Reading back from Experimental Painting

ABSTRACT

My book, Experimental Painting (1970), was the product of a decade of coming to terms with the history of modern art and with contemporary manifestations of the avantgarde. While at Cambridge from 1960 to 1967, I published art criticism, initially in locally published magazines, and then went on to review art exhibitions both nationally and internationally. This led to being co-editor of Form, which produced further opportunities. The term ‘experimental’ that I adopted in 1970 was intended to suggest the paradigm of scientific discovery which suited some, if not all, of the artists I studied. This article considers concepts directly imported from contemporary scientific enquiry that seemed relevant to me at the time, notably those from experimental psychology, psychoanalysis and structural linguistics. I relate them to the character of intellectual life at Cambridge in a period which saw much debate about the relationship between Sciences and Humanities as ‘Two Cultures’.     

In the lure of Geistesgeschichte: the theme of decline in Hungarian historiography and historical thinking in the first half of the twentieth century

Decline was the fundamental issue in Hungarian historiography and historical thinking between the two world wars. This article primarily analyses the views of historian Gyula Szekf?, the writers and essayists Dezs? Szabó and László Németh, and those of philosophers Lajos Fülep and György Lukács. In this period, the so-called spiritual history (Geistesgeschichte) prevailed in Hungarian intellectual circles, in which the themes of decline and even fall were fundamental. Of the most important representatives of Geistesgeschichte, Spengler, Ortega, Huizinga, Croce and Maritain had significant influence on the authors mentioned above. Historians were ready to reject the ideas of these thinkers regarding the criticism of culture, and rather followed the power- and state-centred streams of Geistesgeschichte, conceived by Ranke, Troeltsch and Meinecke. At the same time it is also true that the decline and generation theory developed by the historian Gyula Szekf? (e.g., in his book Three Generations), is one of the most original interpretations of modern Hungarian history. It was shared by many Hungarian intellectuals of the period. Paradoxically, the theme of decline also appeared in the views of the so-called ‘Századok’ (Centuries) circle, mainly in the writings of the historians István Hajnal and István Szabó. They rather followed the social-history-oriented French Annales School, and even attempted to offer a solution to the problems of the so-called ‘third way’ alternative. Almost all of the above-mentioned concepts were tied in the later political discourse to the so-called right-wing tradition of Hungarian political–historical thinking, but the author also touches briefly upon the notion of decline in the leftist (Marxist) tradition of György Lukács, whose ideas had an impact on the beginnings of the Frankfurt School. The article also offers a brief overview of the main ideas of spiritual history/Geistesgeschichte, since the author suggests that this was a common feature in all the interpretations of decline in the period treated here.     

对大革命时期党的军事运动历史地位的再认识

在大革命时期,中国共产党对武装斗争及革命军队在中国革命中的作用等一系列重要军事理论问题进行了大量的探索;通过黄埔军校、国民革命军、国民军、苏联以及工农运动等多种途径与方式,培养和储备了一大批军政人才;通过东征、北伐等一系列的军事行动,积累了丰富的军队管理和指挥的实际经验。这些从军事理论、军事人才以及军事实践上为党在大革命失败后立即创建人民军队、独立开展人民革命战争打下了基础。因此,大革命时期是党创建人民军队的重要准备阶段。大革命时期的军事运动是中国共产党武装斗争史的发端,它对人民军队的创建,对土地革命战争、抗日战争、解放战争都产生了深远影响,有力地推动了中国革命胜利的进程。     

WITH OR AGAINST HAYDEN WHITE? REFLECTIONS ON THEORY OF HISTORY AND SUBJECT FORMATION

This article reflects on Hayden White's understanding of the subject and explores how best to move forward discussions in theory of history after his arguments about narrativity. To do so, I reconsider his arguments in light of more recent feminist and queer theorizations. Through a reconstruction of the current international new wave of feminism and LGBTQ+ activism as a rich and complex social movement that involves a narration of its own (practical) past, I will recontextualize and revaluate White's insight from the perspective of Judith Butler's theory of subject formation. The argument will unfold in four parts. First, I will recall White's ironic and existential stance on language and narrativity in the representation of reality and in relation to social beliefs. Second, I will again raise the question of the value of narrativity, as framed by White, in the context of the publication of a recent feminist manifesto. It is here that another issue will emerge as crucial: the relationship between the limits of linguistic self-consciousness and the question of the subject. In the third part, my argument will take a partial turn “against White” and toward Butler's subject formation theory. My claim will be that there is a residue of the belief in the sovereign individual in White's insistence on self-consciousness. However, I will also show that his suspicion regarding the psychological impulse toward narrative closure can be re-elaborated as the challenge Butler is facing with their theory of subject formation: that of critically resisting the belief in our being coherent and self-sufficient individuals. In the fourth part, I will present Butler's refiguration of the thesis of the subject's opacity in terms of the primary relationality that binds human beings to one another, and I will offer a new understanding of the individual, norms, agency, infancy, and ethics. Finally, I will conclude that we are bodies in history and that theory of history can find a promising line of research through this conception of the subject, a conception that reframes how we understand the intimate links between political consciousness, historicity, and embodiment. I also claim that this line of research constitutes an ethics for our historical undoing.     

"大跃进"时期扫除文盲运动述评

1958～1960年,是新中国历史上的"大跃进"时期.在各行各业"大跃进"的带动下,全国也很快地掀起了扫除文盲的"跃进"运动.这一运动随形势发展,由兴到衰,经历了一个曲折的发展过程.在扫除文盲运动中,存在着严重的浮夸现象,但一些具体的做法也不无借鉴意义.     

五四时期对新史料的接受与认识

19世纪末以来新史料的大发现 ,对史学发展产生了深远影响。五四前后是接受与认识新史料的重要时期 ,王国维等人积极利用新史料进行史学研究并大力介绍新史料 ,使五四时期的中国史坛很快认识到了新史料的价值 ,这对于五四时期史学乃至 2 0世纪史学都有着非常重要的意义。     

中国古代文明可持续发展的原因分析

中国古代文明持续发展,在世界文明史上是极为少见的。究其原因为,一方面是地理环境的基础作用,独特地理位置、封闭而又复杂的地理环境使其然;另一方面,中国古代大一统的历史和文化起着决定性的作用。相对封闭、完整且一脉相承的文化是其内在动因;人口、土地开发和技术水平三者关系的协调是其前提;先进的农耕制对土地资源的保护是其基础;文明中心随环境而变迁,保证了古代文明的持续发展。     

论中古西欧“上帝的和平”运动

10世纪末由基督教会在西欧大陆发起的“上帝的和平”运动是当时的政治、经济和宗教等原因共同促成的。它包括“上帝的和平”和“上帝的休战”两个阶段 ,主要通过举行和平集会等活动 ,力求限制贵族的私战和骑士的暴力行为 ,从而保护社会各阶层免受其害。这一运动使西欧的社会秩序有所好转 ,有利于西欧的经济复兴。它提高了教会的权威 ,促进了西欧骑士制度的形成 ,产生了划分三个等级的社会理论 ,并为十字军东侵创造了条件     

Een‐Gonyama Gonyama!: Zulu Origins of the Boy Scout Movement and the Africanisation of Imperial Britain

British imperialists in the late 19th century denigrated non‐western cultures in rationalising the partition of Africa, but they also had to assimilate African values and traditions to make the imperial system work. The partisans of empire also romanticised non‐western cultures to convince the British public to support the imperial enterprise. In doing so, they introduced significant African and Asian elements into British popular culture, thereby refuting the assumption that the empire had little influence on the historical development of metropolitan Britain. Robert Baden‐Powell conceived of the Boy Scout movement as a cure for the social instability and potential military weakness of Edwardian Britain. Influenced profoundly by his service as a colonial military officer, Africa loomed large in Baden‐Powell's imagination. He was particularly taken with the Zulu. King Cetshwayo's crushing defeat of the British army at Isandhlawana in 1879 fixed their reputation as a ‘martial tribe’ in the imagination of the British public. Baden‐Powell romanticised the Zulus' discipline, and courage, and adapted many of their cultural institutions to scouting. Baden‐Powell's appropriation and reinterpretation of African culture illustrates the influence of subject peoples of the empire on metropolitan British politics and society. Scouting's romanticised trappings of African culture captured the imagination of tens of thousands of Edwardian boys and helped make Baden‐Powell's organisation the premier uniformed youth movement in Britain. Although confident that they were superior to their African subjects, British politicians, educators, and social reformers agreed with Baden‐Powell that ‘tribal’ Africans preserved many of the manly virtues that had been wiped by the industrial age.