The Pluralist Interpretation of Chinese Marxist Aesthetics in Contemporary European Scholarship

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Qilin Fu ◽  
Shubo Gao
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Critical Reception ◽  
Variation Theory ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Universal Applicability

In Europe there have appeared several important collections on Marxist literary theory, such as Francis Mulhern’s Contemporary Marxist Literary Criticism (1992) and Terry Eagleton and Drew Milne’s Marxist Literary Theory: A Reader (1996). However, Chinese voices are not included at all in these volumes. Maybe this lacuna results from a lack of awareness of Chinese Marxist aesthetics on the part of most European literary historians and critics. In this article, we seek to discuss the circumstances of European scholars’ contacts with Chinese Marxist aesthetics, mainly in the 1960s and 1970s. Starting from the variation theory perspective proposed by Shunqing Cao we will discuss how European scholars read and misread what they perceived as the meaning and universal applicability of what was happening in China at the time. The discussion is divided into three parts: the utopian interpretation of the Chinese theory of revolution in France, the critical reception by Eastern European Marxists, and the sympathetic interpretation by sinologists such as the Dutch diplomat and literary scholar Douwe Fokkema.

Concrete Monsters of the Welfare State: Discussions of Brutalist Architecture on Social Media

2021 ◽  
pp. 120633122110193
Author(s):  
Max Holleran
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Municipal Governments ◽  
Online Social Media ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Welfare State

Brutalist architecture is an object of fascination on social media that has taken on new popularity in recent years. This article, drawing on 3,000 social media posts in Russian and English, argues that the buildings stand out for their arresting scale and their association with the expanding state in the 1960s and 1970s. In both North Atlantic and Eastern European contexts, the aesthetic was employed in publicly financed urban planning projects, creating imposing concrete structures for universities, libraries, and government offices. While some online social media users associate the style with the overreach of both socialist and capitalist governments, others are more nostalgic. They use Brutalist buildings as a means to start conversations about welfare state goals of social housing, free university, and other services. They also lament that many municipal governments no longer have the capacity or vision to take on large-scale projects of reworking the built environment to meet contemporary challenges.

scholarly journals Resistance to Anti-Discrimination Law in Central and Eastern Europe–a Post-Communist Legacy?

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 627-656 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Havelková
Keyword(s):  
Gender Discrimination ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Equal Treatment ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Negative Attitudes ◽  
Substantive Equality ◽  
Antidiscrimination Law ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Uk

AbstractPost-communist Central and Eastern European ('CEE') legislators and judges have been resistant to equality and antidiscrimination law. This Article argues that these negative attitudes can be explained in part by the specific trajectory that EAL has taken in CEE during and after state socialism, which has differed from Western Europe. In the UK/EU, the formal guarantees of equal treatment and prohibitions of discrimination of the 1960s and 1970s were complemented by a more substantive understanding of equality in the 1990s and 2000s. This development was reversed in CEE—substantive equality, of a certain kind, preceded rather than followed formal equality and antidiscrimination guarantees.The State Socialist concern with equality was real, and yet the project was incomplete in several significant ways. It saw only socio-economic, but not socio-cultural inequalities (relating to dignity, identity or diversity). It was transformative with regards to class, but not other discrimination grounds, especially not gender. While equality was a constitutionally enshrined principle, there was an absence of any corresponding enforceable antidiscrimination right. Finally, the emphasis on the “natural” differences between the sexes meant that sex/gender discrimination was not recognized as conflicting with women's constitutional equality guarantees.

Literary theorists in and beyond French academic space (1960–1970s)

2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (5) ◽  
pp. 1108-1123
Author(s):  
Lucile Dumont
Keyword(s):  
Literary Theory ◽  
Public Engagement ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
French History ◽  
Social Strategies ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Collective Strategy

This article demonstrates how social strategies deployed at the margins of French academic space to legitimize theoretical approaches to literary texts (semiology, semantics, structural analysis of narratives) in the 1960s and 1970s strongly relied on the interventions of their promoters beyond the academy. It specifically examines two strategies privileged by promoters of literary theory which allowed some of them to bypass several requirements for academic careers in taking advantage of the transformations of higher education, of the absence of stable and strong disciplinary frames, and of their own integration into the intellectual and literary fields. First, either through the alliance with literary avant-gardes or by the temporary constitution as one, the collective strategy of the literary avant-garde became a way to engage both politically and aesthetically. Second, the investment of transnational networks and internationalization allowed the critics and theorists to get around the national path to symbolic and academic consecration, and to reframe the modalities of their public engagement. Ultimately, this article offers an understanding of how, for aspirant or marginalized academics, interventions beyond the perimeter of the academic space have, at a certain point in French history, helped their acquisition of academic legitimacy.

FRATERNAL FRIENDS: SOUTH AFRICAN COMMUNISTS AND CZECHOSLOVAKIA, 1945–89

2020 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-239
Author(s):  
Tom Lodge ◽  
Milan Oralek
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Key Skills ◽  
Democratic Revolution ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
African Nationalism

AbstractCzechoslovak ‘people's democracy’ supplied a model for the development of a South African notion of a ‘national democratic’ revolution as well as providing key skills and resources. Czechoslovak support for this project in the 1960s and 1970s was both a source of confidence and fragility for South African Communists, boosting morale but confirming their subordinate status in their partnership with African nationalism. Drawing upon Czech archival materials as well as memoirs and interviews, this paper explores encounters and connections between South African Communists and the Czechs against the backdrop of the broader strategic concerns that shaped Soviet and Eastern European support for South African liberatory politics.

External Challenges to Soviet Ideology in the Second Half of the 1960s and in the 1970s

Istoriya ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (11 (109)) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Fedor Sinitsyn
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Convergence Theory ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Communist Ideology ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Soviet Ideology ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S

The Soviet Union's foreign policy challenges of the 1960s and 1970s had an ideological aspect to them. Contradictions between Soviet Communism and Eastern European socialist models of development became more pronounced. Eastern European socialist countries began to emphasize the variety of models for “building socialism” and offered their own theories, not sanctioned by Moscow, of the construction of socialism in other European countries. Certain “ideological dangers” for the USSR also came from the Communist parties of capitalist countries. Authority of the Soviet Union and the CPSU among Western communists had declined. The weakening of the influence of Soviet ideology in the world had become evident. As a result, Western communists began to distance themselves from the USSR and the “Socialist Bloc” countries. In the post-war years, the authorities and the elites of the “Capitalist Bloc” countries took additional measures to reduce the popularity of the Communist ideology by promoting the idea of “social compromise instead of social revolution”. One of the most significant challenges to Soviet ideology was also the “convergence theory”. The socio-economic models developed in capitalist countries — especially the concept of the “welfare state” — presented another serious challenge. As a result of these trends and an increase in the standard of living in capitalist countries, there was a “de-ideologization” as well as a decrease in mass revolutionism of the population. The external challenges to Soviet ideology were regarded in Moscow with dismay. New ideological and socio-political concepts in capitalist countries were perceived negatively by the Kremlin. The external challenges had a negative impact on the mass consciousness of Soviet citizens. The article concludes that during the period under review, the challenges posed to Soviet ideology from abroad began to be complex. This article also gives classification of these challenges and reveals main ways of their manifestation.

Toward a Foucauldian Literary Criticism

Poetics Today ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 471-499
Author(s):  
Ryan Devitt
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Affect Theory ◽  
Georges Bataille ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Maurice Blanchot ◽  
Marquis De Sade ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Friedrich Hölderlin

Abstract The article argues for the renewed relevance of Foucault's early essays on literature, written throughout the 1960s, given a return to anthropological reflection in so much literary theory today (especially through affect theory and “new” phenomenologies—both of which rely on older categories supplied by psychoanalysis). On one hand, Foucault reminds us of all the “warped and twisted forms of reflection” that arise from anthropological thought, with its assumptions regarding the “unthought” and the hidden structures of sense and perception. This same Foucault, on the other hand, is deeply engaged with literature; his writings on a range of authors—from Homer and Cervantes, to Friedrich Hölderlin and the Marquis de Sade, to Georges Bataille and Maurice Blanchot—constitute nothing less than an oeuvre. And yet, despite proposals to move beyond Foucauldian critique and its orthodoxy in literary studies today, hardly anything has been thought or said about this body of work in which Foucault, as David Carroll points out, “has the most to say about literature and language.” This lacuna is all the more surprising, since Foucault's early essays offer a rich and fruitful understanding of the being of literature as more than a limpid reflection of the body. In his reading of Bataille and Blanchot in particular, Foucault offers a unique vision of literature that is neither suspicious nor negative but that, in connection with his well-known critique of finitude, culminates in a hopeful call for openness.

scholarly journals Hierarchical Assemblages of Citizenship and Belonging: The Pedestrian Speech Acts of British Gujarati Indian Walkers

Sociology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 159-180
Author(s):  
Aarti Ratna
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Minority ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
African Caribbean ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Racial Ethnic ◽  
Racial And Ethnic Minority

The 2018 Windrush generation controversy, made public state-induced hostilities towards African Caribbean citizens of the nation. However, this is not a new phenomenon. The state’s de-humanising treatment of racial and ethnic minority migrant settlers has a much longer history. I make visible this history by exploring the informal walking pastimes of five, married, British Gujarati Indian couples, many of whom, like other South Asian migrants, arrived in England during the 1960s and 1970s. Using the notion of pedestrian speech acts, I explore the relationship between race, urban multiculture, citizenship and belonging. The findings signal how public and state discourses are mobilised by these walkers to repeatedly invoke their citizenship, mainly by ‘Othering’ Eastern European communities, as well as in terms of what I have called hierarchical assemblages of citizenship and belonging, elucidating the dynamic complexities of racial, ethnic, religious, caste, class, gender, and generational unities and tensions.

Ken Russell's Wartime Imagery

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 539-555 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin M. Flanagan
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
War Films ◽  
Personal Style ◽  
American Cinema ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Second World ◽  
Wartime Experience ◽  
National Experience

This article traces Ken Russell's explorations of war and wartime experience over the course of his career. In particular, it argues that Russell's scattered attempts at coming to terms with war, the rise of fascism and memorialisation are best understood in terms of a combination of Russell's own tastes and personal style, wider stylistic and thematic trends in Euro-American cinema during the 1960s and 1970s, and discourses of collective national experience. In addition to identifying Russell's recurrent techniques, this article focuses on how the residual impacts of the First and Second World Wars appear in his favoured genres: literary adaptations and composer biopics. Although the article looks for patterns and similarities in Russell's war output, it differentiates between his First and Second World War films by indicating how he engages with, and temporarily inhabits, the stylistic regime of the enemy within the latter group.

Mind Bending, Mental Seduction and Menticide: Brainwashing in British Spy Dramas of the 1960s

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Burton
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Thought Control ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Scientific Background ◽  
Mind Control ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Cultural Fantasy

Brainwashing assumed the proportions of a cultural fantasy during the Cold War period. The article examines the various political, scientific and cultural contexts of brainwashing, and proceeds to a consideration of the place of mind control in British spy dramas made for cinema and television in the 1960s and 1970s. Particular attention is given to the films The Mind Benders (1963) and The Ipcress File (1965), and to the television dramas Man in a Suitcase (1967–8), The Prisoner (1967–8) and Callan (1967–81), which gave expression to the anxieties surrounding thought-control. Attention is given to the scientific background to the representations of brainwashing, and the significance of spy scandals, treasons and treacheries as a distinct context to the appearance of brainwashing on British screens.

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