20 2011 Opening speech by Prof. Wang Hui ... - Litteraturhuset

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a deeper understanding of the significance of “the propensity of the times” in dynastic history and inthe process of dynastic changeIt is from this perspective that I critique various discourses on “China.” For example, on the onehand I take issue with such self-evident genealogies as the progression of Yao, Shun, Yu, Tang, Wen,Wu, the Duke of Zhou, Confucius, followed by the Qin dynasty, the Han, the Sui, the Tang, the Song,the Yuan, the Ming, and the Qing. On the other, I do not approve of reductively challenging—ornegating—Chinese identity from the standpoint of national minority history. If Confucianism, and therise of Neo-Confucianism in particular, embodies a determination to rethink historical discontinuitiesand continue the tradition, continuity must be premised on considerations of historical rupture, andthought of from the perspective of seizing historical initiative; from the standpoint of politicscontinuity must be understood as part of the endless process of refashioning legitimacy. In affirmingthat thinking about continuity is premised on the notion of rupture is not to see continuity as a naturalprocess, but rather to understand it as the product of a will to take historical initiative. What are theimplications of this? The point is that “China” has no existence that is external to us, nor is itsomething other than the object of a particular historical subjectivity. “China” is closely tied to thethought and action of the people of particular eras.When I link up “the establishment of Heavenly Principle” with such matters as a state with acentral bureaucracy, patriarchal enfeoffment, a land tenure system, taxation law and the debates inboth the Northern and Southern Song about Chinese vs. barbarians (Yi-xia zhi bian), it is to express theclose relationship between this new weltanschauung and the reconstruction of social values andidentity. When I link up Confucian classical learning with such questions as the legitimacy of theQing dynastic state, the dynasty’s multiple legal systems, the relationship between the Manchu andHan peoples, and the internal and external issues revolving around the imperial tribute system andinternational relations, it is also to express the close relationship between the appearance of this newtype of Confucianism —quite different from Song Neo-Confucianism—and the reconstruction ofsocial values and identity. When I link up the weltanschauung of Universal Principle (gongli) withsuch matters as the nation-state, the social system, rights, and cultural movements, it is in order todiscuss new types of identity and their internal contradictions and difficulties. I examine the entity of“China” and its implications from various angles in order to try to liberate the concept from asimplistic notion of European nationalism. “China” is a richer, more flexible and more diversecategory than the concept of the national would imply, and in constructing the legitimacy [p. 12] of adynasty ruled by a national minority, in constructing equal relations among the different ethnicitiesunder that dynasty, and in such enterprises as molding differing forms of foreign relations and tributerelationships with differing political entities, “China” demonstrated its particular flexibility andadaptability.Accompanying the rethinking of the nation-state system and research on globalization, suchissues as the historical experience of early empires and the dynamics of the transition from empire tothe modern nation-state have once again been brought within the purview of researcher. This hasprovided an opportunity to reexamine issues that had been constricted within the discourse ofteleological modernity, such as the state structures and economic systems of early empires andinterregional communication. Today two approaches dominate the discussion of empire, one focusingon the globalization of the “post-nation-state,” with Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Empire (2000)being among the most influential examples. The other approach consists of a renewed “empirestudies,” driven by dissatisfaction with or a rethinking of the nation-state system, embodied mostdirectly in the efforts of a number of historians to reopen study of the history of early empires and totranscend the predominant existing narrative centered on the nation-state and its metrics. I see bothapproaches as responses to the contemporary crisis and to the study of history—they are, of course,connected, but they should not be conflated; Empire and State, the second volume of my book, hewsmore closely to the second approach. My intent in once again raising the issue of empire is thus totranscend rather than strengthen the narrative of the nation-state. In summing up the legacy of empire,beyond the interregional communication mentioned above, scholars have examined multi-ethnicLitteraturhuset Tlf.: +47 22 95 55 30Wergelandsveien 29 Fax: +47 22 95 55 310167 Oslo, Norway post@litteraturhuset.no
political structures and cultural identity, internal colonization, the tendency to centralize politicalpower, and the complex interrelationship of empire with the formation of the nation-state.If, however, we should approach the relationship between empire and early modernity from theconventional binary of “empire vs. nation-state,” it will be easy to fall into or simply provide evidencefor a nineteenth-century European historical view, which holds that China has no real politicalsubjectivity. The key point here is not to affirm or deny the existence of a “nation-state” in Chinesehistory, but to clarify different sorts of political entity and their different forms, and in so doing freethe concept of “state” from being completely enshrouded within the history of modern Europeancapitalism and the nation-state. Modern states have different political cultures, with socialist andcapitalist states each having their own. Thus, since any discussion of modern states involves comingto grips with distinctive political cultures and traditions, addressing pre-twentieth-century states andtheir subjectivities only as abstractions is inadequate. The Kyoto School lays stress on the Songdynasty [p. 13] as a mature state with a centralized administration, or, in fact, a quasi-nation-state.Therefore, when Kyoto School scholars connect such a centrally administered state with earlymodernity, they once again affirm the binary of “empire vs. nation-state.” This binary can beportrayed in widely divergent ways, but such depictions never depart from positing an inherentconnection between the state and capitalism, Miyazaki Ichisada’s argument being a prime example.Within this conceptual framework, we cannot really imagine what a non-capitalist nation-state mightbe.Because of these factors, I emphasize the overlapping relationship between the construction ofempires and the nation-state rather than becoming entangled within the binary of empire vs. nationstate.Since the nineteenth century, virtually all studies of pre-modern history have been conductedwithin the category of the history of empire, for instance, that representative work of the 1960s, S. N.Eisenstadt’s The Political System of Empires. This highly influential work synthesized historicalstudies of great world civilizations within a Weberian framework, placing “pre-modern” history underthe rubric of the “political system of empires,” a rubric that grew out of the binary of “empire vs.nation-state” in nineteenth- century European political economy. Within this binary, “empire”constitutes all the features that are the opposite of modernity, and even when a relationship betweenempire and modernity is acknowledged, the relationship is only allowed retrospectively; for instance,it might be asked: what are the origins of despotism and authoritarianism in the modern nation-state?Or, why is the modern nation-state unable to break away from its inherently violent nature? In otherwords, all the manifestations of the crises of modernity will be traced back to the historicalrelationship between empires and the modern world. The Political System of Empires is an excellentexample of how nearly all twentieth-century “pre-modern histories” were encompassed within thecategory of “empire.”In my volume Empire and State, I mainly discuss the following problems: First, how didConfucianism legitimize the Qing as a Chinese dynasty? How were pluralistic identities andpluralistic political/juridical institutions within the imperial system constructed? On one hand, animportant part of the exploitation of Confucianism by the Qing rulers to consolidate their rule was toidentify themselves as a “Chinese dynasty.” On the other hand, the Qing literati also used athoroughly legitimate Confucianism to criticize the dynasty’s ethnic hierarchy, with the result thatcertain principles and propositions of Confucianism were fused with the issue of equality within aspecific historical context. Second, since a number of important post-nineteenth-century scholarlyworks take empires as the antithesis of the state, what are the historical relations between theconstruction of empire and the construction of the nation-state? [p. 14] As a response to this question,in my discussion of Qing classical scholarship, and Gongyang learning in particular, I emphasize thatconstruction of the empire, including the expansion of the tribute system, and the construction of theQing state are two sides of the same coin. In fact, phenomena defined as typical symbols of thenation-state, such as boundaries and administrative jurisdictions within those boundaries, alreadyexisted by or began to develop as early as the seventeenth century.Litteraturhuset Tlf.: +47 22 95 55 30Wergelandsveien 29 Fax: +47 22 95 55 310167 Oslo, Norway post@litteraturhuset.no
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Page 15 and 16: sovereign state in a new world syst
Page 17: WANG HUI (2004) Xiandai Zhongguo si

20 2011 Opening speech by Prof. Wang Hui ... - Litteraturhuset

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