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Exposing the initial agenda of this paradigm and revealing its fundamental contradictions, The Nomadic Leviathan debunks it as a myth. Resurrecting the conquest theory, and reinforcing it with the idea of extrahuman transportation, this book places pastoralism at the origin of the state and civilization, and the Eurasian steppe at the center of human history; the political emerges as the primary and fundamental order defining the social and economic.
Exposing the initial agenda of this paradigm and revealing its fundamental contradictions, The Nomadic Leviathan debunks it as a myth. Resurrecting the conquest theory, and reinforcing it with the idea of extrahuman transportation, this book places pastoralism at the origin of the state and civilization, and the Eurasian steppe at the center of human history; the political emerges as the primary and fundamental order defining the social and economic.
The peer-reviewed series aims at furthering our understanding of Inner Asia and enabling us to better cope with the problems past, present and future connected with this region.
The series published an average of two volumes per year over the last 5 years.
Abstract
During China’s war with Japan from 1937 to 1945, the Communist-controlled border regions in north China saw an influx of progressive, patriotic youth from other parts of the country, bringing these new arrivals into contact with officials and army officers in the Communist power structure. Marriage was one potential outcome of such interactions, but while offering certain advantages it was often seen as problematic, with questions raised about the motives and methods of the parties involved. Given its sensitive nature, the subject of mate choice could only briefly be explored in literary works before an ideological clampdown was imposed in the late spring and summer of 1942. This article examines the key works that addressed the issue at the time and details the criticisms that followed their publication. It begins with a close reading of the relevant passage in “Sanbajie you gan” (Thoughts on March 8), the famous essay by Ding Ling (1904-86), and goes on to consider two stories by younger Yan’an authors, Ma Jia (1910-2004) and Mo Ye (1918-86), who broached the topics of mate choice and marriage shortly before and after Ding Ling wrote her essay. Together these works, published during the relatively liberal period leading up to the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art, reveal some critical fault lines within the revolutionary coalition. To this article is appended a full translation of Mo Ye’s story “Liping de fannao” (The sufferings of Liping), which vividly depicts a young woman’s struggle to reconcile her choice of marriage partner with her self-image as a progressive woman.
Abstract
Virtually all illustrations of the life of Confucius/Kongzi include a scene in which one of his parents performs a sacrifice on a hillside, and many versions also depict paranormal events associated with his birth. In most examples, the protagonist is the future sage’s young mother, Yan Zhengzai, but in a few cases she is joined or even replaced by his elderly father, Shuliang He. The variations among depictions of the events sometimes reflect different textual traditions, but social and cultural values also exert a significant influence on the pictorial treatments. As a case in point, this article analyzes a selection of Chinese examples dating from the fifteenth century to our own day, and Japanese examples from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Abstract
This study examines all the surviving examples of short prose pieces written in praise of embroidery depicting Buddhist objects of worship between circa 700 and 900. The process whereby they were transmitted to the present is traced wherever possible, and the main themes are indicated by means of the identification of recurrent vocabulary items. Typically, the embroideries described are said to have been created by women for the posthumous benefit of their family members, both male and female; the male writers involved, whose work was generally deemed to possess literary merit, were usually connected by family or other ties to the creators of the embroideries. One or two pieces that seem to be less typical are also discussed, though the restriction of the total size of the corpus to a score of pieces by a handful of writers makes the task of establishing the scope of the conventions observed difficult to determine. But as a genre in which men praised the cultural production of women these texts may merit further research.