Color capital: Examining the racialized nature of beauty via colorism and skin bleaching

Colorism, like whiteness is capital, is rooted in the institution of slavery and has resulted in the preference of light skin. Because colorism is part of the historical construction of whiteness, the consumption of whiteness is commodified through various markets. Current manifestations of racialized beauty, that is, skin bleaching and photo editing apps such as FaceTune and Snap Chat reinforce colorism and impact conceptualizations of beauty. This literature review surveys how colorism and racialized beauty are reproduced to reinforce whiteness as a form of capital.     

宗教文化立场的书写与言说——20世纪后20年小说语言论之五

20世纪后20年,不少作家站在宗教文化的立场展开书写与言说。在对神圣之物心理的作用下,无论是小说中的人物语言,还是故事的叙述人的语言,都是敬畏式的语言;在宗教精神的制导下,人们可以由形而下开始,向着形而上的终极意义发出追问;宗教徒非常相信语言的力量,总是怀着虔诚的心态面对语言并进入语言;宗教文化的神秘性很容易给小说语言涂上厚厚的神秘色彩;新老教徒之间的言语就很容易形成一种师生式的语言;立足于宗教文化立场的作家常常在创作中由日常语言走向宗教语言。     

从城市崇拜看阎连科的小说创作

阎连科出生在贫困的乡村,由于童年和少年时期的缺失性体验而产生一种向往城市的心理。这种心理在他的小说中体现为贫瘠土地上的青年农民拼命逃离土地、渴望进入城市的迫切心情。他的小说可以让人感受到主人公在逃离土地之路上挣扎的痛苦心声,同时也可体味到作者希冀精神上回归土地的殷切心情。     

中国传奇喜剧英雄发生的文化机制

中国小说史上,张飞、李逵、牛皋、程咬金、焦赞、焦廷贵等形象构成了一个独特的传奇喜剧英雄系列。他们是在虽微弱但却源远流长的中国喜剧艺术的基础上发展起来的,是在对正统文学尤其是史传文学的反动和下层文人大胆的艺术创造过程中产生的。他们是中国平民喜剧精神的物质凝聚、集中体现和高度总结,是平民喜剧精神与元、明、清之际时代精神交合作用的结晶。     

试析大众文化的特点、负面效应及其对策

大众文化具有商业性、流动性、普及性与承载性等特点,它的兴起与传播已带来了较大的负面效应,造成了忽视文化的社会效益,排挤高雅文化,冲击占主流地位的文化,模塑大众,使大众文化品位逐步走向低俗化和单调化。对大众文化必须以“三个代表”思想为指导,坚持“重在建设”的方针,在坚持文化的领导权的前提下,大力加强文化法制建设,进行文化产业结构调整,使大众文化朝着代表先进文化的方向前进。     

晚清科幻乌托邦小说的“中国梦”

晚清的科幻乌托邦小说创作,直指国家富强、民族振兴、人民幸福的“中国梦”。在小说家们对“新中国”的想象中,“新中国”日用科技已实现现代化,国防和军备发展也极其尖端。而繁荣富强后的“新中国”将走向何方,一部分小说将其引入了黄白种战、争霸世界的歧途;另一部分小说则视其为构建“文明世界”的中坚力量。为了实现科学昌明的“中国梦”,小说家们指出,需要培养爱国爱种、自立自强的国民精神,培育大批理想远大、创新、极富实践精神的科学家,及建立君主立宪政体。     

Ghosted Images: Old Lesbians on Screen

Screen images of old lesbians combine modes of representing female gender, lesbian sexuality, and old age, all of which contain layers of otherness within a hetero-patriarchal and youth-centered society. Analyzing a range of films, from independent to mainstream cinema, this article explores how the ghosted lesbian paradigm intersects with narratives of aging as decline in representations of lesbian characters who are over the age of sixty. The spectral matters of illness, death, mourning, and widowhood inevitably culminate in an unhappy ending. Removed from a lesbian community context, intergenerational continuity vanishes and the old lesbian emerges as the cultural other.     

POPULISM AND SPECTACLE

In On Populist Reason Ernesto Laclau proposes that the reputedly ‘empty’ rhetorical excess of populism constitutes the ontological and aesthetic ground on which the existence of an entity called ‘the people’ depends. This essay considers the tensions and affinities between the particular set of aesthetic relations that Laclau attributes to populist rhetoric, on the one hand, and the set of apparently techno-economic relations that Guy Debord describes as the logic of spectacle in The Society of the Spectacle, on the other, arguing that Laclau's conception of populism compels us to recast the ontological problem of the relation that Debord describes between the social and the spectacular in expressly aesthetic terms. Beginning from this premise, the essay contends that the ‘empty’ aesthetic conventions likewise associated with spectacular entertainment – and in particular, the staging of the relation between audience and onstage spectacle that defines the variety showcase aesthetic in this account – enact a set of tropic relations that constitutes the audience as a generalized figure of ‘the people’ in much the same terms as Laclau's rhetoric. Tracing this aesthetic logic through an especially charged performance from the history of blackface minstrelsy, the essay concludes by considering how such a staging of the relation between populism and spectacle might challenge the dominant models for understanding what constitutes ‘popular’ aesthetic form within Cultural Studies, and in the process, afford new critical insights into the formal dimension of Laclau's political logic.     

Making Human Behavior Theory Real Through the Unreal: Fiction in the HBSE Classroom

This article examines the use of fictional literature as a method for helping students apply human behavior theory in competent practice. When students and educators read a poem, short essay, or novel, it allows them the opportunity to join together as an audience as they tease out teachable lessons from the story. The authors posit that when used in human behavior and the social environment courses, fictional literature allows educators and students to experience abstract content as more concrete. Following a brief literature review, we examine one novel through the lens of three different human behavior theories.