ARC Essay_Oliinyk Kateryna Gr.2

 ‘Form’ versus ‘Content’

In the beginning of the XX century the question of ‘form’ as a base of the composition was advanced to the forefront in the literary studies. The leading role of this research was taken by the Russian formalism, which represented with two groups of scientist – Moscow Linguistic Circle founded by Roman Jacobson and Society for the Study of Poetic Language (OPOYAZ) founded in St. Petersburg by Viktor Shklovsky, Boris Eichenbaum, and Yury Tynyanov. This wave of literary studies called the attention to the question of a composition’s form. Obviously, new controversial opinion found its negation among the conservative ‘content-supporters’. Thus, to understand ideas of Russian Formalism in completeness it is worth to look on them through the extant criticism.

First thing of literary work’s formalists were stressing on is unity of each components. What is more, Russian scientists were denying the usual opposition of ‘form’ and ‘contents’. In the same time, they were subjected to criticism mostly because the priority of ‘form’. According to Svetlana Matviyenko: "Formalists were always criticized for an ignorance of the context while the awareness of 'form' in its contextuality was one of the highlights in their theoretical movement." [5, p. 24] But novelty of the reorientation from ‘what’ to ‘how’ contained in idea about ‘form’ as a starting point which creates the ‘content’ for itself.

On the other hand, there still were lots of scientists who pursued to learn the ‘content’ only. The idea about importance of ‘form’ was rejected as a mechanical and algebraical opinion without creative inspiration. Besides, only position based on ‘content’ allowed to be inserted into the literary studies with its orientation on the social and political value of a composition. For instance, Vladimir Hadzinsky states that the art is a "product of revolution" [2, p. 179]; in other words, he believed that an art is purely utilitarian. Thus, formalism as a new methodology in literary studies raised a question about the credibility of Marxism. Notoriously, the latter was promoted as the only possible method and the ‘end’ for a Soviet literature.

However, formalists doubted even the term of ‘content’ and offered to substitute it on ‘material’. According to their works, all the plots, motifs and artistic images had been already done and just can be used again: “The essential to represent was not the quality of what was combined, but to show how this was happened - “the labyrinth of the clutches”” [3, p. 233]. This means that individuality of the author can be described just in the building of ‘form’.

Therefore, literary studies with a works of Russian formalists were reoriented to the new idea of ‘form’ as a first point of the composition. Revising a major opinion of literary studies, which were attached by ‘content-supporters’, was a big step to creative individuality over the social and political servant.   

1. ACR paragraph. Oliinyk Kateryna. – http://fedoriv-writing.blogspot.com/2013/02/acr-paragraph-by-oliinyk-kateryna-in.html 

2.     Hadzinsky V. A Few Words to the Question of "Form and Content" / V. Hadzinskyy / / Red way. - 1923. - № 4-5. - P. 174-179.

3.    Hanzen-Leve O. A. Russian Formalism / O. A. Hanzen-Leve. – M. : Language of Russian Culture, 2001. – 672 p.

4.   Eikhenbaum B. M. Theory of the "Formal Method" / B. M. Eikhenbaum // About the Literature / B. M. Eikhenbaum. – M., 1987. – P. 375-408.

5. Matvienko S. A Discourse of a Formalism: the Ukrainian Context / S. Matvienko. - Lviv: Litopys, 2004. - 142 p.

6.  Shklovsky V. B. Connection of the Story Making Methods with a General Methods of Style / V. B. Shklovsky // About the Theory of Prose / V. B. Shklovsky. – M., 1983. – P. 26-62. 

ACR Essay. Lytoshenko Dariia. A-2

Dangerous consumer society

The end of the ХІХ^th – first half of the ХХ^th century is the time, when different technical inventions of civilization appear and the transformation of production process happens. This process caused significant changes in the everyday life of the human society. The living conditions improves more and more because of the increased attention to human body, popularization of the sport, reformation of the clothes and development of the medicine. The population increases, especially in the big cities. Furthermore, an accelerated process of production causes the accumulation of various goods and satiation of them. This is how consumer society, the main cause of most of the human problems nowadays, works. “Consumerism” is “an emphasis on or preoccupation with the acquisition of consumer goods”, as it is mentioned in Oxford English Dictionary [1]. This phenomenon is the result of an Industrial revolution that reached its highest point in the middle of XX century. Many modern philosophers, such as J. Baudrillard, E. Fromm, T. Adorno, paid their attention to the problem of Consumer society.  It is also one of the main topics in American literature after World War II.

The values of consumer society deny the necessity of intellectual and moral development of a person, which leads to the complete degradation of mind and individuality. Moreover, it makes people ignorant, so that they can be easily manipulated.  Person begins to look at things in one-sided way, as it is imposed on advertising, television or any other branch of popular culture. For example, information that someone gets from mass media merges with what he or she really thinks, sees and feels, becoming undeniable truth. Popular culture can shape the human mind by offering carefully selected authority, way of life and formula of happiness.

Some people may say that creating new products and goods, which is the main target of Consumer society, is the best way to development and progress. The high consumer standards stimulate the desire of person to make money, work hard and study with an enthusiasm, which should obviously lead to the reduction of social pressure. Moreover, the proclamation of equality and democracy, as well as accumulation of free time for the people of working professions, caused the situation when things that were previously available only for the "upper classes" of the society have become common (especially it concerns the achievements of culture).

However, consumerism also causes human dependence and indecisiveness. A separate person loses the feeling of responsibility. For example, most people think that they are not responsible for pollution and leave this question only for the sphere of industry. Also, the Consumer society really exists only in highly-developed countries, whereas the Third World countries are used just like the source of natural resources and cheap workers. As a result of the declaration of the general right to get pleasure, under the influence of myths about the possibility to be equal and happy, demoralization and depersonalization of society have gained an epidemic proportions. The artificially impaled false ideals knock out the ground from under the feet and, as a result, more and more people feel unbeatable loneliness, helplessness and confusion. Lack of privacy, the desire to get as much pleasure and entertainment aspossible, focusing on the physical side of existence throw people into chaos of moral and spiritual collapse. So, this kind of society can’t be good and needs treatment.

Sources:

1.     http://www.oed.com

2.     ACR paragraph. Lytoshenko Dariia. - http://fedoriv-writing.blogspot.com/2013/02/acr-paragraph-lytoshenko-dariia-2.html

3.     Lytoshenko D.The social reflectiveness of the prose of J.D.Salinger and J.Updike; tutor - Rostyslav Semkiv / Dariia Lytoshenko. - Kyiv, 2012. - 47 p.

ACR Essay. Marta Pasiuk

Human I in works of Paul Riecoeur

The fundamental category of the personalistic philosophical and anthropological understanding of human theory is personality. Paul Riecoeur represents French school of personalism and supports the idea of semantic entity – ‘self’, which creates values that are sense of human culture and life in general.

Paul Riecoeur claims about human ‘I’ as essentially embodied ‘self’. The philosopher’s idea is opposite to the Cartesian and the radical anti-Cartesian conceptions, which declare about ego as independent of the body or that ‘self’ is the product of the basically impersonal physical system. However Paul Riecoeur believes that ‘self’ is only possible with the help of the material and cultural components and at the same time is the guaranty of initiative and inaugurating something new.

The other reasons for Paul Riecoeur to describe ‘self’ as a main characteristic of human life are three approaches that the author represents–semantic, pragmatic, narrative approaches. Semantic approach only provides the ability to designate individuals but does not provide opportunities to identify as ‘self’. In pragmatic approach speech acts have an influence on ‘I’ and ‘I’ values now as a subject. But life becomes all-in-one only with entering of the narrative identity, which helps to judge and evaluate behavior of ‘self’ and the others through moral and ethical prism.

Consideration of human ‘I’ in Paul Riecoeur’s researches completes with categories of the morality and ethics. It should be admitted that moral in its requirement of practical compulsion does not take into account the personality in general. But as for Paul Riecoeur by evaluating own actions, provides a kind of interpretation of the ‘self’ in ethical terms.

So as a representative of French personalism Paul Riecoeur demonstrate the idea of human ‘I’ as ‘self’ in such terms as essentially embodied human ‘self’, narrative identity, and moral ‘self’. And by such description determines human ‘I’ as the main characteristic of human life and in all its forms.

1. Ricouer Р. // Stanford Encyclopedia of Philisophy. — 2005. –http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ricoeur/

2. Ricouer Р. Oneself as Another.

ACR Essay. Shapran Yana

Internships in companies

Companies spend billions to recruit best workers from different firms, but it is not the only way to succeed in modern competitive world. Attracting student interns is a trendy business decision which makes finding a real talent cheaper than recruiting. Moreover hiring student interns should be a common practice for each respectful company in Ukraine. This practice is spread among companies that invest in prospective students, and get a competitive advantage of a variety of own faithful future leaders.

The first argument against hiring an intern is a belief that a student is not capable of wide scope of work. This proves to be right only for reckless interns, but the majority is very responsible. Interns may do almost everything that needed in the reasonable bonds. For Example, PR- intern is not supposed to make tea or coffee for colleagues, but may give a hand in doing some paperwork or document workflow or maintaining an own project.

The second argument against hiring a student intern is that it is more efficient and convenient to hire a regular worker then an intern. In fact, hiring a regular worker may take months of time and lots of money, while hiring an intern takes in general several weeks, because students are willing to take group interviews or phone interviews, which is not appropriate for specialists or managers. Moreover students may work even for free in order to obtain experience or a field record to kick-start their career, as practice provided by Universities does not prove to be useful and worthwhile investment of time and forces.

The third argument against hiring a student intern is lack of practical knowledge and working experience. Students got the theoretical knowledge that has nothing to do with working reality and that may demotivate employers. This argument has right for existence, but with some adjustment. For instance, students are highly motivated at the start of their career which makes them curious, energetic and opened to everything new. Furthermore, Interns are easily trained and learned as they continue their learning process, particularly the practical part of it. It is fair to say that a student intern is learning new practices and procedures faster than experienced worker.

     To sum up all these arguments, hiring student interns is an attribute of a modern company, efficient decision for HR department, and a bonus to corporate image. 

ACR essay. Belopolskaya. Exceptional role of women: today and long ago

The XX century witnessed great changes not only in political and economic systems. Social functions of man and especially women have been changed. Now more women can be seen in governments and top management. The evolution is inevitable. But still, as Kozma Prutkov once said, “Capture the gist!” In evolution process the gist can be found in the very beginning of it, or in prehistoric times.

Relicts of prehistoric times are available due to archaeology, and social relations that cannot be found in the ground are reconstructed ethnographically. The first such reconstructions performed by Boris Symchenko refer to Final Paleolithic and Mesolithic, so this essay id going to analyze social function of a woman of those periods and prove that it was rather passive but still exceptional.

So, according to the mentioned above reconstructions a Stone Age woman had certain responsibilities to the family. She dressed meat, made clothes, prepared primitive food. It seems that her job was not so important as compared with a man’s responsibilities.

A man was the main daily breader of the house. It was him who hunted food. Death or physical incapacity meant starvation and extinction of the family. The fact of important man’s social function cannot be ignored.

So, from the one hand, a woman seems to be just a man’s assistant who managed around the house when her man was hunting. But from the other hand exceptional function of a woman in any society is to deliver a baby, a new hunter and a future breader if it is a baby boy, or a future woman to continue the evolution.

But there is an evidence of exceptional attitude towards woman. It can be seen in numerous statuettes of so-called Paleolithic Venus. These are small figures made mostly from sort stone, bones of mammoth or other animals. The figures have some exaggerated features (hips, breast and belly). Although there exist many various interpretations of the statuettes, all researches agree with the fact that no men statuettes of that period were found. It can mean that men required women.

Thus, in a mutually beneficial alliance “man-woman”, a woman was responsible for household activity, children up-bringing, and providing inspiration to men. The mentioned above functions underline the exceptional and specific role of woman in Paleolithic and Mesolithic societies. And this is the “gist” that can help those women who want to reconsider their values and attitude towards a family and carrier.

Literature:

«Искусство. Современная иллюстрированная энциклопедия» Под ред. проф. Горкина А.П.; М.: Росмэн; 2007.

Зализняк Л.Л. Охотники на северного оленя Украинского Полесья в эпоху финального палеолита. — К.: Наукова думка, 1989. — 182 с.

Симченко Ю.Б. Культура охотников на оленей северной Евразии. М., Наука, 1976 –  311 с., С. 191 – 193.

Столяр А.Д. «Происхождение изобразительного искусства». М., 1985.  –  298с.

ACR Essay. Iryna Nikolaichuk.

Literary phenomena of modernism should be revaluated in postmodernism

For humanities, as for any other area of science, not only synchronistical, but also diachronic aspect is important while taking into consideration some actual scientific problems. But sometimes attention paid to both of these aspects is misbalanced, and it can cause over-analyzing of some concepts or phenomena in synchronistical aspect, but ignoring diachronic one and vice versa. Keeping this balance during the process of analysis is very important, but sometimes it is very difficult task for a number of researchers to define whether or not concrete phenomenon which is associated with exact history time needs re-analysis in another time with another criteria and model of thinking. For example, in a literary criticism there is a tendency of earning scientific interest to phenomena of literary modernism, which are noticeably distanced in time from their todays` researchers, in order to revaluate them according to the categories of postmodern way of thinking – and this direction of literary science seems to be very effective.

One reason for these tendencies is that these processes of revaluation of modernistic concepts can provide completely new image of modernistic art system in general and modern literature in particular. Stylistic and ideological inventions of modernism make very bright example of specifically organized system whose influence on next art generations remains to be appreciable. Also, while reanalyzing literary modernism in the terms of postmodernism it is very important to define interconnections between these two types of literature and, consequently, two different models of thinking and world-view. Revaluating modernistic concepts can emphasize their influence on contemporary art and literature. What is more, aesthetical and philosophical systems which were formed in modernism can be used by ‘postmodern’ researchers as theoretical base of analysis. Modernism was represented by a large number of different art and literary schools, organizations, and establishments, and their theoretical and aesthetical ideas are valuable for the theory of art in general and literary science in particular.

But it should be admitted that attention which was paid by different researchers to modernistic phenomena during the last century was so considerable that now for literary science it makes a real problem to deal with such a variety of different points of view about some concepts of modernism. Modernism as cultural phenomenon was analyzed so deeply in all the possible aspects that it makes no sense for postmodern researchers to refer to such over-analyzed problems instead of drawing their attention to something undiscovered yet. Furthermore, so noticeable number of various interpretations of some concepts of modernism causes misunderstanding of them. Different researchers with their points of view, for example, very often refer in their works not to exact meaning of the term, but to their own interpretation of it. Moreover, many problems in this area can appear because of distance in time and differences in model of thinking between modernism and postmodernism. Contemporary researchers sometimes make wrong conclusions just because of their misunderstanding of the modernistic world-view.

However, existing knowledge about some modernistic concepts needs re-systematization and re-analysis in highly distanced in time from modernistic way of thinking postmodern outlook because modernism as cultural and literal phenomenon still is under non-scientific and non-objective stereotypes which are to be destroyed by new researches. And the main problem which appears while analyzing the postmodern image of modernism is that these stereotypes were created by researchers whose conclusions were based on the works of other researchers, but not on the actual sources which are widely available – letters, diaries, newspapers, photos, and different art objects. Modernistic categories, therefore, can be clarified in new cultural and ideological space and can still be the points of interest for a literary criticism.

Sources:

1. ACR paragraph. Iryna Nicolaichuk. - http://fedoriv-writing.blogspot.com/2013/02/acr-paragraph-iryna-nikolaichuk

2.     Nikolaichuk I. Narrative technique of 'stream of concsiousness' in British literature of modernism: James Joyce, Virginia Woolf ; tutor - Rostyslav Semkiv / Iryna Nikolaichuk. - Kyiv, 2012. - 100 p.

Olha Vynohradova. ACR essay

The place of Neanderthals in human evolution

According to paleoanthropology and evolutional biology, modern humans belong to the genus Homo, whose evolution continued during the long period of time since 3-2,5 million years ago. However, not all existed human species were involved in evolution–some of them were its deadlock`s branches, like Homo floresiensis or Homo rudolfiensis. Moreover, the whole genus Homo neanderthalensis is under the consideration of being the part of modern human evolution. Discussion around this problem began in the middle of the XX century and widely spread around the world in the XXI century, when DNA researches emerged.

The majority of scientists exclude Neanderthals from the process of human evolution in the regard of their special features and time of their appearance on the Earth. In 2008 evolutional biologists managed to decipher Neanderthals` mitochondrial DNA that is located in women`s cells. As a result, 206 distinctions accrued between Neanderthals` and humans` DNA, which means that Neanderthal is different from modern human in 98 per cent (Zalizniak 54). Another essential detail is that Neanderthals emerged in Europe 200,000 years ago, whereas Homo sapiens appeared in the Africa about the same time (Segeda 157). This argument shows that those two species could not be sequential. It should be added that Neanderthals had archaic appearance and structure of the body that could be explained by severe climate of glacial Europe. Homo sapiens that were developing at the same time had gracile constitution. So, even morphologically those two species were far from each other.

 Nevertheless, not all scholars agree with that point of view. In 2010-2011 the group of genetics deciphered another part of DNA, but this time it was located in men`s cells. Considering this research, it was proved that 1-4 per cents of Neanderthals` genome were similar to the genes of Homo sapiens (Zalizniak 59). They insist that a small part of Neanderthals were involved in human evolution. Such scholars also explain the approximate time of appearance of those two species on the Earth by arguing that not all human remains were found and the dating is rather controversial. In such way, the first Homo sapiens in their views were archaic one`s and could be named as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis (Sytnyk 78-79). For them, being morphologically different, is another evidence, that those two species were sequential, even though the time of their occurrence is almost the same.

Considering all those arguments and counterarguments, it should be admitted that similarities between Neanderthals` and modern humans` DNA indicates only that they had one mutual ancestor. That ancestor is still living in Africa and does not have Neanderthal genes at all. The line divided into two 600,000 years ago on the territory of the Middle East when after another 200,000 years Neanderthals settled in Europe and Homo sapiens went to Asia (Sytnyk 103).  The simultaneous development of Neanderthals in Europe and Homo sapiens in Asia is actually proving that theory. It should be added that the use of the term ‘Homo sapiens neanderthalensis’ is not correct, because we do not have any human remains with both features of Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens, that could also be an evidence that they had not any sexual intercourses between them.

Based on that arguments and counterarguments, discussion about Neanderthal`s part in human evolution is still continuing and attracts new researchers. Therefore, any discussions about this topic should be reasoned strongly.

Argument	Counterargument	Rebuttal
Neanderthal`s DNA differs from modern human`s in 98%	2 % of Neanderthal`s DNA is similar to modern human`s	It actually confirms that two species had one mutual ancestor, but does not mean, these two were  sequential
Neanderthals had archaic appearance and body constitution	Being morphologically different is another evidence, that those two species were sequential, because they had interbreeding	The science does not have any archaeological evidences that Neanderthal and Sapiens had any sexual intercourses between them
Neanderthals and Homo sapiens appeared on the Earth precisely around the same time – they could not be sequential	The dating is rather controversial	The development of Neanderthals in Europe and Homo sapiens in Asia was simultaneous

References:

Segeda, Sergii. Anthropology. Kyiv: Lybid`, 2009. Print.

Sytnyk, Olexandr. Cultural anthropology: human and society origins. Lviv: Lviv polytechnic press, 2012. Print.

Vynohradova, Olha. "ACR paragraph. Olha Vynohradova." Academic writing blog. 7 Feb. 2013. Web. 27 Feb. 2013

Zalizniak, Leonid. The ancient history of Ukraine. Kyiv: Tempora, 2012. Print.