How the sublime became "now": time, modernity and aesthetics in Lyotard's rewriting of Kant

Writing in the late 1980s, Nancy gives as examples of the "recent fashion for the sublime" not only the theoreticians of Paris, but the artists of Los Angeles, Berlin, Rome, and Tokyo. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the sublime may of course no longer seem quite so "now" as it did back then, whether in North America, Europe, or Japan. Simon Critchley, for one, has suggested that, at least as regards the issue of its conceptual coupling to "postmodernism," the "debate" concerning the sublime "has become rather stale and the discussion has moved on." Nonetheless, if that debate has indeed "moved on"-and thankfully so-it is not without its remainder, particularly in the very contemporary context of a resurgence of interest in explicitly philosophical accounts of art, in the wake of an emergent critique of cultural studies and of the apparent waning of poststructuralism's influence-a resurgence that has led to a certain "return to aesthetics" in recent Continental philosophy and to the work of Kant, Schelling, and the German Romantics. Moreover, as Nancy's precise formulations suggest, the "fashion" [mode] through which the sublime "offers itself"-as "a break within or from aesthetics"-clearly contains a significance that Critchley's more straightforward narration of shifts in theoretical chic cannot encompass. At stake in this would be the relation between the mode of fashion and art's "destiny" within modernity itself, from the late eighteenth century onwards. Such a conception of art's "destiny," as inextricably linked to that of the sublime, is not unique to recent French theory. In a brief passage in Aesthetic Theory, Adorno also suggests that the "sublime, which Kant reserved exclusively for nature, later became the historical constituent of art itself.... [I]n a subtle way, after the fall of formal beauty, the sublime was the only aesthetic idea left to modernism." As such, although the term has its classical origins in Longinus, its historical character for "us," both Nancy and Adorno argue, associates it specifically with the emergence of the modern. As another philosopher states: "It is around this name [of the sublime] that the destiny of classical poetics was hazarded and lost; it is in this name that ... romanticism, in other words, modernity, triumphed."

Nonconformity and the labour movement

Until the 1960s it was a commonplace that the Free Churches had somehow served as a cradle of the early labour movement. Going back to the eighteenth century, this looks at how far this commonplace applies to the emergence of the labour movement in the late nineteenth century and traces the relationship through to the late twentieth century.

A quarter century of creative chaos: Xinhua News Agency 1980-2005

Chinese media in the context of China's rise have puzzled many scholars who used to understand media and communications phenomena by employing the theories generated from a few affluent Western democracies, notably the US. As a result, a complex but more accurate picture has been ignored. Under numerous theoretical polarizations, the contemporary social world seems little changed but polarized. This thesis aims to propose a different approach endeavoring to 'de-Westernize' or 'internationalize' media and communications studies. As a starting point, this study focuses on the globalization debate, Chinese media and news agency studies. The thesis has investigated the Chinese news agency, Xinhua, by employing Fuzzy Logic which captures the complexity of the change in the agency's business structure and journalistic practices over last 25 years. The change is also examined by scrutinizing the role of journalists in the interrelations of Xinhua with its news sources, media and nonmedia clients, and other news agencies. A combination of archive study and 94 semistructured interviews conducted in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Macau and London provides an inclusive account of the Chinese news institution. The key research findings drawn from the empirical research into Xinhua have justified the central argument of this thesis: Crisp Logic or the 'either/or' approach has failed to explain the dynamics of the change to the media system based in a 'non-Western' society. The numerous theoretical polarizations generated by Crisp Logic to a large extent have distorted the understanding of the contemporary social world by polarizing it. Fuzzy Logic serves better(though it is not the only choice)than the traditional approach to reflect on the set of variables existing between the two poles created by Crisp Logic. This thesis is the first doctorate research in the UK and other English-speaking countries to investigate Xinhua by 'going inside' the news institution's headquarters, local branches and overseas bureaus. This is the first comprehensive academic study of the agency, which not only examines the agency's recent change in business structure and journalistic practices, but also provides a historical account of the agency and its relationship with other social institutions. This is the first media study that employs Fuzzy Logic to understand the globalization theory, Chinese media and news agencies.