Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014. xiv, 179 pp. US$29.95, cloth. ISBN 978-0-674-04695-5.
This book is the translation of the introduction to Wang Hui’s four-volume Rise of Modern Chinese Thought, published in Chinese in 2004 and as yet not translated. Wang is a preeminent new-left public intellectual in China, well known for his political and scholarly writings as well as for his editing of Dushu, one of China’s best-known intellectual journals. More of his work is available in English translation than is the case for most contemporary Chinese intellectuals, and this volume is a welcome addition to those interested in Wang in particular and in current intellectual trends in China in general.
Wang’s ambitious goal is to rethink the meanings of “China,” “modernity,” and “modern China.” The context for his inquiry is essentially sinological and historical discourse on China as practiced in Japan, the United States, and Europe over the past few decades (the introduction suggests that Wang pays less attention to his Chinese colleagues, which may be one reason that he is not universally appreciated there). His discipline is intellectual history, meaning both that he has read broadly and deeply in the writings of Chinese thinkers since the Song dynasty, and that he understands sinological and historical writing as a part of intellectual history. Wang’s approach is post-modern; it could hardly be otherwise, given the nature of his project. Happily, he avoids the sneering “holier than thou” tone of some post-modern writings. He also avoids “bashing the West” and “valourizing China,” although he does want us to rethink many of the central narratives of Chinese historical studies, both in China and elsewhere.
As the title of the volume suggests, most of these central narratives are related to notions concerning “empire” and “nation-state” in China and elsewhere. Relentlessly iconoclastic, Wang attempts to illustrate the extent to which these concepts, central to various narratives of modernity, are in fact much more complex than one might think from reading textbook accounts of Chinese history (or history elsewhere). In the first section of the book, “Two Narratives of China and Their Derivative Forms,” Wang argues that the common binary employed in most historical studies which discuss China’s evolution from premodern empire to modern nation are more teleological than fact-based, and ignore much of the complexity of the historical interactions between capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism. In the second section, “The Empire/Nation-State Binary and European ‘World History,’” Wang similarly argues that much of the complexity—and intelligence—of policy discussion and implementation under the Qing has been swept under the rug by dismissive Western images of the Manchus as incompetent Keystone Kops (or by Chinese nationalist images of the Qing as racial enemies). In the third section, “Heavenly Principle/Universal Principle and History,” Wang examines the neo-Confucian notion of heavenly principle, its unfolding over the late dynastic period, and its confrontation with “universal principle” (broadly, science and rationality as introduced by the West in the late nineteenth century). Unlike Joseph Levenson, Wang does not see these two principles as mutually exclusive. Although based on a reading of China’s ancient civilization (rites and music), heavenly principle as conceived by Zhu Xi and others in the Song also contained an understanding of history and flexibility, and remains a resource for present-day Chinese intellectuals. In section 4, “China’s Modern Identity and the Transformation of Empire,” Wang seems to argue against the impact of print capitalism and Benedict Anderson’s idea of an “imagined community” in the rise of China’s modern identity, and for greater attention to the idea of economic empire under globalization.
As this brief summary suggests, this is heady stuff. Wang is clearly serious, erudite and, I think, judicious in what he is trying to do. It is a pleasure to read a Chinese scholar who takes Western and Japanese sinology seriously on its own terms, and who seeks to bend postmodernism to his own ends. At the very least, Wang asks interesting questions in interesting ways, and illustrates helpfully just how silly the (already much decried) notion of “changeless China” really is. At the same time, it is hard to tell the extent to which Wang is “successful.” The project exists at a very high level of abstraction, and given that Wang is hoping to interrogate just what we mean by “China” and “modern,” much of what he says is necessarily highly tentative. It does not help that Wang’s prose is rather dense; a typical paragraph might be a page long, and many are much longer (kudos to the translator, however, who seems to have done a marvelous job). Some passages were fascinating, and made me want to check out the larger four-volume work. Others were nothing short of exasperating, and made me put the book down. I suppose that in a study like this, much of the artistry consists in just getting the balls in the air. Juggling is appreciated for its own sake and there is no immediate larger goal.
Wang wants to do more than juggle, though, and I wish that he had tried harder to communicate his insights in declarative sentences. The final sentence of the volume reads: “Because the process of writing this book stretched out over ten years, I am already unable to sketch out the complete context of my theoretical considerations and how they have changed—this is something that still needs to be addressed” (145). I admire the honesty, but would still have appreciated a few morsels now.
David Ownby
Université de Montréal, Montréal, Canada