Category: Essay
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전쟁의 잔영: 후쿠이 겐이치와 로얼드 호프만
두 명의 ’여섯 명 중 한 명’: 1981년 노벨 화학상 1981년 10월 19일, 두 명의 노벨 화학상 공동수상자가 발표되었다. 그러나 태평양 양쪽에 있던 이들, 일본 교토대학의 후쿠이 겐이치(福井謙一, 1918-1998)와 미국 코넬대학교의 로얼드 호프만(Roald Hoffmann, 1937-)을 향한 언론의 온도차는 컸다. 발표 다음날 요미우리 조간신문은 1면 최상단에 검은색 음영을 덧입힌 표제로 “노벨 화학상에 후쿠이 겐이치 (교토대학) 교수”를…
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「物のあはれ」とカタルシス
近松門左衛門『出世景清』の「物の哀れの限り」を分析する理論的型
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Imagining and Expanding the New Country
The history of America to 1815 was an active process of spreading Europeans into an unknown land. To condense the long narrative into three themes, it would be helpful to pose these three questions: What happened, how so, and which events followed that? Answering the questions one by one, I suggest three objects, water, a…
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Tipping the Balance Sheets
Varying Motives during the Epidemic of Freedom in Early United States Freedom is Contagious One of the most important documents of the United States of America, the Declaration of Independence, demonstrates that all men are created equal. However, history proves that the utopian promise was half-empty: The institution of slavery and indentured servitude, which largely…
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Tangential Extrapolation
The Subversive Role of Literature within the Centro-circular Model of Western Subject-Object Dichotomy In both Can the Subaltern Speak? and Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism, Spivak urges readers to recognize their politically biased position, no matter how “neutral” they assert they are. In her analysis, the subject formation can be likened to a closed circle…
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Evergrowing Dictionary
Anomaly as a Possible Solution to the Dilemma between Totalism and Individualism in Identity Politics In Cultural Identity and Diaspora, Stuart Hall struggles to reconcile the two great traditions regarding men as common total beings and individual characteristic beings. The two methodologies clearly show their pros and cons. The former, dogmatic dealing of Caribbean diaspora as…
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A Hundred Nietzsches?
A Critical View on Nietzsche’s “Übermenschen” Democracy Project ”With a hundred such men . . . the whole noisy sham-culture of our age could now be silenced for ever.” (95) Acutely criticizing the utilitarian science and mass culture, Nietzsche strongly persuades the reader to be completely independent and autonomous. His refusal of the Hegelian narrative…
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To the System of Anti-Systems
Foucault’s Discovery of Critical Theorists as a Remedy for Barthes’s Limitation Every act of creation is first an act of destruction. Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) What’s Good about Destruction? With both temporally and culturally diverse references, Roland Barthes in The Death of the Author carries out an encompassing attack on the concept of “Author.” His argument is quite…
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Posthumously Humanized “Posthuman”
Criticism of Vulgar “Posthumanism” Which Nullifies Human and Fantasizes Nonexistent Future * To avoid ambiguity, Braidotti and Hayles are referred to by their initial alphabets, B and H, respectively. Endangered Humanism? As Braidotti discovers that “Humanistic studies have been downgraded beyond the ‘soft’ sciences level” (B10), contemporary academia seems to have a clear preference for…