三皇五帝时代的再思考

一."层累地造成的中国古史"的辩证上世纪20年代古史辨派兴起,对中国的古史进行了全面的整理,对古史尤其是上古史给予否定,其最为重要的论点认为上古史是"层累地造成的",是"伪造的古史系统","三皇五帝"时代也被完全推翻。近年来随着考古学和历史学的发展,     

Asylum seekers,Ireland, and the return of the repressed

Abstract

In 2014 residents in Direct Provision Centres for asylum seekers staged a series of protests. The protests, which coincided with the appointment of a new Minister for Justice who announced the Irish government’s plans to reform the asylum system, voiced three clear demands. Firstly, the protestors demanded that all asylum centres be closed; secondly, they demanded that all residents be given the right to remain and work in Ireland; and thirdly, they demanded an end to all deportations. The government’s response to these protests was to appoint a working group in October 2014, made up of representatives of migrant-support NGOs (but without any significant representation of asylum seekers themselves) while also announcing that it intends to reform rather than abolish the system.

Against this background, this paper makes three interlinked theoretical propositions. Firstly, I propose that just as the Irish state and society managed to ignore workhouses, mental health asylums, “mother and baby homes”, Magdalene laundries and industrial schools, they also “manage not to know” of the plight of asylum seekers, precisely because the Direct Provision system isolates asylum applicants, makes them dependent on bed and board and a small “residual income maintenance payment to cover personal requisites”, and makes it difficult for them to organise on a national level. “Managing not to know”, or disavowing, entails the erasure of the Direct Provision system from Ireland’s collective consciousness at a time when increasing emigration is returning to haunt Irish society after years of refusing to confront the pain of emigration. I argue that asylum seekers represent the return of Ireland’s repressed that confronts Irish people, themselves e/migrants par excellence. Secondly, I propose that by taking action and representing themselves, the residents of Direct Provision Centres can no longer be theorised as Agamben’s “bare life”, at the mercy of sovereign power, to whom everything is done and who are therefore not considered active agents in their own right. The third proposition responds to the theme of this special issue, that multiculturalism is “in crisis”, arguing in the conclusion that this “crisis” hardly applies to Ireland, where the brief flirtations with “interculturalism” by state, society but also Irish studies disavow race and racism in favour of a returning obsession with emigration, which enables the continued disavowal of the experiences of asylum seekers in Direct Provision.     

Hollywood,the MPAA,and the formation of anti-piracy policy

Combating piracy is fundamental to the policy ‘priorities’ of the Motion Picture Association of America, the trade association representing the major Hollywood entertainment corporations. As the MPAA implements a multitude of actions to fight piracy, it is impossible to locate the formation of the Association’s anti-piracy policy in any single source. Instead, this article sees MPAA anti-piracy policy as formed across three fronts: the legal, through anti-piracy litigation; the political, by the MPAA joining with other trade groups from across the copyright industries to lobby for stronger domestic copyright laws and influence US trade policy; and the discursive, seen in the production of statistics to evidence the value of copyright to the US economy and consequent harms caused by piracy. Examining these actions confirms the cultural and economic influence of MPAA policy but the article is also concerned with how Hollywood’s anti-piracy efforts are challenged and contested from various directions.     

The Role of Geographers in the Study,Mapping, Economic Appraisal,Utilization, Conservation and Renewal of the Natural Resources of the USSR

The paper discusses, mainly from a programmatic point of view, the need for research into the relationships between climate and vegetation. Four lines of research are proposed: (1) the correlation between the distribution of vegetation and climate indices; (2) relationships between the distribution of vegetation and seasonal types of climate; (3) seasonal and annual changes in plant communities related to corresponding changes in the surface layer of the atmosphere and the soil and subsoil; (4) the exchange of matter and energy within an ecological system.     

Beware, the Historian! Hiroshima, the Enola Gay, and theDangers of History

Michael J. Hogan, ed., Hiroshima in History and Memory.
Edward T. Linenthal and Tom engelhardt, eds., History wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Post.