Pragmatist Interventions

Pragmatist Interventions

• Pragmatism emerged at the end of the 19th century, coinciding with industrialization, media advancements (telegraph, phone, radio), and the professionalization of newspapers.
• Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey were key proponents of pragmatism.
• Dewey was a major educational and social reformer, believing democracy was the ultimate ethical ideal.
• Pragmatism shifted focus from European philosophical discourse, opening up philosophy as a discipline (functional psychology).
• William James defined pragmatism by asking what is true, what is the meaning of something, and how that meaning matters.
• Pragmatists are concerned with the pragmatic effects and outcomes of thought.
• Pragmatism sees experience as both subjective and intersubjective, having political implications for democracy.
• It can be misread as "anything goes," leading to accusations of anti-intellectualism.
• Pragmatism offers a method to find answers, focusing on how truths matter in terms of actual experience.
• It shifts philosophical concerns towards practical relevance in our lives.
• Pragmatists focus on what we can know in terms of its effect on the world.
• Peirce stated that experiences of the world are derived through their effects.
• Peirce believed these effects must influence our real world to gain knowledge.
• Pierce addressed epistemology, or the possibility of gaining knowledge and its truthfulness.
• He found these questions relevant only if they have an effect on our real world.

Pragmatism Summary

• Pragmatism was a late-19th-century philosophical movement with heterogeneous ideas.
• Its central tenet was the "cash-value" of an idea.
• It emphasized applicability to experience, unlike empiricism, idealism, and metaphysics.
• It valued the communicative quality of 'truths,' emphasizing scientific knowledge production.
• The emphasis on "cash" might lead to oversimplifying the complexities of the school of thought.

Progressivism

• Progressivism resulted from Enlightenment ideas and industrial revolutions of the 19th century.
• It inspired the "progressive era" in the US, which was an obsession with technological progress.
• It focused on moving society forward into a better future amid the crisis of industrial capitalism and urbanism.
• It was influenced by new media and the development of urban spheres with new modes of transportation.
• It raised socio-economic stratification issues like those of gender, ethnicity, and class.
• The "Standard Oil Trust" cartoon in Puck Magazine (1904) depicted corporations as menacing entities.
• This symbolized the anti-monopoly sentiment against corporations.
• Jacob Riis's "How the Other Half Lives" (1890) was a photo book illuminating the lives of the poor to the upper middle class.
• It raised awareness of socio-economic stratification through photographic journalism.

The Culture of Social Progressivism

• Social progressivism focused on the greed of corporations or the working class as victims of capitalism.
• It was supported by "muckraking" journalism to investigate the issues of capitalist production and politics.
• Photojournalism emerged, enabled by technological advancements in photography that enabled taking pictures without specific staging and lighting.
• Naturalism in literature pondered the individual versus society, for social reform.
• Political cartoons focused on capitalist benefactors and political corruption.
• The goal was social reform to improve social equality.
• Jane Addams advocated for educational reform to make society based on equality, not privilege.

The American Renaissance

• After the Civil War and before the late 1800s there as an American literary renaissance.
• Social and class awareness became highly visible in the progressive era, affecting cultural production.
• The formation of mass cultures codeveloped alongside a split between high and low culture.

Sensationalism

• Sensationalism focused on detectives or the Wild West in dime novels.
• Sensationalism was meant to arouse strong emotional reactions from the public.
• According to Joy Wiltenburg, in the book "True Crime: The Origins of Modern Sensationalism" sensationalism was invented in the 19th century.

The Popular Page

• "Renaissance of American popular culture" was associated with mass culture and the culture industry.
• The Frankfurt school critically thought about popular culture in the 1930s.
• It was a cultural moment of industrialization alongside pragmatism.
• Profitability was an important aspect of the Popular Page, binge watching was profitable for companies.
• Literacy rates increased due to changes in education, increasing the marketplace for sensationalist novels.
• Wire service journalism defined print journalism from the mid-19th century on.
• Immediate news was defined by the invention of the telegraph.
• William Randolph Hearst, Joseph Pulitzer, etc. were the first yellow press media tycoons.
• Newspapers redefined journalism, captivating audiences through serial publishing, fictional "mysteries" and comic strips.
• Dime novels and "pulp" magazines widely circulated in urban centers.
• True crime was a genre characterized by a focus on the body and non-rational aspects.
• Sensationalism was considered "bad" because it was believed to corrupt the minds of women.
• He explores the inherent tensions in entertainment culture in the U.S and is known for the simultaneity of the quest for authenticity in his uneasy relationships with the "sensational".

Garret

• Pat Garret in “The authentic Life of Billy the kid (1882) crafts theory of a person's morality, delineating a morally-ambiguous kid”.
• There is a "atypical heroic split", where the kid becomes a tragic hero.
• The individual vs the system and society is an important aspect.
• The Southwest is presented as an intercultural space.
• There is a tension to the frontier myth, where people build themselves as they urbanize.
• The anxieties are pertaining to rapid modernization and the notion of "the folk."

‘Little Nemo in Slumberland’

• "Little Nemo in Slumberland" by Winsor McCay shows the fascination with dreams and their psychological significance.
• The Dreams are testaments to contemporary architecture and the built environment.
• Comic strips draw reflexive attention to the page as a material entity/media.
• There were Serial, yet episodic, adventures.
• It was a Laboratory of cultural concerns of the time
• The comic appeared in the New York Herald (1905-1911, 1924-1927) and New York American (1911-1914).

The Popular Stage

• Consisted as Vaudeville and Blackface Minstrelsy as lasting cultural forms and idioms.
• Vaudeville was a syncretic form of "polite" entertainment that was family-friendly.
• It was a pot-parade of different kinds of performances including magicians, musicians, puppeteers, ventriloquists, celebrity actors and film clips.
• Before the first wave of nickelodeons (storefront cinemas) appeared at the beginning of the 20th century (around 1905).
• Traveling shows such as P.T. Barnum’s Barnum and Bailey Circus, Menagerie, Caravan & Hippodrome and Wild West Shows like Buffalo Bill were a thing.
• Performance and travel as were crucial markers of this entertainment ecology.
• Freak-shows became a major vehicle of modern entertainment industry.

The Popular Screen and Celebrity Culture

• Hollywood's Golden Age or Classical Hollywood Cinema and Early Narrative Film.
• Classical Hollywood, ran between 1910 and 1960s, referring to narrative style and aesthetics.
• It was a time of transition from Silent media/film (1894) to “talkies” (sound media, mid-1920s).
• In terms of studio referred to roughly the same period but alludes to the production, distribution and exhibition of logics
• Corporations like MGM, Paramount, Warner, RKO, Fox (“big five”) kept and made movie aesthetics.
• Columbia, Universal and United Artists were known as the "little three”.
• New Hollywood meant new talent (new directors daring to shoot experimental films such as Jaws, Easy Rider).
• DW Griffith’s “Birth Of A Nation” was powerful in its portrayal of blatantly-racist and anti-black sentiments.

Star System

• Star personas binded contractually to studios, produced "serial" movies .
• Joan Crawford became an actress from Vaudeville to screen.
• Dance films and musicals were formative for early popular sound film.
• There were Transition figures like “flapper”, “woman in distress”, and “romantic heroine/love interest".
• Rock Hudson was an example of having a “closeted” queer male lead. Contemporary franchise (or universe) system that includes trans-medial franchises.
• This was later adapted to current media ecology and marketing strategies.
• Today, there is a competing broadcasting ad niche-casting logics.

Other Information

• John Bon Jovi -Bless of Glory is available on YouTube.
• Specifically, for the Exam, Pragmatism, sensationalism, and naturalism are important to know about.

Tutorium Time

• Pragmatism describes a philosophical school of thought concerned with what truths are; the James reading presents pragmatism is an attitude from looking away from things and focusing on the consequences.
• It is said to be based on the “cash value” of ideas and their effects in the real world.
• Objects are conceptipzed based on their consequences in the “reall workdd” just like James with the squirrel running around the tree
• Pragmatism emphasizes on the communicability of truth –
• The rise of scientific papers as a means of communicating ideas!
• The rise of commincation of truth well compatible with democracy
• Prragmatism more of a method then a theory
• Jane Addams for instance focused on education as a means of bringing about inivation
• pragmatism stopping thinking about the meaning of things, shifting rather towards understanding their impact on the real world.
• Social school of thought emerging from Enlightenment ideals and industrial revolutions;
• Progressives era focused on urban crriisis, the cost of industrialization in cities
• Progressives wanted to use technical inication
• There photojournalism for activism
• Progressiveis, AMerica becamse arware of corpoartion expliration
• the popular page see risign literacy rates in Ameriuca leading litature maret
• billy the kid inspiring stories Traveliling vaudevilles

Reconstruction Summary

• Reconstruction was the era following the Civil War (1863-1877/1890s).
• "Federal reconstruction" (1863-1877) involved federal government activism in the southern states to protect citizens with the law (later the 13th amendment).
• "Local reconstruction" (1877-1890s) saw grassroots organization and state-specific reconstruction.
• Backlash led to conflict between the Freedmen’s Bureau and the Black Codes.
• The 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments (1865-1869) abolished slavery, established universal citizenship, and guaranteed voting rights.
• Compromise of 1877 (Plessy vs Ferguson in 1896) led to the notion of "separate but equal."

Lynching and the KKK

• Anti-black violence led to the the gatekeeping of White identity.
• Backlash against reconstruction started during the vanishing federal reconstruction of the 1877.
• Grassroots racist southern militias formed anti-black, anti-Jewish violence.
• Lynching was a brutal spectacle and "social event”: in Southern communities, black people were publicly murdered by self-entitled “Lynch mobs" and took pictures.
• Backlash and lynching had a long-lasting impact on society and governmental structures.
• Ida B. Wells (1862-1931) was an African American journalist and activist, who collected images of lynchings and investigated them, raising awareness.

The Long Civil Rights Movement

• Remembrance is always a form of forgetting.
• Jacqueline Dowd-Hall proposed a more mindful and comprehensive history.
• She juxtapositions the stories of post-WW2 events as part of a longer struggle.
• The movement goes back to Reconstruction and, for example, anti-lynching activism of the 19th and early 20th century.

Writing Protest

• The Harlem Renaissance was a period of African American literary and artistic production in the 1920s and early 30s.
• Alain Locke, Zora Neale Hurston, Jean Toomer, Langston Hughes, and others were philosophers and social figures and intelligencia.
• Jazz was backdrop and connected to the art and literature.
• White patronage financed black art of the time.
• Debates ran wild between the nature and quality of literature and art.
• There was the general cultural and ideological pervasiveness of leftist thought in the 1930s.
• James Baldwin published outstanding literary work on African American struggles.
• He chronicler psycho-social pressures on race, class, gender, sexuality, and religion.
• Blackness and Whiteness emerge as crucial themes.

Audre Lorde

• Audre Lorde was a writer, feminist, womanist, activist, poet, and professor.
• She theorized overlapping, interrelated layers of identity.
• Was an important figure in the nascent movement of “Afro-Germans” in the 1980s.
• Coal by Audre Lorde made broader audiences known.
• Called on people to be mindful beyond one’s own standpoint in society.

Black Feminism

• Black Feminism, Womanism trajectory has continued.
• Feminism was recalibrated from within, and Black and queer feminists took over leading roles.
• Womanism often used synonymously, but is also often considered to be more spiritually inclined.
• The Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas hearings galvanized discourse about Black feminism in 1991.
• Discourses on “Blackness” emphasized as a foundational role as a category of experience.

The Black Panther Party and the Nation of Islam

• They are radicial wings of of the civil rights movente but were found since the 1960s.
• They got prominincence during the 1950s to 60s
• Malcolm x was involved in the groups.

The Nation of Islam

• The Nation of Islam: it was a US religious and political organization founded in the 1930s by Wallace Fard Muhammad in Detroit.
• Has influence in conscious rappers in the early 90s among Northern people
• it was inspired by by Malcolm X and Mohammend
• It part of hte longer cival right sovmence and was infiltrated by the FBI in the 1970s and was later broken up into factions.

Protest Music

• Post-War protest movements and the Anti-Vietnam War cultural climate coincided increasing interest in pop music.

• They went on to inspire the Beatle and rollign stones

• They made songs that engaged with poltical and socual ocern

• Pop alowed to exprsss counercultural sentiments and drcuys and sexualities.

• New cinema had that

Genres

• Pop music navigated tension with entertainment business.
• Some of protest music that became self-consciously political
• Protest muiscal wa siner - gernal

"Doing Identity"

• Identities are always "being done", it’s a permanent process.
• This does not mark a new phenomenon of an alleged era of "identity politics.”
• All politics is identity politics.

Protest Music

• Some contexts galvanized political songwriting!.
• Protests are caused by political means.
• "Authenticity effect" when they try to sell, then music labels are often selling something disingenuine, they create an image of their artists, they create them

Modernity

• Modernity is in terms of "American music" is in terms of us soft power.
• And their cultue power that influenced people from the soviet countries and cold war.

Modern Art

• Modernize is in terms of culture and art
• the main power dyanmic recap, tenison becasme more and more apparetn with business side
• These trms genraly culaural and poulcar art

Modernity vs Colonialism

• the definition of modernism in terms of the europe perspective where in the non euope version colonalisal would not happen

Modernism vs. Abstracism

• Art repsoding to chaotis, and that the end that there are so many wars happening

• the heigenberg princapl that woudl afefct art that are so maany wars where the aat are endign agian

• modernism is not about a contemporary things

Main Goal

• what are the most artistc in the wolrd in order to make something new

Modern Painting

• make paintings from home with europe painting and phototgry
• the photo of harley.
• photo realim might be truysted