<h3>Christopher Tolkien</h3>
November 21, 1924 - January 15, 2020
Executor of J.R.R. Tolkien's literary legacy
Growing up listening to the stories of the hobbits and being able to pick out the wrong details; being able to map the Middle-earth world as a child; growing up to serve in South Africa, receiving the "Lord of the Rings" story from his father... As the youngest son of J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien grew up immersed in the world created by his father and became his father's "chief critic and right hand".
J.R.R. Tolkien created a fantasy world so vast that when he died, he left behind 70 boxes of unpublished material. As the successor to the manuscript, Christopher collated and codified the legends of the Middle-earth world in these materials. In 1977, he compiled and published The Elven Diamond, and from 1983 to 1996, he published the 12-volume History of Middle-earth. Then there's "Hulin's Children", "Belen and Lucien", "The Fall of Gondolin"... Christopher has always been wary of the harm that pop culture can do to the Middle-earth world, for example, he does not approve of the world-renowned film "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, believing that it is only an action film for young people, and does not reflect the artistic and philosophical connotations of the original. At the beginning of the year, the true "Lord of the Rings" went west at the age of 95, but his legacy will always be with us.
<h3>George Steiner</h3>
Literary critic and translation theorist
1929-February 3, 2020
Born into a wealthy Jewish family and speaking German, French, and English, the literary critic and translation theorist Steiner called himself a "Central European humanist": a family of classical culture and European literary languages, a multilingualist, and a wide range of books. Against the backdrop of Jewish persecution, in 1944, Steiner went to New York and became an American citizen, reflecting on the Holocaust and observing the degradation of language in modern life, and based on this, he completed his masterpiece "Language and Silence" in 1967. He saw in Nazi officers that a man could play Bach and Schubert and read Goethe and Rilke, but that it did not prevent him from going to work at Auschwitz. Why is that? He asked, what kind of impact should literature and knowledge have on society? Steiner saw that language was the representative of culture. The inhumanity of modern Western politics (especially the Nazis), together with the ensuing technological society, has led to mass education teaching "a special kind of semi-illiteracy, reading and understanding only within a very limited and utilitarian range", which has led to the abuse and pollution of language and culture, and the creation of Western literature into suicidal rhetoric "silence".
Like Harold Bloom, who died in 2019, Steiner is not a "theorist" of structuralism or psychoanalysis. Theory, he argues, is a degenerate manifestation of human loss of perceived patience, which not only simplifies the richness of words, but also deprives literary appreciation and interpretation of its unique dignity. He said that the triumph of theory in literature, history, sociology, etc., was actually self-deception, because science had the upper hand and the humanities had developed in order to fight a war. With the departure of contemporary humanist intellectuals such as Harold Bloom and George Steiner, we may be ushering in an era without masters.
<h3>Ulay (Frank Uwe Laysiepen</h3>).
Performance artist
1943-March 2, 2020
Born in Germany, Ouray began his career in photography by photographing the world of marginalized people. After meeting Marina Abramovich, the "mother of contemporary performance art," they became famous performance couples, collaborating on many experimental performances, where they sat back-to-back with their hair tied together in a ponytail for 16 hours; they also stood face to face at the narrow entrance to the museum, where exhibitors had to awkwardly squeeze into the hall from between their nudes. In 1988, the two performed a creation in China, which also announced their breakup. They climbed the two ends of the Great Wall, one from west to east, one from east to west, and met at Erlang Mountain to complete "Lover's Great Wall". Since then, Ulay has disappeared from public view and returned to his original photography world. It wasn't until 22 years later, in 2010, that Abramovich conducted an exhibition called "Artists on The Spot" at MoMA in New York, where viewers could enter the hall at any time to confront Abramović, who was sitting on the other side of the long table. Unexpectedly, Ulay also came to the scene, and the two stared at each other with tears in their eyes. This encounter seemed beautiful, but soon after, the two went to court because of the interests of creation.
After Ulay's death, Abramović said Ulay was a special artist and human being who would be deeply remembered, and his art and legacy would be eternal.
<h3>Ennio Morricone</h3>
Italian composer
November 10, 1928-July 6, 2020
Morricone entered the Conservatory at the age of 12 as trumpeter. Since then, he has often participated in the recording of film scores. After World War II, he found that although the Italian film industry was developing rapidly, the neorealist films were disappointing in their soundtrack. Partly for the purpose of making money, and feeling capable of doing something different, Morricone and his elementary school classmate, the Italian director Sergio Leone, co-founded the Italian Western in the sixties and seventies. Leone's famous "Dart Trilogy" - "Red Dead Redemption", "Dusk Double Dart", "Golden Trilogy" and "Past Trilogy" - "Once Upon a Time in the West", "Revolutionary Past", and "Once Upon a Time in America" were all written by Morricone.
Since then, Morricone has maintained long-term contacts and cooperation with many film masters, and has served as a jury member at the Cannes and Venice Film Festivals. Although he was well known in Hollywood, he lived in his hometown of Rome throughout the day, insisting on not studying or speaking English. He did not like Hollywood, and even refused the villa given by Hollywood, believing that his music would undergo unavoidable changes in Hollywood, and staying in his hometown could decide everything about music.
<h3>Bernard Stiegler</h3>
French philosopher
April 1, 1952-August 6, 2020
In the 1970s, Stigler worked as a farm worker and a bar owner, and because he was oppressed at the bottom of society, he decided to rob the bank. He described himself, partly out of a sense of discontent after the failure of the Red May Storm and on the other hand a revolt against class oppression, that he robbed three banks in a row and was arrested and imprisoned when he reached the fourth.
In prison, Stigler taught himself philosophy and spent 15 hours a day reading and thinking, and spent five years there. After his release from prison, he studied for a doctorate with the master of deconstructionism, Derrida. His philosophical work Technology and Time, written under the direction of Derrida, is considered one of the most influential works in French philosophical circles at the end of the 20th century. Influenced by phenomenology, psychoanalysis, postmodernism, modern natural science and many other ideological resources, he constructed a radical critical discourse that directly faced the reality of contemporary digital capitalist society, and became the most important representative figure in the critical theory camp of contemporary Western society. From February 26 to March 9, 2015, Stigler visited China, visiting the China Academy of Art, Nanjing University, and Tongji University. He argues that the greatest enemy of humanity today is not Islamism, sovereign expansion, or nationalism, but the process of detachment and sublimation that has happened to us through digitality and social media architecture. He argues that digitality and social media prevent young people from reaching adulthood.
<h3>David Graeber</h3>
anthropologist
February 12, 1961-September 2, 2020
David Graeber, a former anthropologist at Yale University, was fired for political advocacy when he was about to receive a tenured position. He was also an organizer of radical campaigns, best known for organizing the Occupy Wall Street movement. Some argue that the Occupy Wall Street movement's slogan, "We are 99 percent," was proposed by him, but he himself denies it. Not only did Graeber campaign for the protests, turning what had been small rallies into large demonstrations, but his book Debt: The First 5,000 Years also provided the movement with ideological resources. The book points out that the concept of price and the indifferent market have swallowed up all the warm veins that human society originally had. In this regard, Graeber's "prescription" is: to forgive all international and consumer debts.
In recent years, Graeber has also proposed the theory of "bullshit job" to get readers to think about the meaning of work. He argues that a lot of jobs are created to entrench the interests of the 1 percent, such as a large number of financial services and corporate legal positions; some jobs appear only to make the ruling class feel good about themselves, such as some administrative assistants, receptionists. There are also jobs that exist simply because people are doing the "bullshit work" and don't have time to do their own thing. "Hell is when a group of people spend most of their time completing a task they don't like or aren't very good at." In Graeber's view, the massive amount of work in the modern economy is actually "a possible version of hell."
<h3>Shere Hite</h3>
Sexologist
1942-September 9, 2020
While in graduate school at Columbia, Cher Heidi's nude commercial for a typewriter appeared in Playboy titled "The typewriter is smart enough that she doesn't have to be a smart person." The ad reflects the discrimination suffered by women in that era.
Heidi's most famous work is the Heidi Sexology Report, which focuses on the experience of women, getting rid of the male-dominated thinking, and suggests that many women do not get stimulation because of sexual penetration, and vaginal orgasm is not the only way to orgasm. Heidi points out that "women and women have no fault for orgasm, and it is society itself that needs to change sexual attitudes." The study, which kicked off the sexual revolution for women in the 1970s, drew a lot of criticism, with some calling the study an "anti-male" "hate report." Thanks to a barrage of criticism, Heidi gave up her U.S. citizenship and lived in Europe. Heidi died in London this year, and she is remembered because with her, the world has moved a little further towards gender equality.
<h3>Ruth Bader Ginsburg</h3>
Justice of the United States Supreme Court
March 15, 1933-September 18, 2020
Women need to be the decision-makers in their own lives. Ginsburg, the first Jewish female justice on the U.S. Supreme Court and the second female justice in U.S. history, agreed. She was what fans called "the infamous RBG," what Trump called "shame on the Supreme Court," and Bill Clinton who said "Ginsburg exceeded my highest expectations when I appointed her." She wore complex necklaces on judges' robes and objected when she could not express objections, setting off the fashion trend of "Ginsburg dissent necklaces". Her image was made into t-shirts, mugs and memes... There have been 6 films and documentaries about her. Behind this is her contribution to women's equal rights, marriage equality, disability rights, and immigration rights. In the area of gender equality, for example, Ginsburg promoted equal pay for men and women for equal work, equal employment and educational opportunities at the legislative level, and also won compensation for a single father in Weinberg v. Weinberg because she saw that to achieve true equal rights, men also need to be liberated from the existing gender rules. Ginsburg was once called a "bitch" because of her career advancement, to which she responded: "It is better to be called a bitch than a mouse." "She died at the age of 87, in the eyes of some witches, villains, witches, in the eyes of others is a brave fighter, determined, honest, compassionate. Ginsburg set an example for women of all ages and left an America closer to equality.
<h3>Bruno Barbey</h3>
French photographer
1941-November 9, 2020
Born into a family of diplomats, Bruno Babe studied photography at university, rose to prominence at a young age and became a member of the Magnum Photo Agency, after which he traveled the globe to many historical sites in the second half of the last century: Israel's Six-Day War, The May Storm in Paris, the Vietnam War, the 50th anniversary celebration of the October Revolution...
In 1973, Babe visited Beijing for the first time with French President Georges Pompidou, and in the nearly half-century since, he has traveled to China many times, from Beijing during the Cultural Revolution, Shanghai at the beginning of reform and opening up to Pingyao in the new century, from city squares to rural fields. In his shots, some people are eating popsicles, some people are buying dry food on the platform, some people are drinking tea at the Lake Pavilion, and some people are doing morning exercises in the field, and people always show a natural state and their original appearance. Unlike western photographers who documented China, Babe's photographs are often in color, giving people a sense of "yesterday's China." Time flies, and while the photographs are still vibrant and colorful, Babe can no longer fulfill his wish to return to China.
<h3>Jan Morris</h3>
British journalist and writer
October 2, 1926-November 20, 2020
As James Morris, he became the only journalist to accompany Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay to the summit of Mount Everest in 1953, the first human ascent of Everest; in 1960, he attended the United Nations General Assembly to cover the classic scene of Khrushchev taking off his shoes and patting the table; in 1961, he observed and reported on the trial of the Nazi Adolf Eichmann in Israel. In addition to his world-renowned news interviews, his travelogues have also been a huge success in the market, and he and his wife have four children.
By 1972, james' years of hormone therapy and groundbreaking sex reassignment surgery in Casablanca were over. James became Jane. In her 1974 autobiography Conundrum (Chinese edition of Her and Others), she recounted the journey of transgenderism, arguing that she "didn't change gender, I actually absorbed both genders." I now have a little bit of every gender." Jane continued to write more than thirty books, including travelogues, novels, historical works, etc., and compiled and published Virginia Woolf's travel essays. As a result of the transgender, Jane had to divorce her wife, but in her later years they re-registered as civil partners and lived in seclusion by the sea in north-west Wales. In 1994, Jane's life was full of pilgrimages and adventures, and now the adventure has finally come to an end.
<h3>Ki-duk Kim</h3>
Korean director and screenwriter
December 20, 1960-December 11, 2020
In December, South Korean director Kim Ki-duk died in Latvia after contracting COVID-19. On the one hand, he is mourned by fans as an internationally renowned director - his works that portray love, violence and humanity for "bold" and "non-mainstream" have been shortlisted for international film festivals such as Cannes, Venice and Berlin, "Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring" has represented South Korea in the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, and "Holy Death" has also won the Golden Lion Award at the Venice International Film Festival. On the other hand, he has been accused many times by the actresses he has worked with — for sexual harassment and assault , or for beating up an actress on set and forcing her to shoot a bed scene that she didn't already have. As a result, he was isolated by the Korean film industry during his lifetime, and after his death, the Korean film industry rarely mourned publicly.
<h3>John le Carré</h3>
1931-December 12, 2020
British spy novelist
Le Carré's original name was David Conver. He joined the British military intelligence unit at the age of 18 as a spy for East Berlin. Because he was still working in intelligence when he wrote his first three works, his employer required him to use the pseudonym Le Carré. Many readers suspect that he is writing stories that are true, but Le Carré said to himself: "The secret information I know is so small that I can't leak it at all," as a writer, I actually eat by imagination.
From "Summoning the Dead" in 1961 to the publication of a new book" at the age of 87, "Agent on the Battlefield", Le Carré's writing career lasted nearly 60 years. His well-known works include "Pot Maker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy", "Berlin Spy", "Night Manager", etc., many of which have been adapted into film and television dramas. His posthumous work "Battlefield Agent" is set in the Trump era, the United States and the British security services are in cahoots, secretly undermining the DEMOCRATIC SYSTEM of the European Union, with a strong realistic orientation. Foreign media commented that Le Carré dealt with many themes such as betrayal, moral compromise and the psychological cost of secret life in spy novels. Although the outside world always says that he is a spy novelist, he does not care what type of writing he belongs to, and in Le Carré, the world of spies is a metaphor for the human situation. He asked rhetorically, "What kind of a tale of two cities is it?" Thriller? ”
<h3>Ezra F. Vogel</h3>
July 1930-December 20, 2020
He is a senior expert on East Asian issues in the United States and an emeritus professor emeritus of the Harvard University Academy of Social Sciences
"If you want to gain insight into American society, you should go abroad, live in a very different culture, and immerse yourself in it." Vogel, who earned his Ph.D. at Harvard, was changed his life by this quote from anthropologist Lawrence Clarke. He went to Tokyo to do fieldwork and wrote the book "Japan's New Middle Class" (1963), which also opened his research on Japan, and later wrote more influential works, "Japan First: Implications for America" (1979) and "Is Japan Still First?" 》（2000）。 After returning to Harvard from Japan, his sociological background helped Fairbank and others transform traditional Sinology into contemporary Chinese studies. He won the title of "Mr. China" at Harvard for his works such as Guangzhou under Communism: Planning and Politics of a Provincial Capital (1949-1968) (1969), One Step Ahead: Guangdong in Reform (1989), and The Deng Xiaoping Era (2011), and became an "old friend of the Chinese" in China. Although Vogel studied sociology rather than international relations, he always paid attention to the development of trilateral relations between China, Japan and the United States, and had many friends between China and Japan. That's because growing up in World War II and studying foreign countries (even his own ideological enemies) during the Cold War, he felt the need to solve historical problems and normalize relations between countries.
<h3>James Gunn</h3>
1923-December 23, 2020
American science fiction writer, editor, scholar, and former president of the American Science Fiction and Fantasy Association
James Gunn is probably best known to Chinese readers for the "Road to Science Fiction" series of books, which concentrates the classic works of world science fiction and has a great response among Chinese science fiction enthusiasts. In addition, he won a Special Hugo Award for his 1975 history of science fiction, Staggered Worlds: A History of World Science Fiction Graphs, which, in subsequent editions, gan added a new chapter to the book, bringing the timeline to the 21st century and fleshing out the Asian part, launching a Chinese edition in 2020. In 1983, he won a Hugo Award for Isaac Asimov: The Founder of Science Fiction.
Gunn also wrote more than 100 short stories in his lifetime, and was good at dealing with major problems facing mankind, such as energy shortages, terrorism, population explosions, and environmental pollution. In 2017, at the age of 94, he published his memoir, Star-Begotten: A Life Lived in Science Fiction. From this book, the reader can see that Gunn is not limited to desk work, he has also traveled the world to spread the gospel of science fiction.
Resources:
The little son who exchanged letters with Santa Claus was gone forever
https://new.qq.com/omn/20200118/20200118A07BWI00.html
"Hard as a Nail": In Memory of Ruth Bud Ginsburg
https://www.jiemian.com/article/5012853.html
The ideological world | After fading the "infamous RBG" idol packaging, Justice Ginsburg gave more inspiration
https://www.jiemian.com/article/5011070.html
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton: Ginsburg exceeded my highest expectations when I appointed her
https://www.jiemian.com/article/5007453.html
All walks of life in the United States bid farewell to Ginsburg: she is what the American dream should be
https://www.jiemian.com/article/5032468.html
Magnum photographer Bruno Babe dies: Photographs capture colors from China for half a century
https://www.jiemian.com/article/5250618.html
Jane Morris's last interview: Embark on a journey again in eternal rest
https://www.jiemian.com/article/5314417.html
British transgender writer Jane Morris dies: he has covered the summit of Mount Everest, and she has left behind a masterpiece of travelogues
https://www.jiemian.com/article/5300495.html
Kim Ki-duk, what are you doing now?
https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_10376955
Famous director Kim Ki-duk died, and the Korean film industry was "silent"
https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1686002468010055713&wfr=spider&for=pc
Concern for U.S.-Japan Relations: From Vogel's work, Chinese readers can see the other and themselves
https://www.jiemian.com/article/5430286.html
Historian Wang Jiafan: Exuberant curiosity, eternal curiosity| the deceased
https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1671563431659484738&wfr=spider&for=pc
Shao Yanxiang: I have died, I have survived, I testify
https://www.jiemian.com/article/1035888.html
The poet and essayist Shao Yanxiang died and is considered the most prolific and influential essayist in the new period of China
https://www.jiemian.com/article/4766949.html
Ouyang Zhongshi died, a calligrapher, opera composer, and educator with no "home" to return to
https://www.jiemian.com/article/5226898.html
Ouyang Zhongshi: Builder of the calligraphy education system
https://new.qq.com/omn/20201204/20201204A01W7Q00.html