Horizon Of History Research Articles

Modernist Visions Beyond the Horizon of History: The Theatricality of Bai Wei’s Rarely Staged Plays

Abstract: This article explores the theatricality of the works of Bai Wei 白薇 (1894–1987), one of the most prolific women playwrights in early twentieth century China. Her play scripts garnered huge popularity and were frequently reprinted, but were rarely staged. Due to the lack of staging opportunities, their unconventional modernist style, and the paucity of production records, these scripts have been largely deemed unproducible and low in theatricality by scholars and critics both now and then. Through a detailed production analysis of three aspects of Bai’s plays (acting, set design, and stage effects), I argue that Bai’s rarely staged scripts are embedded with rich theatrical intentions and implications. The correlation between the number of staging records and the plays’ intrinsic theatrical value is completely arbitrary, and Bai’s scripts envision a modernist theatre with artistic potentials ahead of her time.

TO LIVE AND DIE IN HISTORY

From what standpoint have the canonical philosophies of history looked at death? And, more particularly, at life and death, since these two “events” are intimately linked? According to what idea, norm and value, definition of human existence, have the philosophies of history comprehended historical events in their singularity? By relying on what signifiers has philosophical thinking sought to engage with singular catastrophes in human history? According to what signification have the philosophies of history grasped the singularity of the deaths occurring in historical catastrophes? According to what law have they provided a rationale for the mutilated lives in history, and in what manner have they sought to account for these in a general historical narrative? What meaning has determined the comprehension of death and informed the reconciliatory horizon of history (Hegel) beyond the “event” of death? What unified origin of the truth of history has death revealed thereby leading human existence to resolutely “free itself” (Heidegger)? While these questions already seek to demonstrate a contextualization of the manner in which philosophies of history have engaged with death – most notably, through readings of Hegel and Heidegger – they also attempt to furnish the background from which contemporary philosophy has undertaken a re-thinking of death in relation to history and to the singularity of historical events. Indeed, twentieth-century thinkers (we are here thinking principally of Levinas and Derrida, but could also add, despite the considerable differences of their philosophical thought: Rosenzweig, Benjamin, Adorno, Anders, Blanchot, Lyotard, Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy) have brought about a profound transformation in the tradition of our philosophical appropriation of death, particularly through the formulation of a renewed form of responsibility towards alterity, through enquiries into the limits of democracy and a reflection on the dangers and perils emanating from what has been named the planetary deployment of technology. We shall concentrate on the development of technology and how it has considerably modified our manner of posing the question of death in philosophy, as well as, and consequently, altered the status of living and dying without relying on the kind of justification and eschatological rationalization commonly found in traditional philosophies of history.

MODERNIZATION OF HISTORICAL SCIENCE IN INDEPENDENT KAZAKHSTAN

The article analyzes the development of historical studies in Kazakhstan in the period after the disintegration of the USSR. The article presents new approaches, achievements and shortcomings in the development of science, the activities of the main research centers and educational institutions, scientific discoveries that have expanded the horizons of history in Kazakhstan. It is shown that in the post-Soviet period, the historical science of Kazakhstan has gone through a difficult and ambiguous path of transformation. The nature of research has changed, which was expressed in methodological approaches and methods. In addition, historians were able to search for materials in the archives both within the country and abroad.

Horizons of History

Big is back across a wide range of historical fields. Many historians are stretching space, to create international, transnational and global histories. Others are expanding time, to pursue Big History, Deep History and the history of the Anthropocene. What explains this broadening of horizons? And what does it mean for the future of history? This article makes a case for history as a discipline of social and political transformation amid crises of global governance, rising inequality, and anthropogenic climate change.

The Subject of History: Historical Subjectivity and Historical Science

Abstract In this paper, I show how the phenomenological and hermeneutic traditions and method converge on their treatment of the historical subject. Thinkers from both traditions converge on the following thesis: that subjectivity is shaped by a historical worldview. Each tradition provides independent grounds and methodological approaches which provide accounts of how these worldviews are shaped, and thus how essentially historical subjective experience is molded. In the second part of this paper I argue that both traditions, although offering helpful ways of understanding the way history shapes subjectivity, go too far in their epistemic claims for the superiority of subjective over positivist or academic history. They propose that the historicity of subjective experience is unexpressed and therefore inexpressible in positivist or academic history. I propose that although the phenomenological-hermeneutic approach to historical subjectivity is both fruitful and valuable for understanding both history and human nature, it cannot and ought not replace academic or what I will call ‘critical’ history. By showing the importance of historicity, and the force of historical consciousness on our actions, philosophers of history in these traditions expose the epistemic and perhaps even ethical requirement to engage in a rigorous critical history, one which recognizes the importance of historical consciousness. Such critical history is necessary to move beyond the subjective horizon of history as experienced to understand how events shaped this historical horizon.

The Horizon of History and the Production of the “Strong Personality”

Etude de l'approche unitaire de l'histoire developpee par Nietzsche dans la seconde «Consideration inactuelle» intitulee «De l'utilite et de l'inclination de l'histoire pour la vie». Examinant les differentes methodes monumentale, antiquaire et critique de lecture de l'histoire utilisees par Nietzsche, l'A. souligne leur pertinence a l'egard de la vie et de l'horizon humain auxquels Nietzsche les subordonne comme a une loi universelle, delimitant la frontiere entre le moi et la culture, le moi et le passe, le moi et l'avenir

Journeys from the horizons of history: Text, trial and tales in the construction of narratives of pain

Journeys from the horizons of history: Text, trial and tales in the construction of narratives of pain

A new look at evolution: Marx, Teilhard de Chardin, Vernadsky

Abstract Three great thinkers Marx, Theilhard de Chardin and Vernadsky meditated about the future of mankind and attempted to look beyond the horizons of history. However their points of departure were quite different. For Marx the source of his thoughts about the future was his doctrine about the establishment and modification of forms of ownership. Telhard's analysis by contrast, was based on the idea of man as a special kind of phenomenon. It is man who has his own spiritual world, who was born of nature and is capable of changing the course of history. Vernadsky studied the evolution of the biosphere and the ever increasing intervention of man in the processes taking place in it. Early in the twentieth century he formulated the thesis that mankind was gradually becoming the principal geologenic force of our planet. Each different approach contained some elements of a modern “universal evolutionism” which is discussed and its historical roots revealed.

Mary in the Horizon of History

Mary in the Horizon of History

The Horizons of History

THE most familiar distinction in the meaning of history has become its most fundamental problem. History refers both to what has happened in the past and to the historian's account of it. Now in itself this ambiguity need notand for centuries did not-raise any momentous difficulties, for the prevalent attitude toward history has been embodied in a third definition which has operated as an effective synthesis of the first two. By this third definition history is the organized past, with events constituting the subject matter and the historian contributing the organization of them, whether narrative or analytical. In our times, however, this synthesis has been shredded. What was once a solution has now become our foremost problem, for the polar constituents of history as the organized past-that is, history as the past on the one hand and history as the historian's organization of it on the other-stand forth in their separate identities. Behind this dissolution of the historical unit are two different kinds of development. The first is the philosophical tendency which questions both the knowability of the past and the integrity of the historian's organizing faculty. This is the tendency which has stimulated the far-flung debate on historical relativism and has activated the large literature upon epistemology and upon values in history. But at the same time there has been a second, more practical, development at work to undermine the unity of history and historian. Essentially, this has consisted in the burgeoning of history as past events beyond the capacity of the historian to organize it. This growing misproportion is not simply a physical matter of the crushing accumulation of evidence. More profoundly, it involves the addition of different kinds of evidence, with which the historian is only marginally or fortuitously equipped to deal. The very horizons of history are expanding, and as they do, the geography of history changes. The traditional field of history becomes one of many fields, and the traditional implements of the historian become cor-