The study of the interplay between the individual self and collective selves is an arena of rich theory and research in social psychology. Self and Social Identity is a collection of readings from the four-volume set of Blackwell Handbooks of Social Psychology that examine how group memberships shape the content of the individual's self concept and how the sense of self is expanded as a consequence of identification with other individuals and the group as a whole.
When Gao Xingjian was proclaimed Nobel Laureate of Literature in 2000, it drew attention to his significant body of literary works that included a collection of short stories, titled Buying a Fishing Rod for my Grandfather (1989), two autobiographical novels titled Soul Mountain (1990) and One Man's Bible (1999), as well as seventeen plays, three of which when performed in Beijing in the early 1980s, had turned him into an instant celebrity, not just in China, but internationally. His plays Absolute Signal (1982), Bus Stop (1983), and Wild Man (1986) were well known in the English- speaking world soon after their publication in Chinese. However, when his next play, The Other Shore (1986), was banned after a few rehearsals, he relocated to Paris in 1987. His play Escape (1990) about the 4 June 1989 military crackdown on student protesters in Tiananmen Square, resulted in a "virtual ban" on his writings, which could no longer be published, sold, or performed in the People's Republic of China. This meant that both the author and his works had been airbrushed out of existence, and that Gao Xingjian research would find it impossible to take root in China. Gao Xingjian and Transmedia Aesthetics demonstrates the extensive reach of Gao Xingjian's transcultural, transdisciplinary and transmedia explorations. Showcased here is the panoramic aesthetics of a polymath who has successfully personified modern-time renaissance by projecting the struggles of the individual's inner landscape into vivid images on stage, film, black-and-white paintings, and in the multilayered narrative expressions of fiction and poetry, even dance and music, to evoke a sense of sincerity and authenticity that penetrates a viewer/reader's heart. The volume is divided into four parts: philosophical inquiry; transdiscipline, transgenre, transculture; cine-poems with paintings, dance and music; and identifying and defining the self. The chapters probe different aspects of Gao Xingjian's work, bearing testimony to their diverse specializations
Paperback. Pub Date :2010-05-21 192 English Harper Perennial From Chinas first-ever winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature comes an exquisite new book of fictions. none of which has ever been published before in English . A young couple on honeymoon visit a beautiful temple up in the mountains. and spend the day intoxicated by the tranquillity of the setting; a swimmer is paralysed by a sudden cramp and finds himself stranded far out to sea on a cold autumn day; a man reminisces about his beloved grandfather. who used to make his own fishing rods from lengths of crooked bamboo straightened over a fire ... Blending the crisp immediacy of the present moment with the soft afterglow of memory and nostalgia. these stories hum with simplicity and wisdom - and will delight anyone who loved Gaos bestselling novels. Soul Mountain and One Mans Bible.
