`Subjects' of Regulation/Resistance? Postmodern Feminism and Agency in Abortion-Decision-Making

This article explores the epistemological and strategic issues facing feminists embarking upon narrative explorations into women's experiences. It considers the implications for feminist epistemology of acknowledging women's participation in dominant ideologies about their social role. Focusing upon questions of women's agency, it asks how this `conforming knowledge' might complicate postmodernist feminist notions of resisting and reconstructing law's categorisation of `Woman'. It also represents an attempt to clarify, in advance of my own analysis of women's agency in abortion decision-making, why postmodern feminists might talk to women – the `subjects' of law's constructive power. It seeks additionally to open a discussion among a wider audience of feminists about what we might do with the information uncovered through listening to women's own stories in an area pronounced upon authoritatively by a multitude of discourses. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Consanguinity as capital in rights assertions: Japanese-Filipino children in the Philippines

This paper examines the material dimensions of ethnic identity claims by Japanese-Filipino children in the Philippines and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) advocating on their behalf. Most Japanese-Filipino clients of NGOs in the Philippines were raised by their Filipino families with little knowledge of their Japanese fathers and little or no lived experience of Japan. Although these children and young adults are often called “multi-cultural” by NGO workers, they frequently grow up with no connection to Japan other than an awareness of their Japanese parentage and Japanese cultural products equally accessible to most Filipinos. I argue that filiation can be leveraged to gain access to resources not only through the legal implications that are provided by biological relationships, but also through symbolically salient claims for belonging to a nation or people by virtue of descent. This consanguineal capital should primarily be understood in politically symbolic terms, mobilized in processes of claims-making and based on notions of “blood” and belonging and their frequent conflation with ethnicity.     

The sounds of silence: American history textbook representations of non-violence and the Abolition Movement

In this paper we examine how the Abolition Movement’s approach to non-violent resistance has been silenced in four American history textbooks. Despite extensive research that reveals an extensive network of groups dedicated to the peaceful abolishment of slavery little of this historical record is included in the textbooks. Instead, a skewed representation of the movement is conveyed to the reader, one that conveys an image of a movement that contributes to a climate of social violence. Through a critical discourse analytical approach to the data we carefully deconstruct how this process of misrepresentation occurs. By employing the discursive tools of narrative framing, positioning, and stance we lift up what is often hidden from the reader and demonstrate how language use communicates powerful social messaging to the reader. We argue that student readers are left with an impoverished sense of how non-violent democratic change has occurred when presented with a limited portrayal of the Abolition Movement. We therefore emphasize the importance of equipping students with the skills needed to critically interrogate both historical and contemporary sources that purports to convey the inevitability of war to resolve complex social problems; we maintain this is both an educational imperative and a civic obligation.     

程序法的内在张力

程序法在内部有着四个向度的张力,分别是交往向度张力、认知向度张力、空间向度张力和时间向度张力。这四个向度张力的存在,使得程序法各项制度的功能失灵,进而又减损了司法权威,导致司法解纷的目的落空。但是这四个向度的张力乃是程序法天生的不可避免的内在张力,实际上也是程序法和程序法理论发展变迁的动力源泉,因此不可能在一般意义上得到彻底消解。比较现实的选择是在个案审理过程中,就所遭遇到的具体的张力逐个消解。而消解个案审理过程中出现的具体的张力的路径,乃是程序法中自带的程序性商谈机制。为保障程序性商谈机制顺利运行,又须在制度上确保程序参与者之商谈行为符合言语行为有效性要件的要求。就民事诉讼而言,目前较为重要的是进一步强化对妨碍民事诉讼行为的惩戒。     

女性话语·国族寓言·华人文化英雄——从文化研究视角重读当代华语经典《桑青与桃红》

本文从文化研究视角重读旅美台湾作家聂华苓的华语经典小说《桑青与桃红》。认为此作的离散书写和女性话语方式在华语文学史上占有突出而重要的位置,作品叙述了20世纪华人个体的流离创伤体验,同时拥有国族寓言的反思视域,以人物的历史遭际和人格分裂隐喻从抗战到冷战时期的华人离散境遇和文化政治。女性形象桑青/桃红具有华人文化英雄意味。     

Discourse and violence: the friend–enemy conjunction in contemporary Iranian–American relations

Iranian–American relations have been beset by mistrust and occasional outbreaks of vitriol and violence for the past three decades. In this article I attempt to map, theoretically and empirically, the ‘discursive field’ in which relations between Iran and the United States reveal themselves. I am interested in representations of Iran and the United States, and how the fundamental friend–enemy distinction setting the two countries politically apart has come about. I take as a starting point the fact that discourse has a real and present impact on policy and that a lot of what is happening in world politics can be adequately contextualised with an appreciation of the linkages between ‘utterance’ and ‘action’.     

福柯的"作者-功能"说及其理论基础

在巴特喊出“作者死了”之后不久，福柯就提出了“作者一功能”理论，深入推进了对作者问题的研究。与巴特等人论述“作者死亡”不同的是，“作者一功能”说的理论基础是福柯的考古学方法，它与福柯对主体进行的批判紧密相连，它是福柯主体批判的一部分，或者更确切点说，它是后者的一个具体化、一个例证。福柯的“作者一功能”理论对当今的文学和文学理论研究具有深刻启示。     

Tammsaare’s Constructions of Femininity in Light of Weininger’s Concept of Sex Difference

The texts of Estonian literary classic A. H. Tammsaare (1878–1940) can be read as mediating contradictory fin de siècle discourses of modernity. The emergence of these discourses was the effect of an accelerated process of socioeconomic modernization. This article analyzes constructions of femininity in Tammsaare’s literary texts through his women protagonists. The construction of these protagonists can meaningfully be traced to the increasingly insistent presence of women in the public sphere throughout Europe and in Estonia at the period of fin de siècle. Although Tammsaare’s texts speak by means of feminist discourses, his constructions of femininity lean toward the negative, misogynistic pole of these reactions to emancipated and “new” women. His analysis of womanhood often refers to the misogynist theory of gender in Otto Weininger’s popular treatise Geschlecht und Charakter. Eine prinzipielle Untersuchung (Sex and Character. An Investigation of Fundamental Principles), which came out 1903.     

论网络时代公民的话语权利与社会责任——“上海地铁二运事件”的多维透视

网络时代的到来，为话语的自由表达提供了广阔的延展空间。但如何在喧嚣的话语表达中彰显理性的权益边界，对嘈杂的网络话语加以科学引领，使之走向民主化与法制化的轨道，是一个亟待解决的难题。2012年6月20日，上海地铁第二运营有限公司发布的一条官方微博引发的网络论战，围绕“骚”与“扰”之争所形成的一路狂飙的话语盛宴，既折射出网络时代社会公共管理服务的应为方向，也反映出公民私权意识的觉醒及其对权利边界认知的不足，为我们解读当下民众的社会情绪和网络时代话语自由的权责意识提供了一个生动的范本。     

“Yours for Socialism”: Communist Cultural Discourse in Early Apartheid South Africa

This paper explores the diversity of cultural debates which constellated around the Communist Party in South Africa in the late segregationist and early apartheid periods. It traces the textual remains of an itinerant public debate––dispersed in periodical reviews, magazine articles, journalistic tit-bits and other ephemeral public sphere activities such as debating societies, theater groups and discussion clubs––with a view to complicating and expanding the South African literary-cultural archive. Of particular importance are the practices and protocols of reading, cultural critique and interpretation that characterized the intellectual-political field––or public sphere––which we name the Communist Party. In this way, a fragmented cultural discussion is provisionally reconstituted or “invented” as an important South African tradition and reclaimed as a significant intellectual inheritance. The project thus bears on broader question of reading the past and attempts to negotiate an historical split between uncritical nostalgia and the will to transcend.