日常生活史的神话认知与表达——以《山本》为例

在新作《山本》中，中国当代作家贾平凹集中展现了作为一种认知与表达方法的神话对日常生活史的介入，从而为神话与历史的辩证关系提供了一种新型观照视角。与其他作家着力于创造意识形态属性明显的集体性或个体性神话不同，贾平凹试图还原神话在人类日常生活史中的本真状态，突出其作为人类知识与思想来源的背景作用，以及以“互渗”形式促成人与万物实现互联的重要特质。作为一种方法的神话，也体现于其通过具有神性特质的人物设置，构建日常生活的神话空间，继而形成一个整体性的稳定神话系统。贾平凹在《山本》中不仅表现了神话视阈中日常生活的和谐流动，也展现了现代革命与权力神话对传统神话时空的侵蚀、压制、重组，以及由此引起的日常生活的断裂，作家借此探讨了传统神话由生而灭的历史过程。神话视角的切入，使贾平凹获得了神话视阈的观照，并在日常生活的漫流中发现神秘与朴实兼具的现实生命质感，重塑了一段亦真亦幻的历史。     

历史发展的多元选择观

基于对当前文化的多元理解，赫勒呼吁建立一种开放的、多元的历史发展选择理论，提出自由是历史研究的最高价值观，强调多种多样的价值追求，并且以不同的方式做出基本的历史选择。     

Why Weren’t We Taught? Exploring Frontier Conflict Through the Lens of Anzac

This article examines public understandings of two key strands of Australian history that sit at opposite ends of a spectrum of remembrance: frontier conflict and Anzac. The former, W. E. H. Stanner argued in 1968, was subsumed in a vacuum of silence, lost to popular consciousness in a wilful act of forgetting. Despite a wealth of subsequent scholarship documenting the violence and dispossession that characterised European colonisation, considerable gaps in public awareness about these foundational events remain. Anzac, in contrast, has become a defining narrative of Australian history for large segments of the general population and the political class. Recent scholarship suggests that this prominence has served to mask other, important histories of the continent, including frontier conflict. In this article, we argue that this is neither a necessary nor essential binary, and further, that one can inform the other. The written reflections of 320 tertiary students enrolled in a course about Australian military history provide insights into the ways that frontier conflict is popularly understood and how the fascination with Anzac can be leveraged to raise awareness of the violent historical dimensions of colonisation.     

Institutional Abuse: A Long History

ABSTRACT

This article explores the long history of institutions for children in Australia and of the existence of abuse within them. By examining the function that such institutions were designed to perform, and the forms and structures that were devised to best achieve such purposes, the article argues that abuse was all too often not simply inherent in, but essential to, institutional operation. It pays particular attention to the classification of children deemed to be in need of institutional “care” and shows how, through a process of “othering”, their institutionalisation too often rendered them vulnerable to abuse.     

Description of the peasants’ sexual behavior in August Wilhelm Hupel’s Topographical Messages in the context of the history of the Estonian family

The aim of this article is to introduce the work of August Wilhem Hupel, a Baltic German author of the 18th century. The article focuses on the sections in his most voluminous work Topographische Nachrichten von Lief- und Ehstland (1774–1782) that describe Estonian peasants’ sexuality. Hupel’s writings belong to the sources of the history of the Estonian family, a field that has been rediscovered at the beginning of the 21st century. Thanks to the work of Marika Mägi and Nils Blomkvist, a new paradigm for research in this field has been opened up. This article adheres to that paradigm.     

The rise and fall of “respectable” Spanish liberalism, 1808–1923: an explanatory framework

Abstract

The article focuses on the reasons behind both the consolidation of what I have termed “respectable” liberalism between the 1830s and the 1840s and its subsequent decline and fall between 1900 and 1923. In understanding both processes I study the links established between “respectable” liberals and propertied elites, the monarchy, and the Church. In the first phase these links served to consolidate the liberal polity. However, they also meant that many tenets of liberal ideology were compromised. Free elections were undermined by the operation of caciquismo, monarchs established a powerful position, and despite the Church hierarchy working with liberalism, the doctrine espoused by much of the Church was still shaped by the Counter-Reformation. Hence, “respectable” liberalism failed to achieve a popular social base. And the liberal order was increasingly denigrated as part of the corrupt “oligarchy” that ruled Spain. Worse still, between 1916 and 1923 the Church, monarch, and the propertied elite increasingly abandoned the liberal Monarchist Restoration. Hence when General Primo de Rivera launched his coup the rug was pulled from under the liberals’ feet and there was no one to cushion the fall.     

John Paul Jones: An Overlooked Autopsy Finding that May Explain His Terminal Illness

A finding in the autopsy of John Paul Jones, the American Revolutionary War naval hero, may explain his terminal illness. During his last 2 years, he had a persistent productive cough and dyspnea. Ten days before death, he developed rapidly progressive dependent edema and ascites. He died in France in 1792. His body, preserved in alcohol in a lead coffin, was, in 1905, removed to the United States. Glomerulonephritis was noted on an autopsy, performed in France, but there was no comment then or since about ventricular wall thickness being the same in both ventricles at 5–6 mm. Hypertrophy and dilatation with biventricular failure followed by tissue shrinkage during 113 years in alcohol could have resulted in these ventricular wall findings. Systemic hypertension and left ventricular failure are consistent with his respiratory symptoms complicated perhaps by pulmonary emboli, right ventricular failure with tricuspid regurgitation, peripheral congestion, and jaundice.     

Subjects with agency? Children’s participation in family law proceedings

Galvanised by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, many jurisdictions now recognise children’s rights to participate in decisions that affect them. While such legal rights have increased, research on family law proceedings shows how children’s views can still be undermined, ignored or not even sought in decisions about them. This article uses the academic resources of childhood studies, to consider dominant and alternative narratives of children’s participation within Scottish family law. Drawing upon reported case law and empirical research, the article concludes that children’s participation gains protection by being institutionalised but children’s participation is attenuated because it is not recognised as relational and contextual. As rationality, consistency and autonomy are privileged, the weight given to children’s views is lessened by concerns about children being manipulated or distressed. Courts and their decisions may be child-focused, centring on children’s welfare, but they are not child-inclusive, involving children in decision-making.     

The State of the Art of Child Hearings in Germany. Results of a Nationwide Representative Study in German Courts

According to German family law, in family court proceedings that deal with custody or access rights, family judges are obligated to personally hear the child if the feelings, ties, or will of the child are significant for the decision. In a research study commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Justice, a nationwide representative survey of all judges compiled their personal information and their attitudes and expectations as well as various parameters regarding the concrete practice of hearing children. Also, with a very complex methodological design, over 50 children and their parents were studied one week in advance of the hearing, directly before and after the hearing, and four weeks following the hearing. The results of the study are presented, particularly those pertaining to the burden and relief for the children and the expectations of judges. The practical experiences of family judges in personally hearing children are included as well.     

自然法与西方法律文明史

自然法从古希腊伊始,至今一直是法律思想领域的一柱栋梁,它历经西方社会各大学派的吹捧或是抨击,从兴盛到没落再到复苏,不得不说它是西方法律文明史上不可或缺的重要学说。它奠定了西方法律人权、民主、分权等观念的基础,它的超然、实然、应然的内容层次也为现代法律制度的构建提供了一定的价值标准。对它在西方法律文明史上的地位研究,有着重要的理论价值和实践意义。