‘Oh motherland I pledge to thee …’: a study into nationalism,gender and the representation of an imagined family within national anthems

In this paper, we argue that beyond understanding nations as imagined communities, the metaphor of an ‘imagined family’ or ‘filial community’ is a more useful concept towards understanding links between gender and nationhood as family relations in four ways: (1) providing a clear, hierarchical structure; (2) prescribing social roles and responsibilities; (3) being linked to positive affective connotations; and (4) reifying social phenomena as biologically determined. In order to empirically substantiate our claim, we will explore the prevalence and use of family metaphors in a key symbol of nationhood discourses. Through a qualitative analysis of national anthems as ‘mnemonics of national identity’, we demonstrate the widespread presence of family metaphors, discussing how they reproduce ideas of family and gender. Finally, we discuss how the ‘imagined family’ as present in anthems and other forms of national representation could inform future studies of nationalism and national politics.     

“Broken Hearted” and “Crushed in Spirit”: Metaphors and Emotions in Psalm 34,19

In the Old Testament, the book of psalms stands out because of its vast and rich imagery and vivid metaphorical language. Deep human experiences and a wide range of human emotions in its heights and depths can be discovered there. The metaphorical language in the Old Testament, particularly in the psalms, is often linked with emotions. This paper centres on emotions within the metaphor discourse and aims to contribute to two fields of research: firstly, the field of metaphor analysis in the psalms and secondly, the area of the Studies of Emotions by using Ps 34,19 as an example. After presenting some core theoretical concepts regarding the study of metaphors and emotions, the analysis of the form and content of Ps 34 as well as the “broken hearted” and “crushed in spirit” in Ps 34,19 will be carried out. The results of the analysis shed new light on the well-known verbal images of the “broken hearted” and “crushed in spirit.”     

时间连接成分的历时演变和产生方式

时间连接成分反映了篇章中相关事件的时间先后关系,是篇章组织中时间顺序义的显性表达法。本文从历时的角度考察了时间连接成分产生和发展的轨迹,归纳出时间连接成分产生的六种方式,同时对时间连接成分的隐喻基础作了简单的探讨。     

‘An entirely new land’? Italy’s post-war culture and its Fascist past

Scholarship has for decades emphasized the significant continuities in Italian culture and society after Fascism, calling into question the rhetoric of post-war renewal. This article proposes a reassessment of that rhetoric through the analysis of five key metaphors with which Italian intellectuals represented national recovery after 1945: parenthesis, disease, flood, childhood and discovery. While the current critical consensus would lead us to expect a cultural conversation characterized by repression and evasion, an analysis of these five post-war metaphors instead reveals both a penetrating reassessment of Italian culture after Fascism and an earnest adherence to the cause of national revitalization. Foregrounding the inter-relation of Italy’s prospects for change and its continuities with Fascism, these metaphors suggest that post-war Italian intellectuals conceived of their country’s hopes for renewal, as well as its connections to the recent past, in terms that transcend the binary division favoured in many historical accounts.     

论空间批评

"空间批评"是西方一种重要的前沿批评形态,它是在当代西方"空间转向"趋势中,强调空间的本体性和异质性观念中形成的。"空间批评"突出文学对现实空间的参与性、并置性,强调文学空间来源的多元性和文本空间的异质性,凸现文学多重阐释中的批判功能。     

试论儒家语境下"水火之喻"的本义消解

子产的政治观念与执政实践都趋向猛政,“水火之喻”原本是对其猛政主张的说明,“宽猛相济”自非是子产“水火之喻”的本义。然而在传统儒家的宽政语境下,学者对子产猛政的历史存在要么漠然视之,要么权变调停,要么根本否定其真实性,子产“水火之喻”的本义因而也不断被消解。出现这一现象的根本动因是,子产在春秋政治史上,具有无可替代的重要而隆崇地位,儒家试图将子产思想作为资源纳入其宽政思想体系,其结果是史实屈从于观念。     

RETHINKING THE BUILDING BLOCKS: ONTOLOGICAL PLURALISM AND THE IDEA OF 'MANAGEMENT'

ABSTRACT. The persistence of indigenous ontologies rooted in human systems that pre-date the creation of colonial property rights and assertions of frontier conquest and dispossession unsettles the dominant idea that 'management' is an unproblematic and universally endorsed goal for communities, regions and nations in their environmental and development discourses. This paper argues that conceptual building blocks which render management, be it of environments, economies or people, as unquestionably good, need to be reconsidered. Drawing on diverse indigenous knowledges in Australia, particularly in relation to wildlife management, the paper examines the hidden cultural specificity of management, planning, institutional strengthening and capacity building as well as their implicit silencing of alternative narratives of the economic, environmental and cultural dimensions of social life.     

From ‘motherland’ to ‘daddy state’: A genealogical analysis of the gender undertone in China's nationalist discourses

This article examines the gender undertone of China's nationalist discourses, especially in familial metaphors of nationalism, and how such an undertone shapes people's understandings of state authority and state-citizen relations. Conventional nationalist discourse of the ‘motherland’ evokes the image of an insulted and raped mother as the symbol of national humiliation and calls for actions from patriots (masculinised in the discourse). In recent years, however, we have seen the emergence of a new discourse that depicts the nation-state as a rich, powerful and masculine ‘daddy’. Using discourse analysis and Foucauldian genealogical methods, this article argues that the discursive development has to be analysed against China's historical backgrounds, especially considering new standards of masculinity and femininity in the era of economic reform. Capital is equated to masculinity and righteousness, whereas femininity is shaped by the middle-class values of consumerism and political disengagement. The ‘daddy state’ discourse conjures strong paternalistic power from China's economic capacity that can be projected onto challengers of state authority, while also constructing the nationalist public as feminised consumers whose consumerist enjoyment relies on patriarchal state protection.     

Critiquing the heteronormativity of the banal citizen in New Zealand's mediated civil union debate

This article extends Billig's (1995) landmark thesis on banal nationalism by considering how processes of national deixis circumscribe the boundaries of citizenship and forms of belonging within nation-states. Drawing on critical analyses of sexual citizenship, the article provides a discursive analysis of the debate over civil union in the New Zealand mainstream press during 2004–2005. It argues that this mediated debate represented an historical moment where the routine deictic flagging of the nation, and the correlated flagging of the ‘banal citizen’, fundamentally broke down, thereby allowing this unmarked and ‘ordinary’ process to be systematically examined. Four major discourses are identified in press coverage: ‘Homosexual’ subjects as abnormal and disordered, tolerance, equality and human rights, the sanctity of marriage and the preservation of the family (and the social order). Although the passing of the Civil Union Act does mark a (faltering) step forward in sexual equality, we argue that the presence of these discourses suggests that forms of both ontological and cultural heterosexism persist in New Zealand society. Despite the Act conferring new legal rights, ultimately we conclude that the four discourses act to restrict the extent to which ‘homosexual’ subjects are considered ‘valid’ and ‘legitimate’ citizens. In continuing to structure the public politics of sexual citizenship in New Zealand, these discourses have influenced recent debates over legislative moves towards ‘marriage equality’ in ways that raise concerns over the continuation of heterosexist norms, as well as exclusionary forms of homo-nationalism. More generally, this research demonstrates the effectiveness of Billig's work as a valuable and productive analytic lens to explicate concerns over the exclusionary nature of citizenship itself.