A R U T L U C CULTURA INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE CULTURA AND AXIOLOGY Founded in 2004, Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of 2015 2015 Vol XII No 1 Culture and Axiology is a semiannual peer-reviewed journal devo- 1 ted to philosophy of culture and the study of value. It aims to pro- mote the exploration of different values and cultural phenomena in FY OG regional and international contexts. The editorial board encourages Y O HL the submission of manuscripts based on original research that are PO OXI judged to make a novel and important contribution to understan- LOSD A ding the values and cultural phenomena in the contempo rary world. HIN A OF PRE U L T AL NU RC U O J L A N O TI A N R E T N I ISBN 978-3-631-66651-7 www.peterlang.com CULTURA 2015_266651_VOL_12_No1_GR_A5Br.indd 1 01.06.15 KW 23 13:21 A R U T L U C CULTURA INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE CULTURA AND AXIOLOGY Founded in 2004, Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of 2015 2015 Vol XII No 1 Culture and Axiology is a semiannual peer-reviewed journal devo- 1 ted to philosophy of culture and the study of value. It aims to pro- mote the exploration of different values and cultural phenomena in FY OG regional and international contexts. The editorial board encourages Y O HL the submission of manuscripts based on original research that are PO OXI judged to make a novel and important contribution to understan- LOSD A ding the values and cultural phenomena in the contempor ary world. HIN A OF PRE U L T AL NU RC U O J L A N O TI A N R E T N I www.peterlang.com CULTURA 2015_266651_VOL_12_No1_GR_A5Br.indd 1 01.06.15 KW 23 13:21 CULTURA INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE AND AXIOLOGY Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology E-ISSN (Online): 2065-5002 ISSN (Print): 1584-1057 Advisory Board Prof. Dr. David Altman, Instituto de Ciencia Política, Universidad Catolica de Chile, Chile Prof. Emeritus Dr. Horst Baier, University of Konstanz, Germany Prof. Dr. David Cornberg, University Ming Chuan, Taiwan Prof. Dr. Paul Cruysberghs, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium Prof. Dr. Nic Gianan, University of the Philippines Los Baños, Philippines Prof. Dr. Marco Ivaldo, Department of Philosophy “A. Aliotta”, University of Naples “Federico II”, Italy Prof. Dr. Michael Jennings, Princeton University, USA Prof. Dr. Maximiliano E. Korstanje, University of Palermo, Argentina Prof. Dr. Richard L. Lanigan, Southern Illinois University, USA Prof. Dr. Christian Lazzeri, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, France Prof. Dr. Massimo Leone, University of Torino, Italy Prof. Dr. Asunción López-Varela Azcárate, Complutense University, Madrid, Spain Prof. Dr. Christian Möckel, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany Prof. Dr. Devendra Nath Tiwari, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India Prof. Dr. José María Paz Gago, University of Coruña, Spain Prof. Dr. Mario Perniola, University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, Italy Prof. Dr. Traian D. Stănciulescu, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University Iassy, Romania Prof. Dr. Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek, Purdue University & Ghent University Editorial Board Editor-in-Chief: Co-Editors: Prof. dr. Nicolae Râmbu Prof. dr. Aldo Marroni Faculty of Philosophy and Social- Dipartimento di Lettere, Arti e Scienze Sociali Political Sciences Università degli Studi G. d’Annunzio Alexandru Ioan Cuza University Via dei Vestini, 31, 66100 Chieti Scalo, Italy B-dul Carol I, nr. 11, 700506 Iasi, Romania [email protected] [email protected] PD Dr. Till Kinzel Executive Editor: Englisches Seminar Dr. Simona Mitroiu Technische Universität Braunschweig, Human Sciences Research Department Bienroder Weg 80, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University 38106 Braunschweig, Germany Lascar Catargi, nr. 54, 700107 Iasi, Romania [email protected] [email protected] Editorial Assistant: Dr. Marius Sidoriuc Designer: Aritia Poenaru Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology Vol. 12, No. 1 (2015) Editor-in-Chief Nicolae Râmbu Guest Editors: I-Chun Wang and Asun López-Varela Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. Umschlagabbildung: © Aritia Poenaru ISSN 2065-5002 ISBN 978-3-631-66651-7 (Print) E-ISBN 978-3-653-05998-4 (E-Book) DOI 10.3726/978-3-653-05998-4 © Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Frankfurt am Main 2015 All rights reserved. Peter Lang Edition is an Imprint of Peter Lang GmbH. Peter Lang – Frankfurt am Main · Bern · Bruxelles · New York · Oxford · Warszawa · Wien All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. This publication has been peer reviewed. www.peterlang.com CONTENTS ALLEGORIES OF IMPERIALISM: BARBARIANS AND WORLD CULTURES I-Chun Wang & Asun López-Varela 7 Allegories of Imperialism: Barbarians and World Cultures David Lea 17 Sovereignty, Linguistic Imperialism and the Quantification of Reality Abobo Kumbalonah 31 The Invention of a Philosophy: Postcolonialism in the Context of Akan Proverbs Antonia Peroikou 45 Speaking (of) the Unspoken: Exploring the Mystery behind Friday’s Severed Tongue in Coetzee’s Foe Temisanren Ebijuwa &Adeniyi Sulaiman Gbadegesin 57 Mediating Ethnic Identities: Reaching Consensus through Dialogue in an African Society Shiuhhuah Serena Chou 71 Claiming the Sacred: Indigenous Knowledge, Spiritual Ecology, and the Emergence of Eco-cosmopolitanism Stephen Joyce 85 The Fearful Merging of Self and Other: Intra-civilizational and Inter-civilizational Colonial Cultures in Richard E. Kim’s Lost Names Oxana Karnaukhova 99 Tracing the Roots of Colonial History and Orientology in Russia Michaela Keck 115 Culture-Crossing in Madison Smartt Bell’s Haitian Trilogy and Neo-Captivity Narrative Mary Theis 129 Ideal Isolation for the Greater Good: The Hazards of Postcolonial Freedom Maximiliano Korstanje 145 Constructing the Other by Means of Hospitality: the Case of Argentina Liudmila Baeva & Anna Romanova 159 Challenges to Frontier Allegories: the Caspian Sea Region in Southern Russia Soon-ok Myong & Byong-soon Chun 173 Cultural Politics of Otherizing Hijabed Muslims in Kazakhstan Nurlykhan Aljanova & Karlygash Borbassova 18(cid:26) Etiquette Rules and Intercultural Relations in Kazakh Society after Independence from the Soviet Union Jinghua Guo 197 The Multi-dimensional Model of Cross-Cultural Interpretation as an Anti-centralist Tool in World Literature Perspectives Huiyong Wu 211 The Impact of Confucianism on Chinese Representations of Japanese Imperialism as well as on International Relations Simon C. Estok 221 Bull and Barbarity, Feeding the World 10.5840/cultura20151211 Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology 12(1)/2015: 07–16 Allegories of Imperialism: Barbarians and World Cultures I-Chun Wang Center for Languages and Culture Kaohsiung Medical University Kaohsiung, 80708, Taiwan [email protected] Asun López-Varela English Studies Universidad Complutense Madrid Madrid, 28040, Spain [email protected] Originating from the Latin word imperium, the concept and practice of imperialism, like that of empire, is a bio-political production (Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, 2001: 29) that refers to the “polity of extend- ing a country’s power and influence through colonization, use of military force, or other means” (Oxford English Dictionary, 1998: 877). Although since the 18th century, European expansion has been at the center of de- bates on imperialism and colonialism, the imposition of foreign control over other territories is a practice that has always existed. The prototype of imperialism can be referred back to the Roman Empire, which set up coloniae in many areas, of the conquests of Genghis Khan and the Mon- gol Empire, the Persian and the Egyptian Empires, the Aztec the Incan Empires, and many others all over the world. Geographical extension, dynamics of rule, as well as exploitation, and even extermination of cer- tain groups, are among the hegemonic and coercive socio-political struc- tures put forth by empires within their conquered territories. In the case of the Romans, for instance, they established tribute systems, degraded heterogeneous groups to the condition of the slaves, and sent military forces to cripple and humiliate those beyond their borders, regulating their rights “with the most scrupulous exactness,” and showing “neither mercy nor justice for foreigners” (Hardt and Negri, 2001: 38). All empires were characterized by the reinforcement of internal rule, the development of highly centralized cultures, and the control over the borders. In all the cases, the empires tried to integrate their neighboring cultures into their own orbits of dominance. An important factor was to 7 Wang &López-Varela / Allegories of Imperialism: Barbarians and World Cultures put in motion cultural politics that emphasized the superiority of the conquering nation, perverted the traits of the colonized, and used cer- tain forms of naming to degrade the status of the Others. In naming, demonization rather than valorization was a common practice. This was achieved by means of discursive tropes such as the term “barbarian,” borrowed from Greek and originally signifying the heterogeneous quality of those who could not speak that language. The term “furor barbari- cus” came to signify the uncivilized and untamed nature of populations that threatened the realm of civilization, such as Scythians, Celts, Ger- mans, Vikings, Huns and other tribes beyond the Greco-Roman Empire. This is seen, for instance, in the rhetoric of naming and the description of barbarians as described by Roman historians and writers such as Pub- lius Cornelius Tacitus (c. AD 56 – after 117) and Diodorus Siculus (90– 30 BC), among others. Tacitus classifies the barbarus according to the re- gions they inhabit, and his descriptions of barbaric behavior are tinted with moral assertions; as when he praises the Roman soldiers fighting with gloria while he uses the word praeda, meaning plundering and greedi- ness, to describe the barbarians, including the Iceni, the Parthians, and the Gauls, among others, who are also seen as lacking of self-discipline (Hist. 4.78). All empires went to great length in promoting cultural politics of dif- ference and prerogative power, employing sophisticated mechanisms for defining and constructing the identities of barbarian aliens. Denigration, marginalization and obliteration are the core concept created by imperial- ists and oppressors (Simerka, 2003: 2-15). In the territories conquered by imperial powers worldwide, barbarian histories were wiped out, and simi- lar politics to those displayed by the Roman Empire were adopted in East Asian, where civilizing politics involving neighboring countries were practiced by the Han and Tang dynasties of China. Like the Romans who subdued the nomads, the emperors of prosperous Chinese dynas- ties would use strategies of legitimation to “civilize” their barbarian neighbors and make them into their loyal subjects, allies or tributary states. After the consolidation of nation states throughout the world and the gradual abandonment of forms of conquest, various other mechanisms of sophisticated political and cultural configurations to control and legit- imize dominance have been put in motion, including globalized mecha- nisms for economic and technological supremacy. 8