2013 Asia Research Institute - Rethinking Asian Part 2 скачать в хорошем качестве

2013 Asia Research Institute - Rethinking Asian Part 2

SPEAKER : Professor Pheng CHEAH SYNOPSIS : It is perhaps Hegel more than any other thinker who gave to the arts a paramount importance in justifying the dominance of one nation over all other nations in a given epoch of world history. As a modality of absolute spirit, the arts are the media through which a nation recognizes the unique spiritual principle that distinguishes it from other nations. The arts of a nation allow posterity to discern its contributions to world historical progress, especially whether it embodies the world spirit in a given epoch. Hence, the arts function to justify the violent hierarchy between nations that structures the world. Accordingly, world history's court of judgment is also a forum for the comparative recognition of aesthetic forms. This elaborate philosophical account of national cultural capital has informed official projects of national cultural development ranging from the Goethe Institute to attempts by postcolonial nations to cultivate a national literature or aesthetics. The tacit assumption of these projects is that national arts have a causal relation to a nation's progress because they symbolically express the level of progress attained and also help to stimulate further progress. This paper examines how this model of cultural capital has been radically transformed in contemporary globalization where the cultural capital of a nation is no longer primarily located in its artistic production but rather in its ability to accumulate works of art with a global significance and the promotion of the arts on a global stage. It suggests that these strategies of purchasing (as opposed to producing) artistic capital are fundamentally connected to the accumulation and cultivation of human capital through transnational migration. DATE : 26 Nov 2012 TIME : ORGANISER : This roundtable event is being organised by Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies; Asia Research Institute and Office of Research, Humanities & Social Sciences at the National University of Singapore; in collaboration with Asian Civilisations Museum; and with funding support from The India Club Singapore