Rescuing the Empire: Chinese Nation-building in the Twentieth Century
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors take modern China's dilemma of how to deal with the legacy of its imperial past as the starting point for a discussion of the drawn-out re-creation of China in the twentieth century.
Abstract: This paper takes modern China's dilemma of how to deal with the legacy of its imperial past as the starting point for a discussion of the drawn-out re-creation of China in the twentieth century. The particular focus is on the important role of non-Han ethnic minorities in this process. It is pointed out that the non-recognition and forced assimilation of all such minorities, in favour of a unified citizenship on an imagined European, American or Japanese model, was actually considered as a serious alternative and favoured by many Chinese nation-builders in the wake of the overthrow of the last imperial dynasty in 1911. The article then proceeds to a discussion of why, on the contrary, ethnic minorities should instead have been formally identified and in some cases even actively organised as official minorities, recognised and incorporated into the state structure, as happened after 1949. Based on the formal and symbolic qualities of the constitution of these minorities, it is argued that new China is also a new formulation of the imperial Chinese model, which resurrects the corollary idea of civilisation as a transformative force that requires a primitive, backward periphery as its object.
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TL;DR: The authors argued that Confucianism is an anthropological machine in the sense of the term used by Giorgio Agamben, and showed that the split between the human and the nonhuman is central to Mencius' moral psychology.
Abstract: Confucianism is a kind of humanism. Confucian humanism presupposes, however, a divisive act that separates human and nonhuman. This paper shows that the split between the human and the nonhuman is central to Mencius’ moral psychology, and it argues that Confucianism is an anthropological machine in the sense of the term used by Giorgio Agamben. I consider the main points of early Daoist critique of Confucian humanism. A comparative analysis of Herman Melville's novella ‘Bartleby the Scrivener’ reveals the limitation of the moral will in Mencius. Finally, I refer to an incident that recently captured the imagination of Chinese netizens, and shows the contested influence of Confucian humanism in contemporary China.
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Cites background from "Rescuing the Empire: Chinese Nation..."
...but never completely disappear from the horizon of the empire (Fiskesjö, 2006)....
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...It is inherent to the logic of the expansion of the Chinese culture-state that the barbarians are continually pacified and brought under control, but never completely disappear from the horizon of the empire (Fiskesjö, 2006)....
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TL;DR: Gros et al. as mentioned in this paper focus on the period from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century, when this “frontier Tibet” [Kham] formed a middle ground in which local communities, the central Tibetan government (Ganden Phodrang), the Chinese imperial government (Qing), and later the republican authorities negotiated means of accommodation and established new institutions and practices.
Abstract: Author(s): Gros, Stephane | Abstract: The contributions in this issue focus on the period from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century, when this “frontier Tibet” [Kham] formed a middle ground in which local communities, the central Tibetan government (Ganden Phodrang), the Chinese imperial government (Qing), and later the republican authorities negotiated means of accommodation and established new institutions and practices. Against this historical background, the articles address questions of economic history, cultural interchange, and political legitimation and contestation at critical historical junctures. They show in particular how historical developments in trade and commerce are interlaced with notions of wealth and value, and linked to political control and authority. Together they bring new, ethnographically oriented historical studies into the arena of theoretical approaches to borderlands and corridors of contact...
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on foreign teachers, itinerant native speakers of English who come to China for adventure and a paycheck in return for teaching their language to others, and argue that the image of the foreigner provokes reflections on the nature of Chinese ethnicity, culture, and national identity.
Abstract: Some of the most recognizable urban figures in China today are not even Chinese, but “foreigners.” Foreigners stand out from the crowd, not simply because of their perceived racial distinctiveness, but because they are seen to possess and successfully manipulate symbols of a globalized world that many Chinese desire but feel disconnected from. Based on fieldwork in the northeastern city of Shenyang, this article will focus specifically on foreign teachers, itinerant native speakers of English who come to China for adventure and a paycheck in return for teaching their language to others. They are encountered in foreign language classrooms, the media, and in public, acting as indexes of modernity in a rapidly changing urban landscape. While Chinese urban residents bemoan a sense of isolation and backwardness within globalized structures of power and capital, they identify the interloping foreign teacher—stereotypically seen as white, English-speaking, mobile, wealthy, and brand-conscious—as an exemplar of the possibilities of modern selfhood. Foreigners are objects of desire, curiosity, envy, and resentment; each emotion is linked to their status as representatives of a world perceived to be beyond the boundaries of the local, but which in reality permeates it at every level. While foreign teachers themselves are often oblivious to this wider context, they are implicated in everyday practices of Chinese self-fashioning, from education in global languages to marketing international brands. I argue that the image of the foreigner provokes reflections on the nature of Chinese ethnicity, culture, and national identity. Contemplating the foreign as a potential subject position, sometimes critically, is one way that urban Chinese articulate creative possibilities for their own futures.
12 citations