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Beyond Postmodernity
Beyond Postmodernity:
Doubt, Time and Violence in Philosophical and
Cultural Thought
Abstracts
Dominique Tyl
Dominique Tyl
Trust, Distrust, and Violence
The paper represents work in progress offered with the aim of inviting discussion during the workshop. Its main idea is that trust is basic in any human relationship, but, since trust cannot be imposed, it is always facing the threat of betrayal. When such a situation happens, the reaction may be one of despair in the victim, ►
which could turn into violence against oneself (withdrawal, or even suicide); or violence against the perpetrator (fighting with words or actions); or faith beyond apparently realistic appreciation of human behavior. All three outcomes of lack of trust have been illustrated in literature, from modest detective stories to masterpieces in fiction. Examples will be provided in the paper, with the hope that more would be proposed during the discussion, if the thesis is valid. Is violence as a consequence of trust betrayed more prevalent today? Financial crisis and fundamentalism surely would suggest so; however, worldwide, past and present literature is replete with the theme, which indicates that it touches the mystery of human nature.
Keith Tester
Keith Tester
Confusing World, Vulnerable People: On the Condition of Medialisation
Following the work of Agnes Heller, modernity is understood as the action of the deconstruction of the natural artifice. Time is emptied out and identified as being filled only through action. But what are the hermeneutics underpinning actions? Two different hermeneutics running through modernity are identified. ►
1. Hermeneutic of constructivist action, consolidated in capitalism and industrialism. It identifies deconstruction of natural artifice as a ground-clearing exercise, creating an empty time to be freely filled by social constructs. A human being is alone in the world with no foundation other than its own action. The resulting existential crisis led to materialism organized as capitalism and industrialism.
2. Hermeneutic of charitable action consolidated in democracy environmentalism (here, the word ‘charitable’ is associated with human togetherness). If deconstruction of the natural artifice has undermined the previously existing forms of human togetherness, a problem arises as to the basis upon which human togetherness can be understood. The hermeneutic of charitable action revolves around an attempt to establish universal criteria of human togetherness through political forms and identification of non-optional preconditions for a human being.
However, these different hermeneutics act as constraints on the free action of one another and cast mutual doubt on foundations. For example, democracy undermines capitalism (democracy implies formal equality contradicted by capitalism’s material inequality), and industrialism challenges an environmentalism which is implicit within the hermeneutic of charitable action (industrialism sees the natural world as a resource to be exploited and transformed through constructivist action, whereas environmentalism is a form of charity which stressing reciprocity).
This incompatibility and mutual doubt generate violence as action oriented towards the overcoming of constraint and doubt. Can violence work in this way? Drawing on themes raised by Charles Taylor, I propose that violence is counterproductive because it confirms the existence of the other who casts doubt. The result is mutual disembedding – the violence intended to overcome doubt actually generates more of it. Paradoxically, this opens up space for hope.
João J. Vila-Chã
João J. Vila-Chã
Violence Transfigured by Language: Alterity and the Power of Discourse
According to Emmanuel Levinas
Following the teaching of Hannah Arendt on the nature of violence, I would like to submit that, both as an ontological and as political act, violence is always a direct participation in the mystery of evil. For Arendt, violence necessarily refers to an evil attitude in the agent that perpetrates it and to evil consequences ►
in the one suffering it. Like Arendt, I distinguish in this paper between violence and power, whereby the presence of violence simply means that true and authentic power is missing. After all, power presupposes plurality and, as such, in its authentic terms, it can be established only through non-violent means. Accordingly, I shall attempt to go beyond the apparent paradox of a power that, in its own authenticity, is non-violent. In order to do so, the paper will focus on Emmanuel Levinas, whose metaphysical work indeed is one of the most expressive manifestations of meaning in contemporary philosophy. This paper will show how Levinas’s ethical thinking constitutes a profound criticism of all the traditions of thought that live out of forgetfulness of the Other and instinctively prefer an ontology of war to an ethics of hospitality and of respect for the otherness of the Other. The analysis will be centered on the notion of discourse and on the power of language. In demonstrating the ethical nature of any authentic act of language, the paper will show that if there is language it is because there is a call to love and to justice; and that if there is love and justice it is only in the measure that human subjects can, and do, talk to one another. Thus, language shall be identified as the first means to overcome the temptation of violence. Whenever human beings speak they affirm the social nature of human ontology, so much so that to recognize human sociality becomes one of the most important steps towards an order of human affairs based on non-violence and mutual benevolence. Against Hobbes, therefore, the paper maintains that human beings are structurally made for peace and love and not for war and injustice.
Nimyan Wong
Nimyan Wong
Allegories of Rape and Reconciliation in City of Life and Death
( 南京﹗南京﹗[ Nanking! Nanking! ] )
The need to picture a wartime trauma and to deal with the disjunctions and incongruities of different historical readings has become one of the most readily recognizable characteristics of different cultural productions on the Nanking massacre. Complex metaphors and symbolic languages ►
have developed to define the interdependency of Chinese women and China and to offer some sort of explanation for the gendered nature of the war. Within this category of cultural productions, traditions of allegory have formed an important element. Allegory as a discursive medium is part of the heritage history but also remains part of the visual vocabulary of many contemporary film makers. As a model, it also puts an interesting gloss on the definitions of originality and artistic morals so frequently of interest to directors working outside the defined mainstream. Re-using and re-ordering the visual languages of rape and reconciliation cannot be seen as specific to the film City of Life and Death (2009) but rather as symptomatic of an awareness of cultural distance towards different depictions of historical trauma among the new generations of the 21st century Chinese film makers.
Alison Bailey
Alison Bailey
Deferred Revenge, Failed Loyalties, Broken Families:
Filial Piety and Loyalty in late Qing and Early Republican Writing
This paper deals with the questionings and uncertainties of Chinese writers and thinkers at the end of the Qing into the Republic with regard to the centuries-old values & duties of filial piety and loyalty, and the narratives, rhetoric and acts of revenge that are often associated with those values. ►
Chinese people struggled to deal with tremendous and deeply unsettling changes in the late 19th century into the 20th century when old certainties were being destroyed and new ways of being were emerging. Central to both traditional visions of the ordering of the world and to the new critiques of the past is the family, especially the patriarch, and, by extension, the imperial system as embodied in the figure of the father-ruler.
The paper will explore a variety of texts that treat the themes of violence, mourning, loyalty, martyrdom, filial and ethnic revenge, failure & reform. The writers and works discussed belong to an age where long-entrenched traditions and beliefs are attacked but conservative desires to hold on to the old and a fear of the new still have power. Both the writers and their characters are transitional figures poised in an in-between world as it undergoes rapid, violent, and radical transformation. Long-held values are weakened and modern ways embraced while nostalgia for a lost past still lingers. Similarly, the themes, messages, rhetoric and narrative forms deployed reveal considerable ambivalence, wavering at times between the old and the new.
The texts discussed include late Qing fiction such as Ernü yingxiong zhuan (A Tale of Heroes and Lovers, 1872), Chou Shi (History of Revenge, 1905), Shizi hou (The Lion Roars, 1905), and Henhai (Sea of Regret, 1906) and Republican-era stories by Lu Xun and Xu Dishan. Some parallels will be drawn with works written after the fall of the Ming and reference made to traces of Confucian values and loyalties in the Republican period in figures such as Wang Guowei.
Zhu Shoutong
Zhu Shoutong
Reflections on the Negative Impact of Scientific Thinking in Modern Chinese Literature
The new literature and new culture movements in early twentieth-century China raised two banners: science and democracy. Democratic thinking actually constituted the core spirit of the new literary movement, and almost all modern ideas represented a democratic spirit. However, scientific thinking ►
was a dissonant element in the early years of this new literature. The pioneers of the new literary movement believed that European culture clearly included science and that science and the arts were wholly compatible. Seeing traditional Chinese literature and culture as essentially inimical to science, these pioneers therefore believed that science was needed to overcome old laws, ethics, religion and politics embodied in traditional literature. In fact, democratic thinking was all that was needed to overcome these things, while the contributions made by scientific thinking were negligible. More importantly, science promoted the spread of materialistic ideas, thereby restricting the role of spiritual awareness in culture. It was for this reason that the founder of new humanism, Irving Babbitt, was critical of science. The rise of the social sciences in China from the 1920s to the early 1930s had a strongly negative impact on the healthy development of new literature. Following the introduction of scientific thinking into literature, literature lost its religious feeling and its fantasies of a miraculous world. The success of new Chinese literature in general was thus deeply compromised.
Wu Xiaoming
Wu Xiaoming
My Being-towards-Death and the Unbearable Kindness of the Other
— Rereading Lu Xun’s The Passerby
This paper will present a preliminary reading of Lu Xun’s complicated literary writing, Wild Grass (野草 Ye cao), a collection of twenty-one prose poems, a short play and a parody of a love poem, covered by a poetic introduction by the author himself. This important work is worth our rereading in a so-called ►
postmodern time that may have longed to go beyond itself, because it contains the whole of Lu Xun’s philosophical thought.
My paper will focus on the following texts: “The Passer-by” (过客 Guo ke), “My Shadow’s Farewell” (影的告别 Ying de gaobei), and “The Epitaph” (墓碣文 Mujiewen). Here, the questions of self-doubt, self-identity and time are intertwined in a both simple (or abstract) and complicated ways. Inseparable from them are the important questions of the other and of violence. Essentially depending on the other but still wanting not to have anything to do with the other, either out of one’s care or out of one’s fear for the other: such a complicated relation or non-relation of the passing guest with the other will be analyzed in some depth in my paper. In this preliminary reading I will also bring Lévinas and Derrida to bear in reading Wild Grass.
Tudor Vlădescu
Tudor Vlădescu
Intrinsic Propaganda Literature: Landscapes of Fear in Fictional Worlds
There are many aspects of Socialist Realism which have been forgotten by the readers of fiction worldwide. The reason for such an abysmal lack of interest for those ideology-sprinkled texts [meant to promote communist cultural hegemony in inter-war Soviet Union and in post-World War Two socialist states] ►
resides in the very foundations of Socialist Realism: literature meant to advertise a political system that, by definition, left no room for other opinions or views. Although it is quite a common negative emotion, fear seems to have been used cautiously in fictional writings ever since. Overuse has pushed fear toward the low-key “horror” sub-species, whereas the absence of fear in a fictional world gave way to the impression that the text is much too “technical”, i.e. depleted of human touch altogether. This paper will dwell upon some instances of classical fictional works in which characters develop negative emotions in view of a possible categorization of those “fears”. Shifting towards contemporary literature, this paper will try to determine whether fictional fear is an accurate measuring device for real social phenomena. Does the use of fear help transgress the fictional canon in use or does it promote obedience to the successfully verified reader-friendly fictional recipes?
Wendy Larson
Wendy Larson
Fighting for Cultural Parity:
Tsui Hark 徐克 and Once Upon a Time in China 《黄飞鸿》
“Fighting for Cultural Parity: Tsui Hark 徐克 and Once Upon a Time in China 《黄飞鸿》” is an in-depth look at the cultural stance developed by film director Tsui Hark (1954-), whose 1991 film Once Upon a Time in China spawned a second and third version (and eventually fourth, fifth, and sixth) ►
and sparked the 1990s global interest in martial arts films. In this first film, I argue, Tsui Hark constructs the identity of hero Wong Fei-Hong through an idealized notion of the parity of nations, expressing the concept that the inherent equality of cultures can and should be brought into play in any transnational negotiation or interaction. Tsui Hark also emphasizes the cultural texture of daily life and the importance of sounds, images, and all material qualities of culture, injecting into his films a sense of future nostalgia that could result from cultural uniformity should this posture be abandoned. Tsui’s position on the validity of culturalism, or the nation-state mandate that each nation develop a unique and rich set of cultural attributes that when expressed on the global stage will garner symbolic capital for the nation, addresses the conference focus on doubt, time, and violence through the humor and optimism of Wong’s personality, through heavy historical reference, and through Western arms and Chinese martial arts fighting. In all elements, Once Upon a Time expresses confidence in the cultural implications of the nation-state political form, a stance that is deconstructed and critiqued by other Chinese filmmakers and writers.
Jin Siyan
Jin Siyan
A Double Sense of an Artistic Revolution:
Doubt and Violence in the Jintian school of poetry and
the Xingxing painting group in 1970s China
Few of its readers realised that the appearance of Jintian [Today] in Beijing on 23 December 1978, containing poems by Bei Dao, Mang Ke, Cai Qijiao and Shu Ting, marked the beginning of a great adventure in contemporary Chinese poetry. ►
A thousand copies of this mimeographed magazine were distributed in Beiijing, affixed page by page to the walls of a major intersection in the western district. Alongside them were a group of painters who shared their aspirations, calling themselves the Xingxing [Stars] group.
Jintian opened a space in which painters as well as poets could express themselves. A central issue was the enigma of individual subjectivity, which found expression in three key points:
1. Art is not simply a mirror which reflects the outside world but depicts a significant and particular moment in history. It presents a collective aspiration in new creative forms that offer insight into individual mentalities.
2. Poetry and painting are both creations of artists expressing their individual selves.
3. The Jintian poets and the Xingxing painters provoked a crisis in realistic values, calling attention to the existence of different kinds of realities. Claiming that art lends itself to an infinity of interpretation, these revolutionaries of the mind embraced the principles of ambiguity and uncertainty.
A radical change was taking shape in Chinese culture.
Lorsque parut à Pékin, le 23 décembre 1978, le petit volume de la revue Jintian, contenant des poèmes de Bei Dao, Mang Ke, Cai Qijiao et Shu Ting, peu nombreux furent les lecteurs qui prirent conscience que cette revue inaugurait l’une des aventures poétiques majeures de la poésie chinoise contemporaine.
Mille exemplaires imprimés à la main furent distribués dans la rue. Ce jour-là, deux membres de la revue, Mang Ke et Bei Dao furent choisis pour aller coller la revue page par page sur les murs de Pékin. Etant célibataires, ils risquaient moins de compromettre des proches. Un autre jeune bénévole, Lu Huanxing, les suivait, peut-être pour la même raison.
« L’école Jintian » est un véritable lieu commun dans lequels’ expriment des poètes et des peintres contemporains ayant des sensibilités différentes. Le problème du je est la question centrale, qui annonce de façon énergique une véritable prise en compte du problème de la subjectivité individuelle. Insistons ici sur trois points qui nous paraissent majeurs :
1). L’art ne doit pas se contenter de servir de miroir reflétant fidèlement le monde extérieur ; elle est avant tout un miroir du soi qui peut même négliger l’existence de l’extérieur. Nous nous efforcerons d’esquisser quelques caractéristiques constituant une réalité historiquement particulière et significative. Il s’agit d’une aspiration commune manifestée dans cette nouvelle création, et donc d’un regard du « nous ».
2). La poésie et la peinture représentent une création individuelle, un vrai récit visuel à plusieurs dimensions, proche de la poéticité, mais non un récit vrai. L’art n’est pas un porte-parole du peuple ni d’une seule réalité. L’artiste n’est pas un peintre, un chantre populaire. Il est avant tout lui-même, il essaie de rattraper sa propre ombre - un autre soi - en pénétrant au fond de son soi propre. Le détachement vis-à-vis du nous est sa première aspiration. Ce je à la recherche de son infiniment autre, nous l’avons rencontré chez les poètes des Neuf Feuilles, chez les symbolistes chinois dans la première moitié du XXe siècle.
3). L’écriture des poètes de la revue Jintian et le tableau de l’école des Etoiles provoquent la crise des valeurs réalistes. Les poètes veulent faire table rase de la tradition réaliste révolutionnaire. L’idée de réalité dans son acception traditionnelle se trouve remise en question. Il n’y a pas une réalité ; il y a des réalités. Les poètes et les artistes de ce courant contemporain anti-réaliste dénoncent toute forme de concept réduisant le poète à un simple haut-parleur de la réalité. L’art se prête en lui-même à une infinité d’interprétations. Il n’existe pas de savoir absolu sur l’interprétation de l’écrit. L’indécidablilité et l’indétermination du verbe font naître cette possibilité infinie.
Un élément révolutionnaire se forme dans l’évolution de la mentalité de la société chinoise.
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