Reflecting Truth

This publication shows how scholarly investigation of Japanese photography in recent years has entered an important transitional stage -- moving beyond its focus on new discoveries and descriptions of collections, to a more sophisticated investigation of photography in its historical and cultural contexts. At one time marginalized as either a practical technique or amateur art form, Japanese photography has now earned full recognition as a legitimate subject of scholarly inquiry. It is now being examined in terms of its aesthetics, technological development, and its role in the development of a national identity in Japanese art during the country's transition to modernity as well as in contemporary society.Contributors include:Himeno Junichi (on the early development of photography in Japan),Sebastian Dobson (focussing on the colourful figure of Felice Beato),Luke Gartlan (on Baron Raimond von Stillfried-Ratenicz),Allen Hockley (on photographic albums produced by commercial studios in the 1880s and 1890s),Kinoshita Naoyuki (exploring the tradition of war portraiture in Japan)Mikiko Hirayama (describing the transition from the pioneering stages of photography in Japan to the modern era).

Winner of the 2003 Trillium Book Award "Stories are wondrous things," award-winning author and scholar Thomas King declares in his 2003 CBC Massey Lectures. "And they are dangerous." Beginning with a traditional Native oral story, King weaves his way through literature and history, religion and politics, popular culture and social protest, gracefully elucidating North America's relationship with its Native peoples. Native culture has deep ties to storytelling, and yet no other North American culture has been the subject of more erroneous stories. The Indian of fact, as King says, bears little resemblance to the literary Indian, the dying Indian, the construct so powerfully and often destructively projected by White North America. With keen perception and wit, King illustrates that stories are the key to, and only hope for, human understanding. He compels us to listen well.

"During her 70-year ministry the author spoke, through her pen, to young people, to church members, and to the world in the The Youth's Instructor, the Review and Herald, and The Signs of the Times. Selections for this book have been drawn from these three periodicals as well as from her books and previously unpublished manuscripts and letters"--Foreword.

We Christians live in a rushed and hurried culture which our churches have accepted without thinking through the consequences. It seems that we have allowed ourselves to equate busyness with spirituality and bible study with the loudest opinion in the room. Reflecting attempts to call us back to a matured time in Christian history when congregants did not read the Bible speedily. One of my high school English teachers used to warn us that just vocalizing words aloud was different than truly reading. This book calls us to read the Scripture, reread the Scripture, think about what we have read, and to meditate on the concepts of a passage following them throughout Scripture. By this means, we should be able to grasp a more complete understanding of the ideas the verses have presented to us. Moreover, a slower reading and a rereading allows time for the Holy Spirit to speak to us. Often I hear someone express that as often as they have read a certain passage of Scripture, they did not gain the newest understanding from their latest reading. Why is that? It is because we have just called words without reflecting on them. Reflecting and meditating are old ways of studying the Word of God. You will be richly blessed by beginning and maintaining the practice. It is indeed food for the hungry Christian's soul.

At the heart of this book is an ethical question: 'With what legitimacy do I assume the right to interpret my fellow being?' This question is raised in the context of a critique of a particular hermeneutic interpretation of psychoanalysis, namely, psychoanalysis as an objectifying discipline in which the other (the analysand) is regarded quintessentially as a representation or exterior object to be understood. The author embraces the fundamental intersubjectivity of psychoanalytic experience. Intersubjectivity is viewed as the human encounter within the psychoanalytic setting where there occurs a mutual influencing or acting upon, rather than an encounter guided by an essentially objectivating scientific knowledge. Truth in this conception is not a cumulatively acquired possession, but an always-emerging process coiled within an interpretative dialectic occurring between human beings. This is a thoughtful, nuanced, clearly articulated and challenging book that engages directly with the perceived crisis of psychoanalysis.