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Editors Q. S. T O N G (University of H o n g Kong) WANG Shouren (Nanjing University) Editorial Board Douglas KERR (University of Hong Kong) ZHANG Yibin (Nanjing University) CHEN Jianhua (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology) Section Editors LIN Qingxin (Peking University) JIANG Ningkang (Nanjing University) Translation Editor Nicola NIGHTINGALE Assistant Editor Ruth Y Y HUNG (University of Hong Kong) Editorial Advisors Jonathan ARAC (Columbia University) Catherine BELSEY (University of Wales) Paul A. BOVE (University of Pittsburgh) CHEN Yangu (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) Rey CHOW (Brown University) CI Jiwei (University of Hong Kong) Andrew GIBSON (Royal Holloway, University of London) Elaine Y L. H O (University of Hong Kong) Christopher M. HUTTON (University of Hong Kong) Leo Ou-fan LEE (Harvard University) LIAO Ping-hui (National Tsinghua University, Taiwan) Lydia H. LIU (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) Joseph H. K POON (University of Hong Kong) QIAN Chengdan (Nanjing University) H a u n SAUSSY (Stanford University) David T. W. WANG (Columbia University) WANG Hui (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) ZHOU Xian (Nanjing University) ZHOU Xiaoyi (Peking University)

A FORUM OF CHINESE AND WESTERN KNOWLEDGE

Edited by Q. §. Toinig, Wairog Shourem, and Doyglas Kerr

# m * # m is. i*• HONG KONG UNIVERSITY PRESS

k -k A # * J&L j i NANJING UNIVERSITY P R E S S

Hong Kong University Press 14/F Hing Wai Centre 7 Tin Wan Praya Road Aberdeen Hong Kong

Nanjing University Press 22 Hankou Road Nanjing 210093 PRC

© Hong Kong University Press 2004

All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be r e p r o d u c e d or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. This edition is available in mainland China exclusively from Nanjing University Press, in the Hong Kong Special Adminstrative Region and the rest of the world exclusively from Hong Kong University Press.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound by Nanjing Amityprinting Co.,Ltd.

Contents

Acknowledgements Introduction: Difference and Convergence in Globalization

ix 1

Q. S. Tong and Douglas Kerr Part I

Knowledge, Institutionalization, and Globalization

What's Real? Catherine Belsey

, 21

Some Notes on a Critique of Culture Ronald A. T. Judy

37

Race Theory on Trial Under National Socialism: The Case of Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss Christopher Hutton

49

English Studies and Global Ethics: Universalism and the Idioms of Experience Eric Clarke

61

vi

Contentsa

English and the Humanities in China Wang Shouren and Zhao Wenshu

69

Why Should the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Continue to Exist? Liu Dong

79

The Chinese Government's Policy on Private Higher Education: 1982-2000 Zhang Boshu and Wang Guilan

87

Reading the West: Notes on Recent Chinese Critiques of Western Discourses Jiang Ningkang

105

Part II

Reviews and Translations

The "Linguistic Turn" in 1990s China and Globalization Chen Jianhua

119

Research Methods and Chinese Humanities at the Turn of the Century Zhu Shoutong

139

Editors' Note

149

Will Literary Study Survive the Globalization of the University and the New Regime of Telecommunications? / . Hillis Miller

153

The Future of Literary Theory in the Context of Globalization (Excerpts) Qian Zhongwen

165

Chinese Literature in the Milieu of "Globality" (Excerpts) Wang Yichuan

173

Economic Globalization and Cultural Pluralism (Excerpts) Wanjunren

179

Chinese Studies: A Changing Field of Contention — A Debate on Wu Hung's Monumentality in Early Chinese Art and Architecture (Excerpts) Li Ling

187

"Re-evaluation of Modernity" and Modern Chinese Literature (Excerpts) Li Yi

199

Contents

vii

Historical Imaginaries of Asia Wang Hui

207

Foreign Settlements in Shanghai and Fusion of Different Cultures (Excerpts) Xiong Yuezhi

215

Afterword Paul A. Bove

221

Contributors

229

Acknowledgements

In the process of preparing for this series we have accumulated a large number of debts of gratitude to individuals and institutions that have contributed in important ways to the actualization of this project. To the University of Hong Kong for the University Development Fund grant that has made it possible to carry out the idea of this book series; to Professor Hong Yinxing, former VicePresident of Nanjing University, whose commitment to the project has enabled us to give Critical Zone a concrete form of collaboration between the University of H o n g Kong and Nanjing University; to the Croucher Foundation (Hong Kong) for its support of the International Symposium on Higher Education and the Humanities (2002), at which a substantial number of papers included in this volume were first delivered; to Paul A. Bove for the intellectual vision that has brought to Critical Zone a perspective larger than its regional identity; to Colin Day, of the Hong Kong University Press, whose sense of our institutional position has helped us present to readers our understanding of cultural and critical interactions between China and the West; and to many other friends and colleagues who have offered their generous help to this project at different stages and in different forms, we are deeply grateful.

Editors June 2004

Introduction: Difference and Convergence in Globalization

Q. S. Tong and Douglas Kerr Virtues of difference It is customary nowadays to accept that a cross-national and cross-regional production of knowledge and the integration of academic communities are no longer just an idea or a desire, but a given and an experience. In the process of globalization, it is often claimed and believed that academics in the humanities are empowered by a new set of international conditions of possibility in critical articulation and intellectual engagement. Over the past two decades or so, there has been a gathering global awareness of the need to develop a more open worldview, and to engage more actively and productively with ideas and views from elsewhere, a global awareness that has rather fundamentally redefined our sense of what we are and what we do. However, to take it for granted that academics and scholars participate in and benefit from a global community of scholarship may indicate a certain idealism or even delusion on the part of our profession. For amid the globalizing forces, whether economic, political, or cultural, there remain conspicuous differences and divergences everywhere and at all levels, which separate, divide, or even antagonize scholarly communities, either because of differences in intellectual preoccupation and geopolitical commitment or because of discursive gaps among different traditions and systems of knowledge production. It is common for dialogues across regional boundaries on putatively common concerns to often take separate paths. In the perceived formation of an international community of scholarship, we are teased and thwarted, it seems, by discrepancies, incongruities, fissures, and communicational lacunae.

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In the context of China, since its open-door policy in the late 1970s, there has been an overwhelming amount of interest in the developments of the Western humanities, in particular in contemporary critical theory or critical knowledge more generally. Almost all of the major works by leading Euro-American thinkers and cultural critics in the past fifty years or so have been translated into Chinese a n d r e p r o d u c e d in various forms: quoted and appropriated, circulated a n d perpetuated among scholars and students alike, until the freshness and novelty of their theoretical and critical articulations have been exhausted. A collective fatigue and intellectual languidness set in, but only for a short while, soon to be transformed into a discursive critical energy directed at reclaiming the lost voice of China in the global production of knowledge, a n d creating a system of knowledge that would bear distinctly Chinese characteristics and be irreducibly different from its Western counterparts. Fredric Jameson has called attention to the differences between what he called "third world" intellectuals and their counterparts in the "first world," primarily the U.S., in terms of their preoccupations and positionings. Among the former, asserts Jameson, "there is now an obsessive return of the national situation itself, the name of the country that returns again and again like a gong, the collective attention to 'us' and what we have to do and how we do it, to what we c a n ' t d o a n d what we d o b e t t e r than this or that nationality, o u r u n i q u e characteristics." 1 "Third world" literature, for Jameson, reveals a remarkable selfconsciousness of its close and innate link to a large social and historical discourse and is generally perceived and understood as a national allegory that documents collectively the political and social processes of the nation in question. In contrast, "first world" literature, as he sees it, is a heavily psychologized discourse that is d e t a c h e d from the public a n d rooted in the realm of private e x p e r i e n c e . Jameson's postulations with regard to this distinction have not gone unchallenged, and the geopolitical configuration of today's world can n o longer be adequately understood and described in terms of the three-world categorization, which is a legacy of the Cold War era (Jameson's article was published in 1986, three years before the fall of the Berlin Wall). However, his diagnosis of the dilemma of "third world" intellectuals in their project of narrating the self as "national allegory" directs our attention to a discursive emphasis on the defining role of "situational consciousness," not just in literary production but also in other realms of cultural and intellectual experience. In this sense, Ahmad's critique of Jameson would seem to have missed the point, even though his engagement with Jameson over such specific issues as global political configuration a n d national cultural particularities remains of interest. 2

1. Fredric Jameson, "Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism," Social Text (fall 1986): 65, 85. 2. See Aijaz Ahmad's "Jameson's Rhetoric of Otherness and the 'National Allegory,'" in his In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures (London and NY: Verso, 1992).

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What we have seen in China testifies to the existence of the kind of discursive gap dividing literary, scholarly and critical communities in different geopolitical and cultural locations. The discursive shift of attention to national characteristics in China is not only a collective expression of the nation's impatience with its inability to articulate a set of distinct theoretical positions but also indicates the advent of a counter-discourse, a discourse of resistance and exclusion. However, it would be too easy to attribute to the rise of nationalism this departure from e n g a g e m e n t for a m o r e self-centred practice. Even if t h e r e was i n d e e d a resurgence of nationalism in China, it would be more a product and consequence of this shift than a cause of the obsessive return to China's "national situation." Those of us living and writing outside the mainland of China, with no particular professional investment in China studies, might easily have overlooked this development. Some of the essays and translations included in this volume delineate this i n t e l l e c t u a l t r a j e c t o r y a n d give o n e a sense of s o m e of t h e e m e r g e n t preoccupations of Chinese academics. Contact with the cultural other prompts, in the classic manner, an intense self-reflection, and Jiang Ningkang's essay entitled "Reading the West: Notes on Recent Chinese Critiques of Western Discourses" traces some of the negotiations in which Chinese intellectuals have engaged with various theoretical discourses coming from the West (or the Wests), to show how a reading of the other may entail both a re-reading and a re-assertion of the self. Such self-reflection in some instances puts significant pressure on institutions. The essay here by Wang Shouren and Zhao Wenshu delineates the impact of English on contemporary Chinese society, in which the enormous popularity of the language, and its adoption as the medium of scientific publication, is not matched in university humanities faculties, where for various reasons, including a cultural nationalism related to the kind of resistance mentioned above, English studies is resisted, underdeveloped, and isolated. Wang and Zhou suggest that English is a problem that Chinese universities have yet to resolve. When he compares the intellectual vitality of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences with research institutions in other countries, Liu Dong allows himself to wonder whether its existence is justified at all. Although in the end he offers it a reprieve, it needs to change its ways, he suggests, if it is to play the role it should in helping China to adapt to some of the conditions of globalization and — equally importantly — to resist others. The contributions from Chinese academics here all speak to an intellectual and institutional self-consciousness, which, interesting in individual cases, is far more significant when considered collectively. Scholars and critics based elsewhere may have a different set of concerns and p r e o c c u p a t i o n s . Catherine Belsey's essay in the present volume is a good illustration of the shifting and contentious landscape of critical practice in the West, where quite fundamental issues (as her title suggests) of understanding and practice — of the production of knowledge — are open to debate. Her critique of cultural constructivism in the name of a Lacanian "anxiety of the real" frames

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itself as part of a dialogue between poststructuralism and postmodernism, and yet it has a "situational consciousness" and geography, although for obvious reasons European intellectual endeavours in the last couple of generations have tended not to sail under a national flag. With a different idiom and focus, Ronald Judy, in "Some Notes on a Critique of Culture," probes differences in thinking about culture, in his investigation of the institutional structures that imagine and mediate it. The new Europa Universitat Viadrina at Frankfurt (Oder) was set up in the aftermath of the Cold War, with the idea of building a bridge between Western and Eastern Europe and redefining "Europeanness" through a new o r g a n i z a t i o n of k n o w l e d g e t h a t w o u l d e m p h a s i z e i n t e r n a t i o n a l i t y a n d interdisciplinarity. Judy sees this new variation on the idea of the university as the purveyor of culture, now in a global context, as having to answer to a history in which a "global culture" is in practice conceived as far from inclusive. It is important, then, to acknowledge the differences between Chinese and Euro-American knowledge production that exist within these intellectual contexts. Within the context of China, the collective attention to the self and discursive emphasis on the urgency and legitimacy of constructing national uniqueness in China must n o t be construed merely as an indication of one interlocutor's withdrawal from the conversation, b u t should be taken as indicative of the ineffectuality and unproductiveness of existing modes of interactions across regions and boundaries. The power of conventionality of knowledge production has sustained a distinct tradition of scholarship in China. It is impossible to list all the differences between Chinese intellectuals and their Euro-American counterparts in modes of thinking and habits of production. And there is no need here to broach in detail the deeper layer of ideological and political implications in the collective obsession with the national situation in China; our purpose is not to mount an argument vis-d-vis the discursive gap between the communities of scholarship but to foreground and probe the gap itself. We may start by thinking more specifically, for example, of the institutional and organized production of scholarship in China. Partly due to the particular political and social system, state sponsorship of research remains the most important form of support from outside academia. This kind of government support is commendable in a way, and indeed could be cause for envy elsewhere, where funding for humanities research is being cut severely. In China, funds received from the state are often provided for national scholarly projects, envisaged as leading to the erection of scholarly monuments. That is perhaps why a considerable a m o u n t of resources are channelled to s u p p o r t large-scale collaborative research projects, such as those on the Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties referred to in Li Ling's article in this volume, which involved a large number of distinguished historians, archeologists, philologists, and scientists. In China, projects of this kind enjoy a startling prestige rarely found elsewhere; they are funded and carried out as part of government planning for social and cultural developments over a certain period. This state participation in the process of

Introduction: Difference and Convergence in Globalization

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scholarly production, which recognizes scholarly labour as a constitutive part of the national economy, has been a decisive influence on the public expectation of research output and thus has shaped and defined public understanding of research culture in academia. It is, then, small wonder that certain areas of studies or modes of scholarly production have enjoyed a privileged centrality and unusual popularity in China, even when they have been subject to critical reflections or even have been called into question elsewhere. Since the political and cultural liberalization in the early 1980s, the discipline of comparative literature, for example, has been one of the most popular and prominent loci of literary studies. There are historical reasons for the rise and development of comparative literature in China. Imported from the West, through Japan, in the early twentieth century, comparative literature as a discipline and area of studies has been closely bound u p with China's national project of modernization. The ideological mainstay of its extraordinary popularity and prominence is shown nowhere more clearly than its mode of inquiry, which enables and supports, under the name of "comparison," direct participation of the self— national literature — in the global system of literary production. The vitality of a discipline can only be sustained on the basis of a great deal of self-understanding and self-consciousness of its own history, of its present situation, and of its continuing possibilities in the future; the habit of disciplinary self-reflection constitutes an essential part of the discipline's scope of inquiry and contributes to its integrity. Said's critique of Western orientalism and more generally cultural imperialism, for example, is both enabled and substantiated by his critical reflections on the discipline of literary studies. In a broader context in which he speaks of "the general relationship between culture and empire," Said urges a historical understanding of the origin of comparative literature as intricately linked to the practice of imperialism in the nineteenth century, despite its apparently liberal aims, one of which is to free literary and cultural experience from parochialism and provincialism and from the dogmas of intellectual inquiry. "I suggest," he proposes, "that we look first at what comparative literature originally was, as vision and as practice; ironically ... the study of 'comparative literature' originated in the period of high European imperialism and is irrecusably linked to it." Only by understanding the genesis of comparative literature, Said continues, can we then "draw out of comparative literature's subsequent trajectory a better sense of what it can do in modern culture and politics." 3 It is perhaps no accident that in the Anglo-American context and in the wake of Said's critique of Western orientalism, comparative literature has gone through some fundamental changes, in particular with regard to its comparative mode of operation and its inevitable practice of binarism; its p r o m i n e n c e has b e e n largely overtaken by o t h e r theoretical and critical programmes and concerns. Said's critique of comparative

3. Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (NY: Vintage Books, 1994), xi, 43.

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literature and its current status in the West should not be taken as the last verdict on comparative literature. The point here is, however, that the large amount of institutional and popular attention comparative literature has attracted in China illustrates that differences between traditions of scholarly production in China and elsewhere are far more deeply rooted than they might appear. In addressing differences of this kind, it is necessary to recognize the social and cultural circumstances under which these differences have been constituted as discursive ones and to consider how these differences have in turn generated further divergences. Indeed, discursive divergences have punctuated every moment in the process of China's engagement with the West, even at times when there seems an obvious resonance between a certain trend in China and a particular strand of critical thinking elsewhere. At a more specific level, for example, one often hears, within Chinese academia, such pronouncements as "Critical theories come and go, but the text r e m a i n s " or even statements m u c h m o r e radically hostile toward theoretical formations and critical approaches that are informed by theories. Surely, the antagonism between theory and criticism, or what de Man has called "resistance to theory," has been a continuing oppositional critical movement since the advent of what is now known as poststructuralism. It is possible to subsume the critical resistance to theory in China under a certain academic "conservatism," but this discursive and institutional resistance to literary theory is at the same time a manifestation of a more profound and significant anxiety over China's inability to develop a counter-critical discourse and over its lack of the critical imagination to reinstate, resuscitate, or create a theoretical and critical system of its own. For "literary theory" as a category is generally perceived and understood in China as a synonym of poststructuralism, a product of Western critical and speculative imagination in the last few decades of the twentieth century. The call for a return to the text, therefore, is a strange spasm of the collective intellectual fatigue that, as mentioned above, is developed out of the continuing and doubly belated experience of the overwhelming presence of various kinds of Western "postology" on the Chinese scene. Parallel to this call for a return to the literariness and textuality of a literary work, not just in the classroom but also in the institutional production of critical knowledge, is a strong critical movement for the creation of a system of criticism and theory that would be Chinese and indigenous and that would operate as an alternative to forms of Western critical theory circulated and practised in China. The politics of resistance to theory therefore marks a fundamental fissure that disrupts the journey of "traveling theory" in its global mission, however much Said considers resistances to theory to be "conditions of acceptance" or "an inevitable part of acceptance" of the regime of theory. 4

4. See Edward Said, 'Traveling Theory/' in The World, the Text, and the Critic (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1983), 227.

Introduction: Difference and Convergence in Globalization

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To illustrate what we mean by the discursive gap, we may now turn to a debate between J. Hillis Miller and Qian Zhongwen, staged in China. In his speech at a conference held in Beijing in 1999, Miller made a plea for a widening of the vision and horizon of literary studies, but he projected at the same time a gloomy picture of the future of literary studies, whose disciplinary integrity, h e said, was increasingly threatened and undermined by the new global conditions. Miller's argument is not exactly the first of its kind, and in a certain sense not even a very controversial one. But his speech provoked, somewhat surprisingly b u t significantly, strong responses. A revised and extended version of the paper Miller presented at the conference was translated into Chinese and published in Wenxue pinglun (Literary review), the leading Chinese critical j o u r n a l edited by the Institute of Literature, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Its publication was meant to set the stage in the journal for a debate over whether indeed the importance of literary studies has diminished in the context of globalization. A slightly different version of Miller's speech and Qian Zhongwen's response, which regrettably has to be truncated and synopsized due to the limitations of space, are reprinted in this volume. This is a rare example of direct dialogical interaction between a US poststructuralist critic and Qian, among other well-respected critics in China. But what emerges from this debate is that their differences are derived more from the different contexts in which they speak and from the different discourses in which they are situated. The problem Miller addressed may not have been an immediate and serious one or had not yet been perceived as one in China. In the realm of literary studies in China, there remains a discernable adherence to the normality and legitimacy of certain critical operations that might be seen to have been superseded by other issues elsewhere. O u r purpose in collecting in this volume some of the articulations from that debate is not to m o u n t a certain argument, is not, in other words, to take sides, to validate or invalidate certain issues or positions. Rather, to stage the dialogue is to drive home the seriousness of the discursive gap existing even in a genuine and direct exchange like this and to draw attention to the need for a clearly identified common set of concerns that would make critical interchange meaningful and productive. The "third world" intellectuals' obsession with the "national situation" which Jameson detected nearly two decades ago is still very much with us today, though it may have different manifestations. It may be argued that the "national situation" can entail differences in forms of institutional practice and intellectual formations; the production of knowledge and scholarship in China does not, therefore, have to follow the procedure established in the West. In this volume, quite a few authors take a stand on the importance of recognizing the necessity and value of a different path that China has taken or should take, and argue for the inevitability of differences on the grounds of the particularities of Chinese society, tradition, and culture. T h e discursive emphasis on local particularities, without an attempt to

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u n d e r s t a n d how t h e s e p a r t i c u l a r i t i e s may b e c o m e discursive g a p s in understanding, entails real consequences in critical practice. One argument Li Yi mounts in his '"Re-evaluation of Modernity' and Modern Chinese Literature" is that misreadings of canonical modern Chinese writers such as Lu Xun partly result from a lack of lived experience of modern Chinese literature as a unique formation u n d e r specific social circumstances. We may read this line of critical thought as indicative not merely of a return to the national or local situation but of a placid acceptance of incommensurabilities existing among different cultures of critical production. Although apologies for local or national specificities are n o t always made on the basis of an overt rejection of ideas and views from elsewhere, there is a real danger that local specificities may be easily ontologized, and this would render critical exchanges across cultures and traditions impossible or unproductive. "Chinese Studies: A Changing Field of Contention," by Li Ling, offers a concrete example of how our confidence derived from the habitual practice in knowledge production may generate radically different views. It is a review essay on the controversies and debates arising from Wu Hung's Monumentality in Early Chinese Art and Architecture, f o r e g r o u n d i n g how differences in the style of production and protocols of research can generate a range of misunderstandings and mutual distrust. Particularly interesting and noteworthy are Li's positive appraisal of Western sinologists' achievements in the area of Chinese studies, for which China as the original site of knowledge is often taken for granted, and his call for a more open-minded and sympathetic attitude towards Chinese intellectual practices among Western scholars who have been accustomed to a set paradigm in research and its rules, which for Li are open to debate. However, to point to those inevitable divergences and differences in opinion and mode of thinking, whether between scholarly communities or within the same academic community, is to show their limitations, their biases, and to remind us that a productive mutuality of scholarly dialogue or debate, between individuals or systems of culture, can be ensured only if we are ready to listen to and learn from others. We have no intention of suggesting that the examples given above present a whole picture" of the complexities of Chinese scholarly practice in relation to research paradigms accepted and valued elsewhere. Generalizations attempting to capture the ethos of a time or a space are often self-defeating in the end. In fact, the two pieces included in the same section, Wang Hui's "Historical Imaginaries of Asia" and Xiong Yuezhi's "Foreign Settlements in Shanghai and Fusion of Different Cultures," may be considered in this context as articulations that disrupt the discursive efforts to c o n s t r u c t local h o m o g e n e i t y : t h e f o r m e r reveals the inconsistencies of the notion of a unified Asia; and the latter, by focusing on the case of Shanghai's early modernity, shows the impossibility of local cultural autonomy. The problem — of squaring intellectual commonality with a full recognition of the difference of experience and idiom in different places and circumstances

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— is a leading preoccupation in this volume. Many of the essays here, whether they speak directly to t h e situation of C h i n a or to o t h e r l o c a t i o n s a n d predicaments, try to insist on the values of both the local and the global, cultural particularity and international universalism. Eric Clarke's collocation of English studies and "global ethics" brings together two very different discourses with an analogous mimetic problem — on one hand, the difficulty of imagining and representing the cultural diversity that a universalist global ethics ought to be advancing, and on the other hand, the way nineteenth-century writers such as George Eliot and Walter Pater sought to elaborate idioms of particular experience that would purport to have a universal extension. Eliot's and Pater's understanding of the task of fiction is a reminder that the field of English studies should not be limited to a national predication of cultural experience. That passage, opened u p in the syntax of Eliot and Pater, between specific local experience and a form of analogical commentary that may generalize it, can be pondered as we face our own task of being true both to what makes us different and to what we have in common. W h a t we have called the discursive g a p t h a t exists in cross-cultural communication but has often been overlooked in the context of globalization should not be simply attributed to the politics of identity at either a national or an individual level, should not be seen as contingent, transient, or isolated. It is imperative that we recognize those blind spots, discontinuities, and voids in the global exchanges of ideas: they have already commended attention as symptoms of a certain failure in our efforts to p r o m o t e a n d advance cross-regional understanding. To posit differences and discontinuities as a given, as a regular occurrence, and as a typicality, can be to make a virtue and a critical value of the discursive gap coterminous with the globalization of scholarly communities. Studies of globalization must also at the same time investigate what the discursive gap can offer in developing an understanding of the current global conditions that is closer to our actual experience of those conditions, an experience that is in fact never frictionless or unproblematic. Differences, when taken seriously and responsibly, can enable a new form of participation and practice in the experience of intellectual globalism.

The symposium on "Higher Education and the Humanities" To recognize, not just in theory but also in practice, the virtues of the kind of discursive differences mentioned above, the English Department of the University of H o n g Kong, the English Department of Nanjing University, and the Editorial Collective of boundary 2 jointly organized a symposium in May 2002 on the present status of the humanities and the university in the context of globalization. The organization of the symposium was also a response to some of the problems that have surfaced in recent years in academia and demanded serious attention. The

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desire to promote better understanding of those issues considered significant beyond one's own locale of intellectual activity is also a desire to make a space for the formation of a common intellectual community. Those of us who wish to work beyond and across disciplinary or regional boundaries were particularly interested in the ways direct dialogue on issues of common interest could be sustained and deepened. Thus the symposium brought together scholars from Hong Kong, mainland China, and the US. Responding to a variety of frustrations in the global exchange of ideas, Paul A. Bove appealed, at the symposium, for "the value of understanding" among regions and communities under the current global conditions. "Not only are we aware," said Bove, "of how globalization has changed many of the basic categories of especially Western critical thinking, but we are especially aware of how central to future cultural development is the relation between China and the US. Intellectuals must accept as one of their tasks the need to work through the modes of thinking that the new globalized world requires and that emerging relations between America and China demand." Bove was speaking as an intellectual based in the US and with special reference to this symposium held in Hong Kong, now a Special Administrative Region of China. What h e sees as the "value of u n d e r s t a n d i n g , " a global u n d e r s t a n d i n g a n d sense of shared intellectual responsibility, can obviously be extended to other contexts. There is no doubt that China for its part needs to understand its relationships not only with the US but also with other parts of the world. Bove's appeal for better intellectual understanding as the condition of possibility for building, strengthening, and developing a meaningful relationship among individuals, communities, traditions, and spheres of critical inquiry speaks directly to the agenda of the symposium. Understanding is constitutive of any meaningful relationship; it requires serious and continuous efforts to renew and deepen itself. If so, then what is more important, Bove continued in the same speech, is to "establish or restore the rigorous efforts a n d standards n e e d e d to make u n d e r s t a n d i n g possible." Therefore, "[at] the heart of this entire conference and the institutional forms we hope to develop from it," he summarized, "lies the need to give the humanities a seriousness of purpose the absence of which ... has led to their degradation and mockery." 5 T h e symposium started this project of understanding with an effort to u n d e r s t a n d ourselves, to u n d e r s t a n d what we do as both intellectuals and institutional members, to understand the relationship between our professional activities and the university as a locale and space that both enables and frustrates those activities. T h e t h e m e of the symposium, "Higher education a n d the humanities," is a topic recognized as demanding urgent attention from critics and

5. Paul A. Bove, "Welcoming Remarks'' (presented at the International Symposium on Higher Education and the Humanities, University of Hong Kong, 3-4 May 2002).

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scholars. 6 The issues discussed and debated at the symposium may be broadly subsumed u n d e r four rubrics: "Academics and the University," "Politics and Academia," "Local and Global," and "Literary Studies and Cultural Studies." These topics o p e n e d u p for discussions a n d debates many m o r e aspects of o u r professional and institutional life, from research to teaching, from the global situation of the university to its local specificity, from some of its historical moments to its present status. Globalization — the marketization of education as o n e of its specific manifestations and its impact on academics — presents challenges we cannot avoid and opportunities we must not miss. Zhang Boshu and Guilan Wang's essay on the history of the rather anxious development of private higher education in China is an instance to ponder. Higher education in H o n g Kong and in the mainland of China provides specific dimensions and perspectives in the debates over "the university in ruins" that the United States and Britain, among others, have been experiencing. Some of the papers at the symposium took historical situations as their focus in thinking about the theme of institutional knowledge production. Christopher Hutton's paper (reproduced here) on the scientific and cultural basis claimed for race theory narrated an academic and legal struggle in Nazi Germany that offers a reminder of the responsibilities of research and theory, within and outside the academy, and uncovers complex issues of knowledge and politics, science and ideology, race and language, too easily buried under our ideal negative construct of Nazism. The paper suggests that contemporary scholars find it easier to be disgusted by such episodes in intellectual history than to learn from them.

Critical Zone The symposium was conceived not just as a meeting, an isolated event, but as a conscious effort to initiate a procedure and create a mechanism for a more sustainable dialogue across regions and boundaries. Supported by both the University of Hong Kong and Nanjing University, that conception can now be embodied in this series of publications. Critical Zone: A Forum of Chinese and Western Knowledge is conceived as an enabling forum in which to continue that collective effort to participate in the practice and experience of intellectual globalism. It is intended to address what we have spoken of above as a general and pervasive insensitivity to a whole range of divergences and differences in the context of globalization. In a sense, this book series has an extremely simple genealogy: it begins with a recognition of the lack of and the need for understanding beyond boundaries, by means of critical engagement. 6. The present status of the university in the context of globalization has already brought out a spate of publications, among which is, for example, Bill Readings's The University in Ruins.

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For this purpose, we have decided to devote a substantial portion of each volume to presenting what we regard as significant trends or articulations from this region, primarily from China, either in translation or in the form of review essays, each of which gives an overview of the field or topic reviewed. The section of reviews and translations as one of the two regular sections in each volume of this series aims to be informative, narrating and delineating, collectively and in the most concrete terms possible, some of the intellectual concerns that preoccupy scholars from this region. We believe access to the production of regional critical scholarship is a necessary c o n d i t i o n for cross-cultural a n d cross-regional engagement. For a long time now, China and the Asia Pacific region as a whole have remained the loci of interest mostly for scholars with special intellectual or professional investment in studies of the region. It is high time to move beyond disciplinary demarcations, because global interactions must remain partial unless there can be a scholarly convergence not only of regions but also of disciplines. Reviews and translations included in this series are meant to make available critical scholarship from China and from this region to international readers who may not have linguistic access to it. In this volume, two review essays are included. C h e n J i a n h u a ' s "The 'Linguistic Turn' in 1990s China and Globalization" is a critical response to the "linguistic turn" in the 1990s in China, detailing the debates over hanyu (Han language) and its problematics under new social and cultural conditions. As Chen Jianhua shows, the language reform movement in China is an incomplete national project, and the debates over the status and legitimacy of modern vernacular Chinese are to some extent defined by the very paradoxical nature of hanyu, which, as "a double-edged sword: internally ... subverted the orthodox tenets of language reform since the early twentieth century, yet at the same time ... reaffirmed national unification under the name of Han" (148). Zhu Shoutong's "Research Methods and Chinese Humanities at the Turn of the Century" narrates some of the noted academic trends in the last few years of the twentieth century in China, linking them to the extraordinary a m o u n t of interest in Western r e s e a r c h m e t h o d s a n d critical a p p r o a c h e s since the e n d of the Cultural Revolution. Those who witnessed the excitement and jubilation in the Chinese academy following the cultural and intellectual liberalization of the early 1980s will remember this "methodology fever," erupting perhaps as a result of a decade's intellectual isolation during the Cultural Revolution. Zhu Shoutong shows how this fever r e c e d e d with the advent of an increasing consciousness of the i m p o r t a n c e of forming China's own intellectual or critical identity in the humanities and social sciences. In addition to this section of translations and review essays, which may be of particular interest to readers outside China or this region with no linguistic access to publications in a language other than English, is another section of Critical Zone, committed to the publication of original articles on themes or topics, some but not all of which will be closely related to those covered in the second section

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and should be of special interest to readers from this region and elsewhere, for they present some of the critical or intellectual preoccupations and debates that are shared by scholars from different cultural settings and academic communities. In its form, therefore, this series has already made a commitment to direct and dialogical interactions among scholars from China, Euro-America, and elsewhere: to see where we differ and disagree, not just with regard to what we in each of our own ways believe to be important but also in terms of the different positions from which we enter upon issues we consider important. Critical Zone is a site of dialogue, and the articles and translations of articles it contains do not necessarily represent editorial views or positions. Still, it wishes to create a particular mode of critical engagement, in addition to its desire to promote sympathetic understanding in the realm of intellectual engagement. Critical Zone is in favour of a critically constructive approach to issues of common interest. Over the past few decades, critical approaches to a n d theoretical reflections on literary and cultural phenomena have been substantially guided and controlled by a proclivity that seems largely interested in subversion and reversal. The new global conditions have altered many of the basic categories of Western critical thinking, and there is now a need to move beyond critical theory as we understand it, not least because it is by and large a self-centered discourse. Poststructuralism a n d p o s t m o d e r n i s m in their various manifestations a n d applications r e m a i n ostensibly p r e o c c u p i e d with the Western e x p e r i e n c e , historical, social, and cultural, either as an object of inquiry or as a point of reference to which all must return in the end. Although based in China, Critical Zone attempts to adopt a global outlook, to p r o m o t e u n d e r s t a n d i n g across boundaries and propagate new forms of understanding in theory and practice, and to engage in dialogue in the wide area of human cultural experience. It hopes to add its voice to the global debates on issues of more general interest. As suggested in the title, the emphasis on the importance of critical knowledge is indicative of its general commitment to global u n d e r s t a n d i n g . "Knowledge" h e r e is u n d e r s t o o d in its simplest a n d most immediate sense — "knowing" and therefore "understanding." What we mean by "critical knowledge" is not knowledge about one object or one set of objects of inquiry external to us. Neither is critical knowledge simply critical theory that may be produced by individual talents. If it is knowledge at all, it is about ourselves, about our understanding of what we consider important, about what we do, and how we think about what we do. Such knowledge, n o longer understood as exclusively one's own, is collectively produced; it can only exist in practice, in experience, and be obtained and made available in a lively network of interactions a m o n g academic c o m m u n i t i e s . T h e p r o d u c t i o n a n d p r o p a g a t i o n of such knowledge, however, must be checked and balanced by critical self-reflection and self-awareness. For us, then, critical knowledge is built on the choice of a positioning, a conscious exercise of skepticism toward the established protocols of scholarly inquiry, and a willingness to accept the necessity to understand what

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we say, what we do, and our relationship to others, and to develop a more open intellectual sympathy on a global scale. It is this critical skepticism, as a practice and modus operandi of the mind, that first inspired this project. As Bove asserts, "skepticism's critical and intellectual force ... unlike cynicism or hipness ... does not destroy values and meaning in the demise of effortful thinking. Rather it is an essential basis for thinking, for humanistic minds unwilling to remain caught either within the despairing attitudes of d o m i n a n t political culture or the hackneyed phrases and old thoughts of academic professionalism." 7 Skepticism enables u n d e r s t a n d i n g a n d knowledge; it exemplifies the kind of critical knowledge we have in mind. We invited Paul Bove, whose opening remarks at the symposium have been quoted above, to read all the contributions to this volume and write an Afterword. We are very grateful for his essay printed here. We were aware that, as Bakhtin showed, every word is an afterword, elicited by and responding to a dialogic history, and every afterword is a foreword, provocative of further response. We trust that the essays in Critical Zone will be no exception.

Critical Zone and Hong Kong To run a series of publications in English, based in Hong Kong and Nanjing and published by two presses — one in Hong Kong and the other in Nanjing — is also responsive to the inevitable challenge Hong Kong faces: how to establish its postcolonial relationship with mainland China. Those of us who have a sense of rootedness in H o n g Kong are also confronted with the challenge to construct a new and substantive relationship with colleagues on the Mainland. Since its handover to China in 1997, H o n g Kong has been placed in an irreversible historical process of ever-increasing integration with mainland China. Is H o n g Kong able to continue to play the role that it has been supposed or expected to play, as "a meeting place," "a contact point" between China and the "West," both in popular perception and in the familiar parlance of Hong Kong studies? And if so, in what sense? H o n g Kong needs to understand itself, its history, its present status, and its possibilities. Anyone attempting to think about Hong Kong more seriously would be struck by its conspicuous marginality. Hong Kong has been in an unfortunate position, not least because it is inescapably tied to its colonial past. The colonial history of H o n g Kong has defined Hong Kong as we know it, and has made H o n g Kong what it is. But H o n g Kong's past has also been a b u r d e n and sometimes an embarrassment not easily or quickly shaken off. That Hong Kong is unfortunate is nowhere more manifest than the conspicuous cultural marginality to which it

7. Bove, "Welcoming Remarks."

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has been assigned, historically and discursively. Familiar terms used to describe H o n g Kong range from early colonial impressions of Hong Kong as "barren" to orientalist celebration of it as "dream-like," and to a postcolonialist reading of it as "fluid" and forever "disappearing." For the cultural purists on the mainland of China, precisely because Hong Kong has been a colony, it is a container of cultural emptiness. H o n g Kong's remarkable economic success has not done much to shape a more sympathetic perception of it. O n the contrary, the wealth of H o n g Kong accumulated over the past decades is, for those cultural purists, yet another example of its irredeemable materiality, whereas for some postcolonial commentators, it is the result of a libidinal diversion of its suppressed political and cultural energy. 8 H o n g Kong has recently been struggling with a severe economic downturn, and how and where would that fervent economic drive, one wonders, be redirected? On the international scene of postcolonial studies, Hong Kong is often "too small to merit attention" and is "usually entirely omitted in most debates on postcoloniality." 9 Indeed, H o n g Kong's marginality is extraordinary. Commentators have remarked on the uniqueness of Hong Kong as a colony in the past and as a Special Administrative Region of China now, and about its present ambiguities and ambivalences with regard to its identity and its relationship to the Mainland. T h o u g h Hong Kong's colonial experience has not turned it into a "third world" place but worked to its economic advantage, Hong Kong's decolonization did not entail its political independence and was not followed by the birth of a new nationstate. There have been numerous critical reflections on this apparent anomaly. W h a t is often overlooked a n d n e g l e c t e d , however, is t h a t H o n g K o n g ' s decolonization was predicated on a historical contract of its status as part of China. H o n g Kong started and ended its coloniality as a territory without sovereignty, and it could not have had itself successfully decolonized had its independence been a possibility. Its colonization and decolonization are two historical phases that have been completed outside and beyond Hong Kong itself. Hong Kong, as it was and is, is not its own invention. H o n g Kong's marginality, however, is n o t just a p r o d u c t of forces from without. Its self-marginalization is even more striking, and disturbing. For some, precisely because the history of H o n g Kong is essentially a colonial history, it has n o pre-colonial history to return to and is forever "disappearing." It is a place of transience, amorphous, shapeless, fluid, made of air, dust, noises of footsteps, traffic jams, and evaporating and evaporated breath; Hong Kong is a place and non-place, a city and a phantom, a mass of concrete and a collection of memories, suitable only for the pleasure of aestheticization. Only w h e n H o n g Kong

8. For a critical reading of this view, see Rey Chow, Ethics after Idealism: Theory, Culture, Ethnicity, Reading (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1998), 169. 9. Chow, Ethics after Idealism, 150.

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"disappears" can it be aestheticized as such, and the aesthetic presence of Hong Kong can only be articulated in an imaginative interpretation of the city as "disappearing." 10 Writing H o n g Kong as such from without might be considered a contemporary form of orientalism; writing Hong Kong as such from within would be an example of self-orientalization, a form of internal alienation. For the "disappearing" Hong Kong would be, to borrow a phrase from Santner in a different context, a " h o m e g r o w n alterity" that is c r e a t e d t h r o u g h a selfdefamiliarization. 11 What is left of Hong Kong in "the politics of disappearance"? T h e historical b u r d e n of H o n g Kong would be increased considerably by articulations of this kind. H o n g Kong's "ethereality" could become a constituted understanding and cultural identity of the city, if it is profusely and discursively reproduced in various forms. Hong Kong "disappears," not because it does, but because the rhetoric of "disappearance" performs its disappearance. Why has Hong Kong been repeatedly marginalized? And how can we figure H o n g Kong's role in its postcolonial era and in the context of globalization if it can only exist in imagination or aestheticization? We cannot afford to congratulate ourselves on the possibility of presenting Hong Kong as a place whose beauty lies in the very impossibility of capturing it. H o n g Kong presents a challenge to postcolonial studies in its refusal to be defined as such. Has Hong Kong failed the test of postcolonialism, or is it the other way round? Perhaps there is a need to rethink the critical practice that attempts to fit Hong Kong into a postcolonial paradigm too often short-circuited by identity politics. Answering the rhetoric of disappearance about Hong Kong, this series is conceived as a metonymic presence of Hong Kong itself. Indeed, it is Hong Kong's unique historical and geocultural positioning and its special relationship with the mainland of China that have made it possible to conceive the idea of an English publication and carry out that idea in practice. We have long felt the importance of bringing China and other parts of the world into closer contact academically and intellectually, beyond ceremonial and symbolic gestures. Scholars from mainland China, in particular from Nanjing University, and Hong Kong have discussed the possibility of sustainable and productive relationships and have agreed that an English book series, based in this region but publishing scholarly and critical work in English from around the world, would not only place our collaborative work on a solid basis but also become a form of expression of such collaboration in the public sphere for years to come. Critical Zone is therefore a project of inter-communal collaboration among scholars from around the world,

10. See Ackbar Abbas, Hong Kong: Culture and Politics of Disappearance (Hong Kong: Hong Kong UP, 1998). 11. Eric L. Santner, On the Psychotheology of Everyday Life: Reflections on Freud and Rosenzwig (Chicago and London: Chicago UP, 2001), 6.

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and more specifically among scholars from the mainland of China and H o n g Kong. Critical Zone is envisaged as an intellectual bridge between China and the rest of the world and as a site of scholarly and critical convergence beyond regional and disciplinary boundaries.

ge,

What's Real?

Catherine Belsey I I can date very precisely the moment in 1985 when I first recognised the specificity of the postmodern. My sympathies were fully enlisted by Cecilia, the downtrodden wife at the centre of Woody Allen's film The Purple Rose of Cairo. I was relishing her pleasure in the black and white adventure story showing at her local picture house, when to my astonishment and delight, as well as to hers, Tom Baxter, the romantic lead in the movie she was watching, spoke directly to Cecilia and then came down off the screen to join her in the audience. Much of the film is taken u p with the fictional Tom's difficulties in the "real" world. His money is movie money and restaurants won't accept it; violence, he finds out for the first time, can be painful; when he kisses Cecilia, he waits in vain for the fade-out and is not sure what to do next. He is not, Cecilia at last reluctantly acknowledges, real. But he is not simply Cecilia's fantasy either. The other black and white characters argue about how their film can go on without him, begging the projectionist not to switch it off and extinguish them; one presses her nose against the glass wall of the screen, complaining that she cannot get out. The actor who plays Tom arrives to coax him back where he belongs, on the other side of the screen, for fear the wayward behaviour of his character will damage the actor's career. Inside the imaginary world of Woody Allen's movie, the comedy depends on a story that crosses the common-sense dividing line between fact and fiction. This is the line actualized by the presence of the screen

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itself, "behind" which, as it naively seems, fictional characters conduct their thrilling, passionate or tragic lives, oblivious of the audience who have paid to watch them do so. Once upon a time, Hollywood knew the difference between fact and fiction, dreams and reality. Haifa century ago, for example, Danny Kaye delighted cinema audiences as Walter Mitty, the irrepressible daydreamer who escapes from suburban life and an overbearing mother into fantasies, where he plays the hero of a succession of narratives derived from the pulp fiction he proofreads in his day j o b . His imagined roles include Mitty the Kid, the fastest gun in the west, and Gayelord Mitty, the Mississippi gentleman-gambler. But my own personal favourite is Wing Commander Mitty of the RAF, in leather helmet and goggles, all self-deprecating heroics and right-ohs, his jaw a grim straight line as he brings down a n o t h e r Messerschmidt {The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, dir. N o r m a n Z. McLeod, 1947). Walter Mitty's fantasies are clearly marked, in accordance with Hollywood convention, by a series of dissolves. With hindsight, we might want to deconstruct this apparent antithesis between imagination and reality.1 In "real" life, the shy, unassuming Walter Mitty gets involved in an adventure concerning an heiress and looted jewels and reluctantly becomes the hero of yet another pulp genre. Oddly enough, the romantic heroine has already featured in his fantasies before he meets her, so Walter reacts with a double take when he sees her for the first time in reality. And the boring events which provoke the make-believe — his mother's endless shopping lists, a bridge game — also reappear in it, though transformed by their glamorous context. But all this can easily be naturalised in a classic realist story: if Walter is genuinely caught u p in a crime narrative in which the villains include Boris Karloff, this only goes to show that life is stranger than fiction; true love, we know, is always the fulfilment of a prior dream; all fantasies reinterpret the everyday. The film is knowing about its own ironies, if in a softer way than the original short story by James Thurber. 2 Officially, the plot sets up a binary opposition between the actual and the imagined. On the surface, at least, we know what the story is asking us to take for real.

1. It would not be entirely anachronistic to see the film as self-aware in this respect. The Cole Porter musical, Les Girls (dir. George Cukor, 1957), depends on a conflict between two accounts of what "really" happened, and the happy ending is made possible when a third version of the story exonerates everyone. Ironically, however, this third version is presented as quite possibly the least trustworthy. At intervals, an unmotivated figure appears in the crowd wearing a sandwich board with the words "What is truth." On the other hand, however, what is at stake here is the difficulty of finding a reliable narrator; truth is not seen as unknowable in principle. 2. Thurber's hero is escaping from an overbearing wife; in his final fantasy he faces a firing squad — heroically, of course. James Thurber, "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," in The Thurber Carnival (London: Penguin, 1953), 37-42.

What's Real?

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In making this distinction, it confirms centuries of Western tradition: sanity, rationality, responsibility, the characteristics of the citizen entitled to play a part in society and accountable before the law, are synonymous with the ability to tell the difference between reality and delusion. Only saints and psychopaths take their voices and visions for truth. The cinema screen that divides the brightly lit world of the fiction decisively from the audience in the darkened movie theatre marks that common-sense distinction between fact and fiction. Fiction isn't real Or rather, it wasn't. Our postmodern condition has made reality into an issue. What, we now ask, is real, and what a culturally induced illusion? Is there a difference between the two? Or is reality itself a product of our minds, either a subjective construct or the effect of culture? Recent cultural theory has contested the conventional view that human behaviour is predominantly natural and that Western capitalist society in particular is the supreme realisation of nature. We have successfully challenged the common-sense assumptions that o u r social arrangements and values are the expression of a universal, foundational humanity and, indeed, cultural theorists have relativised common sense itself. Ironically, this radicalism has been so influential (or, more likely, so fully a symptom of its cultural moment) that it has become fashionable to see human beings as entirely culturally constructed. Can we be sure, as Jean Baudrillard asks, where Disneyland ends and the "real" America begins? Disneyland is part of American culture — but so is American culture. And, Baudrillard concludes, "It is Disneyland that is authentic here." 3 In American theory, in particular, a t h o r o u g h g o i n g constructivism or culturalism is currently paramount. Historicism prevails in literary criticism. Reality is understood to be synonymous with the cultural conception of reality, and this in turn is historically relative. For Judith Butler, whose work has so influenced thinking about gender in the last decade, as well as for Stanley Fish in literary theory and pragmatism in philosophy, culture is — or might as well be — all there is. From this point of view, what we can know becomes entirely culturally relative, and what exists is reducible, either explicitly or implicitly, to what can be said to exist. Epistemology subsumes or occludes ontology. European poststructuralism, by contrast, generally works harder. Starting from the insight of Ferdinand de Saussure that because words do n o t have exact equivalents from one language to another, meanings cannot be said to exist outside language itself, poststructuralist theory also affirms the relativity of what it is possible for us to know as subjects in and of the language we learn. At the same time, however, poststructuralism refuses to incorporate what exists into what we can know exists, leaving open the possibility of a terrain of unmapped alterity which Jacques Lacan calls "the real." In contrast to the nonchalance of the culturalists, but without reverting to the foundationalism that has dominated

3. Jean Baudrillard, America, trans. Chris Turner (London: Verso, 1988), 104.

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Western thought since Plato, poststructuralism holds on to a structural uncertainty that I call "the anxiety of the real." "The real," Lacan affirms, "is what does not depend on my idea of it."4 True to Saussure, Lacan makes a distinction between meaning, which we learn from language itself, and the world that language purports to describe. We have n o evidence that the meanings we know match the world they seem to map. In consequence, One can only think of language as a network, a net over the entirety of things, over the totality of the real. It inscribes on the plane of the real this other plane, which we here call the plane of the symbolic. T r u t h , in consequence, is always an enigma. 5 Lacan's real is not to be confused with reality, which is what we do know, because culture defines it for us. The real, by contrast, remains unknown, though new knowledges gradually advance into its "vastness" in the case of a Newton or an Einstein. 6 The real is what is there, but undefined, unaccountable, perhaps, within the frameworks of our knowledge. It is there as such but not there-for-a-subject. In Lacan's account, the language we learn is always acquired from outside, from the irreducible Otherness of the symbolic. As the human subjects we become by means of our subjection to the symbolic order, we gain access to social reality, but we leave behind the real of the organism in its continuity with its surroundings. From now on, language will always come between us and direct contact with the real. But the loss will be made good in the end: we shall rejoin the real in death, which we can name but not know. Death separates us decisively from subjectivity and its experience, including the experience of reality. Because it cannot normally be brought within the symbolic order of language and culture, the real is there, but precisely not there for a subject, although psychoanalysis can bring to light the missed encounter with a real so unbearable that it cannot be named. Freud recounts the case of a father who, in Lacan's interpretation, woke up rather than continue to dream the appeal of his dead son, "Father, can't you see I'm burning?" Lacan comments that no one can say what it is to lose a child, unless it be the father as father, in the real, organic bond with his child that he cannot name as a conscious being in the symbolic order, in culture, in the reality we (think we) know. The dream comes close, but even there the real is evaded. 7 4. Jacques Lacan, Seminar 21 (1974) cited in Bruce Fink, The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1995), 142. 5. Jacques Lacan, Seminar 1: Freud's Papers on Technique, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. John Forrester (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988), 262. 6. Jacques Lacan, Seminar 11: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-analysis, ed. JacquesAlain Miller, trans, Alan Sheridan (London: Penguin, 1979), 245, 127. 7. Lacan, Four Fundamental Concepts, 59. But see also Le Seminaire de Jacques Lacan, Livre 11, Les quatres concepts fondamentaux de la psychanalyse, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris: Seuil, 1973), 58.

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By d i s t i n g u i s h i n g b e t w e e n reality a n d t h e real, t h e k n o w n a n d t h e unknowable, poststructuralism acknowledges the relativity of what we can be sure of, without resorting to the idealism of the culturalists, who make what exists d e p e n d o n our idea of what exists. Recent American popular culture, oddly enough, shows more affinity with poststructuralism here than with the simpler world of idealism. Since The Purple Rose of Cairo, any number of films have put exploratory pressure, in different ways and to varying degrees, on the fine line between illusion and reality. Peter Greenaway's The Baby of Macon (1993) shows the action of the fictional play get out of hand, to the point where the actors in the play "really" die. In Pleasantvilk (dir. Gary Ross, 1998) the crossover works the other way: two people from our present move through the television screen into the black and white world of a 1950s sitcom. Last Action Hero (dir. J o h n McTiernan, 1993), meanwhile, has it all. Arnold Schwarzenegger plays Arnold Schwarzenegger playing the fictional Hollywood hero, Jack Slater. Jack crosses the line into the world of the audience, where the bad guys can win; gradually, the entire cast of fictional characters turns u p in an actual New York, including the villains; and Jack is in "real" danger for the first time, when the fictional villains realise that if they kill Arnie, they will necessarily destroy the character he plays. But the fictitious Jack rescues the "real" Arnold Schwarzenegger from assassination at the premiere of Jack Slater TV and saves himself, as fictional character, from e x t i n c t i o n . O d d l y e n o u g h , it is J a c k w h o s e e m s s y m p a t h e t i c : A r n o l d Schwarzenegger is presented ironically as smug and insensitive, preoccupied by publicity and self-promotion. In an unexplained and distinctly uncanny moment, Jack tells the actor that he never liked him anyway: "You've brought me nothing but pain." Moreover, Jack is the one who looks "real": Arnie, dressed up for the occasion, appears fake in the way that offstage actors often do. In other words, these movies, including Last Action Hero, do not ask us to make the easy constructivist, idealist assumption that there is n o difference between illusion and reality. Instead, they problematise that difference, call it into question, sometimes wittily, sometimes to disturbing effect. What should we make of this? Should we see this as cinema at play, a sophisticated form of self-referentiality, postmodern metafiction? Probably. But that does not eliminate the possibility that it is also a cultural symptom, the indication of an increasing uncertainty about the borderline between fiction and fact, between the lives we imagine and the simulacra we live, and an anxiety about the implications of that uncertainty.

II Last Action Hero reaches a high point for me when Ian McKellen, as Death, comes out of the cinema where he has been appearing in Ingmar Bergman's film, The Seventh Seal, into the streets of New York City but refuses to intervene on Jack's

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behalf and kill the villains, because he doesn't "do ficshn."8 Six years later, in David Cronenberg's eXistenZ (1999) the distinction between fact and fiction has become in a more serious way a matter of life and death. eXistenZ shows a group of people introduced to a new computer game, which is plugged into the body to achieve the m a x i m u m effect of virtual reality. After a series of hair-raising virtual adventures, including the virtual death of one of them, the participants step out of their game characters and discuss how far they enjoyed their roles. Suddenly, the central figures produce guns and kill the author of the game. Is this "real," or virtual, we wonder? As they turn their weapons on another player, he begs, "Tell me the truth. Are we still in the game?" And with that the movie ends. There is n o way of knowing whether "we" are still in the game. The last reel of eXistenZ displays, no doubt knowingly, all the characteristics of the fully Freudian uncanny. Uncanny effects are often produced, Freud says, "when the distinction between imagination and reality is effaced, as w h e n something that we have hitherto regarded as imaginary appears before us in reality."9 The point about the uncanny in stories, where it occurs, Freud insists, much more commonly than in life, is that it depends on breaking the laws of genre. Supernatural events, he argues, are not in themselves uncanny: magic, apparitions, spectres and secret powers do not disturb us when they appear in fairy tales, where we expect them, or, for that matter, in Shakespeare. But their occurrence in what seems like realism, when the Gothic invades the mimetic, produces a degree of unease. The uncanny obscures the precise nature of the presuppositions on which the world of the fiction is based. 10 At the beginning of eXistenZ, those presuppositions seem clear enough; by the end we have no way of telling whether the guns are real or virtual, and whether the damage they can inflict is final or merely for the duration of the game. But within the fiction the question is, in the full sense of the term, vital. For Freud, the uncanny marks the return of the repressed or the culturally unsurmounted. Is it possible that Hollywood's recent preoccupation with the uncertain line between fiction and reality marks an unresolved cultural anxiety about our identity as subjects of culture? Culture is the element we inhabit as speaking beings; it is what makes us subjects. Culture consists of a society's entire range of signifying practices — rituals, stories, forms of entertainment, lifestyles, sports, norms, beliefs, prohibitions and values. In our own globalised society it includes art and opera, fashion, film, television, travel and computer games.

8. For a brilliant reading of Last Action Hero, and the role of Death in it, see Eric S. Mallin, '"You Kilt My Foddah': or Arnold, Prince of Denmark," Shakespeare Quarterly 50 (1999): 12751. 9. Sigmund Freud, 'The Uncanny," in Art and Literature, ed. Albert Dickson, vol. 14 of The Penguin Freud Library (London: Penguin, 1985), 367. 10. Freud, 'The Uncanny," 374.

What's Real?

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Culture resides in the meanings of those practices, the meanings we learn. The subject is what speaks, or, more precisely, what signifies, and subjects learn in culture to reproduce or to challenge the meanings inscribed in the signifying practices of the society that shapes them. If subjectivity is an effect of culture, of the inscription of culture in signifying practice, there is no place for human beings outside culture. Culture, therefore, is all we know. In that sense, we are always in culture — always in the game. And if so, there is nothing we can be sure of, even when it's vital. Culture is what we know — or think we do. In practice, we can never be certain of it, because it is known in language (or in its equally symbolic surrogates, mathematical, scientific or logical), since knowledge exists at the level of the symbol, and there is no way of showing that any specific set of symbols maps the world accurately. Our mastery of the world depends on our ability to map it, to recognise the difference between fact and fiction, but we cannot do so with absolute confidence. Is any a n x i e t y we feel a b o u t t h e real m e r e l y r e s i d u a l , a vestige of foundationalism in the postmodern condition, a longing to return to the tradition of Western t h o u g h t since Plato, which insists on the distinction between appearance and reality? Are these metacinematic movies registering a change in that world picture, but grudgingly, harking back to an epoch that believed we could know when we were not in the game? Culturalists would say so. T h e theoretical assault on foundationalism has been so successful that it has produced a "reverse" discourse, a thoroughgoing construetivist idealism that celebrates culture as all-embracing. From this perspective there is only culture, and unease about this is pointless, merely nostalgic, literally groundless. This culturalist insouciance seems to me attractive but ultimately reductionist. If my anxiety remains in place, it does so not, I hasten to stress, as the prelude to an assault on the postmodern, and on poststructuralism as its philosophy, in the mode of Terry Eagle ton and Christopher Norris. On the contrary: I don't want truth back. Whose truth was it, anyway? What I want to hold on to is my unease, on the grounds that the banishment of anxiety is not sanity, paradoxically, so much as psychosis. Genuine madness is being certain you're always in the game. The idealist supposition that reality resides in ideas, that what exists is confined to the contents of our own minds, makes lethal weapons seem more virtual and mitigates our sense of the damage they can inflict. If culture is sovereign, the world is surely at our disposal, ours to remake as we think fit in the process of some huge contest whose effects need cause us no very serious alarm. Conversely, if there is anything beyond the reach of our knowledge, not just for the moment, out of ignorance but unknowable in principle, we can never be sure when we might reach the limits of the game or when our cultural knowledges might fail us. If anything resists the sovereignty of the collective cogito, we always risk the uncanny possibility of an encounter that exceeds what culture permits us to define. And in turn we are less likely to forget the deprivation, mutilation and death that our society's power games are able to inflict.

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Jacques Derrida addressed this issue in an interview conducted in 1994, in what is evidently an allusion to the controversy surrounding the publication of Baudrillard's book, The Gulf War Did Not Take Place. As we should expect of him, Derrida problematises the binary opposition between fiction and truth in what we learn from journalism about events in the world. "Clearly," he says, "it is no longer possible to contrast virtuality with actual reality, along the lines of the serene old philosophical distinction." But he also warns against the consequent disavowal of the real, a denial of events, by which everything — even violence and suffering, war and death — is said to be constructed and fictive, and constituted by and for the media, so that nothing ever really happens, only images, simulacra, and delusions. The deconstruction of artifactuality should be carried as far as possible, but we must also take every precaution against this kind of critical neo-idealism. We must bear in mind ... that any coherent deconstruction is about singularity, about events, and about what is ultimately irreducible in them.11

Ill By this time, the culturalist confidence of Judith Butler, to cite what seems to me one influential instance of that critical neo-idealism, had electrified cultural studies departments all over the world in her book, Gender Trouble. Butler's brilliant insight was that speech act theory could be harnessed for feminism and queer studies to demonstrate the performativity of sexual identity. She countered essentialism and identity politics with sexuality as theatre, a display of "corporeal style,"12 in which parody and the masquerade demonstrated the constructed character of gender as impersonation. Sexual disposition was not an origin but an effect of repeated social performances, none more "natural" than any other. And just as gender is constituted by repeated acts, the idea of "an essential sex" is culturally produced to mask gender's contingent character. 13 The conventional feminist distinction between biological sex and cultural gender was regressive, Butler argued, leading to a naturalisation of gender characteristics rooted in the body. For her, by contrast, the body and gender were one and the same; what passed for nature was in practice a product of culture; nature was incorporated into culture. Butler's anti-foundational feminism, and her opposition to heterosexual hegemony, which I wholeheartedly share, are secured by overriding the anxiety about the limits of culture that I have suggested is evident in culture itself. 11. Jacques Derrida, 'The Deconstruction of Actuality. An Interview with Jacques Derrida," Radical Philosophy 68 (autumn 1994): 29. 12. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (NY: Routledge, 1990), 139. 13. Butler, Gender Trouble, 141.

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H e r denaturalisation of sexual identity b r o u g h t Butler close to Michel Foucault, whose broadly poststructuralist work had historicised and thus relativised not only homophobia but also homosexuality itself. This invested her position with a kind of familiarity that lent it authority. And Foucault in turn brought her close to poststructuralism. But the French tradition inherited a more complex account of the relation between the human organism and the culture in which it becomes a signifying subject, and much of Gender Trouble is devoted to a critique of French psychoanalysis and Foucault himself, if in versions that it is sometimes hard to recognise. As Antony Easthope put it, "too often I feel that Butler's copy of Lacan is not the one I've been reading, but another by an author of the same name." 14 Gender Trouble stressed the regulatory character of culture: heterosexuality was a discursive regime, and the possibilities for resistance were limited. But subversion could be read, in Butler's account, as a matter of choice, as if sexual identity could be improvised from m o m e n t to moment, "enacted" at will: The culturally constructed body will then be liberated, neither to its "natural" past, nor to its original pleasures, but to an open future of cultural possibilities.15 At such moments, Gender Trouble sounds remarkably close to the American dream. In practice, norms are not so easily subverted, however, and this reading had to be corrected, along with the impression that physiology was reducible to mere discourse. In Bodies that Matter (1993) Butler insists on performativity rather than performance; the emphasis on theatricality is m u c h reduced in the analysis (though it returns in the style of the writing); and the politics is less Utopian, an issue of rearticulation and resignification. In a rewriting of Foucault's "reverse discourse," in which the identification of a g r o u p of p e o p l e as "deviant" paradoxically affords them a place to speak from,16 she urges that words used as terms of abuse ("queer," for example) can be reappropriated with pride. 17 Butler concedes a "materiality" that accounts for the questions that properly concern the biological sciences, or for our ability to specify "hormonal and chemical composition, illness, age, weight, metabolism, life and death." 18 Bodies are still

14. Antony Easthope, Privileging Difference (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), 90. Oddly enough, in the Preface to the second edition of Gender Trouble, Butler claims that her theories were a "cultural translation" of poststructuralism itself (NY: Routledge, 1999), viii-ix. 15. Butler, Gender Trouble, 93. 16. Michel Foucault, The Will to Knowledge, Vol. 1 of The History of Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley (London: Allen Lane, 1979), 101. 17. Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex" (NY: Routledge, 1993), 223-42. 18. Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex/' 66.

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"produced" by culture, however, and sex is "materialised" by regulatory norms, as the result of a process of "forcible reiteration," the repetition of the cultural script.19 I am not certain I understand what is meant by the materialisation of sex, but what is clear is that there is no space in Butler's account for the anxieties that recur in popular cinema or poststructuralist theory about the limits of the cultural game. On the contrary: in her version of the story it has n o limits. The question for Butler is not what exists but what we can know exists. If culture subsumes nature, epistemology subsumes ontology and ideas produce materiality. In one of his most inventive and teasing fictions, Jorge Luis Borges describes a planet on which the entire culture attributes primacy to ideas. The religion, literature, and philosophy of Tlon are all unequivocally idealist in that sense. Moreover, the language in which this culture is inscribed had, in its original form, no nouns. It had no use for them. The sustained existence of material objects is still thought to be so improbable that it is heresy to suppose that the coins lost on Tuesday and found on Friday are the same coins, since materiality subsists only as a succession of discontinuous states. "For the people of Tlon, the world is not an amalgam of objects in space; it is a heterogeneous series of independent acts."20 O n Tlon, ideas change reality. Two people look for a lost object; one finds it and says nothing; the other finds another version of it. Archaeologists uncover fictional objects they have been led by their culture to expect they will find, and by this means they modify the actual past. Psychic experience materialises the way things are. But the narrator of the story, Borges (or rather, "Borges"), goes on to relate that Tlon is fictitious, an elaborate fraud, perpetrated by generations of experts in astronomy, biology, chemistry, metaphysics and so on, who formed a secret society to compose a forty-volume encyclopaedia giving a full account of life on the planet they had invented for the purpose. However, he reports, objects from the planet have now begun to appear in our world. Uncannily, a small, impossibly heavy cone, made of a metal not known on earth, has recently come to light here. Fascinated by the labyrinthine system described in the fictitious encyclopaedia, our own planet has fallen under its spell. Fiction has invaded the facts; reality has become accountable to ideas and the signifying practices in which they are inscribed. To secure Judith Butler's conflation of sex and gender, her version of the world is also made answerable to language. On the one hand, speech acts bring into being what they name, and "Performativity is the discursive mode by which

19. Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex,"'1 -2. "Sex" is to be construed "no longer as a bodily given on which the construct of gender is artificially imposed, but as a cultural norm which governs the materialization of bodies" (2-3). 20. Jorge Luis Borges, "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius," in Collected Fictions, trans. Andrew Hurley (London: Allen Lane, 1998), 72-3.

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ontological effects are installed." 21 O n the other hand, what subsists as the materiality of the body does so, Butler argues, not as "an ontological in-itself' but only as a requirement on consciousness, a demand to be named, pressing to be theorised or dealt with in language. Culture, the inscription of meanings, modifies the materiality that motivates it. There is in principle nothing that cannot be brought inside language, mapped, because for Butler language is ultimately referential. Materiality, in her intensely difficult prose, turns out to be the referent of language and is a p p r o a c h e d t h r o u g h the signified, which it never fully escapes. 22 Seduced by the vocabulary of signifier and signified, we might easily miss the absence here of Saussure's altogether more modest account of signification. In Saussurean theory, language is differential, not referential; the world is outside the sign, which is no longer the sign of something; the signified (meaning) offers no approach to a referent. This is not to say, of course, that meanings are not lived. But it does leave open the possibility of a domain of meaning-less alterity.

IV According to Lacan's version of Freud, social reality offers gratifications, including sexual gratifications, but because language is irreducibly Other than the organism that we also are, the satisfactions available to the speaking being never quite match the desire they are intended to allay, the desire formed precisely in the gap between the little human animal and the symbolising subject it becomes. Desire, in other words, subsists in ways that are not culturally scripted, not the result of habit or the repetition of speech acts. Desire, unfortunately for us, is never quite performed but continues to insist for that very reason. In that sense, for Lacan, social reality is no more than a fantasy. Is this, then, yet another version of idealism? 23 It can sound like it. For instance, in Seminar 20 he urges that The world, the world of a being full of knowledge, is but a dream, a dream of the body insofar as it speaks, for there's no such thing as a knowing subject.24 21. Peter Osborne and Lynne Segal, "Gender as Performance: An Interview with Judith Butler," Radical Philosophy 67 (1994), 33; cf. Butler, Bodies That Matter, 11. 22. Osborne and Segal, 68-9. 23. Some of Lacan's adherents have represented his work as more Hegelian than in my view it is. Slavoj Zizek is important here, but the distinction deserves to be made in the kind of detail that goes beyond a footnote. See Catherine Belsey, "Intertextual Lineages of the Postmodern Sublime/' Symbolism (in press). 24. Jacques Lacan, Seminar 20: Encore, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Bruce Fink (NY: Norton, 1998), 126; translation modified in the light of Jacques-Alain Miller, ed. Le Seminaire de Jacques Lacan, Livre 20, Encore (Paris: Seuil, 1975), 114.

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T h e dream here, however, is not the world itself but the claim to know, the certainty of the being full of knowledge, for there is no such thing as a knowing subject, only subjects who have learned what their culture knows, or seems to know. Since there is no such thing as a knowing subject, however, the claim that the world does not exist, the certainty that only ideas are real, is just as much a dream in Lacan's view. The subject is not an origin of knowledge but a transitory thing, subject to disappearance, fading. Indeed, this is the essential flaw in philosophical idealism which, in any case, cannot be sustained and has never been radically sustained. There is no subject without, somewhere, aphanisis of the subject, and it is in this alienation, in this fundamental division, that the dialectic of the subject is established.25 Psychoanalysis sees h u m a n beings as determined, to the degree that we are, by the drives, which are psychic representatives of the instincts. The person in psychoanalysis is not ideas that materialise a body, and still less a mind and a body, but a speaking being divided between a real organism and a subject that makes demands in symbols so irreducibly Other that they leave in place a residue, a trace of the real that continues to insist as unconscious desire. From this perspective, the real, culture's differentiating other, without which the term has no meaning, is that silent or silenced exteriority which is also inside us and which we cannot symbolise, delimit, specify or know, even when we can name it. In Lacan's words, "the real ... is the mystery of the speaking body."26 We shall, however, resolve this mystery in the end, in death, which doesn't do fiction, and which eliminates the body and the speaking subject, with all it thinks it knows. Death puts an end to the cultural game for each of us. The real is not nature, which is what Western science has set out since the seventeenth century to map and master, and which Terry Eagleton invokes to counter culturalism in his book, The Idea of Culture. Nor is the real a fact, like the stone Dr Johnson kicked to refute Berkeley's idealism. Still less is it the truth, a foundation on which to base new laws or dogmas, or an alternative reality with which to contrast appearances. On the contrary, the real is a question, not an answer. More likely to subtend than transcend, it has nothing whatever to do with the supernatural, a realm devised to comfort or scare us, and variously explained or mystified by theologians and visionaries. Obstinately, brutally there, the real is not a content, nevertheless. What we don't know, individually or culturally, might be anything, or not much. Though it exists as a difference, there is no meaning in the real; indifferent to description, it exceeds representation and brings

25. Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts, 221. For other assaults on idealism, see p. 53 and Lacan, Television, trans. Denis Hollier et a!., (NY: Norton, 1990), 76. 26. Lacan, Seminar 20, 131.

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language to an impasse. If we experience it, we do so as a gap, or alternatively as a limit, the point at which culture fails us. T h e real is what our knowledge, individually or collectively, both must and cannot accommodate.

V In 1989, a year before Gender Trouble appeared, Stanley Fish published a new collection of essays, one of which featured a character called "rhetorical man." This figure, rightly recognizing that the world is pervaded by language, is an actor who uses words both to manipulate reality and to fabricate himself; his identity is essentially histrionic, performative. 27 Fish also shares Butler's attribution of primacy to language, but his much more accessible prose throws the issues into clearer relief. He explicitly rejects the Saussurean view that meaning resides in language, redefining this as the altogether improbable conviction that meaning is timeless, independent of context, and derived from mechanical features. 28 Fish's preferred alternative assigns meaning to ideas, in accordance with the tradition of Western idealism from the m o m e n t when Descartes identified being with thought in the "I think" that proves "I am." Fish sees meaning as whatever the speaker has in mind, and since, as he acknowledges, we have n o access to this, it follows that meaning must be purely contextual, a matter of what a member of a specific "interpretive community" takes it to be in consequence of his or her conventionally induced beliefs. Truth and falsehood exist as relative terms, the effect of a specific point of view. Meanwhile, discursive change transforms the objects of knowledge, and the world of things comes into line with the world of ideas. An interpretive community represents a political grouping to the degree that it excludes dissent, since to disagree is to align oneself with a n o t h e r community. And so, in summary, "all facts," as well as all values, "are social and political constructs." 29 Since he avoids difficult questions concerning human sexuality, Fish has no need to define a concept of "materiality," however, and in consequence, he generally appears a more thoroughgoing idealist than Butler. Nevertheless, since his theory is altogether less ambitious, he can occasionally allow for a distinction between epistemology a n d ontology. Thus, in a discussion of the disputed historicity of a displaced African slave, Fish concedes, "either Kunta Kinte was real or he was not." The point, from Fish's perspective, is not whether he existed b u t that the procedures for establishing what is real are conventional, a n d whatever these procedures produce will have the status of a fact.30 27. Stanley Fish, Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 471-502, especially 483-4. 28. Fish, Doing What Comes Naturally, 4, 7. 29. Fish, Doing What Comes Naturally, 19-20, 26. 30. Fish, Doing What Comes Naturally, 55-6.

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Richard Rorty's style is as laconic as Fish's, and his philosophical position, while more sophisticated, is more minimalist still. As a pragmatist, Rorty simply sees n o p o i n t in discussing either epistemology or ontology, still less the r e l a t i o n s h i p between t h e m . He regards d e b a t e a b o u t the possibility of a correspondence between words and things as a deplorable residue of Platonist m e t a p h y s i c s . For h i m , l a n g u a g e is n o t to be u n d e r s t o o d as a m o d e of representation; on the contrary, it is away of getting things done, 'strings of noises and marks to facilitate group activities."31 Though he does not deny that the world exists nor, indeed, that it may exert its pressures, 32 Rorty has no serious interest in the questions that are evidently so insistent in Hollywood and in poststructuralist theory. If, as he puts it, "most of reality is indifferent to our descriptions of it,"33 he is correspondingly indifferent to the anxiety of the real. Both Fish and Butler make large claims for the sovereignty of human culture over the world of things. Reality is more or less what we make it; material objects are shaped by language; identity is cultural and performative. But cultural determinism cuts both ways. If what we are is culturally scripted, we are not the source of our own beliefs, actions, selves. On the contrary, we are the helpless products of determinations that exist in our communities. Fish affirms that we have no freedom of opinion and that the only alternative views open to us are those of another interpretive community; Butler sees the only way to influence change as repetition of the cultural script with a difference. Neither has grounds for confidence that things will change much, or that change will be for the better if they do. The pragmatist Rorty is more optimistic about the future, but he repudiates the notion of grounds, and he therefore hopes without any confidence at all.

VI In The Truman Show (dir. Peter Weir, 1998) Truman is the only person who does not know that he is the star of a television serial. Born on the set, Truman believes that Seahaven, domed, climate-controlled, safe, socially predictable, is all there is. He is at the mercy of a world that he does not even know is scripted. But driven by dissatisfaction and desire, in front of a worldwide TV audience, characters whose consecutive responses the camera makes familiar, Truman tries to leave town and travel. His efforts to escape are repeatedly frustrated, until he sails as far as the horizon and finds an exit button. The way out is a black rectangle against the plaster sky, the unknown, perhaps the void. The Truman Show juxtaposes the

31. Richard Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope (London: Penguin, 1999), 64. 32. Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope, 33. 33. Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989), 7.

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imaginary world of Seahaven with the reality of the audience watching the true man's struggles to escape the fiction he believes in, and with a third term, a black hole, the real. The real provokes anxiety precisely to the degree that it is neither controlling nor ours to control. Both Fish and Rorty bracket the real: it is not their concern. Butler denies its existence, but in doing so she impoverishes, in my view, the politics of gender. Sexual difference belongs to the real, to the extent that it generates anxiety as difference but at the same time resists symbolization, or is n o t reducible to a difference between this and that, to decisive criteria for assigning bodies to one side or another of a single binary axis. Babies are not always born unequivocally male or female. Olympic athletes have to be classified before they can be entered for either men's or women's events, but no infallible test has yet been produced to settle the question in marginal cases. Sometimes the evidence of anatomy conflicts with hormones or chromosomes. No single indicator seems to be final. Judith Butler's preferred term is "sex," which points to an essence, and her case is designed to contest the appeal to the biological "facts" of nature as the ground of identity. But sexual difference is not an essence and can hardly constitute a ground. Difference is a relationship, a space between, not a thing, not even a fact. In that sense, however, sexual difference remains a c o n d i t i o n for cultural politics to r e c k o n with, t h o u g h n o t necessarily as determining, and certainly not as natural, in which nature is viewed as either prescriptive or inert. What we make of sexual difference, whether as oppression or diversity, we make in culture. But it doesn't follow that we make it u p or that we can by means of performatives make away with it. The relation between the subject and the real organism that we also and inextricably are renders feminist and queer politics no less imperative: just more difficult, and therefore more demanding. In the text of a seminar first published in 1987, Jean-Francois Lyotard addresses the question, "Can Thought Go On Without a Body?" He concludes that it cannot, and not just because, if language is the software of human thinking, the body provides the hardware without which this software cannot operate. There is in addition, he claims, something specific about human thought processes, including creative processes, which distinguishes them from the logical, binary, data-sorting, problem-solving efforts of memory performed by computers. Human thinking, by contrast, is analogical, lateral, intuitive, inventive. And this is so, because we are driven to an uncomfortable, difficult engagement with what has not been thought previously, impelled by a force beyond pleasure, by a sense of "lack": "we think in a world of inscriptions already there. Call this culture if you like. And if we think, this is because there's still something missing in this plenitude." 34 34. Jean-Francois Lyotard, "Can Thought Go On Without a Body?" The Inhuman: Reflections on Time, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991), 20.

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According to Lyotard, surely the most Lacanian of philosophers, culture itself is always lacking, a n d the paradigm instance of this insufficiency is sexual difference, the evidence that we are all empirically incomplete, that there is as a possibility something that each of us is not, does not know, cannot experience. Neither machines nor people can fully think this difference, let alone resolve it: Not only calculation, but even analogy cannot do away with the remainder left by this difference. This difference makes thought go on endlessly and won't allow itself to be thought. 35 Sexual difference in Lyotard's argument is not, I think, an origin of thought but an instance of its condition; and to revert to Lacan's terms (as Lyotard himself is willing on other occasions to do) ,36 that condition is the awareness of the (absent) real in culture. We might even want to say that the absence of the real is the motive for culture — and for the resistance to culture's regulatory norms. That motive is recurrently figured in Western thought as the darkness of Plato's cave, St Augustine's restlessness, fear in Hobbes, Freud's civilised discontent or Lacan's unconscious desire, the causes of change. In Judith Butler's case, what looked at first like the American dream turned out in practice to be a form of determinism. For Fish, and even to a degree for Rorty, culturalism presents a world that looks all too m u c h like T r u m a n ' s Seahaven: safe, but repetitive. Culturalism reckons without the real, however, and the something missing in culture itself that makes thought go on endlessly. The sense of an alterity beyond culture, pushing and pulling it out of shape, permits us to escape the cultural determinism and the cycle of repetition. Our relation to the world is capable of change: things can be other than they are. The gap between culture and the real is a cause of dissatisfaction, which impels us to want more. Conversely, we are perceptibly more fragile, more subject to events and what is ultimately irreducible in them. If so, current cultural theory confronts the question of the status and the limits of culture itself. On that depends our conception of human beings and their relation n o t only to the sexual possibilities b u t also to the political obligations, of the world in which we live. Idealism in all its forms is as dangerous as it is inadequate. Our lives, I believe, have a real component, and if so, it follows that our power games will have real consequences.

35. Lyotard, "Can Thought Go On?" 23. 36. He borrows the term to account for the sublime feeling, when thinking violates the limits on presentation, acts the impossible and, he says, subjectively "experiences pleasure in the real.'7 Lyotard then apologises for invoking the vocabulary of psychoanalysis "to situate this violence." Lyotard, Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime, trans. Elizabeth Rottenberg (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford UP, 1994), 55-6. See also "Answering the Question, What is Postmodernism?" in The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1984), 79.

Some Notes on a Critique of Culture

Ronald A. T. Judy

It is noteworthy that in tandem with the constitution and integration of more and more "regions" into the global economy — much of Africa, Central Asia, and sections of Southwest Asia remaining exceptions — there is increased attention being paid to the old idea of the university as conservator and purveyor of culture. An instructive example of this is the Europa-Universitdt Viadrina, "European University Viadrina," at Frankfurt (Oder). Of the three new universities established in the federal state of Brandenburg — the other two being the universities of Potsdam and Cottbus, Viadrina is the only one charged with the task of studying culture, along with law and economics. Founded in 1991, Viadrina's schools of Law and Economics opened in the fall of 1992. Its School of Cultural Studies (Kulturwissenschaften) opened a year later, in 1993. The mandate of the European University Viadrina to build an academic bridge between Western and Eastern Europe in general, and between Germany and Poland in particular, has two distinct yet interrelated foci that have been implemented in the university's institutional structure. 1 These are internationality and interdisciplinary. As Hans Wieler has pointed out in his account of the relationship between the concept and institutional reality of Viadrina,

1. The university was founded in 1991 as the successor to the earlier Alma Mater Viadrina (1506-1811). Thirty percent of the Viadrina's students come from Poland. What's more, students from virtually every continent study at the Viadrina, but most of them come from Europe.

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It is around those two poles that the university was to develop, and it is the implementation of these two ideas that has from the start created this university's particular fault lines with the reality of the institutional and normative context within which it is to operate. That this should be so is instructive, but hardly surprising; with respect to both of these ideas, the university's concept is at considerable variance with the central tendency of the history of higher education in Germany (and elsewhere) .2 The claim of variance is remarkable and warrants careful scrutiny, but the first thing to consider is the way the concept of internationality is predicated on a particular definition of "Europeanness," whose five constitutive elements portray a set of presumptions about culture and the university. These are, in synopsis: (a) A substantial cross-national orientation in teaching that should facilitate both the preparation of students for international and cross-cultural tasks and their understanding and appreciation of cultural differences within as well as between national societies. (b) A conception of research that maximizes the intellectual gains to be derived from cross-national and cross-cultural inquiry and therefore places a special emphasis on the development of comparative research designs. (c) An emphasis on the notion of "culture" as a guiding concept for recognizing and understanding the unique ways in which norms and institutions in different societies are constructed over time, and a corresponding emphasis on cultural diversity as a genuine element of the European tradition (as distinct from a more 'technocratic" emphasis on the growing homogeneity of Europe). (d) A conception of Europe that very much includes Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe and thus transcends the parameters of the current "official" scope of Europe as represented by the members of the European Union (EU). (e) The recognition of the central role of language both as a medium of crossnational communication and as a constituent element in cultural identity (Wieler 433). The matter of Poland and Germany's reconciliation as an aspect of European Union enlargement has proven to be of some importance in the establishment of Europa-Universitdt Viadrina. The university's publicity proclaims it to be a reestablishment of the Alma Mater Viadrina, whose dates are given as 1506-1811. This temporal framing of the institution's genealogy is meant to give it an ancient

2. Hans Weiler, "Conceptions of Knowledge and Institutional Realities: Reflections on the Creation of a New University in Eastern Germany," Oxford Review of Education 20, issue 4 (1994): 433.

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Franconian-Polish lineage. The original university was the first established in the Holy Roman Imperial margravate of Brandenburg and was founded at Frankfurt on the Oder River in 1506. It was moved to Cottbus in 1516, where it stayed until 1536, after which it returned to Frankfurt (Oder), only to be dissolved a h u n d r e d years later in the course of the Thirty Years War. It was the Great Elector of Brandenburg, Frederick William (1640-88), who re-established the university at Frankfurt, where it stayed until 1811 when it was removed to Breslau, the medieval Silesian capital, which reverted to Poland as Wroclaw in 1945, after two h u n d r e d years of German occupation. The removal to Breslau/Wroclaw occurred just four years before the incorporation of Brandenburg Lander (state) as a province of Prussia in 1815. After World War II, the East German Lander were dissolved and reorganized as Bezirke (districts). Brandenburg Lander was itself re-established only o n e year earlier t h a n the university in 1990 just prior to G e r m a n y ' s reunification. This genealogy is a major factor in how Europa-Universitdt Viadrina was established and located at Frankfurt Oder as a frontier zone between east and west, Germany and Poland, but most significantly as the transition zone in which the new Mitteleuropa can emerge as a descendant of the older imperial German zone, as well the expression of the new European zone. Not only is the university situated precisely on the border of Germany and Poland, with Frankfurt on the west bank of the Oder and the Polish town of Slubice on the east, it has located its student residences in both towns. In other words, by casting itself as the reestablishment of the old Germanic imperial university, Europa-Universitdt Viadrina proclaims its project to be the articulation of fundamentally Germanic middle Europe as a part of the enlarged EU. This is most clearly evident in new university's coat of arms, which bears the seal of the old Viadrina as well as a view of the bridge over the river Oder between Germany and Poland. It was also evident, however, in the initial concern over the principal language of instruction at the university. Even though English has become the dominant language of commerce, as well as the principal language of EU law, German is the language of instruction in all the faculties of the new European University, including law and economics. While the university claims a largely international student body, nearly a third of the students are from Poland. There is a certain pertinence to asking in this context whether Viadrina is indicative of progress in European thinking about culture. When reading the language of the university's statement of mission and programs of study, some might be inclined to recognize Viadrina's "internationality" as analogous to North America's, specifically the U n i t e d States', c o n c e p t of "multiculturalism," understanding Viadrina as a staging ground for a new European thinking of itself as a multi-racial society. Such would be a misrecognition and misunderstanding, however, because it overlooks an obvious and significant formal difference between Europe and the US. That difference is emblematic of the danger involved with thinking about culture in the current context of a global financial economy,

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let alone thinking about the university as a center of culture in that same context. Given this difference, the case of Viadrina offers an occasion for exploring the question of w h e t h e r multiculturalism is i n d e e d a way of thinking past the categories of culture that were concomitant with the international system of i m p e r i a l capitalist colonialism to a way of t h i n k i n g m o r e a d e q u a t e for understanding the possibilities of action in the existing planetary economy of global finance, let alone thinking about the university as a center of culture in that same context. 3 To begin with, in the Viadrina concept of internationality, culture is identified, if n o t o u t r i g h t confused, with national identity, which is in t u r n m a r k e d linguistically. Disturbing as this may be, it is somewhat predictable in light of both the historical significance of the category national culture in Europe, and the function of the university as its adjudicator. Multiculturalism, in contrast, rearticulates the complete absence of any such category in the United States and hence the lack of need for the university to function as adjudicator of culture. In the US, this is being experienced as the crisis of the human sciences, in which a radical relativism has trivialized, if not altogether incapacitated, j u d g m e n t or at least any epistemologically founded judgment. Of course, this latter statement is a provocation, the details and terms of which cannot be adequately taken up here. W h a t can be r e m a r k e d , a d d i n g to the provocation, is that even after its institutional unfolding as an academic field, American Studies has never been the adjudicator of national culture, but rather it legitimates a "national project." This is a point that Donald Pease has effectively made. The absence of a cultural referent to American studies has been best articulated as interdisciplinarity, whose hallmark has been an intractable instability of field — this is a key factor in

3. The original occasion for this essay was the International Symposium on Higher Education and the Humanities, convened at the University of Hong Kong in the spring of 2002 by the Department of English, in conjunction with the English Department of Nanjing University and the boundary 2 Editorial Collective. The symposium was organized under the four rubrics of "Academics and the University," "Politics and Academia," "Local and Global," and "Literary Studies and Cultural Studies." Its convention at the University of Hong Kong is significant for a number of reasons. After all, the SAR of Hong Kong stands out as perhaps as one of the most dynamic points of convergence between China and "the West," Nanjing emerging as another. And the English departments of the host institutions have played an important role in that convergence, grappling with the complexity of symbolic action that of necessity, attends, if not articulates, such a convergence. The paramount significance of this grappling for the idea as well as convention of the Hong Kong International Symposium on Higher Education and the Humanities was clearly indicated in the third rubric originally proposed in the preliminary program for the Symposium: "The University and the Global Context," the three sub-foci of which were cultural imperialism, cultural nationalism (in part as a reaction to cultural imperialism), and multiculturalism as a "third way." The third sub-focus was accented by a question: Is multiculturalism enlightenment and/or dogma?

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u n d e r s t a n d i n g the difference between what E u r o p e a n s , Latin Americans, Canadians, and United States Americans mean by Atlantic studies. Be that as it may, it is this very interdisciplinarity as an indicator of no cultural referent that makes the Viadrina concept so noteworthy. Recall that the second defining concept of the Europa-Universitdt is interdisciplinarity, which follows to some extent from its concept of internationality. The reciprocity between these two concepts is where the presumed progress in thinking about culture lies. On the assumption of the mandate to capture, in its teaching and research program, the full richness of cultural variation across Europe — again, we must take care of what the referent of "culture" is here — Viadrina is supposed to be a new organization of knowledge. The question of culture is still begged. Nonetheless, the imperative to study and facilitate cross-cultural exchange legitimates, or, rather necessitates, the reorganization of knowledge around a new set of problematics. T h e question of culture cannot even begin to be adequately addressed under the old structure of extreme segregation of the disciplines. The question is whether this is truly indicative of new thinking. This warrants taking care. After all, if culture is identical to national language and identity, then there are well-established structures for adjudicating it. They are called departments of language and literature, and belong very much within the organization of the university since Humboldt's Berlin paradigm. Nor is the expansion of the m a n d a t e of these d e p a r t m e n t s to include all m a n n e r of expression and institutional patterns and social events new. On the contrary, it remains very much in keeping with Dilthey's vision of the human sciences — Geisteswissenschaften. And, even allowing that the official designation of Viadrina's School of Cultural Studies as the Fakultdt fur Kulturwissenschaften implies it to be an institution more in line with Rickert's thought than Dilthey's, the difference between them is little more than a dispute of scope and not perspective. For all the significance of the difference between Rickert and Dilthey about the status of systemic psychology as a foundation for the h u m a n sciences, they concurred o n the anthropological typology of h u m a n s . I n d e e d , it could be said that preoccupation with the human typology — anthropos — has been a hallmark of European thought in modernity up until, and including, now. This goes directly to the aforementioned claim of Viadrina's variance from other German and European universities. That claim is focused on the way in which its School of Cultural Studies is perceived to be a direct challenge to the tradition of the "Philosophical Faculty" where the social sciences a n d the humanities are distinct domains, each of whose conceptual and methodological dominion is preserved through the sovereign agency of the "Ordinarius." The School of Cultural Studies at the Viadrina departs from this institutional habit in its focus on interdisciplinarity, being a single department, combining the faculties of the social sciences, history, linguistics, comparative literature, philosophy and geography, with a course of study leading to a single diploma in Kulturwissenschaft. Granted, this is an unusual institutional entity, in the German context, but this

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institutional variance should not be equated with, or held u p as indicative of, a conceptual revolution. T h e p o i n t of all this is to focus a t t e n t i o n o n t h e p r e s u m p t i o n t h a t interdisciplinarity necessitates a reorganization of knowledge, precisely because interdisciplinarity is predicated on the absence of a unified field. T h a t is, interdisciplinarity unavoidably begs the question of the unity of knowledge. This question is begged because there is n o universally recognizable object of study, but disparate objects whose relationship to one another is neither presumed nor necessary. In other words, what is instructive about the University of Viadrina's m a n d a t e to study culture is not the need to recalibrate already established institutional disciplines so that their methodologies can be reoriented to converge on a new set of objects. Instead, what Viadrina indexes is the problematic of field definition associated with particular modes of knowledge as specific practices. Plainly stated, whether or n o t Viadrina has succeeded in embodying a way of thinking differently, it indicates that the current situation we are in calls for thinking differently about the human — the extent to which Viadrina falls short of the mark is indicated in the way its mission confuses the European with the human. T h e imperative is clear enough: Recognize that the existing dominant conceptual apparatus is inadequate to our circumstances. The challenge is equally clear: Is it possible to realize anything like the "global" university without already having a determined object of study or governing concept? What is it, then, that the Viadrina intends to study under the rubric culture if not the h u m a n individual? T h e slippage between national identity and culture is most telling. As a geo-economic construct, the European Union, like the United States, has n o national culture. In this regard, "Europeanness" takes on the aspects of a project rather than a given way of being or life-regime. That project is currently most recognizable as the delineation of a unifying task or purpose beyond economic unification. This project might very well be characterized as defining the emerging European self, which might even be called the subject of the European experience. The road is full of pitfalls, not the least of which is a revitalized mission of civilization analogous to the American Studies concept of American exceptionalism. We would do well to bear in mind that the Viadrina mandate understands culture as the historical mode of societal evolution — that is, cultural integration by way of systemic unity fosters social evolution. We should also keep before us the fact that it explicitly does so in contradiction to the "more 'technocratic'" view that this same process of societal evolution is fostered through economic forces. The question is: To what extent is the Europa Universitat cultural studies project actually at variance with the more technocratic project of the EU? It is well known that Dilthey proposed Geisteswissenschaft as the contemplation of the self that understands human life as involving continual self-interpretation from within a specific and limited historical context of lived-experience (Erlebnis). In accordance with this combined project, cultural truths and values are not eternal but historical creations of particular groups of individuals responding in

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different ways to their own historical situation. For Rickert, this Kulturxvissenschaft was to be achieved rigorously through comparative anthropology rather than systemic psychology. In this conception of cultural studies, the real (eigentlich) subject is not the worldless transcendental "I" or ego of epistemology, but the concrete, historically situated, living human being who is always engaged in trying to give meaning to life. Understanding culture, for Dilthey and Rickert, required Verstehen, i.e., one must project oneself imaginatively into the historical life of culture to learn anything essential about it. Dilthey called this sympathetic understanding of cultural history "hermeneutics." Prior to this, hermeneutics had been defined as the method for interpreting scripture in light of its social and historical context. The extension of this sense of hermeneutics to experience achieved an understanding of all cultural and personal life as an interpretative process. The presumed task, then, was to account for cultural differences in terms of different understandings of the experience of entities as beings in the world. Let's consider more carefully some of the serious difficulties, perhaps even dangers, involved in thinking theoretically about what goes into the claim that the relationship between experience and expression is the basis of culture. Accordingly, let us think about culture as a sign or problematic rather than assume it as a given. In other words, let's try and think with the problematic of culture, where the presumption of its ontological status is put into question. It is not e n o u g h , however, to differentiate between the problematic of culture a n d ontology. We must also consider the habitual understanding of the relationship between the two. Underlying the insistence on an integral geopolitical domain of European dominion is the understanding that ontological authenticity is derived from cultural authenticity, codified in a system of positive law. This means that being European existentially results from a particular set of social and moral decisions and acts, summed up as culture. What is being forgotten and abandoned is the question Frantz Fanon posed at the height of Algeria's struggle for liberation from E u r o p e a n d o m i n a t i o n : In t h e wake of t h e violent collapse of t h e international system of imperial capitalist colonialism, is it possible to articulate a new concept of the human whose theoretical basis is inclusive of the various ontologies? Before proceeding, it is crucial to bear in mind that orientations in thinking are not, in fact, calculable. It is a mistake, if not out right mischievous, to hold that there are not different orientations in thinking on this matter, or to hold that there is some hierarchy of validity in the different orientations such that only one of them is truly thoughtful and sound. Such mischief is an intricate part of the history of colonialism and decolonization in the twentieth century, and appears to be the case for much of the current efforts to theorize globalization. It is not without significance that a way of thinking about culture where the presumption of its ontological status is put into question unfolded itself in Africa in the last century with the anticolonial wars of national liberation. Fanon in Algeria sought to discover the historicity of ontology, rejecting the conceit of

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o n t o l o g y as t r a n s c e n d e n t a priori w i t h o u t a b a n d o n i n g c o n c e r n with t h e ontological; he also refused the structuralist conceit of an ahistorical value-neutral discourse of analysis — the reiteration of that conceit has been a key characteristic of neo-liberalism's push for a universal civil society — without dismissing the structuralist call for the sort of rigorous non-dogmatic analysis usually identified as scientific. In undertaking this project, Fanon strove to discern and explicate how the Algerian struggle, as paradigmatic of the wars of liberation in Africa, entailed the possibility for articulating a new conception of the human that would, in his terms, overcome the warring metaphysical camps defined by modernity. Notwithstanding that in the instance of immediate concern to him these were the metaphysics of the West a n d Arabo-Islam, the logic of the question extends to nearly all ontologies. The challenge Fanon understood the violence of the Algerian struggle for national liberation posed (and which is still being posed by Algeria today) was to articulate a new concept of humanity beyond that defined by modernity in colonialism — and not colonialism in modernity. His agenda was to discover another modernity, not to perpetuate the conceits of the one derived from the historical crisis of Christendom. In other words, we cannot uncritically found the articulation of a new concept of humanity on the idea of the sovereign individual discovered in the folds of positive law. Nor, for that matter can we presume the identification of this legal fiction with an event of natural law. Thus far, the practice has been to approach the problematic of culture in terms of law and justice. 4 The tripartite organization of the Viadrina into the schools of law, economics, and culture, with the latter originally intended to function as the foundational discipline, persists in attending to the problematic of culture in Europe as being about determining the adjudicating principle between natural and positive law, between irreducible, but interpretable, necessity, and absolute freedom. This, of course, is a function of what Kant designated hypotyposis. The point of recalling Kant here is to remark the connection between the collapse of the modern subject — an aspect of what was supposed in the last decades of the Cold War to have been the collapse of metaphysics — and the explosion of figuration in the global economy 5 The problem is that since Kant first published his idea of the cosmopolitical, it has been habitual to think about culture as the conjunction of the subject and action. In other words, to mis-identify

4. Among the explicit engagements with this issue, see those of Jacques Breque, Pierre Bourdieu, Rachid TIemcen, Abdullah Laouri, Mohammed Harbi, and, of course, Frantz Fanon. 5. See Jean Francois Lyotard, 'Universal History and Cultural Differences," in The Lyotard Reader, ed. Andrew Benjamin (London: Blackwell, 1989). An even more materialist historical account of the connection, with perhaps one of the most insightful analyses of how the cosmopolitan was symptomatic of a particular genealogy of intelligence's figuration as literary textual production is offered by Terry Cochran in The Twilight of the Literary: Figures of Thought in the Age of Print (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 2001).

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it as agency, or as the historical process by which something like intelligence achieves material actuality through the voluntaristic efforts of self-conscious agents. Accordingly, in the Viadrina structure, the problematic of culture is a matter of law, or rather the language of law. That is to say, in paraphrase, the problematic of culture in Europe can still be summarized in its relation to language and law, a relation whose most determinate function is violence. When speaking in succession about Europe, culture, Islam, law, and violence, what readily comes to mind is the habit of thought that enabled the conceivers of the Europa Universitdt Viadrina to think of internationality and its relationship to interdisciplinarity in exclusively European terms. What warrants concern about this habitus is the extent to which Islam is becoming increasingly identified as the sign of lawlessness or that domain without any authentic dominion. In this vein, Fanon's contemplation of violence remains most instructive, and a brief rehearsal of some of its key points might shed some light on the danger entailed in the Viadrina concept of culture. Fanon's account of violence is as a historical force. His concern, therefore, was not with the employment of violence in service of the justness of ends but with the justification of means, with m e d i a t e violence o n its own. In his consideration of the historical grounds on which a distinction is made between kinds of violence i n d e p e n d e n t l y of the cases of their application, F a n o n determined that all mediate violence is either lawmaking or law preserving. In this way, he established that, insofar as the distinction between the colonizer's and the colonized's violence is that of sanctioned and unsanctioned violence, the distinction itself is possible only within one sphere: imperial capitalist colonialism as the socio-political manifestation of modernity. Fanon also understood that law destroying is an inherent feature of violence, along with lawmaking and law preserving (see "The Pitfalls of National Consciousness"). T h e antinomy in evidence in his theory of violence is defined by the conflict between spontaneous revolutionary violence as fateful foundation, and the concomitant executive violence of discipline associated with the state. Insurrection become revolution is lawmaking. Yet, that same m o m e n t of transition entails the emergence of disciplining discourses, or structures and apparatuses geared toward preserving the new law. The fact that revolutionary violence requires both the features of eruption and continuity in order to be conceived of as the agency of historical change keeps the antinomy insoluble. The eventfulness of violence must find expression in a new conceptual language that articulates a new agreement — as in a new contract of understanding originating in violence. Only then is violence revolutionary, only when it is legalistic; and it is legalistic because its strives for an understanding of violence as a justified means — imperial capitalist colonialism — for just ends — universal equality and freedom achieved at the e n d of colonialism. We are thus brought to the problematic question of sovereignty — according to which lawmaking violence inevitably yields to law-preserving violence, whose justification is the law itself. Fanon's analysis of violence implies the

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inevitable admixture of the two aspects of revolutionary violence into the state as police. The police suspend the separation between lawmaking and law-preserving violence, maintaining the conditions of sovereignty in combination of lawmaking, only no longer capricious, and law preserving, no longer bound by purely legal conditions but presumed to serve justice. The police state intervenes only for reasons of security, "preserving" the lawmaking force of fateful revolutionary violence. 6 The irony is not altogether lost on us precisely at this moment. Fanon is instructive because of how his work reveals the pitfalls entailed in trying to think progress in terms of cultural development. This is perhaps most evident in his identification of language and violence as the foundational expression of a new civilization and culture, a new contract of understanding. Fanon understood violence as an experience, that is always attended by an intelligence of the order of the agent of history. The problem is not that culture qua civilization is shown to occur in tandem with this inhuman intellect but that it is posited as a counterbalance to it, and a counter-balance that is not only heterogeneous but has an integral nature or essence. Civilization as the conservator of human nature is the fallacy of natural law, which only promises an anthropological, or typological, human. This old European preoccupation with the human subject as the agent of history remains the cornerstone of the Europa Universitdt Viadrina concept of cultural studies. As an aspect of the project of defining Europeanness, the agenda is to determine how an individual becomes legitimately defined in an aggregation of quantifiable variables and functions, which includes culture insofar as it facilitates aggregation. In this way, culture is structuralist, defining authenticity in terms of the correct relationship within a given system of difference; to that extent it presents us with a world of antithetical systems, perpetually in conflict with one another. This, in the parlance of the United States' current foreign policy, is the War on Terror, which is being waged in the name of preserving Western civilization against anything the state deems threatening — currently, the threat is so-called "militant Islam," but that is only the most immediate instance. Here we must try and grapple with the ways that the current angst in Europe and the US a b o u t t h e possibilities of Islam is materially r e l a t e d to t h e c u r r e n t preoccupation with what has been called the global culture. In conclusion, then, when trying to re-imagine the function of the university in the global context, we would do well to consider that in our current planetary context, the question is no longer whether it is possible to continue the European project of organizing the multitude of events that come to us from the world,

6. For a more elaborate account of Fanon's contemplation of violence along these same lines, see Ronald Judy, "On the Politics of Global Language, or Unfungible Local Value," boundary 2: an international journal of literature and culture 24, no. 2 (1997): 101-43.

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both the h u m a n and the non-human world, by subsuming them beneath the idea of a universal history of humanity. As the political events of the past two years have demonstrated, this is no longer a valid question. Just as it would be a fatal error to misconstrue the US model of multiculturalism to be taking as its point of departure the collapse of the grand narrative of European Enlightenment as the apex of h u m a n development, it would be equally fatal to misconstrue it as emblematic of the continuity of metaphysics. O n the contrary, the c u r r e n t unprecedented exercise of planetary violence by the US state takes as its point of departure the presumed collapse of metaphysics. That collapse legitimates this violence in the name of rescuing civilization by establishing a new planetary lawmaking agency. This claim notwithstanding, it would be folly to imagine that there is only one possible orientation, only one logical relation to the collapse.

Race Theory omi Trial Under National Socialism: The Case of Ludwig Ferdinand Gauss

Christopher Hutton

For the (ideal) scientist, the language of science has maximal autonomy in respect of the object of investigation and in relation to external socio-political forces. This ideal language of science is also autonomous in relation to its utterer, the scientist. T h e value of what is said, its truth, is i n d e p e n d e n t of who is speaking. An alternative picture of science sees the form of the academic, scientific, or clinical institution, its particular institutional shaping of knowledge, and the socioscientific roles that it allocates, in particular the language that circulates within it, as constituting a mode of seeing. Scientific discourse, to the extent that it constitutes an autonomous worldview within which are defined a set of problems, methods and modes of explanation, is simultaneously a blindness or a systematic mode of "not-seeing." Somewhere between these positions, it has been argued that there exists an object of study for some sciences but not for others. Ferdinand de Saussure, generally accorded the title of the founder of modern linguistic science, adopted this position when he (or rather the editors of his lectures) asserted that "[o]ther sciences are provided with objects of study given in advance which are then examined from different points of view. Nothing like that is the case in linguistics." In the case of linguistics, "[t]he object is not given in advance of the viewpoint: far from it. Rather, one might say that it is the viewpoint adopted which creates the object." 1 1. Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, trans. Roy Harris (London: Duckworth, 1983), 8. First published as Cours de Linguistique Generate (Paris: Payot, 1916); hereafter Cours.

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In his commentary on the Cours, Roy Harris develops a comparison between linguistics and medical science. Harris argues that Saussure, in making his claim, is saying something more than simply that language can be studied from various points of view. Saussure is arguing that the various specialist disciplines of linguistics (phonetics, lexicography, etymology, etc.) cannot make any statements about a p h e n o m e n o n until it is seen as the utterance of a linguistic unit. Harris quotes Barthes to the effect that "any speech, as soon as it is grasped as a process of communication, is already part of the language," and comments: To which we might add that until it is thus grasped, it does not exist at all as a linguistic phenomenon. In this respect there is no parallel with the human body and medical science: that is to say, there is no question of physicians having first to 'see" a human body as a human body, or its parts as parts of a human body. Whereas, mutatis mutandis, that is precisely what is required in the linguistic case.2 But this distinction between linguistic science and medical science is difficult to sustain. For, what is truly given in advance in medical science? A popular term used to express the idea that a p h e n o m e n o n is not "given in advance" is "construct." For example, the notion that race is a "construct" has been widely used as a convenient shorthand refutation of the claims of scientific or biological race theory. O n this reading, the science of race created its own object, the division of human beings into "races," and then proceeded to study that object according to scientific methodology. A m o r e polemical way of expressing this would be that race theory — and linguistics for that matter — is a "pseudo-science." In practice, it is hard to give bite to this notion of "construct" or "pseudoscience," since for every science a n d academic discipline we can imagine a discursive universe in which that science did not yet exist. In coming into being, the science (like Benedict Anderson's nation 3 ) must rely on amnesia not just about the nature of what went before but often about the possibility of there having been a previous order. A decree issued from the academic armchair that a discipline or approach is unscientific has, in any case, little value on its own, given the powerful institutional and ideological forces at work and given the problems implicit in maintaining a consistent view of science and method. In the case of race theory, the argument that it is a "pseudo-science" is not likely to be contradicted, but this reflects not a well-thought-out position in the philosophy of science but a

2. Roy Harris, Reading Saussure: A Critical Commentary on the Cours de Linguistique Generate (London: Duckworth, 1987), 14-5. 3. See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 1991).

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widely held moral judgement. To argue the case against a currently established and institutionally recognized discipline is much more challenging, since one is r e q u i r e d to offer an account of what makes a discipline a science a n d to distinguish a m o n g the different ways in which disciplines draw institutional legitimacy. T h e t e r m "construct" is often used to suggest t h e illegitimate use of intellectual power and thus can be applied to the coercive institutionalization of categories and classificatory systems within the m o d e r n state or colonialism or Nazism. But the label is ultimately a weak one, since all notions of any level of abstraction are in some sense constructs. T h e "self may in some sense be a construct, as is "class," but so is the concept "table." Race science has been identified with the Enlightenment's unfulfilled — or partially fulfilled — promise of objectivity and equality before the scientific gaze. W i t h i n this ill-defined "race s c i e n c e , " t h e act of r a c i a l m e a s u r e m e n t ( " a n t h r o p o m e t r i c s " ) has b e e n u n d e r s t o o d as t h e u l t i m a t e in oppressive objectification. A coercive "discourse" view of race science, as well as science in general, accords with contemporary critical sensibility influenced by the writings of Michel Foucault. The claims of science to be transcendent of contingencies of time and place appear false in retrospect, and the all-seeing gaze of the scientist is s h a p e d by a particular a n d telling blindness. But this r e c o g n i t i o n can paradoxically put the commentator in a (quasi) "all-knowing position," looking back over the history of ideas. 4 A determination to take an objective view — whatever our ultimate scepticism about claims for objectivity — cannot always be complicit with oppressive power. Science, including a science of race, and its promise of objectivity, has also been used or at least envisaged as a defence against racism. Race science offered in some contexts a potential means for the intellectual concerned with the place of groups marginalized on grounds of race to think through questions of sameness and difference, even if such "objectivity" is far from offering a self-sufficient solution to political problems. 5 In his study of the rise of race theory among Jewish intellectuals in the late nineteenth century, John Efron speaks of an apparent irony in Jews "conducting large-scale statistical experiments to determine Jewish skull s h a p e a n d t h e p r e v a l e n c e of blue-eyed b l o n d Jews." But t h e r e was n o contradiction, as Jewish intellectuals as "good" Europeans "could not but believe

4. This is not intended to serve as a summary of Foucault's views but reflects rather my sense of a general contemporary understanding of these issues that draws on Foucault. For a discussion of Foucault on race, see Stuart Elden, "The War of Races and the Constitution of the State: Foucault's «il faut defendre la societe»," boundary 2: an international journal of literature and culture 29, no. 1 (2002): 125-51. ' 5. On the case of W. E. B. Du Bois, see the special issue Sociology Hesitant: Thinking with W. E. B. Du Bois, ed. Ronald A. Judy, boundary 2: an international journal of literature and culture 27, no. 3 (2000).

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in the concept of race." 6 Later, in the United States, Franz Boas was to use his authority as an expert in anthropometrics to attack racism. 7 T h e special association of Nazism with anthropometrics was not necessarily evident in the years following World War II. In 1949, the Columbia professor and Yiddish linguist Uriel Weinreich published his classic beginner's textbook, College Yiddish. This textbook was also to serve as an introduction to secular Yiddish culture, and one of the topics that Weinreich felt it necessary to include was a reading on "The Jewish Nose." 8 The passage for the learner can be translated as follows: Many people are of the opinion that one can tell from the nose who is a Jew and who not. The "Jewish nose," it is said, has a special hooked form. But is this really true? What does physical anthropology have to say about this? An anthropologist once carried out research on the shape of the nose among 4,000 Jews in New York. This is what he found: Straight noses: men 57%, women 59%; Short noses: men 22%, women 14%; Hook 'Jewish" noses: men 14%, women 13%; Broad noses: men 6%, women 14%. This shows that one cannot tell from the shape of the nose who is a Jew. Although there are no pure racial types, there are racial types. Some anthropologists who have researched the case of the Jews have found two main types among the Jews: an Oriental type and an Armenoid type. [...] The majority of Jews in the world are not "pure Semites," rather they are mixed anthropological types. For example, in Lithuania before the Second World War 15% ofJews had blond hair and almost 50 % had light-coloured eyes. For Weinreich, there is clearly an important role here for a science of race, that of demystifying a caricature or a physical stereotype. Generalizations based on observation and measurement can help counter prejudice and ill-informed ideas, for example about the purity of races. Although this chapter has been retained in subsequent editions of College Yiddish, it is not generally taught in the classroom. For the association between race theory as a measuring science ( a n t h r o p o m e t r i c s ) , institutionalized racism a n d g e n o c i d e has led to the d e v e l o p m e n t of a powerful taboo. We should note, however, that physical

6. John M. Efron, Defenders of the Race: Jewish Doctors and Race Science in fin-de-siecle Europe (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1994), 176. 7. See the essays collected in Franz Boas, Race, Language and Culture (Chicago and London: The U of Chicago Press, 1940). 8. Uriel Weinreich, College Yiddish: An Introduction to the Yiddish Language and to Jewish ' Life and Culture, 5th rev. ed. (NY: Yivo Institute for Jewish Research, 1981), 216-23. First published, 1949.

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a n t h r o p o l o g y r e m a i n s an i m p o r t a n t p a r t of c o n t e m p o r a r y a n t h r o p o l o g y , particularly in the United States. 9 O n e problem with discussions of this topic is that they rarely engage with Nazi race theory itself, the methodological and ideological content of which is taken as read. It is important to note the substantial continuities that existed between Nazi thought and contemporary scholarship elsewhere in Europe and the United States, and the decisive influence of German thought in the post-war era. This is not an area in which simple distinctions are always easy to draw, as the case of Martin Heidegger has made abundantly clear.10 These continuities and the problematics of differentiation apply as much to race theory as they do to literary theory or history Race theory is particularly complex, as it was of multidisciplinary concern, and questions of scientific methodology and practice (as internationally defined by the standards of the late 1930s) interacted in complex ways with the institutions of ideological scrutiny and control. It is not possible to say that there was a total rejection of scientific standards in the service of ideology, the case of "Aryan physics" notwithstanding. 11 In grappling with this question, we are faced with our own complex and sometimes contradictory views of science, particularly in relation to developments in genetics in the past twenty years. The Berlin University handbook for 1941 12 places the study of race in the humanities (i.e. u n d e r the Philosophische Fakultat) in a section divided into "Rassenkunde, Volkskunde, V o l k e r k u n d e " ("race studies," "folklore," a n d "ethnology"). Under the medical faculty, we find Rassenkunde again, glossed as "Erblehre" ("genetics") and "Rassenhygiene" ("eugenics"). In the faculty of mathematical and natural sciences, "Anthropologic" is listed as a sub-discipline, in w h i c h s t u d e n t s c o u l d study h u m a n g e n e t i c s , a n d a n t h r o p o m e t r i c s ("rassenkundliche Mess- u n d Beobachtungstechnik"), but also the racial history and composition of Europe ("Rassengeschichte u n d Rassekunde Europas"). We should note also the importance of race questions in the study of Germanic preand early history, an interdisciplinary area of study crossing the boundary between the humanities and science. The leading figure in Berlin was the pre-historian Hans Reinerth, the director of the Institute for Pre-history and Early Germanic History (Institut fur Vorgeschichte u n d Germanische Fruhgeschichte).

9. On its website (http://www.physanth.org/positions/race.html), the American Association of Physical Anthropology states: "There is great genetic diversity within all human populations. Pure races, in the sense of genetically homogenous populations, do not exist in the human species today, nor is there any evidence that they have ever existed in the past." 10. See Timothy Clark, Martin Heidegger (London/NY: Routledge, 2002) for a useful commentary on the debate. 11. See J. L. Heilbron, The Dilemmas of an Upright Man (Berkeley: U of California Press, 1986). 12. Universitat Berlin, Personal — und Vorlesungsverzeichnis, Sommersemester (Berlin: Preussiche Druckerei- und Verlags-Aktiengesellschaft, 1941).

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While the fact that the study of race fell across disciplinary boundaries is unsurprising, it also points to a crucial tension at the heart of the relationship between scholarship and science (Wissenschaft) on the one hand, and political policy on the other in Nazi Germany. Who was to control the language of race and race science, and by what methods and under what presuppositions were questions of race best decided? Was the study of race an interpretative, even intuitive, discipline, akin to literary study, or was it a forensic discipline with a m e t h o d o l o g y that e n a b l e d the investigator to read race directly from the measurement of the human body? The personnel involved in teaching the courses in Rassenkunde at the University of Berlin embody this methodological difference in a profound way. O n the one side, we have Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss (18921974), teaching race within the framework of the humanities, who rejected the simplistic use of scientific measurement. Clauss was offering two courses: "The Germanic and Semitic Worlds from the Point of View of the Theory of Race Psychology ("Rassenseelenforschung")" and "Selected Topics in Race Psychology." On the other side, there were Fritz Lenz (1887-1976), the director of the Institute for Eugenics (Institut fur Rassenhygiene) in the medical faculty, and in the faculty of science, Eugen Fischer (1874-1967), the successor to Lenz as the director of the Institute for Anthropology, Human Genetics and Eugenics (Raiser-WilhelmInstitut fur Anthropologic, menschliche Erblehre und Eugenik). Clauss's approach to the study of human diversity was controversial. Essentially it involved the marginalizing of physicalist or biological theories of race. He had developed what he termed the "mimische Methode," a mimetic or empathetic method, in which the investigator strove to "live with" ("mitleben") the race or people he was studying, beginning with the imitation of externals such as dress and food and progressing until the true self of the investigator was set aside or locked away inside a new self which performed or became the "other." This process was the internalization of a form of life through a process of acting or playing along ("mitspielen"). Clauss's formative experience of his method was his fieldwork with the Bedouin in Palestine in the period from 1927 to 1931, during which he explored the problems of "living with" or "living as" a Bedouin at the same time as he studied their culture and took photographs. This required a simultaneous and paradoxical self-awareness and forgetting of self. As part of his adoption of the Bedouin role, Clauss had presented himself as a "German Bedouin," indeed the "pasha of the German Bedouin on the other side of the Arabian desert," a performance that he completed by sending his research assistant, Margarete Lande, to join the women's tent as his wife. Lande was a fluent Arabic speaker and of Jewish origin. 13

13. See Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss, Semiten der Wuste unter sich. Miterlebnisse eines Rassenforschers (Berlin: Buchergilde Gutenberg, 1937), rev. and expanded ed. of Als Beduine unter Beduinen (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1933).

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Clauss's understanding of the Bedouin world was shaped by hostility to the effects of modernity and Western individualism and a sense that their racial or cultural essence was to be found in collective movement and rhythm, a rejection of "work" in the modern sense, and the strategic and ritual use of violence. For Clauss, racial research was a process that involved reading the human body against its natural landscape and environment; generalizing tendencies about race, worldview, and belief were set against close readings of individuals. Each race was understood as having its own self-validating way of being, this being expressed in the body as a dynamic or expressive entity. "Nordic," the dominant mode of being of the German people, "represents a value for us, not a value in and of itself ("'Nordisch' bedeutet einen Wert fur uns, nicht schon einen Wert an sich"). 14 In this he set himself against populist and academic Nordic chauvinism, noting that the label "Nordic" implied a mode of experience but that the content of this experience might be morally good or bad: "One can be a dissipated or criminal person in a Nordic way — we can say without qualms: one can also be a real swine in a Nordic way" ("man kann auf nordische Weise auch ein Wertfreveler, ein Verbrecher — sagen wir es ruhig: m a n kann auf nordische Weise auch ein Schweinehund sein" 15 ). Clauss rejected the notion that races had "characters"; the properties that defined a race were on a more abstract — and elusive — level.16 In 1941, Clauss initiated proceedings in the Highest Court of the Nazi Party against Dr Walter Gross, charging Gross with obstructing his academic work and hindering the dissemination of his ideas. Gross was not an academic but a Party functionary with academic training, the head of the Office of Racial Politics of the Nazi Party (Rassenpolitisches Amt der NSDAP), a role he understood as involving the supervision and disciplining of academics concerned with questions of race, including matters of race theory. H e was a rising player in Alfred Rosenberg's bureaucratic sphere of influence and thus involved in an intense rivalry with the academic enterprises operating within Heinrich Himmier's SS. Although it was Clauss who had initiated the proceedings against another party member, Gross, it was Clauss, not Gross, who became the accused under the rules, since Gross was a Party veteran (alter Kampfer). Clauss, though in many ways an organic intellectual of race science, a popular author and charismatic lecturer, was not securely positioned within the academic system and an outsider to medicoscientific physical anthropology.

14. Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss, Rasse und Seele: Eine Einfuhrung in den Sinn der leiblichen Gestalt, 15th impression (Berlin: Buchergilde Gutenberg, 1939), 48. 15. Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss, Rassenseele und Einzelmensch (Berlin: J. F. Lehmann, 1938), 489. 16. Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss, Rassenseele und Einzelmensch.

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T h e Party trial, however, was not triggered directly by an ideological conflict between Clauss and Party doctrine on race. In fact, part of the problem for Gross was the lack of such a doctrine, and the corresponding — in his eyes — free-forall in matters of race theory. T h e r e was no founding text or clearly set out orthodoxy on race. The figure most identified with official race theory, Hans F. K. Gunther, whose work was partially institutionalized in the school curriculum, had been given an academic appointment by direct political intervention in 1930, and his work was regarded by many "real" academics — including Nazis — as mere popularization. In any case, Gunther, in common with all leading race theorists of the era, viewed the German Volk as a hybrid population and was quite clear that "Most Europeans, and indeed the majority of all people, are racially mixed or Mischlinge."17 There were official anxieties expressed about the effects of this idea, and fears of intra-German racism between those who were or looked more "Nordic" than others. (Thus race theory, unlike linguistics, was a potentially disruptive discourse in relation to the notion of a unified German Volk.) Running through the conflict between Gross and Clauss is a deep anxiety about the nature of race science itself — can it really tell us scientifically who is racially acceptable and who is not? The trial had been triggered by letters sent by Clauss's wife to senior party officials, including Hitler, denouncing Clauss for his close relationship to his Jewish research assistant, Margarete Lande. T h e gist of these letters was that German race theory in the person of Ludwig Clauss had fallen u n d e r Jewish control. Though the letters showed clear signs of mental instabilty, Gross sought to use this denunciation to bring Clauss to heel, and Clauss, as Peter Weingart in his excellent book on the affair emphasizes, overestimated his ability to silence the upstart bureaucrat. 18 In his initial deposition, Gross pointed to the lack of an empirical basis to Clauss's work, the paucity of the materials from which he made his generalizations. He objected that Clauss, by identifying race with style, had no way of distinguishing racial formation from environmental influence, that his conclusions were not logically distinct from his premises: 19 It should be said that Clauss does believe that the "mimetic method" of living with his subjects makes it possible to distinguish between inherited race characteristics and those determined by the environment on the basis of psychological and physical architecture. [...] Here the phenomenological method reaches the limits of its possibilities, and only in clear recognition of this can the scientific attitude of the investigator be shown.

17. Hans F. K. Gunther, Kleine Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes (Munchen: J. F. Lehmann, 1933), 77. 18. See Peter Weingart, Doppel-Leben: Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss zwischen Rassenforschung und Widerstand (Frankfurt/NY: Campus, 1995). 19. Weingart, Doppel-Leben, 83.

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The method was "completely subjective." Gross also poured scorn on Clauss's claims to have passed himself off as a Bedouin, noting that the Bedouin had had extensive contact with the British, Turks, and Germans and were perfectly familiar with the m o d e r n world. Without dismissing Clauss's method in its entirety, Gross argued that it could only be validated by submitting itself to the methods of biological race theory, which Gross saw as transcending the mind-body dualism he attributed to Clauss. The legal proceedings were too complex to discuss here in any detail. Clauss, accused of living in proximity with a Jewish woman, simultaneously found his authority as a race theorist and his research program on trial. The case has great textual density, with Clauss seeking to justify his use of the research assistant by objectifying her as an object of study and arguing that his prominence as a race theorist put him above the normal restrictions of interracial contact. Lande, Clauss argued, was half-Jewish and thus had a valuable understanding of two racial psychologies; she was an i n d i s p e n s a b l e tool ("Werkzeug"). In s e e m i n g contradiction to his own method — which seemed to argue that a researcher from one race can understand and even enter mimetically into the culture of another — Clauss reported that he had long tried to persuade her to use her special insight to live with and to study Jews. Clauss denied that he was insufficiently anti-Semitic, claiming that his work had made a fundamental contribution to the Nordic movement and to Nazism. He denied any sexual relationship with Lande, emphasizing her status as an object of study, a scientific specimen, but also someone with an intuitive racial intuition. In his efforts to save himself and Lande, Clauss made statements of the following kind: I am interested in Judaism in the way that a doctor is interested in disease. Against one germ I have put into action a counter-germ. Only someone who is part of that can really sense the Jew in the fullest way. I cannot live with Jews, no one can imply that of me. I can live as a Bedouin among Bedouin, but not as a Rabbi among Rabbis. I cannot share in the life of the ghetto. It is hard for Miss Lande, but she has this ability. I need someone of this kind, if you like in the way that the police need their informers. 20 Put another way, Clauss defined his task as drawing the boundary between Orient and Occident, part of his understanding that through the insights of his method "we" can realise fully who "we" are. Gross's i n t e l l e c t u a l attack distinguished t h r e e kinds of race t h e o r y : materialistic or physicalist race theory; Clauss's mind-body dualism, with an

20. Report of proceedings, German Federal Archives, 20 December 1941, 22 (Lichterfelde, Berlin), BDC OPG 3402000644 00235.

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emphasis on the mind, or race psychology; and National Socialist race theory, which was renewing scientific race theory through the ancient Aryan idea of the unity of mind and body. Gross, using the criterion of science to attack Clauss, nonetheless left final authority on race matters with a culturally privileged notion of mind-body unity. Clauss, noted Gross, had tried to present himself as the saviour of contemporary race theory through his critique of materialism and physicalism. The criterion of science was also used against Clauss by an expert witness, the Tubingen Professor, Wilhelm Gieseler. Gieseler argued that Clauss's method was not scientific in the sense that the methodology employed by Clauss was uniquely suited to him. It was n o t a methodology that could be taught and reproduced institutionally. While not unsympathetic to Clauss, and noting that he had always urged his students to read his work, Gieseler's evidence concluded: "I cannot call this a scientific method." 21 The Party verdict was indeed, as Clauss had protested, the consequence of a trial of his race theory as a whole rather than his conduct in relation to Lande. In expelling Clauss from the Nazi Party, the court denied that his work had any important role to play in National Socialist ideology, since his lecturing and other popularizing work had not been carried out under the Rosenberg Bureau. Were Clauss's work to disappear, it would leave no ideological gap. Clauss was an opportunist and someone who looked to the Party for recognition rather than seeking to serve the Party. Some of his ideas when taken to their logical conclusion were against National Socialist ideology, and the scientific status of his ideas was at least questionable. The trial of Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss gives us an insight into the complex texture of academic life in Nazi Germany, where issues of academic standards, academic ego, professionalization, scientificity, methodology, proof, empirical observation, truth, ideological loyalty, and institutional rivalry were played out in a multi-dimensional chess game, one no less complex than the politics of any other academic system. Members of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) and SS subsequently aided Clauss in rescuing Lande from the Gestapo, and Clauss, at great personal risk, dug for Lande a hidden cellar, an action that subsequently won him recognition from the State of Israel as a righteous gentile. This makes Clauss in this respect unique among the race theorists of Nazi Germany However, Clauss had joined the SS to seek refuge from Gross (with a proposal to study the psychological effects of frontline combat on different races) and in consequence was denied an academic position after the war. Gross, with admirable consistency, committed suicide in 1945. Nazi thought plays the role of the universal negative in our intellectual self-

21. Report of proceedings, German Federal Archives, 15; see also Weingart, Doppel-Leben, 111-21.

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definitions, and this leads in many cases to the creation of an ideal (negative) construct. What emerges from this episode in Nazi Germany? O n e way to understand this case is to identify physicalist science with Nazism and to see Clauss as representing an intuitive understanding of culture that falls victim to oppression through science. We could alternatively note Gross's own concern to give final priority to an ideological construct in matters of race theory, namely the Aryan worldview, and see Clauss as a victim of science dominated by ideology. It is important to note that Clauss's position as loser does not make him an intellectual victim, even if he displayed laudable personal courage in saving Lande. We are liable instinctively to identify with Clauss as the proponent of an intuitive method silenced by the criteria of a scientific methodology enforced through an oppressive state ideology. But this would be to j u m p to an ill-considered conclusion. For Clauss's method is in principle no more attractive than those of his opponents. Its subjectivity and reliance on the investigator's intuition puts it beyond methodological challenge. By contrast, there always remains the possibility within anthropometrics of a critique of the notion of distinct races, on the grounds that there is no way inductively to arrive at racial distinctions by precise bodily measurement. Clauss did not challenge the terminology of racial classification but rather took it as a given. His method was an extension of his own ego, but it was ultimately dependent on the classifications of H. F. K. Gunther and others. To reach a better understanding of this case and Nazi race theory in general, it is important to replace the ideal negative construct of Nazism by what might be termed "thick description" — to borrow Clifford Geertz's use of the term 22 — of the academic culture of Nazi Germany. Many of the ideas attributed in some generic sense to "Nazi race theory" were not viewed as scientifically or academically respectable by academic race theorists and often explicitly rejected by them. Among the ideas that as university academics Nazi race theorists would have rejected were: the idea that there are pure races, the notion that the Jews form a single race, the notion that the Germans form a single race, the existence of a Germanic race. Nor did much of the language of racial hate associated with Nazism, such as "master race" (Herrenrasse), belong to the terminology of academic race science or academic physical anthropology. Most fundamentally, Nazi race theorists were in general united in rejecting the notion of an Aryan race. The regime subsequently came to recognize in official publications that the notion of Aryan was derived from linguistics and was only properly to be used in relation to a language family, the Indo-Germanic or Aryan languages. It had no current racial basis. 23 There is a considerable historical irony here in that the charge is

22. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (NY: Basic Books, 1973). The term is taken from the philosopher Gilbert Ryle. 23. See Freiherr Christian Ulrich Ulmenstein, Der Abstammungsnachweis (Berlin: Verlag fiir Standesamtswesen, 1941).

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frequently made by linguists against Nazi intellectuals that they mistook a linguistic category for a racial one, i.e. they took the notion of the Aryan or Indo-European languages and transformed this into the racial and racist notion of a superior Aryan people. 24 None of this detracts in any way from the historical moral and intellectual responsibilities of race theorists, including Clauss, for Nazism, both as an ideological formation and a set of policies. But there is a danger in seeking in Nazi intellectual life a foundation for what "we" believe today, i.e. in assuming that what we believe is always precisely what "they" did not. This question arises crucially in our thinking about cultural difference. We cannot assume simply that the defence of culture is progressive, and the biological study of human diversity is necessarily reactionary or oppressive. The important task of reflecting critically on our own confusions about science, social policy and ideology will not be helped by reliance on a caricature of Nazi science and scholarship.

24. J. Comas, "Racial myths," in Race and Science (NY: Columbia UP and Unesco, 1961), 1355.

English Studies and Global Ethics: Universalism and the Idioms of Experience

Eric Clarke

What follows are some tentative reflections on some problems shared by English studies and an emerging notion of "global ethics." These shared problems concern the relationship between culture and experience as this relationship is imagined under the conflicted sign of "universality." While these reflections stem initially from an analogy (and all the limitations analogies bring with them), they also point to more productively transitive lines of thought about the problems of a universalism paradoxically burdened with representing experience. This representational burden forms the initial analogical basis for thinking of English studies and global ethics together. T h e study of literature that has formed the core of English studies takes as its primary object of study a form of writing, the modern Western conception of literature, with a contradictory selfunderstanding: it must be "universal" in appeal a n d yet rooted in concrete experience. While contemporary English studies has largely repudiated the selfunderstanding of its object, the task remains to account for this self-understanding beyond invoking a simplistic diagnosis of ideological delusion. T h e historical development and force of this self-understanding is itself a serious object of inquiry. Global ethics, a fairly recent notion advanced under the auspices of the U n i t e d Nations and related non-governmental h u m a n rights organizations, similarly understands its object to be a set of universal principles whose primary concern would be the protection and encouragement of cultural diversity. It therefore labors under a similarly paradoxical self-understanding. T h e particular articulations of a universalism b u r d e n e d with representing experience within

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English studies and global ethics can shed light on the value of thinking them together. This value comes at a time when human rights in particular are at an impasse regarding their representational mandate. As the forms of life and experience that human rights are meant to protect and encourage multiply, the very universalism by which this multiplication is justified is put under extraordinary pressure. Increasingly, the universalism underlying human rights must find more and more discursive resources for elaborating idioms of experience within its r e p r e s e n t a t i o n a l d o m a i n . Without such idioms, universality will always be vulnerable to the charge of ethnocentrism and exclusivity, even as these charges are used to justify the very expansiveness universality is said to lack. This problematic situation forms the context for the recent turn to the notion of "global ethics." The term stems from fairly recent initiatives by the United Nations to expand the notion of h u m a n rights to include what it has called "cultural development." For example, in 1992, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) created the World Commission on Culture and Development. This commission was charged with studying cultural d e v e l o p m e n t as a necessary global analog to economic development. T h e Commission's 1995 report, Our Creative Diversity, defined development as, on the one hand, "a process of economic growth, a rapid and sustained expansion of production, productivity and income per head," and on the other, following the United Nations Development Project's annual Human Development Report, as "a process that enhances the effective freedom of the people involved to pursue whatever they have reason to value .... "* O n e of the underlying motivations behind the commission's report is the idea that "Modernization has widened the range of choices, but destroyed some others. The aim should be a society in which liberty is not libertine, authority not authoritarian, bonds more than painful restrictions" (16). Because economic development alone cannot guarantee democratic political institutions and values (US foreign policy notwithstanding), the commission called for the establishment of a "new global ethics," which it o u t l i n e d as a m o r a l - p o l i t i c a l s u p p l e m e n t to e c o n o m i c m o d e r n i z a t i o n . "Universalism is the f u n d a m e n t a l p r i n c i p l e of a global ethics," (16) t h e Commission argues; the twenty-first century is a time when "a new global ethics can emerge which respects the universalism of life claims of every new-born person everywhere and which establishes a common morality for both the powerful and the weak" (287). This universalism is grounded in the "underlying unity in the diversity of cultures, which is defined in a global ethics. It furnishes the minimal standards any community should observe" (16). Such a global ethics suggests the following universal moral-political principles: "the idea of human rights, the principle of democratic legitimacy, public accountability, and the emerging ethos of evidence and proof are the prime candidates for consideration" (36; emphasis original). 1. UNESCO, Our Creative Diversity: Report of the World Commission on Culture and Development (Paris: UNESCO, 1995), 22. Further page references in the text are to this edition.

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This report attempts to carefully navigate two seeming contradictions: a global economic development that increases lifestyle choices even as it homogenizes culture, and a corrective global ethics based on universal moral principles even as its prime directive is the sustenance and encouragement of cultural diversity. In this sense, the commission attempts to articulate international h u m a n rights not only within a cultural framework but also within one firmly embedded in the contradictions generated by global capital: seeking to protect traditional "ways of life" even as it applauds the blossoming of diverse "lifestyles" characteristic of capitalized global urban centers. The commission's report signals the need to think carefully about the moral and ethical underpinnings of international h u m a n rights as a set of globalized principles and practices, particularly in their relationship to "culture." This task is not so much a revisiting of debates over cultural relativism and universalism as it is an imaginative revaluation of the very principles that undergird human rights, especially cultural rights, as an international discourse within the context of global capital. By inhabiting the contradictions of the latter, the articulation of cultural development and cultural rights, as well as the "global ethics" underpinning them, must grapple with a number of questions: What is the status of the moral when it justifies both international universalism and cultural particularity? What pressures might this bring to bear on the term "ethics"? T h e commission a t t e m p t e d to imagine a global ethics t h a t pressures universalism to account for, and be accountable to, experience. And it does so under the sign of "culture." Cultural diversity becomes that which a universalist global ethics must recognize and advance. Yet in proclaiming what it terms "the universalism of life claims," the commission also stumbled in elaborating the principles by which this universalism could adequately represent such claims. That is, the commission could only imagine rather limited forms of civil and political rights as the provenance for representing cultural experience. The accountability of a global ethics to cultural experience is here limited by the problematic representational capacities of universalism. It is these problematic representational capacities that I would like to explore as problems shared by English studies and global ethics. I would like to draw a parallel between the difficulties the UNESCO Commission faced in articulating a global ethics a c c o u n t a b l e to cultural experience, and some similar difficulties faced by two nineteenth-century English writers, George Eliot and Walter Pater, who labored under the task of producing a written form of culture through which universality could emerge from the particularities — i n d e e d the often i n c o m m e n s u r a b l e particularities — of experience. Before doing so, I would like to discuss briefly a text with which both authors were familiar, Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment, which lays out a fairly cogent, even flawed, rationale for this paradoxical burden of the literary. In the First Introduction to the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant discusses the need for philosophy to strictly limit what it can reasonably account for as a

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science: "there is a great misunderstanding, which is even quite disadvantageous to the way in which science is handled, about what should be held to be practical in a sense in which it deserves to be taken u p into a practical philosophy. Statesmanship and political economy, rules of good housekeeping as well as those of etiquette, precepts for good health and diet, for the soul as well as of the body (indeed why not all trade and arts?), have been believed to be able to be counted as practical philosophy, because they contain a great many practical propositions." 2 However, Kant continues, all these ethical arenas that take experience as their object are not fit philosophical subjects if philosophy is conceived as a system of thought built on universal, a priori principles. "It is very important," he argues, "to determine the parts of philosophy precisely, and to that end not to include among the members of the division of philosophy, as a system, that which is merely a c o n s e q u e n c e or an application of it to given cases, requiring n o special principles" (5). In this regard, philosophy, for Kant, is not an art or techn-e whose object is experience, at least not in a way that could lead to universal principles. There may be a type of wisdom appropriate for experience, but it is not necessarily philosophical wisdom. Practical precepts, which concern the "voluntary production of a certain state of mind," do not constitute a "special part of the philosophy of human nature." These practical precepts do not have special principles but, Kant argues, "merely belong among its [philosophy's] scholia' (6). Scholia, from which we derive the word scholarship, are explanatory notes or comments, specifically exegetical notes or comments on a passage in a Greek or Latin author. Kant suggests here that the accountability of philosophical discourse to experience is limited to the derivation of universal principles; this universality, t h e r e f o r e , c a n n o t itself be representationally accountable to experience. That task is left to the interpretive, and presumably derivative, activity of scholarship, annotation, commentary. I would like to suggest that this task of annotation precisely describes both the task of English studies broadly conceived, as well as the imaginative task Eliot and Pater set for themselves in their writing. Rather than the representation of national life, the endeavor much of English studies, as a system of exegetical commentary, has understood these writers to have, Eliot and Pater attempted to confront the representational problems of the universal as a discourse that emerges through the representation of experience — which is to say, through the elaboration of idioms of experience that purport to have a universal extension. H e r e I will cite j u s t a few examples. Despite the t r a d i t i o n a l g e n e r i c categorizations that separate these two writers — Eliot the moralistic high realist, Pater the aesthete a n d proto-decadent — they share a stylistic feature that

2. Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of judgment, ed. Paul Guyer, trans. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000), 3. All further page references are to this edition.

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illustrates their shared task. This stylistic feature emblematizes their struggle to write the universal through an account of experience, a struggle many of their contemporaries registered, in fact, as their stylistic or discursive failure. Most reviewers of Eliot's novels, for example, consistently mixed enthusiastic praise with complaints that her novels were too philosophical. These reviewers (Henry James principal among them) recognized the importance and seriousness of her writing while regretting the fact that it did not conform to the idea of the novel as a mildly enlightening form of dramatic entertainment. (In other words, they did not like the fact that she was not Charles Dickens.) Eliot insisted on annotating her fiction with philosophical commentary. Certainly in her commitment to what has been termed realism, Eliot felt the need to account for the particularities of individual and communal experience, and one of the primary discursive vehicles for this in realist fiction is character. Unlike Dickens or Trollope, however, Eliot understood fiction to be accountable to experience in more ways than in the presentation of particular life stories: its accountability also entailed a form of analogical c o m m e n t a r y — what is often d e r i d e d as the "pearls of wisdom" scattered throughout her novels. O n e particular stylistic register of the scholastic feature of Eliot's fiction is the use of arrested qualities whose syntactic predicates universalize them by way of analogical extension. We can see one such example in how Eliot describes the narrow straits of egoism in her last publication, The Impressions of Theophrastus Such (1879); Theophrastus, not coincidentally, was Aristotle's successor at the Lyceum who was known for both his character writing — the ostensible genre of The Impressions — and his scholia on ancient authors. To evoke t h e specific c o n t o u r s of a p a r t i c u l a r c h a r a c t e r ' s egoism while simultaneously extending these contours into the form of a generality, Eliot's narrator Theophrastus describes "that inward squint which consists in a dissatisfied egoism or o t h e r w a n t of m e n t a l b a l a n c e . " 3 T h e "that s o m e t h i n g which" construction is the stylistic vehicle for suggesting a kind of general principle, by way of a qualifying predicate "arrested" by a demonstrative, that might universalize by analogy a particular experience. Eliot's writing is shot through with this stylistic feature. Interestingly, Eliot's use of this syntactic construction was often the occasion for reflecting (not always consistently) on the very ability of literature to extend the specific into the general, particular experiences into universal characteristics or principles. Chapter 15 of Middlemarch begins with an extended discussion of the task of fiction, distinguishing the one before her from Henry Fielding's, who "glories in his copious remarks and digressions": "We belated historians must not linger after his example; ... I at least have so much to do in unraveling certain h u m a n lots, and seeing how they were woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be concentrated on this particular web, and not dispersed 3. George Eliot, Works of George Eliot, Vol. X: Impressions of Theophrastus Such (Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1901), 10; emphasis added.

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over that tempting range of relevancies called the universe." 4 The chapter goes on to provide a brief history of Tertius Lydgate's life in Paris, and his romantic disappointment there, before taking u p residence in the provincial English Midlands. Yet in the following chapter, Eliot provides an extended discussion of Lydgate's scientific interests in a way suggesting that her own "concentrated command" of a particular web of experience cannot but lead her to digress on the "tempting relevancies called the universe." Many men have been praised as vividly imaginative on the strength of their profuseness in indifferent drawing or cheap narration: — reports of very poor talk going on in distant orbs; or portraits of Lucifer coming down on his bad errands as a large and ugly man with bat's wings and spurts of phosphorescence; or exaggerations of wantonness that seem to reflect life in a diseased dream. But these kinds of inspiration Lydgate regarded as rather vulgar and vinous compared with the imagination that reveals subtle actions inaccessible by any sort of lens, but tracked in that outer darkness through long pathways of necessary sequence by the inward light which is the last refinement of Energy, capable of bathing even the ethereal atoms in its ideally illuminated space .... He was enamoured of that arduous invention which is the very eye of research, provisionally framing its object and correcting it to more and more exactness of relation; he wanted to pierce the obscurity of those minute processes which prepare human misery and joy, those invisible thoroughfares which are the first lurking-places of anguish, mania, and crime, that delicate poise and transition which determine the growth of happy or unhappy consciousness. (154) The passage opens with a salvo against a false imaginative expansiveness: types of art that attempt to include aspects of everyday life, geographical regions, or cosmic forces normally excluded from pictorial or discursive representation. But neither Lydgate nor Middlemarch values this kind of imaginative inclusion. Rather, both prize "the imagination that reveals subtle actions inaccessible by any sort of lens," a concentrated light shone on a "particular web" as the true opening of the particular onto the general. This opening salvo immediately invites an analogical comparison to the task of Middlemarch itself. "Those minute processes which prepare h u m a n misery and joy" present a self-reflexive formula for fiction's extensive idiom of experience: a syntax whereby a demonstrative particularity extends into a predicate generality. Despite his many differences from Eliot, Walter Pater also deployed this syntax as a way to render experience into an extensive idiom. O n e finds it throughout his 1885 novel Marius the Epicurean (the title character of which was charged with the task of annotating, providing scholia for, the written reflections of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius). For example, as Marius listens to a lecture by the Stoic philosopher Cornelius Fronto at an imperial celebration, he reflects on the 4. George Eliot, Middlemarch, ed. David Carroll (London: Oxford UP, 1998), 132.

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"ethical charm" of Fronto, a charm that produced in his listeners "an idea of Humanity — of a universal commonwealth of mind," one that held u p the promise of "some principle of conduct which might give unity of motive to an actual rectitude, a cleanness and probity of life," without, however, having any element of this principle be distinctively moral in the listener himself. And as Marius "felt that his own thoughts were passing beyond the actual intention of the speaker," an intention to r e n d e r the moral as only one element in the "comeliness of things," he wonders where he might search for the ethical elaboration of humanity as a universal order beyond just an "intellectual abstraction": "Where was that comely order, to which, as a great fact of experience, Marius must give its due; to which, as to all other beautiful p h e n o m e n a in life, he must, for his own peace, adjust himself?" 5 This question captures in large measure the semantic flow of the novel in general. Through the structure of a qualifying predicate emphasized by the demonstrative, both Eliot and Pater attempt to confront precisely the p r o b l e m laid o u t in Marius's question: How might o n e r e p r e s e n t facts of experience as part of an abstract universality called Humanity? In these very brief comments, I have wanted to suggest that, at least in these examples, the object of English studies is by no means exhausted by the limited notion of representing the cultural particularities of national life. In other words, these two writers show the extent to which the field of English studies should not be limited by a national predication of cultural experience. Eliot and Pater do not engage with the universal as a set of principles that can be directly extracted from experience. Rather, they struggle with the relationship between culture and experience under the sign of universality as a representational problem. As Kant relegated the ethical dimensions of practical precepts that do not directly lead to a priori principles to the secondary, derivative realm of scholia, a kind of intelligent commentary, Eliot and Pater take up this commentary as the proper task of fiction. Fiction can represent experience, can be accountable to it, yet without occupying a strict division between universality and particularity. How they imagine the task of fiction is instructive for how English studies itself might imagine its object, and how a global ethics might understand what it terms "cultural d e v e l o p m e n t " a n d t h e "universalism of life claims." First, t h e representation of experience in literature should not be limited in principle to the expression of cultural authenticity by means of a generically limited discourse. (This is something well worth noting in relation to the legion of antiquarianisms spawned by misreadings of Foucault.) Eliot's and Pater's imaginative, stylistic reworking of these discursive limits can tell us this much. And second, as culture problematically enters the juridical arena of abstract rights that, as principles, c a n n o t themselves account for even as they are m e a n t to be accountable to experience, English studies might have something to contribute to this project even if only by revealing more than one way to imagine and stylize the universal. 5. Walter Pater, Marius the Epicurean, ed. Michael Levey (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985), 1 76-80; emphasis added.

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It is perhaps beyond the imagination of many that an English lecture could be as popular as a p o p song performance or a major football match, but it is true in China where the number of English learners exceeds the population of the United States. When Li Yang, the founder of the "Crazy English" program, came to Nanjing, according to the local newspaper, he rented the biggest stadium in town and attracted a r o u n d 8,000 English learners to his lecture. Indeed, English is going crazy in China. Ever since Beijing's successful bidding for the 2008 Olympic Games, especially since China's entry into the WTO, the promotion of English has gained new m o m e n t u m . Campaigns such as the government-initiated "A Million Citizens Learning English" have been launched in many Chinese cities. English as a foreign language has long been taught in China. The twentieth century in particular witnessed the incredible spread of English in China as an international language. The history of English education, however, is by no means a smooth process. In the first half of the century, the teaching of English was encouraged by the Kuomintang government and enjoyed increasing popularity as the Western involvement or the semi-coloniality in China was increasingly Anglo-Americanized. After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Russian quickly took over, and English, with its Western stigma, was virtually repressed. It was n o t until the late 1970s when China a d o p t e d the policy of opening up and reform that English re-entered the country. In the following two decades, English has completed its "dis-re-placement" and successfully gained the prominent status of "the first foreign language." In the ongoing reform of the

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university entrance examination, for example, the Ministry of Education has decided on English as one of the three core subjects that all candidates must be tested on, putting English on a par with Chinese and mathematics, outweighing such subjects as history, physics, and chemistry in importance in the matriculation. Today, as English instruction runs from kindergarten to graduate programs, the presence of this foreign language in China is tangible. To have a feel of the English craze, o n e only n e e d s to browse classified ads in newspapers a n d promotion banners in the street where English training classes, English language schools, bilingual kindergartens, and even bilingual nurseries are advertised. Paradoxically, however, this u n p r e c e d e n t e d popularity of English at large is accompanied by resistance against English in the humanities. A revealing case can be found in the "Quality PhD Dissertation" project that was launched in the year 2000 by the Ministry of Education as part of the effort to improve the PhD programs in China. O n e h u n d r e d PhD dissertations are selected each year, and each winner receives an honorary title together with a check of 150,000 to 200,000 RMB. The importance of the prize is better illustrated by a comparison with the standard national projects for the humanities and social sciences, which provides each project a funding of 70,000 RMB. Dissertations written in English, however, are ineligible in this prestigious project; only Chinese dissertations are accepted. The reason for this English exclusion, it is explained, is that the members of the Appraisal Committee do not read English. Similarly, a c a d e m i c publications in English are e x c l u d e d from many awards in the humanities and social sciences. In 2002, for example, the Ministry of Education granted the Award for Social Sciences Research for works written in Chinese only; works in English, according to the ministerial directive, are not considered, for the same reason. This is not to say that English is not encouraged in Chinese academia as a whole, however. Chinese scientists have been writing and publishing in English for years. As a matter of fact, the science and engineering departments at China's universities use the US Science Citation Index (SCI) and Engineering Index (EI) to rate the publications of their faculty. In a research project that rates t h e u n i v e r s i t i e s in C h i n a , it was f o u n d t h a t a p a p e r p u b l i s h e d in such international j o u r n a l s as Nature or Science is worth 151.5 points a n d a paper indexed by SCI or EI is worth 3.8 points, whereas a paper published in Chinese journals is worth 1.5 points for both science and social sciences (the humanities are considered part of social sciences). A monogram published in Chinese is given five and two points for science and social sciences respectively. 1 In China today, universities attach great importance to the n u m b e r of papers indexed

1. Wu Shulian, Lu Jia and Guo Shilin, "Appraising China's Universities," Kexue xue yu kexuejishu guanli (Science of science and management of science and technology) 21 (July 2000): 9.

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by SCI and EI, and all universities make special policies to encourage their science faculty to publish in journals indexed by SCI and EI. Nanjing University, for instance, boasts of ranking at the top of China's universities in the n u m b e r of research papers indexed by SCI, for seven consecutive years. Although the faculty and students in science departments at the university are eager to publish in internationally referred journals, it is rare for those in liberal arts departments to write and publish in English. Several factors contribute to the unwillingness or inability for the liberal arts academics to use English as their academic language. One major problem is poor English proficiency, which apparently poses an obstacle for many to express themselves adequately in this alien language. C o m p a r e d with scientists who employ English to report their research findings, scholars in the liberal arts have a more difficult task: a higher level of language proficiency is required for those who want to express sophisticated arguments in the humanities. Another discouraging factor, and perhaps the more serious one, is a lack of environment for the use of English. English in China is an artificial language: people learn English but do not use it. For professionals in the liberal arts circles, English is useful only in helping them pass the standardized tests to secure a promotion in their career. Within universities, Chinese, history, and philosophy have always been the mainstream disciplines, and scholars in these departments are accustomed to Chinese a n d enjoy the privilege of using the d o m i n a n t discourse. They do not have the motivation, nor could they see the need, to take pains to master English in o r d e r to participate in i n t e r n a t i o n a l academic exchange, as the occasions for such exchange do not often occur. The linguistic hegemony of Chinese is institutionalized even in the areas where the foreign language constitutes the foundation of research. Comparative literature studies, for example, used to be part of the foreign literature studies program but has now been taken over by professors of Chinese, and institutionally it is managed by the department of Chinese. Relying heavily upon Chinese translations, Chinacentered scholars, placed in the self-sufficient linguistic context, undertake the task of comparing texts in Chinese and constructing the so-called Chinese critical discourse. Chinese as the dominant academic language suffices in China, and the use of English in the humanities is reduced to the minimum. Despite the tremendous drive toward English learning and the astronomical n u m b e r of English learners, English education in China is in fact kept at the elementary level.2 In China's universities, there are two separate kinds of English department: one is the English department for English majors, and the other is usually called the applied English department for non-English majors. The applied

2. It is interesting to note that most of the English training programs sponsored by the British Council stop at the intermediate level, putting a kind of "glass ceiling" on funding English education in China.

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English d e p a r t m e n t , or the language centre, usually offers only reading and listening instruction to its students; it seldom offers, if not nothing at all, writing and speaking, because of the overwhelming n u m b e r of students it has to deal with. T h e students thus trained could pass Band Four of the National Banded English Test, which is a standardised test with multiple-choice questions as the main form of questions, to meet the prerequisite requirement for graduation; b u t the majority could barely manage an English conversation beyond the ritualistic greetings, let alone express themselves in written English. Very few scholars in the humanities have received proper English education. If the applied English d e p a r t m e n t s could n o t offer a d e q u a t e English instruction to students, rendering the future liberal arts professionals deficient in English proficiency, the English departments are faring no better. Whereas English as a foreign language is being foregrounded in China, English studies as a branch of the humanities is underdeveloped. On the English teaching map of China, among the four h u n d r e d English departments which hold membership in the China English Language Education Association, only twenty-one are considered academically competent to offer PhD programs; the majority of them r u n English BA programs in the "language school" m o d e , giving priority to language acquisition as their main line of action. Teaching language merely for language's sake, the English d e p a r t m e n t is marginalized in the disciplinary structure of the Chinese education system. Unable to develop its English studies program as a proper discipline, the English department finds itself distanced, however unwillingly, from the other departments of liberal arts, which further strengthens the exclusive domination of Chinese in the humanities. T h e marginalization of the English studies program is also encouraged, consciously or unconsciously, by the National English Teaching Advisory Committee, a semi-official academic committee appointed by the Ministry of Education for supervision over the English departments throughout the country. In March 2000, the Committee published The Syllabus for English Majors in Colleges and Universities,3 a document that sets the tone for all the other such syllabuses at various colleges and universities. In this mandatory syllabus, "language skills" and "related special knowledge" take a great part of the courses to be included in the undergraduate English programs. The "related special knowledge" refers to courses aimed at a "combination" of English and knowledge from o t h e r disciplines, such as journalism, business, and law. The syllabus puts forward the concept of "combined talent" to facilitate the market demand for personnel with ready-to-serve language skills and some basic knowledge of the professions currently in vogue.

3. The Syllabus for English Majors in Colleges and Universities (Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2000). This is the second of its kind. The first was published in 1990.

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Ideally, a syllabus of this kind should provide a clear indication that it has a sound understanding of where the discipline is in the context of the related disciplines and what its disciplinary peculiarities are in terms of its differences from the other disciplines. Yet, the Syllabus does not seem to take the humanistic disciplines as a frame of reference and gives little idea of where they are and what English studies as a discipline should be, offering little valid guideline for developing English into a discipline. Based on the assumption that English is just a tool, English education stops at acquiring language skills and then goes into "combination" with other disciplines so that the English department becomes a poor family capable of producing many children for adoption but unable to bring them u p on its own. It is no wonder that the English departments in China are in many respects degraded into language schools. That is why they get lost and often complain of not knowing their own disciplinary identity. To a c e r t a i n e x t e n t , t h e infantilization of English l e a r n i n g a n d t h e underdevelopment of English as a discipline in the Chinese education system can find roots in the Chinese mentality at large toward westernization. The May Fourth Movement of 1919 advocated the adoption of Western science and democracy to revitalise modern China, but people have been always of two minds in answering to the call. While Western science is always accepted, time and again the Western ideology of democracy is viewed with suspicion. More than a century ago, the strategy to separate Western science from Chinese culture h a d already b e e n adopted by the late Qing Dynasty reformers, who attempted to keep Confucianism as the moral basis and adopt Western devices for practical use, as crystallised into the slogan "Chinese learning for the foundation, Western learning for application" ( ^ l ^ & f i ' H ^ & f l S ) . In a way, the age-old foundation-application debate set the tone for Chinese cultural diplomacy and obliquely foreshadowed the destiny of English education in China. Today, this separation strategy is justified by geographical, cultural, and political differences and is still vigorously practised. To some people, "if language, then culture." In the humanistic studies, English would have more chance to function as a carrier and part of a foreign culture. The ambivalent position of acceptance versus resistance to English in China is in fact a reflection of the century-long tradition of separation: the practical side of English as an instrument of science is highlighted and the ideological aspect of the language is played down. English is welcomed as an unbiased means of communication for value-free science and technology. But in liberal arts, the ideological underpinnings of the language get activated, which puts people on the alert. Under the circumstances, a consensus is reached that English is to be a tool to serve our purposes rather than an alien force that subverts. As a consequence, English for science and technology is encouraged. Scientific and technological exchange with international academia is generously supported by government funds, but funding for the exchange between Chinese liberal arts scholars and their international colleagues is often meagre. The science faculty is more likely

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.to get sponsorship from government-funded overseas study programs, 4 and their comparatively large research fund makes their co-operation and exchange with international colleagues more likely to happen. Their more frequent interaction with the international arena may partly explain why they could better publish in English than can their liberal arts colleagues, even though they may have received the same inefficient English education. Resistance to English in the humanities makes liberal arts scholars in China's universities virtually closed to the outside world. Over the past few decades, China has experienced radical economic and social transformations that benefit in n o small measures from the active interaction of Chinese scientists with the outside world, but the humanities lags behind science. The Ministry of Education, holding the purse, rules universities all over the country in a manner similar to that of a p l a n n e d economy. Because of limited resources, the government has to be selective in funding, rendering it unnecessary or even undesirable to use English in liberal arts research. Institutional control is effectively kept by such measures as selecting "Quality PhD Dissertations," conferring Social Sciences Awards, approving degree programs, and assessing departments. The best minds in the Chinese humanities, free from the "contamination" of English, are more or less isolated from the outside academic world. They are busy with their research projects supported by the government funding and find themselves unable to make "a disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world." 5 Resistance to English in liberal arts is partly motivated by cultural nationalism. F o u n d e d on the belief that people of different cultures have separate values, histories, traditions, and lifestyles, cultural nationalism can be justified for bringing vitality to the marginalized culture and contributing to the diversity of the world culture. In the Chinese historical context, cultural nationalist sentiments are understandably strong, given that in modern Chinese history, the military invasion a n d e c o n o m i c exploitation of China by foreign powers were often closely accompanied by attempts at cultural control. As regards to English, what Robert Phillipson calls the Anglo-American "linguistic imperialism" in the spread of English 6 gives cultural nationalists sufficient reason to resist it. 4. In December 2002, the National Overseas Studies Foundation managed by the Ministry of Education stipulated that in 2003 the government fund should give preferential support to seven areas: communication and information technology; high and new technology in agriculture, life science, and health care; material science and new material; energy and environment; engineering; applied social sciences; and disciplines relevant to WTO. No liberal arts discipline is present in this favored list. See the home page of National Overseas Studies Foundation Commission . 5. Matthew Arnold, 'The Function of Criticism at^the Present Time," in Criticism: The Major Texts, enlarged ed., ed. W. J. Bate (NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1970), 464. 6. See Robert Phillipson, Linguistic Imperialism (Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2000).

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For all the good reasons, however, cultural nationalism could be easily manipulated and turned into cultural conservatism. As the old saying goes, the conservatives may argue, flies may come in if you open the window. So they choose to keep the window closed for fear of the flies that may or may not be out there. For the possible minor annoyance of a few buzzing flies, they sacrifice the air of the entire house and the well-being of the inhabitants. Conservative cultural nationalism is the expression of diffidence in one's own culture, b u t it often appears m o r e patriotic. Reflected in the i n s t r u m e n t a l understanding of English, it stipulates that English be a neutral scientific language r a t h e r than the language for cultural a n d ideological expressions. Cultural nationalism, however, does not have to be conservative and closed. There might be an open and dynamic cultural nationalism in which interactions with other cultures can be employed as a stimulus to spur the development of the national culture. In view of a possible dynamic nationalism, English could be embraced n o t only as a n e u t r a l scientific language b u t also a l a n g u a g e for cultural interactions. In this age of g l o b a l i s a t i o n , if a n a t i o n wishes to c o n t r i b u t e to t h e multicultural world with its national culture so that globalisation will not turn out to be mere westernization or Anglo-Americanization, English must be used as the medium, since it is the de facto international language. A non-English-speaking nation cannot circumvent the dilemma that if they do not want to see globalisation downgrade to a one-dimensional Anglo-Americanization, English is at the moment the only effective means in the interaction between their culture and the rest of the world in the process of contributing their share to globalisation. Difficult as it is, this dilemma does n o t present a particular p r o b l e m to scientists. In terms of language policy, French might be o n e of the firmest strongholds against English encroachment, but scientists at the French Pasteur Institute in 1989 decided to "publish its famed international medical review only in English because too few people were reading it in French." 7 In China, scientists are actively publishing in English, and English publications outweigh Chinese publications in the official assessment of their academic performance. Only when it comes to the humanities does English meet strong resistance. Motivated by strong nationalist sentiments, one Chinese scholar questions the necessity for Chinese students of English to write their theses and dissertations in English. He argues, "Why couldn't we insist on writing in our mother tongue as the western sinologists do in their mother tongue? As far as I know, students of Chinese at top-ranking universities in Britain and the US write their MA theses and doctoral dissertations in their mother tongue, and they even receive their instruction of

7. Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way (NY: William Morrow & Co., 1990), 13.

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Chinese history, Chinese philosophy, and Chinese literature in English in their undergraduate years." 8 I n d e e d , if British and American sinologists do not write in Chinese, why should Chinese scholars in the liberal arts circles write in English when they are not even dealing with British and American studies? Such a rhetorical question, apparently flawless in logic, could well be used as a naive excuse for self-willed ethnocentrism. British and American scientists certainly do not write in Chinese, but no one questions the necessity for Chinese scientists, and scientists from other countries for that matter, to write and publish in English. Many governments want to keep secret the advanced scientific and technological findings of their scientists, but few governments are unwilling to let other nations know about their culture. If scientists are encouraged to publish their research results even though the government wishes to hold back confidential information, why shouldn't the liberal arts professionals communicate their wisdom to the world in a language accessible to other peoples, when all the governments want so badly to promote their national culture in the global context? Language is the medium of knowledge production, and the production of knowledge today must be situated in global interaction. In order for different cultures to interact globally, a commonly accepted language needs to be adopted. The failure of artificial languages like Esperanto points to the fact that a common language must be a natural language, and English, among thousands of languages, indisputably leads the way in the competition for this honour. If it is unlikely that English will forever hold dominant linguistic status, this language will nevertheless keep this advantage in a long period to come. Today, while the importance of knowledge production in a local language can never be overemphasized, the importance of knowledge production in a commonly accessible language must be duly recognised. Language is also the medium of knowledge circulation. If Chinese scholars in the humanities wish to have their voices heard beyond the national boundary and contribute to multicultural dialogues in the evolving global culture, as we believe they do, they would find it necessary to resort to English to embark on academic exchanges with their colleagues in the international arena. In cultural contribution to the global dialogues, it seems that Chinese culture at this moment has to find as its speaker someone like Tu Wei-ming, who writes in English about his neo-Confucianism. In Tu's conceptualisation of a "Cultural China," the p e r i p h e r y (Chinese diaspora a n d Western individuals, such as sinologists, journalists, and writers, who try to understand China intellectually) becomes the discursive centre in defining Chineseness. 9 Such a proposal rests with the 8. Ruan Wei, 'The Pathetic 'English Community/" Dushu (Reading) 285 (December 2002): 135-6. 9. Tu Wei-ming, "Cultural China: The Periphery as the Centre," Daedalus 120, no. 2 (1991): 1-32.

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periphery's discursive power — the ability to interpret Chinese culture in English, beside which the geographical periphery could hardly assume any other authority in their assumption of centrality. While cultural nationalists in China may find it satisfactory that even p e o p l e in the p e r i p h e r y of the "Cultural China" are propagating Chinese culture, as can be seen from the fact that the conception of a "Cultural China" has for a period gained currency among Chinese scholars on both sides of the Taiwan Straits, shouldn't Chinese scholars in the geographical centre of this cultural community also speak for themselves and define their own identity? Such grand objectives notwithstanding, the use of English in the humanities may also help Chinese scholars in more practical ways. Active interaction with the outside will help, for one thing, keep Chinese scholars informed of what is happening in the larger world. Originality is always highly valued in academic research. If Chinese scholars are content with their ignorance of and indifference to English and close themselves from the rest of the world, how do they know their research is original and not repeating that of others? In the "Quality PhD Dissertation" project, the Appraisal Committee claims to put originality in the first place in the screening process. But when in all-Chinese texts sources in English are not duly referred to, the highly profiled "originality" can be safely doubted. In the last couple of years, academic corruption as an issue has generated heated discussions within Chinese academia, and some critical cases of such corruption even attracted media attention. In his A Critique of Academic Corruption in China, Yang Shoujian divides plagiarism into two big categories: plagiarising foreign publications and plagiarising domestic publications. Plagiarism in the first category may take the form of copying concepts from international scholars, piecing t o g e t h e r passages from different articles, a n d in some e x t r e m e cases even translating and publishing a paper or a book as one's original writing. 10 Such audacious practices are instigated, at least in part, by the fact that many of the liberal arts scholars could not or do not read English. T h e paradoxical situation of practical enthusiasm for English versus the institutional resistance against it in the humanities is an issue that needs to be addressed now. In his essay on "Theory and Intelligence," Liu Dong of Peking University earnestly urges Chinese scholars to "stimulate the theoretical impulse which has long been repressed" and emphasises that it is the "mission of our cultural commonwealth" to "enter the discourse arena of the international academia." 11 However, if resistance to English in the humanities persists the way it does now, and English studies remains a sub-discipline, Liu's well-meant call is most likely to be mere wishful thinking.

10. Yang Shoujian, A Critique of Academic Corruption in China (Tianjin: Tianjin renmin chubanshe, 2001), 22-6. 11. Liu Dong, "Theory and Intelligence," China Scholarship 2, no. 3 (2001): 161.

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English plays an important role in helping realise the global significance of local knowledge in b o t h science and the humanities. As China's process of opening u p and reform proceeds, it is hoped that English, which is intricately connected with the m o d e r n history of China, can move beyond its "infantile" phase and become not only a tool for science and technological innovation but also a mature and effective medium of cultural dialogue.

Why Should the Chioese Academy of Social Sciences Cootimye to Exist?

Liu Dong I The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences is possibly the biggest research institution in the world and certainly the most prestigious on the Mainland, specializing not only in social science, with particular reference to Chinese society, but also the humanities. As such, it should, indeed it must engage in a scrupulous study of its own research philosophy and purpose. Such self-examination will not only reveal the minutiae of its historical development but also, in the process, shed light on the specifically Chinese m e t h o d of research. It will also serve to clarify some current misconceptions and, more fundamentally, help explain the reason why its existence — and its continued existence — is justified. It is no exaggeration to say that there is widespread doubt about the future of the Academy. Within this leading institution, there are researchers, both young and old, who often argue that there is little need for it. Even worse, some people who claim to be well-informed about the situation abroad rather arbitrarily insist that this cumbersome establishment should be closed because there is nothing like it in the US. Although such views may be the motivation behind the decisions being made today, they do not constitute a logical reason for dismantling the Academy. We

This article is written in Chinese and translated into English for this volume.

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must realize that we cannot imitate the American system of academic output, a system that is based on its national strength and power. T h e inexhaustible academic resources in the US stem from the fierce, long-established and longaccepted competition between many famous universities that enjoy additional support from various funds nationwide. Take, for example, Chinese studies, a field that I'm familiar with. H e r e , the resources dwarf those in o t h e r countries, including developed Europe and Japan. They even outweigh the object of research — China, a country with a population of 1.3 billion and a great number of scholars — thus making the US superior, in some respects, in this subject. It is no surprise, therefore, that although the journal Zhongguo xueshu (China scholarship), of which I am Editor, has an international reputation, it has a distinct Beijing-North America bias as a result of the distribution of the contributors. To the best of my knowledge, there are far more qualified authors and contributors in North America than there are inside China. There are two possible conclusions to be drawn from this. O n e is that we can say it is impossible to imitate the American pattern of research and publication because we have n o hope of receiving the kind of funding that our American counterparts enjoy. And the sad truth is that even if we could single-mindedly edge towards that kind of financial support, I'm afraid that our pool of talent would dry up long before we achieved that goal. So, if that is the situation, what card can we possibly play in the game of creative thinking when the odds are already stacked in favour of the US? Alternatively, we can recognize, along with anyone who is not blindly partisan about all things American, that the impressive US research system is by no means faultless. In the field of humanities research, with which I am most concerned, there remains an unsolvable mystery: why is it that the US, with its huge body of scholars and original thinkers, ranks far lower than Paris, a city in which the level of academic investment is so much smaller? I still can't work it out. Is it a lack of historical tradition? Is it a form of over professionalism? Or is it that American universities tend to subject themselves to popular expectations? Whatever the cause, when it comes to the kind of profound thinking that is the foundation of civilization, American scholarship in the humanities is little m o r e than an insignificant vessel floating on a sea of money. Despite its remarkable achievements and numerous first-rate scholars, the US has so far acted as the "secondary market" to European academia; and it has yet to produce world-class scholars and great thinkers. Therefore, there is still much room for improvement in its rate of input and output, its academic productivity. A balanced system of academic research a n d p r o d u c t i o n can only be achieved, it seems, if there is an inner, profoundly learned academic circle in addition to the outer intellectual and cultural circles. These three circles must constantly seek feedback and agreements through continuous self-reflection and interaction. In a sense, the academic world does not exist or operate in a vacuum. It is supposed to spread its influence outwardly layer by layer, meanwhile drawing

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stimulus or impact from the overall cultural context in order to reach a crossfertilization between research and practice. Measured by this ideal of a developing, interactive atmosphere, humanities scholarship in the US, despite its apparent maturity, may have been a little too independent and isolated to resonate fully with the outer circles. Although their research is apparently concerned with such issues as the human predicament, junior scholars in the US, under the pressures of the tenure system, find it difficult to break away from the protocols of academic research and even more difficult to produce anything original. In most cases, however, their research must be carried on through academic discourse, and it thus runs short on creativity in the long term. It appears then that, though most American universities are not hidden behind impenetrable walls, their mass production of symposium papers makes community or popular culture seem arid, giving people the feeling that such institutions are invisible and indifferent. And what is paradoxical is that without the casual, open, and unrestrained debate traditionally associated with Parisian coffee houses, academics in the US, even though engaged in an apparently pure academic discourse at the top of an ivory tower, cannot represent the intellectual tradition embodied by the educated elite on the banks of the Seine, and what they produce can only reduce that tradition to a vulgar professionalism, a means of living in "a shop of knowledge." It is not self-contradictory to admire, on a practical level, the great store of wealth, material, and labour of the US, while criticizing its scholars' theory. What it means, quite simply, is that we don't have to imitate the US dogmatically because we lack similar conditions, nor do we have to imitate the country's scholars dogmatically if and when such conditions become available in the future. We must blaze a new trail of our own; it is the only way to survive.

II The irony is that from the perspective of modern cultural psychology, people would choose to close this sort of research institute; yet from the old perspective, people would say, without hesitation, that the academy must be maintained. As far as I am concerned, there are three major historical factors behind the birth of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The first is Hanlin Yuan (the old imperial academy), which was usually a royal institute, or think-tank, serving the emperors and courts, the kind of institute that no ancient dynasty could do without. It seems that there is an unwritten law that all central governments must have such an institute u n d e r their control; otherwise, they will not be considered normal. Precisely for this reason, the Academy, which assembled the largest number of intellectuals, was once regarded as Mao's Hanlin Yuan. The second factor is to do with socialism — the construction of an institution that followed the model of the Soviet State Academy of Science. It was on the same scale, and

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like the Soviet academy, it did not differentiate much between different disciplines. This helps us understand why institutes of history and philosophy and the like originally belonged to the Academy of Science. The third is the Central Academy of the Nationalist Government. During this phase, the government may have played a more direct role in decision-making, since the new regime had to take over the old state machines, including the supreme academy, one of the central institutions in the country. In fact, although the Institute of History and Language and the Institute of Mathematics moved to Taiwan, a large portion of the former Central Academy remained on the Mainland, thus naturally constituting the early academic units at the Chinese Academy of Science.

Ill "One-way reform" has turned the market, including the education market, into a huge bulldozer that is going to wipe out all barriers in its way, including cultural institutions supported by the state budget. T h e Chinese Academy of Social Sciences is n o exception and, in fact, it made a great effort to promote such a development of market forces. To understand the underlying reason for the Academy's current predicament, however, requires acknowledging that there is more than just a financial problem; it also involves some institutional issues. The Academy used to be as capable of training experts in the humanities and social sciences, as other prestigious universities did. In theory, therefore, it should have become as competitive as other universities on the education market, without undertaking significant changes and adjustments if it followed the market economy model. As for the demand for professionals in the humanities, the goal of university training is first of all to meet the needs of society, or more precisely, to meet the needs of knowledge-based society. The irony is, however, that graduating students majoring in the humanities can expect to have little chance in society after completing their studies, because of a deterioration in culture, especially in the field of humanities. After all, if prestigious institutes, such as the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, have to deal with this difficulty, how can we expect all the graduates from other universities to be able to find jobs in their universities? In a sense, as long as the ethos remains one of utilitarianism, the Academy and other universities cannot help but waste a huge a m o u n t of their budgets and h u m a n resources in training graduate students in the field of the humanities. We continue to give them information relevant to the discipline, yet it is unreasonable to push those students out into a society that needs little of their expertise. In this respect, the current liberal arts and humanities departments at universities have an unenviable exchange value. They are t r a p p e d in a deflationary spiral that n o t only prevents effective administration, it also threatens to make the problem of hidden waste even more serious.

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TV We should be aware that once we lose the ability to carry out in-depth research into social sciences and the humanities — which previously has been treated as a promising enterprise — we will inevitably lose our potential for originality and creativity. We should be aware of the possibility that China may dwindle into a country of little culture as the power of its economy grows. With this in mind, it is vital that the Academy of Social Sciences makes an effort to search for its raison d'etre. If it found an answer it would, of course, be a significant achievement, but it is just as important that the search itself generates a certain enduring tension, an intellectual argument that will help us re-establish the basis of China's humanities and social sciences. To that end, I would like to suggest two ways to keep opposing forces in balance. The first is to maintain some equilibrium between development and mobility and the maintenance of tradition. In the present benefit-oriented utilitarian context, the demerit of the Academy that invites most criticism is obviously the lack of basic personnel mobility. Once graduates begin their service here, they have secured a j o b for life, without exception, regardless of whether they show research talent or even whether they maintain zeal and respect for their career. That, in turn, means they can still demand a share of the benefits while "idling" in the institute. This kind of "equalism," neither starving nor satisfying the staff, certainly leads to low efficiency, a state that is n o t easily rectified. It is also absolutely unfair to really diligent scholars. So, as the term "laid-off' becomes today's most popular catchphrase, it takes little imagination to conjure up a c o m p e t i t i o n m e c h a n i s m of some k i n d . For e x a m p l e , even t h o u g h t h e "employment system" has proved to be actually invalid, we can either designate some posts as open so that we recruit a large number of established scholars here, or we can resort to temporarily running both systems. Keeping that sort of balance is probably self-evident. I would rather, therefore, because of the special relationship between the state and the institute, emphasize another point of view. We should not chase profits too much in humanities research, or resort too easily to the market economy model that yields profit instantly; otherwise, there will be rampant academic carelessness and research that has been completed prematurely, without serious thought. It is fundamental that we realize that the intrinsic structure of academic research does not cater to the market even in countries where the market economy is highly developed. On the contrary, it steadily corrects and confronts this shortsighted trading practice because to do otherwise would be to risk the flow of funds from various sources drying up. So, in China, since our humanities departments lack a wide range of funding from the outside world in this early period of market growth, the state government should be expressly forbidden to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. It should not be allowed to deny people access to the kind of all-important research that, necessarily, requires protracted study before it yields results. If it

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does so, in the long run, it will be more difficult for the Academy to sustain its development and extend its social influence and even more difficult to hold on to the prestige it has enjoyed in some areas of research. It's vitally important to emphasize this, particularly at a time when China is almost flooded by the tide of huge market forces. From every point of view, our society is now at a critical stage in the reconstruction of academic norms and intellectual authority. True, even before we establish an objective system of research assessment, we can avoid the charge of rewarding the lazy and punishing the diligent to some extent by concentrating on "instant" results and a fast turnover. But it may well produce new evils: shallow understanding and the predominance of bad research over good. And, should even the Academy be affected by the p h e n o m e n o n of cultural disorder and profit-chasing, should it become an "academic workshop" that makes and sells knowledge on demand, then it would have little justification for its existence as an intellectual community and a guide to social norms. Worse still, it could not exert its influence on intellectual and cultural circles, thus depriving society of academic leadership. So, while we should actively seek ways to motivate scholars, we must take care to maintain our traditional stance — one that is above worldly concerns such as the pursuit of fame or fortune. Only by this means can we prevent the continuous erosion of autonomous research and promote the valuable notion of disinterested service to society. T h e r e is also a n e e d to balance the p r o p a g a t i o n a n d p r o d u c t i o n of knowledge. The diktats of the market economy would indicate that, since teaching has become a relatively prosperous profession, the most obvious way to reform the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences is to turn it into a teaching institution. It should be acknowledged at the outset that there is a deeper reason for this thinking, apart from the pressure resulting from ill-conceived notions of social status and practical considerations. Without the benefit of learning through teaching, without the inspiration and verification provided by a teacher, without a conducive research culture that is built on "dialogue," studying in isolation can only stifle any spark of inspiration. Imagine what the research atmosphere would be like if the transmission of ideas stopped, if, say, the debate about rebuilding the humanities in present-day China ceased — the existing academic resources would seep away and traditional scholarship would wither. If we are to avoid this dismal prospect of wasted talent, if we intend to produce and cultivate more talented young scholars in order to keep alive the Chinese tradition of scholarship, it is only natural to turn the Academy into a more teaching-oriented institution. However, the need to provide a home for intellectual excellence is obvious, but, in the context of the relationship between the state and the institution, there are other considerations. While we still use education as a means of reform, we simply cannot ignore the fact there is a difference between teaching and research and that a stratification of educational institutions should be maintained. If it isn't, the pursuit of knowledge will become a mad chase round the same intellectual

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circuit. Basically, we should realize that the Academy is a leading research institution, so teaching should never be the main goal. O n the contrary, its education should be based on the premise that it promotes the cause of research and enhances the positive interaction between teaching and research. Only in this way can teaching which encourages creative thinking be distinct from teaching in a general sense. The Academy should be enthusiastic about transforming itself into an ideas laboratory where students are trained to be research assistants who share their supervisors' triumphs and frustrations, who enjoy provocative ideas and avoid trotting out old axioms. Researchers of this kind will be more inclined to ask questions and cultivate critical thinking. And the research itself will be aimed at qualified readers who do not require the tedious explanations that often appear in published papers. It is vital that the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences adopt this positive approach to research rather than pushing out more and more publications — a sure way to kill creative thinking. In fact, among the flimsy, so-called thesis papers published all over the country, few deserve the title of research in the real sense of the word, and the majority simply repeat stereotypical lectures. The way to end the embarrassment of such publications is to gradually form a reasonable hierarchy of various education groups, based on the ratio of teaching to research. Such a system would allow us to show more respect for the talents of ordinary teachers who would be better employed tracking down and describing the work of pioneering intellectuals rather than being forced to publish papers in their spare time. We could also give more advanced teachers stricter guidelines about the need for creativity in thesis papers rather than tedious, careless work produced under pressure. And we should learn to show real consideration for pioneers in the different disciplines and offer them chair professorships in famous universities. In other words, we should boost their creativity rather than awarding them honours and official ranks at the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, honours which are in fact obstacles to their academic careers. Only within such a system can the Academy of Social Sciences hope to establish its rightful position in society as the heart and soul of Chinese civilization, much like Peking University. Unfortunately, of course, none of these will become a reality if it exists only in my over-active imagination.

(Translated by Ye Xiaoyin)

The Chinese Government's Policy on Private Higher Education: 1982-2000

Zhang Boshu and Wang Guilan

Private higher education in China first emerged in the 1930s, and it flourished until 1949 when it was suspended for political and ideological reasons. In fact, it took the death of Mao Zedong, the exposure of the bankruptcy of Utopian social reform and the beginning of the open-door policy to breathe new life into privately funded education. According to Ministry of Education statistics, at the end of 1999 there were 1,260 private higher education institutions that were nondegree-granting and run by non-governmental bodies. The enrollment at these institutions was about 1,200,000 — approximately one quarter of the total enrollment at government-run, formal degree-granting establishment. 1 Clearly, this is a remarkable achievement given the relatively short time frame. China's long history, its tradition of centralized state power and its cultural autocracy are all reflected in the country's higher-education policies, so in order to understand the growth of the private education sector since the 1980s, it is necessary to look at it in its wider political context. Central to this understanding is the interaction between China's rebuilding of its higher education system and the rise in China of the minban or "non-government" institutions of higher education. This article aims to provide an overview of the policy-related reforms of Chinese private higher education that have taken place over the last twenty years at the central and the local government levels. 1. "Brief Statistical Report on the Development of Chinese Education/' Development and Planning Department, Ministry of Education, January 2000.

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A brief historical overview Probably the best way to understand the institutional rebuilding of Chinese private higher education is to first look at the evolution of Chinese higher education policy since 1949. After t h e b i r t h of t h e P e o p l e ' s Republic of China, h i g h e r e d u c a t i o n underwent two large-scale structural changes called the "adjustment of colleges and departments." It was through this "adjustment," which started in the second half of 1952, that all existing private colleges and universities were changed to public ones. For instance, the private Nankai University and Fudan University, after consolidation and expansion, became public comprehensive universities, although they were allowed to keep their original names. The Industrial College of the old Nankai University, the Industrial College ofJingu University, and Hebei Industrial Institute merged to become Tianjin University, and the original Furen University merged with Beijing Normal University. Ending private higher education was critical to those in power in new China. Any analysis of this important change in the history of higher education must take into account three crucial factors: 1) the general strategy the new government developed in building the country, 2) the specific international background at the time, and 3) the ideology of those in power. First, building a proletarian communist society had been the ultimate goal ever since the birth of the Chinese Communist Party. Although that generation's u n d e r s t a n d i n g of c o m m u n i s m was naive, their faith a n d loyalty or their determination to establish a communist state never diminished. After the "Party's General Line for the Transition Period" was put forward by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party in 1953, the revolt against private ownership spread like wildfire across the country. Private enterprises were wiped out and i n d e p e n d e n t farmers, u r b a n business people and street peddlers alike all disappeared. Inevitably, in such a political climate, it was impossible for private institutions of higher education to survive. Socialist collective ownership was an irreversible truth, and higher education had to be governed by that truth. Second, there was the impact of the international situation. In the 1950s, the Cold War, which succeeded the Second World War, had a strong but subtle influence on those in power in China. The United States' strategy of containment after the Korean War pushed the Chinese closer to the Soviet Union. More and more experts from the Soviet Union came to China to give guidance in all walks of life. Everything had a Soviet stamp of approval, from the five-year plans to the design of industrial products to education. In fact, the "adjustment of colleges and departments" was the direct result of duplication of the Soviet educational model. And as the "adjustment" took hold, not only did Chinese private higher education disappear but also a lot of our great higher education traditions, such as the self-governance, albeit limited, of universities and the principle and practice of e d u c a t i o n for all. Schools were m o d e l l e d o n t h e highly o r g a n i z e d , departmentalized and specialized Soviet higher education system.

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T h e third and most important factor was the ideology of contemporary leaders who believed it was essential to root out private higher education. After all, Mao Zedong had said long before: 'We use both [gun and pen] to seize power and to maintain power." Naturally, "proletarian ideology" had to be used to oversee universities where "writers" were trained. How could private universities of the "old" educational system with their armies of "old intellectuals" cultivate the "pen users/writers" that were needed by the proletarian class? It was obvious that the new leadership could neither believe in nor tolerate such a system and such intellectuals. Even if those in power had had a radical and visionary goal for social development within the collective ownership system, even if there had been n o bias in favor of the Soviet system and even if the urgent international situation that China faced at the time had not existed, it would still have been difficult for private higher education to survive. After the private institutions of higher education had been "incorporated," the state government was in complete control of higher education, a n d it remained in control for almost thirty years. But in December 1978, after the end of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the Third Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the Eleventh National People's Congress of the Communist Party of China was held, and the Party formally switched its focus from class struggle to the construction of socialist modernization. Reform and an open-door policy became the unshakeable new strategy for the country, and higher education policy reform also attracted m u c h attention in various circles. Two serious problems existed at the time: 1) the existing political and ideological framework imposed restrictions on institutions of higher education in China, and 2) the planned economic model for higher education and the state monopoly system not only fettered the development of colleges and universities but also conflicted more and more with the tremendous demand for higher education during the open-door period. Of course, the government would n o t admit to the first problem, but it was well aware of the second. Back in 1978, however, although the state government made great efforts to invest in education, there was not enough funding to go round. And there was no way to change the situation: "The gruel is meager and the monks are many," as the Chinese saying goes. Year after year, more and more high school graduates entered the fiercely competitive national college entrance exam in the hope of gaining one of the limited number of college entrance permits, like "thousands upon thousands of horses and soldiers crossing a single-log bridge." At the same time, state-run institutions of h i g h e r education were tied to an inflexible administrative system, they were overstaffed and their resources were underutilized or even unused. As a result, they were faced with higher running costs and lower efficiency, and as in other monopolies, they had no motivation to transform themselves because there was no challenge from peers and n o stimulus from the environment and the system. The need for reform became obvious and urgent. It was under such pressure that the rebuilding of state policies to promote and rejuvenate private higher education was put on the agenda.

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The 1982 Constitution and the 1987 "Tentative Regulations on NonGovernment Schools" The year 1982 marks the beginning of the widespread reform of private higher education in China. On 4 December that year, the fifth meeting of the Fifth National People's Congress approved the fourth edition of the Constitution since the birth of the People's Republic of China. 2 Article 19 of the newly approved Constitution stipulated: "the State encourages collective-owned e c o n o m i c organizations, state enterprises and businesses, and other social forces to sponsor different kinds of educational undertakings." The key phrase here is "other social forces," or social groups, a term that is more clearly defined in the document entitled "Tentative Regulations o n N o n - G o v e r n m e n t Schools" (hereafter "Tentative Regulations"), issued by the State Education Commission on 8 July 1987. In this document, "other social forces" is defined thus: "'social forces' ... refers to state enterprises and businesses, democratic parties, mass organizations, collective-owned economic organizations, social groups, academic associations, and individuals approved by the state" (Item 6). "Individuals" as one of the legal entities running schools is clearly defined — although the essential prerequisite is that such an "individual" must be approved by the state. In addition, "enterprises and businesses" must be state- or collective-owned. According to "Tentative Regulations," then, privately owned enterprises and businesses had no right to run schools. O t h e r points in t h e 1987 "Tentative Regulations" deserve a t t e n t i o n , particularly the following six: (1) The document divides schools run by social groups into two categories, the first being schools that are qualified to issue state-recognized degrees, and the second being "other schools" that are n o t qualified to issue staterecognized degrees. In fact, this State Education Commission's Regulation was drafted specifically for these "other schools." (Item 6) (2) "Any unit applying to r u n a school must obtain approval from its own administration; any working individual applicant must obtain permission from his or her working unit via a letter of approval; those individuals not formally employed, applying to run a school, must get permission from the local street community offices or the local (village or township) government via a letter of approval. Units or local governments that issue letters of approval must investigate the school's direction and purpose, as well as the political ideology, moral character, and management capability of those individuals [to be] in charge of the school, whether the applicant is an individual or an enterprise. Each letter of approval must be accompanied by documentation of the items checked." (Item 7)

2. The previous three revisions of the Constitution were presented in 1954, 1975, and 1978.

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Item 7 reflects a typical Chinese practice: theoretically, all citizens have the right to r u n schools; however, any person who wants to r u n a school must get permission from his or h e r work unit, or must get the approval of the department leader. Some regions implemented the Regulation in an even tighter fashion, for instance demanding approval from authorities at two levels. For example, if a retired middle-school teacher wants to run a part-time remedial school in order to use his or her expertise and spare energy, he or she would need to get not only permission from his or her former school authority but also the official red stamp of approval from the personnel office of local educational authorities. (3) Item 8 stipulates: "Non-government school applicants are not allowed to start any school without permission from the appropriate level of the educational authorities .... The appropriate administrative departments of education, ... based on local rules and based on application materials, are to review and evaluate several areas: the proposed school's direction, its educational purpose, the [physical] condition of the school, recruitment areas, qualifications of teachers and instructors, and finally, its curriculum." Of course, in the implementation process, Item 8 eventually turned into a very rigid and unified system for obtaining a license and approval to "run a school," with the added burden of meeting local add-on requirements and criteria to complete the process. Furthermore, schools with a "state-degree qualification" (degree-granting schools) could only obtain approval from the State Education Commission (now the Ministry of Education). Non-degree schools had to get approval from educational administrative departments at the provincial level. In 2000, the State Council launched a new regulation, delegating the authority to approve non-state-run "post-secondary professional schools" to the provincial level, making matters much less complicated than had been the case under the former two-level approval system. (4) Item 14 stipulates that: "Non-degree-granting schools run by social groups are not allowed to issue diplomas but only completion certificates with a list of courses and grades. The president signs the student's completion certificate and is responsible for student academic achievement." 3 The State Education Commission explained its no-diploma policy on 17 October 1988, in the " A n n o u n c e m e n t o n Several Issues in Non-Government Schools": "The diploma is a symbol of the country's educational level and it reflects the country's quality requirements for its citizens, So it is obvious that tight control over [both] criteria and quality is necessary." This led directly to a series of difficult problems with, and debates over, the actual practice within private institutions of higher education.

3. Selected Works on Non-government School Policies and Regulations, Advisory Center for Private Educational Studies, Beijing Educational Studies Institute, 10.

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(5) Item 4 states: "Non-government schools must a d h e r e to the four basic principles, which are adherence to socialism, a d h e r e n c e to proletarian dictatorship, adherence to the leadership of the Communist Party, and the adherence to Marxism, Leninism, and Mao Zedong Thought." Of course, these a p p e a r in all related official d o c u m e n t s issued by the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government. In fact, the requirement of "adhering to the four basic principles" in all walks of life has been written into the Constitution. For the purposes of our discussion, it should be noted that this Item says that non-government schools should be "subject to the leadership and supervision both of the local people's governments and of the educational administrative departments." ' (6) In its definition and description of private or minban schools, including the nature and status of minban institutions of higher education, Item 3 says, "nong o v e r n m e n t schools are a part of our educational u n d e r t a k i n g , a n d a supplementary part of the state-run schools." Although it is a big step forward to admit or recognize that independent schools are part of the nation's educational undertaking, it is important to note that they are a supplementary part of state-run schools. At the very least, such a statement reflects the limitations of the author (s) of the document; beyond that, it is a matter for some concern and will be discussed later.

"Ordinances for Non-Government Schools" by the State Council, 1997 T h e "Tentative Regulations" issued by the State Education Commission were limited and "tentative." As the number of local educational establishments grew, so too did that of private or minban schools. The State Education Commission issued several sets of additional and tentative regulations, including "Tentative Regulations on Setting Up Private Institutions of Higher Education" (1993) and "Tentative Regulations on Schools Run as Sino-foreign Joint Ventures" (1995). In 1997, the State Council formally promulgated, through issuing Decree Number 226, "Regulations for Non-Government Schools." Until 2002, the "Ordinances for Non-Government Schools" (hereafter "New Regulations") had been the sole standard and legal document carrying the highest authority. Compared with the "Tentative Regulations," the content of the State Council's "New Regulations" is heftier: a m o n g its eight articles a n d sixty items are several i m p o r t a n t and noteworthy rules, including the following: (1) Item 2 of "New Regulations" clearly indicates that "the use of non-state financial expenditures for education by enterprises and businesses, by mass organizations, and by other individual citizens — [in order] to run schools and engage in other educational activities — complies with the Ordinances." This gives the green light to private enterprises and businesses to enter into the field of private education.

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(2) Item 3 emphasizes the fact that "non-government schools are part of the socialist educational undertaking. People's governments at different levels should exercise strong leadership and make social-group-run schools part of the national economic and social development plans." This is real progress compared to the definitions and descriptions of the 1980s. (3) Item 4 reiterates the sixteen-Chinese-character policy: "active encouragement, energetic support, appropriate leadership, and strengthened management," first seen in Essentials ofEducational Reform and Development published in 1993 jointly by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and the State Council. It is obvious t h a t t h e "New Regulations" p r e s e n t a clear a t t i t u d e to independent schools and provide a larger arena and legal sanctioning for them. However, parts of the "New Regulations" may also lead to misunderstanding. Item 6, for example, states, "non-government schools and organizations are not allowed to exist for profit." In Item 15, the "Tentative Regulations" of 1987, it is specified that schools "can obtain reasonable tuition fees from students, but cannot seek profit illegally u n d e r the n a m e of the school." T h e language of the "New Regulations" is very straightforward, stating quite simply that schools are "not allowed to exist for profit." It is this profit motive which has become the most fiercely debated subject in the field of private higher education. Government policy, however, is perfectly clear on this matter and is designed to prevent anyone making a profit merely in response to the d e m a n d s of the market a n d / o r sacrificing the quality of education. Item 5 of the "New Regulations" states, regressively we think, that "nongovernment schools should focus on vocational education, adult education, advanced secondary education, and pre-school education. T h e state's e n c o u r a g e m e n t of schools r u n by social groups a n d organizations in t h e compulsory education area is complementary to the implementation of the state's compulsory education. T h e state strictly controls n o n - g o v e r n m e n t h i g h e r educational organizations." At the same time, "New Regulations" also indicate quite clearly, "social groups are not allowed to run religious schools or teach religion in disguise." Clearly, to say that "the state strictly controls n o n - g o v e r n m e n t h i g h e r educational organizations" is not only contrary to common international practice but also out of step with reality and the urgent needs of educational development in China. Experience in developed countries shows us that governments direct much of their investment towards basic compulsory education, because doing so ensures broad public access to education and social equality. Investment in higher education comes more and more from non-government sources. This not only addresses a n d ameliorates certain financial p r o b l e m s b u t also provides a c o m f o r t a b l e d i s t a n c e b e t w e e n institutions of h i g h e r e d u c a t i o n a n d t h e government, thus protecting the independence of higher education. Indeed, in

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some developed countries, even though the government invests financially in private higher education institutions, it has no right to interfere in their operation. Let us examine the real situation in China. Given the increasing demand for higher education, private schools are too numerous to be "strictly controlled." And we need more such schools. According to statistics, in 1995, there were 461 college students for every 100,000 people. Even though this was a 40.5% increase over the figure for the 1980s, it is still far too low when compared with figures from other countries for the same period. For instance, in the same period, the North American region reported 5,544 college students for every 100,000 people; in Europe, there were 3,285; and in Arabic-speaking countries, 1,227. China was only higher than the most underdeveloped regions of the world (328 in South Africa). The world average is 1,434.4 In recent years, China's fiscal expenditure on education has been less than 3% of its Gross National Product (GNP), and in 1998 it was only 2.55%, compared with 5%+ in developed countries, 4.6% in Mexico, 5% in Brazil, and 4.9% in Malaysia in 1998.5 Although the above comparisons are only statistics and do not give details or an in-depth analysis, they do present a general picture of how China rates in comparison to other countries. In other words, China does not need "strict control over non-government higher educational organizations," since it is so short of financial resources for education that has such great market demand.

Central control Given China's enormous size and complexity, independent schools can be quite chaotic, as they are still new and immature, and it is not wrong to push for a practice of central control, which has proved to be effective. We believe, however, that central power over independent schools can only be implemented within a certain time frame. T h a t is, it can only be justified in the early stages of development. As independent schools mature, government control should be less centralized, and the government should then convert its administrative function to that of a service function. In the United States, there are more than 3,000 higher education institutions, but there is n o State D e p a r t m e n t of H i g h e r Education — and that should give pause for thought. Beginning with the 1978 Third Session of the Eleventh Assembly of the Communist Party, China's centralized institution began to change, to be replaced by the irresistible m o m e n t u m of the market economy. Economic reform, after all, has been the most successful part of Deng Xiaoping's legacy of reform during the post-Mao era. Today, the status of China's market economy is solid and 4. The Year of 2000 Chinese Education Green Book, Center for the Study of State Education Development, 57. 5. The Year of 2000 Chinese Education Green Book, 50.

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unshakeable. But one cannot help asking: why has the Chinese government accepted the market economy? It is easy to understand that pursuing a marketeconomy strategy has made a significant difference to Chinese society. The benefit for the government is clear: at least when the rank and file live a good life, it means an "easy life" for the government as well — another reason why it was not difficult to implement economic reform in China. When it comes to carrying out educational reform, however, there is a big difference. Education is closely related to ideology. It is the tool to implement state ideology so that state control of the educational sector cannot be relaxed. The complete suppression of private higher education institutions in the 1950s was the result of such concerns, and the issue has not been really resolved to date. If the major worry in Mao's era was the occupation of the university by "bourgeois intellectuals," then the greatest concern today is the loss of control over higher education. In fact, both the restrictions on, and the control over, the non-government schools outlined in the 1987 "Tentative Regulations" and the "strict control" of private higher education in the 1997 "Ordinances for Non-Government Schools" are evidence of central control in China. Until the year 2000, there were just thirty-seven private institutions of higher education that carried state-recognized degree-conferring status,6 and their curricula were designed only for the needs of practical professions. 7 And the recent delegation of power in the approval process, coming as it does from the Ministry of Education, is also limited to post-secondary "vocational education." 8 Market trends may be the major cause of such a delegation of power, but it is difficult not to believe that central control is behind it.9 O n 15 J u n e 1999, Jiang Zemin, then General Party Secretary and Head of State, mentioned in his speech at the Third Annual State Education Meeting that China "may mobilize a social group to r u n a few private higher education institutions as a supplement to the current institutions of higher education," although he further commented that "it is not easy to run a new university, but it can run well after a period of hard work — and as long as related government departments provide leadership and administration with relevant policies and

6. Among the thirty-seven, only Yang En University in Fujian Province offers undergraduate programs. When it was first authorized to confer degrees, Yang En University was one of the colleges of the state-run Overseas Chinese University and not a private university. Huanghe University of Science and Technology is actually the first private university that was authorized by the Ministry of Education in 2000 to confer degrees. 7. This is based on a bulletin review of twenty private higher education institutions in 2000. 8. "Criteria for Setting up Post-Secondary Vocational Institutions (Tentative)/' Ministry of Education, 15 March 2000. 9. See Liu Peizhi, "Using International Experience to Implement the Strategic Plans of Fostering the Rise of Our Nation through Science and Education and Promoting the Development of Private Higher Education," in Chinese Private Higher Education: Theory and Practice, no. 2 (Beijing: Mass Art Publishing Company, 1999): 13.

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appropriate financial support." 10 It is a carefully worded speech. By comparison, Zhu Rongji, then Premier of the State Council, sounded more forthright when speaking on the same topic: Education development can only be speeded up by in-depth reform. The key is to emancipate the mind and to develop an educational estate, through reforming the educational system and structure; utilizing the potential of current educational resources; arousing the vigor and efficiency of schools, and bringing into full play the state-owned schools functioning as the mainstream, while at the same time reinforcing the expansion of reform by completely breaking through the traditional model of running schools. We must further change the status quo in the government monopoly, encouraging a variety of schools to be run by groups outside the government so as to form the system of focusing on state-run schools while simultaneously developing both public and private schools. All types of schools are encouraged as an experiment as long as they are in conformity with the state rules and regulations. We should make bigger strides in the development of private education undertakings. We should encourage middle and secondary education endeavors as well as higher vocational education. If conditions permit, private universities may also be started. Only through privately run schools and only by attracting social forces to work together can we realize the plan of large-scale education in a country as big as China. Internationally, private schools are encouraged to meet the educational needs of citizens, whether they are in developed countries or under-developed countries. As a poor country, China has no choice other than to take on other forms of running schools.11 The two leaders were giving voice to the views coming from our highest policymaking body. In conclusion, the institutional rebuilding at the state level of private or minban education — especially of private higher education — has always tried to promote an "open" environment and at the same time, at least for the last twenty years, to conform generally to the demands of the government's administration and ideology. The government wants to use social forces to buffer the market pressures on higher education, although it is unwilling to release its control and to completely return the institutions' governance to those who run them. This deepening confusion demonstrates a certain degree of progress in the wider reform of Chinese private higher education, yet it also indicates the limitations of the reform itself. There is no doubt that such limitations are not compatible

10. Selected Works on Non-Government School Policies and Regulations, 101. 11. Selected Works on Non-Government School Policies and Regulations, 101-2.

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with the trend of a new era, an era that requires the rebuilding of China's system of higher education, nor are such limitations compatible with carrying forward the fundamentals of modern universities.

Local practice At the level of local government, the guiding principles enforced by the Central Government have proven to be a stumbling block when it comes to the exercising of governmental functions. That is to say, in the context of wider institutional reform, the role of local governments is extremely limited. However, educational reform in China has simply been an experiment, akin to "crossing the river by fumbling over its rocks in the dark." The Central Government has granted to local governments certain freedoms, so that they might engage in such an experiment according to their own unique circumstances. In this sense, local governments can provide the initiative and play a more active role which, in its turn, can directly or indirectly affect institutional rebuilding. Based on available information, we should like to analyze briefly some of the basic practices found both in the non-government schools of Beijing — a municipality directly u n d e r the Central Government — and in three of the provinces: Guangdong, Zhejiang, and Shanxi. Not long ago, the Research Team for Minban Institutions of Higher Education at the Beijing Educational and Scientific Research Academy released a report, "Beijing Municipality: T h e Development of Minban Institutions of H i g h e r Education, Status Quo and Counter Measures." In the development of minban institutions in China, Beijing played a leading role and took "four early actions." 1) Beijing was one of the few cities to begin to develop minban institutions of higher education, and Zhonghua Social University (established in 1982) was the first minban university in Beijing. 2) Beijing was the first city to establish regulations for minban schools. As early as 1981, Beijing Municipality issued its "Provisional Regulations for Private Institutions." Since publication of the Constitution in 1982, the word "private" is n o longer used in the Beijing Municipality documents. "Beijing Municipality: Trial Implementation of Minban Education" appeared in 1984. In 1990 and 1994, "Beijing Municipality Minban Schools' Administrative Procedures" was issued in the form of a government decree. 12 The most recent government document is "Beijing Municipality Stipulations for Minban Schools" issued July 2000. 3) Beijing took the lead by launching in 1993 an experiment — requiring examinations for higher education degrees — that laid the foundation

12. "Government decree" here means it is announced without going through the legislative process of the local People's Congress, which is what differentiates Beijing from the provinces in regulating "social-force-run schools."

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for extended nationwide trials. 4) Beijing also stood at the forefront in conducting comprehensive evaluations of non-degree-granting minban higher education institutions within the country. In 1994, Beijing Municipality set up a mechanism for the evaluation of minban institutions. The year 1996 saw Beijing introduce a fairly standardized, comprehensive and qualitative evaluation system for minban i n s t i t u t i o n s , a n d b e t w e e n 1996 a n d 1998, Beijing c o n d u c t e d its first c o m p r e h e n s i v e , qualitative evaluations of all non-degree-granting minban institutions of higher education in the city.13 In 1998, in order to bring such Beijing institutions up to standard and u p to scale, t h e M u n i c i p a l E d u c a t i o n C o m m i s s i o n i m p l e m e n t e d the tentative "Application and Approval Procedures and Regulations for Beijing Municipality Minban, Non-Degree-Granting Institutions of Higher Education." For instance, a new minban institution is required to have at least: 1) a start-up fund of three million yuan; 2) 3,000 square meters for school buildings and dorms; 3) 30,000 volumes/books in the library; 4) three special academic programs with two years of schooling or more; and 5) a student enrollment of 500 or more, of which at least 300 should be full-time students enrolled in two-year academic programs. Although these numbers and figures are still very low in comparison with staterun institutions, they are unattainable for the majority of China's existing minban institutions of higher education. The situation of minban higher education has changed a great deal since 1999, when the larger private enterprises such as Jili and Zhuoda entered the field of Beijing's non-government higher education. Private universities, commanding a billion yuan of investments by enterprises, began to emerge in Beijing. On the one hand, so far this "invasion" by Beijing's private businesses has brought new life and new opportunities to minban higher education. On the other, it should be noted that it faces major hurdles to further development. As the Chinese saying goes, "Beijing is 'under the emperor's feet'," which means at least two things. One involves the arrogant attitude of the city's top officials. For instance, a big educational enterprise outside Beijing wanted to set u p a school in Beijing, and its head a p p r o a c h e d the Beijing Municipal Government on more than one occasion but was never able to meet the official in charge. Such behavior has obviously given people good reason to feel that the capital's officials are "cold" at the very least. The other point is that it is difficult to be "capital officials," because being too close to the "emperor" they can be easily caught should they do anything inappropriate or wrong. As a result, within the Beijing Municipal Government, the low-level officials who do the groundwork — or actually run

13. The exercise resulted in the report "Beijing Municipality: The Development of Minban Institutions of Higher Education, Status Quo and Counter Measures/' collected in The Development and Future of Beijing Social-Force-Run Education, edited by Ma Shu-Ping (Beijing: Jinghua Publisher, 2000), 113-5.

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things in minban higher education — are enthusiastic and highly dedicated, in contrast to some of the bureaucrats, who may be utterly indifferent and lack any enthusiasm or even maintain that it is not necessary for Beijing to have private higher education because state-run institutions can do everything that is needed. It is not difficult to see why these bureaucrats have developed such an attitude: they want to avoid making any mistake by taking little or n o action. This typical bureaucratic disease has formed a huge barrier to the progress of private higher education. Compared with Beijing, local governments such as those in Zhejiang and Guangdong are progressive and supportive to private higher education. Zhejiang Province on China's southeast coast, for example, has been one of the fastestgrowing provinces since China first opened its doors and began its reform. But Zhejiang has fewer institutions of higher education, and most of them are in Hangzhou. In 1998, in order to fully utilize opportunities presented by private capital, and to help mobilize enthusiasm for private schools, the provincial g o v e r n m e n t issued Zhejiang Province's "Regulations on E n c o u r a g i n g the Involvement of Social Groups in R u n n i n g Schools" (hereafter "Provincial Regulations") — a significant document in the development of Zhejiang's private higher education. Item 1 of the "Provincial Regulations" clearly supports and actively encourages various forms of i n d e p e n d e n t school and promotes experimenting with and exploring ways of running them, as long as such attempts are in conformity with the rules and regulations. Item 1 is also clearly in favor of increasing educational investment, expanding school size, enhancing academic quality, and meeting the educational demands of society. Social groups, organizations and citizens are all allowed to r u n schools. They can run them independently, or they can join forces with one another or with government departments, state-run institutions, overseas enterprises, overseas schools, or other overseas educational organizations in accordance with relevant regulations. Current state-run institutions are permitted to test out different systems of funding and administration. They can, for instance, be publicly run but privately aided, or state-owned and run. Item 2 has a different emphasis. It underlines the need for non-government groups to play an active role in developing education at both the high school and post-high school levels. They are particularly encouraged to take an interest in vocational education at the medium and higher levels; experimental vocational and technical colleges run jointly by colleges, universities, and scientific research institutions; and experimental community colleges, which, run jointly with the local government, combine elements of higher vocational and technical education with adult education. This approach to education is obviously in complete contrast to the conservative attitude found in the "strict control of higher educational organizations r u n by social forces" in the State Council's "Regulations for NonGovernment Schools." Item 4 of the "Provincial Regulations" says: "Enterprises that invest in local

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schools will be given back the local tax they have paid after the deduction of a fiscal levy. The entire rebate must be spent on education. Non-government or minban schools may accept public donations, as well as voluntary donations from students' families, for the purpose of their construction projects. Such donations must be deposited in a specified account and they can only be spent on defined items such as school buildings, construction work and teachers' salaries. School property accumulated through such donations is considered to be education property, reserved for the local school's use. The construction of private schools should be considered part of urban and rural planning and be in accordance with the state regulations. Non-government schools should enjoy the same preferential treatment as state-run schools with regard to land requisition and price reduction, such as discounts for equipment and building materials." Item 5 stipulates: "non-government schools have the freedom to recruit from the public when hiring faculty and staff." Faculty members in public institutions can move to private institutions if the transfer is arranged through the local Talent Exchange Center. Likewise, a non-government school can hire faculty members directly through the Exchange Center. In addition, a private institution can use the same ranking structure as public institutions and can evaluate professional ranks of its teachers and create new positions. Finally, non-government institutions must implement the state's and province's rules and regulations governing staff pensions and medical and social insurance. The government of Guangdong has paid prompt attention to the regulations for non-government institutions, and its view on them is subtly different from that of the Beijing leadership. Unlike the Central Government, the G u a n g d o n g Provincial government started using phrases such as "private institutions of higher education" early on in its official documents. For instance, as early as 1989, the provincial government issued for discussion the draft of "Guangdong Province: Administrative Procedures for Private Institutions of Higher Education." In 1995, the Provincial People's Government's formal legislative document was issued with the same phrase, "Guangdong Province: Administrative Procedures for Private Institutions of Higher Education" (hereafter "Administrative Procedures"). The 1989 draft document contains two significant items. Item 1 makes its purpose very clear: "Administrative procedures ensure the rights of those individuals who run institutions as well as academic quality so that the work of Guangdong's private higher education can progress smoothly and steadily." But what, then, is an institution of "private higher education"? Item 2 of the draft gives a definition: "Private institutions of higher education are those schools that offer programs at the professional level or higher, as established and run by individuals or groups. They may also i n c l u d e those professional schools established by foreign individuals." The term "private institutions of higher education" is further defined in the 1995 "Administrative Procedures" as "undergraduate and adult institutions of higher education which are funded by privately owned enterprises, by nongovernmental organizations, or by individuals through direct investment or self

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fund-raising, and which have the authority to issue state-recognized diplomas and are corporate organizations." As for the process of setting u p private institutions of higher education, Item 7 in the 1995 "Administrative Procedures" says, "the [would-be] founder of a private institution of higher education submits an application to the provincial administrative department of education. (Guangdong private enterprises, nongovernmental organizations, or individuals, if collaborating with groups and individuals from outside Guangdong — including those from overseas in setting u p private institutions of higher education, should play the major role in submitting their applications.) O t h e r r e q u i r e d d o c u m e n t s should also be submitted along with the applications. After an initial screening of them by the provincial administrative department of higher education, they will be reviewed by the evaluation body of the provincial association of institutions of higher education. With the approval of that evaluation body, applications u n d e r the category of professional schools are submitted to the Provincial People's Government for final approval and to the State Education Commission to be placed on the records; applications under the category of institutions offering u n d e r g r a d u a t e a n d / o r graduate programs are submitted to the Provincial People's Government for review and initial approval before they are submitted to the State Education Commission and to the Academic Degree Evaluation Committee of the State Council respectively for final approval." In fact, until now, n o private institution of higher education in China has been given the authority to grant academic degrees. (Although Fujian Yang-En University appears to be an exception, it was granted degree-giving status before it became a private institution of higher education.) The Guangdong Provincial Government, nevertheless, has at least shown its willingness to consider this possibility in its document. Both documents show the government's financial support of private higher education. T h e 1989 draft d o c u m e n t specifies that "every t h r e e years, the Guangdong Provincial People's Government will allocate a certain amount of funds to support higher education" (Item 26). "Part of the funds will support those private institutions of higher education that have passed the evaluation and have gained approval, and part of the funds will be used for the payment of their faculty m e m b e r s ' j o b insurance and pensions" (Item 27). In Chapter 5, under "Awards and Punishments" in the 1995 "Administrative Procedures" (Items 33 and 34), it says that "the Provincial Higher Education Administrative Department allocates a certain amount from the supplementary funds for higher education delegated by the Provincial Financial Department to reward private institutions of higher education for their high efficiency and high quality. The awards are to be mainly used for their i m p r o v e m e n t . To ensure p r o p e r use of the awards, private institutions of higher education that receive them are to set u p appropriate budgets so that funds can be monitored and audited by financial and auditing departments." It also specifies that "various commendations, awards, and non- or

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low-interest loans set u p at different levels within the local governments should be available to private institutions of higher education." Guangdong, in its recent history, has been a trendsetter and a much-admired province. At Zhongshan University in Guangzhou, there are no less than eighteen bronze statues of wise and able men standing in the Memorial Square. All of them were from the south, and quite a few of them were from Guangdong, including Rang Youwei, the thinker and great man of his time; Sun Yatsen the Interim President of the Republic of China; and Deng Shi-Chang, the famous hero and martyr of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95. But the question remains: why is it that Guangdong produced so many talented people? O n e reason is that people in the coastal areas are usually among the first to confront challenges such as modernization — and they are the first to work out ways to deal with such challenges. It was in Guangdong that the Chinese first realized their country would have to change, would have to be strong among other nations of the world, if it were to be free from the control of greater powers. Since then, more than half a century has passed, and, once again, Guangdong is taking the lead, conducting the overture to reform and opening u p to the world. It is in Guangdong that we find three of the four coastal special economic zones (Shenzhen, Zhuhai, and Shantou). And it is also in Guangdong that the 1930s legacy of private higher education is being restored and rejuvenated by the government, which not only actively advocates private higher education but also sets down rules and regulations and provides financial support for it. Compared with Zhejiang and Guangdong, Shanxi is a place of even more strategic importance for private higher education. Shanxi has the largest number of independent institutions in China. According to the 1999 statistics, Shanxi has more than 200 non-government colleges or universities. The giants among them are Xi'an Translation Training College, Xi'an Foreign Affairs Training Institute, Minban Xijing University and Xi'an European-Asian Training Institute. Each has over 10,000 students and each is well known in its own right. So why has Shanxi's private higher education attained so much and expanded on such a big scale? One explanation is that Shanxi has a unique geographical location and is rich in human resources. As an "ancient capital for nine dynasties," Xi'an — which has the double advantage of being on the vital northwest transportation route and having very low tuition and living expenses — is perhaps ideally placed as a center for non-government schools for China's western population. In addition, many state-run colleges and universities make their home in Xi'an (after Beijing and Shanghai, Xi'an has the third largest n u m b e r of state-run colleges and universities). It is also important that privately funded establishments in Shanxi have both legislative and policy support. O n 2 November 1996, the Twenty-Second Standing Committee meeting of the Eighth People's Congress of Shanxi Province passed the "Shanxi Province Regulations for Non-Government Schools" (hereafter "Shanxi Province Regulations") in the form of a legislative document. "Shanxi

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Province Regulations" do put stress on "management and supervision," but they emphasize the need of "protection and assistance" in relation to private education, in sharp contrast to the documents from Beijing.14 The two points on "protection and assistance" in the Shanxi Province Regulations are significant. The first relates to the process of evaluating faculty members' grades and titles, which is a problem with all private institutions. Unlike state-run institutions, few independent institutions of higher education have in place arrangements for p r o p e r evaluation. Non-government institutions have to handle the difficult problem of the titling of a new full time faculty member they hire, especially if this member has just graduated from college or university. Item 36 of the "Shanxi Province Regulations" stipulates that "independently-run educational organizations can independently hire faculty members or other educators, and can determine their duties and responsibilities; furthermore, the Professional Title Evaluation Departments at the non-government institutions of higher education are responsible for the evaluations of their members' professional titles." This provides a quick solution to the problem. The second point is that the "Shanxi P r o v i n c e R e g u l a t i o n s " clearly s t i p u l a t e " n o n - g o v e r n m e n t a l e d u c a t i o n a l o r g a n i z a t i o n s are a u t h o r i z e d to reject any 'illegal' [outside t h e law a n d regulations] requests for apportioned human, material, and financial charges" (Item 40). Such a stipulation, couched as it is in legal terminology, provides those institutions with protection from the less savory elements in society. In addition to those mentioned above, each province — Sichuan, Henan, Heilongjiang, H u n a n , Shandong, etc. —has its own innovative administrative system of non-government schools. We believe that because of the advance of reform in China, private higher education will develop swiftly with the support of local governments. Such progress will in turn influence and promote changes and innovations in the overall policies of China's Central Government.

14. See Beijing No. 23 Government Decree of 1994, "Beijing Municipality: Administrative Procedures for Non-Government Schools/' which strongly demands private institutions of higher education to "adhere to the administrative procedures'' but fails to make any mention of how the government may help them.

Readomig the West: Notes on Recent Chiiniese Critiques of Western Discourses

Jiang Ningkamg

There is n o denying that most Chinese intellectuals now enjoy more academic freedom than before, as the market economy has considerably alleviated the tension between state and society. In academic circles, however, this development has g e n e r a t e d n o t only a sense of a u t o n o m y b u t also t h e fear of b e i n g marginalized by rapid commercialization and fierce social competition. Many Chinese intellectuals and critics have thus remained preoccupied with relocating their position in society, a relocation that has given rise to "mixed feelings of liberation and anxiety," as Bonnie S. McDougall observed. 1 This kind of anxiety is particularly manifest in some critics' aspiration for instant national a n d international recognition. For some vociferous critics, the fear of being treated as inferior counterparts of Western critics seems to have lingered in their recent reading and interpreting of Western discourses. As China has become increasingly important in the international community, no one now openly challenges the advocacy of an "equally-based dialogue between the East and the West" for the sake of political correctness. Only through dialogue, indeed, can cultural misunderstanding between different nations be clarified. The

I'd like to express my thanks to Douglas Kerr, Q. S. Tong, and Wang Shouren for their valuable comments and suggestions in revising this paper. 1. Bonnie S. McDougall, "Literary Decorum or Carnivalistic Grotesque: Literature in the People's Republic of China after 50 Years," The China Quarterly 159 (September 1999), 731.

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question is, however, how cultural dialogue and the construction of self-discourse can be carried out on the basis of mutual understanding and a shared set of s c h o l a r l y r u l e s . V i e w e d from a h i s t o r i c a l p e r s p e c t i v e , c r o s s - c u l t u r a l c o m m u n i c a t i o n s deny b o t h imposed h e g e m o n y and self-centric mentality. Therefore, a proper understanding of both the other and the self is crucial in pursuing a meaningful dialogue with the West and in our endeavor to formulate a discourse of our own.

Who represents the West? As during the May Fourth period, the overwhelming use of Western terms and methods seems to have controlled the domain of critical practice in contemporary China. For fear of shiyu (aphasia, or losing the ability to articulate in one's own terms, a term which is often invoked in Chinese critical writing), therefore, some critics have expressed their frustration at the trend of "closely following the West."2 The term "cultural hegemony" frequently occurs in recent critiques of Western discourses. It is absolutely right for those critics to guard against the imposition of any forms of hegemony, but in the context of globalization, how to define the term "cultural hegemony" has remained a complicated issue. Considering the fact that many imported notions and theories are treated as representing the whole body of Western thought, we may reduce numerous contemporary debates over Western cultural hegemony to one question: Who represents the West? Although we have reasons to worry about neo-imperialism, it is groundless to treat the West as a holistic society or as a single cultural hegemony, since the West consists of diverse countries and cultures. China had never been totally Westernized in its encounters with the Western other for more than a century. As a matter of fact, the victory of the Chinese revolution in 1949 had benefited from such Western ideas as Marxism. Having survived numerous national disasters, China is now in the most promising period of development in its history, as it has been vigorously competing with other countries, including Western powers in the world. In recent critiques of Edward Said's postcolonial theory, for instance, some Chinese critics agree in designating individual Western critics like Said as representatives of Western cultural hegemony. Some critics claimed to have discovered a kind of neo-colonialist color in Said's dissolving Western discursive hegemony. Similar criticisms of Said's theory have also aimed at Said's suspicion of regional loyalty. It is unclear whether or not these critics have full knowledge

2. Yan Hong and Zhang Youde, "Minzuhua yu Zhongguo de xiandaixing rentong" (Nationalization and China's modernity), in Towards the New Phase of Comparative Literature, ed. Cao Shunqing (Chengdu: Sichuan renmin chubanshe, 2000), 654.

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of all of Said's work on the tension and antagonism between the colonialist and the colonized. T h e p o i n t at issue is w h e t h e r an individual Western critic's argumentation and theory can be seen as representing the whole body of Western culture. Taking into consideration Said's overt championing of the "immense wave of anti-colonial and ultimately anti-imperial activity and thought," 3 we find it hardly convincing to label him as the representative of a kind of neo-colonialism. Said is by n o m e a n s a defender of neo-colonialism; on the contrary, h e is consistent and persistent in his fight against hegemonic discourses, including, for example, Francis Fukuyama's declaration of the "end of history." In fact, Said frequently calls our attention to the diversity of a certain culture, oriental or occidental, in order to avoid misreadings of the other. And eight years after the publication of Orientalism in 1978, Said reiterates the importance of cultural multiplicity: although he "was interested in western perceptions of the Orient and in the transformation of those views into western rule over the Orient," he "wasn't suggesting that the west is monolithic." 4 To reinforce this understanding of the i n t e r n a l diversity of a c u l t u r e , Said r e m i n d s us t h a t in t h e p r o c e s s of decolonisation, "many Europeans and Americans were also stirred, and they too fought for new narratives of equality and h u m a n community." 5 In a speech delivered at University of Massachusetts in 1998, Said criticized Fukuyama and H u n t i n g t o n for their overconfidence in Western civilization. His criticism of Huntington's theory of the clash of civilizations is evidence of internal conflicts within the Western framework. 6 In contrast to those who take the West as a totality, other Chinese critics have taken pains to probe into the intrinsic contradictions within the system of Western thought. Chen Yunquan, for example, detects a split within Western discourse, considering Habermas, Daniel Bell, and Fredric Jameson active critics of capitalist hegemony and Western culture. 7 Commenting on the Western influence on Chinese intellectuals during the May Fourth period, Luo Zhitian alerts us to the inner split of the West, in his recent article published in Zhongguo shehuikexue (Social sciences in China). 8 Luo's argument, in a sense, can be seen as a positive response to the consensus shared by some foreign scholars of non-Western origins.

3. Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (NY: Alfred A Knopf, 1994), 195. 4. Said, The Pen and the Sword (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1994), 63. 5. Said, Culture and Imperialism, 3. 6. Said, speech given at University of Massachusetts, 1998 (Uris Library, Cornell U, video copy). 7. Chen Yunquan, "jiaqiang guoji wenhua zhanlue yanjiu" (Strengthening the studies of international cultural strategies), in Guoji wenhua sichao pinglun (Reviews of international cultural waves) (Beijing: Zhongguo shehuikexue chubanshe, 1999), 15. 8. Luo Zhitian, "Xifang de fenglie" (The split in the West), Zhongguo shehuikexue (Social sciences in China) 3 (1999): 20.

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Nakamura Gen, a Japanese scholar, argues that Eastern and Western cultures are never monolithic but rather mixtures of different cultural features, and they share a certain commonality derived from universal humanity. 9 Holding a similar stance, Homi Bhabha regards the representation of diversity inside a national culture as a process that is "more hybrid in the articulation of cultural differences and identifications. "10 Despite articulations of this kind on the inner diversity of the West, some critics seem to adhere to a stereotyped image of the West, believing that Western cultural hegemony is unavoidably embedded in Western thought. Regarding the strong Western influence on Chinese arts and popular culture, Yi Ying warns us against "the Western discursive power" in his article on contemporary Chinese arts. 11 O n how the West could control Chinese popular culture, he seems to have n o satisfactory answer. Li Haozhi, a professor at Lanzhou University, insists on the n a t u r e of "cultural globalization" as a process of "Westernization a n d expansion of American cultural hegemony." 12 Yi's and Li's comments on Western hegemony are to an extent valid criticisms of certain Western discourses, especially those that advocate neo-imperialism. However, it is certainly groundless to label all Western critics representatives of Western cultural hegemony. Individual critics, even as important as Fredric Jameson or Edward Said, cannot be adequately taken as the voice of the entire West, and we should take cultural diversity as a point of departure in reading the other. First, it is important to discern who the agent of the utterance is: is the scholar an individual in the West or a spokesperson of a Western government? Second, it is worth finding out the purpose of a certain critical articulation: is it meant to expand a certain cultural hegemony or to facilitate the exchange of ideas and information among critics inside and outside the West? Thirdly, what kind of position does the individual Western scholar occupy within his or her society? Is he or she a critic, or an apologist of the society and the culture? These questions point to a central issue of cultural identity, individual or national, since cultural identity is defined by social and historical changes. Stuart Hall points out that cultural identity is a "production" that is always constructed within representation, which is positioned in a context influenced by discourses of power.13 Taking the origin of English literature as an example, he states that a

9. See "Riben wenhua he dongxifang wenhua" Qapanese culture and Eastern/Western cultures), Fudan xuebao (Fudan journal) 6 (1990): 119. 10. Homi Bhabha, "DissemiNation: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modern Nation," in Nation and Narration, ed. Homi Bhabha (NY: Routledge, 1990), 292. 11. Yi Ying, "Ershi shiji jiushi niandai yishu: lilun de huigu" (The arts in the 1990s: a theoretical revisit), Wenyi yanjiu (Literature and art studies) 5 (2002): 115. 12. Li Haozhi, "Guanyu quanqiuhua wenti" (On globalization), in Abstracts of the Seventh Triennial Congress of CCLA and the International Conference (Nanjing: 2002), 93. 13. Stuart Hall, "Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation," Framework 36 (1989): 67.

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major part of colonial discourse, the English literary tradition, is not a pure body originating from Beowulf but rather a hybridized tradition associated with the N o r m a n Conquest, the Italian a n d Greek literary heritages. In a sense, h e continues, n o culture is static and pure because each generation has to make adjustments in the overall structure of its tradition. 14 This is also true of Chinese culture, which has undergone several rounds of cultural fusion with the other in history, such as the merging of northern and southern cultures during the preQin period and the acceptance of Buddhist culture after the H a n Dynasty. In his book on contemporary Chinese culture, H a u n Saussy considers the term "Western" a vague word: "I normally refuse to bow to the idol referred to by this term." 15 Saussy's statement finds echoes in some Chinese responses to Western thought. In his consideration of the Western critical tradition, Wang Qingfeng points out, "[some critics] have no overall view of Western discourses, knowing little about their influence and functions in Western societies and ignoring the nature of some Western critics' marginality." 16 Li Yi confirms the critical tradition of the West, stressing that since ancient Greece, intellectuals' critical attitudes toward secular societies have remained an important feature of Western civilization. 17 So the perplexing question remains: Who represents the West? How can an individual Western critic or thinker be categorized? This is like asking whether Shakespearean drama embodies the values of the West, or the universal legacy of human beings. Compared with the radical articulations against or for Western discourses in the mid-1980s, we are now in a position to understand better the other. This development has also attracted attention from outside. Q. S. Tong and Douglas Kerr, two Hong Kong-based scholars, emphasize: "to view our others as significant others is the first step towards this ideal of the fusing of cultural horizons, but it requires the self s sympathetic understanding of these others." "Only when we start to conceive our others as significant others, can we resituate the self/other binarism in a meaningful discourse of cultural dialogism." 18 Their remarks point to a simple yet often neglected truism that without an adequate understanding of the self and the other, one cannot establish a constructive basis on which to

14. Hall, "Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation," 73. 15. Haun Saussy, Great Walls of Discourse and Other Adventures in Cultural China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 2001), 120. 16. Wang Qingfeng, "Lun chuyu quanqiuhua waiwei de wenxue yu wenxue yanjiu" (On literature and literary research in the periphery of globalization), Wenxue pinglun (Literary review), no. 1 (2002): 124. 17. Li Yi, "Chonggu xiandaixing sichao yu Zhongguo xiandai wenxue chuantong de zai renshi" "Re-evaluation of modernity" and modern Chinese literature), Wenxue pinglun, no. 4 (2002): 89. 18. Q. S. Tong and Douglas Kerr, "Significant Others: Identity and Difference in Cross-Cultural Communication," Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 9, nos. 1 & 2 (1999): 8, 6.

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pursue a significant dialogue. Jurgen Habermas situates his discourse on other cultures in the multi-structure of cultures a n d subcultures, stating that "the diversity of cultural forms of life, ethnic groups, religions, and worldviews is constantly growing. T h e r e is n o alternative to this development, except at the normatively intolerable cost of ethnic cleansing." 19 Those who are worried about shiyu (aphasia) and aspire to "construct a critical discourse of ourselves" are in an awkward position. O n the one hand, their stance implies an acknowledgement of the fact that contemporary Chinese criticism has b o r r o w e d a g o o d n u m b e r of Western terms a n d m e t h o d s , an ambivalent borrowing that has made them feel the dominance of Western culture. O n the other hand, however, their assertion of such hegemony often leads them to ignore the diversity within Western thought and society and to attempt to establish a selfcentred discourse by refusing to treat the West as an indispensable other. Unless we are willing to withdraw from the international arena and remain in isolation, we should not let such blindness and bias block us from entering a productive dialogue with the West. In the multi-volume A New Literary History of the United States (2002) by some Chinese professors at Nanjing University, there appears an encouraging sign as the authors demonstrate their consciousness of their identity and yet accept suggestions from their American colleagues. The direct dialogues and discussions between them make possible the writing of the book. 20

The self in a constructive reading The self exists in its awareness of the other, which in Jacques Lacan's words is a "mirror image of self," and the self should first and foremost recognize itself in interacting with its others. In the Chinese context, this understanding deserves special attention, because in m o d e r n history many critical debates over t h e dichotomy between East and West have ended up fruitless, owing to misreadings on the part of the self. Contemporary engagements with Western discourses seem to be caught in the same dilemma, as some critics enthusiastically support the construction of an indigenous system of knowledge without, however, a full understanding of what this exactly means. Associating the critical legacy of the late Qing Dynasty and the May Fourth Period with recent critical practice, Q. S. Tong and Zhou Xiaoyi point out: "the desire to reconstitute a system of indigenous critical theory under the present condition, regardless of its nationalistic subtext, reminds us of all the anxieties, uncertainties, ambivalence, and frustrations that Wang Guowei and other literary

19. Jurgen Habermas, The Inclusion of the Other (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998), 117. 20. Liu Haiping and Wang Shouren et al., Xinbian meiguo wenxue shi (A new literary history of the United States) (Shanghai: Shanghai waiyu jiaoxue chubanshe, 2002), x.

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intellectuals e x p e r i e n c e d in the early twentieth century." 2 1 To constitute a discourse of the self first requires, besides everything else, the acceptance of the rules of the game recognized by the other. Otherwise, it is nothing but an isolated, exclusive set of articulations that will inevitably fade into the inaudible. Recently there have been some constructive interpretations of Western ideas in relation to the Eastern, specifically Chinese, issues. Critics seem more reflective with regard to criticism of the Western other. In the early 1990s, for instance, several young critics, such as Chen Xiaoming and Zhang Yiwu, asserted that in facing t h e invasion of Western t h o u g h t , "Chinese intellectuals have b e e n subjugated to Western cultural hegemony in every respect." 22 Critical of this assertion, Chen Houchen directs our attention to a confusion "between cultural communication and cultural hegemony," a confusion that has led those critics to overemphasize Chinese critics' vulnerability to the other. 23 Adopting a similar position in his recent discussion of popular cultural criticism, Tao Dongfeng argues that some Chinese critics have misunderstood the Frankfurt School's criticism of W e s t e r n p o p u l a r c u l t u r e , which leads to t h e i r criticism of contemporary Chinese popular culture. Tao further points out that these critics misread the self as well as the other and run the risk of decontextualizing Western critical theories at the cost of Chinese experience. 2 4 Less radical yet m o r e sophisticated, these readings of the other suggest perhaps the beginning of a constructive process in which Western t h o u g h t will be better u n d e r s t o o d in relation to Chinese experience. The bent for constructive reading also extends itself beyond the domain of critical theory. Wang Jisi, an expert in international affairs, provides an example in his comments on Huntington's well-known prediction about the incoming clashes between different civilizations^ While criticizing Huntington, Wang rejects the argument that Huntington represents the conservative forces in the United States and suggests that Huntington meant to urge the US government to pay more attention to domestic affairs while assuming a defensive posture in foreign affairs.25 Wang further reminds us that Huntington's notion ignites an old yet 21. Q. S. Tong and Zhou Xiaoyi, "Criticism and Society: The Birth of the Modern Critical Subject in China," boundary 2: an international journal of literature and culture 29, no.1 (spring 2002): 175. 22. Chen Xiaoming et al., "Dongfang zhuyi yu houzhimin zhuyi" (Orientalism and postcolonialism), Zhongshan 1 (1994): 125-148. 23. Chen Houchen, Xifang dangdai wenxue piping zai Zhongguo (Contemporary Western criticism in China) (Tianjin: Baihua wenyi chubanshe, 2000), 542. 24. See Tao Dongfeng, "Pipan lilun de yujinghua yu Zhongguo dazhong wenhua piping" (Contextualizing critical theory and popular cultural criticism in China), Zhongguo shehuikexue (Social sciences in China) 144 (2000). 25. Wang Jisi, "Wenming chongtu lunzhan pingshu" (Review on the debate over civilization clashes), in Wang Jisi et al., ed., Guoji wenhua sichao pinglun (Reviews on the trend of international culture) (Beijing: Zhongguo shehuikexue chubanshe, 1999), 46.

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sensitive issue: whether Chinese culture will conflict or blend with Western culture. It is precisely this lingering contention that frequently, sometimes unconsciously, reinforces Chinese intellectuals' preoccupation with the project of reviving the nation. To probe further into this issue, we may consider a deep-rooted belief in China that the crucial distinction between yi (barbarians) and xia (Chinese) s h o u l d b e m a i n t a i n e d ( j i l J l l ^ ^ K f ) . W h e n s o m e critics a r g u e d for t h e constructing of a Chinese discourse of literary theory in 1997, they might not have been conscious of the possibility of bridging different discourses by constructing a shared set of critical terms and methods. 2 6 O t h e r critics have presented a different scenario in seeking mutual understanding and coexistence. For example, Wang Yichuan maintains that "in the process of borrowing from the values of other cultures of the world ..., we should at the same time concentrate on the creation and propagation of our u n i q u e cultural characteristics." 27 If Wang Yichuan's argument has retained a balanced position in treating self and other, Wang F e n g z h e n g ' s i n t e r p r e t a t i o n of n a t i o n a l culture warns us against an overemphasis on national uniqueness. Suspicious of the popular slogan in China, "the m o r e n a t i o n a l it is, the m o r e i n t e r n a t i o n a l it would b e c o m e , " Wang Fengzheng considers it a better way to describe the relationship between self and other as mutually encompassing and interpenetrating. 2 8 We may think further of the issue by asking: Is there a universally recognized set of values and rules? How can cultural uniqueness survive the challenges of globalization? Adrian Roscoe argues that African poets usually see themselves as inheritors of a universal tradition of art and letters rather than as recipients of a colonial cultural legacy. 29 A similar scenario can be found in modern Chinese history: many Chinese intellectuals considered science and democracy a common legacy of all nations. In the context of globalization, the local cultural uniqueness can hardly survive without interacting with and absorbing other cultural elements. Those who deny the legitimacy of universality but favor the universal existence of Derridean differance will either fall into a self-contradiction or face the pitfalls of relativisim, and their insistence on the absence of universal value may become, in Paul de Man's words, a "blindness" that will undermine their ability to see the significance of cross-cultural dialogue and globalization. The same "blindness" occurred in some Western critics' reading of the self as in Fukuyama's assertion 26. See, for example, Cao Shunqing and Li Siqu, "Zailun chongjian Zhongguo wenlun huayu" (More on the reconstructing of the discourse of Chinese literary theory), Wenxue pinglun, no. 4(1997). 27. Wang Yichuan, "Quanqiuxing yujing xia de Zhongguo wenxue" (Chinese literature in the milieu of "globality"), Wenxue pinglun, no. 6 (2001): 22. 28. Wang Fengzheng, "Jiemuxun de wenhua lilun pingshu" (Review of Jameson's cultural theory), Guoji wenhua sichao pinglun (Review of international cultural trends) (Beijing: Zhongguo shehuikexue chubanshe, 1999), 304. 29. Kwame Anthony Appiah, In My Father's House (NY: Oxford UP, 1992), 70.

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of the "end of history," an assertion that reveals the lingering bias of self-centricism similar to the Sino-centricism espoused by the conservative Chinese literati in the late Qing. China has undergone tremendous changes since the implementation of the open-door policies. As China has increasingly and confidently integrated itself into the international community, there is no reason to be too anxious about what has been often defined as "the Western." On the contrary, it is important to make our contribution to international scholarship and adopt the strategy of nalai zhuyi ( ^ 5 f c i J | , taking whatever is useful for our development), as Lu Xun suggested decades ago.

Social changes and the image of the other Constant social changes play an important part in China's understanding of the West. Modern and contemporary history has witnessed many radical and drastic social changes, and these changes often define the positioning of the self in its encounters with the other. In the early twentieth century, Liang Shuming, a prominent advocate of Western, Confucian, and Indian cultures, asserted that China would never be modernized without encountering the West.30 Different from Liang, some American historians have been interested in "discovering" China in history and attempt to search for an internal structure of China's modernization by showing the inadequacy of the model that China only responded to the West.31 Their disagreement over the future of Chinese modernization alerts us to the fact that the image of the other and its relationship with the self have been subject to constant social changes. China is not the same as that morbid and stagnant nation in the late Qing, and Chinese critics should not feel humiliated in adopting some Western values and ideas. The fear of the loss of the self might become, as Pierre Bourdieu says, a kind of mentality that "may ... take the form of what is called timidity or arrogance." 3 2 In his recent analysis of Chinese intellectuals, Zhang Guoqing criticizes the trend of commercialization and considers intellectuals' anxiety in relation to the uncertainty about how to position themselves in the process of modernization. 3 3 In connection with this anxiety, the fear of "losing the ability to articulate" seems to reveal an unwillingness to engage the o t h e r in the international arena.

30. Liang Shuming, Dongxi wenhua jiqi zhexue (Eastern and Western cultures and philosophy) (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1922), 65. 31. Paul A. Cohen, Discovering History in China (NY: Columbia UP, 1984), 1-7. 32. Pierre Bourdieu, "Social Space and Symbolic Power/' Sociological Theory 7 (spring 1989): 17. 33. Zhang Guoqing, Zhongxing yu bianyuan (Center and periphery) (Beijing: Zhongguo shehuikexue chubanshe, 1998), 260.

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Recent educational reforms, especially at the tertiary level in China, indicate a m u c h m o r e engaging attitude towards the West. In institutions of h i g h e r education, Western pedagogies have b e e n adopted, a n d some fundamental institutional and administrative changes are taking place. For example, major universities like Peking University and Nanjing University have decided to invite applications for full professorship positions from all over the world and to redesign their core curricula with reference to Western universities. Min Weifan, a Stanford PhD and the Party Secretary of Peking University, says these changes are needed in order to "build world-class universities for the purpose of participating in international competition, especially for training the most competitive professionals and talented people." 34 The recent changes in higher education are an interesting development, not only because the decadesold Soviet-Russian model is now questioned but also in the sense that they are symbolic of China's new understanding of the West in its modernization. In 1994, Yao Qihe first proposed a breakaway from the Soviet model of higher education in Journal of Higher Education, but he did not talk about the Western, especially American, educational system. 35 T h e call for institutional reforms in higher e d u c a t i o n has since grown stronger a n d m o r e imperative. In their article commenting on Ernest L. Boyer's views on higher education, Gu Jianmin and Tong Xiaoyan point out that Boyer's four principles of academic assessment "are significant in putting right the corrupt scholarly practice in the Chinese system of academic assessment."36 Similarly, Yang Chunmei considers Burton Clark's ideas to have "methodological significance for the theory and practice of China's higher education" and advocates the reforming of "academic organization." 37 In practice, therefore, China's p e r c e p t i o n of the West, as shown in its appropriation of Western ideas in the domain of higher education, is a process of constant adaptation and reconstruction in response to social changes. We are now at a new historical j u n c t u r e , and what we are now striving for is n o more t h a n to c o n t i n u e t h e p r o c e s s of C h i n a ' s m o d e r n i z a t i o n , i n c l u d i n g t h e modernization of its educational system. Since the May Fourth Movement declared an end to the debate over whether or not we needed to learn from the West, the

34. Min Weifang, "Sange daibiao yu chuangjian yiliu daxue" (Three representatives and construction of first-class universities), Zhongguo gaojiao yanjiu (China higher education research) 8 (2002): 10. 35. See Yao Qihe, "Jiannan de xuanze: tupo Sulian jiaoyu moshi" (A difficult choice: to break through the Soviet model of education), Gaodeng jiaoyu yanjiu (Journal of higher education) 2 (1994). 36. Gu Jianmin and Tong Xiaoyan, "Meiguo gaoxiao de xueshu fangsi yu xueshu pingjia" (Reflections on and assessment of American universities), Gaodeng jiaoyu yanjiu 2 (2002): 100. 37. Yang Chunmei, "Xueshu zhuzhi shiye zhong de gaodeng jiaoyu xitong" (Higher educational system in the framework of academic organization), Gaodeng jiaoyu yanjiu 4 (2002): 55.

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ideas of science and democracy have triumphed over the conservative rhetoric. T h e fear of the loss of the self is not radically different from the advocacy of a total Westernization of China, which has also been proved unworkable in the cause of modernizing China. As Wang Bin reminds us, Western powers never completely colonized China and alien culture never silenced the indigenous voice. Wang warns us against the danger of treating the West as either "angel" or "devil" "in o r d e r to o b t a i n t h e power of articulation" for ourselves. 3 8 It is crucial to understand such questions as how to construct the self in relation to the other, how to generate more self-confidence than arrogance, and how to deal with the challenges posed by the growing d e m a n d for international e n g a g e m e n t and competition. In the process of understanding the West as well as the self, rapid social changes require us to recognize the existence of common values and universal scholarship n o matter where they have originated. As Joseph Levenson and J o h n King Fairbank observed, this belief in the universal nature of scholarship was part of the Chinese intellectual tradition, which gave way to the rise of nationalism in m o d e r n times when China e n c o u n t e r e d the West. As China is being further integrated into the global economy, the ideal of "harmony in differences" (fRTO ^FIHI) Confucius proposed two millennia ago seems to be appropriate here to help us understand the reciprocal relationship between the East and the West.39 To study a text, Foucault insists, is to take it as part of a system of cultural diffusion.40 In the context of globalization, Foucault's idea may be useful in our reading of the West as a process in which cultures interact with and interpenetrate each other. This is a process of cultural involution and simulation within a society, Eastern or Western, on the basis of universal values, such as h u m a n rights and ecological protection. Only when we treat other voices as discursive parts of a critical process, in which some c o m m o n concerns may be addressed, can we become more engaging and less confrontational. In the global arena, indeed, we should have the courage to engage with others rather than complain about how we are being mistreated. Understanding the other requires us not only to seek the m e a n i n g of the other but also to enrich the self. Given the recent social changes and critical reorientation in China, we have no reason to be pessimistic a n d should feel e n c o u r a g e d to envisage the arrival of a new scholarly a n d academic formation in China and confident in engaging with different cultures on the international stage.

38. Wang Bin, "Zhongxi wenhua guanjianci yanjiu" (Study of the keywords in Chinese and Western cultures), in Kua wenhua duihua (Cross-cultural dialogue), vol. 9, ed. Yue Daiyun (Shanghai: Shanghai wenhua chubanshe, 2002), 107. 39. Confucius, Analects of Confucius, trans. Arthur Waley (NY: Penguin, 1979), 56. 40. Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. Sheridan Smith (NY: Pantheon Books, 1972), 120-31.

The "Linguistic Tyro" in 1990s China and Globalization

Chen Jianhua

It is impossible to review how the use of language changed in 1990s China, a subject worthy of several books. China had made herself a new grand narrative of change in that decade; it seems that any aspect of the change is describable, except the change of narrative that had described itself. Rather than a full survey, however, this essay features some texts, authors, moments, and discourses in the fields of the humanities linked to the printing sphere; whether about the issue of ordinary language, classical language, or poetic language, they all inevitably engage the yuyan zhuanxiang (linguistic turn) which originated in the May Fourth period, interplayed with the polemic of the "living" and the "dead" language in the past and present. From diverse voices in debates arises a new language consciousness critical of the "standard language," or putonghua, legitimized by official language reform in the twentieth century. Ultimately, it is about how a new myth of hanyu (Han language) has been created, and its significance in the contemporary global context. In this essay, the "linguistic turn" refers to verbal texts in publication, aside from cultural products in any other language that might be more spectacular, such as visual arts, pop music, or fashion. In twentieth-century China, the linguistic turn has been repeated, as we trace to the first turn created by the May Fourth Movement, only against which can we understand the second in the 1990s. As a metaphor borrowed from the philosophical realm, it strikes an elevated note, though this essay does not deal only with the elite; nevertheless, it carries with it Marx's famous comment: "all facts and personages of great importance in world

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Jianhua

history occur [...] twice, [...] the first time as tragedy, the second as farce." 1 In this case, however, it is comedy rather than farce. The year 1993 was crucial for a new cultural paradigm. Print culture bloomed in all directions. Amid waves of the Post-New Literature, the Post-isms, mass production, and the debate over the renwen jingshen (humanist spirit), a linguistic revolution silently swept the h u m a n i s t fields in which the term hanyu was commonly used. If in the early 1990s an intellectual consensus had been formed that language is the most essential element in culture, 2 now the use of hanyu i m p l i e d a shift of its role from parole to langue in the Saussurian sense, characteristic of the rise of a new racial and national consciousness. By naming it with the character Han, the Chinese language was being identified as a system of ideograms; charged with autonomous critical drive, it was like a double-edged sword: internally it subverted the orthodox tenets of language reform since the early twentieth century, yet at the same time it reaffirmed national unification under the name of Han that was more historically hallowed than the term yuyan (language) or guoyu (national language); externally it symbolized the national cultural essence in answer to the cultural pressures of globalization. If the intellectual discourses in the 1980s were heroic, idealistic, and hyperbolic, what prevailed in the 1990s was individualistic, quotidian, and realistic. The mainstream of literature and art, even the avant-garde "1990s poetry" and sixth-generation cinema, was dominated by a kind of new realism. "My camera d o e s n ' t lie," claimed the sixth-generation directors, trying to distinguish themselves from the fifth-generation directors. In daily and speedy changes, the reality itself was so miraculous and spectacular that it challenged capacities of expressing, performing, and imagining; material fortunes were so close and fertile that they washed away big and empty promises. From the generation born in the 1960s arose a new collective anxiety for contemporaneity; around the question of how to grasp the reality and how to represent it a new paradigm of poetic creation came into being. Sun Wenbo, a m e m b e r of the zhishifenzi xiezuo (intellectual writing) says, "all poets who were influential in the 1990s ... took the relationship between writing and reality as the factor they must consider, and in this consideration they found themselves a starting point and a totally new understanding of poetry and its writing techniques." 3 He wrote:

1.

Karl Marx, ' T h e Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte," in The Marx

Reader, ed.

Christopher Pierson (Cambridge: Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers, 1997), 156. 2.

As a valuable document see Zhang Rulun's Preface to Wenhua de yuyan shijie —

wenhua yuyanxue

Zhongguo

lunji (The horizon of cultural language: essays on cultural language), eds.

Zhang Rulun and Shen Xiaolong (Shanghai: Sanlian shudian, 1991), 1-49. 3.

Wang Jiaxin and Sun Wenbo, eds., Zhongguo

shige — j i u s h i niandai beiwang lu (Chinese

poetry: documents from the 1990s) (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 2000), 19.

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Thus, unlike the 1980s when the holiness of poetry conferred an absolute superhuman value, now the purity of language and its unshakable authority were more or less thrown away. If it departs from the concrete facts of human life, what significance does poetry have? Since language was born in a world complicatedly intertwined with good and evil, it has never been pure. Therefore, from another point of view, the poetry of the 1990s is, we may say, an earthy (shisu de) poetry. Although the "earthy" does not sound lyrical, it is real. Which one — politics, economics, or science — is not real? The reality of human life is earthy; poetry tells about human life and the spiritual understanding of the history of human life. So it is a process of return rather than separation. 4 Such a strong sense of history in the poetic field does not mean that the Chinese poets are short of romantic imagination; rather, their creative practices are historically conditioned by two factors. Indeed, they n o longer pursue the Romantic self or an ontological poetics, under the influence of post-structuralism, which materialistically treats language as a se miotic culture. Meanwhile, they join the Chinese intellectuals in the search for a new sense of history and a new collective identity. I will return to this "sense of history" in the conclusion of this essay.

Wenyan: a shadow presence In the summer of 2001, in the nationwide college entrance examination, Jiang Xinjie, an examinee in Jiangsu Province, hit the news headlines. His essay entitled "Chitu zhi si" (The death of the red rabbit) was written in a sort of classical language and scored by all examiners as exceptionally excellent. As a result, Nanjing University, one of the most distinguished universities in the country, expressed a wish to recruit Jiang. Instantly, this decision became a controversy, attracting both applause and criticism, but no one questioned Jiang's use of wenyan, a notoriety since the May Fourth period; it was unprecedented since the founding of the People's Republic, especially as it occurred in the annual college entrance examination, a national ritual of highly symbolic value. Jiang's essay may have attracted the examiners for other reasons. Aside from its fictional content and elegant style, it titled well the given topic —"Cheng yu xin" (Sincerity and trust) — i m p o r t a n t virtues in Confucianism. This event appeared no more than a storm in a teapot and soon receded from public attention. As a cultural gesture, however, it confirmed a phenomenon

4. Wang and Sun, eds., Zhongguo shige, 17.

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apparent since the late 1980s that wenyan was coming back to life after its burial almost a century ago; the event was one link in a chain of happenings. It is well known that baihua was established in the May Fourth period at the cost of wenyan; this linguistic replacement became the backbone of Chinese literary and cultural modernization. The myth of May Fourth literature originated from the 1917 "literary revolution" or "literary reform" declared by Chen Duxiu (1879-1942) and H u Shi (1891-1962). Calling for a new literature to rescue China, they both c o n d e m n e d classical literature as an obstacle to literary modernization. This literary iconoclasm was also a linguistic one, as H u Shi called baihua "living language" and wenyan "dead language." In the early 1920s, promulgated by the Republican government, the movement to unify the national language was in full swing; one of the crucial steps was that by officially changing guowen (national literature) to guoyu (national speech language) through the educational system, the use of baihua came to dominate classrooms and textbooks. 5 Language reform has been the most fundamental modernization project in China since the late nineteenth century. Every regime, from the Qing Dynasty, the KMT to the CCP, regardless of their different politics and ideology, has i m p l e m e n t e d the project without reservation. 6 However, after May Fourth, intellectual debates over baihua and wenyan did not cease. As notable examples, in the 1920s Mei Guandi (1890-1945) and other classicists criticized the new literary movement as well as its use of baihua;1 in the 1930s Qu Qiubai (18991935) denounced baihua as a "Europeanized language." 8 Nevertheless, it was after 1949 that language reform was carried out more forcefully and ideologically by the Party line and state apparatus; by officially ordering people throughout the nation to use simultaneously the simplified script, the standard vernacular putonghua, and the phonetic spelling plan, linguistic unification was realized. Before the language movement, intellectuals tested their patriotism. No doubt the revolutionary writers supported it; Xia Yan (1900-1995), for example, wrote, "the phenomena of linguistic confusion still exist, and have politically hurt the people's interest; thus we must take language unification and standardization as

5. Wang Feng describes how the May Fourth literary revolution merged with the national language movement. See "Wenxue geming yu guoyu yundong zhi guanxi" (The relation between literary revolution and national language movement), in Wan Ming yu Wan Qing: lishi chuancheng yu wenhua chuangxin (The late Ming and the late Qing: historical dynamics and cultural innovations) (Wuhan: Hubei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002), 594-615. 6. See Language Reform in China, eds. Peter J. Seybolt and Gregory Kuei-ke Chiang (NY: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1979), 18-9. 7. Mei Guandi, "A Critique of the New Culturalists," in Modern Chinese Literary Thought, ed. Kirk A. Denton (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford UP, 1996), 218-27. 8. See Merle Goldman, "Left-wing Criticism of the Pai Hua Movement," in Reflections on the May Fourth Movement: A Symposium, ed. Benjamin Schwartz (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1962), 85-101.

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a serious political task."9 After the 1957 anti-rightist campaign, n o opponents risked saying anything negative about language reform. 10 Alongside the language issue as taboo, a myth of cultural legitimacy was made, while the CCP emphasized its leadership in the May Fourth baihua movement and the dazhongyu yundong (mass language movement) in the 1930s and 1940s. Consequently, the practices of writing literary history were dominated by the baihua s victory over wenyan. Articulating the Maoist dialectics of "contradiction," the classical language was criticized as feudalistic, backward, and decadent. In all new histories of Chinese literature produced in the early 1960s, writers who used wenyan in modern times, from Lin Shu (1852-1924) to the Mandarin Duck and Butterfly school, were labeled a "reactionary current" against the New Literature; hence they were condemned or excluded from the literary histories. Against this sketchy historical backdrop, Jiang's case showed its importance, as it signified a break with the revolutionary canon that had dominated almost a century. Yet the case seems only exceptional in the context of the national examination; also according to the report, Jiang's essay was written in a kind of gu baihua (classical vernacular) language rather than pure classical language. What is interesting is that nowadays the meaning of gu or guwen has become no longer demonic and scary to the public. In the collective memory, guwen was related to Yuan Shikai's vicious restoration of the Confucian classics in the early Republican era. Now such memory has faded, and the event itself is outside the sphere of government interference. It is a mistake to regard Jiang's case as a radical departure. In fact, from the late 1980s the nostalgia for wenyan has appeared time and again, like a shadowy presence discursively permeating creative writing or intellectual discourses. Yet only in recent years, we may say, has it loomed more visibly in the national life. From the outset, the wenyan nostalgia was charged with a strong resentment towards the "violence of language" in the Cultural Revolution and was a critique of baihua as well as the May Fourth literary movement. Ke Ling and Zhou Ruchang, writers of the May Fourth generation who survived the bitter past, spoke of the baihua issue poignantly and with some awe, aware that it was still taboo. In 1988, Ke Ling pointed out that most contemporary baihua writings looked "pale and weak" like an anemic patient, and that this houyizheng (sequela) was left by the May Fourth writers who had brutally amputated wenyan. He wrote, "today this p h e n o m e n o n of our impure mother tongue has caused secret worries among thoughtful folks." Why "secret worries"? Zhou Ruchang asked this question a decade later, still with some timidity; because, he answered, they "could not and

9. Xia Yan, "Wenyi gongzuo yu Hanyu guifanhua" (Literature, art and standardization of the Han language), in Xia Yan zawen suibi ji (A collection of Xia Yan's miscellaneous essays) (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 1980), 526. 10. Seybolt and Chiang, eds., Language Reform, 4-5.

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would not" talk about this sensitive topic. As Zhou recalled himself, he did not break his silence until having read Ke Ling's essay; afterwards, Zhou wrote an essay entitled "Baihua yu wenyan" (The vernacular a n d the classical) a n d published it in Wenhui bao. In praise of Ke Ling's brave challenge to baihua, he ardently wrote, "Wenyan, wenyan— a language from the ancient Chinese past and a miracle of human creation — is by no means the Tierce floods and savage beasts'." 11 In the second half of the 1980s, a radical critique of baihua arose from academia and was influential in later years. Shen Xiaolong, a young linguist at Fudan University, called for a "cultural linguistics" to reshape the study of Chinese language based on its own tradition. By targeting Ma Jianzhong's (1844-1900) Mashi wentong (Mr Ma's g r a m m a r b o o k ) , which, published in 1898, laid a foundation for modernizing Chinese language according to Western linguistics, Shen sharply criticized the overall modernization or Westernization of the Han language since the early twentieth century, from the May Fourth baihua movement to the Communist language reform, and from the Western systemization of grammar to the romanization of phonetics. 12 However shrouded in academic and theoretical terms, his radical ideas reached a broad audience.

The ordinary language marginalized Apart from wenyan, challenges to orthodox language codes came from the use of ordinary language in everyday life, which had already escaped the prison of standard language in the 1980s and manifested its vitality and innovation in the following d e c a d e by p l u n g i n g into a whirlpool of hybridity in the era of transnational cultures. Centering on the use of dialects and oral speech, the ordinary language was heatedly debated in the poetic realm in the late 1990s. Here the ordinary language implies its dynamic development in youth culture in urban centers, closely related to pop music, tourism, fashion, and show business, imbued with the values of free trade and the aesthetics of global fluidity. This ordinary language with its metropolitan and cosmopolitan characteristics was showcased by a new wave of novels in the late 1990s, written by so-called "pretty girl writers" such as Mian Mian and Wei Hui. Nevertheless, in the odd relation with mainstream literature dominated by the elite and the state print institutions, ordinary language has been marginalized, not only because of the subversive force in these audacious female writings. A

11. Zhou Ruchang, "Baihua yu wenyan," Wenhui bao, 11 June 1998, 8. 12. See Shen Xiaolong, Zhongguo wenhua yuyanxue (Chinese cultural linguistics), especially the chapter entitled "Zhongguo wenhua yuyanxue de lishi fansi" (Historical reflections on Chinese cultural linguistics) (Changchun: Jilin jiaoyu chubanshe, 1990), 75-106.

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case in point is Wang Shuo, one of the most popular writers in today's China. He had experiences similar to those of "pretty girl writers," having grown u p in a cultural atmosphere open to the foreign. In the essay entitled "My View of Popular Culture, H o n g Kong and Taiwan Cultures and Other Things," a rare document in contemporary Chinese culture, Wang Shuo described in detail how in the 1980s he was absorbed by the popular culture from Hong Kong and Taiwan.13 Yet, unlike those "pretty girl writers," he was more interested in using ordinary language, or the Beijing dialect in particular, to invoice tensions between oral speech and the standard language, between high and low culture, and between localism and globalism. In hindsight, the success of Wang's TV soap opera Kewang (The yearning) in the early 1990s seems an allegory of the triumph of ordinary language. Intellectuals complained that the show was part of an attempt to erase pain and trauma from the public memory. Yet the show's very success ensured that the masses would play an active role in national culture in the coming global era. Although Wang Shuo wrote more than twenty novels, TV series, and screenplays, all of which became instant best-sellers, he was further accused of creating a pizi wenxue (hooligan literature) infatuated with filthy language in the style of tiaokan (satire) that was vulgar, blasphemous, and in bad taste. Wang Shuo proudly, though with some reluctance, adopted pizi as the brand name of his literary products in defiance of all elitists. He declared, "In my works what is truly valuable is the hooligan spirit ... Who is particularly offended by the hooligan's behavior as well as his dirty words? [It is the] middle-class ... their obedient life style and mode of civil thinking." 14 Indeed, as one critic points out, "the tiaokan style has become the most striking characteristic of Wang Shuo's language, which is neither hard nor soft. He uses this language not only as a tool but as a weapon." 15 Acknowledging that Wang Shuo's hooligan language struck at the most sacred things in nature, Lao Yu complained that the hooligan language as well as its consciousness exalted by Wang Shuo would bring new disaster to Chinese language, which had been "raped" for decades. 16 A defender replied by declaring that ordinary people welcome Wang Shuo's language, for such a language had never existed in challenging authority and tradition. He said, "In Chinese history, when have c o m m o n people h a d any chance to use their own language for mockery? Once, the whole nation wore the Sun-Yat-sen-style jacket in blue, green,

13. Wang Shuo, "Wo kan dazhong wenhua, Gang Tai wenhua ji qita," in Wuzhi zhe wuwei (The illiterate has no fear) (Shenyang: Chunfeng wenyi chubanshe, 2000), 2-46. 14. Wang Shuo, "Wo kan dazhong wenhua," 12. 15. Liu Zhifeng, ed., Pizi yingxiong: Wang Shuo zai pipan (The hooligan hero: criticizing Wang Shuo again) (Beijing: Zhonghua gongshang lianhe chubanshe, 2000), 50-1. 16. Lao Yu, "Yizhi caise banian de du zhizhu" (A colorful poisonous spider), in Pizi yingxiong, 136.

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and black; even in use of language every sentence had to be standardized, and culture was really revolutionized. Today, a great number of revolutionary loyalists are still armed with the 'orthodox dogmas,' because by the orthodox language they can impudently condemn common people. So when they heard the satires and mockeries of Wang Shuo, it was as if their scars were re-opened, and of course they felt unhappy. They labeled him a 'hooligan,' which is just like imposing caps in the past."17 Another proponent praised him from a humanist point of view. "In Wang Shuo's popularity there is another reason that is more important, for the characters in his works appeared as rebels in the literary arena; it was the feelings of rebellion and resistance that young people responded to ... Wang Shuo spoke out what we thought yet dared not to say. The most important thing we felt in his works was that we were humans instead of machines." 18 In 2000, Wang Shuo published an essay entitled "Wo kan Jin Yong" (My view of Jin Yong), which immediately caused a sensation and controversy. Jin Yong (Louis Cha) has long been known for his knight-errant novels in Hong Kong; from the 1980s his novels were so popular in mainland China that he was eulogized as a modern literary master in parallel with Lu Xun. As critics noticed, Wang Shuo often mounted polemics to draw public attention, yet he expressed his dislike of Jin Yong for thematic and formal reasons. O n e accusation was that like old Chinese novelists, Jin Yong "used morality to kill people, and enticed them to lust and robbery in the name of justice." "To me the most intolerable thing is that he glorified violence and murder in the name of patriotism." 19 Yet more polemically, however, Wang c o m p l a i n e d , "Jin's l a n g u a g e is n o t h i n g b u t conventional rhetoric," 20 and boasted that the Beijing dialect, the language of his own novels, is superior to all other dialects. And his chauvinistic claim that he looks down on writers from Hong Kong or Taiwan aroused furious responses from overseas writers. O n e important thing has been obscured by Wang's narcissism. Paradoxically, in praising the Beijing dialect favored by the politico-cultural hegemony of putonghua, he at the same time targeted the standard Chinese in current use and even, in a broader sense, the tradition of written language, both of which were "dead l a n g u a g e " in his terms. In J i n Yong, wrote Wang Shuo, "since t h e Zhejiangese or Cantonese dialect couldn't enter his novels, all he could do was to write in a dead language, and this limited his language resources." 21

17. Xiao Yu, "Qingsong yiba aizhe shui le?" (Who is offended by the light-hearted laughter?), in Pizi yingxiong, 147. 18. Yu Guan, "Yidian zhengjing meiyou" (Nothing is serious), in Wuzhi zhe wuwei, 103. 19. See "Wo kan Jin Yong" (My view of Jin Yong), in Wuzhi zhe wuwei, 76. 20. "Wo kan Jin Yong", 75. 21. "Wo kan Jin Yong", 76.

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Wang Shuo talked about his own "living language" as a new Beijing dialect in his critique of Lao She, a May Fourth writer world-famous for his perfect mastery of the Beijing dialect. Lao She's failure, according to Wang, was that he relied too m u c h on the Beijing dialect in daily use, which was simple a n d h o m o g e n e o u s , a n d t h a t his works from the 1950s b e c a m e p o o r political propaganda. 22 By distancing himself from the old Beijing dialect in Lao She, Wang Shuo identified his own Beijing dialect as provocative and innovative. The Beijing dialect in Wang Shuo intriguingly engages with the cultural logic of global economy. Obviously, in his novels most of the satiric language is spoken by the wanzhu (playful masters), a new generation of urban China wandering the streets and frequenting bars, cafes, Internet bars, malls, dancing halls, and fivestar hotels. As the hallmarks of Wang Shuo's hooligan language, the titles of his novels or TV series, such as Wande jiushi xintiao (Playing for thrills), Guobayinjiu si (Get a kick and die), or Ai ni meishangliang (Love you without asking), can be characterized as playful, chic, spontaneous a n d creative, in effect like the catchwords on the back of T-shirts, or the captions of advertisements, sharing the spirit and logic of ordinary language in urban space and closely linked to the characteristics of global culture such as fluidity, vitality, and contingency. Yang Qing pointed out the context in which Wang's tiaokan style was produced, "the whole society provides grounds for playfulness: dancing halls, cafes, video games, the black market, hidden currents ... , u n d e r the dazzling neon light people embrace the accelerating speed of life; they need j u n k food like instant noodles so as to fill the spiritual world hollowed and flattened by civilization and vigilance, to relax themselves in laughter, and to ease their own repression in deriding others." 23 Wang Shuo interestingly boasted that he had stolen these titles. He "pricked up his ears in streets and eavesdropped on many fresh and fascinating expressions; articulated by these language materials the dialogues between his characters were full of ambiguous meanings and experimental spirit. In this respect he learned from Dream of the Red Chamber, and its dialogues between a boy and a girl who meet each other for the first time." 24 The reference to Dream of the Red Chamber implies a key point in Wang's theory of his language, which provides him with grounds to criticize Jin Yong and Lao She. As he emphasized, rather than simply using- the language materials of everyday life, no matter how fresh and vivid they are, it is most difficult to find speech a proper written form. In his critique of Lao She's limitations in his uncritical use of Beijing dialect, Wang Shuo wrote, In the novel Sishi tongtang (Four generations under the same roof), I saw the limits of Beijing dialect as a dialect. It is very close to putonghua,

22. See Wang Shuo, "Wo kan Lao She," in Wuzhi zhe wuwei, 63-72. 23. Yang Qing, "Wo shi liumang wo pa shui?" in Pizi yingxiong, 86. 24. Wang Shuo, "Wo kan Lao She," 55.

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and many speeches can directly fit the written form without refinement, but as a narrative language in current use it is not rich and flexible enough. The Chinese language has developed over several millennia, and its expressive devices have become very complicated and flexible. In comparison the pure Beijing dialect is still monotonous. 25 In identifying Chinese vernacular narratives such as the Red Chamber as a dynamic tradition, Wang is critical of other resources such as Beijing dialect, putonghua, or the classical tradition. Here we can find the idiomatic terms of "living language" and "dead language" in his usages, as he transforms the May Fourth polemic into his personal discourse. Perhaps because of his peculiar dialect consciousness, Wang has shown some uneasiness while embracing commercial or foreign trends.

The "linguistic turn" consciousness In the early 1990s, after a brief break of the shiyu (loss of speech), intellectuals took t h e risk of e m b r a c i n g the vortex of e c o n o m i c globalization a n d a commercially oriented print industry and soon achieved something, of which perhaps the most conspicuous was their creation of a mirage of houxue (post-isms), in Henry Zhao's term, in the field of literary criticism and cultural theory. This post-ism, argued Zhao, serves a "new conservatism." In the West, he says, the schools of poststructuralism, postmodernism, and postcolonialism have often been accused of being too radical as they have challenged Eurocentrism or postcapitalist ideology, b u t in China these schools are transformed into antirevolutionary politics, most apparently in the intellectual denial of May Fourth iconoclasm. 26 While ardently embracing new Western theories, it was not difficult for a theoretician to find that the issue of language was at the core of humanist discourses in the twentieth-century West. According to a later source, in the 1980s the young intellectuals were already talking about the Western "linguistic turn." 27 Yet, even in the early 1990s when its Chinese equivalent yuyan zhuanzhebegan to appear in various publications, its meaning was far from clear. In the essay entitled

25. See Wang Shuo, "Wo kan Lao She," 68. 26. Henry Y. H. Zhao, "Post-Isms and Chinese New Conservatism," New Literary History 28 (1997): 31-44. 27. See Xu Youyu, "Ershi shiji zhexue zhong de yuyan zhuanxiang" (The linguistic turn in twentieth-century philosophy), in Gaobie ershi shiji (Farewell to the twentieth century) (Jinan: Shandong jiaoyu chubanshe, 1999), 4-5. Xu rightly points out that it is in the first half of the 1990s that academic writing about the linguistic turn began to appear. Xu's book provides more evidence, as he himself wrote about the linguistic turn as a philosophical issue in 1995 and 1996. And the book also includes Xu's 1987 essay entitled "Zhongshi yuyan — zhexue xiandaihua de yige zhongyao fangmian" (Emphasizing language: an important aspect of philosophical modernization), from which the term "linguistic turn" is absent.

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"From the Center of Reason to the Center of Language," Wang Yichuan, a young professor at Peking University, borrowed the term "linguistic t u r n , " which originated in an anthology on Western linguistic philosophy edited by Richard Rorty in 1967. Given its origins, Wang turned it into the metaphor of the "center of language" referring to the paradigm shift in m o d e r n poetics and literary discourses in the West. The essay asserts that since Kant, the crisis in Western rationalism deepened until in the twentieth century it was replaced by linguistic philosophy and literary theory. Interestingly, clustered around the "center of language," Wang's essay profusely showcased Western theories including Russian formalism, structuralism, post-structuralism, phenomenology, existentialism, psychoanalysis, new historicism, hermeneutics, and reception theory. 28 In 1993, Zheng Min, a well known senior modernist poet and professor at Beijing Normal University, published in Wenxue pinglun (Literary review) an essay entitled "A Fin-de-Siecle Retrospect: The Han Language's Reform and Chinese New Poetry." Her sharp critique of May Fourth language reform provoked a series of debates in the journal, whose significance also drew the attention of overseas literary scholars. Henry Zhao took Zheng's essay as an example of the relation between neoconservatism and Western critical theory. 29 Michelle Yeh criticized Zheng's "simplistic" view of May Fourth language reform which "violently ignored the Chinese new poetry that has developed over 80 years."30 However, from the language perspective, the debates initiated by Zheng provide us an intersection showing how the historical polemic of "living language" versus "dead language" was renewed in the context of global culture, involving the tensions between radicalism and conservatism, and between regionalism and cosmopolitanism, emblematic of a collective consensus in today's China: language has been central to intellectual and cultural life in the past and present, notwithstanding political or intellectual imposition on it. Zheng's essay began with a biting question: why has modern Chinese poetry failed to produce masterpieces like those in classical poetry? 31 She answered it in linguistic terms. As she outlined, the Chinese language met its modern fate in three phases: first it was hurt by the May Fourth iconoclasm; after the 1950s it was further victimized by political homogeneity and populism; it was after 1979 that its vitality and diversity started to revive, signaled by the emergence of "misty poetry." Especially she targeted Chen Duxiu and Hu Shi for tyrannically declaring that the classical language was dead and the vernacular was living. From then on

28. Wang Yichuan, "Cong lixing zhongxin dao yuyan zhongxin," Wenxue pinglun, no. 6 (1994): 97-107. 29. Zhao, "Post-lsrns and Chinese New Conservatism," 32-3. 30. Michelle Yeh [Xi Mi, pseud.], "Zhongguo shi de houxaindai?" Zhongguo yanjiu 37 (September 1998): 1-13. 31. Zheng Min, "Shiji mo de huigu: Hanyu yuyan biange yu Zhongguo xinshi chuangzuo," Wenxue pinglun, no. 3 (1993): 5-20.

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Chinese culture became a wounded body, and this was responsible for the failure of the new poetry. In Zheng's diagnosis, what is behind the clear divide between living language and dead language is the dualist and oppositional mode of thinking invested with oppression, absolutism a n d violence; these binary opposites — vernacular language/classical language, proletarian culture/capitalist culture, and traditional literature/revolutionary literature — have occupied the humanist realm and i n t e l l e c t u a l life t h r o u g h o u t the m o d e r n e r a a n d severely d a m a g e d t h e development of Chinese literature and culture. This dualist mode of thinking originated in the May Fourth period, and its violent nature is typically embodied by Chen Duxiu's imperial rejection of wenyan in his proclamation of the literary revolution: "there is n o room for any discussion." Her argument was beyond the issue of baihua and wenyan, though Zheng still reasoned in purely linguistic terms. Invoking Saussure's linguistics from the outset of the essay, she argues that both Chen Duxiu and H u Shi ignore the fact that language, according to the Saussurian concept of langue, is a semiotic structure of culture; so in their denial of wenyan they absurdly amputate Chinese culture as a living body. Particularly Zheng felt ashamed for Hu Shi: From our hindsight, Hu Shi was so erudite and familiar with both Chinese and foreign cultures, but he trashed his own cultural treasures developed over millennia. Such an unhealthy mentality requires our attention, for it is more unexplainable if compared to the Red Guards whose violent destruction was out of ignorance. However, in contrast to the Chinese intellectuals, sinologists abroad treasured what had been thrown into the wastepaper basket! And the rise of Western modernism in the early twentieth century owed much to Chinese language and classical poetry from which the poets found inspiration and created the new imagist poetry and poetics.32 The stark comparison is astounding yet inevitably ironic: what had been lost at h o m e was gained abroad, and, as her essay shows, wenyan was justified in Western theory. In one-third of the essay, crucially for her argument against the May Fourth iconoclasm, Zheng reevaluated wenyan 's expressive and aesthetic capacities unique for the Han language by deriving supporting sources from Western literature, linguistics and sinology. In elaborating the relations between language, culture and human life, she also frequently cited Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Derrida. Nevertheless, mixed with her gratitude to Western resources, the essay delivered a critical message that should by no means be missed: Chinese culture must heal its wounds from the past and develop as an organic whole in answer to the new global situation. And the connection to Saussure is thoughtful in terms of allying Western critical theories for her own purpose.

32. Zheng Min, "Shiji mo de huigu," 9.

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Among the essays in response, Zhang Yiwu, a young theoretician at Peking University turned the debate into a postmodern and postcolonial discourse by shifting the focus from historical radicalism to the c o n t e m p o r a r y "cultural transition," in which China engaged with the cultural hegemony of the First World. His critique of May Fourth iconoclasm was integrated into his larger program of repudiating Chinese modernity in favor of postmodernism; not surprisingly his essay was no less bombarded by Western theoretical sources, yet in contrast to Zheng Min's interests in Western modernism and philosophy of language, Zhang was inspired more by new theorists in North America such as Jameson, Spivak, and Homi Bhabha. 33 When Zhang paradoxically explored Chinese postmodernity as a way to intervene in the power hierarchy dominated by the First World, he stressed that it was necessary and important to forge a Third World subjectivity for the Han language. Zhang's postmodernism soon faded in the 1990s intellectual landscape, but his native proclivity in the national language has sustained its influence, as shown by the recent call for the "purity" of the Han language, which I will refer to shortly.

Poetic language in debate: home and abroad Indeed, despite Zheng Min's praise of late 1970s Misty Poetry as a renaissance, up to now the new Chinese poetry as a whole has been overshadowed by her regret for its linguistic poverty. In early 2002, Shi tansuo (Poetry exploration) published Zheng Min's essay entitled "What Can the Chinese New Poetry Learn from Classical Poetry?" in which she harped on the necessity to study the tradition. 34 Among those who disagreed with Zheng, it was the young poets who were most annoyed; in fact, they were more embarrassed by the international forces with which she allied herself — modernist writers and sinologists in the West. In the same issue, Sun Wenbo's essay entitled "The 'Chineseness' of Chinese Poetry" refuted, with frustration, the assertion commonly shared by most overseas Chinese, that the Chinese new poetry lacks Zhongguo xing (Chineseness) because of its loss of tradition. 35 Sun was impatient at their inability to see the issue the other way round — that "Chineseness" was a quality contained and defined in poetry written by Chinese people.

33. Zhang Yiwu, "Chonggu 'xiandaixing' yu Hanyu shumianyu zhenglun" (Re-evaluating "modernity" and the polemics of the written Han language), Wenxue pinglun (August 1994): 107-13, 120. 34. Zheng Min, "Zhongguo xinshi neng xiang gudian shige xuexie shenme?" Shi tansuo 45-6 (spring 2000): 24-9. Almost at the same time, Zheng Min published another essay entitled "Reflections on the Chinese New Poetry in the Past Eighty Years" (Zhongguo xinshi bashinian fansi) in Wenxue pinglun (October 2002): 68-73. 35. Sun Wenpo, "Zhongguo shige de 'Zhongguo xing/" Shi tansuo 45-6 (spring 2000): 1-8.

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Since t h e 1990s, as a new p h e n o m e n o n of global C h i n a , linguistic controversies at h o m e can never be separated from those abroad. It started in 1990 from a book review of Beidao's The August Sleepwalker by Stephen Owen, a professor at Harvard University, which was instantly attacked by Chinese sinologists teaching in the United States such as Rey Chow and Michelle Yeh. Owen's criterion of poetic creativity was rooted not only in Western modernism but also in Chinese classicism, as he himself admired High Tang poetry. The translation of Beidao's poetry failed his high expectation of the vivacity and potential of the Chinese poetic tradition in a new Chinese poet. The dispute arose from his notion of "world poetry," which meant to be an intriguing interplay between "local color," the political "other," poetic writing, and the "world audience." In other words, the aesthetic beauty in Beidao's poetry was affected in the process of writing or translation directed to a "world audience" who expected cheap local color and images of an undemocratic China in the translation. 36 When Rey Chow accused Owen of an "orientalist" nostalgia for a classical China, which had led him to overlook t h e "historical c o n t e x t essential to the writing a n d r e a d i n g of contemporary Chinese poetry," she declared her own minority politics concerned with an integral Chinese identity in defiance of Orientalism. 37 In her critique, however, Owen's aesthetic concern was seen as a political issue. In Yunte Huang's analysis, the Chinese "context" in Chow's emphasis "is an assumed political reality that often frames the reading and promotion of a particular kind of contemporary Chinese poetry in the United States."38 Yet what has been neglected in Owen's essay is his view of contemporary Chinese poetic language under "global influence," a critical insight in terms of cultural studies. Leaving aside his judgment of Beidao's poetry, he keenly pointed out the global p h e n o m e n o n : Chinese literature embarking upon the world is constrained by the mechanisms of literary institutions in the West, as the process of making "world poetry" involves interventions of translation, a u d i e n c e , publishing, the literary market, and even the Nobel Prize. As the polemic of poetic language has continued, the borderline of homeland and overseas has become blurred. In her 1998 essay in Chinese entitled "A Chinese-Style Postmodernism? The Cultural Politics of Contemporary Han Poetry" Michelle Yeh confronted Zheng Min's 1993 critique mentioned above. Noting the irony that Zheng justifies wenyan by appealing to Western sinologists, namely the "new international authorities," Yeh revisited the polemic of Owen's book review, to which she and Rey Chow had responded, and added some comments to date. O n the linguistic question of Zhonghua xing in m o d e r n Chinese poetry, Yeh

36. Stephen Owen, "What Is World Poetry?" The New Republic, 19 November 1990, 28-32. 37. Rey Chow, Writing Diaspora: Tactics of Intervention in Contemporary Cultural Studies (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1993), 2. 38. Yunte Huang, Transpacific Displacement: Ethnography Translation, and Intertextual Travel in Twentieth-century American Literature (Berkeley: U of California Press, 2002), 165-6.

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criticized Zheng's idea of wenyan as a "static" one, which tended to deny the historical evolution of modern Chinese poetry, but Yeh was more inclined to justify baihua as a historical necessity, and thus highly praised the 1917 May Fourth literary revolution. She asked: Does modern Chinese poetry only imitate European and American originals, and is it therefore destined to lag behind? Or is it inclined to some foreign influences because of its own inner demand to change, to answer questions, and to solve difficulties? In other words, is modern Chinese poetry a passive receiver of Western imperial culture, or an active self-reformer? Over the years I have insisted on the latter.39 Ironically, in her optimistic confidence in the inner drive of modern Chinese poetry, Yeh has failed to question the legitimacy of imperial influence as well as of political violence in the issue of modern Chinese poetic language. What she has insisted on is the legitimacy of Chinese modernity, not without a Hegelian sense of historical progress. It is a salutary warning to conceptual infatuation when Yeh holds that "essentializing Chineseness is equal to essentializing Westernness," b u t w h e n it leads h e r to c o n c l u d e that the question of "Chineseness" is meaningless, she ignores what h e r c o u n t e r p a r t s are struggling for in the contemporary global situation. It is only recently that Zheng Min published her essay entitled "Reflections on the Chinese New Poetry of the Past 80 Years," which implicitly answered Yeh's criticism, made years before, that Zheng "has violently ignored the new Chinese poetry that had developed over 80 years." In showing her full understanding of the development of the new Chinese poetry, Zheng detailed the ups and downs of the relationship between baihua and wenyan, reaffirming her conclusion that Chinese poetry had been lamentably injured by the linguistic turn eighty years ago. Although their debates continued, there was little interaction between Zheng and Yeh, since each was responsible more to her own needs in a different context. Zheng insisted on what should be inherited from the tradition, though the evidence she offered, such as the rhythm or rhetoric of classical poetry, was never taken seriously by contemporary young poets facing a different set of poetic problems. O n the other hand, Yeh endorsed an abstract concept of Chinese "context" meaningful to the politics of identity in North America, yet she missed the symbolic significance arising from the issue of wenyan in contemporary China.

Poetic language in agony The so-called "1990s poetry" was the principal battlefield in which the Chinese avant-gardists most daringly experimented on, reformed, and invented the Han 39. Michelle Yeh, "Zhongguo shi de houxiandai? — xiandai hanshi de wenhua zhengzhi," Zhongguo yanjiu 37 (September 1998): 9.

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language in theory and practice. Their practices are a complex of multiplicity that cannot be explored in this paper, but their theories have become accessible due to a painful break-up among them in 1998. There formed antagonistic camps: the group of zhishifenzi xiezuo (intellectual writing) headed by Xi Chuan, Ouyang Jianghe, Sun Wenbo, and Wang Jiaxin in Beijing; the other group was called minjian lichang (folk position), led by Yu Jian, Han Dong, and Yang Ke from the southern provinces. Also labeled as the third-generation poets, most of them were rebels and friends in the 1980s and showed their devotion to art by publishing "underground poetry," but now they fell apart, accusing each other of "intending to dominate the poetic world," with biting mockeries and even personal attacks. However, the quarrel helped them clarify their poetic theory; among other things, linguistic identity was a focal point, unavoidably touching upon how to treat Western influences and the classical heritage in the global context. The "intellectual poets" claimed the legitimacy of the new poetic reality they created as "1990s poetry," characterized by textual complexity, Western resources, narrative techniques, the individual voice, aesthetic modernity, and assimilation of knowledge. In terms of justifying poetic reality as well as Chinese modernity they shared Michelle Yeh's view that the tradition was changeable and had been creatively reshaped into m o d e r n Chinese poetry. The poets of the "folk position" emphasized intuition, creativity, ordinary life and oral language; a strong nativist ethos was implied in their critique of the intellectual poets "surrendering themselves to the foreign," "colonizing the poetic realm," and "destroying the humanities by equating poetry with knowledge." Yu Jian wrote in a combative manner: The marginal poets from southern provinces have insisted on the folk position, poetic writing, Chinese experience, poetic freedom, independence, originality, democratic spirit, and anti-ideology. They will never agree with those critics, who have utilized the geographic advantage of Beijing as a cultural and political center and wanted, by means of historical convention, to channel the poetry that had regained its independence and dignity since the 1980s into the power of discourse and establish their self-centered poetic order and hegemony.40 Yu Jian fervently advocated ordinary language, especially the southern dialects, as poetic language. Portraying the standard putonghua as the "hard tongue" and the southern dialects as the "soft tongue," he described his bitter, painful experiences of speaking and writing in putonghua, which his soft tongue could n o t accommodate. Yu Jian wrote, "In the outer provinces of China,

40. Yu Jian, "Zhenxtang — guanyu 'zhishifenzi xiezuo' he xinchao shige piping" (The truth: on the "intellectual writing" and the criticism of the new poetry), Shi tansuo 35 (fall 1999): 47-8.

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putonghua was, in the poets' unconscious, an official and unordinary language that hardened their tongue. It represented the orthodox standard in ideology, the state image, and the textbooks. ... But in the outer provinces, oral speech d o m i n a t i n g the private, o r d i n a r y everyday life dissolved a n d r e d u c e d this influence." 41 He praised the tradition of southern writing. "In the outer provinces, such words as 'secularized,' 'worldly,' 'petty urbanite,' 'small familial,' 'trivial,' 'carnal,' or 'ordinary,' have no bad sense as in putonghua; instead they are taken for granted in the classic writings of the southerners." 42 Ambivalently admitting putonghua writing as "healthy" and "necessary" for modern Chinese poetry, he claimed at the same time that it was the southern poetry centering on dialects and ordinary language that had truly created the new poetry since the 1980s. Despite each group claiming proudly to represent the poetic achievement of the 1990s, the poetic arena is still haunted by an elegiac sense of loss; sometimes it can be heard from some neutral voice. In his recent essay entitled "Lyric Poetry in t h e T i m e of E m b a r r a s s m e n t : T h e I m p o r t a n c e a n d S i g n i f i c a n c e of Sensationalism in Contemporary Chinese Lyric Poetry," Liu Xiang points out that the tradition of lyricism, which so splendidly flourished in classical poetry, has definitely been lost in contemporary Chinese poetry. He even hints that the year 1989 was crucial for the disappearance of a kind of intellectual ideal as well as of real poetry. 43

The myth of Han language in global prospectus Amid the efflorescent revival of humanist discourses in 1990s China, the new language consciousness arising from the linguistic t u r n may be the most phenomenal in terms of cultural transformation in the global context. It seems to bear the direct impact of globalization, for it would have been impossible without China's dramatic and drastic turn to global capitalism after 1989. Yet the rise of the new language consciousness indicates interaction and incongruity between the economic base and the superstructure, as well as between global and local mobilizations. When global capitalism rapidly expands its economic reach in China, Chinese culture rallies historically in dealing with the revolutionary legacy, as shown by the polemic of the linguistic turn, a battleground of historical and humanist strands and forces. This process of linguistic debate leading to the birth of a new consciousness of Han language is particularly significant, for it

41. Yu Jian, "Shige zhi she de ying yu man: guanyu dangdai shege de lianglei yuyan xiangdu" (The hard and soft poetic tongues: The two types of language direction in the contemporary poetry), Shi tansuo 29 (spring 1998): 12. 42. Yu Jian, "Shige zhi she de ying yu ruan," 17. 43. Liu Xiang, "Ganga shidai de shuqing shige — lun zai Zhongguo dangdai shige geju zhong shuqingshi de diwei he yiyi," Shi tansuo 45-6 (spring 2002): 9-23.

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vividly displays how local culture mobilizes in the contemporary global era. In rewriting her history China responds to the process of globalization rather than making herself a part of the latter. This historical perspective is imperative in terms of relating contemporary China to the discourse of globalization. While theorists celebrate globalization as a process of spatial domination in every nook and cranny of the world, whether in the name of "a borderless world" or "global democracy," they tend to ignore the temporality of local specificities. Considering "Maori self-representation," a claim to indigenous sovereignty in New Zealand, Stephen Turner argues that "indigenous movements are not only indicative of processes of globalization but more objectively representative of them," suggesting "a sense of history closed out by postmodern critical discourse, or now, the rhetoric of globalization." 44 As Turner elaborates, Maori self-representation implies a sense of "world history" rather than "globalization," "whose history marks the disappearance of all that ever opposed globalizing phenomena, and therefore all that could explain its apparent triumph. World history or historical process, in other words, is not the same thing as the history of globalization." 45 The new language consciousness in 1990s China arises from the fact that the old orthodox ideology has ended with the open-door policy; it also results from the formation of a collective identity challenging national language reform as well as the May Fourth tradition. However, in the case of China the theory that the nation-state will decline in the process of globalization has its limits, manifested by the linguistic debates controlled or regulated by the state apparatus, of which the most effective is the state-controlled printing industry. The new myth of hanyu was fabricated through printed texts which have undergone superintendence and censorship; when the socialist printing industry turns into that of state capitalism, it by n o means reduces its role of reinforcing the "imagined communities" discussed by Anderson. With the ambiguous relations with autonomous cultural identity, the nationstate, a n d globalization, the hanyu consciousness has grown into the new millennium, with a clearer stance as it confronts the increasing pressure of globalization. In February 2002, Shehuikexue bao (The social science weekly), a newspaper edited by the Academy of Social Sciences of Shanghai, organized a forum entitled "The Han Language: How To Break Up the Siege of Foreign L a n g u a g e s , " to which several scholars at F u d a n University contributed. 4 6 Concentrating on the Han language as the essence of national culture, they

44. Stephen Terner, "Sovereignty, or the Art of Being Native," Cultural Critique 51 (spring 2002): 76. 45. Terner, "Sovereignty," 77-8. 46. See "Hanyu: tuchu wailaiyu de chongwei," The Social Science Weekly 807, 21 February 2002.

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worried about the loss of its "purity" in daily use eroded or hybridized by foreign words — mainly by English, which had flooded into China since the 1980s. Yet Zhou Zhenhe maintained that this purification should be sought and realized in the open-door situation; in other words, the desire to purify native language should n o t contradict the open-door policy, and the H a n Language should develop in an open world. The strongest call for the "purification" came from H u Shoujun, who was stunned by the fact that students could not write Chinese in correct grammar, or that a host at the Central TV News Channel misread words. He wrote, "As globalization is accelerating its processes, the Chinese language, like other languages, is facing the threat of English; this situation became more serious after China had entered WTO. Hence for every Chinese it is an undeniable historical duty to struggle for the purity of hanyu." In his essay, H u even appealed to government authority to safeguard linguistic purity through legal or administrative procedures. In opposition, critical of Hu's "essentialism," Ge Hongbing rejoiced in the fact that Chinese language reinvented itself by adopting or in fusing with foreign words, the signs of new ideas, new thoughts, and new things from the West that were necessary to revitalize native culture. He bid us to learn from the Japanese who had never been bothered by this kind of linguistic imperialism. Ge wrote, "What shall we say to those essentialists? We should ask them to return to the time before Confucius when the Han language was primitive and free from pollution. As for us, we are more willing to live in the times of 'WTO' or 'KFC.'" Although the language consciousness presented by this forum tended to stress its collective cultural identity, different voices were heard; the double-edged sword forged in t h e 1990s was still t h e r e , i.e., it o p p o s e d b o t h the pressure of globalization and the official or ideological imposition on the development of native language. As shown by the repeated linguistic turn, the latter was realized by negating the former; the historical reverse indicated the growth of an a u t o n o m o u s subjectivity, desiring to revive the native culture as organic, as continual, free from violence, authoritarian powers, and imposed modernity. Among these forum contributors it is noticeable that there is a shared fear that losing the mother tongue is losing home. This diasporic feeling towards h o m e l a n d has a larger implication, mirroring our borderless age, in which national identities in flux are more linked to the conditions of native languages. In the world picture, the new language consciousness of contemporary China significantly resonates with many trends of cultural politics linked to linguistic theory and practice in various places, such as the Maoritanga in New Zealand, multicultural bilingualism in North America, or the politics of dialects in the Asia Pacific region. However, whether language is used as a tool or a weapon is determined by political, ethical, or cultural agendas. To take an individual case, Leo Lee interestingly defines himself as a Chinese-American traveling across t r a n s n a t i o n a l a n d " t r a n s - C h i n e s e s p h e r e s , " e s p o u s i n g b i l i n g u a l i s m or biculturalism, and thus, in his words, "negotiating my distance from both my

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h o m e l a n d and my adopted country." 47 While using dialects as a weapon of Taiwanese identity, Hou Hsiaohsien initiated the "politics of dialects" in his films, such as A City of Sadness or Flowers of Shanghai dubbed in Hakka, Shanghainese, or Suzhounese, suggesting a subversion of Mandarin centrality. As for the kaleidoscope of linguistic practices in 1990s China, any oral or written form has a tempo-spatial dimension, invested with various purposes and agendas on the level of the individual, group, or community. Certainly this linguistic consciousness will continue to declare itself at both internal and external frontiers in the years to come.

47. Leo Ou-fan Lee, "Trans-Chinese: Notes on Language and Sensibility," Venue 1 (1997): 16880.

Research Methods and Chinese Humanities at the Tyro of the Century

Zhu Shoutong

Twentieth-century humanities scholarship in China was marked and marred by unsettling debates over all the despotic "-isms" that held sway. Serious engagement with the Western concepts and "-isms," however, failed to lead Chinese scholars into the international arena, because they were in the intellectual shadow of the West and showed little originality and self-confidence. It took time for scholars to fully come to terms with the gap between China and the West in the production of scholarship in the humanities. Only then, as if waking from a bad dream, did they retreat from controversial concepts and "-isms" and turn their attention to the more c u r r e n t critical approaches and research methods used by Western scholars and critics, approaches which were believed to be immediately useful for the development of the humanities in China. What is commonly known in China as "methodology fever" started in the mid1980s and was the result of discursive efforts that were intended to break new g r o u n d in research a n d criticism by i n t r o d u c i n g diverse Western research methodologies and critical approaches. The fever has long gone, of course, but a review of some of the achievements in Chinese humanities over the last three years of the twentieth c e n t u r y reveals a distinct d e v e l o p m e n t in Chinese scholarship. It also shows an historical link between that fever, immature though it was, and the present status of the intellectual community in China, a community that is becoming increasingly visible on the international academic stage. 1 This article is written in Chinese and translated into English for this volume. 1.

In order to present, within the limits of this article, an outline of scholarly and critical

140 Zhu Shoutong

It is evident that various new modes of critical thinking imported from the West continue to influence Chinese scholars. Such fashionable critical approaches as new-historicism a n d post-colonialism, traveling across g e o c u l t u r a l a n d disciplinary boundaries, have been enthusiastically received and widely accepted in literary and historical studies in China. A spate of publications on trendy critical approaches and research methods has appeared over the past decades, reminding o n e of the "methodology fever" of the 1980s. Admittedly, this time it's n o t contagious, since Chinese scholars and critics have acquired a new sense of research identity a n d are engaged in a diverse range of research projects. However, there is n o denying that major Western critical approaches continue to influence Chinese scholarship, which is particularly manifest in such disciplines as philosophy, history, and literature.

Critical approaches and research methods: Chinese and Western Since the "methodology fever" of the 1980s, Chinese scholars have developed a sensitivity toward the importance of research methods and critical approaches. For example, they n o longer confine themselves to the arguments or views formulated in those scholarly canons they study. There has been a noticeable shift of emphasis on the underlying methodologies and approaches in these canons, whether Chinese or foreign. There is no doubt that Chinese scholars pay much m o r e attention to the importance of bringing to the fore those underlying methodological principles and the possibility of using them in other areas. In his article, "Defining the Concepts and Analyzing the Principles: How Guo Xiang Annotated Zhuang Zi," Tang Yijie concludes that Guo Xiang, in annotating Zhuang Zi, attempts to define concepts and analyze principles in the book, and he urges Chinese scholars to learn from him and construct their own hermeneutics with Chinese characteristics. Tang says: "If we carefully study research methods employed in the past to annotate the Chinese classics, it is possible to construct a set of indigenous research methodologies, which would be conducive to our engagement with Western hermeneutics." 2 Around the same time, Tang further developed his view on the possibility of developing a Chinese hermeneutics, in an article entitled, "Can We Construct a Chinese Hermeneutics?" 3 He commented again on this and appealed again for the establishment of a Chinese hermeneutics.

preoccupations in the humanities in China at the end of the twentieth century, I have relied on the articles published in Social Sciences in China. Although the examples used here are far from all-embracing, the reason for choosing Social Sciences in China is that it is indisputably the most representative and authoritative academic publication in social sciences and the humanities in mainland China, and its articles often represent the most significant research. 2. Social Sciences in China, no. I (1998). 3. The Scholar, no. 3 (1998).

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Apart from Sun Yushi, who had earlier proposed to build a Chinese hermeneutics of poetry for the interpretation of m o d e r n poetry, no one else has ever made such a clear and systematic effort to establish Chinese hermeneutics as Tang does. [...] Tang's advocacy manifests an intellectual vision and deserves serious attention. In his article, "Wang Bi's Methodology for Interpreting Lao Zi," Zhou Guangqin concurs with Tang Yijie and testifies that traditional Chinese philosophy embodies a u n i q u e a n d p r o f o u n d h e r m e n e u t i c s . Analyzing Wang Bi's strategies of interpretation, he points out that Wang Bi's study of Lao Zi successfully combines Confucianism and Taoism and represents a novel philosophical approach. As scholars of classical Chinese philosophy eagerly search through heaps of musty old books for new approaches that may be adapted and applied to modern scholarship, so scholars in the field of Western philosophy in China should be even more enthusiastically attempting to introduce to the Chinese reader some new m o d e s of inquiry. And, i n d e e d , this is what is h a p p e n i n g . Li Wenge's "Generative Thinking: T h e Mode of T h i n k i n g in M o d e r n Philosophy" is a significant study of "generative thinking" and a critique of this common mode of thinking in modern philosophy with particular reference to its emphasis on the process of thinking rather than on the conclusions. 4 Ni Liangkang discusses the n a t u r e of "phenomenology" entirely from the perspective of philosophical methodology, and argues that phenomenology, especially with regard to Husserl's mode of thinking, has in it some latent connections with Proust's narrative mode and Cezanne's visual expression. 5 Ye Xiushan's article, "How Martin Heidegger Has Developed Immanuel Kant's Philosophy," 6 concludes that Heidegger derives his theory of Being from Kant's epistemology formulated in Kritik der reinen Verrunft. T h e article "The Methodology and Logic in the Construction of the Marxist Theory of World History" 7 by Ye Xianming shares some of the views put forward in the aforementioned articles, as it also shows a great interest in the approach adopted by Marx in his theory of world history. If the introduction of modernist principles in the 1980s and the advocacy of postmodern doctrines in the 1990s provided Chinese scholars with some new and applicable approaches in the humanities, Xu Gongchi's article "Modernizing Studies of Classical Chinese Literature" is a prime example of what has been achieved in Chinese scholarship. Although some of Xu's notions, such as that of modernity, are open to debate due to the complexities involved in them, the article does provide a way forward in the study of classical literature in the new century. Chinese scholars are well aware of the fact that studies of modernism and postmodernism have outgrown the stage of preliminary discussion. What is 4. 5. 6. 7.

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no. 6 (2000). no. 4 (2000): 72-3. no. 3 (1999). no. 6 (1998).

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i m p o r t a n t at p r e s e n t is to apply these a p p r o a c h e s to specific cases a n d to understand their strengths and weaknesses in application. Scholars who produce such works as A Study of the Poetics of New Criticism, which only appeared in 1998, seem out of touch with new developments, particularly when the study is no more than an introduction based on The New Criticism Reader and Theory of Literature by R. Wellek and A. Warren, translated into Chinese in the early 1980s.

Application of research methods Although Chinese scholars still paid great attention to methodology at the end of the 1990s, t h e r e h a d b e e n sufficient theoretical p r e p a r a t i o n , after the "methodology fever" and "translation fever," for the application of various modern Western theoretical approaches in the humanities and social sciences. Such application of Western research methods has engendered new research areas, responding to the increasing importance of the market economy in China. The rise of economic philosophy is a typical example. At the end of the 1990s, Chinese philosophers began to explore new research methods in this field of study, which had already been fully developed in the West. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences a n d o t h e r institutions co-sponsored the National Symposium o n Economic Philosophy in May 1998, and in 1999, Social Sciences in China published a cluster of essays entitled "Pen-Conversations on Economic Philosophy" in the second issue of that year. Yu Peiyuan in his essay "The Genesis of Economic Philosophy in China," emphasises the practical usefulness of this new area of study, which, he points out, "reveals the law of socialist modernization and promotes social transformation in China." It is difficult for traditional scholars in the humanities to imagine that an area of study could have such direct social relevance or that the humanities could h o p e to have m o r e visible social effects when integrated with applied social sciences. At the time economic philosophy rose to some prominence, another hot topic in philosophy was axiology. Encouraged and stimulated by the market-oriented social developments, Chinese philosophers paid much attention to axiology at the e n d of the 1990s when the value and even the concept of value were the subject of heated discussion in the country. Wang Yuliang's "A Milestone in the D e v e l o p m e n t of Axiology — Deng Xiaoping's I m p o r t a n t C o n t r i b u t i o n to Axiology" is a detailed study of this branch of philosophy, tracing its- development from the end of the nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. 8 Zhang Huaxia in his "Axiology" claims that "self-properties" (self-interest and selfpurposefulness) are "the ontological source of t h e i r i n h e r e n t value a n d instrumental value" and unravels the basic features and the validity of social values

8. Social Sciences in China, no. 1 (1998).

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in contemporary China that is preoccupied with economic development. 9 Li Deshun's "Universal Value and Its Objective Basis" takes on the notion of universal value and its implications in the global context and in socio-cultural terms. Li comes to the conclusion that "pluralism and the autonomy of one particular way of life should be respected and be allowed to develop. Tolerance, understanding, c o o p e r a t i o n a n d e x c h a n g e s h o u l d b e e n c o u r a g e d [...] a n d a ' h u m a n c o m m o n w e a l t h ' may be formed t h r o u g h developing and consolidating o u r c o m m o n a l i t i e s [...]." 1 0 Study of the h u m a n i t i e s is usually d e t a c h e d from complicated international politics, but it is axiology and its application that make it possible for these arguments to engage, critically as well as productively, with international politics. Motivated by the same desire to engage with practical issues and to make humanistic research more relevant, Gu Su, a philosopher, turns his critical attention to international finance in his article "Cultural Reflections on the Financial Crisis in Southeast Asia."11 These new perspectives in research are employed not only for dealing with practical issues and current events but also for understanding different ways of thinking at a metaphysical level. Wang Shuren and Yu Bolin's "On Image" and "Thinking in Terms of Images" is a case in point. 12 H u a n g Yusheng's article, "Essence of Truth and Truth of Essence — On Martin Heidegger's Conception of Truth," challenges the notion in traditional philosophy that truth is merely an epistemological problem and "the essence of truth is Ubereinstimmung" and argues that "truth in essence is freedom." Historical studies in general are perhaps less sensitive to these new research methods and perspectives, and historians were, initially, less enthusiastic about new forms of knowledge. But history as a discipline in China, by comparison, did not lag far behind philosophy in its adoption and application of novel research methods. The achievements of historical research in this period proves once again that history is a discipline that is able to internalize various kinds of methodology and apply them effectively to its own advantage. At the end of the century, historians carried forward and further developed "textual argumentation," a traditional research method that has been used for thousands of years. Liu Dajun's "The Origin of Guaqi"13 a n d Zhang Peiyu's "Oracle-Bone Inscriptions Related to Solar and Lunar Eclipses and the Dating of the Shang Dynasty"14 are examples that manifest a conscious effort to continue and develop this traditional method in historical research. There was a visible collective effort to promote traditional methodology in the study of history in

9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

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in in in in in in

China, China, China, China, China, China,

no. 4 (1998). no. 6 (1998): 14. no. 3 (1999). no. 4 (1998). no. 5 (2000). no. 5 (1999).

144 Zhu Shoutong

the 1990s and, at the same time, the application of such popular Western theories as new historicism and post-colonialism was noteworthy. Unlike their counterparts in literary study, historians do not overtly reveal their propensity to utilize these theories, which, in most cases, are organically fused into their research. Luo Zhitian's article, "The Disintegration of the West: The International Politics and Evolution of Chinese Thoughts Before and After the May Fourth Movement," synthesizes various new theories in historical studies, and his discussion of this familiar topic reaches a depth rarely matched by o t h e r studies. He argues that the debates over Chinese culture during the May Fourth Movement in fact corresponded with or reflected the disintegration of the Western system of t h o u g h t at the time. For Luo, the debates a m o n g the May Fourth intellectuals in China reflected "the internal conflicts among different Western ideas," t h o u g h they might have appeared to stem from the cultural conflicts between China and the West. Some of the most significant, if not all, intellectual and cultural controversies a m o n g Chinese intellectuals at that time echoed the clashes within Western intellectual circles. For example, the two influential concepts "science" a n d "democracy" gave rise to some major debates in the late period of the May Fourth Movement, as in the debates over "science and life" in 1923 and over "human rights" after the victory of the N o r t h e r n Expedition. To Luo, these debates manifested more of a "disintegration" of the system of Western thought. Luo's readings provide a new perspective on various controversies in the New Culture Movement. Even some of the debates that appeared to be between traditionalists . and reformers can be read as conflicts between Western ideas dislocated in China. O n e good example is that between those who wanted to p r o m o t e Chinese "classical heritage" and the May Fourth radicals. Those that admired Chinese classics actually adhered to a conservative Western humanism in practice, even when they were busily engaged in a debate with the radicals. As Wu Mi puts it, they "indirectly inherited the orthodox tradition from the West and absorbed its spirit," and what they embodied was a different form of Western intellectual tradition. 15 There are many similarities between literary and historical studies in their application of traditional research methods. Jiang Yin's "The Concept of Qing in Classical Chinese Poetics" gives a detailed analysis of the rich implications of the concept qing (clarity) in classical poetry. 16 Zhang Xikun, in his article, "On the Concept of Qiyun," synthesizes traditional textual analysis and modern aesthetics and arrives at a novel conclusion that "qiyun {MM, the lasting appeal of qi) is in fact derived from the physical movement of qi (M) and its application in the domain of literature and aesthetics." 17 This article is a conscious effort to adapt 15. Social Sciences in China, no. 4 (1999): 32-4. 16. Social Sciences in China, no. 1 (2000). 17. Social Sciences in China, no. 2 (2000).

Research Methods and Chinese Humanities at the Turn of the Century 145

traditional modes of literary studies to the contemporary context. Qu Guang and Wang Qizhou use the theories of Western m o d e r n i s m a n d p o s t m o d e r n i s m respectively to scrutinize classical Chinese literature and criticism in their articles "Stream of Consciousness in Classical Chinese Poetry" 18 and "A Semiological Study of Chinese Literary Concepts." 1 9 With the aim a n d desire to renovate postcolonialism, Wang Liesheng analyses the ecology of national literature, pointing out that an ideal morphology of national literature is one that transcends both the canonicity of national literature and a servile imitation of foreign literature, one that contributes to the enrichment of cultural heritage through a twofold process of natural development and importation of foreign elements. 20 Discourse analysis, borrowed from linguistics, is an important methodological basis for a n u m b e r of literary studies. Moving beyond the scope of narratology and employing discourse analysis, Wen Guiliang's article "Deconstruction and Reconstruction: T h e Genesis and Evolution of the Discourse of May Fourth Literature" shows the transformational process in which May Fourth literary language moved away from the classical to the vernacular a n d t h e n to the language of the masses. 21 Long Quanming's essay "A Survey of the 'Cenozoic' Poetry in the 1940s" shows a similar self-awareness of its own critical methodology. 22 Particular mention should also be made of Yang Shousen's "Literary Criticism in China in the Twentieth Century." In this incisive article, Yang mounts a critique of various forms of critical practice in the past century in China, which for him are "biased in scope," "too conceptualized," "heavily dependant on binarism," and "dull in style," and argues that most of these problems have originated from a mechanical use of critical approaches. 23

Integration of research methods across disciplinary boundaries The general enthusiasm for various critical approaches and research methods, whether traditional or new, indigenous or imported, was conducive to research in the humanities at the turn of the century. New perspectives brought forth new concepts and ideas, stimulating academic interest in case studies, which became a feature of Chinese humanities in this period. In the domain of philosophy, Gao Q i n g h a i a n d Yu X i a o f e n g , in t h e i r essay, " ' Q u a s i P h i l o s o p h y ' a n d t h e Modernization of Man," have put forward, from a humanist sociological point of view and not without some originality, the notion of "quasi philosophy" that looks

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

Social Sciences in China, no. 5 (2000). Social Sciences in China, no. 1 (1999). Social Sciences in China, no. 1 (1998). Social Sciences in China, no. 3 (1999). Social Sciences in China, no. 1 (2000). Social Sciences in China, no. 3 (2000).

746 Zhu Shoutong

at man from man's own perspective. Drawing on Marxist theory of Verkehr, Ren Ping's essay, "Towards a Materialism of Interactive Practice," expounds on a new cognitive system that is based on interactions at various levels: material, spiritual, a n d linguistic. 24 Ren puts forward the concept of "materialism of interactive practice," believing that it is likely to be a major mode of philosophical thinking in the twenty-first century. Furthermore, Ren identifies interactive practice as "a m o d e of philosophical inquiry which integrates Chinese philosophy, Western philosophy and Marxism and is capable of creating a future-oriented Marxism with Chinese characteristics." Ren's thesis is boldly argued. The secret behind such audacity devoid of insolence lies in the author's novel exposition of Marxist epistemology, upon which his argument is based. Historians, rather than proposing new theories or new concepts, place much emphasis on, and attach greater importance to, the applicability and effectiveness of new research approaches. Incorporating research methods commonly used in both sociology and statistics, Wang Yuesheng, in his "The Family Structure in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century in China," builds u p a data model on the basis of the original archival materials about marriage and family life during the Qianlong era of the Qing Dynasty. His research shows that over 50% of all families in China at that time were nuclear families, and his conclusion is that the common familial pattern even then was not that of the extended family.25 It is hard to imagine that traditional historical research methods would enable one to present a conclusion so convincingly based on historical findings of this kind. Tapping into research methods in sociology and economics, Xu Tan confirms that the market networks formed between u r b a n and rural areas stimulated and advanced social developments in the Ming and Qing Dynasties in China. 26 It would be difficult to explain China's rapid economic developments during this time, within the framework of traditional sociological theory, as there had been no radical changes in the forces and relationships of production during that historical period. Employment of research methods across disciplinary boundaries also bore visible fruit in philosophy. Drawing on sociological theories and cultural studies, Fan Hao's article "'Neo-Confucian Reason' and the 'Neo-Confucian Complex'" probes the Neo-Confucianism that first appeared in the 1920s and argues that Neo-Confucianism as a latent m o v e m e n t has b e e n driven n o t so m u c h by intellectual reason as by a deep-seated cultural complex that often reveals a sympathetic understanding of and profound reverence for tradition. 27 With close reference to science, sociology, and cultural studies, Yang Guorong makes a

24. Social Sciences in China, no. 1 (1999). 25. 5oc/a/ Sciences in China, no. 2 (2002). 26. See his "Formation and Significance of the Market Networks between Urban and Rural Areas in the Ming and Qing Dynasties/' Social Sciences in China, no. 3 (2003). 27. Social Sciences in China, no. 2 (1999).

Research Methods and Chinese Humanities at the Turn of the Century 147

profound analysis of the opposition between scientism and humanism since the Opium War in his article "Scientific Dimension and Humanist Dimension in the Process of Modernization." Yang proposes ways to alleviate the tension between science and the humanities, between instrumental reason and morality, and to fuse natural science and the humanities for the unity between "the world of science and the world of life."28 In literary studies, Yang Yi's attainments deserve special attention, especially his efforts to synthesize research methods belonging to various other disciplines. His "Questions about Heaven: A Remarkable Work Beyond Myth and History" is a comprehensive study of the aesthetic, artistic, folkloric, and psychological aspects of Qu Yuan's masterpiece written more than 2,000 years ago. 29 He holds that the most important feature of the poetic device and the structural morphology of Qu's work lies in its dual-structural configuration set between order and disorder which Qu Yuan derived from the murals in ancestral temples in the Chu Kingdom during the Spring and Autumn Period. Although one may have questions about the validity of this conclusion, one has to agree that Yang's approach, which leads him to his conclusion, is brilliantly original, precisely because it is interdisciplinary. In their research that attempts to integrate musicology into the study of classical literature, Ge Xiaoying, Wang Xiaodun, and Tokura Hidemi have also made a c o n s i d e r a b l e c o n t r i b u t i o n to t h e f o r m a t i o n of t h e n e w d i r e c t i o n in interdisciplinary research in China. 30 In the area of m o d e r n and contemporary Chinese literary studies, Wang Guangming, inspired by Heidegger's dictum that "the essence of poetry must be understood through the essence of language," considers the question of language and form to be most important in twentieth-century Chinese poetry and holds that the development of Chinese poetry could not be fully understood without a serious consideration of poetic language and poetic form. 31 With close reference to aesthetics, literary and cultural studies, and political science, Meng Fanhua, in "Political C u l t u r e a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y Art in C h i n a , " f o r e g r o u n d s the importance of recognizing the legitimacy of political culture and the autonomy of art. 32 T h e value of "Cultural Studies: T h e West and China," presented as a "conversation" between Jin Ytianpu, Tao Dongfeng, and Chen Xiaoming, lies more in its exploration of an integrated research method for comparative literature, arts, and cultural studies than in its attempt to present new ideas. 33 28. Social Sciences in China, no. 6 (1998). 29. Social Sciences in China, no. 1 (1998). 30. See Ge Xiaoying, 'Ancient Musical Scores: The Relationship between Music and Lyrics/ Tokura Hidemi, "Reconsidering Some Issues Relating to Ancient Musical Scores and Lyrics," Wang Xiaodun, "Primitive Buddhist Music and Its Influence in China," Social Sciences in China, no. 1 (1999), no. 6 (2000), no. 2 (1999). 31. Social Sciences in China, no. 4 (1998). 32. Social Sciences in China, no. 6 (1999). 33. Social Sciences in China, no. 6 (2000).

148 Zhu Shoutong Indeed, at the turn of the century, it was a common goal among Chinese scholars and critics to find novel research methods and to conduct research across disciplinary boundaries. It would be safe to say that nearly all the important scholarly and critical achievements during this time bear a direct relationship to a collective effort to experiment and apply new approaches in the humanities, whether these approaches represent new perspectives or integrated modes of inquiry.

(Translated by Xu Lei)

Editors' Note

In the following pages, we present the work of J. Hillis Miller, Qian Zhongwen, Wang Yichuan, and Wan Junren. The four articles included in this cluster, though quite different in perspective as well as in position, discuss the cultural and literary consequences of globalization, a topic that has been drawing much critical attention in mainland China. We reprint these articles (all of which, except J. Hillis Miller's, have been translated from Chinese and shortened) in this volume, believing that they will inform our readers of what is going on in Chinese critical circles and give them a glimpse of how Chinese critics reflect on and react to globalization. J. Hillis Miller's essay, which was originally a conference paper presented In Beijing in 2000, has been translated into Chinese and published in China. Taking as a point of departure Jacques Derrida's curt assertion in The Post Card that literature, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and love letters cannot survive the regime of telecommunications, Miller explores the effects of new technologies in telecommunications on the subject/object dichotomy, the representation/reality opposition, the perceptions of selfhood, nationhood, and cultural identity, all of which are, to him, the products of what he calls a print culture. The development of technologies from the invention of the telephone, through radio, tape recorder, cinema and television, down to the Internet and telecommunications has dealt a deadly blow to the old conceptions of subjectivity, selfhood, nation-state, and cultural identity. Because of the advent of a digital culture, the self is dissolved into a multiplicity of selves, hence love letters are impossible; the subject/object dichotomy is greatly weakened by TV, the cinema and the Internet screen, resulting in the loss of subjectivity and thus the demise of philosophy; similarly, literature

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Editors'Note

and psychoanalysis, due to the blurring of the distinction between representation and reality, are also doomed. Miller thus claims that the time is up for literary study and that it won't come back again; literature, now no longer seen as an intimate part of a single homogeneous culture, is just one of many equipollent registers of culture or multiculture. This view of Miller's has generated some heated debates among Chinese critics. In his article, Qian Zhongwen, Chief Editor of Wenxue pinglun (Literary review) and researcher in the Research Institute of Chinese Literature, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, endeavors to defend the traditional way of studying literature for its own sake. He sets out with a discussion of what he calls the time lag between the development of Chinese literary theory and that of its Western counterpart, claiming that modern Chinese and Western literary theories had twice been oriented to different directions and interests, and that it is likely that they are going their separate ways for a third time now. Attributing this time lag to uneven social development, thus positing the West in a postmodern era and China in a modern one, Qian makes a case for the quest for aesthetics in Chinese literary study viewed by him as an "unfinished project" of modernity. By the same token, Qian denounces those Chinese critics who blindly follow Western cultural studies. Such an approach is postmodern, he says, and as such unfit for China as it really is today. Qian's article appears to be a critical response to Miller's assertion that the age of literary study is over and it has been replaced by an age of virtual reality in which the modernist distinction between fact and fiction is nullified. His stance is representative of those who are preoccupied with national literature and who cast a skeptical eye on contemporary Western theories. In contrast with Qian's belief in a Chinese literary modernity, Wang Yichuan, Professor of Chinese Literature, Beijing Normal University, is more concerned with the threat of technologies (e.g. film and television, the Internet) to literature, which is now looming large in China. Drawing on Roland Robertson's differentiation between "globalization" and "globality," he traces the effects of globality on modern Chinese literature and holds it responsible for major transformations in the Chinese literary arena, for better or for worse, from 1902 to the present day. Wang sees these transformations as the results of changes in the perception of time and space and of the logos/ instrumentality relation, and changes in the development of new media, and the shift of the aesthetic paradigm, all of which were in turn brought about by Western influences. He obviously takes the tremendous impact of globality on Chinese literature as ineluctable and as "an objective fact" that cannot be undone. Instead of warning against cinema and television's usurpation of the hegemonic position literature once occupied, he has suggested some ways to get out of the predicament literature now stands in: 1) to popularize literary works by adapting them for the screen; 2) to adjust to popular taste; 3) to treat refined and popular tastes as separate pursuits; 4) to encourage the writing of cross-generic works which fuse fiction, prose, poetry, and diary and legal document writing. Wang's solution poses some problems, e.g. if literature has to depend on film and TV or has to adjust to popular taste, how can it maintain its own status and character? His seemingly vigorous reasoning might as well be taken as

Editors' Note 151 a sort of non possumus, from which we can detect a sense of helplessness about the crisis in literature. In a nutshell, Wang's idea is that globality is beyond our control and, rather than combat it, we should accommodate it, though he also emphasizes the importance of maintaining national character in the face of globalization. Like the other two Chinese critics, Wan Junren, Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy, Tsinghua University, has a rather complicated attitude towards globalization. He traces the history of globalization from the Renaissance through to the Enlightenment Movement in the eighteenth century and Utopian thinking in the nineteenth century, to the Cold War in the twentieth century, and draws the conclusion that globalization is a social movement aimed not only at the globalization of economies but also that of cultures. Wan posits globalization within modernity, which was initiated in the West and which has expanded ever since to the rest of the world with surprising rapidity. He alerts his reader to the incommensurability of cultures and thus the impossibility of a common global culture, though he does not altogether deny a certain degree of globalization of economies, which he believes is necessary for facilitating international trade and business. Obviously, Wan doesn't want to see the prevalence of a uniform global culture, which, if achievable, is to him still a regional culture (in this case Western culture) imposed on the world in the name of common welfare and prosperity. Such a global culture would be deprived of richness and diversity. Balancing the economic gains of globalization against the cost of cultural diversity, he seems to take the tension between economic globalization and cultural pluralism as an inevitable contradiction having no foreseeable solution. Wan's appeal to national interest and cultural pluralism, as well as his recognition of some degree of economic globalization, reflects a contradictory attitude to globalization that is not uncommon among Chinese scholars.

literary Study Survive the Globalization of the University and the New Regime of TeBecommunicatooinis?

/. Hillis Miller

Jacques Derrida, in a striking passage written by one or another of the protagonists of La carte postale (The post card), says the following: an entire epoch of so-called literature, if not all of it, cannot survive a certain technological regime of telecommunications (in this respect the political regime is s e c o n d a r y ) . Neither can philosophy, or psychoanalysis. Or love letters. Refound here the American student with whom we had coffee last Saturday, the one who was looking for a thesis subject (comparative literature). I suggested to her something on the telephone in the literature of the 20th century (and beyond), starting with, for example, the telephone lady in Proust or the figure of the American operator, and then asking the question of the effects of the most advanced telematics {la telematique la plus avancee) on whatever would still remain of literature. I spoke to her about microprocessors and computer terminals, she seemed somewhat disgusted (avait Fair unpen degoutee). She told me that she still loved literature (me too, I answered her, mais si, mais si). Curious to know what she understood by this.1 This is a speech Miller first gave in Beijing in August 1999. A different version of it has been published in Comparative Literature Worldwide: Issues and Methods, ed. Lisa de Behar (Montevideo: Fundacion Fontaina Minelli, 2000). 1. "Envois/ in La carte postale (Paris: Aubier-Flammarion, 1980), 212, 219; The Post Card, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1987), 197, 204.

154 J. Hillis Miller

What Derrida, or rather his protagonist in La carte postale, says in the citation I have made is truly frightening, at least to a lover of literature like me or like the p r o t a g o n i s t ' s hapless interlocuter, the American g r a d u a t e s t u d e n t in comparative literature who was looking for a dissertation topic. What the protagonist says arouses in me the passions of anxiety, dubiety, fear, disgust, and perhaps a little secret desire to see what it would be like to live beyond the end of literature, love letters, philosophy, and psychoanalysis, all prime examples of "humanistic discourse." To live beyond their end would be like living beyond the end of the world. Derrida's words in The Post Card also perhaps generate in most readers the passions of disbelief and even scorn. What a ridiculous idea! We passionately and instinctively resist the statement that Derrida makes in such a casual and offhand way, as though it goes without saying. How could a change in something so superficial, mechanical, or contingent as the dominant means of preservation and dissemination of information, the change, to be precise, from a manuscript and print culture to a digital culture, actually bring to an end things that seem so universal in any civilized society as literature, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and love letters? Surely these will survive any change in the regime of telecommunications? Surely I can write love letters by e-mail! Surely I can compose and transmit literature or philosophy or even a love letter on a computer connected to the Internet just as well as I can with handwriting or with a typewriter or through a printed book? How is psychoanalysis, based as it is on face-to-face interlocution (it's called "the talking cure"), tied to the regime of print and to be brought to an end by a shift to digital culture? Derrida's curt and even insolent words arouse in me a passion of disgust like that in the graduate student to whom Derrida gave such strange advice. This advice, by the way, was taken by Avital Ronell, in her own way and no doubt not as a response to any direct solicitation from Derrida. Both Proust on the telephone and Derrida's The Post Card figure in Ronell's admirable The Telephone Book, itself in its format an anticipation of the new regime of telecommunications coming into being. Laurence Rickels had also already written brilliantly on the telephone in m o d e r n literature, psychoanalysis, and culture generally, as has Friedrich Kittler.2 Nevertheless, that is what Derrida is claiming: the change in "regime of telecommunications" does not simply transform but absolutely bring to an end literature, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and even love letters. It does this by a kind

2. See Avital Ronell, The Telephone Book (Lincoln: U of Nebraska Press, 1989); Laurence Rickels, "Kafka and Freud on the Telephone," Modern Austrian Literature: Journal of the International Arthur Schnitzier Association 22, nos. 3/4 (1989): 211-25; and Aberrations of Mourning (Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1988), especially chapters 7 and 8; Friedrich Kittler, Essays: Literature, Media, Information Systems, ed. John Johnston (Amsterdam: G+B Arts International, 1997), especially 31-49.

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of death-dealing performative fiat: "Let there be no more love letters!" How in the world could this be? Insofar as Derrida's words, either those he (or one protagonist of The Post Card) said to the graduate student, or the words you or I read now in that book, generate the passions of fear, anxiety, disgust, incredulity, and secret desire, those words are a "felicitous" performative utterance. They do what they say and help bring about the end of literature, love letters, etc., just as saying "je Vaime (I love you)," as Derrida argued in a recent seminar, not only creates love in the speaker but may generate belief and reciprocal love in the addressee, the one to whom the words are spoken. In spite of all his love for literature, Derrida's writings, for example Glas, or La carte postale itself', have certainly contributed to the end of literature as we have known it in a particular historical epoch and culture, say the last two or two and a half centuries in Europe and America. The concept of literature in the West has been inextricably tied to Cartesian notions of selfhood, to the regime of print, to Western-style democracies and notions of the nation-state, and to the right to free speech within such democracies. "Literature" in that sense began fairly recently, in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, and in one place, Western Europe. It could come to an end, and that would not be the end of civilization. In fact, if Derrida is right, and I believe he is, the new regime of telecommunications is bringing literature to an end by transforming all those factors that were its preconditions or its concomitants. One of Derrida's main points in The Post Card is that it is a feature of the new regime of telecommunications to break down the inside/outside dichotomies that presided over the old print culture. The new regime is ironically allegorized in The Post Card in somewhat obsolete forms, that is, n o t only in the many telephone conversations the protagonist (or protagonists) have with their beloved or beloveds but also in an old-fashioned remnant of the rapidly disappearing culture of handwriting, print, and the postal system: the post card. The post card stands as a proleptic anticipation of the publicity and openness of the new communications regimes. A postcard is open for anyone to read, just as e-mail today is by no means sealed or private. If an example of either happens to fall u n d e r my eye, as Derrida makes explicit for post cards and letters not only in La carte postale but also in the admirable essay called 'Telepathie," 3 I can make myself or am magically made into its recipient. The post card message, or the e-mail letter, that happens to fall under my eye, is meant for me, or I take it as meant for me, whatever its addressee. This certainly happens when I read the passage from The Post Card I have cited. The bad or even disgusting news the speaker conveys to the graduate student, news of the e n d of literature, philosophy,

3. See Jacques Derrida, "Telepathie," Furor 2 (February 1981): 5-41, also in Derrida, Psyche: Inventions de Yautre (Paris: Galilee, 1987), 237-70; and "Telepathy," trans. Nicholas Royle, The Oxford Literary Review 10, nos. 1-2 (1988): 3-41.

156 J. Hillis Miller

psychoanalysis, and love letters, is also conveyed to me. I become the recipient of this bad news. The passions that what the protagonist said generated in the graduate student are also generated in me. Perhaps the most disturbing thing Derrida says in the passage I have cited is that in the power the new regime of telecommunications has to bring an end to literature, psychoanalysis, philosophy, and love letters, "the political regime is secondary." More exactly, Derrida says, "in this respect the political regime is secondary." "In this respect" means, I take it, that he does not deny, nor would I, the importance of political regimes but that the power of the new regime of telecommunications is not limited or controlled, except in a "secondary" way, by the political regime of this or that nation. T h e second industrial revolution, as everyone knows, is the shift in the West, beginning in the mid-nineteenth-century but accelerating ever since, from an economy centered on the production and distribution of commodities to an e c o n o m y increasingly d o m i n a t e d by the creation, storage, retrieval, a n d distribution of information. Even money is now primarily information, exchanged and distributed all over the world at the speed of light by telecommunications networks that also transmit literature in digitized form. Several of Henry James's novels, for example, are now available on the Internet, along with innumerable other literary works, works, that is, belonging to the now rapidly fading historical epoch dominated by the printing press. Photography, the telegraph, the typewriter, the telephone, the gramophone, cinematography, radio, tape recorders, television, and now CDs, VCRs, DVDs, cell phones, computers, communication satellites, and the World Wide Web — we all know what these new devices are and how their power and effects have accelerated over the last century and a half. The possession and consequent effect of these devices, as Masao Miyoshi and others have frequently reminded us, is unevenly distributed among various countries and peoples of the world. Only about fifty percent at most of United States households at this point have personal computers, and of course the percentage is immensely smaller in many other countries. Nevertheless, in one way or another and to one degree and another, almost everyone's life has already been decisively changed by these technological gadgets. The changes will accelerate as more and more people come, for example, to have access to the Internet, just as so many people already have access to television. The changes occurring include a transformation of politics, nationhood or citizenship, culture, and the individual's sense of selfhood, identity, and belonging, not to speak of literature, psychoanalysis, philosophy, and love letters. The decline or weakening of the nation-state's autonomy, the development of new electronic communities, communities in cyberspace, and the possible generation of a new h u m a n sensibility leading to a mutation of perceptual experience making new cyberspace persons, persons deprived of literature, psychoanalysis, philosophy, and love letters — these are three effects of the new telecommunications regime. No doubt one effect of this endangering of various

Will Literary Study Survive? 157

privacies a n d enclosures by prosthetic telecommunication devices (as the telephone is an extension of the ear) is to exacerbate by reaction defensive nationalisms, often separatist nationalisms within once secure nation-states or unions, as is the case in Africa or in the Balkans today, or to inspire the horrors of genocide and "ethnic cleansing." Fear of these new technologies also generates defensive moves like attempts by the United States Congress to control the Internet, for example in the Communications Decency Act. This act is clearly unconstitutional, a breach of the right to free speech guaranteed by the United States Constitution. It has been judged so by the courts. W h a t is p e r h a p s m o s t s c a n d a l o u s a b o u t t h e radical effects of new telecommunications is the way none of these gadgets' inventors, so far as I know, intended or foresaw any such thing as the effects their inventions have had. The inventors of the telephone or of the magnetic tape recorder were doing n o more than exploiting technological possibilities, playing creatively with wires, electrical currents, vibrating diaphragms, plastic tapes, etc. These scientists had no intention, so far as I know, of putting an end to literature, love letters, philosophy, or the nation-state. It is the incommensurability between cause and effect plus the accidental aspect of the huge effect, no less than a radical disruption, interruption, break, or reorientation in human history, that is so scandalous. The new telecommunications are having a powerful effect in creating local and transnational ideologies. It would be a rash intellectual who would dare to affirm that we have reached an "end of ideology." Ideology does not vanish that easily, if ever or at all. Nor do I think that Marx's analysis of ideology in The German Ideology has by any means lost its pertinence today. For both Marx and Louis Althusser, though in somewhat different ways, ideology is a phantasmal imaginary superstructural effect of human beings' actual material conditions of existence, that is, the mode of manufacture, distribution, and circulation of goods under which those human beings live. For both Marx and Althusser, ideology is not transformed by lecturing people or by rational argument but by changes in those material conditions of existence. Nor is ideology just an innocent subjective spectral insubstantial set of mistakes. It has power, often unfortunately, to intervene in history and make things happen, as for example in the effects in the state of California, where I live, of repressive immigration laws and of the absurd law declaring English the official language of California. Though Paul de Man was not a Marxist (whatever, exactly, that means, these days or at any time), he was a good reader of Marx's The German Ideology. Both Marx and Althusser might have agreed with the definition of ideology he gives in "The Resistance to Theory": "this does not mean that fictional narratives are not part of the world and of reality; their impact upon the world may well be all too strong for comfort. What we call ideology is precisely the confusion of linguistic with natural reality, of reference with phenomenalism." 4 4. Paul de Man, The Resistance to Theory (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press, 1986), 11.

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I would add to what de Man says that it is not so much language as such that generates the delusions of ideologies but rather language as molded by one or another medium: voice, handwriting, print, television, or the computer connected to the Internet. All these reproductive technologies exploit the strange propensity to dwell in fictional or phantasmal spaces that each human being has. The bodies of readers, television viewers, users of the Internet — bodies in the sense of eyes, ears, n e r v o u s systems, brains, passions — are a p p r o p r i a t e d , by way of an extravagant propensity peculiar, at least in its hyperbolic form, to human beings among living creatures, to become the theater of fictions, phantasmagoria, swarms of ghosts. We lend our bodies to the bodiless and then are prone to act in the material world on the strength of that fictitious embodiment. Cervantes's Don Quixote, Flaubert's Emma Bovary, and Conrad's Lord Jim acted in the social world on the basis of fantasies incarnated in them through reading books. This was a haunting that the reader of these novels repeats in reading about it, as he or she raises in turn the specters of Don Quixote, Emma Bovary, and Lord Jim. That is the work or working of ideology. How much more powerful even than books are these new communications technologies to do that work! New c o m m u n i c a t i o n technologies are making a q u a n t u m leap in the generation and imposition of ideologies. They do this by a kind of hallucinatory hypnotic conjuration. This is easy to see, though by no means easy, or perhaps even possible, to understand clearly. The means of understanding it are caught in the thing to be understood. It used to be the newspaper. Now it is television, cinema, and, increasingly, the Internet. These technologies, it might be argued, are in a sense ideologically neutral. They will transmit whatever they are told to say. Nevertheless, as Marshall McLuhan notoriously said, "the medium is the message." I take it this means, as Derrida in his own way is saying, that a change in medium will change the message. To put this in another way, "the medium is the ideology." Ideology, for de Man, as for Marx and Althusser in their somewhat different ways, is not an easily correctible error existing at the level of rational consciousness. It is a powerful unconscious error. In ideology, says Althusser, "men represent their real conditions of existence to themselves in imaginary form." 5 De Man's way of putting this, in the passage I have cited, is to say that what we call ideology is a confusion between linguistic and natural reality. In ideology, something that is a purely linguistic phantasmal or spectral creation is taken to be an accurate representation of things as they are. This error is taken so much for granted as to be unconscious. Of course that is the way things are, we say to ourselves. Since an ideological aberration is so unconscious, so taken for granted, it is impossible to eradicate it simply by pointing out that it is an error, just as

5. Louis Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation)," in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, trans. Ben Brewster (NY: Monthly Review Press, 1972), 163.

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you cannot cure someone of being in love by pointing out the defects of the beloved. I would add to these formulations, as I have already said, the claim that it is not just language as such that creates and enforces ideology but language or other signs as generated, stored, retrieved, transmitted, and received by one or another technological prosthesis. This is as true of manuscript and then print culture as it is of digital culture today. Althusser lists in the essay already cited "the communications ISA (press, radio and television, etc.)" as o n e , along with education, the political system, the juridical system, and so on, among the various ideological state apparatuses. 6 The regime of print generated the possibility of literature, love letters, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and the modern concept of the nation-state. The new regime of telecommunications is now generating new forms replacing all these. These new media — cinema, television, the Internet — are not just passive matrices that transmit in unchanged form ideological or truthtelling content. They shape what is "sent" by their means and transform that "content," willy-nilly, into expressions of the messages the medium itself puissantly imposes. That is what Derrida means by saying "in this respect the political regime is secondary." You cannot write or send love letters or literature on the World Wide Web. When you try to do so, they turn into something else. Henry James's The Golden Bowl becomes a different thing when I download it from cyberspace. Nor are politics and the sense of citizenship the same to a user of the World Wide Web or to a television-watcher as to an old-fashioned reader of the newspapers. The transformation of political life by television has been strikingly evident in recent presidential elections in the United States. People vote on the basis of the way the candidates come across on television, not on the basis of an objective assessment of alternative programs nor any longer on the basis of what they read in the newspapers. Fewer people read newspapers at all. It is easy enough to specify what are the most salient features of the new set of (no doubt ideological) presuppositions being transmitted now everywhere in the world by the new regime of telecommunications. It is easy, because many authorities have already told us what they are, among them Jacques Derrida in the passages I have cited. The print age made possible the modern nation-state, the imperialist conquest of the world, colonialism, revolutions like the French and American revolutions, psychoanalysis, love letters, and philosophy from Descartes through Locke and H u m e to Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, and Heidegger (the latter three already unwillingly and anxiously part of the age of the typewriter and the gramophone). I do not say print was the single "cause" of these features of culture from the eighteenth to early twentieth centuries. No doubt other factors contributed,

6

Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses," 143.

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other inventions like the steam engine, the postal system, the spinning jenny, gunpowder in its reinvented European form, more and more powerful and efficient guns, and so on, just as the internal combustion engine, the jet plane, the transistor, rocket engines, and so on have been necessary for the second industrial revolution. What I do claim, however, is that all these features of the now fading culture depended on print, on the newspaper, on clandestine printing presses turning out manifestoes, on the printers who brought out, sometimes against censorship, the books of Descartes, Locke, Richardson, Thomas Paine, the Marquis de Sade, and so on through Dickens, Balzac, Marx, and Dostoevsky, down to Proust and Joyce. Print encouraged and reinforced the assumption of the separation of subject and object; the separate unity and autonomy of the self; the authority of the "author"; the difficulty or perhaps impossibility of knowing verifiably the mind and heart of the other person; the regime of representation or of a certain kind of mimesis ("there is reality," we used to say. "Here is its representation in the printed book, to be measured by its truth of correspondence to the extra-linguistic reality that is out there.")', the assumption of the nation-state's ethnic unity and autonomy, r e i n f o r c e d by all t h o s e state a p p a r a t u s e s Althusser lists, i n c l u d i n g t h e "Communications ISA"; the enforcement of laws and regulations by printing them; the constant indoctrination of a certain national ideology through the newspaper; and, finally, the development of the modern research university as the place where the ethos of a given nation-state is inculcated in future citizens and servants of that state. Of course these features were often contested in print media, but the media themselves, I am arguing, constantly reinforced what was being contested, even in the act of its putting in question. "Give me control of the printing presses," it used to be said, "and I shall control the whole nation." Now such a person might say, "Give me control of all the televisions stations and all the radio talk shows, and I shall control the world." All these features of print culture, the reader will note, depend on relatively rigid boundaries, frontiers, walls: those between one person and another, one class, race, or gender and another, one medium and another (print, picture, and music), one nation-state and another, consciousness and the objects of which c o n s c i o u s n e s s is c o n s c i o u s , e x t r a l i n g u i s t i c t h i n g s as they a r e a n d t h e representation of those things in language, one time and another (as reinforced, for example, by the tense structure of Western languages as used in printed historical narratives or in novels). When the printing press gradually gives way to cinema, television, and the Internet, as is now happening with increasing rapidity, all those once more or less solid frontiers are blurred. The self dissolves into a multiplicity of selves, each generated by whatever prosthetic device I happen to be using. That is one reason why love letters will be n o longer possible. I become a different self o n the telephone or on the Internet, no longer the same person as the one who wrote love letters and sent them through the postal system.

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The subject/object dichotomy on which philosophy from Descartes to Husserl d e p e n d e d is also greatly weakened, since the television or cinematic or Internet screen is neither objective nor subjective but an extension of a mobile subjectivity that is "wired" into it. That is one thing Derrida may mean by saying the new regime of telecommunications will bring an end to philosophy. The opposition between representation and reality also is shaken. All that swarm of television or cinematic or Internet images, so many ghosts invoked or conjured into existence by the machines, breaks down the distinction between fiction and reality, just as it breaks down the distinction between present, past, and future. It is often difficult to distinguish between news and advertising in television "shows." A printed novel, at least in Western languages, tells the reader by the system of verb tenses whether something being described is to be thought of as taking place in an imaginary present or whether it belongs to something to be thought of as past for the present-tense narration. A television or cinematic image belongs to a strange ghostly species of non-present present, nor is it always easy to tell whether something is "eyewitness news," that is, something that is claimed to be happening at this moment, or whether it is a "simulation," as they say. Many people believed and perhaps still believe that the United States did not really land men on the moon but that the images of the moon landing were created in some television studio. How would you be sure, since the only testimony is those dancing images on the screen? The new communications media are also transforming the university, for better and for worse, making it less and less a self-enclosed ivory tower serving the interests of a single nation-state, m o r e and m o r e p e n e t r a t e d by those transnational corporations that pay for its research. The new research university is also a place where new transnational communities and solidarities can be developed. The boundaries of the nation-state are also being broken down, for example by the Internet, since more or less instantaneous access to sites from all over the world is possible to anyone with a computer, a modem, and a service provider. The Internet is a powerful force for globalization and for the weakening of the nation-state. The frontiers between the different media, finally, are also more and more erased. Visual images, auditory sequences (such as music), and words are all indifferently transformed by digitizing into streams of zeroes and ones. Like television and cinema, the computer monitor with attached or incorporated audio speakers mixes inextricably images that appeal to eye, ear, and the ability to decipher written language. The new regime of telecommunications is incorrigibly a multimedia affair. Reading as the private and exclusive activity of a man, woman, or child "curled u p with a good book" gives way to "surround sight" and "surround sound." The latter inundate ear and eye with a swarm of ghosts that are neither present nor non-present, neither incarnated nor disincarnated, neither here nor there, neither dead nor undead. These specters have enormous power to invade the mind, feelings, and imagination of the person who raises them by pressing

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the button on the remote control, and to bend mind and feelings to their shapes. Since many of these phantoms are figures of the utmost violence, as in so much of cinema and television today, it is as if the fears that in the old print world lurked in the depths of the unconscious are now brought out into the open, for better or for worse, where we can behold them face to face, see and hear them, not just read about them. The distinction between consciousness and unconsciousness, basis of psychoanalysis, no longer holds. That, I suppose, is what Derrida may mean by saying the new regime of telecommunications is bringing an end to psychoanalysis. Of course all those books on my shelves also are powerful instruments for the conjuring of ghosts when I read them. They are therefore powerful tools for reinforcing the ideologies embodied in the medium of the printed book: the ghosts of Hegel's "geisf or Heidegger's "sein when I read Hegel or Heidegger, the ghosts of the unconscious or of Freud's patients, Irma, Anna, or Dora, when I read psychoanalysis, the swarming ghosts of all those characters in all those novels when I read works of fiction: Fielding's Tom Jones, Stendhal's Fabrizio, Flaubert's Emma Bovary, George Eliot's Dorothea, Henry James's Isabel, Joyce's Leopold Bloom. All books, as Friedrich Kittler says, "are books of the dead, like those from Egypt that stand at the beginning of [Western!] literature." 7 Books are so many powerful conjuring devices for raising all those phantoms, the phantoms inhabiting philosophy, psychoanalysis, and literature. The ghosts on the television or cinema screen, however, seem much more objective, public, a n d shared, m u c h less d e p e n d e n t on my own effort of conjuration than is the private act of reading a book. Moreover, as I have said, these new telecommunications technologies, so many new devices for raising ghosts in a new way, also generate new ideological matrices. They break down, for example, the barrier between subject and object, consciousness and the objects of consciousness, that is presupposed and sublated in Hegel's Phenomenology. What should we do in this new and unprecedented situation? As I have suggested, with Derrida's help, the new telecommunications regime may have been created by capitalism but it exceeds its creators and takes on a force and life of its own. That's what Derrida means by saying: "In this respect the political regime is secondary." This is also what gives us our chance: the openness of the new telecommunications to be appropriated for mobilization or recuperation, the creation of new alliances. How can this happen? One answer is to recognize that critique or diagnosis always has a performative as well as a constative dimension. Though these technologies have a powerful effect on the meaning of what is encoded in the new forms, they can be appropriated for new forms of co-operative h u m a n praxis. We are not simply at their mercy. T h e appropriation of new

7. Kittler, Essays, 37.

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communications technology can take place in the n a m e of new cyberspace communities of diversity. I call these, following Bill Readings, communities of dissensus, that is, communities of those who disagree, who c a n n o t come to consensus. Giorgio Agamben calls this association of diversities "the coming community." 8 T h e new c o m m u n i c a t i o n s technologies can also be used to facilitate performative acts of political responsibility. Those acts respond to a d e m a n d coming from the future anterior of that "democracy to come" as a sort of possible impossibility. If this perfect democracy were programmed as an inevitable future, if it were "possible" in the sense of certainly foreseeable, it would not require our praxis. It is only as unforeseeable and as impossible without a break in the programmed continuity that it invites or demands or obliges our performative praxis. A model for this might be that sentence in the United States Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." On the one hand, this sentence asserts that these truths are self-evident. They do not require political action to be made true. On the other hand, the sentence says, "we hold these truths to be self-evident." "We hold" is a performative speech act. It creates the truths it claims are self-evident and invites whoever reads these words to endorse them, to countersign them, to work for their fulfilment, as an ancestor of mine, Samuel Hopkins of Rhode Island, signed the United States Declaration of Independence. The words invite us to work towards their fulfilment in further performative acts. The promise embodied in those words has by no means yet been entirely fulfilled in the United States. Though the words belong to the past, the past of the moment of the founding of our country, they invite from the future, as a future anterior, their more perfect fulfilment. The words call to us from the horizon of that democracy to come. Well, what about literary study? Will it survive? Literary study's time is up. T h e r e is never time any more to study literature "for itself," detached from theoretical or political reflection. It would be anachronistic to do so. I doubt very much if it will ever again be time or if there will ever again be time. This gives yet another meaning, or perhaps the same one, to Hegel's famous dictum that art is a thing of the past: "In alien diesen Beziehungen ist und bleibt die Kunst nach der Seite ihrer hochsten Bestimmung fur uns ein Vergdngenes. (In all these respects art, as far as its highest determination [or calling] is concerned — is and remains for

8. See Bill Readings, The University in Ruins (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1996); Giorgio Agamben, La comunita che viene (Turin: Einaudi, 1990); and Giorgio Agamben, The Coming Community, trans. Michael Hardt (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press, 1993).

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us a thing of the past [ein Vergdngenes — a something past, a past thing])." 9 This means too, though Hegel perhaps did not quite know it, that art, including literature as a form of art, is also always a thing of the future. It never quite successfully gets spirit into sensuous form so we can get on to the end of getting spirit into spiritual form. It is never time yet for art and literature. We dwell, as far as literature and literary study is concerned, in that perpetual in-between, always too late and always too early, untimely. To shift, on Hegel's back, so to speak, to a slightly different register in conclusion, I assert that there never has been time for literary study. It was never the right time for it. Literary study always was, is now, and always will be untimely. Literature is a name for that component in sign systems in whatever medium or m o d e t h a t is i n c a p a b l e of b e i n g r a t i o n a l i z e d in any form of collective institutionalized pragmatically valuable study in the university, whether in the old Cold War university or in the new global university with new departmental configurations now coming into being. This means that "literary study" is an oxymoron. What this oxymoron names will continue to take place, whenever it does, if it does, in odd moments stolen from more practical concerns, such as making California competitive in the global economy. Literary study's time is always up. It will survive as it has always survived, as a ghostly revenant, as a somewhat embarrassing or alarming spectral visitant at the feast of reason. Literature is potholes in the Information Superhighway, black holes in the Internet Galaxy. Nevertheless, though there's never time, though it's never the time, these holes, potholes or black holes, "literature" as survivor, as a feature of absolute singularity within any cultural forms in whatever medium, will continue to demand urgently to be "studied," here and now, within whatever new institutional and d e p a r t m e n t a l configurations we devise and within whatever new regime of telecommunications we inhabit.

9. G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen uber die Asthetik: Theorie Werkausgabe (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970), 13, 25. I am grateful to Andrzej Warminski for providing the reference and for suggesting an interpretative translation to me on the Hegel-less Maine island where I am writing this. I also thank him for an e-mail interchange about the meaning of Hegel's sentence.

The Future of Literary Theory io the Context of Globalization (Excerpts)

Qian Zhongwen

I once pointed out that in the context of globalization, the development of literary theory in China and the West, when viewed from the twentieth-century vantage point, had diverged twice. Before the 1980s, mainstream Western literary theory foregrounded the intrinsic approach to the study of literature, whereas, in our country, extrinsic study had been carried to the extreme, the consequence being that both had gone into culs-de-sac, leaving no room for further development. Since the 1980s, when the effects of globalization began to be felt, Western literary theory has on the whole shifted its focus from intrinsic study to extrinsic study, and this trend has been rapidly gaining force. However, our focus has turned from extrinsic study to intrinsic study, with heavy emphasis on the questions and rules of literary theory per se. Judging from the current situation, it seems likely that the development of Chinese literary theory may run counter to that of Western literary theory for the third time. [...] In the mid-1980s, American scholars introduced China to "cultural studies," a p o p u l a r field of study in E u r o p e a n d t h e US at the time. Afterwards, postmodernism, new historicism, postcolonialism, orientalism, feminism, ethnic studies, and so on, flooded the field of literary theory and criticism. Soon, such critical theories began to influence various disciplines in social sciences and the

This article was first published in Chinese in Wenxue pinglun (Literary review), no. 3, 2001.

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humanities. In the second half of the 1980s, cultural studies was still not exactly fashionable in China. When it was considered and addressed, it was as a sort of interdisciplinary study within literary theory. By the early 1990s, however, people, after a period of contemplation and reflection, started to discover the strengths and characteristics of postmodern thought, which then spread to literary and artistic circles, initiating the upsurge of postmodernism. Later on, we found that many literary critics had shifted their academic interest to critical reviews of economics, politics, and schools of thought, which marked the first sign of literary theorists and critics branching out into disciplines other than their own. This p h e n o m e n o n was in sharp contrast to the early 1980s, when literary critics, focusing on literary questions alone, strongly condemned the neglect of the aesthetic aspects of literature and arts in the past and shunned any connection with politics, ethics, history, or society in their research. They castigated the distractions of non-literary fields of study, together with cultural preferences that should be a constituent part of aesthetic appreciation, with the purpose of purifying literature per se. Now the situation has reversed. Those who in the past studied literature are now devoted to translating a n d / o r introducing academic works in sociology, ideology, economics, science, and technology. We can discern two trends in this endeavor: the inclination to instruct and edify, a n d the inclination to apply Western terms indiscriminately. Whichever it is, we are experiencing another large-scale transplant of Western terms, and the effects of that are very complicated. Cultural studies is now prevalent in our country. But, initially, it was scholars in the field of Chinese and foreign literatures who were among the first to enter this area. Later, scholars in political science, economics, philosophy and sociology became involved, signaling a sincere quest for postmodernity in contemporary cultural studies and the wish to expand the academic space in social sciences and the humanities. While cultural studies remains very popular in China, we are aware that the theories of such masters of cultural studies as Foucault and Derrida are often problematized and criticized back in their own country now. Similarly, the validity of cultural studies is seriously questioned in the American academic arena because of its defects in theory, methodology, and practice. The field of cultural studies described above, which has been popular in Europe and America over the past few decades, is cultural studies in the narrow sense — the study of new cultural trends. In fact, general cultural studies has always existed in the cultural activities of all nations. There are as many schools of such studies as there are cultural concepts; only they are less flashy than the current "cultural studies." Take China for example. T h r o u g h o u t China's history, there have been large-scale cultural research projects on the political and economic systems, in addition to those in archaeology, linguistics, philosophy, and literature. These form the bulk of our cultural studies. Cultural studies as part of postmodern thought takes up only a small portion of the general cultural studies, which is oriented on the whole towards the quest for modernity. Modernity means a new rational spirit that

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enables society to make steady progress. It represents a scientific and humanistic spirit constantly involved in self-reflection and criticism; it is an incomplete project that keeps changing, innovating, and producing unlimited resources. Postmodern cultural studies has raised various questions that enrich cultural studies in the broad sense; however, our culture should on the whole be oriented towards modernity, t h o u g h at times it can draw o n some reasonable e l e m e n t s of postmodernism.

In his articles published in Chinese periodicals and in his seminars in China, the American deconstructionist, J. Hillis Miller, has said several times that literature has become a victim of the present regime of telecommunications, that literature and the arts have always been untimely, and that the age of literary study is over. For Miller, "Literary study's time is up," and there is never time any more to study literature for itself detached from theoretical or political reflection; it would be anachronistic to do so. He doubts very much if there will ever again be time. 1 Another American scholar, Gabriele Schwab, believes that there has been an apparent shift of focus in American critical circles to historical and political critiques. She thinks theorists nowadays concern themselves more with issues relating to ethnicity, gender, class, identity, and so on. Many critics base their discussions on such issues as history a n d politics. T h e s e new theoretical perspectives have shed much light on traditional texts. 2 American scholars who have been in contact with Chinese academics have discovered that they are preoccupied with the issue of "the aesthetic quest" as they explore, among other things, such topics as poetics, poetic culture, mythical aesthetics, comparisons between Chinese and Western literary theories. These topics, they argue, are too broad to be useful, which is the reason they were abandoned in the US three or four decades ago. They are eager, however, to learn about the writing methods of major Chinese critics of theories, although the advice they give to Chinese scholars is that their research should be "more specific and detailed." 3 What Miller and others have argued, if I haven't got them wrong, also has the following implications: first, it is no longer possible, nor is it right, for literary theory to explore questions concerning only literature itself, detached from theoretical and political reflections; second, a propitious age for literature, i.e., a literary age, is no longer possible, though literary study will continue to exist; third,

1. J. H. Miller, "The Future of Literary Study in the Age of Globalization and Telecommunications/' Wenyi bao, 29 August 2000; "Will Literary Study Survive the Age of Globalization?" Wenxue pinglun, no. 1 (2001). 2. Gabriele Schwab, "Travelling Theory: A Dialogue," Zhonghua dushu bao, 25 October 2000. 3. Schwab, "Travelling Theory."

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literary study in the US has shifted to cultural studies, the new methodologies and perspectives of which can enrich literary study. Therefore, literary study and literary theory have been relegated to a minor status. American scholars' opinions convey an i m p o r t a n t message: there is now a problem, in the context and atmosphere of globalization, of whether literary theory will continue to exist and develop. Judging from the views of these American scholars, it is untimely to discuss literary questions for the sake of literature itself, detached from theoretical and political consideration. And this seems to have been the case for some time in their country. Now I understand some p h e n o m e n a that have been puzzling me for a long time. For instance, Richard Rorty says in The Culture of Postphilosophy that in Britain and the United States discussions of Freud, Heidegger, Derrida, and Sartre in literature classes are considered literary theory and that philosophy courses for English majors are offered not by philosophers but by teachers from English d e p a r t m e n t s . A n o t h e r e x a m p l e : w h e n discussing the c u l t u r e of globalization, some scholars suggest that literary works should be read as philosophical works, and vice versa. They also want the methods of literary criticism to be applied to other disciplines. The fact that the study of pure literary theory was challenged and ruined by "cultural studies" perhaps explains why we haven't seen any brilliant and profound works of literary theory by contemporary European and American scholars for a long time. But why then is "the quest for aesthetics" still the basis on which Chinese scholars conduct their research in literary theory? In my opinion, this reveals the essential difference between Chinese and foreign literary theories in the current situation of globalization. Owing to differences in social and artistic development, Chinese scholars' conception of literary and artistic research differs from that of their foreign counterparts in that the former focus on modernity and the latter on postmodernity. This is exactly what I mean when I say that Chinese literary theory has run counter to its Western counterpart for a third time. Foreign literary theories may be beautiful beyond compare, and yet they cannot replace our own, even though they all might be translated into Chinese. We need to establish our own literary theory. And this is exactly what the quest for modernity is doing in our contemporary literary theory. T h e question is whether all this confirms that in the current context of globalization there exist two essentially different ideological quests — one for modernity and the other for postmodernity. As for which will be dominant, it really depends on a country's cultural development. The reason why Chinese literary theory is lagging behind is that for a long time, politics castrated the essential feature, i.e., the aesthetic feature, of literature and arts, and throttled the freedom of aesthetic imagination in literary and artistic creations. When this unfortunate situation had become a thing of the past, literature and arts, in order to be literature and arts, had first of all to recover their original nature, that is, their aesthetic character. Therefore, in the early

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1980s, there were widespread discussions of aesthetic appreciation as a part of aesthetic and literary theories, which enabled literature a n d arts to restore themselves, to rebuild their own principles and re-establish their autonomous status. Very soon, because the repression of aesthetic features had lasted so long and the resistance against such repressions had been equally strong, many scholars proposed, as a counter measure, that aesthetic appreciation was just aesthetic appreciation; it had nothing to do with cultural factors. The role of cultural preferences a n d cultural content was then entirely excluded from aesthetic appreciation. So, in our country the so-called "quest for aesthetic appreciation" is still a topic under scrutiny and discussion. The hardships Chinese literature and arts have undergone are rather hard for our foreign colleagues to imagine. To them, many questions concerning literary theory that we now face are outdated; indeed, from their postmodern point of view, these questions have ceased to be the issue. But, though they find them insignificant, it is just these questions that remain of great significance to us, and they need to be explored and given theoretical reconsideration. And I'm afraid, even within their (Western) literary theory and study, there are still some important questions, such as the nature of art, that need to be explored. Foreign scholars themselves do not seem to have any agreed-upon answer to this question; their opinions vary. Because of the upsurge of antiessentialism and postmodernism in the last few decades, many scholars prefer to concentrate on concrete and specific topics rather than on any "isms" or theories. This tendency can also be found in the field of literary theory in our country. In the second half of the 1990s, some Chinese scholars, under the influence of globalization and postmodern cultural studies, began to think that discussions about aesthetic features, poetics and cultural poetics were out-of-date, because these topics had long ceased to be discussed abroad. Only discussions of society, e c o n o m y , r a c e , class, t h e p u b l i c s p h e r e , p o s t c o l o n i a l i s m , f e m i n i s m , postmodernism and post-postmodernism, with a few examples from literature, could be counted as representing the cutting edge in international academic research. But I'm afraid that is not exactly the way things are. Naturally, we can draw on some reasonable elements of what foreigners say and get instruction and inspiration from them, but we should not take over what they do and say as a guide to our own actions or as our academic standard. I'm much puzzled by the rejection of the earlier quest for aesthetic appreciation. What on earth has happened to literature and the arts? Why should literary phenomena, which are mainly fictive, be equated with economics, historical facts, and social investigation? Why should it become an appendage to ideology again, though of a different kind? Can it ever become an independent aesthetic ideology? Even if foreign literary theories are superior, adopting them in place of our own — which happened in the 1980s — is by no means effective. For our part, the in-depth study of literary theory is still at the fledgling stage. I don't think the undertaking we have just begun is coming to an end yet. I'd rather believe

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that modernity is "an unfinished project." For instance, Chinese classical literary theory does n o t seem to have a clear-cut morphology, nor does it have any theoretical system in the modern sense. Some experts have devoted themselves to sifting and integrating a prodigious corpus of older works, in the h o p e of reconstructing a system of classical literary theory by interpreting and elucidating its key concepts. Despite the fact that they have made tremendous progress, having produced a long list of works with differing merits, there is still much to be done, owing to the disparity of their views, before any agreement can be reached. The research on classical Chinese literary theory should n o doubt look for new perspectives in its undertaking, which is part and parcel of our project of literary theory. Of course, what is more important is that we should construct the morphology of our own modern literary theory. Modernity lays heavy emphasis on spirit and value; it requires restructuring and construction. [...] We should c o n d u c t academic research with the spirit of modernity and communicative rationality, a n d with humanistic c o n c e r n s in m i n d . We should h a n d l e historical a n d theoretical issues with a genuine historicist attitude, and scrutinize the nonhistoricist views and attitudes held by some people. If we are not aware of the existence of various morphologies in our modern literary theory, and do not regard them as a part of our tradition but rather describe them one-sidedly, dissolving and negating them from a postmodern point of view, then we can hardly find any starting point at all for the establishment of a new literary theory. The construction and renovation of our literary theory still has a long way to go, and this remains an essential aspect of our research on literary theory. Literary theory as an autonomous discipline should continue to exist in accordance with its own law, and resist the tide of postmodern cultural studies rather than being drowned by it. At the same time, there is another reason why literary theory won't be replaced by cultural studies, which lies in literature's special mode of existence and mode of thinking represented by literary and artistic creations. Obviously, it is not wrong to view literature as a constituent part of culture. For thousands of years, before literature became an independent artistic form, it had interlocked with other fields of study. As people learned more and more about literary p h e n o m e n a and the features of literature, they started to separate it from other aspects of culture. A relatively more scientific conception of literature in the m o d e r n sense was thus born only a few h u n d r e d years ago. U n d e r the influence of new technology, people's way of thinking may change in accordance with the change in their material life. Corresponding ideologies may undergo transformations from inside. Literary and artistic forms are also constantly changing, and the art of language is certainly affected. No matter how variegated the forms of literature and the arts are, they can only be the products of artistic thinking. Take fiction for example. No matter whether it is fictive or claims to be fictive, whether it is Internet fiction or fiction for film and TV, whether it is a

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realistic work or a mere product of narrative strategies, it is nothing if not the product of artistic thinking, including all the new artistic forms which never stop a p p e a r i n g . Artistic sense a n d aesthetic thinking is an essential feature of humankind formed in the long course of history; art is indeed a verification of human nature. As culture diversifies and changes over time, there may be more scope for artistic creation to express and enrich cultural preferences; however, it is unlikely that the essential feature of literature formulated over thousands of years will be abruptly castrated and annexed by culture in the broad sense. In other words, human aesthetic thinking will continue to exist and be enriched, whereas expressions deprived of aesthetic sense can hardly become literature or art at all. [...] Literary study and cultural studies are both similar and different in their modes of thinking. Both entail comprehensive and theoretical thinking. However, they have different emphases. Literary study, by concentrating on the perception and reception of aesthetic objects, explores questions relating to artistic thoughts, narrative modes, and the use of techniques shown in individual literary and artistic works. Even though literary study may deal with various cultural aspects such as politics, social issues, ethics, philosophy, colonialism, feminism and so on, its major concern centers on aesthetic features, aesthetic ideas, aesthetic variations, aesthetic trends and traditions, with a view to illuminating the artistic works themselves. As for t h e cultural preferences a n d i n t e r p r e t a t i o n s involved in aesthetic consciousness, they enrich the elucidations and interpretations of aesthetic elements; therefore, they are a part of literary study. These discussions about cultural preferences within the sphere of aesthetic perception loosely fall within the field of cultural poetics.

(Translated by Lin Qingxin)

Chinese literature m the Milieu of "Globality" (Excerpts)

Wang Yichuan

I U] China's economy is an active participant in the process of "globalization" (e.g., China's accession to the WTO) that characterizes the world economy. But our culture adopts a basic attitude of opening to, communicating with, and learning from other nations on the one hand, while on the other endeavouring to maintain and uphold its own unique character. In other words, while the economies of the world are seeking some sort of unification, cultures in the world tend to be conserved, cultivated, and unique. Although the unification of world economies appears possible, the unification of different cultures into one world culture is anything but practicable. How can we deal with such a complicated issue? There is obviously a need to make a proper distinction between globalization and globality in this matter. With this differentiation, the term "globalization" can be used to refer to the unification of economies, trades, and science and technology, whereas the term "globality" foregrounds the interdependence and negotiations a m o n g different cultures of the world. These h e t e r o g e n e o u s cultures are constantly in the conflicting situation of consultation and dispute, influence and rejection, homogenization and resistance, universalization and localization. This differentiation serves to limit the use of "globalization" to the spheres of economy, This article was first published in Chinese in Wenxue pinglun (Literary review), no. 6 (2001).

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trade and science, and reserves the word "globality" for a more specific and active role in cultural and humanities studies, including literary study.1 T h e unfolding of globality in China, or China's encounter of globality, can be looked at from many different perspectives. This is of course a matter of opinion. I would like to consider four points of departure — or dimensions — of the question at issue. First, there has been a fundamental change in the conception of time and space. For a long time, the Chinese had a unique spatialtemporal perception, i.e., their own system of perceiving time and space, which was evident in the way they kept annals, designated years in the lunar calendar, a n d conceived the alternation of dynasties, as well as in the hierarchical conceptualization of space, i.e., placing China at the "center" of the "universe" and all other countries at the periphery. This old-fashioned conceptualization of time and space is bound to conflict with the idea of globality. The West, once thought to be one of those weak and insignificant "foreign places" outside China, turned out to be a powerful "Other," and China ceased to be the center of the universe and became no different from numerous other countries on earth. No longer the lone superpower, China now must associate with other countries; no longer at the center of global culture, China is now marginalized, weakened, and even e n d a n g e r e d . Secondly, there is the change in the p e r c e p t i o n of the relationship between logos and instrumentality. This is a uniquely Chinese system of conceptualizing the relationship between immanent essence and external forms. Traditionally, the Chinese had always regarded logos (the i m m a n e n t subject, nature or law) as "fundamental" and instrumentality (external material instruments) as "inessential." However, the increasingly important role that advanced science and Western technology — such as mathematics, physics, steam engines, mining technology, and military technology — have played both in the military conflicts between China and the West and in our daily life clearly indicates that this perception of the relationship should be readjusted. Thirdly, there is the change in the media. This involves the way people communicate with one another. Lithographic printing and typographic printing were used in China for a long time, and the postal service mainly relied on human resources (e.g., courier station). But, since the Opium War, the import of modern Western media, such as m e c h a n i z e d p r i n t i n g technology a n d electronic m e d i a , have b r o u g h t tremendous changes to China's media and have made possible mass production, r a p i d transmission over long distances, a n d the i n a u g u r a t i o n of m o d e r n newspapers and periodicals. Finally, there is the change in the paradigm of aesthetic expression. People want to express their life experiences in the world by means of a symbolic system, and this requires changes in the paradigm of 1. For a discussion of "globalization" and "globality/' see Ulrich Beck and Jurgen Habermas et al., Globalization and Politics (Beijing: Zhongyang bianyi chubanshe, 2000); Roland Robertson, Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 2000).

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aesthetic expression. Poetry, or lyrical poetry, had always enjoyed a hegemonic position in Chinese literature. Under Western influences, the supreme position of p o e t r y was w e a k e n e d a n d b e c a m e u n s t a b l e . W h e n t h e C h i n e s e conceptualizations of time and space, of the relationship between logos and instrumentality, media, and the paradigm of aesthetic expression are incorporated into the process of globalization, the situation and standing of Chinese literature are also subjected to corresponding changes.

II It was the combined forces of a new temporal-spatial pattern, a new l o g o s / instrumentality relationship and the advent of mechanised printing that led to the birth of a new paradigm of aesthetic expression — modern Chinese literature. The role played by both the transformation of temporal-spatial perception and the logos/instrumentality relationship should be emphasized, but it should also be noted that if modern media production such as that in newspapers, magazines, and books had not been available when Liang Qichao started his "revolution of fiction" in 1902, the birth of modern literature would have been unimaginable. But the question is: why did fiction, the lesser form of literature, rather than poetry, which was the overlord of classical literature, become "the most refined of literary works" (Liang Qichao)? There are various reasons. First, from the generic point of view, poetry, fettered by restrictions such as tonal pattern and rhyme scheme, could not rid itself of its status as the genre for people of letters or the intellectual elite, whereas fiction, particularly the vernacular story that was couched in plain language, was closer to c o m m o n readers. It was therefore justifiable that fiction should replace poetry to carry out the enlightenment project. Secondly, as in the West, literature's power to enlighten was best displayed in "political fiction" rather than poetry. Thirdly, modern newspapers and books made it possible for popular novels to be circulated rapidly. Finally, because of the increased pace of urbanization and the emergence of cosmopolitan cities such as Shanghai, urban d e m a n d for newspapers and books skyrocketed. Novels, because of their populist approach, could better meet the need of city readers.

in After the "Cultural Revolution," China's opened up to the outside world, putting an end to its insularity and antagonism to globality. From then down to the present day, the electronic media have been a serious rival to literature. In

176 Wang Yichuan the face of such a challenge, and such severe competition from the world of film and television, will the hegemonic position of literature still be secure? It seems inevitable that the aesthetic paradigm of literature will once again be subjected to change. The question is how, and in what direction? In the first stage of globality, the modern printing techniques adopted by newspapers and periodicals enabled literature (fiction in particular) to become the dominant art form; in the second, literature's hegemonic position, albeit insulated, had to be reinforced. But today the challenge is greater. Literature, despite its past prosperity and glories, has to face more advanced and powerful media which, owing to their overwhelming superiority in production, processing, circulation and receptivity, have become its most formidable rivals. Films and television appeal to the public because they display directly on the screen physical images which are more vivid and concrete than images in literature that depend on linguistic description and the reader's imagination. Cinema and television images cater better to the desire of Chinese audiences for instant satisfaction in present-day society. In the context of the cultural exchange between China and the rest of the world and China's attempt to gain the recognition of mainstream Western culture, film and television are superior to literature. They have a language of "images" which can overcome language barriers, unlike Chinese literature in which the language forms a barrier to the global stage of culture where English is the first language.

IV Under such circumstances, can there be any way out for literature? Contrary to the prediction of some critics, literature, though no longer in fashion, is not fated to decline. Even at its current relatively low ebb, it has been trying, by means of self-reflection and self-transformation, to achieve a turn of fortune in its efforts to break through the siege of film and television. Literary art can reach such a breakthrough in several ways. First, a piece of literature can be revived by its film or television adaptation. When there is a successful adaptation for the screen, a novel can become a great hit in the book market. This method of stealing your rival's thunder may help literature to come back into vogue by means of popular film and TV adaptations. After Qian Zhongshu's 1940s novel, The Besieged City, was turned into a TV drama, the book sold more than a million copies, excluding innumerable pirated ones. The fame of such writers as Mo Yan, Su Tong, and Yu Hua has, in part at least, to do with the film adaptations of their novels, Red Sorghum, Concubines, To Live, and the prizes the films won at international festivals. Had it n o t been for such occasions, their fame would have been confined to literary circles only. [...] So, although film and TV have taken the place of literature as the dominant artistic form, literature, which would have otherwise been left out in the cold, still has

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an opportunity to get close to an audience. The truth is that both the success and the failure of literature d e p e n d on film and television. In an age when electronic media dominate our lives, literature has to accept such a fate. Of course, whether or not literary works will sell well after being adapted for the screen will also depend on the quality of the works in question; what's more, literature might change itself to adjust to the d e m a n d s of mass media a n d popularization. Benefiting from film and television while keeping its unique character seems to have become a real problem for literature. Secondly, there are the internal aims and interests of literary creation that have to be set against the trend to turn from refined taste to popular taste. Literature (mainly fiction) in the 1980s was in the main rather highbrow, reflecting the taste of the intellectual elite; since the 1990s, however, literature has had no choice but to cater for popular taste, particularly when seduced by the enormous success that film and television have achieved by adopting a popularization strategy. Like such popular media as film and television, literature n o longer considers that it is its primary mission to represent the intellectual elite's taste (e.g., cultural enlightenment) but rather tries to cater for the daily cultural and recreational needs of the populace. The fact that novels by such writers as Wang Suo, Su Tong, Jia Pingwa, and Chi Li have, at different times, become big hits in the book market as well as the targets for illegal publishers' piracy clearly indicates the success of such a shift to popular taste. Thirdly, and in relation to the point made above, there can be coexistence of the intellectual and the popular, in the appraisal of the aesthetic aspect of literature. In the past, both high and low literatures were judged by the same aesthetic yardstick; as a result, literary works that appealed to both refined and popular tastes were most highly valued. But now, it is recognized that the refined and the popular can be separated; they can have separate interests, different norms and different audiences. The refined is not necessarily better than the popular, and the popular is not necessarily beneath the refined. [...] Finally, as for stylistic preferences, different styles can be blended to produce a form of so-called "cross-generic writing." What I call "style" here does not merely refer to genre or literary form in the usual sense but rather to a combination of form and content and is a m o d e of literary signification in some language structures. In other words, style includes both generic features (e.g., poetry, fiction, prose and so on) and different modes of literary signification (e.g., narration/ lyrics, realism/fictiveness, monologue/dialogue, etc.). This kind of cross-generic writing, which is manifested chiefly in the style, may be viewed as a dialectical and revolutionary solution to Chinese literature's internal contradictions caused by the competition of film and television. For instance, the fusion of a wide variety of genres such as fiction, prose, poetry, comic dialogue, diary, and legal document, signals the dashing spirit and the vitality of fiction which, under siege from film and television, actively seeks transformations and renovations. [...] From the above analysis, we get a glimpse of the changes in Chinese literature

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u n d e r the influence of globality. How can we judge the effects of globality on literature? I don't think we can give a black or white answer to this question. The effects of globality are already an objective fact unalterable by any subjective wish. Globality may help boost the development of literature (e.g., in the late Qing and early Republican Period), or paralyze it (e.g., during the Cultural Revolution); it may revitalize literature (e.g., in the May Fourth literary revolution), or destroy it (e.g., literature of the 1970s); it has the power to "lead our literature to the world" (e.g. literature of the 1980s), as well as to help it break through the film and TV siege (e.g., literature of the 1990s). In a word, to study the overall effects of globality on literature, one should give concrete analysis to each specific case. T h e healthy development of any literature in the context of globality depends on various factors. Of these, one is inevitable: the construction of the unique character of indigenous culture. By this I do n o t m e a n we should employ nationalism to resist Western cultural hegemony or close our door again and return to our "glorious" ancient world. Rather, I intend to say that in the process of borrowing from a universal vision based on the values of the excellent cultures of the world, we should at the same time concentrate on the creation and propagation of our own unique cultural character. In other words, the importation of a universal (or world) vision should be accompanied by an active construction of locality (or regionality). While a common aesthetic yardstick for a "global literature" should be seriously considered, Chinese literature should at the same time cultivate and create its unique aesthetic and cultural characteristics. We cannot dream of returning to the good old days when China was the "center." Nor can we seek to implant universal values wholesale, without considering our own individual character. What we should do, in the context of globality, is cultivate our national uniqueness while taking universality into consideration.

(Translated by Lin Qingxin)

Economic Globalization) and Cultural Pluralism (Exceirpts)

Wan jjunren Introduction: globalization and its cultural dimension

In its modern context, "globalization" is innately related to the concept of modernity and has become a force with an infinite capacity for growth and development. Since it entails an inalienable sense of modernity and is endowed with an increasingly more urgent expectation of the values expressed by the moderns' teleology, it is even becoming, in a sense, the keyword for expressing the value a n d teleology of modernity. It therefore n o t only possesses the increasingly universalized power to describe "facts" and to interpret economic affairs but also enjoys a cross-cultural discursive right that transcends economy, which is the starting point for the present thesis. It is undeniable that, after the Cold War, the combined effect of unilateral political expectation, the move towards the globalization of economies, plus the emergence of the Internet or the global knowledge-based economy, has led directly to globalization's capacity to expand. Such expansion concerns not only the sociology of knowledge b u t also cultural values. People even prophesy optimistically that globalization will become a reality and the world picture of the twenty-first century. Not only the market economy and democracy but also the This article was first published in Chinese in Zhongguo shehuikexue (Chinese social sciences), no. 1 (2001).

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globalization of cultural values will bring about a brand new civilization and culture. So, when we consider the cultural significance of globalization, we should not restrict ourselves only to its cultural dimensions. More importandy, we should examine closely the following questions: 1) Can globalization possibly extend to the cultural sphere? 2) If so, to what extent? 3) How is this possible? 4) What is the cultural consequence of globalization, if it is possible in some (or sufficient) degree? Since these questions concern the future of us all, we should give some serious thought to them. Moreover, as a modernizing country transforming from a pre-modern to a modern state, how can China participate in the process of globalization when it is n o t yet fully m o d e r n i z e d ? Gilbert R o z m a n writes t h a t t h e process of modernization is by nature a kind of domestic change, either for a forerunner or a latecomer of modernization. 1 If Rozman is right, does this mean China's participation in the process of globalization chiefly takes the form of an internal transformation rather than a foreign implant or a forced transformation? If the answer to this question is "yes," then how can China, which Rozman calls "the cultural giant of the entire East Asian society," reasonably and effectively make use of its own cultural resources in the process of globalization? To put it another way, can local or regional cultures, as well as traditional Chinese culture, all be incorporated into some form of universal culture for the entire world? In this essay, I start with an a t t e m p t to clarify two essential concepts, "globalization" a n d "culture," a n d t h e n reflect on the cultural limits of globalization (including, in the main, cultural resources, cultural restrictions, and cultural consequences) as a world modernization project, in the hope of coming u p with a cautious or even critical cultural interpretation. But I must say from the start that my cautious and critical cultural interpretation should not be taken as cultural conservatism, which simply denies globalization. On the contrary, globalization, in my understanding, has already been accepted as a fact with practical reason. What I am concerned with is how to understand the global significance of local cultures and how to maintain the discursive rights of different cultures when confronting globalization, a worldwide movement that is gradually being realized. Manifestly, my approval of cultural pluralism, just like my approval of globalization, is an essential faith that runs throughout this academic inquiry into the question at issue. I endeavor to show that this seemingly paradoxical academic belief reveals the internal tension of globalization itself rather than an indication of the clashes between different "world views," between different cultural values. How this internal tension will be dealt with and dissolved will determine the direction in which the movement of globalization will go and its ultimate fate.

1. See Gilbert Rozman, ed., The Modernization of China (Nanjing: Jianshu renmin chubanshe, 1988), 17.

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Globalization as a question of "modernity" Globalization is neither an incidental modern event nor a pure world economic event; it is a social movement aimed at global unification. From a historical point of view, its essential goal is actually not merely the realization of a global economic system; rather, it directs its attention first to the sphere of cultural values. It is not difficult for us to discern this universalistic notion as far back as the Christian crusades in medieval Europe — and further. According to the accounts of many scholars of the history of philosophy, this idea and intention can be traced to the Stoic school of philosophy in late classical Greek civilization. Its v e h e m e n t advocacy of "the universal reason of mankind" and universal philosophy of life were the f o u n t a i n h e a d of globalism. 2 However, globalization, as a social movement, is n o doubt a modern event and primarily a world economic event within modernity. 3 [... ] First of all, Europeans' great geographical discoveries via navigation initiated the modern vision of globalization. Then the formation and expansion of the market economy in Europe from the seventeenth century on, hand in hand with the ensuing commercialism and the challenge of liberal economic theories, helped establish the modern conception of globalization. However, it was not until the end of the nineteenth century that the modern significance of globalization moved beyond the idea of the unification of a global "commodity market" and reached the supra-economic level of cultural values. In a sense, h u m a n society in the twentieth century was the laboratory for man's pursuit of cosmopolitanism; moreover, experiments of various kinds and n a t u r e s o n u n i v e r s a l i s m have c o n t i n u e d to this day. In this u n c e a s i n g experimentation with a cosmopolitan society, the first key role was played by nation-states. The modernization of colonizing countries and the subsequent liberation of colonized countries formed the two poles in these early experiments, whereas colonization and decolonization or anti-colonization constituted the main conflict between the two poles. This conflict originated from the clashes between the expansion of modernized nation-states and the struggle for survival on the part of those pre-modern nation-states, which was the primary agent of World War I. Afterwards, the continuing effects of this clash led to World War II, which was the catalyst for the formation of the two opposing camps, i.e., East and West. Two conflicting ideologies, which r e p r e s e n t e d different social ideals — c o m m u n i s m a n d capitalism — finally became two opposing worldviews of humankind, society and history.

2. Frank Thiily calls stoicism, approvingly, a school of "global humanism." See his A History of Western Philosophy, trans. Ge Li (Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1975), 132. 3. This is perhaps an important reason why the concept of "globalization" is often reduced to "the unification of global economies/7

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The tearing down of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union announced the end of the Cold War. People (Westerners in particular) began to believe that this meant both "the end of ideology"4 and the victory of one ideology (over the other). But it is the conflicting and polarized ideologies that have come to an end, whereas the victory belongs to the worldview of liberalism, which is itself being increasingly universalized. As Hegel's rationalist logic shows: everything eventually belongs with the divine "absolute idea." In order to focus upon my main concerns in this paper, I do not intend to dwell on the question of whether or not ideology has come to an end. What I am concerned with is the historical background against which globalization as a social m o v e m e n t is b e c o m i n g increasingly visible a n d against which the contemporary globalization movement has acquired modern characteristics. The above examination shows that today's globalization is nothing but the continuation of the expansion of modernization that originated in the West. Its essential goal is by no means limited to the unification of world economic systems. Rather, it is a m o m e n t o u s event of "modernity" that concerns various aspects of modern* society including politics, economics, cultural values, and so forth. If it is true that we still can't reach a unanimous understanding of modernity, originally a Western concept, it follows that globalization, as an event of modernity, should be subjected to the intellectual examination of various cultural traditions. Obviously, this j u d g m e n t of mine presupposes a kind of philosophy of history: "modernity" originated from modernized countries and regions in the West; as a result, Western visions are inevitably embedded in it. To the non-Western world, the expansion of the idea of modernity will inevitably show some features of a dominant discourse. And the global social movement and cosmopolitanism it supports also has to be subjected to the critical examinations of heterogeneous, or at least different, civilizations or cultures.

One and many: the cultural problem of globalization To date, there have been roughly two ways to understand globalization: one is the so-called universalism or "universalizable" understanding; the other is the socalled particularism or cultural pluralism. The former believes that globalization will b e c o m e t h e inevitable t r e n d a n d result of the social m o v e m e n t of modernization. The latter holds that even though globalization may become an inevitable trend of modernization, it can only be shown at the superficial level of modern economic life, or perhaps can only be a form of relatively universalized liaison and coexistence of world economies; globalization cannot go as far as the homogenization or "unification" of world politics and world cultures, unless

4. cf. Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1988), 393-488.

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homogenization is imposed by some irresistible, unilateral, and totalizing power. So, the concept of so-called globalization is only of relative, and indeed small, economic significance. Closer examination of the issue reveals that within each of these two ways of understanding globalization, there are still different, even opposing, views.5 As far as universalism is concerned, two possibilities exist. First, there is a kind of unilateral or monistic universalism, which is based on some fixed system of social ideas or values. In other words, some dominant system of social ideas or some cultural value system supported by dominant political, economic, or cultural forces may be imposed and propagated as the goal of the globalization movement. In contrast, there is also the possibility of arriving at some ideological consensus and establishing some benefit-sharing system by means of global modernization based on a multilateral complementary relationship and rational discourse (to borrow Jurgen Habermas's term). 6 For the sake of argument, I shall call the first possibility the danger of global hegemony, and the second, the kind of truly democratic global modernization that we might reasonably expect. Much like universalism, there are also two possible views in the so-called particularist understanding of globalization. O n e is the transformation from multiple civilizations and cultural pluralism to rational consensus or overlapping consensus (as Rawis calls it) ,7 the realization of common development and prosperity of all civilizations and cultures as its final goal. In contrast, the other is the downright denial of the possibility of globalization in any form or degree. That denial is due to a persistence in cultural particularism, a stubborn adherence to heterogeneities, an overemphasis on the "clash of civilizations" (to borrow Huntington's term), 8 or an insistence on "incommensurability" (Maclntyre's term) 9 between the basic social ideas and cultural values of different civilization types and cultural traditions. American scholar Michael Walzer addresses this issue in his recent work Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad. He calls the first "mild multi-culturalism" or "thin universalism" and the latter "cultural tribalism" or "thick particularism." 10 It is not difficult to see that the two understandings of globalization, as well as

5. In my study of "universal ethics" relating to this issue, 1 have discussed this problem from the moralistic and cultural point of view. See Wan Junren, Xunqiu pushi lunli (In search of universal ethics) (Beijing: Shangwu yingshuguan, 2000). 6. See Jurgen Habermas, "Discourse Ethics: Notes on a Program of Philosophical Justification," in Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, trans. Christian Lenhardst et al. (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1990). 7. See John Rawls, Political Liberalism (NY: Columbia UP), 1993. 8. See Sammuel Huntington, "The Clash of Civilizations," Foreign Affairs (summer 1994). 9. See Alasdair Maclntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame: U of Notre Dame Press, 1994). 10. See Michael Walzer, Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad (Notre Dame: U of Notre Dame Press, 1994).

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the many views derived from them, manifest themselves mosdy in two conflicting, even opposing theoretical positions. I shall summarize them, for the moment, as the monistic and pluralist positions of globalization. [...] O u r conclusion is: the nature of the relationship between globalization and locality or the diversity of multiple cultures is primarily characterized by conflicts and tensions rather than by imaginary coexistence and integration, especially in cultural spheres. This kind of conflict and tension is in the first place determined by the different origins of cultural traditions. Different beliefs (religious and quasireligious) and forms of development and origins determine the innate disparity and heterogeneity of different cultural traditions. [...] [...] If we i g n o r e t h e existence of cultural plurality a n d the i n t e r n a l limitations of economic globalization and view globalization as a totalizing and homogenizing process which can transcend and even erase all cultural differences, then so-called globalization may also find itself in a cultural trap: either it will fall into the pit of competing cultural differences, or else it will "level out" the diversity and differences of human culture, depriving it of its rich diversity and reducing it to dry uniformity.

Cultural nostalgia: the consequence of globalization The reason why I have dwelt in a negative sense on the cultural limits and risks of economic globalization is not that I want to deny its economic significance or that it has a degree of practical reason. What I really mean is that, rather than let that hallowed beast called globalization run wild, we should rein it in so that it can only advance at a rational pace. My intention in seeing globalization as an event within modernity is to say that economic globalization, which has been m a r c h i n g h a n d in h a n d with the liberal Western economic ideals and the modernist notion of progress for 300 years, has indeed exacted a heavy price from us, while it has brought to our world unprecedented material wealth and material civilization. The ratio of cost and benefit does not conform to the demands of modern economic reason, which requires minimum investment and maximum economic return. This is really a question worthy of our scrutiny. In fact, the globalization campaign in the modern world has already shown its egregious weakness. Not only has it failed to reduce man's "cultural nostalgia" or rather cultural worries, but it has also, on the contrary, increased them. Put simply, cultural nostalgia means a sense of loss or some nostalgic recollections about one's cultural tradition, caused by globalization's leveling campaign. It is the by-product of modern civilization and culture. To modern society and modern man, it is characterized by an "ideology of home." According to Roland Robertson, this sense of loss of cultural tradition, which is accompanied by pessimistic cultural

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recollections, was prevalent in the German historical and sociological fields as early as the nineteenth century. One has n o difficulty in finding the origins of this kind of cultural feeling and sentiment in The Decline of the West and Max Weber's sociological studies of capitalism. [...] The decline of history and the loss of the sense of totality as experienced by modern man are directly related to economic expansionism in modern society. The global expansion of the market economy seems to have spawned a brand new civilization and an unprecedented totalizing view of the world that undoubtedly transcends the boundaries of traditional civilizations, nation-states and national cultures. However, a violent contradiction has o c c u r r e d within "modernity," and the cause is two-fold. Modernity's rejection of tradition has led to discontinuities and ruptures, and modern economic rationalism's rejection of historical "grand narratives," which are either non-materialistic or impractical, has added to the difficulty of identifying with one's own history. What accompanies this is the loss of historical continuity and cultural identity, which makes it very difficult to identify with a certain form of "the total community." And without a sense of community, m o d e r n man is deprived of individual identity and personal expression. This is one of the grave cultural consequences of economic globalization, a consequence that not only does not conform to the goal of globalization but actually runs counter to it. [...]

China and Chinese culture in the process of globalization It was not until the last two decades of the twentieth century that the Chinese started to communicate with foreigners and to participate enthusiastically in the world modernization process that is a part of economic globalization. As a sign of this participation in globalization, China's accession to the WTO is a symbolic trophy. From China's point of view, all this seems to have come a bit late. However, as far as Chinese culture is concerned, everything seems to have occurred all too suddenly and all too soon. When a country or a people come to a sudden awareness of the huge gap between their own civilization and that of others, when they are eager to merge with advanced civilization and take part in the expansion of world modernization, and when such a merging process, due to complicated internal and external conditions, has to be made by leaps and bounds, the biggest problem it faces is cultural and spiritual, and it is a problem that is far more o n e r o u s t h a n m e r e technological a n d material difficulties. As I have said repeatedly, the modernization of national culture and spiritual values and ideas concerns not only a shift to "modernity" in temporal and spatial dimensions (which accords with what Robertson refers to as "the localization of globality" and "the globalization of locality") but also the question of how this goal can be realized. Culture is primarily and under most circumstances regional and national.

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Any attempt to prescribe a common set of values and a common destiny which goes beyond particular cultural traditions has to be subjected to this premise because, unless the boundaries separating ethnic groups and countries entirely disappear, it concerns the raison d'etre and the fate of a people or a nation. When we reflect on Chinese culture and the China that is in the process of globalization in which the quest for multilateral global politics and cultural pluralism (even the quest for diversified economies) is on the rise, we simply cannot evade our political and cultural duties to our country and our people. In the "world system" and the worldwide practice of globalization, these duties and promises are, at the same time, significant in relation to claims to certain rights. They form the cornerstone for maintaining national independence and development.

(Translated by Lin Qingxin)

Chioese Studies: A Changing Field of Comteotioini — A Debate on Wo Hong's Monumentality in EairSy Chinese Art and Architecture (Excerpts)

Li ling EDITORS' NOTE

In this article, "Chinese Studies: A Changing Field of Contention — A Debate on Wu Hung's Monumentally

in Early Chinese Art and Architecture,"

on Wu Hung's Monumentality

Li Ling uses the debate

as a point of entry into the field of discursive differences

between traditional Chinese historiography and its counterpart in the West, in particular in the US. In recapitulating the debate over Wu Hung's work, Li intends to "acquaint Chinese scholars not only with the debate itself but with the protocols of criticism and academic standards in the West/' In his summary of the main criticisms of the book in the reviews he had seen by the time he wrote and published this article in Chinese (2000), Li focuses on the controversies surrounding the legitimacy of Wu's attempt, in his book, to deploy the concept of "monumentality" as an "organizing concept" to marshal apparently discrete bodies of historical material into a unified system of historical knowledge. For his critics, Wu's liberal employment of the concept has a r b i t r a r i l y expanded and at the same t i m e v i o l a t e d the t h e m a t i c limits of " m o n u m e n t a l i t y , " and his attempt to subsume objects under the category of "monuments" is a crude appropriation of the concept and more seriously reveals a discursive effort to construct the myth of a monolithic and "eternal" China. The reason

This article was first published in Chinese, under the title "Xueshu Kesuowo: yicang weirao Wu Hung xinzuo de tao lun" (Academic "Kosovo": a debate on Wu Hung's new book), in China Scholarship 2 (summer 2000).

188 Li Ling why Wu includes small objects such as jades and ceramics and man-made structures such as tombs and mausoleums in the category of "monuments," Li explains, is that sublime architectural structures understood and defined as "monuments" in the West are almost totally absent in China. While he acknowledges that some of these criticisms of Wu's book are not unfounded, Li suggests that such critical views often ignore alternative research modalities and are sometimes overstretched to include references to Wu's training, his intellectual background, and his mode of research that seem to them deeply rooted in the Chinese scholarly tradition. While he recognizes the unique strengths and vantage points of Western sinologists in conducting research in Chinese studies — an area of which China has been considered to be the original locale — and therefore urges Chinese scholars to pay due respect to the research work done by Western scholars, Li calls on sinologists based elsewhere to be more perceptive about the scholarly tradition in China and refrain from generalizing or ideologizing academic issues.

I We Chinese scholars involved in Chinese studies have long harbored a deep-rooted misunderstanding about our Western counterparts (and indeed about ourselves). On the one hand, we are seduced into the "Nobel Prize" complex, believing that recognition from the international community signifies national prestige as well as academic distinction among colleagues at home, and on the other, we do not pay due respect to the research done by our counterparts in the West. Even if it is true that sinologists in the West do not have a high regard for native Chinese scholarship and archival materials, important as we think they are, their scholarship deserves more than our passing attention (so long as we do not take o u r standard of j u d g m e n t as o n e that is universal). 1 Firstly, Western scholarship is governed by a set of protocols, has its own language and research methodology and, from teaching to research, runs on well-oiled wheels. Secondly, Western scholars, though comparatively fewer in number, have a sense of selfimportance as they embody "international scholarship," whereas Chinese scholars, a larger community by far, are locally confined (to the area of East Asian Studies). Thirdly, Western sinologists value our research materials and sources rather than our research itself, and they often consider us to be less capable than the Japanese

1. Sinologists examine Chinese history from a position outside it, and they have carried out excellent research into the relationships between China and its neighboring cultures and into the related languages; even within the field of Chinese culture itself, they have made remarkable achievements.

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in keeping and organizing archival materials. What we think of as our strengths and advantages, if viewed from their perspective, might turn out to be drawbacks. To some Western scholars, for example, our "insider" perspective indicates a partiality that is, necessarily, far less objective than the perspective of "outsiders." Chinese scholars believe that they are best at textual studies, but this reflects, perhaps, our inability to break away from traditional historiography and our blind reliance on the written text. Western scholars have been openly critical of us. Though their criticisms are without ulterior motives, we often read too much into them: we dismiss them too readily as "ignorant" or "arrogant," and we are easily hurt by them. Many Chinese scholars, including me, feel mortified, for example, by Lothar von Falkenhausen's "On the Historiographical Orientation of Chinese Archaeology,"2 notwithstanding his repeated attempts to explain that the article, written for Western scholars, is intended n o t as a piece of criticism but an introduction to the study of Chinese archaeology. In my r e c e n t c o m m u n i c a t i o n s with Euro-American sinologists I have frequently come across sharp, critical remarks on Chinese scholarship. For example, it has been said that Chinese scholarship has gone "crazy," losing its critical edge in handling written documents and regressing to a time before the Yigu Age (the age of doubting in antiquity) .3 Three factors have contributed to this regression: first, the influence of a certain ideology of ours; second, the feeling we have for our nation; and third, our limited exposure to Western academic protocols a n d practices. O u r research project of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou Dynasties, for instance, seems to confirm the Western perception of Chinese s c h o l a r s h i p . It is a H e r c u l e a n r e s e a r c h p r o g r a m involving two h u n d r e d distinguished archaeologists, philologists, astronomers, and other scientists from the mainland of China and is meant to lead Chinese studies out of the Yigu Age. But the West believes it only shows the degeneration of Chinese scholarship because this project is state-sponsored and intended to promote national pride. The West's critical assessment of our research is not altogether unfounded. In my opinion, opening ourselves up is the first step to reclaiming our self-respect; after all, interactive exchanges can only take place after constructive debates and competition. T h o u g h there have been long-standing misunderstandings that urgently need clarification, it is only in recent years that we have had a few good opportunities to study more systematically certain Western academic protocols and research methodologies. Among the limited opportunities is the debate among Western sinologists over Wu Hung's Monumentality in Early Chinese Art and

2. Lothar von Falkenhausen, "On the Historiographical Orientation of Chinese Archaeology," Antiquity 67, no. 257 (1993): 839-49. A version translated by Chen Chun is published in Antiquity Quarterly, no. 2 (1995): 83-9. 3. See Li Xueqin, Out of the Age of Skepticism about Ancient Literature (Shenyang: Liaoning UP, 1994).

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Architecture,4 published in 1996, and the publication of The Cambridge History of Ancient China, from the Origins of Civilization to 221 B.C., edited by Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy, a distillation of studies and thoughts collected by fourteen leading Western sinologists over the past thirty years. 5 What follows is a selection of reviews of Wu Hung's work, intended to acquaint Chinese scholars not only with the debate itself but with the protocols of criticism and academic standards in the West.

II Wu H u n g is among the new generation of Chinese American scholars who went to the US after the opening-up of China. He teaches in the Department of Art History at Chicago University and is erudite about Chinese fine arts and antiques. Having studied in the Central Academy of Fine Arts and having worked at the Palace Museum in Beijing for years, Wu went to Harvard University, where, as a student and later a teacher, he received Western training in fine arts. A successful scholar, Wu has benefited from, and is burdened by, his "double background" in equal measure. 6 Although his first publication in English, The Wu Liang Shrine: The Ideology of Early Chinese Pictorial Art,7 has been favorably reviewed in both E u r o p e and the US, his latest book, Monumentality in Early Chinese Art and Architecture, has been attacked by other sinologists for being too "Chinese" and n o t "international" enough, notwithstanding the fact that students from the Department of Archaeology at Peking University think the opposite is true. To the best of my knowledge, there have so far been seven critical reviews of Wu Hung's book. They are by Lothar von Falkenhausen (Early China 21 [1996]: 183-99); Charles Lachman (The Journal ofAsian Studies 56, no. 1 [February 1997]: 194-6); Robert E. Harristjr. (OrientalArt43, no. 2 [summer 1997]: 62-3); Michael Nylan (Artibus Asiae 17, no. 1/2 [1997]: 157-66); Ladislav Kesner (China Review

4. Wu Hung, Monumentality in Early Chinese Art and Architecture (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford UP, 1995); hereafter Monumentality. 5. Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy, eds., The Cambridge History of Ancient China, from the Origins of Civilization to 221 B.C (NY: Cambridge UP, 1990). 6. There are certain "amphibian"' scholars bridging the gulf between established Chinese studies and Western sinology, specializing in "sub-sinology" or "new Chinese studies." As we know, the early generation of Chinese scholars who studied abroad, some staying permanently, became part of Western academia. They introduced into Chinese studies a global view, Western research paradigms, and conventions of sinology. It must be noted that this marginal sphere of studies is also faced with a choice: it can be either new blood for Chinese studies or a supplement to Western sinology. 7. Wu Hung, The Wu Liang Shrine: The Ideology of Early Chinese Pictorial Art (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford UP, 1989).

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International 5, no. 1 [spring 1998]: 35-51); Robert Bagley (Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 58, no. 1 [June 1998]: 221-56); and Alain Thote (Arts Asiatiques 53 [1998]: 129-31). Apart from Lachman and Harrist, who both give a brief introduction to Monumentality and assert its importance, all reviewers are very critical and some even totally dismissive. Written in a relatively more subtle and subdued tone, Falkenhausen's review, while considering Monumentality "a work of importance" (183) a n d "worth r e a d i n g " ( 1 9 9 ) , t u r n s v e h e m e n t a n d e l a b o r a t e w h e n c o m m e n t i n g o n Wu's t e c h n i c a l oversights a n d e r r o r s in t h e b o o k . T h e methodology of Monumentality is, to Falkenhausen, a manifestation of problems that are "distinctively" Chinese. For Robert Bagley, whose attitude is strikingly more radical, Wu's writing manifests the more fundamental problem of "pernicious Chinese habits."

Ill What exactly is it in Monumentality that invites recriminations in general and Bagley's stinging reproofs in particular? T h e r e are certainly many potential reasons. First of all, quite unlike The Wu Liang Shrine, a focused study of one single art form defined within a small time frame, Monumentality deals with the historical development of a range of art forms over a long span of time, from the Neolithic Age to the Six Dynasties. Wu condenses the theme of "monumentality" from the complex realities and a wide range of materials into an organizing concept to outline the development of these art forms, but his project, large in scale, gets no credit for its effort and ambition. Monumentality has been criticized for being "too ambitious to be well-grounded," and too theoretical to be substantial. In terms of the amount of information presented, it is, according to some of the reviewers, far weaker than Jessica Rawson's Mysteries ofAncient China,8 an exhibition catalogue that discusses concretely a collection of different art forms and some recent findings in Chinese art history. Second, Monumentality claims to be a thematic study, a way of reading now popular among scholars in the US (like the younger generation of scholars, Wu Hung appreciates various postmodern theories). To his critics, however, Wu's book seems to discuss history in the abstract. Evolving a r o u n d t h e t h e m e of "monumentality," his discussion often shifts casually between the conceptual and the concrete. As critics point out, each of the art forms in question (ceramics, j a d e s , b r o n z e s , stone carvings, a r c h i t e c t u r e ) has a long history, a n d the development of one overlaps that of another. It is thus only arbitrary, or even

8. Jessica Rawson, Mysteries of Ancient China (London: British Museum Press, 1996).

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conjectural, for Wu to regard one art form of one specific period as having one particular kind of monumentality. Third, there is a fundamental difference between Wu and his colleagues in the West over their understanding of the word "monument." In the West, a "monument" usually means ancestral temples, obelisks and arches of triumph, etc., majestic and sublime architectural structures or art forms. As the critics understand it, Wu's concept of "monumentality" is willfully extended to include small vessels and hidden objects. In his discussion of different art forms in early times (between the Neolithic Age and the Three Dynasties), Wu puts special emphasis on objects (such as ceramics, jades, and bronzes, things that make u p the "art" in the title of the book), and in his discussion of the late periods (from the Three Dynasties, through Han and Wei, to the Six Dynasties), he pays attention to architecture (tombs, palaces, mausoleums, and cities, which belong to the "architecture" in the title). By adding "objects" to the category of "monuments," Wu has not only violated the purity of the Western concept but has also created a lot of technical problems for himself in his t r e a t m e n t of the subject. As Falkenhausen and Bagley, both experts in bronzes studies, have noted, there are errors in Wu's depiction of the Chinese art of the Bronze Age. Finally, and more significantly perhaps, Western sinologists have a common objective in their criticism of Wu: to "deconstruct the myth of Eternal China," that is, to demystify the accepted view that China has a "monolithic" and "united" culture. Wu's notion of "monumentality," they say, highlights the "unique" development of a "unique" China and manifests a chauvinistic view that Chinese culture is independent of the Western mode of inquiry. Monumentality violates academic protocols in two ways. First, there is no sense of temporality in Wu's narration; later historical records are used indiscriminately to explicate earlier periods, and historical changes are ignored. Second, Wu's "China" as a spatial concept is too vague, ignoring its interactions with other cultures (especially those outside the b o u n d a r i e s of China) a n d the regional diversities within its b o u n d a r i e s . Finally, p e r h a p s the most serious p r o b l e m lies in the way Wu comprehends the relation between archaeological findings and written sources: he has attempted to willfully match archaeological findings with written sources and even goes so far as to distort the significance of archaeological findings to fit in with written documents. For example, his suggestion that the Jiuding (Nine Ding) recorded in Late Zhou literature is a symbol of "monumentality" in the Neolithic Age has made him a laughing stock among some sinologists. (Should they be able to see the ding erected here in China, they might be even more furious.) 9

9. Jiuding was recorded in Zhou Anecdotes, Records by Zuo Qiu Ming, Annals of Warring States and Mozi. Further reference can be found in Tang Lan's "On Tings of Xia," in Culture & History, vol. 7 (Beijing: China Book Company, 1979), 1-8.

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Of the above four points of criticism, the first three, though failing to take into consideration the main objective underlying Wu Hung's project, are not totally unfounded. The fourth one concerning Wu's idea of "China" is, however, just one-sided. It is noticeable that the criticism of Monumentality is often extended to its author in relation to his academic training, his intellectual background and his research habits, and to the studies conducted by the Chinese scholars, whom Wu frequently acknowledges. The "inadequacy" of Chinese scholarship is, I believe, the very target that has inspired criticism of Monumentality.

w With reference to the above-mentioned critical reviews, I would like to offer, with some sympathy, my views on Monumentality. First, I think "monuments" and "monumentality" are both worthy topics in the study of art history. The question is whether Wu Hung has handled his subject matter in a way that achieves the desired effect. Monumentality is considered a patchwork that is conceptualized on the notion of "monumentality." But as I understand it, the main reason why Wu seeks to modify and expand the Western notion of the monument and uses "monumentality" as a defining quality of the m o n u m e n t is that mud and wood, rather than stone, were used in ancient China as building materials, and as a result, except for the remnants of some palaces and city walls, virtually no remains or traces of anything constructed before the Tang Dynasty are to be seen. Since there is n o near equivalent of Western "monuments" in China 10 and if we are to fill in the historical gap with "objects," expanding the conceptual scope of "monument" and "monumentality" (thus destabilizing the established ways of thinking about them in the West) is inevitable. Laughable as they are to a lot of Western scholars, Wu's notions of "monument" and "monumentality," as Ladislav Kesner points out, have been previously used by others and have been accepted as "new principles" in the studies of postmodern art; so Wu's attempt to define "monumentality" beyond the constraints of the size and temporality of the m o n u m e n t is significant. Second, the way Monumentality is presented seems eccentric much in the way postmodern art may appear to us. Like history writing in general, there are two

10. Chinese people tend to re-erect on the site a replica of a building that has been destroyed. The rebuilt structure may have nothing to do with the original. In this sense, in the Chinese psyche it is not antiquity but this feeling for antiquity (nostalgia) that matters. Monumentality, a bridge of old and new, is a continuing influence on many contemporary Chinese. Some Western sinologists may misunderstand this point, as Gao Jianping explains in "The Origin of Imitation Antiquity," Dushu (Reading) 11 (1999): 125-31.

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ways of presenting art history: one is to give a comprehensive and detailed presentation of the subject, like a piece of fine brushwork in Chinese painting; the other is to be more spontaneous and impressionistic, like a piece of freehand brushwork. Each method has its own strengths and drawbacks. As Wu proposes to exhibit a logical development of "monumentality" in a series of "case studies," he claims to do both at the same time. While focusing his discussion on the theme of "monumentality," Wu is nonetheless conscious of the impossibility of covering every aspect and of the need to select "cases" for his study of the concept of "monumentality," which, like that of "canonicity," implies the principle of selection. Monumentality combines the two methods of writing history but is more inclined to be thematically oriented in its narrative. In their attempt to play down Monumentality as "not worthy of the name of art history," the critics often cite Rawson's The Mysteries of Ancient China as the model for writing on the subject. There is no doubt that Rawson's book, as a catalogue of Chinese monumental art, is a classic, but it is not adequate to compare it with Monumentality. For one thing, Wu and Rawson take different approaches to their subject. It is relatively easy and safer to give a descriptive presentation of art history, but Wu has adopted a more sophisticated approach that runs the risk of simplifying the complexities of art history. Furthermore, it is impossible for any historical narrative, however thorough and informative, to lay claim to true comprehensiveness. In other words, our disappointment with the conceptual approach to writing about history should not lead us to the conclusion that the other approach is the only legitimate way. Finally, a l t h o u g h t h e r e are m a n y p r o b l e m s in t h e Chinese scholarly community, some of which have disheartened me, Western scholars' criticism of traditional Chinese scholarship is not entirely justifiable. First, what they object to most vehemently is the intervention of ideology and nationalism into research, but it should be pointed out that the practice is n o t indigenous to Chinese scholarly tradition; it is a result of China's acceptance of the notion of "modernity," inspired and encouraged by Western culture. T h o u g h the claim to Chinese uniqueness is apparently at odds with "universalism" and "internationalism," it shadows Western values. Second, though Chinese scholarship is subject to the h e g e m o n y of i d e o l o g y a n d n a t i o n a l i s m (just as t h e West is b o u n d by "universalism"), this should n o t be used to prejudice all aspects of Chinese scholarship. In fact, in the past three decades or so, the attempt to reflect on and understand Chinese scholarship through discussion has been a response to fresh archaeological findings rather than a manifestation of a blind faith in ancient Chinese history. Third, to be fair, Chinese studies in China has actually been making significant progress, both in determining dates of publication and categorization of ancient books and in our overall archaeological work and understanding of the connections between detailed findings. By comparison, the views of our Western counterparts are conservative, if not antiquated, however forward and audacious they have been in their critique of our scholarship.

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My point then is that what has given rise to the widespread criticism of Chinese scholarship by Western academics lies not so much in their different understanding of historical facts but in their use of a different research paradigm. They have many rules: first, the study of one particular period should rely on historical materials from the same period, and it is taboo to use later findings to study an earlier period. Each historical age has its own references, and any discussion of the continuities among different periods should be avoided. 11 Second, they argue that China as a geographical c o n c e p t n e e d s a clearer definition: within its boundaries it needs to be divided into different cultural regions, and external cultural influences should be considered in the formation of Chinese culture; China as a single and unified culture is simply not feasible (especially with regard to its early history). 12 Third, they say that the Legendary Age in Chinese history is a Han fabrication, and the Three Dynasties of Xia, Shang, and Zhou might as well be fictional constructs (for them, Xia never existed, Shang was only a small state, and Zhou was not any bigger). 13 Fourth, Western scholars maintain that our written historical records are useful only for the study of later historical periods, and studies of early China should be informed by archaeological findings. 14 Finally, they insist that archaeological objects should take precedence over written records, especially in the studies of fine arts. 15 All these rules are open for debate.

11. Whereas Chinese scholars like to see history as a necklace with beads representing different historical events, Western sinologists like to cut history into temporal and spatial units. 12. "China" as used by Chinese scholars for convenience is a vague term, referring to things within the confines of Chinese territory. Nevertheless, it is no more unscientific than the favorite terms of sinologists such as East Asia (macro) and Anyang (micro). In reality, Chinese scholars have always been serious in matters of territorial change and development and have conscientiously drawn detailed maps accompanied by data and records. The accusation that Chinese scholars are not aware of historical change is hence unfounded, though our Western counterparts may have done better than we have in this regard. If they insist on a total rejection of the term on the grounds that there has never been a single unchanging China, then there will be no Chinese studies to speak of, not even studies of Chinese art history. 13. Records of early China, now known to have been in existence during the Warring States, used to be suspected of being forgeries of the Han Dynasty. Some documents have been traced even further, though it is hard to determine their exact age. Total rejection is not a recommended approach. Reference can be found in Li Ling's "Reconsideration of Archaeological Discoveries and the Age of Ancient Records" and "Archaeology and Legend'' in Selected Readings of Li Ling (Guilin: Guangxi Normal UP, 1998), 22-57 and 58-89. 14. The purpose of archaeology is not to put down literature (of which we have little). At the Peking Conference on Chinese Studies, Shaughnessy sensibly remarked that historical records and archaeological findings are equally subject to investigation; it is the approach that matters. I concur. 15. Certain Western scholars rely almost exclusively on archaeological excavations and slides for studies in art history.

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V It is said that in US academic circles there is an unwritten law that authors should abstain from responding to criticisms ("your work doesn't belong to you once it's published"), but Wu H u n g has written a response: "Reply to Robert Bagley's Review on My Book Monumentality in Early Chinese Art and Architecture." In his reply, Wu n o t only attempts to defend himself against Bagley's "distorting" and "partial" critical remarks but also tries to make clear that he intends neither to exclude himself from American academia nor to cling to the narrow-mindedness and rigidity of Chinese scholars. Rather, he says, he would like to adopt an open attitude toward his American colleagues, regardless of their background and ethnic origins. To Wu, Bagley's attempt to categorize Chinese scholars as "insiders" and their counterparts as "outsiders," and Chinese historical scholarship as "traditional historiography" and its Western counterpart as one governed by archaeology, 16 is fallacious and prejudice-ridden. At the International Conference on Chinese Studies (1998) at the Xiangshan Hotel, organized as part of Peking University's centennial celebration, Yuan Xingpei talked most enthusiastically about the importance of cross-cultural communications and interactions, about how we were duty-bound to share with the West the quintessence of Chinese culture. Western counterparts, I observed, made not the slightest attempt to disguise the fact that they received their training, whether in Chinese studies or in other disciplines, in a totally different cultural context from ours and thus had a very different perception of things. 17 Western sinologists maintain, for example, that China has only around three instead of five thousand years of civilization. [...] The Cambridge History ofAncient China is another case in point. Acknowledging t h e fact t h a t t h e r e a r e u n d o u b t e d l y differences in t h e c o n t r i b u t o r s ' understandings of Chinese tradition and history, the editors "have felt that it would be improper to [...] exclude interpretations by different contributors." 18 Covering the period from Shang to Qin, the book serves as a site for traditional textual

16. Extremes meet. I believe that the prejudices of Western sinologists, about which we feel so upset, are a good remedy for ours, especially our narrow-mindedness. 1 7. It is more than debatable whether sinology is a shared field of studies for scholars in Chinese studies (including Chinese scholars) or a discipline established by Western sinologists according to their standards, which embodies what we might call "international scholarship." Falkenhausen disapproves of my proposition that the Chinese studies pursued by Chinese scholars and Western sinologists are two different things. Though disappointed with our approaches and results in various aspects, he cherishes a sincere hope that the two shall not be separated, since we have Chinese studies as a common base. I do not share his optimism and I do not believe I will live to see the two disciplines melt and merge into one. That, however, must be the goal we strive for, especially now that we have exposed dissatisfactions on both sides. 18. Loewe and Shaughnessy, eds., Cambridge History of Ancient China, xxiv.

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historians and archaeologists to engage in meaningful conversations, with tensions within and between them. Take, for example, the discussion of Erlitou Culture. The fact that it forms the first chapter, "China on the Eve of the Historical Period," is an early indication of those tensions, since it reveals that the author, KwangChih Chang, has a different idea about the Xia Dynasty in Chinese history. While sinologists argue that the civilization of China began not with Xia but Shang and Zhou, Chang identifies with the prevailing view in China that it began to be formed in the Xia Dynasty. David N. Keightley argues, as the title of Chapter 4 suggests, that Shang is the first dynasty in Chinese history; however, Robert Bagley maintains in Chapter 3 that Shang is a small state among many rather than a united empire, and it is Anyang Culture. Excavations prior to those found in sites other than Ying (Shang) Ruins and Anyang, he argues, have nothing to do with Shang. Contributors to The Cambridge History of Ancient China include, among others, Wu Hung, Lothar von Falkenhausen, and Robert Bagley, and each expresses a different idea and understanding of archaeology and history. Needless to say, it is difficult for the two editors to reconcile this flood of ideas a n d different perceptions and, as editors, they have to do so in an honest, open, and liberal manner. In their introduction, concerning the debate between the xingu pai (believing in antiquity school) and the yigu pai (doubting in antiquity school), Loewe and Shaughnessy write: This archaeological verification of some received texts has given rise, especially in China, to a scholarly view which affirms the antiquity of most significant aspects of Chinese culture. This view is now referred to as that of the Xingu pai (Believing in Antiquity School), in conscious distinction from the Yigu pai (Doubting in Antiquity School) which had contributed to the Gu shi bian series of the 1930s. In some of its expressions this belief in antiquity is doubtless exaggerated, owing as much to contemporary cultural chauvinism as to scholarly evidence; but such opinions are probably no more biased than those of many Western attempts to negate this view, and each of its proposals needs consideration on its own merits. Despite all these reservations, it is hard to deny the conclusion that the archaeological discoveries of the past generation have tended to authenticate, rather than to overturn, the traditional literary record of ancient China. (10) The two editors point out that Chinese scholars and their Western counterparts have different concerns and are biased in their own ways and that it is not a question of who is more biased than the other. I think this is a more objective and open attitude.

(Translated by Duan Fang)

"Re-evalyatfloim of Modernity" aod Modern Chomiese literature (Exceirpts)

Li Yi

EDITORS' NOTE The point of departure of Li Yi's "'Re-evaluation

of Modernity' and Modern Chinese

Literature," is familiar enough; it is yet another attempt to reassess "modernity" as a concept and a practice in relation to the development of modern Chinese literature. The article argues that the issue of historical and social specificities and rich details of modern Chinese literature have often been ignored in recent critical articulations about the notion of "modernity" in China and that it is important to understand the inadequacies of the notion of "modernity" when applied to the unique experience of such writers as Lu Xun and their distinctive ways of expressing themselves in modern Chinese literature. The productive way to deal with modern Chinese literature, Li argues, is to start with what he calls "our own literary tradition." What is ironical is that in his critique of the pervasive use of the Western concept of "modernity," Li himself presents a reassessment of "modernity." Li's re-evaJuation of modern and contemporary Chinese literature leads to a critique of recent and influential views on some of the sensitive areas formulated by sinologists or critics residing and working outside China. He considers, for example, Jameson's and Leo Ou-fan Lee's comments on or studies of Chinese literature lacking in a sense of critical immediacy, either because they are

This article was first published in Chinese in Wenxue pinglun (Literary review), no. 4 (2002): 85-96.

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LiYi

based outside the culture and literature to which they are referring or because their theoretical frameworks cannot be applied adequately to modern Chinese literature. His provocative statement — that "it is extremely necessary for us to stay inside literature for significant re-evaluation/' and Chinese scholars should not "simply transplant Western ideological and cultural concepts" — is ostensibly a political one, and certainly not a carefully considered critical position. The article also advocates a sort of literary/ cultural essentialism that could easily isolate the study of Chinese literature. But his view is not unrepresentative in contemporary China.

W h e n the tide of the cultural e n l i g h t e n m e n t of the 1980s started to ebb, postmodern culture, which had started as a critique of the Enlightenment, began to arrive in China, and the "re-evaluation of modernity" became a rather forceful and prominent discourse in postmodern culture. Nowadays, a re-evaluation of "modernity" is having a major impact on modern Chinese literature and on the most basic way in which value judgments are made in the field. Even those literary historians who do not completely accept the conclusions made in this move have begun to use "modernity" as a basic term in the study of m o d e r n Chinese literature. Serious questions thus arise: What has such a re-evaluation brought about in the field of modern Chinese literary studies? Is it necessary for scholars, confronted by the irresistible momentum of the re-evaluation movement, to reexamine established views on modern Chinese literature and to reconsider the established "tradition" of modern Chinese literature?

I Understanding the notion of modernity has been a complex process for scholars of modern Chinese literature — indeed for the whole modern Chinese scholarly community. In the 1980s, when "modern consciousness" prevailed, a sober and comprehensive examination of the concept of modernity was rarely made. It was not until the 1990s, when modernity and its values were challenged by scholars of contemporary Chinese arts and literature, that Chinese academic circles began to attach considerable importance to it. The field of modern Chinese literature was the first to bear the brunt of the "critique of modernity" imported from postmodern Western thought. Ever since the beginning of the twentieth century, especially after the May Fourth Movement, the pursuit of "modernity" in arts and culture had been the basis of study in this field. Now, since the goal of pursuing modernity itself is questionable, using the May Fourth New Culture Movement as a yardstick naturally becomes doubtful, and, therefore, the value and significance of modern Chinese literature — this

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very object of our study — becomes uncertain. [...] The cultural trend of reevaluating modernity has thus caused a profound split and readjustment in m o d e r n Chinese literary studies, a split that has made itself felt since the mid1980s. [...] Although the discourse of modernity has updated accepted views and ideas and brought us new perspectives and answers about past literary phenomena, it has failed to overcome its estrangement from the rich historical facts of literature. The reason is that examination and discussion of modernity did not originate from within the field of modern Chinese literature. This problem occurs in many of the major theories in this new discourse of modernity, including Fredric Jameson's notion of "national allegory" and the theory of "two kinds of modernity." As Jameson's theory of "third-world literature" gains popularity in China, national allegory, o n e of his i m p o r t a n t concepts, is used m o r e a n d m o r e frequently. According to Jameson: "All third-world literary texts are necessarily ... allegorical, and in a very specific way: they are to be read as ... national allegories." H e also says: "third-world texts ... necessarily project a political dimension in the form of national allegory: the story of the private individual destiny is always an allegory of the embattled situation of the public third-world culture and society"1 Jameson attempts to tell us that all third-world literature, including Lu Xun and m o d e r n Chinese literature, can be interpreted as "national allegories" and "political p r o j e c t i o n s . " However, a c o m p a r i s o n b e t w e e n t h e allegorical interpretations and the existing studies of Lu Xun's novels shows that this new explanation does not seem to be more detailed than the existing studies. Rather, as some scholars have already pointed out, it often conceals the many subtleties, contradictions a n d complexities in Lu Xun's artistic world with its careless sweeping generalizations. Moreover, this new interpretation makes it very convenient to categorize nearly all modern Chinese writers as writers of "national allegory." In this seemingly new "intermixture," the richness and variety of literature have been compromised. The same thing happens with the often-discussed theory of two kinds of modernity, that is, "aesthetic modernity" and "secular modernity." The exploration of "secular modernity" has resulted in a n u m b e r of theories about m o d e r n institutionalization — such as those about the modern nation-state, print media, and the notion of "public sphere"— which have been used to interpret modern Chinese literature. [...] However, a question keeps occurring: to what extent do these new and seemingly well-argued analyses beyond and above the literary text coincide with our basic experience of the text? It must be noted that it is literary texts that constitute the real history of literature, whereas analysis is only to enrich 1. Jameson, "Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism/' in The Jameson Reader, eds. Michael Hardt and Kathi Weeks (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 2000), 31920; emphasis in original.

202 LiYi understanding. Liu He's assertion, based on the concept of the nation-state, for example, is dubious: "Literature of the nation-state has since the very start been a reflection of the Western cultural hegemony in Chinese writing." 2 Does this mean that Lu Xun's national consciousness was the same as state-nationalism in a general sense, or even that it could be seen as a reflection of the "Western cultural hegemony"? Another study, which traces Lu Xun's theory of national characteristics to the Western distortion of China, appears to deviate from the basic historical facts: "He [Lu Xun], drawing on the Japanese version of Smith's work and 'translating' the missionary's theory about Chinese characteristics into his own literary creation, became the most important architect of modern Chinese literature." 3 Whatever the case, it is simplistic and far from convincing to interpret such literature, which is sustained by complex life experiences, as a m e r e "translation" of a certain foreign theory. [...] Using the Western distinction between two kinds of modernity, m o d e r n Chinese writers' belief in evolutionism, linear progress and the Enlightenment can be read as a manifestation of "secular modernity," whereas their doubts about modern society and their nostalgia for the past, which is embedded in modern Chinese literature, can be seen as "aesthetic modernity." Such a division is illuminating in that it reveals the self-construction of modern Chinese literature; but it seems too simplistic, and after many layers of theoretical exposition, a more convincing interpretation is yet to be presented. For example, it remains a key question whether m o d e r n Chinese writers' belief in evolutionism was a real conviction of theirs or merely the result of their passionate critique of modern society. This question should be answered not through quoting the writers' theories b u t t h r o u g h exploring thoroughly their complex spiritual worlds constructed in their complex texts. It is also questionable whether the concept of aesthetic modernity leads to more fruitful interpretations of modern Chinese writers' contradictions than our own critical frameworks, since aesthetics is such a complex issue with Chinese writers that it is impossible to expound it fully with a single theory. [...] In his "Literary Trends I: The Quest for Modernity, 1895-1927," a chapter in The Cambridge History of China, Leo Ou-fan Lee argues convincingly that "Lu Hsun's 'return' from the frontiers of a Western type of modernism to Chinese reality is [...] indicative of the 'modernizing process' of his contemporaries." "[MJodernity never really triumphed in the history of Chinese literature." 4 The

2. Liu He (Lydia Liu), 'Text, Criticism and Nation-State Literature," in Establishment of Critical Space, ed. Wang Xiaoming (Shanghai: Dongfang chuaban zhongxin, 1998). 3. Liu He (Lydia Liu) "Questioning Theories of National Character," in Establishment of Critical Space, ed. Wang Xiaoming (Shanghai: Dongfang chuaban zhongxin, 1998). 4. Leo On-fan Lee, "Literary trends I: The Quest for Modernity, 1895-1927," in The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 12: Republican China 1912-1949, Part 1, ed. John K. Fairbank (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983), 502, 504.

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more extreme view that modernity did not exist in Chinese literature because of its persistent rejection of modernist thought appeared later in the debate and was put forward by those who may well have recognized the huge difference between modern Chinese literature and modern Western literature. But does that mean that Chinese literature at the time lost value and significance just because it lacked some Western characteristics? Such a view, obviously based on the standards set by Western culture and literature, would ultimately exclude any further debate on modernity and would give modern Chinese literature little room to maneuver. We are no longer able to describe the historical richness and diversity of modern Chinese literature only on the basis of its internal development and with reference to our own understanding of it.

II The reason why the new discourse of modernity suppresses a lot of historical details is that from the very beginning, it has identified itself as the product of Western thought and literature. It assumes that the development of m o d e r n Western thought and literature has "offered" Chinese literary studies various new perspectives, from which Chinese scholars have looked back at modern Chinese literature and "found" the "same" pursuit of secular modernity that is under attack from aesthetic modernity. Therefore, the two kinds of modernity and their contradiction must appear to be applicable to modern Chinese literature. In my view, what renders this theoretical framework different from previous approaches is that it enables one to study as parts of literary history some literary formations ascribed to secular modernity (such as popular cultural productions) and others (such as classical poetry) as manifestations of the "contradiction of modernity." [...] The New Culture Movement did not import into China the abstract idea of "modernity"; rather, in Yu Dafu's famous words, its "greatest contribution ... was the rediscovery of man." After the May Fourth Movement, a new g r o u p of intellectuals endeavored to create and sustain a culture that reflected their own experiences and ideals, and it was possibly at this moment that a genuine critical secular consciousness took shape. But unlike Westerners who directed their criticism at secular materialism, Chinese intellectuals concentrated on pursuing individual freedom and happiness. [...] Chinese writers reserved their criticism for secular (although in a different sense) political dictatorships which obstructed individual freedom, and their pursuit of freedom often ran parallel to a longing and enthusiasm for a real modern life that was often far removed from intellectual asceticism. [...]

204 LiYi

III It is necessary, therefore, to tease out and examine thoroughly the concept of "modernity" in modern Chinese literature. This concept belongs both to China itself and to literature itself; it is not a purely Western import nor is it the result of logical deduction. Any study of China's modernity and that of the West should take into consideration what some scholars have called "cultural space." More specifically, we should examine the more fundamental question of "space" with regard to the general cultural positioning of writers. [...] In modern China, the more eminent the writers were, the more unique was their experience of space. In contrast, they always had misgivings about "evolution" as a concept and what it might bring about. For Lu Xun, Chinese history alternates between order and disorder, which was a vicious cycle from a period in which "one is totally a slave" to a period in which "one is unable to be a slave even if one wishes to." Lu Xun interpreted the historical time between progress and regression as an actual space. O n e space is always different from another, and therefore in the nostalgic writings by modern Chinese writers, conservatives and decadents differed in numerous ways. Writers of the School of Xueheng cannot be equated with Shen Congwen or Zhang Ailing; nor should Zhang Ailing be identified with the School of New Sensationalism. To lump Chinese writers together under the Western label of aesthetic modernity, which is based on a uniform experience of the same space, would be to risk losing a large part of literary history. Specific notions of time and diverse experiences of space form the basis on which the Chinese reader understands modern Chinese literature. [...] It was in the particular space of China that modern writers such as Lu Xun, Yu Dafu, and Mu Dan demonstrated and achieved their significance. [...] Only when a writer has identified a specific space can he or she grasp life and its truth and ultimately establish his or her own literary independence. It follows that, instead of being dragged away from actual experiences and engaged in increasingly abstract discussions, literary studies might as well be restored to its starting point — scholars should look again at the experiences of life before broaching the "modernity" of modern Chinese literature. [...] [...] It is particularly necessary nowadays to u n d e r s t a n d extra-literary influences on the basis of the innate qualities of literature, to guard against the use of narratives external to literature as a replacement of our actual experience of a literary discourse itself. A series of basic Western c o n c e p t s such as e n l i g h t e n m e n t , evolution, rationality a n d the m o d e r n nation-state greatly influenced modern Chinese writers, yet they should not be regarded as norms merely because of their prominence in Western culture. Special attention should be paid to the views and ideas presented in Chinese literature itself, and what

"Re-evaluation of Modernity" and Modern Chinese Literature (Excerpts) 205

enlightenment, evolution, rationality, and the m o d e r n nation-state m e a n to Chinese writers, how they understand such concepts and how they handle them in their writing. There is certainly the need to ratify modern Chinese literature as a subject of study. In other words, literary concepts and ideas cannot be simply transplanted from the West but should be formulated on the basis of the real experience of modern Chinese literature. The fact that modern Chinese literature as a "past actuality" continues to give rise to d e b a t e s today shows that it still has its value a n d significance for contemporary literature. To put it another way, modern Chinese literature will continue to inspire and energize contemporary literature.

(Translated by Lu Yalin)

Historical Imagioairies of Asia

Wang Hui

EDITORS' NOTE This piece by Wang Hui presents a brief outline of the historical imaginaries of Asia, with its focus of attention on the Japanese articulations on a Japan that is both within and outside Asia. The idea that Asia or East Asia was a separate and unique civilization that had Confucianism as its ethical and cultural mainstay must be considered in close relation to the rise of Japan as a regional power in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the appropriation of the notion of a common Asia should be understood in the context of nationalist movements in Asia. Wang Hui attempts to show that the discursive articulations on Asia by both Japanese scholars and their counterparts elsewhere, including China, and their strategic use of the idea of a different and unique Asia were replete with inconsistencies and contradictions at both theoretical and practical levels. It is the historical conditions that enabled such imaginaries of Asia. What Wang Hui argues is rather straightforward, and the relevance of this piece to the present debate over the politics of regional identity is self-evident. Wang Hui's recent essay, "The Genealogy of Asian Imaginaries/' published in Chinese in 2003 in No. 8 of Shijie (Horizons), may be seen as an extended and expanded version of this speech.

* * * * * This is an edited speech given by Wang Hui in December 2001 at a seminar organized by Tianze Economic Research Institute, Beijing.

208 Wang Hui

My discussion of different perceptions of Asia and their use is in four parts. The first part reflects on the notion of Asia formulated by Fukuzawa Yukichi (tetRMi" pf), a late nineteenth-century Japanese scholar who, after the Meiji Reform, contended that Japan should break away from Asia and identify with Europe. The second part focuses on the socialist movement and national autonomy. When Lenin was considering revolution in Russia, he touched u p o n the issue of his country's identity, that is, the question of whether Russia should be considered a European or an Asian country. His thinking had tremendous influence on his contemporary revolutionaries in China, especially on Dr Sun Yat-sen, who later p r o p o s e d the idea of a G r a n d Asia, somehow echoing a n d confronting the Japanese notion of a "Grand East Asia." The third part considers Asian and East Asian civilization from the perspective of different historical contexts. Some Japanese scholars, Hamashita Takeshi (^RTS^fe) and Mizoguchi Yuzo ( i f P i | H ) for example, imagined Asia to be a unified continent with its own u n i q u e civilization. The fourth part considers the notion of Asia as part of an interacting world rather than a self-contained unit. I conclude by way of offering my own thoughts on the issue. On 16 March 1885, Fukuzawa Yukichi, forerunner ofJapan's modern reform, published an article in World Affairs that argued that Japan should break away from Asia and join Europe. Since then, this idea has become a recurrent topic for discussion among scholars of Japan's modern intellectual history. The gist of the article is that the notion of J a p a n as a peripheral country in the Chinacentered tributary system should be abandoned. His main point is that J a p a n should be d i s c o n n e c t e d from the China-centered tributary system a n d in particular from Confucianism and Asian feudalism, in order to make the country a Westernized nation-state. [...] Asia and Europe, for him, were not geographical categories, for n o one would locate Japan in Europe; they were rather cultural concepts and embodied different values. To break away from Asia was to break away from Confucianism. There had been debates over similar issues among Chinese intellectuals. The majority of Chinese intellectuals favored Western culture, advocating such Western enlightenment concepts as democracy, human rights, freedom, and equality, and using them as a weapon against Confucianism. There was a difference, however, in the case ofJapan. On the one hand, Fukuzawa Yukichi's idea that Japan should break away from Asia contributed to the rise ofJapanese nationalism and became an important slogan for Japanese nationalists; on the other, it was appropriated by Japan's ultra right-wing forces. For instance, Kokuryukai (the Black Dragon Society), which actively participated in the invasion of some Asian countries, worshipped Fukuzawa as their spiritual leader. It is crucial to understand the different interpretations of Fukuzawa's argument. Although Japan's colonial policy advocated the idea that Japan should separate itself from Asia and identify with Europe, in practice Japanese colonialists had a strong aversion to the European presence in Asia and invaded Southeast Asia and China. [...]

Historical Imaginaries of Asia 209

The second section of my discussion examines the discursive formation of the idea of Asia against the background of the socialist movement and national autonomy in Asia. Asia was imagined not only by European colonialists but also by revolutionaries. In the course of their resistance against colonial and capitalist expansionism, socialist activists formed their own conception of Asia. Socialism started in E u r o p e as a campaign for internationalism a n d as a critique of nationalism. Indeed, before World War I, socialist activists were faced with these questions: should the proletariat and the working class of different nations lend their support to their governments in fighting against another imperialist state? What position should the working class take when different nations were in conflict? Lenin, who proposed his theory of national autonomy largely in response to these questions, did not think that the working class should sympathize with the ruling class of their own country at war with another imperial power. Speaking about the issue of national autonomy and self-determination, Lenin was mainly concerned with how revolutionaries and intellectuals in a large country such as Russia should respond to the desire of smaller countries to achieve autonomy a n d self-determination, how Russians, for example, should r e s p o n d to the i n d e p e n d e n c e of Ukraine and Poland. Lenin's position is an ethical one: all revolutionaries s h o u l d stand with small c o u n t r i e s in t h e i r c a m p a i g n s for i n d e p e n d e n c e against the chauvinism of major powers. [...] Although large, wealthy nations, he argued, have the advantage of developing capitalism in the long run, revolutionaries in these countries should give their support to weak nations struggling for independence rather than to their own government. It was this reasoning that launched Lenin into his discussion of Asia. Twenty-five years after the publication of Fukuzawa Yukichi's theory of Japan's identity, and on the eve of the Russian Revolution, Lenin published a series of articles including "The Awakening of Asia" and "Backward Europe and Advanced Asia." In these articles, he applauded the exciting political life and the socialist and democratic movements in China and d e n o u n c e d Europe, which though technologically developed, culturally rich, constitutionally sound, and highly civilized, was under the control of the bourgeoisie and acted as the defender and s u p p o r t e r of everything that was backward, dying, and medieval. Such an assessment constitutes part of Lenin's theory of imperialism and proletariat revolution. According to Lenin, capitalism had reached its imperialist stage, and the social struggles of the oppressed peoples throughout the world could be categorized as a world proletarian revolution. He regarded Asia as progressive a n d E u r o p e as backward only in the sense that Asia was representative of revolutionary struggles at this imperialist stage. A careful examination of Lenin's conception of the identity of Russia shows, however, that his idea of Asia was deeply rooted in E u r o p e a n discursive representations of Asia dating to the eighteenth century, such as those by Adam Smith and Hegel. [...] In the Hegelian model of history, Asia typifies pre-capitalist and feudal social relations. In Lenin's narrative of imperialism, Asia had special historical significance precisely because

210 Wang Hui

Asian countries were being transformed into capitalist nation-states, and the oppressed nations' struggle for i n d e p e n d e n c e itself was a criticism of global capitalism. In his discussion of Russia, Lenin said that it was undoubtedly an Asian country in many respects; indeed, it was the most barbaric, medieval, backward, and shameless Asian country. Here, Asia is once again associated with barbarism, medievalism, and backwardness. L e n i n ' s conceptualization of Asia sheds some i m p o r t a n t light o n o u r u n d e r s t a n d i n g of m o d e r n Chinese nationalism. In a speech entitled "Grand Asianism" delivered in Kobe in 1924, Dr Sun Yat-sen made a vague distinction between two different Asias. O n e was that it was the site of one of the oldest civilizations in the world, a region where there was no totally independent country, no new politically structured nation-state. This Asia was a doomed one. The other was the continent of Asia as the site of an Asian revival. The starting point for this revival was Japan, because Japan had abrogated all unequal treaties with the West and had become the first independent nation-state in Asia. [...] [...] H e r e we see that whether it is Sun's "Grand Asianism" or Fukuzawa Yukichi's advocacy of "breaking away from Asia and identification with Europe," Asia is conceived as at once beyond and inextricably linked to the concept of the nation-state and the issue of national autonomy. If we compare these two ideas of Asia, we find that the Asia or East Asia that Fukuzawa Yukichi imagined was a region with a system of homogeneous cultures having their roots in Confucianism, whereas Dr Sun Yat-sen's "Grand Asia" was not culturally homogeneous, as he viewed Asia as the birthplace of Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism and included both Turkey and Russia as Asian countries. [...] The third part of my discussion concerns the identification and mapping of Asian and East Asian civilization in different historical contexts. My discussion is mainly based on the Japanese narrative of discursive formations of knowledge that uses either Europe or Islam as a point of reference in demarcating different cultural regions. Since World War II, several generations of Japanese historians have accepted the concept of an autonomous East Asia (which consists of China, Japan, the Korean Peninsula, and Vietnam), viewing its cultures as characterized by Confucianism and thus very different from Christian and Muslim cultures. According to Nishijima Sadao (0llL§/E#i), East Asia was a self-contained cultural r e g i o n w h e r e d i f f e r e n t c u l t u r e s h a d b o t h t h e i r own a n d s o m e closely interconnected historical structures. [...] Its cultural characteristics, indigenous and exclusive, include the Chinese written character, Confucianism, its legal system and, in part, Buddhism. Although this perception of East Asia incorporated J a p a n into a Chinacentered system, it had two premises: first, it establishes a brand new relationship between Japan and the Asian continent; second, it recognizes Japan's position as a unique oceanic nation. Maeda Naonori ( f u f f l i ^ r ) introduces the notion of "an organic Asia" [...]. According to him, the theory of an organic Asia adds a new concept to the discourse on Asia. [...]

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T h e c o n s t r u c t i o n of an o r g a n i c image of Asia is a m o d e r n c r e a t i o n . Contemporary Japanese scholars such as Hamashita Takeshi and Mizoguchi Yuzo have a t t e m p t e d to reveal the internal relationship between J a p a n a n d Asia. Hamashita Takeshi's studies of the tributary system are groundbreaking. Working in the field of economic history, he attempts to reconstruct an East Asia founded on the China-centered tributary system. At the same time, he points out that this system is entirely hierarchical and should be changed to a new East Asian system with the ocean at its center. The reason why Hamashita Takeshi underlines the organic and interactive relationships in Asia is that there was long-distance trading within Asia and beyond, long before Asia established any trade relations with Europe. He uses these early trading links to establish the concept of an organic and interrelated Asia and critique those narratives that centralize Europe in the world system. The significance of his theory lies in his revelation of the existence of a complex and developed economic network within Asia and his reversal of J o h n King Fairbank's negative evaluation of the tributary system. Mizoguchi Yuzo reconstructs the concept of Asia from the perspective of cultural and intellectual history. He regards Confucianism as the dominant culture in Asia and associates the Chinese Revolution with such concepts as "the mandate of heaven" and "equality"— concepts that were established as far back as the Song Dynasty — thus emphasizing the cultural homogeneity of Asia. This last section addresses the notion of Asia as part of an interacting world. T h e construction of Asia as a unified whole presents a problem, since, as I m e n t i o n e d earlier, the internal relationships a m o n g nations on the Asian continent are far too complicated. Whether Asia is perceived as a unified and holistic historical formation or as one of changing historical relationships is of vital importance. When viewed from the angle of Chinese historical studies, scholars from Japan, Korea, and Taiwan have tended to define Asia by paying close attention to its "peripheral" areas, and this obviously has to do with their own geographical positions. But how should we look at the internal relations of the mainland of China? I cite two examples. In the 1920s, American historian Owen Lattimore was dispatched by the American Geographers' Association to China and Mid-Asia for field studies. Later, h e wrote many reports on the areas and became a forerunner in the field of Chinese frontier history. [...] His books — among them Chinese Frontier at the Center of Asia (1940), which singles out the Great Wall as the center of the continent — are receiving more and more attention. Moving beyond political and national boundaries, Lattimore sees the Great Wall as the dividing line between two social formations, i.e., agricultural society and nomadic society. The frequent contacts of the two groups along the Wall helped form a relationship that was characterized by constant interaction and which, in turn, was reflected in the internal structure of these societies. Undoubtedly, the farmers were influenced by the nomads, and vice versa. Prior to the Tang Dynasty, Changan (Xi'an) and the Yellow River were

212 Wang Hui the focus of historical narratives. After the Song Dynasty, the focus shifted to the south of the Yangtze River and the Grand Canal regions, whereas the areas around the Wall were regarded as remote frontier regions. Lattimore's book shows the Wall as the center of Asia; peoples from both sides often crossed the boundary to make contact and intermingle, thus establishing internal relations among Asian countries. Lattimore also suggests that the nomads were originally farmers who were expelled to the prairie. Only after they had established their own society in the prairie could the borderline between two different societies, i.e., the nomadic and the agricultural, be established. The second example: Miyazaki Ichisada (PET^TI?JE), a distinguished Japanese historian, argues that Asia had had its own modern age long ago. What he calls "Song Dynasty capitalism" was established in the tenth century (the Northern Song Dynasty), earlier than European capitalism. Similarly, Korea in the fourteenth c e n t u r y a n d J a p a n in the seventeenth c e n t u r y c o n t r i b u t e d greatly to the emergence of a m o d e r n Asia. Miyazaki Ichisada has several reasons for dating the beginning of Asian modernity to the seventeenth century, including the fact that the feudal system had started to disintegrate by the end of the Tang Dynasty and that the conflicts among the Five Dynasties and Ten States at the end of the Tang Dynasty helped to foster a state consciousness. The Song Dynasty saw the building of a nation on the basis of a strong consciousness of the nation-state or quasi-nation-state. He emphasizes the role of the Grand Canal in trade and in linking the interior of China with the outside world. [... ] Neither Miyazaki Ichisada nor Hamashita Takeshi defines Asia as an isolated and absolute whole. [...] The point of my discussion is that there are ambiguity and internal contradiction, rather than consistency, in these ideas of Asia. Asia is at one time a colonial construct, at another time a non-colonial one; it is now a conservative construct, and now a revolutionary one; it is at once an embodiment of a nationalist and an internationalist ideal; it is a European concept (although in defining Asia, Europe constructs it in its own image); it is at times related to national autonomy and at other times to the vision of an empire; it is at once a cultural concept which contrasts with European civilization, and a geographical concept. In conclusion, I would like to make a few observations: 1) all the different ideas of Asia discussed above are marked by a common search for the origin of modernity in Asia; 2) they are intimately related with the history and reality of nationalist movements and the nation-state; 3) it is hardly feasible to construct a consistent Asia. When we talk about new imaginaries of Asia, we should n o t imagine it to be a culturally homogeneous region, but rather we should associate it with cultural plurality and regional politics, economy and culture; 4) there have long been religious, commercial, cultural, and military relationships between Asia and Europe, Africa and America, and, at times, such relationships might have been even more important than the internal relationships within Asia; 5) if the

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cultivation of cultural potential in Asia implies a critique of Eurocentrism, then the reconstruction of the concept of Asia can also be viewed as a resistance against colonial forces, intervening forces and dominant forces. With the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Cold War has almost come to an end in Europe, but in Asia it still exists. How to terminate the Cold War in Asia and remove all the structural causes that have brought this Cold War into being should be an important concern of various imaginaries of Asia.

(Translated by Luo Xiaoyun)

Foreign Settlements in Shanghai and Fusion of Different Cultures (Excerpts)

Xiong Yuezhi

EDITORS' NOTE In "Foreign Settlements in Shanghai and Fusion of Different Cultures," Xiong Yuezhi, a Shanghai-based historian, considers the importance of Western culture to the formation of modern Shanghai. The article examines the relationship between foreign settlements in Shanghai and the formation of its modernity in the second half of nineteenth century. In contrast to the established view that the foreign settlements were the product of Western colonial imperialist and colonialist practice, Xiong Yuezhi argues that their presence in Shanghai actually created a condition of possibility for the development of a modern society and culture and therefore played a significant role in bringing about the city's "modernity." And the most salient features of the metropolitan culture of Shanghai, Xiong asserts, are defined by its social openness and cultural tolerance. Shanghai is a cultural melting pot in which foreign culture and local culture are fused. Xiong's argument is noteworthy in the sense that it reinterprets the function of the foreign settlements in Shanghai, which have been regarded in China as colonial establishment imposed on China. This article, though specifically focused on one city, might be read as an attempt to comprehend the historical significance of the "invasion" of China by Western culture after the Opium War.

* * * * * The article was first published in Chinese in Xueshu Yuekan Qournal of scholarship), no. 5 (2002).

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The earliest of the twenty-four foreign concessions established in modern China, the foreign settlements in Shanghai were the largest and had the longest history. In their heyday, the Shanghai settlements were 1.5 times larger than the other twenty-three groups of settlements combined and had more than 150,000 foreign residents. The establishment of the foreign settlements opened the door to an influx of Western culture, and the m o d e r n characteristics of Shanghai culture considerably weakened its resistance to foreign influences. Moreover, as an immigrant city without a gentry tradition, Shanghai was a place where no cultural discourse could become dominant, so it was conducive to interaction and the fusion of different cultures. Shanghai thus became known as a cultural melting pot. Many important factors have already been identified as contributing to the re-creation of Shanghai as typical oasis of Western culture. This article expounds on four more: a) the special municipal structure of Shanghai, b) its peripheral "local tradition," c) the m o d e r n elements in its cultural heritage, and d) the influence of an immigrant society on cultural interactions. I Firstly, the special municipal structure of Shanghai provided a relatively free space for cultural interaction and a fusion between China and the West. M o d e r n Shanghai was divided into several districts: the French Concession, C o m m o n Settlements, and local Chinese districts. Each district ran its own affairs while respecting the autonomy of the others. Between 1860 and 1880, for example, members of the British royal family visited Shanghai several times, and each time they could expect two receptions — one held in the British Consulate located in the Settlements and the other organized by Chinese officials at Yuyuan (i^BI) in Shanghai County. Similarly, in 1879 when Ulysses S. Grant, a former US president, paid a weeklong visit to Shanghai, there were receptions by the British and the Chinese, plus a banquet in his honor in the French Concession. In other words, in the late Qing Dynasty, three municipal systems co-existed in Shanghai, which paved the way for the exchange and intermingling of different cultures. In the settlements and concessions, Western consuls, tycoons, and financial oligarchies maintained power, exercising tight political control while gaining as much economic benefit as possible. [...] In cultural matters, however, they allowed a fair degree of freedom. In fact, they did not usually interfere with businesses linked to local culture, especially such private institutions as newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, and schools. Most educated Westerners in the settlements, including some missionaries, were themselves marginalized in their home countries and therefore did not try to establish any form of Western cultural hegemony in Shanghai. From 1854 on, the majority of residents in the setdements were Chinese, since there was virtually no barrier to movement among the three municipal areas,

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especially during wartime. Such easy, uncontrolled mobility made it impossible to prevent Western culture penetrating local society, although efforts were made by the local gentry to counter foreign influences. As a result, Western materialism, aestheticism, municipal administration, the parliamentary system, lifestyle, and system of values were all brought to Shanghai. The settlements became, in fact, a kind of Western cultural "enclave" on oriental land, and the people of Shanghai, therefore, gradually changed their attitude towards Western culture and began to admire and mimic it. Modern industries, like gas and electricity companies, were established, and there was a move toward local autonomy and the cultivation of a consciousness of civil rights, the law, and public morality. Shanghai citizens thus demonstrated their willingness to identify with Western culture, materially and spiritually. [... ] As a result, t h e r e was also a surge of enthusiasm for studying foreign languages. Foreign-language training schools mushroomed during the 1880s and 1890s, while in Beijing the same languages were despised by the literati. T h e eagerness to learn foreign languages was so intense that people sometimes had to bribe the schools to get in. [...] The Longmen Shuyuan ( t l P l i l r l S Dragon Gate Academy) is a notable example of a school in which a Western curriculum found its way into the traditional academic framework. Books like Elementary Chemistry and Introduction to Geology were frequently seen in the school's library catalogue, a n d many of the graduates later became famous intellectuals in Shanghai. In an environment free from cultural hegemony, cultural exchanges could take place at a d e e p e r level. By watching the Western way of life a n d their i m p l e m e n t a t i o n of municipal administration, Shanghai- citizens gradually embraced Western influences, not only in the material sense but also at political and social levels. For a long time, "the West" had only b e e n an idea for the Chinese, as very few had any real experience of it, and cultural exchanges between China a n d the West h a d consequently r e m a i n e d at a superficial level. T h e emergence of the foreign settlements and concessions, however, brought into Shanghai not only Western tools but also their way of life, social systems, values, and conventions. T h e East-West cultural exchanges became as leisurely and unremarkable as any social intercourse. II Secondly, the marginality of Shanghai's culture considerably weakened local resistance to the influence of Western culture. Shanghai was chosen as one of the first treaty ports, n o t only because of its excellent geographic location but also because of its unique cultural tradition. Unlike the pugnacious Cantonese and the aggressive southern people, Shanghai citizens were moderate and more willing to deal with foreigners. One of the main reasons for this cultural tolerance

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could be that Shanghai had always b e e n marginalized in traditional Chinese culture. T h e Shanghai area belonged to the ancient Wu region, far away from c e n t r a l C h i n a w h e r e m a i n s t r e a m t r a d i t i o n was r o o t e d . S h a m a n i s m was predominant, and early scholars of literature, dating to the pre-Qin period, treated it with contempt. Although the center of cultural gravity moved from the north to the south after the Song-Yuan Dynasties, Shanghai maintained some of its marginal cultural characteristics, and there were other distinctive features. Its citizens, for instance, pursued practical rather than intellectual interests; they preferred merchants to the literati. Then there was the propensity for luxury and extravagance. Local people ignored the Confucian hierarchy's dress code and official etiquette and turned their attention instead to the competitive pursuit of luxury. Another feature was the prevalence of ghost worship, as Wang Tao (182897) records in his book on Shanghai local customs during the reign of Emperor Xianfeng. In addition, as a city with a relatively short history and a mixture of cultural influences, Shanghai was more tolerant of and more open to Western culture. [...]

Ill The third factor contributing to Shanghai's development as a Western "enclave" was its modern economy. The modern elements embedded in the city's culture provided a base for transplanting Western culture and, in fact, emerged before Shanghai became a port city. The economic structure of Shanghai was actually that of a well-developed market economy, and merchants were elevated to a higher social status than in other regions. During the Ming period (1363-1644), the J i a n g n a n area (the* lower Yangzi River region) built u p an effective m a r k e t economy that accelerated the exchange of commodities. It also accelerated social change with, as Yu Yingshi observes, the inherited literati-peasant-artisan-merchant hierarchy transforming itself into a new literati-merchant-peasant-artisan structure. T h e development of a market economy enabled local popular culture to prosper and flourish, particularly popular fiction. Feng Menglong, Ling Mengchu, and Li Yu were among the representatives of this new cultural development, and their themes and narrative styles deviated considerably from the established conventions. O r t h o d o x standards of behavior, which used to privilege the aristocracy, were also subverted by the local taste for luxury and extravagance. Residents were fashionably dressed, and they wore gold and jade ornaments; some male residents even dressed themselves in feminine costumes. Their deviance from n o r m a l i t y a n d t h e i r obsession with e x t r a v a g a n c e can be s e e n as demonstrating the modern pursuit of freedom and individuality.

IV Lastly, there was the mobility of the population, a common characteristic of an immigrant society. Prior to being a treaty port, Shanghai was well known for its

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immigrant merchants, who made up the most dynamic group of residents and came from all over China. In the early nineteenth century, there were at least twenty-six clubs and village/town associations in Shanghai, which played an important role in shaping social and urban life. At the same time, the local gentry, in contrast, had not been able to hold onto their Confucian values. After being converted into a treaty port, Shanghai b e c a m e even m o r e secularized a n d commercialized. New social upstarts such as compradors and business people became the most active and powerful group, while the old gentry declined and failed to maintain their status as pillars of society. Subsequently, Shanghai became a city in which the traditional elitist culture was lost, and there was no modern r e p l a c e m e n t or cultural hegemony, since many Shanghai intellectuals were immigrants themselves. Previously marginalized in their native provinces, these intellectuals were free from traditional culture in Shanghai and certainly had no intention of protecting or promoting it. Their emergence also marked a split among the local literati. The new intellectuals like Wang Tao, Jiang Dunfu, and Qian Xinbo had a value system radically different from that of the conservative men of letters such as Feng Guifeng and Yu Yue, and the two groups were critical of each other. Because foreign settlements were free from the political control of the Qing Dynasty, Shanghai had a relatively developed cultural industry. Private newspapers, magazines, and book publishers flourished and, at the same time, the related conventions and norms, including rules about copyright and advertisements, b e c a m e r e s p e c t e d a n d were p r o t e c t e d to a certain d e g r e e . This cultural environment helped convert the traditional literati from government lackeys into independent modern intellectuals, who could use their knowledge to earn a living. Intellectuals from all over China moved to Shanghai and invigorated its culture by importing diverse local customs and conventions. Liang Qichao, Zhang Taiyan, and Yan Fu were the best known among these intellectuals. [...] Shanghai culture has two prominent characteristics: one is the multiplicity of its cultural origins, and the other is its tolerance of alien cultures. These two characteristics have made Shanghai impressively different from other Chinese cities and regions. In general, Shanghai is an ideal city for cultural interactions and fusions in modern China. Established as a part of the treaty port, the foreign settlements provided Shanghai with a convenient opportunity to absorb Western culture, both material and spiritual, on a large scale and in a systematic way. The rapid influx of Western culture n o t only stimulated the economy and e x t e n d e d foreign influences politically but also helped the formation of the four basic characteristics of S h a n g h a i described above: its u n i q u e municipal s t r u c t u r e , its cultural marginality, the m o d e r n elements in its local traditions, and its vitality as an i m m i g r a n t society. These features c o n t r i b u t e d enormously to establishing Shanghai as a melting pot free from the hegemony of any single cultural discourse.

(Translated by Jiang Ningkang)

Afterword

Paul A. Bove Critical Zone is a symptom of the most important problem facing traditional politics — the relationship between China and the English-speaking world, which is to say, the relationship between the PRC and the USA. The editors of Critical Zone have taken excellent advantage of Hong Kong's particular history as an open society and ex-colony of Britain importantly oriented to US economic and political action, to encourage the exchange and circulation of histories and ideas in a manner that runs parallel to processes in the diplomatic, political, and financial fields. It is of vital importance for the world that Chinese and especially North American English-speaking critics inform each other, describe singular and common problems, and transmit ideas and ways of speaking — in order to build intellectual a n d cultural relations that s u p p l e m e n t and examine politicaleconomistic structures. The editors and contributors to this number of Critical Zone clearly understand the stakes involved for their enterprise. There is little need for another venue that would simply exchange commonplaces between US and PRC intellectuals. For a number of years, China's Open Door policy — to an American, this is an ironic self-description — enabled visits between the US and China of scholars important to each country. No doubt, as a number of essays in this collection testify, that exchange has lacked balance: many more US intellectuals have spent time at conferences on the Mainland than vice versa. Critical Zone marks a clear end to that first phase of relations in which US intellectual commodities arrive on China's shores as new fashions. Not only do nationalist impulses refuse this

222 Paul A. Bove continuing importation of what are often shoddy goods, but also newer intellectual generations recognize that neither nationalist repulsion nor slavish import/export models allow the best use of critical intelligence among either US or Chinese scholars who hope to confront the large problems facing the human species today. Critical Zone stands ready to open the second phase of US/China exchange that rests upon the recognition that American and Chinese power demand US and Chinese dialogue a n d solutions. Although a m o n g Americans a n d Chinese intellectuals a romance with Western European high intellectual traditions remains undiluted, increasingly, history d e m a n d s that world problems pass through the fires of this emerging central nexus for cooperation or competition. It is not, I think, wrong for intellectuals on each side of the Pacific to be aware that nothing less than the fate of the species lies within the power of the US and China. In different ways, each of these countries looks to the other for political, technological, cultural, and financial resources. Worldwide anger at American pre-emptive war strategy comes in part from an awareness that US power is almost irresistible, that it excludes most of the world's peoples from decisionmaking, and that, finally, it exists strategically as both an aspiration to worldd o m i n a t i o n a n d a t h r e a t to the species' existence. Frustration at t h e US government's rejection of the Kyoto Accord on global warming as well as furious protests at US militarism rest on an intuitive human knowledge that US action aiming to subdue the earth can destroy it — a fear that has continued unabated despite the seemingly reduced threat of nuclear war consequent upon the end of the USSR. Several essays in this collection — especially that by Ronald Judy — point to these facts and anxieties. Moreover, other essays, more conventionally reflecting traditional nationalistic concerns for independence — while historically understandable — matter most for their awareness of US power. Danger lies, however, in imagining that a competing national power, i n d e p e n d e n t of or alternate to the US, might present itself as an answer to the threat that US power poses to the species. Rather, as Critical Zone makes clear, co-operative intellectual action among scholars in two centers of great power can provide alternative political and cultural elaborations friendlier to life than can political competition or exchange of commodified tropes. Critical Zone does two essential tasks. It allows intellectuals from different communities and systems to share the stories that matter to their intellectual priorities and from that exchange, in part, to build toward newer theories and models that better fit the combined needs of each group as they live in not only their local worlds but also the increasingly global history we share. Chinese scholars' relatively traditional objections to Hillis Miller's deconstructive concerns for the death of literature typify the sort of problem that Critical Zone can surmount. In effect, Miller and his opponents live not merely in different countries and histories but in different times — or at least they do seemingly. Standard historicist development narratives can account for the debate — the North Atlantic world, especially the US, seems so much more "modernized" than China that the written word's passing is more noticeable and seemingly

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irrefutable. 1 Critical Zone not only allows intellectuals from China and the US to see these different historical and temporal moments forming their work but to imagine new ways to think the c u r r e n t m o m e n t that, in themselves, would supercede the limits either of their narratives contain and rest upon. In other words and generally, Critical Zone first records materials that intellectuals need to exchange, which themselves become the necessary basis for thinking through to new ideas and concepts. Its readers and contributors can take a more superjacent point of view than that we find on any side of such debates. The debate and its situation exist as the unity we must now theorize. Critical Zone is thus both the r e c o r d of difference, of the intellectual inadequacy of merely "different" intellectual efforts, and at the same time, the place where progress past those differences should emerge. Chinese and US intellectuals in particular must realize that their historical circumstance imposes upon them the need to think their national differences, their exchange relations, and their worldly position in terms that matter to the species itself. What is that circumstance? In terms of standard realism, the US and PRC stand to be competitors for regional and global hegemony. Of course, humanists' efforts might help disprove the anticipated results of standard realist theories, but only if they together consider more than national stances on the various problems that present themselves. US political intellectuals clearly have the PRC firmly in mind as one of the small handful of important agents in world history. 2 What matters much more, however, is the fact that the US/PRC relation has world-historical importance. By that I mean nothing more than the obvious fact that the potential for global competition exists between two great powers and that the US, at least, wants to encourage development of the PRC in a manner that will minimize its potential threat to long-term US interests. There is abundant direct evidence on this last point, and it is evidence of the sort of threat to the species' survival that Ronald Judy's essay in this volume implies. In The National Security Strategy of the United States,3 the American government lays out a clear vision of the US attitude toward the world and a handful of other 1. See Terry Cochran, The Twilight of Literacy (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2001). 2. Foreign Affairs 82, no. 6 (November/December 2003) has the cover headline, "China Takes Off" and contains lengthy essays on China's economic and diplomatic maturity. All other questions aside, this is evidence of US elites' deepening sense of the centrality of the US /PRC relation, of the PRC's developing world importance, and of the simultaneous sense that US elites need to know more about China and have already the right methods to gain that knowledge. Needless to say, the sorts of question that most interest humanists and stand at the center of Critical Zone do not appear in such discussions. 3. Published by the White House in September 2002 and available at the White House website; President George W. Bush signed this document. See also, James Der Derrian, "Decoding the National Security Strategy of the United States of America," boundary 2, 30, no. 3 (fall 2003): 19-27.

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states, among which is China. Critical Zone provides a critical and constructive counterpart to the administrative elites' modes of thinking about this relation; indeed, it has the potential to supplement importantly the already large body of critical writing in the US, the PRC, and in the Chinese diaspora that currently define discussion of this relation. Critical Zone has begun an important effort to combine the intellectual classes of the US and China to lay out basic issues and to form common theories in response. Moreover, it has chosen to combine with this important and traditional humanistic effort elements that turn discussion and critical elaboration towards the world-historic issues the relation implies and that intellectuals cannot easily catch in merely local or national terms. Of course, in r e c e n t years, intellectuals have p r o d u c e d endlessly varying discussions on globalization, globalism, globality, and so on, devoting reams of paper to debates over terms and methods. While Critical Zone stands on this body of work, it clearly comes after it. It recognizes that those debates, like earlier ones on postmodernism and other fashionable critical terms, do not and cannot catch either risks or opportunities in the present efforts in the US and PRC to produce new ways of living and thinking that might minimize the dangers in a competitive relation between the US and China. Where there are risks there are also opportunities, and Critical Zone is a valuable and original venue to seize those opportunities. Many risks are clear. Some are seemingly innocuous, because relations mediate their danger. Among these dangers, from a humanistic scholar's point of view, is the sometimesunfortunate exchange of US cultural value for access to the Chinese intellectual market. Essays in this volume suggest that some PRC intellectuals rightly resent the forces that facilitate importing especially US but generally Western categories in ways that minimize either the indigenous Chinese traditions or the originality of contemporary Chinese critique. Of course, heated debates exist around all these questions. My point here is a limited one. Structural forces that overvalue US or Western notions and figures, that overvalue publication in US venues, and so on, n o t only d a m a g e the n e e d e d intellectual exchanges a m o n g US a n d PRC intellectuals. More importantly, they also substitute for and displace exposition, description, and analysis, the results of which could have serious consequences for both the developing relations between two states and the species' way of being in the world in the face of these two great powers. Of course, political and social intellectuals recognize certain c o m m o n problems, from the varying places each nation occupies in the world trading system to the bilateral arrangements of diplomacy, to the global implications of air pollution and energy conservation. 4 Humanistic scholars have not played a 4. For some sense of the stakes over these issues, recall the differences between the US and PRC over the Kyoto Accord. See "China Strongly Opposes Junking of Kyoto Protocol," in People's Daily Sunday, 24 June 2 0 0 1 , http://fpeng.peopledaily.com.cn/english/200106/24/ eng20010624_73400.html/.

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role in these discussions nor, for the most part, have they discovered common concerns or developed theories that might gain prominence in the relationship. In other words, humanists have abdicated their roles in arranging power and its relations among crucial actors on the world's stage. While Hillis Miller's essay and the debate that follows it draws attention to world-historic transformations that have to d o with complex interrelations among media, knowledge, modes of thinking, and forms of political organization, the debate that it triggers ties itself narrowly to matters of nation and bureaucratic effort. That the US and Europe have (not alone) societies mostly illiterate in their dependence on the visual and acoustic image matters globally, despite the national or professional prejudices of scholars, wherever they exist. Of course, my remark implies a theory of modernization that many might resent or want to resist, but there is no clear e v i d e n c e t h a t capital i n n o v a t i o n s with such p r o f o u n d c o n s e q u e n c e s as reorganizing knowledge around the visual limit themselves to local or national regions. Moreover, it clearly matters for the entire globe if intellectuals rightly understand the very existence of the nation-state system as tied tightly to the existence of print culture. Questions arise for intellectuals in light of such a transformation that extend from relatively simple questions such as "Does it make sense to produce national literary histories" to more complex questions such as "Must critical t h e o r i e s apply equally in the various t e m p o r a l i t i e s of o n e modernizing global arrangement." Critical Zone has already established that Chinese and Western intellectuals cannot escape such questions. It gives the US a species-wide perspective on seemingly local or national concerns with language learning, traveling theory, and so on. That this space opened by Critical Zonehas profound human consequences rests upon not only the deepening examination of various problems presented in these essays but the context in which we exist. One notorious point of reference that indicates the inescapable importance of a critical US/PRC relation is the already-mentioned The National Security Strategy of the United States of America. If nothing else, this document makes clear how one extremely important and powerful set of intellectuals sees the world and how it plans to dispose the world according to the interests of its most influential agent. Neither this document nor its authors monopolize the range of concerns we need to address, nor should we confuse these plans with achieved reality. Often, these intellectuals' terms ignore the historical reality produced by millions of people working hard to create their own lives and elaborate societies in which they can live. Yet, these intellectuals stand in a privileged relation to power that implies at least three things: first, that their opinion rests upon highly developed knowledge bases; second, that it expresses a plan for action; and third, that its proximity to power demands critical intellectuals' most rigorous attention. The National Security document begins with a statement of US victory over challenges that arose in the twentieth century, acknowledges and celebrates the US' consequent position as world hegemony and articulates a clear plan for

226 Paul A. Bove arranging the world in accord with US interests and habits. China appears several times by name and other times by implication. Implied by all that I have said so far about the importance of Critical Zone is the fact that US humanists need to c o n c e r n themselves with this powerful view of the world e m a n a t i n g from Washington elites; moreover, Chinese intellectuals need to concern themselves as well; they need to bother with much more than those things that specifically implicate the PRC. Nothing less than the fate of the world is the subject of the National Security Statement, and humanistic intellectuals cannot but engage with entities possessed of sufficient power to apply their vision on all of the US: The United States possesses unprecedented — and unequaled — strength and influence in the world. Sustained by faith in the principles of liberty, and the value of a free society, this position comes with unparalleled responsibilities, obligations, and opportunity. The great strength of this nation must be used to promote a balance of power that favors freedom. 5 Such a visionary remark is familiar to all those who know the US or have studied its literature. Oddly enough, it comes as no surprise that the US state should speak in such poetic discourse, nor does it surprise many that US writers from Whitman have contributed to such visions of America and its place in the world. Ideological critique and literary history are slim resources in the face of the power that now underlies this vision. Not only must negative critique take aim at how these platitudes mask the operations of real power, but also humanistic intellectuals need to join in elaborating other imaginative and thoughtful relations that show that we should not confuse powerful visions with natural or historical necessity. The Security statement is less lucid on this point: We are attentive to the possible renewal of old patterns of great power competition. Several potential great powers are now in the midst of internal transition — most importantly Russia, India, and China. In all three cases, recent developments have encouraged our hope that a truly global consensus about basic principles is slowly taking shape. (26) Such end-of-history thinking as emerged after the Cold War would seem to have scant g r o u n d following the events of September 11 in the US. This document, the impulse for which predates the horrors of 2001, nonetheless expresses the underlying anti-historicism of a neo-conservative position in US foreign policy that imagines the US regime as the goal of historical development. Lest the warning implied by this passage pass unnoticed, the Security Statement becomes much more explicit:

5.

The National Security Strategy, p. 1. Hereafter cited by page number in my text.

Afterword

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We welcome the emergence of a strong, peaceful, and prosperous China. The democratic development of China is crucial to that future. Yet, a quarter century after beginning the process of shedding the worst features of the Communist legacy, China's leaders have not yet made the next series of fundamental choices about the character of their state. In pursuing advanced military capabilities that can threaten its neighbors in the Asia-Pacific region, China is following an outdated path that, in the end, will hamper its own pursuit of national greatness. In time, China will find that social and political freedom is the only source of that greatness. Such remarks implicate not only a considerable part of US history but also a complex line of politics and ideology within the PRC. Wang Hui's essay in this volume and some of his other writing embodies both a strong critical awareness of US attitudes toward globality and what is still a nationalistically inflected sense of an alternative. In light of the National Security Statement, AVang Hui rightly insists that current forms of globalization appear as forms of US dominance and, furthermore, by implication, that nationalist answers to the arrest of globalization are inadequate. 6 As I take it, this means that not only must humanistic critics criticize the arrogance of those intellectuals who produced the National Security Statement but that they should not seek alternatives to it in competing nationalist ideas. Interestingly, because the National Security Statement tends to speak in n a t i o n - c e n t e r e d terms of power a n d d o m i n a t i o n , critics c a n n o t look for alternatives in life and idea in national terms. Since the effects of ex-colonial societies make clear the dangers of nationalism as much as the rampages of military power a m o n g developed nations, critics' suspicion of the national impulses as purely imagined alternatives to ruling regimes have a definite place. Critical alternatives to these inherited and troubling ideas will emerge only in exchange that is aware of the world's largest forces and of the specific ways in which human beings, wherever they are, work to produce worlds that best suit their own need for justice and freedom. For complex historical reasons, Chinese and US intellectuals are among those now best positioned to think the relations among powers and interests as these effect the species. There are, of course, others who do the same, and from importantly complementary positions. But the advanced status of the US and the PRC, their situation as established and emerging powers, makes demands upon their intellectual classes' responsibility to think the state of the world for the species as a whole. Humans work in locales permeated by the effects of global and national power, but within the division of labor that marks this arrangement not all humans or even intellectuals have equal access to the systemic arrangements the control of which is essential. Moreover,

6. Wang Hui, "The 1989 Social Movement and China's Neoliberalism," China's New Order, trans. Rebecca Karl, ed. Theodore Huters (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 2003), 128.

228 Paul A. Bove without a view of the global arrangements as power implants them we cannot have confidence that any locally emerging forms of life provide acceptable bases for critique and innocent alternative forms. In other words, if we were to take the status of the species with an eye towards an ecology of political power and intellectual imagination, then the fate of the species provides the basis for j u d g m e n t of visions wherever we find them. Critical Zone emerges from what its editors consciously represent as the specific ecological zone that is Hong Kong. The PRC makes a great deal of its special zones, and so these intellectuals appropriate Hong Kong, its special advantages and its historical position, as a zone that enables special reflection upon worlds in transition. In the process, they have transmuted Hong Kong's status as a former British colony and the University of Hong Kong's history as an English language university into an opportunity to elaborate new lines of thinking alongside the new aesthetic and political forms that emerge within US/China relations.

Cootiribytors

Belsey, Catherine Catherine Belsey is Distinguished Research Professor at the Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory, Cardiff University. Her books include Critical Practice (1980, second edition 2002), The Subject of Tragedy (1985), Desire: Love Stories in Western Culture (1994) and Shakespeare and the Loss of Eden (1999). H e r most recent publication, Poststructuralism: A Very Short Introduction (2002), does what it promises. Bove, Paul A. Paul A. Bove is Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh and Editor of boundary 2: an international journal of literature and culture (Duke UP). His works include Intellectuals in Power: A Genealogy of Critical Humanism (1986), In the Wake of Theory (1992), and Mastering Discourse: The Politics of Intellectual Culture (1992). He is currently working on a book about Henry Adams. Chen, Jianhua Chen Jianhua is Assistant Professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He is the author of Zhongguo "Geming" huayu kaolun (Studies of the discourses of Chinese "revolution," 2000) and numerous articles on Chinese literary culture from the thirteenth century to the present. His research interests include the history of Chinese poetic hermeneutics, late Ming and late Qing literary culture, Republican literature and print culture, and Chinese literary and visual modernities.

230

Contributors

Clarke, Eric Eric Clarke is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the English Department at the University of Pittsburgh. His primary research interests are the history of sexuality, nineteenth-century British literature, and social and cultural theory. He is the author of Virtuous Vice: Homoerotidsm and the Public Sphere (2000) and is Advisory Editor for boundary 2: an international journal of literature and culture. He has published articles on Hegel, Kant, P. B. Shelley, queer theory, and contemporary film. His current research projects include a book on George Eliot and a book on the history of lifestyle. Hutton, Christopher Christopher Hutton is currently Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Hong Kong where he teaches sociolinguistics and the history of linguistics. He previously taught at the University of Texas at Austin and at the Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies. He is the author of Abstraction and Instance: the Type-token Relation in Linguistic Theory (1990) and Linguistics and the Third Reich (1999). C u r r e n t research involves the interactions between colonialism, linguistics and race theory in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His forthcoming study, Race and the Third Reich, will be published by Polity Press in 2005. Jiang, Ningkang Jiang Ningkang received his doctorate from Cornell University and is currently Associate Professor of English at Nanjing University. His primary research interests are literary criticism, cultural studies, and contemporary American literature. He is the a u t h o r of n u m e r o u s articles and essays on a wide range of topics in comparative literature and cultural criticism. Judy, Ronald A. T. Ronald A. T. Judy is Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh and a member of the Editorial Collective of boundary 2: an international journal of literature and culture. He is the author of (Dis)forming the American Canon: The Vernacular of African Arabic American Slave Narrative (1992) and has published numerous papers in philosophy, contemporary Islamic philosophy, literary and cultural theory, music, and Arabic and American literatures. He has been the guest editor of two special editions of boundary 2, one on the philosophy of W E. B. Du Bois, Sociology Hesitant: W E. B. Du Bois's Dynamic Thinking (2000), which was awarded second place by the Council of Editors of Learned Journals in the category of Best Special issue of 2001; and the other, co-edited with Jonathan Arac, Ralph Ellison: The Next Fifty Years (2003). He is currently completing a book project tentatively called The Last Negro or the Destruction of Categorical Thought: An Experiment in Hyperbolic Thinking.

Contributors

231

Kerr, Douglas Douglas Kerr is Associate Professor in the English Department at the University of Hong Kong, and has been visiting scholar at Oxford University and London University. His published work includes Wilfred Owen's Voices (1993) and George Orwell (2003), and essays and articles in Essays in Criticism, Textual Practice, Modern Language Review, and Journal of Commonwealth Literature. His c u r r e n t work is concerned with the history of representations of Eastern people and places in English writing, from the time of Kipling to the postcolonial period. Liu, Dong Liu Dong is Professor of Comparative Literature at the Institute of Comparative Literature a n d Cultural Studies at Beijing University a n d Editor of China Scholarship. His more recent research interests include aesthetics, comparative literature a n d sinology. He is the author of n u m e r o u s volumes a n d articles including: Lilun yu xinzhi (Theory and wisdom, 2000), Fushi hui (Pictures of the floating world, 1996), Liu Dong zixuanji (Liu Dong's selection of his own writings, 1996), Zhonghua wenming (Chinese civilization, 1994), Xifangde chouxue (Aesthetics of ugliness in the West, 1986). Tong, Q. S. Q. S. Tong is Associate Professor of English at the University of Hong Kong, where he teaches critical theory, romanticism, and the English idea of China in the e i g h t e e n t h a n d n i n e t e e n t h c e n t u r i e s . H e is the a u t h o r of Reconstructing Romanticism: Organic Theory Revisited (1997) and numerous essays and papers on comparative literature and cultural studies. An editorial m e m b e r of several international journals, he has co-edited special issues for Journal of Asian Padfic Communication and World Englishes. Wang, Guilan Wang Guilan is currently Director of the Office of International Education at C e n t r a l M i c h i g a n University. H e r r e s e a r c h i n t e r e s t s i n c l u d e university management and international exchanges in higher education. She has published numerous articles and co-authored, with Zhang Boshu, Chongjian zhonguo shili daxue: lilun, xianshi yu qianjing (Reconstructing Chinese private universities: theory, reality and prospect, 2003). Wang, Shouren Wang Shouren is Professor of English and Dean of the School of Foreign Studies at Nanjing University. He is Vice Chairman of China English Language Education Association and Vice Chairman of China Association for the Study of American Literature. His research interests are British and American fiction and twentiethcentury British and American literary history. His publications include The Theatre

232

Contributors

of the Mind (1990), Xingbie zhongzu wenhua (Gender, race and culture, 1999; 2004), Xinbian mdguo wenxueshi (New literary history of the United States, 2002) and numerous papers on English language and literature. He has also compiled ten textbooks including Yingguo wenxue xuandu (Selected readings in British literature, 2001). Zhang, Boshu Zhang Boshu works in the Institute of Philosophy, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. His research interests are critical theory and institutional modernity. He has participated in the founding of some private institutions of education in China. His published works include Jingji xingwdyu ren (Economic behavior and human beings, 1998), Xiandaixinyu zhidu xiandaixing (Modernity and institutional modernity, 1998), Chongjian zhonguo shili daxue: lilun, xianshi yu qianjing (Reconstructing Chinese private universities: theory, reality and prospect, 2003, co-authored with Wang Guilan). Zhu, Shoutong Zhu Shoutong is Professor of Chinese at Nanjing University. His is also a parttime professor at Macau University of Science and Technology, and Foguang University, Taiwan. His main research area is modern Chinese literature. His published works include Zhongguo xiandai shetuan wenxueshi (On history of modern Chinese literary groups, 2004), Wenxue yu rensheng (Literature and life, 2004), Xinyuepai de shenshi fengqing (The gentlemen mode of New Crescent Society, 2003), Zhongguo xiandai langmanzhuyi wenxueshi lun (On history of m o d e r n Chinese romanticist literature, 2002, co-authored), and Zhu Shoutong lun xiju (Zhu Shoutong on dramas, 2002).