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A system for classifying descriptions of society in the era of fall of postmodernism
Krčil, David ; Hauser, Michael (advisor) ; Horáková, Hana (referee)
The thesis deals with the comparison and classification of descriptive theories that seek to describe the state of Western society and culture in the 21st century. In this context, the most frequently invoked term is "postmodernism", which according to many thinkers has already lost its ability to describe society or, according to others, has never even truly described it. This paper is concerned with those theories that are supposed to be either the successors to postmodernism or its surrogate. The research question of the thesis is whether it is possible to find points of contact between the chosen theories, on the basis of which they could be sorted into hyperonymic groups (meta-descriptions) as to map the contemporary thinking about the historical stage of the West in the 21st century. A classification of this kind is potentially fruitful for creating a map of contemporary modes of thinking about society, and the categories delineated should prove to be inherently open for quickly linking emerging theories, or those not included in this thesis, to similar descriptions of society so that their findings can be compared. To lay the foundations for this purpose, the theories of Timothee Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker's metamodernism, Jeffrey Nealon's post-postmodernism, Alan Kirby's...
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Forming Identity in Jennifer Egan's Novels
KOUKLÍKOVÁ, Tereza
This diploma thesis focuses on the question of identity and its formation in the novels of the contemporary American author, Jennifer Egan. At first, it characterizes the concept of identity in literature in relation to literary characters, and it attempts to define the term as such. After the introduction, it moves to situating the concept in particular literary periods, with an emphasis on the context in which the writer has built her career of a successful novelist and in which there is a continuation of postmodern heritage on the one hand and the emergence of contemporary novelistic writing that is sometimes called "post-postmodernism" on the other hand. In the practical part, the thesis examines selected Egan's novels, Look at Me, The Keep, A Visit from the Goon Squad a Manhattan Beach, and thoroughly analyses how she deals with the topic. By a method of close-reading and interpretation, it aims to capture the essence of characters' identities, if there is any, and subsequently to identify the nature of today's American fiction.
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Critical-realist Philosophy of Science, its Consequences and Merit for the Methodology of Social Sciences
Zich, Jakub ; Balon, Jan (advisor) ; Hlaváček, Karel (referee)
Critical realism acknowledges epistemic relativism, which means faith, that our knowledge is not definite, complete and that it's not pure mirror of reality. It however refuses critical relativism, which claims, that we cannot choose more adequate description of reality between two or more competing descriptions. In order to reflect an extent and character of our knowledge, first we have to reveal ontological status of things, which are subject of our investigation - in case of natural science as well as in social science - which implies fundamental refuse of the thesis about correspondence between descriptions of things and their substantial existence. In order to approach knowledge about real essence of things, we cannot confine on our experiences of events, which are products of co-operation of particular generative mechanisms and causal relations. For that reason higher degree of abstraction and theory-grounded knowledge is necessary. Our theories about generative mechanisms can be than on the basis of empirical investigation temporarily verified, partly falsified or modified; but always with recognition, that our experience is only an experience of variable manifest appearances, which are conditioned with higher structural ordering. Foregoing thesis represents connection between natural and...
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