Abstract
About 2500 years ago, Confucius asked, ‘Is it not pleasant to have friends coming from distant quarters?’ (Legge, 1991: 65). It means that it is pleasant to have friends coming from a distance. This rings true of my relationship with Peter Beilharz. He has come all the way from Melbourne to Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province, the most important city in southwestern China. It was through Agnes Heller that I established academic contact with Peter, from the distant imagination to a face-to-face colleague, from a professor in Melbourne to a professor of critical theory at Sichuan University. In the last 15 years, a lot of events have happened between us in terms of Marxism, modernity, and aesthetics. They undoubtedly deepen our academic research, adorn our everyday life, and stimulate mutual thinking and imagination by creatively working together. I chronicle our deep and evolving relationship in what follows.
My first contact with Peter traces back to 2008 when I published an interview with Agnes Heller on the Budapest School aesthetics (Fu, 2008).
I thought that, perhaps, Peter, the founder of the journal Thesis Eleven, might read the interview. I remember being at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and feeling extremely excited when I learned that my interview was published in Thesis Eleven. I went to Peter’s world through Heller for the first time. However, it was not until 2014 that we finally established direct contact because of my paper ‘On Agnes Heller’s Aesthetic Dimension: From “Marxist Renaissance” to “Post-Marxist” paradigm’, which considered a general conception of Heller’s aesthetics. Throughout her career, Heller maintained a continued interest in aesthetics. Heller’s attention to aesthetics is apparent in her social and political philosophy, philosophy of ethics, and philosophy of history and also touches on some central issues in contemporary society over the past 60 years (Fu, 2014). Peter had accepted it with some wonderful suggestions for feedback!
July 2007 Agnes Heller, Chengdu, China
From 2015 onward, my project ‘Bibliography and Research of Eastern European Marxist Aesthetics’ was supported by the China Social Science Fund as a Key Project (Fu, 2015). It was a challenging project. I invited scores of scholars from home and abroad to join the project. It is my honor that Agnes Heller and Peter accepted my invitations. For me, their participation strengthened and encouraged creative explorations of Marxism and modernity.
November 2016 Conference, Sichuan University
In November 2016, Peter and Sian Supski visited Sichuan University for the first time, participating in the forum ‘Research of Eastern European Marxist Aesthetics’. Peter, as a keynote speaker, talked about the travel of the Budapest School, and the expression that he introduced – ‘CT = CT (Critical Theory = cultural traffic)’ – is original and poetic. It meant, in this instance, that the Budapest School travelled from Eastern Europe to Australia and then to the USA, and so on with intercultural communication. He passionately spoke of Agnes Heller, the Budapest School, and Zygmunt Bauman. I appreciated many of his ideas about Marxism and modernity. He tried to grasp the main ideas of the Chinese participants. Sian spoke of her understanding of modernity from Zygmunt Bauman’s wife, Janina Lewinson. After the conference, Peter advised me to publish the review and abstracts of the papers submitted at the conference. The review was named after ‘The Conference on Eastern European Marxist Aesthetics’, co-authored by Qilin Fu and Peter Beilharz, and was published in 2017 in Thesis Eleven with more than 20 abstracts. Peter’s visit and cooperation brought our relationship to a new and deeper level.
Academically, Peter focuses on Zygmunt Bauman and I on Agnes Heller, with our theoretical overlap being Marxism and modernity. We understand the same critical theorists and their central preoccupations. Peter once wrote: I was born in 1953 in Melbourne, almost 30 years after Zygmunt Bauman was born in Poznan. He was to become one of the most influential sociologists of our time. I was to become his interpreter, among others. We were friends for almost 30 years, until his death in 2017. (Beilharz, 2020: 1)
December 2017, Thesis Eleven journal, Melbourne
In the late 1970s, Agnes Heller and other members of the Budapest School chose Melbourne and Sydney (Australia) as their new home and became connected to an excellent group of critical theorists tied to Thesis Eleven, including Peter. In December 2017, I led a Sichuan University group to visit Melbourne for the first time – at Peter’s invitation. The visit was successful and productive. Through Peter, we met David Roberts, Peter Murphy, Trevor Hogan, and other young scholars. I introduced my studies on Agnes Heller’s theory of modernity, aesthetics, and the Budapest School to them and received many positive responses. Of course, there were many disagreements, but we shared understandings of the conception of modernity. Peter and Sian accompanied us to visit Melbourne’s cultural sites to help us better understand its modernity and modernization, which have some similarities with China’s, but are different in a variety of important ways.
December 2017, Hosier Lane, Melbourne
Peter and Sian live near a well-known graffitied street, Hosier Lane. Our hotel was nearby, so it was easy for us to visit it every day and enjoy its colorful, urban beauty. Usually, it was full of tourists but, when it was empty, we would get absorbed in its works with sheer aesthetic pleasure. Opposite the lane is the National Gallery of Victoria. We visited it with Peter and he provided detailed interpretations of a variety of artistic styles. The gallery presented a variety of genres, including folk arts and avant-garde art.
Peter later brought me to a music bar. We enjoyed the newest popular music from some really wonderful genres. We climbed to the top of an 88-storey skyscraper. There we overlooked the whole of Melbourne City, and could see to its edge where it appeared to crawl into the blue and beautiful ocean. We went to the National Gallery of Victoria and surfed our way into the artworld and cultural heritages, ending at the Royal Arcade in the center of Melbourne where we experienced Walter Benjamin’s life in Paris. Through Peter, we went into the imaginary world of the arts, which is characteristic of aesthetic modernity. Most scholars know that Peter Beilharz is a prominent sociologist, but few likely know that he is an expert on art. Like Agnes Heller, he has plenty of aesthetic experiences and he creatively puts them in his writings, which are marked by his characteristic thinking and imagination. Actually, he studied Bernard Smith, who was Australia’s greatest art historian. I read his paper ‘Marx and aesthetic value’ (Beilharz, 2018 [1986]) about Bernard Smith’s paper in the same year: Smith ‘discussed the productivist or humanist aesthetic in Marx, referring also to an ideological aesthetic and to the idea of a primal, or originary, production’ (Beilharz, 1986: 243). For me, his interpretation of Smith’s Marxist aesthetics is of significance. Peter develops contemporary Marxist literary theory and aesthetics because he goes beyond the traditional pattern, and argues that the modern and postmodern aesthetic experience should be taken into consideration.
My relationship with Peter again reached a new stage in 2018–19 through Agnes Heller, after several big events. In November 2018, Peter and I co-sponsored a workshop and an international conference and invited Agnes Heller to join us in person. Heller, at the age of 89, was active and became a leading star thinker in these academic activities. I wrote: All of these events laid the foundation for the 2018 climax. A series of academic events were created at Sichuan University by scores of international scholars, but the star was, without a doubt, Agnes Heller. A series of academic communications about Heller subsequently were sponsored by Sichuan University and Thesis Eleven journal. (Fu, 2021: 169–178)
November 2018 in Chengdu, China
At the opening ceremony, Peter wore a black T-shirt with a cute dinosaur vividly rendered on it. He was handsome and energetic, like a strong boxer. Through his eyes, we could perceive his profound insights. He was seated next to Agnes Heller who always kept alert and engaged when Peter spoke. He gave a wonderful address in a smiling and gentle manner. He held the microphone with his hands together while speaking. It seemed serious. He reflected on the Budapest School
November 2018, Conference, Sichuan University
Following that, we successfully opened the ceremony of an international conference on ‘Eastern European Marxist Critical Theory’. Peter gave a keynote speech: ‘Last Bauman/lost Bauman: Fifty years on – Sketches in a Theory of Culture (1968) – the suppressed and now final book of Zygmunt Bauman
November 2018 Conference Speech, Sichuan University
In the closing ceremony, I expressed thanks to all the conference
November 2018 Conference, Sichuan University
Through his participation in such meaningful things, I was moved by Peter ever more deeply. We organized and participated in a number of creative activities thereafter. We cherished Heller’s theory of modernity and organized ‘the second international conference on Marxist Critical Theory in Eastern Europe: In Memory of Agnes Heller’ in November 2020. We read once again Heller’s writings and wrote something about her. I recommended Peter to Sichuan University, and our university invited him to be a foreign professor.
October 2019, Xinglong Lake, Chengdu
Consequently, Peter comes to Chengdu for three months each year. We have become both friends and colleagues at Sichuan University. We have more time and opportunities to share thoughts and life experiences with each other. Of course, every time, Sian is with us. From dawn to night, Sian deeply delves into Chengdu’s everyday life, which is a characteristic Chinese mixture of traditional and modern styles. She published a booklet about it – something similar to a poetic essay coupled with photos. Peter keeps observing Chinese modernity and Chinese modernization on and off campus by attending tourist sites, visiting bookstores, and tasting Sichuan foods. I feel that Peter could be as at home in Chengdu as Agnes Heller was. I, too, feel at home in Melbourne because of the mutual, respectful, and creative relationship between us. Sometimes, something contingent might inspire our thinking like a beautiful wave on the sea under the sunlight.
September 2020, Teaching online at Sichuan University
At Sichuan University, I annually invite Peter to co-teach undergraduates with me. The course is ‘Western Literary Theory’ and consists of Marxism, formalism, phenomenology, and psychoanalysis. We lead a group of teachers to the classroom. Peter and I taught together for three months, mainly concerning Marxist Literary Theory and Cultural Theory from Marx to Lukács, Gramsci, the Frankfurt School, Raymond Williams, the Budapest School, Zygmunt Bauman, and so on. Modernity sits at the center of it all. Many important ideas and critical theorists are looped together around it. Obviously, Marx stands in the middle as one of the three most classical theorists of modernity, as noted by Heller. The other two are Hegel and Weber. For us, Marx is significant in understanding the nature and situation of literature and culture. There are so many wonderful insights in our course. I appreciate Peter’s conception of Marx as a writer. For Peter, Marx is a great writer of many genres. Peter talks about at least eight genres in writing including poetry, plays, sonnets, dissertation, journalism, notebooks, manuscripts, manifesto, system, and so on. Peter’s position on Marx encourages me to reconsider Marxian and Marxist literary theory from the 19th century to the present. It broadens my horizon when reading Marx’s writings from the western cultural background and theory of modernity. Peter teaches graduate students with me in my class of ‘The Basic Issues of Literary Theory’, and he teaches ‘Marxism’ and ‘Liquid Modernity’. Every July, Peter is invited to teach in the University Immersion Program (UIP) of Sichuan University, and he gives a series of lectures to students both from Sichuan University and from the rest of the world.
In December 2019, Peter sponsored a conference in Melbourne, welcoming Heller, and I was interested in the conference. Unfortunately, and suddenly, Agnes Heller died on 19 July that year. Peter and I were extremely shocked and saddened. Heller’s sudden leaving, like a gust of wind, completely smashed the Melbourne schedule. After the difficult grieving process, Peter decided to continue. For the second time, I led a Sichuan University group to Melbourne and gave a keynote speech, ‘Can we still be at home? Agnes Heller and China’, which chronicled the three stages of Heller’s contact with Chinese culture and scholarship. My speech was in memory of Heller and was later published in Thesis Eleven (Fu, 2021). It aroused John Grumley’s interest in Chinese modernity. Thanks to Peter’s efforts, I met John, an excellent student of György Márkus at the University of Sydney, who pays close attention to Agnes Heller and Márkus’s theory of modernity.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, we had no opportunities to meet in person. Sian recorded the situation by writing the photographic essay, Watching the Crown: ‘As the weeks passed, we sat at our table, where we work each day’ (Supski, 2020: 3). According to Sian, ‘This photo essay is about loss, but is also a love letter’ (Supski, 2020: 35). In the age of information technology and globalization, we use email, WeChat, online meetings, and so on to keep in touch with each other. Our collaborative teaching continues, as does our academic friendship. And our friendship grows fonder as reflecting on Heller always inspires our reflection on the topics of Marxism, modernity, and aesthetics.
November 2020, Conference Speech online
In November 2020, Peter and I sponsored the second international conference on ‘Marxist Critical Theory in Eastern Europe: In Memory of Agnes Heller’ at Sichuan University. Because of COVID-19, we had to hold the conference online via Zoom. This conference attracted more than 100 scholars at home and abroad to talk about Agnes Heller and to pay tribute to her great contribution to critical theory. It was a big success. Then, Peter and I selected some significant papers to compile for a special issue of Thesis Eleven. Our great and successful co-operation generated more understanding and creativity.
November 2022, Conference online
In November 2022, the third international conference we hosted was held in memory of György Márkus at Sichuan University. In this conference, we discussed the thoughts and lives of Márkus and Heller from different perspectives. We are planning future events, with hopes of a November 2024 conference. We hope to make a long-term academic space that will allow for the sharing of insights into critical theory and interdisciplinary fields like aesthetics, literary theory, and Marxism.
November 2022, Conference Speech online
Peter and I have always deeply and passionately engaged in teaching together and co-sponsoring the international conference. We both benefit from these activities and develop new considerations for critical theory. Perhaps 2023 is a new take-off point because we can work together in-person again. In July 2023, he came to Sichuan University with Sian to teach in the UIP for two weeks. Before their arrival, I could hardly wait. We embraced each other. It was so lucky for us to meet once again. It’s like catching up with old friends after a major disaster, and I am more than grateful. These years, Chengdu has changed so much and has become more beautiful, as a consequence of the continuous preparation for the World University Student Games. I felt excited and drove Peter and Sian to visit the new sports park. Even though the summer in Chengdu was a little hot, we enjoyed the great gymnasium, the clean lake, and the blue sky. Peter gave a series of speeches and, at last, Sian was invited to give a speech. They were excited. We made a refined academic poster for the speeches. Sian liked it very much and took it back to Melbourne. I think that the poster symbolically ties Chengdu to Melbourne.
July 2023, Sports Park, Chengdu
Shortly thereafter, on 4 September, 2023, Peter and Sian came back and will teach with me until the end of November. Peter is full of wonderful and powerful creativity. It is fortunate for me to learn so much from Peter. He always keeps thinking and reflecting, and becomes positively interested in the issue of aesthetics. On 9 September 2023, I was so excited when he gave his new book, Toward the Blues (Beilharz, 2023) to me. It had only recently been published.
I hurried to turn the page as soon as I went home and was quickly drawn in by it. I read it with a strong desire and surprise. It deconstructed my image of Peter. How curious I am! Perhaps how strange he is! Peter is deeply and passionately involved in the rock music movement in Australia and in the world. Through the book, I went more deeply into Peter’s thoughts and rich spiritual life. I see the other dimension of his personality, which is a mix of avant-garde, modern, and postmodern. It is amazing, as I am interested in music, too. When I was young, my major was music education. In those years from 1989 to 1992, I learned to play the organ, the flute, the guitar, and other instruments. I made many flutes of bamboo. Later on, I took my guitar to play something. Now the guitar is in my bookroom. It is no doubt that Peter’s book evokes my lived experience of music. This work adds another facet to the Peter I know. I would like to share some initial thoughts about this and my early reactions to the book.
September 2023, Chengdu, China
Peter’s book is about the history of Australian rock music since 1971, mainly about the Melbourne rock band Chain’s classic album Toward the Blues. Peter was – and is – a fan of the band Chain. Since he was a teenager, Peter has been fascinated by Chain’s magical performance, which he regards as ‘a magic moment in the studio and in Melbourne’s wider music scene’ (Beilharz, 2023: xiii). Peter ‘played as support to Chain in 1971’ as is noted in the profile in the back of the book. He wrote: For finally, there was a small personal story here. Chain was the source of my musical initiation, the period of Live Chain and then Toward the Blues. By the time of the latter, my band, Serenity, was supporting Chain in high school halls in the outer eastern suburbs of Melbourne. We could talk, especially with Phil, who had the decency to treat us as equals even though we were novices. Fifty years later I could take the train to his home in West Footscray to talk through all this, not least Toward the Blues track by track. How did you get that sound? and so on. And he would pick up his Strat and show me. (Beilharz, 2023: 12) In December 1971 I left home to live with Fred in Serene House in Lilydale, our little Big Pink (ours was green). We shared lots of clothes, food, music, books, boots, other stuff. And we shared that album, which he still has. I found some pristine copies in vinyl shops during the writing of this book, and shared them with Phil Manning when interviewed at his home in West Footscray fifty years later. It’s a long time back. Now we are drinking tea, and it still feels like yesterday. We listened through the tracks together, me waxing lyrical, Phil more restrained, sober, indeed. Toward the Blues has a long tail. We were so much older then, we’re younger than that now, perhaps. (Beilharz, 2023: 93–4)
It is associated with the 1970s radical politics and cultural production in Australia and its time and place in globalization. This is a serious book. However, Peter writes it in his experientially based knowledge of music. He writes in the first person. I can feel his blood flowing and his mind embodying it. Here I list some examples: A word, as my English friends might say, before you read on, or hit the cans. Better yet, do both together: read and listen at the same time. (Beilharz, 2023: xii) This was the first version of Chain I saw, at the Traffik disco in Flinders Lane near Spencer Street fifty years ago, at fifteen or so, in the company of my friend Vivian Lees, himself later to become a leading rock entrepreneur. (Beilharz, 2023: 7)
November 2019, Sian and Peter, Melbourne’s home
I am grateful to have Peter in my life. We have the same friend, Agnes Heller. Through Heller, I had opportunities to meet Peter, and with Peter I deepened my understanding of Heller’s Marxism, theory of modernity, and aesthetics. At the 70th birthday of Peter, when I just went past 50 years of age, I would like to give many thanks to him. He has made a great contribution to critical theory in Sichuan University. I hope our academic friendship can give birth to new writings and insights in the traffic of critical theory. My contact with Peter is creative, reciprocal, and happy, like the aesthetic pleasure that we enjoy in a Chinese landscape. It establishes a wonderful inter-subjectivity and inter-cultural dialogue. We both cherish mutual touches in the condition of postmodern contingent existence.
Circling Marx lecture with Professor Fu, Chengdu, 2019
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.