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Full-Text Articles in American Studies
The Somaesthetics Of The Multitude: The Politico-Aesthetic Logic Of Antonio Negri And Michael Hardt In Constructing The Subjecthood, Jinying Li
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
"The Multitude", a concept reconstructed by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt after the deconstruction of the subjecthood by post-structuralism, is a combination of singularity and commonality, and physicality and affection, and it is the subjecthood of postmodern society that overthrows the control of the empire and constructs the commonwealth. In the early days, Negri began to explore social issues from the perspective of the relationship between art and the multitude. From this perspective, his logics in constructing the multitude can be summed up as aestheticization and bio-politicization, and its inner trajectory of reasoning can be summarized as a transformation from …
Fictional Text And Reality Of The Possible, Shusheng Zhang
Fictional Text And Reality Of The Possible, Shusheng Zhang
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
This article explores the issue of reference in fictional texts, that is, the relationship between fictional texts and reality. Paul Ricoeur thinks that the reference of poetic language is not cancelled, but only suspended. Through its semantic creativity, it possesses the ability to transform reality and to turn our personal environment into a habitable world. The interpretation of the concept "world /Welt" and "environment /Umwelt" by Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer shed light on the significance of fictional texts in reality, for they propose to us possible modes of existence in the ontological sense. In other words, fictional texts can …
Juxtaposition, Narrative Strategies, And Multimedia Explorations: Representation Of Time In Comics, Xu Lian
Juxtaposition, Narrative Strategies, And Multimedia Explorations: Representation Of Time In Comics, Xu Lian
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Following the tradition of narratology and comics studies, this article explores various ways of representing time in comics and displays the complexity and diversity of temporal representation in the grammar of comics. It focuses on spatialization, closure, order, speed, and innovation enabled by virtue of multimedia explorations. Spatialization strategies such as juxtaposition and collage are basic ways to represent time in comics, and closure of perception is also critical in understanding time. However, new forms like music comics and webcomics have significantly changed the structure of temporal representation.
Third Reading Of Early Film Theory: The Turn To Dispositif, Affect, And Action Comedy, Yingjin Zhang
Third Reading Of Early Film Theory: The Turn To Dispositif, Affect, And Action Comedy, Yingjin Zhang
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Early film studies has spread rapidly since the 1990s and become a mainstay in film studies in Euro-American academia, bringing technological innovation, visual culture, and urban modernity into film historiography and thus enriching scholarship in a field previously dominated by close textual reading. This article continues my tracking of early film studies but concentrates on methodological issues of the recent focus on “media archaeology.” My “Reading Early Film Theory: Collective Sensorium and Vernacular Modernism” (2005) introduces Miriam Hansen's theory and Zhen Zhang's book on reconstructing a cultural history of Shanghai film. My follow-up “Rereading Early Film Theory: In Pursuit of …
Cabaret Voltaire Or Kabarett Voltaire? Three Breakthroughs Of The Concept Gesamtkunstwerk, Duozhi Chen
Cabaret Voltaire Or Kabarett Voltaire? Three Breakthroughs Of The Concept Gesamtkunstwerk, Duozhi Chen
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
The birthplace of Dadaism in Switzerland is often simply translated into Chinese as “Voltaire Pub”. As an art salon, it actually finds its prototype in artists' pubs in Germany. The word “Cabaret” translated as “pub”, is also the general term for the entertaining variety shows therein,which originated in France. After its introduction into the German-speaking area, Cabaret became Kabarett and its cultural connotations and ways of presentations underwent great changes due to its collision with the avant-garde movement. Therefore, the simplified understanding of Cabaret as a pub downplays the significance of the Cabaret Voltaire in the history of modern art. …
Recoding Postmodernist Art Criticism: The Debate Between Anti-Pluralism And Pluralism, Juanjuan Yang
Recoding Postmodernist Art Criticism: The Debate Between Anti-Pluralism And Pluralism, Juanjuan Yang
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
While pluralism is considered politically correct today, this article tries to describe the trajectory of anti-pluralist criticism through some famous authors of October, specifically Hal Foster, who edited the seminal Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture. In the beginning of the 1980s, Foster categorized two types of postmodernism, one being the postmodernism of reaction and neo-conservatism, the other being postmodernism of resistance and post-structuralism. Aligning with the latter of the two types, major authors of October published a series of important essays to criticize “mainstream postmodernist art, ” especially neo-expressionist paintings. However, during the same period, Arthur Danto claimed“the end of …
Writing Of Futurity: On Derrida's Hauntology, Yun Li
Writing Of Futurity: On Derrida's Hauntology, Yun Li
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
In Spectres of Marx, Jacques Derrida answers the post-Levinasian question: how to respond to the Other. He claims that The Communist Manifesto has become an injunction of Marx, who requires our response. We have to respond to it and speak, as Marx does, in a non-metaphysical way. Since it is beyond the economy of re-presentation, writing does not produce presence. Thus, everything in it is spectral. But it takes us into l＇avenir or futurity, a "spacing ( and) temporizing" different from the space-time produced by re-presentation, because it constitutes an "ethicality" which goes beyond the metaphysical subjective conquest of the …
Post-Structural Theories And Chinese Feminist Criticism: On The Theorization Of Women's “Subjectivity” In The Cultural Studies Of Socialist China, Xi Liu
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Centering on the conceptualization of "subjectivity," this article first traces the post-structural theories' impact on as well as their complex relationship with Western feminism. It then explores the development of the theorization of “women 's subjectivity" in academic research on Chinese women and gender discourses in socialist China from the 1980s. By examining the application of three influential theorists, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, and Judith Butler, in the Chinese context, this article intends to show the complex genealogy of "appropriating" post-structural theories for different agendas of contemporary Chinese feminist criticism. Some scholars integrated post-structural ideas into liberal-humanist discourses; some employed …
Narrative Of Habitus Distinction: From Fantasy Of Identity To Competition Of Elegance——Centering On The Image Of People Subject To Identity Transformations In Modern Fictions, Daizong Yu
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Sociological or anthropological list of the habitus of people are from different classes, focusing on the strategy and function of habitus distinction in social struggles from the perspectives of political culture, economic level, and intergenerational reproduction. In contrast, modern fictions depict different forms of struggles from the perspectives of perceptual experience, emotional change, and taste preference. The narrative of habitus distinction in modern fictions shows the obstinacy of old habitus, the fragility of new habitus, and the aggressiveness of habitus in the struggles of classification. Its insight and aesthetic interpretation provide not only a more precise way but also a …
Fables Agreed Upon: A Comparative Study Of New Historicism And Alternate History, Feng Li, Yitzhak Lewis
Fables Agreed Upon: A Comparative Study Of New Historicism And Alternate History, Feng Li, Yitzhak Lewis
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
New Historicism and alternate history raise similar questions regarding history and ideology. New Historicism reads every text as an alternate history narrative, while the narrative mode in alternate history can inspire a nuanced understanding of the critical positions promoted by New Historicism. The paper offers a comparative study of the two in terms of their conceptualizations of historical narrative, intertextuality, narrativity, non-linear structure and spatiality. It seeks to create dialogues between different voices in both the critical theory and the literary genre with respect to their attention to mundane matters, their allusions to the present and projections of the future, …