‘Our own Hurricane Katrina’: Aboriginal disadvantage and Australian national identity

Since Prime Minister Howard's declaration in 2007 that child sex abuse in Northern Territory Aboriginal communities was Australia's ‘own Hurricane Katrina’, the trope of natural disaster has been a regular feature of print and television media coverage of Indigenous affairs in Australia. The effect of this rhetorical strategy is to separate what happens to Aboriginal people from the fabric of ‘mainstream’ Australian cultural and political life; to render it alien and unconnected to the relative privilege enjoyed by other Australians. This strategy also produces peculiar temporal effects by erecting a cordon sanitaire around Australian history and the national identity that it supports. Howard's comparison of Aboriginal disadvantage with Katrina, if read alongside his politicization of the teaching of Australian history, demonstrates an unwillingness to incorporate systemic injustice toward Indigenous people within the composition of that history. This article interrogates the relationships between the manifold understandings of Aboriginal disadvantage and attempts to commemorate its violent history, as these aspects of Australian life are both integrated and refused by national identity narratives. Specifically, the paper reinterprets the trope of natural disaster as a means of comprehending Indigenous disadvantage and Australian identity by drawing on Walter Benjamin's philosophy of history. Benjamin's understanding of activism as a constructive retrieval of the past will be developed to reconnect catastrophe to history, and to enable an exploration of responsibility for that history as an integral condition of contemporary Australian identity.     

麦都思及其早期中文史地著述

19世纪初来华的英国传教士麦都思撰有三部具有开创性意义的中文史地著述。《地理便童略传》是新教传教士所编写的第一部面世的汉文地理学通论 ;《咬吧总论》是晚清来华外国传教士所编写第一部中文外国区域地志 ;《东西史记和合》不仅是 1 9世纪问世的第一部中西比较的编年体史书 ,可能也是有史以来第一部东西比较历史的著述。麦都思在这三部文献中不仅给中国人带来了西方有关世界地理、区域地理和西方历史的常识 ,而且还注意在这些中文著述中对中国文献加以利用和吸收 ,使这三部文献不仅在一般西学史地知识的介绍方面 ,而且在早期汉学研究方面 ,也显示了它们一定的地位。     

读沃尔特·本雅明的“译者的任务”

本文对沃尔特·本雅明的翻译理论即原著与译文之间的关系加以论述。     

Murakami Haruki and the Naturalization of Modernity

Walter Benjamin famously portrayed the shock sensation as the cause of a "heightening of consciousness" in modernity, a process which in turn causes the disintegration of the "aura" and the suffocation of "experience" under the "protective shield" of consciousness. When applied to the cultural space of Murakami Haruki's novels a discrepancy comes into view that calls for sociological elucidation. Here modernity is a "naturalized" space characterized by tranquillity and stillness, a low consciousness, and a fusion of reification with re-enchantment. This naturalization is made possible by a process of privatization whereby libidinal energy becomes transferred from objective human relations to the interior of the self. Murakami struggles with the dilemma of how to affirm naturalization while counteracting privatization. While the prime cultural contradiction according to Benjamin was the conflict between "the aura" and the heightening of consciousness, in the naturalized modernity portrayed by Murakami another contradiction emerges which revolves around the conflict between painless solitude and the struggle to regain auratic human relations.     

沃尔特·拉夫伯的美拉关系史研究述评

沃尔特.拉夫伯通过对＂门罗主义＂历史演变的梳理,对美国-巴拿马关系、美国-中美洲关系的追述,从根本上推翻了以比米斯为代表的传统派对美国的拉美政策大唱赞歌的观点。他揭示：美国对拉美的政策历来都是利己主义的帝国主义政策;历史上,这些政策作了一些边边角角的小缝小补,但基本上是换汤不换药;这些政策不仅没造福拉美国家,反而导致了拉美国家的经济停滞、社会分化、政治不民主,从而使民族主义情绪激化、革命频发。     

本雅明“闲逛者”在当代消费文化语境中的意义

“闲逛者”是德国法兰克福学派美学家本雅明在对19世纪法国抒情诗人波德莱尔的研究中提出的一个非常重要且影响深远的概念,特指那些因为现代性城市的兴起,而可以游荡在城市各个角落,观察、体验都市生活的人。文学和文化研究者经常使用本雅明的闲逛者意象来探讨城市经验、城市空间与审美现代性等问题。闲逛者意象为人们阅读和分析城市文本提供了一个重要的理论视野。在后现代性消费社会的语境下,本雅明的闲逛者意象与消费文化产生了一定的关联性,特别在与现代生活之间的视觉联系、视觉消费、日常生活审美化等方面具有重要的文化意义。     

本雅明的“游手好闲者”：在视觉文化的观照下

在视觉文化的观照下,重新论述本雅明＂游手好闲者＂的美学内涵。通过分析这一术语出现的文化背景以及隐含的视觉消费姿态等,不仅帮助我们理解本雅明对都市文化的深刻思考,而且为我们深入认识本雅明的视觉文化理论提供重要的入思路径,对我们考察当下的视觉文化研究具有重要的启示意义。     

A ‘Lost Crowd’: Reconfiguring the Harlem Renaissance as a Post-War ‘Lost Generation’

Abstract

Traditionally for black Americans, World War I did not signify the traumatic removal of traditional Victorian ideals, the end of any romantic notions of battle, or, as it would for white American literature, the disillusionment and alienation of a literary ‘Lost Generation’. Although experiencing continued racism upon their return, the recognition that black Americans had received in wartime France came to characterize a budding enthusiasm for the social prospects of the post-war era. Yet many novels of the Harlem Renaissance certainly resonate with the disillusionment of the Lost Generation and similarly grapple with notions of war trauma and traumatic post-war (re)integration into a chaotic American society. This article considers the endeavour to reconcile feelings of post-war national unity with the African-American struggle for racial equality in the early twentieth century. By evaluating the analogous themes of alienation, masculinity, and place represented by both the Lost Generation and Harlem Renaissance, this article seeks to highlight traumatic parallels between post-war literatures of two divergent ‘lost’ generations.     

本雅明的城市美学探赜

城市美学是德国美学家瓦尔特·本雅明学术关怀的重要维度.城市作为社会的符号和缩影,几乎纵贯本雅明一生的学术研究.本雅明以城市文本作为批评策略,瓦解叙事意义;将城市看作独特的现代性方式,以拯救现代“震惊经验”.他的城市美学在当今的城市文化研究中有十分重要的借鉴意义.     

本雅明电影心理学理论与当代意义

随着电影艺术的日益繁荣，本雅明的电影理论越来越受到学界的重视，但他的电影心理学理论却很少有学者进行系统研究。观众接受心理是本雅明电影心理学理论中的重要观点，对这种不同以往的接受心里，他主要通过绘画与电影的比较而得出。大众的感知觉因为电影的出现而得到了深化，同时本雅明还对电影演员的心理进行了论述。