On Abolition Ecologies and Making “Freedom as a Place”

This introduction calls for political ecology to systematically engage with the ways that white supremacy shapes human relationships with land through entangled processes of settler colonialism, empire and racial capitalism. To develop the analytic of abolition ecology, we begin with the articulation of W.E.B. Du Bois’ abolition democracy together with Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s spatially attuned analytic of abolition geography. Rather than define communities by the violence they suffer, abolition ecologies call for attention to radical place‐making and the land, air and water based environments within which places are made. To that end, we suggest that an abolition ecology demands attention to the ways that coalitional land‐based politics dismantle oppressive institutions and to the promise of abolition, which Gilmore describes as making “freedom as a place”.     

《明实录》建文朝科举书写及其意涵

科举是建文历史的重要内容,也是其"文治"的具体表现。然而,《明实录》书写的建文朝科举,既缺乏三级科举考试的正面记载,又大体上掩盖了附传传主建文年间科举中式的信息。本不属于政治敏感性问题的科举史事,因其体现了建文帝泽被天下士子的恩典、妨碍了朱棣"文治"的弘扬,遭到了《明实录》的排斥。这表明实录对建文历史的讳饰,不只限于政治敏感性问题,而是一切有利于建文帝形象的史事。值得注意的是,史官在实录编修中采用春秋笔法披露了建文朝科举的蛛丝马迹,使得相关史事并没有在"国史"话语体系中完全被湮没。这反映出史官与君主在建文历史的认识、评价方面,存在一定的差异,此种现象并非晚明才出现,而是明初已露端倪。     

试论铭文中反书、倒书等特殊书写形式的形成原因

针对铭文中出现的反书、倒书等特殊形式的书写现象,本工作采用泥条贴范法,从铭文制作的工艺角度对反书和倒书进行了讨论,并搭建了一套以树叶刻字为基础的推论模型,通过模拟实验进一步地阐述了在此模型下反书和倒书的产生的可能性及原因。     

Unfastening Israel's Future from the Occupation: Israeli Plans for Partial Annexation of West Bank Territory

Israeli plans to partially annex West Bank territory have mainly been perceived as frustrating the two-state solution, and as putting Palestine/Israel on a path leading to the one-state alternative. This paper analyses partial annexation plans without assuming that the future of Palestine/Israel would necessarily abide by either statist resolution. It argues that by ostensibly distancing Israel's hold of the West Bank from an identifiable configuration of a belligerent occupation, partial annexation is offered to Jewish Israelis as a path for detaching the futurity of the two nations, and as a trajectory for normalising the Israeli state, without having to make what much of this public would see as painful concessions. It further explores settlers’ objections to such plans, claiming that even a partial incorporation of West Bank territory into formal Israel is expected to erode the exclusivity of Jewish domination which Israel has been upholding in its settler-colonial frontier.     

Seductive Alienation: The American Way of Life Rearticulated in Occupied Japan

This article explores how the notion of American domesticity promoted by US occupation forces in postwar Japan was decoded and rearticulated by non-elite Japanese women, a social group that has been largely overlooked in studies of the global promotion of the American way of life during the early Cold War years. Specifically examined here is the case of Takehisa Chieko, an actress and the wife of an American officer, who enjoyed high visibility in popular women’s magazines as the embodiment of the idealised postwar American lifestyle. A reading of Takehisa’s magazine writings, interviews, and photographs suggests, however, that she was far from a passive recipient and transmitter of this cultural message. As such, a close unpacking of her rearticulation of the idea of American domesticity toward the particular socio-cultural fabric of postwar Japan reveals the particular nature of this supposedly universal American model. In demonstrating the various dilemmas that stemmed from confronting both the seductive and alienating features of the American way as promoted in occupied Japan, this study illuminates a point of rupture in the larger US global promotion of American domesticity as a means toward cultural hegemony and political containment in the early Cold War period.     

Resistance politics of non-violence: Jean Paulhan’s ’Fautrier the Enraged’ (1943)

ABSTRACT

The idea of adequately ‘representing’ violence was an important point of discussion amongst Resistance artists and intellectuals at the time of the French Occupation. In particular, intellectual resistant Jean Paulhan had written on the subject in his text introducing Jean Fautrier’s retrospective exhibition of November and December 1943 in occupied Paris, ‘Fautrier the Enraged’. While the thematic of the exhibition proposed an academic and traditional subject matter, Paulhan demonstrated that Fautrier’s typically matierist and anti-naturalistic approach was instrumental in ‘suggesting reality’. Fautrier’s individual creative process, Paulhan argued, led to a transparent experience to be shared between viewer and artist not only on an aesthetic level, but also from a political point of view. At the time of ‘Fautrier the Enraged”s writing, Paulhan had indeed been concerned with issues of political engagement, as is evident from his essay ‘The Flowers of Tarbes or Terror in Literature’ (1941), which reflects upon the human condition and is concerned with reconciling poetry, politics and ethics. The author believes that such questions were being addressed in Paulhan’s text on Fautrier and by Fautrier’s art and that an aesthetic reading of Paulhan’s text is inseparable from a political interpretation of Fautrier’s art within the context of the Occupation. Indeed, the aesthetic criteria used in Paulhan’s text as framework to his argument were then loaded with political meaning. For instance, Paulhan considered virtuosity as an essential artistic characteristic to be opposed to the art of imitation based on the technical ability to observe and simulate ‘nature’ as imposed by the occupants. With excerpts from Paulhan’s essay and exchange of letters with Fautrier as well as visual analysis of some of the artworks presented in the exhibition, this paper deals with the wider issues of ‘representation’ in the historical and cultural context of the Second World War in France.     

Socio-demographic differences of disability prevalence among the population aged 60 years and over in Bangladesh

This study aims to delineate the sociodemographic differences in disability prevalence across the population aged 60 years and over in Bangladesh, and to investigate the association of factors with reporting disability in later life. A microdata sample for those aged 60 years or over from the Census of Bangladesh 2011 was used where disability was assessed with a self-reported single response question. Logistic regression models were performed separately for men and women. Results reveal that the disability prevalence rate increased sharply with age, and it was higher among older women (5.2 per cent) compared to men (4.8 per cent). Physical and vision disabilities were the two categories with the highest prevalence of reported disabilities, with a higher prevalence of physical disability among men and vision disability among women. Being older, female, currently not in marital partnership, and having a lower educational attainment, not being employed, living alone, and residing in the rural areas were significantly associated with reporting disability in later life. The higher prevalence of disability among older women, those who are illiterate, and those residing in rural areas highlights the need for policies prioritising these groups. Special attention should also be given to those who are currently not in marital partnership, particularly women who are living alone.     

从“良渚全考古”到“良博全展示”——以良渚博物院2018年改陈策展为例

良渚考古工作历经八十余年,考古内涵不断丰富,考古价值不断提升,已进入到"良渚全考古"时代,是边发现、边研究、边保护、边利用、边传承的模式。2018年良渚博物院改陈,进入"良博全展示"阶段。现有的展览全面展示良渚考古成果,全面呈现良渚文化内涵,全面阐释良渚文明价值,全面解读良渚遗存信息。良渚的展示除了依靠文物本身或图文所呈现和传递的信息,还采用过程性展示、功能性展示、复原性展示、对比性展示、演变性展示、场景性展示等多种手段,多角度、全方位地解读和展示遗物,力图将良渚文物的故事讲清楚、讲明白。     

Loyalist,patriot, or colonizer? The three faces of Zheng Chenggong in Meiji Japan and late Qing China

ABSTRACT

This article examines the transformation of Zheng Chenggong’s image in Meiji Japan and late Qing China. Prior to the mid-nineteenth century, Zheng Chenggong was often depicted as a Ming dynasty loyalist in Chinese narratives and as a Japanese hero adventuring in a foreign land in Japanese narratives. The two groups of narratives converged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, transforming Zheng Chenggong into a patriot, an anti-imperialist hero, and a conqueror and developer of Taiwan. Underlying the convergence of Chinese and Japanese narratives of Zheng Chenggong was surging nationalist sentiment in response to different forms of imperialism. This study aims to show how different nationalist agendas activated efforts to recreate Zheng Chenggong’s image in China and Japan at the turn of the nineteenth century.     

Introduction: Biographies Between Spheres of Empire

ABSTRACT

Biographical research offers a promising approach to the study of empire, imperialism and colonialism. The careers and life stories of individuals and generations show particularly clearly the disruptions and constraints, but also the new possibilities and mobilities, that were created by colonial rule. This special issue focuses on practices and experiences of boundary crossing in imperial and colonial history. It explores how ‘ordinary’ individuals and groups navigated between the different imperial spaces and spheres into which they were categorised according to the ideologies and regulations of the well-ordered colonial world. Africa offers particularly interesting cases for studying these issues because, first, it was a field of particularly rigid colonial distinctions and, second, different colonial empires overlapped and competed there with particular intensity. This introduction outlines briefly the relevance of biographical research for new approaches in imperial, colonial and African history, and highlights the major themes of the five articles comprising this special issue. It is argued that these new biographical approaches tell us much not only about life in Africa on the eve of and under colonial rule, but also more generally about both the power and the permeability of imperial domination and of colonial categories.