Resisting the Norm
Ironic Images of Marx and Confucius
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9216197 |
|---|---|
| Authors | William A Callahan (0000-0001-6103-0586, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1994 |
| Volume | 44 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 279 |
| Publication date | 1994-04-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Philosophy East and West (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0031-8221 • E-ISSN: 1529-1898 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/1399595 |
| OpenAlex | W2017473368 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 6 |
nuren (Half of Man is Woman).This shift is useful in that it shows how the peculiar representations of these two figures call their namesake norms into question, thus ironically opening doors for other images and resistance to the powerful discourses of Confucianism and Marxism.Irony, in this sense, is a practice of reading for multiple meanings, where difference does not necessarily have to be reduced to wrong or right, true or false, Marxist or Confucian.Hence the reinscriptions of Confucius and Marx demonstrate that they are not stable historical figures but are images involved in discourses of power.Irony is thus a possible resource for resistance against such powerful norms, a mode of resistance that engages in a critique which does not totally separate itself from the present and its power configurations-it is not part of some political-economic coin with power on one side and resistance on the other.For are distinctions between power and resistance so clean?Or is resistance imbedded in the power that it opposes along the lines of Michel Foucault's oft-cited analysis: "Where there is power there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power " (1980:94).Hence it is useful to figure resistance in relation to power in ironic ways: using Confucius to resist Confucianism and Marx to resist Marxism, that is.This argument is not clean or neat; the multiplicity involved in ironic images is not necessarily some grand battle cry for a revolution to overturn the singularity of norms, for, as we saw in 1949, newer, stricter norms can easily fill this holistic void.Irony cuts many ways; it can be used to reinforce norms as well as resist them.Since irony does not
Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Literature · Norm (philosophy) · Chinese history and philosophy · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Philosophy · Pragmatism in Philosophy and Education
| Citations per year | 0.04 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2003 - 2003 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |