Emancipation as a Matter of Style

Abstract

This article will focus upon the relationship between humour, politics and theology. More precisely, it will inquire whether there is some kind of correlation between style of humour and political standpoint in two contemporary Marxist authors that also have an interest in theology, the British literary critic Terry Eagleton and the Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj ?i?ek. If Eagleton’s style is characterized by the strategic use of wit, influenced by the late Dominican friar and philosopher Herbert McCabe, ?i?ek’s use of humour in his philosophy is more about the telling of jokes that supposedly illustrate a political predicament, thus creating a humorous disidentification on behalf of the reader with her or his circumstances. The article ends with the suggestion that there is indeed a relationship between humour, politics and eschatology in Eagleton and ?i?ek, but that their different senses of humour also correspond to differing political agendas. But one should beware of generalizing this insight, as all authors might not be as stylistically gifted as those two.     

The Shock of the Real: The Neoliberal Neurosis in the Life and Times of Jeffrey Sachs

This paper draws on Slavoj ?i?ek's critique of ideology in seeking to account for the persistence and transformability of the neoliberal project. Against understandings of neoliberalism as a utopian representation projected onto an external reality, I argue that neoliberal ideology operates as a social fantasy, which structures reality itself against the traumatic Real of Capital. The evolution of the neoliberal project should be understood, not as the meticulous manipulation of social reality, but as a series of increasingly desperate attempts to hold the very fabric of reality together. Reconceptualizing neoliberalization as a form of obsessional neurosis can help to explain the relentless persistence of “zombie neoliberalism” and its paradoxical trajectory towards increasingly intensive forms of social engineering. This argument is developed through a critical engagement with the work of the economist Jeffrey Sachs. From shock therapy to the Millennium Villages Project, Sachs's trajectory embodies the characteristics of the neoliberal neurosis. The paper aims to undermine the apparently monolithic power of neoliberalism, by challenging dominant critical representations of the neoliberal project in terms of a hyper‐rational governmentality. It also aims to subvert the attempts by Jeffrey Sachs and other neoliberals to reposition themselves as opponents of the Washington Consensus, and as spokesmen of the Occupy movement. The chosen method of attack is more satirical than polemical. Neurotic neoliberals such as Sachs have successfully appropriated ethical objections to neoliberalism in the name of “globalization with a human face”. In the present conjuncture, an immanent critique that reveals the internal incoherence of neoliberal ideology, and the hapless floundering of its proponents, is perhaps more effective than a repetition of familiar forms of moral condemnation. An alternative subtitle for this paper might therefore be “Towards a satirical materialism”.     

Carrying the Cross,Caring for Kin: The Everyday Life of Charismatic Christianity in Remote Aboriginal Australia

ABSTRACT In this paper, I address the important yet under‐examined role of charismatic Protestant Christianity in the reconfiguring of personhood and social relations in the remote Yolngu settlement of Galiwin'ku. I focus in particular on the ways in which this form of Christianity, locally articulated, brings together indigenous concepts of personhood with those introduced by the market, the state, and evangelism to produce what I refer to as Christian individuality and Christian relatedness. These dialectical tendencies in postcolonial settlement life call attention to the ways Yolngu converts use their Christian practices both to continue kin‐based moralities in the present and to engage (if selectively) modern individualism. This paper addresses post‐colonial conditions where demands of state institutions and modern governance interact with changing ideas of personhood and sociality. It contributes to the growing anthropological literature on Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity.     

Myths,missions, and mistrust: The fate of Christianity in 16th and 17th century Japan

This article examines accepted opinion regarding the persecution and demise of Christian/Catholic missions in 16th and 17th century Japan. Many of the key issues associated with the encounter of European missionaries and Japanese feudal systems of authority and power resonate with contemporary interest in transculturalism, semantic slippage, personal agency, and the intimate interplay between religion, politics, and economics. Burdened with rigid standards of belief, heresy, and race from European inquisitions as well as Mesoamerican conquests, the Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries made numerous strategic blunders that contributed to their fates, both as recipients of expulsion orders and, finally, on the execution grounds.     

自养与本色之深入：1929年世界经济危机冲击下的华北基督教

1929年世界经济危机发生后,西方基督教差会被迫减少对华传教事业经费,裁减传教士人数,对华北基督教产生重要影响。华北教会为此提倡受托主义,鼓励教徒捐献,并减少职员薪金;同时,教会为减轻经济负担,还组织各种义工训练班,注意培养义务工作人员为教会服务;教会学校与医院在差会经费减少的形势下,通过裁员减支、增收学费与住院费及向政府、社会力量请求援助等多种形式维持运营。此次经济危机有利于增强中国教会及教会机构的自养,破除教徒的依赖心理,推动了中国教会的本色化进程,但不能从根本上使其摆脱对西方经费的依赖。     

资本贪婪与金融危机:资本的本性、特点、霸权、转嫁危机和思维方式

回顾西方资本的历史,有利于认识它的今天,预计其未来行动.马克思在<资本论>中科学地分析资本的融资流通等经济作用的同时,特意指出:资本需要流通,只是在这个不断更新的运动中才有价值的增殖.因此,资本的运动是没有限度的.他进一步指出:资本家的目的不是取得一次利润,而只是谋取利润的无休止的运动.马克思称之为绝对的致富欲,价值追逐狂,而且,资本来到世间,从头到脚,每个毛孔都滴着血和肮脏的东西.[1]     

"五德终始"说之终结——兼论宋代以降传统政治文化的嬗变

The Five Virtues theory, designed to legitimate rules, was based on the belief in a cosmological system. The theory of the Five Virtues was replaced by the theory of Confucian orthodoxy based on moral critics during the renaissance of Confucianism in the Song Dynasty. The intellectual elites in the Song Dynasty launched a campaign against the Five Phases theory and the Apocryphal Texts, Fengshan, and Chuanguoxi, which constituted the main body of traditional political culture. They sought to eliminate the theoretical value of these traditions and eradicate their influence on people’s thoughts. Their high keyed and advanced political and ethical notions during the Song period became universal values in the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties. The changes in the traditional political culture reveal the intellectual trends from the Song Dynasty throughout the Qing Dynasty. Translated by Luo Hui from Zhongguo Shehui Kexue 中国社会科学 (Social Sciences in China), 2006, (2): 177–191     

The face of the other: Zapatismo,responsibility and the ethics of deconstruction

Recent work has highlighted the importance of moral and ethical issues for geographical inquiries of space and place. Much of this work has been couched in a modernist framework, drawing on universalist conceptions of subjectivity and legal rights in an attempt to ground the normative foundations for ethical conduct. In this paper, I draw upon post‐structuralist theory to elaborate an alternative approach to spatial ethics. Drawing on the work of Emmanuel Levinas, I outline a theory of subjectivity that would view our relationship to distant others as a form of unconditional responsibility. Our ability to meet this responsibility, I suggest, is dependent upon a deconstructionist ethics which, in recognizing the impossibility of grounding ethical conduct, expands the horizon of political engagement. In the second half of the paper, I interpret the Zapatista movement in Mexico as an example of such an ethics. Through an examination of the writings of Subcomandante Marcos, I argue that the Zapatistas have articulated a new form of ethical and political engagement, one that transcends the boundaries of space and identity, and invokes an unconditional responsibility.     

The Magic of Money and the Magic of the State: Fast Money Schemes in Papua New Guinea

As Keith Hart (1986) articulated in his neat phrase ‘two sides of the coin’, money and the state are inextricably intertwined. However, academic discussions of the state tend to fall under the heading of ‘governance’, with implicit reference to democratic ideals, while money is regarded as ‘economics’, a field dominated by ideas of the market. In this paper, I use material from U‐Vistract, a mass Ponzi scam to show how quasi‐magical ideas of money and wealth have grown out of the disillusioning experience of the state in its failure to deliver ‘development’. These imaginings of prosperity entail a different kind of state, based on the moral reform of Christian citizens and political leaders and the reorientation of the banking system to deliver benefits to ordinary people. As the Royal Kingdom of Papala, U‐Vistract sought to be seen to be like a Christian state and so deceived its investors into thinking that they were participating in a moral project that would allow them to redress the short‐comings of the Papua New Guinean state. As the scam took on the appearance of the state, so the state came to be seen as a scam.     

Impure and Worldly Geography:1 The Africanist Discourse of the Royal Geographical Society, 1831–73

The written networks through which knowledge is produced and circulated offer a focus for a theoretically informed critique of the formation of modern geographical knowledge. Drawing on deconstruction and colonial discourse theory, this paper presents a reading of the Royal Geographical Society's (RGS) published record of nineteenth-century African exploration. This discourse posits a racially unmarked subject-position as the condition of scientific discussion. The Society's geographical knowledge is shown to have been formed through the effacement of alternative subject-positions and the appropriation of other ways of knowing. It is suggested that closer attention to the discursive structures of written networks of knowledge might inform a more nuanced understanding of the reproduction of disciplined knowledge.     

丝绸之路的象征符号——骆驼

被誉为”沙漠之舟”的骆驼,在北朝至唐代塑像、壁画中频频出现,通常由胡人牵引,满载货物、用具,它们的形态、组合、驮载的物品等,暗示着当时社会的变迁和人们观念的更新,其图像成为“丝绸之路”的象征符号。“胡人”与“骆驼载货”的组合反映出不同国家和地区的商品的交流、信仰观念的传播、不同的文明的碰撞融合,蕴育出了以“胡汉”相融为特色的唐文化。     

Stable isotope data from the early Christian catacombs of ancient Rome: new insights into the dietary habits of Rome's early Christians

This study reports on the first attempt that determines the diet of a small but conceivably representative section of Rome's early Christian community by means of δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N measurements on collagen extracted from twenty-two samples of human bone. Samples derive from the Liberian Region in the catacombs of St. Callixtus on the Appian Way—an area that has been radiocarbon dated to the period from the mid-3rd through early 5th century AD. Comparing our results to those produced for several other sites, we argue that this population's typical diet included freshwater fish. We also briefly discuss breastfeeding and the freshwater reservoir effect, to then explore the dietary, art historical, and possible sociological ramifications of our results.     

The Threefold Logic of Papua‐Melanesia: Constitution‐writing in the Margins of the Indonesian Nation‐State

Clashes over the status of West Papua and the political future of the territory proliferated markedly following the end of Indonesia's New Order regime in 1998. Amid a wide variety of demands for justice and independence, and a series of demonstrations, mass gatherings and prayers, only a few Papuans mused on how Papua could become a state and what would constitute its nature as being distinctly Papuan and/or Melanesian. One exception is the work put into the Constitution for West Papua entitled Basic Guidelines, State of West Papua, a document edited by Don A.L. Flassy, a bureaucrat, writer and thinker, with a preface by late Theys H. Eluay, then chairman of the Papuan Council. In this article I analyse this Constitution to show how a combination of Christianity and local customs, and a mimicry of elements of Indonesian nation building and symbols of the Indonesian nation‐state are reshaped to oppose Indonesian nation‐building agendas. The Constitution shows that when Papuans imagine an independent state, forms of vernacular legality play a central role. ‘The state’ has journeyed to Papua and encouraged faith in ‘the law,’ and Basic Guidelines is partly the effect of this growing vernacular legality. My analysis shows that it is essential to see how legal mobilisations and imaginations of the state articulate with other normative systems and practices – in particular Christianity and custom (adat) – and how they mutually allow for and invite strategies.     

The Collision,Interaction, and Integration of Heterogeneous Cultures in the Global Context: The Impact of The Monument on Huaju (Modern Chinese Drama)

This article reads Alice Munro’s “Material” as a staging of the failure of its narrator’s voice and understanding. Her failure exposes the limits of the mind to understand and language to represent, but it does so within a complex aesthetic structure that obliquely asserts the value of literature. This aesthetically realist story displays a deconstructive ethics that shows Munro working toward a literature free from phallogocentrism and pushing at the limits of logos itself. “Material” exposes the ethical risk and the power of writing, as well as the significance of that which lies beyond its ability to express.     

The Crofter and the Iron Works: The Material Culture of Structural Crisis, Identity and Making a Living on the Edge

The iron and steel industry has been of the greatest importance to the Swedish economy since medieval times. During the seventeenth century a large number of new iron works were erected in the Värmland region of western Sweden. The iron works brought an urban and industrial culture into an otherwise rural area. They were also of great importance to the local economies, as a number of people could earn their living, or part of their living, by working at the iron works or in other forms of associated employment. In the late nineteenth century a serious structural crisis hit the Swedish iron industry, causing many iron works to close. However, the actual effects, in the form of unemployment and increased poverty, appear, for hitherto unknown reasons, to have been minimal. In this article the household of a crofter family with close links with an iron works at the time of the structural crisis is investigated. Aspects of the crofter’s material culture, identity and consumption pattern are studied, and it is found that although the household shared in an urban and industrial identity, its economic basis was in the rural tradition of a mixed economy, combining wage employment and land-based elements. The mixed economy stands out as one reason why the structural crisis did not have as dramatic an effect as might have been expected.     

The Impact of Back Benchers in the Creation of Social Reform: The Indefatigable and Honourable Exertions of Mr Gilbert*

During the 18th century, back-bench members of parliament played a critical role in creating social policy. This article provides a case study of the political campaigns of the Lichfield MP, Thomas Gilbert, and his attempts at a comprehensive reform of the poor law in 1765 and 1782. These individual endeavours were energetic, sophisticated, but unallied to a particular agenda or based on Gilbert's original perspectives. Instead, he harnessed the power of local interests and extra-parliamentary forces, particularly magistrates, through the adept use of print culture in his later campaign to form social policy based on a broad political consensus. A skilled political operator, he used these same methods to help navigate his bills through parliament. To better fit the context, the campaigns were moulded around political expediency and influenced by the development of Gilbert's humanitarian reputation and the burgeoning of the press, parliamentary reporting, and political debate. The political environments of 1765 and 1782 were, therefore, different, and broader trends influenced the two campaigns. This article demonstrates the importance of the press to political campaigning and suggests that to be successful (in social policy at least) a would-be reformer was required to engage with a developing participatory political culture. However, given Gilbert's approach, the importance of ideology as a basis for social reform in an 18th-century context is questioned.     

内地劳动力与海外华人资本的结合--珠江三角洲侨乡研究

1979年以来,以港澳台资本为先导和主力的华商率先在中国改革开放的前沿阵地--珠江三角洲侨乡落户,在带动侨乡工业化进程的同时,也使过去侨乡传统的劳动力结构发生巨大的变化.本文通过若干个案研究,分析侨乡劳动力市场与海外华人资本的结合模式及其对沿海侨乡、内陆地区及海外华商三方所产生的影响.     

The Dragoman and the Scholar: Two Polish Translations of Saʿdi’s Golestān

This article discusses two Polish translations of Sa?di’s Golestān, prepared by Samuel Otwinowski and Wojciech Biberstein-Kazimirski (alias Albert Kazimirski de Biberstein) and published in 1879 and 1876 respectively. Though edited at the end of the nineteenth century, Otwinowski's translation had been originally completed in the first half of the seventeenth century and is assumed to be the first one or one of the very first renderings of Sa?di's work into a European language. The question that remains unresolved is whether or not Otwinowski's translation, despite being unpublished, was known to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Polish poets. One can find some stories and motifs “picked” from Sa?di’s Golestān in their poetry, but they seem more likely to have been influenced by non-Polish renderings. This article describes the different translation strategies adopted by the two translators, the literarily gifted dragoman Otwinowski and the nineteenth-century philologist Biberstein Kazimirski.     

一位明代翰林官员的工作履历——《徐显卿宦迹图》图像简析

收藏在故宫博物院的《徐显卿宦迹图》记录了明万历年间吏部右侍郎徐显卿的宦迹。图册中有关明代宫廷典制的描绘以及徐显卿的题记为历史研究提供了形象生动的资料。此外,本文还以图册为例,对明清时代宦迹图的源流、艺术形式等作了简要分析。     

Living With the Other's Pain: The Ethical Implications of Mitsein in Simone de Beauvoir's Le sang des autres

This article establishes that the suffering of the other represents a serious philosophical and ethical problem in Beauvoir's first post–World War II novel. In fact, the other's suffering poses such a complex problem in Le sang des autres particularly because Beauvoir depicts her characters’ world as a kind of Mitsein, which is Heidegger's word to describe how our lives necessarily intertwine with and envelop the lives of others while still allowing for the existential experience of separation. In the novel, the main characters’ potential responses to the other's suffering—quietism, indifference, charity, and empathy—fail according to the novel's existentialist ethical framework because of the ways these responses deny the fundamental ambiguity of Beauvoirian Mitsein. Only in accepting separation and connection as codependent ethical values do the characters find an ethically palatable response to the other's suffering at the end of the novel.