A Pacific Sojourn: Anna Kavan and the New Zealand Connection, 1941–2

Abstract

This article examines Anna Kavan’s sojourn in New Zealand from February 1941 to November 1942 in the company of the pacifist playwright Ian Hamilton. Living in the most remote of the ex-British colonies reinforced Kavan’s ontological sense of homelessness and wish to disidentify from British society, yet the colony’s anglophone orientation offered familiarity within the strange and alien. The geography, landscapes and communities of its Pacific islands encouraged a reshaping of her imaginative engagement with otherness. Referring to Kavan’s recently published diary, ‘Five Months Further or What I Remember ab[ou]t New Zealand’, the essay argues that the New Zealand ‘experience’ encouraged her use of tropes of the Gothic and uncanny as she grappled with issues of distance, homelessness and disjunctive reality. The discussion focuses on the alternative/parallel world that New Zealand represents in stories published in I Am Lazarus (1945). It identifies experimental techniques associated with Gothic fiction by which Kavan registers the overlapping dualisms of war-torn London and idyllic rural New Zealand, and represents memory through framing devices and defamiliarizing rhetorical tropes as a distancing activity interrupting the present moment: dream sequences, irruptions into and splittings of reality, space and time reversals, doublings of self/other, disjunctive non sequiturs and ghostly mirror imaging.     

Art,Cold War Diplomacy and Commonwealth: Australian and Canadian Art at the Tate Gallery 1962–1964

This article analyses the formation, presentation and reception of two seminal exhibitions: Australian Painting: Colonial, Impressionist, Contemporary (1962–1963) and Canadian Painting 1939–1963 (1964). The presentation of these exhibitions at London’s Tate Gallery reflected the institution’s support for “old dominion” Commonwealth members. The exhibitions also highlight the differing visions of the Canadian and Australian governments concerning the relationship between art, diplomacy and politics during the Cold War. In Canada, Vincent Massey (Governor General 1952–1959) played a key role in ensuring that all forms of Canadian art were promoted internationally. Massey wanted to connect with the European and American avant-garde and to be part of a multiracial Commonwealth. This contrasted with the rather “old-fashioned” views of the Australian prime minister, Robert Menzies, and the Commonwealth Art Advisory Board. They supported a Commonwealth dominated by the “white dominions” and the initial exhibition plan for Australian Painting recalled previous British Empire art shows. The British response to the Canadian and Australian exhibitions is also discussed. British critics preferred the nationally identifiable “exotic” art found in Australian art to the transnational forms of international abstraction in Canadian art. Eventually, Australia “caught up” with Canadian cultural policy following the establishment of the Australia Council.     

《孙子兵法》与处置群体性事件谋略

《孙子兵法》作为一部论述谋略智慧的军事巨著，在孙子“全胜”思想的指导下，主张通过认识战争规律来控制战局，用计策谋略来赢得战果。当下，公安机关根据群体性事件的特点，按照“以柔克刚、依法行动、注重实效”的处置原则，通常采用《孙子兵法》的“攻心”、“择机”、“拖延”和“就势”谋略，科学妥善的处置群体性事件。     

土地革命时期毛泽东信念观探析——重温《井冈山的斗争》与《星星之火， 可以燎原》

1927年大革命失败后,中国革命进入了十年土地革命时期。期间党与红军内部出现了"右"倾悲观思潮,并几度提出"红旗到底打得多久"的疑问。对此,毛泽东在《井冈山的斗争》与《星星之火,可以燎原》等著作中给予了科学回答,形成了毛泽东信念观:坚定信念创建农村革命根据地;坚信红色政权的发生、存在与发展既是可能的,也是必然的;坚信星火必燎原,中国革命高潮必将到来。毛泽东信念观的形成是大革命失败后时局变化的产物,是实行正确政策的必然结果。     

Contesting land grabs,negotiating statehood: the politics of international accountability mechanisms and land disputes in rural Cambodia

Abstract

In Cambodia, rural citizens embroiled in protracted land grabbing cases with the state and private companies are turning increasingly to international accountability mechanisms for resolution. This article applies the interlinked concepts of hybrid governance and legal pluralism to understand the prospects and limitations of ‘forum-shopping’ through appeals to international mechanisms for rural communities affected by land grabs. Drawing on interviews and using process tracing, it examines the outcomes of a mediation case filed with the International Finance Corporation’s Compliance Advisor/Ombudsman (CAO) involving indigenous groups and a Vietnamese rubber company in north-east Cambodia. It argues that while international accountability mechanisms yield platforms for dispossessed groups to assert claims, they also reify choices between entitlements and attainability without circumventing the problems associated with justice delivery under Cambodia’s authoritarian regime. Overall, this study highlights the interaction, competition and collaboration between distinct forms of regulatory authority exercised by national and transnational actors involved in land grabbing cases in Cambodia, demonstrating their role in ‘negotiating statehood’ by governing local claims to land.     

Narco-Terrorism: The Merger of the War on Drugs and the War on Terror

The aim of this article is to analyse the phenomena of narco-terrorism and the practical measures utilised to counter this threat. By adopting the model of the crime-terror continuum developed by Tamara Makarenko, the article will outline the similarities and dissimilarities of narcotics trafficking and terrorism in order to provide a more nuanced perspective on the concept of narco-terrorism. By doing so, the article will evaluate the kind of approach taken in combating the threat of narco-terrorism.     

愿景与现实的矛盾触碰--美国心理战略委员会东南亚心理战略的筹划、实施与结果

为了遏制共产主义在东南亚的渗透，在美国国家安全委员会的指示下，心理战略委员会特别成立了一个东南亚计划小组来负责制定编号为PSB D-23号的东南亚心理战略计划。但是，在PSB D-23号文件筹划过程中，国务院、中央情报局等部门对如何扩大在东南亚的心理战略计划有不同的看法，使得该文件的制定过程颇多磨难。虽然经过妥协，该计划最终得到国家安全委员会通过，但其实施效果却不应过分夸大。     

Toward Olympics 2008: China's development in the reform period

Owen Bennett-Jones presents ‘Newshour’ and ‘The Interview’ for BBC World Service Radio. He has reported from all over the world and was the BBC Correspondent in Islamabad between 1998 and 2001. He is currently preparing a second edition of his book Pakistan: Eye of the Storm.     

Hearts and Minds: War Neurosis and the Politics of Madness in Anna Kavan's I Am Lazarus

Abstract

Anna Kavan's fictional portrayals of psychiatric breakdown and its treatment provide a unique perspective on the patient's experience of early to mid twentieth-century psychiatry. This article looks in detail at Kavan's time working with soldiers suffering from effort syndrome during the Second World War, observing how the solider-psychiatric patient becomes a figurehead for her radical politics in her Horizon article ‘The Case of Bill Williams’ (1944), and a prominent protagonist in her stories. Through close reading of her correspondence, her journalism and her wartime stories collected in I Am Lazarus (1945), it examines how the intersection of psychological trauma and physiological symptoms characteristic of effort syndrome surfaces in Kavan's writing of this period and in her own psychic responses to the war. It observes the importance of figurative language to her portrayal of war trauma and psychological breakdown, as her characters embody metaphor in their psychosomatic symptoms, and explores a twisted reconception of mind–body dualism prevalent throughout her writing of this period. It goes on to examine how the peculiar interaction of the physical and the psychological extends to the relationship between Kavan's characters and their external environment in her Blitz stories. Against the backdrop of the war-torn city, mind and body engage in ongoing conflict, affect and emotion bleed into her physical landscapes, and everyday objects become animated and hostile towards her protagonists.     

中日甲午战争与东北亚国际关系的变化

中日甲午战争中清朝的惨败给中国社会带来空前严重的社会危机,大大加深了中国社会半殖民地化的程度。而战胜国日本则国力日益强大,跻身于资本主义列强的行列。甲午战争后,日本的崛起和扩张加剧了东亚地区国家关系的变化,给这一地区的国际关系带来直接而深远的影响。东亚国际秩序由以中国为中心的传统宗藩朝贡体系向近代殖民条约体系转型,中朝日近代新型的国家关系逐渐建立起来,传统的宗藩体系土崩瓦解。本文以中日甲午战争的爆发与传统华夷秩序的瓦解为切入点,探讨甲午战争后东亚传统邻邦中朝日三国新型近代国家关系建立始末及其对三国关系产生的影响。