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CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

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Reminiscing About Latin: Cases Of Life-Writing And The Classical Tradition, David Andrew Porter Dec 2018

Reminiscing About Latin: Cases Of Life-Writing And The Classical Tradition, David Andrew Porter

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Reminiscing about Latin: Cases of Life-writing and the Classical Tradition," David Andrew Porter examines the life of Latin and life-writing in Latin while drawing on other languages. He argues that post-classical Latin writing is vital to many modern writers and offers a challenge to post-Romantic conceptions of literature. He explores how Latin literary traditions affect professional and accidental writers, from the Renaissance scholar Isaac Casaubon to the Jamaican poet Francis Williams, in order to draw attention to the humour, irony and conflict in such lived experiences and writing.

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The Colonized Masculinity And Cultural Politics Of Seediq Bale, Chin-Ju Lin Dec 2018

The Colonized Masculinity And Cultural Politics Of Seediq Bale, Chin-Ju Lin

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, “The Colonized Masculinity and Cultural Politics of Seediq Bale,” Chin-ju Lin discusses a Taiwanese blockbuster movie, a postcolonial historiography and a form of life-writing, which delineates the last Indigenous insurrection against Japanese colonialism. This article explores the cultural representations in Seediq Bale. Fighting back as a colonized man for pride and dignity is portrayed as means to restore their masculine identity. The headhunting tradition is remembered, romanticized, praised highly as heroic and even strengthened in an inaccurate way to promote individualistic masculinity and to forge a new national identity in postcolonial Taiwan. Nevertheless, the stereotypical …

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Hardship And Healing Through The Lens Of Cultural Translation In Peter Hessler’S Travel Memoir River Town, Shang Wu Dec 2018

Hardship And Healing Through The Lens Of Cultural Translation In Peter Hessler’S Travel Memoir River Town, Shang Wu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The article “Hardship and Healing through the Lens of Cultural Translation in Peter Hessler’s Travel Memoir River Town” looks into the autobiographical dimension of Hessler’s account of his two-year stay as a Peace Corps teacher in Fuling, a remote town in southwestern China. Taking the two senses of cultural translation, one in anthropology and one in cultural studies, as two descriptive aspects, it illustrates the hardship Hessler confronted and his healing strategies. Faced with etiquette and language issues as well as the power relation between China and America and its consequent stereotypes in cross-cultural encounters, Hessler gazed back to …

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The Voices Of Life And Death In Shakespeare’S Narrative Poems, Jonathan Locke Hart Dec 2018

The Voices Of Life And Death In Shakespeare’S Narrative Poems, Jonathan Locke Hart

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The article “The Voices of Life and Death in Shakespeare’s Narrative Poems” uses Shakespeare’s dedications and Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece to discuss art and life, death and life, life-writing and death-writing. The relation between life and art, often framed in terms of mimesis, is fraught with difficulties, so that the connection between ethics and aesthetics is intricate. After briefly discussing the theoretical debate on mimesis, this article examines closely Shakespeare’s narrative poems, to discuss life and death as well as, to some extent, health, illness. The poems explore the themes of time, love, lust and death …

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Albert Camus' Social, Cultural And Political Migrations, Benaouda Lebdai Pr Dec 2018

Albert Camus' Social, Cultural And Political Migrations, Benaouda Lebdai Pr

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article “Albert Camus’ social, cultural and political migrations,” Benaouda LEBDAI analyses Albert Camus’ posthumous autofiction The First man, a fascinating self-representation and self -telling. Found after his deadly car accident, the manuscript adds a tragic dimension to the disguised autobiography. This paper demonstrates Camus’ capacity to migrate from one world to another, looks into the reasons behind such attitudes and stresses the significance of an outstanding life account within the on-going debate between France and Algeria about his political stands during colonial Algeria. His vision of the indigenous people, the Algerians, and of the future of colonial Algeria, …

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Shakespeare's Henry Vi And Depression, Cindy Chopoidalo Dec 2018

Shakespeare's Henry Vi And Depression, Cindy Chopoidalo

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Shakespeare’s Henry VI and Depression”, Cindy Chopoidalo discusses Shakespeare’s Henry VI plays not only as his first significant explorations of the tragic consequences of war and the price of ambition, but also as his first major treatment of a character who, in both fiction and reality, suffered from what has sometimes been described as severe clinical depression and what would have been known in Shakespeare’s time as melancholy. In Shakespeare’s Henry VI, as well as in his historical inspiration, we see an early counterpart of his later characters who have been linked to melancholy or depression, such …

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Illness, Disability, And Ethical Life Writing, G Thomas Couser Dec 2018

Illness, Disability, And Ethical Life Writing, G Thomas Couser

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article “Illness, Disability, and Ethical Life Writing,” G. Thomas Couser discusses illness and disability as related to ethical Life Writing. Since the issues came to his attention in the early 1990s, narratives of illness and disability have continued to proliferate in the US. And today, even as psychiatry moves away from narrative therapy toward drug therapy, narrative competence is being emphasized in the treatment of non-mental illness. Whether inside or outside the clinic, narratives of illness and disability can be in and of themselves restorative, if not healing. And yet, the production of such narratives is not without …

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Introduction To Voices Of Life, Illness And Disabilities In Life Writing And Medical Narratives, I-Chun Wang, Jonathan Locke Hart Dec 2018

Introduction To Voices Of Life, Illness And Disabilities In Life Writing And Medical Narratives, I-Chun Wang, Jonathan Locke Hart

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Life writing is a narrative and discourse on the self from social, psychological and biographical perspectives. This special issue includes eleven essays addressing recurrent themes in life writing such as migration, medical narratives and cultural memories. Through voices of life, illness, suffering, disabilities and death, the authors not only question a traditional sense of self but also provoke further debates on human values and facets of identity formation.

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Selected Bibliography For The Study Of Belief In Contemporary Global Capitalism, Fu-Jen Chen, Su-Lin Yu Dec 2018

Selected Bibliography For The Study Of Belief In Contemporary Global Capitalism, Fu-Jen Chen, Su-Lin Yu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

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Decolonizing Adoption Narratives For Transnational Reproductive Justice, Sung Hee Yook, Hosu Kim Dec 2018

Decolonizing Adoption Narratives For Transnational Reproductive Justice, Sung Hee Yook, Hosu Kim

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article “Decolonizing Adoption Narratives for Transnational Reproductive Justice,” Sung Hee Yook and Hosu Kim examine narratives emerging from transnational adoption practices, focusing on how birth mothers’ narratives—in which a victim-mother makes choices to give a child for adoption in hopes of a better life for the child, and awaits that child’s return—develop alongside and deviate from the normative orders of motherhood. While birth mothers’ self-transformative narrative illuminates their subjectivities—apart from victimhood, simmering in the latent form of agency—Yook and Kim argue that a compelling narrative of self-mastery produces another discursive trap which renders the numerous less-masterful birth mothers …

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Mindfulness And Heightened Consciousness In Phillip Zarrilli’S Psychophysical Approach To Acting, Tsu-Chung Su Dec 2018

Mindfulness And Heightened Consciousness In Phillip Zarrilli’S Psychophysical Approach To Acting, Tsu-Chung Su

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Mindfulness and Heightened Consciousness in Phillip Zarrilli’s Psychophysical Approach to Acting," Tsu-Chung Su intends to explore the significance of mindfulness and heightened consciousness in Zarrilli’s psychophysical approach to acting. Su first traces and discusses the Chinese and Indian sources, resources, and knowledge that have forged Zarrilli’s psychophysical acting techniques, theories, and approaches. Then, he critically examines and assesses the efficacy of Zarrilli’s approach which combines Western theatrical concepts and techniques with what he self-consciously borrows from Chinese qi and taijiquan, Indian ayurvedic medicine, Vedic philosophy, performing aesthetics, Hindu religion, kathakali, yoga, meditation, massage, and kalarippayattu …

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Adopting The Unadoptable/Disabled Subject In The Posthuman Era, Fu-Jen Chen Dec 2018

Adopting The Unadoptable/Disabled Subject In The Posthuman Era, Fu-Jen Chen

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article “Adopting the Unadoptable/Disabled Subject in the Posthuman Era,” Fu-Jen Chen first examines three memoirs that demonstrate prevalent features of today’s narratives by parents with adopted children of special needs and next offers a theoretical and ontological investigation of disability. He suggests that we have to change the way we relate to disability: to recognize it not as an external limitation but an internal as well as pre-existent division and to re-orient ourselves to the ontological truth that we are always already “disabled/otherized” especially in the posthuman era when the body is seen to exceed existing boundaries of …

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A Sinful Reaction To Capitalist Ethics In No Quiero Quedarme Sola Y Vacía (2006), Celina Bortolotto Dec 2018

A Sinful Reaction To Capitalist Ethics In No Quiero Quedarme Sola Y Vacía (2006), Celina Bortolotto

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article “A Sinful Reaction to Capitalist Ethics in No quiero quedarme sola y vacía (2006)” Celina Bortolotto analyzes how Lozada’s characterization of the main character, La Loca, questions the ideals of free agency offered by consumerist capitalism and the urban gay male ideal under the promise of a liberating gay lifestyle in a social context defined by identity politics. The novel is a fictionalized autobiographical account of Puerto Rican author Angel Lozada’s misadventures in the early 2000s gay scene in New York. This essay plays with the punitive sense of the word “capital” in the seven capital sins …

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The Rise Of The Neoliberal Chinese Female Subject In Go Lala Go, Su-Lin Yu Dec 2018

The Rise Of The Neoliberal Chinese Female Subject In Go Lala Go, Su-Lin Yu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Built upon feminist critique of neoliberalism, this paper will examine a prominent medium through which neoliberal feminist ideology is disseminated: Go Lala Go. By analyzing the film, I will show how it co-opts the discourse of neoliberalism, and reworks it to construct neoliberal female subjects. First, I will explore what kind of role neoliberalism has enacted in the formation of an emergent type of female subject in China. Then, I will demonstrate how the contentious process of neoliberal feminism affects young career women’s identities. More than career guides promoting different techniques for making women more successful at their workplaces, …

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Innovation, Entrepreneurship, And The Spirit Of Digital Capitalism, Collin Chua Dec 2018

Innovation, Entrepreneurship, And The Spirit Of Digital Capitalism, Collin Chua

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article “Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and the Spirit of Digital Capitalism,”Collin Chua analyzes the myth of innovation and the fantasy of entrepreneurship. The article draws on foundational perspectives regarding the spirit of capitalism established by Max Weber, later extended by Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello. The myth of innovation is interrogated, as innovation now operates as a rhetorical and managerial strategy that must be pursued in order to be competitive in today’s capitalist system. The fantasy of entrepreneurship is explored, as it serves as a coping mechanism for the fragmentation and erosion of traditional work arrangements and structures. The article …

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Introduction To Belief In Contemporary Global Capitalism, Fu-Jen Chen Dec 2018

Introduction To Belief In Contemporary Global Capitalism, Fu-Jen Chen

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This special issue addresses the broad and complex nexus among three topics: belief, subjectivity, and contemporary global capitalism. It explores the intersection of material practices, ideational dimensions, and the subjective dynamics of global capitalism. The interdisciplinary contributions in this special issue come from authors in Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, South Korea, Turkey, and the United States. And the articles gathered in this issue are to explore a wide range of topics, varying from entrepreneurship and digital capitalism to neoliberalism and postfeminism; from fundamentalism and terrorism to Protestantism and contemporary homosexual identity; from body and ableism to mind and New Age …

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Personal Geography, Floating Identities And Inter-Asian Migration In Stories By Migrant Workers In Taiwan, I-Chun Wang Dec 2018

Personal Geography, Floating Identities And Inter-Asian Migration In Stories By Migrant Workers In Taiwan, I-Chun Wang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Personal Geography, floating Identities and Inter-Asian Migration in Stories by Migrant Workers in Taiwan," I-Chun Wang discusses narratives by migrant workers with the purpose of looking into their personal geographies, their possibilities of integration, their floating identities and their dreams of settlement and possible success. This paper stresses the stories of migration show not only common human values, shared across cultures and creolization, but also sad stories of human-rights violations, injustices, discrimination, and even human trafficking. In these fictional stories or witness literature, cross-cultural conflicts, cultural in-betweenness and cultural hybridity are intertwined with the migrants’ ways to …

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Cultural Industries In China And Their Importance In Asian Communities, Qingben Li Dec 2018

Cultural Industries In China And Their Importance In Asian Communities, Qingben Li

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article “Cultural Industries in China and their Importance in Asian Communities”, Qingben Li discusses the concept of cultural industries in China, the new trend and the importance of cultural industries in Asia. Following the model of the One Asia Foundation, Li argues that cultural industries will play an ever-increasing important role in economy. Contrary to thoughts held by some Western scholars, Li points out, Chinese culture has not always been closed, but open and inclusive to the world in general. Moreover, Li argues that the unique combination of Chinese traditional culture and new media will have an important …

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Maoist Aesthetics In Western Left-Wing Thought, Jun Zeng, Siying Duan Sep 2018

Maoist Aesthetics In Western Left-Wing Thought, Jun Zeng, Siying Duan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article “Maoist Aesthetics in Western Left-wing Thought,” Jun Zeng and Siying Duan discuss a terrain of knowledge called “Maoist aesthetics,” which is the creative misreading of Mao’s “On Contradiction,” the theory and practice of “Cultural Revolution” and other revolutionary literature and arts of Mao’s time by Western Left intellectuals. Scholars and academic communities inspired by Maoism include Bertolt Brecht, Herbert Marcuse, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Louis Pierre Althusser, the Chinese period of Tel Quel, Fredric Jameson, Arif Dirlik, and Contemporary Radical Left intellectuals such as Alain Badiou and Slavoj Zizek. Comparative study of the mutual influence of …

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Mapping Out Chinese Modernity And Alternative Modernity, Song Li Sep 2018

Mapping Out Chinese Modernity And Alternative Modernity, Song Li

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, “Mapping Out Chinese Modernity and Alternative Modernity,” Song Li reviews the writings of Kang Liu, particularly his Aesthetics and Marxism. Kang Liu studies the intellectual trajectory of Chinese Marxism from its inception to its post-Mao phases of transformation by comparing it with the cultural and aesthetic thinking of Western Marxism. It provides not only a new perspective for the study of Marxism in general and Chinese Marxism in particular, but also opens up a new space for mapping out Chinese modernity and alternative modernity. Its 2012 Chinese translation makes it more accessible in China, and it will …

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Introduction: Rethinking Critical Theory And Maoism, Kang Liu Sep 2018

Introduction: Rethinking Critical Theory And Maoism, Kang Liu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, "Rethinking Critical Theory and Maoism," Kang Liu reviews the existing literature in English on the relationship of Critical Theory and Maoism and discusses the need to explore and reconstruct a genealogy of Critical Theory and Maoism within the global context of political, ideological, and intellectual currents and trends. The special issue will focus on three clusters of issues: first, the western invention of Maoism as a universal theory of revolution; second, the reception of Critical Theory in China and its relationship to Maoism; and third, the relevance of Maoism and Critical Theory today. Liu raises the question …

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Maoism In Culture: A “Glocalized” Or “Sinicized” Marxist Literary Theory, Ning Wang Sep 2018

Maoism In Culture: A “Glocalized” Or “Sinicized” Marxist Literary Theory, Ning Wang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his essay "Maoism in Culture," Ning Wang discusses the importance to literature and art of Mao's famous "Yan'an Talks" as one of his most representative works. Maoism, or Mao Zedong Thought as is generally called in China, is a "glocalized" or "Sinicized" Marxism initiated and developed by Mao and his comrades in arms and successors in China. Wang argues that although Maoism is not a dogmatically "imported" Marxism from the West, it has indeed grasped some fundamental Marxist principles in combination with the concrete Chinese literary and critical practice. Thus a "glocalized" or "Sinicized" Marxist literary theory has contributed …

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Mao's "On Contradiction," Mao-Hegel/Mao-Deleuze, Kenneth Surin Sep 2018

Mao's "On Contradiction," Mao-Hegel/Mao-Deleuze, Kenneth Surin

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Mao Tse-Tung's famous 1937 essay "On Contradiction" is regarded as a significant attempt to redefine and reapply Marx's notion of a "dialectical contradiction" to the Chinese revolutionary conjuncture of Mao's time. I set out the principles outlined in Mao's essay, before arguing that the revolutionary conjuncture of his time no longer exists in the era of globalization and neoliberalism. I conclude that a new conception of "antagonism" is needed, and revise Mao's position with the aid of the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari.

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Traveling Theory: Fredric Jameson’S Interpretations Of The Cultural Revolution And Maoism, Xian Wang Sep 2018

Traveling Theory: Fredric Jameson’S Interpretations Of The Cultural Revolution And Maoism, Xian Wang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, "Traveling Theory: Fredric Jameson’s Interpretations of the Cultural Revolution and Maoism," Xian Wang discusses how Fredric Jameson transformed or “transcoded” the Chinese Cultural Revolution into his notion of cultural revolution, regarding it as a radical means to achieve decolonization and national liberation. The Chinese Cultural Revolution therefore became a model for cultural revolution in different parts of the world, and an alternative vision of modernity. Jameson also associates Maoism and the Cultural Revolution with Antonio Gramsci’s concept of subalternity, and considers cultural revolution as an ideological revolution for the oppressed classes. Taking Maoism as a traveling theory, …

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The “Althusser-Mao” Problematic And The Reconstruction Of Historical Materialism: Maoism, China And Althusser On Ideology, Fang Yan Sep 2018

The “Althusser-Mao” Problematic And The Reconstruction Of Historical Materialism: Maoism, China And Althusser On Ideology, Fang Yan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article “The ‘Althusser-Mao’ Problematic and the Reconstruction of Historical Materialism: Maoism, China and Althusser on Ideology,” Fang Yan analyses the “Althusser-Mao” problematic which was first brought up by Liu Kang, outlining how Mao’s ideas contributed to the formation of Althusser’s theory of ideology. The paper is divided into three parts: first, how Mao influenced Althusser’s propositions of the primacy of relations of production and reciprocal action of the superstructure; secondly, how Mao influenced Althusser’s notions of ideological practice, Ideological State Apparatuses and ideological class struggle; and finally, how Althusser drew on Mao in the formation of the concept …

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Chinese Theories Of "Anti-Modern" Or Alternative Modernity: Arif Dirlik, Liu Kang, And Wang Hui, Wu Yuyu Sep 2018

Chinese Theories Of "Anti-Modern" Or Alternative Modernity: Arif Dirlik, Liu Kang, And Wang Hui, Wu Yuyu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In Yuyu Wu’s article, "There and Back Again: A Critical Study on 'Anti-modern Modernity,'" the author discusses the arguments about "anti-modern modernity," raised by Arif Dirlik, Kang Liu and Hui Wang, and compares different contexts in which China’s modernity has been understood and interpreted. Both Dirlik and Liu reflect upon western Critical Theory through analysis of the Chinese experience, while Wang brings this theory back to China. However, in this two-way journey, a structural change occurs. By justifying China’s historical experience through abstract western theories, western Critical Theory has not only lost its sharp critical edge, but also transmogrified into …

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From The "Other" To The "Master Narrative": The Chinese Journey Of The Frankfurt School, Guohua Zhu, Xiangchun Meng Sep 2018

From The "Other" To The "Master Narrative": The Chinese Journey Of The Frankfurt School, Guohua Zhu, Xiangchun Meng

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article, "From the 'Other' to the 'Master Narrative': The Chinese Journey of the Frankfurt School," Guohua Zhu and Xiangchun Meng discuss the Chinese reception of Frankfurt School and the Maoist historical context. Chinese scholars take the narrow view of the Frankfurt School theories as a depoliticized instrument to explain Chinese practice, particularly in the realm of mass culture. Furthermore, the Frankfurt School has encountered the powerful political and ideological legacy of Maoism, which not only dictates instrumentalist view, but also predisposes to a nationalistic attitude that pits Chinese exceptionalism against universalism, including the Frankfurt School and other western …

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The Political (Un)Conscious: Rethinking Aesthetics From A Cross-Cultural Perspective, Xiaohong Zhang Sep 2018

The Political (Un)Conscious: Rethinking Aesthetics From A Cross-Cultural Perspective, Xiaohong Zhang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, "The Political (Un)conscious: Rethinking Aesthetics from a Cross-Cultural Perspective," Xiaohong Zhang adopts a cross-cultural perspective, examining the cultural-specific nuances of critical terms like race, class and gender, all of which have bearings on our perception and conception of aesthetics. Drawing on Emory Elliot's groundbreaking book, Aesthetics in a Multicultural Age (2002), the paper probes into the aesthetic experience whose primary effect is to depragmatize. Along this line of thinking, the author draws attention to the aesthetic impetus of two Nobel laureates, Mo Yan and Gao Xingjian, whose rewriting of Western classics demonstrates Chinese authors' shared predilection for …

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Conflicting Neo-Colonialist Narratives In The Representation Of Africa In Ngugi And Naipaul's Novels, Weiping Li, Xiuli Zhang Aug 2018

Conflicting Neo-Colonialist Narratives In The Representation Of Africa In Ngugi And Naipaul's Novels, Weiping Li, Xiuli Zhang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "Conflicting Neo-colonialist Narratives in the Representation of Africa in Ngugi and Naipaul's Novels" Weiping Li and Xiuli Zhang analyze the conflicting neo-colonialist narratives by comparing the different representations of the post-independent Africa between Ngugi's Petals of Blood and Naipaul's A Bend in the River. The multiple narrators in Petals of Blood expose imperialists' continuing domination of Africa, while the limited third person narrator in A Bend in the River blames the African people for the deterioration and chaos of the African society. One from an insider's perspective, the other from the outsider's, Ngugi and Naipaul thus form …

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The Subversion Of East And West In Orhan Pamuk’S Novel, The White Castle, Adile Aslan Almond Jun 2018

The Subversion Of East And West In Orhan Pamuk’S Novel, The White Castle, Adile Aslan Almond

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "The subversion of East and West in Orhan Pamuk's novel, The White Castle" Adile Aslan seeks to show how Orhan Pamuk plays with the theme of East versus West in his third novel The White Castle (1985), with the aim of de-essentializing both concepts. In 1928, Perso-Arabic script, in use for centuries as the main writing system in the Ottoman Empire, was replaced with Latin alphabet (accompanied by an intensive Turkification of the Ottoman language in the coming years) as a part of a larger modernization-Westernization project in the new nation state, a move which effectively …

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