Intellectual Narratives: Theory, History and Self-Characterization of Social Margins in Public Writings

ISBN-13: 9783034306959 / Angielski / Miękka / 2011 / 240 str.

Chan, Alex Ching-Shing

Opis

This book aims to study the intellectual lives of three Hong Kong intellectuals by narrating their lives as self-reflections on theories related to social margins. Drawing on insights from Paul Ricoeur, Hannah Arendt and Zygmunt Bauman, the author analyses their narratives through in-depth interviews. Their stories point to an interpretative understanding of the works they had cursorily read when creating their historical narrations of Hong Kong from the 1970s to 2003. These stories of individual intellectuals, together with their interpretations of what they have individually read about various western theories, challenge theoretical prescriptions of historical contingent events in their narration. Such narration unfolds self-characterizations of intellectuals the author interviewed, and represents a neglected social marginal which demands that immediate attention in the public through their intellectual writings.

Spis treści

Contents: Intellectual Narratives as Historical Inquires and Life Reflections - A Genealogy of Social Theory on Intellectuals - The Narrativist Turn and the Historical Construction of Intellectual Self - Analysing and Defending Intellectual Narratives - Readings and Struggles: Hermeneutics of Suspicion in the Social Context of Intellectual Life - Emplotment, or Reflection on History, and Intellectual Self - Plots or Distinctive Personal Characters Acting for the Social Margins - Public Writings of Local Intellectuals - The Narrative Completion.

O autorze

Alex Ching-shing Chan (b. 1966) has been teaching consumption culture and general issues of Hong Kong society in Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong Baptist University and City University of Hong Kong. His academic interest focuses upon qualitative research of creative personals, especially design and its contributions to industries. He is now doing research on the crossborder creative industries and entrepreneurship between China and Hong Kong.