‘How to handle eternity’: infinity and the theories of J.W. Dunne in the fiction of Jorge Luis Borges and Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman

This essay examines the importance of the notion of infinity to the work of Flann O'Brien and Jorge Luis Borges. Using as a starting point their shared interest in the Irish-born popular scientist J.W. Dunne's highly eccentric theories about the ‘multidimensional’ nature of time, the essay goes on, through a close analysis of a number of Borges' stories and of O'Brien's novel The Third Policeman, to call attention to a fundamental affinity between these two ostensibly quite different authors. A case is ultimately made for a consideration of Borges and O'Brien as writers with remarkably similar views on fiction and the universe.     

西汉初期北部诸郡边界略考

西汉初期,北部诸郡多为强大的匈奴帝国侵占,不能恢复秦郡之旧观。汉高帝时云中、定襄、代郡、雁门四郡只得秦郡之半。在汉惠帝至高后二年之前这段时间,云中、定襄二郡的北界推进至阴山南麓的赵武灵王长城下。代、雁门二郡经数十年的扰攘,终于在汉景帝时期将北界稳定在善无、武州、平城、参合、高柳一线。西北之上郡、陇西、北地三郡边界则退缩至秦昭王长城。上谷、渔阳、右北平、辽西、辽东五郡则以秦始皇长城为界。     

美国对1962年中印边界冲突的反应

美国对1962年中印边界冲突反应与它的南亚政策息息相关。从印巴分治直到中美和解前夕,美国的南亚政策始终有服务于全球冷战的两个目标：力促印巴和解以防止共产主义集团乘机介入;以一切可能的手段使印度放弃中立政策并加入到西方集团。中印边界冲突在美国政府的南亚政策渐入困境时发生,给了美国决策者以莫大的期望,他们企图以其所谓的天赐良机达至以上主要针对中国的冷战目标。然而,中国正确政策及出神入化的实践大大强化了美国在南亚地区既有的结构性困境,使肯尼迪政府利用中印冲突的图谋以失败而告终。     

Rev. John G. Lansing (1851–1906) on Preaching the Gospel to Muslims

At the turn of the twentieth century, the interest of American Protestant churches in foreign missions increased dramatically. “The evangelization of the world in this generation” became a powerful slogan and a new understanding of the Great Commission or the instruction of the resurrected Jesus Christ to his disciples, was among factors that “revolutionized American missionary movement.”¹ This article presents the views on Islam of Rev. John G. Lansing from the New Brunswick Seminary of the Reformed Church of America,² and suggests that Lansing changed the view that Islam is not approachable and awakened the imagination of his disciples concerning the land of Islam and its inhabitants as people to whom the words of the gospel should be addressed. Although the Arabian Mission established by Lansing in 1889 finally failed in ensuring mass conversions of Muslims, it did result in a great discovery of Islam by the missionaries.     

Mongrel nation: animality and Empire in the novels of J.G. Farrell

The novels of J.G. Farrell (1935–79), reveal a writer preoccupied with the cultural representation of Britain in an era of post-imperial decline. Farrell's ‘Empire trilogy’ illustrates a national consciousness examining its chequered past through focus on Ireland in Troubles (1970), the Indian Rebellion of 1857 in The Siege of Krishnapur (1973) and the fall of Singapore in The Singapore Grip (1978). In doing so, Farrell's novels feature a notable proliferation of flora and fauna, particularly his use of dogs as representative of national character and the changeable state of British society under attack. This article argues that Farrell's novels explore the state of post-imperial Britain through a sustained focus on dogs and animality. In situations marked by degradation and decline, Farrell gradually collapses the boundaries of order and disorder, obedience and disobedience and man and beast, inviting comparisons between the animal instincts of the dogs that populate his novels and those of Britons fighting for survival.     

Religion in Habermas’s Two-Track Political Theory

Abstract

This article argues that Habermas’s position on the relationship between religion and politics reaffirms his two-track political theory of the secular state and civic duty. His “hard-core” theory of secularism coupled with an ethics of citizenship seeks new ways of including religious citizens in modern pluralistic societies. The analysis of secularism both as a concept and as a guiding principle in Habermas’s work shows that most critics have misinterpreted his specific use of the term. The result of this is that most secularist and accommodationist critics of Habermas’s ethics of citizenship disregard his two-track political theory and its co-originality principle that assumes the equal status of public and private autonomies of citizens. My aim is thus to shift critical attention to the central aspects of Habermas’s work on religion, specifically to the task of translating religious reasons into an all-accessible language. This task of translation faces several difficulties due to some points that are left unclear by Habermas, such as determining the line separating the informal and the formal spheres, and how to avert the risk of majoritarian hijacks of democracy that could altogether undermine the Habermasian framework.     

THE UNRESOLVED PROBLEMS OF LATE CRITICAL THEORY

Martin Jay's sweeping account of reason in Western philosophy provides the context for understanding the crisis that the Frankfurt School thinkers faced when they spoke of the “eclipse of reason.” In the background of the thinking of the first generation of Frankfurt thinkers such as Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse is a hankering for a more substantive conception of reason that bears affinities with what Hegel called Vernunft (reason), which he contrasted with Verstand (understanding). According to Jay, the first generation of Frankfurt thinkers never quite succeeded in elaborating this substantive concept of reason and grew increasingly pessimistic in the face of the self‐destruction of reason. Habermas sought to elaborate a communicative theory of rationality that did not fall into the misleading promises of Hegelian Vernunft but could nevertheless provide a normative basis for the critique of instrumental, strategic, and systems rationality—a normative basis for critical theory. Jay presents an extremely lucid account of Jürgen Habermas's theory of communicative rationality. He concludes by reviewing some of the outstanding problems and questions that have been raised about the adequacy and success of Habermas's project. I seek to do justice to the strengths and weaknesses of Jay's narrative, and I focus on a number of deep, unresolved issues that confront the future of critical theory in its attempt to develop an adequate conception of rationality. I also raise concerns about what precisely is distinctive about critical theory today.     

The British Parliamentary Labour Party and the Government of Ireland Act 1920

Immediately after the First World War the British Labour Party was forced to reconsider its relationship with an increasingly militant Irish nationalism. This reassessment occurred at the same time as it was becoming a major political and electoral force in post‐war Britain. The political imperative from the party's perspective was to portray itself as a responsible, moderate and patriotic alternative governing party. Thus it was fearful of the potential negative impact of too close an association with, and perceived sympathy for, extreme Irish nationalism. This explains the party's often bewildering changes in policy on Ireland at various party conferences in 1919 and 1920, ranging from support for home rule to federalism throughout the United Kingdom to ‘dominion home rule’ as part of a wider evolving British Commonwealth to adopting outright ‘ self‐determination’ for a completely independent Ireland outside both United Kingdom and empire. On one aspect of its Irish policy, however, the party was adamant and united – its opposition to the partition of Ireland, which was the fundamental principle of Lloyd George's Government of Ireland Bill of 1920 which established Northern Ireland. Curiously, that aspect of Labour's Irish policy was never discussed in the party at large. All the running was made by the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) in the house of commons in 1920. The PLP's outright opposition to the bill acted as balm throughout the wider party, binding together the confusing, and often contradictory, positions promulgated on the long‐term constitutional future of Ireland and its relationship with Britain.     

A Grand-Guignol legacy: Martin McDonagh's A Behanding in Spokane

This article examines Martin McDonagh's most recent play, A Behanding in Spokane (2010), through the lens of Théâtre du Grand-Guignol, deploying the scholarship of Richard J. Hand and Michael Wilson on this specific theatrical style. The article links discussions of Grand-Guignol with the amputation suffered by the drama's main character, Carmichael, played by Christopher Walken in the play's first production, and with the case of hands he brings with him on his journey around America. I draw on V.S. Ramachandran's work on consciousness, phantom limbs, and apotemnophilia in order to consider Carmichael's amputation in relation to self-defining narratives, loss, lack, excess and difference, with particular emphasis given to issues of race.     

多逻斯川、双河及金牙山——唐将苏定方西征路线考辨

本文在史料分析和前人研究的基础上,考察了公元657年唐将苏定方西征西突厥阿史那贺鲁一役,对进军路线、战役发生地点进行了探索,并进一步对西突厥史地研究中的三个重要地点多逻斯川、双河及金牙山加以考证。结论是:多逻斯川并非额尔齐斯河,而更有可能是今日塔城东南之额敏河,其地应为西突厥北庭所在地,是阿史那贺鲁的重要根据地;双河必不在前人通常认为的博罗塔拉河流域,而是位于今哈萨克斯坦的阿勒坦额墨尔地区;金牙山即唐人贾耽所称之"羯丹山",位于今楚河北岸。