The Products of the Imagination: Psychoanalytic Theory and Postmodern Literary Criticism

This article considers some of the affinities between postmodern literary theory and the psychoanalytic theories concerned with intersubjective phenomena. Postmodern literary theory is described briefly, and it is argued that one of its major concerns is the nature of, and the political and cultural influences on, subjectivity and identity. Despite that, postmodernism generally, and literary postmodernism in particular, can be said to lack a theory of the psychological and interpersonal dimensions of the experience of self. This article contends that the more relational schools of psychoanalytic theory can provide an example of the construction of selfhood that is of importance to contemporary and postmodern literary criticism. The academy has, to a considerable extent identified psychoanalysis with the work of Jacques Lacan, but since the 1980s the work of such theorists as Jane Flax and Jessica Benjamin, building on the work of Nancy Chodorow, have increasingly opened up the possibilities of relational and object relations theory for literary studies. The relational psychoanalytic theories operate in the same epistemological universe as postmodern literary criticism, congruent with the postmodern idea of truth as constructed and relational, and selfhood as shifting, contingent, and always-in-process. Particular attention is paid to the work of Wilfred Bion, whose understanding of self provides an account both of the failure of meaning, and of the development of mind. Some examples of a relational approach to literary analysis are provided.     

The Mind and the Book: A Long Look at Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism

This immense field can be summarized by recognizing that the psychoanalytic critic must address one or more of three minds: the author's, the reader's, or a mind derived from the text. The critic can then address them from any theoretical point of view. The future of psychoanalytic criticism, and indeed of psychoanalysis, lies in integrating the discoveries of brain and cognitive science with those of psychoanalysis. In the present, psychoanalytic critics need to recognize that their function is to delight and enlighten. Hence, no more pathography, no more id-analysis, no more symbol-mongering, no more jargon. Only that way, will psychoanalytic critics keep open psychoanalysis' royal road into the human possibilities offered by great literature.     

Planetary Love: Ecofeminist Perspectives on Globalization

This article draws on three ecofeminist theorists (Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Val Plumwood, and Donna Haraway) in order to criticize the dominant model of globalization, which oppresses humans and the natural environment, and propose an alternative globalization grounded in planetary love. Rather than affirming or opposing the globalization, planetary love acknowledges its complicity with the neocolonial tendencies of globalization while aiming toward another globalization, a more just, peaceful, and sustainable globalization. In this context, love is characterized by non-coercive, mutually transformative contact, which opens spaces of respect and responsibility for the unique differences and otherness of planetary subjects (humans and nonhumans).     

关于《易传》美学—文学思想的若干问题——兼论《易传》是我国最早作专书批评的文章—文学理论著作

《易传》作者有意表明了对《易经》的研究与评价的立场 ,《易传》文本包含有关美学—文学思想的内容。在前人研究的基础上 ,本文拾遗补阙 ,论述《易传》之“美”有美在自然、自然美高于艺术美、美乃自然而然、无所为而为等方面的内容以及阴柔之为美及其含蓄的特征 ;又 ,关于“修辞立其诚”的意义及其影响 ,关于“衰世之意”、“忧患”著书的意义及其对司马迁“发愤著书”说的影响等等。论述结合了与古今中外美学—文学理论的比较 ,加强证明了《易传》实为《文心雕龙》之先导 ,是我国最早作专书批评的文章—文学理论著作。     

Gender and Nature: A Psychological Analysis of Ecofeminist Theory1

For ecofeminists, the logic of domination (Warren, 1990) subserves the interconnected oppressions of patriarchy (i.e., sexism) and the anthropocentric domination of nature (i.e., naturism). Given this premise, it was hypothesized that interconnections would be found across instruments that assessed the following constructs: right-wing authoritarianism, attitudes toward women, social-dominance orientation, and attitudes toward the environment. As predicted, a correlation was found between attitudes toward women and the environment. Regression analyses indicate that authoritarianism reliably predicted sexism in men and women. Authoritarianism also predicted naturism in women. These results are interpreted as an initial rapprochement between psychology and the ecofeminism framework delineating the social attitudes that are inherent in the oppressive systems of sexism and naturism.     

The Ways of Criticism

This paper attempts to systematically characterize critical reactions in argumentative discourse, such as objections, critical questions, rebuttals, refutations, counterarguments, and fallacy charges, in order to contribute to the dialogical approach to argumentation. We shall make use of four parameters to characterize distinct types of critical reaction. First, a critical reaction has a focus, for example on the standpoint, or on another part of an argument. Second, critical reactions appeal to some kind of norm, argumentative or other. Third, they each have a particular illocutionary force, which may include that of giving strategic advice to the other. Fourth, a critical reaction occurs at a particular level of dialogue (the ground level or some meta-level). The concepts here developed shall be applied to discussions of critical reactions by Aristotle and by some contemporary authors.     

Society Against Societies: The Possibility of Transcultural Criticism

This paper argues against particularism about social criticism of the form presented by Walzer. I contend that while limitation of the scope of criticism depends on the existence of our shared meanings, which are not shared by them, shared meaning itself depends on society. So, an account of society showing that societies are not discrete and mutually inaccessible refutes particularism. I argue for such an account. I deal with the objection that the focus of particularism is culture, not society, and conclude that the conditions of possibility of shared meaning have anti-particularist consequences. This paper draws on Samuel Clark, Living Without Domination: The Possibility of an Anarchist Utopia (Aldershot: Ashgate, forthcoming 2007), chapter 2. I would like to thank Gideon Calder, and two anonymous referees for Res Publica, for their helpful comments on an earlier draft.     

Interpreting Ecofeminist Environmentalism in African Communitarian Philosophy and Ubuntu: An Alternative to Anthropocentrism

Abstract

The question of what an African ecofeminist environmental ethical view ought to look like remains unanswered in much of philosophical writing on African environmental ethics. I consider what an African ecofeminist environmental ethics ought to look like if values salient in African communitarian philosophy and ubuntu are seriously considered. After considering how African communitarian philosophy and ubuntu foster communitarian living, relational living, harmonious living, interrelatedness and interdependence between human beings and various aspects of nature, I reveal how African communitarian philosophy and ubuntu could be interpreted from an ecofeminist environmental perspective. I suggest that this underexplored ecofeminist environmental ethical view in African philosophical thinking might be reasonably taken as an alternative to anthropocentric environmentalism. I urge other ethical theorists on African environmentalism not to neglect this non-anthropocentric African environmentalism that is salient in African ecofeminist environmentalism.     

The Minority-Majority Conundrum in Northern Ireland: An Orange Order Perspective

Researchers have argued that, depending on the framing of the Northern Ireland conflict, each group could either be a minority or a majority relative to the other. This complicates macrosocial explanations of the conflict which make specific predictions on the basis of minority or majority positions. The present paper argues that this conundrum may have arisen from the inherent variability in microidentity processes that do not fit easily with macroexplanations. In this paper the rhetoric of relative group position is analysed in political speeches delivered by leading members of an influential Protestant institution in Northern Ireland. It is apparent that minority and majority claims are not fixed but are flexibly used to achieve local rhetorical goals. Furthermore, the speeches differ before and after the Good Friday Agreement, with a reactionary "hegemonic" Unionist position giving way to a "majority-rights power sharing" argument and a "pseudo-minority" status giving way to a "disempowered minority" argument. These results suggest a view of the Northern Ireland conflict as a struggle for "symbolic power," i.e., the ability to flexibly define the intergroup situation to the ingroup's advantage.     

农民健康权：定位、检讨与重构

农民健康权概念是二元社会结构下改善农村卫生工作的法治路径,符合健康权作为国际基本人权的发展趋势。在对农民健康权进行界定和探讨农民健康权性质演化、权利位阶及其价值意蕴的基础上进行检讨,认为农民健康权处于权利贫困状态,并提出了构建农民健康权利体系的路径包括"赋权"和"保障"两个层面。     

农民健康权:定位、检讨与重构

农民健康权概念是二元社会结构下改善农村卫生工作的法治路径,符合健康权作为国际基本人权的发展趋势.在对农民健康权进行界定和探讨农民健康权性质演化、权利位阶及其价值意蕴的基础上进行检讨,认为农民健康权处于权利贫困状态,并提出了构建农民健康权利体系的路径包括"赋权"和"保障"两个层面.     

Myth,Meaning and the Order of Words: Reading Hadith Collections with Northrop Frye and the Development of Compilation Criticism

The field of Hadith Studies has been grappling and engaging with Ignaz Goldziher's ideas about Hadith and, in particular, the isnād; but this focus on the isnād and the early Islamic period has meant that there has been relatively little reflection on how Hadiths actually work from a theoretical perspective, and even less study on Hadith compilation as a specific scholarly exercise. This article will argue that there is a need to think of Hadith collections not simply as legal works or repositories of information, but rather as literary works, which seek to say something that can only be understood through a process of compilation criticism. This article will use the work of the Canadian literary theorist and critic Northrop Frye to explore issues in the study of Hadiths and their compilation. Frye's approach to the Bible and English literature, particularly his ideas concerning the construction of meaning and discourse, adds a great deal to the understanding of the way Hadiths and Hadith collections work and how they can be read.     

Reading aloud: The cumulative lexical interference effect

Picture naming shows a cumulative semantic interference effect: Latency for naming a target picture increases as a function of the number of pictures semantically similar to the target that have previously been named (Howard, Nickels, Coltheart, & Cole-Virtue, Cognition 100:464-482, 2006). Howard and colleagues, and also Oppenheim, Dell, and Schwartz (Cognition 114:227-252, 2010), argued that this occurs because of the joint presence in the picture-naming system of three critical properties: shared activation, priming, and competition. They also discussed the possibility that whenever any cognitive system possesses these three properties, a cumulative similarity-based interference effect from repeated use of that cognitive system will occur. We investigated this possibility by looking for a cumulative lexical interference effect when the task is reading aloud: Will the latency of reading a target word aloud increase as a function of the number of words orthographically/phonologically similar to the target that have previously been read aloud? We found that this was so. This supports the general idea that cumulative similarity-based interference effects will arise whenever any cognitive system that possesses the three key properties of shared activation, priming, and competition is repeatedly used.