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Depoliticization and the Chinese Intellectual Scene Alexander Day Wayne State University, Aday@Wayne.Edu Criticism Volume 53 | Issue 1 Article 8 2011 Depoliticization and the Chinese Intellectual Scene Alexander Day Wayne State University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/criticism Recommended Citation Day, Alexander (2011) "Depoliticization and the Chinese Intellectual Scene," Criticism: Vol. 53: Iss. 1, Article 8. Available at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/criticism/vol53/iss1/8 depoLiticizatioN it is not easy to construct a Left critique in china today. one has ANd the chiNese to work hard both to differentiate iNteLLectuAL oneself from the socialist past— sceNe especially the contentious period Alexander day of the cultural revolution—and to critique the capitalist present. it is much easier to fall into a liberal the end of the revolution: china position of maintaining an opposi- and the Limits of modernity tion between the market and what by Wang hui. New york: Verso, is considered civil society, on one 2009. pp. xxxiii, 274. $26.95 cloth. side, and the socialist state, on the other. Wang hui, one of the stron- gest critics of contemporary in- equality and the marketization of society and politics in china, argues against the ideological separation of the market and the state that has undergirded much of chinese in- tellectual discourse since the 1980s. this argument is forcefully made in the end of the revolution, a new english-language collection of his essays published by Verso. the book is a difficult read because the thread linking its essays is not always clear; they cover a broad se- ries of topics and were written over more than a decade. But its diffi- culty also stems from the complex- ity of Wang’s intellectual project and the particular politics that he has worked to construct. Wang hui’s intellectual trajec- tory cannot be understood apart from the development of intel- lectual politics in china since the 1980s, when his academic career began and his involvement in the 1989 tiananmen democracy move- ment shaped his political outlook. criticism Winter 2011, Vol. 53, No. 1, pp. 141–151. issN 0011-1589. 141 ©2011 by Wayne state university press detroit, michigan 48201-1309 142 ALexANder dAy the post-mao chinese intellectual to develop his major, four-volume scene of the 1980s was dominated work of intellectual history, the by a progressive narrative of tradi- rise of modern chinese thought tion and modernity, in which the (2004)—discussed in several essays West was the modern standard and in the Verso collection.1 in that in- china was forced to catch up. in- tellectual history, finally published tellectuals saw themselves as agents in chinese in 2004 and yet to be of a new enlightenment, and mao- translated into english, Wang re- ism was seen as an offspring of au- jected the teleological and progres- thoritarian chinese feudal tradi- sive narrative of history of the 1980s tion based in a conservative peasant and its key dichotomies of china/ mentality. Breaking with tradition West, state/society, and empire/na- meant converging with the West. tion, transforming the dichotomy the reform-period liberalism that tradition/modernity in the process. emerged at the time imagined this For Wang—and this marks the key process as a liberation of society divergence of the New Left from from the state, with the freedom of the liberals in the 1990s—the 1980s the market determining the mea- narrative of enlightenment acted sure of that liberation. this was as an ideological veil, concealing always an elite process in which the repressive link between market intellectuals and radical reformers reforms and the postrevolution- in the communist party were to ary state. instead of celebrating the engineer the transformation and present moment as a break from guard against populist backlash— the feudal state, with the market with the specter of a violent and playing the role of a modernizing chaotic cultural revolution always and progressive agent, according a present fear. While there were to Wang it is the role of intellectu- debates over how this process was als to critically tear away the ideo- to unfold and what the best policies logical veil that conceals the hidden were to speed its progress, this nar- connection between the market rative remained hegemonic within and the repressive state, revealing the chinese intellectual scene until a present in which the market and the 1990s and the emergence of the capital dominate the social world. New Left critique, of which Wang the rise of modern chinese hui was a central figure. thought attempts to open up his- As he outlines in chapter 4, it tory as a nonteleological process, was in the repressive years imme- full of reversals and contingencies. diately following 1989 that Wang, ranging across chinese history, who was banished to shaanxi for with a focus on the period from a year in punishment for his par- the song dynasty (960–1279) to the ticipation in the movement, began twentieth century, Wang argued oN WANg’s the end of the reVoLution 143 that china had its own modernity By excavating categories inter- that offered resources for con- nal to those chinese traditions and structing a society different from putting them to historical work, that of the capitalist West. in doing Wang shows less a teleology of so, Wang hoped to break down the convergence than the historicity of ideological thinking that constricts song critical thought. in his intel- present political construction and lectual history as well as the essays to open up avenues to new pos- in the Verso collection, Wang coun- sible futures. Wang’s reading of ters a universal progressive notion song confucian debates provides of world history and modernity a model of intellectual critique, as with a “multi-interactive perspec- well as itself serving as a critique of tive” (84) in which modernity, in- anachronistic and universalizing stead of a product of the West that narratives typically used to discuss inevitably came to transform the the song. Wang is not the first to world into clones of Western capi- trace modernity to song china. talist modernity, was initially the Japanese scholars of the Kyoto varied production of interacting so- school, writing from the 1920s to cieties. it was only because of a set the 1940s, believed that song bu- of very contingent causes that the reaucracy and markets signaled a Western model came to dominate. modern break from the preceding this implies that even today the aristocratic tang dynasty. they Western capitalist model should constructed a universalizing and not be taken as the inevitable end teleological narrative in which point of modernization. Wang’s china had the potential to con- work, therefore, aims to uncover verge with the West. For the Kyoto how key Western categories came school, the dichotomy of empire/ to be hegemonic in our discussion nation-state was key to understand- of modern chinese thought. For ing this transformation: the song example, Wang argues that the em- was an early form of nation-state. pire/nation-state dichotomy tells us What differentiates Wang’s read- more about Western thought—in ing, however, is that he locates this which “the nation-state as the goal chinese modernity not so much in of history becomes a negation of the the institutional social organization political form of empire in general” of the song—whether positively or (126)—than it does about song negatively compared to that of the china. What Wang is attempting West—as in the dialectic between to do is “to break down this dual- that institutional transformation ism, and to negate the dualistic and the intellectual practice of song relation as it appears in nineteenth- scholars that criticized their chang- century political economy” (126). ing society. Wang cautions, however, that 144 ALexANder dAy this is not to say that . in- in the West. he was as critical of digenous concepts can com- progress and modernity as he was pletely represent history: we of tradition (196): again, the dichot- must recognize that these omy itself does not help us to make endemic concepts also rep- political and ethical decisions. resent a particularistic nar- Wang follows the Japanese thinker rative or description in any yoshimi takeuchi in noting the given context. As a result, the same cycle of critique and institu- particular ways of seeing that tionalization that Wang found in are opened up to us when we song history: attach importance to history are very important in help- For Lu xun, only “perma- ing us to identify the limita- nent revolution” can break tions of our own ways of see- away from the never-ending ing. (124–25) repetition and cycle of his- tory, and the one who main- through the process, the history tains from beginning to end of modern chinese thought comes his “revolutionary” spirit will to be told as a story of intellectual inevitably become the critic critique, its institutionalization, of his own comrades in the and new cycles of critique;2 only by past, because the moment his breaking from the hegemonic cat- comrades become satisfied egories of Western thought and the with their “success” is the mo- powerful teleological narrative that ment they will become mired they help construct can song his- in that historical cycle—it is tory be given its proper historicity, this cycle that is the real revo- and song thought again become a lutionary’s ultimate target of resource for critical engagement revolution. (201) with modernity. this critical spirit is perhaps critics must never, in other words, most fully articulated in Wang’s believe themselves to be outside of engagement with the revolutionary what they criticize—critique must chinese writer Lu xun, the sub- always be self-reflexive (202).
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