The political commentary on May Fourth in 1950s Hong Kong and Taiwan

Abstract

“May Fourth” has long been considered a turning point for modern China, resulting in continuous heated discussion on the topic since the 1920s. These discussions not only reexamine culture but also have political intent. Many recent scholars have discussed the “ideologization” of May Fourth from the perspective of “memory politics.” They argue that “May Fourth discourse” was not only used to understand and recapture the past, but also to help one’s own cherished values occupy a core position in modern Chinese history, thus using historical interpretation to create a compass for China’s future that conforms to historical tides. From the four great philosophies of modern China, the Nationalists and Communists have incorporated May Fourth into the “Three People’s Principles” and “New Democracy,” respectively. Liberals held up democracy and science as a need for China’s future, and made efforts to propagate and practice democracy in Hong Kong and Taiwan after 1949. As for New Confucians who had continuously criticized May Fourth for being anti-tradition, they supported traditional values but also believed that democracy and science were a “priority and necessity for China's cultural development,” and hoped to use the spirit behind this ideal. They along with liberals criticized the Nationalist and Communist autocracy for departing from May Fourth ideals, and especially noted how May Fourth created fertile ground for the rise and expansion of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), “resulting in the growth of the Communist Party,” and the Nationalist government’s move to Taiwan. After 1949, Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and the Guomindang (GMD) Nationalist Party he led primarily assessed the May Fourth Movement by synthesizing the views of the liberals and New Confucians. They highlighted the slogans of saving the nation, ethics, democracy, and science to promote ethical education and “national spirit education” as top-priority cultural policies. The focus of this article is to examine how liberals and New Confucians used the topic of May Fourth to criticize the CCP and GMD in Hong Kong and Taiwanese political commentary magazines during the 1950s (approximately 1949–1960). It also explores how the GMD synthesized liberal and New Confucian views to lay out their own position. This discourse shows how May Fourth had diverse interpretations under the context of conflict between the liberals and the New Confucians as well as Nationalists and Communists. The criticism of the ideologization of May Fourth in recent years is actually an important turning point in the scholarly study of May Fourth.     

Whiteness and Farmers Markets: Performances,Perpetuations … Contestations?

Abstract: Academics and activists highlight the potential for alternative agrifood movements to contribute to the evolving coalescence of justice and sustainability. This potential, however, is constrained by what scholars have identified as the prevalent whiteness of such movements. This paper uses ethnographic research at two northern California farmers markets to investigate how whiteness is performed and perpetuated through the movements’ discourses and practices. We found that many managers, vendors and customers hold notions of what farmers and community members should be that both reflect and inform an affluent, liberal habitus of whiteness. Although whiteness pervades these spaces, we have also witnessed individual discourses and acts of solidarity and anti‐racism, as well as fledgling institutional efforts to contest white cultural dominance. We conclude by discussing the potential of farmers markets to create an anti‐racist politics of food.     

Biophysikalisches Doppelleben, 1939–1946. Oder: Räume der Lange‐weile. Zur (Nicht‐)Zäsur des ‘Informationsdiskurses’

Biophysical Double‐lives, 1939–1946. Or: Spaces of Boredom. On ‘Information Discourse’ and (Dis)continuities in the Life Sciences. Arguably, few things have shaped the historiography of the mid‐twentieth century psy‐sciences (and indeed, of the life sciences and science/technology/intellectual life quite generally) more profoundly than the story of cybernetics. This essay aims to undermine this technofuturistic picture of epistemological upheavals, of cyborg regimes of knowing, and of the incipient post‐human, by reinserting back into the story the rather dull and unspectacular lives (and occupations) of the great majority of British, ‘diverted’ biologists during World War II. Instead of Ratio Clubbers or Macy‐Conference frequenters, this essay is concerned with a much larger population of would‐be biologists and their most pedestrian appropriations of, and exposures to, electronics. What I argue is that the prevalence and systematicity of such exposures in the course of the personnel‐hungry radio‐war points to a very different – low‐key – picture of the war/technology‐induced deflections of biological science at mid‐century. As an example of how deeply at odds narrations of cybernetic's ascent tend to sit with developments on ground level, special attention will be devoted to the physiologists‐turned‐radar‐scientists Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley, and their war‐time, or more properly, spare‐time investigations into the biophysics of nerve. The latter – technical, difficult, and utterly unphilosophical – while absent from the cyber‐theme‐focused historiography, provided the basis for the tremendous impact Hodkgin and Huxley would in fact have on the mainstream, disciplinarily conservative physiological sciences; the larger aim however is to weave these far from peculiar biographical trajectories into a somewhat bigger picture of the intersections between radar electronics and biological science: a picture which does not centre on sensational discourses but on mundane electronic practices; and thus, on the generational experience of those who were known at the time as “ex radar folk with biological leanings”.     

Re‐evaluating otherness in genocidal ideology

Ideas of otherness in both nationalism and genocide studies do not sufficiently explain genocidal levels of policy and ideological development, nor do they help identify groups that may be selected in the future for this particular kind of destruction. This article sets out to introduce the typology of ‘anti‐nation’ to the dialogue of nationalism studies in order to more aptly identify prospective groups at risk of future possible genocidal aggression. This article looks to the Armenian genocide to provide analysis for a greater understanding of the way radicalising ideology evolves regarding the anti‐nation during the early years of identity development in states radicalising towards genocide.     

Survey and excavations at Solomon’s Pools,Palestine: 2018 preliminary report

This article provides an initial archaeological and historical overview of the Lower Pool at the Pools of Solomon south of Bethlehem, Palestine.