The grotesque in the plays of Enda Walsh

This article attempts to outline the aesthetic of Enda Walsh's dramatic oeuvre, viewing it as fundamentally grotesque. Plays such as The New Electric Ballroom, The Walworth Farce, and Penelope have generally enjoyed a most enthusiastic reception; however, reviewers and critics have remained largely baffled as to where exactly these intoxicating pieces have left them. A plausible way of addressing the distinctive combination of citationality, the intermingling of genres, linguistic brilliance, circuitous structure, pathological interaction between characters, and the darkest humour, may consist in juxtaposing Walsh's technique with concepts of the grotesque as outlined, alternately, by Mikhail Bakhtin and Wolfgang Kayser. The consequent observations on the grotesque in Walsh's plays are followed by a query as regards the moral dimension of Walsh's aesthetic, focusing on their position in relation to Bakhtin's assertion of the liberating potential of the grotesque as opposed to Kayser's insistence on the grotesque coming across as essentially bleak and hopeless.     

From aisling to chora: female allegories of the nation in contemporary Irish women's poetry

Contemporary Irish women poets use female tropes of Irish nationalism as a potent site for revising traditional conceptions of femininity, maternity, and cultural identity. Arguably, female tropes of aisling poetry inhabit the same cultural location that anchors the societal role of motherhood as theorised by Julia Kristeva. Kristeva's work highlights mothers' important function in regulating the drives and preparing children for entrance into the symbolic order of society, in relation to which mothers remain structurally liminal. The Platonic chora, an amorphous receptacle from which forms emerge, symbolises this position at the threshold. This essay shows that Irish women poets revise female allegories of the nation either by aligning them with women's lived experience, as Eavan Boland has done, or by re-evaluating them from within their liminality, through stylistic experimentation or irony, which the analysis of poems by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Medbh McGuckian, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Rita Ann Higgins demonstrates.     

冷战视域下的金门女性地位变迁研究

1949年国民党军队退居台湾之后,将金门视为日后反攻大陆的跳板,在金门地区实行所谓的"战地政务"。该政策的实施,对金门女性的地位产生了十分深刻的影响:为军中士兵服务的性工作者在金门出现;同时,大批军人的到来也使婚姻市场上的女性和普通家庭中已婚妇女的地位发生了改变;女性也被动员起来参加军事活动及女性士兵在金门的出现。整个冷战期间,和男性一样,金门地区的所有女性也被强制性地动员起来为国民党政权服务,成为国民党政权反共和"反攻大陆"的工具。     

蒋介石与宋明理学

本文通过对《蒋介石日记》的解读与论证,从新的角度证明了“宋明理学”对蒋介石的道德取向、人格塑造及思想理念的潜在影响。     

海外华人跨国主义实践的模式及其差异——基于美国与新加坡的比较分析

论文参考有关跨国主义的理论文献和实证研究,分析了移民个人、移民社会以及民族国家在国际移民进程和跨国活动中所扮演的不同角色,考察了在美国和新加坡的华人新移民及其社团组织与祖籍国之间互动模式的变化。结果显示,由于国际移民的迁移历史以及移居国(地)结构的多重差异,导致了海外华人社会在人口构成和族裔社区建设等方面存在显著差异。个人、社团、祖籍国和移居国实际上并不是单方面地影响着海外华人的跨国活动及其与祖籍国的互动关系,他们的互动关系还受到国家关系和地缘政治等宏观因素的制约。因此,国际移民参与跨国活动的主要目的是为了寻求更好的、更广阔的创业和就业机会,以便提高个人和族群在移居国的社会地位,但其结果因移居国社会的结构因素影响而产生差异。     

War 2.0: an analytical framework

Media has always been a critical dimension of politics and of political violence. Information about violence and conflict is disseminated through the media. Media is also a mechanism through which the politics of violence is monitored, represented and interpreted. While the historical relationship between old media and political violence has long been the subject of research and debate, how this relationship is affected by the emergence of digital new media technology warrants further consideration. This development raises several important issues and questions for students of international relations, in particular with respect to how the reconfiguration of the role of media in conflict impacts more broadly on configurations of world politics. This article identifies four critical dimensions of world politics through which to explore this impact: the constitution of power, the configuration of agency, the nature and politics of representation, and the constitution of legitimacy. It argues that the concepts of power, agency, representation and legitimacy provide critical interfaces between media, conflict and world politics. In so doing, the article elucidates the conceptual framework that animates this special issue. Finally, it reflects on how these concepts are engaged in the articles to follow.     

Voluntary Environmental Governance Arrangements in the Australian Building Sector

Voluntary environmental governance arrangements (VEGAs) are designed to minimise negative outcomes through the use of collectively agreed arrangements. They have attracted a large literature, but issues remain unresolved, especially regarding their effectiveness. This article takes up a small part of this challenge of mapping the role of VEGAs in larger systems of environmental governance by examining the development and implementation of a range of VEGAs in the Australian building sector, here defined as the construction and use of buildings.

人们设计了自愿环境治理计划,意在通过集体认同的安排尽量减少消极结果。它吸引了大量文献的关注,但问题依旧是问题,特别在效率方面。本文试图回答其中一小部分问题,通过考察其在澳大利亚建筑部门（这里定义为建筑和建筑物的使用）,看看自愿环境治理计划在更大的环境治理中究竟扮演什么样的角色。     

A Review of “The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government,” and “Adam Smith as Theologian”

Abstract

Philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre has asserted in several writings that present-day democratic governing institutions fail to incorporate beliefs about the common good and deliberation. However, objections can be raised against MacIntyre's characterization based on research from a new field in political science, Deliberative Democracy. Empirical research in that field shows that the common good and deliberation still do have a place in the United States Congress. It also shows that what James Madison argued at the founding of the country still holds, that representative deliberative bodies aid in transforming arguments for private goods into arguments for the common good; they refine and enlarge the public views.     

Political History and Political Philosophy: Making Sense of the West

Abstract

The old Western synthesis, the coming together of self-government, the Christian proposition, modern equality, and the commitment to relieving man's estate, appears to be unraveling. In the European context, it is being replaced by a “pure democracy” that cannot do justice to the continuity of Western civilization. Rejecting the twin temptations of Progress and Decline, Pierre Manent recovers the perspective of the human agent. While the polis or classical city is no longer available to us, the self-government of free human beings remains at the heart of the Western enterprise. Manent shows that the Christian notion of conscience preserved the classical analogy between the soul and the political association and is at the hear of Western liberty. The West as a whole rests on the synthetic and mediating notion of conscience.     

Visualising Values in the Caribbean: A Creative Approach to Value Assessment

In this article, a creative heritage value assessment that was developed on the island of St Christopher (St Kitts), West Indies is discussed and evaluated. A synergetic approach emerged out of a collaboration between local heritage managers and policy officials with foreign heritage researchers and archaeologists. Together, they developed a transdisciplinary and practice-oriented approach based upon capturing values with audiovisual methods, which effectively integrated archaeological-historical research as well as outreach and dissemination activities in the value-assessment process. This effectively brought valorisation as well as the contested and multivocal nature of heritage to the heart of a transparent heritage management process. The practicalities and rationale of this approach are discussed, as well as its potential benefits for the combined three fields of local heritage management, archaeological-historical research, and public outreach.