A critical-sympathetic introduction to Linklater’s odyssey: Bridge over troubled (Eurocentric?) water

2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 581-601 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Hobson
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
The West ◽  
Civilizing Process ◽  
Harmonious World ◽  
Imperial Power ◽  
Key Word

AbstractThis article provides an ‘engaged’ introduction to this forum on Andrew Linklater’s recently published book,Violence and Civilization in the Western States-Systems. I call this ‘engaged’ because I seek to adjudicate between the critics and Linklater’s book in the hope of building a bridge over troubled water. Given that the key word that underpins many of this forum’s contributions is Eurocentrism, I explore whether, and if so to what extent, Linklater’s book is Eurocentric. While I too identify various Eurocentric cues, I also provide various defences for Linklater. In particular, the final section advances two definitions of Eurocentrism and anti-Eurocentrism. Although I identify elements of ‘Eurocentrism I’ (the elision of non-Western agency and reification of the West) in his book, Linklater might respond to the principal forum complaint that he accords little or no role to non-Western actors and processes in the Western or global civilizing process by appealing to an alternative anti-Eurocentric approach: ‘anti-Eurocentrism II’ (which focuses squarely on Western imperial power and ignores or heavily downplays non-Western agency). I close by critiquing his left-liberal cosmopolitan politics, arguing that his Eurocentric-universalist normative posture cannot create the kind of peaceful and harmonious world that he (and Kant) so desires.

Introduction: Rhetoric and realities

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Maijastina Kahlos
Keyword(s):  
Church Leaders ◽  
The West ◽  
Roman Society ◽  
Imperial Power ◽  
Christian Congregations ◽  
Late Roman

The introduction defines several concepts that are used throughout the book. The religious dissidents in late Roman society were pagans and heretics. These terms are only shorthand: ‘pagans’ for non-Christians, and ‘heretics’ for deviant Christians. They are relational, meaning that there would have been no pagans without the viewpoint of Christians. Similarly, the question of who was a heretic depended on the perceiver. The period under scrutiny saw the Christianization of imperial and ecclesiastical discourses of control. Imperial power is understood as the emperors in both the East and the West, the imperial courts, and the administration. Ecclesiastical power refers to church leaders—mainly bishops, whose authority was increasing during the fourth and fifth centuries. There was no uniform church, and Christian congregations were miscellaneous assemblages of adherents.

scholarly journals Futures beyond ‘the West’? Autoimmunity in China’s harmonious world

2015 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 156-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
ASTRID H.M. NORDIN
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Open Systems ◽  
Open Future ◽  
The West ◽  
Western Modernity ◽  
Harmonious World ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
European Democracy ◽  
To Come

AbstractIt has become fashionable among International Relations scholars to draw on the concept of ‘autoimmunity’, which some call ‘the ultimate horizon in which contemporary politics inscribes itself’. To these scholars, most of whom draw on the thought of Jacques Derrida, such logics open systems up to a future to come. At the same time, they tend to identify such logics with Europe, America, Western modernity, and/or democracy. Implied, and sometimes explicit, in their accounts is the denial of autoimmune logics at work outside such an imagined configuration.This article challenges that denial through arguing that the system of ‘harmony’, deployed in contemporary China, also works on an autoimmune logic. If autoimmunity opens up a system to the future, this is not only so for European democracy or its derivatives. Moreover, the expulsion of ‘non-Western’ others from accounts of autoimmunity undermines their rethinking of difference by falling back on an immunitary logic, denying China an open future. This exclusion is their condition of possibility. At the same time, this exclusion is what keeps open their promise of its future to come. Paradoxically, the exclusion of the ‘non-West’ is what keeps the idea of an autoimmune ‘Western’ or European democracy alive.

scholarly journals Rewolucja konsumpcyjna i kształtowanie się podmiotu emocjonalnego w perspektywie Norberta Eliasa

2015 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-136
Author(s):  
Joanna Zalewska
Keyword(s):  
Global Market ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Integration Process ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
Civilizing Process ◽  
Consumption Culture ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Second World ◽  
Process Sociology

The aim of this article is to analyze the interdependence between the processes of forming mass markets and the processes of rationalizing emotion and the shaping of modern hedonism. The author uses the perspective of Norbert Elias’s process sociology, in which the monopolization of resources results in the growth of dependence between all the inhabitants of the territory encompassed by the monopoly, and this is accompanied by a civilizing process, or the rationalization of the behaviours of individuals. The author presents the idea that the integration process at the level of humanity, as survival unit on the platform of the global market and consumption culture, is ongoing. As an example, the author analyzes the first stage in the consumer revolution in Poland after the Second World War, where fashion was shaped on one side by the socialist ideology of progress, and on the other by the romantic ethic present in communications from the West. Individual emotion as a factor guiding behaviour corresponds to the logic of the market, and fashion is the process of mediating between the market and the individual.

Tirumala Nayaka's “New Hall” and the European Study of the South Indian Temple

2001 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Crispin Branfoot
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Final Section ◽  
European Study ◽  
The South ◽  
The West ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Temple Complex ◽  
South Indian ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Architectural Sculpture

AbstractThe Pudu Mandapa (‘New Hall’) in Madurai is one of the best-known monuments from the Nayaka period of Tamilnadu (c. 1550–1700). It was built around 1630 under the patronage of Tirumala Nayaka as a major addition to the Minaksi-Sundaresvara temple complex that dominates the centre of this major Tamil town and Hindu pilgrimage centre. The Pudu Mandapa is well known in the West from the aquatint produced by Thomas and William Daniell, but this is only one of numerous other illustrations by Western and Indian artists in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century of this single Tamil temple structure. A discussion of the Pudu Mandapa as an example of a major architectural type, the festival mandapa, is followed by an examination of the structure's architectural sculpture. The final section discusses the Royal Asiatic Society's collection of drawings of this mandapa and the European documentation of the south Indian temple more generally.

Demeter and Persephone

2019 ◽  
pp. 73-136
Author(s):  
Virginia M. Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
The Other ◽  
The West ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Epinician Poetry ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Demeter And Persephone

Chapter 2 concentrates on representations of Demeter and Persephone in the Syracusan odes. The goddesses are important for two reasons. First, the Deinomenids were ancestral priests of Demeter and Persephone in Sicily and the goddesses therefore could easily be linked to the rule of this family of tyrants. On the other hand, worship of the two goddesses was widespread throughout Sicily. This chapter argues that references to Demeter and Persephone in epinician poetry for Hieron and members of his circle promote and celebrate Syracusan and Deinomenid expansion throughout the island of Sicily by aligning pan-Sicilian and Deinomenid interests and rooting them in the island’s landscape. The first section surveys the material remains for the goddesses in Sicily before exploring discussions of the goddesses in mythological, historical, and literary sources. An analysis of Pindar’s Nemean 1 then proposes that, while the link between Arethusa and Alpheos represents the close tie between Syracuse and the Panhellenic sanctuary at Olympia, Pindar’s references to Demeter and Persephone in epinician poetry define the relationship between Syracuse and the rest of Sicily under the rule of the Deinomenid tyrants. A final section argues that in contrast to the goddesses who celebrate uniquely Syracusan and Deinomenid interests, the hero Herakles articulates a role for Syracuse and the West more generally in the maintenance of the order of the Olympians.

Literatization vs. Civilization: A Preliminary Comparison of the Development of Sport in China and the West with a Focus on Violence

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 174-190
Author(s):  
Chih-Chieh Tang
Keyword(s):  
Functional Differentiation ◽  
Function System ◽  
Entertainment Industry ◽  
The West ◽  
Dual Structure ◽  
Hierarchical Order ◽  
Civilizing Process ◽  
Preliminary Comparison ◽  
Yin Yang

Abstract This article highlights the differences in the civilizing process in China by examining the development of sport. Focusing on the problem of violence, it shows how the evolution of forms of differentiation caused the decline of the violent game jiju and the rise of the elegant game chuiwan as China transformed from a strictly stratified mendi rank society to an open gentry society of greater functional differentiation. The development of the entertainment industry of cuju rather than a function system of sport documented an idiosyncratic literatization. This resulted from the structure of the first post-aristocratic society as a meritocratic commoner society. The unique yin/yang dual structure as a compromise of functional differentiation with hierarchical order brought about a paradoxical domestication of violence.

scholarly journals The American Waste: A New Take on the Conquest of the West in Paul Auster’s novel Travels in the Scriptorium // El desecho americano: Una nueva versión de la conquista del Oeste en la novela Travels in the Scriptorium de Paul Auster

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-105
Author(s):  
Sławomir Studniarz
Keyword(s):  
Mexican War ◽  
Paul Auster ◽  
The West ◽  
Westward Expansion ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Imperial Power ◽  
The Usa ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Precise Moment

      The subject of the article is the 2006 novel Travels in the Scriptorium by Paul Auster, which contains an embedded, alternative history of the USA. The article aims to demonstrate that Auster’s novel offers a revision of two essential myths of the American nation. The precise moment in the history of the USA that Auster’s novel reinvents is the time before the Mexican War and before taking over the Southwest and California. The Mexican War and its political consequences marked the transition of the USA from a republic upholding its libertarian and progressive ideals to an invading imperial power. The shift in the American policy toward its neighboring nations and peoples is reflected in Auster’s novel in the presentation of the westward expansion as a brutal invasion. Auster’s novel heavily revises the two formative myths of the American state, the myth of the West and the “errand in the wilderness,” with Manifest Destiny as its later incarnation justifying the imperialist mission. The wilderness itself is divested of spiritual significance, desacralized, as the Alien Territories are converted into the arena of carnage and indiscriminate slaughter. It is unreservedly sacrificed to the interests of the emerging imperialist enterprise, which is nothing less than the ultimate consequence of the original Puritan venture—the taming of the wilderness and the creation of a model Christian state for the rest of the world to admire. Resumen      El presente artículo gira en torno a la novela Travels in the Scriptorium (2006) de Paul Auster, en la que se narra una historia alternativa de los Estados Unidos. El artículo pretende demostrar que la novela de Auster ofrece una revisión de dos mitos esenciales de la nación norteamericana. El momento preciso de la historia de los Estados Unidos que reinventa la novela de Auster es la época anterior a la Guerra de Estados Unidos-México y antes de que se produjera la anexión del suroeste y de California. La Guerra de Estados Unidos-México y sus consecuencias políticas marcaron la transición de los EE.UU. desde una república que defendía sus ideales libertarios y progresistas a una potencia imperial invasora. El cambio de la política estadounidense con respecto a las naciones y pueblos vecinos se refleja en la novela de Auster al presentar la expansión hacia el oeste como una invasión brutal. La novela de Auster revisa en gran medida los dos mitos formativos del estado estadounidense: el mito del Oeste y la “misión en el desierto”, con el Destino Manifiesto como su encarnación posterior que justifica la misión imperialista. La propia naturaleza salvaje es despojada de su significado espiritual, desacralizada, a medida que los Territorios Foráneos se convierten en una arena para la carnicería y la matanza indiscriminadas. Esta naturaleza salvaje se sacrifica sin reservas en aras de los intereses de la empresa imperialista emergente, la cual es nada más y nada menos que la consecuencia última de la empresa puritana original: la domesticación de la naturaleza y la creación de un estado cristiano modelo para que el resto del mundo lo admire.

Shinnanga

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rhiannon Paget
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
Art History ◽  
The West ◽  
Literati Painting ◽  
Color Palette ◽  
Western Art ◽  
The Qing Dynasty ◽  
Imperial Power ◽  
The Common ◽  
Artistic Tradition

Shinnanga [新南画], or "neo-nanga," is a term that came into use during the Taisho period (1912–1926) to describe new interpretations of literati-style painting by Japanese artists at that time. Nanga [南画] is the Japanese adaptation of Chinese literati painting and is also known as nanshūga [南宗画] or "Southern style painting," bunjinga [文人画], or literati painting. Shinnanga initially referred to experimentations among artists of nihonga [日本画] [Japanese-style painting] and yōga [洋画] [Western-style painting] with themes, pictorial techniques and sensibilities associated with literati painting, including vertical landscape compositions, expressive brushwork, a reduced color palette, and an impressionistic approach to representing form. The revival of nanga and the emergence of shinnanga occurred within the context of a broader resurgence of Sinology, fueled partly by the disintegration of the Qing dynasty, Japan’s rise as an imperial power, and the ensuing shifts of power in its relationships with China and the West. Japanese scholars found in nanga an artistic tradition that could hold its own against Western art history, arguing that nanga’s preference for subjectivity over likeness inspired Western art’s movement towards Expressionism and abstraction. Nanga was championed as the pre-eminent artistic expression of East Asia, and as an example of the common heritage of countries in the region, was invoked to naturalize Japan’s project of a Greater East Asia.

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