My lifetime involvement with China includes study of the archaic culture through their classical texts, as well as concern for interpreting Chinese culture in our contemporary world.
In Die verspätete Nation, a careful treatment, conducted from the inside, of developments and cha... more In Die verspätete Nation, a careful treatment, conducted from the inside, of developments and challenges of German culture, was presented to map out a landscape of cultural change and plot lines of stress and openings to new accomplishments. The terms and images are laid out in a positional network, so one senses the fateful weightings of each node upon the entire topography’s balance as it unfolded over the time of the tradition—less a representation of historical events than a simulacrum of cultural effects, one of which was to develop ideas of culture, of the “hidden this-side” of participants in a worldview, of race and the biological and economic carriers of the cultural superstructures. But Plessner shows it is not race but dispositif that roots the cultures. The guided exploration of the regional culture shows how its operative concept, culture, was fostered and applied. In order to gain a perspective on this circular but informative circumstance, this article contrasts the European situation with that of China, to compare its civilizational foundations and self-understandings, with Plessner’s analysis of Germany.
This paper points to a convergence of formal and rhetorical features in ancient Chinese cosmobiol... more This paper points to a convergence of formal and rhetorical features in ancient Chinese cosmobiological theory, within which is developed a view of the inner life of human emotions. Inasmuch as there is an extensive classical tradition considering the emotions in conjunction with music, one can justify a structural analysis of medical texts treating disorder in emotional life, since emotions, musical interpretation and structural analysis all deal with systems interrelated in a transformational space largely independent of objective reference and propositional coordination. Following a section of ethnolinguistic sketches to provide grounds in some phenomenological worlds recognized by Chinese people, there is a textual analysis of a classical medical source for the treatment of emotional distress. Through close examination of the compositional schema of this text, it can be demonstrated that the standard categories of correlative cosmology are arrayed within a more comprehensive structural order.
ABSTRACT For the first time, this volume brings to the study of China the theoretical concerns an... more ABSTRACT For the first time, this volume brings to the study of China the theoretical concerns and methods of contemporary critical cultural studies. Written by historians, art historians, anthropologists, and literary critics who came of age after the People's Republic resumed scholarly ties with the United States, these essays yield valuable new insights not only for China studies but also, by extension, for non-Asian cultural criticism. Contributors investigate problems of bodiliness, engendered subjectivities, and discourses of power through a variety of sources that include written texts, paintings, buildings, interviews, and observations. Taken together, the essays show that bodies in China have been classified, represented, discussed, ritualized, gendered, and eroticized in ways as rich and multiple as those described in critical histories of the West. Silk robes, rocks, winds, gestures of bowing, yin yang hierarchies, and cross-dressing have helped create experiences of the body specific to Chinese historical life. By pointing to multiple examples of reimagining subjectivity and renegotiating power, the essays encourage scholars to avoid making broad generalizations about China and to rethink traditional notions of power, subject, and bodiliness in light of actual Chinese practices. Body, Subject, and Power in China is at once an example of the changing face of China studies and a work of importance to the entire discipline of cultural studies.
In another few days, a manuscript of a large book now entitled Ancient Thought in the Mega-Text o... more In another few days, a manuscript of a large book now entitled Ancient Thought in the Mega-Text of Zhou Changes, Analects, and Zuo zhuan will be submitted to Cambria Press who have kindly agreed in principle to consider it for publication alongside the first book also appearing by this same, very competent publisher (The Classic of Changes in Cultural Context: A Textual Archaeology of the Yi jing, 2012). For this reason I was advised to remove all sample chapters from this manuscript, which accordingly, have recently all been taken down. As well, for technical reasons I have been advised to remove anything remotely similar to content of the manuscript, and that is why “A Heavy Load of Discovery” will now have to be taken off this list, and I apologize for the inconvenience.
Perhaps replacing these, here is a paper I wrote for The IVth International Plessner Conference at the Erasmus University Rotterdam in 2009; unfortunately, the northern European professors were greatly troubled by this approach and, failing to meet the high standards of its cohort, it was excised from the final compilation (Plessner's Philosophical Anthropology. Perspectives and Prospects [Amsterdam University Press, 2014] along with some other efforts I contributed to that august assembly. So I offer it tentatively and apologetically as a failed attempt at expression, but perhaps the monstrous anomaly of its existence will provide some with guideposts regarding what not to do as one experiments in an academic setting.
In Die verspätete Nation, a careful treatment, conducted from the inside, of developments and cha... more In Die verspätete Nation, a careful treatment, conducted from the inside, of developments and challenges of German culture, was presented to map out a landscape of cultural change and plot lines of stress and openings to new accomplishments. The terms and images are laid out in a positional network, so one senses the fateful weightings of each node upon the entire topography’s balance as it unfolded over the time of the tradition—less a representation of historical events than a simulacrum of cultural effects, one of which was to develop ideas of culture, of the “hidden this-side” of participants in a worldview, of race and the biological and economic carriers of the cultural superstructures. But Plessner shows it is not race but dispositif that roots the cultures. The guided exploration of the regional culture shows how its operative concept, culture, was fostered and applied. In order to gain a perspective on this circular but informative circumstance, this article contrasts the European situation with that of China, to compare its civilizational foundations and self-understandings, with Plessner’s analysis of Germany.
This paper points to a convergence of formal and rhetorical features in ancient Chinese cosmobiol... more This paper points to a convergence of formal and rhetorical features in ancient Chinese cosmobiological theory, within which is developed a view of the inner life of human emotions. Inasmuch as there is an extensive classical tradition considering the emotions in conjunction with music, one can justify a structural analysis of medical texts treating disorder in emotional life, since emotions, musical interpretation and structural analysis all deal with systems interrelated in a transformational space largely independent of objective reference and propositional coordination. Following a section of ethnolinguistic sketches to provide grounds in some phenomenological worlds recognized by Chinese people, there is a textual analysis of a classical medical source for the treatment of emotional distress. Through close examination of the compositional schema of this text, it can be demonstrated that the standard categories of correlative cosmology are arrayed within a more comprehensive structural order.
ABSTRACT For the first time, this volume brings to the study of China the theoretical concerns an... more ABSTRACT For the first time, this volume brings to the study of China the theoretical concerns and methods of contemporary critical cultural studies. Written by historians, art historians, anthropologists, and literary critics who came of age after the People's Republic resumed scholarly ties with the United States, these essays yield valuable new insights not only for China studies but also, by extension, for non-Asian cultural criticism. Contributors investigate problems of bodiliness, engendered subjectivities, and discourses of power through a variety of sources that include written texts, paintings, buildings, interviews, and observations. Taken together, the essays show that bodies in China have been classified, represented, discussed, ritualized, gendered, and eroticized in ways as rich and multiple as those described in critical histories of the West. Silk robes, rocks, winds, gestures of bowing, yin yang hierarchies, and cross-dressing have helped create experiences of the body specific to Chinese historical life. By pointing to multiple examples of reimagining subjectivity and renegotiating power, the essays encourage scholars to avoid making broad generalizations about China and to rethink traditional notions of power, subject, and bodiliness in light of actual Chinese practices. Body, Subject, and Power in China is at once an example of the changing face of China studies and a work of importance to the entire discipline of cultural studies.
In another few days, a manuscript of a large book now entitled Ancient Thought in the Mega-Text o... more In another few days, a manuscript of a large book now entitled Ancient Thought in the Mega-Text of Zhou Changes, Analects, and Zuo zhuan will be submitted to Cambria Press who have kindly agreed in principle to consider it for publication alongside the first book also appearing by this same, very competent publisher (The Classic of Changes in Cultural Context: A Textual Archaeology of the Yi jing, 2012). For this reason I was advised to remove all sample chapters from this manuscript, which accordingly, have recently all been taken down. As well, for technical reasons I have been advised to remove anything remotely similar to content of the manuscript, and that is why “A Heavy Load of Discovery” will now have to be taken off this list, and I apologize for the inconvenience.
Perhaps replacing these, here is a paper I wrote for The IVth International Plessner Conference at the Erasmus University Rotterdam in 2009; unfortunately, the northern European professors were greatly troubled by this approach and, failing to meet the high standards of its cohort, it was excised from the final compilation (Plessner's Philosophical Anthropology. Perspectives and Prospects [Amsterdam University Press, 2014] along with some other efforts I contributed to that august assembly. So I offer it tentatively and apologetically as a failed attempt at expression, but perhaps the monstrous anomaly of its existence will provide some with guideposts regarding what not to do as one experiments in an academic setting.
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Papers by Scott Davis
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Perhaps replacing these, here is a paper I wrote for The IVth International Plessner Conference at the Erasmus University Rotterdam in 2009; unfortunately, the northern European professors were greatly troubled by this approach and, failing to meet the high standards of its cohort, it was excised from the final compilation (Plessner's Philosophical Anthropology. Perspectives and Prospects [Amsterdam University Press, 2014] along with some other efforts I contributed to that august assembly. So I offer it tentatively and apologetically as a failed attempt at expression, but perhaps the monstrous anomaly of its existence will provide some with guideposts regarding what not to do as one experiments in an academic setting.
Perhaps replacing these, here is a paper I wrote for The IVth International Plessner Conference at the Erasmus University Rotterdam in 2009; unfortunately, the northern European professors were greatly troubled by this approach and, failing to meet the high standards of its cohort, it was excised from the final compilation (Plessner's Philosophical Anthropology. Perspectives and Prospects [Amsterdam University Press, 2014] along with some other efforts I contributed to that august assembly. So I offer it tentatively and apologetically as a failed attempt at expression, but perhaps the monstrous anomaly of its existence will provide some with guideposts regarding what not to do as one experiments in an academic setting.