• Title/Summary/Keyword: Essentialism

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From 'Self-realization' to Interdependent Arising -- Seeking an Alternative to Deep Ecology (통각에서 연기론으로 -- 심층생태론의 대안 모색)

  • Kang, Yong-Ki
    • English & American cultural studies
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    • v.14 no.2
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    • pp.1-21
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    • 2014
  • Arne Naess' ecocentrally-oriented worldview of 'Self-realization' has been continually attacked by sociocultural critics since it was launched in the early 1970s. Especially ecofeminists and social ecologists criticize that the concept of Self-realization cannot accept social & cultural particularity enough. In other words, they assert that Deep Ecology cannot efficiently resist interpersonal hierarchy. Concentrating their criticism on compassion just for nonhuman beings, the interpersonal equality-oriented critics claim that Deep Ecology should incorporate voices of marginalized humans within their eco-centered world view. Even if Naess recently recognizes necessity to draw more attention to sociohistorical particularity, still unchanged remains essentialism in his neological term 'Self-realization.' Compared to exclusiveness in Naess' Self-realization, the Buddhist worldview of Interdependent Arising(pratityasamutpada) favors both intraspeciel egalitarianism and interpersonal equality as well. The very insight that all beings dependently co-originate reasons compassion for historically marginalized humans as well as nonhuman beings. Accordingly, today's environmentalism might better its efficiency as it goes toward the inclusive Buddhist world view of interdependent arising. For the human being tends to respond more readily to his or her individually urgent problems than their remote social matters.

Toward Shared Grounds Between Environmental Pragmatism and Foundationalist Ecology (실용주의 환경론과 근본주의 생태론의 접점 모색)

  • Kang, Yong-Ki
    • Journal of English Language & Literature
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    • v.56 no.1
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    • pp.47-64
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    • 2010
  • It is unfair that environmental pragmatism has been regarded as a mouthpiece for industrial expediency and business boosterism. John Dewey's radical pragmatism known as 'Instrumentalism' has provoked ecological fundamentalists' criticism more vehemently than any other pragmatic philosophies. However, most of the presumptive misunderstandings of such critics as Holmes Rolston, J. Baird Calliott, Erich Katz, C. A. Bowers and many others come from their limited or reduced reading of Deweyan pragmatism. The following three aspects of Deweyan pragmatism can work out in opening up a dialogical space with those eco-centrist thinkers mentioned above. First, the concept of Dewey's 'primary experience' can articulate the foundationalist view of nature, which is often found in aboriginal cultures. Second, as Andrew Light points out, ecological essentialism can share its metaphilosophical position with the pragmatist epistemology. While Anthony Weston pursues pluralism, admitting that the foundationalism might be one of the efficient approaches to nature, Eric Katz is also clearly attracted to the metaphilosophical element in Weston's argument that anyone who attempts to claim the 'inherent value' of non-human nature never possibly avoids a pitfall of anthropomorphism. Lastly, in a more comprehensive perspective, Dewey's pragmatism shows a philosophical complexity, what Larry A. Hickman calls 'post-postmodernism.' a dynamic interaction between modernism and postmodernism. Significantly enough, the environmental version of this complexity can procure a meeting ground between foundationalist ecology and the pragmatic view of nature.

Hierarchical Regimentation of Korean Language Uses (반말의 비인문성 -철학자가 본 한국의 언어연구-)

  • 정대현
    • Lingua Humanitatis
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    • v.5
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    • pp.75-92
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    • 2003
  • One of the distinctive features of Korean language is that it has a fine hierarchical regimentation of language uses, perhaps finer than English, Chinese or Japanese. If English language uses have a hierarchical structure they are to be thick. You may respond to any of your male colleagues often by saying either "Yes, Sir" or "Yes, John". But Korean speakers attend to the One grades of differences of social positions of a speaker and a hearer and they show the respect of the difference by adding or dropping relevant suffixes of verbs which Korean language has developed. For example, one yew difference would affect how you choose a suffix of verbs you use to speak to your hearer and two year difference often leads to the adoption of still another fitting suffix of the same verb. One year criterion works not only in 3my barracks, school dormitories but also in government offices. business sectors. Korean speaking people have been taught to use this finely regimented hierarchical language. I try, in this paper, to develop the idea that hierarchical regimentation of Korean language uses is not humane. 1 of for the main argument for the thesis as what follows: How could one justify the hierarchical regimentation of a language like Korean\ulcorner Only if there is an essential structure in which the fine grades of differences of social positions of all the people are distinct; The essentialism here involved is not plausible. And I may add that language is to be used fur the purposes of communication, rationalization and expression. If true, language use is a genuine art of liberation or humanization. Any overt hierarchical language tends to damage those purposes and more to enforce those oppressive elements already existing in the community. Then, a hierarchical language is to defeat its own purpose.

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The Rhetoric of Revelation and the Politics of Prophecy: A Reading of Ginsberg's "Howl" and "Kaddish" (계시의 수사와 정치학-긴즈버그의 「울부짖음」과 「캐디쉬」를 중심으로)

  • Son, Hyesook
    • Journal of English Language & Literature
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    • v.57 no.4
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    • pp.529-552
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    • 2011
  • My essay aims at reading Ginsberg's "Howl" and "Kaddish" with the concept of 'shaman-prophet-poet' to illustrate the dynamic relationship between his poetics and radical politics. Throughout his widely-ranging career, Ginsberg represents himself as a poet-prophet and commands a typical rhetoric of revelation as a way of decentering Cold War orthodoxies. While well aware of the oppressive and pervasive power of the dominant post-war ideologies, he adopts 'madness' to oppose conventional political, social, and religious institutions; by way of entering into the madness of this world and actively engaging himself as a victim, he can finally heal both himself and the world. This dual function of poet characterizes his rhetoric of revelation, but it doesn't appeal to the mainstream of American critical ideology where the post-structural approach to language and subject gives a skeptical look at any account of active human agency and humanistic belief in the possibility of language. In "Howl" and "Kaddish," Ginsburg persuades the reader of the truth of his own vision through the convincing and realistic portraits of his contemporaries as well as his own mother and family. Different from his visionary predecessors such as Emerson and Whitman, Ginsberg knew the difficulty of a negotiation between history and divine vision, and attempted to imbricate his family, friends, and even the larger social and political units within his visionary experience in order to avoid naive idealism, escapism, or solipsism. Furthermore, he deconstructs the Logos of Western prophecy and replaces it with the groundless identity and the nontheistic epistemology of Buddhism, which, in turn, leads to emptying his powerful language of absolutist meaning and prevents his prophecy from becoming re-reified as divine essentialism. Ginsberg's idea of poet and poem revitalizes the skeptical view on language and literary representation of our contemporary critical community which is unwilling to engage the experimental scope of his radical prophecy.

"In the Beginning was the Deed": Sigmund Freud's Auditory Imagination

  • KIM, TaeChul
    • English & American cultural studies
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    • v.9 no.1
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    • pp.113-139
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    • 2009
  • Such is an elective affinity between literary studies and psychoanalysis that the latter sometime serves as a form of literary pedagogy. The affinity mainly consists in their shared concern for language. The signification of language in psychoanalysis is much similar to that of literature. Many of psychoanalytic terms and theoretical tenets bear witness to its dependence clinically on speech phenomena and theoretically on language in general. It is most true of Sigmund Freud, for whom the unconscious is in effect the linguistic unconscious. The Freudian unconscious, compressing and displacing through images and ideas, works as a text for psychoanalysis, which approach has not only paved one of the ways to poststructuralist anti-essentialism but with which literary studies also feel uncanny familiarity. Freudian psychoanalysis, starting empirically from clinical observations, discovers that words exist independent of meanings in the form of things in the unconscious system. Out of the various sensory elements of a word-thing, in psychoanalytic terms, the auditory is central. Now with the auditory imagination cultivated in the clinic, Freud figures out compression and displacement as the chief unconscious works, of which my main argument is that they are based phonetically on heteronym and homonym associations respectively. Compression and displacement work to be masks, which excites Freud's sense of challenge: his is a kind of poststructuralist approach, in the sense that the closed interrelatedness of words without external referents determines the signification in a given situation. But the works of compression and displacement, viewed in auditory terms rather than mapped on to metaphor and metonymy, can provide a new insight for a literary reading of Freud. Pursuing Freud's auditory imagination is not only an attempt to read his writing as literary text rather than for theoretical discussion, but also an experiment with the possibility of literary reading of a theoretical text in the age of after-theory.

W. E. B. Du Bois and the Reconstruction of the 'Negro' (W. E. B. 듀보이스와 '니그로'의 재구성)

  • Lee, Kyungwon
    • Journal of English Language & Literature
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    • v.55 no.5
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    • pp.907-936
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    • 2009
  • Quite arguably, W. E. B. Du Bois is the first figure in the history of black nationalism who engaged most persistently and systematically with the dominant ideology of racism and white supremacy. It is not too much to say that, by contending with the Eurocentric but taken-for-granted concept of the 'Negro' in the turn of the century, Du bois has laid the theoretical and ideological cornerstone of postcolonialism today. But his concept of race varied over time and was even contradictory in the same writings. The early Du Bois defined race as something historically made rather than biologically given and determined. Yet he didn't utterly deny the significance of physical traits and skin color in constructing racial identity. His notion of the 'Negro' was not unambiguous, either. While drawing on the 'soul' of 'black folk' to undermine the Eurocentric dichotomy of white/mind and black/body, Du Bois argued that there is some kind of 'spiritual' differences between whites and blacks, differences that are essentially inherent and hereditary in the 'Negro.' Such essentialist notion of race and the 'Negro' was on the wane in the later Du Bois, especially after his encounter with Marxism. He came to think of race merely as a discourse of racism that can be subverted and even appropriated for anti-racist practices. Following the Marxist assumption that 'the color line' is a class conflict on the international level, Du Bois contended that the 'Negro' is an outcome of slavery which is in turn a subsystem of Western capitalism. He also argued that, since the 'Negro' is not a biological essence but a sociocultural formation, the identity of the 'Negro' can and must be reconstructed according to historical change. For Du Bois, therefore, the resistance against colonialism and capitalism became a resistance against racism. This is why his Pan-African movement shifted its gear from the American program in the initial phase to a truly 'Afrocentric' and socialist one.

A Matter of Autonomy in Art Criticism on Modernism (모더니즘 미술비평에 있어서 '자율성' (Autonomy)의 문제)

  • Choi Kwang-Jin
    • Journal of Science of Art and Design
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    • v.3
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    • pp.87-144
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    • 2001
  • This study looks into historical genealogy of autonomy in art criticism on modernism and presents the view of the judgment and correction about that. A matter of autonomy in art appeared in the attempt to totally reconsider and upset the theory of 'Mimesis' or 'Representation' which was the basis of traditional aesthetic theory. In the traditional theory of representation, they assumed primary image exists first and then tried to obtain visual similarity to it through art works. However, in the theory of autonomy in modernism, they maintained the reduction to pure form' or medium', regarding what art works represents and how similar to primary image are not the true essence of art. In the early 20th century, C. Bell laid the foundation stone of the theory of Formalism', providing that a matter of autonomy is significant form', which is the combination of lines and colors Aesthetic autonomy theory came to a climax by C. Greenberg, who systemized art criticism on modernism in the middle 20th century. According to his theory, the pursuit of the essence of form resulted in the specificity of medium' and flatness. They thought that the autonomy of art would be achieved by eliminating outward social factors from art works. This theory ended by Minimalism preventing the instructive function of art work and only emphasizing its material property. Since the middle 20th century, the autonomy theory was confronted with the limit and intense attack because it resulted in this fixed canon and materialism, so they began laying emphasis on those extrinsic factors around art works such as human life, society, history, and so on. This study focuses on arguing and complementing the limit of autonomy such as the adhesive and fixed canon, and then defining the more dynamic area of it. For this, first, I introduced the view of T. J. Clark and T. Crow who criticized the aesthetic autonomy theory. They denied the transcendental structure of form, and found form only in the association with substantial life and society. And they insisted the dynamism of form by emphasizing form as a result of negation insisted by avant-garde. Second, I researched the view of A. C, Danto and M. Fried, who complemented the traditional autonomy theory. They made autonomy emerge from the fixation of form like flatness through connecting essentialism with historical view. In conclusion, I insist that autonomic position of art make it possible to connect or mediate between material form and human or social elements. Therefore, autonomy should not be reduced to the axis of form or that of society but make interaction between two heterogeneous axes.

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Chicano Muralism(1975-1989): From Grassroots Community Murals to a Form of Public Art (치카노 벽화운동 제2기(1975-1989): 자생적 공동체 벽화에서 공공미술로)

  • Kim, Jin-A
    • The Journal of Art Theory & Practice
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    • no.9
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    • pp.7-31
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    • 2010
  • In this paper, I examine the development of the second stage of Chicano muralism and compare it with the first stage of the Chicano Mural Movement that was born out of the Civil Rights Movement. I then discuss the different aspects of the first stage in relation to the birth of institutionalized public art and question how Chicano murals influenced public art and, conversely, how mainstream public art transformed some of the attitudes and practices of Chicano muralism. Chicano murals initially functioned as a political mouthpiece for Chicano's human rights and as a tool to recover the Chicano people's cultural pride and legacy. However, the murals gradually developed into public art projects supported by the city or federal governments, who regarded them as an economic way to effectively communicate with the community. In this process of institutionalization, muralists became increasingly concerned with aesthetic quality and began to work more systematically. For example, amateur artists or community participants who produced the earlier murals were transformed into mural experts. Chicano essentialism and the politically volatile themes used previously were phased out and the new murals began to incorporate diverse subjects and people, for example, native culture, Blacks, and women. This phenomenon reflected the changing emphasis on multicultural understanding. This kind of institutionalization did not always draw positive results. Inadequate funds were the primary concern over the actual subject and creation of the mural work. Artists reduced the strong political metaphors and aestheticized the mural forms. However, their work was productive as well: thorough research on wall conditions and painting techniques was conducted and new processes and designs were developed. This paper examines the murals created for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, Judy Baca's works, and the Balmy Alley Mural Environment project in San Francisco's Mission District. Works by Las Mujeres Muralistas in Mission District, in particular, show case colorful patterns and the Latin American indigenous culture, exploring new interpretations of old icons and design. They challenged the stereotypical depictions of females and presented alternative visual languages that revised the male-centered mural aesthetics and elaborated on the aesthetics of Rasquachismo.

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Exploring Cognitive Biases Limiting Rational Problem Solving and Debiasing Methods Using Science Education (합리적 문제해결을 저해하는 인지편향과 과학교육을 통한 탈인지편향 방법 탐색)

  • Ha, Minsu
    • Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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    • v.36 no.6
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    • pp.935-946
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    • 2016
  • This study aims to explore cognitive biases relating the core competences of science and instructional strategy in reducing the level of cognitive biases. The literature review method was used to explore cognitive biases and science education experts discussed the relevance of cognitive biases to science education. Twenty nine cognitive biases were categorized into five groups (limiting rational causal inference, limiting diverse information search, limiting self-regulated learning, limiting self-directed decision making, and category-limited thinking). The cognitive biases in limiting rational causal inference group are teleological thinking, availability heuristic, illusory correlation, and clustering illusion. The cognitive biases in limiting diverse information search group are selective perception, experimenter bias, confirmation bias, mere thought effect, attentional bias, belief bias, pragmatic fallacy, functional fixedness, and framing effect. The cognitive biases in limiting self-regulated learning group are overconfidence bias, better-than-average bias, planning fallacy, fundamental attribution error, Dunning-Kruger effect, hindsight bias, and blind-spot bias. The cognitive biases in limiting self-directed decision-making group are acquiescence effect, bandwagon effect, group-think, appeal to authority bias, and information bias. Lastly, the cognitive biases in category-limited thinking group are psychological essentialism, stereotyping, anthropomorphism, and outgroup homogeneity bias. The instructional strategy to reduce the level of cognitive biases is disused based on the psychological characters of cognitive biases reviewed in this study and related science education methods.

The Problems of the Archaeological Approaches to the Bronze Age Society (한국 청동기시대 '사회' 고고학의 문제)

  • Lee, Seong-Ju
    • KOMUNHWA
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    • no.68
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    • pp.7-24
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    • 2006
  • This article is the critical review of the methods and assumptions with which the Korean archaeologists have tried to approach to the Bronze age society. It was not until the 1980s' that there had been any attempt to define the relevant units for the study of past societies. Before the archaeological records of megalithic builders in the Bronze age began to be analyzed to find out the general traits of chiefdom society, Korean archaeologists had described the variations in the cultural, rather than the social, entities. From the 1990s' , some scholars have attempted to reconstruct the scale and organization of the social groups and explain the growth of polities in evolutionary view, analyzing the hierarchical distributions of settlement data. In the concluding remarks of the review, I would like to indicate the some problems in the conceptualization of the material culture patterning in the regional and/or inter-regional level. First, the conceptual problem which appeared when the Bronze archaeologists define the distribution of artifact assemblages, composed of the specific artifact traits , beyond the instrumental categories that are efficient for the establishments of regional chronologies. It is evidently erroneous conceptualization that we define the artifact assemblages as the socio-cultual entities which came into being in specific time and place, geographically expanded, and finally disappeared based on the view of essentialism. Second, the interpretative problems about wide distributions of certain bronze artifacts must be indicated. I would like to suggest that the wide distributions of the specific bronze dagger or mirror types should be explained not by the cultural area concept related to the ethnicity assumptions, but by the world system or the inter-regional interaction models.

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