East-West/North-South – or Imperial-Subimperial? The BRICS, Global Governance and Capital Accumulation

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Bond
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Dependency Theory ◽  
The West ◽  
Accumulation By Dispossession ◽  
The World ◽  
Western Imperialism ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
World Environment ◽  
East West

Two leading critics of imperialism — John Smith and David Harvey — have engaged in a bitter dispute over how to interpret geographically-shifting processes of super-exploitation and power. Missing, though, is consideration of ‘subimperialism,’ a category drawn from Ruy Mauro Marini's 1960s-70s dependency theory, with its focus on Brazil's relationship with the West: a fusion of imperial and semi-peripheral agendas of power and accumulation with internal processes of super-exploitation. The risk is that by splitting hairs on geographically-generalized categories, Smith and Harvey obscure crucial features of their joint wrath, which is the unjust accumulation processes and geopolitics that enrich the wealthy and despoil the world environment. The concept of subimperialism can resolve some of the Smith-Harvey disputes, but only if read through Marini and Harvey in a more generous way than does Smith. One of the best examples of the phenomenon is the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) bloc, which for a decade from 2009–18 has increasingly asserted an ‘alternative’ strategy to key features of Western imperialism, while in reality fitting tightly within it. This fit works through amplified neoliberal multilateralism serving both the BRICS and the West, the regional displacement of overaccumulated capital, financialization, and persistent super-exploitative social relations: the spatio-temporal fixes and accumulation by dispossession that amplify global crisis tendencies.

Crossing Cultural and Aesthetic Frontiers: Yves Bonnefoy and the Dynamics of Haiku

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-40
Author(s):  
Pamela A. Genova
Keyword(s):  
The West ◽  
Japanese Aesthetics ◽  
The World ◽  
Third Dimension ◽  
Mind's Eye ◽  
East West ◽  
Yves Bonnefoy

Ever since the opening of the ports of Japan to the West in 1854, French authors have participated in a fruitful dialogue of East-West exchange, to which the work of Yves Bonnefoy adds an engaging dimension. Bonnefoy, who reads Japanese and has spent time in Japan, has carried on throughout his career an equivocal relationship with Japanese aesthetics, especially notable in his complex views on haiku. Early on, Bonnefoy critiqued the form as a hollow discursive structure inattentive to the crucial referential relationship between art and world that he underscored in his own work as primary. Yet, interestingly, critics have described similarities between Bonnefoy's poetry and Japanese haiku, and indeed Bonnefoy later recanted his negative critique of the form. In the 1989 essay, 'Du haïku', he argues in fact that haiku embodies pure presence, expressing a kind of third dimension, situating itself in the space of the world and in the mind's eye, as it communicates the plenitude of being.

scholarly journals Real and Exotic Siberia in Vsevolod Ivanov’s Story “The Return of the Buddha”

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 39-52
Author(s):  
E. A. Papkova
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Work ◽  
Communist Society ◽  
The West ◽  
The World ◽  
Spatial Coordinates ◽  
Encyclopedic Dictionary ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
Chinese Texts ◽  
Soviet Russia ◽  
The Buddha

The article examines two opposing images of Siberia, created in the story of Vsevolod Ivanov “The Return of the Buddha”. It is noted that the main feature of the writer’s works of the early 1920s critics both at home and abroad called it “the discovery of Siberia”, while emphasizing that “East and Asia prevail in Vsevolod Ivanov’s Siberia” (A. Voronsky). In the story “The Return of the Buddha” in the description of Siberia during the Civil War the terrible realities are emphasized: destruction, insurrections, famine, cruelty both on the part of the white guards and on the part of the Reds, against the background of which the representatives of the Soviet power are very ironically given. Exotic Siberia has different, extended spatio-temporal boundaries and includes the legend of the 300 th awakening of the Buddha, told to the hero of the story by the Mongol Dava-Dorzhchi, as well as the verses of Chinese poets given in epigraphs to its chapters. The real sources of the legend texts (“Encyclopedic Dictionary” by F. A. Brockhaus and I. A. Efron) and poems of ancient Chinese poets – the scientific work of V. M. Alekseeva “Chinese poem about a poet. Stansi Sykun Tu (837–908). Translation and research with attachment of Chinese texts” (Petrograd, 1916). The author of the article shows that, despite the formal remoteness of the spatial coordinates of this exotic world from Siberia, their inextricable connection is affirmed in the story. Exotic Siberia, as the author of the article proves, is a part of the vast, mysterious East – the world of high spirit, selfless devotion, faith and freedom acquired by man. Ivanov’s idea that the East, and not the West, is the focus of spirituality and culture is considered in the article in the historical, political and bio- graphical contexts of the early 1920s. In the policy of Soviet Russia, it was at this time that a turn to the East was taking place – the preparation of elements of the Asian orientation of the world revolution. However, for Ivanov, as the author of the article shows, the East is by no means an oasis of the future communist society. His understanding of the East and West is much closer to the concepts of philosophers, authors of the books “Exodus to the East. Premonitions and accomplishments. Approval of the Eurasians” (1921) and “Oswald Spengler” and “The Decline of Europe” (1922). The biographical realities of the life of the writer, who in 1921 came from his native Siberian East to the West – to Petrograd, could also contribute to the creation of a spiritualized and attractive image of Siberia in the story “The Return of the Buddha”.

scholarly journals PECULIARITIES OF THE CHRONOTOPE THROUGH THE PRISM OF IDENTITY PROBLEM OF THE URBAN NOVEL CHARACTER

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaya Semih
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Closed Space ◽  
Main Principle ◽  
Eternal Return ◽  
Identity Problem ◽  
The West ◽  
Temporal Space ◽  
Urban Novel ◽  
The World ◽  
East West

The article analyses the chronotope of the novel by Orhan Pamuk Silent House through the prism of identity problem. The purpose of the article is to establish a connection of this problem to the peculiarities of the interpretation of the chronotope (which is a result of analysis of the opposites capital-country and East-West. The urban issue of the Silent House grounds on the eschatological paradigm and the cyclic concept of the world, the concept of eternal return; this attests a postmodernist understanding of the categories of time and space. Hence, the composition of the novel is a peculiar spatial and temporal mosaic and narrative polyphony. In the temporal space of the Silent House the spatial (home and provincial town) and temporal (past and present) images, motive of travel (real and metaphysical in the form of memories), of the travelers acquire the semantics of existential metamorphosis that lead to moral and spiritual initiation. And the closed space of the novel — the house of Mrs. Fatma and the provincial Turkish town — appears as a special topos-gerontope, the main principle of which is a freezing of the time. In this way Pamuk realizes typical for his works problems of relations between the West and the East and self-identification.

scholarly journals Beyond East–West: Marginality and National Dignity in Finnish Identity Construction

2007 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 691-716 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Browning ◽  
Marko Lehti
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
The West ◽  
Eu Membership ◽  
Identity Narratives ◽  
The World ◽  
Historical Role ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
East West

Since the end of the Cold War it has become common for Finnish academics and politicians alike to frame debates about Finnish national identity in terms of locating Finland somewhere along a continuum between East and West. Indeed, for politicians, properly locating oneself (and therefore Finland) along this continuum has often been seen as central to the winning and losing of elections. For example, the 1994 referendum on EU membership was largely interpreted precisely as an opportunity to relocate Finland further to the West. Indeed, the tendency to depict Finnish history in terms of a series of “Westernizing” moves has been notable, but has also betrayed some of the politicized elements of this view. However, this framing of Finnish national identity discourse is not only sometimes politicized but arguably is also too simplified and results in blindness towards other identity narratives that have also been important through Finnish history, and that are also evident (but rarely recognized) today as well. In this article we aim to highlight one of these that we argue has played a key role in locating Finland in the world and in formulating notions of what Finland is about, what historical role and mission it has been understood as destined to play, and what futures for the nation have been conceptualized as possible and as providing a source of subjectivity and national dignity.

scholarly journals Orientalisms and Occidentalisms: Evolution of Concepts and Divergence of Connotations

2020 ◽  
pp. 30-45
Author(s):  
Ingrīda Kleinhofa ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Racial Discrimination ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Colonial Discourse ◽  
Asian Studies ◽  
The West ◽  
European Tradition ◽  
The World ◽  
Western Imperialism ◽  
Science And Politics

During the most part of its long history, the term ‘Orientalism’ has had several interrelated meanings with neutral or positive connotations, some of which are still preserved, for instance, in art, architecture, design, and music, where it refers to Oriental influences and works inspired by Oriental themes and sounds rather attractive and romantic. As an academic term, it was used to denote the European tradition of Asian studies, suggesting a thorough exploration of Eastern cultural heritage, in particular, languages, literature, and artifacts. After the publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism in 1978, the term gained new negative meanings, related to postcolonial theory where it denotes mainly the biased, haughty attitude of the West towards an essentialized East and manifestations of Western colonial discourse in literature, science, and politics, such as the justification of Western imperialism, colonialism, and racial discrimination. The redefinition of the term by postcolonial theorists raised a debate about the about the so-called Western approach to history, sociology, and Asian studies as well as about the permissibility of division of the world into binary opposites, “the Orient” and “the Occident”. By the end of the 20th century, the term ‘Orientalism’ was adapted for the use by anthropologists, and its counterpart, ‘Occidentalism’ emerged, referring to the essentialized, dehumanized image of the West created by non-Western societies. Currently, most of the mentioned meanings have survived, each to some extent, and interfere in various fields of knowledge, creating complex sets of contradictory connotations.

Imperial Subjects in the Soviet Union: M.N. Roy, Rabindranath Tagore, and Re-Thinking Freedom and Authoritarianism

2017 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 913-934 ◽  
Author(s):  
Choi Chatterjee
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Political Freedom ◽  
The West ◽  
Rabindranath Tagore ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Western Imperialism ◽  
Travel Writings ◽  
Political Framing ◽  
East West

The compelling trope of ‘Russia and the West,’ or to be more precise, ‘Russia Under Western Eyes,’ has produced a vast and significant body of literature. This has helped in the political framing of the twentieth century as a world divided between the democratic and market-based nations of the West, and the dictatorial and state controlled countries in the Soviet East. Simultaneously, it has served to bury, blunt, and otherwise obscure perspectives from the colonized world on the East–West dichotomy. An analysis of the travel writings of two important Indian visitors to the Soviet Union, M.N. Roy and Rabindranath Tagore, shows that Europe’s imperial subjects filtered their impressions of Soviet authoritarianism through their own experiences of repressive Western imperialism, thus charting a new global map of political freedom. Roy and Tagore’s writings, powered by both their colonial and Soviet experiences, make a significant contribution to the twentieth-century intellectual debates on moral freedom, individualism, and authoritarianism.

scholarly journals East-West dichotomy in the context of Ukrainian conflict resolution

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
The West ◽  
The World ◽  
Imaginary Line ◽  
Elite Interviews ◽  
Eastern European Countries ◽  
Negative Connotation ◽  
East West

This article analyses the contrasting images of the West and the East in the conflict narrative in Ukraine: Where is the imaginary line that divides them? Which countries constitute the ‘East’ and which the ‘West’? and How does the Russia-Ukraine conflict affect the perceived division? This article is informed by Edward Said’s hypothesis of orientalism, specifically that Western knowledge of the Eastern world(s) carries a negative connotation. Testing this hypothesis on the materials of elite interviews conducted in Ukraine in 2017, the article ‘maps’ the image of the world from a Ukrainian point of view. It explores if an internalized ‘othering’ may be present within Ukraine’s borders due to the ongoing conflict in the East. The findings, however, disprove this assumption. Results show that there is a perceived sense of closeness between Ukraine and Eastern European countries due to historical and cultural ties as well as modern day partnership. Relations with Russia were perceived as ambiguous despite the armed conflict in the East and the annexation of Crimea. There is also no evidence for “othering of Eastern vis-à-vis Western regions inside Ukraine.

scholarly journals The Philosophy of Davos

Philosophy ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 77 (3) ◽  
pp. 307-308
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
World Order ◽  
Cultural Relativism ◽  
Global Integration ◽  
Clash Of Civilizations ◽  
Far Right ◽  
The West ◽  
The World ◽  
Western Imperialism

Though written several years earlier, Samuel P. Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order has had quite a vogue since September 11th. Philosophers of history, however, will recognize its themes as a re-hash, albeit a timely re-hash, of the eighteenth century dispute between the universalism and optimism of the enlightenment and the cultural relativism and pessimism of Herder.Instead of Voltaire and Diderot in the eighteenth century, in 2002 we have what Huntington calls Davos people, after the annual World Economic Forum meeting in that place. Those who go to Davos include many of the top businessmen, bankers, government officials and opinion formers in the world. They and their kind control most international institutions, most of the world's finances and many governments. They believe in individualism, market economies and political democracy.There is nothing wrong with these beliefs or with holding them. Problems arise when, in enlightenment fashion, Davos people think of these beliefs not just as universal in content but as universally believed in. For though Davos people control much of the world and form political elites in many countries inside and outside the West, outside the West they and their ideas find favour with probably less than one per cent of the world's population. As Huntington puts it this provokes a typically Herderian reaction: ‘The non-Wests see as Western what the West sees as universal. What Westerners herald as benign global integration, such as the proliferation of worldwide media, non-Westerners denounce as nefarious Western imperialism. To the extent that non-Westerners see the world as one, they see it as a threat.’And not only non-Westerners. Much of the success of so-called far right and nationalist movements in Western Europe is undoubtedly due to a Herderian reaction within the West to globalization and federalism, and much of the anger implicit in that reaction is stoked by the complacency of the Davos people.There is indeed nothing wrong with Davos beliefs in themselves, at least nothing that would convict those who hold them of any nefarious or sinister motives. Nor is there anything wrong with the more general enlightenment belief in a universal human nature and a universal standard of morality. The difficulty is to hold this and cognate beliefs, while recognizing that they may not be universally shared, and understanding and even respecting the sensibilities of those who might not share them. In the minds of those who disagree, failure on this point will transform what is supposed to be a liberating faith in universal human rights into an instrument of oppression. But how can one respect what one believes is wrong and even harmful, while not acceding to the very relativism one's commitment to universal truth would strenuously contest—and for the best of philosophical reasons?We are no nearer to solving this problem on a philosophical level than were our predecessors two hundred years ago. But if Huntington and other observers of the world scene are right, its solution is more urgent now than it has ever been.

Constructing Chinese Masculinity for the Modern World: with Particular Reference to Lao She's The Two Mas

2000 ◽  
Vol 164 ◽  
pp. 1062-1078 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kam Louie
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Chinese Culture ◽  
Modern World ◽  
The West ◽  
Western Imperialism ◽  
Chinese Masculinity ◽  
Chinese Intellectuals ◽  
East West ◽  
European Civilization

In the early decades of the 20th century, Chinese identities were subjected to profound challenges posed by the West. Traditional Chinese linkages between gender and power were shaken by contact with aggressive western imperialism. Although there are numerous studies on this impact, almost nothing has been written on its effects on the Chinese constructions of masculinity. Did East-West contact significantly change the male ideal? If so, how did the new image integrate traditional and Western gender configurations? This article first examines the theoretical basis of masculinity models in traditional China, and then analyses the ways in which a Western context could alter the ways Chinese intellectuals reconstruct these models to arrive at a new male prototype. As one of the best known examples of the interface between East and West, Lao She's (1899–1966) novel Er Ma (The Two Mas) will be used as a case study. The 1920s was a time when many Westernized intellectuals such as Xu Zhimo were totally enamoured by European civilization, to such an extent that Xu's influential friend Hu Shi once called for a “wholesale Westernization” of Chinese culture. While there was a great diversity of masculine ideals in this period, the effects on the male identity from contact with the West were fundamental and enduring, and the images presented in The Two Mas were in many respects typical of the Republican era.

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