To Become What One Is

In the twentieth century, criticism flourished in the academy in the English language from the 1930s to the 1960s, but gradually a hyperprofessionalized discourse purporting to be criticism took its place. The problem was exacerbated because people misunderstand literary theory thinking it superior to criticism. Big mistake. Theory proper begins its life as criticism, criticism that has staying power. Central to criticism as Kant argued is judgment. Judgment is based on feeling provoked by the artwork in our encounters with artworks. This essay talks about the author’s encounter with Mary Gaitskill’s novel Veronica. The critical judgment puts the artwork into a milieu. This essay argues the case for the holism of critical judgments versus what the author calls Bitsiness as Usual, the fragmentation of our understanding of our encounters with artworks. The author subjects both Paul de Man and the New Historicists to severe attacks.

Higher-order commutators with power central values on rings and algebras involving generalized derivations

Let {\mathfrak{R}} be a ring with center {Z(\mathfrak{R})}. In this paper, we study the higher-order commutators with power central values on rings and algebras involving generalized derivations. Motivated by [A. Alahmadi, S. Ali, A. N. Khan and M. Salahuddin Khan, A characterization of generalized derivations on prime rings, Comm. Algebra 44 2016, 8, 3201–3210], we characterize generalized derivations and related maps that satisfy certain differential identities on prime rings. Precisely, we prove that if a prime ring of characteristic different from two admitting generalized derivation {\mathfrak{F}} such that {([\mathfrak{F}(s^{m})s^{n}+s^{n}\mathfrak{F}(s^{m}),s^{r}]_{k})^{l}\in Z(% \mathfrak{R})} for every {s\in\mathfrak{R}}, then either {\mathfrak{F}(s)=ps} for every {s\in\mathfrak{R}} or {\mathfrak{R}} satisfies {s_{4}} and {\mathfrak{F}(s)=sp} for every {s\in\mathfrak{R}} and {p\in\mathfrak{U}}, the Utumi quotient ring of {\mathfrak{R}}. As an application, we prove that any spectrally generalized derivation on a semisimple Banach algebra satisfying the above mentioned differential identity must be a left multiplication map.

Authoritarian Powers and Norm Contestation in the Liberal International Order: Theorizing the Power Politics of Ideas and Identity

Are rising authoritarian powers such as China and Russia converging towards or challenging the normative structures of the liberal international order? This article argues that scholarship on norm contestation provides a fruitful theoretical avenue for addressing this question. It finds, however, that this literature has problematically tended to either overlook or externalize power dynamics from norm contestation. The article therefore proposes and develops a power political approach to norm contestation that, informed by a realpolitik sensibility, more explicitly and consistently makes power central to the analysis. A power political perspective conceptualizes norm contestation as the expression of battles for influence in world politics that take place at the ideational level and through symbolic instruments. It understands these struggles as occurring in the context of an international system profoundly marked by conflicting interests, cultural pluralism, hierarchical structures, and power asymmetries. This power political lens is then used to identify four modes of contestation that Russian and Chinese actors are engaged in: liberal performance, liberal mimicry, civilizational essentialization, and counter-norm entrepreneurship. It empirically explores how these contestatory practices express themselves at different intensity levels—applicatory, meaning, and validity—and display specific power political logics—fragmenting and integrative—with the goal of undermining the ideational hegemony of liberal Western-based actors and structures in world politics, and advancing alternative non-liberal visions of domestic and international order. Along with contributing to the literature on norms, this article also makes a broader intervention in current debates about rising powers and the future of the liberal international order.

Educating Children, Civilizing Society: Missionary Schools and Non-European Teachers in South Dutch New Guinea, 1902–1942

This article addresses the colonial project of “civilizing” and educating indigenous people in the farthest corners of the Dutch empire – South Dutch New Guinea (1902–1942), exploring the entanglement between colonial education practice and the civilizing mission, unravelling the variety of actors in colonial education in South Dutch New Guinea. Focusing on practice, I highlight that colonial education invested heavily in disciplining the bodies, minds, and beliefs of indigenous peoples to align them with Western Catholic standards. This observation links projects to educating and disciplining indigenous youth to the consolidation of colonial power. Central to these intense colonial interventions in the lives of Papuans were institutions of colonial education, managed by the Catholic mission but run by non-European teachers recruited from elsewhere in the Dutch colony. Their importance as proponents of the “civilizing mission” is largely unappreciated in the historiography of missionary work on Papua.