Ming Dong Gu’s research while affiliated with Shenzhen University and other places

Zen/Chan 禪 occupies a unique position in world intellectual history. This article argues that there is a trend in the development of Chan thought which significantly reduces the innovative nature of Huineng’s 慧能 original thought and evinces an institutional effort to realign Huineng’s school of Chan with the Buddhist establishment. Its main objective is to locate the original sources of Huineng’s Chan and restore the revolutionary ideas of his thought. Adopting an approach that integrates historical materials with psychology, neuroscience with philosophy, and close reading of Huineng’s interpretation of the Diamond Sutra and his innovative ideas and methods of cultivation in the Platform Sutra in relation to Laozi’s 老子 and Zhuangzi’s 莊子 Daoist ideas, it works out insights into the originality and universal appeal of Chan and the hitherto unpenetrated secret of Chan enlightenment. It concludes that the core of Huineng’s Chan thought is his idea of wunian 無念 (no-thinking), and satori 悟り is not the Buddhist enlightenment.

A new orientation appeared in cultural studies at the turn of the twenty-first century. As it centers around the concept, “decoloniality,” it has been called the “decolonial turn” by some scholars. Since the decolonial turn addresses “decoloniality,” one would think it signals a new orientation in postcolonial studies. Proponents of “decoloniality,” however, have denied it as a concept of postcolonialism and even regretted its conflation with postcolonialism and decolonization. This article critically examines major ideas in the decoloniality program in relation to issues of postcolonialism and argues for its placement in the context of postcolonialism so as to enrich postcolonial studies and advance the project of decoloniality.

‘Cultural unconscious’ is a vague term in literary and cultural studies. It has not yet been systematically examined from the conceptual standpoint. As a concept, it is not a simple idea that combines ‘culture’ and ‘unconscious’, but refers to the mechanism of cultural psychology and epistemology structured on the interaction of history, psychology, discourse, ideology and other factors. By investigating how culture and the unconscious work together to form a concept from the integrated approach of psychoanalysis and semiotics, this article aims to turn a vague idea into a clearly defined theory of criticism with practical applicability for cultural studies. After a conception of its logic and mechanism in terms of Freud’s unconscious, Lacan’s renovation, Peirce’s semiosis, and Barthes’s semiology, the article applies the new theory to the analysis of a literary text to see how it may not only help reveal deep dimensions and mechanism of cultural consciousness but also has the potential of becoming a theory of cultural criticism.

This chapter conducts a study of traditional Chinese language theories in relation to its Western counterpart. The aim is not to systematize Chinese philosophy of language but to conduct comparison and contrast with Western theories of language. By demystifying various views about Chinese language in history and in present-day scholarship, it demonstrates with incontrovertible evidence that despite some special features of the Chinese language, Chinese language philosophy is not significantly different from its Western counterpart. The chapter also explores feasible ways to reconceptualize the linguistic divide between Chinese and Western writing, especially the written signs in terms of contemporary theories of psycholinguistics and semiotics.

This chapter recognizes some special features in a Chinese concept, bi-xing, in the poetic use of metaphor. It suggests that bi-xing (inspired metaphor or metonymic metaphor) as a dual concept for poetic expression should be studied in relation to Western conceptions of metaphor and metonymy. It compares and contrasts Chinese and Western concepts from an interdisciplinary perspective that integrates literary analysis, rhetorical study, and conceptual thinking. With the aid of recent achievements in research on metaphor and metonymy, it reconceptualizes Chinese notions of bi-xing and on the basis of the reconception, advances a new model for understanding Chinese bi-xing in particular and metaphor and metonymy in general.

This chapter reexamines the debates over the nature of Chinese writing and attempts to bring theoretical discourses on the sign in Chinese and Western thought into a meaningful dialogue so as to acquire useful insights for providing answers to some fundamental questions concerning the nature of Chinese and Western written sign, the linguistic gap between Chinese and Western writing systems, possible common ground for linguistic differences, and analytical tool that can be used to create a bridge across the gap. It argues that despite the distinct contrast between the ideographic nature of Chinese writing and the phonocentric nature of Western writing, Chinese language philosophy is not significantly different from its Western counterpart in the conceptions of linguistic sign.

This chapter explores whether mimetic theory is unique to Western tradition and whether it exists in Chinese critical discourse. It reexamines the widely accepted view that while mimesis is the foundation of Western aesthetic thought, expression is the dominant mode of representation in Chinese literary thought. By examining ontological and epistemological issues concerning mimesis in the Chinese tradition in relation to conceptual insights in the West, this chapter reaffirms imitation as a transcultural human instinct and mimetic theory in art as a universal thought across cultural traditions and suggests that the difference in the emphasis on mimesis and expression in Chinese and Western traditions is one in degree, not in kind.

This chapter inquires whether Chinese and Western aesthetic thought are compatible in terms of ontological and epistemological grounds. It chooses two groups of aesthetic thinkers from the Chinese and Western traditions and compares such key issues as mimesis and representation, lyricism and expressionism, metaphysical foundations of art, and other topics. With both conceptual analysis and critical evidence, it argues that the aesthetic consciousnesses of the Chinese and Western traditions are compatible though each tradition displays a different emphasis in the course of history and exhibits culture-specific characteristics. Chinese and Western aesthetic thought are essentially the same in ontology and epistemology, differing in degrees of intensity and formal features.

The introductory chapter conducts a brief survey of the present-day condition of China–West studies and discusses the nature, objective, scope, and approach of the proposed study. It critically reviews the arch paradigm of binary oppositions between Chinese and Western aesthetics and examines how it was formed, what its major dichotomies are, and to what extent the major ideas have been subjected to critical scrutiny and debates. Critiquing the existing models of criticism and theory sets the ground for conceptual and scholarly inquiries into a series of dichotomies in China–West studies of language, metaphor, representation, poetics, aesthetics, and metaphysics and proposes a paradigm shift from ethnocentric criticism to global aesthetics.