Wrapped in Two Flags: The Complex Political History of Nunavik

ABSTRACT

During the first half of the twentieth century, northern Quebec was under federal jurisdiction. Tired of English Canadian supremacy and increasingly aware of northern Quebec’s considerable natural resources, which could provide a solid basis for future moves toward independence, the Quebec government began to take over responsibility for its northern territories in the 1960s. It established a regional administration to take charge of its northern affairs and sent officers to northern Quebec’s remote communities. For two decades, both governments administered the region and imposed two political systems on the local Inuit. This article is based on lengthy fieldwork and archival research. The historical background is described to show how Nunavik has developed as a political and social entity through its relationships with the Quebec and Canadian governments. This conflictual situation has created tensions in the Inuit community, resulting in political dissensions over the goal of self-government. Finally, this article details how the Inuit have exploited federal–provincial tensions to further their own interests.     

Bradley Holt,Thirsty for God: A Brief History of Christian Spirituality

Abstract

In this essay, I consider the relationship between more radically open conceptions of democracy and the recent "return of religion" as the return of distinct, particular religions. The radical democracy of figures such as Derrida, Badiou, and Hardt and Negri is found to be not radical enough to be open to the particular religious other. Derrida's "religion without religion" does violence to the particularity of concrete religious traditions, Badiou appropriates Paul's universalism while abandoning the particularity and difference in his conception of collective identity, and Hardt and Negri advocate a "politics of love" while severing that love from its ground— namely, God. I then show a way of rethinking both society and Christianity so that Christianity finds a place in society and society makes room for Christianity. A radical Christianity devoid of self-privilege and triumphalism provides a model for an intersubjectivity of love in which the other really comes first. Paul's radical conception of membership in the body of Christ accomplishes precisely what radical democracy fails to do: it allows for heterophony as well as polyphony, and incoherence as well as commonality. It is only when church and society allow the possibility of incoherence and heterophony that they are truly open to the other, and it is only when they are truly open to the other that they satisfy the demands of a truly radical democracy and radical Christianity.     

Political participation in Australia: contingency in the behaviour and attitudes of citizens

This article explores the idea that a citizen's relationship with their polity is contingent on and liable to change under certain conditions. The assessment of the prospects for political reform requires an understanding of the contingent nature of political engagement. Drawing from a survey of a representative sample of Australians three insights emerge. First, although many Australian citizens are not directly engaged in political actions beyond voting most do present a ‘standby’ role that suggests potential to engage. Second, willingness to shift patterns of engagement may depend on general orientations towards the polity and we find extensive evidence of negative understanding of the political system as well as more positive endorsement of representative political practices. Our third finding is that citizens might be prepared to change their relationship with the polity depending on the kind of politics that is offered; hence providing a creative space for political reform.     

论西方环境史的政治特点

国内外环境史学者基本认为,环境史是人与自然相互关系的历史,因此他们对环境史中人与人的关系普遍重视不够。但通过对环境史发展过程及环境史理论的分析,尤其对环保运动与反环保势力的政治特点的概述,人们会意识到生态危机的实质是不同的利益冲突,是社会危机、人与人关系的危机。因此,在肯定环境史独特的生态视角的同时,也应充分认识到它与一般史学分支尤其是政治史内容的密切关系。     

Adaptations: History,Gender, and Political Economy in the Work of Dugald Stewart

Summary

This paper notes and explores the attraction of Dugald Stewart's moral philosophy for women readers and a few women writers. Student lecture notes reveal the chronological development of his ideas, as he drew upon the works of Thomas Reid, Adam Smith, and Adam Ferguson, and responded to political events. Particular attention is paid to Stewart's comments relating to women and gender, through discussions of education, the institution of marriage, and population questions. After 1800, he shifted away from a speculative conjectural history towards a philosophy of moral progress rooted in common sense philosophy and a belief in perfectibility. He taught a system of practical morality relevant to the education of children and strongly emphasised the importance of the association of ideas in childhood. For women readers, the message was contradictory in that he united an apparently conservative reinforcement of the relations of the sexes with a belief in the improvement of the condition of women through education in a modern, progressive, and commercial society.     

Intellectual History and the History of Philosophy

Summary

The issue which I wish to address in this paper is the widespread tendency in Anglophone philosophy to insist on a separation between the history of philosophy and the history of ideas or intellectual history. This separation reflects an anxiety on the part of philosophers lest the special character of philosophy will be dissolved into something else in the hands of historians. And it is borne of a fundamental tension between those who think of philosophy's past as a source of ideas and arguments of interest to the present, and those who hold that the philosophy of the past should be studied on its own terms, in relation to its immediate context, without reference to the present. The challenge, then, is to re-historicise the history of philosophy, and to keep the philosophers onside.     

改革开放以来的中国基督教史研究

改革开放以来,中国历史学发展的新景象之一就是中国基督教史研究的兴起。这一新兴领域的发展,首先,体现于多种研究范式的存续和转移,文化侵略、中西文化交流、现代化、全球化等范式下的研究成果体现了各自不同的解释力与学术影响。其次,则体现于研究焦点的流变,从基督教与中国社会的现代性变迁、基督教与中西关系,直到关注中国基督教自身的个性化发展,呈现了从研究基督教外围向内部移动的趋势。最后,体现于这一领域的开放性和成长性。基于中国基督教的区域史、性别史、宗教史、宗派史及人物史仍有相当的研究空间,同时随着网络资料和海外档案的获取能力加强,跨文化史料与视野下的研究,将成为这一学科新的增长点。     

The Sense of History: On the Political Implications of Karl Löwith's Concept of Secularization

Written during the period of his emigration to the United States, during and just after World War II, the originality of Karl Löwith's book Meaning in History lies in its resolute critique of all forms of philosophy of history. This critique is based on the now famous idea that modern philosophies of history have only extended and deepened an illusion fabricated by a long tradition of Christian historical reflection: the illusion that history itself has an intrinsic goal. This modern extension and deepening of the chimera propagated by Christian historical reflection is what Löwith terms "secularization." Drawing on the arguments in Meaning in History as well as those proposed in other contemporaneous and earlier writings, including Löwith's heretofore unpublished correspondence with Leo Strauss, this article attempts to set in relief the frequently neglected, yet eminently political implications of Löwith"s idea of secularization. Among the problems implicitly considered in relation to the theory of secularization in Meaning in History is a theme frequently addressed in earlier writings: the motives that led German intellectuals like Friedrich Gogarten, Martin Heidegger, and Carl Schmitt to adhere to the Nazi movement.     

From Romanus to Graecus. The identity and perceptions of the Byzantines in the Frankish West

Estrangement between the Byzantine and Frankish worlds was a long-term process, perceptible in a gradual change in the designations used to refer to the respective other. The Franks came more often to label the Eastern Romans as ‘Greeks’, a term with increasingly pejorative connotations that was used to distinguish the Byzantines from the ancient Roman past, and thereby to reconnect Western identities with both ancient and papal Rome. This paper examines the Frankish terminology and analyses this gradual shift in order to assess what it tells us about Frankish perceptions and their relationship with the Byzantine world. This analysis helps not only in a reassessment of early medieval identity and the use of the notions included in these appellations, but also to understand how these designations might have been used to create a modified Frankish identity and alterity.     

牧区天灾与美国"牧畜王国"的衰落

美国的第二次工业革命在内战以后迅速兴起。工业社会的勃兴和城市人口的剧增使美国原有的肉类生产远远满足不了国内外市场的需求。这种巨大的需求推动了美国西部的牧业开发。内战以后,在密西西比河以西至太平洋沿岸,牧牛业和牧羊业迅速发展起来,形成一个疆域辽阔的“牧畜王国”。西部牧区成为美国新的重要肉产品生产基地,放牧业成了当时最赚钱的行业之一。“牧畜王国”繁荣兴旺了二十余年,到1885年以后盛极而衰。在导致“牧畜王国”衰落的诸多因素中,牧区天灾是一个重要的因素。牧场主们竭草而牧的掠夺式经营更加重了牧区天灾的危害性。     

Plasticity and the Future of Philosophy and Theology

Abstract

This article develops a theoretical and political critique of the contemporary notion of the deconstruction of Christianity, primarily in the later work of Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy. The deconstruction of Christianity relies upon an understanding of temporality and messianicity derived from Heidegger and Benjamin, and we challenge this privileging of messianism in contemporary philosophy and theology. Messianism is contrasted with plasticity, and plasticity is shown to have resources to overcome the impasses of contemporary thought in a counter-messianic way. To oppose messianism is not to oppose theological thinking, but to open a creative and productive political space for a radical theological and philosophical reflection.     

Doxographical or Philosophical History of Philosophy: On Michael Frede's Precepts for Writing the History of Philosophy

Summary

In a series of articles from the 1980s and 1990s, Michael Frede analysed the history of histories of philosophy written over the last three hundred years. According to Frede, modern scholars have degenerated into what he calls a ‘doxographical’ mode of writing the history of philosophy. Instead, he argued, these scholars should write what he called ‘philosophical’ history of philosophy, first established in the last decades of the seventeenth century but since abandoned. In the present article it is argued that Frede's reconstruction of the history of histories of philosophy is historically problematic.     

钱穆的中西史学比较观

中西史学比较研究是钱穆史学思想的重要内容 ,钱氏往往是以此来阐明史学的本质、方法、功用和中国史学精神。其中西史学比较研究主要包括中西史学关于历史中人与事关系的认识、史学的通变观、史学的体例和体裁、史学编纂方法、史学功用、史学发展形式等方面。钱穆的中西史学比较观是建立在他的民族文化生命史观基础上的 ,意在为他的中国史学优越论和中国历史文化优越论提供理论和历史的依据。它既有积极合理性 ,也表现出文化保守性和民族狭隘性。     

In the Shade of the Oaks of Mamre: Hospitality as a Framework for Political Engagement between Christians and Muslims

Abstract

This essay is the initial sketch of a theological framework for political dialogue based on traditions of hospitality. This essay is intended to further a normative commitment to pluralism by creating a space for Christians and Muslims to engage in political dialogue on issues of governance. Using the story of Abraham and the three strangers, the essay analyzes hospitality as a possible model for interreligious political dialogue. The essay follows the narrative of the story recounted in Genesis 18 and Surah 51 of the Qur'an focusing on Abraham's greeting of the strangers as expressing a "duty of hospitality"; the "sharing of a meal" as an act of mutual vulnerability; and the gift of Isaac as exemplary of hospitality's possibility for grace and transformation. The goal is to show that a shared theological tradition could be the basis for political dialogue.     

Political pragmatism and the creative economy: Singapore as a City for the Arts

Can the arts and culture prosper under a less than democratic political regime? This paper looks at the soft authoritarian Singaporean government and the making of Singapore into a ‘City for the Arts’. Many scholars advocate that a culturally vibrant and creative city must also celebrate diversity, tolerance and experimentation. This implies that a democratic space is needed for creative energies to flow. Singapore is not known for its democracy. But Singapore has become relatively successful in being the cultural hub in the region. A more liberal approach to diversity and criticism of the authorities can now be observed but there are still many strong‐handed social and political controls in the city‐state. This paper tries to answer these two questions: has Singapore become democratic because the authorities want the arts and culture to flourish? Is democracy necessary for the creation of a lively cultural city?     

Political Theology,Democracy, and the Exception in the Egyptian Revolution

As the sixth anniversary of the 2011 protests in Tahrir Square passes, those uprisings and the events that followed continue pose important challenges not only for students of Middle Eastern and North African politics, but also for students of political theory and political theology. While scholars debate the extent to which the “Arab Spring” has amounted to a truly revolutionary turn of events, it is commonly accepted that the protests that swept the region were exceptional in their unanticipated and profound disruption of ordinary affairs. Under the influence of Carl Schmitt's theory of sovereignty, “the exception” has become a key figure in contemporary reflections on political theology, but attention to events in Egypt suggests that the familiar figure of the exception has not yet been mined for all of its implications for democratic practice. Slipping below grand articulations of the exception as a moment of sovereign decision, or as the suspension of the law, this essay turns its attention to the minor, everyday, background patterns of exceptionality that accompany the emergence of democratic practices outside the purview of the sovereign state. I argue that there is an intimate connection between the forms of exceptionality produced by longstanding practices of Egyptian secularism, the forms of exceptionality peculiar to the 2011 uprisings and their aftermath, and the forms of exceptionality that both make and unmake democratic practices. My argument has three parts: first Egyptian secularism is a process that manages and transforms authorized forms of Islamic practice, while at the same time producing exceptional formations, of which the Muslim Brotherhood is a key example; second that revolutionary politics can be understood as a matter of opening and sustaining the kind of exceptional circumstances that attended the 2011 uprisings, and that this can be usefully framed as an open-ended process of conversion; third that democratic practice requires courting both kinds of exception, despite their challenges, ambivalences, and potential dangers.     

Renewing the Political Perspective: Reflections on James Ceaser,Political Science,and Liberal Democracy

Abstract

This is a response to the contributions to the symposium on David Walsh's trilogy on modernity: After Ideology (1990), The Growth of the Liberal Soul (1997), and The Modern Philosophical Revolution (2008). After expressing appreciation for the careful reading the work has received, it enters into a reflection on the underlying unity of the studies. This is intended to address the common concerns that center on the issue of how the modern world is to be understood. It emphasizes the impossibility of separating the attempt to understand modernity from the need to take responsibility for it. This is the perspective that has illuminated the totalitarian catharsis, the durability of liberal political regimes, and the existential turn within modern philosophy. In the latter part of the essay, a response is offered to specific objections and characterizations that individual symposiasts raise.     

日本宋代政治史研究的现状与课题

近五十年来的日本宋代政治史研究,深受内藤湖南、宫崎市定倡导的“君主独裁政治”论的重大影响。在此引导下,日本的宋代政治史研究不断发展,有关政治的大致框架得到了澄清,但在研究领域、理论和方法等方面仍有改进的必要。今后需要引进微观政治学、宏观政治学、国际政治学等理论和方法,扩大研究领域,跨出制度史研究的框架,并努力发掘新资料和扩大对以往资料的多方面利用,从而推进“谁?何时?什么?怎样搞?”这种政治结构的研究。     

Death and the Making of West Berlin, 1948-1961

This essay traces shifts in attitudes towards death, practicesof burial, and rituals of mourning in West Berlin from the 1948currency reform to the 1961 construction of the Berlin Wall.It shows that West Berliners in the years immediately followingthe Second World War maintained an arduous devotion to theirdead—particularly the war dead. Yet as the war becamea less immediate experience over the course of the 1950s, broadcultural shifts took shape, including a renewed sense of optimismand an emerging feeling that the suffering associated with thewar could be and was being redeemed. Meanwhile, a cult of thedead long venerated as part of the very foundation of Germanculture gradually became ‘less German’ and ‘moreWestern’ over that same period. In this way, it also becamea means of distinguishing West Berlin from its Communist neighbourto the East. By focusing on shifts in perceptions and practicessurrounding death, the essay reveals part of the process bywhich moral and ethical values were reconstructed after Nazism,and how the racist collectivism of the Third Reich graduallygave way to the broadly individualist, democratic-socialisthumanism that would form the basis of an expressly West Germanpolitics and society.     

问鼎上层文化:胡适的哲学史研究

胡适是中国哲学史研究的开山者。他的《中国哲学史大纲》(卷上)作为中国第一部真正的哲学史著作,建立了哲学史学科的新体系,开创了现代学术史的新纪元。(1)它以科学的方法和可信的史料,创造了全新古典哲学史体系、构想与规范,使哲学史作为一门科学戛然独立,并迈向了中国古代哲学史研究的近代化进程;(2)它用疑古与实证的方法实践,完成了新学科的创立及从“形”到“质”的转变,开启了崭新的治学门径,对具体的学术研究起到了示范作用。(3)它从形式到内容整体手段的全方位更新,不仅具有冲击传统惯性的强劲的反封建之风,又有开拓学术研究新风尚之意义。胡适的哲学史研究,新见迭出,影响深远,具有划时代的意义。