The Prophetic and the Limitation of Authority in Modernist Islam

ABSTRACT

The “prophetic”, as a central concept in modernist Islamic political philosophy, has been invoked to show that Islamic political philosophy takes into account the spiritual as well as the material world. However, this expansion of the prophetic had remained relatively silent as to the authority that is granted to experiencing individuals. This essay is a story of these reinterpretations the “prophetic” by three major Muslim thinkers – Muhammad Iqbal (d. 1938), Ali Shari‘ati (d. 1977), and Abdolkarim Soroush (b. 1945). Writing in different periods and trying to respond to different questions, these authors engaged with the question of politics by reference to prophetic experience. I will explain their intellectual context, according to their cosmologies and their notions of language (participation vs. representation). Then, I will see how in different intellectual context, the force of a democratic notion of the prophetic was undermined by different reinterpretations.     

The Rise and Fall of the Australian Greens: The 2002 Cunningham By-election and its Implications

This article examines the 2002 by-election in the Australian federal seat of Cunningham, in which the Australian Greens secured their first and only member of the House of Representatives. This case study of Greens voting suggests that the electoral support base of the Greens in Cunningham was consistent with what is known about the support base of the Greens elsewhere in Australia. At the same time, it makes the case that local factors were at least as important as national issues in explaining the high Greens vote in Cunningham. A suburb-by-suburb analysis of Greens voting in the 2002 by-election suggests that traditional markers of Greens voting, such as higher than average incomes and educational qualifications, were a necessary, but not a sufficient, explanation of Greens voting in the case of Cunningham.     

Sumozhe Suppressed,Huntuo Halted: An Investigation into the Nature and Stakes of the Cold-Splashing Sogdian Festal Dramas Performed in Early Eighth Century Tang China

This article investigates two specific dramatic elements-the huntuo 渾脫 and the sumozhe蘇摩遮-at the core of the controversial "cold-splashing Sogdian plays" (pohan huxi潑寒胡戲).The huntuo could be a felt hat,an oilcloth,a pelt headdress,or a theatrical striptease.With deep multicultural roots,the sumozhe (samāja) combined masquerade,ambulatory drama,dance,and music into a boisterous spectacle.In addition to examining the high cultural stakes underlying the public performance and imperial support (or prohibition) of these plays in early eighth century Tang China,this essay proposes a link between these hibernal festal dramas and Turkish K(o)se plays.     

The Inconsistent City,Participatory Planning,and the Part of No Part in Recife,Brazil

This article engages with the trajectory of urban participation in Recife, Brazil, from its start as a governance system aimed at ensuring the right of the poor to the city, to the introduction by the Workers’ Party of participatory budgeting. I argue that participation is used by the state in order to include populations within governmental structures while the poor struggle for the right to belong to the city. Drawing on Alain Badiou's ontology of multiplicity I contend that the urban situation is grounded in inconsistency, as manifested in the existence of a category of people who “sit at the edge of the void”, that neither is included nor belongs. I conclude that the popular mobilizations in Recife in the 1980s constituted a true emancipatory event that exposed the divisions of the city, the existence of a fundamental wrong, and that proclaimed the right of the excluded to the city.     

The Nature and Genesis of the Peutinger Map

The place of the Peutinger map in the history of both ancient and medieval geography and cartography is controversial. Many basic questions as to its sources, dating and purpose remain unanswered. In the light of various pieces of new evidence these problems are reassessed. It is argued that the Peutinger map does derive from a Roman original but that, without precedent in Roman cartography or impact on later medieval cartography, the mapping of itinerary data onto a base map of the oecumene is likely to be a genuine innovation of the designer of the archetype. There is no need to suppose the map to be an officially state‐sponsored product. The sources relied upon were commonly available and would have been familiar to the public in late antiquity. The purpose of the map is more likely to have been ornamental than practical. It is impossible to determine a precise date or location for the creation of the archetype, but the cultural viewpoint embodied in the map is undoubtedly antique, Latin and western.     

The social and economic fall of the salmon/brander clan of tahiti

Between the 1840s and 1880s, the Salmon and Brander families, of mixed British and Tahitian origins, dominated the social, commercial and, to some extent, also the political scene in Tahiti. One member married a Tahitian princess, and both families were connected through marriage and business to one another. Another member was married for a short time to the last king of Tahiti and, since she survived him for many years, was called ‘the last Queen of Tahiti’. That, for a time, also added to the prestige of what can truly be called a ‘clan’. Since each of the families had nine children, there were sufficient descendants who could have held the group together, although the progenitors died when many of their offspring were still minors. But commercial inability, distrust of one another, faulty personnel decisions and fighting for a share of the inheritance was responsible for the disappearance of the clan within a generation.     

Material Movement in the Near Eastern Epipalaeolithic: Implications of the Shell and Stone Beads of Direkli Cave,Turkey

Direkli Cave is an Epipalaeolithic site in the central Taurus mountain range in southeastern Turkey that was used by mobile hunter-gatherer communities. The assemblage of beads from the cave, made primarily from shell (marine and freshwater) and stone, shows new evidence both that bead materials were brought to the site from the shores of the Mediterranean and that the material culture of the site has relationships to the Levant, northern Mesopotamia, and inner Anatolia. This article questions how such a bead assemblage should be interpreted in the light of existing evidence for the Near Eastern and Anatolian Epipalaeolithic and what it adds to our understanding of the better known contemporary Natufian culture of the Levant. It considers the long-distance movement of materials, interregional material cultural influences, and the way the Epipalaeolithic period is conceptualized more broadly.     

原始农耕信仰与祖先英雄崇拜的现代展演——湖南新晃侗族傩戏“咚咚推”调查

有"中国戏剧的活化石"之称的傩戏"咚咚推"保存了侗族先民遗留下来的多种傩戏剧目,向世人展现了侗族人民各种繁复有序和神秘有趣的习俗,是侗族先民原始农耕信仰的现代展演;"咚咚推"以盘古大王和飞山大王为傩神,除了在表演时对傩神举行各种请、迎、会、送的舞祭仪式外,演出的剧目也表现了作为移民后代的天井寨人为增强家族凝聚力而保持的祖先英雄崇拜。"咚咚推"作为天井寨人独有的一种戏剧形式,为研究南方民族在迁徙过程中的文化传承与文化交融提供了极为难得而生动的活动文本。     

The Power of the Future: Prophetic Politics Between Political Crises and Civil Rights

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the political life of Malcolm X in the context of the Black Prophetic Tradition. By exploring historical, literary, and theological considerations of political violence and divine warnings, “Catch on Fire” evaluates Malcolm X’s legacy as one of the iconic figures within more contemporary prophetic politics.     

郢城遗址的年代与性质新证

本文对荆州博物馆等单位在郢城遗址及周边所作的考古调查、勘探、发掘材料进行了系统梳理。郢城的始建年代为公元前278年当年或其后一年,秦至西汉汉武帝前期为南郡郡治与江陵县治所在。约在汉武帝后期至成帝元延年之间,南郡与江陵县迁至今荆州城西北的嵠峨山城址附近,郢城为郢县县治。王莽时期郢县撤并入江陵县,郢城为郢亭所在,东汉初年。城址废弃。     

The Nature and History of the Birkat Isra'il and its Relation to the Pool 'With the Expanse of the Sea' (Sir 50: 3): Rereading Charles Warren

Abstract

The Birkat Isra'il was the largest pool in Jerusalem when it was constructed. Yet when it is studied, it is often done in connection with the extent of the Temple Platform rather than for its own sake. Charles Warren studied the pool in considerable detail yet several aspects of it remain unexplained, particularly its location within the es-Sahireh valley. Data provided by Warren suggest that the Herodian form of the pool is a secondary construction and that a previous pool had been situated directly over the lowest point of the valley and that this is the pool 'with the expanse of the sea' (Sir 50: 3) built by Simon II.     

Nature,space and distances in an imperial boundary network: The delimitation of the Nyasa-Tanganyika plateau boundary

This article discusses an episode of boundary delimitation/demarcation conducted between British and German imperial powers on the central African Nyasa-Tanganyika plateau in the late 1890s. I situate vignettes on the boundary's delimitation in 1897-98 within broader processes of imperial territorialisation to note that the boundary eventually produced on the plateau represented a fabrication resolving tensions between its ‘natural’ and textual sources. Specifically, I argue the boundary was produced to mediate between a diplomatic nature, written in metropolitan worlds by diplomats and cartographers, and a colonial nature, a zone of phenomenal experiences, inhuman encounters and ‘sensation’ (Wark, 2016). I emphasise the experience of technical practice to suggest that this itself represented a form of imperial power, capable of challenging or ‘deferring’ (Bhabha, 2012) metropolitan circuits of governance and knowledge production, not least by revealing the liveliness of the material world undergoing imperial territorialisation. Sensation produced the form of the writings and archives of survey-exploration: often confounded by problems of their data and surroundings, commissioners made the epistemological and subjective manoeuvrings through which they appeared to rise above their inert surroundings to master them. But this does not characterise the experience of fieldwork on the plateau, which was constituted by a panoply of technical situations wherein delineations between objects, observers and their material settings were indeterminable.     

Mutuality, De-Mutualization and Communities: The Implications of Branch Network Rationalization in the British Building Society Industry

The paper examines the withdrawal of branches from local communities by financial institutions. It assesses whether mutually owned building societies are more adept than the former societies that have converted to public limited companies (plcs), or the high street banks, in serving disadvantaged communities. The paper shows that during the mid-1990s: mutual building societies were more likely than former societies that have converted to plcs to maintain their branch network; mutual societies were less likely than banks to withdraw from socially deprived locations and more likely to open branches in such places; differences between mutual societies and convertors are less marked, but mutual institutions appear less likely than convertors to close branches in deprived communities. Among the remaining mutual building societies there are differences of perspective, with more commercially-minded societies less positive than socially-concerned mutuals about the need to maintain or even expand branches in disadvantaged areas.     

The Adaptative Nature of Neoliberalism at the Local Scale: Fifteen Years of City Improvement Districts in Cape Town and Johannesburg

Abstract: By unravelling the adoption and adaptation of the North American Business Improvement District (BID) model in South African cities, this paper considers the way neoliberal principles are making their way in the post‐apartheid context. Drawing on a comparative approach of BIDs in Johannesburg and Cape Town, we analyse the tensions and conflicts surrounding their implementation and unpack the resilience of this model. As unexpected as this resilience might be in such a context, that is, far away from the heartland of neoliberalism, we argue that this resilience is linked to the permeability of the local contexts and to the plasticity of the model itself at the city and neighbourhood levels, reflecting a capacity to adapt to inherited regulatory frameworks, patterns of territorial development and embedded socio‐political alliances of the local terrains, as well as an ability to accommodate post‐apartheid issues through the crafting of what we refer to as “local Third Ways”.     

The wood in the pits of terracotta figures and its architectural application

Ever since the pits of terracotta warriors and horses in China were discovered and opened to the public, a number of questions remained unsolved: what kinds of wood were selected for building the pits, how the wood was used in the pits' architecture and where was the giant volume of wood collected from? In this study, twenty pieces of charcoal specimens from Pit 1 and Pit 2 were examined with the Scanning Electron Microscope and identified as Abies, Tusga, Picea (all three genera in Pinaceae) and Phoebe (Lauraceae) woods. With the former works, it is concluded that the woods in the pits were mainly from the group of gymnosperms (95%) and few from that of angiosperms (5%). It is deduced that the wood in the pits was probably collected from the areas nearby.     

明中叶以来史学考据的兴起及其成就与缺失

由于明朝官方所修国史失实,私家修史存在比较严重的曲笔、讳饰等现象,因此明中叶以来史学考据应运而生。首开史学考信风气之先的是王世贞,其代表作《史乘考误》是明代首部对当代史史料进行考证的著作。其后焦竑、朱国桢、张燧、朱明镐、谈迁、钱谦益等人在考史方面都取得了不小的成绩,同时也存在着一定的缺失。     

民国时期的行政督察专员制度及其知识背景

行政督察专员制度是南京政府于20世纪30年代初所创设、后逐渐在国共各治区推行和实施的地方层级制度,对当代中国地方政府制度也产生重要影响。该制在民国时期随着国内局势的重大变化,在抗战以前、抗战时期和抗战胜利以后,相继发生了相应的变迁,在国共各治区也有不同的特征和命运。在行政督察专员制创设和演变的过程中,也不应忽视其与学术界流行的相关知识、观念的关联。     

庐陵史学特征及其在中国史学史上的地位

庐陵史学发达宏富,史备众体,尤其是在宋明时期,史学大家叠出,史学著作丰硕,史书类型繁多。诞生了龙衮、欧阳修、徐梦莘、罗泌、龙文彬等众多的史学家,编撰了《江南野史》、《新唐书》、《新五代史》、《集古录》、《三朝北盟会编》、《路史》、《西域行程记》、《广舆图》、《豫章书》和《明会要》等重要史学著作。庐陵史学重文献网罗、考证和历史经验总结,从整体上看具有父子同撰、通今博古、文史兼通、诗文咏史、金石证史等特征,有史料、校勘和辑佚价值。庐陵史学享誉海内外,口碑较好,在中国史学史上具有重要地位和作用。     

The Partisan Nature of Race and Imperialism: Dadabhai Naoroji,M. M. Bhownaggree and the Late Nineteenth-Century British Politics of Indian Nationalism

This article examines Dadabhai Naoroji's and Mancherjee Merwanjee Bhownaggree's contribution to politically partisan ideologies on Indian empire as London MPs and reform advocates late in the nineteenth century. Exploring politically nuanced, cultural definitions of racial difference, this article reveals how their participation in British parliamentary and press debate on Indian nationalism adhered to distinct liberal and conservative imperial political conceptions of race and governance during this period. Beyond an analysis of Naoroji and the Indian National Congress's relationship with British liberalism, this essay explores Bhownaggree's contribution to a sustained conservative imperial tradition. This article postulates that Edmund Burke's separation from a liberal imperial rationality and a British Tory critique of liberalism informed a nineteenth-century conservative governing justification in India predicated on conciliating organic national racial difference. As Naoroji's devotion, as a Liberal MP for Central Finsbury (1892–95), to a liberal civilising mission informed an advocacy of political self-governance in Britain and India, Bhownaggree's pursuit of female and technical education reform while Conservative MP for Bethnal Green N.E. (1895–1905) represented a conservative espousal of racial difference.     

梁启超《中国之美文及其历史》的整理问题

梁启超的《中国之美文及其历史》属于生前未完之作,死后由人整理出版,但其章节的编排存在问题,本文对其整个卷章结构进行了还原。