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Full-Text Articles in Chinese Studies
Why Is K. A Land Surveyor?, Yanbing Zeng
Why Is K. A Land Surveyor?, Yanbing Zeng
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
In Franz Kafka's novel The Castle, the protagonist K. claims that he is a land surveyor by profession. However, K. has no land to survey, which undermines the certainty of K.'s profession. Why, then, did Kafka choose this ancient profession for his protagonist? The uncertainty of K.'s identity, the paper claims, implies that K. is in essence an explorer of existence. Thus, Kafka was a pioneer of existentialist writers. Giorgio Agamben argues that the protagonist K. gets the name from kardo, an old instrument for land surveying. The land surveyor's work is to establish and to break boundaries — not …
On The Experiential Basis Of Beauty, Hongxiang Li
On The Experiential Basis Of Beauty, Hongxiang Li
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
The concept of beauty has been abused in contemporary popular aesthetics, which attributes the beautiful to the superficial experience of human body and fails to understand the spirituality of true beauty. In contrast to beauty in everyday sense, true beauty exists in ecstasy, a holistic experience integrating body and mind, in which people may feel a transcendental sense of reality. Different from pathological illusion, the ecstatic sense of beauty signifies nature's manifestation in human life and testifies to the intrinsic harmony between humankind and the universe. Through the lens of ecstasy, this article examines true beauty in three dimensions: reflections …
From "Image" To Simulacrum: Derrida's Discussion On Writing, Shubao Dong
From "Image" To Simulacrum: Derrida's Discussion On Writing, Shubao Dong
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Writing is one of the key words in Derrida's deconstructive philosophy. In his Of Grammatology, Derrida refers to the claims of writing from Plato to Rousseau and down to Saussure, confuting their idea that "writing is the image of speech". However, Derrida, inspired by Saussure's principle of difference that "in language there are only differences," and expounds the relationship between writing and difference, by which he transforms Saussure's static difference into the dynamic difference. Writing plays the game of difference in simulacra, and fills up the simulacrum in the supplemental movement of "image", Writing finally becomes a roaming orphan, which …
From Neutrality To The Other: Levinas On Blanchot, Jiajun Wang
From Neutrality To The Other: Levinas On Blanchot, Jiajun Wang
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Levinas's and Blanchot's literary theory coalesced while maintained a tension in between. They both tried to break through Heidegger's ontological literary theory, but Levinas used "the other", and Blanchot used "the outside" as the weapons to achieve this goal. In general, Levinas and Blanchot showed us two different and yet connected ethics and literature. The former intended to use ethics to transcend the totality of philosophy, but ultimately found the literary language in the depth of this ethics, which made the ethics become literary; the latter intended to use literature to transcend the identity of philosophy, but ultimately found the …
"Andersstreben" And Cross-Media Narrative, Diyong Long
"Andersstreben" And Cross-Media Narrative, Diyong Long
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
The term "Andersstreben" means that a type of medium seeks to imitate the features of another type while keeping its own characteristics. In terms of narrative, "Andersstreben" means cross-media narrative. Regarding fiction that features cross-media narratives, we need to understand both its own medium particularities and the other media properties that it pursues. Only in this way can we better appreciate its aesthetics. Cross-media narratives primarily originate from the mutual imitations between temporal arts and spatial arts, and often achieve magical artistic effects and rich artistic connotations that are otherwise unattainable for literature and arts by simply sticking to their …
On Issues Of Internet Literature As A Research Topic, Youquan Ouyang, Yufei He
On Issues Of Internet Literature As A Research Topic, Youquan Ouyang, Yufei He
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Theoretical criticism centering around Internet literature has recently witnessed its growing boom. Issues being popularly addressed include not only the construction of evaluation system for Internet literature, social benefits it brings, legal regulations, but also its cultural heritage, industrialization, categories, reviews, overseas spread, corpus construction, and tendency in research direction. The aim of this article is to review the current situation of Internet literature as an academic hot spot and to reflect on it through a discussion of its dynamics and limitations.
Poetry And The Generation And Maintenance Of National Community: The Core Issue And Line Of Thinking In Heidegger's First Lecture On Hölderlin, Zhenhua Zhang
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
This paper is an interpretation of Heidegger's first lecture on Hölderlin. The lecture centers on how a national community is created and maintained, and Heidegger's belief is that poetry plays as decisive role. Poets are hailed as "demigods" between the sphere of divinity and that of people. Poetry-writing embodies the message of God and passes it to the people, and achieves the connection between them; hence a national community is generated.
The Ethics Of Memory In Adorno's Aesthetic Utopia And Its Transform, Wenjun Ding
The Ethics Of Memory In Adorno's Aesthetic Utopia And Its Transform, Wenjun Ding
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Regarding how art exists after Auschwitz, Adorno argues that the legitimacy of post-war art is based on representing the memory of accumulated intergenerational suffering, which reflects on and criticizes Auschwitz and its roots in modernity with reference to Walter Benjamin's methodology of theological redemption. Memories of sufferings exist in artworks in a constellation-like structure, causing explosive production of meaning and breaking the monopoly of meaning and value by the identity system. With remembrance as the means, art presents the memory of suffering concerning Auschwitz, and offers a new understanding of the development of contemporary capitalism and possibilities for imagining a …
Habermas And Hermeneutics: From Verstehen To Lebenswelt, Wolin Richard
Habermas And Hermeneutics: From Verstehen To Lebenswelt, Wolin Richard
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Throughout his career, Habermas sought to remain faithful to the idea of a non-dogmatic and reflexive Marxism – Marxism as "critique." Although Habermas never adopted the framework of social phenomenology per se, by the same token, his reception of the later Husserl's notion of the lifeworld would play a central methodological role in his later work, enabling him to parry the well-entrenched scientistic biases of philosophy and social science. In "Knowledge and Human Interests" (1965), his inaugural lecture at University of Frankfurt, Habermas embraced Husserl's critique of modern science's misguided "mathematicization of nature." Yet his systematic employment of Husserl would …
On The Possibilities, Construction, And Functions Of Trauma Narratives, Weihua He
On The Possibilities, Construction, And Functions Of Trauma Narratives, Weihua He
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Trauma narratives are made possible by the "traces" left by traumatic events. These narratives are not only therapeutic, but can also provide an access to historical reality. In recent years, critics begin to switch their attention from individual traumas to collective traumas. According to them, collective traumas not only affect people's identification with the community, but also play important roles in the formation, maintenance, and consolidation of the community. Due to the shaping influence of collective traumas, different forms of power are woven into the representation of trauma, making the representation of trauma a product of cultural construction. In the …
The Everlasting Voyage Of Heteronymy: Badiou's Discussion About Pessoa And Plato, Huan Wang, Jiang Lan
The Everlasting Voyage Of Heteronymy: Badiou's Discussion About Pessoa And Plato, Huan Wang, Jiang Lan
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Through his analysis, Badiou discovers that the "heteronymy" thoughts in Pessoa's poems reflect his anti-Platonic tendency. Despite this, Badiou also notices the entangled connections between Pessoa's poems and Platonism. In fact, the modernity of Pessoa lies in his ambivalent position between Platonism and anti-Platonism; the task for contemplation poetry is not to pledge loyalty to Platonism or anti-Platonism. Instead, we should follow the poetic path opened up by Pessoa and create a philosophy about heterogeneity, void and infinity.
Art As The Foundation Of History: On The Historical Dimension Of Heidegger's Art Criticism, Congcong Song
Art As The Foundation Of History: On The Historical Dimension Of Heidegger's Art Criticism, Congcong Song
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
In the latest years, the debate between Heidegger and Schapiro on Van Gogh's Shoes has received considerable attention among the Chinese scholars. Despite the controversy over Heidegger's interpretation of the painting, scholars have reached an agreement that Heidegger's art criticism derives from his philosophy of art and therefore lacks the insight of art history abundant in Schapiro's scholarship. This assertion, to a certain extent, misunderstands Heidegger's thought. This paper argues that Heidegger's art criticism also contains a historical dimension, for he not only investigates art history but also pays close attention to the relationship between art and history. The difference, …
A Semantic Analysis Of Kant's Judgment Of Taste, Shuangyu Xue
A Semantic Analysis Of Kant's Judgment Of Taste, Shuangyu Xue
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
A typical judgment of taste could be expressed as a subject-predicate structure in Critique of the Power of Judgment. The subject is connected with the predicate by a copula. In the third Critique, however, Kant grounds his theory of taste on the first Critique, from which his views and conceptual apparatus of epistemology have been transferred to a new aesthetic context, and interpreters are inclined to investigate Kant's theory of taste by virtue of his epistemology. It is common, if also necessary, to conduct in studies of the third Critique a semantic analysis of judgement of taste by referring to …
Schematizing Without A Concept: Kant On The Harmony Of Imagination And Understanding, Wei Li
Schematizing Without A Concept: Kant On The Harmony Of Imagination And Understanding, Wei Li
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
Kant's theory of the harmony of imagination and understanding either leads to an inconsequent claim that "everything is beautiful" or fails to ensure the universal validity of judgements of taste. This paper proposes to approach the dilemma by way of Kant's notion of "idea—schema—the-expression-of-the-idea" developed in "Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic," interpreting the text from a noncognitive-idealist approach. This approach starts with Kant's "schematizing without a concept," claiming that this "schematizing without a concept" is an indeterminate schematization, and thus initiates a noncognitive-idealist interpretation of the harmony of imagination and understanding. This approach, on the one hand, solves the problem …
The Unfinished Theoretical System Of Modernism: Origins In The Forms Of Knowledge, Xiaoming Yi
The Unfinished Theoretical System Of Modernism: Origins In The Forms Of Knowledge, Xiaoming Yi
Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art
The theoretical system of Modernism remains unfinished. This is due to the unstable nature of the concept of Modernism and its complicated relationship with Modernity. More importantly, although Modernism has developed into a new type of arts in the technological context, the current perception of Modernism remains within the old humanist knowledge framework and lacks a dimension of technological knowledge. For this reason, we need to turn to media theory to understand the new aesthetic paradigm of Modernism. McLuhan's media theory, for example, can better explain such aesthetical forms. The perception of Modernism is limited by the lack of technological …