Sung Kim

This study explores the act of giving, a topic underexplored in semiotic research. To develop a semiotic perspective on gift-giving, it investigates the “donation of the century,” an unprecedented contribution of 23,000 items by the late Samsung Group chairman Lee Kun-hee to South Korea’s national and public museums, which demonstrates how donation transcends material exchange and carries symbolic, social, and cultural significance. Based on actor-network theory, the study analyses the complex networks of donation. It challenges the traditional human-centric perspective framing donation solely as the actions of donors or heirs, rather revealing it as the outcome of intricate and dynamic interactions between human and non-human actors, including laws, artefacts, and recipient institutions. This study recognizes musealization as a process that creates new meanings and knowledge through material-semiotic interactions and that a collection’s defining characteristic lies in its transmissibility. Accordingly, the study highlights how the musealization of the donated collection – grounded in the materiality of artefacts – fosters new relationships and redefines the collection as “dynamic national treasures.” This study presents an exemplary case of art donation, exploring its semiotic, epistemological, and ontological dimensions and offering insights into the dynamics and significance of gift-giving in contemporary society.

This paper analyzes the ‘Theory of Inverse Numbers’ that appears in Chapter 3 of the “Shuogua zhuan” 說卦傳 in the I Ching and seeks to apply the findings to the Yi studies of Cheng Yi. The Yi studies of Shao Yong, Zhu Xi, and Cheng Yi are generally explained in the categories of Xiangshu(Image-Number) Yi studies and Yili(Meaning-Principle) Yi studies. However, upon analyzing the ‘Theory of Inverse Numbers’ as a theory representing numbers of principles, it is evident that the framework of this theory is also reflected in Cheng Yi’s Yi studies. The analysis of the ‘Theory of Inverse Numbers’ was conducted through the interpretations of Shao Yong and Zhu Xi, proposing the concept of the ‘Theory of Inverse Numbers’ as a Yi interpretation framework that accounts for what has already occurred [yisheng 已生] and what has not yet occurred [weisheng 未生]. By applying the Yi interpretation framework of what has arisen and what has not, which was developed through the explanations of Shao Yong and Zhu Xi, to Cheng Yi’s Yi studies, it is revealed that even though Cheng Yi does not directly mention Chapter 3 of the “Shuogua zhuan,” the narrative framework of Yichuan Yizhuan 伊川易傳 can be well elucidated by the ‘Theory of Inverse Numbers.’ Accordingly, it suggests that viewing Cheng Yi’s Yi studies merely as a dichotomy of meaning-principle and image-number is limited, and that the concept of Xiangshu Yi is inherent in Cheng Yi’s Yi studies. In other words, the ‘Theory of Inverse Numbers’ as a theory of principle-representing numbers originating from Shao Yong is inherent throughout Cheng Yi’s interpretation of the I Ching as a framework of Yi interpretation for what has arisen and what has not, and this was systematized as the ‘Theory of Inverse Numbers’ by Zhu Xi.

In the age of artificial intelligence, writing machines or robot authors have already begun to produce narrative texts in a variety of genres, including short stories and poetry, as well as journalistic articles. This article is based on the prospect that the narrative ecosystem is in a transitional period of decisive disconnection as it enters the era of artificial intelligence. The primary force driving this transition is the formidable execution of artificial intelligence algorithms, which fully automate narrative communication and narrative works. This article attempts to lay the groundwork for building a new paradigm of post-narrativity through a critical examination of several detailed themes in narrative semiotics and non-anthropocentric narratology. The process of narrative creation based on artificial intelligence algorithms is a key condition that constitutes post-narrativity. This presupposes a non-anthropocentric view. In the landscape of post-narrativity, human writers, paper books, computer screens, and invisible narrative algorithms are all agents with equal influence. Automated narrative production by algorithms accelerates the repositioning of other existing media and actors, and changes the narrative ecosystem by incorporating new elements into activities such as production, distribution, and reception of narratives.

Utilizing Schleiermacher's own theory of interpretation as stated in his Hermeneutics, this study analyzes and interprets On Religion, Speeches to its Cultured Despisers through the historical context in which they were written, and in the light of Schleiermacher's correspondence with friends and associates during the period of their composition. The censorship of religious writings by scholars on order of the King of Prussia was the overwhelming consideration that informed their composition. The criteria for passing censorship were the doctrines of the Church of Prussia, as interpreted by state officials. The writings of such famous persons as Immanuel Kant and Johann G. Fichte had been denied the official imprimatur. Speeches was a product of Schleiermacher's struggle to write something that would pass the censor, while at the same time expressing his own views that would have to be judged as unacceptable to the censor, who was Schleiermacher's own personal sponsor, F. S. G. Sack. The result was a multi-layered text in the tradition of Descartes and John Toland, who also wrote such texts to pass the censors of their day. Like theirs Speeches has an intended "esoteric" philosophy contained in a publicly acceptable "exoteric" philosophy. ;The outermost layer supports the established orthodox Lutheran Christianity. The middle layer has two opposing sections: the first two Speeches advocate a universal or Spinozistic religion. The later section, the Third, Fourth and Fifth are written as an apology for the established Church, criticizing views that are in fact Schleiermacher's own true convictions. These criticized views are the deepest layer of the Speeches, expressing the free religious thought of Schleiermacher. Much of the text is purposely ambiguous. It is possible to identify several different groups as the "cultured despisers of religion:" his romantic friends, Fr. Schlegel and Henriette Herz; the philosophers Kant and Fichte, and even the King, the politicians and the church officials. The latter conclusion is supported by an ironic reading of the text, which is here held to be the key to Schleiermacher's own deepest purpose, which is to bring forth a new healthier form of Christianity from the ruins of a decadent state Christianity

If, today, ‘politics is in culture and culture is relentlessly political’ (Brown, 2002), if the domains of ‘the political’ and ‘the cultural’ can no longer be easily distinguished or kept separate, then contemporary political theory requires an understanding and analysis of cultural politics. This essay undertakes the first stages of such a project by trying to theorize ‘cultural politics’. I argue that ‘cultural politics’ proves to be an object of discourse — it indeed has a certain discursive existence — but not an object of discipline, since no single field or discipline produces it as an object of knowledge. I read this disciplinary failure optimistically, arguing that the study of cultural politics requires a reorientation of theory. The sort of interdisciplinary and multiple-genre work needed to study cultural politics produces a conception of theory as fugitive. Fugitive theory must travel among disciplines, calling on a variety of theoretical and political resources to sustain itself; it refuses the very notion of ‘applied’ theory, insisting that theory ‘is already at work’ in politics (Butler, 1997). To link politics to culture is to practise fugitive theory. And the practice of fugitive theory therefore has the capacity to reveal and explore the workings of cultural politics.