Dialectical Materialism Serves Voluntarist Productivism: The Epistemic Foundation of Lysenkoism in Socialist China and North Vietnam

This paper deals with the impact that Karl Marx"s Das Kapital (and especially its fourth volume, the theory of Surplus Value) had on the category of economy in Kazimir Malevich"s output. In a series of texts, Malevich proclaims economy the new criterion of art and the Black Square its embodiment in contemporary painting. While the author was analyzing Marx"s views on labor and human nature, echoes of them turned up in Malevich"s manifestos and philosophical essays where the artist pondered the idea of the liberation of creative exaltation. The article others an interpretation of the creative process itself from the standpoint of economy, which for Malevich provided an opportunity to lay down the foundation for a new kind of art that was consistent with the prevailing ideology. The author points out that while Malevich was in Vitebsk he studied Marx"s works with idea of incorporating economic studies into art: his speculations on the relationships between the ideological superstructure and the practical, economic base were written in the manner of Marxist philosophy and provided the basis for his main essays, The World as Non-Objectivity (1923) and Suprematism: Thee World as Non-Objectivity or Eternal Rest (1923-1924). They defined the new art as an independent ideological superstructure positioned “outside of other contents and ideologies.” Parallel to that, the author examines the correspondence between Malevich"s theory of the surplus element and Marxist doctrines on surplus value. It is also shown that Malevich hoped to prove that, as in dialectical materialism, his new surplus element opens the way to a new artistic structure that is emerging from the womb of the old system in the same way that communism comes about as a kind of heterogeneous body from within the underpinnings of bourgeois society.

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The New Historicism

10.1093/oso/9780198810315.003.0002 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Marjorie Levinson

Keyword(s):

Dialectical Materialism ◽

The Other ◽

New Historicism ◽

Turn On ◽

The World ◽

Previous Decade ◽

Critical Turn ◽

The Relationship

Chapter 2 studies the relationship between historicism and Romanticism. It locates the two between Enlightenment materialism, on one side, and Marxian historical and dialectical materialism, on the other. In so doing, it isolates a paradox of materialism—namely, its production of the very concepts that undo it. These include the ideas of knowing as dissociated conceptual activity, and consciousness as absolute negativity. Romanticism and historicism, it is argued, represent solutions to a common problem—a claim defended through a reading of Wordsworth’s sonnet “The world is too much with us.” In considering how we position ourselves in relation to past literature, the chapter evaluates the choices between contemplation and empathy, knowledge and power, blame and defense. As such, it represents the first move in a self-critical turn on the new historicist method that had shaped the author’s—and part of the field’s—work in the previous decade.

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Vietnamese Historical Writing

10.1093/oso/9780199225996.003.0028 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Patricia Pelley

Keyword(s):

Cold War ◽

East Asian ◽

History Writing ◽

Southern State ◽

The Past ◽

South Vietnam ◽

Political Function ◽

Different Types ◽

The Cold War ◽

North Vietnam

This chapter demonstrates how the process of decolonization and the ensuing separation of Vietnam into a northern and southern state as part of the Cold War in Asia led to different types of history-writing. In both Vietnamese regimes, the writing of history had to serve the state, and in both countries historians emphasized its political function. Whereas North Vietnam located itself in an East Asian and Marxist context, historians of South Vietnam positioned it within a Southeast Asian setting and took a determinedly anti-communist position. After 1986—over a decade after reunification—with past tensions now relaxed, the past could be revaluated more openly under a reformist Vietnamese government that now also permitted much greater interaction with foreign historians.

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Hegel's Conception of the Study of Human Nature

Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement ◽

10.1017/s0080443600000066 ◽

1970 ◽

Vol 4 ◽

pp. 32-47

Author(s):

H. B. Acton

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Human Nature ◽

Dialectical Materialism ◽

Philosophy Of History ◽

Formal Logic ◽

Human Society ◽

Royal Family ◽

Dialectical Method ◽

English Speaking ◽

The Creation

It is easy to understand why Hegel's philosophy should be little studied by English-speaking philosophers today. Those who at the beginning of the twentieth century initiated the movement we are now caught up in presented their earliest philosophical arguments as criticisms of the prevailing Anglo-Hegelian views. It may now be thought illiberal to take much interest in this perhaps excusably slaughtered royal family, and positively reactionary to hanker after the foreign dynasty from which it sometimes claimed descent. Hegel was a systematic philosopher with a scope hardly to be found today, and men who, as we say, wish to keep up with their subject may well be daunted at the idea of having to understand a way of looking at philosophy which they suspect would not repay them for their trouble anyway. Furthermore, since Hegel wrote, formal logic has advanced in ways he could not have foreseen, and has, it seems to many, destroyed the whole basis of his dialectical method. At the same time, the creation of a science of sociology, it is supposed, has rendered obsolete the philosophy of history for which Hegel was at one time admired. In countries where there are Marxist intellectuals, Hegel does get discussed as the inadvertent forerunner of historical and dialectical materialism. But in England, where there is no such need or presence, there do not seem to be any very strong ideological reasons for discussing him. In what follows I shall be asking you to direct your thoughts to certain forgotten far-off things which I hope you will find historically interesting even if you do not agree with me that they give important clues for an understanding of human nature and human society.

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The origins of cultural divergence: evidence from Vietnam

Journal of Economic Growth ◽

10.1007/s10887-021-09194-x ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Hoang-Anh Ho ◽

Peter Martinsson ◽

Ola Olsson

Keyword(s):

Cultural Differences ◽

Current Distribution ◽

Household Survey ◽

Mekong River ◽

Cultural Norms ◽

Population Census ◽

Territorial Expansion ◽

And Migration ◽

Historical Accounts ◽

North Vietnam

AbstractCultural norms diverge substantially across societies, often within the same country. We propose and investigate a self-domestication/selective migration hypothesis, proposing that cultural differences along the individualism–collectivism dimension are driven by the out-migration of individualistic people from collectivist core regions of states to peripheral frontier areas, and that such patterns of historical migration are reflected even in the current distribution of cultural norms. Gaining independence in 939 CE after about a thousand years of Chinese colonization, historical Vietnam emerged in the region that is now north Vietnam with a collectivist social organization. From the eleventh to the eighteenth centuries, historical Vietnam gradually expanded its territory southward to the Mekong River Delta through repeated waves of conquest and migration. Using a nationwide household survey, a population census, and a lab-in-the-field experiment, we demonstrate that areas annexed earlier to historical Vietnam are currently more prone to collectivist norms, and that these cultural norms are embodied in individual beliefs. Relying on many historical accounts, together with various robustness checks, we argue that the southward out-migration of individualistic people during the eight centuries of the territorial expansion is an important driver, among many others, of these cultural differences.

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Cassava Starch Processing at Small Scale in North Vietnam

Starch - Stärke ◽

10.1002/star.200800202 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 60 (7) ◽

pp. 358-372 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Guillaume Da ◽

Dominique Dufour ◽

Claude Marouzé ◽

Mai Le Thanh ◽

Pierre‐André Maréchal

Keyword(s):

Cassava Starch ◽

Small Scale ◽

North Vietnam

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A revision of the genus Morphostenophanes Pic, 1925 (Coleoptera, Tenebrionidae, Stenochiinae, Cnodalonini)

Zootaxa ◽

10.11646/zootaxa.4769.1.1 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 4769 (1) ◽

pp. 1-81

Author(s):

DE-YAO ZHOU

Keyword(s):

New Species ◽

Identification Key ◽

New Subspecies ◽

Species Groups ◽

North Vietnam ◽

First Time ◽

Coleoptera Tenebrionidae

The genus Morphostenophanes Pic, 1925 is redefined and revised. Seventeen new species and three new subspecies are described, including M. aenescens yelang Zhou, new subspecies, M. bannaensis Zhou, new species, M. brevigaster Zhou, new species, M. chongli Zhou, new species, M. crassus Zhou, new species, M. furvus Zhou, new species, M. furvus weishanus Zhou, new subspecies, M. gaoligongensis Zhou, new species, M. iridescens Zhou, new species, M. lincangensis Zhou, new species, M. linglong Zhou, new species, M. metallicus Zhou, new species, M. minor, Zhou, new species, M. planus Zhou, new species, M. purpurascens Zhou, new species, M. sinicus Zhou, new species, and M. yunnanus Zhou, new species from Yunnan, China; M. chongli glaber Zhou, new subspecies from Yunnan, China and North Vietnam; M. curvitibialis Zhou, new species from Guangxi, China, and M. luoxiaoshanus Zhou, new species from Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi, China. M. birmanicus (Kaszab, 1980) is recorded from China (Yunnan) for the first time. M. papillatus Kaszab, 1941 is firstly recorded from Yunnan and Sichuan, China. Two poorly known species, M. aenescens Pic, 1925 and M. vietnamicus Kaszab, 1980 are redescribed. Male of M. atavus (Kaszab, 1960) is described in detail. Misidentifications of M. aenescens Pic. 1925 and M. atavus (Kaszab, 1960) in previous works are corrected. Six species groups are proposed. A species catalog, identification key and distributional maps for the genus are given.

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