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Reclaiming Culture in the Digital Age

The provincial attitude is limited in time but not in space. When the regional man, in his ignorance, often an intensive and creative ignorance, extends his own immediate necessities into the world, and assumes that the present moment is unique, he becomes the provincial man. He cuts himself off from the past, and without benefit of the fund of traditional wisdom approaches the simplest problems of life as if nobody had ever heard of them before. A society without arts, said Plato, lives by chance. The provincial man, locked in the present, lives by chance.

Allen Tate 1945: “The New Provincialism”

Hollow men, T.S. Eliot named denizens of the 21st century. Are we any less vacuous in the 21st? Or have we been further emptied?

It often proves difficult to describe our situation—our time and place in history and the world—without sounding morose, or, indeed, without falling into that trap of assuming our present moment is unique, or, to take Tate’s criticism farther, that we, as somehow constituting this moment, are ourselves unique. Arguably, our situation is unique. But we remain as human as any and every human ever has or ever will. There are challenges faced in 2023 that were not and perhaps could not quite be imagined in 1945—let alone 1845, or 545. But the uniqueness of these challenges, such as how culture is to be formed or reclaimed in the digital age, leaves us yet with an unchanged nature.

Regional Cultures

Among the unchanging truths of human nature: we are cultural beings. There has never been a time nor a place in which a human being did not carry some mark of culture—even its absence (say, in a child raised by wolves!), that is, being something distinctly human, visible in its resulting deficiency. But the deficiencies sometimes come not from the absence of culture, but from its own noxious constitution. These noxious cultural vapors are hard to discern when living amidst them. It belongs to the insightful critic, therefore, to give us the perspective from which they can be seen.

Allen Tate (1899–1979)—American poet laureate in 1943, essays, social commentator, brilliant mind and troubled soul—proved himself such an insightful critic time and again. His 1945 essay, “The New Provincialism”, clearly articulates the titular source of a cultural vapor much-thickened in the past 80 years. The term “provincialism” has often been used in criticism of rural thinking. To be “provincial”, it was often said, was to be narrow-minded. The provincial man, in other words, is an unsophisticated bumpkin.

Against the “provincial”, Tate contrasts the “regional”, which he describes as “that consciousness or that habit of men in a given locality which influences them to certain patterns of thought and conduct handed to them by their ancestors. Regionalism is thus limited in space but not in time.” In other words, the regional carries on local tradition. It may carry such traditions on across countless generations. Regionalism focuses not upon the now, but the here. Thereby, it constitutes a cultural place: an innermost boundary within which a culture may be located.

Contemporary Provinces

The ”provincial” man, however, as stated above, takes his regional here and extends it into the world, transforming the idiosyncrasy of place into an idiom of time. He becomes “locked in the present”. Do we not hear this all-too-often today? “C’mon, it’s 2023!” Do we not see obtuse historical idiocy trotted out daily?

Our culture today consists little in regional awareness and almost entirely in provincial outlook. We have no place for our cultures. They seem, therefore, to lack solidity, sameness, any transgenerational durability. Buildings across the world look increasingly similar. Dialects disappear. Styles of art—painting, sculpture, music, cinema, one and all—lose their distinctiveness through a flattening refinement of technique and production.

Can we recover any genuine “regionalism” in our modern, hypercommunicative world?

Digital Culture

As the Executive Director of an institution founded within the hypercommunicative digital environment, I think often of how our technological tools of culture can be used without contravening the good of our nature. I do not believe regional dissolution follows of necessity from our global communication. But I do think we need better habits of living today, in order that we not lapse forevermore into the “new provincialism”. Come join us (details below) this Wednesday (11/1/2023) to discuss Tate’s essay and the formation of these habits to discover how we might reclaim culture in the digital age.

Philosophical Happy Hour

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Come join us for drinks (adult or otherwise) and a meaningful conversation. Open to the public! Held every Wednesday from 5:45–7:15pm ET.

Humble Beginnings for Human Education

To all our visitors, members, faculty, patrons, and benefactors: I am deeply humbled by the time, dedication, and resources that you have given to this endeavor—more so by the fact that each good we have received seems to have resulted in returns with exponential interest. A single seed, well-nurtured, may produce many fruits; and the seeds first sown at the Lyceum Institute are just beginning to flower. We began with four seminars, taught by one faculty members, in 2019. In just a few short years, we have blossomed to seven faculty, twelve seminars, six Latin courses, German, three Trivium courses—and more. From these humble beginnings, we are aspiring to great things: true human education.

As we turn the corner into the new year, I yet again must ask for your continued support. All seeds require continued nourishment. Your funds will enable us to accomplish our goals in 2023 and beyond. Click the link below to learn more about our progress and our goals, and to see our GiveButter campaign.

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[POSTPONED] ⚘ The Semiotics of Religion in the Digital Era | Massimo Leone

On 2 December 2022 (see event times around the world here and join the live Q&A here), Massimo Leone will present on “The Semiotics of Religion in the Digital Era”. Leone is Tenured Full Professor (“Professore Ordinario”) of Philosophy of Communication, Cultural Semiotics, and Visual Semiotics at the Department of Philosophy and Educational Sciences, University of Turin, Italy, and part-time Professor of Semiotics in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Shanghai University, China. He has been visiting professor at several universities in the five continents. He has single-authored fifteen books, edited more than fifty collective volumes, and published more than five hundred articles in semiotics, religious studies, and visual studies. He is the winner of a 2018 ERC Consolidator Grant, the most prestigious research grant in Europe. He is editor-in-chief of Lexia, the Semiotic Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Communication, University of Turin, Italy, co-editor-in-chief of Semiotica (Walter de Gruyter), and co-editor of the book series “I Saggi di Lexia” (Rome: Aracne), “Semiotics of Religion” (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter), and “Advances in Face Studies” (London and New York: Routledge).

Commentary will be provided by Leif Weatherby, Associate Profess or German and founding director of the Digital Theory Lab at New York University.

Join the Live Q&A here.

2022 International Open Seminar on Semiotics (IO2S) | Website

This collaborative international open scientific initiative and celebration is jointly organized by the Institute for Philosophical Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, the Lyceum Institute, the Deely Project, Saint Vincent College, the Iranian Society for Phenomenology at the Iranian Political Science Association, the International Association for Semiotics of Space and Time, the Institute for Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Semiotic Society of America, the American Maritain Association, the International Association for Semiotic Studies, the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies and the Mansarda Acesa with the support of the FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Government of Portugal under the UID/FIL/00010/2020 project.

⚘ Semiotics and Dark Web Memes | Robert W. Gehl

On 30 September 2022 at 3pm ET (see event times around the world here and join the live Q&A here), Dr. Robert W. Gehl will present on “Semiotics and Dark Web Memes”. Dr. Gehl is a Fulbright scholar and award-winning author whose research focuses on contemporary communication technologies. He is currently the F. Jay Endowed Research Chair of Communication at Louisiana Tech University. He has published over two dozens articles in journals such as New Media & Society, Communication Theory, Social Media + Society, and Media, Culture and Society. His books include Reverse Engineering Social Media, which won the Nancy Baym Book Award from the Association of Internet Researchers, and Weaving the Dark Web, published by the MIT Press in 2018, and Social Engineering, forthcoming from MIT Press in 2022.

Join the Live Q&A here.

2022 International Open Seminar on Semiotics (IO2S) | Website

This collaborative international open scientific initiative and celebration is jointly organized by the Institute for Philosophical Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, the Lyceum Institute, the Deely Project, Saint Vincent College, the Iranian Society for Phenomenology at the Iranian Political Science Association, the International Association for Semiotics of Space and Time, the Institute for Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Semiotic Society of America, the American Maritain Association, the International Association for Semiotic Studies, the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies and the Mansarda Acesa with the support of the FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Government of Portugal under the UID/FIL/00010/2020 project.

IO2S Deely – Reading and Teaching Literature Digitally

On 5 March 2022, Alexandra Milyakina, PhD, will present on “Reading and Teaching Literature Digitally: A Cultural Semiotic Perspective” at 10am ET/3pm UTC (check event times around the world here). Dr. Milyakina is a researcher at the Department of Semiotics in the University of Tartu, Estonia. The topic of PhD thesis is Digitalization of literary education in the context of cultural autocommunication. Main research interests are literary education, semiotics of culture, transmedia and digitalization. Alexandra is a co-founder of the Transmedia research group and digital research project “Education on Screen.”

Participate in the conversation via Zoom.

2022 International Open Seminar on Semiotics (IO2S) | Website

This collaborative international open scientific initiative and celebration is jointly organized by the Institute for Philosophical Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, the Lyceum Institute, the Deely Project, Saint Vincent College, the Iranian Society for Phenomenology at the Iranian Political Science Association, the International Association for Semiotics of Space and Time, the Institute for Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Semiotic Society of America, the American Maritain Association, the International Association for Semiotic Studies, the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies and the Mansarda Acesa with the support of the FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Government of Portugal under the UID/FIL/00010/2020 project.