Authentication Studies (辨偽學) Methodology and the Polymorphous Text Paradigm

Early China ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 1-43 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Textual Criticism ◽  
Han Dynasty ◽  
Chinese Intellectual ◽  
History Of ◽  
Chinese Scholars ◽  
Chinese Texts ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Last Two Millennia ◽  
Made In

The foundation of Chinese intellectual history is a group of texts known as “masters texts” (子書). Many masters texts were authored in the Han dynasty or earlier and many of these have as their title the name of a master who was generally regarded as the author. The inclination to treat a given book as the product of a single writer is apparently a strong one. Nevertheless, from the very beginning there were Chinese scholars who doubted the veracity of the putative authorship of some of these works and suggested that they may in fact have been the product of several authors. Over time, such scholars developed criteria by which to judge the authenticity of ancient masters texts. But as such textual criticism grew more penetrating, the object of its scrutiny began to come apart at the seams. In the last two decades there has been a growing consensus that most early Chinese masters texts were originally quite permeable and that only later were their received forms settled upon.The branch of textual criticism that deals with authenticating early Chinese texts is called “Authentication studies.” This paper is a survey of the methodological advances made in the field of Authentication studies over the last two millennia. It is not a history of the field, as such a history would be a much longer project. The survey concludes with the idea of the “polymorphous text paradigm,” a paradigm that paradoxically obviates much of the preceding scholarship in its own field. Simply put, if authentication relies largely on anachronism, and anachronism relies largely on the dates of the putative author, then a multi-author work with no known “last author” will be impossible to authenticate. Furthermore, the polymorphous text paradigm does not posit these texts as necessarily having earlier and later “layers,” but rather as having had no set structure over the course of their early redactional evolution.This survey examines the contributions of seventeen scholars to Authentication studies methodology, and concludes with how the changes in this field have influenced the work of three modern, Western scholars.

Reading from, Reading into: The Challenge of the Bamboo Odes

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 200-213
Author(s):  
Haun Saussy (蘇源熙)
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Chinese Literature ◽  
Early China ◽  
Formative Stage ◽  
History Of ◽  
Chinese Texts

Abstract One of the great fascinations of excavated Chinese texts is the promise of recovering the formative stage of works that later became classics: we might then learn what later editors and interpreters have done to them, and rewrite the intellectual history of early China. But little is inevitable in the history of texts. This paper takes a single short poem from the Anhui Shijing manuscript and reads it both with and against the transmitted Mao edition, using it to imagine various scenarios for the “wonderful life” (Gould) of early Chinese literature.

scholarly journals Casting the atomic canon: (R)evolving nuclear strategy

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Kjølv Egeland ◽  
Thomas Fraise ◽  
Hebatalla Taha
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Nuclear Strategy ◽  
Security Environment ◽  
Nuclear Policy ◽  
Nuclear Security ◽  
Vested Interests ◽  
History Of ◽  
To Come

Abstract Looming decisions on arms control and strategic weapon procurements in a range of nuclear-armed states are set to shape the international security environment for decades to come. In this context, it is crucial to understand the concepts, theories, and debates that condition nuclear policymaking. This review essay dissects the four editions of The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, the authoritative intellectual history of its subject. Using this widely acclaimed work as a looking glass into the broader field of nuclear security studies, we interrogate the field's underlying assumptions and question the correspondence between theory and practice in the realm of nuclear policy. The study of nuclear strategy, we maintain, remains largely committed to an interpretive approach that invites analysts to search for universal axioms and to abstract strategic arguments from the precise circumstances of their occurrence. While this approach is useful for analysing the locutionary dimension of strategic debates, it risks obscuring the power structures, vested interests, and illocutionary forces shaping nuclear discourse. In the conclusion, we lay out avenues for future scholarship.

The history of international thought and International Relations theory: from context to interpretation

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 241-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Hall
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
The Past ◽  
Disciplinary History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Made In ◽  
International Thought

Over the past two decades, historians of international thought have markedly improved our understanding of the disciplinary history of International Relations (IR) and its wider intellectual history. During that period, ‘contextualism’ has become a leading approach in the field, as it has been for half a century in the history of political thought. This article argues that while the application of contextualism in IR has improved our understanding of its disciplinary history, its assumptions about the proper relationship between historians and theorists threaten to marginalise the history of international thought within IR. It argues that unless the inherent weaknesses in contextualism are recognised, the progress made in the field will go unrecognised by a discipline that sees little reason to engage with its history. It suggests that historians of international thought adopt an extensively modified version of contextualism that would allow them to rebuild bridges back into IR, especially IR theory.

“Innovation” Discourse and the Neoliberal University: Top Ten Reasons to Abolish Disruptive Innovation

2019 ◽  
pp. 244-268
Author(s):  
Christopher Newfield
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Research University ◽  
Disruptive Innovation ◽  
Western Development ◽  
Hard Limit ◽  
History Of ◽  
To Come ◽  
University Officials ◽  
Privileged Site

Innovation is a core neoliberal economic strategy, and the research university is a privileged site for its incubation and practice. Most senior university officials believe that the university’s stature, funding, and fate depend on maintaining its reputation as a primary innovation source and look to purge elements that do not appear to fit that purpose. This chapter argues that this neoliberal policy agenda is, in effect, fighting the latest and possibly the last economic war. The chapter begins with a brief intellectual history of innovation as a business concept, focusing on the development and influence of Clayton Christensen’s innovation theory. It then offers a critical analysis of the role of innovation in the contemporary global research university. In turn, it presents the argument of Giovanni Arrighi and others that the “Western development pathway” has reached a hard limit. Finally, the chapter posits that the sustainable, post-neoliberal economy-to-come will depart from the current pathway by replacing energy-intensive technology with skilled and educated labor.

Jurisdiction and Holiness: Reflections on the Coptic-Ethiopian Case

1982 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 245-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter Zander
Keyword(s):  
Small Area ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Legal Issues ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Holy Places ◽  
History Of ◽  
To Come ◽  
Made In

The Coptic-Ethiopian case is the first dispute between Christian Churches over their rights in the Holy Places to come before the Supreme Court of Israel. It concerns only a small area, but the legal issues involved are far-reaching. They deal with the jurisdiction over Holy Sites, and therefore affect potentially all Christian communities which claim rights in the Sanctuaries.The history of the jurisdiction over the Holy Places is dramatic and rich in contradictions. For many centuries control over the Sanctuaries was in the hands of Moslem rulers who decided disputes according to their discretion. In view of the widespread impact of these decisions on the Christian world as a whole, the tendency gradually developed to avoid all changes, and in 1878 the Treaty of Berlin suspended every jurisdiction by its Art. LXII which prescribed “that no alteration can be made in thestatus quoin the Holy Places”.

The Political Science of Political Science

1971 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 277-302 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. J. M. Mackenzie
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
General Study ◽  
The West ◽  
History Of ◽  
Analytical Tools ◽  
Made In

PROFESSOR LAZARSFELD ONCE REFERRED TO SOCIOLOGY AS BEING IN A sense a residuary legatee, the surviving part of a very general study, out of which specializations have successively been shaped.The same might be said of political science. In the West the first deliberate and reflective studies of political life were made in Greece at the end of the th century BC, and in the succeeding century. The histories of Herodotus and Thucydides, some of the pamphlets attributed to Xenophon, above all the normative and empirical studies of Plato and Aristotle were among the direct ancestors of contemporary political science. Parallel examples are to be found in the intellectual history of China, India and Islam. It seems that at certain stages in the development of great societies questions of legitimacy, power and leadership assume supreme importance; and intense intellectual effort, using the best analytical tools available, is devoted to the study of man as brought to a focus in the study of politics.

Headhunting in ancient China: the history of violence and denial of knowledge

2018 ◽  
Vol 81 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivia Milburn
Keyword(s):  
Han Dynasty ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Ancient China ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Violence ◽  
Oracle Bones ◽  
Chinese Texts ◽  
Enemy Combatant ◽  
The Way ◽  
Ancient Texts

AbstractHeadhunting has a long and well-documented history in China, but most people are today unaware of this practice, first recorded in Shang oracle bones and regularly mentioned in ancient Chinese texts until the Han dynasty. This ignorance is because headhunting subsequently came to be seen as a barbaric practice and knowledge concerning its long history was destroyed: this was achieved by inventing a new character, guo 聝, which means “to cut the ear of a dead enemy combatant” and using this to replace (and thus confuse meanings with) an older character guo 馘, which refers specifically to headhunting. Ancient texts in which headhunting practices are documented have been misunderstood and misrepresented by imperial era scholars to prevent anyone from seeing that ancient China was a headhunting culture. This study shows how dominant cultural norms can impact on the way in which texts are read.

O Anjo Azul: do fim do Expressionismo à influência da Paramount – um filme de Josef von Sternberg

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sérgio Bordalo e Sá
Keyword(s):  
Motion Picture ◽  
Hybrid Film ◽  
Silent Cinema ◽  
German Expressionism ◽  
Heinrich Mann ◽  
History Of ◽  
To Come ◽  
Josef Von Sternberg ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Made In

“The success of the film will depend on the naked thighs of Miss Dietrich”. This was the answer that Heinrich Mann gave to Emil Jannings, when he asked the novelist if he had liked his performance. Made in 1930 and directed by Josef von Sternberg, The Blue Angel will always be remembered in the history of cinema as the movie in which the myth of Marlene Dietrich was born. However, its merits go well beyond this fact. The Blue Angel is the prototype of a hybrid film, made in Germany by an Austrian settled in America since he was a young boy, having been influenced not only by the American studio production, but also by the German Expressionism, through Max Reinhardt. A director whose cinema Nöel Simsolo compares to tapestry, in which all the elements are always necessary and important, with the supremacy of the décor because everything that appears on the screen becomes it. More than a motion picture that marks the end of an era, that of the German silent cinema, or the German Expressionism, more than a ‘foreign’ production of Paramount, The Blue Angel is above all a film by Josef von Sternberg, a point of arrival and a point of departure for all the marvels to come.

Jealousy and Domestic Violence by Women in Early and Medieval China

T oung Pao ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 107 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 555-581
Author(s):  
Olivia Milburn
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Violence ◽  
Han Dynasty ◽  
Marital Relationships ◽  
Domestic Life ◽  
Sexual Jealousy ◽  
Historical Texts ◽  
Medieval China ◽  
History Of ◽  
Chinese Texts ◽  
Narrative Poem

Abstract Beginning in the early imperial era, Chinese texts recorded instances of domestic violence perpetrated by women living in polygynous households. These acts of abuse were commonly understood to be the result of sexual jealousy. Marital disharmony was a cause of great concern to the elite, as a result of which legal and historical texts, as well as the literature of the period, provide a rich vein of evidence concerning domestic violence perpetrated by women. Furthermore, there are some surprisingly sympathetic accounts of the psychological pressures that led to such abuse by wives. As the importance of this material in the history of marital relationships and domestic life in China has been neglected, this study provides an overview of some of the key sources, particularly the recently discovered Han dynasty narrative poem, Wang Ji 妄稽.

Northumbria and the Book of Kells

1972 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 219-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. J. Brown ◽  
C. D. Verey
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Bright Light ◽  
Traditional Beliefs ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Core ◽  
Book Of Kells ◽  
History Of ◽  
Venerable Bede ◽  
Post War ◽  
Made In

It is a century and a half since the Book of Kells began to be revered as the supreme work of Irish calligraphy and art in the Early Christian period, and a quarter of a century since Monsieur François Masai challenged that traditional opinion, arguing that the Book was in fact made in Northumbria, apparently at Lindisfarne, or at least in some centre influenced both by Lindisfarne and Wearmouth–Jarrow – a definition which, he thought, could well apply to Iona. Masai's Essai sur les Origines de la Miniature dite irlandaise, completed in Brussels in 1944, makes no pretence to be based on research at first hand; it was written as a critique of traditional beliefs about the origins of Hiberno-Saxon illumination, with particular reference to works by Mlle Françoise Henry and Mrs Geneviève Marsh-Micheli. As such, it strikes me as a brilliant success, although some of its conclusions are false and some are not as well founded as they could have been, if Masai had revised his war-time text on the basis of a post-war examination of the manuscripts themselves. It was as a follower of Masai – his was the first book I read on Hiberno-Saxon art – that I persuaded Dr E. A. Lowe to consider, shortly before his death in August 1969, the attribution of the Book of Kells which will appear in the second edition of Codices Latini Antiquiores, part 11; and since Dr Lowe cited me as ‘an expert in this field’, I am under an obligation to publish the arguments that I advanced in 1968 and 1969, partly in letters and partly through reports which he received from his successive assistants Dr Braxton Ross and Dr Virginia Brown. The core of what I have to say is a reconsideration of a group of manuscripts, described in CLA, in the history of which Wearmouth–Jarrow had an important part to play. Lowe's devotion to the Venerable Bede and to the manuscripts produced at Wearmouth–Jarrow is well known, and I should like my lecture to count as a tribute not only to Bede's memory but to the memory of the palaeographer whose work has thrown such a bright light on the intellectual history of Bede's monastery.

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