Production. Issue 2

Author: Wang Min'an
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-04-01
Features: The Greeks once regarded friendship as a major ethical and philosophical issue. For them, friendship was a way of life. But for a long time, friendship has detached itself from the realm of philosophy and become a secular game of practice. It was not until the emergence of Derrida's The Politics of Friendship that the return of friendship to philosophy reached its climax. What is friendship? What are the different types of friendship? How does friendship shape personality and temperament? Where lies the boundary between the privacy and sociality of friendship? What is the relationship between friendship and war? What are the differences between private friendship and friendship between collectives and between nations? These are the questions explored in this special issue titled "The Return of Friendship." The focus on "production" stems from the Marxist tradition, where Marx discovered the secret of capital accumulation in the process of production. After Marx, "production" acquired a richer connotation: the cultural sphere is the production of knowledge, the spiritual sphere is the production of desire, and the political sphere is the production of power. Society becomes a massive production machine—and what is called the "consumer society" is merely an ironic commentary on it. "Production" has become the key term for diagnosing contemporary society. On the other hand, the word "production" holds a special meaning for modern Chinese people: we once found ourselves trapped in the cage of "production," and now we hope that this word, lost in the depths of history, will regain vitality. Of course, words have their own fate, and all we can do is extend an invitation. The intrinsic semantics of "production" is generation, transformation, and vitality—it aligns with the temperament of contemporary intellectuals, who tirelessly think and critique. This book is mainly divided into five parts: special topics, figures, art, reviews, and documents, exploring numerous issues.