Concentric: Studies in English Literature and Linguistics

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://rportal.lib.ntnu.edu.tw/handle/20.500.12235/219

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Subject: search.filters.subject.subjectivity

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Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    (英語學系, 2015-05-??) Tony See Sin Heng
    This paper examines the resonances between Gilles Deleuze’s and Daisaku Ikeda’s philosophy of the subject and revolution. Although much has been written about Deleuze’s and Ikeda’s philosophies separately, relatively little has been focused on the resonances between these two philosophies. This paper aims to highlight the resonances between Deleuze’s and Ikeda’s philosophy of subjectivity and their implications for contemporary revolutionary discourses. This paper does not aim to establish that the two philosophies are identical, for it is recognized that Deleuze’s philosophy developed in the context of Western philosophy and Ikeda wrote in the in the context of Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophy advocated by Nichiren Daishonin. This paper aims to argue, instead, that despite the obvious differences, there are important resonances between these two philosophies, and they need to be explored as both philosophies may both benefit from mutual dialogue and theoretical exchanges. In the first part of this paper we will examine Deleuze’s theory of the subject in the context of Western philosophy, followed by an examination of Ikeda’s philosophy of the subject in the context of Mahāyāna Buddhism. In the third part, we will examine the resonances between Deleuze’s and Ikeda’s philosophy of the subject, and consider the implications of these for social and political revolutions.
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    Untitled
    (英語學系, 2015-05-??) Tony See Sin Heng
    This paper examines the resonances between Gilles Deleuze’s and Daisaku Ikeda’s philosophy of the subject and revolution. Although much has been written about Deleuze’s and Ikeda’s philosophies separately, relatively little has been focused on the resonances between these two philosophies. This paper aims to highlight the resonances between Deleuze’s and Ikeda’s philosophy of subjectivity and their implications for contemporary revolutionary discourses. This paper does not aim to establish that the two philosophies are identical, for it is recognized that Deleuze’s philosophy developed in the context of Western philosophy and Ikeda wrote in the in the context of Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophy advocated by Nichiren Daishonin. This paper aims to argue, instead, that despite the obvious differences, there are important resonances between these two philosophies, and they need to be explored as both philosophies may both benefit from mutual dialogue and theoretical exchanges. In the first part of this paper we will examine Deleuze’s theory of the subject in the context of Western philosophy, followed by an examination of Ikeda’s philosophy of the subject in the context of Mahāyāna Buddhism. In the third part, we will examine the resonances between Deleuze’s and Ikeda’s philosophy of the subject, and consider the implications of these for social and political revolutions.
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    Disappearing Politics and the Politics of Disappearance
    (英語學系, 2012-03-??) Han Li
    This paper examines the intertextual structure and its dynamic employment of (de)constructing female subjectivity in Stanley Kwan’s Center Stage (1992). In this study, I suggest how the film’s fundamental reconstruction of the life experience of Ruan Lingyu (1910-35) is intertwined with representational erasure of 1930s Shanghai that in turn testifies to Hong Kong’s own subjectivity. I focus on the places in Center Stage where remakes of certain scenes of Ruan’s films along with original footage are inserted into the reconstructed narration of Ruan’s life. By examining the appropriation of these clips in Center Stage, I demonstrate how a parallel is created between the female characters’ experience in these 1930s films with the purported situation of Ruan Lingyu on the reconstruction level. I argue that in the filmmaker’s effort to seemingly reconstruct the female subject, the narrative in fact serves to de-politicize the 1930s films, especially the leftist ones. With the postmodern meta-cinematic structure of this film, not only does the reconstructed female subjectivity dissolve in the self-reflexive move, but the leftist progressive ideologies are also undermined. The representational erasure of the leftist elements on the discursive level is supported by the art direction in Center Stage, in which painted paperboards are used as background. On these two intermingled discursive and visual layers, Kwan tackles the apocalyptical anxiety of Hong Kong society in the 1990s with a unique representational hegemony of 1930s Shanghai.
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    Invoking the West: Giorgio Agamben’s “Romantic Ideology” and the Civilizational Transference
    (英語學系, 2014-09-??) Jon Solomon
    Inspired by Giorgio Agamben’s critique of the “Romantic Ideology” that consciously created a tautological equivalency between language and people, this essay is interested in drawing upon elements of the philosopher’s conceptual kit to explore the ways in which his attempt to trace ontological origins recuperates “Romantic ideology” with regard to civilizational difference. We will take as our point of departure the construction of that ambiguous yet ubiquitous civilizational entity, the “West.” In order to tease apart the status of the “West” in Agamben’s work, we will return to the conceptual distinction and historical narrative deployed in one of the philosopher’s earliest works, Language and Death, which plays a seminal role in the development of the author’s later philosophy. Having thus established the moment when the “Romantic Ideology” criticized by Agamben reappears in the form of civilizational transfer, we proceed by way of asking, once again both with and against Agamben, if the “West” might not be seen as a form of translational apparatus such as the concept is critically taken up in the philosopher’s 2006 essay, “What is an Apparatus?” The essay concludes with a reflection on the relation between translation and species difference in the context of the new biospheric colonization that characterizes contemporary capitalism.
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    Disappearing Politics and the Politics of Disappearance
    (英語學系, 2012-03-??) Han Li
    This paper examines the intertextual structure and its dynamic employment of (de)constructing female subjectivity in Stanley Kwan’s Center Stage (1992). In this study, I suggest how the film’s fundamental reconstruction of the life experience of Ruan Lingyu (1910-35) is intertwined with representational erasure of 1930s Shanghai that in turn testifies to Hong Kong’s own subjectivity. I focus on the places in Center Stage where remakes of certain scenes of Ruan’s films along with original footage are inserted into the reconstructed narration of Ruan’s life. By examining the appropriation of these clips in Center Stage, I demonstrate how a parallel is created between the female characters’ experience in these 1930s films with the purported situation of Ruan Lingyu on the reconstruction level. I argue that in the filmmaker’s effort to seemingly reconstruct the female subject, the narrative in fact serves to de-politicize the 1930s films, especially the leftist ones. With the postmodern meta-cinematic structure of this film, not only does the reconstructed female subjectivity dissolve in the self-reflexive move, but the leftist progressive ideologies are also undermined. The representational erasure of the leftist elements on the discursive level is supported by the art direction in Center Stage, in which painted paperboards are used as background. On these two intermingled discursive and visual layers, Kwan tackles the apocalyptical anxiety of Hong Kong society in the 1990s with a unique representational hegemony of 1930s Shanghai.
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    The Uses of Brevity: Valuing the “No More to Be Said” in Jean Echenoz’s Plan of Occupancy and the Transcontinental “Critical Novel”
    (英語學系, 2013-09-??) Thomas Phillips
    This paper examines the value of brevity in contemporary French novels, particularly Jean Echenoz’s Plan of Occupancy, in relation to the broader context of transcontinental fiction. Its central claim is that the stylistic minimalism of such fiction informs a “minoritarian” subjectivity that has both aesthetic and political implications. Additionally, I discuss, in brief, other texts that are central to this issue including Don DeLillo’s The Body Artist, an example of an American novel that not only limits itself to a page count far below the average in American fiction, but presents a style that is indicative of precisely the kind of minimalism that is accepted and, indeed, celebrated by DeLillo’s French contemporaries.