The connection between Chinese sexism and Confucianism has been a subject of study on the condition of Chinese women in the West since the rise of feminist consciousness in the 1970s. However Confucianism in feminist scholarship is inescapably construed as a misogynous ideology that is incapable of self-rectification in regards to the issue of gender parity. Hence, conceptually the eradication of Confucianism becomes the necessary condition for the liberation of Chinese women, and the adoption of Western ideology (...) let it be Marxist-socialism, Liberalism, or Existentialism is then a logical next step for Chinese women. Yet, such a dichotomization of the West as a superior moral subject and the East as a passive object victimized by their "sexist" tradition is nevertheless an oversimplification of the condition and the liberation of women in the developing world. In the end, it is essentially a neo-colonial discourse in a feminist disguise. This dissertation sets itself up to accomplish two tasks: first, it is to obtain a conceptual clarity of what constitutes Confucianism and its connection with dominant sexist, social practices; second, it is to go beyond a mere critique of Confucianism and feminism as an ally of Chinese patriarchal family structure and Western imperialism respectively, and to lay a foundation for a future construction of a gender theory based on Confucianism as a theoretical ground to explain the cultural construct of Chinese women and to conceive an alternative ethical ground for women's liberation. Eventually, the whole project can be seen as an act of self-affirmation of my ethnic identity as a Chinese and an act of reconciliation with my feminist identity in the modern world. (shrink)

Xu Fuguan (1904-1982) is one of the central representatives of the second generation of Taiwanese Modern Confucianism. This book focuses primarily on his fundamental contributions to the philosophy of this intellectual current, particularly his reinterpretations and reevaluations of the basic axiological concepts of the original Confucian and Daoist aesthetics. It also addresses issues related to his attempts to preserve, systematize, and modernize traditional Chinese aesthetics. Xu Fuguanâ (TM)s theory of the Chinese ideational tradition is defined by (...) the paradigm of the traditional link between ethics and aesthetics. The book highlights the importance of the complementary interaction between Confucianism and Daoism in Xuâ (TM)s theory. In his interpretation of Chinese aesthetics, Xu also incorporated a comparative perspective and contrasted it with Western aesthetics. However, the book shows that his analysis of Western aesthetics is too generalized and therefore problematic. These difficulties are also manifested in Xuâ (TM)s superficial understanding of modern Western art and culture. Nevertheless, this does not detract from the great relevance of his studies of traditional Chinese aesthetics. Xu Fuguanâ (TM)s central theoretical contributions, such as the concept of concerned consciousness, the concept of qiyun shengdong, and the systematic explanation of the axiological foundations of Chinese aesthetics presented and analyzed in this book, are among the most important philosophical innovations elaborated by Modern Confucian theory. These novel approaches are also interesting from the perspective of global theoretical discourses, as they reveal important, culturally conditioned differences between traditional Western and traditional Chinese philosophy in terms of their respective ways of perceiving and interpreting reality. (shrink)

Sound has given rise to many rich theoretical reflections, but when compared to the study of images, the study of sound continues to be marginalized. How is the “sense” of sound constituted and elaborated linguistically, textually, technologically, phenomenologically, and geologically, as well as acoustically? How is sound grasped as an object? Considering sound both within and beyond the scope of the human senses, contributors from literature, film, music, philosophy, anthropology, media and communication, and science and technology studies address (...) topics that range from Descartes’s resonant subject to the gendering of hearing physiology in the nineteenth century, Cold War politics and the opera _Nixon in China_, sounds from the Mediterranean, the poetics of signal processing, and the acousmatic voice in the age of MP3s. In the interpretive challenges posed by voice, noise, antinoise, whispering, near inaudibility, and silence and in the frequent noncoincidence of emission and reception, sound confronts us with what might be called its inhuman qualities—its irreducibility to meaning, to communication, to information, and even to recognition and identification. _Rey Chow_ is Anne Firor Scott Professor of Literature at Duke University. She is the author of _The Age of the World Target _and_ Modern Chinese Literary and Cultural Studies in the Age of Theory_, both_ _published by Duke University Press. _James A. Steintrager _is Professor and Chair of English at the University of California, Irvine. _ Contributors:_ Caroline Bassett, Eugenie Brinkema, Iain Chambers, Michel Chion, Rey Chow,_ _Mladen Dolar, Veit Erlmann, Evan Johnson, Christopher Lee, Mara Mills, John Mowitt, Dominic Pettman, Tara Rodgers, Nicholas Seaver, James A. Steintrager, Jonathan Sterne. (shrink)

In the course of his short literary life, Liu Na'ou travelled across four geographical areas: Taiwan, Japan, Shanghai and Beijing, as well as five cultural domains: Taiwanese, Japanese, French, English and Chinese. The transnational facet of Liu's modernist writing is not merely literary or cultural but political and historical. The earliest modernist writing in China was initiated on the basis of the colonial experience of Taiwan and the semi-colonial modernity of Shanghai. It became a “contact (...) zone” in which various cultural and political influences to contest with each other, signaling a process of power shifting in East Asia in the early 20th century. This article aims to reflect on theoretical issues ranging from nationalism, cosmopolitanism, colonialism and semi-colonialism, to the colonial modernity of East Asia, drawing upon Liu's modernist writings in 1928. (shrink)

He work of the Russian nationwide conference ‘National identity through language and literature. Characteristics of conceptoshere of national culture‘ is analyzed in the article. Previous theoretical sources on the issue in question are summarized. The matters represented in the considered scientific forum are generalized. Diachronic analysis of national cultural consciousness as well as complex cognitive-based approach are used to investigate the issue. Special attention is paid to the study of linguistic world-image as exemplified in fiction, folklore, religious texts, (...) business papers, scholarly works and media texts, as well as to the research of intercultural communication in the era of multiculturalism and globalization. As long as terms ‘cultural code‘, ‘national code‘, and ‘fictional code‘ are not precisely defined, the problem of terminological field was noted, as well as the issue of linguo-cognitive interpretation of methods for representing country image in linguistic consciousness. The attention was paid to Russian as a foreign language, to perception and transforming of European cultural codes by American and western European writers in synchronous and diachronic ways. Geopolitical factor of North and South that matters both in global and local context was noted, particularly the issue of German distinction of the modern European mindset was reviewed. Lots of speaker papers mirrored interdisciplinary links that is of importance for contemporary scholarship in the context of globalization and multicultural society. Up-to-date schools of thought in the field of linguistics, literary studies and journalism were represented. (shrink)

Well-developed educational system leads to a strong country. The Chinese government has emphasized and clarified the priority of developing the Chinese educational system, and it has accelerated efforts to modernize it to position China as one of the world leaders in education. This essay discusses the priority of developing the Chinese educational system, and it outlines the main factors for the construction of a modern theoretical system of education with Chinese characteristics. It argues that (...) this construction should be based on the actual practice of education in China in the new era, it should be deeply rooted in the methods and wisdom of traditional Chinese education, it should incorporate the educational ideology and concepts nurtured by the modern Chinese revolutionary culture, it should draw on the latest scientific advancements and achievements throughout the world and keep pace with the development of the times, and, finally, it should be informed by the study of the nature and development of human beings with special attention to the theoretical issues embedded in educational activities themselves, which relate to the deepest levels of a philosophical worldview. (shrink)

In the process of interpreting works of pictorial art, it is easier to understand not the "style", but the "theme", that is, not how to write, but what to write. In the history of modern art, which attaches more importance to "style", the problem of "theme" is not fundamental and is among the primitive issues worthy of the attention of amateurs who do not understand art. However, sometimes it is in simplicity that the essence lies. The simplest questions (...) that interest almost everyone are the link between works of art and society. When analyzing the "topic", the subject under study is not confined to one work of art, since an integrated approach to the consideration of the problem should be used. The author's main contribution to the study of the history of the development of Chinese painting is a new perspective – the analysis of works based on the "theme". The results of the study revealed the main themes of Chinese pictorial art, identified the main reasons for referring to them, and also established their symbolic meaning, connection with philosophical and literary traditions. The important role of literary scientists in determining the directions of thematic development of Chinese landscape painting is revealed, the significance of the images of the fisherman and the traveler as carriers of the spiritual content of the landscape is determined. The conclusion is made about the prominence of certain themes in the pictorial art, depending on the processes of social development of China. (shrink)

1 Introduction1 In the 1980s, hermeneutics was often incorporated into deconstructionism and literary theory. Rather than focus on authorial intentions, the nature of writing itself including codes used to construct meaning, socio-economic contexts and inequalities of power,2 Gadamer introduced a different perspective; the interplay between effects of history on a reader’s understanding and the tradition(s) handed down in writing. This interplay in which a reader’s prejudices are called into question and modified by the text in a fusion of understanding (...) and topic revitalized the study of the printed word. Gadamer’s turn to language for understanding the meaning of Being also appealed to the post-modern antipathy toward modernity and metaphysics.3 If the truth and validity of interpretations are limited to communities of language, then our mode of being in history cannot but be historical. This point of view rendered Gadamer’s phenomenological hermeneutics vulnerable to the critique of moral and epistemological relativism. However, Gadamer’s theory of interpretation also stems from re-examination of the beginning of knowledge in the Pre-Socratics and Plato, and on this basis, is receptive to another dimension of inquiry than that which was trending in North America. -/- At the East-West Center, University of Hawai’i at Manoa in 1982, Chung-ying Cheng for the first time introduced onto-hermeneutics to an audience of esteemed philosophers including Li Zehou, Ren Jiyu, Feng Youlan, and Zhang Liwen.4 In contrast to schools of deconstruction and literary theory that had disengaged the interpreter from trans-historical sources of meaning and truth, Cheng explained that interpreters exist within a cosmological order inextricable from responsibility to harmonize Heaven and Earth in creative acts of interpretation. By integrating Chinese cosmology into hermeneutics through ontology, he tacitly challenged philosophers in the West to re-examine assumptions about humanity’s place in nature and by implication, Gadamer’s recovery of the beginnings of knowledge in Western philosophy. -/- Cheng’s Neo-Confucianism is inspired by the method and goals of Thomé H. Fang. The following words by Fang seem to prefigure, although in an indistinct and bundled way, aspects of Cheng’s philosophy including a Mencian theory of human nature, comprehensive observation, and creativity: “In the very process of living in concord with creative Nature, Man is charged with an ideal to be fully realized in the light of the principle of comprehensive harmony.”5 Like Fang, Cheng reinvigorates Chinese culture and language, but not solely in order to vindicate the insights of Neo-Confucianism. He has studied Western thought, from pragmatism and the analytic school to German idealism and phenomenology, to unlock and clarify philosophical concepts within the Yijing tradition and thereby render them intelligible to Anglophones. The result has been an awakening of Western scholars to the moral and cultural consequences of decoupling their thought from metaphysical foundations that are neither dogmatic nor doctrinal. -/- Not unlike the dialectic of Gadamer’s dialogue form, onto-generative hermeneutics integrates contrary positions on the same topic in order to blend both sides into a world philosophy, or as Cheng says, a “totalizing or integrative theory,”6 not to be confused with a theoretical rewording of a theory. On the contrary, the universal scope and relevance of hermeneutics stems from personal experience. Just as Gadamer, in response to faction and strife, immersed himself in Plato during the war years, and developed a method with which to harmonize opposites, so too, according to On-cho Ng, was Cheng moved by faction, strife and political persecution to develop a path toward unity.7 Gadamer taught at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and Cheng at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa among other institutions in North America. They facilitated trans-continental educational and cultural ties. Similar experiences yield similar insights irrespective of differences of time and place. Hence, authors in this issue who reside in Europe, China and North America, delineate the differences between Gadamer and Cheng, yet also, in light of Cheng’s onto-generative method and cosmology, develop integrative theories. Due to the page-budget restriction of the publisher, certain articles of this special theme will be subsequently published in the next issue. -/- 2 Integrative Theory This special issue of The Journal of Chinese Philosophy confirms a dimension of hermeneutics that Cheng has both motivated and inspired. The contributors do not abide by the conviction that since thought is mediated by language, interpretations cannot transcend culture. On the contrary, their research exemplifies the fruits of trans-historical onto-dialogical hermeneutics within limits defined by their field inquiry, organized into Parts I and II, around three themes: language, the philosophy of history and ethics. -/- Andrew Fuyarchuk introduces the theme of ontology in relation to Gadamer’s turn to language. Fuyarchuk argues that Chung-ying Cheng’s criticism of Gadamer’s hermeneutics is informed by Heidegger’s concept of Dasein and thereby overlooks how Gadamer’s Platonic-Pythagorean problem of the division between the One and Many is harmonized in the event of language, which in turn positions Gadamer in proximity to the presupposed grounds of receptivity in Cheng’s onto-generative hermeneutics. Lauren Pfister’s contributing article addresses the year 2000 meeting between Cheng and Gadamer in Heidelberg and expands the transhistorical grounds of meaning in Gadamer to matters of theology. Pfister’s summary of the written Chinese record of their conversation indicates that Cheng does not address the role of Christian philosophy and hence, the role of the inner word in Gadamer’s hermeneutics. This is important not only for detecting changes in Cheng’s philosophical development, but also for modifying his hermeneutics along the lines of a living conversation, possibilities explored by Pfister in a sequel to the article submitted to this issue. Nevertheless, by raising the issue of how Gadamer’s turn to language for understanding the meaning of Being extends possibilities in Cheng’s thought, Pfister anticipates the article by Katarina Gajdosova. She returns to the roots of Chinese thought during the Warring States period and broadens the meaning of names in recently excavated texts. Contrary to the conventions about how to understand terms, she appeals to both Heidegger’s ontology and Cheng’s notion of receptivity and creativity to reinterpret naming in relation to cosmology. Along the same lines, insofar as the event of Being is lingual, Jay Goulding captures its emergent structure in an evolving community of scholars and scholarship. He recalls his philosophical journey toward Cheng’s philosophy that begins in conversations with Gadamer at McMaster University in Hamilton, leads to Heidegger and Asian thought, expands into turning points with teachers and colleagues from various backgrounds that by increments contributed to Goulding’s formulation of “Daoist phenomenology.” -/- Although differing traditions guide their inquiries and research, Cheng and Gadamer recall the wisdom of the past to ameliorate the fragmentation in contemporary life. This leads them to re-examine the origins of philosophy; historical roots and thus sources of creative re-interpretations East and West whose affinities are developed in contributions by Hyun Höchsmann and Friederike Assandri. Höchsmann assesses convergences and divergences in the origins of Chinese and Western philosophy (Confucius and Socrates, the Yijing and Pre-Socratics) that culminates in pairing Gadamer’s understanding of paideia in the context of Plato’s political cosmology in the Timaeus with moral and social cultivation in The Western Inscription. She delineates the limits of this comparison which in turn justifies introducing Vattimo’s notion of locality. Assandri’s comparative analysis moves between India and China, Buddhism and Tang Daoism. Based on Gadamer’s argument that writing detaches concepts from their cultural moorings, she defines and applies three levels of understanding in onto-generative hermeneutics to Buddhist terms that were assimilated into the Benji Jing and in so doing clarifies essential dimensions of Daoism. -/- Contributions by Stephen Palmquist and Nicholas Brasovan position Cheng in relation to Kant and Gadamer by way of Aristotle’s ethics respectively. On the one hand, Palmquist plots Cheng’s evolving criticism of Kant’s moral philosophy and draws on crucial dimensions of Gadamer’s hermeneutics to reposition that criticism in a constructive relation to Kant’s emphasis on the philosophical conditions of morality while also indicating how religious dimensions of his thought answer Cheng’s concerns for lived moral action. For Palmquist, Gadamer enables a constructive criticism of Cheng. On the other hand, Brasovan compares Cheng’s Yijing-based account of moral deliberation with Gadamer’s Aristotelian-based ethics and reasons that in contrast to Cheng, Gadamer’s hermeneutical consciousness is disengaged from practical knowledge. For Brasovan, Cheng is a constructive critic of Gadamer. Palmquist and Brasovan’s divergent angles on Gadamer and Cheng map onto a dialectic of contrast and complementarity that constitutes the inner logic of Cheng’s philosophy. In other words, Gadamer and Cheng ought to be read alongside one another for the sake of removing discrepancies and contradictions, which constitutes the organic structure of their thinking. -/- 3 Our Mode of Being in History Is Not Historical The conversations between Cheng and Gadamer in this issue of The Journal of Chinese Philosophy pivot on language, philosophy of history and ethics within a comparative framework of analysis, but also explore the grounds that make the comparisons possible. Those grounds are informed by Chinese cosmology, and function to wrest Gadamer from the shadow of Heideggerian facticity and reposition him within the range of Cheng’s ideas about our place in nature that is embedded in his question about how mind emerges from inorganic matter.8 -/- For Gadamer scholars of Heidegger, human finitude, our ownmost individuating death ensures that hermeneutics is always open to the other as other, always on the way toward understanding the meaning of Being. To arrest the process in a concept of “the Absolute” cannot but represent someone’s point of view, and thereby render hermeneutics indistinguishable from ideology. However, insofar as finitude is defined by them in terms of an onto-theological concept of immorality, finitude is a metaphysical concept consistent with epistemologies and confuse beings with the meaning of Being. As a result, the celebrated political value of hermeneutics to always be on the way toward an understanding of the meaning of Being admits subtle variations on the same worldview that are insufficiently self-critical. -/- Gadamer scholars of Heidegger are right. A transformation in ethos and opening to the meaning of Being depends on awareness of finitude. Yet this awareness does not yield openness to more of the same, i.e., discourse structurally incapable of coming to unity but instead, for both Gadamer and Cheng, openness to a distinctly different ontological dimension of reality. As Sandra Wawrytko and So-Seong Park indicate,9 this ontological dimension is prefigured in the experience of being-as-a-whole or the totality of all possible relations in both Chinese totemic shamanistic rituals,10 and Greek Dionysian festivals.11 Through these religious experiences human ethos and therefore consciousness is expanded and elevated from being centered on one’s ownmost concerns toward an affinity with all sentient beings from insects and plants to animals. The channel for this affinity is an auditory disposition and hence, the emotions, compassion, and feeling response. -/- The capacity for an auditory disposition, or as Gadamer calls it, listening consciousness to respond to the inter-relationality and therefore inherent balance of nature is developed through music, song and dance of the religious rituals and festivals. They facilitate the unity of mind with nature. This use of music, that transforms ordinary consciousness, explains Cheng’s emphasis on the receptivity of feeling response in comprehensive observation, and Gadamer’s emphasis on openness to the other in attunement. However, an auditory disposition characteristic of pre-literate oral cultures that reveals the “All” need not rely on religion. As theorists about the evolution of language have explained,12 modern languages preserve their pre-historical past in music or prosody. That is to say, the song and dance that revealed the totality of inter-related beings to an ethos of comprehensive observation and attunement toward beings in classical civilizations is retained in the back-and-forth movement or rhythm of the dialogue form. Our mode of being in history is a mode of being in nature – through the music of language. -/- While alerting the reader to the limits of a nominalist interpretation, Gadamer expresses the inner law of the nature as follows: “in perishing there is always becoming, and in becoming there is always perishing.”13 Considered in process, opposites generate and blend into each other. This law of nature applies to everything.14 Hence, in a manner comparable to Pfister’s concluding insights, onto-dialogical hermeneutics is not only open to discrete events of otherness but moreover, to the moving structure of reality expressed, as Gajdosova suggests, in the existential moment of naming. Considered as interplay of tension and resolution with a life of its own, the dialectic of a dialogue is self-similar to the way in which an organism grows (by instinct). There is, therefore, a sense in which the art of interpretation extends the human mind into the eternal cycles of nature such that we participate in the articulation of the inner telos/homeostasis toward which all beings strive and importantly for Gadamer scholars of Heidegger, within the material limits of energy to which our embodied minds are self-evidently subject. In mortality there is always immortality. (shrink)

Post-Theories in Literary and Cultural Studies brings to attention the post-theoretical discussions on the changing perceptions in literary and cultural studies. In four sections the volume presents essays that trace the engagement of post-theory with post-postmodernism, posthumanism, ethics, and politics.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 64.3 (2003) 489-510 [Access article in PDF] The Analysis of Culture Revisited:Pure Texts, Applied Texts, Literary Historicisms, Cultural Histories Warren Boutcher School of English and Drama, Queen Mary, University of London Theory What is the relationship between study of canonical texts and broader social and cultural history? This question lies behind the contemporary academic issue of historicism and the public (...) "culture wars" that broke out in the late 1980s, but it was asked by Raymond Williams in the late 1950s and by German and French intellectuals of the 1930s. For the purposes of the present argument I shall distinguish between three broad phases in the responses of those who have taken the inquiry up most actively. Each phase began with what were perceived as crises or turning-points in the humanities corresponding to watersheds in wider history. The first and most profound began after the global crisis of 1929-33 and continued through the global wars that followed. A second began in the mid-1950s after McCarthyism, the consolidation of the Cold War and the Soviet invasion of Hungary. A third phase began in the mid-1970s, after the events of 1968 brought on the extended period of social unrest which found one important epicenter in the universities themselves and which broke out again in the more civilized form of the culture wars already mentioned.Most discussions of historicism do not engage directly with the practice of history. The second half of the paper will therefore ask what the theoretical account offered in the first half means for historical research that starts from past texts, and will include as one of its practical examples a case-study in the modern intellectual history offered in outline below. [End Page 489] Literary Histories of Ideas After the First World War an intellectual revolt took place against the isolation of aesthetic experience in the European tradition. It was led in England and America by teachers who wanted to establish that the general critical intelligence acquired in English literary studies could be applied in extra-literary fields from anthropology to social psychology. In England, English literature as a single discipline was to be the "liaison field of study"; in America it fell to pre-professional literary education in general. 1 The common project was to use refined literary experience of texts as the base from which to conduct value-laden, historically informed analysis of the contemporary problems of interwar European and American society, of western culture and civilization. 2 As consolidated in English intellectual culture between the pre-war and immediate post-war period this has been dubbed the moment of Scrutiny, the influential literary periodical headed by F. R. Leavis. In American intellectual culture it might well be dubbed the moment of Partisan Review, an equally influential periodical whose leading literary critic was Lionel Trilling. 3Leavis's at once dissident and élitist literary criticism concealed a sociology designed to salvage the humane culture of an earlier England from amidst the decay of mass civilization. 4 Trilling used European culture to critique what he perceived to be the superficiality of modern American civilization and literature. His criticism became the Ellis Island of intellectual life, the product of an immigrant culture desirous of assimilation by means of high culture to an American society whose better values were formed by the European canon. 5 For both, then, distinctive histories of society and social change, culture and cultural change were central to the enterprise of criticism. 6 Culture in their hands was a value-laden English or European way of life that shaped and was shaped by the highest artistic consciousness. As such, it carried a new awareness of alienation and repression in the midst of modern society or civilization. The aesthetic critical sense of a Leavis or a Trilling was now a sense of past and present cultural and social life. It competed successfully with claims to the [End Page 490] same ground made by what were seen as cruder sociological theories of... (shrink)

The relevance and theoretical weight of the mentioned topic of research consists in the definition of the phenomenon metamodernism, which, in modern humanitarian knowledge and in literary and artistic practice, determines the need to distinguish and analyse segments of European humanism as means of in-depth reproduction, nuance and personalisation of historical and cultural stages, in the context of the specified systematisation of the movement of segments from the middle of the 19th to the first two decades (...) of the 21st century. The main goal of this study, considering the creative and research potential of segments that contributed to the gradual layering of specific features of European humanism, is the reconstruction of arguments for and against those processes that caused the development of a single cultural space. The basis of the methodological approach in this study is the principles of historicism with the assignment of analytical, comparative, and chronological approaches to the determination of a wide range of issues that are of significant importance in the context of the stated topic. In the course of carrying out this research, results were obtained that have significant theoretical and practical significance, because they contribute to the further scientific and theoretical understanding of the dynamics of the European humanistic movement from the second half of the 19th to the first two decades of the 21st century, and can be used in lectures on aesthetics, philosophy, cultural studies, history and the theory of art for students of humanitarian and artistic creative universities. The results obtained during the implementation of this research, and the conclusions formulated on their basis, are of significant importance in the context of determining the key trends in the recognition of the creative and searching tendencies of European humanism, which play an important role in the process of forming a single cultural space. (shrink)

Socio-cultural and political transformations that are taking place in the modern world under the influence of globalization, predetermine the growth of scientific interest in the history and the theory of shaping the group unity.The coverage of various aspects of this problem is found in the works of foreign philosophers (M. Gibernau, S. Huntington, E. Hiddens, B. Yak, et al.), which focus their primary attention on studying the factors, contributing to the emergence of communities in the modern world, (...) while distancing from the development of universal explanatory schemes for the process of forming the collective unity at various stages of the historical development of society.Some Ukrainian researchers (Y. Hrytsak, V. Kravchenko, H. Kasyanov, et al.), who, in contrast to foreign scholars, pay more attention to studying the various aspects of Ukrainian nation-building, are approaching the above problems from a bit different angle of view to solve them. Undoubtedly, the work of these researchers thoroughly and fully covers the history of the formation of the Ukrainian nation, explains the reasons or factors that contributed to its appearance. Meanwhile, they do not have sufficient potential to explain the causes of the cultural fragmentation of modern Ukrainian society, which, in our opinion, has become a logical consequence of the undivided domination in the Ukrainian intellectual discourse of the paradigm of perennialism, within which the cultural identity of the community appears to be a kind of “entity or reality.” Proponents of this position believe that the cultural diversity of nations emerged in the early stages of social development. Within this outlook, Ukrainians, as a mentally and culturally distinct community, have always existed. Of course, their culture has been developing and enriching in the process of historical development and intercultural communication, while its original spiritual and symbolic core remaining unchanged.Despite the fact, that renaissance has a rational grain and can become themethodological basis for very effective national consolidation strategies, one should not ignore its failure to explain the causes of the cultural and civilizational fragmentation of modern Ukrainian society. In our opinion, the solution of this issue requires a comprehensive understanding of the origins, mechanisms and factors, and the formation of a culturally homogeneous Ukrainian cultural space. In view of this, the purpose of our work is to uncover the theoretical preconditions and mechanisms for shaping the cultural identity of Ukrainians in the XIX and early XX centuries. Instead, the task of the work is to highlight the ideological foundations of the growth of scientific interest in folk culture in foreign and Ukrainian intellectual discourse and to reveal their significance in the process of thematizing the modern Ukrainian identity.Methods.The interdisciplinary approach and the principle of unity of the historical and logical have become a methodological basis of scientific research. Methods of historical and philosophical reconstruction, cultural analysis, and extrapolation have been also widely used in the process of research, as well as the fundamental principles of hermeneutics, which have been taken into account.Results. The dominance of the educational enlightenment-cognitive paradigm has contributed to the growth of scientific interest in the cultural identity of peoples, which, according to the prevailing beliefs, has been most clearly preserved in folk poetry and ancient literature. The study of the latter has resulted in the outbreak of ethnographic and linguistic exploration, which facilitated the gradual introduction of the Ukrainian language to literary use, thereby contributing to the thematization of modern Ukrainian identity. (shrink)

The article focuses on the key issues of contemporary Chinese academic publications on the specifcs of Chinese rationality. Among its most common characteristics, there are focus on practice, attention to everyday life of society and individuals, pursuit of centrality and harmony in the moral sphere. Cross-cultural comparisons serve to justify the role of traditional rationality as a balancer keeping Chinese thought away from subjectivism, irrationalism, abstract reasoning and formalism. The researchers seek to identify the impacts (...) of “applied rationality” upon the formation of positive features of Chinese national character. The widespread interpretation of Chinese practical rationality underlines the priority of practice of political governance over the theoretical reasoning about politics; in the moral sphere it leads to rejection of extremes in human behavior and sets the normative status of the middle path and harmony. The inclination of humans to keep their emotions under control and to take a proactive approach to the world was accompanied by recognition of the higher value of empirical experience and intuition compared to formal and abstract ideas. The focus on the secular life of people deprived the Chinese rationality of the “otherworldly” religious dimension. The participants of the discussion note that the Chinese culture has gained stability and “elasticity,” but it lacks Western formal rationality, which is a prerequisite for scientifc knowledge. Chinese researchers pay much attention to the impact of traditional rationality on the formation of Chinese philosophy in the 20th century and to the choice of socio-political path of national development. The emphasis on the differences between the cultures ofChinaand the West is combined with searches for similarities between Chinese rationality and Marxism. That steers the discussion beyond the sphere of comparative studies and makes its content relevant to the understanding of broader set of contemporary problems. (shrink)

The development of modern Chinese thought involves an ongoing interaction between internal processes and impacts of foreign ideas. Several intellectual controversies are interwoven into its history and among these one of the more philosophical ones began some 90 years ago, in 1923. In this controversy, supporters of science or scientism and supporters of metaphysics or Confucian tradition debated issues of what both sides referred to as "the view of life." The study of the view of life controversy (...) by Gad C. Isay discusses the positions of the view of life supporters who upheld metaphysics against scientism. It focuses on both the philosophical merit of their views and the relevance of these views to the question of culture in modern China. Considering the sources of the view of life problem in traditional Chinese thought and the discussions that followed after the controversy, it is argued that the view of life question was a central theme in Chinese thought from its beginning. In this respect, modern discussions of this problem indicate continuity with the past. However, these discussions demonstrate too, the dynamics of changing conceptions regarding the context of human relationships that are related directly to the meeting with the West. Isay's study traces the development of these discussions from their beginning up to our days giving a comprehensive survey of the philosophy of the view of life in modern Chinese thought. (shrink)

Since the publication of his influential book The Discourse of "Revolution" and Chinese Modernity in 2000, Chen Jianhua, who currently teaches at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, has been acknowledged as a leading scholar in the study of modern Chinese literary culture and thought. The current issue includes three essays taken from the three chapters in his latest book, From Revolution to the Republic: Literary, Cinematic, and Cultural Transformations in the Late (...) Qing and Republican Period, originally written in Chinese. Inspired by Western theory, yet firmly rooted in the modern Chinese cultural context, Chen's inquiry into the dominant modern Chinese discourse of revolution (geming;) demonstrates how the ideology of revolution was formed through a complex translation process and is extremely instructive in redirecting contemporary Chinese thought for those seeking alternatives to such dominant ideas as "revolution.". (shrink)

This article is devoted to the consideration of a number of stage projects by Chinese directors, in which the work of the writer Anton Pavlovich Chekhov is reinterpreted. Analysis of such productions and projects as the international drama festival "Chekhov Forever" in 2004, a hybrid work based on Chekhov's story "Three Sisters" and Beckett's novel "Waiting for Godot" by Lin Zhaohua in 1998 and 2018, a double performance by Stan Lai based on the works "I take You by the (...) Hand" by Carol Rocamora and "The Seagull" Chekhov 2014, etc. It allows us to trace innovative approaches to reading Chekhov's works in the context of the life of modern Chinese society. These works cause a great resonance not only in the professional environment, but also among the mass audience, who invariably penetrates the depth of Chekhov's images, the subtlest shades of emotional experiences; the Chinese audience finds themselves close to the problems, hopes and aspirations of the heroes, brilliantly transferred to the actual socio-cultural environment of China, always topical and recognizable. The scientific novelty of the article is connected with the fact that the nature of mastering the creativity of the Russian playwright in the theater of the East is a fairly new and at the same time promising topic for research. The conclusions and results of the study can become the basis for further studies of the specifics of the adaptation of foreign dramaturgy in the national theatrical tradition on the example of other countries and regions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Language, Truth, and Literary Interpretation: A Cross-cultural ExaminationYanfang TangReflections on the philosophy of language in China and the West suggest that philosophers’ critiques of language center on two issues: its inadequacy and its metaphoricity. The former indicates the inability of the signifier to capture the multiplicity of the signified, whereas the latter reflects the semantic surplus of the signifier over its referent. While modern Western (...) philosophers focus on the metaphoricity, frequently referred to as the “play,” of the sign, philosophers in traditional China targeted what they believed to be the inherent inadequacies of words in their discussions. 1 Both aspects of language are considered the cause of equivocal or ineffective speech, and thus of impediment to correct understanding, and yet philosophers of the two cultural traditions have come to different conclusions about reading or literary study.To Western philosophers and literary critics, the metaphoricity of language incurs a serious problem for reading. Because the sign, in its incessant play, always points to more than is needed to the point that its real reference is blurred or covered up, correct reading of a literary text becomes impossible. Such phrases, frequently appearing in contemporary critical writings as “the tyranny of words,” “the indeterminacy of meaning,” and “the unreadable text,” testify to the widespread concern about the problems of language in the West. On the other hand, despite their acute awareness of the intrinsic deficiency of words, Chinese philosophers and poets never gave up their hope in the efficacy [End Page 1] of writing and literary understanding. Indeed, the enterprise of creative writing and literary criticism boomed in China at the time when the philosophical aphorism that “words do not exhaust meaning” (yan bu jin yi) was brought home to almost every poet and critic flourishing between the third and fourth centuries. For the following one and a half millennia the question of the objectivity of meaning, the crux of Western post-structuralist discourse and quarrels, has never been raised in Chinese philosophical or literary discussions. This wide contrast of outlooks on reading informed by the same disillusionment with language is rather intriguing. To account for this phenomenon this article attempts to look at the differences in the way language is perceived and practiced in China and the West. It shall also probe into the concepts of truth underlying the two cultural traditions because such an inquiry sheds some important light on the different perceptions people in the two parts of the world hold concerning language and literary practice.Metaphoricity: The Way In or Out of the Dilemma?It is interesting to say that while twentieth-century discoveries about the metaphoricity of language have made some Western critics conclude that “all reading is misreading” and that “there is no such a thing as an objective meaning,” this same awareness—that language is essentially metaphorical in nature, that it always says more than what it appears to—posed a solution for Chinese philosophers and poets to get out of the linguistic dilemma in which they found themselves. But before we enter the topic, let us first look at the dominant views of language in each cultural tradition. First, as Yip Wai-lim and others have demonstrated, the Chinese philosophical tradition began with a rejection of language as a reliable means for cognition and expression. 2 Philosophers in ancient China viewed language, or in their own terminology, words, as an instrument for expressing ideas in the mind or describing objects in the world, but they considered them inherently limited and thus unable to carry out their tasks effectively. The earliest statement of this conception is recorded in the ancient classic the Book of Changes, where it says: “Writing does not exhaust words, and words do not exhaust meaning.” 3 Attributed to Confucius and thus also representing Confucian ideas, 4 this statement was elaborated, amplified, and developed into a systematic argument by Daoist (Taoist) philosophers Lao [End Page 2] Zi and Zhuang Zi (369?-286? bc). Approaching the issue from the perspective of Dao (Tao), these founders of Daoist school viewed language as intrinsically limited in its function of representing Dao. This is because Dao, the cosmic principle or pattern, is dynamic in... (shrink)

From the perspective of critical cultural sociology, this book delves into the intertwining relations of cultural transformation and social evolution, illuminating contemporary Chinese culture's landscape and underlying logic since the 1980s. With a special focus on the tensions among politics, economy, and culture itself, the book examines the transitions of Chinese culture from tradition to the modern age. It expounds the cultural differentiation and its effect in contemporary China. Within this framework, the author addresses (...) some key issues and phenomena that figure in the cultural scene of modern China, ranging from the crisis of Chinese cultural identity in the context of globalization, the media culture and its impacts on everyday life, to the visual culture and social transformation. Offering a panoramic view of Chinese contemporary culture, literature, arts, and society, this title will serve as an essential read for scholars of China Studies, Cultural Studies, and Visual Culture as well as anyone interested in what's going on in Chinese contemporary culture. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reframing Baudelaire: Literary History, Biography, Postcolonial Theory, and Vernacular LanguagesFrançoise Lionnet* (bio)In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf quips: “History is too much about wars; biography too much about great men;” literary history, she might have added, is too much about sons murdering their fathers. Canonical readings of the canon have often insisted on the vaguely Freudian (if not biblical) model of literary creation susceptible (...) both to “anxieties of influence” and to creative revisions imposed by strong misreadings. Criticism has followed the same reactive pattern in order to clear new ground for further research: the debate between “traditionalists” and proponents of “cultural studies” all but repeats this familiar and combative dialectic. Between formalist and sociopolitical readings, French texts have been mined by many different critical trends; but the perspectives that do not fit neatly into one or the other of these agonistic moves tend to be left out. Dominick LaCapra has suggested that “one issue for readers today is whether a different, ‘noncanonical’ reading of the canon, which resists symbolic resolutions as well as narrowly formalistic interpretations, may be one force in reopening texts to the[ir] broader sociopolitical effects” [731].In the case of Baudelaire, the way to do this “noncanonical” reading might well be to go back to a discursive field which includes biography and oral histories, and to resist the temptation either to eulogize the innovations of the poet of modernity or to denounce the patent racism of his images. The challenge today is to return to the scene of writing and the conditions of production of the early poetry—in other words, to look at the text from outside of conventional literary, critical or cultural history, to reclaim it for our side, that of a more global francophonie. To do so might mean to map out once again the contested terrain of culturally and politically sensitive readings such as the ones Christopher Miller and Gayatri Spivak claim to do. Their readings, however, do not take into account the residual cultural element of the poetry, that is, the vernacular language it appropriates. This language is all but buried beneath the emergent theoretical practices of postcolonial criticism and its vaguely nationalist agendas. 1 Critics have tended to look for [End Page 63] symbolic resolutions and to settle cultural scores at the expense of historical and geographical specificity, despite claims to the contrary.The facts of Baudelaire’s youthful travels in the Indian Ocean have remained relatively obscure. While doing research in the islands of Mauritius and Réunion on two separate occasions during the past few years, I came across written documents and watercolors that helped me reconstruct the historical and visual contexts that appear to have been Baudelaire’s in 1841. By re-examining the criticisms that have been lodged against the exoticizing rhetoric of his poetry, I want to foreground the links between the Creole culture with which Baudelaire became familiar and the now canonical texts he produced. These links can allow us to bypass the sterile opposition between “literary studies” and “cultural studies” or between aesthetics and politics; they demonstrate the urgency of re-visioning the canon not just from the perspectives of its margins, but as an important source of muted cultural knowledge. The questions with which I begin, then, are the following: where did Baudelaire actually go on his travels in 1841? and why does this matter to the field of French studies?Il faut en finir avec la légende de l’Inde parcourue par Baudelaire. Elle était séduisante, Gautier l’a adoptée, Banville ne l’a pas négligée.... Mais la vérité vraie est que Baudelaire, embarqué malgré lui, brûla la politesse à l’Inde.... Peut-être Baudelaire abandonnait-il complaisamment au commun public ces bruits de longues pérégrinations en pays fabuleux, parce qu’il en tirait, avec des couleurs de mystère, l’air de revenir de loin. Dans tous les cas, il ne nous parlait jamais de ces voyages. A peine, à son retour, nous dit-il quelques mots d’une station dans l’île Maurice ou l’île Bourbon. 2[It is time to put a stop to... (shrink)

Although Chinese Marxism—primarily represented by Maoism—is generally seen by Western intellectuals as monolithic, Liu Kang argues that its practices and projects are as diverse as those in Western Marxism, particularly in the area of aesthetics. In this comparative study of European and Chinese Marxist traditions, Liu reveals the extent to which Chinese Marxists incorporate ideas about aesthetics and culture in their theories and practices. In doing so, he constructs a wholly new understanding of Chinese Marxism. Far (...) from being secondary considerations in Chinese Marxism, aesthetics and culture are in fact principal concerns. In this respect, such Marxists are similar to their Western counterparts, although Europeans have had little understanding of the Chinese experience. Liu traces the genealogy of aesthetic discourse in both modern China and the West since the era of classical German thought, showing where conceptual modifications and divergences have occurred in the two traditions. He examines the work of Mao Zedong, Lu Xun, Li Zehou, Qu Qiubai, and others in China, and from the West he discusses Kant, Schiller, Schopenhauer, and Marxist theorists including Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, and Marcuse. While stressing the diversity of Marxist positions within China as well as in the West, Liu explains how ideas of culture and aesthetics have offered a constructive vision for a postrevolutionary society and have affected a wide field of issues involving the problems of modernity. Forcefully argued and theoretically sophisticated, this book will appeal to students and scholars of contemporary Marxism, cultural studies, aesthetics, and modern Chinese culture, politics, and ideology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Theorizing Chinese Masculinity: Society and Gender in ChinaKwai-Cheung LoTheorizing Chinese Masculinity: Society and Gender in China. By Kam Louie. Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. 239. Hardcover U.S. $60.00.In Theorizing Chinese Masculinity: Society and Gender in China Kam Louie offers us a very clear and concise analysis of the cultural models of Chinese masculinity from ancient imperial times to the present age of (...) transnational contact. Although academic works on Chinese masculinity are not totally absent, systematic and thorough historical surveys of this topic are still rare. While gender studies of China are predominantly on femininity or other women-related issues, man as a gendered category has long escaped serious academic attention. Louie's book could be considered a pioneering effort to provide a rather comprehensive study of this subject. Besides describing in detail the historical development of the male image from premodern to contemporary times, Louie also focuses on the ways in which Chinese men have been represented under the Western gaze and how these representations have negotiated with the dominant Western culture.The fundamental structure of masculinity in China, according to Louie, operates according to the two poles of wen (literary attainment, cultural knowledge, the mental) and wu (martial valor, martial arts, the physical), which are far more complementary than antagonistic, although the wen polarity has always been prioritized over wu in the conventional Chinese mindset. wen maleness is exemplified by Confucius, the sage of the gentleman-scholar type, whereas Guan Yu, the God of War, represents the wu masculine ideal. These two archetypes of Chinese masculinity [End Page 497] converge in the stern observance of moral demands, self-restraint, and a resistance or even a misogynistic attitude to the faults associated with femininity (i.e., sexual pleasure, comfort, and loss of virility) in order to pursue lofty forms of justice and homosocial binding. The recent popularity of Hong Kong martial arts films in the West may help Western readers become accustomed to the traditional Chinese idea that the ideal balance of wen and wu places emphasis on strategy and learning as a means of avoiding the use of violence. Louie repeatedly asserts that, in the Chinese cultural context, all men by definition have some wen and/or some wu, thus negating a simplified dichotomy.The highest ideal of Chinese maleness is that of a single individual who can demonstrate at the highest level the cultural credentials and physical skills of wen and wu. That is to say, the great man who can hold a brush in his right hand and a sword or some other weapon in his left, demonstrating prowess in both kinds of effort. But in terms of their sex appeal, it is always the softer, cerebral, scholarly men of wen who are more attractive to Chinese women than their macho, brawny opposite. Other than analyzing the heterosexual relationships of Chinese manhood, Louie also provocatively suggests that brotherhood and passions between men are never simply homosocial but can have sexual implications. He supports this claim by making reference to many classical texts that depict men sleeping together, leading to strong emotional attachments and jealousy, as if they were in a romantic or erotic liaison. What distinguishes Louie's wen/wu duality from the conventional yin/yang binary opposition (which is also an artificial difference that defines the Chinese male in relation to Western men and reinforces the stereotype of a feminized Chinese masculinity) is that he believes his dyad of Chinese masculinity to be more resilient, flexible, and adaptable to historical change, hybridizing with Western culture while simultaneously exerting its own global influence on non-Chinese cultures.Covering a vast range of historical and contemporary materials and a variety of genres, from classical philosophy to traditional vernacular fiction (e.g., The Romance of the Three Kingdoms and The Water Margin), through Lao She's early twentieth-century novel The Two Mas, the subversive portrayals of men by modern Chinese women writers, to contemporary Hong Kong action cinema—all in a relatively slim volume—Louie is at his best, for example, when observing and depicting character, but he is not so good at analyzing his texts on a... (shrink)

The author of the article deals with the main issues of Chinese neologisms formation. Language is a complex and dynamically developing system. Vocabulary is one of the most unstable and changeable layers of a language; it is highly sensitive to any changes in the society. In the study, a number of neologisms found in Chinese dictionaries of neologisms published in 2012-2015 is analyzed. The research is based on the concept of linguistic motivation, which distinguishes three levels of (...) motivation of lexical units: phonetic, morphological and semantic. Phonetically motivated lexical units under the examination are phonetic borrowings and homonymous lexical units. On the morphological level, such productive ways of word formation were analyzed as compounding, derivation, and such phenomena as acronyms and lettered words. Special attention is paid to the study of Chinese semantic word-formation where metaphorization plays an important role. The specific feature of Chinese metaphors is that abstract concepts are expressed with the help of concrete words, which is explained by national and cultural peculiarities of the Chinese language. Chinese native speakers perceive the world through concrete images that is conditioned by the Chinese language typology and the hieroglyphics. (shrink)

This introduction charts several of rhythm's various returns as a way of laying out the theoretical and methodological field in which the articles of this special issue find their place. While Henri Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis is perhaps familiar to many, rhythm has appeared in a wide repertoire of guises, in many disciplines over the decades and indeed the centuries. This introduction attends to the particular roles of rhythm in the formation of modernity ranging from the processes of industrialization and the (...) proliferation of new media technologies to film and literary aesthetics as well as conceptualizations of human psychology, social behaviour and physiology. These are some of the historical antecedents to the contemporary understandings of rhythm within body studies to which most of the contributions to this issue are devoted. In this respect, the introduction outlines recent approaches to rhythm as vibration, a force of the virtual, and an intensive excess outside consciousness. (shrink)

The article reveals ideological-theoretical, methodological, and politico-ideological basic principles for an adequate analysis of the specifics of modern Chinese (Sinicized) Marxism. The attributive features of modern Chinese Marxism (Marxism with Chinese specifics (the adaptation of Marxism to the Chinese Context, Sinicized Marxism), as the most effective version in world history for correcting and modernizing the axiomatics of the Marxist-Leninist theoretical model of social development, as well as improving the ideology of the ruling (...) Communist Party in order to increase the effectiveness of its domestic and foreign state policies, have been characterized by means of concrete-historical and systematic comparative analysis of the ideational grounds and basic socio-philosophical postulates, political and ideological prescriptions of the program documents of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Communist Party of China. Within the framework of this study, special attention has been paid to highlighting the essence and features of the Soviet and Chinese strategy of socialist construction, created to implement Marxist socialist and communist projects, as well as revealing the scientific evaluation of the differences between the political doctrines of the CPSU and the CPC in the interpretation of objective logic (the duration of stages, goals, and objectives of fundamental economic, social, political, and cultural transformations) of the process of constructing high-level development socialism ("developed socialism") and the further progressive movement of such a society to the phase of communism. (shrink)

With references to the theoretical framework of Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu, this book offers a critical investigation into such epic issues as the end of art and the inherent laws of literature's evolution, while conflating the two into one major argumentation. The book proceeds from Hegel's claim of "the end of art" to tackle the universal yet essential problem of literature: its legitimacy in a sociological sense. It invests Bourdieu's sociological terms -- power, capital, habitus, field, etc. (...) into the study of literature and art while taking on other theoretical enquiries, particularly the Marxist exploration into ideology, as well as aspects of economics and communication studies. This book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of the sociology of literature, cultural studies, and those with specific interests in Chinese literature, literary and art theory. (shrink)

This book addresses the Confucian philosophy of common good and deals with the comparative philosophy on eastern and western understandings of common good. The common good is an essentially contested concept in contemporary moral and political discussions. Although the notion of the common good has a slightly antique air, especially in the North Atlantic discussion, it has figured prominently in both the sophisticated theoretical accounts of moral and political theory in recent years and also in the popular arguments brought (...) for particular political policies and for more general orientations toward policy. It has been at home both in the political arsenal of the left and the right and has had special significance in ethical and political debates in modern and modernizing cultures. This text will be of interest to philosophers interested in Chinese philosophy and issues related to individualism and communitarianism, ethicists and political philosophers, comparative philosophers, and those in religious studies working on Chinese religion. (shrink)

Just like the self, sensations and emotions expressed in literature are elusive issues. Necessarily separated from living reality and yet, in a sense, a mirror of it, linguistic coding of bodily feeling and emotional feeling became subject of avid interest among scholars of historical emotion research and the history of mentality in intra- and intercultural perspectives. This volume combines eleven essays with critical discussions concerning the bidirectional network of sense perception and emotion. Exploring the theme from different angles - (...) psychological, medical, and literary - From Skin to Heart highlights the intimate interrelationship between bodily sensations, states of mind, and the emotions from pain, illness, and self-destruction to love-sickness and self-sacrifice in early Chinese poetry and ethics and late imperial lyrics and narrative. The partly descriptive, partly analytical essays are contributions of a new wave of Continental and American sinology that, inspired by cultural studies, discourse analysis, and rhetorical analysis, offers fresh views on body and psyche as locked into and emerging from Chinese primary sources. An appendix provides additional examples of the rich linguistic material referring to phenomena of sense perception and the affective sphere and their interdependence. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 29.4 (1999) 40-57 [Access article in PDF] Bogeyman: Benedict Anderson's "Derivative" Discourse Andrew Parker Between life and death, nationalism has as its own proper space the experience of haunting. There is no nationalism without some ghost. -Jacques Derrida, "Onto-Theology of National-Humanism" Writing a mere decade ago about Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities, Timothy Brennan noted that "with the exception of some recent sociological works which use literary theories, (...) it is rare in English to see 'nation-ness' talked about as an imaginative vision--as a topic worthy of full fictional realization.... Even in the underrepresented branch of Third World English studies, one is likely to find discussions of race and colonialism, but not the 'nation' as such" [47]. If these sentences appear astonishing today--if over the past ten years we seem to have done little else but regard the nation as an imaginative construction--our sense of surprise may help to register how rapidly and profoundly Anderson's work has transformed the nature of literary and cultural studies. Viewing the modern nation primarily as an anthropological rather than political category, one that has less inherently to do with ideologies than with kinship, gender, and religion, Anderson argues in Imagined Communities for the irreducibility of material-cultural practices (what he memorably termed "print-capitalism") in creating and sustaining the "imagined community" of a nation whose citizens maintain "deep attachments" to each other in the absence of face-to-face contact: "the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion" [6]. Part of what makes such communities national, Anderson suggests, is a shared experience of simultaneity modeled on the spatio-temporal organization of newspapers and novels, for "these forms provided the technical means for 're-presenting' the kind of imagined community that is the nation" by furnishing their reader-consumers with a "complex gloss on the word 'meanwhile'" [25]. The "old-fashioned novel" especially, through its distinctive structures of address and omniscient point of view, becomes in this schema a "device" for generating a sociologically complex world populated by characters who, even though they "may be largely unaware of each other," nevertheless move together "calendrically through homogeneous, empty time"--a world, in short, that may be considered "a precise analogue of the idea of the nation, which also is conceived as a solid community moving steadily up (or down) history" [25-26]. As Jonathan Culler aptly summarizes in his contribution to this issue, Anderson thus takes the novel to be "a precondition for the nation" [24], "a formal condition of imagining the nation--a structural condition of possibility" [37]. Such strong emphasis on the novel as "a force for imagining the communities that are nations" certainly helps to explain why Imagined Communities so swiftly and pervasively became doxa in literary study--even if, as Culler elaborates, some of Anderson's readers have mistaken his argument for a stronger if less defensible [End Page 40] version that sees the novel as "a force in shaping or legitimating the nation" [37].While Anderson's analogy between novel and nation has been put by literary critics to a multitude of creative uses, what has been acknowledged much less commonly is that his literary interests are by no means exhausted by the paradigm for which he is best known. 1 The very title of his most recent book is, significantly as we shall see, a translated quotation from a novel, and he returns repeatedly for insights into the politics of literary form not only to Walter Benjamin but to certain exemplary "nationalist" novelists, José Rizal and Pramoedya Ananta Toer first and foremost. Where The Spectre of Comparisons is unusual in containing chapter-length readings of literary works (several of them reprinted from the earlier Language and Power), Imagined Communities was no stranger to detailed discussions of fiction. We may be struck, in fact, by the extent to which Anderson's theoretical and historical studies locate themselves persistently over time with reference to "literature... (shrink)

Abdullah Al-Nadim is one of the most important intellectual and political figures in modern Egyptian history. He played a major role in all significant stages of the Egypt nineteenth century. He was called "the orator of the revolution." He left his mark on various aspects of Arab social, political, and cultural life and awareness. So now it is very important to study and analyze his intellectual legacy, especially in contemporary circumstances, in which we see the rise of the (...) new barbarism of various primitive religious Salafism. Abdullah Al-Nadim was one of the fine examples of the free intellectual. He committed to issues of society, national Idea, freedom, and progress. This study aims to trace the emergence and development of political, social, and literary ideas of Abdullah Al-Nadim. In their outcome, these ideas were the outcome of the Egyptian social, political, and national struggle against Ottoman despotism and its ruined remnants in the historical existence at that time. In his research and positions, critical and satirical ideas, precise clarity, depth, and loyalty to the truth and the nation's supreme interests are united. His creativity was a model for critical vision and mockery of the remnants of a collapsing world. He sought in all his works for alternatives to development and social progress, calling for modern civilization and freedom. His defense of women, their rights, and freedom was among the most dramatic at that time. Abdullah Al-Nadim sacrificed himself for these endeavors and goals. But at the same time, he revealed the possibility of synthesizing the poetic spirit and truth in theoretical and practical creativity. They are the issues and aspects that form the focus of this research. (shrink)

My article will take issue with some of the scholarship on current and prospective configurations of the Caribbean and, in more general terms, postcolonial literary criticism. It will give an account of the turn-of-the century debates about literary value and critical practice and analyze how contemporary fiction by Caribbean female writers responds to the socioeconomic reality that came into being with the rise of globalization and neo-liberalism. I will use David Scott’s thought provoking study-Refashioning Futures: Criticism after Postcoloniality (...) -to outline the history of the Caribbean literary discourse and to try to rethink the strategic goals of postcolonial criticism. (shrink)

This book collects sixteen theses written by Professor Tang Yijie, one of the most prominent scholars of traditional Chinese philosophy. He argues that a general understanding of traditional Chinese philosophy can be achieved by a concise elaboration of its truth, goodness and beauty. He also asserts that goodness and beauty in Chinese philosophy, combined with the integration of man and heaven, knowledge and practice, scenery and feeling, reflect a pursuit of an ideal goal in traditional Chinese (...) philosophy characterized by the thought mode uniting man and nature. He also discusses the anti-traditionalism of the May Fourth Movement, explaining that the true value of "sagacity theory" in traditional Chinese philosophy, especially in Neo-Confucianism in the Song and Ming dynasties, lies in its insights into universal life. In addition, he stresses that existing ideas, issues, terminologies, concepts, and logic of Chinese philosophical thought were shaped by Western philosophy. It is necessary to be alienated from traditional status for the creation of a viable "Chinese philosophy." "Modern Chinese philosophy" in the 1930s and 1940s was comprised of scholarly work that characteristically continued rather than followed the traditional discourse of Chinese philosophy. That is to say, in the process of studying and adapting Western philosophy, Chinese philosophers transformed Chinese philosophy from traditional to modern. In Chapter 13, he puts forward the idea of a "New Axial Age." He emphasizes that the rejuvenation of Chinese culture we endeavor to pursue has to be deeply rooted in our mainstream culture with universal values incorporating cultures of other nations, especially the cultural essence of the West. (shrink)

Since 1978, contemporary Chinese philosophy has entered a new stage of development. The last two decades have witnessed three hot topics: "practice," "man," and "Cultural Heritage Studies." They reflect the following major transitions: from practice as a standard to practical materialism, from humanism to the Study of Man, and from Culture mania to [Chinese] Cultural Heritage Studies mania. The first topic is an expression of the reflection and innovation going on in Marxist philosophy; the (...) issues of the Study of Man and Cultural Heritage Studies reflect the influences of modern Western philosophy and traditional Chinese philosophy. The interaction of Marxist philosophy, modern Western philosophy, and traditional Chinese philosophy is not only the major theme in contemporary Chinese philosophy, but also its promising prospect. Therefore, research into their interaction is of theoretical, as well as practical, significance. (shrink)

Brings together essays on the philosophy of art in which a philosophical theory of aesthetic judgment is tested and developed through its application to particular examples. Each essay approaches, from its own field of study, what Roger Scruton argues to be the central problems of aesthetics -- what is aesthetic experience, and what is its importance for human conduct? The book is divided into four parts. The first contains a resume of modern analytical aesthetics, which also serves as an (...) introduction to subsequent chapters. It also includes an essay that reviews current theories of literary criticism. The second part is devoted to musical aesthetics and contains the theoretical core of the work. Here Scruton describes the contours of aesthetic understanding, and defends the view that the object of aesthetic experience is inherently significant, even when it has no "content" that can be described in propositional terms. He rebuts the view that music is representational, and in the third part goes on to propose a theory of representation whereby to refute the suggestion that photography is a representational art. This third section also contains a study of film. The final part comprises essays relating aesthetic judgment to the understanding of culture, humor, and design. It covers many subjects, including the prose works of Samuel Beckett and the architecture of Leninism. The essays in this book form parts of a single intellectual enterprise, which is to give analytical foundations to the criticism of literature, visual art, music, and culture. (shrink)

End-of-life decision making constitutes a major challenge for bioethical deliberation and political governance in modern democracies: On the one hand, it touches upon fundamental convictions about life, death, and the human condition. On the other, it is deeply rooted in religious traditions and historical experiences and thus shows great socio-cultural diversity. The bioethical discussion of such cultural issues oscillates between liberal individualism and cultural stereotyping. Our paper confronts the bioethical expert discourse with public moral attitudes. (...) The paper is based on a qualitative study comprising 12 focus group discussions with religious and secular persons in the USA, Germany, and Israel. Considering the respective socio-political and legal frameworks, the thematic analysis focuses on moral attitudes towards end-of-life decision making and explores the complex interplay between individual preferences, culture, and religion. Our findings draw attention to the variety and complexity of cultural and religious aspects of end-of-life decision making. Although there is local consensus that goes beyond radical individualism, positions are not neatly matched with national cultures or religious denominations. Instead, the relevance of the specific situatedness of religious beliefs and cultural communities becomes visible: Their status and role in individual situations, for example, as consensual or conflicting on the level of personal perspectives, family relationships, or broader social contexts, e.g., as a majority or minority culture within a political system. As the group discussions indicate, there are no clear-cut positions anchored in “nationality,” “culture,” or “religion.” Instead, attitudes are personally decided on as part of a negotiated context representing the political, social and existential situatedness of the individual. Therefore, more complex theoretical and practical approaches to cultural diversity have to be developed. (shrink)

. The purpose of this article is to analyze the specifics of the mythologizing of time in the historical period dramas "Downton Abbey" and "The Crown" in the context of the transition from the postmodern paradigm to a new metamodern sensibility. The article summarizes the experience of domestic and foreign studies of the metamodern tendencies of the modern TV series and analyzes the theoretical issues of the mythological temporality of TV series production. On the basis of (...) the theoretical concept of retrotopia by Z. Bauman, the concept of layers of cinematic temporality by N.E. Marievskaya and the critical discourse analysis of S. Jäger, the features of the mythologization of horizontal, vertical time, as well as the biographical time of characters in selected period dramas have been analyzed. The scientific novelty of the article lies in the problematization and analysis of the discursive environment of the deployment of the temporal mythology of the modern period drama. The modern historical period drama demonstrates the specifics of turning to retrotopia, as it seeks to represent the current problems of the present through an imaginary past. In the case of the “Downton Abbey”, this happens through the harmonization in the viewer's mind of nostalgia for an imaginary English aristocratic past and an unstable future. In the case of the “The Crown”, the presentation of the private life of the British royal family against the backdrop of historical events contributes to the formation of a more multidimensional image of the present and responds to the demands of the mass audience in the emotional representation of historical events. The result of this representation is a kind of mythology of time, which arises between the cultural demand for retrotopia and the development of modern technologies for the production of cinematographic products, which makes it possible to fully realize the intention of modern metamodernist discourse to achieve a “new sensibility”. This allows us to consider the modern historical period drama not only as a "commercial project", but also as a tool for the development of historical culture, an instrument of cultural orientation in social space and time. (shrink)

The subtle and complex relation between Confucianism and modern democracy has long been a controversial issue, and it is now again becoming a topical issue in the process of political modernization in contemporary China. This paper argues that there are some quite basic early Confucian values and principles that are not only compatible with democracy, but also may become the theoretic foundation of modern democracy in China. Early Confucianism considers 'the people's will' as the direct representative of 'Heaven's (...) will', with which it legitimizes political power. Confucian theory of 'human nature is good' endorses equal potential good for every man. These principles can be used in reasoning towards a system of democracy. In terms of decision-making, the Confucian 'Doctrine of the Mean' accords with certain democratic principles. The independent personality and committed individualism advocated by early Confucianism is a required civic merit in a democratic society. These fundamental Confucian principles, through contemporary hermeneutics, may provide a philosophic grounding for democracy and support the construction of a democratic system with a Chinese dimension. To get democracy rooted in the spirit of traditional Chinese culture will benefit the healthy and smooth development of democracy in China. (shrink)

Since 1980s, the Frankfurt School's critique of Culture Industry has provided powerful ammunitions for Chinese intellectuals to reject rising consumer popular culture. In recent years, Chinese academics began to study the Frankfurt School's critique of capitalist modernity from more theoretical perspectives, attempting to set Chinese problems of modernity and its legitimacy against the Frankfurt School's theorization. However, Chinese intellectuals’ diverse responses to the Frankfurt School have largely remained at the level of academic inquiries rather than (...) seriously engaging in practically seeking alternatives. This study will consider issues of critique of and alternatives to capitalist modernity that modern Marxists or post-Marxists, be they Frankfurt School philosophers, the Chinese Marxists or the latter-day Chinese “new left,” all wish to seek out. (shrink)

Since the beginning of the twentieth century Chinese historians have struggled to reform Chinese historiography and to establish a new identity for the Chinese nation. In this article I analyze the historiography of Chen Yinke and Fu Sinian as a case study for this ongoing process of reform.Although both were bound into the dichotomy of dao and history as established by Benjamin Schwartz, they represent quite different solutions to the question of how the relationship between norm and (...) fact has to be conceptualized. Chen Yinke's historiography is one of the first examples of the emerging pluralization of the relationship between dao and history, since he is aware of the subjective influences that affect a historian's research and seems to recognize that these influences can be positive. Fu Sinian's historiography on the other hand is an example of the reintegration of dao and history. He explicitly refutes the claims of theory and interpretation, but actually reintroduces theoretical explanations without identifying them as such. Thus his methodology can be described as a hidden reintegration of dao and history, of norm and fact.These different methodological views imply two divergent approaches to the nature of Sino-Western cultural relations, and to the role of the historian in modern Chinese society. Chen recognizes the fundamental differences between China and the West and assumes the equality of the unequal, that is, the principle that there are no absolute values that could function as norms for comparing different cultures. Because of the pluralization of the relationship between dao and history, the historian is no longer in a position to guide society ideologically and philosophically. He is freed from the constraints of political engagement and assumes the role of a kind of cultural guardian. By contrast Fu assumes a single world civilization based on a universal methodology for accumulating knowledge. He is unable to establish continuity between the particular Chinese past and its present and therefore cannot establish an identity that is both new and at the same time Chinese. Fu also takes a position different from Chen on the role of the historian. He postulates a complete separation from politics, but in historiographical as well as in political practice, he adopts the role of ideological leader and moral critic of those in power. (shrink)

This article presents the results of a study of both Western and Far Eastern narratives of philosophical cosmology. The task of the study was to analyse the essential characteristics of philosophical cosmology in both Western and Far Eastern paradigms. This was made possible by clarifying the distinction between astronomy and cosmology, on the one hand, and philosophy and philosophical cosmology, on the other. The Greek word “??sµ??” is both etymologically and semantically different from the concept of “space.” If space has (...) only one characteristic, it is an extension, and then the cosmos, being a phenomenon that is not static but dynamic, has internal forces and a movement towards selforganisation and harmonisation. A person does not live in space, but in the world; such is the point of view of philosophical cosmology, which means that different cultures may have their own cosmology, which will need to be different. It is in this difference of philosophical cosmologies that the richness of philosophy is seen; by studying other cosmological worldviews, one can better understand one’s own. Scholars, including Weimin Sun, Robert Cummings Neville, and others, agree on the need to intensify interest in Chinese cosmology and its basic concepts. One such concept is Zhonghua. Modern Chinese philosophy is a combination of Marxist philosophy, traditional Chinese philosophy, and Western philosophy. One of the tasks of a modern researcher in China is to find possible points of contact, and common features in order to demonstrate the possible well-functioning cooperation of these currents. In addition, common features are found primarily in cosmology. (shrink)

In "On Variations of the Classical Chinese Literary Genre terminchinesescript in Literary History," the authors analyze the representation of the classical Chinese literary genre Fu, or namely, rhapsode, in Chinese literary histories compiled in English. A unique classical literary genre, Fu commonly appears in classical Chinese literature as well as in aesthetics and philosophy, thus constituting an important part in Chinese literature in all periods from ancient to contemporary. However, Fu (...) falls outside the quartered-division of modern western stylistics, so is bound to cause problems in the compilation of a literary history in the Anglophone literary culture, as is the case in Sinology. This paper argues that variations caused in the translation of the name Fu and its configuration set-up in the English context have resulted in the under exploration of its full meanings in existing relevant studies, which necessitates future research for the sake of substantially changing the peripheral status of Chinese literature in the arena of world literature. (shrink)

School Counselling in a Chinese Context discusses research in school counselling in the Chinese context of Hong Kong schools and various educational settings, and provides a contextualized understanding of counselling issues. This book highlights key contextual conditions for counselling in Hong Kong a Chinese society. The sub themes addressed in the book include school practices and teacher perspectives on guidance, counselling, behaviour support and school discipline; whole-school guidance program for identity construction; school counselling for ethnic minority (...) students; contextual influence of the use of play therapy; school counselling for students with minority sexual orientation; Chinese cultural influence on counselling, etc. The book also develops new theoretical orientations to understanding various issues of counselling as arisen in the Chinese society of Hong Kong and helps school practitioners to develop culturally responsive approaches to school counselling for personal growth, spiritual and emotional education. The themes addressed in the book include: School practices and teacher perspectives on guidance, counselling, behavior support and school discipline School counselling for ethnic minority students Contextual and cultural influence of the use of play therapy School counselling for students with minority sexual orientation Chinese culture influence on parental participation in counselling School Counselling in a Chinese Context will be of interest to postgraduates and researchers in the field of Counselling, school psychology, child development and Chinese studies. ". (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Chinese and Indian Ways of Thinking in Early Modern European Philosophy: The Reception and the Exclusion by Selusi AmbrogioCatherine König-Pralong (bio)Chinese and Indian Ways of Thinking in Early Modern European Philosophy: The Reception and the Exclusion. By Selusi Ambrogio. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. How Modern Historians of Philosophy Drew Their World MapsIn his latest book, Chinese and Indian Ways of Thinking in (...) Early Modern European Philosophy: The Reception and the Exclusion, Selusi Ambrogio presents an extensive survey of how Indian and Chinese traditions were conceived of and staged in modern European historiography. This study, which surpasses in detail and scope other works devoted to the same topic,1 reconstructs 150 years of philosophical historiography. Otto van Heurn's Barbaricae philosophiae antiquitatum libri duo (published in 1600) included for the first time contemporary and ancient Indian thinkers in the philosophical doxography; at the other end of the time span considered, Jacob Brucker's Historia critica philosophiae (1744) sanctioned the exclusion of Chinese and Indian thinkers by means of a detailed criticism of their pseudo-philosophies. Moreover, Ambrogio makes the choice to focus on the history of philosophy, unlike Étiemble, for example,2 who was interested in philosophy in a broad sense—academic and non-academic—as well as in travel accounts, the writings of the Jesuits, and those of their opponents, among other sources. According to Ambrogio, the histories of philosophy were more representative of "the common European understanding of these civilizations," since they "were not openly written for controversialist aims" (p. 2). Even though one may wonder whether defining philosophy ("what philosophy is and its role"—ibid.) and legitimizing its scholarly practice is a less political or less polemical undertaking than pamphlets, letters, and philosophical essays,3 it is probably true that philosophical historiography produced an effect of objectification or an appearance of neutrality.The author's main thesis is that the exclusion of all non-Greeks or non-Europeans from the history of philosophy does not date from the nineteenth century and Hegel, as is generally thought, but precisely from the moment when Indian and Chinese "civilizations" were considered by historians of philosophy and included in the philosophical historiography: from the beginning of the seventeenth century onwards (p. 3). Applying a segregationist model, modern historians of philosophy developed a dialectic of [End Page 203] identification—the author speaks of "reception"—and exclusion. They defined the European philosophical mind by demarcating it from other ways of thinking, which they situated in place and time on a civilizational world map. Encompassing the world from Europe produced in return processes of definition and situation. Philosophy was established in a territory and identified with a "culture" or "mind" that began to think itself in relation to the rest of the world under the name of Europe.4I will discuss Ambrogio's remarkable work in three moments. First, I will develop some particularly interesting conclusions drawn from the study; namely, they address periodization, the production of cultural categories, and the valorization of theory. I will then discuss the main thesis as well as some problematic issues, before concluding on the subject of a world absent from Ambrogio's book, the Near and Middle East.I. Logic of Time and Cultural TerritorializationAmbrogio's book is composed of three parts that address three successive historiographical models. First, the "perennialist universalism" (p. 57)—represented by, among others, Otto van Heurn, Thomas Burnet, Isaac Vossius, François Bernier, Georg Horn, and François de la Mothe le Vayer—included ancient India and then China in the "prisca theologia"; on the other hand, it described contemporary Indian and Chinese thinkers as "barbarian" philosophers. In this constellation, Buddhism began to function as the negative part of Oriental thought. According to the Jesuits, it had polluted and corrupted the original Chinese wisdom, often identified with Confucianism.The second model constructed an "Atheistic Asia," which was used either as a positive anthropological image (for example in Pierre Bayle), or as a negative foil for Lutheran philosophy and theology (for example in Johann Franz Buddeus). In the pages he dedicates to these endeavors, Ambrogio often moves away from philosophical doxography, represented by André-Fran... (shrink)

The paper provides an overview of the early considerations regarding the phenomenon of plagiarism – from Greco-Roman antiquity to the time when a thorough study examining literary theft in its textual, legal, and moral manifestations was printed, i. e. “Philosophical Dissertation on Literary Plagiarism” by Jacob Thomasius. Although the issue of plagiarism was very vital in ancient times, all the oldest considerations concerning the appropriation of other people’s texts were essentially pragmatic moves or reactions rather than purposeful (...) class='Hi'>theoretical interpretations of the subject. However, in addition to the situational grounds of the accusation, they can reveal certain principles that, according to estimations of the time, could prevent or refute allegations of plagiarism. It was enough if the author stated, albeit generally but clearly, that the fragments of other people’s texts, whether altered or not, were used. It was also acceptable if the reader believed that the author considered his borrowings recognizable to educated readers. Another reason for the elimination of possible accusations was the factor of competition – the author’s desire to adapt the achievements of another cultural environment in his own one, significantly improving them. The medieval and early modern materials generally testify to the relevance of ancient views and reveal some new problems. This is, in particular, the incompatibility of new more formalized ideas about authorship and traditional educational practices, which encouraged the uncontrolled use of others’ texts. Some authors also emphasized that plagiarism was an obstacle to the development of science. The paper ends with examples that show how European ideas about the rules of using others’ writings may help interpret the writing methods of the early modern Ukrainian authors, including philosophers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Economy, Society, Tragedy: Moral Reflections in an Age of Crisis and Austerity LOUIS A. RUPRECHT JR. Precisely their tragedies prove that the Greeks were not pessimists... In this sense, I have the right to understand myself as the first tragic philosopher—that is to say, the most extreme antithesis and antipode of a pessimistic philosopher. —Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, “The Birth of Tragedy” Orgiastic religion leads most readily to song and (...) music; ritualistic religion inclines toward the pictorial arts; religions enjoining love favor the development of poetry and music. In all of this, the one important fact for us is the significance of the marked rejection of all distinctively aesthetic devices by those religions which are rational, in our special sense. —Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion tragedy and society The title of this review essay is taken from Max Weber’s posthumous magnum opus, Economy and Society,1 an ambitious and wide-ranging comparative sociological analysis of economic orders, social orders and the normative structures that both emerge from and lend meaning to the intersecting economic, political and religious spheres in which complex human arion 28.2 fall 2020 Kathryn A. Kozaitis, Indebted: An Ethnography of Despair and Resilience in Greece’s Second City (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2021), 248 pages. This book is the fifteenth in Oxford’s important series, “Issues of Globalization: Case Studies in Contemporary Anthropology,” edited by Carla Freeman and Li Zhang. 138 economy, society, tragedy societies take shape. To Weber’s grand and capacious sociological categories, economy and society, I have added a third literary and philosophical term: tragedy. Now, to be sure, Weber thought a great deal about tragedy,2 and was drawn to tragic themes in many of his most salient and influential sociological studies. One need think only of his account of the bureaucratic “routinization” of prophetic charisma in The Sociology of Religion,3 or his depiction of modern humanity’s self-imposed “iron cage” in the rousing final pages of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,4 a text to which I will return at the end of this essay.5 But tragedy entails far more than systemic collapse or self-inflicted disaster. In this essay, I want to explore some of the implications of combining close attention to the lived experience of concrete individuals to the highly theoretical, systems-level analysis inspired by such Weberian categories. Put another way, how may Cultural Anthropology, and more specifically Ethnography, deepen such a globally-oriented Sociology? Here, I intend to supplement Weber’s sociological dyad, economy and society, with a conception of tragedy drawn from the cognate social sciences of Comparative Religion and Cultural Anthropology; I will be using Attic Greek tragedy as a benchmark. More specifically, I wish to highlight some of the ways in which the first book-length ethnographic study of the Greek economic crisis may add vital nuance to Weber’s more theoretical, world-systems approach. That book is Kathryn Kozaitis’s Indebted: An Ethnography of Despair and Resilience in Greece’s Second City, an ethnographic study of the lived reality of Greeks experiencing the double -whammy of a sovereign debt crisis and externally imposed austerity regimes in the Greek city of Thessaloniki; the book is the fifteenth to appear inOxford’s “Issues of Globalization: Case Studies in Contemporary Anthropology” series, edited by Carla Freeman and Li Zhang. As Kozaitis demonstrates with sensitivity and eloquence, by zeroing in on the people, rather than the economic policies or the social and administrative structures, Louis A. Ruprecht Jr. 139 certain normative categories and ethical stances become more relevant, many of them implicated in ancient Greek tragedy, and drama more broadly. tragic crises appropriately to a work of cultural ethnography, Kozaitis links the personal to her profession; further still, she weaves her own personal story into the story of the people to whom she is attempting to give voice. This, she notes, constitutes “the auto-ethnography in this ethnography” (4–6). How, then, did this professor of Cultural Anthropology, based in the United States, find her way to Greece’s “second city”? The path was circuitous, and its destination unclear for quite some time. That Kozaitis’s personal... (shrink)

Undoubtedly, Abū Ḥanīfa (d. 150/767) is one of the most important subjects affecting the development of Islamic thought for about thirteen centuries. Not only Islamic law; however, with his fundamental contributions to the doctrine, he continues to influence a very large environment in the Islamic geography today. In fact, this effect has been attractive enough to create a depth that permeates the daily lives of societies from economics to law, from education to health, beyond these mere theoretical and practical (...) dimensions of religion. Essentially, the interpretation of Islam systematized by Abū Ḥanīfa in the context of a religious philosophy and method has been the subject of a heated discussion and evaluation under different Islamic paradigms since the very first time. Today, the issue has gained a different dimension in parallel with the increasing tensions in all aspects of the Islamic world. Apart from the interest shown to him in the context of organized religion, Abū Ḥanīfa has been a means of reaction to the Arab religion and politics attitude on the one hand, and on the other hand he has been made the object of conflict, harmony and incompatibilities in the context of modernization. The research is limited to studies conducted in Turkey between 2000 and 2020 years on Abū Ḥanīfa. The research is based on the assumption that these studies dealt with Abū Ḥanīfa almost completely detached from her sociological and historical personality and confronted with a theoretical problem. In the study, a theoretical analysis of the mentioned literature has been made and a theoretical proposal has been made for the studies in the field. With the research, it is aimed to make a theoretical contribution to the Abū Ḥanīfa literature. For this purpose, the general theoretical view of these studies is tried to be understood by scanning the books, articles and symposium papers covering these years. In this framework, some semantic packages that manifest themselves widely in the studies are determined, and thus the unchanging concrete reflections of the phenomenon problematized in the research are tried to be understood. The data in the study are evaluated in the context of phenomenological sociology of knowledge. From the earliest times to today, Abū Ḥanīfa is not only about the theological perception of people; besides, he has drawn an image surrounded by the limitations drawn by their socioeconomic, cultural, political and ideological circles. On the other hand, it can easily be seen that the approaches reflected in the literature about Abū Ḥanīfa, whether they come from the Hanafi school or have matured within another tradition of thought, are almost entirely shaped in a macro-theological, suprahistorical, universalist and nomothetic perspective. It can also be said that these studies have not attempted to open themselves up to new discussions in theoretical terms. In the years that were the subject of the research, Abū Ḥanīfa was the subject of periodicals and symposiums conducted within a program rather than copyrighted works. The literature, which is clearly observed to be confronted with a theological contraction, is progressing with a more doctrine debate today. It is understood that relatively less practical areas of discussion have emerged with the motive of responding to developments in the Islamic world and on a global scale, ignoring Abū Ḥanīfa 's sociological background. Handing over to Abū Ḥanīfa, disciplinary populism, sectarian marginalization, romanticization and ideological commodification are important meaning packages reflected in the literature. The main concern of all this semantic reality is to build an order based on the knowledge stock in the tradition against the breaks and traumas in the social structure. However, this approach to explain Abū Ḥanīfa has revealed some theoretical problems. In another respect, the perspectives that dominated the literature made such generalizing attitudes inevitable. As a result, with this theoretical point of view, Abū Ḥanīfa has been turned into a historical problem in related studies in general. Finally, in this study, a historical, idiographic perspective emphasizing the specificity to the social event is proposed for the literature of Abū Ḥanīfa. In this context, the article draws attention to the phenomenological sociology of knowledge that takes the understanding of each event in its own reality as opposed to macro approaches. (shrink)

This paper takes a reflective look at the notions of identity, ‘race’ and ethnicity using a few ancient and modern Chinese ‘texts’. It begins with an examination of the reforms known as ‘adopting the costume of barbarian/foreign people and practicing mounted archery [hufuqishe]’ carried out by King Wuling 武靈王 in 307 BCE as described in the Zhan Guo Ce 戰國策 and the Shiji 史記 by Sima Qian 司馬遷. Its cultural and educational significance is then discussed in order (...) to show how the issues faced by King Wuling are still relevant to the educational scene in the contemporary world. Some recent materials from Hong Kong school textbooks relating to the issues on identity and ‘race’ are then used to contrast and compare with the approach taken by King Wuling. This study argues that the inability to take a critical stance toward categories such as ‘race’ risks perpetuating dated and ethically questionable mentalities. In addition, the importance of taking into consideration issues pertaining to purpose and evaluation in the context of education is highlighted. (shrink)

In the Western media, stories about China seem to fall into one of two categories: China’s astounding economic development or its human rights abuses. As human rights discourses follow increasingly hegemonic conventions, especially with regard to China, many of their key assumptions remain unexamined. This special issue—the second in a two-part series beginning with “Cosmologies of the Human”—critically investigates the relationship between China and the human as it plays out in law, politics, biopolitics, political economy, labor, medicine, and culture. The (...) contributors interrogate the evolving meanings of “China” and “the human,” both inside China and internationally. The issue tracks the ways in which global discourses treat China—still officially socialist—as similar to, different from, and alternative to Western capitalist modernities. Several essays probe the modern theoretical underpinnings of human rights abuses in China, including a crucial distinction between “the human” and “the people.” Others review the impact of Maoism on Marxist debates in China and in the West, as well as the specific influences of Mao’s writings on French politics and theory in the 1960s. A visual dossier compares eight contemporary Chinese artists, directors, and public image-makers in order to discuss the figure of the human from Tiananmen Square to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. While many contributors discuss China and the West comparatively, the issue interrogates the universalizing claims of both Western and Chinese norms of the human by privileging the local, particular, and eccentric. Contributors: Ackbar Abbas, Michael Dutton, David L. Eng, Doug Howland, Petrus Liu, Camille Robcis, Teemu Ruskola, Shuang Shen, Shu-mei Shih, Wang Xiaoming David L. Eng is Professor of English, Comparative Literature, and Asian American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of _The Feeling of Kinship: Queer Liberalism and the Racialization of Intimacy_ and _Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America_, both also published by Duke University Press. Teemu Ruskola is Professor of Law at Emory University and Visiting Professor of Law at Georgetown University. Shuang Shen is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Chinese at Pennsylvania State University. (shrink)

The studies of urban popular culture in modern China in recent years have attracted wide attention from scholars in China and abroad. The symposium, which is composed by Ma Min’s “Injecting vitality into the studies of urban cultural history,” Jiang Jin’s “Issues in the studies of urban popular culture in modern China,” Wang Di’s “The microcosm of Chinese cities: The perspective and methodology of studying urban popular culture from the case of teahouses (...) in Chengdu,” Joseph W. Esherick’s “Remaking the Chinese city: Urban space and urban culture” and Lu Hanchao’s “From elites to common people: The downward trend in the studies of Chinese urban history in the United States,” provide valuable insights on the perspective, trend, and methodology of the studies. (shrink)

Architecture and Deconstruction Case of Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi -/- Introduction Towards deconstruction in architecture Intensive relations between philosophical deconstruction and architecture, which were present in the late 1980s and early 1990s, belong to the past and therefore may be described from a greater than before distance. Within these relations three basic variations can be distinguished: the first one, in which philosophy of deconstruction deals with architectural terms but does not interfere with real architecture, the second one, in which (...) a collaboration between Jacques Derrida and a group of architects interested in his concepts is commenced, and the third one, in which completed or only designed objects or new concepts of deconstruction created by architects gain their supremacy over philosophy. The following book analyses these three possible ways, first of all with the reference to Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi. -/- Peter Eisenman -/- Misreading… and Other Errors -/- The issue of relations between Peter Eisenman’s work and philosophy of deconstruction may be referred to his activity more than ten years preceding his direct collaboration with Jacques Derrida (in 1985) and organisation of the exhibition Deconstructivist Architecture at Museum of Modern Art in New York (in 1988). As soon as at the stage of designing the first houses (House I-III, 1967-1970), which almost entirely inscribed in formalistic aesthetics of Modernism, the architect analysed the problem of architecture dependence on its assumptions. All his later designs may be treated as consequence of this initial interest in relations between practice and theory, and at the same time as an introduction to manipulations later on led at the level of metaphysics of architecture. Beginning with the issue of presence, considered in comments to House VI (1972), the number of ideas having their analogies in philosophy of deconstruction increased. The text entitled The End of the Classical: The End of the Beginning, The End of the End (1984), in which Eisenman criticised questions of representation in architecture, its delusive strive for truth and comparably unattainable attempts at ultimate definition of elementary rules, should be acclaimed the breaking point. This attitude was extended by numerous strategies disturbing architecture rules defined at metaphysical level in an essay Moving Arrows, Eros, and Other Errors: an Architecture of Absence (1986). The issue of Eisenman’s passage from formalism to deconstruction has already been much discussed in the literature (Rosalind Krauss, Thomas Patin among others), still it should be mentioned that the threads similar to Derrida’s concept included in Eisenman’s writing reveal untranslatability of architecture and philosophy. -/- Choral Works or Separate tricks -/- In 1985-1986 a series of seven disputes between Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman took place. The pretext for them were designs concerning Parc de la Villette in Paris. The situation of many months of collaboration between a notable philosopher of the second half of the 20th c. and an architect that already had a huge theoretical oeuvre, ended up with a publication of a large volume entitled Chora L Works and it became at the same time a vast study area for historians of contemporary architecture and philosophers. Derrida’s contribution to concept works were his considerations over the idea of chôra, the properties related to this concept were about to be reflected in shapes of the park. Therefore, Chora L Works became an example of the abilities of contemporary art, both in its capability of translation from philosophical ideas to artistic forms and its resistance to tradition of representing in architecture some phenomena and values originating outside this discipline. In the final period of their collaboration both interlocutors started to polemicise with each other more decidedly, what became a separate part of their thought exchange. The exchange of letters between Derrida and Eisenman at the turn of 1989 ended up the period of their direct contacts, nevertheless, at this time precisely a large group of experts in issues of deconstruction joined the discussion and extended the revealed in the former dispute problems into more than ten years of further considerations and publications. Except for a long text by Jeffrey Kipnis, who had participated in the meetings of the philosopher and the architect, there appeared also comments of researchers of artistic theories (K. Michael Hays, Thomas Patin), philosophers (Andrew Benjamin), and even experts in Greek literature (Maria Theodorou or Ann Bergren). Following these debates a contemporary reflection on architecture has saturated with indeed numerous concepts originating in philosophy of deconstruction. -/- Architecture which imitates mute philosophy -/- The series of Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman meetings, which took place in the period of 1985-1987, induced many authors to make comments. Some of them (Jeffrey Kipnis, Ann Bergren, Maria Theodorou) developed the subject of chôra which was introduced to the discussion by Derrida. The problem that was about to be solved was the question of tying up the concept of chôra with architecture, including Eisenman’s architecture and the series of meetings within frames of Chora L Works project. Kipnis on this occasion paid attention to chôra and its character of anachronia which infects any being created within chôra. In other words any event has its counterpart (analogon) in another, earlier event. He demonstrated the similarity of structure of many events and statements from the times of Derrida and Eisenman’s meetings to the almost identical behaviour of figures in Plato’s dialogue Timaeus. The loss of beginning present in this phenomenon was appropriate to both features of chôra and the effects of typical analyses of philosophy of deconstruction. Bergren’s analyses focused on accentuating gender of chôra, which, according to this author, had been neglected hitherto in discussions. She collated chôra descriptions with characteristics of women in myths, early Greek epic and philosophy and she arrived at a conclusion that chôra has features of a single woman and a married one at the same time. And yet Theodorou’s studies showed that in the Homeric epics chôra is not treated as an idea but is related with single things and events. The other part of the comments (represented by Andrew Benjamin and K. Michael Hays’ utterances) concerns Eisenman’s attitude to tradition which was treated as a variety of iteration understood philosophically. Benjamin commenced his considerations at the point of closeness between a definition of tradition and a concept of chôra understood as perpetuation (placement). A problematic issue was for him Eisenman’s complex relation to tradition based on its contest and affirmation at the same time. Overcoming the simple subordination to tradition – according to Benjamin – was based on awareness of the role of repetition in culture not known before. Hays made an attempt to explain the pleasure and torment of repetition with the support of Sigmund Freud and Roland Barthes’ concepts. According to Hays repetitions are attempts of a single being to a certain primal state perceived as free of any tension. In a similar way Rosalind Krauss explained a motif of a grate present in Modernistic art and also exceptionally frequent in Eisenman’s work. -/- Annex Architecture is still writing Balzac novels. Peter Eisenman and literature -/- Architecture’s approach to writing, script or literature, present within Peter Eisenman’s work, is an exceptional phenomenon, furthermore a complex one. The article considers four possible relations. The first one relates to Eisenman’s characteristics as a person extremely gifted with the ability to wordplay, which very ‘play’ reveals skills to create architectural images. In the second approach the attention has been paid to Eisenman’s interests – in the first period of his oeuvre – in linguistic works by Noam Chomsky and his transformational-generative grammar. The third kind of relations applied to overcoming the need for autonomy of architecture (and of modernist aesthetics at the same time) and renew interests in questions of meaning in architecture. The fourth sort of relations occurred when Eisenman started to create reflections of historic or literary narrations in architecture – ‘stone stories’ and architectural fictions of their kind. -/- Bernard Tschumi -/- From perversion to deconstruction In Bernard Tschumi’s writings from the 1970s and 1980s we can find a transposition of important threads of post-structuralist ideas deriving from Georges Bataille, Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida’s works. The analysis of the architect’s writings also shows roots in Phillippe Sollers, Michel Foucault and Denis Hollier’s works. The analysis of borrowed elements from the beginnings of Tschumi’s theoretical activity may be helpful in explaining the contents of his later writings motre inspired by philosophy of deconstruction. The set of his earliest views was inspired by Marxism, Neo Marxism and French Structuralism, mainly by the writings of Henri Levebre and Guy Debord. From the thought of Levebre Tschumi took interest for city as not only a question of urbanistics but also a political issue. From Debord’s concepts he borrowed a conviction about the role of situational violation for changes in the society structure. Some of these beliefs were preserved in his own concepts of architecture as an event. From this period derived also his will to change conservative elements of social structure not by means of political revolution but of theoretical and creative activity. Tschumi acknowledged that the effective way of the proceedings towards achieving his aims would be accepting the role of both a critical intellectualist and architecture expert who would not hide away his left-wing orientation. The speculations defined by the architect as ‘revolting analyses’ were about to characterise contradictions which tear the society apart, penetrate architecture and constitute the basis of culture. Spreading away of the conscience of false assumptions hidden away in various disciplines could have weakened cohesion of a conservative society and influence the will to change among the elites. This way the beginnings of political revolution were rooted in philosophy of architecture. In 1977 Tschumi published his text entitled The Pleasure of Architecture inspired by Roland Barthes’s The Pleasure of the Text, it also included some concepts derived from Georges Bataille and Jacques Derrida. First of all the author used Barthes’s concept which made an assumption that literary activity is pervaded by the spirit of resistance towards social rules, and Tschudi transferred this remark onto architecture. From the ideas of Bataille, acquainted via Holier’s work, he derived his belief that two concepts of space, a conceptual one (defined as Pyramid) and a sensual one (defined as Labirynth), not losing their distinct features, they join in the concept of experienced space which exceeds contradictions. The exceeding itself was defined as the basic rule of architecture and it was referred to situations in which architecture not only negates social needs, but also disavows its own tradition. Crossing the borders applies not only to political issues or permanent rules of the very discipline but also interfering with other fields (especially literature and film). The fact that architecture is associated with organising events turned Tschumi’s attention to questions of violence that result from upsetting architectural order of a given building by its users and the one hand, and on the other from forcing the users to specific acts imposed by this very order. The analysis of the concepts used by Tschumi in his early writings indicates that they are close to definitions that would occur in his reflection in the following years influenced by philosophy of deconstruction. -/- Approaching deconstruction Tschumi in his theories developed in the 1980s presumed that the current social world had undergone a deep process of decay, and the reaction against which ought to be based on ordering-up actions, and also preserving the main outline of disintegration of the whole and its elements in the state of conflict. The statements concerning the nature of the contemporary to Tschumi social relations were applied by him to the world of architecture, this led him to coming up with designing strategies that took into consideration the destabilised character of conditions in which works of architecture were created. New ways of conduct invented by Tschumi drew their inspiration from literature and research on literature, psychoanalysis, structural linguistics, structuralism and post structuralism, and eventually also deconstruction philosophy. The proposed methods were opposed by their author both to functionalism continuity trends and postmodern architecture. Tschumi’s proposals contradicted any forms of conservatism or traditionalism in political sphere as well as in reference to tendencies in architecture. They were not simple contradictions of social or architectural rules, they intrude them from the inside, weaken or escalate the already existing incongruities, they move the boundaries between the areas. Revolutionary illusions about the possibility of radical changes were replaced with strategies which completed, tainted or test former rules in the series of formal games of permutation and combination. Quite different from avant-garde formalism Tschumi’s games were not about maintaining the autonomy of a given area, but on the contrary – polluting it with other areas’ influences. Tschumi enjoyed demonstrating illusions of architecture concerning simple relations between form and function, or between form and meaning. Making use of Freud, Lacan and Foucault’s research he introduced a category of “madness” into architecture allowing an observation that the recognised norms are nothing but merely ones of many possible principles of behaviour, and their recognised status resulted from unjustified hindering innovativeness which is crucial for architecture. To reborn architecture’s capability of changing Tschumi also made use of Barthes’s discoveries concerning rules of narration and works by writers who applied in their writing knowledge on linguistics. Making a work’s author unclear by various mechanical transformations of its elements was however apparent only, and formal rigours imposed on the process of designing liberated possibilities difficult to obtain in more traditional creative action. Another mode of acting introduced by Tschumi was combining his work of elements deriving from outside architecture; joining space records with notation of motion and events accompanying architectural objects among others. These architectural and extra-architectural elements were not unified, on the contrary their heterogenous and conflictual character was stressed. This is how shock, anxiety and instability, typical for live in great metropolises, infiltrated architecture. Taking some ideas of deconstruction philosophy as a pattern Tschumi also took into critical consideration in his essays traditional in architecture oppositions between form and figuration, or theory and practice. By combining various inspirations he eventually worked out an idea of architectural event, which he understood as a series of actions contesting its own field, redefining its sources, principles and elements. An event, understood in this way, was not so much producing works as rather creating conditions of their production and at the same time designing the society different from a hierarchic one. -/- Park of deconstruction Among numerous philosophical strategies of deconstruction most frequently used was questioning the practice of strong opposition of two reasons. In many cases Bernard Tschumi’s writings just consider functioning of the conflict juxtaposition of the ideas of structure and ornament or theory and practice in history of architecture. Violation of traditional relations between terms of this kind, both old and modern, raised Jacques Derrida’s objections, when he was induced for the first time to co-operate with architects’ milieu. During this long lasting thought exchange the philosopher eventually acknowledged Bernard Tschumi’s arguments for reasoning the encroachment of architecture’s fundamental rules. Deconstruction applied in architecture was not a simple transposition or analogy of practices that had been applied by philosophy of deconstruction. We may even say that considering architectural terms became an important formula of deconstruction. Architecture understood in philosophical way became something beyond the practice and theory of its own discipline, a sort of metaphysics of both philosophy and architecture. The deliberate encroachment of simplicity of dividing architecture into theory and practice, for the first time became a clear aim for Tschumi in his drawings and texts entitled The Manhattan Transcripts. The contents of this series of works was a record of characteristic features of this New York district in such a way that not only objects were the subject of the record but also relations between objects, people and events. The record was about to take into consideration a conflict character of elements of this representation and at the same time to avoid applying to them the rule of mimetism. The record became a form of reflection over the very record by an increased control over the ways of representation. Architecture which was considered in the The Manhattan Transcripts was not directed to fulfill the needs of inhabitation or production, it was rather related with hitherto usually marginalised liminal situations: building ostentatiously big monuments, religious cult, war etc. Architecture operating in these relations focused also the attention on the included in it continuous tendency to overpass its own restrictions, the role of violence as its not recognised factor, or the meaning of excess and shock in its operation. Architecture moving from reason towards madness became even more visible in the design of Parisian Parc de la Villette, whose pavilions were defined as folies (in French it means both small park buildings and follies). The park was supposed to be on the one hand a reflection of traditional society disintegration while on the other it questioned basic rules of producing a work of architecture. The traditional rules of designing, based on ordering up, were replaced with the strategies of dysfunction and dissociation. In Tschumi’s opinion methods of this kind may be equivalent of what Derrida named différance. Instead of aiming at mergence, any diversity, plays or variations were strengthen. Tschumi’s texts, in which he explained his attitude, were completed by Derrida’s extent statement entitled Point de folie – Maintenant l’architecture. Derrida’s article is the most significant of all his statements on architecture as a form of thinking and activity. According to the philosopher, architecture should divide space (in French defined as espacement), what enables both thinking and action – it arranges the space of an event. Tschumi’s buildings, defined as folies, in an essential way destabilise any created order, and at the same time they refresh it. Derrida’s statement suggests that architecture may become both metaphor of an order merging a language or a society but also of inner forces which deconstruct and reconstruct it. Therefore architecture is at the same time a construction, a deconstruction and a reconstruction. Parc de la Villette stands out in this system with its attempt to step beyond the scheme of an easy repetition and its heading for chances of achieving more radical otherness. -/- Conclusion Destruction as construction. Paradoxes of deconstruction in architecture -/- Scepticism about persistence and common importance of fundamental values of human culture evinced in philosophers and writers’ works as early as in Greek antiquity, nevertheless it was not expressed so strongly as in the second half of the 20th century. Especially in Heidegger’s work Being and Time (although originated in 1927, still influential in all later philosophy) the following states were characterised: the state of losing the ground (Abgrund), of being out of sight (Unheimlichkeit) and of being out of dwelling (Un-zuhause-sein) – as the basis of self-confidence of conscious being there (Dasein). The entire criticism of philosophy of home and dwelling draws the inspiration from this early writing of the German philosopher, it combines crisis of basic terms of metaphysics with social conditions which are dictated by living in large metropolis. The crisis of both metaphysical foundation and home appears to be similar to the situation of weakening the relations between a man and his dwelling in extensively expanding cities. Whereas philosophy, as well as many disciplines of social sciences, have diagnosed for a long time the destabilisation of fundamental ideas of Western culture and crucial changes in the ways of dwelling, architecture itself occurred to be “the last fortress of metaphysics” (J. Derrida). Among contemporary architects, Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi were the ones who engaged most decidedly in the issues of critical analysis of architecture foundation and its social role. Both the architects noticed new formulas of contemporary social and individual existence, tremendously different from the entire history, and at the same time they affirmed lack of adequacy of architecture concepts to new situations. Both Eisenman and Tschumi used to describe the existing architecture as a tool for consolidation of highly integrated and hierarchised societies, and also as a discipline extremely uncoincidental with the current character of social life based on ideas of freedom and diversity. The means to transform architecture and make a factor of further social changes out of it, was a concept that accentuated revealing the inner contradictions of this discipline, and considering them in designing strategies. Eisenman’s activity, in regard of what has just been noticed, was focused on questioning the basic rules of traditionally comprehended architecture, especially the rule of purpose. The American architect noticed that the concept of architecture as fulfilment the need of location, hides away the fact that the location has to be constantly reconsidered, and hence it is overtaken by change (dislocation). Therefore new concept of architecture propounded architectural activity to translocate the concept of location – more than before – but also to change its status perpetually. Such comprehended architecture should claim, as its main purpose, the constant revision of this purpose and create itself anew permanently. Even Eisenman’s earliest designs of houses nos. I-IV broke with such values as the sense of safety, closeness and familiarity, and just on the contrary they accentuated senses of strangeness, homelessness and loss of confidence. The contradictions within architecture noticed by Tschumi referred to combination of intellectual and sensual values in architecture, when their non-appropriation was defeated by an additional condition, namely the way of experience based on pleasure of excess, marked by insanity. The features of folly were especially visible in his designs of gardens, where the order of planning was mixed with sensual experience introduced by particular elements (both the ones created by nature, and the buildings defined as folies). Parc de la Villette designed by the French architect in Paris put in question not only the common understanding of purpose in architecture but also the ideas of order and integrity, as its plan was based on the combination of independent layers with records of grids of points, various lines and planes. The architecture that collides inadequate elements with each other was supposed to be a kind of an event with no beginning and no end. The architecture treated as an event became a form of a space weakened articulation that maintains its diversity and lack of accordance of the elements building it up. The analyses of Eisenman and Tschumi’s theoretical writings indicate how much the aims of architecture have actually changed; instead of supporting social persistence, the architecture is rather intensifying contradictions, and instead of providing people with the sense of safety, it sublimes danger. From simple acts of defamiliarisation, increasing the distance to itself and enhancing the role of theory, through discomfort, anxiety, not feeling someone at home, weirdness, excess, shock and violence, architecture reached the edge of stability and uncertainty, only to make an attempt at penetrating what is impossible and unutterable, and recording what cannot become the subject of any records. -/- . (shrink)