we are hiding our heads in the sand if we do not provide it. (We, on the other hand, also need help from our students in order to learn).

In democratizing education, then, we should not simply dismantle all structures and hope that something happens, but rather try to create structures that give students the support they need and allow them to make a significant input and have optimal control over their learning. While schooling should as far as possible be dialogical, it should not be a mere pooling of ignorance. To be effective, dialogue requires strong input of many kinds: information, examples, stories, feelings, ideas, theories, worldviews, and so on. The point about a democratic approach is not that structure and content are unnecessary, but that students (and teachers) should have a major say in how their learning is structured and what content is made available to them.

SOME IMPLICATIONS FOR PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION

There are many implications of what we have been discussing for philosophy of education, but once again I must be selective. To begin with, students of education, like school students, should be helped to see that knowledge is value dependent, culture dependent, and changeable — that we are not searching for a fixed, universal philosophy of life and education. At the same time, however, they should be helped to identify continuities and commonalities that give some stability and direction to their lives and to the practice of teaching.

One way of achieving the twofold goal of combating foundationalism and yet helping students develop modest “foundations” for life and education is to study various “forms of scholarship” — e.g., anti-racist, feminist, individual, and so on — as advocated in Part III, above. In this way students will see that theory is necessarily tailored to suit diverse group and individual needs. As I have argued, however, this does not involve denying substantial overlap between different forms of scholarship. Indeed, the exploration of what different categories of people have in common should be a major aspect of educational studies.

The philosophy of education classroom, like the school classroom, should also be strongly democratic and dialogical. In this way the energies of students will be engaged, their values respected, and their insights made available to fellow students and to professors. It is surprising how often professors of education advocate democracy for schools and yet do not practice it with their own students. If we believe in a democratic approach to inquiry we should model it ourselves, so that our students understand what we mean and are given the opportunity to develop a democratic pedagogy which they can in turn employ in schools.

Adopting a genuinely democratic and dialogical approach involves a fundamental re-thinking of the nature of philosophy — and of intellectual work in general — and of our role as professors. We should not view our research into educational theory as something that can be carried on separately — in the mind or in the study — and then used as a key to unlock the secrets of education and life. As Rorty says:

…the intellectual…is just a special case — just somebody who does with marks and noises what other people do with their spouses and children, their fellow workers, the tools of their trade, the cash accounts of their businesses, the possessions they accumulate in their homes, the music they listen to, the sports they play and watch, or the trees they pass on their way to work.²²

Philosophers are simply living life like everyone else, working on the same problems as everyone else, but using a distinctive language (often more distinctive than need be). We should “compare notes” with others, including our students, not impose our solutions on them.

In this respect, the postmodernist attitude is the same as the hermeneutic attitude, on Gadamer’s interpretation. As Dieter Misgeld expounds Gadamer’s position:

Hermeneutics…is a mode of inquiry that refuses to legitimate any disposition on the side of those inquiring to exempt themselves from what is topical in the inquiry…. [I]f inquiry is itself a situated activity, just as much as what one studies, the conduct of life of those inquiring comes to be an issue as does the relation of inquiry to their lives.²³

This is not to downplay the importance of theory, as many postmodernists have done. Rather it is to recognize that everyone is constantly theorizing about life — trying to make sense of it — including the academically “least able” student in our class. Our task as professors is not to blind students with our knowledge of the history of philosophy and our command of technical jargon but rather to help them see that they are grappling with the same issues as we are — and have been all their lives — and to enable them to get into conversation with philosophers, ancient and modern, and other theorists, largely as equals.

However, while our educational theory will always be somewhat self-referential in this way, the broader our base of experience the more others (including our students) will gain from our theory. We education professors must as much as possible go out into society, homes, schools. As noted earlier, philosophy is not a theoretical key that unlocks practice. Theory must be fundamentally rooted in practical experience if it is to be of value. The common professorial disclaimer that we are “not equipped” to talk about practical matters appears humble but is in fact arrogant; and it betrays a lack of understanding of theory. If we are not equipped to talk about practice, we are not equipped to talk about theory. We must as far as possible address both theory and practice. That is the most effective way to contribute to education, which is our responsibility. People who specialize mainly in theory or mainly in practice can make a contribution, but normally they would contribute more even in their area of specialization if they did both (in accordance with Buckminster Fuller’s principle of synergy). Far from doing a better job by specializing in theory, we almost inevitably do a worse job.

Finally, just as we should encourage our students to dialogue with us and other theorists rather than “drinking it in,” so we ourselves should be more critical — or dialogical — in relation to so-called “pure” philosophers. I feel that, in general, philosophers of education over the past few decades have shown too much deference to pure philosophy. We have tended to quote people such as Austin, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Habermas, Foucault, Rorty, and so on rather than “interrogating” them. As you can see from this paper, I believe in taking pure philosophers seriously; but they, like us, make enormous errors. I feel that, in good postmodernist spirit, we who are in education should develop a positive image of ourselves as sensitive, knowledgeable people, working away in our particular “site,” interacting with other scholars and learning from them, but having as much to offer as to gain, and as in no way merely “applying” the “findings” of pure philosophy.

In closing, I would like to pose a question: Am I here today engaging in genuine dialogue (and do I with my students back home?) or am I preaching, imposing, controlling, and so forth, in the manner criticized by postmodernists and by myself in this paper? That is something I want to reflect on more. But part of the answer, I think, lies in how active you are in assessing what I have to say. Part of the key to avoiding authoritarianism and indoctrination in classrooms — of school or university — is not to have teachers refrain from saying what they think, but rather to have students feeling free — and acquiring the skills, emotions, and habits they need — to react strongly and honestly to what teachers say. And the same is true here. I have said my piece as forcefully and clearly as I can. Now it is up to you to assess equally forcefully what I have said from the vantage point of your own experience, culture, ideas, interests, needs, values. I am sure my respondents will do that only too soon!

For responseS to this essay, see Feinberg and Greene.

¹On this point see Linda Hutcheon, The Politics of Postmodernism (London: Routledge, 1989), 1.

²See Stanley Aronowitz and Henry Giroux, Postmodern Education (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), 19, 59.

³See Carol Nicholson, “Postmodernism, Feminism, and Education: The Need for Solidarity,” Educational Theory 40, no. 1 (1990): 43.

⁴See Nicholson, 198.

⁵John McGowan, Postmodernism and Its Critics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 184.

⁶Richard Rorty, “The Dangers of Over-Philosophication — Reply to Arcilla and Nicholson,” Educational Theory 40, no. 1 (1990): 43.

⁷Rorty, “The Dangers of Over-Philosophication,” 43.

⁸Rorty, “The Dangers of Over-Philosophication,” 44.

⁹McGowan, 181. My parentheses.

¹⁰See Aronowitz and Giroux’s Postmodern Education and William Doll’s, A Post-Modern Perspective on Curriculum (New York: Teachers College Press, 1993).

¹¹Apart from works cited above and below, I would like to mention especially Chris Weedon, Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987).

¹²Hutcheon, 2.

¹³E.T. Gendlin, “Thinking Beyond Patterns: Body, Language, and Situations,” in The Presence of Feeling in Thoughts, ed. B. denOuden and M. Moen (New York: Peter Lang, 1991), 29.

¹⁴This process of interaction is discussed by Northrop Frye in terms of the tension between centripetal and centrifugal tendencies. See his The Great Code (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983), 52, 61-62, 217-18; and Words with Power (Penguin, 1990), 37-40

¹⁵See for example Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality (New York: Random House/Vintage, 1990/1976), 11-13.

¹⁶Landon E. Beyer and Daniel P. Liston, “Discourse or Moral Action? A Critique of Postmodernism,” Educational Theory 42, no. 4 (1992): 383-87.

¹⁷Richard Rorty, “Postmodernist Bourgeois Liberalism,” in Hermeneutics and Praxis, ed. Robert Hollinger (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985), 217.

¹⁸For accounts of Rorty’s pragmatism, see for example, his Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 63-77; and Richard Bernstein’s Beyond Objectivity and Relativism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), 198-207.

¹⁹Rorty, “The Dangers of Over-Philosophication,” 41-42.

²⁰Rorty, “The Dangers of Over-Philosophication,” 44.

²¹Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984/1979), 51.

²²Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 37.

²³Dieter Misgeld, “On Gadamer’s Hermeneutics,” in Hermeneutics and Praxis, ed. Robert Hollinger, 162.

Postmodern architecture

2007-09-02T01:37:00.003+07:00

1000 de La Gauchetière, with ornamented and strongly defined top, middle and bottom. Contrast with the modernist Seagram Building and Torre Picasso

Postmodern architecture is an international style whose first examples are generally cited as being from the 1950s, and which continues to influence present-day architecture. Postmodernity in architecture is generally thought to be heralded by the return of "wit, ornament and reference" to architecture in response to the formalism of the International Style of modernism. As with many cultural movements, some of postmodernism's most pronounced and visible ideas can be seen in architecture. The functional and formalized shapes and spaces of the modernist movement are replaced by unapologetically diverse aesthetics: styles collide, form is adopted for its own sake, and new ways of viewing familiar styles and space abound.

Classic examples of modern architecture are the Lever House and the Seagram Building in commercial space, and the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright or the Bauhaus movement in private or communal spaces. Transitional examples of postmodern architecture are the Portland Building in Portland, Oregon and the Sony Building (New York City) (originally AT&T Building) in New York City, which borrows elements and references from the past and reintroduces color and symbolism to architecture. A prime example of inspiration for postmodern architecture lies along the Las Vegas Strip, which was studied by Robert Venturi in his 1977 book Learning from Las Vegas celebrating the strip's ordinary and common architecture.

Postmodern architecture has also been described as "neo-eclectic", where reference and ornament have returned to the facade, replacing the aggressively unornamented modern styles. This eclecticism is often combined with the use of non-orthogonal angles and unusual surfaces, most famously in the State Gallery of Stuttgart (New wing of the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart) and the Piazza d'Italia by Charles Willard Moore. The Scottish Parliament buildings in Edinburgh have also been cited as being of postmodern vogue.

Modernist architects regard post-modern buildings as vulgar and cluttered with "gew-gaws". Postmodern architects often regard modern spaces as soulless and bland. The divergence in opinions comes down to a difference in goals: modernism is rooted in minimal and true use of material as well as absence of ornament, while postmodernism is a rejection of strict rules set by the early modernists and seeks exuberance in the use of building techniques, angles, and stylistic references.

Contents
[hide]

1 Relationship to previous styles
2 Postmodernism
3 Robert Venturi
4 Aims and Characteristics
5 Influential architects
6 Changes in the teaching of architectural history
7 Notes
8 References
9 External links

Relationship to previous styles

San Antonio Public Library, Texas.

New trends became evident in the last quarter of the 20th century as some architects started to turn away from modern Functionalism which they viewed as boring, and which most of the public considered unwelcoming and even unpleasant. These architects turned towards the past, quoting past aspects of various buildings and melding them together (even sometimes in an inharmonious manner) to create a new means of designing buildings. A vivid example of this new approach was that Postmodernism saw the comeback of pillars and other elements of premodern designs, sometimes adapting classical Greek and Roman examples (but not simply recreating them, as was done in neoclassical architecture). In Modernism, the pillar (as a design feature) was either replaced by other technological means such as cantilevers, or masked completely by curtain wall façades. The revival of the pillar was an aesthetic, rather than a technological, necessity. Modernist high-rise buildings had become in most instances monolithic, rejecting the concept of a stack of varied design elements for a single vocabulary from ground level to the top, in the most extreme cases even using a constant "footprint" (with no tapering or "wedding cake" design), with the building sometimes even suggesting the possibility of a single metallic extrusion directly from the ground, mostly by eliminating visual horizontal elements — this was seen most strictly in the World Trade Center buildings of Minoru Yamasaki.

Ancient ruyi symbol adorning Taipei 101 (Taiwan)

Another return was that of the “wit, ornament and reference” seen in older buildings in terra cotta decorative façades and bronze or stainless steel embellishments of the Beaux-Arts and Art Deco periods. In post-modern structures this was often achieved by placing contradictory quotes of previous building styles alongside each other, and even incorporating furniture stylistic references at a huge scale. Surprisingly, the buildings manage to (most of the time) retain a generally pleasing aesthetic. However, as with any new style, it would take some time to be accepted by the general public.

Contextualism, a trend in thinking in the later parts of 20th Century, influences the ideologies of the postmodern movement in general. Contextualism was centered on the belief that all knowledge is “context-sensitive”. This idea was even taken further to say that knowledge cannot be understood without considering its context. This influenced Postmodern Architecture to be sensitive to context as discussed below.

Postmodernism

Robinson's department store, Fashion Island (William Pereira, 1967), an example of Spanish-inspired postmodernism.

The postmodernist movement began in America around the 1960’s/70’s and then it spread to Europe and the rest of the world, to remain right through to the present. The aims of postmodernism or Late-modernism begin with its reaction to Modernism; it tries to address the limitations of its predecessor. The list of aims is extended to include communicating ideas with the public often in a then humorous or witty way. Often, the communication is done by quoting extensively from past architectural styles, often many at once. In breaking away from modernism, it also strives to produce buildings that are sensitive to the context within which they are built.

Postmodernism has its origins in the perceived failure of Modern Architecture. Its preoccupation with functionalism and economical building meant that ornaments were done away with and the buildings were cloaked in a stark rational appearance. Postmodernists felt the buildings failed to meet the human need for comfort both for body and for the eye. Modernism did not account for the desire for beauty. The problem worsened when some already monotonous apartment blocks degenerated into slums. Post Modernism sought to cure this by reintroducing ornament and decoration for its own sake. Form was no longer to be defined solely by its functional requirements; it could be anything the architect pleased.

Robert Venturi

Robert Venturi was at the forefront of instantiating this movement. His book, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (published in 1966), was instrumental in the postmodernist movement in architecture and was fiercely critical of the dominant Functional Modernism. The move away from Modernism’s functionalism is well illustrated by Venturi’s witty adaptation of Mies van der Rohe’s famous maxim “Less is more”. Venturi instead said “less is a bore”. Along with the rest of the Postmodernists, he sought to bring back ornament because of its necessity. He explains this and his criticism of Modernism in his Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture by saying that:

Architects can bemoan or try to ignore them (referring to the ornamental and decorative elements in buildings) or even try to abolish them, but they will not go away. Or they will not go away for a long time, because architects do not have the power to replace them (nor do they know what to replace them with).

Robert Venturi was possibly the foremost campaigner of the rebellion against Modernist Architecture which became known as Postmodern. His two books Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966) and Learning from Las Vegas (1972) (although not actual manifestos of Post Modern Architecture) do well to express many of the aims embodied in Postmodernism. The latter book he co-authored with Steven Izenour and his wife, Denise Scott Brown.

Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture highlights an aim that ornamental and decorative elements “accommodate existing needs for variety and communication”. Here Venturi stresses the importance of the building communicating a meaning to the public (which necessitates non-functional elements of the building). The Postmodernists in general strive to achieve this communication through their buildings. This communication is not intended to a direct narrating of the meaning. Venturi goes on to explain that it is rather intended to be a communication that could be interpreted in many ways. Each interpretation is more or less true for its moment because work of such quality will have many dimensions and layers of meaning. This pluralism of meaning is intended to mirror the similar nature of contemporary society. The pluralism in meaning was also echoed in the postmodern architects striving for variety in their buildings. Venturi reminisces in one of his essays, A View from the Campidoglio, to that effect when he says that:

When [he] was young, a sure way to distinguish great architects was through the consistency and originality of their work...This should no longer be the case. Where the Modern masters' strength lay in consistency, ours should lie in diversity.

Postmodernism with its diversity possesses sensitivity to the building’s context and history, and the client’s requirements. The Postmodernist architects considered the general requirements of the urban buildings and their surroundings during the building’s design. For example, in Frank Gehry's Venice Beach House, the neighboring houses have a similar bright flat color. This vernacular sensitivity is evident in some Postmodern buildings.

Aims and Characteristics

The aims of post-modernism, including solving the problems of Modernism, communicating meanings with ambiguity, and sensitivity for the building’s context, are surprisingly unified for a period of buildings designed by architects who largely never collaborated with each other. The aims do, however, leave room for various implementations as can be illustrated by the diverse buildings created during the movement.

The characteristics of Postmodernism allow its aim to be expressed in diverse ways. These characteristics include the use of sculptural forms, ornaments, anthropomorphism and materials which perform trompe l’oeil. These physical characteristics are combined with conceptual characteristics of meaning. These characteristics of meaning include pluralism, double coding, irony and paradox, and contextualism.

Detail of Abteiberg Museum

The sculptural forms, not necessarily organic, were created with much ardor. These can be seen in Hans Hollein’s Abteiberg Museum (1972-1982). The building is made up of several building units, all very different. Each building’s forms are nothing like the conforming rigid ones of Modernism. These forms are sculptural and are somewhat playful. These forms are not reduced to an absolute minimum; they are built and shaped for their own sake. The building units all fit together in a very organic way, which enhances the effect of the forms.

Portland Public Service Building

After many years of neglect, ornament returned. Frank Gehry’s Venice Beach house, built in 1986, is littered with small ornamental details that would have been considered excessive and needless in Modernism. The Venice Beach House has an assembly of circular logs which exist mostly for decoration. The logs on top do have a minor purpose of holding up the window covers. However, the mere fact that they could have been replaced with a practically invisible nail, makes their exaggerated existence largely ornamental. The ornament in Michael Graves' Portland Public Service Building (1980) is even more prominent. The two obtruding triangular forms are largely ornamental. They exist for aesthetic or their own purpose.

Postmodernism, with its sensitivity to the building’s context, did not exclude the needs of humans from the building. Carlo Scarpa’s Brion-Vega Cemetery (1970-72) exemplifies this. The human requirements of a cemetery is that it posses a solemn nature, yet it must not cause the visitor to become depressed. Scarpa’s cemetery achieves the solemn mood with the dull gray colors of the walls and neatly defined forms, but the bright green grass prevents this from being too overwhelming.

Postmodern buildings sometimes perform the age old trompe l'oeil, creating the illusion of forms or depths where none actually exist, as has been done by painters since the renaissance. The Portland Public Service Building (1980) has pillars represented on the side of the building that to some extent appear to be real, yet they are not.

The Hood Museum of Art (1981-1983) has a typical symmetrical façade which was at the time prevalent throughout Postmodern Buildings.

Robert Venturi’s Vanna Venturi House (1962-64) illustrates the Postmodernist aim of communicating a meaning and the characteristic of symbolism. The façade is, according to Venturi, a symbolic picture of a house, looking back to the 18th century. This is partly achieved through the use of symmetry and the arch over the entrance.

Piazza d'Italia by Charles Willard Moore, New Orleans.

Perhaps the best example of irony in Postmodern buildings is Charles Willard Moore’s Piazza d’Italia (1978). Moore quotes (architecturally) elements of Italian renaissance and Roman Antiquity. However, he does so with a twist. The irony comes when it is noted that the pillars are covered with steel. It is also paradoxical in the way he quotes Italian antiquity far away from the original in New Orleans.

Double coding meant the buildings convey many meanings simultaneously. The AT&T Building does this very well. The building is a tall skyscraper which brings with it connotations of very modern technology. Yet, the top contradicts this. The top section conveys elements of the antiquity. This double coding is a prevalent trait of Postmodernism.

The characteristics of Postmodernism were rather unified given their diverse appearances. The most notable among their characteristics is their playfully extravagant forms and the humour of the meanings the buildings conveyed.

Influential architects

Aluminum-clad top of San Francisco's Transamerica Pyramid

Some of the most well-known and influential architects in the postmodern style are:

John Burgee
Michael Graves is perhaps the most well-known figure in the postmodern movement.
Jon Jerde
Philip Johnson
Ricardo Legorreta
Ricardo Bofill
Charles Willard Moore
William Pereira
Cesar Pelli
Antoine Predock
Robert A.M. Stern
James Stirling
Robert Venturi
Peter Eisenman
Thomas Gordon Smith

Changes in the teaching of architectural history

The rise of interest in history that came as a consequence of the general Postmodernist turn had a profound impact on architectural education. History courses became increasingly regularized and insisted upon. With the demand for professors knowledgeable in the history of architecture, several Ph.D. programs in schools of architecture arose in order to differentiate themselves from art history Ph.D. programs, where architectural historians had previously trained. In the US, MIT and Cornell were the first, created in the mid 1970s, followed by Columbia, Berkeley, and Princeton. Among the founders of new architectural history programs were Bruno Zevi at the Institute for the History of Architecture in Venice, Stanford Anderson and Henry Millon at MIT, Alexander Tzonis at the Architectural Association, Anthony Vidler at Princeton, Manfredo Tafuri at the University of Venice, Kenneth Frampton at Columbia University, and Werner Oechslin and Kurt Forster at ETH.^[1]

The creation of these programs was paralleled by the hiring, in the 1970s, of professionally trained historians by schools of architecture: Margaret Crawford (with a Ph.D. from U.C.L.A) at SCI-Arch; Elisabeth Grossman (Ph.D., Brown University) at Rhode Island School of Design; Christian Otto^[2] (Ph.D., Columbia University) at Cornell University; Richard Chafee (Ph.D., Courtauld Institute) at Roger Williams University; and Howard Burns (M.A. Kings College) at Harvard, to name just a few examples. A second generation of scholars then emerged that began to extend these efforts in the direction of what is now called “theory”: K. Michael Hays (Ph.D., MIT) at Harvard, Mark Wigley (Ph.D., Auckland University) at Princeton (now at Columbia University), and Beatriz Colomina (Ph.D., School of Architecture, Barcelona) at Princeton; Mark Jarzombek (Ph.D. MIT) at Cornell (now at MIT), Jennifer Bloomer (Ph.D., Georgia Tech) at Iowa State and Catherine Ingraham (Ph.D., Johns Hopkins) now at Pratt Institute.

Notes

^ Mark Jarzombek, “The Disciplinary Dislocations of Architectural History,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 58/3 (September 1999), p. 489. See also other articles in that issue by Eve Blau, Stanford Anderson, Alina Payne, Daniel Bluestone, Jeon-Louis Cohen and others.
^ Cornell University Dept. of Architecture website[1]

References

Postmodern Architecture: Restoring Context Princeton University Lecture
Postmodern Architecture and Urbanism University of California - Berkeley Lecture
Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form. Robert Venturi, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977 ISBN 0-262-22015-6
History of Post-Modern Architecture. Heinrich Klotz, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998. ISBN 0-262-11123-3

BEING	DOING/MEANS		ENDS
Rén, "benevolence, charity, humanity, love," kindness. The fundamental virtue of Confucianism. Confucius defines it as "Aì rén," "love others." [Analects XII:22]	Yì, "right conduct, morality, duty to one's neighbor," righteousness.		Lì, "profit, gain, advantage": NOT a proper motive for actions affecting others. The idea that profit is the source of temptation to do wrong is the Confucian ground of the later official disparagment of commerce and industry.
	The Master said, "The gentleman (chün tzu or ) understands yì. The small man understands lì." [Analects IV:16]
Li³, "propriety, good manners, politeness, ceremony, worship." Xiào, "to honor one's parents," filial piety.		Yì may be broken down [Analects IV:15] into: zhong¹, doing one's best, conscientiousness, "loyalty" [2]; and shù, "reciprocity," altruism, consideration for others, "what you don't want yourself, don't do to others" [Analects XV:24 or 23].
quoted definitions, Mathews' Chinese-English Dictionary, Harvard, 1972; quotations from Analects translated by D.C. Lau, Penguin Books, 1979

	600 B.C.E.

Thales
Anaximander
Anaximenes
		Pythagoras
	Xenophanes
	500 B.C.E.
Heraclitus
		Parmenides
	Protagoras	Zeno of Elea
Hippias	Empedocles
Leucippus		Anaxagoras
Democritus	Socrates
	400 B.C.E.
Aristippus	Antisthenes
	Xenophon
		Plato
	Diogenes
Euclid	Aristotle	Xenocrates
Pyrrho
	300 B.C.E.
Epicurus
	Zeno of Citium
Timon

Archimedes	Chrysippus
Eratosthenes
	200 B.C.E.


	Carneades



	100 B.C.E.


Lucretius
	Cicero


	C.E.

		Philo
	Seneca



	100
	Epictetus


	Marcus Aurelius


	200
Sextus Empiricus

		Plotinus
		Porphyry


	300






	400
	Hypatia	Augustine





	500

	Boethius




	600






	700






	800


al-Kindi
		Erigena


	900
al-Faràbi

Saadiah



	1000

Ibn Sina
Ibn Gabirol

		Anselm
al-Ghazàlì
	1100


	Abelard
Ibn Daud	Peter Lombard
Ibn Rushd
Maimonides
	1200
Fibonacci
Grosseteste
	Albert the Great
Roger Bacon
	Aquinas	Bonaventure
Siger	Boetius of Dacia
	1300
	Scotus
	Eckhart	Marsilius of Padua
Ockham		Gersonides
Buridan

		Crescas
	1400



		Cusa
	Valla

	Pico della Mirandola	Ficino

	1500
		Erasmus
	Machiavelli	Thomas More
Paracelsus
Copernicus
Ramus
	1550

		Teresa of Avila

	Montaigne
Bruno
	Suarez
	1600
Kepler	Charron
		Mersenne
Francis Bacon	Grotius
Galileo		Herbert of Cherbury
Gassendi	Princess Elizabeth
Fermat	Queen Kristina	Descartes
Hobbes	Filmer
	1650
Glanvill	Geulincx	Pascal
Henry More	Cordemoy	Nicole
Cudworth	Cavendish	Arnauld
Cumberland	Rohault	Foucher
Boyle		Malebranche
	Pufendorf	Spinoza
Newton	Conway	Régis
Locke	Masham
Toland	Bayle	Souvré
	1700
Clarke	Shaftesbury	Norris
		Leibniz
Berkeley
	Cockburn	Vico
Mandeville
Hutcheson	Butler	Wolff
	Gay
Hume
	La Mettrie
Hartley	Montesquieu
	1750
Euler	Condillac
Price	d'Alembert	Voltaire
	Diderot	Rousseau
Bayes	d'Holbach	Helvétius
Smith	Jefferson
Reid	Paine	Lessing
Burke		Kant
Wollstonecraft	Bentham	Mendelssohn
Stewart	Godwin	Schiller
Malthus	Paley	Fichte
	1800
Gauss	de Staël	Schelling
		Schleiermacher
Laplace		Hegel
Lamarck	Saint-Simon
Fourier		Schopenhauer
	Whately
Babbage
Lobachevsky	John Austin	Comte
Whewell	James Mill	Proudhon
Bolzano	Emerson	Feuerbach
De Morgan	Fuller	Kierkegaard
Boole	Thoreau
	1850
Riemann	Sojourner Truth	Marx

Darwin	Taylor	Engels
	Hamilton
Mendel	J. S. Mill	Lotze
		Spencer
Venn	Anthony	Bakunin
Cantor	Brentano
	1875
	Sidgwick
Dedekind	Clifford
	Peirce	Caird
Mach		Green
Frege	Dilthey	Nietzsche
Carroll		Bosanquet
Peano	Stanton	Ritchie
Durkheim	James	Royce
	Gilman	Bradley
Pareto	Veblen

	1900
Planck	Freud	Weber	Bergson
Poincare	Meinong	Dubois	Cook Wilson
Duhem	Husserl	Addams	Seth
Zermelo	Moore		Croce
Einstein	Jung	Goldman	Vaihinger
Bohr	Watson	Luxemburg	Otto
Hilbert			Unamuno
	Adler	Lenin	Saussure
Lukasciewicz	Dewey	Trotsky	Buber
Russell			Whitehead
	Mead	Alexander	McTaggart
Keynes	Broad	Lukács	Santayana
	1925
Reichenbach	Lovejoy	Ross	Berdyaev
Heisenberg	Schlick	Kelsen	Heidegger
Neurath	Ramsey	Hartmann	Cassirer
Gödel	Perry	Gramsci	Collingwood
Schrödinger	C. I. Lewis	Ingarden
Ayer	Bachelard	Mao Zedong	Maritain
Waismann		Day	Ortega y Gasset
Tarski	Carnap		Blanshard
E. Nagel	Popper	Gandhi
	Horney		Sartre
Ryle	H.H. Price	Langer	Camus
	Stevenson	Hayek	Jaspers
Wittgenstein			Adorno
Turing	Prichard	Marcel	Beauvoir
	1950
von Neumann	Lorenz	Wisdom	Tillich
Hopper	Arrow	Hare	Merleau-Ponty
Polya	Skinner	Berlin	Weil
Church	Anscombe	Rand	Horkheimer
Feigl	Austin	Hampshire	Arendt
Hempel	Strawson	Kurt Baier	Gadamer
Quine	Grice	Hart	Lacan
Goodman	Sellars		Habermas
Kuhn	Smart	Marcuse
Feynman	Bergmann		Ricoeur
Gettier	Armstrong	King	Althusser
Chomsky	Chisholm		Derrida
Searle	Lakatos	Rawls	Foucault
Kripke	E.O. Wilson		Deleuze
	1975
Feyerabend	Thomson	Singer	Eco
Dummett	Putnam	Dworkin	Lyotard
Davidson	T. Nagel	Midgley	Daly
Hofstadter	Rorty	Nozick	Cixous
Mandelbrot	Kim	Regan	Le Dœuff
	Haraway	Gilligan	Kristeva
Minsky	Appiah	Noddings	Irigaray
Lehrer	Annette Baier	Held
Harding		Ruddick	Hoagland
	Kemerling	MacKinnon
Dennett	Nussbaum		Bordo
	West	hooks


	2000

BaNtU aKu UnTuK BeLaJaR yAaaa

fiiuuuhhh sibuknya euy

Filsafat??? apalah itu?

Pembuka - Langkah Awal

Mencoba Untuk Kembali merumuskan pemikiran

Pendidikan Multikultural sebuah jawab atau ??

Gila udah lama ini blog gue ga sentuh

POSSESSIVENESS

SMILE

Ayo HadaPI Dengan SenyuM

MeNgiNGat MaSA lalU

sibuk-sibuk

Partiture Panis Angelicus

AyO KiTa HaRus SAdaR "AiR BErsIh Itu MAhal"

Apa Itu GReeN ARcHitecTure??

The environmental impact of buildings

Green building practices

SoLuSI Untuk LaHaN SeMPit part 2

SoLuSI Untuk LaHaN SeMPit part 1

KoNseP PeKeRJaAN MeNUruT MArX

MAu SekoLAh Pa Mau BeRanTem

SeKiLAs TeNTaNg InTeRnEt

Internet

Terminology: Internet vs. World Wide Web

History

Creation

Growth

Today's Internet

Internet protocols

Internet structure

ICANN

Language

Internet and the workplace

The Internet Viewed on Mobile Devices

Common uses of the Internet

E-mail

The World Wide Web

Remote access

Collaboration

File sharing

Streaming media

Voice telephony (VoIP)

Censorship

Internet access

Leisure

Complex architecture

Marketing

The name Internet

Selayang Pandang Tentang Konfusiua

ConfuciusK'ung-fu-tzu or Kongfuzi

Jesu, meine freude

Feminist Kesukaan Gue

CaRi InFo TenTaNg FilsUf IdOlAmU....

A Timeline of Western Philosophers

POSTMODERNISM, PEDAGOGY, AND PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION

Postmodern architecture

Contents

Relationship to previous styles

Postmodernism

Robert Venturi

Aims and Characteristics

Influential architects

Changes in the teaching of architectural history

Notes

References

Confucius
K'ung-fu-tzu or Kongfuzi