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How did the exhibition in the Chinese pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale entitled Continuum – Generation by Generation (buxi 不息) mobilize the concept of buxi, which translates literally as “endlessness” or “never ceasing”? What does it mean to conceive of art, the world, and oneself through the lens of buxi, as endlessly intrarelated? This paper delves into this question from a multi-pronged perspective. First, it explains the meaning of buxi and analyzes how the show engages with aesthetic, epistemological, social and political implications of art and the world conceived through a contemporary perspective on the concept of “endlessness”. Second, the paper explores how a reading of the show and the artworks – their adopted aesthetic strategies, media, techniques, and materialities – through the lens of buxi complicates the critical and aesthetic framework for contemporary art in the global context. Finally, the paper evaluates the engagement with buxi – and the respective alternative processual ontology and temporality of art and world – as a useful mode of decolonizing the discipline of art history, even as it emphasizes the importance of adopting a dynamic pluriversal approach that attends to the transcultural relations that shape and reshape the multiplicity of meanings of art in a global framework, its multiple and entangled critical and aesthetic discourses, and the complexity of power structures, and avoids obscuring significant contexts and experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deuteronomy 23:3, says: "No ... Moabite may enter the assembly of the Lord". This verse is motivated by a discriminatory tendency embedded in the ontology of the Deuteronomist. Interestingly, Deuteronomy 23:3 was used by Ezra-Nehemiah to discriminate against the "Moabites" during the Second Temple. Such ontology is countered by the author of Ruth in the narrative of Ruth during the Second Temple. This demonstrates an ontological "war" within the Bible itself. The primary contestation lies in whether God is exclusive or inclusive. This development necessitates a hermeneutics of suspicion. In the course of history, the "theology" of Deuteronomy has been used to grossly violate the human dignity of many God-fearing African people and many other people of the South for colonial purposes. To exacerbate the situation, there were persistent attempts from some quarters to universalise such a discriminatory biblical perspective. This would feed into the centre–periphery arrangement, with the centre feeding the periphery with such hermeneutics. For this reason, African scholars are implored to be very vigilant against ardent pressures put on the biblical texts by ontological, epistemological, and contextual biases of interpretations. Accordingly, Andrew Mbuvi identifies African Biblical Hermeneutics perfectly when he says it seeks to undo "the very construct of the 'centre-periphery' binary by allowing the possibility of multiple centres"). Kenneth Ngwa, thus, rightly asserts that African Biblical Hermeneutics considers African epistemologies and conditions "to be invaluable and legitimate contexts and resources in biblical interpretation"), drinking from our own wells). In consequence, this paper intends to set a dialogue between Deuteronomy 23:3 and Ruth 4:18–22. This paper aims to examine the understanding of God behind these verses. This paper will then compare the two theologies with the African philosophical concept of God. Harnessing the African concept of Ubuntu, this paper will de-ideologise the two texts and thus will provide a recommendation concerning the two texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically reflects on the research portfolio by the ecological economist Clive Spash who has helped pinpoint specific and systemic blindspots in a political-economic system that prioritises myopic development trajectories divorced from ecological reality. Drawing on his published work and collaborations it seeks to make sense of the slow, or absent, progress in averting global warming and ecological destruction. Three strands of key concern and influence are identified and discussed with reference to their orientation and explicit expression regarding Ontology, Epistemology and Axiology. Some complementary points about indeterminacy and holism are presented to further strengthen the arguments for a transition towards a social-ecological economic system that puts values and principles back into focus. While Clive Spash's work has made a strong case within the economic community and appealing to ecology professionals, the value-myopia or value-vacuum has to be tackled across all disciplines, politics and society for a meaningful and urgently required transformation in decision making. Hence, the article finishes with some suggestions for the (higher) education system, and highlights the importance of simplicity and sufficiency, as well as strong sustainability-driven citizen and community action as necessary catalysts of change in this social-ecological transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]