J Toscano
Biographic Data
| ID | 68126 |
|---|---|
| NAME | J Toscano |
| GIVEN NAMES | J |
| FAMILY NAME | Toscano |
| SIGNATURE | TOSCANO J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Chemnitz University of Technology |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8317-8311 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 11 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Beyond Erinnerungsmania and white blindness: A radical entanglement approach to Germany’s Erinnerungskultur
Germany’s Erinnerungskultur —long praised as a model for confronting historical violence—has reached a critical impasse in the face of Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza (2023–2025). While originally developed to reckon with the crimes of the Holocaust, this memorial framework now reveals deep historiographic, epistemic, and ethical limitations. This article presents Erinnerungskultur as a form of state-directed memoro-politics , exposing its reliance …
The timescape framework: Discerning the temporal horizon of algorithm dynamics
This article offers a critical framework to examine how temporal practices shape our understanding of algorithm dynamics, and how in turn the latter reinforce our experience of time. Drawing on Adam's timescape concept, it argues for specific temporal approaches and analytical perspectives in critical algorithm studies. In that guise, familiar notions such as “feedback loops” and “black boxes” are reframed through a temporal lens, seeking thus to…
The symbolic work of political discourse. Populist reason and its foundational myth
This article locates Ernesto Laclau’s populist reason as a point of departure to understand the contemporary democratic logic and its so-called ‘excesses’. It argues that, even if resourceful, Laclau’s findings can be supplemented with a theory of the imaginary as developed by Cornelius Castoriadis, as well as with key remarks from a discussion of the theologico-political as this was characterized by Claude Lefort. The aim is to construct an unde…
The Lesvos limbo: A visual memory from the periphery of Europe
This photo‐essay describes the situation in the refugee camp of Kara Tepe, in Lesvos, Greece, framed in the continuity of a “border event”. The aim is to document and create awareness on a specific situation, through a narrative that highlights moments of resilience, agency, and creativity. The project was developed as an investigative inquiry between a formal researcher and a (non)citizen/refugee photographer, in a collaboration that stresses et…
Awakening: A Politico-Existential Understanding of Messianism; On Walter Benjamin's Project for a New Humankind
This article explores the notion of awakening that Walter Benjamin constructed throughout his work. While this concept has been continuously examined, this article shows how key articulations have remained out of sight, and how these become crucial elements to reread and revitalize Benjamin's analyses. The article presents the thrust of awakening as the apex of a form of profane messianism, a reconfiguration of inner forces and perceptions throug…
Working from below: Exploring the subversive quality of technological affordances along the Mediterranean
In the last few years, civil society groups working from below the established core of power have been acting as contestant parties in border sites, particularly in the Mediterranean zone, by repurposing technological devices traditionally utilized for state security and control. For their task, these groups engage through the development of networks and channels of communication to enable informal systems of knowledge, which imply technological …
Embodying parkour's visual subculture: Ethos, Style and the Emergence of a Visual Habitus
This article describes parkour's visual subculture as a form of subcultural capital that has developed with the rise of this alternative sport. It examines the recent history of its visual media as well as a visual habitus to understand the ways in which a collective gaze is produced and performed. Furthermore, the text locates the parkour practitioner – the traceur – as a key actor of an aesthetic system, a relatively autonomous figure that embo…
Parkour’s interactional organization. The paradoxes of media representations and how traceurs cope through non-representational strategies
Parkour is a recent type of sport where the body appears to produce moving sequences along urban spaces. Now, however smooth these sequences might seem, our perception of them entails media representations of the sport already. These actually generate certain uneasiness in practitioners themselves, who see them more like stagings than accurate depictions. Still, media representations are paramount to understand the social organization of parkour.…
The Visual Habitus of a Traceur: Articulating Action and Media Practices within Parkour’s Visual Subculture
Because of the research's regional focus, the findings reflect mostly the cultural distinctiveness of the groups examined
Transcoding identity: Assemblages between man and machine beyond the cyborg archetype – a semiotic route
The way we perform identity in everyday situations nowadays is affected in very concrete ways by our interactions with technology. However, our conceptual understanding of such exchanges has been limited to a handful of concepts or narrative devices (i.e. a cyborg ), which have proved their limits when facing extreme complexity. This paper develops a proposal to reexamine various possible assemblages between man and machine – at the level of the …
Re-Shaping the Political Field One Visual Fragment at a Time: The Tunisian Conundrum
The Internet has become a vigorous political field of interactions. Many of these interchanges – confrontations as well as encounters – rely on the weight of the image as a prominent communication tool. We are now used to loads of images flowing through the Internet’s digital corridors, but the mainstreaming of this phenomenon has brought about singular possibilities for political developments based on emerging uses and interpretations. In a way,…
Parkour’s interactional organization. The paradoxes of media representations and how traceurs cope through non-representational strategies
Parkour is a recent type of sport where the body appears to produce moving sequences along urban spaces. Now, however smooth these sequences might seem, our perception of them entails media representations of the sport already. These actually generate certain uneasiness in practitioners themselves, who see them more like stagings than accurate depictions. Still, media representations are paramount to understand the social organization of parkour.…
Re-Shaping the Political Field One Visual Fragment at a Time: The Tunisian Conundrum
The Internet has become a vigorous political field of interactions. Many of these interchanges – confrontations as well as encounters – rely on the weight of the image as a prominent communication tool. We are now used to loads of images flowing through the Internet’s digital corridors, but the mainstreaming of this phenomenon has brought about singular possibilities for political developments based on emerging uses and interpretations. In a way,…
Transcoding identity: Assemblages between man and machine beyond the cyborg archetype – a semiotic route
The way we perform identity in everyday situations nowadays is affected in very concrete ways by our interactions with technology. However, our conceptual understanding of such exchanges has been limited to a handful of concepts or narrative devices (i.e. a cyborg ), which have proved their limits when facing extreme complexity. This paper develops a proposal to reexamine various possible assemblages between man and machine – at the level of the …
The Visual Habitus of a Traceur: Articulating Action and Media Practices within Parkour’s Visual Subculture
Because of the research's regional focus, the findings reflect mostly the cultural distinctiveness of the groups examined
Parkour’s interactional organization. The paradoxes of media representations and how traceurs cope through non-representational strategies
Parkour is a recent type of sport where the body appears to produce moving sequences along urban spaces. Now, however smooth these sequences might seem, our perception of them entails media representations of the sport already. These actually generate certain uneasiness in practitioners themselves, who see them more like stagings than accurate depictions. Still, media representations are paramount to understand the social organization of parkour.…
Working from below: Exploring the subversive quality of technological affordances along the Mediterranean
In the last few years, civil society groups working from below the established core of power have been acting as contestant parties in border sites, particularly in the Mediterranean zone, by repurposing technological devices traditionally utilized for state security and control. For their task, these groups engage through the development of networks and channels of communication to enable informal systems of knowledge, which imply technological …
Embodying parkour's visual subculture: Ethos, Style and the Emergence of a Visual Habitus
This article describes parkour's visual subculture as a form of subcultural capital that has developed with the rise of this alternative sport. It examines the recent history of its visual media as well as a visual habitus to understand the ways in which a collective gaze is produced and performed. Furthermore, the text locates the parkour practitioner – the traceur – as a key actor of an aesthetic system, a relatively autonomous figure that embo…
Beyond Erinnerungsmania and white blindness: A radical entanglement approach to Germany’s Erinnerungskultur
Germany’s Erinnerungskultur —long praised as a model for confronting historical violence—has reached a critical impasse in the face of Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza (2023–2025). While originally developed to reckon with the crimes of the Holocaust, this memorial framework now reveals deep historiographic, epistemic, and ethical limitations. This article presents Erinnerungskultur as a form of state-directed memoro-politics , exposing its reliance …
The timescape framework: Discerning the temporal horizon of algorithm dynamics
This article offers a critical framework to examine how temporal practices shape our understanding of algorithm dynamics, and how in turn the latter reinforce our experience of time. Drawing on Adam's timescape concept, it argues for specific temporal approaches and analytical perspectives in critical algorithm studies. In that guise, familiar notions such as “feedback loops” and “black boxes” are reframed through a temporal lens, seeking thus to…
The symbolic work of political discourse. Populist reason and its foundational myth
This article locates Ernesto Laclau’s populist reason as a point of departure to understand the contemporary democratic logic and its so-called ‘excesses’. It argues that, even if resourceful, Laclau’s findings can be supplemented with a theory of the imaginary as developed by Cornelius Castoriadis, as well as with key remarks from a discussion of the theologico-political as this was characterized by Claude Lefort. The aim is to construct an unde…
The Lesvos limbo: A visual memory from the periphery of Europe
This photo‐essay describes the situation in the refugee camp of Kara Tepe, in Lesvos, Greece, framed in the continuity of a “border event”. The aim is to document and create awareness on a specific situation, through a narrative that highlights moments of resilience, agency, and creativity. The project was developed as an investigative inquiry between a formal researcher and a (non)citizen/refugee photographer, in a collaboration that stresses et…
Awakening: A Politico-Existential Understanding of Messianism; On Walter Benjamin's Project for a New Humankind
This article explores the notion of awakening that Walter Benjamin constructed throughout his work. While this concept has been continuously examined, this article shows how key articulations have remained out of sight, and how these become crucial elements to reread and revitalize Benjamin's analyses. The article presents the thrust of awakening as the apex of a form of profane messianism, a reconfiguration of inner forces and perceptions throug…
Sociology (8 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · Aesthetics (4 works) · Art (4 works) · Philosophy (4 works) · Politics (4 works) · Psychology (4 works) · Adventure Sports and Sensation Seeking (3 works)