The nation-state is as much a narrative and ideational project as it is a spatial-territorial one. In the People’s Republic of China, Xi Jinping’s calls to “revitalize” China’s traditional culture, “Sinicize” religions, and “rejuvenate” the Chinese nation reflect a broader effort to reframe the national narrative and strengthen Communist Party control. This article examines the implications of Xi’s revisionist nationalism for China’s fifty-five minority nationalities, in particular the Hui, one of ten Muslim minority groups. It does so by analyzing the rise and demise of World Muslim City (WMC), a development project in western China that mobilized Hui identity and traditions for economic and diplomatic purposes. WMC was facilitated by a multicultural national narrative and by a fragmented authoritarian political system that for many years fostered policy improvisation, and deviation, at the local level. Its suspension underscores the increasingly anti-Muslim, anti-religious tenor of PRC policy, as evidenced by the Sinicization campaign that was a proximate cause of WMC’s demise. Its demise also highlights ongoing efforts to reassert CCP control over government, business, and the Party’s own rank-and-file. The fate of WMC furthermore reveals the spatial dimensions of Sinicization, and of Chinese cultural governance past and present. To paraphrase theorist Henri Lefebvre, Sinicization entails “spatial practices” that impose Xi-ist “representations of space” on lived “representational spaces,” from mosques and businesses to theme parks and luxury resorts.
Examining the author’s own experiences of narcotics addiction reveals certain aspects of the addicted mentality that have strong ethical valence. In general, this shows that addiction is not a state fundamentally characterized by lack. The rudiments of this position are found in some contemporary philosophy of addiction; also, it is contrasted with a common widely held mistaken view. Addiction should instead be understood in continuity with and as illuminating the nature of human personhood and subjectivity. Under a phenomenology specific to the author’s experience, addiction appears as a mode of experience that has an unmanageable overflow of narratives created as discourses concerning people, events, thoughts, and feelings; narratives embodied in assemblages of objects; and narratives appearing as mental images. These considerations suggest that pre-reflective connection to the world can be profoundly illuminative but also can isolate is from the world and, further, that our ethical values form from within our lives and not as an artificial addition. Our historical, narrative self-understanding has existential and moral import. Thus, addiction by its extremity exemplifies the ceaseless ethical activity of personhood.
This article analyses the role of plants in three well publicised Nordic climate fictions for young adults: Memories of Water by Emmi Itäranta, originally published in 2012, The World According to Anna (2013) by Jostein Gaarder, and Bouvetøya 2052 (2015) by Lars Mæhle. Departing from the wider scholarly field of ecocritical theory, the study draws on the developing field of cultural plant studies to examine the role allocated to plants in these fictional depictions of climate change. The analysis is based on a quantitative counting and sorting of all references to plants in the analysed fictions. The aim of this exercise is to contribute to theoretical reflections on climate fiction (cli-fi) as a literary form and to say something about the kind of literary thinking with, and about, plants that currently informs (Nordic) climate fiction for young adults, given that plants are highly important to the global climate. While broadening the discussion of climate change fiction to include a consideration of plants, the article further contributes to theoretical reflection on cli-fi through its Nordic perspective. In dialogue with Adam Trexler’s work on Anglo-American climate change fiction, the Nordic fictions examined here display both similar and diverging patterns of engagement with climate change, something that highlights the importance of reflecting on the genre with reference to a wide spectrum of local literatures.
危险品化学品经营许可证（带存储）