This article explores the interpretation of the Qurān presented by Mullā Sadrā (d. 1050AH/1640), a mystic philosopher of Ithnācasharī Shīca Islam in Iran. First, in his Keys to the Unknown (Mafātīh al-ghayb), we know the general mechanism of how reading the Qur'ān realizes spiritual perfection. Mullā Sadrā considers the Qurān as the source of spiritual wisdom with a multi-layered structure of meaning. Through concentration on Qur'ānic texts, a reader's soul will be open to a deeper layer of meaning with an awareness of a higher level of spiritual perfection. As a concrete example, we examine his commentary on the Chapter of Earthquake (Sūrat al-Zalzalah), which depicts the catastrophic events on the Last Day. In the literal meaning, or the surface layer of meaning, he intuits as a hidden deeper meaning the incessant re-creation and dynamic flux of existence towards perfection, which also explains different transformations of human beings in the hereafter. We find here another spirituality of Islam, which differs from that of the Islam built on the surface meanings of the Qur'ān.

When the global material reality has already been reshaped and determined by western modernity, Gandhism and Maoism stand for attempts to discover a material world other than the existing one. I examine the ways in which the theory and practice of the body in Mao and Gandhi resonates with new materialisms' views of the body and matter as dynamic multitude and anti-dualistic open system. Gandhi and Mao share the concerns of new materialism in terms of seeing human bodies, environments, (in)organic matters and systems as configurations of multiple influences and dependencies. To put Maoism and Gandhism in the perspective of today's new materialism, the entanglement of human, nature and matter in their ideas also functions as a kind of agency in connection to other socio-political forces (instead of deploying ethics, as current new materialist ontologies have done) to enact changes. The ways in which the two formidable Asian thinkers grasp materials sound more like an abstraction, revealing that materialisms – either old or new – may be something other than what they define themselves as.

China's commercial revival of the 1980s initiated a wave of nostalgia for old brands, which various political and commercial actors spent the subsequent four decades trying to develop, enhance, or exploit. Such attempts can be divided into two types: the heritage approach of the “old brands revitalization project” and the “creative nostalgia” of retro advertising. Both aim to nurture a sense of nostalgia for old brands, but they espouse opposing logic: the former emphasizing authenticity, while the latter mines the past for fun, novelty, and irony. These trends are expressed in the food sector, which comprises the majority of classic enterprises, and has been shaped by explosive growth. Rather than a generational rejection of the past, it is the rush to establish a presence in the crowded national market that drives China's classic food brands to repackage nostalgia from authenticity to novelty, from scarcity to replicability, and from heritage to retro.1