Mandarin lessons: modernity,colonialism and Chinese cultural nationalism in the Dutch East Indies,c.1900s

The Chinese Association in the Dutch East Indies, known locally as the Tiong Hoa Hwe Koan (THHK) was first established in Batavia in 1900. A key objective of the THHK’s foundation was the creation of modern schools instructing in Mandarin for local Chinese students. At the turn of the 20th century, this odd choice of instructional language led to highly charged debates about languages, pedagogical efficacy, practicality, modernity-tradition and cultural authenticity. Using underutilized source materials in the local Malay-Hokkien vernacular, this article revisits these debates amongst the Chinese in the Dutch colony. This article interrogates the transparency of common ethnicity in analyses of Chinese nationalisms that developed outside of continental China. Drawing on the concept of “literary governance” as well as comparative work by scholars on Indian and continental Chinese nationalisms, it demonstrates the significance of the colonial context which provoked the THHK to adopt the vocabulary of modernity in reworking progressive ideas circulating in displaced Chinese nationalistic circles. Notwithstanding the THHK’s promotion of Mandarin, such reworking was accomplished through vigorous acts of transliteration and translation in the hybridized Malay-Hokkien vernacular. The THHK was hardly on the receiving end of nationalistic influences emanating from the proverbial China core but was an active agent in what has been described as a “global moment of Chinese nationalism.” The case of the THHK demonstrates the need for a finer understanding of multivalent histories of Chinese nationalisms as well as how these histories intersected with those of European colonialism in Southeast Asia.     

Nations in shame and art’s shame: towards a radical politics of image and affect around “Okinawa”

ABSTRACT

This article first examines the resurgence of popular, semi-academic nationalist discourses that solidify the figures of “Japan” and “Okinawa” within post-1945 U.S.-led formation of nation-states across the Asia-Pacific. It critiques two discourses that are symptomatic of such a return to the figure of the nation: developmental economist Matsushima Yasukatsu’s thesis of “Ryukyu’s independence” and philosopher Takahashi Tetsuya’s call to relocate the U.S. military bases from Okinawa to mainland Japan. These symptomatic instances of the mutually transferential nationalisms in Okinawa and mainland Japan rely upon crudely culturalist assumptions about the self and the others and are thus surprisingly oblivious to how the very nation-forms have been instituted as part of imperial modernity. Their implicit figurations of the exemplary national subjects partake in the biopolitical assumptions as to whose lives must be “made to live” and “made to die” within and outside the border of the national. Ultimately, such nationalist discourses about Japan and Okinawa engage in a zero-sum exchange of imperial shame and colonial shame, a process that further stabilizes the co-operative placement of local nation-forms within the U.S.-led inter-state regime of warfare and biopolitics. But insofar as these discourses require the images of the nations that they seek to represent, their (re)production of what Naoki Sakai calls “a schema of co-figurative” nationalities needs to be critiqued through an exploration of a radical aesthetics and affect that pertain to image production.

The second part of the article presents my interpretation of artist Nema Satoko’s recent book of photography titled Paradigm, a work in which both bodies and objects explore their potential transformations in the midst of their precarious exposure to one another. I argue that Nema’s images of fragile bodies and objects in the present landscape of Okinawa are poised on the cusp between the past that invokes a sense of shame and this past’s potential future that necessitates an ethical posture of humility. In the vicinity of Adorno’s notion of “art’s shame,” Nema’s photographic images illuminate an amorphous realm of fragile beings, whose linkage and exposure to one another opens a space of viability that is obscured by the biopolitical imaginaries of nation-forms.     

大战中的热烈与冷静——民初十年《东方杂志》民族主义观评析

1912-1922年间,杜亚泉为代表的知识分子群体以《东方杂志》为舞台,集中地表达了他们的民族主义思想。他们倡导的和平、民主、文化的国家主义思想有合理可贵的积极价值,是中国现代民族主义思想史上的重要资源。     

毛泽东思想与中国特色社会主义理论体系关系研究述评

自党的十七大报告提出并明确界定中国特色社会主义理论体系以来,毛泽东思想与中国特色社会主义理论体系的关系问题,成为学界讨论的热点.研究者对此各抒己见,主要观点有"非包含"说、"包含"说、"继承发展"说、"多重关系"说等.     

Korean-Wave celebrities between global capital and regional nationalisms

This article examines conflicts over the transnationalization of South Korean celebrities in the wake of the Korean Wave (Hallyu) in the twenty-first century. I consider a number of celebrity controversies to argue that the demands placed upon Hallyu celebrities by domestic observers, foreign audiences, and global capital are fundamentally irreconcilable. South Korean nationalist appropriation of Hallyu, as well as the local celebrity culture, demand that Hallyu stars firstly be exemplary Korean patriots, whereas international audiences expect sympathy for their own causes. Local nationalist agendas have proven particularly troublesome because of postcolonial sensibilities and ongoing territorial disagreements between South Korea and its neighbors. Finally, as circulating commodities and commercial assets, Hallyu stars are also pledged to global capital. Their value is highest when they appeal to as broad an audience as possible and alienate no one with their politics. An apolitical neutrality on regionally controversial issues, however, is an untenable position when antagonistic geopolitical interests are concerned and nationalist passions flare. I situate this argument within critical scholarship on cultural globalization flows within Asia, while engaging celebrity studies to frame Hallyu stars as transnational commodities.     

E.E. Fournier d’Albe’s Fin de siècle: Science,Nationalism and Monistic Philosophy in Britain and Ireland

The fin de siècle witnessed radical shifts in the intellectual and cultural landscapes of the British Isles in the context of a general revolt against Victorian values. E. E. Fournier d’Albe – physicist, spiritualist, inventor and Pan-Celticist – personified the ability of intellectuals to latch onto and advance new trends, made available by the emergent intellectual pluralism. Like many contemporaries he rejected traditional religion, but he also disdained scientific materialism, and sought a deeper metaphysical meaning to life, pursued through his various interests. Influenced by the totalising theories of figures like Herbert Spencer and Ernst Haeckel, Fournier concocted his own brand of scientific monism, rejecting materialism, embracing spiritualism, and ever optimistic in the notion of scientific progress, even in the wake of the carnage of the Great War. The article aims to give Fournier a fuller historical treatment, allowing his story to add to understanding of the milieus in which he lived and operated, and revealing how his monistic philosophy incorporated some of the disparate cultural strands explored by intellectuals in the fin de siècle reaction against conventional Victorian ideals.     

A true original

Abstract

This study analyzes Japanese and Korean ethno-national (minzoku-kokumin) education in postwar Japan. During a period of political unrest in Japan (1945–1955), some of the Korean residents and Japanese worked together to overcome the culture of Imperial Japan and its assimilative education. They also regarded themselves as people colonized by the United States, and pursued a political-cultural movement for their liberation and independence from American imperialism. The Koreans in Japan rejected compulsory education in the Japanese language. As a result, since 1956, Korean schools (Chōsengakkō), funded and supported by North Korea, were founded all across Japan. Their ethno-national education was in fact incorporated into North Korean politics, and has been considered in many studies as having overcome Japanese assimilation and ethnic inequalities. Such a view was a result of many academic Zainichi Korean studies that come from an “insider's perspective” to criticize Japanese colonialism and discrimination. In order to go beyond this insider's view, I focus on the political alliance between Zainichi Koreans and the Japanese people in their pursuit of ethno-national education. Since 2010, the Japanese state funding for Korean schools has become a major controversy in Japan. By tracing the historical background, this article intends to explain why this political issue has arisen. The ultimate purpose of this article is to suggest an ethical perspective to resolve the current political conflict regarding Korean schools in Japan.     

奥运会和大型热点赛事期间防范狭隘民族主义的对策研究

狭隘民族主义是民族主义的一种极端表现形式.探讨了国内狭隘民族主义的主要表现,针对奥运会和大型热点赛事期间狭隘民族主义可能造成的破坏,主要从摆正位置调整心态、加强宣传沟通、强化组织培训、广泛搜集情报、快速采取行动、及时发布信息等6个方面提出对策.     

全球化语境中的民族偶像建构——以姚明为样本

作为首位进入美国主流文化中的体育使者,姚明被媒体塑造成为中国的民族偶像。本文将姚明置于跨文化传播语境中,以中美传媒建构姚明形象的关键词为切入点,揭示其中存在的显著差异,剖析民族主义叙述语境中的姚明形象内涵,同时指出,“姚神话”的塑造受到以NBA为代表的西方消费主义意识形态的支配。     

独家新闻报道及其主体表现特征

信息时代大众媒体的内容趋同和交叉传递 ,已成为新闻界亟需攻克的难题 ,独家新闻无疑是新闻媒体奉献给受众的优质信息。从学理意义上看独家新闻 ,它是一个特定的历史概念 ,也是一个动态的发展概念。在媒体竞争加剧和信息技术发达的今天 ,一家媒体独家垄断新闻资源已成过去。新闻主体应淡化其“独家发现”、“率先刊播”的外在特征 ,而对其内涵属性即新闻事实中蕴含的独特新闻价值和对人生独特的启迪意义以及对事物演变规律的独特探索应进行深入开掘 ,这就要求新闻主体应有完善的知识结构和独特的思维表现方式