In his later years, the famed French philosopher Michel Foucault began to develop a

previously untouched system of thought, namely the history of the care of the self,
particularly in a series of lectures titled Subject and Truth, if not in his works on other
subjects. For Foucault, to understand the modern subject (and its notion of truth), one must
not only examine the Cartesian idea of know yourself heavily highlighted in Enlightenment
age, which is perceived to be the core of Western morality. Instead, he argues for a turn to the
underlying notion of care of self, which he believes many Greek philosophers, including
Socrates, took as central value. According to what Foucault quoted from Apology, Socrates
allegedly spent endless effort trying to persuade him (Athenians) to care less about his
property than about himself (7). Indeed, care of self is never a merely self-interested
code of conduct that may be associated with material pleasure and modern entertainment.
Deemed as the moment of the first awakening, it is described to be a principle of
restlessness and movement, of continuous concern throughout life (8). To be more precise,
this movement include an attitude towards the self, others, and the world, and thus a
social morality, an act of looking from the outside towards oneself, and a process that
changes, purifies, transforms, and transfigures oneself (10-11). Apparently, this philosophy
is fundamentally different from the idea of gaining truth through a simple act of knowledge,
an outward gesture if you will, but more in line with the focus of inner spirituality (15).
Speaking in a more pessimistic note, Foucault warns that the institutional accumulation of
bodies of knowledge may not be able to save the subject (19), as the subjects being is not
put in question (18) and thus untransformed.
Similarly, in a recent article published on The Atlantic, Choose Your Own
Enlightenment, a critique against modern Enlightenment is also raised. Described as only
personal, never political, the Enlightenment is claimed to be never automatically
democratic in the modern sense, but Intellectually always an elite business. As
knowledge and education becomes a valuable product (somehow fetishistic) in higher
education market nowadays, especially in the U.S. where elite colleges raise an impossible
threshold and pass their private knowledge (which they describe as universal value) to their
own class in order to further control the hierarchical system, both Foucaults warning (the
lack of education that questions the subjects being) as well as the article seem to ring true. In
fact, Foucaults use of the word accumulation does not sound that much different from the
logic of neo-liberalistic capitalism. The question, then, seems necessary to be phrased as such:
Can we begin to care less about the worldly knowledge and more about ourselves? Can we
choose, or even create, our own Enlightenment? How should we overthrow our inner bias
(and maybe later the structural social flaws) through self-education? And eventually, how
does that transformation in turn affects the world? Truth (and its necessary facilitating factor:
democracy) has yet to come.

Kun Xian Shen

R03122026
An Ethics for the Future: Care of Self and Social Movements
As he develops his theory of the care of self more in his series of lectures, the
French philosopher Michele Foucault begins to propose several principles of the
movement (a word that perhaps pertains to both social and physical meaning), in
order to elucidate this rule coextensive with life (247). To begin with, Foucault
makes it clear that it is a real movement of the subject which includes shift,
trajectory, effortandreturn (248) that formulates this philosophy. Compared to
Odyssey, the care of self apparently involves a sense of navigation and objective,
which will also requires knowledge to overcome the danger on the journey (248-249).
At the end of the journey, the self basically appeared as the aim (250), and this
self-finalization of the relationship to self and conversion to self (258) becomes the

site for the formation of a morality (258). Using Senecas letters and forewords of his
books as examples, Foucault demonstrates that the real focus of this journey is to
triumph over the vices (265). Not only has Seneca promoted people to hasten to
complete our lives and achieved its fullness, taking care of the estate close by
(262-263), he also differentiates necessary knowledge of what we should do from
the vanity of investigating what has been done like historians (264). Such kind of
practical knowledge (316) is indeed a preparation of the individual for the events
of life, and thus, for the future (320-321).
Reading Foucaults interpretation of the philosophical ideas of the ancient
Greeks, one cannot help but try to develop the principles into a more general and
universal application. Just as Foucault points out somewhat unnecessarily in the
middle of his lecture, this Greek art of self is of course associated with the direction
and government of oneself, and therefore the activity of government (249-250)
(note that the strict sense of government does not appear until the modern time),
which in turn involve a strategic field of power relations in their mobility,
transformability, and reversibility (252), very much in line with his previous works
on power.
This question of politics and the question of ethics (252) is not incomparable
to our contemporary issues. Take, for instance, the history of Japanese social
movements, as narrated by Takemasa Ando in his book Japan's New Left Movements:
Legacies for Civil Society. In his research, Ando roughly separates student movements
in the sixties into two modes: mode of self-liberation, and mode of self-reflection,
with the latter persisting after the movement and surviving as the self-revolution in
everydayness. Not that much different from Foucaults government of oneself,
young people in nowadays Japanese society tend to reflect more on their own mental
and physical well-being when they protest against the state, thus resulting in a more
relaxed and care-free atmosphere. In fact, if my observation serves right, this trend of
care of self has been prevalent throughout different social movements around the
world recently, including the Occupy Movement that sees American hipsters utilizing
their gadgets, the A little happiness () phenomenon in Taiwans Sun Flower
Movement, or even the blooming creativity of logo and product designs in Hong
Kongs Umbrella Movement. Apparently, there are negative sides to this
development, as old-fashioned socialists would view this as the vice of capitalism and
individualism. There is, however, also a democratic side as well. In the past, social
movements from the left wing politics focused more on the confrontation between the
unions (or, an even more broad term: civil society) and the capitalists (or the state),
generalizing both sides of the group as unified forces. Following Andos observations,
however, it is interesting to see how the old-school Marxist mode sort of failed, and a
new generation begins to take over and voice their opinions in their own unique ways.
Suppose this self-reflexive mode does share similarities with Foucaults idea of the
care of self, social movements would then be required to embrace countless goals,
since the goal of the care of self is self-finalization. As we all have different
views on morality (what we should do), the movements can become more
diversified and democratic. And maybe this is the only common goal we should be
working on.

Kun Xian Shen, R03122026

Mar 24th, 2015
Ashcroft, Bill; Griffiths, Gareth; Tiffin, Helen.
"Introduction," The Empire Writes Back.
The Scope of Post-colonial Studies:
---"Day-to day realities experienced by colonized people" "encoded" in writings and other arts. (1)
---"We use the term 'post-colonial', however, to cover all the culture affected by the imperial process
from the moment of colonization to the present day" (2), thus including oppressions of different class,
race, and sex, but not just defiance based on nationalism.
---"cross-cultural criticism" (2), not limited to traditional Western criticism like traditional Marxist
philosophy.
---"during and after the period of European imperial domination" (2). This is dubious as to the limit of
time of study. What about study on slave narratives before 19th Century? c.f. Transatlantic Studies
"The literature of the USA" (2) ---> Urban post-colonial (e.g. Zadie Smith's White Teeth)
"Postcolonial literature is often thought to present a conflict between tradition and modernity... As
it turns out, urban landscapes are key staging grounds for the terms, claims, and experiences of
postcoloniality." (Nadia Ellis)
A Short History of Post-colonial Literatures:
---"...beyond...regional characteristics is that they emerged in their present form out of the experience
of colonization and asserted themselves by foregrounding the tension with the imperial power, and by
emphasizing their differences from the assumptions of the imperial centre." (2)
---"peripheral" and "marginal" (3) ---> "incorporated" by mainstream, "mimicry of the centre"
How is this different from Homi Bhabha's "mimicry"?
---"Post-colonial literatures developed through several stages which can be seen to correspond to stages
both of national or regional consciousness and of the project of asserting difference from the imperial
centre." (4)
A tension between different stages: 1977

c.f. Noli me Tangere by Jos Rizal: class issue within the construct of nationalism
---"this distinction between English and english has been between the claims of a powerful 'centre' and
a multitude of intersecting usages designated as 'peripheries'" (8)
0. English Studies as Colonial Legacies:
---"language and literature have both been called into the service of a profound and embracing
nationalism" (2)
---"emergence of 'English'...also produced... colonial form of imperialism" (3) c.f. Terry Eagleton. "The
Rise of English," Literary Theory: An Introduction; From feminine to masculine
---"the study of English" and "growth of Empire" (3)

---"...the canonical nature and unquestioned status of the works of the English literary tradition and the
values they incorporated remained potent in the cultural formation and the ideological institutions of
education and literature." (4)
Ngugi's "On the abolition of the English department," "The Quest for Relevance"
c.f.

......
...

1. The Colonial Power

---"literate elite whose primary identification is with the colonizing power" (5)
"'representatives' of the imperial power" (5)
---"Such texts can never form the basis for an indigenous culture" (5)
2. The Colonized Natives
---"the literature produced under imperial license by 'natives' or 'outcasts'" (5)
"Language of the dominant culture" c.f. Child of All Nations by Pramoedya Ananta Toer
---"The development of independent literatures depended upon the abrogation of this constraining
power and the appropriation of language and writing for new and distinctive usages." (6)
3. Colonial Language: A Contested Site
---the need to "write back to a centre" (6)
---"Standard English" "dominate cultural production in much of the post-colonial world" (7) "cultural
hegemony"
---post-colonial literatures become "isolated national off-shoots of English literature" (7)
consider the position of Taiwanese or Asian American literature within the trans-Pacific structure, or
why Taiwanese should even study Asian American at all?
---"One of the main features of imperial oppression is control over language" (7)
"Language becomes the medium through which a hierarchical structure of power is perpetuated"
Shih Shu-Mei believes the medium in our time is visuality
4. Features and Strategies of Post-colonial Literatures
---"concern with place and displacement" (8) <---> space (in its modern sense)
"post-colonial crisis of identity," "self and place," "authenticity" (9), diaspora
"dialectic of place and displacement" (9)
Is there danger of essentialism? Also consider again.
"crisis in self-image" e.g. Fanon, W.E.B. Dubois' double consciousness
---"transform the language" (10) e.g. ; the alliance between postmodern fiction and post-colonial
fiction?
---"European theories themselves emerge from particular cultural traditions which are hidden by false
notions of 'the universal'" (11)
Problems of universalism and particularism within post-colonial theories. e.g. Gayatri Spivak's
critique of metropolitan post-colonial theorists; "Can the Subaltern Speak?"; Naoki Sakai, "Modernity
and Its Critique: The Problem of Universalism and Particularism"
---"imperial expansion has had a radically destabilizing effect on its own preoccupations and power,"
"turned upon itself" (11)
---"uncentred, pluralistic, and multifarious" (11)
"Marginality thus became an unprecedented source of creative energy" (11)
Tensions Unmentioned:
---Is there different possibilities of the historical mapping of "post-colonial literatures"? (e.g. Consider
again the already existing slave narratives)
---The post-colonial nation and the different intersectionalities within it: the failure of the state, the
legacy of colonialism, and global neo-liberalism.

"How can we explain the rise of the radical educated native who plays a pioneering role in opposing
the colonial regime despite the fact that the educated native derives many benefits under colonialism?"
(Pheng Cheah)
---Pros and cons of "mimicry"?
---The differences between "place" (regional) and "transnational" (diaspora)?
---Why are most of the "post-colonial fictions" in English published in American or British book
market?
India, if it is to speak to itself, will always need a lingua franca. But English, which re-enacts the
colonial relationship, placing certain Indians in a position the British once occupied, does more than
that. It has created a linguistic line as unbreachable as the color line once was in the United States.
(Aatish Taseer, How English Ruined Indian Literature, The New York Times)
In the Introduction chapter of the seminal work on post-colonial theories, The Empire Writes
Back, the authors briefly define the scope of post-colonial studies in the literary world, as well as give a
short account of the history and features of this somewhat ambiguous term. Most importantly, it offers
a possible strategy for both artists and theorists to deploy against the ever-growing imperial powers,
shedding light on the gloomy day-to day realities experienced by colonized people (1) perhaps even
today.
Characterized as all the culture affected by the imperial process from the moment of
colonization to the present day (2), the object of study for post-colonial studies apparently has both a
diachronic and synchronic scope concerning all kinds of experiences of being subjugated to power, not
excluding oppressions of different class, race, and sex. Despite the large scale, the authors point out
that one of the common features for post-colonial experiences is that they emerged in their present
form out of the experience of colonization and asserted themselves by foregrounding the tension with
the imperial power, and by emphasizing their differences from the assumptions of the imperial centre
(2). Indeed, the central issue of post-colonial studies seems to be that of the rift between peripheral
(3) and center, and how this rift should be dealt with, politically or culturally.
Locating one of the sites where the rift most often takes place in language, the authors point
out that the emergence of English...also produced... colonial form of imperialism, while the study
of English goes hand in hand with the growth of Empire (3). In the beginning of most history of
colonies, the ideology (4) of English produced literate elite whose primary identification is with the
colonizing power, or at best, the literature produced under imperial license by natives or outcasts
(5). Apparently, under the rule of the language of the dominant culture, such texts can never form
the basis for an indigenous culture (5).
There is, however, always the need to write back to a centre (6), even if standard English
already dominate cultural production in much of the post-colonial world (7). In order to break
through this cultural hegemony, the variants of colonial language (7), or, the englishes without
capital E are utilized as weapons to assert the differences of the colonized people. Whats more, these
post-colonial works are highly concerned with place and displacement (8), as language is not the
only rift, but the relationship between the native people and their homeland is also one in crisis, as is
identity. Eventually, however, the effort to transform the language (10) may result in uncentred,
pluralistic, and multifarious (11) bloom of literary works that eventually seeks to overthrow the
hegemony and redefine the peripheral as a place that matters.
In spite of the vivid and comprehensive mapping of the development of post-colonial culture,
there are, of course, still tensions, if not ambivalences, within the paradigm unmentioned by the
authors. One of the most obvious problems here may lie in the extent to which this kind of assertion of
difference can bring. On one hand, the authors have great confidence in the proliferation of different
englishes, since it is the most efficient way to write back to the centre. On the other hand, however,
the authors also notice the danger of such mimicry of the centre (3), as it may well be incorporated
back into the hegemony and cast off as some minor cult sub-culture.
Indeed, even though the post-colonial theorist Homi Bhabha once wrote candidly on the
deconstructing power of mimicry, the mockingly distorted mirror-images of the colonizers
themselves that seek to break the illusion of a unifying culture, it is still undeniable that such caricature
may strike back at the colonized people. In fact, in a recent editorial published by The New York Times,
entitled How English Ruined Indian Literature, the author Aatish Taseer mournfully recounts the loss
of a tradition of Indian literature (as great poet like Tagore used to write in Urdu), while reflecting on
his own privileged position as an English-using Indian writer in India. He writes, India, if it is to speak

to itself, will always need a lingua franca. But English, which re-enacts the colonial relationship,
placing certain Indians in a position the British once occupied, does more than that. It has created a
linguistic line as unbreachable as the color line once was in the United States.
We may pursue this even further and ask: why have not the proliferation and success of Indian
post-colonial fictions, with writers such as Samuel Rushdie and Arundhati Roy, created a similar
richness in literary world in the post-colonial India? Why are most of the post-colonial authors we
cherish today mostly publishing in American and British book market in English, instead of writing in
their own native languages (if there is any left) and communicate with their own people? Some may be
political refugees, of course, who are prosecuted by a neo-colonial government that continues the
authoritarian regimes of their colonial masters. Others, however, may only be exploiting a privileged
position.
The line between a powerful defiance and an (un)conscious conformity is hard to grasp, since
colonial power nowadays hides itself in much murkier ground, such as transnational capitalism, virtual
space like the Internet, or even in mediums other than languages. After 25 years since its publication,
the book The Empire Writes Back will now need an even more delicate structure to strike back.
Kun Xian Shen, R03122026
Apr 7th, 2015
Butler, Judith.
Subject of Sex/Gender/Desire, Gender Trouble
Women as the Subject of Feminism
---existing identity, understood through the category of women vs. The very subject of women is no
longer understood in stable or abiding terms (1)
---the duality of representation: operative term and normative function (1)
Foucaults juridical systems of power and the law, both represent and produce (2)
---the feminist subject turns out to be discursively constituted by the very political system that is
supposed to facilitate its emancipation, thus self-defeating (2).
Exclusionary, fictive (imagined as natural, nonhistorical, and universal), foundationalist
---women, even in the plural, has become a troublesome term, a site of contest (3) gender is not
always constituted coherently or consistently in different historical contexts, and because gender
intersects with racial, class, ethnic, sexual, and regional modalities of discursively constituted
identities (3)
---My suggestion is that the presumed universality and unity of the subject of feminism is effectively
undermined by the constraints of the representational discourse in which it functions, limits of
identity politics (4)
---critique of the categories of identity contest the very reifications of gender and identity (5)
representation will be shown to make sense for feminism only when the subject of women is
nowhere presumed (6)
The Compulsory Order of Sex/Gender/Desire
---splitbetween sex and gender (6)
---gender is neither the causal result of sex nor as seemingly fixed as sex; culturally constructed
gendersbecomes a free-floating artifice (6)
---sex is as culturally constructed as gender; sex itself is a gendered category (7)
Gender: The Circular Ruins of Contemporary Debate
---Construction of gender: social (cultural) determinism vs. agency (7)
---Beauvoir: gender is constructed, there is agency, free will to choose, take on some other
gender (8). Critique of humanist feminist: pregendered substance called the person (10),
existential subject (11)
---The body: mere instrument vs. construction (8); Beauvoir maintains the mind/body dualism
(12) (Cartesian)
---The locus of intractability, whether in sex or gender or in the very meaning of construction,
provides a clue to what cultural possibilities can and cannot become mobilized through any further
analysis; The limits of the discursive analysis of gender are always set within the terms of a
hegemonic cultural discourse predicated on binary structures (9)

---Irigaray: Women are the sex which is not one, but multiple, unrepresentable (9), linguistic
absence, an entirely different economy of signification (10); On Irigarays reading, Beauvoirs
claim that woman is sex is reversed to mean that she is not the sex she is designated to be, but,
rather, the masculine sex encore (12)
---1. gender is a secondary characteristic of persons; 2. the very notion of the person is a
masculinist construction (11)
Theorizing the Binary, the Unitary, and Beyond
---Both are epistemological imperialism (11) with global reach and totalizing gestures vs. listing the
varieties of oppression
---variously positioned women articulate separate identities within the framework of an emergent
coalition (14); The very notion of dialogue is culturally specific and historically bound;
acknowledged fragmentation, provisional unities and a number of women,
antifoundationalist (15); an open coalition (16)
Kun Xian Shen, R03122026
Apr 28th, 2015
On Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
Nowlin, Michael. Edith Wharton's Higher Provincialism: French Ways for Americans and the Ends of
The Age of Innocence. Journal of American Studies Volume 38.Issue 01 (2004): 89-108. Print.
Higher Provincialism for a Rising Empire
---French Ways and Their Meaning and The Age of Innocence are in fact complementary cultural
nationalist texts. (90)1
Americas need for culture at the moment of Americas ascendency to a position of global power
and influence. (90)2
---Culture is the equivocal keyword linking both texts, affiliating Wharton with both the apologists
for an older America and with American modernists, and dividing her sympathies between the
provincial Newland Archer and such deracinated citizens of the world as Ellen Olenska, Ned Winsett,
and Monsieur de Riviere. (93-94)
---A kind of higher provincialism by which she (Wharton) also took the measure of a hazy
cosmopolitanism divorced from cultural tradition and social power. That higher provincialism, finally,
was in her view thoroughly compatible with embracing Americas imperial prospects, the necessary
attitude cultivated Americans must assume if they hoped to see their nation rank alongside the great
European empires of the past. (91)
American Traditional Provincialism + French Cosmopolitan Culture (also a national culture)
= Higher Provincialism
American Traditions and its Discontents
---Defenses of culturally vital provincial center coupled with denunciations of the vulgarizing,
standardizing tendencies in American life, were by the 1910s a familiar theme in American letters.
(98)
The fundamental problem shaping the discourse of American cultural nationalism, in its dominant
strands, was how to ensure the continuity of a Eurocentric civilization in the hands of a new people
whose cultural uniqueness might lie precisely in its contact with primitive tribes on native grounds, its
multi-ethnic urban cacophony, and its vulgar popular culture (98)
Whartons Ned Winsett speaks nationalistically and yet as one spiritually homeless within a nation
witnessing the decay of the Anglo-Saxon elite (95)

1
2

All bold and italics mine.

Wharton more boldly acknowledged the imperialist underpinnings of Americas need for cultural distinction:
We are a new people, a pioneer people, a people destined by fate to break up new continents and experiment in
new social conditions, she announces near the outset of French Ways and Their Meaning. America is now ripe
to take her share in the long inheritance of the races she descends from, she elaborates later, and it is a pity that
at this time the inclination of the immense majority of Americans is setting away from all real education and real
culture. (96)

---The Age of Innocence certainly spoke to modernist sensibilities (92): Attack traditions, institutions,
and provincialism in an ethnographic analysis.
Like the more radical advocates of a spiritually unifying American culture, Wharton speaks from the
post-provincial, cosmopolitan standpoint increasingly accessible to Americans as an effect of both the
centralizing tendencies in the nation since the end of the Civil War and, more recently, of the United
Statess emergence as an aggressive global power. (98)
---Winsett is himself starving for culture, and looking ultimately not to the denizens of Bohemia but to
a more established minority, represented by Newland Archer, to supply or create it. (99-100)
Class and ethnic strife (95): Is the cosmopolitan white elitists in New York seeking European
modernist aesthetics suitable for representing a new nation?
French Culture as both an Ethnographic and Cosmopolitan Surrogate
---For someone like Wharton, America had an imperial duty to enter it on the side of France and
England: at stake from both perspectives was Eurocentric civilization itself. (99)
suggesting the inextricability of higher notions of culture from evolutionary-ethnographic
conceptions of what we might call embedded or enculturated bodies, individual and collective. (95)
---Matthew Arnold in Culture and Anarchy (1869) the shared body of humanistic ideals, institutions,
art objects, and critical and aesthetic practices that make for humankinds growth, through education,
toward spiritual perfection. (94)
A cultural relativist paradigm (94)
French Ways and their Meaning (1919): the old European tradition (89); a belief in the superiority
of European cultural institutions (90)
---Try as they would to disavow it, Americas young cultural nationalists and modernist rebels were
fundamentally dependent on notions of culture and criticism derived from Victorian England and most
fully realized, to Whartons mind, by the deeply traditionalist French. (94-95)
---The Old European tradition, in effect, is Ned Winsetts term for that spiritually elevating resource
that Arnold called culture, by which entitled Americans, tied to distinct local patches, may
imagine themselves citizens of someplace else, because they may imagine themselves as universal
people. Culture facilitates what Royce called the Higher Provincialism the capacity to be servants
and lovers of your own community and its ways, as well as citizens of the world, and not incidentally
an attitude conducive to assimilating to our own social order the strangers that are within our gates.
(100)
---Whartons French ways are an exemplary synthesis of the conservative virtues of reverence,
standards of taste, and continuity, on the one hand, and the progressive virtues of intellectual
honesty the capacity to see ones cultural condition as it really is and thus improve it and sexual
egalitarianism, on the other French ways, finally, are an exemplary synthesis of old New York
traditionalism and the more general American tendency toward irreverence and idol-breaking. (104)
---Whartons French make an ideal imperial race. For their claim on the universalist ideals of
aesthetic and intellectual culture culture in the sense that Arnold, with his eye on France, had in
mind has long proven compatible with the experience of longstanding racial customs and provincial
practices that have given the French a unique, national culture over time and made them model
caretakers of exotic, indigenous cultures worldwide. (105)
Leaping Forward to a New Century
---Ned Winsetts declamation has an anachronistic dimension to it, and brings to the scene of mid1870s New York a discourse about the nature of and prospects for a distinct American culture that
flourished in the 1910s, the formative decade of American modernism. (90)
Rip Van Wrinkle vs. the time leap: Anachronism
Newland is like a latter-day Rip in feeling like a relic from the past (92)
---The ending of the novel, I repeat, reveals this encounter to have borne fruit, which suggests the
cross-fertilisation that helps transform old New York into the emerging metropolitan center of the
Western world owes as much to the impact uprooted Anglo-Saxons have had on the self-reflexive
but rooted Anglo-Saxon subject as to the new blood and new money wrung from outsiders. (100)

---In The Age of Innocence, the transplanted harbingers of the modern Ellen Olenska, Ned Winsett,
and Monsieur Riviere provoke in Newland a self-consciousness about his provinciality that leaves
him forever discontented. At the same time, deliberately or otherwise, they awaken him to the
liberating imperatives of the old European tradition, which at once undergirds the cohesion and
homogeneity of the tribe, justifies its perpetuation, and, most importantly, sanctions the
transgressions against itself essential to social evolution. (100)
Newlands growth from tribal speciman to modern citizen initially comes at the diminution of his
culture. (100)
And yet it is precisely the presence of such a self-conscious cultural subject capable of regarding his
culture as archaic, arbitrary, or strange as historical and relational, in effect that signals his
provinces capacity to shape and even lead a responsible, enlightened, imperial nation. (101)
Newlandembodying in the process of remembering an evolutionary bridge between past and
present, or, in the figurative terms of both the novel and the memoirs, between pre-historic old New
York and modern America. (106)
He has been instrumental in shaping the new nation. (106)
There was good in the old ways and [t]here was good in the new order too. (107)
Having had his dreams of erotic bliss and cosmopolitan freedom thwarted, but not extinguished, by a
powerful but dying tribe, Newland finds consolation in philosophy, as well as in a higher provincialism
that promotes both a more liberal bearing toward his children and the future, and a dedication to
turning the rapidly changing province he remains so embedded in into a new cosmopolitan center of
the civilized world. (106)

Kun Xian Shen, R03122026

Apr 28th, 2015
On Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
MacMaster, Anne. "Wharton, Race, and The Age of Innocence: Three Historical Contexts." A Forward
Glance: New Essays on Edith Wharton. Ed. Clare Colquitt, Susan Goodman, and Candace Waid.
Newark: U of Delaware, 1999. Print.
The Minority Races in The Age of Innocence and their Functions
---The central crux of American identity (188)
---Exposing American dilemmas: the history of slavery in the land of the free, the fear of the foreign
in a nation of immigrants, the drive toward conformity behind the creed of individualism (188)
racial difference
---Toni Morrisons Playing in the Dark: Africanist presence: rather than presenting the views of
African-Americans, such characters enable white writers to think about themselves (188)
Both reveal and make use of the ethnic problems in United States at the turn of the Century
Three Historical Moments
---The other New Yorks beyond Whartons narrow strip: Waves of immigrants from abroad and
Blacks from the South in 1870s. (189)
---Increase of immigration from Southern Europe who are imagined as yellow but not white, and a
growing anti-immigrant sentiment among white native-born Americans in 1890s. (189)
The Age of Innocence both condemns and mourns the loss of a vanished social order (190)
---WWI and the aftermath of race riots: Wharton must have known ethnic problems when she was
writing The Age of Innocence.
c.f. Native Son by Richard Wright
Whartons novel captures the inseparability for Americans of the social changes brought about by the
Great War which led to the stirrings of a civil rights movement (191) by addressing her (Wharton)
classs anxieties about race
Skin Color as Racial Marker
---Ellen Olenskas status as the novels dark heroine (191) vs. May Welland the fair heroine
May remains the fair heroine and Ellen the dark, each according to her respective devotion to or
defiance of convention, and Wharton emphasizes this polarity through the heroines contrasting
colorings. (191-192)
---In this connection between Ellen and Catherine, that the Africanist presence enters the novel (192)
Ellen and Catherine, the only two unconventional women in this society, are the only New Yorkers
who eagerly employ dark-skinned servants. (192)
Aligns darkness (or color) with resistance to conformity, with passion, courage, and vitality (192)
Morrison: the strategic use of black characters to define the goals and enhance the qualities of white
characters

---Darkness also reveals the desires and fears of the major male characters. (192)
Ellen is more desirable, while May symbolizes only legitimate marriage
Ellens darkness aligns her with Nastasia and a series of dark-skinned and colorfully dressed
women who seem to constitute, from the perspective of masculine New York, a fantasy of
extramarital sex. (193)
the mystique of the Orient of Ellens drawing room (194)
Newland endows Ellen with the exotic qualities of a Westerners fantasy of Oriental woman (194)
---the Africanist character as surrogate (194)
Again and again in scenes of subtle replacement, Newland encounters a dark servant at times and in
places where he expects to find Ellen (194)
---The Africanist presence in The Age of Innocence, by serving as a marker of both white male
privilege and white female defiance, seems to express two meanings that might cancel each other out.
(196)
Morrison: Images of blackness can be evil and protective, rebellious and forgiving, fearful and
desirable---all of the self-contradictory features of the self (196)
Whiteness as a Non-ethnicity that Absorbs Others
---Whiteness is drained of meanings; images of ice, snow, shrouds, and a living death. (196)
e.g. Van der Luydens, Mays sexual purity, innocence, and blindness
---Mrs. Strutherss entry into New York society represents the beginning of a real but relatively small
demographic change (198)
Wharton figures Mrs. Strutherss enter into Society as the conversion of a darker element into a lighter
one
In Whartons trope for the move from the age of innocence to the definition of whiteness,
revitalizes an aged and dying race by being absorbed into it and thereby disappearing itself (198)
Similar to how Michael Nowlin describes the Americans adoption of Frances cosmopolitan but
ethnographic culture: A higher provincialism
---an assimilationist analysis of what would and should happen to people of color in the United States.
Whartons image of something dark transmuted into something light stands thus poised at an
ideological shift that would ultimately lead to assimilationist racism (199)
Everything objectionable to Society in the Jew Beaufort and his mistress Fanny Ring is dissociated
from their daughter who, like a second-generation immigrant, assimilates into the tribe by leaving
her parents identities behind. (199)
A Multi-cultural America?
---Much in the novel works against both essentialist and assimilationist concepts of race (200)
Wharton repeatedly subverts the international theme to question American claims to freedom,
individualism, and originality
Their (whiteness) sameness, given the novels color coding, takes on ethnic/racial significance (200)
the paradox that everyone looks alike in a land of immigrants (200)
e.g. In Boston: M. Rivieres face vs. American faces

Kun Xian Shen, R03122026

Apr 28th, 2015
Edith Whartons Nationalism and its Discontent: The Age of Innocence as an American National Novel
As the characteristics of modern nationalism centers on masculinity and ethnocentrism, it seems
unlikely to picture the American female novelist Edith Wharton alongside with the idea of Empire,
colonialism, or cultural essentialist; indeed, most of the scholars choose to focus on her feminist
position and her social realist critique of a non-modern society. There is, however, apparent nationalist
spirits within her writings, as some research (which I will show below) have begun to point out, as well
as a strong desire to borrow foreign ideas and aesthetics to further improves her native country, which
can be easily disguised as cosmopolitanism. Through novels that emphasizes on the struggles of
national elites and their encounter with modern world, Wharton successfully represent the rising
American empire as a young and promising force that is ready to inherit legacies that were not
previously considered American.
Not surprisingly, Wharton has already shown her tendency of American nationalism not only in
her novels, but also in her social engagement and reputation. As The New Yorker uncovers a not so
well-known and indirect literary feud between Virginia Woolf and Wharton herself, it seems that
Wharton, a self-proclaimed cosmopolitan, is highly unpleasant about Woolfs accusation that their
praises were qualified because they were not Americans.3 Apparently referring to Whartons
fascination with European aesthetics and culture, Woolf retorts that They do not give us anything we
have not got already, expecting the Americans to write more about their own national culture, much
like Walt Whitmen. The critic Gerald Bullett even upgrades this nationalistic comparison to that of an
aesthetic one, calling Woolf a brilliant experimentalist, while Wharton was content to practice the
craft of fiction without attempting to enlarge its technical scope.4 Of course, Wharton will not be
happy to be criticized as an American who imitates European modernism and fails; she deals with this,
however, not by exclaiming that modernism is an universal aesthetics, nor proving herself as a
cosmopolitan with hybrid cultural background. Instead, she prides herself on educating young
American writers, improving American aesthetics, and, of course, winning the Pulitzer prize. In fact,
the judges of the Pulitzer prize in 1921 actually praises The Age of Innocence for revealing the
wholesome atmosphere of American life and the highest standard of American manners and
manhood.5 This apparent cultural dilemma between the need to build up a national culture and the
fascination of a European one is clearly the symptom of a rising American empire.
Further defining this complex as Whartons quest for a higher provincialism for United States,
scholar Michael Nowlin points out that Whartons French Ways and Their Meaning and The Age of
Innocence are in fact complementary cultural nationalist texts (90).6 For Nowlin, Whartons
dividing her sympathies between the provincial Newland Archer and such deracinated citizens of the
world as Ellen Olenska, Ned Winsett, and Monsieur de Riviere (93-94) seems to be the symptom of
her embracing Americas imperial prospects (91). Although The Age of Innocence certainly spoke to

3 Colapinto, John. "Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton, and a Case of Anxiety of Influence." The New Yorker. The
New Yorker, 19 Sept. 2014. Web. 27 Apr. 2015.
4 Ibid.

5 McCrum, Robert. "The 100 Best Novels: No 45 - The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (1920)." The
Guardian. Guardian News and Media Limited, 28 July 2014. Web. 27 Apr. 2015.
6 Nowlin, Michael. Edith Wharton's Higher Provincialism: French Ways for Americans and the Ends of The Age
of Innocence. Journal of American Studies Volume 38.Issue 01 (2004): 89-108. Print.

modernist sensibilities (92) with its attack on old New Yorks traditions, institutions, and
provincialism in an ethnographic analysis, as seen through the character Ned Winsett, who is himself
starving for culture(99), Americas young cultural nationalists and modernist rebels were
fundamentally dependent on notions of culture and criticism derived from Victorian England and most
fully realized, to Whartons mind, by the deeply traditionalist French (94-95). That is to say,
Whartons French ways are an exemplary synthesis of the conservative virtues of reverence,
standards of taste, and continuity, on the one hand, and the progressive virtues of intellectual
honesty the capacity to see ones cultural condition as it really is and thus improve it (104) on the
other. The modern French culture for Wharton can be both radical and conservative at the same time. In
fact, Whartons French make an ideal imperial race (105). In the end, the once provincial Newland
becomes a bridge between old and new Americans, who are awakened to the liberating imperatives
of the old European tradition, which at once undergirds the cohesion and homogeneity of the tribe,
justifies its perpetuation, and, most importantly, sanctions the transgressions against itself essential to
social evolution (100). This leap from traditions to modernity is not only based on temporal
dimension, but also on a structural reformation of national culture which borrows greatly from the
simultaneously ethnographic and universal French culture.
Looking back at this latent nationalist spirit within a seemingly cosmopolitan work, one might begin to
question the adequacy of any universal culturist claim, if not an unifying nationalist agenda that seeks
to represent different ethnic cultures within a diverse nation. To begin with, we can start by asking: Is
the cosmopolitan white elitists in New York seeking European modernist aesthetics suitable for
representing a new nation? Indeed, judging from the current cultural capital status of New York, and
the influences United States have achieved through globalization, one can safely defend Whartons
pursuit of the seemingly better or more advanced aesthetic and taste of France at the time of
Americans cultural infancy. Through post-colonial studies and similar disciplines, however, we can
also criticize Whartons neglect of minority cultures at the time, which is by no means inferior in
taste or complexity than European culture. The cosmopolitanism necessary for Whartons nationalism
does not seem to include lower class and ethnic minorities, despite the inclusion of females. Whats
more, along with this thinking, it is also worth tracing the REAL beneficiaries of such kind of
nationalism: can a black man living in suburban area, who might not have a decent education and is
therefore illiterate, really understand Whartons use of intricate European arts and their introduction to
American lifestyles? Or is that legacy only a small fraction of United States, which is, ironically, what
Wharton is trying to ironize in The Age of Innocence? Last but not least, despite some scholars effort
to tackle this apparent paradox, including Nancy Bentley and the aforementioned Michael Nowlin,
there is still a lack in a truly transnational criticism, if not theory, that can be used to amend the flaws
of this novel. Originally speaking, the so-called transnational aspect in the novel is limited to the
interaction between white Europe and America; however, is it possible to locate a more valid
transnationalism within any of the character in the book? Is Ellen Olenska a revolutionary figure who
eventually chooses to travel around the world, perhaps out of Europe, without any man on her side, but
is not given enough details by Wharton? And, eventually, after given so much credit as being a national
literary canon, should we still value the book as it is, or should we begin to take on a wholly different
view toward it? Will the nationalist spirit in the book keeps on passing on a white privileged
perspective to future generations, or will we be able to learn from it the facts that are not included as
well? These are the questions we should always bear in mind, both as a cosmopolitan, and a global
citizen who is always already under the influence of American nationalism.

Kun Xian Shen, R03122026

Mar 13th, 2015
Prof. Liao Chao-yang
The Posthuman Global
Toward a Theorization of the Transnational Subject: A Posthuman Perspective
In an age when traditional humanism is under severe attack from prominent philosophers,
including the so-called deconstructionists and post-modernists, it seems more and more necessary for a
new ontology of being to be born. From existentialism to post-structuralism, the Post-war philosophical
thinking has always aimed at a skeptical attitude toward the (Cartesian) Subject, questioning preexisting ideas such as rational thoughts, universality, free will, as well as the clean-cut separation of
body and mind. These previous efforts, however, have mostly only criticized traditional ideas, but did
not pursue a revolutionary understanding of the being in question. What is human when machines
and virtual information begin to be adopted by our body without there being a clear boundary to
separate the non-human from the human? What is individual when the forces of globalization and
capitalism begin to blur the line between the self and the other? What is being when human
individual is constantly adapting to new environment and will not reach a stable status? This paper
will try to tackle these questions by first summarizing ideas from contemporary philosophers like Andy
Clark, Gilbert Simondon, and Bernard Stiegler among others, and then it will adopt these theories to
propose a new understanding of the transnational subject, as most of the academic discussions now
focus solely on the political and social aspects of transnationalism, but not an ontological one. How are
we to understand ourselves (epistemologically) in a world where nations still exist, but not quite? As
the paper will demonstrate, this question can be solved through the consideration of technology and
information.
Inspired perhaps not so much by sci-fi films and novels as by the constantly transforming
technical realities, philosophers like Simondon and Clark have both argued for a new understanding of
the relationship between machine and human. In the past, both have mentioned, traditional ideas about
machine tend to treat them as independent unit that will either threaten humans existence or serve as
an obedient slave or tool. Such kind of thinking not only underestimates capabilities of human, who are
viewed as locked-in agent (Clark 31), but also leads to the alienation of human from machines. On
the contrary, the significance of technical objects points to their status as mediators between nature
and man (Simondon, On the Mode 1), transforming humans into extended or enhanced agent
confronting the (wider) world (Clark 31), while their existence becomes something as a transparent

equipment (33). This open plurality of technics (Simondon, On the Mode 3) as well as the openness
of humans minds and bodies (Clark 31) prove the negotiability of our own embodiment (31),
suggesting an uncertain level of combination between human and machine while blurring the line
between human and non-human, as well as culture and nature. Whats more, this incorporation,
described both as new systemic wholes (39) and the ensemble of open machines (or an
orchestra) (Simondon, On the Mode 2), does not have a clear end in sight; instead, there is a flow of
information across those interfaces (Clark 33), and the agents are able constantly to negotiate and
renegotiate the agentworld boundary itself (34). Portraying human as natural-born cyborg, Clark
thus concludes that we are forever testing and exploring the possibilities for incorporating new
resources and structures deep into their embodied acting and problemsolving regimes (42). This
rethinking of the position and value of technical object and their relationship with human has replaced
old understanding of human, which is a locked-in agent that dominates the world of objects, with a
more adequate one that focuses more on interaction and transformation. Indeed, the ever-changing
systemic wholes will lead to the idea of being as becoming, which I will discuss later.
Despite the fact that Simondon and Clark have both argued for a reevaluation of machine, their
position still seem to center around the perspective of an individual human, as Simondon vividly
compares the human among the machines to the orchestra conductor (On the Mode 2) who seems to
be in control of the technical system. To achieve a broader perspective, it is necessary to also examine
the relationship between the self and others under the influence of technology (that is to say, the
conductor is never alone in the theater, as we must consider the audiences as well, who are interacting
with the conductor, to borrow the metaphor Simondon applies). Referencing Simondon more often than
not, the philosopher Bernard Stiegler borrows his analytical structure to further illustrate the
relationship between the I and the We in an age of technological innovation. Through his analysis of
history of technology, Stiegler uses the term adoption to describe the technological changes that
human society take up, which leads to the unification process that extend a We, to amass other Is
and other Wes (88). Apparently, this unifying process is also an identification, an organization, and a
unification of diverse elements of the communitys past as they project its future that is founded on
the process of exteriorization; that is, on technical media (93). Apparently, adoption is a doublesided coin that allows both the I and the We to influence one another through technical objects.
Furthermore, according to Stigler, as adoptions nowadays are controlled by marketing systems
and media forces (92), we are witnessing a Global unification that can be best exemplified by
(Hollywood) cinema, which brings about the industrialization of the schemata (93). Claiming that a
single global mechanism of regional specialization has arrived (132), Stigler briefly explains how
technological innovation that transmits information can create a dialectical link between the individual
and the collective, as well as how the individual consciousness is mass-produced and conveyed to
others. In spite of the benefit this process might bring, including the constant renewal of the local
community as well as the global consciousness, as Stigler points out that the individual, whether
psychological or social, and although the We is not indivisible as is the I, is an incomplete process of a
metastable equilibrium (94), a concept similar to the Simondonian idea of being as becoming, he
also warns the readers of the menaces that this global synchronization might bring. Believing that The
synchronization of the I as flux is the dissolving of the possibility of exception (100), Stigler reveals

the importance of critiquing the global industry of memory transmission (131) as today technical
systems always overdetermine the conditions of the process of adoption: as a technique of
communication, they control the relationships between individuals and collectivities (133). Perhaps
as a latent rebuke of Simondons belief that machine create no threat to the humans, Stigler argues that
individual memory and consciousness are indeed influenced by the fusion of technical with the
mnemotechnical systems (134) as they become the mastery of the global imagination (135), and
The technological synthesis of tertiary retention is originarily super-imposed on syntheses of
consciousness (141). Whats more, under the hegemony of global media, Public education becomes
the installing of consciousness (144). In short, Stigler dimly concludes that under such circumstance,
The We, having become One, is without a future (102), unless we value the living experience of
differences that must be learned and synthesized (153) once again.
It may seem the two types of structures discussed above are not thorough enough to provide a
satisfactory criticism of traditional humanism, let alone setting forth a new ontology of being.
Examining more closely, however, one may discover the mutual interest both invest in: that is, the
being as something that is becoming. In the first model, which details the relationship between machine
and human, theorists believe that technical objects can assist human with the interaction with nature,
and the boundary between culture and nature will thus be redrawn over and over again. For the second
model, it is clear that the individual I and the collective We are never stable as both can affect each
other through technical objects. For Simondon, this ever-changing status of being leads to his critique
of the quest for a substantial origin, the philosophy of which he replaces with the idea of pre-individual
and individuation. Interrogating traditional philosophers who presuppose the existence of a principle
of individuation that is anterior to the individuation itself (The Position 4), Simondon instead
focuses on the process of individuation, which he describes as the division of being into phases, and
This division of being into phases is becoming (5). Apparently, Simondon has forfeited the
possibility of a stabilized, concrete, and pre-given being, and begins to theorize the idea of becoming.
Therefore, he claims, In order to think individuation, being must be considered neither as a substance,
nor matter, nor form, but as a system that is charged and supersaturated, above the level of unity, not
consisting only of itself (5). Whats more, in order to counter against the idea of a locked-in individual
unit, he proposes the idea of pre-individual, which goes beyond unity (6), and individuation does
not exhaust with one stroke the potentials of pre-individual reality (5). Combining the idea of preindividual and individuation, we can conclude that there is no clear boundary nor definition to a being,
including that of individual person, a local community, a nation, or the global sphere. In contrast,
being is constantly individuating itself while referring back to the openness of the pre-individual. Such
philosophical insight can prove to be very provocative as it questions various presupposed ontological
presence, but not without a concrete position.
In order to relate these somewhat abstract theoretical structures to the contemporary cultural and
socio-political scenario, as Stigler has clearly attempted to do, I will further extend these philosophical
threads to a theorization of transnationalism. In his book, Stigler points out that the question of
adoption is indissociable from that of commerce, and therefore of the market(91), explicitly referring
to capitalism and its power. According to Stigler, this capitalistic force, if combined with technical
objects and techniques (media is a prominent example), can construct a common past to project a

desire for a common future for local communities (88). Apparently, this not only resonates with
Benedict Andersons thoughts on nationalism, which he believes to be imaginative and constructed, as
well as Etienne Balibars fictive ethnicity, but it also questions Martin Heideggers quest for origin,
the idea of which is replaced by Stiglers own Epiphylogenetic past (90). Claiming that technology
would have to be as fully adopted as the false past constructing the projective We (90), Stigler explains
well how a collective consciousness is reached. It is worth noting, however, that such power is not
limited within nation only, as Stigler also briefly mentions the danger of the global transmission of a
single American perspective of Hollywood movie industry. Indeed, the unifying force of globalization
(mostly driven by capitalism) can be said to take place with the support of technical objects. Both
Naoki Sakai and Shih Shu-mei have theorized the trans-Pacific structure in which the flow of
information, commercial goods, and humans has proved that the imagination of a national identity
alone is contested. As the transnational We is now constantly conflicting with the national I (which, in
turn, is also a We if set against the different communities within the nation), it seems more and more
necessary to break away from the traditional theories of cultural and political identity, while adopting a
new transnational, if not global, structure that can both consider the national and the transnational
subject. When Shih Shu-mei points out that the Sinophone director Ann Lee can both identify as a
Taiwanese film auteur as well as an Asian American, or when Naoki Sakai defines the ambiguous
position of the Japanese between the leader of the imperialistic Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere
and the main base for the Pacific Cold War defense as subject in transit, it seems to correspond to
what Simondon says: If multiple types of individuation were to exist, multiple logics would also have
to exist, each corresponding to a specific type of individuation (The Position 13). That is to say,
identity should always be reconsidered.
Works Cited
Clark, Andy. Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension. Oxford: Oxford UP,
2008.
Sakai, Naoki. Translation and Subjectivity on "Japan" and Cultural Nationalism. Minneapolis: U of
Minnesota, 1997.
Shi, Shu-mei. Visuality and Identity Sinophone: Articulations across the Pacific. Berkeley: U of
California, 2007.
Simondon, Gilbert. The Position of the Problem of Ontogenesis. Trans. Gregory Flanders. Parrhesia
7 (2009): 4-16.
. On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects. London. Ont.: U of Western Ontario, 1980.
Stiegler, Bernard, and David Barison. Acting out. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford UP, 2009.
, and Stephen Francis Barker. Technics and Time, 3: Cinematic Time and the Question of Malaise.
Stanford, Calif.: Stanford UP, 2011.
Psychical subject
Subject

adoptionimaginary

Kun Xian Shen, R03122026

Mar 15th, 2015

Prof. Li, Hung-Chiung
Truth and Subject
Signifier of the Event? A Consideration of Power-relations in Being and Event
It is clear that, through his attempts to concretize a position of the event as well as lay down the
pre-requisites for such event to occur, the contemporary French philosopher Alain Badiou is proposing
a new epistemological understanding of ontology and being in an age when deconstructionist and postmodernist have focused more on contingency and infinite extension of meanings. First attributing
negative features to the evental site, including what-is-not-being-qua-being, the nothing, byproduct of appearing, the non-natural, and the erasure of any natural appearing (173), Badiou
seems to see the event as a contingent and artificial happening that needs to be discussed historically as
well, as he claims that Nature is absolute, historicity relative, and A multiple is a site relative to the
situation in which it is presented (counted as one) (176). Whats more, in contrast to nature, the
terms of the multiple of which are both presented and represented (174), the historical multiple is
singular, and thus abnormal, as some of the terms in it are not presented. As he goes on to argue the
instability of the singular (174), it seems more so that he is criticizing traditional philosophical quest
for a substantial essence, as he blatantly says that origin would be a state of a totality is imaginary,
and A historical situation is therefore, in at least one of its points, on the edge of the void (177).
Despite the acknowledgement of the contingency and singularity of historical event, Badiou does
not avoid the need for ontology. Indeed, he claims that it is by way of historical localization that being
comes-forth within presentative proximity, because something is subtracted from representation, or
from the state (177). Apparently, the negative and empty event (the representative precariousness of
evental sites (177)) is still something that is capable of being presented, serving as a rupture or
exception, as Bernard Stigler also briefly notes in his book Technics and Time, 3 as a means to counter
the manipulative We (and, implicitly, both have criticized Heidegger). Further arguing that An event
can always be localized (in contrast to a universal nature) (178), Badious constructive approach
reminds us of the possibility of the emergence of resistance within a system that defies the over-arching
regulating power.
Self-explanatory as it is, Badious idea of the event seems to neglect, if not avoid, the very
locality and the power-relations within it that deploy different events according to the part with more
power. As he has briefly mentioned, the inventory of all the elements of the site contains forever
infinite numbering of the gestures (180), something similar to the deconstructionists infinite extensive
meanings, and there must be a filter to serve as a signifier of the event to represent the event itself.
After this explanation, nevertheless, Badiou seems to fail to provide a better way to grasp this filter
as he also claims that it is undecidable from the standpoint of the situation itself (181). It might be
helpful to borrow Michele Foucaults analysis of power-relations here again to map out the terms of an
eventual site, so as to really point out the constructive power of the event itself.
Kun Xian Shen, R03122026
Mar 15th, 2015
Prof. Li, Hung-Chiung
Truth and Subject
Truth and Knowledge: A Question of Chicken or the Egg?
Perhaps similar to what the philosopher Michele Foucault is trying to signify in his later years as
he looked back at his previous works, Alain Badiou also tries to differentiate the nuances within the
truth/knowledge couple (327). Pointing out that a procedure of truth subtracts itself from this or that
jurisdiction of knowledge, Badiou seems to view truth as in an infinite status (328), while the
procedure of fidelity traverses existent knowledge (327). Furthermore, he compares knowledge to the
quality of an encyclopaedia, which must be understood here as a summation of judgments under a
common determinant (328). Apparently, in his comparison between truth and knowledge, the former
is of a more transcendent quality that cannot be simply defined, while the latter is something
recognizable and confined. In fact, he even combines this thinking with his former work on the idea of

the event. Reiterating that what qualifies the name of the event is that it is drawn from the void,
Badiou believes that truth is a matter of an evental (or historical) quality, and not of a signifying
quality, and that the event does not fall under any encyclopaedic determinant (329).
Despite his efforts in differentiating the two sets of epistemological systems that are connected to
each other while setting each other apart at the same time, Badiou does not seem to have a clear picture
of the exact positions of the two. In fact, he may be contradicting himself when some descriptions he
uses are not so compatible with each other. At first, Badiou points out that a procedure of truth
subtracts itself from this or that jurisdiction of knowledge (328), which makes knowledge the base of
truth. However, he also portrays truth as the foundation of all knowledge to come (327). If we are
not debating the question of origin here, then we must certainly examine more closely the interaction
and the power-relations between the two. Which gets to influence more? And how do they influence
each other? This is the questions that should be asked next.
Kun Xian Shen, R03122026
June 2nd, 2015
On The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
Boehmer, Elleke. East Is East: Where Postcolonialism Is Neo-orientalist - the Cases of Sarojini Naidu
and Arundhati Roy. Stories of Women: Gender and Narrative in the Postcolonial Nation. Manchester:
Manchester UP, 2005. Print.
Central Problematic: Postcolonial Privilege
exoticisation of the other woman that is involved in the postcolonial privileging of her voice (158)
(Similar to the question I asked in the beginning of the semester: ---Why are most of the "post-colonial
fictions" in English published in American or British book market?
India, if it is to speak to itself, will always need a lingua franca. But English, which re-enacts the
colonial relationship, placing certain Indians in a position the British once occupied, does more than
that. It has created a linguistic line as unbreachable as the color line once was in the United States.
(Aatish Taseer, How English Ruined Indian Literature, The New York Times)
Neo-Colonialism in Early Indian Nationalist Literature
Sarojini Naidu: a Keats for India (158) vs. a genuine Indian poet of the Deccan (159)
She instead began to produce, yet one which was ironically, and again symptomatically, another
imitation of a western intervention. (159) cf. Becoming Yellow: A Short History of Racial Thinking
the east as shaped by the west, represented by an eastern woman writing from the perspective of the
west. (159)
she now worked to add my little exotic flower to the glorious garland of English verse. (160)
The bizarre and disturbing force of Naidus ventriloquism is a fascinating instance of the doublevoiced as well as doubled colonial mimicry of a European aesthetic (160)
split identification (160)
un-English, Oriental (160)
Neo-Colonialism in Postcolonial Works
It is possible to find in recent criticism of postcolonial work a configuration of cultural differences
between west and east (160)
In sometimes imperceptible ways, the past of colonial discourse seems to reiterate itself within the
present that is postcolonial criticism (160)
objectifications of otherness (160): postcolonialist commodification of non-western cultures (160);
gendered inflectionswhere the woman becomes the epitome of the ethnic, the exotic (161)
Arundhati Roy as a Sucessful and Objectified Postcolonial Writer
the long-awaited female Rushdie (161) critical promotion of Roy in the west (161)
Roy is female, and beautiful, different from other Indian male writers: the first girl among the new
boys (163)
promoted by their class position or other elitist structures (166)

the novels appeal to certain western cultural forms - Elvis Presleyfilms (161) is avoided
Instead promote: the layerings of contrasting extreme experiences (161) (e.g. Sex and violence)
conflation of biography, female body and writing, a slight, feminine body shape as somehow
corresponding to stylistic whimsicality (162)
how the several interconnections converge in the notions of lyric complexity and emotional
intensity, and, on the other, of singular femaleness (162)
The Orient with its perfumes and ardent sensations is classically conceptualized as feminine (162)
ornate linguistic effects, and in the acceptance of her excesses (reflected in the books success), there
is a tacit understanding that this style in some way suits, while also contrasting productively and
provocatively with, her Indian subject matter (163) gender-marked, nationalist mode of thinking
one of which single, so-called typical imaged are held to mark an entire community (163) neoorientalist (163)
familial, allegedly personal and domestic perspectives Roys with female frustrations in the
domestic context (163)
Does the underlying characterization of the oriental feminine in some postcolonial critique not
leave embedded entrenched differences between an exotic and impassioned east and a consuming west,
interested in yet distancing itself from that easts enticements and intensities? (163) cf. Under Western
Eyes
Examining Neo-orientalism and its Functions
---the neo-orientalist tendency I want to underline is a critical inclination to regard as more culturally
alive, interestingly authentic and intensively postcolonial than other kinds of international writing, the
extravagant realism and exuberant word-play associated with certain Indian writers (164)
replicates inherited categories of colonial difference (164) objectification of otherness
in a magic realist or postmodernised guise (165)
commodified and made safe for a western readership (164) cf. Zadie Smiths White Teeth; Native
Informant (G. C. Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason)
---India is transmitted as multiple, extreme, scented, sensual, transgressive and as quintessentially
feminine (164)
feminized Orient an Indo-chic (164)
---The role of western critics: what is up for scrutiny are the evaluative vocabularies used to
represent Roys work. (165); Can they participate in a critical postcolonialism rather than a
globalized postcoloniality (165)
Homi Bhabhas theories of hybridity, or Bakhtin on polyphony, have caused postcolonial literary
subversions and multiplicity to become almost too expected as being always already there (165)
the whole of the Third World singularized into an oppositionality, is idealized as the site,
simultaneously, of alterity and authenticity (166)
the location of critics (166)
---as Arif Dirlik has also observed, that postcolonialism has emrged at a time when transnational
capital continues to generate stark economic and power imbalances between different parts of the world
a time when globalization has produced a neocolonial dependency of the chaotic, helpless rest on
the rationalized, masculine west (166)
postcolonial criticism is related to, and representative of, the continuing dominance of the formerly
imperial metropolis (166)
the relative neglect of transnational capitalism as a subject for critique (166)
Throwing Sands in Western Eyes
the English language expanded, distorted, excavated, disconcerted. (165)
Strange attractions are created between words through rhyming and alliterative patterns. (168)
e.g. viable, die-able age
co-existence: small and big gods

necessary to set up contextualizing temporalities, histories or background stories that would reveal, for
example, the many social, political and linguistic determinants that have shaped, and continue to shape,
what we now call postcolonial hybridity (167)
sensitivity to agency (167): The God of Small Things open-ended structures compared to Kathakali
Spivak: any postcolonial reading must be approached as a continuously self-critical, contextualizing
and intesnsively inter-literary rather than a conventionally comparative excercise (167)
irreconcilability enuciatory disorder (167)

Kun Xian Shen, R03122026

June 2nd, 2015
On The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
Friedman, Susan Stanford. Spatial Poetics and Arundhati Roy'd The God of Small Things. A
Companion to Narrative Theory. Ed. James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz. Malden, MA: Blackwell
Pub., 2005. Print.
Can this papers point of view compensate that of the former paper?
(A different line of thinking that includes Arif Dirlik and other place-based critique, as well as new
materialist); (Somehow anti-postmodern for postmodernism may only serve the interest of Western
critics)
A Brief Review of Space in Narrative Theories
In contrast to the narrative theory of Bakhtin, Ricoeru, Genette, Brooks
Space in narrative poetics is often present as the description that interrupts the flow of temporality or
as the setting that functions as static background for the plot (192)
narrative exists in time (193): a narrative takes time to tell and tells about a sequence of events in
time (193)
Foucault: epoch of space (20th Century); heterotopias as real places that bring into focus the
interrelationship of other spaces, and slices of time as structures of the social order (199)
Soja: emphasis on spatiality to counteract the hegemony of temporal modes of thought (192)
Moretti: space as interval force within narrative, generative of narration (195); the historical novel
narrates the confluence of space and time by telling stories about external frontiers and internal
borders (196) cf. Imagined Communities
De Certeau: story as spatial practice, as practice of everyday life (195); space as the site of
encounter: frontier, boundaries, and bridges. (196) Narrative is built out of a contradiction of
interactions in space (196)
W. Benjamins The Storyteller: storytellers relationship to space (195); seaman and tiller of the
soil (Home and elsewhere (195))
active and mobile
Lawrence Grossberg: spatial materialism (195): space as the milieu of becoming (195)
the function of space as an active agent in the production of narrative (194)
a topochronic narrative poetics (194)
The Importance of Border within Identity Politics and the Time of Globalization
effect of the intensified form of globalization (192)
all stories require borders and border crossings, that is, some form of intercultural contact zones,
understanding culture in it broadest sense to incorporate the multiple communal identities (196)
Identity is unthinkable without borders (196)

Borders insist on purity, distinction, difference, but facilitate contamination, mixing, and creolization
(196)
an intercultural fort/da (196)
Bodies as border.
Spatial Poetics in The God of Small Things
tropes locations as figures on the ground of time (197)
Roy preeminently calls attention to the borders within the nation-state as an inseparable element of
the postcolonial dilemma (197)
Attacked as a traitor to the national cause she nonetheless insists painful interrogations of social
inequities at home (197)
Keralas importance and its differences from India itself (also mentioned by Boehmer)
dystopic and utopic border crossings that transgress material, social, psychological, sexual, and
spiritual frontiers (198) Does this claim falls under the criticism of Boehmer?
different spaces in the novel contain history. The novel moves associationally in and out of these
spaces, rather than sequentially in linear time, with each location stimulating different fragments of
events (199)
Roys profession as an architect, each space is troped in a building that is a charged site of historical
overdetermination (199)
E.g. The Abhilash Talkies movie theater as heterotopia that contains the history of colonialism,
postcolonialism, and the growing American cultural and economic hegemony (199); the oragedrink
man violates Esthas body border out of class and caste resentment of the borders between himself
and the privileged boy who have been brought together in the space (200)
Ayemenem House
Paradise Pickles & Preserves: The factory brings together not only East and West, touchables, and
untouchables, but also manager and communist leader (200) cf. s 2003

a critical searchlight onto Indias internal affairs (201): The temple vs. movie palace and Heritage
Hotel (contradictory); the Meenachal River as representation of the dangers and allure of fluidity
(201)
Most important building: History House: Indias colonial past, the intertwined stories of home and
travel (201), as promoted by Benjamin as the best mode of story-telling
Anglophilia vs. Anglophobia (the house is mysterious but also alluring)
the frontier where the contacts of amorous or hostile struggles are inscribed, as mentioned by de
Certau (202). E.g. Velutha has sex with Ammu, but is also beaten to death also proves that body is the
site
the History House morphs into a postmodern space, burying in its playful faade the sedimented
layers of desire and trauma that characterized the erection and dissolution of colonial, postcolonial,
caste, and sexual boundaries (202) critical of postmodernity, similar to Boehmer
Heart of Darkness colonial legacy
Dark of Heartness dark borders erected in the heart of India critical of Indian nationalism
(different form Boehmers point of view, but is the same as Morettis view of the novel)
But do all these buildings and spaces and the spatial practices that take place within them connect
to the spatial quality of these spaces itself?

the retreat of the political (147)

Impossibility, impure, philosophy
impossible to find, link between philosophy
and what, of politics, inscribes into History the destiny of a thought in
the form of a clearing (148)
Community is that by means of which philosophy
understands first the socialist, and then the communist, proposition.
unavowable inoperative the coming community (148)
a specific impossibility of the world, and of every world, inasmuch
as a world finds support alone in consensual consistency (149)
The impossibility of the community, which is the real of the
world, prevents politics from falling under an idea. (150)
Politics, as a form of thought, however, does not proceed in a definitional
way. (154)
'to do philosophy' is totally different
frol1l 'making politics' (154)

we ought to displace
the barren imperative of our world (150)
the impossibility of community forms no objection to the imperative of
emancipatory politics (151)
the figure of statements. A politics is already real insofar as its
statements have succeeded in existing. (152)
A politics of emancipation draws itself from the void that
an event brings forth (fait advenir) as the latent inconsistency of the
given world. These statements are the namings of this very void. (152)
political subjectivity (152) ()
In philosophy, the name of community,
for example, expresses that this thinking, or this truth, will have been (153)

politics as a truth-procedure (153)

to identify politics as thought from within political thought. (153)

Philosophy(or a philosophy) endeavours to this truth and therefore to anticipate
its being, which, as generic, has on principle not yet taken place: what
exists is its (finite) subject, not its (eternal) being. (154)
a philosophical definition of politics. (154)
The task is a disjunctive one: in order to maintain the inevitable resurrection
of communist forms of politics - irrespective of the names they
receive at the distance of a vital condition for philosophy, their notions
and processes must be separated out from the names and acts of
philosophy. (159)
de-suture
philosophy and politics (159)

(the return of the reign of the One (155)

'Disaster' is a philosophical concept that names the suturing
of philosophy to politics. (156)
the ecstasy of the site (156)
disaster results from a confusion in
thought between the philosophical reception of its political condition,