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Languages continually enrich themselves and other languages with concepts they exchange. While not a modern phenomenon, the denser and faster communications during the 19th and 20th centuries have resulted in a large-scale homogenization of the world's modern languages around a core of globalized concepts with their modern order and hierarchy. The common features of these concepts are hidden below the linguistic surface of the different languages and most speakers are unaware of them. Concepts are abstract and cannot directly guide action in time and space. For this purpose, recourse is taken to metaphor and simile. These in turn lend themselves to become the material for visual representation, for example in political cartoons. The article investigates the migration of such metaphors and their visualized forms across languages and cultures. It will focus on the metaphor of "China asleep/China awakened." This metaphor became common parlance during the 19th century and has remained in the global metaphorical canon to this day. The article addresses the dynamics of this highly asymmetrical translingual and transcultural migration, the cultural brokers involved, and the contact zones where the exchanges take place.

Languages continually enrich themselves and other languages with concepts they exchange. While not a modern phenomenon, the denser and faster communications during the 19th and 20th centuries have resulted in a large-scale homogenization of the world's modern languages around a core of globalized concepts with their modern order and hierarchy. The common features of these concepts are hidden below the linguistic surface of the different languages and most speakers are unaware of them. Concepts are abstract and cannot directly guide action in time and space. For this purpose, recourse is taken to metaphor and simile. These in turn lend themselves to become the material for visual representation, for example in political cartoons. The article investigates the migration of such metaphors and their visualized forms across languages and cultures. It will focus on the metaphor of "China asleep/China awakened." This metaphor became common parlance during the 19th century and has remained in the global metaphorical canon to this day. The article addresses the dynamics of this highly asymmetrical translingual and transcultural migration, the cultural brokers involved, and the contact zones where the exchanges take place.

The last years have seen lively international sinological and domestic Chinese debates oDn the structure and development of the Chinese public sphere. The international discussion has been largely analytical in orientation, prompted by developments in late Qing social history research and the new availability in English and French of Habermas's seminal study. The Chinese discussion has been more strategic, suggesting or legitimizing paths for China's further development: PRC government-directed research in the context of the Seventh Five-Year Plan focused on those aspects in the development experiences of cities like Shanghai which might be of use for the city's further development, especially regarding its relationship with the developed world. Independent critics writing outside the PRC felt prompted to join the discussion about the Chinese public sphere by the growing conflict between a society in the process of rapid diversification and development on the one hand and a political leadership rigidly maintaining the ideal of the people's uniformity in thought and attitude on the other. These differences notwithstanding, the international and domestic branches of the discussion share, for different reasons, an endogenous perspective explaining modern developments from the internal dynamics of Chinese society rather than from the impact from or the response to the West.The international sinological discussion has searched for elements of a self-assertive Chinese public sphere in traditional areas such as guilds, associations orlandsmannschaften, in the new private social welfare institutions set up by reconstruction activists after the Taiping rebellion, in the late Qingqingyidiscussions within the bureaucracy, or in more modern areas such as labour unions or chambers of commerce.

Rudolf G. Wagner ; Inhaltsverzeichnis ; Volltext // Exemplar mit der Signatur: München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek -- 93.13960

An den Ereignissen auf dem "Platz des Himmlischen Friedens" 1989 in Peking werden exemplarisch politische, gesellschaftliche und soziale Strukturen in der Volksrepublik China unter historischen Bezügen skizziert. These des Autors ist dabei, daß die institutionelle Verdichtung diverser Machtorgane wie Polizei, Ministerien sich schwach zeigt, wenn ihr Stellenwert im "Imaginaire" sinkt, das heißt in der theoretischen Zuschreibung und Akzeptanz ihrer Macht. Die Institutionen entwickeln dann eine Eigendynamik, die von ständigen Machtkonflikten, von Spannung geprägt sei. Anhand zahlreicher Einzelaspekte erläutert der Autor die allmähliche Zuspitzung der Ereignisse im Juni 1989 in Peking; er geht besonders auf die Rolle der Intellektuellen und Studenten ein und beschreibt - analog zu seinem theoretischen Konzept - den Rückgriff auf das "Imaginaire", auf tradierte Rollen, wie er sie auch in der Kleidersprache der Offiziellen entdeckt, als notwendige Etablierung der eigenen Legitimität, als Bestandteil einer Selbstdefinition von Regierenden und Demonstranten.(rk)

Rudolf G. Wagner ; Inhaltsverzeichnis ; Volltext // Exemplar mit der Signatur: München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek -- 90.35087