Act Natural: Dubious Proposals in The Mill on the Floss,The Pastor’s Wife,Vera and Rebecca

Abstract

Following George Eliot, Elizabeth von Arnim showcases a male rhetoric of naturalness. Her men cultivate and punish their women when they resist naturalizing. Without denigrating the intelligence of women, von Arnim shows their unwitting complicity in their subjection. In The Pastor’s Wife (1914) and in Vera (1921), the highly literate women have read the wrong books or missed the unfriendly truths about relationships in those they have read. The husbands and lovers make shallow use of philosophical and scientific reasoning to justify their control and enforce female uniformity deemed ‘natural’. Darwin is misappropriated by the tyrannical Wemyss: evolutionary theories support his imperious dismissal of Lucy’s aunt and friends. Wemyss’s most monstrous actions suggest an atavistic patriarchal dominance like the hereditary reversion theorized by Samuel Butler as unconscious memory. Wemyss brings up the issue of England’s inheritance, and a disturbing vision dawns as the philistine and self-appointed natural man subdues Lucy. Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca (1938) follows Vera’s plot, but it does not interrogate naturalness in the same way. Entrapped in her husband’s vision of a natural woman, the narrator registers Rebecca’s wild transgressiveness as more powerful and universal than her own tamed naturalness.     

Juridifications and religion in early modern Europe: The challenge of a contextual history of law

To end Europe's great cycle of religious wars, some early modern states imposed a secular ‘rule of law’ in spheres of life previously governed by religion. The following essay compares two instances of this basic fact of seventeenth-century European political history, one German and the other English. In these different religious and political settings, different juridifications were undertaken that do not reduce to manifestations of a single underlying process of social change. Considered in a legal-historical light, early modern juridifications therefore invite a clear disciplinary alternative to the socio-theoretical and socio-critical perspective on juridification associated with Jürgen Habermas. The larger challenge on behalf of legal history is to end the subordination of historical method to critical social theory. This revised version was published online in November 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

传统与非传统:十年国际关系的两种解读--兼评亨廷顿《文明的冲突与世界秩序的重建》

近十年来,传统的安全威胁与非传统的安全威胁相互交织,非传统威胁的影响日益上升;相应地,传统的国际关系理论与非传统的国际关系理论难决高下,非传统理论似将占据上风.根据近十年来的国际大事进行检测,也许可以较客观地评判以"文明冲突论"为代表的非传统理论的现实有效程度,也许还可以评判传统理论在目前"非传统环境"中的生存能力.     

论亨廷顿“民主扩展”理论与美国“新霸权主义”的内在关联性

在美国历史上 ,尽管深信美国负有传播其价值观以“改变”其他国家的使命的人从来就未曾少过 ,而到 19世纪中叶 ,一些信奉“盎格鲁 -撒克逊种族优越论”的人又打出了“天定命运论”(ManifestDestiny)的旗号来推行侵略政策和扩张主义 ,但主张以赤裸裸的武力和强权来扩展所谓“民主”和“自由”并为此提供“理论依据”的始作俑者则非塞缪尔·亨廷顿这位哈佛大学的理论家莫属。本文着重对亨廷顿在 1981至 1991年期间所撰写的两部影响甚巨的著作进行了理论上的剖析 ,驳斥了他所提出的美国在国外输出“自由”、扩展“民主”需要以强权和武力来作后盾的理论依据 ,并揭示了美国“新霸权主义”的实质性内涵。     

Making It Up with the Motherland: Revision and Reconciliation in Edna O'Brien's The Light of Evening

This article explores the relationship between the Irish woman writer and exile and return in Edna O'Brien's recent novel The Light of Evening (2006). This work, dedicated as it is ‘To my mother and my motherland’, represents a new chapter in O'Brien's configuration of the connection between the Irish woman writer and the image of Ireland as a place from which escape is a necessary step towards creative freedom. The Light of Evening contains a web of subtle allusions that invite a reading of the novel as a statement of O'Brien's allegiances with the English and Irish literary traditions. Ultimately, however, it foregrounds the quotidian world of the main character's home place—one represented fully in her mother's letters—as the key source of inspiration for the Irish woman writer. The article examines how relationships with the literary past are mapped onto familial ties in the novel, as O'Brien seems to move away from the Joycean promise of creative exile towards a more hopeful reading of the relationship between the Irish woman writer and her ‘motherland’.     

论"民主扩展论"的二律背反

"民主扩展论"是当前美国和西方的国际政治学理论界占有重要地位的学术理论之一.它虽然早在20世纪80年代初便已出现,但受到众多理论家的推崇和追随却是90年代以后的事.近年来,伴随美国对其超级独霸地位的追逐,独家垄断对国际事务主宰权和以武力干涉别国国内事务的欲求几乎不可避免地成了它迫切而现实的需要.这种现实的需要促使美国国内的某些理论家去为这种欲求寻求理论上的"合理性"和"合法性"依据."民主扩展论"在这种情形之下应运而生.它所宣扬的核心论点是:"民主"和"自由"价值理念在世界范围的进一步扩展需要靠美国等少数掌握了民主"真理"的国家以武力干涉其他国家国内事务的方式才能实现.本文通过对民主和自由最本质的价值内涵和当今世界最根本的国际政治现实因素的深入分析和对比,揭示了这种理论所表现出来的理性价值的二律背反:它虽然在理论上以扩展"民主"和"自由"价值观的必要性为"依据",但它在本质意义上却走到了与民主和自由价值理念相悖的价值立场上--即以民主和自由的理性价值来为强权政治和霸权主义的非理性诉求辩护.     

"文明冲突论"与跨文明比较文学研究

亨廷顿的"文明冲突论"备受研究讨论的现象,典型地体现出全球化背景下知识分子追求自身文化身份认同和生存利益的"忧患意识",也从侧面深刻反映了跨文明比较研究的必要性和深刻性.为避免陷入到由全球化所引发的文化身份认同危机而导致的"虚拟对抗"的"文明冲突"陷阱中,在文化思想界有必要进行跨文明研究与对话,而中国的比较文学界有能力、更有责任参与其中.