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Showing papers in "Thesis Eleven in 1999"


Journal Article•DOI•
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine Nihonjinron, the popular essentialist genre in Japan, which purports to analyse Japan's quintessence and cultural core by using three concepts - nationality, ethnicity and culture - synonymously.
Abstract: This article attempts to examine Nihonjinron, the popular essentialist genre in Japan, which purports to analyse Japan's quintessence and cultural core by using three concepts - nationality, ethnicity and culture - synonymously. The focus of the paper will be placed on: (1) the widespread political bases of Nihonjinron and its internal divisions; (2) its changing features in the face of globalization; (3) the possible productive uses of Nihonjinron at both conceptual and theoretical levels; and (4) the dilemma of inter-societal and intra-societal cultural relativism, which the Nihonjinron debate has highlighted. The paper presents an outline of an inductive, pluralistic, multicultural model of analysis as a possible alternative.

74 citations


Journal Article•DOI•
TL;DR: The role of social struggles in the transition from traditional values to modernity in South Korean economic development is discussed in this paper, where the authors stress the importance of social conflicts and clashes between modernity and tradition and between external and national values.
Abstract: A large literature on South Korean economic development has presented one dominant narrative on Korean modernity, essentially that of a smooth and peaceful process of modernity brought about by the immutable logic of the market and by a gradual expansion of the middle class and civil society. This essay presents another narrative which stresses the role of social struggles in this process. Korea's transition to modernity has been marked by a high level of social conflicts and by clashes between modernity and tradition and between external and national values. In this process, history and tradition did not simply give way to modernity but have been continuously rediscovered and reappropriated for new social struggles. Korea's modernity has been woven out of these political, social and cultural materials rather than simply out of the universal fabric of capitalism.

19 citations


Journal Article•DOI•
TL;DR: A series of methodological difficulti... W.T. Adorno's philosophy of music aims to show that music is a source of important insights into the nature of modern society as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: T. W. Adorno's philosophy of music aims to show that music is a source of important insights into the nature of modern society. This position leads, though, to a series of methodological difficulti...

17 citations


Journal Article•DOI•
TL;DR: The authors explored some of the ways in which the rejection or affirmation of modernity in Europe has been channelled through observations on America and argued that the variety of European ways of looking at America also demonstrates the range of forms available to social theory for thinking the social world under conditions of Modernity and that this European debate provided some seeds for the current discussion about multiple modernities.
Abstract: During the past two centuries, and in particular during the inter-war period, American ways of living and of thinking have become one principal object of European reflections on modernity. This essay explores some of the ways in which the rejection or affirmation of modernity in Europe has been channelled through observations on America. It is argued that the variety of European ways of looking at America also demonstrates the range of forms available to social theory for thinking the social world under conditions of modernity and that this European debate provided some seeds for the current discussion about `multiple modernities'.

15 citations


Journal Article•DOI•
TL;DR: The authors examines the fragmenting of the Islamist movement in Turkey, as well as Islamist attempts to head off Kurdish nationalism, arguing that the making of an Islamist movement is threatened by the mobilization of other political identities similarly suppressed by the Turkish state's modernizing project.
Abstract: The Islamist critique of the post-1923 regime in Turkey centres around the deconstruction of the Republic's civilizing mission. Here the modernization of the rump of the Ottoman Empire undertaken in the name of the universality of western civilization (with the consequent attributing of backwardness to Islam) is problematized: Islamist discourse converges with other postmodern critiques in proclaiming the exhaustion of modernity as a project of emancipation. Islamist politics celebrate the return of the Muslim actor and identity. And yet the making of an Islamist movement is threatened by the mobilization of other political identities similarly suppressed by the Turkish state's modernizing project. This includes in particular Kurdish subjectivity, long a target of assimilation in the name of the universality of the greater Turkish nation. This paper examines the fragmenting of the Islamist movement in Turkey, as well as Islamist attempts to head off Kurdish nationalism. The Islamist suppression of differe...

13 citations


Journal Article•DOI•

6 citations


Journal Article•DOI•
TL;DR: The most salient feature of the Latin American developmental path is the chronic frailty of legal-constitutional arrangements as discussed by the authors, which is characterized by a low degree of juridification and institutional precariousness.
Abstract: What is the distinctive trait of the Latin American pattern of modernization? In contrast to western societies, where the debate on modernization has been dominated by the Weberian thematic of bureaucratiz-ation, the most salient feature of the Latin American developmental path is the chronic frailty of legal-constitutional arrangements. In Latin America, the process of modernization and social differentiation has not been followed by the legal stabilization of social complexity but is characterized by a low degree of juridification and institutional precariousness. Drawing on insights from both Luhmann's and Habermas' theories, the article provides a critical theoretical framework for the study of the peculiarities of the Latin American modernizing path.

6 citations


Journal Article•DOI•
TL;DR: The idea of a Confucian tradition or region is best understood as an attempt to superimpose a more emphatic conception of cultural identity on this historical constellation, and to rebuild bridges between past and present as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The historical unity of the East Asian region - defined as made up of China, Korea and Japan - is based on three successive phases: the longue duree of the traditional Sinocentric order, the ear of imperialist conflicts from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century, and the post-war developmentalist turn. The idea of a Confucian tradition or region is best understood as an attempt to superimpose a more emphatic conception of cultural identity on this historical constellation, and to rebuild bridges between past and present. For a critical and comparative analysis of the claims made in relation to Confucianism and its modernizing potential, it is essential to move from the issue of capitalist development to a broader civilizational framework.

5 citations


Journal Article•DOI•
TL;DR: In this paper, the author concludes that the only possibility of ethics in our age is an ethics of personality, which has only one imperative: ''Be yourself! Follow your own destiny!'' The author does not conceal his one-sided preference for this last part of Heller's Theory of Morals.
Abstract: Agnes Heller's Theory of Morals was to be composed of three parts: General Ethics, Moral Philosophy, and a Theory of Proper Behaviour. The first two were born; the third, however, before it was written, was rebaptized by the author who could not resist her inner compulsion to do so. It bears the title Ethics of Personality. This author does not conceal his one-sided preference for this last part of Heller's Theory of Morals which has only one imperative: `Be yourself! Follow your own destiny!'. At the same time he raises the question whether an ethics of personality does not contradict so much a general ethics (that simply describes the functioning of the moral) but a moral philosophy that tries to prescribe how people should behave. The author concludes that the only possibility of ethics in our age is an ethics of personality.

4 citations


Journal Article•DOI•
TL;DR: In this article, the essay draws on Agnes Heller's philosophy of existential choice to outline a reconstructed stoic theory of happiness and a pneumatic ethics addressing the context and dynamics of cybernetically structured societies in which vocational (professional) ethics play a declining role.
Abstract: Presenting a contemporary interpretation of stoicism, the essay draws on Agnes Heller's philosophy of existential choice in order to outline a reconstructed stoic theory of happiness and a pneumatic ethics addressing the context and dynamics of cybernetically structured societies in which vocational (professional) ethics play a declining role.

4 citations


Journal Article•DOI•
TL;DR: The military humiliation of China by the West in the 19th century was slight in objective terms but lethal to late-imperial political culture This was partly because prestige structures such as prestige structures, such as t
Abstract: The military humiliation of China by the West in the 19th century was slight in objective terms but lethal to late-imperial political culture This was partly because prestige structures, such as t

Journal Article•DOI•
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors use Lyotard's own theologically inspired essays on music, "God and Puppet" and "Obedience", to re-evaluate the following: Adorno's claims that music transcends mere language and reaches' for the theological; and more general claims within modern western culture on behalf of music's ability to express the inexpressible.
Abstract: Jean-Francois Lyotard's essay 'Adorno as the Devil' had argued that Theodor Adorno's Philosophy of Modern Music was a 'diabolic' work of 'negative theology' which attributed to Schoenberg's music a secret redemptive power. However, in his later writings, such as the essays in The Inhuman, Lyotard has himself moved close to a 'negative theological' position with respect to modernity, time, aesthetics and music. The paper uses the occasion of Lyotard's own theologically inspired essays on music, 'God and Puppet' and 'Obedience', to re-evaluate the following: Adorno's claims that music transcends mere language and 'reaches' for the theological; and more general claims within modern western culture on behalf of music's ability to express the inexpressible. The argument is that the music as negative theology position is not inherently metaphysical but rather that it reflects the importance of the 'unsayable' to modern conceptions of reason. In resisting the 'closure' of the modern narrative of reason, music, as a temporal art, has often given expression to the more radical forms of alterity present within modern forms of time. In other words, negative theology is not the discourse of the devil; it is the impossible discourse of western reason and its internal fracturing.

Journal Article•DOI•
TL;DR: The authors argue that Apel's version of linguistic transcendentalism is to be refuted, if one succeeds in demonstrating that the normative conditions of intersubjective validity of the argumentative discourse are ''derivable'' from the fore-structure of the discursive-practical medium of communication.
Abstract: This article addresses the ongoing debate between transcendental pragmatics and philosophical hermeneutics. I argue that Apel's version of linguistic transcendentalism is to be refuted, if one succeeds in demonstrating that the normative conditions of intersubjective validity of the argumentative discourse are `derivable' from the fore-structure of the discursive-practical medium of communication. Loci for specifically hermeneutical investigations of this fore-structure include the proto-normativity of the discursive practices, the effective-historical openness of the medium of communication, and the interplay between argumentative discourse and medium.

Journal Article•DOI•
TL;DR: The most important structural feature of the music of the New World is its often-time polyrhythmic and polymetrical character as discussed by the authors, which is also a key to unlocking the nature of social form and democratic persona in the diasporic and settler metropolises of the new world.
Abstract: The most important structural feature of the music of the New World is its often-time polyrhythmic and polymetrical character. This is also a key to unlocking the nature of social form and democratic persona in the diasporic and settler metropolises of the New World. In such settings, composers and musicians working with simultaneous temporalities, lines, groups, textures and characters offer intimations of a just totality for culturally fragmented societies.

Journal Article•DOI•
TL;DR: The notion of commodity character and the associated concept of phantasmagoria are to fulfil the function of mediation between the more narrowly conceived technical analysis of Wagner's music and the disclosure of its aesthetic-social substance, providing the ultimate social ground for their unity.
Abstract: Adorno's first musical monograph, his book on Wagner, represents his most consistent effort to apply commodity analysis to one of the seminal oeuvres of cultural modernity. The notion of commodity character and the associated concept of phantasmagoria are to fulfil the function of mediation between the more narrowly conceived technical analysis of Wagner's music and the disclosure of its aesthetic-social substance, providing the ultimate social ground for their unity. This project, however, fails. Commodity analysis proves to be radically vague, incapable of disclosing the historical specificity of the music dramas either in respect of the tradition of Vienna classicism, or the ensuing development of aesthetic modernism. At the same time its application is burdened by contradictions. Ultimately, Adorno's critical interpretation relapses into a form of ideology critique the simplifications of which he originally attempted to overcome.

Journal Article•DOI•
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors identify influence on the Democracy Movement from the Cultural Revolution through the expansion and/or widespread familiarization of repertories of collective action available to Chinese activists; precedents for collective action that may have lowered the barriers to action for some while raising them for others.
Abstract: Students in 1989 were at pains to distinguish their actions from those taken by students in the Cultural Revolution Yet there were important similarities In the present paper, we identify influence on the Democracy Movement from the Cultural Revolution through (1) the expansion and/or widespread familiarization of repertories of collective action available to Chinese activists; (2) precedents for collective action that may have lowered the barriers to action for some while raising them for others; (3) the participation of people at different stages of their lives in both movements; (4) the transformation of the significance of the ideas of democracy and political authority wrought by the Cultural Revolution for many Chinese; (5) the impact of the Cultural Revolution on Chinese intellectuals; (6) the material consequences of the Cultural Revolution which contributed to China's position in the post-Mao era and the specific issues reform and protest sought to confront; (7) the discourse of corruption which

Journal Article•DOI•
TL;DR: The authors examines Adorno and Heidegger's contrasting conceptions of art and myth in relation to their reading of western history since the Greeks and to German thinking on the relation between nature and history since Kant.
Abstract: The article examines Adorno and Heidegger's contrasting conceptions of art and myth in relation to their reading of western history since the Greeks and to German thinking on the relation between nature and history since Kant. In Part I Adorno's lecture `The Idea of Natural History' (1932), which draws on Lukacs's Theory of the Novel and Benjamin's The Origin of German Tragic Drama and is conceived as a response to Heidegger's fundamental ontology in Being and Time, serves as focus for the interrelation between myth, origin and repetition in western history, construed as the forgetting of nature (Adorno) or the forgetting of Being (Heidegger). In Part II, the question of the remythologization or the demythologization of art in Benjamin, Heidegger and Adorno is examined in the context of aesthetic modernism.

Journal Article•DOI•
TL;DR: The question of whether Japan has achieved the modernity that makes it a member of and player in the post-war world system has been a hot topic in recent years as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Intense debates have taken place in Japan about the country's role in the post-war world system and the question of whether Japan has achieved the modernity that makes it a member of and player in ...


Journal Article•DOI•
TL;DR: In this article, Agnes Heller galvanizes modernity's anthropological reflexivity and hints at the prospect of a classicism pertinent to the present by dovetailing the classical concepts of virtue, beauty, harmony and happiness with the cardinal values of modern imagination, life and freedom.
Abstract: By dovetailing the classical concepts of virtue, beauty, harmony and happiness with the cardinal values of modern imagination, life and freedom, Agnes Heller galvanizes modernity's anthropological reflexivity and hints at the prospect of a classicism pertinent to the present. Beyond nostalgia for an ancient past or apology for a contemporary present, her moral anthropology is approached via a dialectical elucidation of aspects of epicurean theory attuned to modernity's complexity. Under the contemporary condition of waning postmodern challenges, escalating confusion and cynicism, moral anthropology's task is as one of probing modernity's destiny for a non-predatory humanism that combines the existential wisdom of ancient theory with modern values.

Journal Article•DOI•
TL;DR: The authors traces the history of thinking about the future in China from the late 19th to the late 20th centuries with a view to identifying China's particular ''end of history'' and explores what has become of this ideal at the close of the century and what its demise implies for political and cultural practice.
Abstract: This paper traces the history of thinking about the `future' in China from the late 19th to the late 20th centuries with a view to identifying China's particular `end of history'. At the turn of this century, the future of New China was prefigured in a variety of scenarios - from statist to liberal - that implied competing goals and strategies for realizing the future. These strategies were shaped by a utopian vision of Great Harmony (datong), which shaped in turn everyday forms of political and cultural practice. The paper explores what has become of this ideal at the close of the century, and what its demise implies for political and cultural practice.

Journal Article•DOI•
TL;DR: The concept of ''radical needs'' has been a constant element in Heller's social philosophy over the last 25 years despite the fact that her own perspective moved progressively away from Marxian philo...
Abstract: The concept of `radical needs' has been a constant element in Heller's social philosophy over the last 25 years despite the fact that her own perspective moved progressively away from Marxian philo...


Journal Article•DOI•
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors study two 20th-century texts in counterpoint: political philosopher Agnes Heller's essay, ''Where Are We at Home'' and novelist Melpo Axioti's My Home, a nostalgic recollection of life on Mykonos.
Abstract: This article builds on a developing interdisciplinary discussion of home. It studies two 20th-century texts in counterpoint: political philosopher Agnes Heller's essay, `Where Are We at Home,' and novelist Melpo Axioti's My Home, a nostalgic recollection of life on Mykonos. Heller contrasts the elusive, self-appointed geography of postmodern living with a traditional view of primordial dwelling, a non-transient way of dwelling that gave to Earth a commitment stretching from ancestral past to a distant future. That experience is all but lost today, Heller muses as she surveys the horizon for space-bound alternatives to today's geographic promiscuity. The closing paragraph of her essay, which settles inconclusively on a Mediterranean landscape, opens a portal to My Home, the work of another political exile deprived of nationality and citizenship during the Cold War. Axioti's postmodern novel juxtaposes native stories of a transient life on Mykonos with the modern developer's efforts to discover firm foundat...