Sinkwan Cheng

This essay argues that linear time is not inherently colonialistic; rather, its politics emerge from its interactions with the power structures of its era. I explore the progressive roles of linear time in Christianity, the Enlightenment, and Marxism within key _historical_ contexts, highlighting also the diversity of linear temporalities. This diversity enabled Marx to position his “Revolution" against both Christian and Enlightenment temporalities while drawing from them. Key points include: • All three linear temporalities challenged social hierarchies—for instance, by redefining human identity on their future potential rather than birth origin. • The Enlightenment’s homogeneous time was countered by Christianity on original sin and Marx on capitalism. Christianity maintained grace as humanity’s only salvation from cycles of “vanities"; Marx advocated for proletariat revolution to break capitalist alienation’s vicious cycles. Building on the (dis-)continuities among these temporalities, I show how Marx initiated an alternative modernity, radically heterogenizing (the temporality of) modernity before post-structuralism. Christianity emphasized grace as humanity’s salvation from cyclical time, while Marx advocated for proletariat revolution to escape the cycles of alienation. I illustrate the (dis-)continuities among these temporalities to show how Marx initiated an alternative modernity, significantly contributing to the heterogenization of modernity before post-structuralism.

My essay begins by analyzing how Hegel and Honneth’stheory of recognition would seem to lend support to insurgentterrorists’ struggle for the right to self-determination. Insurgentterrorism often looks like a concretization of what Honneth calls themoral protest of the oppressed launched against the dominatingpowers. Insurgent terrorism also bears affinity to the politics ofrecognition in the sense that it challenges the legitimacy and authorityof the forces owned by the state, and seeks to gain public recognitioninstead for the legitimacy of their own cause. Precisely because whatmatters uppermost to terrorists is the gaining of recognition for theircause as just, terrorists are eager to seize the mass media as a meansof spreading their ideas. My essay will end, however, by pointing outmajor differences between insurgent terrorism on the one hand, andHegel and Honneth on the other.

An optical scalpel and optical tweezer have been combined to perform intracellular microsurgery and micromanipulation in vivo. When only laser microsurgery was performed on metaphase chromosomes, the dissected sister chromatid fragments drifted off to either the side of the spindle or completely off the spindle. At anaphase the fragments separated and the two arms generally moved to their respective daughter cells. When the chromosome arm was cut during anaphase A and B, the distal chromosome fragment separated from the rest of the chromosome and moved toward the pole, following the proximal chromosome fragment. Distal chromosome fragments laser-dissected during metaphase were held together throughout anaphase using the optical trap. Optical trapping of dissected chromosome fragments during anaphase A and B inhibited movement of the chromosome fragment to its pole. As a result, the trapped chromosome fragments were incorporated into the opposite daughter cell, lost in the cleavage furrow during cytokinesis, or eventually incorporated into the correct daughter cell. These results indicate that optical traps are effective in holding laser-dissected chromosome fragments throughout mitosis. This new tool should be useful for studies on chromosome movement and cell genetics. © 1993 Academic Press. All rights reserved.

Drawing from Koselleck’s Begriffsgeschichte, this paper explores how and why China’s linguistic revolutions took place alongside the country’s quest for scientific, economic and political modernity. When discussing the contributions made by translation of Western texts to China’s modernization process, scholars have been focusing on content issues. They have overlooked how translation, _through effecting changes in the Chinese language, has transformed the Chinese people’s Weltanschauung at a fundamental level—only with that transformation did China become truly ready for modernity_. For example, tenses did not exist in classical Chinese. But given the prominence of the temporal dimension in Western languages, time markers were gradually invented for the Chinese language as intellectuals engaged in translations of Western texts. These time markers brought a linear concept of time to Chinese society, and only with that new way of experiencing time could “the modern” become conceivable for the Chinese people. I examine how the _time consciousness gave the Chinese a new concept of the future and laid the path for China’s modernization_, and elaborate the subject at hand via an analysis of two waves of temporalization of the Chinese language.

Drawing on Lacanian theory, deconstruction, cultural studies, philosophies of law, and reconsiderations of post-colonialism, my dissertation performs close readings of texts by Byron, Yeats, and Forster in order to examine the ambiguous relationship between justice and the law in both existentialist and colonialist settings. I highlight the discrepancies between justice and law as they are formulated by these three authors by tracing the tension between the law of desire and the law of representation in both the private sphere and the social-political arena. ;I divide my dissertation into an introduction and three long chapters. My introduction sets up the theoretical framework underpinning my reading by contrasting the two laws mentioned above. Articulated spacially, the law of representation manifests itself in a hierarchy of signifiers, each of which derives its identity and power from being the representative of a higher signifier, until finally, all signifiers on the chain refer back to an Absolute posited as the telos of the sequence of representations. This Hegelian bureaucratic structure reduces individuals to mere representations of representations of the Absolute. This totalitarian law meets powerful resistance in Lacan's law of desire that radically singularizes each subject as absolutely unrepresentable and non-exchangeable. The conflict between the two laws is what I set out to examine in three close studies of Byron's Manfred. Yeats's On Baile's Strand, and Forster's A Passage to India. I have chosen these particular texts because they allow me to progress from an analysis, first, of an existentialist individual challenging divine and social laws of representation, to the agon between a higher and an inferior king upholding two different laws, and, finally, to the struggle between two nations and races in the context of colonialism--a struggle in the cause of which the law of representation imposed by the Master upon the Slave turns back on itself. As I move from the first to the second half of my dissertation, my interrogation of the coercive force exercised by the law of representation in the private sphere builds the foundation for my contention that representational jurisprudence makes ready allowance for the practice of colonialism.

This paper adopts a transnational approach to a global issue. I bring together two different traditions—Derridean deconstruction and Buddhism--to address world conflicts as well as intra- and inter-national calls for apology in the global age. Derrida and Buddhism are brought together for good reasons. The “cosmos” underpins both kinds of praxis. The kosmos-polis is the context which prompts Derrida to interrogate forgiveness anew; Buddhism has telling insights to offer on the cosmic effects of karma which could help move us beyond global conflicts. Both deconstruction and Buddhism are radically anti-essentialist; both destabilize concepts of “self” and substance; both push aporetic thinking to the extreme where language, concepts, and ontology deconstruct themselves. Both seem to hold out new alternatives for world peace where existing “institutions of forgiveness” have failed. My examination of these similarities however, are linked up with my analyses of their critical differences. Central to the divergence I demonstrate between Derrida and Buddhism is how the two tackle the Abgrund of forgiveness. Derrida rethinks forgiveness in the groundless ground of “forgiving the unforgivable.” In Buddhism, the groundless ground (samsara-nirvana) of forgiveness can be traced to the “forgoing of the self.” One cannot give up one’s claim if one cannot give up (parts of) the self in the first place. In contrast to Derrida’s “impossible but necessary” forgiveness, Buddhism offers a “possible but unnecessary” forgiveness. For Derrida, forgiveness necessitates forgiving the unforgivable. For Buddhism, nothing is unforgivable. By giving up the self, there is no victim, no aggressor, and no sin to forgive in the first place.