MEGATRENDS AND MEDIA

TRANSCULTURAL COMMUNICATION AND MEDIA ART
are considered to be sociologists of “tragic ethos” is another proof of
ontological nostalgia. Also, Paul Ricœur labels the three philosophers
Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche and Karl Marx the “hermeneutics
of distrust”. 16 These titles imply the presence of nostalgic tendencies in
their thought and worldview.
1.2 Dimensions of nostalgic paradigm
The proposition of the “end of the social”, according to which there is a
crisis of the society as of an empiric reality and a concept (social theory),
forms the background for Turner’s conception of nostalgic paradigm. 17
He states that most of the efforts to grasp this crisis are based on the
assumptions of loss of society as of a means of solidarity or a social
structure. Based on this, Turner states that in classical sociology, the
motives of solidarity and community are components of the general
nostalgic paradigm, which is not only relected in sociology, but also
generally in Western culture. Turner recognizes three major dimensions
of nostalgic paradigm, 18 which basically represent some sort of sets of
possible reasons or sources of nostalgia:
1.) „...sense of historical decline and loss, involving a departure from
some golden age. The messianic message of Old Testament Judaism
and New Testament Christianity typically involved some sense of a
lost space and lost time from which contemporary social systems
can be measured and found wanting. (…) This Judeo-Christian
background has had a profound impact on Western thought in
general and on Marxist sociology and critical theory in particular
which have also often embraced a cataclysmic vision of history as a
violent progression of revolutionary events into an unknown future
from a garden of perfect harmony. This was a radical catastrophic
ir.nmu.org.ua/bitstream/handle/123456789/133608/85ade96e1bad95ae
cde863ca19e31b41.pdf?sequence=1>.
16 HARRINGTON, A. et al.: Moderní sociální teorie. Praha : Portál, 2006, p. 127.
17 ELLIOTT, A., TURNER, B. S.: Debating “the Social”: Towards a Critique of
Sociological Nostalgia. In Societies, 2012, Vol. 2, p. 14. [online]. [2013-09-
12]. Available at: .
18 While Turner uses various terms to denote them, such as elements,
components or aspects, we chose the term dimension, as it denotes the
object most precisely.
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