Among Ghosts and Tigers: The Chinese in the White Terror

This paper explores the effects of Cossack warlordism on the Chinese community in the Far Eastern regions during the Russian Civil War. Leaders of the White movement targeted the Chinese diaspora, carrying out a series of thefts and diplomatic blunders which provoked a harsh response from the Chinese, from merchants to consular officials. This response was directly linked to existing geopolitical tensions surrounding the heavily-contested Sino-Russian border. It fed into the Chinese rhetoric of “national humiliation”, in which the Whites were seen as inheritors of tsarist arbitrariness and arrogance. Crucially, it was this nationalist discourse that drove the Chinese towards the Reds

Immanent authority and the performance of community in late nineteenth century Montmartre

This article develops an account of the aesthetic structure of ‘immanent’, non-foundational forms of authority. It argues for the need to develop a positive account of decentralized authority as an important constitutive form of social bond. Through a genealogical reading of the cultural experiments of the artistic community of late nineteenth century Montmartre, it builds an analysis of the affective and perceptual structures of immanent authority. Authority, it argues, operates across three axes of experience: amplitude, gravity and distance. Although the artistic experiments and cultural politics of fin-de-siècle Montmartre were politically naive, they offer an illuminating lens through which to view the emerging experiential structures of authority in the twentieth century