DIALOGUE AND CREATIVITY Culture and Dialogue, Vol. 7, No. 1, 2019, pp. 1-114 Editorial: Dialogue and Creativity
Culture and Dialogue 7.1 focuses on “Dialogue and Creativity.” Publishing an issue on a theme that pertains to “creativity” may, for some, appear to be simply a rehash of all-too-familiar debates. It is perhaps less common to understand creativity within the dynamics of the dialogue and from different angles, whether in the sciences or the arts, whether in terms of its forms or its dynamics, its temporality or instrumentality, its metaphysical or ethical dimensions, or, simply, in terms of its historical condition or renewing nature. Creativity may be exemplary of a rule that cannot be formulated, or, to put it in a less morally-loaded fashion, creativity may just be the renewing of worlds that do make sense to us. Creativity, therefore, is not in-nihilo. Of course not. Nor is it destructive. Or else, we should use another word. It may be destructive of the world it inexorably leaves behind, but this would already be a shift in interpretative focus. Perhaps it would be truer to say that creativity is an emptying movement that departs from the already-known, the self as we know it, the recognisable world with its laws and order; creativity leaves behind the very traditions and cultural values of all kinds that make it possible. Not only is history a necessary component of creativity, but for anyone to envisage its possibility one needs to make oneself available to the past and what has already been established. Creativity cannot therefore be ex-nihilo. Neither ex-nihilo nor in-nihilo. Creativity thus involves a double emptying movement, which—as one can easily anticipate—characterises the very nature of the dialogue: an availability to the formed world that metamorphoses into an availability to the world in formation. Creativity is therefore in essence ethical, and creative non-sense is no creativity at all. The genius artist or, rather, to avoid using a word this time as historically loaded as controversial in contemporary Western thought, the creative artist is the one who manages to almost encapsulate these two emptying movements with their respective temporal orientations into a single brush-stroke, word-stroke, sound-stroke, or body-stroke. Creativity in art becomes almost a-temporal and therefore eternal. It is the unfolding of the worldly scroll; the breath whose ethical essence owes to its nearing eternity; a virtually non-dual energy that conflates the emptying movements towards two poles, those of the formed world and the world to be formed. In this sense, creativity is not phenomenal but kinetic. Or, rather, as soon as one thinks of creativity as a phenomenon, one has already crystalized it as unidirectional appearing, with an origin and an end. Needless to say, creativity can also be found in the sciences, whether natural or social. Where, in art, creativity pertains to the very kinetic relation between the poles, in the sciences the same creativity in its principle is used in order to retrieve worlds and foresee new paradigms. The scientist requires the same ability to negotiate a double emptying movement: in this case to both absorb from the known reality and withdraw from the already known in order to explain the un-known. The dialogical principle is that between the scientist and the reality at stake. Creativity is of course fundamental for both the sciences and the arts, but the aims and the methods are different. In the former, creativity is used as means to retrieve the poles, to explain and to know them, and as such it remains temporally oriented; in the latter, creativity nears eternity because it is not experienced instrumentally. Thus, it may make sense to qualify creativity in the arts as being, from one angle, “disinterested” and therefore close to being temporally un-oriented. All essays in this journal issue address in different ways from different perspectives and in different relevant fields what is at stake in the dynamics of creativity. John Pauley analyses the “the conditions for creativity” in a particular form of human activity, i.e., conversation, and does so by highlighting the “constant tension between the regime of the status quo and the possibilities intrinsic to creativity.” Rudi Capra reflects on the dynamics of creativity in the Chan pedagogy of the Song era, through the use of gongan literature, and in ‘particular ritual dialogues between masters and students’ as evidenced in the Chan Buddhist text Blue Cliff Record (碧巖錄). John Baldacchino, inspired by the thought of playwriter Dario Fo, discusses and advocates a form of creativity found in a dialogical pedagogy – a “weak pedagogy” – that enacts irony and satire, and that “refuses to provide solutions presumed on measurement, certainty or finality.” Colleen Fitzpatrick explores an aspect of creativity that is embedded in the reciprocal, complementary relationship between painting and mindfulness, a conception that she argues can be traced in Mikel Dufrenne’s phenomenology of aesthetic experience, as well as in Buddhist thought. Joshua M. Hall considers creativity in choreography through the lens of Cornelius Castoriadis’ conception of imagination and time that he elaborated in his The Imaginary Institution of Time and “Time and Creation.” In choreography “society’s time reworks itself into the poetic text to which it dances.” Finally, Åsa Andersson in Observations of Lightness offers an example of what is nowadays known as creative writing, in other words creativity at work through temporal variations, shifts, cuts and returns as enacted in the narration. I am most grateful to my editorial colleagues, Martin Ovens, Loni Reynolds and Erika Mandarino, as well as to Robert Clarke for his book review; all the Editorial Board members of the Journal; the anonymous reviewers who lent on good will their scholarship and expertise to improve the standard of essays; and, needless to say, all the contributors to this issue on “Creativity and Dialogue.” The next theme of the Journal will be “Culture, War and Sovereignty” (Volume 7, Number 2, 2019) – doubtless another topical and thrilling, albeit sensitive, challenge ahead! Gerald Cipriani DIALOGUE AND GLOBALISATION Culture and Dialogue, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2018, pp. 119-255 Editorial: Dialogue, Culture and Globalisation
Volume 6 Number 2 of Culture and Dialogue reflects on different facets and causes of the phenomenon of globalisation from a variety of theoretical perspectives, case studies and spatiotemporal contexts. In this sense, the selection of essays is in part a continuation of the roundtable that was organised on the same topic on the occasion of the Twentieth International Congress of Aesthetics, Seoul 2016. Globalisation has pervaded all aspects of our lives in many parts of the world. The phenomenon is obviously not only economic and technological; globalisation has affected human and cultural relationships, identity formations, and our ability and willingness to be attentive to our fellow human beings and the places of our worlds. Globalisation has generated particular forms of cultural practices and the ways we perceive and interpret them. But beyond the simple realisation of such mutations, the question is whether cultural experience, be it existential, religious, political or aesthetic, can still be the guarantor of authentic human relationships, genuine intercultural encounters, or dialogical renewing, offering thus a fruitful mode of redemptive resistance against the forces that may soon plunge us into the existential catacombs of globalisation. What are the ethical and existential implications of cultural experience in globalisation? As we all know, the formulation of the socio-economic roots of globalisation can be traced back to Marx and Engels’ Manifesto of the Communist Party (1888):
"The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. …The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere… Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground…" Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1888
For this passage to read like an authentic premonition, we simply have to replace the word “bourgeoisie” with “global class.” Marx clearly saw the link between globalisation and socio-economics. But globalisation has many different facets and causes. Beside the spheres of international relations, economics, or socio-politics, globalisation is impacting our modes of existence as persons, how we relate to each other, to our communities and environments, in other words, to the place that contributes to shaping our very selves. While remaining wary of making any value judgement, UNESCO highlights the relational nature of globalisation in the following way:
"Globalisation is the ongoing process that is linking people, neighbourhoods, cities, regions and countries much more closely together than they have ever been before. This has resulted in our lives being intertwined with people in all parts of the world via the food we eat, the clothing we wear, the music we listen to, the information we get and the ideas we hold… The process is driven economically by international financial flows and trade, technologically by information technology and mass media entertainment, and very significantly, also by very human means such as cultural exchanges, migration and international tourism. …While globalisation is not a new process, it has accelerated rapidly since World War II, and is having many effects on people, the environment, cultures, national governments, economic development and human well-being in countries around the world." UNESCO 2010
Of course, globalisation thus presented can be seen to have many positive effects on humanity. Poverty reduction, for instance, is what some would consider to be the most noticeable and worthwhile achievement of globalisation. According to a 2013 United Nations report based on empirical scientific research, poverty in the developing world has drastically decreased in the past couple of decades.
"The world is witnessing a epochal ‘global rebalancing’ with higher growth in at least 40 poor countries helping lift hundreds of millions out of poverty and into a new ‘global middle class’. Never in history have the living conditions and prospects of so many people changed so dramatically and so fast." UN report, 2013
Global trade, networking, assistance, and cooperation are all factors that are improving, for example, education, medical treatments, accommodations and infrastructures of all kinds – in other words what makes life possible, bearable, and even enjoyable. Globalisation has also proved to foster creativity even if, from another angle, it is often associated with the platitude of standardisation. The invention of new techniques of representation, expression and communication by global partners has given its specific shape to contemporary creativity. Moreover, the simple fact that globalisation has enabled the kind of intercultural exchanges that would have been unthinkable just fifty years ago has also fostered creativity in our visions and interpretations of the world. The question is whether those significantly positive sides of globalisation can be sustained without begetting poisonous effects. Evidence suggests that it cannot. The challenge, then, is to find the means to accommodate, limit, or channel these negative forces so that the world can regenerate a sense of livable harmony. Globalisation is, indeed, like the ancient Greek concept of the pharmakon; it can have the effects of a remedy or a poison. Globalisation understood as an acceleration of exchanges in the wake of economic fluxes, or as a virtual nearing of worlds through transportation and information technologies, generates a poison by offering a remedy. For example, easiness and affordability of global movement offers a favourable ground for terrorist attacks, the spread of diseases, pollution, or, at a cultural level, the vanishing of entire communities and their traditions, their languages, their value-systems. Or, the very techniques we invent for our own good to improve efficiency, practicality, life-expectation, access to commodities and lodging, can exhaust the earth beyond control. One thing is certain is that, in spite of its ability to remedy the many ills of humankind, globalisation unavoidably also poisons the relational aspect of life with profound implications on our modes of existence. Globalisation is affecting many layers of life, albeit in different ways. It takes different shapes depending not only on the geographical location, but also on the historical period and the cultural environment. To develop a sense of “global being” is obviously not the same in today’s East Asia, postcolonial Africa, or in the postmodern West. However, if the sense of global being varies depending on time and place, one of the increasingly universal effects of globalisation is the pervasion of a form of “unavailability” at all levels of the human sphere. The human species is in danger of evolving towards dialogical impairment. In the cultural spheres of the contemporary world, the symptoms of this impairment are countless. We are nowadays increasingly experiencing a “casual formalism of the here-and-now” whereby meaning becomes “un-earthed” with the effect that notions such as authorial horizon, memorial field, authentic place and even cultural identity begin to look irrelevant if not anachronistic. In the late 1970s, theorists such as Jean-François Lyotard named the “postmodern condition” what was at the time perceived mainly as a Western phenomenon. In all evidence, the phenomenon is now becoming global. Unlike with “postmodernity,” a term that can only be applied to cultures that did at some stage experience modernity, the nature of globalisation is to spread values and practices beyond historical and geographical boundaries. In globalisation, cultural experience broadly understood becomes akin to attending things “as such,” creating thus a culture of the spectacle that disregards the author speaking as person, silences the voice of history, overlooks the gathering nature of memory, or ignores the “place” of cultural and identity formations. All these are symptoms of a phenomenon doubtless fostered by both the electronic revolution, whether in communication, information, or transportation, and the mishandling of socio-economic systems that use technology as means for reckless increases in productivity. The “global subject” can no longer afford to devote the necessary time to dwell at a particular place, or be available and therefore attentive to otherness. The global subject relates to things, locations and even persons here, now, and “as such,” without taking the time to attend the worlds within which things, locations and persons dwell. Interestingly the Western world has, in the name of Exotic Reason, historically and traditionally associated attitudes and practices that pay attention to the “such-ness” of things with so-called “oriental” cultures, in particular with Taoism and schools of Buddhism such as Chan or Zen. To say the least, suggesting any similarities between the cultural experience of things “as such” in the context of globalisation and “oriental” conceptions of the “suchness” of things may sound incongruous. Indeed, the alleged similarities are only formal. There are, in fact, profound ethical differences. The “disinterestedness” of cultural experiences of things “as such” within the context of globalisation does not share the same existential ethos as the “self-less” perceptual experience of the suchness of things as described in areas of East Asian thought. In fact, cultural disinterestedness in globalisation smacks of, in many ways, the nihilistic undertone that runs through Western postmodern culture. Disinterestedness in Western postmodernity can be read as a rejection of established values and ideas of authenticity and origins. Admittedly, what was in Western postmodern thought and culture a historical reaction against traditional metaphysics and belief-systems based on power-driven, reifying representation and narratives has, on the scale of globalisation, lost its legitimate element of scepticism. What remains is a mode of cultural experience whose disinterestedness stands in sharp contrast with anything ethical – in the relational sense of mutually determining cultural formations. Such is the true dialogical impairment in globalisation, provided that we accept that the dialogue constitutes a fundamental basis for all modes of cultural formation. The list of examples of such impairment is endless. When I sit on the train, I see a digital message being displayed above the door of the compartment telling me that I am welcome, and I soon discover that the train is also wishing me a safe journey. But who is speaking? I perceive the message as such – a message that is hardly indexical of anyone behind. In fact, the message as perceived is only indexical of the absence of a speaking person. We may argue that it is the very nature of signs to be removed and therefore abstracted from the sender or designator, and that the same principles equally applies to paleolithic cave paintings as well as Chinese oracle bones’ scripts. The principle remains the same but the phenomenon has drastically intensified because of speed, movement and exchanges, to the point of making us lose sight of the world, the place, or the person speaking through such or such perceptual experience. Or, how often do we hear musical logos – especially, tellingly, in hotels’ lifts – that epitomise so much that formalism of the here-and-now that they have been stripped of their humaneness or of the worlds they once expressed. How often do we eat fruits and vegetables that are not seasonal? How often do we wear clothes whose materials feel like the flat texture of net surfing rather than the fabrics of local colours and places? And, how much of our mode of thought has mutated into mono-global thinking? We may argue, like the UNESCO report, that contemporary globalisation is simply intensifying a phenomenon that has, after all, always existed. The problem, though, is that a mutation in degree can be such that it becomes a mutation in kind – and globalisation as we experience it today is begetting problems unknown to those who experienced trade, communication, transportation, and culture in earlier times and smaller spaces. Take the example of virtual reality, which allows us to experience worlds as if they were real, that is, as if there was hardly any deferring between their image and their in-itself to the point of being blurred; hence, a phenomenon that no other civilization experienced ever before. There can only be a sense of the virtual for the one who also has a sense of reality, be it world, place, person, or whatever entities. The acceleration of globalisation is blurring the distinction between virtual and real to such an extent that, one day, these categories may become existentially irrelevant – indeed a formalism of the here-and-now, with all its load of ethical problematics. In the aesthetic field, for instance, such blurring removes the relational dimension that is so fundamental for the experience to remain what Eric D. Hirsch once called “an affair of persons” in his Validity in Interpretation (1967) when explaining what it means to understand a text. Should not all cultural experiences remain an affair between us as persons and worlds, places, and indeed other persons? There is a sense that contemporary globalisation, regardless of all its unquestionable positive developments, is not offering the most favourable conditions for this ethical fundamental to be fully preserved. The metaphysics, ethics and aesthetics of globalisation can be appraised in an array of different ways, and each contribution in this journal issue is in this sense a wonderful illustration. Josef Boehle opens the discussion by suggesting, expounding, and justifying a “universal type of encounter between persons,” which he names “Trialogue.” What Boehle calls the “Trialogue model” not only reinterprets Martin Buber’s dialogical thinking, but it also overcomes the “confines of Abrahamic traditions” and Western Enlightenment conception of selfhood. The two following essays also consider relational issues, but within a specific globality, namely, the context of Nigeria. As a response to the problem of “deficit of national cohesion” stemming from “ethno-religious pluralism,” Ronald Olufemi Badru proposes a model that would positively integrate “the essentials of the self culture and the other culture.” Badru calls this relational model “the Third culture.” In a similar vein, Philip Ogo Ujomu and Anthony I. Bature’s essay reinterprets the well-known African ethical philosophy of Ubuntu as a model whose principles of humaneness, compassion and dignity could well address Nigeria’s value crisis at the source of much of its social disorder, conflicts and degradation. But relational issues in whatever global contexts can also have an aesthetic dimension. The subsequent two essays by Xiaomeng Ning and Wei Hsiu Tung address relational values and globality in very different ways within the field of aesthetics. Ning reflects on the concept of “famous painting” from Tang Dynasty art historian Zhang Yanyuan’s Record of Famous Paintings of All Dynasties (847 CE). By analysing both the value-related and historicist criteria that allow for the elaboration of such a concept Ning shows that no matter how global the claim for being “famous” can be, it is “embedded” within the specificity of a particular space and time – in this case, painting in the Tang Dynasty. Tung’s essay equally addresses relational aesthetic values, albeit in a more anthropological manner and in the context of Taiwan (Plum Tree Creek and Togo Village). The essay brings to light how “social practice art” that involves not only artists but also community people in specific projectscan, against the effects of globalisation, “regenerate an everyday life aesthetics” that fosters awareness of “the environmental specificity of local culture, history and geography.” As usual, all my gratitude goes to my editorial colleagues, Martin Ovens, Loni Reynolds, Erika Mandarino who has been newly appointed as Manuscript Editor, Robert Clarke for all the book reviews he has produced, all the Editorial Board members for their continuous support and trust, as well as all the generous anonymous reviewers. And needless to say, my words of thanks must also go to the contributors for accepting so diligently our editorial work. The next issue of Culture and Dialogue (7.1, 2019) will be on the topic of “Dialogue and Creativity.” Gerald Cipriani CULTURE WITHIN DIALOGUE EAST-WEST Culture and Dialogue, Vol. 6, No. 1, 2018, pp. 1-118 Editorial: Eastern and Western Thought in Dialogue Volume 6 Issue 1 of the Journal is partly based on the outcomes of a 2016 one-day conference organised at National University of Ireland, Galway on the theme of “In Dialogue: Eastern and Western Thought.” Other contributors have brought in additional perspectives to what had already been a very enriching debate. Everyone familiar with the works of the great thinkers of the dialogue will be aware that the dialogue is not about exchanging opinions or worldviews for the sake of confirming or, even worse, consolidating one’s sense of self or identity. The dialogue is a renewing process whereby selves accept and enact the fact that their formation becomes meaningful, and therefore identifiable, through mutual emptying. Metaphysically, this means that selves and identities owe their existence partly to the way they relate to otherness. Of course, it is dangerously naïve to think that this relational matter of fact justifies a politics of alterity, and there is no shortage of examples throughout history and within our contemporary world. But it is equally injudicious to develop an ideology of sameness, for the extraordinarily rich, complex, and ever-evolving interplay between differences and similarities is the stuff of meaning and, by extension, culture. Ethically, the life, validity and relevance of the process of the dialogue depend on all parties’ good disposition and ability to function according to a sense of recovered or potential balance between selves, identities and cultures; we should bear in mind that the mutating nature of the interplay between differences and similarities creates, from time to time and by nature, imbalance or blurring at the source of suffering or boredom. Needless to say, in various ways, all these issues feature attempts at bringing cultural worlds in relation to each other, whether by cognising, comparing between, entering into, or dialoguing with such worlds. And the idea of bringing Eastern and Western thought into dialogue is no exception. The idea starts from a questionable premise: that there are such things as Western and Eastern traditions of thinking as unique and recognisable entities, implying therefore a degree of homogeneity in the way we perceive each of them. The same applies to cultures in general or any identified phenomenon, principle, substance and so on. In fact, the same can be said about any entities in the universe that are identified as such. From one angle, the premise can be easily challenged: establishing a dichotomy between two allegedly homogeneous wholes such as Eastern and Western cultures can only smack of subjectivity, artificiality and even self-interest. For instance, on which basis do we decide what is “western” or “eastern,” and for whom? However, when we begin to think in terms of conditions that allow us to make sense of and therefore identify the heterogeneity of entities, whatever they are, we soon realise that homogeneity is an equally constitutive element. There are no such things as differences if not considered on the plane of similarities; vice versa, there must be a unifying factor in order to discern differences. Overlooking the nature of the interplay between the two is the cause of much misunderstanding when it comes to considering worldviews, traditions and cultures. Neither cultural generalisations nor nominalism and its blind belief in the sole existence of particulars is satisfactory. To discern particulars is conditional upon the existence of a general unifying field, which, in turn, depends on particulars to operate. There are no such things as Eastern and Western thought if they are not considered within the interplay between similarities and differences. Nishida Kitarô tells us something similar when he states in his I and Thou (私と汝, 1932) that “[t]he I and the thou cannot be directly bound together; they are reciprocally united by means of the external world.” He gives the example of language or writing as a means external to entities seeking to relate to each other, which at the same time allows those entities to be “reciprocally united.” What Nishida calls the “external world” is, seemingly paradoxically, the field or place of similarities shared between self and otherness, which precisely guaranties the possibility of differences. In other words, for different entities to be recognised as such they must share something in common – a universal such as language or writing – which, far from being some kind of fictional generality or abstraction, has at the same time a very concrete reality. This “concrete universal,” to borrow Hegel’s wording, is no more than the interplay between similarities and differences. Ways of understanding universals obviously have a very long history in world thought. Universals vary depending on the scale and the concrete, differential particular to which they relate, be they spatial or temporal, geographical or historical, metaphysical or ethical, and so on. In fact, there are as many universals as there are particulars: that is, an infinity. Understanding the interplay between universals and particulars, or similarities and differences, is essential when suggesting the idea of a dialogue between relevant “entities.” At the simple interpersonal level, one’s identity takes shape as a configuration of differential features precisely from within the field of similarities shared with the other’s identity. At the inter-natural level – that is, when human beings relate to what is commonly called the natural environment – the laws of biophysics partly constitute the shared field that enables the human mind to identify and recognise chaotic sense-data as a configuration in the name of nature. At the inter-cultural level, looking at a tradition of thought that, from the perspective of the philosophy of being, seems to put more emphasis on emptiness is, of course, only possible if the two traditions share a common field. The same applies to differentiating traditions that put more emphasis on systemic thinking, reason or criticality from traditions that convey thinking in a more decentring, embodied, or descriptive fashion. There must be a unifying field that enables us to distinguish between philosophical insight in narratives, analyses, descriptions, reasoning, and so on. Again, Nishida gave the simple example of language as a necessary universal amongst others that makes the distinction between “I and thou” possible. The possibility of a dialogue between Eastern and Western thought is therefore conditional upon the existence of unifying fields, for example, the common concern to give accounts of thinking processes at work in relation to the worlds from which they step out, or of which they are part, or within which they are thrown. Unifying fields are fundamental when it comes to establishing or recognising entities, whatever these may be, as other than ourselves. And failing to understand the interplay between universals and particulars can open the door to legitimate accusations of, for example, orientalism when attempting to define or work out Eastern cultures and traditions of thought as opposed to Western ones. One of the best-known and most virulent critics of Western orientalism is Edward Said, whose celebrated book Orientalism (1978) analyses Western discourses on what they labelled “the Orient.” Said’s argument was not about redeeming the image of oriental cultural practices and values that were, in the best case, preserved as something exotic in the Western eye, or, in the worst case, squashed under the order of colonialism; what Said suggested was questioning the very existence of the Orient as a cultural identity because it was allegedly a Western construction. What he reacted against was the will to control embedded in the West’s perspectival representation of the East. This explains what may be called his cultural nihilist stance against orientalism as a mode of representation of the Orient as otherness. This also means that Said’s cultural nihilism was justified in context only; in other words, insofar as Western representations of the Orient smacked of authority at work in particular historical periods and geographical locations. To put it differently, when Western representations of the Orient (or, simply, representations of non-Western cultures and traditions) ignore the unifying field by constructing images of the other as a means for the end of confirming the distinct Western self, then, orientalism – or alterism – needs to be deconstructed for the sake of becoming aware of the motivations, interests, desires and wills at work. Indeed, the cultural self must become aware of the extent to which what it projects onto “the other” constructs the identity of this other. Orientalism is certainly a radicalism that seeks to identify differences by turning a blind eye on similarities. It is as such very questionable. But there is also the danger of falling into the kind of nihilism that reduces whatever identity to the effect of a one-sided construction that would otherwise be unsubstantial in itself. Bringing cultural traditions East-West into dialogue thus rests on a premise that could be problematic regarding the validity of its identity claim. Beside the issue of ignoring the very unifying field that makes differences identifiable, as in the case of orientalism, there is also the related issue of the possibility of and justification for identifying cultural traditions, including philosophies, as if they were homogenous wholes. In fact, this issue applies to all entities that we attempt to identify and, indeed, all cultural configurations. How can we possibly identify a philosophical tradition as being either Eastern or Western, given the richness and variety of practices, interpretations and customs within the respective traditions? What is Western philosophy in itself? What is Western culture in itself? Said’s stance against orientalism suggested that, because of the hybridity of any cultural tradition not only across space but also across time, there was not such a thing as the so-called Orient in itself. If we follow this line of thought the same scepticism could then be applied to Western culture itself, to any cultural identity, to the identity of persons, to nature itself, to atoms and the universe. Of course and again, Said’s criticism of orientalism was directed against the cultural caricatures formulated across sections of Western culture, literature and politics – and his point was that the cultural differences were established in the image of the Western self instead of providing a true understanding of the variety and richness of oriental culture, which would, in fact, paradoxically disprove the existence of “the Orient” as a recognisable entity. Another example of validity in cultural scepticism could stem from the very question: what is authentic East-Asian philosophy and thought? Is it to be found in Confucianism? Taoism? Mohism? Legalism? Buddhism? Shinto? Is it to be located in the way Western philosophy ended up being reinterpreted and even “inculturated” in East Asian traditions? We can even keep asking the same type of questions by changing our plane of identity-quest by reducing the distance between the interpreter and the interpreted entity at stake. Where do we historically pin down Confucian philosophy? In Confucius’ Analects? In the works of Mencius, Xunzi, or Dong Zhongshu? In the Confucian Revival or Neo-Confucianism of medieval China that responded to Buddhism and Taoism? Just as there are temporal factors at work when validating an identity quest, there are also, amongst many others, spatial factors such as physical geographies. Where is Confucianism “truer”? In continental China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, or Vietnam? For many, these questions are irrelevant, just as it would be irrelevant to caricaturise Western and Eastern thought in a way that ignores the unifying field as well as the richness and complexity of entities, phenomena and trends whose recognisable identities are relative to time and space. Dichotomous conceptions encapsulated by Thorsten Pattberg speak for themselves: “The East-West dichotomy is a philosophical concept of ancient origin claiming that the two cultural hemispheres, East and West, developed diametrically opposed, one from the particular to the universal and the other from the universal to the particular; the East is more inductive while the West is more deductive. Together they form an equilibrium...” (The East-West Dichotomy, 2009). Any such East-West dichotomous thinking suffers from long distance and wide space, so to speak, in its self-reflexive accounts. Alan W. Watts, in the 1950s, depicted Western thought as being obsessed by the task of controlling by means of “reason” – controlling the to-be-known as much as controlling the knowing subject. The problem for Western thought was, as a result, its own ability and drive to control the environment as much as controlling itself. What Watts wanted us to believe was that, in the West, “‘to know’ really means to control; that is, to see how events may be fitted to consistent orders of words and symbols so that we may predict and govern their course.” (Essays and Lectures, 1953). Watts obviously put in the same bag the philosophical practices that run from Classical Greece to the nineteenth century. A tradition that, for him, could only end up in confusion and philosophical dead-ends simply because we cannot factually separate ourselves from the environment that we try to control, be it by means of reason. De facto, from the nineteenth century on Western philosophy – be it existentialism, phenomenology, poststructuralism, or reflections on language – did pay attention to the inexorability of our belonging to the world we seek to understand and the degree to which the subject plays a part when portraying such a world. For Watts, however, the point is to highlight contrasts with so-called oriental philosophies – Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism – which in his eyes appear to be “far less concerned with controlling the world,” finding quite absurd this idea of a universe dominated by human beings and nonsensical the notion of “conscious ego.” Distinguishing ways of handling embodiment when it comes to philosophical practice becomes therefore an identity device used to label what is allegedly essentially Western, as opposed to essentially Eastern. Other identity devices include the belief in the idea of an already-created world waiting to be represented by the human mind; or the idea of a world as a matrix in a constant state of becoming of which human being is a very small part and within which knowledge and representation develop. The list is endless, and one does not need to be an expert in all of these philosophical and cultural traditions to realise what is at stake. If working out, establishing, and recognising identity trends East-West or any identity for that matter are questionable exercises, it is so only insofar as we ignore that validity in identification and therefore generalisation is relative to time and space, amongst others albeit fundamentally, and, again, to the unifying field that brings together the identifying self and the identified other. Tzvetan Todorov rightly pointed out that rejecting not only the validity but also the possibility of generalising from particulars and individual practices – in other words adopting a radical form of cultural nominalism – would prevent knowledge or even awareness of other cultures, values, practices and trends. In fact, such scepticism would prevent the very possibility of a form of renewing inter-cultural communication that rests on a dynamics of interplay between similarities and differences. The problem is not the formulation of identities, categories, essences, or general characters, but the lack of reflexivity when it comes to formulating, establishing and recognising the other’s identity. For example, the more spatiotemporal distance there is between the identifying self and the identified other, the more the act of identification says about the perspective of the identifying self. Above all, the problem is not the formulation of identities but what we do with them and for what purpose. The orientalist who focuses on differences by ignoring the unifying field between self and other not only precludes an ethical understanding of the other – an understanding that shows attentiveness to the other in all its hybridity and mutations – but also, and perhaps more fundamentally, the orientalist prevents the possibility of mutual cultural renewal. It is on the basis of an awareness of the rich and complex renewing interplay between differences and similarities at work when relating to entities seemingly outside of ourselves – the unfamiliar or the strange – that the relevance of the practice of the dialogue should be understood. This renewal is a relational movement that makes up the fullness and emptiness of cultural identity. One philosophical movement that is both an example of such a dialogue – in this case with the Western philosophical tradition – and, on another level, a counter-example as a form of monologue that uses the discourse of authentic identity for instrumental reason, is the Kyoto School. Of course, just as Western orientalists run into problems when providing a homogenous picture of Eastern thought, cultures and traditions, there is in itself no justification for portraying monochromatically the different philosophies that come under the name of the Kyoto School. However, it can hardly be ignored that several members of the Kyoto School, including Nishitani Keiji, attempted to articulate a conception of authentic Japanese-ness derived from an alleged typical Asian conception by the name of “emptiness,” which found its completion in Zen Buddhism and whose sources could be traced back to Mahayana. Beside the fact that a good deal of historicity is needed to understand the reasons behind this motivation – i.e., to counter-balance in the first half of the twentieth century the overwhelming impact of Western culture, values, thought, philosophy of being and substance as well as the West’s own modern counter reaction in the form of subversive nihilism – the very attempt to focus on the concept of emptiness as an essential difference is to ignore the unifying field; it basically amounts to turning orientalism upside down. Whether historicity is a legitimate justification for such a motivation unavoidably sparked heated debates between neo-Marxist critics of the Kyoto School and philosophers such as Graham Parkes, who qualified the motivation “a putative fascism.” Then, the other side of the Kyoto School is truly dialogical: its constant drive to enter in conversation with philosophical traditions from other parts of the world (such as French metaphysics, British empiricism, German idealism, Marxism, or phenomenology) through the lens of their own traditions (be they Buddhist, Taoist or Confucian) leading to renewed dynamics of similarities and differences – something that the West has never truly undertaken, apart from a few isolated cases. After all, as Bret W. Davis puts it, “Only Westerners have the apparent luxury – which may in fact all too easily become an intellectual blindfold – of ignoring other traditions of thought” (Japanese and Continental Philosophy, 2011). Perhaps, then, we would be wise to simply bear in mind that, in Hinduist thinker Swami Krishnananda’s words, “[k]nowledge is neither Western nor Eastern, but universal” (Studies in Comparative Philosophy, 2016) – a universality that is the very condition for the possibility of difference and therefore renewal. There is of course an array of ways of understanding and handling the interplay between cultural differences and similarities; some are descriptive, others are critical, some are comparative, and others are hermeneutical or more dialogical. The contributors to this journal issue offer a great variety of both topics and methods. In whatever case, they all engage in their own ways with the topic of Eastern and Western thought in dialogue. Tiziano Tosolini reflects on the concept of time in specific aspects of Japanese cultural practices from the philosophical perspective of the theories of Mircea Eliade, Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner, with particular reference to rites, celebrations and festivals. Tanehisa Otabe’s “An Iroquois in Paris and a Crusoe on a Desert Island” shows how one of the greatest Western philosophers, Immanuel Kant, saw in the figure of the non-Western alleged savage the ability to be genuinely critical of “civilised” Western societies and their moral standards. Anne Cheng’s “Is the Dialogue of Cultures a Contemporary Myth?” brings back the question of orientalism by questioning the alterist premise that still motivates particular types of comparative studies; those that, for example, locate the essence of Chinese philosophies in Ancient China in comparison with “the wise men of Ancient Greece.” Wangheng Chen offers a comparative study from within the tradition of Chinese aesthetics. His “interpretative encounter” between Taoism and Confucianism expounds the interplay at work between similarities and differences by focusing on “three fundamentals of Chinese aesthetics: beauty, feeling of beauty, and artistic image.” Kanchana Mahadevan reflects on the topicality of a dialogue between Michel Foucault’s and Partha Chatterjee’s interpretations of Kant’s conception of “Enlightenment” in order to provide a better understanding of the condition of women within the context of colonised India and its aftermath. Another mode of encounter between two traditions of thought is Martin Ovens’ “Resemblance, Resonance and Reconstitution.” Ovens uses a phenomenological approach to describe aspects of Śaṃkara’s Advaita Vedānta and “creative scepticism” sourced in Pyrrhonism in order to discern “possible and potential relationships between them.” Finally, the journal issue ends with a book review by Robert Clarke of Lin Ma and Jaap van Brakel’s Fundamentals of Comparative and Intercultural Philosophy (2016). As ever, my words of gratitude go to all the authors of this issue for their tremendous contribution to the field of intercultural philosophy and the debate about the possibility and relevance of the dialogue between traditions of thought. I would also like to express all my thanks to our editorial team, members and anonymous reviewers without whom Culture and Dialogue would not survive. Finally, we are very pleased to announce that Erika Mandarino from Tulane University, in New Orleans, has joined our team as Manuscript Editor. Her appointment comes in effect for the publication of Volume 6 Issue 2, which will focus on “dialogue and globalisation.” Gerald Cipriani
HISTORY AND DIALOGUE Purchase Culture and Dialogue, Vol. 5, No. 2, 2017, pp. 155-256 Editorial Volume 5 Issue 2 of Culture and Dialogue is devoted to the theme of “history and dialogue,” that is, to particular ways of relating to a more or less distant past for the sake of understanding and renewal. Gone are the days of naivety that made world history follow the course of Reason or other totalising teleological ideals. Gone should be the days that reduce history to logical orders based on causation that could be worked out, for example, by imagining counterfactuals. Should history, then, amount to subjectivity alone or, for that matter, inter-subjectivity? Such a radicalism could be equally ethically unbalanced. Historical truth is neither reality nor interpretation. Historical truth has a physicality permeated by the singularity of the onlooker, with various degrees of emphasis depending on the physical intensity or the subjective will. A war, for example, imposes itself as historical tragedy because of, among other factors, the physical harm caused and the space and time it takes. But even in such a case, the significance of a war calls for subjective interpretation, which inevitably carries its load of moral values, political judgements and other motivations. The nexus between physical reality and interpretative singularity at the heart of historical truth is, needless to say, immensely complex and takes different shapes depending on physical and cultural circumstances. There is, however, a mutually creative determining dynamics at work between the physicality of historical truth and its interpretation, as if the former empties the latter, which, in turn, establishes the significance of an event by projecting values onto it or analysing causal relationships outside of itself. In this sense, the physical reality of historical truth is the place of the interpreting subject as much as the latter is the place of the former, as paradoxical as it may sound. The historian who looks at a human predicament is already shedding a new light on his or her conception of what constitutes such a reality. Vice versa, each time the reality looks in the eyes of the historian, interpretation takes place and is renewed. Such is the dialogical nature of historical truth. The selection of essays of the current issue reflects in one way or another the dialogical nature of historical truth, either through analyses of particular case studies or in general terms. Laura Candiotto offers an example of how a particular form of dialogical quest – the Socratic dialogue – can be used to avert the tragedies that have partly shaped the history of humanity and, more specifically, the rise of Nazism. The dialogue is then akin to “political action” in the face of history and toward a more human future. Elisa Freschi, Elise Coquereau and Muzaffar Ali reflect on the way Daya Krishna incorporated in his own philosophy some dialogical features of classical Indian philosophy and on the subsequent impact on contemporary Indian philosophy. Arup Jyoti Sarma reappraises the question of historical understanding and, in particular, Hans-Georg Gadamer’s idea of dialogical “play” at work in interpretative experience. Natan Elgabsi offers an expository account of a neglected aspect of the work of historian Marc Bloch on the nature of “historical understanding” and the possibility of “understanding other worlds in their own terms.” Dimitri Spivak closes the discussion by highlighting or, for many of us, recalling the centrality of the idea of intercultural dialogue within the UNESCO and with particular relevance to “cultural heritage,” its possibilities, and its difficulties. As the Editor in Chief of Culture and Dialogue, I would like to express my thanks to my editorial colleagues, Martin Ovens, Loni Reynolds and Robert Clarke, all the Editorial Board members for their continuous support and trust, as well as all the generous anonymous reviewers whose scholarship and expertise are of the essence to guarantee the academic standard of the Journal. Finally, my words of gratitude equally go to the contributors who accepted so diligently our editorial work. This is also a form of understanding that is part of the dialogical “play.” Gerald Cipriani
CULTURE AND THE ENVIRONMENT Guest Co-Editor: Kinya Nishi (Konan University, Japan) Bilingual Issue English-Japanese Culture and Dialogue, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2017, pp.1-6 It is with great sadness that we learned that our Honorary Member Tzvetan Todorov passed away on the 7th February 2017. Professor Todorov had been supportive of the Culture and Dialogueproject from the outset. As a historian, philosopher, aesthetician, and literary critic he witnessed and reflected upon many of the good and bad things our modern world offered – and continues to offer. In one way or another the nature and possibility of the dialogue was always for him a central question to address, should we take the time and the trouble to think of how to bring out the best in the human condition. One thing that the cycles of life cannot take away from us is learning from the spirit of the dialogue that Tzvetan Todorov conveyed. The cruelty of death will never prevent us from transmitting to our fellow human beings what he called “that fragile legacy, those words that help us live a better life.” Faithful to this spirit we are devoting Volume 5 Issue 1 of the Journal to the theme of “culture and the environment,” following an international forum that we organised back in the summer 2015 at Etchigo-Tsumari Art Field, near Niigata, Japan. This is a uniquely bilingual, English-Japanese issue, and, speaking here as the Editor in Chief of the Journal, we are most honoured that Kinya Nishi, Professor of Aesthetics and Philosophy at Konan University, Kobe, accepted our invitation to be our Guest Co-Editor. Only in the relatively recent past has humanity felt worldwide the growing urge to rethink the way we relate to the environment. The human environment has been deeply affected by socio-economic factors of all kinds, by new techniques to maximize information and transportation efficiency, and by the need to be more competitive than our fellow human beings in order to survive (at least in market-oriented societies). The built environment has very much embodied these mutations through architecture and urban developments, impacting thus on human relationships as never before and using natural resources perhaps past the point of no return. Whether the environment is human, built or natural, there is, it seems, a vital need to re-establish the dialogue between usand it. Etchigo-Tsumari Art Field is a worldwide known site that endeavours not only to preserve but also foster and renew the dialogue between ourselves and our environments; it is a site where, at best, art, local communities and nature mingle into each other for a more considerate relationship with and renewed understanding of our environments. On the occasion of the Triennale 2015 a group of scholars from different horizons gathered at a forum organised on-site and entitled “In-Dialogue: Culture and the Environment” to present and exchange ideas about the different ways culture relates to the environment, whether human, built, or natural. The forum was endorsed by the International Research Group for Culture and Dialogueand the Japanese Society for Aesthetics. Above all, we are indebted to Etchigo-Tsumari Art Field founder and organiser Fram Kitagawa and, in particular,curator Rei Maeda.Without her the forum, the visits and all the exchanges that took place with local people, artists and participants would not have been possible. The students who helped run the forum equally deserve special praise. A special thanks must likewise go to Mami Aota for the efforts she put into translating the abstracts of the presentations into Japanese, and to Hiroshi Yoshioka, Kinya Nishi, and Amiko Matsuo for providing instantaneous translation – an ever-perilous exercise. Finally and worthy of notice for what has nowadays become a rarefied form of human agency, all invited speakers accepted to take part and contribute on good will: Amiko Matsuo (California State University), Wu Mali (National Kaohsiung Normal University), Brad Monsma (California State University), Hiroshi Yoshioka (Kyoto University), Laura Fisher (The University of Sydney), Wei Hsiu Tung (National University of Tainan), Kinya Nishi (Konan University), Clélia Zernik (École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris), andMami Aota (The University of Tokyo). Whether in relation to Etchigo-Tsumari Art Field, other similar projects in environmental and community art, or simply more universally from philosophical, anthropological, or sociological perspectives, topics presented and discussed at the forum spanned cultural identity, memory, communication, place, creativity, and economic factors – all of which are vital ingredients for the survival of communities. These burgeoning ideas make up the core of the present issue of Culture and Dialogue. Echigo-Tsumari Art Field was therefore more than a simple opportunity to exchange ideas about the environment, be it natural, built, or human, and environmental issues. The site is an appeal that calls for a response: it has given us the opportunity to reflect on how art makes us become aware of what is at stake when we relate to our environment – and how to improve such a relationship. In their own way all contributors are addressing such issues, whether in relation to Etchigo-Tsumari Art Field, other artistic residencies and community art practices, or simply through the lenses of literature and philosophy. In his opening essay Kinya Nishi addresses the evolution of the perception of nature in Japan from the perspective of literature and, in particular, Matsuo Basho’s poetry. The three following essays focus specifically on the aesthetics of Etchigo-Tsumari Art Field:Amiko Matsuo discussesFram Kitagawa’s conception of “cultural revitalization through the visual arts”; Brad Monsma offers an interpretation based on ideas of “assemblage” and “agency”; Carmela Cucuzzella and Paul Shrivastava highlight the regenerative and developmental dimension of Etchigo-Tsumari Art Field. From a different geographical and cultural perspective Laura Fisher addresses similar environmental issues at the crossroad between aesthetics, anthropology and ecology by considering two art projects set in Australia: Sugar vs the Reef?and The Yeomans Project. Mami Aota closes the discussion by reminding us of the relevance of the beautiful when it comes to considering the natural environment; the question of whether our aesthetic appreciation of nature pertains to artistic beauty becomes therefore fundamental. We are also welcoming a topical book review by John Rippey on Fram Kitagawa’s Art Place Japan: The Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale and the Vision to Reconnect Art and Nature(trans. Amiko Matsuo and Brad Monsma, 2015). This bilingual issue in English and Japanese would not have seen the light of day without the tremendous work of our translators: Masanobu Matsuo and Izu Matsuo; graduate students Rie Kodera (Kyoto University), Mami Aota (The University of Tokyo), and Eiko Mitsunaga (Kyoto University). Finally and as ever, we would like to thank our editorial team and all our Board members for the vital support and encouragements they give to the Journal.
Gerald Cipriani and Kinya Nishi
エディトリアル:文化と環境
2017年2月7日に名誉会員ツヴェタン・トドロフ氏が世を去ったことを知り、我々は大きな悲しみに打たれた。トドロフ教授は、『カルチャー・アンド・ダイアローグ』誌のプロジェクトを当初から支持してくださった。歴史家として、哲学者として、美学者そして文学批評家として、氏は、我々の近代世界が呈したもの(そして今なお呈しているもの)の数々の長短を見守り、またそれらについて考察された。対話の性質と可能性は常に様々な仕方で、氏にとって扱うべき中心的な問いであった。人間の条件において最良のものを引き出すにはどうすればよいかを我々が時間と労力とを費やして考えるとすれば、対話の問題が問われなくてはならない。生のサイクルと言えど、ツヴェタン・トドロフ氏が伝えた対話の精神から学ぶことを、我々から奪うことはできないだろう。死の非情さと言えど、「あの毀れやすい遺産、すなわち、よりよい生を生きる助けとなる言葉」と氏が呼んだものを人類同胞に伝えることを、妨げられはしないだろう。 こうした精神にのっとって、我々は本誌第5巻第1号を「文化と環境」というテーマに捧げる。このテーマは、2015年夏に新潟の越後妻有アートフィールドにおいて我々が組織した国際フォーラムに基づくものである。これまでの号と異なり、英語/日本語バイリンガルの号となった。ここで編集主幹の立場から語るとすれば、甲南大学教授(哲学・美学)の西欣也が共同編集の招きに応じてくれたことは光栄であった。 環境に対する関わり方について考え直す必要を人類が世界的規模で感じとるようになってきたのは、比較的最近のことである。人間環境は、多種多様な社会的経済的要因によって大きな影響を被ってきた。情報と移動の効率を最大化しようとする新技術も、あるいは(少なくとも市場社会において)生き残りのために他の人間よりも競争力をつける必要も、そうした要因となる。造られたものとしての環境は、建築や都市開発を通じて、上のような変容を具現してきた。それによって人間同士の関係はこれまでにない仕方で影響を受けたし、天然資源は取り返しのつかないところまで使い果たされた。人間の環境、造られた環境あるいは自然環境といった区別なく、「我々」と「それ」との間のダイアローグを再構築することが、差し迫って必要であるように思われる。 越後妻有アートフィールドは、我々と環境とのあいだのダイアローグを保持するだけでなく、育み、また新たにする試みの場として、世界的に知られている。それはアートと地元コミュニティと自然とが互いに融合して、環境に対する一層思慮深い関わり方や新たな理解をもたらす場所とさえなりうる。 2015年のトリエンナーレに機を得て、様々な研究領域を持つ学者のグループが集い、「イン・ダイアローグ:文化と環境」と題された会場公開討論を開いた。そこでは人間環境であれ、自然であれ造られた環境であれ、環境に文化が関与する多様な仕方について発表がなされ、意見が交換された。公開討論会は、美学会および「カルチャー・アンド・ダイアローグ」国際研究グループの協賛を得た。 越後妻有アートフィールドの主催者である北川フラム氏には大いにお世話になったし、特にキュレーターの前田礼氏にお世話になった。彼女なくしては、公開討論会も、我々の訪問も、また参加者と地元の方々とアーティストとの意見交換も、不可能であったろう。各発表の要旨を日本語に翻訳する労をとってくださった青田麻未氏、そして同時通訳(非常な勇気を求められる業務であった)を務めてくださった吉岡洋氏・西欣也・松尾亜実子氏にも、特別な感謝を捧げなくてはならない。さらに、以下にお名前をあげる招聘講師の方々が皆、快く参加や寄稿を承諾してくださったことには、今や高尚とも言われうる人間的なはたらきが感じられる。松尾亜実子氏(カリフォルニア州立大学)、呉瑪悧氏(国立高雄師範大学)、ブラッド・モンスマ氏(カリフォルニア州立大学)、吉岡洋氏(京都大学)、ローラ・フィッシャー氏(シドニー大学)、董維琇氏(国立台南大学)、西欣也(甲南大学)、クレリア・ゼルニク氏(パリ国立高等美術学校)、青田麻未氏(東京大学)という方々である。 越後妻有アートフィールドをはじめ、環境とコミュニティ・アートを扱う他の同様のプロジェクトに関連付けつつ、あるいは一層普遍的に哲学・人類学・社会学の視点から、このフォーラムで示され論じられたトピックは多岐に渡った。文化的アイデンティティ、記憶、コミュニケーション、場所、創造性、そして経済的要因などのトピックである。いずれも、コミュニティの存続にとって不可欠の構成要素である。そうした諸々の、新たに展開しつつある考え方が、『カルチャー・アンド・ダイアローグ』誌本号の中核をなしている。 したがって、越後妻有アートフィールドは、自然であれ造られたものであれ環境や環境問題に関して単に意見交換をおこなう好機という以上のものであった。その現場は、応答を求める一つの呼びかけであったのだ。我々が環境に関わるときに問題となるものを芸術がいかにして意識させてくれるか、またその関係をより良いものにするにはどうしたらよいか、そうしたことを反省する機会を、この現場が与えてくれたのである。寄稿者は —— 越後妻有アートフィールドに関わるもの、他のアート・イン・レジデンスやアート実践に関わるもの、さらに文学や哲学のレンズを通して論じるものなど —— それぞれの仕方で、こうした問題にアプローチしている。 冒頭のエッセイにおいて、西欣也はとりわけ松尾芭蕉の文学の観点から日本における自然知覚の変容を扱っている。これに続く3本のエッセイは、越後妻有アートフィールドの美学に特に注目している。松尾亜実子氏は「視覚芸術による文化的再生」という北川フラム氏の考え方を論じている。ブラッド・モンスマ氏は、「集合体」および「主体」という概念に基づいた解釈を与えてくれる。カーメラ・ククゼラ氏とポール・シュリヴァストラヴァ氏は、越後妻有アートフィールドの再生的・開発的な側面を強調している。これとは異なる地理と文化上の視点から、ローラ・フィッシャー氏は、「サトウ対サンゴ?」および「ヨーマン・プロジェクト」という、オーストラリアで実施された二つのアート・プロジェクトを考察することで、美学と人類学と生態学の交わる点における環境の問題を扱っている。一連の論考の締めくくりとなる青田麻未氏の論文は、自然環境を考える際の「美しいもの」の重要性を思い起こさせてくれる。自然の美的観照が芸術美にも適合するのかどうかという問いが、そこでは根元的な意味を持つ。また我々は、ジョン・リッピー氏が本誌に売ってつけの書評(北川フラム著、松尾亜実子、ブラッド・モンスマ訳『アート・プレイス・ジャパン ——越後妻有アート・トリエンナーレそして芸術と自然を再びつなぐための思想』、2015年)を寄稿されたことを喜びとしたい。 この日本語/英語バイリンガル・イシューは、以下の翻訳者による大変な作業がなければ日の目を見ることがなかったであろう。松尾正信氏、松尾伊都氏、小寺里枝氏(京都大学大学院)、青田麻未氏(東京大学大学院)、光永英子(京都大学大学院)の諸氏である。 いつもどおりではあるが、最後に、本誌に対してあたたかい支持と励ましを送ってくださる編集スタッフおよび編集委員の皆様に感謝を申し上げたい。
ジェラルド・シプリアーニ 西 欣也
日本語訳:西 欣也 INTERPRETATION AND DIALOGUE Purchase Culture and Dialogue, Vol. 4, No. 2, 2016, pp. 223-224 Editorial Volume 4 closes with an issue on “dialogue and interpretation.” The Latin etymology of the word, interpretari, already contained elements of what we usually mean nowadays by interpreting something: clarifying, explaining, understanding, or even translating. Of course, interpretation also came to designate the transmission, expression, or embodiment of meaning found in messages of all kinds; the artist can interpret the world as much as the musician a piece of music or the actor a play. To interpret, in other words, is not always about ascribing meaning to something at a distance; it can also be about incarnating the meaning of the world, a musical piece, or a play. Depending on schools of philosophy, cultures and historical periods, emphases have fluctuated between the objective, subjective, and experiential natures of interpretation. Each of these different emphases has been determined by how the interpreter relates to the interpreted and, needless to say, by the ethical validity individuals, communities, systems, ideologies, cultures, or periods see in the act of interpretation. In any case, whether interpretation incarnates the revelation of being or attempts to retrieve the alleged original meaning of messages or the true nature of things; whether interpretation is a means by which the interpreter expresses his or her subjectivity or relives the experience of the world of the interpreted, interpretation is inherently relational. In that sense, interpretation is not only an essential element of conscious life; it shapes the way we relate to worlds, whether in space or time, whether human or natural. By doing so, interpretation shapes self and worlds. I interpret therefore we are. The relevance of “interpretation” as a theme to Culture and Dialogue is therefore self-evident: the act of “inter-preting” involves “between-ness.” Each contribution in this issue of the Journal discusses, analyses, describes, or provides examples of the fundamental of interpretative “between-ness” at work. Nicholas Davey’s opening essay draws critically from Hans-Georg Gadamer’s conception of the “in-between” to formulate an understanding of hermeneutics as practice “between faith and reason.” Laura Di Summa-Knoop discusses a form of “missing dialogue” between contemporary art and philosophy by focusing on three interpretative aspects of artistic experience today: its “enactive accounts,” the “ethical content of artworks,” and the influence of “the art market” on artistic appreciation. Alexander Naraniecki bridges science and art by showing how Karl Popper’s “later writings on evolutionary epistemology and theory of objective knowledge” can renew our understanding of artistic creativity. Inspired by Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya’s “improvisations” from his reading and understanding of classical Indian texts and thought, Daniel Raveh provides an example of interpretative “in-between” at work by “interfering creatively” with Milan Kundera’s novel Slowness through the lens of poets and thinkers from ancient and contemporary India alike. Jonathan Day questions the relevance of Immanuel Kant’s account of judgement of beauty to understand the inherently ineffable nature of aesthetic experience as found in interpretative practices such as Zen writing, composition, musical improvisation and jazz. The two last essays of this issue of the Journal explore in different ways the metaphysics and ethics of translation as interpretation. Yong Zhong provides a detailed analysis of how the concept of “discourse” was introduced and translated into Chinese. The ensuing problems of interpretative inadequacy, Zhong argues, can only be addressed by adopting “an informed strategy” when it comes to translating such Western critical cultural concepts in the Chinese language. Validity in types of interpretation is also what Takeshi Morisato tackles by introducing the thought of Kyoto School philosopher Miki Kiyoshi on translation and understanding in the context of modern Japan. Morisato also offers the first English translation ever of Miki’s text “Disregarded Translation.” Finally, Robert Clarke reviews the recent publication of another form of interpretative journey, that of Stephen Pax Leonard in The Polar North: Ways of Speaking, Ways of Belonging (2014). As usual, I would like to thank again my editorial colleagues, Martin Ovens and Loni Reynolds, as well as all the scholars who accepted to review the contributions that make up this issue, and the members of the Board for their continuous patience, support and trust. Gerald Cipriani
Gerald Cipriani 225 Hermeneutics: Between Faith and Reason Nicholas Davey 246 Art Today and Philosophical Aesthetics: A Missing Dialogue Laura T. Di Summa-Knoop 263 Karl Popper on the Unknown Logic of Artistic Production and Creative Discovery Alexander Naraniecki 283 A Short Improvisation on Milan Kundera's Slowness Daniel Raveh 301 Jazz, Kant and Zen: The Philosophy of Improvisation Jonathan Day 317 Becoming Equivalent: Tracking the Chinese Renditions of “Discourse” Yong Zhong 338 Miki Kiyoshi and Interpretation: An Introduction to “Disregarded Translations” 349 Book Review Guest Editor: Martin Ovens (University of Oxford) Culture and Dialogue, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2016, pp. 1-2
IDENTITY AND DIALOGUE Purchase Culture and Dialogue, Vol. 3, No. 2, 2013, pp. 1-2
Gerald Cipriani Contents 1 Editorial Gerald Cipriani 3 After “Cool Japan”: A Study on Cultural Nationalism Hiroshi Yoshioka 13 American Identity and American Gun Culture: A Buddhist Deconstruction Sandra A. Wawrytko 29 Cultural Production in the Corsican Language: An Identity Field in the Making Dominique Verdoni 37 Portrait as Dialogue: Exercising the Dialogical Self Angelika Böck 53 Anglo-American Narratives of Italian Otherness and the Politics of Orientalizing Southern Europe Francesca Pierini 71 “Manly” Drinks and Secretive Cooks: On the Development of Students’ Gendered Identities Hannah Hale SPECIAL ISSUE: RELIGION AND DIALOGUE Purchase Guest Editor: Cosimo Zene (SOAS, University of London) Culture and Dialogue, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2013, pp. 1-2 Editorial
1 Editorial Gerald Cipriani 3 Introduction Cosimo Zene 10 Deqing and Daoism: A View of Dialogue and Translation from Late Ming China Tim H. Barrett 23 Dialogue with a Devious Divinity: Sovereignty, Kinship, and Kṛṣṇa’s Ethics in the Mahābhārata Theodore Proferes 48 Freak, not Sage: An Exploration into Freakishness in Modern Jewish Culture Catherine Hezser 69 The Limits of the Dialogical: Thoughts on Muslim Patterns of In- and Exclusion Jan-Peter Hartung 91 Trauma, Dislocation, and Lived Fear in the Postsecular World: Towards a First Methodological Checklist Stephen Chan 104 The Pietas of Doubt: Dialogue, Consciousness and Weak Thought Tullio Lobetti 122 An Outlaw Ethics for the Study of Religions: Maternality and the Dialogic Subject in Julia Kristeva’s “Stabat Mater” Sîan Hawthorne 147 The Challenge of Critical Dialogue and the Study of Religions Cosimo Zene POLITICS AND DIALOGUE Culture and Dialogue, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2012, pp. 1-4
1 Editorial Gerald Cipriani 5 I and Thou – Philosophical Anthropology and Dialogicality in the Human Realms Goutam Biswas 23 Eternal Peace – Eternal War: Some Remarks on Kant, Heraclitus and Sunzi Günter Wohlfart 31 Cultural Obstacles to Political Dialogue in China Yingchi Chu and Horst Ruthrof 51 Distant Voices: Amartya Sen on Adam Smith’s Impartial Spectator Ian Fraser 73 Sustaining Cultures in the Face of Globalization Nicole Hassoun and David B. Wong ART AND DIALOGUE Culture and Dialogue, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2012, pp. 1-2
PHILOSOPHY AND DIALOGUE Culture and Dialogue, Vol. 1, No. 2, 2011, pp. 1-3
INAUGURAL ISSUE Culture and Dialogue, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2011, pp. 1-2
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