Ariel-a Review of International English Literature, Oct 1, 1996
SHAOBO XIE H OMi BHABHA'S the location of culture is a provocative and illuminating text that wil... more SHAOBO XIE H OMi BHABHA'S the location of culture is a provocative and illuminating text that will shock the reader into renewed knowledge of his or her own position in history and cultural discourse. As a cultural hybrid myself-I grew up in China, now live in Canada, and have attended universities in both countries-I find my own mirror image in what Bhabha describes as a foreverexiled, ambivalent, subaltern subject of cultural difference. In an attempt to revise the known, to rename the postmodern from the postcolonial perspective, Bhabha investigates the question of culture "in the realm of the beyond" (1). As he asserts in the introductory chapter, to dwell on the beyond is "to be part of a revisionary time," to address the present from the position of a new time frame, a new narrative (7). What he sees in that revisionary beyond is the "boundary," which in Martin Heidegger's terms, is that from which something begins its presencing. This Heideggerian boundary is ingeniously translated by Bhabha into the liminal space of cultural hybridity. His whole project is intended to theorize the different moments of hybridity in cultural discourse, and he accomplishes this task by relaunching the poststructuralist theory of the sign on postcolonial terrain. Indeed, New French Theory provides Bhabha with a vigorous and productive method for analyzing the cultural inbetweenness of the postcolonial world. His first chapter, 'The Commitment to Theory," can be read as an answer to the following question: "Are the interests of 'western' theory necessarily collusive with the hegemonic role of the West as a power bloc?" (20). In this chapter, he deploys the postmodern concept of
... we investigate the problem of Chinese education in the day of capitalist globalization, exami... more ... we investigate the problem of Chinese education in the day of capitalist globalization, examining its ... for modernity at every historical moment till recently has always pri-oritized education over other ... by its power to enlighten the Chinese, to transform them into creative agents of ...
Ariel-a Review of International English Literature, 2009
In his latest New Left Review article titled "How to Begin from the Beginning," Slavoj ... more In his latest New Left Review article titled "How to Begin from the Beginning," Slavoj Zizek points out that the world today is confronted with four major antagonisms: Eco-environmental crisis, challenge to the established parameters of intellectual property, the unethical potential of biogenetic technology, and "new forms of social apartheid--new walls and slums" (53). In his view, the fourth antagonism, "the one between the included and the excluded," stands out as the crucial one, for without it "all the others lose their subversive edge" (53). In focusing on the antagonism between the included and the excluded, Zizek purports to uncover or foreground the "need for communism" the antagonism generates. Zizek's notion of the excluded versus the included recalls what Judith Butler's conception of the excluded expounded in a different context. In Precarious Life, Judith Butler discusses the fate and situation of a different ki...
What inspires me to write on the question of universality from the perspective of cultural transl... more What inspires me to write on the question of universality from the perspective of cultural translation are Etienne Balibar's 1995 article "Ambiguous Universality" and Judith Butler, Emesto Laclau, and Slavoj ZiZek's Contingency, Hegemony, Universality. Following upon the Lacanian triad Real-Imaginary-Symbolic, Balibar breaks the concept of universality into three components: Universality as a reality, universality as a fiction, and universality as a symbol (or ideal). Real universality points to a universal reality of the world's globally interconnected social, political, 27
The paper celebrates the publication of Ranjan Ghosh and J. Hillis Miller's Thinking Literatu... more The paper celebrates the publication of Ranjan Ghosh and J. Hillis Miller's Thinking Literature across Continents as a significant event in the age of neoliberalism. It argues that, in spite of the different premises and the resulting interpretative procedures respectively championed by the two co-authors, both of them anchor their readings of literary texts in a concept of literature that is diametrically opposed to neoliberal rationality, and both impassionedly safeguard human values and experiences that resist the technologisation and marketisation of the humanities and aesthetic education. While Ghosh's readings of literature offer lightning flashes of thought from the outside of the Western tradition, signalling a new culture of reading as well as a new manner of appreciation of the other, Miller dedicatedly speaks and thinks against the hegemony of neoliberal reason, opening our eyes to the kind of change our teaching or reading of literature can trigger in the world, ...
R Res est ta ag gin ing W g Wor orld Lit ld Lite er ra atur ture in the A e in the Age of N ge of... more R Res est ta ag gin ing W g Wor orld Lit ld Lite er ra atur ture in the A e in the Age of N ge of Neoli eolib be er rali alis sm/N m/Neo eocoloni coloniali alis sm m
Ariel-a Review of International English Literature, Oct 1, 1996
SHAOBO XIE H OMi BHABHA'S the location of culture is a provocative and illuminating text that wil... more SHAOBO XIE H OMi BHABHA'S the location of culture is a provocative and illuminating text that will shock the reader into renewed knowledge of his or her own position in history and cultural discourse. As a cultural hybrid myself-I grew up in China, now live in Canada, and have attended universities in both countries-I find my own mirror image in what Bhabha describes as a foreverexiled, ambivalent, subaltern subject of cultural difference. In an attempt to revise the known, to rename the postmodern from the postcolonial perspective, Bhabha investigates the question of culture "in the realm of the beyond" (1). As he asserts in the introductory chapter, to dwell on the beyond is "to be part of a revisionary time," to address the present from the position of a new time frame, a new narrative (7). What he sees in that revisionary beyond is the "boundary," which in Martin Heidegger's terms, is that from which something begins its presencing. This Heideggerian boundary is ingeniously translated by Bhabha into the liminal space of cultural hybridity. His whole project is intended to theorize the different moments of hybridity in cultural discourse, and he accomplishes this task by relaunching the poststructuralist theory of the sign on postcolonial terrain. Indeed, New French Theory provides Bhabha with a vigorous and productive method for analyzing the cultural inbetweenness of the postcolonial world. His first chapter, 'The Commitment to Theory," can be read as an answer to the following question: "Are the interests of 'western' theory necessarily collusive with the hegemonic role of the West as a power bloc?" (20). In this chapter, he deploys the postmodern concept of
... we investigate the problem of Chinese education in the day of capitalist globalization, exami... more ... we investigate the problem of Chinese education in the day of capitalist globalization, examining its ... for modernity at every historical moment till recently has always pri-oritized education over other ... by its power to enlighten the Chinese, to transform them into creative agents of ...
Ariel-a Review of International English Literature, 2009
In his latest New Left Review article titled "How to Begin from the Beginning," Slavoj ... more In his latest New Left Review article titled "How to Begin from the Beginning," Slavoj Zizek points out that the world today is confronted with four major antagonisms: Eco-environmental crisis, challenge to the established parameters of intellectual property, the unethical potential of biogenetic technology, and "new forms of social apartheid--new walls and slums" (53). In his view, the fourth antagonism, "the one between the included and the excluded," stands out as the crucial one, for without it "all the others lose their subversive edge" (53). In focusing on the antagonism between the included and the excluded, Zizek purports to uncover or foreground the "need for communism" the antagonism generates. Zizek's notion of the excluded versus the included recalls what Judith Butler's conception of the excluded expounded in a different context. In Precarious Life, Judith Butler discusses the fate and situation of a different ki...
What inspires me to write on the question of universality from the perspective of cultural transl... more What inspires me to write on the question of universality from the perspective of cultural translation are Etienne Balibar's 1995 article "Ambiguous Universality" and Judith Butler, Emesto Laclau, and Slavoj ZiZek's Contingency, Hegemony, Universality. Following upon the Lacanian triad Real-Imaginary-Symbolic, Balibar breaks the concept of universality into three components: Universality as a reality, universality as a fiction, and universality as a symbol (or ideal). Real universality points to a universal reality of the world's globally interconnected social, political, 27
The paper celebrates the publication of Ranjan Ghosh and J. Hillis Miller's Thinking Literatu... more The paper celebrates the publication of Ranjan Ghosh and J. Hillis Miller's Thinking Literature across Continents as a significant event in the age of neoliberalism. It argues that, in spite of the different premises and the resulting interpretative procedures respectively championed by the two co-authors, both of them anchor their readings of literary texts in a concept of literature that is diametrically opposed to neoliberal rationality, and both impassionedly safeguard human values and experiences that resist the technologisation and marketisation of the humanities and aesthetic education. While Ghosh's readings of literature offer lightning flashes of thought from the outside of the Western tradition, signalling a new culture of reading as well as a new manner of appreciation of the other, Miller dedicatedly speaks and thinks against the hegemony of neoliberal reason, opening our eyes to the kind of change our teaching or reading of literature can trigger in the world, ...
R Res est ta ag gin ing W g Wor orld Lit ld Lite er ra atur ture in the A e in the Age of N ge of... more R Res est ta ag gin ing W g Wor orld Lit ld Lite er ra atur ture in the A e in the Age of N ge of Neoli eolib be er rali alis sm/N m/Neo eocoloni coloniali alis sm m
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