| 1976 | ||
| semiannually | ||
| English | ||
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literary and cultural studies |
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| 1729-6897 | ||
Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies
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Emerging as one of the best journals of its kind produced outside of West, Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies is, in the words of Professor Ronald Bogue, “one of the most vibrant and innovative vehicles of transcultural exchange active today.” Its history traces back to 1976 when the journal was published as a joint study of the English language and literature. Starting from 1999, it has become a medium devoted to exclusively literary and cultural studies. It is now published biannually in March and September by Bookman Books, Ltd. for the Department of English, National Taiwan Normal University, in Taipei, Taiwan. A peer-reviewed journal, Concentric is dedicated to offering innovative perspectives on literary and cultural issues, as well as to initiating the transcultural exchange of ideas. While foregrounding Asian—and particularly Taiwanese—points of view, Concentric encourages all perspectives and approaches including comparative and interdisciplinary ones, and welcomes original contributions from diverse national and cultural backgrounds, which address any of the many dimensions of literatures and cultures. Concentric is indexed in the MLA International Bibliography; the Taiwan Humanities Citation Index (THCI); and in PerioPath: An Index to Chinese Periodical Literature. |
The Couch, Volume 35, Number 2
Introduction: East Asian Perspectives on Psychoanalysis -- Theoretical and Political
Never Divide and Love: From The Ethics of Psychoanalysis to The Politics of Friendship
In this paper, I would like to propose a kind of parallel reading of Lacan and Derrida, not in order to confront them with each other and to decide in favor of one of them, but in order to shed light on a certain conceptual configuration or topography that they seem to share. In the first half of the paper I focus on the notion of neighbor, proposed by Lacan in his seminar The Ethics of Psychoanalysis. I show how he elaborated this notion with multiple references to Freud and to various literary works, and in relation to the positing and removal of a dividing line relative to love. In the second half of the paper I try to demonstrate that the notion of friend occupies a homologous position in the conceptual framework of Derrida's Politics of Friendship, at the center of which we find an in-depth analysis of that distinction between friend and enemy which marks the works of Carl Schmitt. Nevertheless, this homology does not spell identity. I suggest in the conclusion that the divergence between the two thinkers opens up a field for new and potentially important investigations.
Other Issues
Who Speaks for the Human Today?, Volume 32, Number 2