Future Insights

The article analyzes the concept of intensity promoted in late capitalism, and its difference from the teleological intensity of the countercultural sixties. Intensity is approached through psychoanalytic lenses as related to Freud’s drive theory, and to Lacan’s concept of jouissance. Counter-depressive intensity persists today devoid of any meaning, as it is a self-legitimating strategy of the most perfect and best conformed capitalist subject. The notion of the culture of intensity covers the natural privileging of late capitalism towards ‘the good intense.’ This paper analyzes its reverse: ‘the bad intense,’ and the tragedy of dysphoria. The movie Shame (2011), directed by Steve McQueen, is interpreted as an example of the transformation of the countercultural value of sexuality in the sixties to its mere reduction to both intense and numbing experience. Keywords: intensity, Eros, death drive, jouissance, euphoria, countercultureThis paper analyzes the concept of intensity promoted ...

From Homer’s Odyssey and Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe to Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, the sea has always featured prominently in Western literature. Stories of voyages over (or under) boundless oceans, tales of mutiny and piracy, of treasure and adventure, have all become an integral part of our literary tradition. And while it was frequently admired, the sea’s capricious nature and fathomless depths have often led to it being feared in equal measure. Compiled and edited by Mike Ashley, From the Depths and Other Strange Tales of the Sea is an anthology comprising fifteen lesser known stories taken from other collections and pulp magazines dating back to the early 20th century, which ably illustrates that period’s fascination with the sea, especially with its more fantastical and uncanny aspects.The collection opens strongly with an invitingly horrific, if somewhat traditional ghost ship story. Albert A. Wetjen’s “The Ship of Sil...

This paper discusses the use of caves in Ovid’s works. It focuses on several passages from Ars Amatoria, Fasti, and Metamorphoses in which Ovid uses cave imagery as part of his Golden age discourse. Ovid’s use of cave as a motif in Golden age imagery is distinct from his Greek predecessors (Homer, Hesiod, and Callimachus) whose works he heavily drew on. Caves are sometimes dangerous, but most often they are presented as places of refuge, where one finds privacy from prying eyes including the gaze of Augustus, whose moral laws Ovid criticized.Keywords: Ovid, Augustus, adultery, caves, Roman literature, intertextuality, Hesiod, Homer, CallimachusOd prapovijesti špilje su bile mjesta osobitog vjerskog i kultnog značaja. Špilje su pružale sklonište čovjeku kad nije imao doma. Nije čudno da nam najraniji prikazi odnosa čovjeka s prirodom dolaze iz poznatih špilja Altamira i Lascaux, gdje nalazimo umjetnost velikog značaja za povijest čovječanstva.

Novinar je najavio prilog o još jednoj pucnjavi, nakon čega su počele reklame. Još jednog nenaoružanog crnog tinejdžera ustrijelio je još jedan bijeli policajac. Nakon toga, džingl na jedanaestom programu prekinula je djevojčica kovrčave kose, koja je gđu Mendez podsjećala na njezinu Eloisu prije nego što je ova postala mrzovoljna tinejdžerka. Eloisina dvojnica pogledom je tražila ubruse. Mlijeko iz pahuljica prolila je po netaknutom kuhinjskom šanku, a njezina majka iz reklame istoga je trena počistila nered s osmijehom na licu iz kojeg se moglo iščitati, kako si samo dražesna svaki put kad zasereš kuću.„Opet ista priča”, rekla je gđa Mendez mužu. Nije joj bilo jasno zašto uporno želi gledati vijesti – sve te stravične pljačke, napade, nesreće. I politiku. Politika je još gora. Gđa Mendez na stolić je stavila vreli tanjur pun riže i graška pa pokupila dvije prazne limenke piva s poda. „Sad je samo pitanje vremena kad će susjedi opet početi prosvjedovati i gunđati.”

The idea of the landlord's estate as “paradise on land,” traditional in the Russian culture of the late 19th and early 20th century, evolved in the literature of the 1910s and 1920s into the idea of the city-garden, which united the “beginning” and “ends” of the image of Biblical paradise – the Old Testament Eden and the Apocalyptic New Jerusalem. The substrate of the city-garden mythologem became the "estate topos," which indicates its plasticity and significant heuristic potential, i.e. not only its belonging to the former landowner estate of the 19th century, but also its ability to create new cultural modifications, such as the “city of the future” by V. V. Khlebnikov or the “city garden” in the prose of A. N. Tolstoy and in the Soviet poetry of the 1920s.Keywords: paradise, topics, landowner estate, estate topos, “city of the future,” “city-garden,” the first third of the 20th century, A. N. Tolstoy, V. V. Khlebnikov, V. V. Mayakovsky

Između gradskog centra i konačišta prostirala se velika močvara. Hladnoća pristigla s Atlantskog oceana u veljači ju je smrznula i pretvorila u veliko svjetlucavo polje. Žena je hodala prema konačištu. Bila je odjevena u krzneni kaput, nosila je visoke kožne čizme, a lice joj je izgledalo ljutito. Na nebu, između tamnoplavih oblaka, vijugavi trag mlaznog aviona. Pored grmlja žena je malo usporila. Nešto ju je žacnulo u srcu i ona se prisjetila nečeg vrlo davnog. Bilo je to sredinom ljeta, debeli, zeleni travnati tepih i cvilež svinje u rukama koljača. Žena je uspjela locirati sjećanje. To se dogodilo na drugom mjestu, u drugoj zemlji, i bilo je stvarno. Lice joj je postalo tužno. Gurnula je ruku duboko u džep kaputa i osjetila kako joj se hladnoća diže iz utrobe prema kosi.Čovjek u žbunju zaustavio je dah i čekao da žena stigne do točno određenog mjesta. U očima mu se zrcalio uplašen pogled, a žile su mu nabrekle na sljepoočnicama. U tišini je pričekao još trenutak-dva te je s leđa zas...