Yang Chunshi

English Abstracts

The Modern Signif i cance of Chinese Aesthetics and Its Reconstruction

Yang Chunshi

Chinese aesthetics has both pre-modern and modern meaning. Its pre-modern meaning is embodied in the savagery of the unity of heaven and man, non-transcendent worldliness and the weakness of logical system. This classical theory cannot completely adapt to the aesthetic practice of modern society. Meanwhile, Chinese aesthetics has the modern meaning, which conserves the reasonable cores of thought such as intersubjectivity, phenomenological methods of intuition and comprehension, af f ective aesthetics, somaesthetics, and life aesthetics, etc. If its savagery is removed, Chinese aesthetics can have a dialogue with modern aesthetics, and hence become the thought resource of Chinese modern aesthetics.

The Theoretical Dif f erences of Contemporary Literary Politics Between China and the West

Fan Yongkang

Abstract:Literary Politics has become a hot academic question in Chinese and Western literary criticism. There are four aspects of dif f erences that signify the conf l uent rather than identical points of view in Chinese and western literary politics. In historical development, literary politics of the West develops from depoliticizing to politicizing, while Chinese literary politics follows a process from politicizing to depoliticizing and then to re-politicizing. As for the philosophical base, Chinese literary politics is constructed on Marxism instead of post-Marxism which is the base of the western literary politics. The third dif f erence lies in the political meaning with a demarcation between macro-politics and micro-politics for Chinese and western literary politics. The last dif f erence is in literary concepts with Chinese literary politics in favor of aestheticization while the West in favor of de-aestheticization. It is obvious from the dif f erences analysis that Chinese literary politics has evolved along a complete logic and thus seems more reasonable. Therefore, it is necessary to construct and perfect a literary politics with Chinese characteristics, conforming to principles of aesthetic preference, people-f i rst and value-regulation.

Obscurity of Scientism: Reread Literary Psychology by Jin Kaicheng

Zhao Yanling, Liu Fengjie

Abstract:In the early period of 1980s, Jin Kaicheng begins the reconstruction of literary psychology by adopting Scientism, a research method quite dif f erent from others. A further study on him would reveal that his Scientism stems from Cao Richang’s General Psychology, trying to revise and defend the theory of literary ref l ection. Since the theory of literary ref l ection has a specif i c political connotation, Jin Kaicheng’s Scientism cannot actually f i gure out the essence of literature, meanwhile ref l ecting psychological symptoms under the severe political stress.

Tools and Methods in the Perspective of Media Ecology

Lance Strate (Trans. by Hu Julan)

Abstract:Just as our ancestors hunted, gathered and processed their foods with stone, we use digital tools to hunt and gather alphanumeric data, and also process words, numbers, images, and sounds. Cut, Copy, and Paste are the typical tools used in human life, and in the perspective of media ecology, they are ingenious methods to deal with environment, and simultaneously stimulate practice, creating new-type aesthetics associated with abstract pasteup, montage, and the postmodern pastiche. Those inconspicuous but ubiquitous tools usually constitute the deep structure of human culture. From stone knives to oral literature, then to written work, and up to digital editing, we use tools to modify and manipulate environments, and the new environments in turn create and af f ect human development. In such a sense, Cut, Copy, and Paste far surpass the screen, mice and keyboards of computers. And all those tools mean much to biotechnology, image politics, and postmodern art,literature, music, etc. All in all, Cut, Copy, and Paste are signif i cant for our future. That is why we should comprehend the tools that will decide the way human develops.

A Study on Marxism Genealogy of Stuart Hall’s Cultural Theory

Zheng Hongju

Abstract:It is still a debate on Marxism genealogy of Stuart Hall’s cultural theory. This paper, by probing into the thought foundation,theoretic theme and research method of Hall’s cultural theory, suggests that Hall’s cultural theory belongs to Marxism genealogy, and he not only adheres to Marxist thought but also makes innovations, thus re-exerting the inf l uence of Marxism in western cultural circles.

Memory of Chinese Literary Criticism in the 20th Century—1916: A Year of Death and Vitality (Part Ⅰ)

Yin Guoming

Abstract:In the 20thcentury, China has undergone a gigantic transformation of which literature and literary criticism is not only a witness and recorder but also a participant and creator. As for literary criticism, the year of 1916 is a special time full of historical uncertainty and possibility as well as death and vitality, leaving lots of unforgettable memories. These memories are recorded in latter cultural and literary transformation and has remained a lasting inf l uence as a stamp and mark in the history of Chinese literary criticism and even culture of the 20thcentury.

Chen Mingshu’s Research Life

Fu Jiexiang, Huang Qiaofei

Abstract:Chen Mingshu,a famous expert on modern literature in China, and a research expert in Lu Xun as wellas in literature and art. As the new power in the f i eld of new Chinese civilization, his early research articles on Lu Xun can be described as a tortuous and difficult testimony of an era. Since the beginning of the new era, with a wide range of horizons, Mr. Chen has continued to launch numerous Lu Xun research achievements. Besides, he has also put forward a series of pioneering concepts such as the principle of bipolar negation and the principle of correspondence in the f i eld of methodology of literary theory, and has perfectly accomplished an interdisciplinary pioneering exploration across fields. Mr. Chen has achieved great success thanks to his rich literary talent, profound theoretical accomplishment and rigorous research spirit. Mr.Chen’s articles could always follow the times and even surpass the times.

On Pan Zhichang’s Life Aesthetics System

Wang Shide

Abstract:Professor Pan Zhichang starts to construct Life Aesthetics system from 1984, and has worked systematically on the theory for four times and produced more than 20 works. His great contribution lies in the breakthrough of the widespread confusion in aesthetics circles and his proposal that beauty is not an entity but the signif i cance and value created and felt by people in their aesthetic activities. Life aesthetics focuses on aesthetic activity with individual enlightenment and the enlightenment of faith as the two basic points, suggesting that aesthetics, as a kind of life activity, is to realize the inf i nite freedom, and is an ideal attitude for ultimate care and a way of poetic habitation. Thus, aesthetic activity is an ideal activity featured by its transcendence of life limits, and beauty is the ideal image of human life progress.

From Crime and Punishment to A Touch Of Sin: Raskolnikov’s Fragmentation

Mao Chongjie

Abstract:Although the novel Crime and Punishment and the f i lm A Touch of Sin are two dif f erent forms of artistic texts in time and space,both of them describe the social crisis at the beginning of information revolution in the wake of violent revolution respectively by way of realistic depth and completeness, and of the fragmentation and complanation of postmodernism. Both texts focus on the fate of the weak and follow the same logic of “Oriental Despotism” where the primitive accumulation of capital has alienated people. In dif f erent period of times, violence could be transformed from being as an inevitable means into a motivation as itself, thus generalizing violence in practice backed up by violence theory.Those who resist violence would always take violent measures when they win, which demonstrates that evil, as the lever for the progress of history, would always trap itself in circles of “means of salvation” being converted into “origin of evil” during the reciprocal period from justice to injustice. Bakhtin’s polyphonic theory adopted in Dostoevsky’s Poetics, based on “communication-dialogue”, develops into a system and still functions in postmodernism. The new age could f i nally accomplish the universal values surpassing being Utopian and religious.

Has Impressionism Nothing to Do with Chinese Art?

Wang Caiyong

Abstract:The influence of Ukiyoe on impressionism is not as unsubstituted as is always taken for granted. It is sufficient to say that impressionism is effected rather by Chinese art or any kind of Eastern Asian art than Ukiyoe under a given condition, because what effect impressionism by Ukiyoe is not Ukiyoe’s uniqueness but the “homo-features” shared by the whole Eastern Asian art, which provides the possibility probing the relation between Chinese art and impressionism. Chinese art and impressionism implicitly coincide with each other in logic and works’ language. It is this implicit coincidence that demonstrates the metonymy mechanism for the intercultural art communication.

The Benevolence of “Sheng Sheng Princile” and Cheng Hao’s “Oneness in All Things”

Wu Peng

Abstract:The relationship between Cheng Yi and Cheng Hao in the connotation of “heavenly principles” and The Sheng-sheng Principle has developed and ref i ned the discussion on the question of “heavenly principles”, and further extended the “heavenly principles” problem of The Sheng-sheng Principle to the world of all things, and thus formed a “oneness in all things” of the music of further performance. “All things” is actually the reality of this “l(fā)ife and life” in the process of human show, but in the process of showing it on the one hand it is pure and transparent,on the other hand it also indicates that the Song and Ming Dynasties have been for the “heavenly principles” of the “benevolence” for human nature of the emotional desire of the squeeze. So Cheng Hao's “oneness in all things” of the saints does not seem to lose the color of the world’s fireworks, a purely perfect embodiment of moral activities.

Problems of Christian Colleges and Chinese Higher Education

Li Tiangang

Abstract:Christian plays an important role in the f i rst development stage of Chinese higher education in modern times with Christian colleges set up by churches and sects as the pioneer for disciplines and knowledge of modern times. After the Republic of China was founded,nationalism prevailed in Chinese colleges with an emphasis on national identity. Since western states obey to the principle of “separation of church and state”, such modern creeds as humanism, philanthropism and universal belief propose “freedom of belief” in social, cultural and educational fields instead of a direct intervention in politics. However, after the breakout of the war against Japan in 1937, China’s Protestantism and Catholicism submitted politically to Chinese government and adapted to Chinese culture, taking a position inclined to China and against Japan. All Christian colleges moved to Southwest and played a signif i cant role not less than that of public colleges in protecting Chinese intellectual elites.The war strengthened the national identity and Christian colleges had already become one part of the war.