Dark Ages, Middle Ages, New Ages...

Most of us received information in History about “Dark Ages”, or “Middle Ages” as a time of ignorance, superstition, disrespect, prejudice, etc., and other “negative” things, and that all of these was overcome with Renascence, Humanism and Enlightenment.

Currently historians know that Dark Ages were not so dark… Middle Ages were not so ignorant… In true, the names Renascence and Humanism were fixed centuries after they occurred. Men of Enlightenment saw their own time as a “time of light”, under the “light of reason” and Middle Ages as a “time of obscurity”. Dark Ages and Middle Ages are concepts created later then the supposed eras. Throw research historians now know that at those times it was light and darkness, as in anytime. We do not know which century was better or worst. Each century has its light and its darkness. Sometimes it seems that the 20^th century could be the worst, other times it seems that could be the best. Anyway, we could say that we are now in a “macro shift” in history, or we could say that we are in after-postmodern times. We are not sure about “new ages”... But, as in all human history, light and darkness are still around… 

Memory and after-postmodern – Part 2

Maybe the Big Data is a new level of memory, a new kind of memory, a kind of individual and collective memory that is stored in the virtual world, outside of any head. At same time, if people refuse handwriting, if people give up handwriting, if people “forget” handwriting, it can be a kind of memory loss. One is the language of Big Data, other is the language inside the brain without handwriting, and other is the language using the fingers holding a pen, even supposing that the words are the same.

Memory is stored based in senses strongly connected to verbal language. The brain cannot achieve complexity without the body and its sensory stimulations. Also, using the brain to activate the body can improve the brain capacities.

In the Postmodern Period we used to think that there were “brain people” (intellectuals, artists) opposed to “body people” (athletes, hard work). Nowadays step by step we understand that brain and body depend on each other and can help each other to improve both capabilities.

In the end of the 20^th century and the beginning of the 21^st century there were produced several movies about memory loss and manipulation of memory, mainly in Science Fiction. It was arousing a perception that humanity was at an increasing risk of memory loss. Memory and identity are connected things and Occidental Culture could be in a risk of identity loss in the transition from Postmodern to After-postmodern.

Is our collective memory vanishing together with “the language” of the muscles of our hands?          

Memory and After-postmodern – Part 1

The last decade of the 20^th Century was called “the decade of the brain”. Under the postmodern culture, the brain could be the last frontier to conquer by the power of chemistry… mind and soul were maybe only some kind of illusion produced by the machine of brain.

At the same time the Arts started to focus on variations of “memory”. Could Science manipulate memory? Could Science make us forget painful moments? Or maybe some new kind of power, political or scientific, could take over us controlling our memories?

That theme is now perhaps stronger and maybe nearer to happen in some way, although we have apparently better conditions to keep data in digital archives.

But maybe we are living some other kind of memory loss. If we do not use some of our oldest capacities, as for example, the ability of handwrite, we are losing “body-memory”, “hand-memory”, even some “neuron-memory”, as cultural memory as well. 

Piketty’s book and after-postmodern economy

The book of Thomas Piketty “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” is a best seller and has raised many debates and several divided opinions. But here, in our forum, it is secondary to choose among those opinions. What does matter is that the book was written in after-postmodern times. The debates are after-postmodern debates about what can be the after-postmodern economy. Even if we conclude that “nothing changes under the sun” throw decades or centuries, this conclusion still is an after-postmodern conclusion.

All that discussion shows that we are not anymore in “post-modernity”. So, the book of Piketty is also a tool to try to understand what is going on in after-postmodern social structure and what is going to be the after-postmodern economy which seems no to be yet very well established.  

After-postmodern University and “1968”

Humbolt started the Modern University when he founded the University of Berlin in the beginning of the 19^th century. It was the “University of Culture”. In the second half of the 20^th century emerged the Post-modern University or, as Bill Readings used to say, the “Post-historical University”, and also as he wrote, the “University of Excellence”, that replaced the University of Culture. According to Bill Readings, the students’ French movement of 1968 was ambiguous between the former two models of University: the Ancient University and the Modern University. They did not want the oldest model or the modern one. In a certain way that movement helped to establish the University of Excellence: a kind of excellence that has no center point for the university except “the excellence itself” instead of the idealistic aim of Culture for the former Modern University. Felix Guattari was enthusiastic for the movement of 1968, but he became disappointed after the eighties, because he saw that cultivation of “subjectivity” was not valorized and he adverted that if someone do not take care of its own subjectivity, “something” outside would have power over it. So, he used the term “ecosophy” to explain an idea of ecology of the external but also the internal environment inside the human being. Readings just lived until the apex of Postmodern Era and he saw in the University something happening similar to what Guattari thought about subjectivity. They both did not see the coming of the After-postmodern Era and the weakness of pragmatism, efficiency and Excellency. Toward the University goes one cannot say, but it is neither “modern” nor “postmodern”… Maybe the after-postmodern model could come from theories and practices of transdisciplinarity and complexity.        

After-postmodern timing

20^th century`s Sci-Fi could not imagine mobile phones… At those days people imagined several kinds of complicated machines for everything, but not some so simple and, at same time, so complex as a mobile phone. Maybe “The Jetsons” approached something similar with that “talking watch”… But nothing as a small computer shooter talker photographer library etc. etc. that you can carry inside your pocket.

This great invention, maybe one of the greatest in history of mankind, brought even a kind of new step for democracy and citizenship… How many people can achieve information of the entire world and, at same time, can communicate anything…

But, everything has, at least, two sides… So, mobile phones also changed the human timing… People are forgetting patience, forgetting to wait, to wait for anything… to be far from anything… to be unwired… “Unplugged”… So the only time is now and in a not poetical way, or even philosophical…

This one of the greatest after-postmodern paradoxes.

      

After-postmodern University – Part 4

The postmodern period can be divided in two parts: the first from 1950 to 1989 and the second from 1990 to 2008 approximately. Historical periodization is not exactly determined. The transition between eras is a blurred zone. So, some characteristics of the precedent period can persist in the next.

When Bill Readings writes about University he is in the nineties of the 20^th century. At this time, postmodern ideas and practices were in the apex, with the so called “excellency criteria” cited by Readings as the main target of that institution. He criticizes that criteria and sees the “modern University”, from the modern era, lost in its original meaning as a focus of Culture linked to nation-state; with the economic “globalization” of the end of the 20^th century, the nation-state was weaker more and more.

With the end of the postmodernity, globalization became weaker and entered in a new step that we do not know yet where it will go. The nation-state regained a new form that we also do not know where it will go.

In that way, after-postmodern University is not anymore in that entire “excellency standard” even with the continuing use of that word in international rankings. Nevertheless, current internationalization of university is not quite the same as the former “globalization”; that internationalization can be seen under the net and complexity theories.

Maybe the after-postmodern University could have some mixed characteristics of modern and postmodern universities, looking for a kind of “Humanized Excellency”.