Foreword

The topic of the workshop consisted in the communication among literature and history as well as visual art by the power of words to research the historiography and aesthetics. We invited Korean scholar Bing-shou Wu and associate professor Ya-lan Liu, Department of Digital Humanities, Aletheia University, to the workshop. They talked about the issues respectively focusing on modernism in Korea and the connection of contemporary eastern Asia as well as a word “sublime” from the perspective of rhetoric and aesthetic. Besides, they talked with our team members Mal-soon Choi and Jing-qi Wang.

Modernism in Korea and eastern Asia

Taiwan and Korea were incorporated into the core of free-Asia area in the American-led Cold War structure and implemented the cold war in political and military as well as cultural fields. The lecture interpreted the above problems via the modernism in Korea in the period of the Cold War. Liberalism was integrated with democracy in Korea and shown with the form of liberal democracy. However, the liberal democracy was took over and institutionalized as a premise of Cold War liberalism under the anti-communist system during the Cold War; also, it was closely related to the Cold War around the world. Nowadays, the arguments regarding the liberalism in Korea probably were the phenomena of the collapse of the Cold War liberalism.

In eastern Asia liberalism is a method and purpose to fulfill the modernization. First of all, liberalism, generally speaking, bases on protecting the personal interests, freedom and rights from the national power. It is the core principle of democracy such as constitutionalism, rule of law and the separation of powers that restricts the national will. Secondly, liberalism is a prerequisite for political diversification. It is featured as personal choice and focuses on the respect and tolerance as well as multiculturalism of personal conscience and diversity of thought. In general, “integration with the society”, “(the fulfillment of the common suffrage) representative” and “(the freedom of party-founding) organizational objection” are the indispensable elements of democracy. Democracy will come true by means of common and fair voting right to achieve the political participation of people; additionally, with the freedom of party-founding democracy can thoroughly be carried out. Nevertheless, from the Cold War structure at that time liberalism in Korea had the characteristic of conceptual isolation in political space and the typical Cold War liberalism featured as the strong states (army, police officer and legal system). Meanwhile, the adapted process of the Cold War liberalism is definitely the history of liberalism in Korea.

Strategy and Implication of the Concepts from “Kantanian Sublime” to “Feminine Sublime”: Taking the Visual Works for Exemple

The term “sublime” has transformed several times. At first it was only used in rhetoric while in the 18th century it became an important aesthetics concept. With the interpretation of German philosopher Immanuel Kant this word even influenced German writer Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller and the later romanticism aesthetics. Nonetheless, this aesthetics concept became unpopular for a while because it was afraid of associated with the political centralism. Not until in the 1970’s French philosopher Jean- François Lyotard re-focused on the Kantanian aesthetics, particularly on the relation between the concepts of sublime and avant-garde, did the issue concerning sublime become noticeable again. Recently, integrating with development of science and technology, contemporary art stimulated the viewers and made those contemporary artists turn back to the topic “sublime”.

On the other hand, regarding the topic “sublime”, “beauty” and “sublime” had been added into the strong gender characteristic since the 18th century Irish statesman Edmund Burke discussed these two terms. And this gender characteristic was applied by Immanuel Kant as well. Therefore, the concept of sublime was always included in the gender issue although it was an aesthetics term. Furthermore, the above situation made the contemporary feminists be highly interested in this issue and took a strongly critical attitude toward it. Moreover, the concept of feminine sublime has become the result of the criticism for the concept of Kantanian sublime since the 18th century.

In the former part of the lecture participants talked about the basic content of Kantanian sublime and clarified the criticism from the feminine sublime. What’s more, they explained why the supporters of the feminine sublime opposed the dominated relation of Kantanian sublime between the subjects and the nature. In addition, they considered that people need to re-introspect the relation among nature/others and ourselves. In a word, people were supposed to use a diversified way of communication to re-open the intersubjectivity among nature/others and ourselves. In the latter part of the lecture participants tried to expound upon the extensively different relation of intersubjectivity among the objects/nature/others and ourselves as a further statement via the connection between the concept of sublime and the fail-to-present avant-garde from Lyotard, and the equal-value exchange system of French painter Paul Cézanne’s paintings analyzed by French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty. In the end they concretely illustrated the diversified strategy of feminine sublime in visual art through German painter Caspar Davis Friedrich’s work, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, in comparison with the two female artists’ works, Birthday by Ning Tai and【容和、相待、彩虹曲】by Jiin-shiow Lii.

In Conclusion

The workshop turned out happily while team members continued the academic topic and extensively communicated with the professors and the guests at the banquet after the workshop. In the future our team will keep on dedicating to exploring the fields between literature and art and inviting distinguished scholars to join in the regular meetings and workshops as well as annual seminars so as to better the academic contribution.