Aesthetization, or aestheticization, has recently become a new key word in scholarly debates about culture and society, roughly concerned with the kind of phenomenon that pictorial turn describes. It is not that `aesthetization', in its literal sense, is making the unaesthetic aesthetic, nor does it point to the sort of topics typical of an aestheticized human life as favored by some traditional Chinese intellectuals; rather it is about a transaesthetization. This process differs not just in the range and extent of (...) aesthetization, but in its essence and nature: reality will no longer exist when it is transaesthetized and what is left is an aesthetic realm only; in other words, there will be no reality, but purely the `hyperreal'. Accordingly, transaesthetization can then often be associated with the concept of simulacrum, or the proliferation of images; it would thus result from the expansion of simulacra. However, there arises the problem that simulacrum is not identical with image. Assuming that the beauty of image consists in its rich connotations and its presentation at the level of form, it is doubtful that transaesthetization is configured merely by the simulacral. Why, and how could it be so? (shrink)

British cultural studies, represented perhaps chiefly by the so-called Birmingham School, is much marked by its strong orientation towards the application of grounded theory in the analysis of concrete cases, rather than the development of abstract Theory with a Capital T. As a leading figure of the Birmingham School and a key representative of the active audience model in television studies, or broadly, media studies, David Morley stands at a point where this trend was set, as is evidenced in this (...) interview. Questioned by Huimin Jin, Morley puts his audience studies into the contexts of British cultural studies, postmodernism, Marxism, social movements, and so on; and in doing so, he shows the ambiguity, and subtlety of his concepts of how to best theorize the active audience. Only by this method, Jin believes, could Morley launch his version of audience studies, which aims not to invent a general theory of media effects, but to use an interdisciplinary range of theories to explore how people actually respond to a TV programme; and only by this approach to audience studies, furthermore, could Morley develop a theory of the audience’s activity, which is embedded in the course of their everyday life and that cannot be thoroughly colonized by discourses. Cultural studies, wherever it is conducted, therefore, Morley suggests, has to construct modes of analysis that are relevant to its own conditions of production in a particular place, at a particular time. This is the tradition, as we know it, but also the future, as Morley envisages, of cultural studies. (shrink)

Bashir Makhoul is a Palestinian British artist whose recent installation titled Enter Ghost, Exit Ghost contains the theme of ‘revenge’. It essentially advocates the return to ‘identity’ and ‘land’. This is obviously Makhoul’s politics, but it can only belong to politics through art. Makhoul has adopted the stage directions of Hamlet, involving his work with a political project on the one hand, while on the other hand turning such a project into a ‘ghost’ and a series of ghostly images. Thus, (...) the political revenge becomes the revenge of images. In other words, politics becomes art here. But this artistic politics doesn’t mean the castration or abandonment of politics. To Makhoul, it is an artistic means by which to engage politics, an alternative way to look at politics, which is based upon the conviction that politics should have its emotional and affective dimension. (shrink)

本书包括:后现代性与德国解释学;后现代性与中国传统思想;后现代“帝国”的扩张;后现代理论家如是说等内容。.

本书包括:后现代性与德国解释学;后现代性与中国传统思想;后现代“帝国”的扩张;后现代理论家如是说等内容。.

This article argues that neither the city nor the commodity is ultimately responsible for rubbish, but rather industrialization: rubbish is a consequence, an evil effect, of industrialization, which aims to produce anything but nature, which is considered rough and tough, and therefore needs to be refined out.

本书包括:进化论革命者颉德之学说、尼采氏之教育观、德国文化大改革家尼采传、叔本华与尼采、德国大哲学者尼采之略专及学说等内容。.