This quartet of books of aphoristic philosophy with a Social Theocratic dimension is comprised of 'Yang and Anti-Yin', 'Lamb and Anti-Lion', 'Celestial City and Anti-Vanity Fair' and, last but by no means least, 'Jesus - A Summing Up!', the title of which is a kind of oblique tribute to Arthur Koestler's estimable 'Janus - A Summing Up', which, however, would not have much bearing on the aforementioned works in terms of thematic structure, as germane, by and large, to the noumenal distinction between metaphysics and antimetachemistry, as explained in the texts.
This is the author's only literary 'sextet', a six-book philosophy project entitled THE FATHER OMEGA SEXTET, the individual books of which are 'Father Omega's Last Testament', 'Revaluations and Transvaluations', 'The Classless Solution', 'The Dialectics of Synthetic Attraction', 'The Dialectics of Civilization', and 'The Dialectics of Gender and Class'. In fact, dialectics is arguably the principal subject under consideration here, albeit of a different and more complex order to anything Marxist and merely materialist. All in all, this monumental project stands very close to, if not actually at, the apex of an oeuvre which has chronologically spiralled towards a metaphysical summit through Social Theocracy and the ideological philosophy of Social Transcendentalism.
These two 'posthumous' publications to John O'Loughlin's oeuvre-proper were culled, like the material of 'Opus Postscriptum', from two of his blogsites and contain material of an essayistic and aphoristic nature which has been extensively revised and reformatted to suit the parameters of e-book publication. There is a sense, though only a loose one, in which the first book corresponds to physics and the second, the so-called 'Theosophical Illuminations', to metaphysics; though that is more in the form than in the substance, since both books are equally radical and thoroughgoing in their approach to metaphysics and kindred subjects.
The four e-books in this quartet are 'The Free Testament (Of a Bound Genius)', 'Revelationary Afterthoughts', 'Revolutionary Afterthoughts', and 'Judgemental Afterthoughts (Of a Free Genius)', all of which take the author's ideological philosophy closer to completion in what is a kind of ultimate testament to Social Theocratic truth.
No, Anti-Book is not a book about books. Not exactly. And yet it is a must for anyone interested in the future of the book. Presenting what he terms “a communism of textual matter,” Nicholas Thoburn explores the encounter between political thought and experimental writing and publishing, shifting the politics of text from an exclusive concern with content and meaning to the media forms and social relations by which text is produced and consumed. Taking a “post-digital” approach in considering a wide array of textual media forms, Thoburn invites us to challenge the commodity form of books—to stop imagining books as transcendent intellectual, moral, and aesthetic goods unsullied by commerce. His critique is, instead, one immersed in the many materialities of text. Anti-Book engages with an array of writing and publishing projects, including Antonin Artaud’s paper gris-gris, Valerie Solanas’s SCUM Manifesto, Guy Debord’s sandpaper-bound Mémoires, the collective novelist Wu Ming, and the digital/print hybrid of Mute magazine. Empirically grounded, it is also a major achievement in expressing a political philosophy of writing and publishing, where the materiality of text is interlaced with conceptual production. Each chapter investigates a different form of textual media in concert with a particular concept: the small-press pamphlet as “communist object,” the magazine as “diagrammatic publishing,” political books in the modes of “root” and “rhizome,” the “multiple single” of anonymous authorship, and myth as “unidentified narrative object.” An absorbingly written contribution to contemporary media theory in all its manifestations, Anti-Book will enrich current debates about radical publishing, artists’ books and other new genre and media forms in alternative media, art publishing, media studies, cultural studies, critical theory, and social and political theory.
This collection in five volumes tries to realize the desideratum of a comprehensive interdisciplinary work on the manifold faces and images of Jesus in China, which unites the Sinological, mission-historical, theological, art-historical, and other aspects. The first three volumes (vols. L/1-3) contain articles and texts which discuss the faces and images of Jesus Christ from the Tang dynasty to the present time. In a separate volume (vol. L/4) follows an annotated bibliography of the Western and Chinese writings on Jesus Christ in China and a general index with glossary. The iconography, i.e., the attempts of the Western missionaries and the Chinese to portray Jesus in an artistic way, will be presented in the fifth volume of this collection (vol. L/5).
This set comprises a comprehensive selection of colonial Western scholarly texts on Chinese secret societies from the early nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. It includes a selection of important papers on Chinese secret societies by a variety of scholars, missionaries, and colonial officials.
Instant New York Times No.1 Bestseller. A YA Pacific Rim meets the Handmaid’s Tale retelling of the rise of Wu Zetian, the only female emperor in Chinese history. I have no faith in love. Love cannot save me. I choose vengeance. The boys of Huaxia dream of pairing up with girls to pilot Chrysalises – giant transforming robots that battle aliens beyond the Great Wall. It doesn’t matter that their female co-pilots are expected to serve as concubines and often die from the mental strain. When 18-year-old Zetian offers herself up as a concubine-pilot, her plan is to assassinate the ace male pilot responsible for her sister’s death. But after miraculously surviving her first battle, Zetian sets her sights on a mightier goal. The time has come to stop more girls from being sacrificed. ‘This is the historical-inspired, futuristic sci-fi mash-up of my wildest dreams.’ Chloe Gong ‘Raging against the patriarchy in spectacular style.’ Observer, best books of the year ‘Zetian is unstoppable, and I dare you not to cheer her on.’ Elizabeth Lim, author of Spin the Dawn
This is the last in the series of aphoristic philosophy quartets stemming from 'The Ethnic Universality Quartet' (2002), and, like its predecessors, including one notable departure from the quartet mould, namely 'The Father Omega Sextet' (2004), it continues with the task of expanding the ideological frontiers of Social Theocracy towards their ultimate culmination in a structure which is both metaphysical and, in the case of anti-metachemistry, less than metaphysical but equally crucial to the viability of what the author regards as an ultimate solution to the existence of the world considered as a female-dominated phenomenon partial to greed and exploitation that can only be opposed from a standpoint favouring metaphysics and pseudo-metachemistry in relation to the possibility of some equivalence of 'Kingdom Come', rendered all the more imperative in view of the current parlous situation of the world and, more particularly, of those who suffer from the oppression of greed-motivated exploiters the most. Thus with this quartet, dating from 2004-5, a phase of John O'Loughlin's writing comes to an end as a kind of consummation of his philosophical endeavour to-date, and this is especially so of the final book, 'Jesus - A Summing Up!', the appendix to which paves the way for the weblogs that were to ensue from 2005 onwards through a succession of blog hosts and, following due revision and reformatting, a new approach to e-book creation that has continued to the present time, with further refinements of and modifications to the philosophy outlined both here and in previous titles.
This book examines how the rise of China has influenced its cross-regional foreign policy toward non-Arab countries in the Middle East between 2001 and 2011. Analyzing contemporary international crises in the Middle East such as the Iran nuclear crisis, the Palestinian–Israeli conflict, and the Cyprus question, the volume draws on daily newspapers published in Chinese, Turkish, and English and official documents as primary sources. The examined period is critical to understand China’s aggressive and more attractive foreign policy dynamism in the following years. All the bilateral relations China has developed in the Middle East during these years was a preparation for the next big step toward China’s rising influence in the region and the world. Utilizing the framework of debates on the rise of China in international relations literature, the volume focuses on political, economic, and military aspects of the power transition. Claiming that China’s foreign policy toward the Middle East can be defined as "active pragmatism," the "non-Arab" conceptualization provides a new understanding of China’s traditional Middle Eastern foreign policies. The study assesses fieldwork carried out in Beijing and Shanghai, and Chinese sources that are critical in understanding both official and academic perspectives. The book is a key resource for students, academics and analysts interested in China and the Middle East relations, foreign policy, and politics, as well as for contemporary political historians.
