Shadows of traditions: Discourse shifts on the rule of law and China's modernity by Ning Du A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Communication Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario ©2010, Ning Du Library and Archives Bibliothèque et ?F? 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While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. 1*1 Canada Abstract This thesis seeks to define the modernity-tradition problematic from a perspective of epistemology. It argues that traditions are objects of discourses that are constructed under the modern epistemic condition. Under such a condition, the modern West and its world of ideas provide major references of thought when traditions are depicted. This approach to the modernity-tradition problematic has implications for transnational communication studies on two levels. First, it calls for analyses of the specific and diverse ways in which the modern condition orients non-Western narrations of traditions. Second, it requires communication analysts to reflect on the ways in which their own interpretations of traditions, to the extent that they are impacted by the modern epistemic condition, may affect their observations about patterns of communication in cross-cultural phenomena. The thesis applies the proposed approach to study the changing discourses on "the rule of law"—an idea of Western origin—in socialist China. Employing a model of "discourse shifts" which is developed to study semiotic histories, the thesis analyzes the varying accounts of traditions in the transforming networks of discourses on "the rule of law" in China. It discusses how these accounts, while serving various social agendas, are commonly narrated within the modern epistemic framework. Moreover, it considers how divergent views on Chinese and Western traditions may lead to varied conclusions on the patterns of communication shown by the case. As such, this thesis is an alternative attempt at transnational communication analysis that highlights the importance of an integrated epistemological perspective. It also shows how such a perspective contributes to an understanding of China's modernity which avoids the teleology of the modernization paradigm, yet which does not trivialize Western influences on China. ii Acknowledgements It would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to produce an exhaustive "thank you" list for such a project as a doctoral dissertation. I would first like to thank my supervisor, Karim Karim, for his indispensable mentorship, support, and encouragement in each phase of my doctoral study, and to thank Michael Dorland and Sheryl Hamilton for their inspiration and critiques without which the dissertation in its current form would have neither been possible. I am grateful to my supervisor and the advisory committee for their invaluable insights and comments from which I have benefited in each stage of the process. Thanks too to other faculty members and the staff in the program of Communication Studies who have made my experience at Carleton an enriching one. I am also grateful to many friends of mine whose friendship has supported me along the way. I would like to thank particularly the family of Tom Lisi and Elaine Schuetz, the family of Ania Wasilewski and Kevin Murchie, as well as the family of Chengbin Feng and Merlinda Poon, who have made Ottawa a lovely place to live in, and have brought warmth and pleasure to my cross-cultural experience. Last but not least, I am deeply indebted to my family, for the constant and invigorating encouragement and support from my husband, Nan Feng, my mother, Fan Xiaojing, and my grandparents, Fan Chao and Cao Jingchun. My baby daughter, Yanching, who was born while I was working on the dissertation, is a precious gift that grants new meanings to my life and brings me new strengths. I regret, however, that I have missed forever the chance to present the finalized dissertation to my grandparents, but I always cherish to my heart those moments together with them and am enormously grateful for what they have given to and instilled in me. iii Table of Contents Chapter 1 Introduction 1 Chapter 2 "Tradition" revisited : Chinese and Western legal heritages 44 Chapter 3 Discourse shifts 87 Chapter 4 The new socialists: Revolution and "the rule of law" 130 Chapter 5 Socialism in transformation: Post-revolution (re)emergence of the rule of law 164 Chapter 6 Contemporary languaging of the rule of law: New waves in discourse shifts 210 Chapter 7 Shadows of traditions in China's modernity: Rethinking transnational communication in the discourse shifts on the rule of law 247 References 266 Chapter 1 Introduction The relation between modernity and tradition has been defined and reworked in variegated ways in theories of transnational communication.1 However, even competing paradigms in the field share common ground in treating the two as disparate and opposed frontiers. This polarization is more evident in accounts of cultural diffusion and confrontation, where global modernity and local tradition are often taken to be in an adversarial relation. In the theories of hybridization, such a dichotomization has been challenged on the basis of evidence of various syncretisms that are said to be combinations of the global and the local. However, there still exists the tendency to conceive of hybridity as that which "highlights the mixtures and discontinuities that have characterized. .the encounter between the modern and the traditional in history" (Kraidy, 2005, p. 64; italics added). Marwan Kraidy once noted that "hybridity is a pervasive existential condition" (2004, p. 16; original italics). As celebrated as the approach of hybridization is as a subversion of other paradigms of transnational communication, one may nevertheless wonder: what, then, is the existential condition of hybridities? Are "modernity" and "tradition," if not two opposites, no more than two disparate entities only to be mingled in an epistemic vacuum? I argue that grappling with these issues leads one to the task of re-approaching modernity and tradition from a perspective of 1 1 will conduct a detailed literature review of the various theories of transnational communication later. theories.What is provided here is a brief note of the conceptualization of the modernity-tradition relation in the 1 2 epistemology. In such an approach, one may conceptualize "modernity," not as a level of social development achieved in the West, but as a pandemic epistemic condition, under which the modern West and its world of ideas provide major references of thought when social realities are defined, problems are identified, and solutions are sought. Thus, "traditions," rather than being the antithesis of modernity, are a variety of discursive products of the modern condition that are configured to advance social agendas. This alternative approach to the modernity-tradition problematic has implications for transnational communication studies on two levels. First, it calls for analyses of the specific and diverse ways in which the modern condition orients non-Western narrations of traditions. Second, it requires communication analysts to reflect on the ways in which their own interpretations of traditions, to the extent that they are impacted by the modern epistemic condition, may affect their observations about patterns of communication in cross-cultural phenomena. In fact, ifmodernity and tradition are conceptualized as connected semiotic events, then, "diffusion," "confrontation," and "hybridities" are not so much epistemologically detached descriptions as observations resulting from subjective hermeneutics of traditions. Applying