新时期的思想解放与马克思主义中国化的历史发展

新时期以来的思想解放与马克思主义中国化有着清晰的脉络和明确的成果。在新时期中共历史发展的三个阶段、四个重大关头,思想解放形成了三次“大潮”和若干个“次大潮”。随着思想解放的不断深入,马克思主义中国化在实践和理论两个方面取得了丰硕的成果,即在实践中探索出一条建设中国特色社会主义的道路;理论上形成了邓小平理论和“三个代表”重要思想两大成果。     

POSTMODERNISM,SOCIAL SCIENCE,AND HISTORY: RETURNING TO AN UNFINISHED AGENDA

Recognizing that the vogue of postmodernism has passed, Simon Susen seeks to assess whatever enduring impact it may have had on the social sciences, including historiography. Indeed, the postmodern turn, as he sees it, seems to have had particular implications for our understanding of the human relationship with history. After five exegetical chapters, in which he seems mostly sympathetic to postmodernism, Susen turns to often biting criticism in a subsequent chapter. He charges, most basically, that postmodernists miss the self‐critical side of modernity and tend to overreact against aspects of modernism. That overreaction is evident especially in the postmodern preoccupation with textuality and discourse, which transforms sociology into cultural studies and historiography into a form of literature. But as Susen sees it, a comparable overreaction has been at work in the postmodern emphasis on new, “little” politics, concerned with identity and difference, at the expense of more traditional large‐scale politics and attendant forms of radicalism. His assessment reflects the “emancipatory” political agenda he assigns to the social sciences. Partly because that agenda inevitably affects what he finds to embrace and what to criticize, aspects of his discussion prove one‐sided. And he does not follow through on his suggestions that postmodernist insights entail a sort of inflation of history or historicity. Partly as a result, his treatment of “reason,” universal rights, and reality (including historiographical realism) betrays an inadequate grasp of the postmodern challenge—and opportunity. In the last analysis, Susen's understanding of the historical sources of postmodernism is simply too limited, but he usefully makes it clear that we have not put the postmodernist challenge behind us.     

The Non‐Adult Cohort from Le Morne Cemetery,Mauritius: A Snap Shot of Early Life and Death after Abolition

The cemetery of Le Morne in Mauritius dates from the 1830s and is thought to contain the remains of slaves, freed slaves or potentially free Madagascans, which in itself has economic and social implications and makes the cemetery all the more intriguing. During 2010, excavations recovered the remains of 11 individuals, of which six were children. Although a small sample, the burials of the non‐adults show several interesting features. Two neonates were buried contemporaneously and may have been twins, while a late term foetus in a grave with a young woman may represent an incident of coffin birth. This sample has the potential to cast light on the burial practices of the slave/ex‐slave community in Mauritius, about which little is currently known. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Italian receptions of Hegel: Epilogue

ABSTRACT

The reconstruction of national receptions of Hegel, and the inflections of his influence through local traditions and international exchanges, remains a fruitful field of investigation. The Anglophone literature has been relatively neglectful of the specific contributions made by Italian readings of Hegel, from his earliest reception onwards. The collection published here builds toward a fuller understanding of Hegel’s diagnosis of the origins and functions of the modern state and the dialectics of modern individuality and freedom, as these issues appear in debates undertaken in the Italian Risorgimento and beyond.     

THE SEMIOTICS OF SERFDOM: How serfdom was perceived in the Swedish conglomerate state, 1561–1806

The Swedish conglomerate state has been characterized by the special status of its provinces. While serfdom did not exist in Sweden and Finland, it was accepted in the Baltic and German provinces. The main aim of the paper is to explore how the institution of serfdom was understood and interpreted in Stockholm. It will analyse the question of how the Swedish central government’s position on serfdom changed between 1561 and 1806. It will argue that there were clichés, stereotypes, and prejudices that have shaped the discourse on serfdom. The sources leave us no doubt that the labels and emotions around serfdom were very important to the authorities, the nobility and later to the public commentators who opined on the issue. Serfdom did not live up to the ideals expressed by the Swedish authorities, and a critical discussion of serfdom started much earlier than the mid-eighteenth century process of peasant emancipation. However, there were always both practical and ideological considerations around serfdom and Stockholm’s policy did not change throughout the 17th and 18th century when it came to restricting peasants‘ free movement or using serf labour in manor fields.     

Standing Upon a Volcano: Cincinnati’s Newspapers Debate Emancipation, 1860–1862

Newspaper editors in Cincinnati saw the abolition question on a spectrum before President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862. Most favored some form of confiscation of Confederate slaves for use in the Union war effort; some favored emancipation of slaves as a means to weaken the Confederacy; but almost all vociferously opposed any idea that unrestrained black freedom might be an outcome of the Civil War. While it appears to historians that there was an “inexorable logic” in the development of Union war aims, it is clear from the point of view of Cincinnati that the inexorability of that logic was heavily contested.     

Abraham Lincoln and the Movies

Comparatively little work has been done on how Abraham Lincoln has been represented in American cinema. Yet movies have been a major – and during the first half of the twentieth century probably the major – influence on how his memory has been constructed in American popular culture. This article analyzes changing representations of Lincoln on screen, showing that differing cinematic constructions of the sixteenth president were shaped by a range of factors, including popular biographies and the biases of directors. They also echoed salient issues of the era in which they were produced and more general changes in American attitudes.     

The Media and American Institutions: Introduction

Abstract

A striking feature of contemporary Christianity is the new consensus that has emerged about politics. Almost all churches and theologians now believe that the form of government most compatible with the Christian religion is democracy. Of course, an important difference still exists between Christians who support liberal democracy and those who cling to hopes for some kind of Marxist rule. But even this difference implies that the only serious debate is not whether democracy should be preferred to monarchy or to theocracy, but which kind of democracy is best—a democracy based on human rights (liberal democracy) or a democracy based on a more radical notion of human liberation (socialist democracy). For contemporary Christians, it seems obvious that the Gospel message of care for the poor and universal love implies democratic institutions.     

Between political emancipation and creole hegemony: Viscardo’s Letter to the Spanish Americans (c. 1791)

Viscardo’s Letter to the Spanish Americans inaugurates a tradition of nonconformist political writing against Spanish colonial rule during the second half of the eighteenth century, a period characterized by the Crown’s attempt to reorganize several aspects of the colonial administration. As an ex-Jesuit living in exile after the expulsion of the Society of Jesus from all Spanish territories in 1767, Viscardo had a political as much as a personal motive in designing a project that would cut the colonial ties between Spain and the New World. His plans for emancipation included the instauration of a monarchical form of government, but his design was out of touch with reality and would have hardly been taken seriously by the inhabitants had a British-backed expeditionary force reached the coasts of Chile and Peru, as he had planned. While Viscardo’s Letter may have stirred a sense of creole patriotism some years after his death, the political scruples of the ancien regime based on social privileges and racial distinctions were too strong to be dismantled by mere ideals of freedom, justice and equality. Thus, effective political participation was restricted to the creole elite, whom Viscardo saw as the legitimate guarantor of social order and economic prosperity.