This public invited lecture was given by Jana Rošker in December 2012 at the Department of East Asian studies at the Vienna University in Austria. The lecturer deals with the idea of harmonious society which represents the core of contemporary social ideologies in the P. R. China. This idea has been illuminated from three different angels, namely through the analysis of official state interpretations of the concept of harmony (he or hexie), through the analysis of classical Confucian explanations of this concept, as well as through the analysis of its Modern Confucian interpretations. The authoress concludes that the official interpretation, written by the theoreticians from the P.R. China mainly follows Xunzi’s classical elaboration of this concept which stands in the legalist tradition and implies autocratic elements, whereas Taiwanese Modern Confucian explanations are mainly focused on the Mencianist (i.e. more egalitarian) stream of classical Confucian thought. In her lecture, jana Rošker has clearly shown that we cannot understand the construction of contemporary ideologies in the P.R. China without being aware of their traditional intellectual and historiographic backgrounds.
B.04 Guest lecture
COBISS.SI-ID: 50678370In October 2012, Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik has given a five days set of invited guest lectures at the department of East Asian studies at Commenius University in Bratislava in the framework of the EU exchange program Erasmus. The present lecture represents a part of this scope. The lecture scope was dedicated to the investigations of the mural art from the Han Dynasty (206 B.C. – 220). Han tombs as historical, social and cultural peculiarities represent a record of this period and the social structure of the time. It offers the possibility of reconstructing the concrete technological achievements as well as the more abstract-philosophical and other spiritual and cosmologic values. The main reason which stood behind this unusual type of building in the society of that time was surely the ever present and widespread belief in the independent existence of the soul, idealized as possessing the same wishes and yearnings as the living representatives of the human world. The desire to transcend human fugacity in the form of the soul’s life after death resulted in building sepulchral places and equipping them with numerous objects the deceased might need in the world unknown to the living man. The work of archaeologists today who continuously unearth newly discovered ancient tombs thus offers us progressive insight into earlier social activities and technological achievements. At the same time it enables a thorough understanding of the spiritual yearnings of that time, their understanding of philosophical views and natural processes and not the least, of the activity of the whole universe that is the central topic of present lectures. The purpose of the lectures was to connect individual aspects of the traditional cosmologic system of the Han Dynasty with different material elements of the tomb structure.
B.05 Guest lecturer at an institute/university
COBISS.SI-ID: 50128738In May 2012, Jana Rošker has given a five days set of invited guest lectures at the department of East Asian studies at Commenius University in Bratislava in the framework of the EU exchange program Erasmus. The present lecture represents a part of this scope. In this lecture, she followed the presumption, according to which current problems connected to the urgent need to re-conceptualize the academic field of East Asian studies are linked to the fact that these disciplines have not yet elaborated a general, unified and coherent system of collecting, processing and transmitting knowledge. Thus, a search for a specific sinological methodology belongs to the most important tasks of contemporary Asian studies. The foundations of modern scientific methodologies are rooted in the conceptual framework which has been established within the prevailing currents of “Western” philosophies, epistemologies and theories of science. In the course of intellectual history, this basic framework has developed within a unified and inherent network of the dominant theoretical streams of European and, later, Euro-America discourses. Thus, it is not coincidental that current philosophical studies in East Asia are also focused upon the search for new methodologies which could enable researchers to grasp the specific features of traditional Asian theoretical discourses, especially in the field of humanities and social sciences. Because this search for the establishment of new methodologies has clearly shown that concepts and categories cannot be simply transferred from one socio-cultural context to another, a constructive dialogue between Euro-American and Asian scientific discourses requires a theoretic discipline which is able to “translate” the concepts and categories in question. Such “translations” cannot be understood in the sense of merely linguistic impeccable transferring of notions, but also – and primarily - in the sense of conceptual or discursive translations. Methods that are needed for such discursive translations are not part of the methodological systems of any particular other discipline. They represent a foundation of new, specific methodologies that could represent a foundation of contemporary Chinese studies.
B.05 Guest lecturer at an institute/university
COBISS.SI-ID: 51282274The starting-point of the radio interview which aimed to introduce the topic under question to a broader Slovenian public, is Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik’s research of the tombs of the Chinese Han dynasty (206 B.C. - 220 A.D.); of the traditional Chinese cosmological system and of the world view as can be found in the architecture of the tombs, in the arrangement of their places and in their art, all of them closely linked with burying the members of high social class. The research materials were tombs with mural paintings as well as literary sources, according to which a reconsideration of the iconographic material closely connected with the architectural structure has been made. Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik introduced the analysis of an individual grave structure beyond the limitations of individual disciplines and rather than separated its parts joined them into an integrity of cultural, social, spiritual and cosmological picture of grave structures. Simultaneously, she supposed a link between the architectural and painting elements and explained the verification of the hypothesis which supposed the reflection of the spiritual world and of the entire Chinese traditional cosmological system in the architecture and in the art design of the tombs of the Chinese Han period. She described the interior of the tombs with paintings and revealed that mural scenes not only represented an aspiration for embellishment, but also had a much more profound meaning: together with the construction of the grave chamber and other artistic burial objects they represented the entire cosmos - thus the soul would be able to attain immortality in the ever changing but never ending cosmos.
F.02 Acquisition of new scientific knowledge
COBISS.SI-ID: 50309730At the round table which took place at the Faculty of Arts, on October 25, 2012, Mitja Saje has given a lecture concerning Asian production mode and the problems how to define social formations in the case of China. Prof. Ludvik Čarni was the first in Slovenia dealing with Asian production mode exposing the ideas of early Marxists concerning Asian production mode as well as introducing and critically evaluating the debates on this topic in 20th Century mainly in the Soviet Union. The problem covers the historical placement of this specific production mode regarding the Marxist time sequence of production modes as well as a more precise definition of typical relations defining the main characteristics of Asian production mode. The problem appeared with Marx stating this formulation, when he came to the conclusion that Asian societies didn’t necessary follow the time sequence of development, which he elaborated on the model of European societies. Due to poor knowledge about historic development of Asian societies Marks didn’t make a precise definition of Asian production mode, but only proposed it as a possibility, which could be further elaborated later. Among Marxist circles predominantly in Soviet Union this idea aroused a vivid discussion, which was on one side burdened with over-dogmatic and rigid views and on the other side it was still lacking comprehensive knowledge of historic social circumstances in Asia, so the discussion resulted in oversimplifications, because they didn’t distinguished the differences between social development in so different civilisations as India, China, Japan, or Muslim countries. This led to simplifications on the basis of some characteristics one or some other Asian society trying to elaborate a common model of development, which should fit into theoretical requirements. In my lecture I analysed such dilemmas and demonstrated the unsustainability of such generalisations in the case of Chinese social development, which is very specific and does not fit into the accepted Marxist theoretical model of the normal time sequence of social formations. Further I exposed the practical difficulties which are facing Chinese Marxist historians when, upon political requests, they are trying to place the different Chinese historic social situations into rigid theoretical frames demanded by the Marxist doctrine.
B.04 Guest lecture
COBISS.SI-ID: 50239842