2020 Vol. 3, No. 3

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Material Evidence Priority: Quadruple Evidence Method and the “Jade-Making China Trilogy”
YE Shuxian
2020, 3(3): 415-437. doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20203301
Abstract:
The school of literary anthropology, an outstanding representative of interdisciplinary research in Chinese comparative literature, has designed and completed three major scientific research projects in the past ten years, which are simply summarized as the "Jade-Making China Trilogy," comprising "Mythological Research on the Origin of Chinese Civilization" (2015), "Jade Myth Belief and Huaxia Spirit" (2019) and "Xuanyu Era:Five Thousand Years of China's New Verification" (2020). The quadruple evidence method, the first interdisciplinary research methodology paradigm proposed by the literary anthropology school in 2005, summarizes the exploration direction and research strategy so far-that is, the principle of "material evidence first." This means that domestic scholars of literature, history, and philosophy finally have the conditions to get rid of the millennium bottleneck of literary knowledge, and truly implement the cognitive goals of "five thousand years of China" and even "ten thousand years of China." This article demonstrates the operation of the new methodology of the literary anthropology school by combing and reviewing the process of the "Jade-Making China Trilogy," successively published since 2015:employing the handed-down literary materials as primary evidence, and the newly unearthed textual sources such as Oracle Bone and Bronze Inscriptions as secondary evidence, oral culture, ritual performance, and other anthropological special research resources as the third evidence, and archaeological excavated sites, cultural relics, and images as the fourth evidence. Based on the three-dimensional research experience of the quadruple evidence method, the school proposed the new concept of the "Big Tradition" in 2010, especially referring to the cultural tradition in the era of no text. The project of exploring the problem of the cultural tradition without words leads researchers to jump out of the traditional literature-based research formula, regard the writing tradition as a minor tradition, and theorize the goal of in-depth interpretation of literature and culture, which is the innovative road from the research of written text to the overall understanding constructed by "cultural texts."
[Abstract](682) [PDF 1717KB](1133)
The Yijing as a Receptive Text: A Phenomenological Research
DOU Keyang
2020, 3(3): 438-451. doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20203302
Abstract:
In the reception of Yijing 《易经》(also as The Book of Changes), the existence of the text of Yijing as a reception text should not be regarded as an objective history book or simple record of divination, but as a typical living text consisting of strata from Yan 言 (the stratum of sound and concrete meaning units by Ingarden) to Xiang 象 (the stratum of imaginative forms) and Yi 意 (the stratum of metaphysical formation). It originated from real life, but was not limited by this concrete existence. Thus, the existence of Yijing not only included writings, but also the existence in the process of interpretation by latter receivers, therefore realizing a lively transcending. Yijing as a reception text should not be regarded as a closed and objective record, but an open and appealing text to all receivers.
[Abstract](662) [PDF 1728KB](980)
“Connatching”: An Important Thinking Mode in Traditional Chinese Culture
RAN Qibin
2020, 3(3): 452-468. doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20203303
Abstract:
Connatching" (connecting and matching) is an important feature in traditional Chinese culture:a thinking mode to establish connections/linkages between things and phenomena through subjective bridging. Specifically, based on their shapes, appearances, properties, and characteristics, matchings and mappings between concepts are constructed through subjective feeling, intuitive thinking, and correspoding association. The associations between Yin, Yang, and the Eight Trigrams, among other elements, indicated the early forms of connatching. And connatching can be found typically in the theory of interaction between heaven and mankind. In the field of specific knowledge, connatching in traditional Chinese medicine lies in the doctrine of signatures, food-medicine, and also massage. Connatching of human organs and herbal medicines typically reflects the direct and intuitive associations between the two. In traditional Chinese culture, the largest, most systemetic, and most influential form of connatching is centered on "five Xing." In fact, the series of connections and associations centered on "five Xing" forms a three-dimensional "connatching cloud" phenomenon. "Five Xing" involved at least thirty semantic fields before the Tang dynasty, including colors, seasons, classical literature, numbers, sounds, tastes, etc. For example, thirty-six initials in Middle Chinese were connatched to five Xing, five music chords, five objects in society, five organs, and five directions and weights. The influence of connatch-thinking is pervasive in traditional Chinese culture, being widely reflected in calligraphy, painting, martial arts, language, and other fields, including numerous instances of "speech-sound connatching" by ordinary people. For example, homophone preferences and homophone taboo generally result from speech-sound connatching. While connatch-thinking has certain characteristics of "systematic thinking," there are essential differences between the two. More often than not, connatch-thinking falls into vague and general concept-matching games.
[Abstract](651) [PDF 1933KB](1746)
Nationalist and Anti-Nationalist Feminist Discourses in Late Imperial China
WANG Lang
2020, 3(3): 469-489. doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20203304
Abstract:
With the spread of Western ideals that valorize gender equality and the popularization of women's education in late imperial China, feminism advanced with unprecedented impact. Qiu Jin 秋瑾 (1877-1907), who espoused nationalism, became the most famous feminist in that era. Previous scholarship has popularly understood early Chinese feminism as nationalistic and acknowledged the subordination of women's liberation movements to the project of national emancipation. This well-known assertion does not take into consideration the anarcho-feminism championed by He Zhen何震 (1886-1920?). The nationalist feminist discourse advocated by Qiu Jin and the emerging anarcho-feminist discourse endorsed by He Zhen reveal essential truths about the relationship between woman, state, and the larger world. A comparative study of Qiu Jin and He Zhen's feminist thought illuminates the internal conflicts and insights inside early Chinese feminism and is explicative of the ensuing evolution of Chinese feminist thought. This study aims to present the panoramic and pluralistic landscape of early Chinese feminism in late imperial China.
[Abstract](525) [PDF 2192KB](441)
Eurydice's Face: the Paradox of Mallarmé's Musical Poetics
WU Tsaiyi
2020, 3(3): 490-506. doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20203305
Abstract:
Inspired by Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003) who compares Stéphane Mallarmé's (1842-1898) poetics to Orpheus's descent into the underworld, this article seeks to account for the relationship between the two seemingly contradictory sides of Mallarmé as a psychological journey-one that seeks the mystery of things hidden in eternal night, and the other proclaims that poetry should contain nothingness only as the Orphic poet realizes that his desire to find the essence has violated the law and would thus make the thing disappear altogether. The first two sections of the article elucidate Mallarmé's lesser-known musical poetics which seeks to distill the essence of things, to transcribe "the symphonic equation proper to the seasons," with reference to his prose poems and Arthur Schopenhauer's (1788-1860) philosophy of music. The final section argues that Mallarmé's nothingness means not autonomous language, as asserted by his idealist predecessors or structuralist/poststructuralist critics, but an ethical pronouncement to protect the mystery of the thing from poetic exploitation and exhaustion.
[Abstract](478) [PDF 2225KB](625)
The Great Learning in Russia
A. I. Kobzev
2020, 3(3): 507-518. doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20203306
Abstract:
Through the research of the fate and evolution of the earliest Latin translation of the Confucian canon The Great Learning published in Russia and its subsequent Russian translations, this paper reconstructs the process of the translation, influence and acceptance of The Great Learning in Russia and describes its dramatic fate. The discovery and interpretation of the The Great Learning continually reflected the developing spirit of Russian society, and became the essential content of the instruments of its social and political struggle.
[Abstract](478) [PDF 1651KB](414)
The Journey to the West in the French Knowledge Space: From the Jesuits to Théodore Pavie
WU Hanlai
2020, 3(3): 519-532. doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20203307
Abstract:
This article aims to reveal the place occupied by the Journey to the West in the intellectual sphere of nineteenth-century France, from the perspective of the history of science and knowledge that has developed since the second half of the twentieth century. The author describes the formation of the gaze of the Western subject, from the emergence of Jesuit proto-Sinology to the establishment of institutionalized knowledge, including the French Revolution. Indeed, from the arrival of the Jesuits in China until the beginning of the nineteenth century, the paradigm of knowledge was gradually constituted, where natural science (such as that of Linnaeus and Buffon) and human science (such as that of Condillac and Condorcet) intertwine in such a way that renders it difficult to establish a clear border between the two. And on the other hand, the monarchical and ecclesiastical powers give way to relatively autonomous educational institutions, where knowledge becomes more and more formalized. Witness the inaugural lesson of Jean-Pierre Abel Rémusat, first professor of Sinology at the Collège de France, which illustrates very well that the Sinological knowledge of the time was framed by the episteme described above. Taking for example Théodore Pavie, an orientalist who studied the novel in question for the first time, the author endeavors to highlight the way in which knowledge of the novel is placed in the general field of the human sciences of the time. In this field dominated by historical progressivism (more on the side of human science) and scientific racism (more on the side of natural science), the classical Chinese novel can only lurk on the sidelines of the splendid map of knowledge. In the history thus traced, attention is paid not only to the circulation and transformation of knowledge, but also to the rise and fall of spiritual and temporal powers, and to the institutionalization of the human sciences.
[Abstract](468) [PDF 1833KB](432)
Mu Xin: An Outsider of the Circle of Contemporary Writers
JIANG Yuqin
2020, 3(3): 533-542. doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20203308
Abstract:
Mu Xin is a controversial writer. His gentle, cultivated, and softly-voiced manner of expression is difficult for many readers. While his writings continue the tradition of Chinese high culture, they are also deeply influenced by European aristocratic culture. The two cultures that embody internal humanistic diathesis are unified in his writings, which distinguishes his writings with particular traits that reflect a literary spirit and style.
[Abstract](437) [PDF 1720KB](411)
From Electronic Pets in Cyberspace to the “One-all-alone” in the Posthuman Era: A Psychoanalytical Interpretation of Spike Jonze's Her
WANG Duoxiang
2020, 3(3): 543-554. doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20203309
Abstract:
Spike Jonze's film Her is the story of a man falling in love with an artificial intelligence voice system. The opposition between human and artificial intelligence is a problem that must be faced in the posthuman era. Studying this film with the subject theory of Lacanian-Žižek psychoanalysis upgrades the interpretive terminology and accomplishes the cohesion and transition from Slavoj Žižek's Cyberspace Criticism to Jacques-Alain Miller's "one-all-alone." In the posthuman era, with the combination of capitalist and scientific discourses, the new objet petit a appears with a new form as i-object, which satisfies the subject's desires with better timeliness and more privacy. In the film, the hero Theodore, as the subject, becomes "one-all-alone" due to the fear of sameness-the first posthuman symptom-as well as the fear of difference-the second symptom-which he experiences as "the jouissance in delocalization." Theodore, as the masculine subject, faces an emergence of feminine jouissance and two kinds of NSR (non-sexual rapport):one between sexes and the other of the i-object. In their relationship, Theodore is in a passively lacking state, while Samantha, the artificial intelligence, is in an active state and wants to get more. Comparing Samantha with Ash, an electronic pet from the British TV series Black Mirror, we find that electronic pets are lacking for their subjects, while i-objects make their masculine structured subjects excessively satisfied with feminine jouissance. Finally, the Hegelian logic of "the negation of the negation" can help us solve the problem of the two paradoxical posthuman symptoms. Although these symptoms seem to split us into unhealed parts or even fragments that are difficult to piece together, they urge us to constantly adjust ourselves and find a balance between sameness and difference.
[Abstract](462) [PDF 2686KB](417)
Critical Theory, Comparative Literature, and Dialogue between Theories: Interview with Peter V. Zima
ZHAO Bing, ZHANG Cong, Peter V. Zima
2020, 3(3): 557-564. doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20203310
Abstract:
As one of the most eloquent voices on critical theory, sociological aesthetics, and comparative literature in the German-speaking world, Peter V. Zima shared in this interview his idea about these fields. He explained how he has tried to reconstruct both critical theory and world literature by giving them a sociosemiotic basis. More interestingly, he demonstrated his attempt at a dialogue between theories by juxtaposing Adorno and Bourdieu in the common context of the literary market.
[Abstract](504) [PDF 2514KB](438)
David Wang and JI Jin, eds. Humanistic Vistas of Cosmopolitanism
SUN Lianwu
2020, 3(3): 567-570. doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20203311
Abstract:
[Abstract](433) [PDF 1508KB](443)
Iovene, Paola. Tales of Futures Past: Anticipation and the Ends of Literature in Contemporary China
XIE Danling
2020, 3(3): 571-573. doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20203312
Abstract:
[Abstract](484) [PDF 1464KB](500)
HUANG Jincheng. Organic Modernity: The Young Hegel and The Aesthetic Discourse of Modernity
WANG Yaochong
2020, 3(3): 574-580. doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20203313
Abstract:
[Abstract](503) [PDF 1606KB](435)
MENG Qingshu. Echo, Mirror, Dialogue: Chinese and Japanese Culture and Literature
LIU Yan
2020, 3(3): 581-586. doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20203314
Abstract:
[Abstract](442) [PDF 1582KB](437)
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