TEXTS ON THE MOVE: TEXTUALITY AND HISTORICITY REVISITED

The last time texts were brought onto the general theoretical and methodological agenda of the human and social sciences, they were reintroduced into history in terms of an indefinite set of indefinitely complex contexts, which gave every text a specific date and location in a network of other texts and events. A couple of decades later, however, a more prominent feature of texts seems to be that they are permanently on the move: they circulate, have effects on other things, change and transform realities, and are at the same time themselves translated and modified. In the literature exploring the textuality of history, these dimensions have been under‐theorized and often ignored. To meet this challenge, we need to develop concepts and approaches that enable us to place the mobility of texts as well as their mobilizing force at the center of our current historical concerns. In this article we will explore what the consequences of this move could be, and what resources are already at hand in different scholarly traditions. Exploring the entanglements between actor‐network theory (ANT in the version of Bruno Latour), on the one hand, and literary criticism, linguistics, and book history, on the other, enables us to focus on how texts move and how they move others. We will proceed in this essay by identifying three decisive moments in twentieth‐ and twenty‐first‐century textual scholarship, often conceptualized as “turns,” which are linked to the works of three path‐breaking authors and which at the same time represent three different stages or forms of textuality: the linguistic turn (Saussure), the turn to writing (Derrida), and the turn to print (Eisenstein). Our discussions of these three moments and forms of textuality aim at uncovering how they also represent seminal moments in Bruno Latour's development of the theoretical and methodological complex now referred to as ANT.     

《史律》新证

学界普遍认为《史律》之"试史学童十五篇"之"十五篇"是指《汉书.艺文志》所述识字课本《史籀》十五篇,"卜学童讽书史书"之"史书"是指隶书。但是,认真考证后可以看出,这里"史书"不是指书体,更不是指隶书,而是基层官吏——史所要掌握的"簿书"——各种公文文本,包括司法文书。"十五篇"也不是识字课本《史籀》十五篇,而是"簿书"的一部分,和"史书"属于同一个系统。学童考试系按年举行,三年举行大考以满足不同层次的史官选拔。辨别清楚这些,都有助于人们深化对汉代政治特点的认识。     

Lanhydrock’s autobiographical instillation: books,reputation, and habitat in early modern England

The library at Lanhydrock in Cornwall contains many books annotated by its seventeenth-century owners. The complex meanings these books carried depended on their physical location in the Cornish landscape, and the meaning of that landscape was in turn shaped by the presence of the marked books. Early moderns were adept at creating and interpreting such context-specific assemblages of books which projected autobiographical personae. These habits were a means by which book-users could simultaneously fit themselves to their environments (or “habitats”) and reshape those environments in a reciprocal process of fashioning. Public reputation was an important consideration guiding these practices. This model of the interaction of books, reputation, and habitat can be extended beyond physical locations like Lanhydrock to help understand how early moderns inhabited their economic culture. Customizing books shaped users as agents equipped with the kind of habitus demanded by the “credit economy” and reproduced its moral codes.     

一部重现新中国发展历程的信史——读金冲及《二十世纪中国史纲》第三、第四卷

20世纪在神州大地上发生的改变世界面目的最重大的事件,是中华人民共和国的创建及其后半个世纪胜利进行的社会主义革命、建设和改革开放。在中国共产党领导下,中华人民共和国屹立在世界东方,昂首阔步前进在中国特色社会主义道路上。金冲及先生的《二十世纪中国史纲》(社会科学文献出版社2009年出版),用第三、第四两卷(即全书一半)的篇幅来写新中国成立以来半个世纪的历史,充分显示了史学大家胸有全局的眼光。这是一部客观全面叙述而又科学具体分析中华人民共和国半个世纪发展历程的信史。     

对编纂资料性国史书的几点思考——以《中华人民共和国日史》为例

中共十一届三中全会以来,随着中华人民共和国史研究的广泛开展,一批体例各异、详略不一的资料性国史书相继出版。四川人民出版社2003年8月推出的卷帙浩繁的《中华人民共和国日史》(以下简称《日史》),就是其中之一。该书以年分卷,逐日记事,上自1949年10月1日起,下至1999年12月31日止,共计50卷。编纂者称该书是国家断代性质历史,     

On Not Reading The Soldier’s Pocket-book for Field Service

This essay focuses on Garnet Wolseley’s controversial war instruction manual, The Soldier’s Pocket-book for Field Service (1869). While the Pocket-book’s contribution to discussions of reading and soldiers’ education has carved out a significant place for it in Victorian military history, in its day it was constantly contested and undermined by contradictory representations, as a book much talked about but little read. This essay is an exercise in tracing these eccentric reception histories, as an acute reminder that books may well have vibrant intellectual lives without actually being read. To examine the literary and material circulation of the Pocket-book in the late nineteenth century, it draws on archival research in the Macmillan Archive and Wolseley’s private papers to discuss the genesis of the text not just as a compendium of information but also as an object that is handled, carried, and exchanged. I juxtapose these considerations with episodes in the representation of the Pocket-book: in an anti-war pamphlet; an anonymous satirical drawing found in Wolseley’s personal scrapbooks; and in Kipling’s short stories about British soldiers in colonial South Asia. In all of these, the Pocket-book is characterized as a dubious, even dangerous text – one that was neither read, nor should be. The examples demonstrate three of the different trajectories through which the Pocket-book emerged as an unread book in the Victorian imagination: through encouragements not to read, rejection, and misappropriation.     

ERNST CASSIRER,MARTIN HEIDEGGER,AND THE LEGACY OF DAVOS

In 1929 Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger participated in a momentous debate in Davos, Switzerland, which is widely held to have marked an important division in twentieth‐century European thought. Peter E. Gordon's recent book, Continental Divide: Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos, centers on this debate between these two philosophical adversaries. In his book Gordon examines the background of the debate, the issues that distinguished the respective positions of Cassirer and Heidegger, and the legacy of the debate for later decades. Throughout the work, Gordon concisely portrays the source of disagreement between the two adversaries in terms of a difference between Cassirer's philosophy of spontaneity and Heidegger's philosophy of receptivity, or of “thrownness” (Geworfenheit), into a situation that finite human beings can never hope to master. Although it recognizes that this work provides an important contribution to our understanding of the Davos debate and to twentieth‐century European thought, this review essay subjects Gordon's manner of interpreting the distinction between Cassirer and Heidegger to critical scrutiny. Its purpose is to examine the possibility that important aspects of the debate, which do not conform to the grid imposed by Gordon's interpretation, might have been set aside in the context of his analysis.     

民初“二次革命”前知识分子群体关于联邦制的论争——以《民立报》、《庸言》、《东方杂志》为中心

清末传入中国的联邦制思想,在民初新的政治环境中,引起了知识分子群体的极大关注和论争.<民立报>所代表的革命派知识分子主张有限的中央集权,即某种程度的地方分权;<庸言>所代表的原立宪派知识分子主张中央集权;而<东方杂志>则折衷于二者之间.同时三者还提出了各自对地方制度的不同主张.他们的态度和主张与民初政局的复杂多变以及各自所代表阶层利益的不同有着很大的关系.     

Redefining the Republic of Letters: The Literary Public and Mudie’s Circulating Library

In late 1860, Charles Mudie’s plans to expand his circulating library inspired his detractors and competitors to challenge the validity of his ‘right to selection’ – the process by which he chose which texts he would loan from his library. Over the next few months, prominent periodicals featured correspondence and editorials that decried or supported Mudie’s ostensible monopoly over literary exchange. While the initial argument was economic, the dispute extended beyond economics to religion, literary quality and culture. To connect these disparate fields, writers turned to the politics of interpretation: that is, whether specialists should define literary culture, or if a public comprised of individual, ‘common’ readers should determine their own standards for books. Mudie’s opponents advocated for individual readers’ right to read what they liked, how they liked. His supporters argued that the public needed specialists to guide their literary tastes. The resulting exchange about what I call the ‘literary public’ amplified conversations integral to the burgeoning field of literary studies as it was emerging in the London colleges through the 1850s and 1860s. The contributing authors, publishers and critics justified or refuted ideas foundational to the establishment of English literature as an academic study for the common reader. As part of the mid-century confrontation between popular literary consumption and academic culture, the Mudie debate helped to politicize the reception and circulation of English literature.     

从出土材料谈今本《老子》中“孩”字的释读问题

今本《老子》中有两个“孩”字,对其训释,历来众说纷纭,但从文义上看,均有未安。本文从战国楚简文字中的“娩”字经常被误释为“孩”这一现象入手,推测今本《老子》中的“孩”字也是“娩”字的误释,应该分别读为“娩”和“矇”。     

TOPOLOGIES OF HISTORY

History, it is routinely assumed, belongs primarily to time and the temporal. Yet although routine, the assumption is nevertheless mistaken. It is place or topos, which encompasses both time and space (and that is intimately tied to the notion of bound or limit), that is primary here, and so history has to be understood as determined topologically, and not merely temporally. The exploration and elaboration of this claim involves rethinking the ideas of time, space, and place as well as of language and narrative. History appears in its adventual character, but its adventuality is itself seen as a happening of place.     

《郑子家丧》与《铎氏微》

《郑子家丧》与《铎氏微》竹书《郑子家丧》是一篇战国时期的《春秋》学佚籍。全篇记述楚、晋邲之战的原因与经过,弘扬了楚庄王的霸业。其文本脱胎于《左传》,应属楚威王傅铎椒所作之《铎氏微》。此书见载于《汉书·艺文志》,久已失传,今复重见,具有重要的文献学价值。文中对竹书内容进行考释,并就其文本属于《铎氏微》提出证据。