Comparative Literature Commons^™

Deleuze’S Challenge To Hegel’S Aesthetics—Chinese Aesthetics In The Confrontation Between German Classical Aesthetics And Postmodernism, Wu Yuyu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

German classical aesthetics, featuring a systematic analysis of concepts and theories, plays a fundamental role in the founding of Chinese modern aesthetics. From the 1980s, when the spread of Western theories began to flourish, Chinese scholars assimilated deconstructionist thought (for example, that of Deleuze) and started to reflect on German classical aesthetics as represented by Kant and Hegel. Chinese aesthetics presents various characteristics in the confrontation between German classical aesthetics and French deconstructionist thought. From the perspective of German classical aesthetics, China has no philosophy, tragedy, or system. The Chinese culture became a thinking resource for criticizing essentialism and dualism …

French Left-Wing Literary Theory And Mao Zedong Thought, Han Zhenjiang, Zhang Yuling

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

French left-wing literary theories have continued to accept and interpret Mao Zedong’s thought (including his theories on literature and art) from the 1960s to today. This intellectual communication enabled the formation of Louis Althusser’s structural Marxism and contemporary left-wing literary theory. Mao’s theory of contradiction and his thoughts on reliance on the popular masses, aesthetics and politics, and people’s literature and art are the major intellectual resources for Louis Althusser’s, Alain Badiou’s, and Slavoj Žižek’s theories and are fully integrated into their theoretical system and critical practice. Althusser, Badiou, and Žižek innovated materialistic dialectics on the basis of Mao’s theory …

“China Form” And The Question Of The Frankfurt School, Duan Jifang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Theories of the Frankfurt School were introduced into aesthetics studies in China at the end of the 1970s. After more than 40 years of theoretical journey, the ideas of the Frankfurt School have undergone a process from “criticism/query/opposition” to “recognition/acceptance/approval,” and have also substantially completed “theoretical linkage” with Chinese aesthetics. As a Western discourse, the theories of the Frankfurt School, like other theories, are faced with scrutinization in the Chinese context. China’s acceptance of the School plays an objective role in promoting the transformation of its contemporary aesthetic discourse, making contemporary aesthetic research in China more obvious in its problem …

Knowledge Production In The Theory Of Literature And Art In Contemporary China: From A Generations Perspective, Tao Dongfeng, Zhang Chun

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In the field of theory of literature and art (i.e., the discipline of Wenyi xue) in contemporary China, the post-1930s and the post-1950s generations (scholars who were born between 1930 and 1939 and between 1950 and 1959, respectively) are the most influential ones. They are father and son generations both in a physiological and a sociocultural sense; both occupied or are still occupying important positions in Chinese academia. Their profound differences in life experiences, educational background, intellectual structures, cultural stances, and literary perspectives significantly affect their knowledge production in Chinese literary theory. This article attempts to use Karl Mannheim’s …

Chinese Modern Leftist Affect And Aesthetic-Affective Modernity In The Global Affective Turn, Yan Fang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Influenced by China’s distinctive “qing” tradition, ranging from the “affective Enlightenment” to the sentimental/affective revolution, both China’s modern Enlightenment movement and the Chinese leftists’ endeavors for social transformation and revolution heavily relied on the emotions and affect, especially those within literature, art, and aesthetics. The dyna mics of “moods” proposed by Qu Qiubai, the “national form” movement, and the Maoist affect not only foreshadowed and actualized but also enriched the conceptualizations of feelings, emotions, and affect by Western theorists such as Gramsci, Raymond Williams, Gilles Deleuze, and Jacques Rancière. With its meticulous portrayal and innovative theorization of the …

Traveling Theory And Discursive Transformation: The Reception Of Walter Benjamin And Emmanuel Levinas In China, Wang Jiajun, Tang Qilin

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Chinese scholars are increasingly interested in Jewish philosophy and culture and the philosophical concept of redemption. That is bringing about more and more studies on Walter Benjamin and Emmanuel Levinas, two of the most well-known Jewish philosophers. In these studies, conducted with different approaches and from diverse perspectives, Chinese scholars are attempting to connect the philosophers’ theories with some of their Chinese counterparts. Overall, they are well received or Sinicized, but in different fields, and to different extent, deserving an in-depth comparative study. Obviously a large amount of works have been produced in attempts to have dialogues with Benjamin and …

The Many Afterlives Of Orientalism: Translation, Reception, And Appropriation Of Saidian Theory In China, Wu You

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

During the mass translation of Western “post-isms” since the 1990s, Saidian postcolonial theory, Orientalism in particular, was introduced to China through interpretation, reception, and appropriation in the Chinese academe, becoming an important discursive tool for the debate about China. The translated work is perceived as the “afterlife” of the original work, and Saidian theory achieves its constantly renewed and comprehensive unfolding through translation and critical reception in China. In this sense, translation contributes to the complexity and multiplicity of traveling theories, which plays an important part in the formation of Chinese literary theories. Arguably, theoretical transformation occurs through debates and …

The Making Of Chinese Meixue, Li Qingben, Wang Gang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In “The Making of Chinese Meixue,” Li and Wang discuss the Chinese translation of the term “aesthetics.” It had been believed that it was the German missionary Ernst Faber who first coined the Chinese term “meixue,” which is refuted in this paper. The view that the term “shenmeixue” in Japan was derived from Wilhelm Lobscheid’s English and Chinese Dictionary also lacks factual basis. It is true that the term “meixue” was introduced to China from the West via Japan, but it was then a term that had not yet developed within a specific …

Introduction: Western Theory’S Chinese Transformation, Zeng Jun

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Sauron: Weirdly Sexy, Robert T. Tally Jr.

Journal of Tolkien Research

A popular meme depict Galadriel and Frodo admitting that Sauron is "weirdly sexy," a humorous allusion to The Rings of Power’s Halbrand. The show's controversial revelation of Halbrand as Sauron highlights the differences between Tolkien’s construction of Second and Third Age Sauron as an attractive or admirable leader compared to Peter Jackson’s portrayal of him as a monster or disembodied fiery eyeball. This, in turn, has implications for the geopolitical order of Middle-earth in which many people legitimately might wish to be on Sauron’s side. Acknowledging Sauron's "sexiness" may allow us to see Tolkien's world system in a new …

Front Matter

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Michael Farmer. An Atlas Of The Tibetan Plateau. Volume 50 In Brill’S Tibetan Studies Library Series, Constance Wilkinson

Comparative Civilizations Review

An Atlas of the Tibetan Plateau is a masterful melding of science and art created by British architect and cartographer Michael Farmer. Based on extensive contemporary data painstakingly woven from satellite imagery, the intrepid and apparently indefatigable Farmer has, over decades, produced a unique and indispensable reference work.

Raphael Patai. The Hebrew Goddess, Third Enlarged Edition, Joseph Drew

Comparative Civilizations Review

According to the famous French philosopher and revolutionary, the Marquis de Condorcet, we can look back to history and discern therein a number of phases, stages through which the human mind evolves. The number of these is fixed as is the succession of them; progress and human perfectibility always dominate the movement. The progress of the human mind, Condorcet wrote in the Tableau des Progrès Historiques de l’Ésprit Humain, is reflected invariably in the successive stages of society. We move upward and onward, ineluctably.

The Heritage Of The Reincarnated Lama Of The Gobi, Mend-Ooyo Gombojav

Comparative Civilizations Review

In Mongolia’s Gobi desert, at the beginning of the 19th century, a remarkable boy was born. This boy was Danzanravjaa, the Fifth Noyon Hutagt of the Gobi. He became a man of extraordinary ability — a talented poet, a Buddhist teacher, a meditator and philosopher, the creator of a nomadic theater, a dramatist and lyricist, a composer of songs, a craftsman of religious objects, a natural scientist, and a traveler.

Table Of Contents

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Culture-Oriented Interpretations Of Corporate Responsibility, Berkay Orhaner Phd

Comparative Civilizations Review

Classical narratives of corporate responsibility reflect the cultural values of Western industrialized countries. Meanwhile, the understanding of corporate responsibility has been disseminated by globalization and this has resulted in culture-oriented interpretations of corporate responsibility from non-Western contexts.

This article aims to investigate the multidimensional relationship between corporate responsibility and globalization and outline culture-oriented corporate responsibility interpretations as a global phenomenon.

Amanda H. Podany. Weavers, Scribes, And Kings: A New History Of The Ancient Near East, Leland Conley Barrows

Comparative Civilizations Review

Professor Amanda Podany’s massive survey of ancient Near Eastern history reflects her commitment to interpreting and presenting the information revealed about the ancient history of this region by the cuneiform script etched on clay tablets and other mediums, the oldest examples dating back to 3000 BCE. She has endeavored to shed light on the details of the lives of ordinary people and day-to-day events by inserting microhistories of beer brewers, laundrymen, gardeners, slaves, as well as diviners, scribes, and priests into accounts of the rise and fall of kingdoms, empires, and their rulers. She declares that her book “…has been …

Military Comparison Of The Han Dynasty And The Roman Republic, Jack Tribolet

Comparative Civilizations Review

The Middle and Late Roman Republic (264 BCE - 27 BCE) and the Han Dynasty (202 BCE - 220 CE) characterized two concurrent military superpowers of the ancient world. Anchoring opposite ends of the Eurasian continent, the two powers shared structural similarities that enabled their longevity and resilience to ruination.

Michael Boym: The Polish Marco Polo, Agnieszka Couderq

Comparative Civilizations Review

The following is a selection drawn from Ms. Couderq’s written proposal for a television series based on the book she has published. It offers a summation of the life of this remarkable cross-civilizational traveler.

Full Issue

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Apotheosis Of The State And The Decline Of Civilization: A Systems Approach, Robert Bedeski

Comparative Civilizations Review

Humanity is undergoing a second Axial Age. The first, as described by Karl Jaspers, brought transcendence into the vision and self-understanding of humans and the world. The rise of secularism and “Death of God” is dissolving and fragmenting that transcendence — a vital subsystem of the civilization system. Economy, knowledge and government comprise three additional subsystems and have coalesced to form the modern sovereign state, diminishing the traditional place of religion, art and philosophy in civilizations. An example of a state lacking common institutions of transcendence was the Mongol empire. Ruling Russia for a quarter millennium, its state form was …

President's Message, Lynn Rhodes

Comparative Civilizations Review

Throughout 2023 and into 2024, the International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations has been extremely busy in the furtherance of our vision. Here are some of the highlights.

The Rise Of China And The Concept Of Civilization: Constructing Conceptual Apparatus For Cross-Civilizational Comparisons, Liah Greenfeld

Comparative Civilizations Review

The paper argues that the rise of China to a position of prominence in the contemporary world offers Western scholars a greatly expanded comparative perspective and, thus, an opportunity to re-assess their fundamental view of social reality. This comparative perspective draws attention to supra-national cultural unities, “civilizations,” first suggested by both Durkheim and Weber.

There are deficiencies in the current understanding of “civilization” in the social science literature, among others exemplified by “civilizational analysis,” and so this paper proposes a new concept which adds to the conceptual apparatus of sociological theory a new — fully independent of others — variant …

From Compromise To Confrontation: The American Secretary Of State James F. Byrnes And His Attempts To Mitigate Disagreements With The Soviet Union As The Cold War Began, John Karl

Comparative Civilizations Review

James F. Byrnes as United States Secretary of State pursued a policy based on compromise with the Soviet Union during the first year following the end of the Second World War. He was determined to use his political skill for engineering compromise in order to bring about an agreement with the Soviet Union which would lead to an era of peace. While the crucial question facing American policymakers in the wake of World War II was the creation of a new world order, a most important part of this question was the future of American-Soviet relations, the two nations that …

Reading A Global Landscape, John Berteaux

Comparative Civilizations Review

It seems a truism that while our grasp of the world is at best inconclusive, it is attended by a pressing desire to articulate the ultimate context in which our lives are set. Here, my remarks focus on the limits of our ability to explicate that context or landscape, suggesting that any attempt to de-confuse our world will be inherently inconclusive, indeterminate, and undefined. In other words, I want to encourage a little cognitive dissonance regarding our ability to make sense of the globe.

Esra Özyürek. Subcontractors Of Guilt: Holocaust Memory & Muslim Belonging In Postwar Germany, Stefan Gunther

Comparative Civilizations Review

As early as 1995, James E. Young, referring to the “social effects of public memorial spaces” (p.20) in Germany, stated that “Holocaust memorial work in Germany today remains a tortured, self-reflective, even paralyzing preoccupation.” (p.21) He continues with a series of questions: “How does a state recite, much less commemorate, the litany of its misdeeds, making them part of its reason for being? Under what memorial aegis, whose rules, does a nation remember its own barbarity? Where is the tradition for memorial mea culpa, when combined remembrance and self-indictment seem so hopelessly at odds?” (p.22)

End Matter

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Daughters And Fathers In Memoirs: Najla Said And Fatima Bhutto, Yasmina Bakry

Theses and Dissertations

The father-daughter relationship has always been crucial in shaping the identity of the daughter. Daughters inevitably inherit their fathers’ personal trauma, and in the case of the daughters of activists, national trauma as well. Throughout childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, daughters struggle to depoliticize their famous fathers, as well as assert their individuality amidst the overshadowing activism of their fathers and conflictual history of their nations. To heal the daughters’ identity fissures, they embark on a journey to chronicle memories of their fathers throughout their lives and critically assess their fathers’ cultural, social and political heritage and identity. This thesis will …

The Romani People In The European Cultural Imagination: Alexander Pushkin, Prosper Mérimée And Virginia Woolf, Nadya Siyam

Theses and Dissertations

Scholarly literature on Roma is scarce compared to other racial groups as a lack of academic interest, financial limitations, and other social and political factors has constrained it. This resulted in a cross-cultural circulation of misinformation about Romani people and the reproduction of Romani myths and stereotypes in fiction. This project aims to analyze selected literary works on Gypsies from three Eastern and Western European countries and two periods to unpack the cultural and political roots of Romani literary misrepresentation. This research employs a range of theoretical frameworks chosen to put the Gypsy protagonists under maximum spotlight without unnecessary repetition, …

Queering The Family In Zoraida Córdova’S Labyrinth Lost, Rebekah Rendon

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Córdova focuses on Alex Mortiz, a Mexican-American bruja and her journey to a fantastical otherworld to rescue her family. Alex begins to understand the love and unity that exists in her own blood family, while forging new relationships, thereby creating a found family, or queered family. The topic of this paper addresses queerness and found family dynamics in Labyrinth Lost. While many scholars have written on themes in fantasy and magical realism texts by Latino/a and Hispanic authors, these genres tend to be under-researched in literature for young adults. My argument analyzes Labyrinth Lost as emblematic …