Steven Heine
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195326772
- eISBN:
- 9780199870363
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195326772.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Buddhism
This book provides analyses of the many ways Japanese Zen Buddhism can be interpreted as either a cure‐all for the world's problems as stated by the Traditional Zen Narrative (TZN) view or whether ...
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This book provides analyses of the many ways Japanese Zen Buddhism can be interpreted as either a cure‐all for the world's problems as stated by the Traditional Zen Narrative (TZN) view or whether Zen is a contradictory, self‐serving entity as offered by the Historical and Cultural Criticism (HCC) view. Through the concepts of Zen “writes, rites, and rights,” the book examines the character of Zen. “Zen writes” describes the contradiction that although Zen is traditionally considered to be an esoteric religion based on personal transmissions between monks, it has created an extraordinary amount of written literature. The chapter considers whether the voluminous literature is a strength or a weak point for Zen. In the debate of “Zen rites,” the critical view (HCC) points out the history of religious syncretism in Japan as a compromise by Zen to appeal to the general public by incorporating folk gods and rituals into monastic rites, while the traditional view maintains that there is a separation between the syncretic and the monastic sides of Zen. And finally, “Zen rights” deals with both the ethical benefits that Zen can provide in addition to the moral atrocities that Zen has committed in the past. Zen can be a powerful tool in environmental preservation and world peace, but has also been used to justify discrimination and extreme nationalism in Japan through the 20th century. The final chapter seeks to rectify the two views of TZN and HCC through an acknowledgment of both sides and a balanced recommendation for the future of Zen.Less
This book provides analyses of the many ways Japanese Zen Buddhism can be interpreted as either a cure‐all for the world's problems as stated by the Traditional Zen Narrative (TZN) view or whether Zen is a contradictory, self‐serving entity as offered by the Historical and Cultural Criticism (HCC) view. Through the concepts of Zen “writes, rites, and rights,” the book examines the character of Zen. “Zen writes” describes the contradiction that although Zen is traditionally considered to be an esoteric religion based on personal transmissions between monks, it has created an extraordinary amount of written literature. The chapter considers whether the voluminous literature is a strength or a weak point for Zen. In the debate of “Zen rites,” the critical view (HCC) points out the history of religious syncretism in Japan as a compromise by Zen to appeal to the general public by incorporating folk gods and rituals into monastic rites, while the traditional view maintains that there is a separation between the syncretic and the monastic sides of Zen. And finally, “Zen rights” deals with both the ethical benefits that Zen can provide in addition to the moral atrocities that Zen has committed in the past. Zen can be a powerful tool in environmental preservation and world peace, but has also been used to justify discrimination and extreme nationalism in Japan through the 20th century. The final chapter seeks to rectify the two views of TZN and HCC through an acknowledgment of both sides and a balanced recommendation for the future of Zen.
Randall Fuller
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195313925
- eISBN:
- 9780199787753
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195313925.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The central question engaged in this book is the following: why does Emerson's cultural legacy continue to influence writers so forcefully? This study examines the way influential 20th-century ...
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The central question engaged in this book is the following: why does Emerson's cultural legacy continue to influence writers so forcefully? This study examines the way influential 20th-century critics have understood and deployed Emerson as part of their own larger projects aimed at reconceiving America. It examines previously unpublished material and original research on Van Wyck Brooks, Perry Miller, F. O. Matthiessen, and Sacvan Bercovitch along with other supporting thinkers. Emerging from this research is an in-depth account of Emerson's cultural construction as well as an institutional history of American literary studies in the 20th century. This book is also a fine-grained study of how the relationship between a scholar's individual perspective and prevailing cultural conditions merge together to impel critics to redirect the course of a present moment — often experienced as disappointing and unfulfilled — toward a desired future. When an engaged but theoretical mind meets with an impassive history, the response that follows, for some of our most imaginative and brilliant critics, has led, often and suggestively, to a turn toward Emerson.Less
The central question engaged in this book is the following: why does Emerson's cultural legacy continue to influence writers so forcefully? This study examines the way influential 20th-century critics have understood and deployed Emerson as part of their own larger projects aimed at reconceiving America. It examines previously unpublished material and original research on Van Wyck Brooks, Perry Miller, F. O. Matthiessen, and Sacvan Bercovitch along with other supporting thinkers. Emerging from this research is an in-depth account of Emerson's cultural construction as well as an institutional history of American literary studies in the 20th century. This book is also a fine-grained study of how the relationship between a scholar's individual perspective and prevailing cultural conditions merge together to impel critics to redirect the course of a present moment — often experienced as disappointing and unfulfilled — toward a desired future. When an engaged but theoretical mind meets with an impassive history, the response that follows, for some of our most imaginative and brilliant critics, has led, often and suggestively, to a turn toward Emerson.
Margaret Urban Walker
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195315394
- eISBN:
- 9780199872053
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195315394.003.0010
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy
The objection to a naturalized, historically situated, and culturally embedded view of morality is that it amounts to moral relativism, and so fails to provide for real moral justification. On the ...
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The objection to a naturalized, historically situated, and culturally embedded view of morality is that it amounts to moral relativism, and so fails to provide for real moral justification. On the contrary, such a view entails that a moral position can only be corrected or refuted by another better justified one. Moral justification, however, cannot carry the same authority for those who do not share enough factual, moral, social, and epistemic assumptions; this has moral as well as epistemological implications for cross-cultural criticism and persuasion. Within a moral order, transparency demands that moral understandings survive the impact of experiences from diverse places within that order. Because differentials of social power often allow some to obscure the real nature of moral and social arrangements, the revelation of experiences, testimonies, and knowledge that have been suppressed or excluded may challenge the moral authority of a way of living.Less
The objection to a naturalized, historically situated, and culturally embedded view of morality is that it amounts to moral relativism, and so fails to provide for real moral justification. On the contrary, such a view entails that a moral position can only be corrected or refuted by another better justified one. Moral justification, however, cannot carry the same authority for those who do not share enough factual, moral, social, and epistemic assumptions; this has moral as well as epistemological implications for cross-cultural criticism and persuasion. Within a moral order, transparency demands that moral understandings survive the impact of experiences from diverse places within that order. Because differentials of social power often allow some to obscure the real nature of moral and social arrangements, the revelation of experiences, testimonies, and knowledge that have been suppressed or excluded may challenge the moral authority of a way of living.
Patrick Hayes
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199587957
- eISBN:
- 9780191723292
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199587957.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This concluding chapter considers Coetzee's Australian fiction in relation to a longstanding tradition of cultural criticism directed at the moral and political condition of modernity. It has ...
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This concluding chapter considers Coetzee's Australian fiction in relation to a longstanding tradition of cultural criticism directed at the moral and political condition of modernity. It has recently been argued that this tradition, for all its many differences of emphasis, has as its shared characteristic the deployment of a ‘cultural principle’ that displaces politics and itself lays claim to the role of social authority: this chapter sets Coetzee in the context of the most important new thinking about the tradition of cultural criticism, making special reference to the recent debate between Stefan Collini and Francis Mulhern. It shows that Coetzee sustainedly tries to refuse the moral and political simplifications that at times have characterized this tradition—allusion is made in particular to the work of Benda, Arnold, Nietzsche, and T. S. Eliot—and that his fiction opens up a line of cultural criticism that more subtly navigates the complex terrain of political modernity.Less
This concluding chapter considers Coetzee's Australian fiction in relation to a longstanding tradition of cultural criticism directed at the moral and political condition of modernity. It has recently been argued that this tradition, for all its many differences of emphasis, has as its shared characteristic the deployment of a ‘cultural principle’ that displaces politics and itself lays claim to the role of social authority: this chapter sets Coetzee in the context of the most important new thinking about the tradition of cultural criticism, making special reference to the recent debate between Stefan Collini and Francis Mulhern. It shows that Coetzee sustainedly tries to refuse the moral and political simplifications that at times have characterized this tradition—allusion is made in particular to the work of Benda, Arnold, Nietzsche, and T. S. Eliot—and that his fiction opens up a line of cultural criticism that more subtly navigates the complex terrain of political modernity.
Randall Fuller
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195313925
- eISBN:
- 9780199787753
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195313925.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter traces the career of Van Wyck Brooks, who unconsciously enacted Emerson's “American Scholar” in his groundbreaking critical manifestos of the 1910s. Brooks eventually found that his ...
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This chapter traces the career of Van Wyck Brooks, who unconsciously enacted Emerson's “American Scholar” in his groundbreaking critical manifestos of the 1910s. Brooks eventually found that his guerilla warfare against the genteel dispensation had succeeded too well; he now stood in the wan afterglow of a sustained and robust series of instrumental approaches to literature that had released energies whose consequences were unpredictable and unintended. Ransacking the cultural archive for a “usable past”, Brooks had illuminated the role politics exerts in every act of writing and amplified (if not as much as he might have hoped) the canon. But he had accomplished these things at the cost of his sense of the literary, and soon began the more difficult project of healing and reconstruction. He did so by beginning a biography of Emerson. This work, which promised to heal a divided America, instead sent Brooks into a five-year nervous breakdown and hospitalization. Examining unpublished letters from this period, this chapter traces the fascinating story of Brooks' near-fatal engagement with Emerson and its lasting repercussions for the critic's practice.Less
This chapter traces the career of Van Wyck Brooks, who unconsciously enacted Emerson's “American Scholar” in his groundbreaking critical manifestos of the 1910s. Brooks eventually found that his guerilla warfare against the genteel dispensation had succeeded too well; he now stood in the wan afterglow of a sustained and robust series of instrumental approaches to literature that had released energies whose consequences were unpredictable and unintended. Ransacking the cultural archive for a “usable past”, Brooks had illuminated the role politics exerts in every act of writing and amplified (if not as much as he might have hoped) the canon. But he had accomplished these things at the cost of his sense of the literary, and soon began the more difficult project of healing and reconstruction. He did so by beginning a biography of Emerson. This work, which promised to heal a divided America, instead sent Brooks into a five-year nervous breakdown and hospitalization. Examining unpublished letters from this period, this chapter traces the fascinating story of Brooks' near-fatal engagement with Emerson and its lasting repercussions for the critic's practice.
Michael W. Jennings
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691135106
- eISBN:
- 9781400846788
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691135106.003.0011
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
This chapter offers a careful exposition of themes and debates in Weimar Kulturkritik, or cultural criticism, focusing on its two greatest exemplars, Walter Benjamin and Siegfried Kracauer. At first ...
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This chapter offers a careful exposition of themes and debates in Weimar Kulturkritik, or cultural criticism, focusing on its two greatest exemplars, Walter Benjamin and Siegfried Kracauer. At first tentatively, and then beginning in 1926 with a new focus and resolve, Benjamin and Kracauer set out to reinvent German cultural criticism as a form. Their writings do not simply mirror the new set of preoccupations and circumstances that characterize cultural criticism in the Weimar Republic: no other writers were so instrumental in setting its agenda and defining its formal means and strategies. Kracauer and Benjamin virtually invented the criticism of popular culture. In books and essays such as One Way Street and “Surrealism” (Benjamin) and “The Mass Ornament” and “Photography” (Kracauer), the two writers reinvent cultural analysis as a specific form of the critique of the new urban metropolis. And in doing so, they formulate what is arguably the most compelling theory of modernity ever to arise from cultural criticism.Less
This chapter offers a careful exposition of themes and debates in Weimar Kulturkritik, or cultural criticism, focusing on its two greatest exemplars, Walter Benjamin and Siegfried Kracauer. At first tentatively, and then beginning in 1926 with a new focus and resolve, Benjamin and Kracauer set out to reinvent German cultural criticism as a form. Their writings do not simply mirror the new set of preoccupations and circumstances that characterize cultural criticism in the Weimar Republic: no other writers were so instrumental in setting its agenda and defining its formal means and strategies. Kracauer and Benjamin virtually invented the criticism of popular culture. In books and essays such as One Way Street and “Surrealism” (Benjamin) and “The Mass Ornament” and “Photography” (Kracauer), the two writers reinvent cultural analysis as a specific form of the critique of the new urban metropolis. And in doing so, they formulate what is arguably the most compelling theory of modernity ever to arise from cultural criticism.
John Lee
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198185048
- eISBN:
- 9780191674433
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198185048.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This book offers a new approach to the discussion of English Renaissance literary subjectivity. Dissatisfied with much New Historicist and Cultural Materialistic criticism, it attempts to trace the ...
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This book offers a new approach to the discussion of English Renaissance literary subjectivity. Dissatisfied with much New Historicist and Cultural Materialistic criticism, it attempts to trace the history of the controversies of self. William Hazlitt emerges as a pioneering figure in a tradition of literary criticism, which this book tries to advance. Drawing on the personal construct theory of George A. Kelly, and on the moral theory of Alasdair MacIntyre, the textual ways are traced by which ‘that within’ Hamlet is constructed. In an argument that challenges some of the founding propositions of New Historicist and Cultural Materialist practice, the Prince is seen to have a self-constituting, as opposed to a self-fashioning, sense of self. This sense of self is neither essentialist nor transhistorical; using the work of Charles Taylor, the play is seen to be exploring a Montaignesque, as opposed to Cartesian, notion of subjectivity. The controversies of self are, in fact, an issue within Shakespeare's play; and if the notion of Folio and Quarto Princes is allowed, it may even be at issue within the play. Hamlet debates our debate.Less
This book offers a new approach to the discussion of English Renaissance literary subjectivity. Dissatisfied with much New Historicist and Cultural Materialistic criticism, it attempts to trace the history of the controversies of self. William Hazlitt emerges as a pioneering figure in a tradition of literary criticism, which this book tries to advance. Drawing on the personal construct theory of George A. Kelly, and on the moral theory of Alasdair MacIntyre, the textual ways are traced by which ‘that within’ Hamlet is constructed. In an argument that challenges some of the founding propositions of New Historicist and Cultural Materialist practice, the Prince is seen to have a self-constituting, as opposed to a self-fashioning, sense of self. This sense of self is neither essentialist nor transhistorical; using the work of Charles Taylor, the play is seen to be exploring a Montaignesque, as opposed to Cartesian, notion of subjectivity. The controversies of self are, in fact, an issue within Shakespeare's play; and if the notion of Folio and Quarto Princes is allowed, it may even be at issue within the play. Hamlet debates our debate.
Alan Liu
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226486956
- eISBN:
- 9780226486970
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226486970.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Driven by global economic forces to innovate, today's society paradoxically looks forward to the future while staring only at the nearest, most local present—the most recent financial quarter, the ...
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Driven by global economic forces to innovate, today's society paradoxically looks forward to the future while staring only at the nearest, most local present—the most recent financial quarter, the latest artistic movement, the instant message or blog post at the top of the screen. Postmodernity is lived, it seems, at the end of history. This book takes the pulse of such postmodern historicism by tracking two leading indicators of its acceleration in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries: postmodern cultural criticism—including the new historicism, the new cultural history, cultural anthropology, the new pragmatism, and postmodern and postindustrial theory—and digital information technology. What is the relation between the new historicist anecdote and the database field, and can either have a critical function in the age of postmodern historicism? The book includes two previously unpublished essays and a synthetic introduction in which the author traverses from his earlier work on the theory of historicism to his recent studies of information culture to propose a theory of contingent method incorporating a special inflection of history: media history.Less
Driven by global economic forces to innovate, today's society paradoxically looks forward to the future while staring only at the nearest, most local present—the most recent financial quarter, the latest artistic movement, the instant message or blog post at the top of the screen. Postmodernity is lived, it seems, at the end of history. This book takes the pulse of such postmodern historicism by tracking two leading indicators of its acceleration in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries: postmodern cultural criticism—including the new historicism, the new cultural history, cultural anthropology, the new pragmatism, and postmodern and postindustrial theory—and digital information technology. What is the relation between the new historicist anecdote and the database field, and can either have a critical function in the age of postmodern historicism? The book includes two previously unpublished essays and a synthetic introduction in which the author traverses from his earlier work on the theory of historicism to his recent studies of information culture to propose a theory of contingent method incorporating a special inflection of history: media history.
Alan Liu
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226486956
- eISBN:
- 9780226486970
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226486970.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter criticizes cultural criticism in what can be called its high postmodernist forms: cultural anthropology, the New Cultural History, the New Historicism, the New Pragmatism, the new and/or ...
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This chapter criticizes cultural criticism in what can be called its high postmodernist forms: cultural anthropology, the New Cultural History, the New Historicism, the New Pragmatism, the new and/or post-Marxism, and, finally, that side of French theory—overlapping with post-Marxism—that may be labeled French pragmatism. These aggressively new forms of contextualism do not exhaust the field of postmodern cultural criticism, and a fuller study would need to include the different emphases of ethnic, gender, and area studies as well as of British cultural materialism. However, for now we can stay high. “High” distinguishes neither the theoretical from the practical, the high cultural from the populist, nor the neoconservative from the leftist. Rather, it indicates a shared mode of cultural engagement that undercuts all such polemics dividing the field to project an increasingly generic discourse of contextualism. This mode of engagement can be called detached immanence.Less
This chapter criticizes cultural criticism in what can be called its high postmodernist forms: cultural anthropology, the New Cultural History, the New Historicism, the New Pragmatism, the new and/or post-Marxism, and, finally, that side of French theory—overlapping with post-Marxism—that may be labeled French pragmatism. These aggressively new forms of contextualism do not exhaust the field of postmodern cultural criticism, and a fuller study would need to include the different emphases of ethnic, gender, and area studies as well as of British cultural materialism. However, for now we can stay high. “High” distinguishes neither the theoretical from the practical, the high cultural from the populist, nor the neoconservative from the leftist. Rather, it indicates a shared mode of cultural engagement that undercuts all such polemics dividing the field to project an increasingly generic discourse of contextualism. This mode of engagement can be called detached immanence.
Lawrence A. Scaff
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691147796
- eISBN:
- 9781400836710
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691147796.003.0011
- Subject:
- Sociology, Population and Demography
This chapter examines the results of Max Weber's American journey, particularly in terms of its impact on his work. It begins with a discussion of the popular discourse about America in ...
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This chapter examines the results of Max Weber's American journey, particularly in terms of its impact on his work. It begins with a discussion of the popular discourse about America in German-speaking Europe, focusing on two views of which Weber was aware. On the one side were the inspiring romanticism and adventurous spirit of Karl May's depictions of the American frontier, and on the other side was the cultural criticism as expressed in Ferdinand Kürnberger's novella Der Amerika-Müde. The chapter then considers how the American experience influenced Weber's thinking in The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism, with particular emphasis on his ruminations on the “Europeanization” of American life and the “Americanization” of European institutions. It also explores Weber's appropriation of American institutions and social practices in his work.Less
This chapter examines the results of Max Weber's American journey, particularly in terms of its impact on his work. It begins with a discussion of the popular discourse about America in German-speaking Europe, focusing on two views of which Weber was aware. On the one side were the inspiring romanticism and adventurous spirit of Karl May's depictions of the American frontier, and on the other side was the cultural criticism as expressed in Ferdinand Kürnberger's novella Der Amerika-Müde. The chapter then considers how the American experience influenced Weber's thinking in The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism, with particular emphasis on his ruminations on the “Europeanization” of American life and the “Americanization” of European institutions. It also explores Weber's appropriation of American institutions and social practices in his work.
Charles Capper
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195092677
- eISBN:
- 9780199854264
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195092677.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
This chapter examines the life and career of Margaret Fuller during the period from 1837 to 1838. It describes her teaching at the Greene Street School in Providence, Rhode Island, and her ...
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This chapter examines the life and career of Margaret Fuller during the period from 1837 to 1838. It describes her teaching at the Greene Street School in Providence, Rhode Island, and her association with Ralph Waldo Emerson. During this period, Fuller also wrote articles packed with contemporary cultural punch including Letters from Palmyra. This chapter also discusses her regular testing of Providence's cultural waters and her later decision to quit teaching the Greene Street School.Less
This chapter examines the life and career of Margaret Fuller during the period from 1837 to 1838. It describes her teaching at the Greene Street School in Providence, Rhode Island, and her association with Ralph Waldo Emerson. During this period, Fuller also wrote articles packed with contemporary cultural punch including Letters from Palmyra. This chapter also discusses her regular testing of Providence's cultural waters and her later decision to quit teaching the Greene Street School.
Beth A. Berkowitz
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- February 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780195179194
- eISBN:
- 9780199784509
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195179196.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter introduces the book’s thesis that death penalty discourse helped both Rabbis and Christians to invent themselves in the first centuries of the common era. It reviews recent ...
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This chapter introduces the book’s thesis that death penalty discourse helped both Rabbis and Christians to invent themselves in the first centuries of the common era. It reviews recent historiography of the early rabbinic movement, presents the book’s approach to reading rabbinic literature, and surveys the culture-critical concerns at the heart of the book: the politics of punishment, the politics of ritual, and the politics of imperialism. It addresses questions readers may bring to the subject, such as the historical reality of Jewish execution in antiquity, and the question of whether the classical Rabbis were for or against the death penalty. It also gives the plan of the book and describes the texts that the book will analyze.Less
This chapter introduces the book’s thesis that death penalty discourse helped both Rabbis and Christians to invent themselves in the first centuries of the common era. It reviews recent historiography of the early rabbinic movement, presents the book’s approach to reading rabbinic literature, and surveys the culture-critical concerns at the heart of the book: the politics of punishment, the politics of ritual, and the politics of imperialism. It addresses questions readers may bring to the subject, such as the historical reality of Jewish execution in antiquity, and the question of whether the classical Rabbis were for or against the death penalty. It also gives the plan of the book and describes the texts that the book will analyze.
Alan Liu
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226486956
- eISBN:
- 9780226486970
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226486970.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The underlying object of study in this book is historicism—specifically, postmodern historicism—as a pervasive sociocultural condition. Theorists of postmodernism or, on its socioeconomic and ...
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The underlying object of study in this book is historicism—specifically, postmodern historicism—as a pervasive sociocultural condition. Theorists of postmodernism or, on its socioeconomic and political side, postindustrialism, have described this condition in large, systemic terms as, for example, “space- time compression” and the “end of history.” This chapter explores the questions that frame the book. The essays collected in the book were written from 1986 to the present, during a period when the author, like others, was engaged in sustained projects of historicist cultural criticism yet felt the need to reflect on and—from the inside—criticize the methodology of such projects. The best way to characterize these essays is to say that they are an internal critique of the historicist way in contemporary cultural criticism. The nature of such internal critique—or critical advocacy—will emerge from glossing the key concepts in this latter description of the book's topic.Less
The underlying object of study in this book is historicism—specifically, postmodern historicism—as a pervasive sociocultural condition. Theorists of postmodernism or, on its socioeconomic and political side, postindustrialism, have described this condition in large, systemic terms as, for example, “space- time compression” and the “end of history.” This chapter explores the questions that frame the book. The essays collected in the book were written from 1986 to the present, during a period when the author, like others, was engaged in sustained projects of historicist cultural criticism yet felt the need to reflect on and—from the inside—criticize the methodology of such projects. The best way to characterize these essays is to say that they are an internal critique of the historicist way in contemporary cultural criticism. The nature of such internal critique—or critical advocacy—will emerge from glossing the key concepts in this latter description of the book's topic.
Alan Liu
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226486956
- eISBN:
- 9780226486970
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226486970.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter offers two concurrent investigations, the first of which is a reexplanation, by means of the subversion/containment analytic, of William Wordsworth's turn from radicalism in the ...
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This chapter offers two concurrent investigations, the first of which is a reexplanation, by means of the subversion/containment analytic, of William Wordsworth's turn from radicalism in the aftermath of the 1789 Revolution. The second is an examination of the revolution manqué expressed in the subversion/containment analytic itself, specifically as spoken by cultural criticism in its American New Historicist or Representations inflection. In an age when absolute knowledge and/or dialectical materialism has become the “interpretation of cultures,” with its exclusive attention to symbol, display, and representation, the dynamics of lordship/bondage is itself bound. It is “décor, gadget culturel” contained within a room of larger interpretive possibilities. The chapter's thesis is this: if there is a cultural fallacy, pace the New Critical biographical fallacy, it lies in the constrictive interpretation of social representations empowered by the notion of the subject.Less
This chapter offers two concurrent investigations, the first of which is a reexplanation, by means of the subversion/containment analytic, of William Wordsworth's turn from radicalism in the aftermath of the 1789 Revolution. The second is an examination of the revolution manqué expressed in the subversion/containment analytic itself, specifically as spoken by cultural criticism in its American New Historicist or Representations inflection. In an age when absolute knowledge and/or dialectical materialism has become the “interpretation of cultures,” with its exclusive attention to symbol, display, and representation, the dynamics of lordship/bondage is itself bound. It is “décor, gadget culturel” contained within a room of larger interpretive possibilities. The chapter's thesis is this: if there is a cultural fallacy, pace the New Critical biographical fallacy, it lies in the constrictive interpretation of social representations empowered by the notion of the subject.
Alan Liu
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226486987
- eISBN:
- 9780226487007
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226487007.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
To understand knowledge work from the perspective of the humanities, this chapter reviews three explanations of the concept that arose independently and largely in ignorance of each other: subject ...
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To understand knowledge work from the perspective of the humanities, this chapter reviews three explanations of the concept that arose independently and largely in ignorance of each other: subject work, New Class work, and teamwork. The first two are academic approaches characteristic of the humanities in their now prevailing cultural critical personality. The third is the neo-corporate business thesis that seems destined to buy out the others. Where there was “identity group” and “cultural class,” there will now be only that elementary unit of corporate knowledge work, the team. Since about 1980, the dominant, if unwitting, explanation of knowledge work in the humanities, especially in literature departments, has been the cultural criticism of identity and subject. Knowledge work was a subject or identity work as vast as all culture. New Class work also arose in the academy, but from the direction of sociology rather than literary cultural studies. This chapter analyzes the general sociology of culture-based class distinctions proposed by Pierre Bourdieu as well as the more specific sociology of the New Class.Less
To understand knowledge work from the perspective of the humanities, this chapter reviews three explanations of the concept that arose independently and largely in ignorance of each other: subject work, New Class work, and teamwork. The first two are academic approaches characteristic of the humanities in their now prevailing cultural critical personality. The third is the neo-corporate business thesis that seems destined to buy out the others. Where there was “identity group” and “cultural class,” there will now be only that elementary unit of corporate knowledge work, the team. Since about 1980, the dominant, if unwitting, explanation of knowledge work in the humanities, especially in literature departments, has been the cultural criticism of identity and subject. Knowledge work was a subject or identity work as vast as all culture. New Class work also arose in the academy, but from the direction of sociology rather than literary cultural studies. This chapter analyzes the general sociology of culture-based class distinctions proposed by Pierre Bourdieu as well as the more specific sociology of the New Class.
Tiantian Zheng
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816691999
- eISBN:
- 9781452952499
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816691999.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
Tongzhi, which translates into English as “same purpose” or “same will,” was once widely used to mean “comrade.” Since the 1990s, the word has been appropriated by the LGBT community in China and now ...
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Tongzhi, which translates into English as “same purpose” or “same will,” was once widely used to mean “comrade.” Since the 1990s, the word has been appropriated by the LGBT community in China and now refers to a broad range of people who do not espouse heteronormativity. Tongzhi Living, the first study of its kind, offers insights into the community of same-sex-attracted men in the metropolitan city of Dalian in northeast China. Based on ethnographic fieldwork by Tiantian Zheng, the book reveals an array of coping mechanisms developed by tongzhi men in response to rapid social, cultural, and political transformations in postsocialist China. According to Zheng, unlike gay men in the West over the past three decades, tongzhi men in China have adopted the prevailing moral ideal of heterosexuality and pursued membership in the dominant culture at the same time they have endeavored to establish a tongzhi culture. They are, therefore, caught in a constant tension of embracing and contesting normality as they try to create a new and legitimate space for themselves. Tongzhi men’s attempts to practice both conformity and rebellion paradoxically undercut the goals they aspire to reach, Zheng shows, perpetuating social prejudice against them and thwarting the activism they believe they are advocating.Less
Tongzhi, which translates into English as “same purpose” or “same will,” was once widely used to mean “comrade.” Since the 1990s, the word has been appropriated by the LGBT community in China and now refers to a broad range of people who do not espouse heteronormativity. Tongzhi Living, the first study of its kind, offers insights into the community of same-sex-attracted men in the metropolitan city of Dalian in northeast China. Based on ethnographic fieldwork by Tiantian Zheng, the book reveals an array of coping mechanisms developed by tongzhi men in response to rapid social, cultural, and political transformations in postsocialist China. According to Zheng, unlike gay men in the West over the past three decades, tongzhi men in China have adopted the prevailing moral ideal of heterosexuality and pursued membership in the dominant culture at the same time they have endeavored to establish a tongzhi culture. They are, therefore, caught in a constant tension of embracing and contesting normality as they try to create a new and legitimate space for themselves. Tongzhi men’s attempts to practice both conformity and rebellion paradoxically undercut the goals they aspire to reach, Zheng shows, perpetuating social prejudice against them and thwarting the activism they believe they are advocating.
Keith Chapin and Lawrence Kramer (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823230099
- eISBN:
- 9780823235445
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823230099.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
Musical understanding has evolved dramatically in recent years, principally through a heightened appreciation of musical meaning in its social, cultural, and philosophical dimensions. This book ...
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Musical understanding has evolved dramatically in recent years, principally through a heightened appreciation of musical meaning in its social, cultural, and philosophical dimensions. This book addresses an aspect of meaning that has not yet received its due: the relation of meaning in this broad humanistic sense to the shaping of fundamental values. The book examines the open and active circle between the values and valuations placed on music by both individuals and societies, and the discovery, through music, of what to value and how to value it. With a combination of cultural criticism and close readings of musical works, the chapters demonstrate repeatedly that to make music is also to make value, in every sense. They give particular attention to values that have historically enabled music to assume a formative role in human societies: to foster practices of contemplation, fantasy, and irony; to explore sexuality, subjectivity, and the uncanny; and to articulate longings for unity with nature and for moral certainty. Each chapter shows, in its own way, how music may provoke transformative reflection in its listeners and thus help guide humanity to its own essential embodiment in the world.Less
Musical understanding has evolved dramatically in recent years, principally through a heightened appreciation of musical meaning in its social, cultural, and philosophical dimensions. This book addresses an aspect of meaning that has not yet received its due: the relation of meaning in this broad humanistic sense to the shaping of fundamental values. The book examines the open and active circle between the values and valuations placed on music by both individuals and societies, and the discovery, through music, of what to value and how to value it. With a combination of cultural criticism and close readings of musical works, the chapters demonstrate repeatedly that to make music is also to make value, in every sense. They give particular attention to values that have historically enabled music to assume a formative role in human societies: to foster practices of contemplation, fantasy, and irony; to explore sexuality, subjectivity, and the uncanny; and to articulate longings for unity with nature and for moral certainty. Each chapter shows, in its own way, how music may provoke transformative reflection in its listeners and thus help guide humanity to its own essential embodiment in the world.
Jackie Stacey and Janet Wolff (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780719089428
- eISBN:
- 9781781707340
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719089428.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Writing Otherwise is a collection of essays by established feminist and cultural critics interested in experimenting with new styles of expression. Leading figures in their field, such as Marianne ...
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Writing Otherwise is a collection of essays by established feminist and cultural critics interested in experimenting with new styles of expression. Leading figures in their field, such as Marianne Hirsch, Lynne Pearce, Griselda Pollock, Carol Smart, Jackie Stacey and Janet Wolff, all risk new ways of writing about themselves and their subjects. Contributions move beyond conventional academic writing and into more exploratory registers to consider subjects such as: feminist collaborations, memories of dislocation, movement and belonging, intimacy and affect, encountering difference, passionate connections to art and opera. Some chapters use personal writing to interrogate theoretical issues; others put conceptual questions next to therapeutic ones; all of them offer the reader new ways of thinking about how and why we write, and how we might do it differently. Discovering the creative spaces in between traditional genres, many of the chapters show how new styles of writing open up new ways of doing cultural criticism. Aimed at both general and academic readers interested in how scholarly writing might be more innovative and creative, this collection introduces the personal, the poetic and the experimental into the frame of cultural criticism. This collection of essays is highly interdisciplinary and contributes to debates in sociology, history, anthropology, art history, cultural and media studies and gender studies.Less
Writing Otherwise is a collection of essays by established feminist and cultural critics interested in experimenting with new styles of expression. Leading figures in their field, such as Marianne Hirsch, Lynne Pearce, Griselda Pollock, Carol Smart, Jackie Stacey and Janet Wolff, all risk new ways of writing about themselves and their subjects. Contributions move beyond conventional academic writing and into more exploratory registers to consider subjects such as: feminist collaborations, memories of dislocation, movement and belonging, intimacy and affect, encountering difference, passionate connections to art and opera. Some chapters use personal writing to interrogate theoretical issues; others put conceptual questions next to therapeutic ones; all of them offer the reader new ways of thinking about how and why we write, and how we might do it differently. Discovering the creative spaces in between traditional genres, many of the chapters show how new styles of writing open up new ways of doing cultural criticism. Aimed at both general and academic readers interested in how scholarly writing might be more innovative and creative, this collection introduces the personal, the poetic and the experimental into the frame of cultural criticism. This collection of essays is highly interdisciplinary and contributes to debates in sociology, history, anthropology, art history, cultural and media studies and gender studies.
Alan Liu
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816677948
- eISBN:
- 9781452948379
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816677948.003.0049
- Subject:
- Education, Philosophy and Theory of Education
This chapter discusses how the digital humanities have been oblivious to cultural criticism and how the lack of engagement cultural criticism prevents the digital humanities from becoming a full ...
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This chapter discusses how the digital humanities have been oblivious to cultural criticism and how the lack of engagement cultural criticism prevents the digital humanities from becoming a full partner of the humanities. It argues that the appropriate, unique contribution that the digital humanities can make to cultural criticism at the present time is to use the tools, paradigms, and concepts of digital technologies to help rethink the idea of instrumentality. The goal is to think “critically about metadata” (and everything else related to digital technologies) in a way that “scales into thinking critically about the power, finance, and other governance protocols of the world.” Phrased even more expansively, the goal is to rethink instrumentality so that it includes both humanistic and STEM fields in a culturally broad, and not just narrowly purposive, ideal of service.Less
This chapter discusses how the digital humanities have been oblivious to cultural criticism and how the lack of engagement cultural criticism prevents the digital humanities from becoming a full partner of the humanities. It argues that the appropriate, unique contribution that the digital humanities can make to cultural criticism at the present time is to use the tools, paradigms, and concepts of digital technologies to help rethink the idea of instrumentality. The goal is to think “critically about metadata” (and everything else related to digital technologies) in a way that “scales into thinking critically about the power, finance, and other governance protocols of the world.” Phrased even more expansively, the goal is to rethink instrumentality so that it includes both humanistic and STEM fields in a culturally broad, and not just narrowly purposive, ideal of service.
Julian Johnson
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195146813
- eISBN:
- 9780199849246
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195146813.003.0007
- Subject:
- Music, Philosophy of Music
This final and sixth chapter is about the division of culture by the spatial metaphors of high and low forms of cultural criticism. This includes the differences of aesthetic criteria and different ...
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This final and sixth chapter is about the division of culture by the spatial metaphors of high and low forms of cultural criticism. This includes the differences of aesthetic criteria and different music for the sociology of music. The dissimilarities in music arise not because they are made differently, but because they exhibite different properties and characteristics. Today's musical culture reflects a diversity that seems to mark a perfect union of self-determination. Music, despite its apparently subjective nature, is rooted in the same social objectivity. That this statement seems odd today is perhaps a sign of the degree to which, in cultural matters, the educational system confirms rather than questions the relativism of everyday life.Less
This final and sixth chapter is about the division of culture by the spatial metaphors of high and low forms of cultural criticism. This includes the differences of aesthetic criteria and different music for the sociology of music. The dissimilarities in music arise not because they are made differently, but because they exhibite different properties and characteristics. Today's musical culture reflects a diversity that seems to mark a perfect union of self-determination. Music, despite its apparently subjective nature, is rooted in the same social objectivity. That this statement seems odd today is perhaps a sign of the degree to which, in cultural matters, the educational system confirms rather than questions the relativism of everyday life.
