The Crying Students

Introduction

le nationalisme 国家主义

Narrative is not only a form of power but also a crucial practice of state sovereignty. In contemporary China's dominant master narrative, reflections on the early 20th century and modernisation often place 'national humiliation' and 'anti-imperialism & anti-colonialism' at the core of nationalism. However, the nationalism that prevailed in the 1920s—represented by the Young China Party/Chinese Youth Party’s political theory—offered a sociological response to the nationalisms of Europe and Japan, Liang Qichao’s nationalism, and the late Qing dynasty’s ethnic nationalism. By revisiting significant social events and conditions of the early 1920s (the Paris Peace Conference, imperial powers' condominium of China, and the Work-Study Movement in France), we attempt to explore how young people of that time reflected on the disengagement and reintegration of politics. In doing so, we seek to draw upon certain theoretical insights beyond the mainstream CCP-KMT narrative to create, reflect upon, or challenge the established discourses, which allows us to search for a hidden 'third party'.

叙事不仅是一种权力，更是国家主权实践的重要方式。当代中国的主导性叙事在回顾二十世纪早期及现代化议题时，常将“国耻”与“反帝反殖”置于民族主义核心。然而，1920年代盛行的国家主义——以中国青年党为代表的政党理论——则从社会学视角回应了欧洲与日本的国家主义、梁启超的国家主义以及晚清的民族主义。我们希望通过回望1920s初的重要社会事件、社会状况（如巴黎和会、列强共管、勤工俭学等等），探讨彼时青年人对文化与政治剥离及再融合的反思。借此，在主流叙事之外，汲取些许理论，以创造、反思或者对抗某些固有叙事。进而在主流的二元对立的体系外，寻找所谓的“第三方力量”。

Host

Hannah, Communication Studies

William, School of English

References

陳正茂 (Ed.). (1993). 中國青年黨史料叢刊第一輯 醒獅週報. 國史館印行.

方庆秋 (Ed.). (1988). 中国青年党. 档案出版社.

李璜. (1934). 国家存在论 . 上海中國書局.

李璜. (1979). 學鈍室回憶錄. 明報月刊社.

少年中國學會. (1925). 國家主義論文集. 上海中華書局.

左舜生. (1954). 萬竹樓隨筆. 自由出版社.

BGM

春光曲 - 白光

魂牵旧梦 - 白光

In Introduction to 21st Century Fiction, Peter Boxall discusses three preoccupations of contemporary fiction: first, temporality, encompassing the speeded, slowed, stalled, or fragmented time, as well as a fascination with fleeting moments; second, ‘the real,’ referring to the emergence of new forms of realism and mechanisms for capturing the new reality, with these forms themselves becoming the material substrate of our existence; and third, embodiment. One consequence of the suspension of temporality and the real in ‘our time’ is a sense of estrangement in how we experience our own bodies, with the boundaries of the body, its materiality, and its relationship to forms undergoing fundamental changes. In this episode, William and Raven discuss contemporary British fiction, inspired by a module we did together of the same name. By the end of the module, we realised that the three words in its title aligned with these three preoccupations: temporality refers to the contemporary, ‘the real’ addresses the nature of fiction, and Britishness is something embodied by individuals living in ‘our time’, within or outside of Britian. From the Irish civil unrest, Caribbean migration, and the Battle of Culloden, to espionage activities across the Europe and the UK-US transatlantic alliances, our focus shifts from defining Britishness to examining what is subtly excluded from it or selectively incorporated into it. The module begins with Rachel Cusk’s London-centric perspective and gradually moves toward the edges of Britishness, challenging and rethinking its boundaries.

Peter Boxall在Introduction to 21st Century Fiction中论述了当代小说的三个关注点。一是时间性，时间的加速、减速、停滞、失衡，和对流逝瞬间的迷恋。二是“真实”（the real），或者说，一种新的现实主义的生成，一套捕捉“真实”的形式机制，这种形式本身成为我们存在的物质基础。其三是具身性。时间性和真实被悬置在“我们的时间”中造成的后果之一是我们在体验自己身体的方式上产生了某种疏离；身体的界限、其物质性和身体与形式的关系正在发生根本变化。在这期节目中，William和Raven讨论了当代英国小说。这来源于我们共同参与的一门同名课程，而直到课程结束我们才意识到，在这门课名字中的三个单词中，时间性是对当代的指涉、真实是对小说本质的回应，而英国性则是由生活在“我们的时间”中的人具身感受的（无论是否身在英国）。从爱尔兰内战、加勒比移民、卡洛登战役，到间谍活动、跨大西洋联盟，重要的不是什么是英国性，而是哪些领域以微妙的方式被排除出了英国性，哪些又被选择性地收编了。这门课从Rachel Cusk这样非常伦敦中心的视角开始，逐渐走向英国性的边界、挑战它的边界、重思它的边界。

Host

William, School of English

Guest

Raven, School of English

Materials Mentioned

Cusk, Rachel, Outline: A Novel (London: Faber & Faber, 2018)

Closure: Contemporary Black British Stories, ed. by Jacob Ross (Leeds: Peepal Tree Press, 2015)

Kelman, James, You Have to be Careful in the Land of the Free (London: Penguin, 2005)

Jacques, Juliet, Variations (London: Influx Press, 2021)

Burns, Anna, Milkman (London: Faber & Faber, 2018)

McEwan, Ian, Sweet Tooth (London: Vintage Books, 2013)

Oyeyemi, Helen, What is Not Yours is Not Yours (London: Picador, 2017)

Smith, Ali, Spring (London: Penguin, 2019)

Kunzru, Hari, Red Pill: A Novel (New York: Vintage Books, 2020)

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Danny Boy - Bill Evans

We reviewed the conferences we attended in 2024, vibe-checked, and wished everyone the best of luck.

我们回顾了2024年参加过的会议。

They were not good, they were not bad, they just happened

Host

William, School of English

Hannah, Communication Studies

BGM

九月鹰飞-田汨

Host

William, School of English

Guest

Fan, School of English

In this episode, William and Fan discussed foregrounding, text-world theory, and other issues concerning stylistics, including the controversies it faces as an academic institution.

Materials Mentioned

Cureton, R.D. (1979). E.E. Cummings: A Study of the Poetic Use of Deviant Morphology. Poetics Today, 1(1/2), 213-224. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1772048

Gavins, J. (2007) Text World Theory : An Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Harrison, C. et al. (2014) Cognitive Grammar in Literature. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Jakobson, R (1960). Closing statement: linguistics and poetics. In Sebeok, T. A (ed) Style in Language (pp.350-377). Cambridge: The MIT Press.

Leech, G. N. (1969). A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry. Harlow: Longman Group Ltd.

Simpson, P. (2014) Stylistics : a resource book for students. 2nd edn. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

Stockwell, P. (2019) Cognitive Poetics: An Introduction. 2nd edn. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

Van Peer, W., Zyngier, S., & Hakemulder, J. (2007). Foregrounding: Past, Present, Future. In Stylistics. Leiden: Brill. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789401205313_002

Werth, P. (1999) Text worlds : Representing conceptual space in discourse. Harlow: Longman.

BGM

幻海同游-银临

Hosts

Hannah, Communication Studies

William, School of English

Guest

Joey, Communication Studies

本期由于我们焦虑大爆发所以不写按语了。

BGM

万千花蕊慈母悲哀-珂拉琪

Materials Mentioned

William's

Szonyi, M. (2018). The art of being governed: Everyday politics in late imperial China. Princeton University Press.

Zhou, X. (2022). The Logic of Governance in China: an organizational approach. Cambridge University Press.

秦晖. (1999). 问题与主义: 秦晖文选. 长春出版社. 

秦晖. (1998). “大共同体本位” 与传统中国社会 (上). 社会学研究, 5, 12-21.

秦晖. (2002). “第三条道路”, 还是共同的底线?——读吉登斯《 第三条道路》. 社会科学论坛, (6), 4-11.

Benjamin, W. (2019). The Storyteller Essays. ⁠New York Review of Books⁠.

Lakoff, G. (2010). Moral politics: How liberals and conservatives think. University of Chicago Press.

Hannah’s

Highmore, B. (2002). BENJAMIN’S TRASH AESTHETICS. In Everyday Life and Cultural Theory: An Introduction. Routledge.

Hu, S. (1919). 多研究些问题，少谈些“主义.” 每周评论, 31.

Parris, K. (1993). Local Initiative and National Reform: The Wenzhou Model of Development. The China Quarterly, 134, 242–263. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305741000029672

秦晖. (1999). 问题与主义：秦晖文选. 长春出版社.

秦晖. (2016). 走出帝制：从晚清到民国的历史回望. 群言出版社.

Xiaotong Fei. (2010). Peasant life in china : a field study of country life in the yangtze valley. Foreign Languages Press.

谢湜. (2020). 山海故人. 北京师范大学出版社 .

Zhou, X. (2022). The Logic of Governance in China. Cambridge University Press.

Zhou, X., Liu, S., & Zhe, X. (2012). 国家建设与政府行为 = State building and government behavior. Zhongguo She Hui Ke Xue Chu Ban She.

Hosts

Hannah, Communication Studies 

William, School of English 

Guest 

波子, Communication Studies

本期出现了很多残酷二选一界的天问。

Highlights

如何应对文化传统在开放社会的庸俗化、片面化？低门槛会带来庸俗化的风险吗？大众的文化传承是否是一个伪命题？究竟要怎样看待知识民主化？

消费资本主义对于进步主义文化来说意味着什么？

中产阶级在中国指代的是哪一群人？他们产生过一种中产阶级文化吗？这个词语对应着某种历史责任吗？

Is the debasement of cultural traditions a problem? Is cultural heritage of the masses a false proposition? How to evaluate the democratisation of knowledge?

How can consumer capitalism impact progressivist culture?

What group of people does 'middle class' refer to in China? Have they produced a middle-class culture? Does the term correspond to some kind of historical responsibility?

BGM 

Faculty of Classics, University of Oxford. (2020). BAME Medea (Oxford University BAME Drama Society). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SsIHyRwGt8

Materials Mentioned

William's

Fukuyama, F. (2006). The end of history and the last man. Simon and Schuster.

Barton, D., Chen, Y., & Jin, A. (2013). Mapping China’s middle class. McKinsey Quarterly, 3(2013), 54-60.

Chen, J., & Lu, C. (2011). Democratization and the middle class in China: The middle class’s attitudes toward democracy. Political Research Quarterly, 64(3), 705-719.

Goodman, D. S. (2016). Locating China’s Middle Classes: social intermediaries and the Party-state. Journal of Contemporary China, 25(97), 1-13.

Hannah's 

Liao, Y. (2001). The Corpse Walker: China From The Bottom Up[中国底层访谈录]. Changjiang literature & art publishing house[长江文艺出版社].

Lin, J.-P., & Yi, C.-C. (2013). A comparative analysis of intergenerational relations in East Asia. International Sociology, 28(3), 297–315. https://doi.org/10.1177/0268580913485261

Stein, L., & Busse, K. (2009). Limit Play: Fan Authorship between Source Text, Intertext, and Context. Popular Communication, 7(4), 192–207. https://doi.org/10.1080/15405700903177545

Stephen, D., & Minglu Chen. (2013). Middle class China: identity and behaviour. Edward Elgar.

Yan, Y. (2017). The Rise of Neo-Familism in Contemporary China [Video/moving image]. In East Asia Program, Cornell University. https://hdl.handle.net/1813/69507. (n.d.).

本期播客是一次策划已久的残酷二选一, i.e., 一期闲聊。

Hosts

Hannah, Communication Studies 

William, School of English 

Guest 

波子, Communication Studies

Highlights

什么是反男性凝视？什么是女性凝视？在一个不平等的权力结构中局部倒转权力关系但沿用相同的暴力手段可以被允许吗？

恶法非法、公民抗命如何正当？非暴力/和平主义是一种结果还是一种目标？

教师如何反抗新自由主义化的高等教育？

Anti-male gaze? Female gaze?In what contexts and situations, civil disobedience is a form of justice?

Is non-violence/pacifism a means or an end?

How can university staff resist neoliberalised higher education?

BGM

风之城一乐章（弦乐四重奏）-乐正子大人

Materials Mentioned

William's

Von Jhering, R. (1915). The struggle for law. Callaghan.

Liminal Negative Space. (2023, July 12). Retrieved from https://liminalnegativespace.github.io/blog/posts/pickOne/

Euripides. (1992). Medea. De Gruyter.

Cairns, D. (2014). Medea: Feminism or misogyny?. In Looking at Medea: Essays and a Translation of Euripides’ Tragedy (pp. 123-138). Bloomsbury Academic.

Faculty of Classics, University of Oxford. (2020). BAME Medea (Oxford University BAME Drama Society). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SsIHyRwGt8

Hannah's

최승호 (Choi S. (Director). (2017).  공범자들 (Criminal Conspiracy). Korea Center for Investigative Journalism. 

조현탁 (Jo Hyun Tak). (2018). SKY 캐슬 (Sky Castle). HB Entertainment Drama House. 

Martin, B. (2012). Backfire Manual : Tactics Against Injustice. Irene Publishing. 

True Story Award. (n.d.). True Story Award. Retrieved October 9, 2023, from https://truestoryaward.org/ 

袁鹰. (2006). 风云侧记. 中国档案出版社. 

“If we can wander, without fear, not only in the streets of Paris, which bristle with police, but especially in rustic walks where you rarely meet passersby, is it to the police that we owe this security? Or rather to the absence of people who care to rob or murder us?”

― Pyotr Kropotkin, Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal

“当我们不仅可以在警察林立的巴黎街道上，还可以在少见路人的乡村步道上毫不恐惧地漫步的时候，我们的安全归功于警察吗？还是说，是因为没有人想要抢劫或谋杀我们？”

—— 彼得·克鲁泡特金， 《无政府主义：它的哲学和理想》

From the very beginning of the idea of abolishing centralised institutions of governance and their monopoly of violence, decentralisation has entered public discourse not only as a technical term, but also as a highly politicised ideal. In this episode, we are going to talk about: In the contemporary world of technologies and applications that appear to be associated with decentralisation, is decentralisation merely a rhetorical strategy? Are substitutes for centralisation responsible for the human being? Do decentralised technologies need to call upon centralised resources to sustain themselves? Can a virtuous vision of freedom and equality at technological level lead to good results?

在取消集中化的宰制机构和其暴力支持这一思想诞生之初，去中心化就不仅仅作为一个技术术语，而且作为一种高度政治化的理想进入公共讨论。但是，在那些看似与去中心化相关的技术和应用中，作为一种话语展演的去中心化究竟是否仅仅是一种修辞策略？代替中心化之物是否是负责任的、可存续的？去中心化的技术是否需要调用中心化的资源来维系？技术层面上自由、平等的良善愿景一定能带来好的结果吗？Hannah在本期节目中从她的mastodon使用经验分享开始，试图碰触这些缠绕的问题。

BGM

Freedom - Anthony Hamilton/Elayna Boynton

Materials Mentioned

Hannah's

Baran, P. (1964). On Distributed Communications Networks. IEEE Transactions on Communications, 12(1), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1109/tcom.1964.1088883

Benjamin, W. (1935). The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Penguin Books.

Blanke, T., & Pybus, J. (2020). The Material Conditions of Platforms: Monopolization Through Decentralization. Social Media + Society, 6(4), 205630512097163. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305120971632

Mastodon. (n.d.). Mastodon documentation. Docs.joinmastodon.org. Retrieved June 7, 2023, from https://docs.joinmastodon.org

Rochko, E. (2017, February 20). The power to build communities. Mastodon Blog. https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2017/02/the-power-to-build-communities/

Schneider, N. (2019). Decentralization: an incomplete ambition. Journal of Cultural Economy, 12(4), 265–285. https://doi.org/10.1080/17530350.2019.1589553

Schrape, J.-F. (2019). The Promise of Technological Decentralization. A Brief Reconstruction. Society, 56(1), 31–37. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-018-00321-w

William's

Bao, G. (2015). The common sense of modern politics [政治学通识]. Peking University Press.

CrimethInc. (2022). The city in the forest: Reinventing resistance for an age of climate crisis and police militarization. Retrieved from https://crimethinc.com/2022/04/11/the-city-in-the-forest-reinventing-resistance-for-an-age-of-ecological-collapse-and-police-militarization

The Initium Media. (2023). The art of resilience: Inspiration from Atlanta's abolish the cop city movement. [韌性的藝術：亞特蘭大「廢除警察城」運動的啓示]. Retrieved from https://theinitium.com/article/20230717-international-cop-city

This episode is comprised of an introduction to the theories of critical discourse analysis and an interesting article sharing session. Starting with two turns in Fairclough's approaches to critical discourse analysis, William and Fan attempt to draw the critical analysis of discourse into deep, broad and complex critical analysis of the society in specific journal articles. We find that it is the macro, fluid and inclusive nature of critical discourse analysis that makes it such a vital and interdisciplinary critical theory that engages with reality directly.

这期节目分为批评性话语分析理论简介和趣味论文分享两个部分。William和Fan从Fairclough的批评性话语分析路径的两次转折开始聊起，在一篇篇具体的文章中尝试将对话语的批判分析引向更深广而复杂的对社会的批判分析。我们发现，正是批评性话语分析宏观、流动而包容的特质让它成为一个如此具有生命力、如此直接地介入现实的跨学科批判理论。

BGM

The Presses Roll - John Williams

Just Look Up - Ariana Grande/Kid Cudi

Materials Mentioned

William’s

Chen, W. (2020). The “marked” nation: National identity and family-country imagination in the discourse of overseas evacuation in China [被“标识”的国家：撤侨话语中的国家认同与家国想象]. Chinese Journal of Journalism and Communication, 42(1), 136-153. 

Flowerdew, J., & Richardson, J. E. (Eds.). (2017). The Routledge handbook of critical discourse studies. Taylor & Francis.

Huang, Q. (2023). The discursive construction of populist and misogynist nationalism: Digital vigilantism against unpatriotic intellectual women in China. Social Media+ Society, 9(2). 

Jones, R. H. (2012). Discourse analysis. Routledge.

Peng, A. Y. (2021). Neoliberal feminism, gender relations, and a feminized male ideal in China: A critical discourse analysis of Mimeng’s WeChat posts. Feminist Media Studies, 21(1), 115-131.

Peng, A. Y., Kuang, X., & Hou, J. (2022). Love NBA, hate BLM: Racism in China’s sports fandom. International Journal of Communication, 16, 3133-3153.

Sirulhaq, A., Yuwono, U., & Muta’ali, A. (2023). Why do we need a sociocognitive-CDA in hate speech studies? A corpus-based systematic review. Discourse & Society, 09579265221126599.

Wang, C. Y., & Chen, Z. (2023). From ‘motherland’ to ‘daddy state’: A genealogical analysis of the gender undertone in China's nationalist discourses. Nations and Nationalism, 29(2), 751-767.

Yin, J. (2007). The clash of rights: A critical analysis of news discourse on human rights in the United States and China. Critical Discourse Studies, 4(1), 75-94.

Zhang, C. (2017). The curious rise of the ‘white left’ as a Chinese internet insult. Open Democracy, 11, 88-115.

Zhang, C. (2020). Right-wing populism with Chinese characteristics? Identity, otherness and global imaginaries in debating world politics online. European journal of international relations, 26(1), 88-115.

Fan's

Baker, P., & McEnery, T. (2005). A corpus-based approach to discourses of refugees and asylum seekers in UN and newspaper texts. Journal of Language and Politics, 4(2), 197-226.

Bates, D. (2023). 'The jobs all go to foreigners': A critical discourse analysis of the Labour Party's 'left-wing' case for immigration controls. Critical Discourse Studies, 20(2), 183-199.

Chen, Y., & Gong, Q. (2023). Unpacking ‘baby man’ in Chinese social media: a feminist critical discourse analysis. Critical Discourse Studies, 1-18.

Hart, C. (2010). Critical discourse analysis and cognitive science: New perspectives on immigration discourse. Palgrave Macmillan UK.

KhosraviNik, M. (2010). The representation of refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants in British newspapers. Journal of Language and Politics, 9(1), 1-28.

Peng, A. Y., Wu, C., & Chen, M. (2022). Sportswomen under the Chinese male gaze: A feminist critical discourse analysis. Critical Discourse Studies, 1-18.

Reisigl, M., & Wodak, R. (2000). Discourse and discrimination: Rhetorics of racism and antisemitism. Taylor & Francis Group.