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It’s Christmas Eve and we’ll be going away next week (Sanya and then Hong Kong) so let me wish both of my readers and my Mom a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. (If you miss me, you can check out this week’s Sinica Podcast, Kaiser Kuo, David Moser and I discuss “The Long Arm of History.”) Until 2011, 圣诞节快乐! Um, Summer Palace? Lama Temple? Temple of Heaven? I’m not saying the Beijing Municipal Government are paragons of historic preservation, but Jesus…open a f—–g copy of Fodors why don’t you? Students in my Late Imperial China class are familiar with Shen Fu, the writer and artist who wrote “Six Records” about a life of financial hardship, troublesome family, his loving relationship with his talented and dutiful wife Yun, and some of the indignities of trying to cling to elite status in the increasingly complex society of late 18th/early 19th-century China. The problem though is that of the six records, only four are extant…until now, and will wonders never cease, it just so happens that Shen Fu turns out to be an expert witness in the ongoing debate between China and Japan over the status of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. From China.org/China Daily: A hand-written document believed to be of a missing part of a Chinese literary work which showed the Diaoyu Islands as being part of China, was auctioned for 13.25 million yuan (2 million U.S.dollars) Monday in Beijing. The item was hand-written by Qian Meixi, a calligrapher in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). It is believed to be a copy of the fifth chapter of “the Six Chapters of a Floating Life” of Shen Fu, a writer and painter also from the Qing Dynasty. This island chain, once a tributary of Taxi card photo taken by my student Jaimie Pham this past week. The lowest I've ever seen was 8000-something. This is like the holy grail of low taxi numbers, not sure it can be beaten. Asked Jaimie about the driver and she replied, "He was kind of old and a little grumpy." Given how long he's been at it, I wouldn't be surprised. (I've intentionally blurred out the driver's name and photo) |
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Copyright © 2012 Jottings from the Granite Studio - All Rights Reserved
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Criticism, Critical Analysis, and Hurt Feelings
Reading about a new book by Stefan Collini: That’s Offensive! Criticism, Identity, Respect.
Professor Collini is a professor of intellectual history and English literature at Cambridge University, and in this, his latest book, he looks at the very meaning of criticism, what it means to criticize, and distinguishes the most common understanding of the term (“fault-finding”) with it’s more academic usage, that is the close analysis of a particular subject or text.
Scott McLemee’s short review for Inside Higher Education notes, quite correctly, that in an increasingly poisonous and rancorous atmosphere for the public debate of important topics, understanding the goals and rhetoric of criticism is an important first step to overcoming the resistance to listening to a critical analysis of our own cherished ideas and views. (In the Levensonian language of Modern China, not to let ideas about “what is mine” prevent me from hearing “what might be true.”)
Of course, thinking of this through Levenson, it’s hard not to recall the rather prickly response on the part of the Modern Chinese state (and their supporters and advocates) to recent criticism of their handling of the Nobel Prize. In a recent Global Times masterpiece with the whimsical title of