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Chinese Ideas and American Politics: Confucius as a Guideline for Leadership
Get PDFIn his article Chinese Ideas and American Politics: Confucius as a Guideline for Leadership , Alfred Hornung traces the influence of Chinese ideas on American politics with a focus on the works of Confucius. The more than 2.500-year-old impact of the Chinese philosopher on public conduct and his pursuit of virtuous perfection has served as a guideline for leadership emanating from China to Europe and America. For this trajectory of ideas, the historic and the new Silk Road play a decisive role. The exchange of goods along the land-based and maritime routes, which inform Xi Jinping\u27s Belt and Road Initiative, also involved an exchange of cultural ideas, reflected in Marco Polo\u27s thirteenth-century account of his trip and the Jesuits\u27 Latin translations of Confucius. The publication of Confucius Sinarum Philosophus in Paris in 1687 made the Chinese philosopher a major source of knowledge for Europeans and turned him into the patron saint of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. It is the transcultural impetus of Benjamin Franklin, who reviewed Confucius\u27 teachings in his Pennsylvania Gazette in 1737, to apply his ideas to the foundation of the American Republic. Likewise, the Founding Fathers and American presidents John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were familiar with Confucius\u27 moral stance for leadership, shared his rejection of corrupt regimes and promised the pursuit of happiness for all. The Confucian influence on the moral constitution of the United States of America is an important topic in the modernist poetry of Ezra Pound who takes up the history of the Chinese civilization and Confucius\u27 role for the political formation of his country in his Cantos. It is also visible in the choice of Confucius as one of three lawgivers who figure on the eastern pediment of the 1935 US Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C. China\u27s reconnection with the legacy of its major philosopher in 1989 becomes part of the public diplomacy to promote Chinese language and culture worldwide. The subsequent foundation of Confucius Institutes set up a platform of transcultural communication in which the Chinese sage enforces the quality of global leadership. Considered an ancient Marx, the impact of Confucian ideas disseminated by China correlate with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe\u27s idea of world literature taken up in Marx and Engels\u27 Communist Manifesto. China\u27s gift of the Karl Marx statue to the city of Trier on the occasion of the 200-year-anniversary of his birth in 2018 can be linked to the transcultural and transnational mission of the Chinese government in the twenty-first century with Confucius as the guideline
The Malvinas/Falklands War in Transatlantic Narratives: Exploring Collective Memory and Negotiating Self/Other Identity
Get PDFIn her article The Malvinas/Falklands War in Transatlantic Narratives: Exploring Collective Memory and Negotiating Self/Other Identity , Andrea R. Bellot examines the remembrance of the Malvinas/Falklands War (1982) through cultural texts for children, presenting a comparative analysis of post-war narratives from both the United Kingdom and Argentina. Through a detailed exploration of The Tin-Pot Foreign General and the Old Iron Woman by British author and illustrator Raymond Briggs (1984), and the Argentine TV cartoon show La Asombrosa Excursión de Zamba en las Islas Malvinas (2012), broadcasted on Paka Paka, Bellot discusses how collective memory and national identity are crafted and contested in these representations. While both works aim to critique the absurdity of war, they diverge in their political undertones, engaging with themes of patriotism, collective memory, and political satire. Bellot\u27s analysis employs a comparative literature framework to illuminate the role these narratives play in shaping remembrance and contributing to the ongoing construction of national identities and collective memories in the post-war era. Her findings underscore the significant influence of children\u27s cultural texts in negotiating memory and identity, enriching our understanding of the complex dynamics between narrative, memory, and identity in the context of conflict
CLCWeb Call for Papers: Global Futurism
Get PDFThe imagination of the future is a constant topic that transcends geographical frontiers and cultural boundaries in human society, giving rise to future(s) studies, futurology, or simply, futurism. Futurism is taken here not in the sense of the art movement that originated in Italy in 1909, but simply all forms of cultural expressions that embrace the “future”. As a medium for cultural exchange and innovation, literary and artistic narratives reflect and shape societal values and visions of the future, exerting considerable influence on technological and social developments through imaginative foresight. This issue invites contributions on futuristic themes in literature and art that encompass diverse cultures and perspectives, envisioning to depict a “global” picture of contemplating futuristic narratives and contribute to constructing a diversified landscape of the future.
Literature is an important vehicle for people’s futuristic imagination, as speculative aspects of futurism are noticeably traceable to the traditions of utopian literature or science fiction. Literary texts seem to have shown great potential for cultural prophecy, as manifested by the term “fiction about the future” coined by H. G. Wells (1980), or the “fiction of the future” claimed by Robert Scholes (1975). Wells, who authored Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought (1901), is perceived as the founder of future(s) studies. In this sense, from the beginning, the systematic and interdisciplinary exploration (or “prediction”) of technological advancement and the social progress that the former may bring about is essential in people’s reflections on the future.
Firstly, people express a common conviction that science and technology will transform the world in the century ahead, either assertively or doubtfully. In other words, the function of prophecy as exhibited by literature may have different natures of prophetic insight, both anticipation and exhortation. Secondly, the dimension of futuristic imagination in relation to history and reality is worthy of attention, for some science fiction aims “not to give us ‘images’ of the future…but rather to defamiliarize and restructure our experience of our own present” (Jameson 1982, 151). Thirdly, futuristic narratives are multi-dimensional: some are closely intertwined with political, ideological, or nationalist agendas in special socio-historical settings, as Jameson defends the political relevance of utopia and science fiction (2005, xi); while others are oriented toward shared interests of human society or, rather a community (e.g. the ideal of Great Unity in Confucianism). Fourthly, since recent years have witnessed the coming true of some incredible predictions in the early literary imagination, it is foreseeable that literary works can not only imagine the future as it might be, but may also become an inspiring force to turn imaginations into reality. Fifthly, does the imagination and representation of futurism have the potential to question, challenge, and improve the political, cultural, economic, and identity-based inequalities and unevenness between the global South/North, capitalists/laborers, males/other oppressed genders, and humans/nature? Finally, contextualized in constant techno-innovation, how might literary and artistic practice capitalize on technological advancement to generate new creativity today? What are the ethical dimensions to be addressed in this process?
From a global perspective, texts from various eras and locations may address similar global issues alongside transcultural activities: from the translation and creation of futuristic novels in late Qing China, as an important facet of China Question of Western Theory (Liu 2020), to Francesco Verso’s “future fiction” project in Italy today[1]; from the rise of “Afrofuturism”, as both a cultural movement and a critical framework, to the Manifesto of Science Fiction Futurism 科幻未来主义的状态或宣言(2014) proposed by Chinese scholars to anticipate the future. In the new media age today, the ubiquity of technology has exerted an increasingly profound influence on people’s imagination of the future, which makes the reflections on science and technology an overarching theme in thinking about the future as a global topic. On the one hand, the globalizing force has paved the way for literary and theoretical texts, or artistic expressions to circulate beyond their cultures of origin, address similar issues, and explore alternatives about the future across the globe; On the other, digital globalization has further made possible the circulation of literary texts across different media platforms, giving rise to transmedia futurities, as an inventive combination of theoretical, literary or artistic reflections vis-à-vis technological innovations.
With these questions in mind, by combining inter-disciplinary and international perspectives, potential contributions will be grouped under the following broad categories:
l Futuristic narrative and imagination in literature (as a response to/ or an intervention in reality)
l Criticism of future-oriented cultural phenomena/practices and their ethical implications
l The impact of technology (eg. Internet, AI) on future literary, artistic, and cultural creations
l Transmedia futurities: reflections on literature, art, and media for the next generation(s)
l Leftist futurism, futuristic cultural studies, global futurist aesthetics
l Ethical considerations in futuristic narratives (promoting responsible and inclusive visions of the future)
We invite original contributions in response to this theme. Please send an abstract of around 300 words and a short bionote of the contributor by email to the guest editor You Wu at [email protected] by December 30th, 2024. Please use the subject heading “CLCWeb Special Issue on Global Futurism” in communication or submission.
[1] https://www.futurefiction.org/francesco-verso/?lang=en, accessed on January 12, 2023
Testing whether the relations between sex and psychopathology are accounted for by structural morphometry in ABCD.
Get PDFSex differences in psychopathology are well-established, with females demonstrating higher rates of internalizing (INT) psychopathology and males demonstrating higher rates of externalizing (EXT) psychopathology. Using two waves of data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (N = 6,778 at each wave), the current study tested whether the relations between sex and psychopathology might be accounted for by structural brain differences. In general, we found robust, relatively consistent relations between sex and structural morphometry across waves. Relatively few morphometric brain variables were significantly related to INT or EXT across waves, however, with very small effect sizes when present. Next, we tested the extent to which each morphometric brain variable could account for the associations of sex with INT and EXT psychopathology. We found a total of 26 brain regions that accounted for significant portions of the associations between sex and psychopathology across both waves (almost all related to EXT), although the effects present were very small. The current evidence suggests that in children aged 9–12, multiple whole-brain and regional brain variables appear to statistically account for small portions of the sex-psychopathology links, especially for externalizing
